Tiger Woods 08 on the Wii

I couldn't wait to pick up "Tiger Woods 07" when it first came out on the Wii. The "Wii Sports" game collection did enough to whet your appetite for a meatier game and Tiger Woods seemed to fit that bill.

Sadly it wasn't to be. The game itself wasn't bad but its ability to reliably do anything with the Wiimote was virtually nil. Nothing about it seemed intuitive and the swing would do little more than frustrate you with its inconsistencies.

Well, "Tiger Woods 08" was done by an entirely different team that for the Wii than for all the other consoles and the input controls from the last version were tossed out and redone from scratch. The word was that Electronic Arts realized the Wii caters to a different audience and they needed to design all Wii products with that in mind.

The end result, sadly, is little better than the last effort. First, the input controls are much improved. Reliability is much better than the the 07 version. However, what they have now is a product that simply defies you at being able to hit shots anywhere within 95-102%. The new design is supposed to take into account the amount of backswing coupled with the amount of downward force. If I swing fully but slowly I get 102-110% drives. If I swing back just halfway I get swings from 80%-105%. Nearly all approach shots zoom over the stick. Nearly all chip shots either blow over the flag or fall terribly short.

The end result is that after less than 24 hours of play, I'm already fed up with the game. My very first round I played my son and shot a 10 under at Doral. I thought, "Wow, this is FUN and it's not frustrating like before. Now I'll look to turn up the skill levels." My very next game, also at Doral, was as if I'd never seen the game before. I shot 15 over par and I've pretty much been shooting just as badly since. I started a PGA Tour Season and in 4 events have yet to do better than 35th. I just lost a match play event to a woman named "Carpenter" who wore overalls and a red handkerchief on her head. The two holes I won were when I shot a double and triple bogey. She just shot worse.

Perhaps I misunderstand something here but looking to the manual is useless. It's a couple pages of entirely cursory information. There's nothing there to explain most of what's in the game our how to really improve in it. I have no idea if my scores are being hampered because I'm viewed as new or because I'm new. I wonder if the Wiimotes are broken.

There are a number of things that concern me with the game beyond this. First, there's the ridiculously dizzying array of setup elements needed to get going. It takes an hour to really create your player. In the end everyone still looks like a strange version of Tiger Woods. I think it's the eyes. Then there's the shirts, hats, pants, shoes, balls, watches, clubs, shafts, grips, etc., etc., etc. There must be literally thousands of items here if not tens of thousands. I have to wonder how they all affect play. Do I suck because I have crappy equipment? Do I have to play for 2 months to get better equipment just to play better? If so, best of luck with that. It's not going to happen. I'm not 12 and don't care about having to unlock all these things. I want the game I bought and I want it unlocked when I buy it. Give me an option. Do they really think most people are going to try out the dozens of different balls they give you? They even include a range ball. Why would anyone need that?

Then there's all the saving. Every time you do something the game wants you to save. When you do it's an annoyance of major proportions. Do you want to save your profile? Yes/No. Say Yes. Oh, that profile already exists, do you want to overwrite it? Yes/No. Move up to Yes and select it. Then there's another Yes/No in there for something. When you're done you have to accept that it's done as if there's something else that can be done at that point. Come on EA. Plus, if you play with several people it wants you to repeat this for each one. There's no, "Save All" option.

The interface itself is frustrating. I still have no idea how I actually manage to zoom in on the face when I'm working on it. I have to fight between Wiimote movement input and direction pad input on most menus. I ended up buying several things I didn't want simply because I hit the wrong thing at the wrong time.

For a product that was supposedly re-developed heavily, it feels a lot like the 07 version with some small clean-up. I'll do some searching on the web to see what others are saying but for now, I'm not all that impressed and there's no reason for that.

That Man Who Hates The Law Resigned

Chief law enforcement officer Alberto Gonzales resigned today. This is excellent news assuming the President doesn't turn around and try to nominate Barney as his replacement. The timing of this seems odd. When he was under extreme pressure he held firm saying he'd be in the post all the way through. Now, suddenly, out of nowhere he resigns? Could it be that some back room deal was made in exchange for his resignation? Seems fairly likely to me.

Superbad

Another Friday, another movie. This time we checked out "Superbad", the new Judd Apatow movie.

It still amazes me that this guy has so many awesome hits as movies and failed so notably (and surprisingly) with TV shows. It makes no sense.

The great part for me is that I confused this movie as being the one with the kid who wants to be a stunt man by trying to ride his bike over huge jumps and such. What a relief it wasn't that. "Superbad" is rather a funny experience. You'll find yourself laughing out loud several times while seeing it if it's your kind of movie. What kind of movie is that? Well, this one is all about sex, drinking, graduating and all the normal high school senior angst. That means you can expect a dizzying array of profanity and references to genitals. In fact, I think I can safely say that you'll experience more genitals jokes in this movie than any movie you've ever seen or likely will ever see. Amazingly that turns out to be a good thing here. Somehow it doesn't get old. They even close the credits with more of it and people continued to laugh out loud. Well, okay, not the lady next to us who clearly thought "Superbad" was going to be a slow, deep romantic movie based on her complete dislike of the entire event. At least she hung in long enough to walk out on the credits.

One thing I hope not to forget, so much so that I'm posting it here in an attempt to force it into a permanent location in my head, is the line, "No one's gotten laid in cargo pants since 'Nam." Don't ask me why that was so funny. You have to see the movie. In context it was hilarious.

If there were any issues to complain about it would be the following:

1) Judd Apatow has to stop pretending that all the geeks have scores of hot women who secretly desire them. This seems to happen in all his efforts. I know it happened for him but that's the exception and not the rule. If you're Mrs. Apatow, yes, you're hot and yes, your husband is a geek. It would be a lot more enjoyable if he'd start insisting on casting women like Alyson Hannigan as we saw her in "American Pie". Part of what made that movie the classic that it is is that she was believable as the partner for geeky Jim. She's cute and adorable. If they used Shannon Elizabeth in her role the entire thing would have been ridiculous. I loved "Knocked Up" but no one believes the character Seth Rogen played could ever get anyone in the league of Katherine Heigl. Please stop tormenting the rest of us.

2) The casting of Michael Cera as Evan didn't work at all for me or my friend. This guy came off during the entire movie as gay. He looked gay, he acted gay, he walked gay, he ran gay, he drank gay, he sat gay, he slept gay, he probably may even be gay. And there's nothing wrong with that except that it doesn't work here. The entire scene where he had issues with the romantic situation came off as not working not because of his being such a gentleman but because he's clearly gay! The guy playing McLovin did it entirely right. You believed his immaturity. I guarantee you if his character said to the girl, "I'm sorry I just can't do this because I'm gay", everyone in the audience would have said, "I knew it!"

3) There are a couple of spots where the movie drags a bit. We see a bit too much of the police and a few scenes run on a bit past their welcome.

Even with those, the movie is a great deal of fun. It's certainly no "40 Year Old Virgin" and isn't quite up to "Knocked Up" but it's good in its own right and well worth the price of admission.

It Never Ends

Well, the news it out that, as you could possibly expect, General David Petraeus’ upcoming report on the situation in Iraq will not actually be his own report but will come right out of the White House. It'll be written by the White House with input from various officials. What a crock. Our Fearless Leader has spent months telling everyone that this will be his report and now we find out that's a complete lie.

Now I get arguments from the Right saying that all these ridiculous moves by this administration are simply par for the course with respect to politics. BULL. This suggests I haven't been alive during the previous seven administrations to know this for myself. This latest move is right up there with, "But all my friends are doing it."

Only This Administration Could Be This Dumb

To invoke Vietnam.... Is this President joking? From the moment I heard about the speech my first thought was, "This guy would have us still there, with our kids dying all in the hopes that it might turn around at some point."

The lesson we learned from the experience in Vietnam was not that we didn't stay long enough it was that we got involved in that fiasco in the first place. Vietnam is now up in arms over this speech and they should be. It shows that our leader learned nothing useful from the entire affair.

President Bush is absolutely among the worst Presidents this country has ever had to endure. He doesn't understand the domestic issues, he doesn't understand geopolitical issues, he doesn't understand global issues. The only thing this guy knows is how to read a prepared speech and he doesn't do that very well.

He met with a head of state a week ago and talked about making him a burger or hot dog at his ranch. This guy needs to be given the keg and sent on his way. He clearly has his eye on some other task that doesn't include competently running our government.

When a burger and hot dog guy starts telling you we shouldn't have left Vietnam, you know you've pretty much reached the bottom of the well. Think about it. If the guy next to you at your neighbor's barbecue started to rattle that one off, he'd be laughed out of the event or sent home in a cab.

I must say one thing--we're managing to not totally collapse under the guy and this has been the most amusing and perplexing President and administration in history. Never have so many people been assigned to so many posts that don't have any interest in upholding the post for which they were appointed. We get our leading attorney who doesn't believe in the rule of law. We get a Secretary of Defense who doesn't realize that defense is about protecting the country and not sending all our troops into a quagmire and speaking of quagmire's, we get a Vice President who speaks out of one orifice 10 years ago only to speak out of the other one a decade later. Who would have guessed we'd have a Vice President who manages to shoot his friend while hunting flightless birds from a car? You couldn't make that movie. No one would believe it.

Wow! I Predicated This One!

I just read that 20/20, amazingly, is going to do an expose on Dateline NBC! Are you kidding me? I wrote a post on August 3rd about how they should do this and expose Chris Hansen and his antics. Turns out they apparently had the same idea and are going after their "Predators" pieces. I can't wait to see that one....

Ultimatum, Sunshine, Stardust, No End In Sight

I've been at the movies quite a bit over the last few weeks. We've seen a number of films so I'll chat a bit about each of them.

First up we saw "Bourne Ultimatum", which is the best three-peat movie of the year. I didn't find it as good as the first movie but quite a bit better than the second one. It's a wonderfully fun rollercoaster ride. Action movies will have a hard time beating this for sheer edge-of-the-seat fun. The story has some major issues with respect to believability but hey, it's not a drama so I'll skip those. It was interesting to see Julia Stiles return and it appears as if the writers were attempting to work her in as a new love interest. Unfortunately I thought 90% of her time on screen just didn't work. I think I'd like her as a friend or neighbor but I've yet to like her in any film I've seen that she's done. This, in fact, was as close to liking her onscreen as I got and you can see that didn't go very far.

My wife and I caught "Sunshine" during the single week it played at the local art house theater. I'm not surprised it vanished so quickly but it really didn't deserve to do so. If you're a sci-fi fan, get a copy of this when it hits DVD and enjoy it. It's not perfect but it is an interesting and enjoyable movie (though I do wish they'd have re-thought the last 10 minutes or so). The biggest issue for is is that it stars Cillian Murphy. It's not that I don't like Mr. Murphy, it's just that I'm always so distracted by his off-beat looks that I can't focus on his character or the story when he's onscreen. His eyes simply do not fit the rest of him. As far as the film, it actually reminded me a bit of "2001: A Space Odyssey" in several places, both good and bad.

We then saw "Stardust" which I think the Philadelphia Inquirer nailed in its review. They basically said it was a good movie that is unlikely to find an audience. It has too much romance for the kids and too much fantasy for the adults. Thankfully, I walk the line between those two perfectly so I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a wonderful classic fairytale love story that requires you to just put the believability meter in your back pocket and forget about it. I think its biggest failure was in casting. I really like Claire Danes but she just didn't seem right in this role. She came off as trying to be a light version of Cate Blanchett in "Lord of the Rings". It didn't help that Ian McKellen did the narration of the story. He did a great job but it kept me thinking about how much better the LoTR movies were. The leading male character was also miscast. He was a complete throw-away. I can't tell you his name and can hardly recall what he even looked like a week after seeing the movie.

Meanwhile, much to my complete surprise, Robert De Niro stole the show. When I first saw this it reminded me of Dustin Hoffman playing Captain Hook and what a disaster that was. This was completely the opposite. His character was wonderfully portrayed and memorable.

This movie tries to be more than it is and I kept thinking that the producers came within a stone's throw of getting it home but missed. I definitely recommend it but it won't go down as a classic. It sort of wanted to be "The Princess Bride" and sort of wanted to be "Lord of the Rings" and sort of didn't make it anywhere in the process. Someone here goofed. For example, there's this wonderful plot line involving a set of brothers who are all interested in becoming the next King. One by one they fail and end up, in death, walking around forever trapped as a ghost until a new King is found. These ghosts could have been absolutely hilarious. Instead they're only moderately interesting. I'm sure the writers and producers thought they were funny but they just weren't. As I said though, I still would think most people would enjoy the movie.

Just the other night we decided to check out the documentary, "No End In Sight" which is all about the Iraq war. My biggest problem with it is that it never lives up to its name. It's much more about a retelling of how we got to where we are than in telling us why it's not going to end anytime soon. The other problem with it is that little is explained about the people who are interviewed about the film. We get their names and titles and that's about it. We're not given any real insight as to their qualifications, their politics (if any) or their dedication to their work. One person after another chimes in with another short burst comment about why things are so screwed up and then we're onto the next person. You can also sense that a lot of the interviews proved hard to turn into material for a film. The key case in point is with General Jay Garner. He goes out of his way to say as absolutely little as possible so as to not point any fingers. His responses often are little more than short single words or phrases. You sense that a lot of the people in it have a lot more to say but don't. You also sense that a lot of other people should have been approached but weren't. Where's Richard Clarke for example?

In the end, if you followed the news, you learn very little, if anything, that you didn't already pretty much know before. The film acts as a concise reminder of all those missteps condensed down into a single movie. It also does nothing to suggest what could be done to rectify things. The end result comes off as one big case of Monday Morning Quarterbacking. How 94% of reviewers recommended this is beyond me. It's not a bad documentary but it's certainly very lacking in real, original information.

Liberal Media Bias My Ass

This is one I'm tired of hearing about. It just isn't true.

Here are some realities those that espouse this pile of misinformation don't like to address:

Look at the major cable networks. At CNN you have what's considered to be a left-leaning news organization. Why? Who there is patently, overtly liberal? Anderson Cooper? What does he ever say to give this impression? Wolf Blitzer? Wolf just recently had a big battle with Michael Moore supporting Doctor Sanjay Gupta's misinformed piece on his film, "Sicko". The brand names at CNN include Larry King who seems to be completely lacking for either side, Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace. You don't get much more conservative than the latter two.

Then we have MSNBC. They're often listed as diehard lefties. Really? They've certainly got Keith Olbermann and frankly if I were the Right I'd be scared of this guy. He's smart, savvy, fast on his feet and can put together a commentary that would make Lincoln sit up and take notice. The big name there is Chris Matthews who can't find a good thing to say about a Democrat. Then there's Tucker Carlson and of course Pat Buchanan. If anyone is going to tell me these guys are lefties I'm going to call them flat-out liars. Don't give me Ronnie Reagan as the guy is rarely on.

Do I even need to bother touching on Fox News? You'd have to be brain-dead to suggest they have a liberal bias.

Things don't get much better on network news. You've got ABC, owned by ultra-conservative Disney. ABC also owns Sean Hannity's show. CBS and NBC also have heavily conservative corporations running the show. These are all large corporate entities and we all know corporate entities are conservative at their heart. It's all about the bottom line and that's conservative thinking. Both CBS and NBC radio have conservatives on their talk shows.

Then look at the radio. How many left-leaning radio talk shows do you know of? Meanwhile we have Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and many more. Don't tell me "progressive radio doesn't interest people". Bull, Ed Schultz beats Hannity in several markets but still can't get onto The Armed Forces Radio Network or out of the mid-west. The bottom line is that corporate America doesn't want these guys on their networks. They want what sells ad space and corporate America gets most of its ad income from other entities just like them.

I'm sick and tired of being surrounded 24/7 with conservative propaganda and being served up this ridiculous lie that we're inundated with liberal media bias. Don't even give me the New York Times. If there's a liberal media bias at the Times they would have called George W. Bush out on the war long ago. Instead, like every other paper with the exception of the then Knight-Ridder papers, they bought the administration's cause hook, line and sinker.

If you think we have a liberal media bias, let the world surround you with people like Al Franken on 4 out of 5 radio stations and people like Michael Moore on 4 out of 5 news channels and then see how you like it when they tell you we're swamped with conservative media bias. For every single Bill Maher (who is a comedian people, unlike Ann Coulter who he always seems to be compared to for some unknown reason... next you'll try to suggest Jon Stewart is an actual news anchor) you can name, I can name 4 or 5 conservatives to offset them.

20/20 Needs to Expose Dateline NBC

Dateline was back with the hidden cameras again this week. Chris Hansen attempted to make a big deal out of "exposing" iPod "thefts" and to make Apple out have some responsibility for not incorporating a complex solution to keep thieves from being able to use iPod's that they steal.

First, let me say right off, taking something that isn't yours is wrong. It's a moral issue. However, life is not fair and part of the process is to learn not to leave things lying all over creation and expect to get them all back. If we lived in a world where everything you left out was returned, we wouldn't have shows like Dateline. There would be no wars and no one would ever do anything even remotely questionable.

The problem I have with the episode is two-fold:

First, it's not Apple's responsibility to act as your insurer. If you cannot insure the protection of your own property that's a lesson you need to learn. Apple should not be required to spend the money to add complex security to an iPod just in the event of your leaving it laying on a park bench.

Second, if you see someone with an iPod and you see them leave it on a bench and then go up and take it, you're a thief. You could have done something to help this situation. If you walk along one day and see an iPod lying on a bench in an empty park and you take it, you are NOT a thief. The moral thing to do would be to take it and give it to the police. The odds of that happening are probably off-the-charts but it would be the moral thing to do.

To suggest that such a person is a thief is to suggest that everyone who finds money on the ground, and spends it, is also a thief.

People need to get some perspective on these issues. It's extremely easy to sit back and act like the world is a perfect place where people do the right thing all the time. It's just not going to be that way.

I lost my wallet at a local cinema. We were the last people to leave the theater. I realized it was missing before the cleaning crew finished cleaning up the theater we were in. When I went to the desk to inquire about it, much to my surprise, the wallet was there. What wasn't there was the $40 in cash that was in it. I said, "Who turned it in?" The response was the one of the workers did, just moments before I came up. When I pointed out the missing cash their answer was, "Oh well." It seemed pretty obvious to me who took it and I do believe someone should have taken this up with the worker but, frankly, I was just glad to get the wallet back. The $40 was a cheap lesson learned. I now check for my wallet whenever I get up from a movie theater seat.

The point is that I should have taken better care of my wallet just as I should with an iPod or anything else that I want to keep. Someone online tried to suggest that this view is the same thing as saying that you're not a thief if you drive up with a forklift and cart my car off. Nonsense. You had to willingly plan to take my car for that to happen. It's also a simple matter to know who a car belongs to.

Here's the bottom line. If you leave your iPod on a bench and the next day you return to look for it and don't find it there, would you actually tell your friends that your iPod was stolen or that you lost it? Nearly everyone would say they lost it and the last time I checked losing things was not something that could be defined as being part of a crime. Try going to the police to press charges on that one. Their first question will be, "Did you leave it unattended?" However, if I go out to the parking lot and realize my car is gone, I, like everyone else, will call the police and report a theft. Their first question in that case will not be, "Did you leave it unattended?"

Dateline must really be running on empty if this is their idea of a hot hidden camera story. How about exposing more spammers, more politicians, more corrupt companies? Come on, you've got a long way to go Dateline before you get to making people who find a dollar on the street feel bad.