A song today on the way to soccer practice:
"Never leave your head,
Never leave your shoulders,
Never leave your mommy alone,
That's why I drink this special drink..."
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Nerd Grrl Street Cred
Okay, so this isn't a real accomplishment, which is why the blog is probably the only appropriate way to crow about it, but I recently beat all 120 levels in Super Mario Galaxy. Oh yeah baby! (Thomas is now trotting out that particular phrase whenever he does something well. Should I feel guilty?) Despite the fact that I play games regularly, I've never been hardcore--in fact if a boss fight seems boring and tends to take too many retries, I'll usually just ditch the title for the next game in my lineup. But something about Mario Galaxy has kept me playing.
Once, you could tell the console pros by their zen stillness during play. Beginners have a tendency to whip the controller around in a desperate attempt to get their little guy pixels to do what they want, despite the fact that the controller can't tell whether it's in your lap or flying through the air. Well, until now. I used to be one of those zen players, sitting in silent, button-mashing ohm-position. But the Wii remote has changed all that. Now I careen around on the couch as wildly as before. I even move the remote in ways totally unhelpful to gameplay. In Galaxy, Mario can change direction midair by shaking the remote and pressing the control stick in the direction you want to go. However, I also yank the remote in that direction, even though I know it's useless. I can't help it. The Wii has unmade me back into that silly kid again who whirled the controller around and yelled at Megaman not to fall off the edge. And that's probably a good reason why I can't stop playing it.
Anyway, beat all 120 levels and you get to play Luigi. Beat all 120 levels with him and supposedly the 121st level opens. Beat that...and I don't know. We'll find out when I get there.
Until then, watch this video of a guy beating one of the hardest Galaxy levels: What looks like an old school Luigi sprite from the original NES game turns out to be a map full of rotating boards, disappearing squares, and green muck that serves up an instant kill. The goal is to collect 100 purple coins (out of the 150 available) and make it back to your starting position all before time runs out. I felt pretty cool finally slogging through it after about 50+ retries.
Obviously I'm still just a grasshopper. Mr. Miyagi, is that you?
Once, you could tell the console pros by their zen stillness during play. Beginners have a tendency to whip the controller around in a desperate attempt to get their little guy pixels to do what they want, despite the fact that the controller can't tell whether it's in your lap or flying through the air. Well, until now. I used to be one of those zen players, sitting in silent, button-mashing ohm-position. But the Wii remote has changed all that. Now I careen around on the couch as wildly as before. I even move the remote in ways totally unhelpful to gameplay. In Galaxy, Mario can change direction midair by shaking the remote and pressing the control stick in the direction you want to go. However, I also yank the remote in that direction, even though I know it's useless. I can't help it. The Wii has unmade me back into that silly kid again who whirled the controller around and yelled at Megaman not to fall off the edge. And that's probably a good reason why I can't stop playing it.
Anyway, beat all 120 levels and you get to play Luigi. Beat all 120 levels with him and supposedly the 121st level opens. Beat that...and I don't know. We'll find out when I get there.
Until then, watch this video of a guy beating one of the hardest Galaxy levels: What looks like an old school Luigi sprite from the original NES game turns out to be a map full of rotating boards, disappearing squares, and green muck that serves up an instant kill. The goal is to collect 100 purple coins (out of the 150 available) and make it back to your starting position all before time runs out. I felt pretty cool finally slogging through it after about 50+ retries.
Obviously I'm still just a grasshopper. Mr. Miyagi, is that you?
Monday, May 12, 2008
Waiting for Godot
Seth has been a real character study for me after being swept up in the whirlwind that is Thomas for four years prior to his arrival. When Thomas was 18 mos. old, his favorite game was to run across the living room and have us pelt him with pillows. If he got knocked down, he only laughed harder. In fact, I once sent him careening into the wall and as I was running for him, imagining how I was going to explain his head wound in the ER, he emerged from the pillow pile, a huge red spot on his noggin, laughing hysterically.
He's also been a water baby all his life. Readers of this blog know that when we hit the beach in the summers, Thomas flings himself into the ocean, chaperoned or not, and has survived a few near drowning misses. He seems to have no fear, which is good in the sense that he has always been willing to try new things and adventures, and bad in the sense that I have been living with a near heart attack for most of his life as I wait for age and reason to finally overtake his lack of pain sensitivity and tendency to rush headlong into danger. I suspect I've got a number of years to go on that count.
Of course, it's a stereotype that the second child is often the categorical opposite of their first, but Seth and Thomas really do fit that bill. Where Thomas is easily distracted, Seth is methodical and while Thomas is easily pleased, Seth is a little more...discerning, let's call it that. Nothing seems to illustrate their differences as well as the following videos of a little sprinkler-running action in our backyard. Note that Thomas is not running through the sprinkler with such happy abandon just because he's older and is more comfortable with the experience. He was happily dousing himself in jets of water from the time he was a year old.
Sethie is my sensitive baby, the one who checks all the variables before turning the ignition, but I'm proud of him, too, that despite his obvious fear, he keeps going back to face it.
He's also been a water baby all his life. Readers of this blog know that when we hit the beach in the summers, Thomas flings himself into the ocean, chaperoned or not, and has survived a few near drowning misses. He seems to have no fear, which is good in the sense that he has always been willing to try new things and adventures, and bad in the sense that I have been living with a near heart attack for most of his life as I wait for age and reason to finally overtake his lack of pain sensitivity and tendency to rush headlong into danger. I suspect I've got a number of years to go on that count.
Of course, it's a stereotype that the second child is often the categorical opposite of their first, but Seth and Thomas really do fit that bill. Where Thomas is easily distracted, Seth is methodical and while Thomas is easily pleased, Seth is a little more...discerning, let's call it that. Nothing seems to illustrate their differences as well as the following videos of a little sprinkler-running action in our backyard. Note that Thomas is not running through the sprinkler with such happy abandon just because he's older and is more comfortable with the experience. He was happily dousing himself in jets of water from the time he was a year old.
Sethie is my sensitive baby, the one who checks all the variables before turning the ignition, but I'm proud of him, too, that despite his obvious fear, he keeps going back to face it.
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