10 minutes of writing each and every day.
The hardest thing to do once you’re in a state of chill is to do anything else. I’m borderline sick, based on the weird way my body is behaving. In truth I haven’t been right for the last few years and most of that is a worsening of conditions. I’ve let my health go to a level beyond normal and I need to get it back.
Some Thoughts:
I love Mariokart.
Though my skills have declined precipitously over the past decade, I still have love for the game. I am such a fan and aficionado that I knew all of the tracks the Mariokart ride paid homage to throughout this Augmented Reality experience. Yep, that’s right. The new Mario ride is AR. You wear an AR mask and this is the only interface on which you can see Team Mario and Team Bowser. You are racing against Team Bowser, and the construction of the game is such that four people ride in a Kart and each, with their own steering wheel, are only interacting with the AR while the Kart does its thing on the track.
Your goal is to score 100 plus points. Presently the record is close to 250. I scored 132 and 122 respectively, because I shot way too many shells at the same target. So, what happens is you see the enemy team on your goggles as well as Ghosts, and other characters you’re supposed to shoot and you shoot them. Also, you are directed to turn the wheel at certain times for additional points. However, the turns don’t translate to actual Kart movement.
It felt like a miss. It felt like a near miss. It felt like you could have built a game around racing and, at least, divided the people in the room into Team Bowser and Team Mario and been competitive. You could’ve even made it so the racers played against each other. They tried that with the point system. They show the points for each Kart and the point winner for each Kart, and the overall points person for the match. This is all good… but not great. Given the standard 150 minute wait time, it needed to be great.
Some Thoughts:
I want to talk MarioWorld.
Yesterday I went to Nintendoland Hollywood and was excited to see what sort of magic the space offered. The conditions were rainy and overcast, and I actually think that helped out. The world looks like a compressed version of the entire Super Mario game. Against the backdrop of gray skies, the coins and the koopas and all of the other animatronics looked surprisingly real. Visually, the location is stunning. You don’t want to miss that part at all. The main attraction is Bowser’s Castle, which houses the main ride. Unlike other main attractions, the location is larger than it needs to be to house the ride, because the ride itself is quite short. We’ll get to that.
Like Hogwarts before it, Bowser’s Castle is meant to show you the life and style of its inhabitants. In this case the focus is wholly on Bowser right up until you hit the ride. You see all the race awards on the wall, and for a long segment, end up in Bowser’s library where he has a collection of books covering topics from how to raise a family to specifics on the different types of shells. It is an amazing creation and matches what I would imagine Bowser’s crib to look like. I loved that section.
Once you get close to the ride it shifts to an MKTV studio where we are led through a series of rooms (like loading screens) that detail the racing life, including a Team Mario ready room with all their racing gear. The game concept is straight forward: We are riding with Team Mario vs. Team Bowser. When you’re getting set up to race they give you visual instructions like in the games… no words–at least not ones you can understand, because it’s that cloud dude talking.
Here is where things get tricky… Also, that’s ten so tune in tomorrow for more!
The VIP experience is one that people don’t often think is in reach or even worthwhile if you’re just someone who wants to enjoy the park. It is worth it. Like really. We went to Universal Hollywood on the VIP tour and that was the best theme park experience I’ve ever had. The rides that take 30-90 minutes to get on were ours in minutes. We got to see Hogwarts, and after that we got in to the new Nintendoland and that was pretty epic.
Here’s how VIP works at Universal: You show up, they feed you a breakfast, they take you on a 90 minute tour through the lot, backstage, and through a handful of mobile rides like King Kong. Then your tour guide takes you (in a small group of 12) around the park, passing you quickly to the front of all the lines and right into the rides. We got on all of the rides without a wait. All of them.
The rides themselves are really good. The Harry Potter 3d and Transformers 3d are the best and not to be missed. Unfortunately, without the vip cutting of the line you don’t get to get into all the rides because the lines are so long. We used that privilege twice on the new Mariokart ride. That one is complex–so much so I’ll need to talk about it tomorrow.
Some Thoughts:
A short journey through my open tabs reveals what I am thinking about. There are three categories worth noting: Medical, Story research, and Academic. I want to speak on the last one these ten minutes. I’ve been thinking a lot about my place as an educator and, in part, stressing over what I do vs. what I used to do. I used to be in the public eye and on the stage and on the road where everyone knew what I was doing. Nowadays I’m not that guy. My focus is on providing and improving upon a peak classroom experience. The term peak is not static in teaching, because the material that was fresh and current two to five years ago is stuff these students were too young to care about when you try to present it to them today. It took a while for me to learn that and, moreover, to mix new content and delivery methods (both for them to present and for me to present) with tried and true formats that are immune to the passage of years. I’m still getting there.
I’ve long been a distant follower of memes. I’m not up to date on them or follow them with the ferocity of my kids, but I get the idea. I have yet to find a way to fit that kind of communication into an english comp class, or decided if I even should. There should always be space between how they communicate with each other and more of a formal communication, the latter of which is my role in providing guidance for. Yet, I am also trying to teach them about the value of essay writing. In truth, I am more focused on the value of cogent argument and thought–particularly at the paragraph level. Just as in developmental education where I taught the kernel sentence, and spread out from there, I now focus on the PIE paragraph and use that blueprint to build anything larger.
So, why are so many windows open on my computer? Because the fundamentals only matter in context, and providing a context they can understand through content that entertains is the core of the classroom experience. To wit, I need new content.
Let’s start with the High School. Scooter Molander takes over as DV coach and he will lead both of my kiddos next year. He’s won in divisions as high as 5A and also in college as a coach and he has the chops to win 6A. Needs the talent to make it happen. He built a program from scratch and took them to the 3A title in 4 years. With an incoming freshman, I’d like to see this team competing in the next four years. I think they will. I think they hire will generate buzz and will give us some transfers at key positions. We need a new QB, because our all-conference guy is moving out of state.
Moving on to the pro game, I’m half-pissed at the Giants. I get it: You think Jones is that guy… 40 million though? He carries a cap hit of 19 million this year, which balloons to 45 next year and that is rough rough rough. I don’t know if any one player is worth that much cap–especially as we are trying to seriously develop other positions at offense. Still, I’m trusting the process and trusting that a long term deal with our key leader, Mr. Barkley, gets done. In the interim the team needs to finally release Golladay (as promised) and restructure Williams (32 mil cap), and Jackson (19 mil cap) in order to provide some space for the team to sign (or trade for) talent at the WR position, CB position, and finish rebuilding the O-line so we can win. If the G-men cannot find anyone to stretch the field, we won’t win.
I’ll talk about options, and DV Football more next time.
This one is coming in late in the evening. Been a long day as Tuesdays typically are. That is why I like to reflect on Tuesdays, however I’m on the phone so I cannot exactly link to a past post. I can however link to a past experience.
Today I spent time walking the campus with my students. We are preparing for a public event, which used to be my jam. Lately I’ve been either in my office or in my classroom and zero presence In between. This is a contrast to my early years at the college when I was everywhere and doing just about everything. It was my life. Between that and coaching my existence was about pleasing and educating.
no longer.
I give more of my hours and energy to the writing —be it student or my likely my own. I plan for classes instead of hanging with colleagues. I am no longer a scion of campus life. It was good for a time and I have no regrets. This is good too. This is who I am now and still, I have no regrets.
Listening to Mr. Nightmare while writing this. He’s talking about disturbing backstories of Craig’s List ads. I like diving into these stories purely for the creep factor. I’m not very good at building that type of tension in my narrative, and it feels like training to listen to this modern version of what I’m trying to create at times and contrast that with the beauty of Stephen King and those of his ilk. It also makes me think about the things that people do foolishly and how people can figure out that something is not quite right… For starters, stay off of Craig’s List. That’s just a recipe for disaster. I’ve sold dogs on the list, and only after meeting and vetting the people was I willing to part ways with the pup.
I also think I stumbled on the dude who is responsible for them creating the ‘Don’t F** with Cats’ story. People are incredibly messed up.
Some Thoughts:
I came back into the office to write this blog and wound up working on the novel for a while until I realized I was supposed to be blogging. That is a dang good sign. I want to write this story. I feel the contours of the thing in my bones and it is going to be very very good. High hopes for a book that ostensibly a Shadowrun novel, but there it is in a nutshell. This is going to be my best work. Then I will write something better.
The most incredible part of it all is that I do have new ground to tread here. I have stories that haven’t been told in the 60+ books before. Now that I’ve stopped looking at the crew in the story in the same vein/fashion as the Smoker’s Club, I can tell their own authentic story that speaks to their quirks and their world through their eyes. I don’t think I accomplished that with the first one, because I was trying to get it all out and making sure it ‘felt’ like a Shadowrun book. I’m past that. This one is going to feel like a Talislegger book, which is the only way it ought to be.
Some Thoughts:
In the background the after-show is playing and Kareem Abdul-Jabar is dropping knowledge from his 75 years of life about how we got to what is modern black culture. He’s talking about what Chris Rock said just a few minutes hence on his Netflix Comedy special–The first live Netflix Comedy special ever. I had a wonderful time listening to him drop jokes and finally have a chance to internationally air his grievances about Will Smith just shy of a year to the day. In truth he was so amped up about the affair that he actually screwed up the joke. Of course, he hit the other 11. He went so hard that I had a moment where I turned to my partner and gave her the ‘stop the fight’ look. He talked about selective outrage and how Will knew he could hit him and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. He talked about the reason Will went at him like that. He talked about the personal stuff (that Will’s wife took public) that led up to that. All of this culminating in an evisceration of a man that Rock once admired.
I think I needed this special. I think I needed a moment where people talked about the journey I’ve been trying to make since I realized who I was and the level of life I wanted to live. I think that journey is different for a black man on many levels and, honestly, it feels really good to hear that situation reflected by someone I truly admire and see has gone through the work to be the man he is today.