The Goblet of Darkness

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with my parents on Thanksgiving day. This was the second time I saw it, the first time being a midnight showing. Although I liked the movie a lot (it's much better than the book which drags on interminably), seeing it a second time made me realize two things which I talk about below. I can't imagine anyone who could be worried about spoilers at this point, but if there is such a person, don't worry - I don't spoil anything about any of the books in this post.

Disturbing Realization #1: The films are now a lot darker. I'm not talking about the storyline, mind you. That is darker, but in a good way. What I'm talking about is the lighting in the film. In this movie and Prisoner, there is effectively no sun at all. The days are gray and blue and green and so are the nights. For those that would say it's because they filmed in Scotland, well, this is not true as I saw behind the scenes footage and there was plenty of sun during the shooting of key outdoor scenes. A choice was made to cover it up. Case in point - the above picutre of Harry jumping is much brigther than it appears in ANY theatrical showing of the film). The problem with this is two-fold (three-fold if you count the fact that it just plain pisses me off). First, without any color correction, the colors for outdoors scenes are much more drab and murky than they would be with sunlight. Second, theaters have a tendency nowadays to turn down the intensity of bulbs on their projectors (assuming they're using projectors which a lot of smaller ones still do). The result is that the movie becomes even darker. For me and my parents, this resulted in my not being able to see the graveyard scene at all when I saw it the second time. My plea to directors is to not give movies blanket treatments with respect to lighting and color. The Lord of the Rings story was plenty dark at times, but that didn't mean you couldn't see the light of day.

Disturbing Realization #2: The past few books/movies haven't advanced the storyline in a significant way. Watching the ending of Goblet on the big screen really hit this one home. I found myself saying, "Hey! We already know all of this!" The fact is, after Philosopher's Stone, the books do not add any more pieces to the Voldemort/Harry conflict. The next piece we get is in Order (the upcoming movie) where we find out why Voldemort is so bent on killing the boy who lived. Then in Half-Blood we find out how Voldemort managed to not die from his killing curse backfiring. But that's really it for those two books as well. True, Half-Blood solidifes who is on who's side, but I think everybody can see this coming. So, it really raises the question, "Is Rowling just good at creating an entertaining backdrop and not so good at storytelling, or perhaps she originally wanted just 3-4 books and the publishers forced here to spread them out?" I hope it is the latter, and yet, it's arguably just as saddening. We seen this all before, though - The Lord of the Rings was supposed to be one novel. So much for creative freedom in literature.

Top Five Ways to Draw a Crowd

I spent this entire past weekend behind a booth at an Expo in order to recruit new members to my soccer club (I'm the newly elected Officer for Membership/Secretary). Expos are pretty much like any gaming convention's dealer room or an exhibit hall for a research convention (as mentioned in my Nashville post). Basically, you've got rows upon rows of tables with people behind them trying to get you to buy into something or another. Hopefully when you're at one of these, you're not directly next to a competitor, but even if you aren't, it ain't no walk in the park. There are a lot of people floating around and, all things being equal, the majority of them won't stop by your booth at all. Let's face it, there are a lot of booths jam-packed together and at times they all seem to run together. This combined with the fact that the average person is well, average, means you may not get noticed by someone walking right by you.

I've heard people go on and on about how you need to have a good speech to tell the people that visit your booth or a good demo routine to reel them in or a great selling point for your product. Well, that's a lot of hooey. After careful consideration of this weekend's events and events I attended in the past, I've determined what the four most important things to have at any booth are:

5. Cute Furry Animals: Let's face it, we're all suckers for cute and cuddly creatures. The women will be suckered in immediately. The guys may resist at first, but on the second day, they'll cave in. They always do.
4. Entourage: Nobody likes a loser or a perceived loser. So, if you're alone at a booth people are going to think there is something wrong with you or be painfully reminded of their own lonely inadequecies and will stay away. To avoid this make sure you've got a posse with you and make sure it's full of colorful, humorous and outgoing individuals.
3. Eye-Catching Displays: If you're a white on white banality, nobody's going to give a damn. Make sure you have a colorful display and secondary props that catch people's attention. Things that move, even if it's a TV program showing are great eye-catchers. So are colorfully dressed members of your posse (as exemplified by the Pirate hat worn by Mark a few years ago).
2. Free Food: This should never be underestimated, especially at Cons/Expos where food is obscenely expensive to purchase. The sexier the food you're offering, the bigger the line you'll get (one booth this weekend was serving up free Lobster Bisque soup). If you can't be sexy (I realize not all of you can be), then be decadent - the average person has a weakness for candy.
1. Hot Guys and/or Girls: Hopefully you all saw this one coming. Having hot people at your booth is a great draw because it makes attendees forget about everything else that's going on around them and since you've been so good and read this far in my entry, I'll tell you one of my personal secret techniques that has worked exceedingly well. After the attendee gets over to your booth you can ask them to leave their email for more information. The key to getting them to sign is to say, "If you write your email address, I'll *personally* send you an email back with more information." (note: results may vary depending on your individual hotness level)

A Lesson In Humility

This past weekend I had the opportunity to do something I've never done before - judge at a 40k Magic Event. I was a judge at Grand Prix Philly which is the first (and possibly the last) Legacy format Premiere Magic Event. Based on the absurd turnout of last years' GP New Jersey (near 1,000), the tournament hall for Philly had similar capactiy, but unfortunately we only had about 490 people.

Still, I learned a great deal from this experience. Being able to work with judges of a variety of skill levels and being able to work with judges that have not worked with you before is a great way to get feedback and learn things you might not realize you were missing. I learned more during one day of this event than I did at both 3-day Pro Circuits I worked this year. Of course, I was afraid that I would make a major mistake somewhere during this weekend and all hell would break loose, but that never came to pass. I did have one notable mistake where my training had me doing something differently than DCI policy, so that was a bit embarassing, but the head judge was totally cool about it and I'm glad that I now know the official policy.

In case any of you are wondering whether Level 3 and Level 4 judges are effectively perfect, well they're not. The legacy format had some thick card interactions and the card Humility offered a good number of headaches. This card used to be a disorganized monstrocity and now it's a highly organized monstrocity with two abilities that apply in different layers for continuous modifiers. Over the course of the weekend, even the head judge (a Level 4) mis-ruled on Humilty. Yikes! I was privy to an interesting scenario seen above and left. We have a Swords to Plowshares targeting a Creature Land, a Teferi's Response targeting the Swords and then a Wingshards is played to destroy the Creature Land. The Wingshards resolves destroying the land. Next up is Teferi's Response. Does it resolve as normal giving a card draw or is it countered upon resolution? I wasn't the acting judge on this one. The judge who answered ruled and his ruling was appealed. When the head judge came over I figured he would overturn the ruling, but he upheld it. I was surprised, because I disageed with them both. A few minutes and a phone call later, the head judge came back and said that the ruling he made was incorrect. Fortunately it didn't influence who won the match. So, yeah, I felt pretty good that I knew the right ruling all along. Ten points if you can come up with the right ruling.

On the last day I was asked to observe the quarter-final and semi-final single elimination rounds (you can see me in the picture to the left of Sonne who went on to win the event). I'm not sure why I keep getting asked to table judge the top 8s (I did so for both Pro Circuits I attended), because I'm definitely not the best at it. Maybe it's my dashing good looks? At any rate, observing (what I'm doing in the picture) isn't the same as table judging, but I did table judge the Grand Prix and it was nothing less than the final match of the whole gosh darn event. Sheesh. I *must* be damn sexy. Fortunately there were no mishaps and all went smoothly. The weekend convinced me that I defintetly need to pursue my Level 3 status and that is my aim for 2006.

Got Smarts?

Anyone who has played soccer knows how frustrating it can be to determine if the ball has fully crossed the goal line. The combination of a 3D sphere, a 2D line and perspective variation (with possible obstruction) is just plain hard to handle. Still, players and refs have handled it for decades. Recently it was announced that Adidas, working with Germany's Cairos AG and Fraunhofer Institute, is testing and developing an "intelligent" soccer ball designed to end goal-line controversies. The ball contains a microchip that senses when the ball crosses the goal line. Referees outfitted with earpieces hear a transmitted beep once a ball makes a goal. FIFA, the international football association, tried out the ball in the Under-17 World Championship this year in Peru, and the ball may be used in next year’s World Cup in Germany.

I'm sure there are those cringing at the thought and saying "Why are we doing this?" I had similar thoughts myself, but then I went home this past weekend to celebrate my father's birthday. On the morning of this special day I went downstairs and greeted him with a hearty "Happy Father's Day!" He stood there looking perplexed and awaiting my admission that it was a silly joke on my part. Sadly it was no joke. I didn't realize what was wrong and my father had to remind me that we've already done the Father's Day thing this year. As if this weren't bad enough, when he opened his gifts and cards, the card from my mother read "Happy Anniversary!"

Today's world isn't the one my parents and grandparents grew up in. Apparently senility sets in before retirement age. Young, healthy men and women are losing basic mental processing and storage capabilities. The microchip in the soccer ball is only the beginning. It's a subtle way of pushing that technology to where it is really needed - inside my brain.

Webber's Wench

I'm a huge fan of musicals. I started seeing them on Broadway with my parents when I was little (my first was Me and My Girl at the Marriott) and have been seeing them ever since. I'm such a fan of musicals that I can't remember ever seeing one that I didn't like (aside from those god awful Rodgers and Hammerstein bombs Oklahoma and Carosel; it's hard to say which one of these I hate most). In fact, 9 times out of 10, after I would see a musical, I'd go and buy the soundtrack on CD. Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of those artists who has never let me down - until last night.

I went to see his latest musical, The Woman in White on Broadway. In short, it was astonishingly bad. I guess I can't expect all his works to be as big as Phantom, Jesus Christ Superstar, etc., but putting that aside, the musical was still downright awful. The fundamental problem with the play was that it was boring. The music is largely uninteresting. There was one good song, but it tries to build itself up to something powerful and then just loses steam in a heartbeat. The casting is also annoying as two of the three female leads look a lot alike. I dealt with this initially until every character kept mentioning how the two looked alike. They did it so many times that they gave away the story's plot twist. Of course, all the old ladies sitting next to me were aghast at the twist nonetheless. The thing that annoyed me the most was how pathetic the characters were. I didn't care about any of them except Count Fosco who was at least funny and played with real mice and rats on the stage (see, I'm not the only one who plays with rodents for a living). The other characters were dumb as can be. The leading man literally walked out of the story for 2/3 of the musical because he was being given a hard time by the other characters. Is that how you repsond when you've found the love of your life? You just pout and leave? Please. When the intermission came around I was tempted to leave. I really did consider it, which was a first for me. In the end I decided to stay - I have one of these personal rules which is to always finish something I start, even if it sucks, that way if I'm ever in a situation where the suck comes up in discussion and I'm there, I can thoroughly and intelligently rip the bitch apart.