Archive for June, 2008

See WALL•E

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

You’ve already been told, but I’m gonna tell you too. See it. We went last night, and about 30 seconds into the film I leaned over to Liz and said “yeah, this movie’s gonna make me cry.”

It’s not rare for a Pixar movie to make me cry, but I’ll go ahead and agree with Cabel that this movie has one of the most memorable first acts of all the movies I’ve seen.

Also of note, this movie employed one of my favorite visual effects of the past decade. I first saw it in the TV series Firefly. In that show, they would often show a spacecraft from far away, perhaps in orbit over a planet, and they’d suddenly zoom in on it. But rather than just zoom in, they’d try and re-create reality: the “camera” would be slightly off-center and out-of-focus, so you (the viewer) would watch as the focus and position were re-composed, as if there were a real cameraman between you and the scene. It’s such a subtle thing, but when you’re dealing with 100%-computer-generated visuals, it adds a sense of realism and dynamic range. It adds emotion and grit to an antiseptic visual medium.

Anyway, they did this sort of thing in WALL•E. Apparently, from what I’ve read, it was the director’s goal from the outset to treat the visuals with a good deal more attention to “reality detail.” They employed lens flares, tricky focus, hell, they even used atmospheric effects like the “shimmering” you’d get on a sweltering-hot day.

I remember being in awe of the translucent leaves, genius textures and atmospheric haze that was used in A Bug’s Life. And these people are just getting better and better at what they do. I work in an office that’s about five miles from Pixar’s home base in Emeryville, CA. I’m gonna be sad when I eventually have to move away.

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Poor Chris

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

For some crazy reason, my mind has recently been wandering back to this kid I went to Catholic elementary school with. Most of the kids in my class went on to become proper miscreants or whatever (my peoples), but Chris, as far as I know, was never heard from again.

I’m not sure how, but somewhere around 4th grade I got tricked into going over to Chris’ house to play a couple times. He was the absolute biggest of dorks (back then, it wasn’t a badge of pride), and it took a herculean effort by my mom to actually get me in the door of his house. His mom, who ran the Cub Scout troop, was apparently at least a generation away from her Irish roots, and she had a tendency to dye her hair an unnatural shade of red. She cut her son’s hair herself (poorly), and I always — even as a child — got the impression that he was the product of extreme coddling. Something about him just screamed “under-developed.” He always had the best toys, and he had an extremely condescending attitude that made me feel like shit because my toys weren’t the really big and expensive ones. But somehow, even when I was feeling belittled by him, I felt bad for him. I was way too young to consciously recognize that he was trying to compensate for something, but I always knew I shouldn’t take it personally (even though I always took such things personally from others).

I wonder where he is these days. I wonder where he went to school, post-grade school. I wonder if he lost weight in middle school, like I did. I wonder if he found an identity for himself. I wonder if he started smoking or drinking or rebelling in some other way. I wonder if he stayed a mama’s boy. I wonder if he ever lost the awkwardness, or gained enough self-confidence to perceptibly exude a little.

Earlier this year, Liz and I were standing in line to get food at an airport. We were still struggling to wake up, but I caught sight of a girl farther back in line. She looked, for all intents and purposes, just like Chris’ younger sister. Or, at least, that’s what my mind’s eye might configure when asked to create “Chris’ younger sister plus about 20 years.” I’m sure it wasn’t her, but it somehow gave me hope. Because this girl had the right face, and she looked like she had confidence, stature, experience, etc. And I hope that after 20 years, Chris has gained those things and assimilated them into a personality that suits him. The thing is, I can’t picture it. I wish I could.

I also wish I could find a picture of this t-shirt I’m thinking of. It’d illustrate the point perfectly. It’s a t-shirt that I saw Seth Green wearing in an episode of Greg the Bunny. Basically, it has just the head of Stewie Griffin on it, but it’s a depiction of Stewie as a mid-20’s hipster with some facial hair and a casual look in his eyes. Not all wound-up anymore. Cool.

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surreal commute

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I rode the bike to work this morning, and got caught in some serious traffic about 15 miles South of the office. For several miles, I was riding between cars to get to the front, and the closer I got, the more people were starting to open their doors…people had been there a while.

And the closer I got to the head of the pack, the more the pile of cars started to look like a scene from The Happening: crooked, angled away from the median, and just looking more and more haphazard. Like, something had happened that scared all of these people into swerving to a stop.

Well, I finally got to the front, and saw a southbound 18-wheeler had jumped the divider, connected with a northbound box truck, and burst into flames. The whole thing was just a big smoky skeleton by the time I got there. Someone definitely died in there.

A few minutes after I stopped and took off my helmet, they opened up the nearby exit to allow cars to filter around the carnage. As I was exiting the highway, I saw an absolutely beautiful woman in full fireman’s gear (all I could see was her face), with an expression that said the emergency of the situation had just recently faded. She was five feet from me as I rode off the highway.

I wish to Christ I could take pictures with my eyeballs.

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Li Wei

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Just stumbled upon this guy’s art, and love it:
li-wei

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Well, color me impressed

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

As kind of a follow-up to my post about the parking situation at work, I’ve got to say that the aftermath left me scared, and then completely impressed with Oakland’s ability to solve a problem.

The city’s response to the “park however the hell you want” problem was to finally paint diagonal lines on the street. While one might think this would make everything hunky-dorey, the fact is it makes things infinitely worse for guys like me…I ride a motorcycle. I’ve been relying on people who park poorly, so I can grab the narrow spots between cars. But if I’m parked on a line, I’m that much more likely to get a parking ticket. Fuckin’ YAY!

On top of that, the city started putting up 4-hour parking limit signs where it used to be unlimited. And, of course, now that there are distinct lines to divide the spaces, it actually turns out that there are fewer spots per block. A perfect storm, which really made me feel like all the city cared about was revenue from tickets.

So, cut to a few weeks after the parking restrictions were enacted, and an amazing thing happened. Suddenly, every single day, there were dozens of parking spots open. Every time I went out to move my car, there was no trouble finding a spot. Apparently, most of the motivation for putting up the 4-hour limit was because there’s a BART station just a few blocks away. People were dropping off their cars and leaving them there all day. Now, not so much.

I can deal with moving my car every few hours, as long as there’s a method to the madness.

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