Puntabulous

So there is this traffic light in our town. It is at the intersection of a relatively major road, and a tiny minuscule side street and tiny industrial park. I suspect that many moons ago either the residents of the minuscule side street, or the employees who worked in the tiny industrial park complained to the town and got a traffic light put in to make their lives easier. The traffic light was never really that bad though. A minor nuisance more than anything. Plus, it had pretty good sensors, so it would only turn red for the major road when someone pulled up to the light from the minuscule side street or tiny industrial park, and even when it turned red, it was only long enough to let the other car out. So like I said, minor nuisance, nothing more.

Then about a month ago, they added two more additional traffic lights, literally hundreds of feet down the road from the original nuisance. For more than 28 years there were not lights there, and no accidents at these intersections that I can remember, but people must have been fed up with — GASP! — waiting at the intersection, so they complained to the town and got traffic lights installed. Yay, government works for you! But not only that, the controls of the original nuisance has been changed, and now it turns red for the main road for no reason whatsoever! At 5:15AM when I’m driving to work along that road, the light at the intersection of the minuscule side street and tiny industrial park turns red even when there is no car pulling up. And it’s red for a solid 15 seconds, which is a long time when you have a train to catch!

I can forgive the two additional traffic lights. I’m a real Mother Teresa in that regard. But I cannot forgive waiting at a red light at 5:15AM at an intersection that hardly anyone ever uses! Especially when that intersection worked fine for years prior to that! I was so fed up, that I did something I’ve never done before. I emailed the town. That would surely get their attention, am I right?! So I went to the town’s website and sent the following query:

What happened to the traffic light on Connetquot Ave and Westbury Street in Islip Terrace? It used to only turn red when cars came down Westbury and wanted to turn onto Connetquot. Now it turns red for no reason, even during early hours when both streets are deserted. Why the change?

A few minutes after I sent that I got a response:

Thank you for expressing your concern. I have forwarded your message to the Department of Public Works, which is responsible for all road and traffic matters in the Town of Islip. If you’d like to call them, the number is 224-5600.

Wow! My query was going somewhere! Who says the government can’t get anything done? Then the next day I got this:

According to the town Department of Public Works, Manhattan Blvd. (from Spur Dr. N to Connetquot Ave.) is on the 2010 repaving schedule.

Um, what? Just so you can see how utterly useless this information is in relation to my query, I present the following map:

Yeah, so since they’re repaving Manhattan Blvd at some point this year, the controls of the traffic light a mile away needed to be changed in order to give imaginary cars the right-of-way? I’m not really following. Or is it that some extremely well trained government employee looked at my email blankly for a while, then unsure of what else they could possibly do, typed “Connetequot” into some handy dandy database and got the repaving information and was like “Eureka! This must be what they’re looking for!” and passed it along to me. Well as the title of this post says, thanks for nothing, you stupid jerk.

So I finished watching Season 4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation the other day. Normally I’d give you reviews of each season like I did with One and Two, but thanks to the amazing two part episode The Best of Both Worlds, both seasons blended so well, that I didn’t bother taking a break to review Three before I moved immediately onto Four. People had told me that Season Three was where The Next Generation really took off and they were certainly right, not to say anything bad about the first two seasons of course.

The noticeable improvement to me actually began with episode 3.12 The High Ground, where Dr. Crusher was taken hostage by terrorists. Not that the episode itself was amazing, but it was a really solid episode that combined everything great about Star Trek (personal relationships mixed with social and political conundrums), and from then on, each episode maintained a solid consistency in terms of quality. Deja Q, where Q is stripped of his powers and kicked out of the Q continuum, Yesterday’s Enterprise, involving an alternate Enterprise from another timeline, Hollow Pursuits, which introduced Barclay and his wonderful use of the Holodeck, and of course the first half of The Best of Both Worlds, the season finale where Picard is taken hostage by the Borg were all standout episodes. You can pretty much guarantee that any episode involving Q, the Borg, or alternate timelines is gonna be amazing. I’d have to say Yesterday’s Enterprise was probably the best of the standalone episodes.

Season Four continued Season Three’s ascent into pure amazingness. The change here that really made a great impression upon me was that Season Four began to acknowledge the events of previous episodes. I don’t need a single storyline carried over the entire series, but you can’t have these life changing events each episode, and then never mention them again. Storylines like the effects the Borg had on Picard, Worf having to defend his father’s name and its ongoing consequences, and recurring characters like Lore, the Traveller, and even Vash, add a sense of continuity between episodes, which I find very welcome. Not to mention the introduction of half human, half romulan Sela which I found quite awesome.

Standout episodes this season included the second part of The Best of Both Worlds of course, Data’s Day, where we see a day in the life of Data, Devil’s Due, where an all-powerful being claims to be the Devil and holds an entire planet hostage, Clues, where the crew — excluding Data — is rendered unconscious and they need to discover what happened to them during those thirty seconds, Galaxy’s Child, where the Enterprise accidentally kills the mother of a giant space creature and needs to lead the baby to safety, The Nth Degree, where Barclay becomes a super intelligent being and takes over the Enterprise, Qpid, where Q sends the crew to act out a Robin Hood fantasy, and In Theory, where a random crewmember (who I dubbed an android hag) falls in love with Data. And believe it or not, that’s a narrowed down list of episodes. They were all so good this season!

While the Klingon civil war season finale of Four doesn’t really compare to the Borg season finale of Three, I enjoyed the fact that they built up to it a bit more in previous episodes, and kept Sela in the shadows for a few episodes prior to the big reveal. The cliffhanger was quite nice, but didn’t have me racing to put in the next disc as I did with The Best of Both Worlds. But I watched the first episode of Five last night and it wrapped up nicely.

May all your dreams come true! Mr. Grids rides his magical unicorn Percival throughout the fairylands of Queens, NY granting wishes to all the good little boys and girls. Even if your dream is a warm, toasty waffle, Mr. Grids will sacrifice himself to make the children he adores happy. And if your dream is to see what a unicorn burger tastes like, Percival will skewer your sorry ass faster than you can say “With fries.”

Bonus doodles by Emily, Jillian, then me Emily and Jillian via committee:

I’m also happy to report that both my nieces now want an iPad. You’re welcome, mom and dad! As she was going to bed last night Emily asked me where I keep mine so she could play with it tomorrow while I’m at work. She now knows the meaning of the phrase “Are you fucking kidding me?” Just kidding! I just laughed and laughed and laughed. Yeah, so maybe I’m a bit more Percival than Mr. Grids when it comes to my iPad.

My boss just printed out this article and gave it to me with the words “You’re in luck!” written across the top. Titled Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind, it begins:

At long last, the doodling daydreamer is getting some respect.

I feel like he’s trying to tell me something. Hmm. Imagine a giant waffle riding a unicorn? That would be awesome! I think I’ll draw it…

My nieces Emily and Jillian are staying with us and it’s amazing what being around kids teaches you, especially in my role as uncle. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned so far:

Getting a little girl back into a wet bathing suit after a potty break is nearly impossible. Seriously, they fit into it just fine before the potty break, how does it seem to shrink twenty sizes too small during the potty break? It’s a good thing they’re tough little girls because I was yanking and pulling with all my might (which I’m sure you can imagine is quite high on the might scale) and they didn’t fuss a bit! And seriously, what’s with the millions of (read as: two) straps you need to maneuver onto their shoulders? And when I was finally able to get the straps up to their shoulders, the neckline was still halfway down their stomachs!

They always know what’s right and trick you into doing what’s wrong. After said potty break, Jillian asked if she had to wash her hands. Now, as the role of cool uncle, it’s hard to resist the urge to say “No way! Screw society! I don’t care what your parents told you, washing your hands is for losers!” then break a vase over my head and set the backyard on fire. But I compromised and said she only had to rinse them (I figured any residual germs would be killed off back in the pool anyway). As she’s drying her hands she says “You know Uncle Craig, I’m supposed to use soap.” Sigh. “You want to wash them again?” I ask. “Not now that my hands are already dry!” And scampers off back to the pool.

They have ways of getting their point across. I was given requests by the girls to do silly things as I jumped off the diving board. At one point Jillian told me to act like a clown. I acted as though I kept thinking she said cow and jumped off the diving board acting like a cow (which admittedly was more moose-like since I put my hands to my head with splayed fingers) but the girls enjoyed it. Then, no less than half an hour passes by, the jumping off the diving board game has all but ended when Jillian calls me over to tell me a secret. What was that secret you ask? “I said clown.”

Flattery will get you everywhere. You may think I mean flattering little girls will make them putty in your hand, but of course it’s the other way around. In any other universe, the last thing I want to do when I get home from a long day at work is play around in the pool but when called “the greatest person in the world” (take note, everyone!) I’ll be acting like a moose in no time.

You are allowed to say ridiculous things that make perfect sense. At one point I said “Hold on, I need to empty the water out of the muffin.” and Emily patiently waited because I was literally emptying water out of a plastic muffin they made me balance on my head as I jumped in the pool.

I’m sure there will be plenty more as the week goes on. What have kids taught you?

I got these pics emailed to me in a forward, so I’m not quite certain of the source, but I had to share it with you guys. I wish I could take credit, but I can’t.

1. My parents will be out of the house Saturday and Sunday. Expect a wild Strip Mario tournament at my house Saturday night.

2. I edited my novel for the first time on the train last night using the Pages app on my iPad. I’ve been worried about trying it because I just feared I’d lose it somehow and never get it back, which is ridiculous because I have it saved in about a million places. But it worked out really well! It’s incredible how natural it feels to type on it and I was pleased with how much I was able to get accomplished. The only thing I don’t like is not having a Save button. It saves automatically, and you can email it to yourself, but a simple Save button would make me feel much better.

3. No, I’m not getting the new iPhone. I can’t justify the upgrade to myself just yet. I feel like I need to make two jumps, the way I skipped over the 3G and went straight to the 3GS from the original one. But did any of you guys out there get one? How is it?

4. I’m thoroughly enjoying Catching Fire, the sequel to the amazing Hunger Games. It’s incredible how the author can get me to hate the Capitol so much even when they’re not on the page.

5. I ordered Avatar: The Last Airbender: Complete Book 1 (Collector’s Edition) off of Amazon. I’ve been wanting my own set of the DVDs ever since my brother Adam loaned me his, but they’re pretty expensive so I’ve held off. But this new edition is $10-$20 cheaper than the original edition so I had to pick it up. I assume it’s because of the new movie. I just hope they come out with the other seasons in similar sets too. I hope they don’t stop if the new movie doesn’t do well, or make us wait another two years for the next set just to line it up with the release of the (hopefully!) next movie.

6. Speaking of Avatar, here’s some screenshots of Momo from the upcoming movie. I think he looks great! I just hope they get his personality right.

7. The Princess and the Frog is one of those movies that sticks with me for a few days. Now I’m obsessed with the line “I got news for you, Shadowman: it’s not slime… it’s mucus!” I love running jokes with a great payoff at the end.

8. Damn you Eclipse trailers for making you look like a good movie! I said the same thing about New Moon too. The trailers never showed Kristen Stewart sitting in a chair for three months or screaming in her sleep. Interesting articles with the director don’t help matters either.

9. I watched Tron for the first time the other night. I can respect it for the milestone in special effects it represents, but as a movie it was just awful. It had no story whatsoever to support the special effects and was a downright snoozefest. I loved seeing a young Bruce Boxleitner though and I’m still excited about the sequel.

10. Speaking of Bruce Boxleitner, sometimes I just sit around and memories of Babylon 5 randomly come back to me and I just remember what an amazing show (experience may be a better word for it) that was. “Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.”

So I watched The Princess and the Frog last night, Disney’s first traditionally animated movie since 2004’s abomination Home on the Range. I thought this was going to be Disney’s big reemergence into traditional animation, with a Rapunzel movie annoyingly named Tangled on the way, but it turns out that’s going to be computer animated. But I certainly hope Disney doesn’t let the relatively meager box office for The Princess and the Frog keep them from continuing on with traditional animation, especially considering how wonderful this movie was. There’s just something about watching a traditionally animated Disney movie that’s like drinking hot chocolate loaded with marshmallows. It’s just warm and wonderful.

The story centers around Tiana, a hard working girl who dreams of opening her own restaurant in New Orleans, who kisses a frog (formerly Prince Naveen of Maldonia) and turns into one herself. The two frogs then have to go find a way to be human again. Along the way they meet a trumpet playing alligator named Louis and a firefly named Ray. To me, Louis and Ray embody the fun, wonderful spirit of the old Disney cartoons. And Ray’s romance with Evangeline added an emotional touch which may or may not have had me crying at the end. Shut up.

A big deal was made about this movie featuring the first black Disney princess (OMG Obama ruined everything!) or the fact that she spends half the movie as a frog (OMG Disney is racist!). But it was such a non-issue. It doesn’t matter what they look like, the chemistry between Tiana and Naveen was so fun and poignant, that they could have been turquoise and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. There’s a running joke between them about slime/mucous that’s particularly wonderful. The villain, Dr. Facilier was a pretty suitable Disney villain. While he himself wasn’t particularly frightening, his shadows most definitely were, and they were handled really cleverly. Plus he does something completely dastardly near the end to ensure you hate him, so he’s worthy of being called a Disney villain.

Another thing I really liked was the modern take on the fairy tale, in particular, Tiana’s insistence that hard work and perseverance is a better way of making your dreams come true, rather than wishing on stars. (Though wishing on a star couldn’t hurt.) One thing I really wasn’t crazy about was the Mama Odie character. I don’t know if it was just her character design that bugged me, but I never really connected with her. But that’s just a minor quibble. None of the songs really stick out in my mind right now (there’s certainly no Can You Feel the Love Tonight? stand out) but I distinctly remember tapping my foot throughout almost every single one of them. The jazz infused score really added a nice touch.

So yeah, I really enjoyed this and I hope Disney keeps traditional animation alive. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

The 80th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, titled Legacy featured the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise helping out a crashed freighter on the planet Turkana IV, homeworld of fallen comrade Tasha Yar. While on the mission they find Tasha’s sister Ishara, who helps out the crew, but has motives of her own. This fourth season episode was enjoyable, but not one that particularly stands out in my mind. The relationship formed between Ishara and Data was probably the best part of the episode and deserves a better episode to encapsulate it, but like I said, it was still a decent episode. What makes this episode noteworthy though is that as the 80th episode, it helped The Next Generation surpass the episode run of The Original Series, which ran for 79 episodes. In his Captain’s Log at the beginning of the episode, Picard casually makes reference to passing the planet Camus II on their way to a new mission. As it turns out, Camus II is the setting of the 79th and final episode of The Original Series episode Turnabout Intruder. This in-joke was supposedly devised by producers Rick Berman, Eric Stillwell and William Riker actor Jonathan Frakes, which I’m sure they took great pleasure in since so many people thought creating a new Star Trek series was a terrible idea and that it would never last.

NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW!

So I saw Toy Story 3 over the weekend. I don’t really remember the first one very much, other than the fact that I loved it. I’m a bit more familiar with the second one as I’ve seen it more recently, and I’m pretty sure I liked that one even better. Sigh. When Somebody Loved Me gets me every time! So this review won’t do a very good job at comparing the new one to the others, but I can tell you how wonderful the new one was.

First off the animation was incredible. It’s amazing how great they’ve gotten their movements downright perfect. Every time (still?) Woody runs, I crack up because it is just flailingly wonderful. There’s also a moment involving Woody and toilet paper, which is just hysterical. I really enjoyed the new toys, especially every second Ken was on screen. I also liked Bonnie’s toys and wish we could have spent a bit more time with them, but I guess it’s better they didn’t shoehorn too many new toys into it and ruin the flow of the movie.

As for the story, there wasn’t too much you don’t already know from the commercials, and plotwise the movie did seem a little short, but they definitely came up with a wonderful and poignant story to tell. It was a story that made me want to drag down my Power Ranger toys from the attic and have an Avatar style battle of the universe in my basement. And don’t even get me started on the last ten minutes which had me bawling my eyes out shedding big manly tears, squeezed from the balls of Chuck Norris.

Like I said, it’s hard to compare this one to the others, but if I had to say, I’d say I still like the second one the best. I’ll have to watch the first one again and come up with a definitive order. Have you guys seen the way Entertainment Weekly ranked all the Pixar movies? Awful! They clearly put the first Toy Story up top for sentimental reasons. Nonsense! And how did Cars get above Toy Story 2 and Monster Inc.? Cars is the worst and Monsters Inc. was my favorite for the longest time! And Wall-E is only number 3? Ridiculous! That one is the best! Ratatouille is the only Pixar movie I haven’t seen, so I can’t really speak for that one. And poor A Bug’s Life. So disrespected.