Wall-E

I saw Disney/Pixar's new movie Wall-E last week. I also saw a huge Wall-E sculpture in Pixar's courtyard across the street from Kelly's new office. Unfortunately they've just taken it down so I can't provide a picture. At any rate, Wall-E was an entertaining movie. I didn't think it was quite as sharp as the last one, "The Incredibles", but I definitely liked it.

I certainly noticed the strong undertones of anti-apathetic society and over commercialization - not to mention the attack on dumb fat people who sit in front of the tv all day eating Cheetos. However, boycotts on the movie? Protests from conservatives everywhere who don't believe that we can "trash" our world. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, this site here summarizes some of the main issues closed minded people are having with the film.

All this fuss is ridiculous on a few counts. One, it's a kids movie and it's not indoctrinating kids to watch it. It's a cute little robot who loves another robot in the backdrop of future Earth. Two, people just need to relax and chill out. It's a movie, it can say whatever it wants and you don't have to believe it, like it, or watch it - get over it. For all the so-called problems this is creating for conservative closed minded parents, they need to look in the mirror as to why this is an issue with their kids. It's the parenting. Instead of sending raging flame mail to all the websites one can find, how about just talking with your kid instead? Is that too easy?

Now, the other interesting aspect I find is the "fat" perspective. In a world (or perhaps country) of obesity, I have little sympathy for people who eat themselves huge and then complain about social commentary on huge people. In most cases, it's a choice, and you can always start doing something about it. What I do have a problem with is the child perspective of this. I remember being somewhere recently and seeing a family of three. A father and mother who were at least 150 pounds over a healthy weight and a girl of I'd say about 8 who was already easily 50 pounds overweight. That child never had a chance, and that saddens me and makes me feel bad about the commentary on fat people.

There was also an interesting point in that link about Disney providing this commentary while putting out thousands of Wall-E products and providing mindless entertainment at Disney Parks while giving out wheelchairs to fat people as quickly as they can. Kelly and I were appalled at the huge number of obese people in Disney World last November. Additionally, we certainly noticed many many fat people driving around in little powered carts (see picture) because they were too lazy or impaired by their bulk to walk around. Certainly puts an interesting twist on all the fat people being carted around in the movie. What are they saying though? It seems unlike Disney to be so self-effacing. I also don't see them opening mocking their customers. I'm left to think that perhaps this was all Pixar's doing because the movie was first started while they were partnering with Disney but not yet owned by Disney.

At any rate... I enjoyed the movie. If you can't go enjoy a kids movie without getting up in arms, spare us all the annoyance, and don't go.

Pyramid Brew Tour

Kelly and I got a behind the scenes tour of the Pyramid brewery last week. Jeff, a friend of ours, has been a brewer there for about 6 years and took us around on a quiet Sunday. It was pretty interesting to hear him talk about the brew process and get to go examine the ingredients and process and flow of beer and soda from place to place. I've attached a picture of what it looks like. We got to pour a beer sample of Pyramid "Curveball" straight from the bright tank (the tank where the filtered beer goes to be stored before it is bottled or kegged.

As we learned on the tour. Pyramid, a company with four or five brewing locations on the west coast, was just purchased by Magic Hat, a slightly larger but similar company on the East Coast. I say similar in that they a mid sized players who's beer is not ubiquitous in stores, restaurants, and bars. My guess is that the idea will be to cross utilize the distribution channels of each thereby growing both brands. As I've learned in school, setting up distribution channels is not an easy process. In many cases it actually is easier to buy someone else's. I wonder how it work out for Magic Hat/Pyramid. Neither of the two beers is well known on the opposite coast. My guess is this will be a good deal for both brands, which is why Magic Hat paid over a 50% premium on Pyramid's stock.

Reopening the Hotel...

With gas prices through the roof, natural disasters all over the world and US, and me back in California as an intern, it's time to reopen the hotel for business. I'll be checking out some of the changes on blogspot to see what enhancements have been made. They've added features and been acquired (by Google of course) since the last time I really looked at it.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, more to come...

The Dumbing of America

Found this article from today's Washington Post quite interesting. I've ranted on this topic before while watching our society degrade to one where it's not "cool" to be smart and intelligent. Where coool activities are ones that shirk learning, school, and organization. With the "cool" kids, who don't spend any time learning anything, defining the social pressures many others shy away from succeeding in school and pursuing knowledge for knowledge sake. It's an idea that's out there that as a former teacher who has worked with today's kids, I have some degree (not absolute) of agreement with what the article says. Check out the article here.

Does every generation bemoan the degredation of the next? Are they right, wrong, in the middle? From an intellectual standpoint however, they may all be true. The very definition of what is smart or intelligent changes, rarely do one generation's priorities work for the next.

Still, there must be some base things that we can all agree on such as knowing basic history, literature, or some other subject area. The problem is, todays youth are either following completely different definitions of intelligence, or just failing miserbly. I wonder what it's like in other countries...

How low can we go as a society? For my part, I know only my generation and the ones after. To say that no one reads books or values education is obviously not true. To say that as a whole, the emphasis is on things that don't build up the mind, knowledge, learning, etc... That is harder to refute. I'd like to see some more data on this personally, but from my view I would say anti-intellectualism is a problem in our society today.

Mark Bauerlein has written, "The Dumbest Generation", pegging the digital age as the reason for the rapid decline in education and learning among the current generation of American youth. You can read more about the book at the website, www.dumbestgeneration.com or Boston.com summed it up with a little spot found here.

There has been a lot of press about the book with people agreeing and disagreeing so I suppose it has sparked some good dialogue. Don't know if I'll agree with it once I read it or not, but at the very least Bauerlein is the first person I can remember willing to take the digital "age" to task for not delivering on it's promise and potentiatl to expanded knowledge, develop smarter people, etc...

The internet "revolution" has changed business and communication forever. For the better? That is up to your interpretation. If I can know what my friends are all doing right now and contact them with the click of a mouse, am I any smarter? Where's the benefit? What do we gain by such advances?

I don't know...

If you own time, you own the world

Apparently Microsoft is familiar with this phrase. Today as my professor gauged the time left in class by the time on his computer, I was thinking how he probably doesn't even know where that time comes from. It's just there and "accurate". But is it really either?

The answer to this question lies with Microsoft and of course, the ubiquitous windows operating systems. Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft set your computer to synchronize it's time with an internet time server under Microsoft's care. In most cases this is time.windows.com. So, your clock updates itself periodically with that time server and hence you see the "accurate" time. What if Microsoft decided to change the time on the time server?

It's akin to a group of really smart scientists getting together and announcing that the day is 24 hours and 17 minutes long. What would we do? Would some people agree and deviate from the "norm" that is currently accepted? Would the whole planet? Who decides? Who controls time? Actually I think it's an international body that oversees time; but I would offer that no one really controls it. It's fake, it doesn't exist. Time is of course a construct of our minds. Yet it has great sway over everything we do.

If I don't want to be affected by Microsoft's control over the clock, I can simply ignore that time or purposely change it and stop my computer from updating with the server, right? Instead I will use my trusty old watch, which I will set with my TV. Oh wait, then I'm relying on RCN to publish an accurate time, well maybe that's better but not by much. So instead, I'll just turn on my radio and get the time - oh wait, that's just as bad, now news media is controlling my time too. So then, I'll stick to my cell phone, right? Wrong again. My GPS? Nope. How about the sundial in the back yard? Unfortunately it's a rainy day. I guess I'm just out of luck.

Is Microsoft likely to change time just to screw with us? No. Is it possible that at some future date there could be a huge advantage for Microsoft to do so and thus affect the hundreds of millions of users worldwide? Absolutely.

I haven't really answered this question well, but it's an important one. What is time and where does it come from? Can you ever be sure just what "time" it is?

Get ready for Relaunch!

That's right, I'm like a product that doesn't sell. Every so often I throw some new effort into it and "relaunch". Stay tuned for changes coming to Hotel California. I'm debating new titles and new features now that Hotel California has shipped back east and busy kickin it Allston style.

Graduation

Props to my sister Ann on her graduation. It's quite an experience to watch your younger sister graduate from college. I suppose there is a piece of parenthood in there - not that I was at all a parent to her, I mean only that I changed a few diapers, took her for walks, helped with homework (occasionally), watched her grow up, and now she's out in the world with a job, a diploma, and she's done growing up. It's over. Anyway, makes me very proud and happy to see my little sis graduate and everything.

You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave...

As my time on the west coast draws near an end, I'm ratcheting up Hotel Cali for the stretch run. Surprisingly I've had a few people comment that they missed my posts. Okay, to be honest missed may be an exaggeration, but at least that they noticed I wasn't writing anymore. Frankly I'm flattered that anyone reads this. Well, I'm here to say I'm firmly back in the pulpit and ready sermonize on any number of topics.

Remembering Layne Staley

So, when you die what stays behind? I can think of a few things: memories, accomplishments, things you have created, basically places where you left your mark (either physically or emotionally). Unfortunately over time almost all of those are washed away or become meaningless. There are plenty of examples to the contrary, such as people who changed the lives and perspective of many, who in turn did the same or raised families based on those values, etc. However, for the most part, even many of your creations will disappear or be taken by others. This was never more poignant for me than Sunday night at the Alice in Chains concert here in town.

Artists who touch public culture with art or music, however, have some level of continuity from the grave. You can listen to someone's music from long ago and feel what they felt or know what they sing about. You can look at their painting and be moved by what they convey. In a way you can connect with them from the grave. Except in Layne Staley's case where they replace you with a joke of a guy who steals your voice from the grave.

In Layne's case even his musical legacy has been taken from him. Alice in Chains co-founder Jerry Cantrell started the band back up recently and has gone on tour. Only now there is someone else singing Staley's songs, and singing them with a very similar voice. Only it's not him, and herein lies my problem with this situation. To have someone else sing is one thing, to have someone exactly mimic Staley's voice is another. Though they played a tribute video to Staley while setting up the acoustic part of the set, and Cantrell made a few comments about him, Staley's work has been taken from him in death. It's a shame, whether you like Alice in Chains or not, Staley deserved better. In fact he always has.

I was outraged back 4 or 5 years ago when he died in the same week as "One-Eye Lopez" of TLC and no one paid notice. A B level singer in a C band that pressed no musical boundaries, made predictable pop hits, and basically meant nothing, got weeks of press while Layne Staley's death went unnoticed. There was literally 3 weeks of "Left Eye" stories in the papers and online while the media turned a blind eye to Staley. I had to go to the band's website to find the news after hearing rumors from someone two days later. Ridiculous. However this isn't a discussion on media coverage of celebrity deaths and such. In reality I'd rather people be more informed about the world and country than such things...

At any rate, Staley is gone, though his band goes on. I find it a disservice to him to continue on with a soundalike vocalist.