The Gimcrack Miscellany

There has been an explosion of references to squid & octopuses (cephalopods) since my first post about them. I have been putting these references in the comments of the post so as not to clutter up The Gimcrack Miscellany, but with the two new references today this phenomenon needs to have its own post.

First, glance over the post about why i’m scared of cephalopods which was posted exactly 5 days ago. Then note the following sequence of various references since then, which combined are a classic example of Reference Burst Theory™.

1. My wife sent me this link she found on Yahoo news (she had not read my blog post at that time): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080429/ap_on_sc/new_zealand_colossal_squid.

2. I was browsing Digg.com and saw this article on the front page: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/30/colossal.squid/index.html

Here’s where it gets crazy.

3. I was on The Sixty One listening to some of my old favorites and noticed one of the songs had just changed its avatar to this:

4. Finally, I proceeded to go to the New section of The Sixty One and was shocked to see the following:

That’s right, two songs right next to each other, the first with an octopus as an avatar and the second mentioning tentacles (not to mention the guy in the picture sort of resembles an octopus).

I fully expect a giant squid to be sitting in my favorite chair when I get home.

*****EDIT*****

Another article on Digg’s front page today: 8 Supersize Sea Monsters. Here’s an image from the article:

Twice in one day!

The URL to my specific island on my Ikariam game has an ID of 1337. I don’t know why I haven’t noticed before today.

This is not a joke, I promise. I know I could have just changed the URL to reflect the 1337 for the ID attribute, but believe me I didn’t. I can’t believe the Reference Burst Theory™ that just happened. Check the comments of the previous post to see how the references are coming together precisely as predicted by RBT™.

Here’s the proof that I didn’t just change the URL. When hovering over the “Island” button in my Ikariam game, you can see the URL of the button in the status bar of my Firefox browser:

Anyone who has doubted my theory up until now has no reason to disbelieve any longer.

This is just amazing. I haven’t been able to beat this chamber in less than 12 steps. I was sure that was the absolute minimum number of steps possible. This guy does it in 4 steps. Four. He makes a few mistakes, but it doesn’t cost him any steps because going through a portal and landing on the floor doesn’t count as an actual step.

Sorry about the bombardment of videos. Hey, I’m a child of the intarwebz.

– Edit –

Oh. My. Goodness.

Reference Burst Theory™ has just reared it’s magnificent head.

I’m writing this after I originally posted. Would you believe that my brother happened to post about Portal at the exact same time as me this morning? Neither of us saw the other’s blog post before writing our posts. There was no reason we were both inspired to post about Portal. There wasn’t a Digg article on Portal this morning or anything like that.

I just recently started playing WoW again and went to a site called WeGame (the best website since they started the intarwebs) to download screen capturing software so I could post my WoW gameplay videos online, and I happened to browse around and find some Portal videos. I have no idea why my brother happened to be on the same site at the same time and watch the same videos and then write a blog post about them.

This is insanity. What are the odds?!? ACK! GAH! UGH! BLECH! LOL!

A few weeks ago I saw a little film - don’t know if you’ve heard of it - called I Am Legend. It was good. Dang good. Yesterday I saw another movie called Cloverfield. It was better. Dang better. And that’s saying a lot because I Am Legend got at least a 2/10 Berating (soon to come).

Spoilers commencing…

I wanted to compare these films because they both take place in Manhattan, they both feature the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge and evacuation of the island of Manhattan, and they both contain potential world-ending (or at least city-ending) events that take place in the heart of New York City. Plus I saw them two weeks apart and they’re both fresh in my mind.

What are the chances of me seeing two movies in a row with such events in common as the decimation of the Brooklyn Bridge? There are so many bridges in the world, why this one? Beginning to sound a little like Reference Burst Theory™.

My hopes and dreams for Cloverfield were actually exceeded. To recap my preview-style post on Cloverfield:

1) I saw a mysterious trailer for an unknown movie
2) I found out it was called Cloverfield and it looked like Godzilla meets Blair Witch
3) It reminded me of Half-Life 2 because of the type of storytelling
4) I crossed my fingers that it would be really good and not really bad

As it turns out, it was very much like Half-Life 2. My premonitions were spot on, because they used my favorite type of film/game storytelling: first-person narrative paired with first-person visual perspective.

“Since the narrator is within the story, he or she may not have knowledge of all the events. For this reason, first-person narrative is often used… so that the reader and narrator uncover the case together.”

While the combination of these two storytelling devices exists frequently in video games, it is very rare in film, and that’s what makes Cloverfield so unique.

I Am Legend, on the other hand, is told in a much different fashion. It is not first-person perspective obviously, and since I’m not a literary expert (or even novice), I have no idea what type of narrative is used. Third-person limited, maybe? Who cares, that is not the point of this post. It is a fundamentally different type of movie, but it has many similarities to Cloverfield, and it is very good. Like Cloverfield, I Am Legend far exceeded my expectations, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to talk about it in a separate Berating post.

But I’m way more excited about Cloverfield right now, so on with the Berating.

The Good

This movie was a breath of fresh air amidst a sea of movies filled with computer generated special effects. Picture those old Playstation commercials where a Handycam captures some dudes in the back yard messing with a rocket launcher, or the Toyota commercials where an amateur camera records extraordinary things happening to a guy and his truck. Now picture an hour and 24 minutes of it in the context of a truly frightening plot. That’s what the CGI is akin to in Cloverfield. It was so well done, in fact, that I challenge someone to make a film that more accurately captures the essence of what it would really be like if you were in the same situation.

I’m not getting through to you. What would it be like if you were having a going away party with your friends and a horrible, gigantic monster came out of nowhere and began knocking over skyscrapers on the other side of the city at 3 o’clock in the morning, and then it started coming closer and you and your friends had to flee amidst wreckage, flying debris, and a bunch of shocked people who are all in survival-mode?

No, I’m not asking you what it was like in other movies like War of the Worlds and Independance Day. I’m asking you if you can really imagine what it would be like to actually be involved in a situation like that.

Just watch Cloverfield and you’ll know.

I loved this movie. I never thought I could love a monster movie completely devoid of a soundtrack filled with no-name actors with a fairly simple plot, but those are the elements that made Cloverfield a film worth watching. It was really scary and realistic. There was blood, but not excessive gore. For instance, when a piece of rebar is protruding through the shoulder of a female protagonist, pinning her to the floor, the camera is haphazardly tossed aside showing only her legs as her friends free her from her affliction.

We are constantly left wanting more. Since we are seeing the events as they happened through the lens of an amateur videographer instead of a full camera crew able to capture every angle of every scene, we only sort of glimpse a lot of the horrific things that are going on. We half-see a building being knocked down at a weird angle behind other spectators. Only our peripheral vision captures military RPGs striking the side of a giant unknown horror. We swivel around and barely witness an infected friend being scurried away by medical personal only to become, um, how shall I put it… “decontaminated”.

It’s ground-breaking storytelling and it’s a ride you won’t forget. It’s one of those films that affected me and it is a joy for me to replay over and over in my mind.

The Bad

Some people may get, and have definitely gotten, very frustrated by this film. I can see three possible reasons for this. First, I can see frustration in the fact that we never really know what’s going on and we’re left with a cliff-hanger ending. As I have stated, I love that, but it might not be your personal cup of tea. If not, I feel bad for you, son. Next, I can see frustration in the fact that you never really get to feast your eyes upon the special effects. As the viewer, I was always moving my head to try to see different vantage points - like if I was at the back row of a concert trying to see the stage - only to remember that I am watching from a fixed point of view no matter how much I tilt and pivot my neck. A little frustrating, but overall necessary for the success of the film. Finally, some will definitely be frustrated - sickened actually - by the motion of the camera used in this film. Lots of people have gotten sick from the motion of the film, but don’t judge it by the first 5 minutes, because it actually gets a lot better for the rest of the movie (with small pockets of a lot worse here and there).

The review over at CNN.com says it much better than I can:

“Some viewers will find the style a mixed blessing at best — it’s not the smooth ride we’re used to, certainly, but then maybe this genre could use a good jolt. It’s easy to grow blase when computer graphics do all the work for you. Here we spend Act II straining to see whatever it is that’s laying waste to the city, and Act III recoiling from glimpses of something unspeakable.”

The Beratings

Acting - no beratings
Surprisingly good acting from a bunch of nobodies. I believed these people were going through this trauma, for the most part.

Plot - no beratings
Simple and potent.

Inconsistencies - no beratings

Unbelievable Events - no beratings
Sure, no one in their right mind would’ve been able to keep documenting the way our camera operator did, but I get the feeling our camera operator wasn’t exactly in his right mind.

Schematics - no beratings
When there’s no soundtrack, the soundtrack can’t be bad. That’s one way to do it.

Recommended Investment = Stand in line for the very first showing

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our very first 0/10 Berating. I might buy it and publicly destroy it just to have the pleasure of buying it again.

We know that celebrities die in threes, even though some people don’t seem to think it’s that simple. But I have always found my reference burst theory to be very interesting. It’s based out of a very scientific idea that things seem to get referenced all of the sudden multiple times in a short period, from seemingly disconnected sources. It was made up by me so don’t steal it and take credit for it.

For instance, all of a sudden you’ll hear an obscure 20 year old song on the radio that you haven’t heard in a long time, and then you’ll be flipping through an old magazine the next day and come across the name of that artist. If it’s a true Reference Burst (notice how the term is now capitalized), you’ll then proceed to see an old sitcom on TV where one of the characters makes a reference to that very song, or something along those lines.

It happened to me with Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo a couple years ago when it was referenced on an episode of Seinfeld shortly after I had heard it on the radio and seen it in print (I can’t remember where). That’s just one example - it happens pretty often.

Could it have something to do with the butterfly effect? One event causes a chain reaction, so the first reference somehow prompts the other two, not by chance, but by some complex chain of cause and effect. Could it be that Reference Bursts™ exist everywhere all the time and we only notice them when our minds are open to them? Could it be that I am a telepathic robotic bionic mutant-ic machine? My name is Brian, which is close to Brain, so maybe.

What does this have to do with cats dying? I’ll tell you - you just have to come on a short journey with me first. I’ll have you back to your cubical in no time. Refill your coffee mug, you closet caffeine addict, and let’s go.

A Short Journey

Yesterday I witnessed video of a team of lion hunters flirting with death. About halfway through it contains 5 seconds of some of the most amazing and terrifying footage mine eyes have ever seen. The video is work appropriate, 2 minutes long, and, although not required, is best viewed with sound. I probably built it up way too much. Sorry, but here it is anyway.

I want to go off topic for a second and point something out. Despite what you may be thinking about how terrible it is that they’re hunting lions, that guy drinks Milwaukee’s Best for sure. He got right back up and shot that lion. I would be burrowing into the ground like a little Hobbit creature of some sort. And stop judging that guy too. Maybe that lion killed his African wife and their 17 mixed-children. Ok, back to the subject.

You’re thinking “Man, I’ve got a lot more blogs to read today at work instead of finishing my project that’s due on Friday, and I wish he’d get to the point so I can just move on to Perez-Hilton.” I’ve got the cure for what ales you, my friend. Here’s where it gets interesting. Friday, not two days prior to Sunday’s video-tastic-ness, I happened upon a nugget of YouTube video involving a tiger, a stick-wielding Indian man, and a mostly uninvolved elephant. This one has about 3 seconds of sheer heaven towards the end. It’s work appropriate and 35 seconds long (with no audio).

You’re thinking “If this honky ever wants me to visit his blog again, he better have one more video clip that’s even better than the first two and conclude his post with a profound summarizing statement.” Today’s your lucky day, chief. A few weeks ago I witnessed the most amazing video I have ever seen. I know it sounds fake, but the video is entitled the Battle at Kruger and it contains footage of an epic three-way fight over an innocent little calf between a pride of lions, a crocodile, and a herd of angry buffalo. It is 8:30 in length and is worth every second, so watch it when you actually have a solid 20 minutes of time (I gave you an extra 11 minutes to rewind and re-watch the best parts).

You’re thinking “He’s doing it! He’s actually doing it! I hope he doesn’t screw it up so close to the end.” Don’t worry fake condescending guy, I won’t. It all comes full-circle because today, would you believe it, I happened to come across this article about the popularity of the battle at kruger video. I wasn’t searching for it, and I wasn’t even thinking about the crazy cat videos I had recently seen. In fact, I found it in the related articles section of an article on Digg about the godfather of the Internet predicting the end of TV as we know it.

Conclusion

Is there truth to my © Reference Burst Theory™? Have you had any crazy coincidences recently that would fall into this category? If so, you owe me $12 for stealing my idea that has been © Copyrighted and Trademarked™ and now contains the word “theory” in the official term too, just FYI in case you missed that. I know you can do that, I’ve seen it done. No one just says Pythagorean, do they? Who would give you any credit if you said “I used Pythagorean to figure out the third side of that triangle”? People need to hear that “theory” in there.

Here, I’ll type it again just to clear it up, this is how you have to refer to it without having to owe me $15: © Reference Burst Theory ™ ®. Yes, it has to be underlined and bolded, and just one last thing, notice how it’s Registered® too. I’m just covering my own butt here, ok.