Back to School

May 22, 1993.  On this date I graduated from George Mason University School of Law, and my formal education ended.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, soon to be on the US Supreme Court, gave our commencement address (not that I can remember a word she said, but all such addresses are exactly the same) and I got my diploma, with name correctly spelled, on the spot.

            I had to take the Virginia and Maryland bars before I could be an attorney, but those involved bar review courses, not actual classes.  The end of law school marked the end of education, which had begin in the early 70s with nursery school and kindergarten, continuing in Paris in the early to mid 80s for high school, at University of Maryland for college in the late 80s, and then law school.  Law school, with its assigned seating, corporate track thesis, and Socratic method, was far beyond the laid back, low standards of Huge State Party School.

            After law school it was time for the real world, in the form of my first legal job.  No more summer vacations, but then again, September wasn’t any worse than August.

NOVA.  In 1994 the real world bit me in ass, in the form of a layoff.  Suddenly having a surplus of free time and determined to make productive use of it (aside from looking for a job, which I was determined to do anyway) I studied auto mechanics, a topic I knew nothing about.  From reading a high school auto mechanics textbook, I then took two classes at the Arlington County Adult Education Center, these “intro to auto mechanics” courses for people who know nothing about it and want to know how to change their spare tire, etc.  Most of students in the class were women.

            After having taken both classes and still not satisfied that I’d exhausted my opportunities for practical, hands-on education (as I knew that book smart meant nothing when it comes to turning wrenches and getting dirty, and getting a job as a mechanic was impractical as I had not given up on continuing my legal career) I enrolled at Northern Virginia Community College for classes in auto mechanics.  Although some of the students were NOVA students, 2/3rds of the class members were gas station mechanics and dealer techs, so I knew I was in good company. 

I took classes in fuel systems (carburetor and fuel injection), transmissions (manual and automatic) and engines.  They even let us work on our own cars!  I changed my own oil, transmission fluid, differential fluid, and spark plugs.  I took apart and rebuilt a Rochester Quadrajet.  We took apart and put together two GM TH350 transmissions.

Oddly, I was still working as an attorney during this time.  My boss, Jerry, was gracious enough to allow me to leave work early from Falls Church to attend classes at NOVA in Alexandria, a luxury I haven’t had with any subsequent employer.  Ironically, I now live next to the school, but can no longer fit any of the classes into my work schedule. 

This was school, so it did involve reading and tests, but I was so excited that I devoured the textbook and read it on my own initiative, acing every exam.  My transmission teacher, Sandy, was the shop foreman at Stohlman Oldsmobile, so I could bring my Formula there for service and he’d always fix what was wrong for less than I expected (unfortunately Stohlman is now a Mercedes dealer, so I have to bring the car elsewhere).  I also took, and passed, the ASE exams on Auto Repair, Automatic Transmissions, and Manual Transmissions. 

However, despite all that, I am not a mechanic, have never worked as a mechanic, and cannot fix everything that goes wrong: I know what I don’t know, and I know my limitations.  I don’t try to handle body work; I never took any classes on that – what I know, I know from watching the guy who painted my car 3 times.  Also, no-start conditions and electrical problems still baffle me.  But I can have a normal conversation with a mechanic, and from talking to me they can sense I’m not someone they can fool.  I have the factory service manual for my Formula and it’s falling apart from so much use and review.

CLEs.  The second form of post-law school education are Continuing Legal Education (CLE) classes.  The Virginia bar requires 12 credits a year, including 2 credits in ethics.  They typically last between 4 and 6 hours and take place in hotel conference rooms.  They’re either live – in which case you can often ask the experts questions – or videotape replays.  You show up in polo shirt and jeans, almost a vacation from the law office and certainly from court.  There are no quizzes or tests, you just listen and take notes.  Hell, you could snooze for the entire time, pick up the materials binder, and then leave, and get as much credit for having taken the class as if you’d eagerly absorbed every word and took copious notes.  Typically a firm will pay for the class so long as you take a relevant topic and take notes for the other lawyers.  I used to take the courses on DUI (drunk driving) and divorce law, and now I take the general civil litigation ones.  They vary from dull snoozefests (especially ethics seminars) to fairly well presented courses with film clips to illustrate various topics.  I also frequently run into lawyers I haven’t seen in awhile, including former GMUSL classmates.  Of course, if you take a course in your line of practice, it’s even better.  Once, I had a DUI case continued because the court date conflicted with a DUI CLE.  I took the CLE, and sure enough what I learned was immensely helpful to me when the case came around. 

The ethics ones used to be the dullest, typically presented by the least engaging lawyers monosyllabically reciting sections of the code of professional responsibility, but in recent years they have improved the quality.  A recent one I took even had a video vignette of a parody of “Dirty Jobs”, called “Dirty Lawyers”, featuring an over-the-top shark of an attorney who really jumped over the ethical rules.  He joked about insulting an opposing party at a deposition, calling her a “slut” and “bimbo” who wasn’t smart enough to know what a restraining order was.  Certainly one of the more entertaining CLEs.

This ethics seminar, unlike most of the CLE’s I’ve been too, was actually at NOVA Annandale, so it really was like going back to school.  But as with all of them, no homework, no tests, just turn in your attendance form and you’re outta there.  Woohoo!

Cold Gin Time Again

Here’s a tribute to alcohol – in various formats.

Beer.  Probably my favorite.  As with most alcoholic beverages it’s an acquired taste.  I was a slow starter, and pretty much made up for being dry in high school by being tanked in college.  “Tanked”, though, is relative.  Compared to others at University of Maryland, I was probably average.  I was “tanked” relative to my virtually nil drinking in high school.  The drinking was never heavy and tapered off after college, and never came close to alcoholism.  I was never a heavy drinker.

Heineken.  This has a special spot for me, for several reasons:

            A.         Back when we returned to Paris on semester break in college – drinking age 14 in Paris, 21 in the US – we’d hit Roscoe’s.  Instead of the Stella Artois on tap, I’d exclusively drink Heineken.  Not sure why, just preferred something more upscale than what was on draft.

            B.         When I’d visit my buddy Ken in New Jersey, our first stop after I finished the 4 hour drive was usually a beer run to the local liquor store, and it was usually Heineken we picked out.  Good memories.

            C.         Not sure why, but Viets seem to drink Heineken or Corona.  They have their own beer, “33”, which is not bad, but not special either.  I’ve never seen a Viet (or anyone else) drink 33 though.  Why do they bother importing it??

            D.         I saw at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, that they have a home tap setup, which keeps the mini-keg cool and keeps track of the quantity.  Very cool, if expensive ($279).  Too bad it only works with Heineken mini-kegs.  I like the idea, but not enough to limit myself to only one brand of beer, as good as it may be.

Types.  I’m more into pilsners, and I can’t stand stouts (like Guinness), ambers (like Killians) or any thick ale.  German beers all have to obey that damn Rheinheitsgebot (or whatever the beer purity law is) which means they have to all taste equally strong and skunky, sort of like the Phil Hartman impression of the German chick on Sprockets (SNL); that goes for Samuel Adams and most microbrews.  I can endure Beck’s or St Pauli Girl, though.  Belgians are famous for their beer, but I never had much more than Stella Artois.  I love Brazilian beer (Brahma, Antarctica or Skol) which seems to blend the skill of German beer – they had plenty of Germans there teaching them how to brew it – without so much of the nasty aftertaste, a good compromise.  Light beer is ok, but Michelob Ultra is a bit TOO thin.  What happened to Michelob Dry and Coors Extra Gold?

Beer Snobs.  A friend of mine (name withheld, lol) recently turned into a beer snob.  Unless it’s some obnoxious microbrew or stout, it’s horse piss to him now, even quality beer we used to drink without a fuss.  To me, though, being a beer snob seems to be trying to have your cake and eat it too: being a snob for alcohol without having the stigma of being pretentious like the wine snobs. Sorry, snob = pretentious.  My only snobbery with regard to beer is refusing to drink cheap beer, such as Schlitz, Miller High Life, Busch, or Milwaukee’s Best, which definitely do taste like cheap, shitty beer.  For some reason, everyone’s 12 year old introduction to beer seems to be with the worst, cheapest beer imaginable.  I tend to buy Michelob or Icehouse these days.  The ice beers do seem to have a stronger kick without tasting any nastier.

Can vs. Bottle.  Screw them both.  I drink only out of a glass.  Something about cans makes beer taste 100x more filling, and even a bottle isn’t that great.  Just pour it into a pint glass.

Ads.  The beer ads for some reason are the most clever – especially during the Super Bowl.  I’m not sure why this should be, but it indoubtedly is.

Malt beverages.  Apparently someone figured out how to make a beer with absolutely no flavor, so they could put whatever taste they want into it and screw around with it with countless different flavors (sorta like schnapps).  I don’t mind these, as they taste pretty good (at least most of them) and are considerably less filling than normal beer – though according to the scientists, they are still beer.  Back on Rio Trip V I waltzed down the Suvaco do Cristo bloco drinking Smirnoff Ices and chomping down mystery meat on a stick dipped in sawdust, topless, before meeting up near the Jockey Clube with minha amiga.  Woohoo!  I think we went to the hippie fair in Ipanema after that, though my memory is somewhat hazy on the details.

Blame Canada.  The beer in Canada is stronger.  Labatt’s Blue, Molson, etc. are stronger in their local forms that what we get in the US (export versions).  I found out the hard way in ’91 when I visited my high school buddies in Ottawa.  I ended up listening to Max Webster’s “Hangover”...on a hangover.

Hard Cider.  This stuff is great.  Woodchuck Granny Smith is my favorite, though I love them all.  Much less filling than beer with even more kick.  My buddy and I went to NYC in June 2001 to see Nebula, and I kicked back 7-8 draft ciders while waiting to see the band.  I could never have done that with beer, at least not in that short frame of time.

Wine is fine but whiskey’s quicker.  I could never get into wine, though by now I know the difference between the different varieties.  To me it’s impossible for a guy to be “into” wine without being pretentious, although Brendan “put it back in the horse” Frasier and John “Monty Python” Cleese come close.  The stupid thing is that most guys who get into wine seem to assume that “getting into it” instantly makes you an expert.  Uh-uh.  It just makes you pretentious.

            Cleese did a remarkable wine-tasting video which demonstrated two interesting facts: most wine enthusiasts (or at least, the 50 or so idiots he found) can neither distinguish between white wine or red wine (without looking at it) or between a $20 wine vs. a $200 wine.  Watch “Sideways” if you think being a wine snob necessarily makes you sophisticated: it doesn’t.

Wine Coolers.  Remarkably, these are still around.  Who is drinking them?  I don’t even see women drinking them anymore.  They seem to have gone out with “Moonlighting” (Bruce Willis with hair – who can remember that??).  Bartles & James is still available at the local stores, even though the ads are long gone.  I suppose the same people drinking this have Dr. Pepper in their fridge.  If you’re having an 80’s party, by all means stock up on these.

Mixed drinks and straight alcohol.  I’m not keen on these, though sex on the beach is my favorite, with a caipirinha being a close second.  Remarkably, the bartenders at the Rio Hotel in Vegas had no idea how to make Rio de Janeiro’s official mixed drink (crushed limes with sugar and cachaça, sugar cane liquor), or even what it was.  Though the buffet included pizza, so I won’t complain too much.  Martinis are – guess what – pretentious, especially since they’re mostly just gin anyway (or vodka, “shhhaken not shhhtirrred”, thank you, Jamesshhh Bond).

The same pretentiousness applies to any doofus going on about a 100 point whiskey (or whisky).  Where is it written that if you’re hammered out of your skull, and cradling the porcelain companion after a technicolor yawn, on Patron (tequila) or some 1000 year old wine, that it makes you better than the idiot in the next stall puking out all the Budweiser he’s been drinking all night?  Drunk is drunk, and Dudley Moore is as much an idiot as any stupid frat rat.  Enough.

Absinthe.  Honorable mention for the liquor of choice of turn-of-the-century impressionists.  Mix it 50/50 with water (as you would anti-freeze) and add some sugar, and you have a pale green liquid that tastes like...licorice.  I have a bottle of the real stuff, but never saw the green fairy.  So far as I can tell it’s overrated.  I haven’t had enough of the Deer (aka Jagermeister) to complain or comment on how it compares, but no one I know has gotten visuals from it.  I trust James Hetfield is long past that phase.

Music.  As the title indicates, there is no shortage of musical tributes to various forms of alcohol and excessive consumption thereof.  A few of my favorites: “Cold Gin” (KISS), “Have a Drink On Me” (AC/DC), “High’n’Dry” (Def Leppard), “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” (George Thorogood); “Suicide Solution” (Ozzy) (I’m not thrilled with “Demon Alcohol”).  I’m sure there are plenty more, which I’m forgetting (!) or which I simply don’t care for.

Impact.  Alcohol is probably the drug with the most notoriously negative impact on society.  Even marijuana, which has grown more acceptable within mainstream society, still doesn’t have the reach and depth of impact that alcohol does.  A majority of broken marriages, domestic disputes, wife battering, child abuse, traffic accidents due to drunk driving, and so on are caused not by marijuana, nicotine, caffeine, LSD, valium, sleeping pills, heroin, cocaine, etc. but by alcohol.  Bon Scott (AC/DC), John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), and Steve Clark (Def Leppard) all owe their demises to alcohol.  Prohibition (1919-1933) proved that alcohol use cannot be eliminated even if it is outlawed, and Prohibition itself can plausibly be blamed for the rise in organized crime in the US.  No other drug comes close – we’re stuck with it, whether we like it or not.

Bee Movie v. Ratatouille

Time for another movie comparison, this time about two animated movies about animals.  I liked one better than the other.  Take a guess which.

Bee Movie.  This marks Jerry Seinfeld’s return to mainstream media since his show, “Seinfeld”, ended.  No sign of Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, or Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Patrick “Puddy” Warburton was the only other Seinfeld cast member here).  Too bad.  This is yet another one of those “alternate worlds” we were already dosed with in “Monsters, Inc.”, “Robots”, and “A Bug’s Life” among many, many others.  Plus, I’m not keen on bees and can’t stand yellow.  Too clever for its own good.  And they topped it off with this idiotic lawsuit against humans for stealing honey.  Give me a break. 

            The best thing about the film, though, was this.  The bees, upon reaching maturity, choose a particular bee job from a menu, like ordering at a fast food joint, and have to keep that job for the rest of their lives, with not a single day off.  Barry is reluctant to do so, yet somehow he’s the only one who feels that way.  Renee Zellweger plays the human girl he befriends, and Chris Rock plays an ebonic-speaking mosquito.

Ratatouille.  Ahh, beaucoup mieux.  The rats are rats!  They scurry along the gutters and between the cracks in the walls, and don’t pretend to be an advanced civilization of their own.  Aside from talking – and being able to cook – they act like rats.  Remy, the rat who can cook, finds himself allied with Linguini, the chef Gusteau’s long-lost son.  Their nemesis: Anton Ego (the insufferable restaurant critic who is unbelievably arrogant and impossible to impress) and Skinner, the sous-chef who stands to win ownership of the restaurant if he can only keep Linguini out of the picture long enough.  The love interest is a cute chick Colette who also works at the restaurant.  Of course we know the hero will win and get Colette, but how the trip proceeds is nonetheless worth watching and enjoying.  And it’s PARIS!  Not nearly as annoying as “Moulin Rouge” and all the other Paris films which give us a heavy dose of pretentiousness (and that idiotic accordion music) as the price of seeing Paris again on the screen.

Iron Maiden - Live After Death

I recently picked up the DVD of “Live After Death”, Iron Maiden’s classic 1985 Long Beach Arena show in 1985 on the World Slavery Tour for their Powerslave album.  Apparently this had been on VHS for ages (and I know I’ve seen it, although I never bought it) but until now had not been released in DVD format.  The second disc includes footage of Iron Maiden in Eastern Europe on the same tour (behind the “Iron Curtain”, as these countries were still communist at that time) and Rock in Rio I, which complements their more recent Rock in Rio (III) DVD.

I have two caveats about the quality of this, and then I’ll move on.  First, the original double LP included a 4^th side recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon on the same tour, and included “22 Acacia Avenue”, “Children of the Damned”, “Die With Your Boots On”, “Wrathchild”, and “Phantom of the Opera”.  This segment was missing from the original CD release of the album and apparently not filmed, as it hasn’t even showed up in this collection.  The second caveat is about “Running Free”, which Bruce Dickinson needlessly extends by another 5 minutes with that inane call-and-response segment.

Having said that, this DVD captures not only Iron Maiden at their peak, but also the whole 80’s metal movement.  The setlist alone is excellent: “Trooper”, “Revelations” (my favorite, aside from “Strange World”, which I don’t think we’ll ever see played), “Powerslave”, “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, “Number of the Beast”, etc.  I’ve heard “Run To The Hills” a few too many times to get excited about it anymore.  Bruce Dickinson is at his best, jumping around and still in long hair.  His inter-song contributions – especially this bit about Queen Victoria smoking hemp to alleviate her menstrual cramps – are a far cry from “are you ready to rock, motherf**kers???” we usually can count on from the likes of Motley Crue or Skid Row.  Dave Murray and Adrian Smith trade off their melodic, winding solos; Steve Harris attacking us with his Fender Precision Bass; and (zzz) Nicko McBrain going nuts behind the drums.  No sign of Blaze Bayley or Janick Gers; I never liked Bayley, and while Gers is a decent guy, he doesn’t seem to add anything except another guy running around with a guitar.  (Rik Emmitt: “More necks, I need more necks!” and “More frets! I need more frets!”)  Most importantly, the result is not some incessant wall of noise, but a coherent, tight, well-organized array of sounds which all fit together and give us metal at its finest.

Background.  Emerging from the slums of East London amidst the punk era of the late 70s, Maiden finally secured a record deal in 1980 after 3 years in the trenches of the club scene and scraping enough cash to make a crude demo, the Soundhouse Tapes.  After two albums with the original singer Paul D’ianno (not a bad voice, but a bit rough around the edges), Iron Maiden and Killers, the band dumped D’ianno for Bruce Dickinson and took off with Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, and Powerslave.  Along with Def Leppard and Saxon, Maiden are one of the few bands of the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) to survive into the mid to late 80s and make it big. 

Tour.  By this time they had 5 albums, three with Bruce Dickinson, and toured Powerslave as the World Slavery Tour.  The stage setup was amazing: elaborate backdrops, Egyptian motifs, and a huge Eddie.  Even the floor had Egyptian designs.  Contrasted with AC/DC’s bare stage with just Marshall stacks, or the Grateful Dead with their “wall” P.A. and carpets on the floor, this was even more outrageous and ambitious than even the prior stage masters, KISS.  This was metal at its most extravagant and self-indulgent, but somehow it worked, because the music was just as monumental, bombastic and dramatic; in other words, metal at its peak, at its best. 

It started in August 1984 in Poland, and continued for practically an entire year, even to Rio de Janeiro Brazil for Rock in Rio I, in January 1985, in front of 300,000 metaleiros, after Whitesnake and before Queen, the headliner, before finishing up in July 1985 in California.  Countries: Poland, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, UK, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland (August-November ’84), Canada and USA (November ’84-March 1985, except for Rock in Rio in January), to Japan and Australia (March-May ’85), then back to the US from May to July.  The P.A. system put out 152,000 watts, the monitor system was 21,000 watts, and the lighting alone was 7,000 watts.  They recorded and filmed the live album over 4 nights at the Long Beach Arena in L.A. on March 14-17, 1985.

Band.

Bruce Dickinson (vocals).  Nicknamed “Air Raid Siren”, Dickinson was as much an improvement over D’ianno as a Z06 Corvette is over a standard Camaro.  He’s got a top quality voice, sings so you can actually understand the words, and chats between songs almost as wittily as Ian Anderson.  He’s probably one of the top singers in metal, or music, period.

Dave Murray (guitar).  Along with Harris, one of the only original members.  I love his long blond hair consistently – from 1977 to this day – parted in the middle, and his innocent-but-hiding-some-dark-secret impish smile.  His solo style is melodic; his top solos are “Powerslave”, “Strange World”, “Phantom of the Opera”, “22 Acacia Avenue” and “Revelations”.  Murray is probably one of the most underrated metal guitarists.

Adrian Smith (guitar).  Quiet, unassuming, yet hardworking and competent, Smith is like the Brad Whitford of the band.  He plays off Murray well (they’re old buddies from before Iron Maiden) and they never step on each other’s toes.

Steve Harris (bass).  Clearly the anchor of the band.  He’s a big fan of West Ham United (east London Premier League soccer team), Wisbone Ash, and Jethro Tull.  He’s also the leading writer of the band’s music and lyrics.  There would be no Maiden without ‘Arry.  He attacks his Fender Precision Bass with passion, jumps around the stage, and lip syncs the words he wrote for Dickinson to sing.

Nicko McBrain (drums).  I really don’t have much of a discerning ear for drummers besides distinguishing styles at the extremes (Neil Peart vs. John Bonham) so I won’t comment on his technique.  He acts a bit loony as part of the “drummers have to be the animal” act, but is actually pretty smart and articulate.

Eddie.  Their mascot since the early days.  It’s not clear WHAT he is, or what he’s supposed to be, but he appears in some form on every album, in various clever forms on their T-shirts, and has some stage presence at every show, be it an oversized dummy lurching around on stilts or an inflated mummy blown up at the back of the stage.  Megadeth have their persistent wanna-be Eddie, Vic Rattlehead (better to rip off Iron Maiden than Metallica, huh?), and even Motley Crue tried (for about a nanosecond) to weasel in with lame-ass mascot of their own.  But there’s only one Eddie.

Brazil.  While Maiden struggle to fill modest venues these days in the US – and are only playing one show in the UK on this tour – in Brazil it might as well still be 1985.  They headlined their night at Rock in Rio III (which was taped and filmed) in January 2001, yet again in front of 250,000 screaming Brazilian metal fans.  They continue to pack the crowds in there, a feat they could never repeat in the US.  For a country known for bossa nova, “The Girl from Ipanema” (Stan Getz or Frank Sinatra), and all that soft, tropical music, Brazil outclasses the US and UK for sheer metal devotion, even to this date. 

UP THE IRONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Intellivision

 

My Tron blog led me to this one, as seems logical.  These days we’ve got Nintendo Wii, the Xbox, and Playstation, with their super-sophisticated graphics and plotlines.  I’m old enough to remember the Olde Days, when we had much cruder games to play with.

Pong.  WAYYY back.  I remember playing this in the basement of my friend Paul, who was also our next-door neighbor.  Tennis, hockey, and squash, with big or small paddles, was about the range of games in this thing.  Black and white.  That was it.  Pretty crude, but very simple and very playable, especially if you didn’t even have an Atari to compare it with.

Odyssey.  My relatives in Long Island had this thing.   It was a modest improvement over Pong, using overlays on the TV screen but still having crude graphics.  We couldn’t get it to work.  I remember it had a haunted house game I would have liked to have played….

Atari 2600.  This was the first game to really have any impact, and certainly had by far the most games.  Back in 1980 we had the choice of this or an Intellivision.  Going with quality over quantity, we picked the Intellivision, though we had no shortage of friends who had made the opposite decision and were happy to play their games with us.  The graphics were crude but viewable, but the play was fairly simple, with a simple joystick with one button.  In retrospect, though, despite the wide variety of games available for this system, the only Atari games which were really decent were “Combat” (the stock cartridge which came with the system, and curiously absent from the recent standalone Atari units you can get at Toys R Us these days) and “Adventure” with its dragons which looked more like ducks.  Activision actually made better games, and probably saved Atari’s butt from an earlier extinction.

Intellivision.  We loved this.  From 1980-84 we were relentless in trying to collect literally every single game they made, even boring ones like Reversi which we played once and never again.  Although the disc-based controller wasn’t nearly as easy to get used to as the Atari’s joystick, the keypad and side buttons dramatically enhanced the range of options available, making the games considerably more sophisticated without necessarily (!) compromising their playability. The graphics were 10x better than Atari’s.  The voice cabability – with the IntelliVoice module and the games Bomb Squad, B-17 Bomber, Space Spartans and Tron: Solar Sailor – wasn’t nearly as remarkable as the games which featured them weren’t that great.  Here are some of the highlights.  Relax, I won’t name them all, but the games tended to be fairly high quality, so even picking the highlights means picking a fairly high percentage of them.  Although the sports games were “officially licensed” by the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, NASL, PGA, etc. none of them were nearly advanced enough to allow you to actually select real teams.

            Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  The earlier Cloudy Mountain game was cruder, but far more playable and enjoyable than the later, more ambitious and complex (and boring) Treasure of Tarmin game.  We were huge gamers when the first cartridge came out, only to have our Intellivision unit fry on us shortly before getting the game. 

            Astrosmash.  Clearly cool with huge scores available and varying color backgrounds, but after a certain point it got dull and repetitive.  It’s like Asteroids but oriented left-to-right across the bottom of the screen.

            NFL Football.  You could program plays, offense and defense, and could actually complete passes.  This game actually scrolled left and right, rather than up and down the screen.

            MLB Baseball.  One of the best, EVER, and had crude voice ability (the umpire) long before IntelliVoice.  The keypad allowed complete control over all players on the field, yet the game was very playable.  I’m not a fan of baseball, but I loved this game. 

            Bump & Jump.  How can a dump truck go at 200 mph?  Who knows.  This game was cool, especially with the changing seasons, but you got 50,000 points for completing a segment without crashing anyone, far higher than you ever would by crashing as many cars as you could.    The Death Skull car was cool.

            Lock & Chase.  Like Pac-Man but better (I always thought Pac-Man was dull, as the maze never changed, whereas Ms Pac-Man had changing mazes which made it more worthwhile to advance, beyond simply ramping up the score for its own sake).  The original arcade version was at the arcade in the Jardin where we used to go as kids.  You’re a thief who steals coins in a bank, avoiding the Keystone cops and picking up bonus items along the way.  Instead of an energizer pill, you can lock doors behind you.

            Burger Time.  I brought my Intellivision to college with me during sophomore year and my roommates got addicted to this one.  I’d come back from class and find them doing marathon sessions of this (“screw class, I’m getting a high score!”).  I got pretty good at it myself.  Your little chef makes giant burgers by walking across the buns and patties, avoiding animated evil hot dogs, a fried egg, and a pickle.  Cute but compelling.

            Frog Bog.  Childish, but still cool.  Two frogs jump from pad to pad trying to catch bugs with their tongues.  The frog with the most points after a time period wins.  At night the bugs are fireflies.  The frogs could actually miss the pad, splash into the water, and swim back onto the pads.

            Mission X.  A scrolling bombing mission in a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, with strafing and bombing.  It was unclear whether the targets were German or Japanese.

            Night Stalker.  One of my favorites: you’re hunted down by killer robots in a dark maze, and you have to keep getting new guns as each only has 6 shots.  Bats and a spider lurk around to paralyze you.  The robots get progressively more dangerous (aggressive and intelligent) as your score increases, up to the invisible robot who was by far the most difficult to kill.

            Sea Battle.  I loved this one.   You have a whole fleet, including a sub, two PT boats, an aircraft carrier (minus aircraft??), destroyers, a battleship, a troop transport and a mine layer and mine sweeper.   Mines were so damn annoying we generally agreed to ban them. If you were really cocky, arrogant and good at the game you’d try and wipe out your opponent’s whole fleet using only your mine layer or mine sweeper.

            Snafu.  Killer funky disco music!  Simple but effective, reminiscent of the light cycle phase of Tron.

            Triple Action.  Race cars, tanks – with ricochet effect! – and biplanes (with stall) brought Intellivision up to Atari’s Combat credentials, with better graphics and few wrinkles.

            Shark! Shark!  More groovy music, adding bubble effects too.  You’re a fish eating other fish, avoiding a shark and jellyfish, gradually getting larger and larger as you successfully devour smaller fish and avoid the larger ones.  You can eat your opponent, which is pretty funny.

            Star Strike.  We got this one at Hamleys, the toy store in London.  They ripped off “Star Wars” for this one.  You have to kill aliens swooping over their space station channel or they’ll destroy the Earth.  Whether you defeated the alien death star or let them blow up the Earth, the finale was impressive either way.

            Vectron.  This was more my favorite than my brother’s.  Abstract puzzle kind of shoot-em-up, very challenging and thought-provoking, but with fantastic graphics and sound effects.

            Utopia.  Long before Civilization and SimCity, there was Utopia.  Two islands, two competing societies, with housing, schools, hospitals, hurricanes, rain, rebels, and crops, etc.  Well before its time.

            Space Armada, Space Battle, and Space Hawk.  Armada was nothing more than Space Invaders.  Space Battle was pretty good (a fairly originally done shoot-em-up) and Hawk was OK as long as you didn’t set it on the realistic but unplayable drift mode.

            Pitfall.  One of the Activision games.  My brother loved this one.  Any of you Atari fans will probably recognize this one.

            Tron Deadly Discs, Maze-A-Tron, and Solar Sailor.  I mentioned these in the last blog.

            Skiing.  We could do the downhill, even to the point of mastering the fastest speed, but the slalom was well beyond our capability.

            Imagic.  This was by far the most impressive of the aftermarket suppliers.  Their games were ….original.  Microsurgeon, Beauty and the Beast, Demon Attack, Atlantis, Safe Cracker, Dracula, White Water, and Dragon Fire were the ones I’ve played.  The games weren’t always impressive, but they were certainly imaginative.

            Lame-O’s.  ANY of the gaming ones (Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, Horse Racing, Roulette, Royal Dealer), the strategy games (reversi, backgammon, checkers, or chess, although the chess game played “The Ride of the Valkyries” when you won); or the Electric Company Word and Math fun games.  Sports: Boxing & tennis.  The golf, auto racing and basketball games were mediocre.  The hockey game was cool that you could trip the opposing players and get sent to the penalty box, but the team colors were brown and green, which made it hard to see which was which.  

Colecovision.  I have to mention this in fairness, as it rivalled the Intellivision in graphics quality at that time, and had a similar controller.  The Zaxxon and Smurf games were the best.  It could also play the Atari 2600 games (with a special module), something the Intellivision could never do.

After Intellivision and Colecovision came the first generation Nintendo and Sega Genesis, which lead us up to the present day.

TRON

This was a movie released in 1982 by Disney, which we saw in the movie theaters when it came out, on our home leave to the US that summer.  It features, among others, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Bernard Hughes.  The true star, of course, is the special effects.

Story.  The main character, Flynn (Bridges) starts off the movie as a video arcade operator, squeezed out of ENCOM (hmm, sounds like ENRON) by Dillinger (Warner) who stole his game, “Space Paranoids”, and has basically taken over not only the firm itself, but also its system, with his ominous Master Control Program (MCP), which had started out as a chess program (ZZZ).  Flynn meets up with Alan (Boxleitner) and Lora (Morgan) who still work at ENCOM and find Dillinger’s management practices and policies less than ideal.  They sneak Flynn into ENCOM after hours.

Flynn tries to break into the system, and is digitized into the computer itself.  This is where the fun and magic – and confusion – begin.

In the virtual computer world, the programs are personified into people.  They either submit to the MCP or face off against each other in gladiatorial games, including a light cycle game and another one involving discs thrown around like jai alai (where are Crockett and Tubbs?  With G. Gordon Liddy as Dillinger!).  Flynn and his comrade Tron (the computer version of Alan), meet up with another program, Ram, and escape from the games.  Eventually they team up with Yori (Lora’s virtual counterpart) and set off to bring down Sark (Dillinger’s computer counterpart) and the MCP.

To be honest, I found the subtleties of the plot a bit hard to follow, both as a 13 year old in 1982 and as a 39 year old a few weeks ago watching the film again.  Suffice to say that the following things happen:

1.         Ram is de-rezzed (killed), but not before learning that Flynn is, in fact a user (real person and not just another program). 

2.         Flynn captures a Recognizer (nasty bad guy tank which looks like an unfolded staple flying around with its open end face down) and makes some progress in that.

3.         They steal a Solar Sailor, an incredibly cool ship which sails along a beam over cyber landscapes.

4.         Tron interfaces with an I/O tower with his disc and gets the necessary information from Alan in the real world, on how to defeat the MCP.

5.         Despite being captured, Flynn and Lori manage to escape and assist Tron in defeating first Sark, then the MCP itself, which explodes in spectacular fashion. 

6.         With the MCP destroyed, Flynn is re-digitized back to real life, Dillinger is discredited, and Flynn gets to take control over ENCOM.  And there was much rejoicing…

Special effects.  Even today, they hold up remarkably well.  In fact, the entire environment was unique; I haven’t seen anything like it since.  The clever part about this is that it’s MEANT to be a virtual world, not the real world corrupted and enhanced with special effects.  This is why “Tron” and “The Matrix” worked so well, and why “The Phantom Menace” worked so poorly.

            I’m not one of those people who tries so hard to discredit and slam films with substantial special effects, as if to say “uh, you don’t impress me.”  I try to enjoy them and appreciate their role in the picture.  Unless the plot totally and completely sucks, and the movie makers clearly intended to bootstrap the film relying on the special effects – which seemed to be the case with “The Phantom Menace” and the subsequent Matrix films – I can handle them.  I will agree that in some cases, like the recent “Spiderman” films with Toby Maguire (spectacularly miscast as Peter Parker, in my opinion), the special effects are overwhelming even with a passable plot.   It’s all a matter of balance and execution, but ultimately the appreciation and entertainment element will be subjective.  We all have different tastes.

Video games.  I never liked the standalone arcade version of this game.  The video games we really got into with this were the three Intellivision games, “Tron Deadly Discs”, “Tron Maze-A-Tron”, and “Tron Solar Sailor”, the last being one with the IntelliVoice system. 

            Although well done and impressive, “Solar Sailor” was a bit ambitious, and I don’t recall playing it more than 2-3 times, much less completing the game.  “Maze-A-Tron” was alluring and tempting, but I found the scrolling feature to be annoying as hell, as was the MCP challenge phase.  Even if you defeated the MCP, you still got sent back to the maze phase.  So what was the point?? Remarkably, it was “Deadly Discs”, the crudest and simplest of the three, which I found most playable and enjoyable, and which we played by far the most.  You simply throw the disc at the three opponents, block their special discs, knock the doors open, defeat the Recognizer, and after a million points, avoid the bad guys with their paralysis sticks.  This was a game you could play for awhile without getting bored, and one of the better Intellivision games.

Jeff Bridges.  I’ve already mentioned the 1976 King Kong film.  I have to say I generally like his roles, particularly “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” (w/Clint Eastwood), “The Big Lebowski” (w/John Goodman), and “Tucker”.

David Warner.  Remarkably, this guy is STILL alive and still doing movies, though nothing I’ve seen him in lately.  Like Patrick Stewart, he’s a Shakespearean actor who found himself immersed in science-fiction roles. In addition to this film, his other great bad guy role was as Jack the Ripper in “Time After Time”, the 1979 sci-fi film which featured “your humble narrator” Malcolm McDowell as effete, shy, bookish H.G. Wells instead of the nasty, ultra-violent Alex from “A Clockwork Orange”.

Cindy Morgan.  My brother pointed out that she was also the slut in “Caddyshack”, perhaps not as recognizable here with no golf courses, Chevy Chase, or Bill Murray in the Tron virtual world.

I hear they will be making a sequel to Tron, possibly involving Jeff Bridges.  I’ll certainly watch it.

See You In Court

The new
Fairfax County courthouse is now open! Woohoo! Another palace of justice! I get the same feeling going into a newly opened courthouse as I did when I was a kid on the first day of school (and the last day, of course). The new complex is a big rectangle with a tropical botanical garden in the courtyard. The cafeteria is now a 5 star Brazilian churrascaria, with a Vocelli’s thrown in, and the judges are totally awesome. You can even have the pizza delivered to the courtroom, Jeff Spicoli style, in the middle of a trial.

Some of the above may be a little exaggerated.

The top “palace of justice” in this neck of the woods is still the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division (I’ve never seen the ones in other three divisions). Glass, dark wood, escalators, and 10 floors, even a little cafeteria. It’s justice in style and luxury. Too bad I rarely have occasion to go there as I don’t handle federal cases very often (like once every 10 years). Get caught smoking pot on Fort Belvoir, or drive a little too fast on the GW Parkway, and you may get the pleasure of meeting the velvet glove US Attorneys at this place and getting hosed – or better yet, acquitted.

Arlington’s courthouse opened up around 1995 or so. I was just starting out as an attorney when the older courthouse was still up, which had a real 60s CIA-Langley kind of style. The new one is also clean, light and airy, and well polished. It still looks brand new. The Marv Alpert trial was held there. My ex-boss fixed Greta Van Susteren’s cell phone when the media circus had come to town there. Despite its luxury, it lacks a cafeteria, which even Prince William County has. Fairfax’s cafeteria is huge, and tends to be a staging ground for cases and a great place to settle instead of going upstairs to try a case.

Alexandria (pictured above) is one of the few Colonial-retro courthouses around. Inside and out it looks like it belongs in Colonial Williamsburg. You even have the “bar” fences separating the gallery from where the counsel tables are and the bench, with the little swinging doors, so you have to “pass the bar” in the original sense. Remarkably, they handle all their business with just 4 courtrooms for General District Court and 4 for Circuit Court. Fairfax was bursting at the seams with 16 Circuit Court courtrooms.

Prince William County recently expanded its relatively modest facilities, where they get the J&DR Court, the General District Court, and the Circuit Court all into one building, and like Alexandria managed to cope with only 4 courtrooms per section. This was the site of the Bobbitt Trial (Lorena and John), about the only piece of notoriety Prince William ever seemed to achieve. Neither Manassas nor Woodbridge are much to write home about.

Loudoun County (Leesburg) recently opened up their new, and totally confusing, courthouse. Non-Euclidian geometry? Somehow they managed.

Over in Maryland, Monkey (Montgomery) County still has its 70s era main building and a 30s era District Court in Rockville. I went to the District Court as a kid on a school trip, and now – every now and then – practice there as an attorney. The 60s CIA-retro style District Court in Silver Spring was recently bumped in favor of a glass and IKEA wood new one just two blocks away. I noticed that they conduct many of their criminal hearings, when the defendant is in jail, by closed circuit TV, instead of the usual deal of having someone in a jail jumpsuit make a brief appearance, handcuffed, in the courtroom before being led back into the jail. One of the district courts in Baltimore, on Patapsco Ave., uses a similar system and the courthouse also looks the same. If IKEA designed courthouses, they would look like this.

Prince George’s County has been trying to renovate their courthouse, but a huge fire (“Didn’t you hear? There was a huge fire, the court burned down!”) set that back a bit. Upper Marlboro is kind of way out, so I’m not sorry that I don’t go that way often. This was one of the first courts to use computerized bulletin boards to show the docket, instead of the paper lists tacked to the bulletin board. Fairfax has only recently upgraded, but waiting for the docket to scroll screen by screen can be annoying, and less efficient than actually looking up on the paper.

Baltimore City’s court is located downtown, deep in the heart of the financial district. You may have seen it in “Die Hard 4” (supposed to be in DC but obviously in Baltimore) or “…And Justice for All” with Al Pacino.

Baltimore County, on the other hand, has a huge 60s Langley thing going on. It’s all the way up in Towson, somewhat of a long drive. Actually, having cases there helped me later, as I ended up driving past the Recher Theater and seeing where it was. It came in handy when I went to see Tesla there in 2004.

DC. I’m not licensed in DC, so I rarely have occasion to go to any of its courthouses. The Superior Court over on Indiana, is pretty big, and now has all sort of lighted boards there like airline arrival/departure boards. I went there a few times checking up on the DUI case of a PI client’s nemesis. The chairs in the courtroom, instead of being the usual benches, were single buckets which folded up – like in movie theaters. Some of the smaller courtrooms at the Montgomery County Circuit Court have similar seating. The US District Court (for DC) is more like a 30s retro deal, like the Dept of Commerce or the District court in Rockville.
Some of the courts have their own style, but mostly they fall into certain patterns. The continual upgrading and opening of new courthouses makes practice a bit more interesting than it otherwise would be. Not quite SSDD…