Roll for Initiative

Summer is here and with it comes the onslaught of time to waste and the demise of my normal sleeping habits. I always go into summer with grand ideas and schemes but they all seem to dissolve once it occurs to me that I don’t actually have to do any of them. Summer plans are entirely too much like work or school to merit my time. That said, I do have one abstract goal to work toward: reading. I love to read but during the school year it usually comes down to sacrificing my reading time or my sleeping time. Guess which one usually wins. I have a reading list that I have composed, but not really a set number of books to get read. I’m thinking I’d like to get 10 or so done and/or get my page count (from my meticulously detailed Excel spreadsheet on what I read) up to 20,000 pages. Right now it is at 15,549. My spreadsheet tells me the average length of one of my books is 420.24 pages, so that comes out to… 10.59 books. See how clever I am? I wrote 10 books up there ^^^ before I did the calculations.

Every year on the night of the last day of school, the Sprague High German Club, under the command of the completely awesome but equally crazy Dr. Herr Juengling puts on a musical. This year it was Arielle, die kleine Meerjungfrau (the Little Mermaid). Yes, it is all in German. I feel I must note that Sprague is well known for its quality of drama productions and choral activities, which only serves to counterpoint the insanity of the German play. Quite fortunately, there are some members of the German contingent that are in choir and can thus sing well. Erica Nelson, aka “Gurke II”, was excellent as Arielle and Josh Trammell was epically awesome as Sebastian the crab, complete with Juengling-esque conducting. (Grab a stick and wave both arms as if you are an octopus on crack.) Some of you clever people may be saying, but you are in choir and German aren’t you Jordan? (or Günter if you are in German as well) Yes, I am but usually second years aren’t in the German play. Usually. Herr J got a bee in his bonnet and I wasn’t in class one day, my dear dummkopf of a friend, Hans Unrein volunteered me to be in the play. Singing “My Girl” in German. And dancing.  (Just for the record I still don’t forgive you, Hans.) Long story short, last Wednesday I found myself in my Goodwill old man suit singing and dancing to a packed house. Fortunately it went very well, and it helped that the front row was filled with my choir compatriots who didn’t know what I would be doing. I’ve built up such a dry wit persona that when I do something out of the ordinary it goes over really well. Herr J said that I’m a rock star now, so lets see if that carries over through the summer.

Wow, this is getting long and I am just now to my titular topic for the day. Last week I was introduced to the world of table-top roleplaying with the Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplaying Game. If you know anything about RPGs, you probably have heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Well, SWSE is essentially the same thing but set in the Star Wars universe. For those of you who don’t know anything, basically you make a character then go through a storyline rolling dice, killing and doing cool stuff. The story is run by someone known as a “Game Master” or GM and this is what I found myself doing. I met up with my friends Alex, Brandon and the Andrews (Naugle and Hatz) to play the first session of SWSE for everyone but Hatz. As the GM I was responsible for telling the story and controlling NPCs (non-player characters, or as Alex calls them, Munions). Please be remembering that I’d never done this before, but I did have a pre-made campaign and my obscene amount of Star Wars knowledge to draw on. It ended up being really fun, with highlights of the night being Hatz’s Zabrak named “Juancho Mahne” (pronounce in a Mexican accent) and selling Bail Organa a desk. (Points for you if you knew who that was.) The party of adventurers thought it would be a good idea to take everything that wasn’t nailed down, so I expect to see more of this in the future. I believe that this is going to become a weekly thing for the rest of the summer now.

Jordan Keagle is a level 4 Jedi with a Wisdom of 19.

And we thought Temple of Doom was bad…

I’ll get this out of the way right now, so no complaining later.

THIS POST (OR BLOGLET) CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ABSOLUTELY EVERY MOMENT OF INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL! ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE!

Okay, that should do it. On with the comments.

The opening scene, I felt, was too long and did not match the rest of the series. Teenagers racing army personnel in a Chevy down the open highway in the American Southwest accompanied by Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog”? OK, George! We get it! It’s the 50’s! I figured that out after 30 seconds! What ever happened to watching Indy pursue an unrelated artifact to the main MacGuffin which in the meantime foreshadows the coming plot? The next scene in the legendary warehouse from the end of Raiders I thought was well executed, with the scale and action I expected, though I probably was not thinking clearly through the cloud of ecstatic fanboy glee I was feeling at the prospect of seeing the Ark of the Covenant. (I was desperately trying to read the boxes for the number 9906753) Speaking of which, I was quite happy to see the Ark but rather disappointed that Indy didn’t notice he crashed into the freaking thing.

Moving onward, Indy escapes from the Russians and wanders through the open spaces of Area 51 to a Leave it to Beaver-esque neighborhood populated by mannequins. Then alarms start going off, as Indy has wandered into a bomb test facility. Here we come to George Lucas Insanity™ (or GLI) number 1: Indy rides oout the blast in, I kid you not, a refrigerator! Yes, the camera does zoom in on a label that says “lead-lined” but seriously, you could not do that! The radiation notwithstanding, the amount of force, even though it was ridiculously low, sent Jones and his chill-casket bumping across the ground like a bouncy ball. That had to cause some major injuries, especially with a guy so… dare I say, old. There I said it. Harrison Ford is old. Most of the time though, it did not affect how he played the character, at most adding a little more “I’ve seen this all before” swagger that Indy already had. Oh, and directly after this scene while talking to the federal agents after the blast one of the agents is Neil Flynn aka the Janitor from Scrubs. Really. Check IMDB if you don’t believe me.

The next few scenes back at the university in Connecticut I have no problems with. This is the Indiana Jones I know and love without any changes to the formula. Riding a motorcycle through a library and answering questions from students is just the mix of awesomeness, wit and intellect that Indy embodies.The nods to Marcus Brody were appreciated as well. The only problem I had was that the first couple clues, such as the Nazca lines were too darn easy and I was shouting them out before Indy and Mutt worked through them. Speaking of Mutt, I thought that Shia LaBeouf was going to be the Jar Jar Binks of this movie. You know what? He wasn’t. He only did one thing that ticked me off and that was a GLI and not his fault (we’ll deal with that later).

The sanatorium was a bit much in my opinion as was the entire “the Skull makes you crazy” motif. It seemed as though this was merely a way to throw more obstacles and puzzles in Indy’s path without coming up with clever things like the map room or the trials in Last Crusade. This leads me to something I realized about this film versus the other three. In the others, the MacGuffin, if used at all (see the useless Sankara Stones in ToD) are not used until the end adding mystery and anticipation to the incredible powers. The Crystal Skull, however, is very easily obtained and its Swiss army knife powers, ranging from trances to mind control to super magnetism, are used constantly through the rest of the movie. (This is GLI #2 by the way.) When Indy describes the Skull, he says that the person who returns it to Akator gets control of the temple’s power. What power? He says he doesn’t know, and that is far less awesome and imagination inspiring than when he was asked about the Ark in Raiders and answered “I dunno. Lightning, fire, the power of God or something.” Doesn’t that have a more visual and imposing quality to it? In the end, it turns out the power is knowledge, which is lame because we don’t even get to hear what any of it is. On the plus side, the crazy brain overload makes Irina Spalkov, the Ruskie commander burst into flames from the eyeballs out, a combo of the awesome deaths from Raiders and Last Crusade.

In the jungles of Peru, Indy and Mutt are captured by the Russians and meet up with Mutt’s mom and Indy’s old flame Marion Ravenwood aka the only non-irritating Indy Girl. I was very happy that Karen Allen returned for the role as her relationship with Indy was one of the nice touches in Raiders. The next crucial scene is with Marion and Indy stuck in quicksand where two things happen: 1. Mutt throws Indy a snake to grab on to, leading to much hilarity as he can’t understand why Indy won’t grab on, and 2. Marion tells Indy he is Mutt’s father. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially as it leaked pretty early in production. If it slipped past you may I point out that Mutt is about 20 years old, so the timeline matches perfectly to Indy and Marion’s last rendezvous in Raiders. (1957 – 1936 = 21 years) The thing that did surprise me was how early in the movie this came, I thought it would be left for the end. This was actually a blessing in disguise as we get to see a relationship develop between Indy and his son, culminating in Indy calling him “Junior” just like his dad, the recently deceased according to this film, Henry Jones I.

Back on the hunt for a storyline, we find out that the skull, which is strangely elongated, and as Indy says, unlike any others seen is from an alien with a crystalline magnetic body, one of which crashed at Roswell in 1947. Indy deciphers the ramblings of his befuzzled colleague Professor Oxley, or Ox, or Mr. Exposition and the heroes escape to return the Skull to the Temple of Unknown World Shaking Power before the Nazis, sorry, Russians can. Actually, I think the Nazis were brighter than the Ruskies. They were at least better shots and they didn’t have a leader that sounded like Natasha from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.

The remainder of the movie gets progressively worse, including Shia swinging like Tarzan with monkeys (GLI #3) and the power of knowledge destroying Natasha, wait, Spalko. Then the temple which is actually a spaceship blasts off ala Close Encounters and the whole area collapses. Blech.

Back in America, Indy and Marion get married, which disappointed me. I liked Indy as the globetrotting ladies man, but that is just me. A magical wind blows the church doors open and blows Indy’s fedora to the feet of Mutt, who reaches down to pick it up. At this point, the stress in the theater is palpable and people are shouting “NO!”. Luckily, at the last second Indy grabs the hat and exits. This got the second-largest amount of applause in the whole movie, after the Dark Knight trailer.

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Overall, the movie was fun but it didn’t live up to the previous entries, even though it took them 19 years to make. If you haven’t seen it, see it but set expectations low. It isn’t even as good as Temple of Doom. Seriously, George. I’ve lost my faith in you.

Colonel Doctor Professor Jordan Keagle is disappointed that “Communist” is not the worst thing you can call someone anymore.

Dun da dun daaa…

Wow, it has been a while hasn’t it? See how good I am at continual scheduled things? Pretty bad, but that isn’t the point today.

Rather, my point is to herald the coming of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the first Indy movie in 19 freaking years! The last one came out in 1989, really, that was before I was even born. This is most of the reason why I am so excited, because it is the only one I am alive to see in theaters. George Lucas, who in his old age, has become incredibly crazy and senile, has the potential to have ruined this movie (see Star Wars Episodes I-III) but I am praying that Steven Spielberg has prevented him from doing anything too retarded. Luckily, George was not allowed to write the screenplay or direct, which are two things he is amazingly bad at doing. (Once again, see Episodes I-III) Back on the positive side, the elderly Harrison Ford is still awesome and apparently did all of the stunts they would allow him to. Also, Karen Allen is returning as Marion Ravenwood, the only good Indy girl. Yeah, Elsa was alright but she was a Nazi. Plus, she died at the end of Last Crusade. I’ve heard some comments that there are too many computerized effects, and while I haven’t seen the movie yet to judge for myself, I personally feel that this would definitely be a detriment to the film as the original movies were characterized by the use of old-style stunts as opposed to fancy tech-no-lo-gy.

I will be at Movieland in downtown Salem on Wednesday evening in full Indy gear eagerly waiting for the show.

Jordan Keagle is in it for the fortune and glory.

Best Day Ever!

Today my sad little blog had 6 hits, more than any previous day, for a grand total of 16 since I started. I am attributing this jump to my good buddy, the Sultan of Poultry, Patrick. If I may borrow a passage from my kindred spirit and fellow hair-enthusiast Truman, allow me to say this:

If you’re reading this and you’re a girl, that’s awesome! There are girls reading my blog besides my Mom*! Do any of you want to be my girlfriend? I’m über-sensitive.

* Note: Unlike Truman, my mom doesn’t read my blog. I’m that sad.

Jordan Keagle is a pathetic, lonely person who can’t even appear popular online despite what Brad Paisley tells him.

First Contact

So, it would appear that my little experiment has now shown up to the blogosphere at large. I have received my first unsolicited comment and have been getting more hits, mainly due to the Firefly tag I put on one of my other entries. Since that was 4 hits worth of popular and because I am a bit of a Whedon evangelist, I figure I will discuss the show a little more in detail.

Firefly is set in 2517, humans have consolidated into the Anglo-Sino Alliance (or just the Alliance), which is dominated by American and Chinese culture, hence the Chinese language (mostly long and colorful swear words) which are incorporated into dialog. Centuries before, the humans were forced to leave a polluted and depleted Earth to settle on new planets in another solar system.

This brings us to Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, captain of a Firefly-class ship named Serenity, and the show’s “anti-hero” if you will. He leads a renegade band on his little ship, taking work as it comes, mostly of a less than completely legal variety. Other crewmembers include Zoe, his first mate and partner from the failed war against the Alliance, her husband Wash, the pilot, Jayne the mercenary muscle and Kaylee the eternally happy engineer.

Another frequent flyer is Inara, a companion, basically a unionized and well respected whore, as Mal is quick to point out at any available opportunity.

In the first episode, Serenity picks up a preacher named Book, a young doctor, Simon and his mentally unstable sister River.

Anything beyond this delves deep into the realm of spoilers but I will say that the world of Firefly is rich and complex. It seems real even though it only has 14 episodes to develop. Maybe this is on account of all the dirt.

You can watch the whole series on Hulu.com (link to the right) so check it out!

In summary:

Watch if you like: Joss Whedon, Space operas, Cowboys, Amazingly funny stuff

Avoid if you don’t like: Awesomeness and a little country-sounding music (Check out the opening credits above. If you don’t like it, don’t worry it grows on you.)

Jordan Keagle is a leaf on the wind.

Das Imperium Schlägt Zurück

Well, I missed an entry again. This isn’t going to be an everyday blog. I will try my best but it really isn’t going to happen.

So for those of you who are too uncivilized to know what the title means, it is German for “The Empire Strikes Back” as in Star Wars: Episode V. We are watching it in Deutsch II and it rocks. Seriously, take German just for the movies, you won’t be disappointed. We were sitting around watching the Battle of Hoth when we hear a strange alarm in the background. It takes a few seconds for anyone to notice as it blends in with the rest of the movie sounds and it would make sense that alarms would be going off at Echo Base, but it eventually dawned on us that it was the fire alarm. The freaking fire alarm! And with only about 4 minutes left in class. Ridiculous. Between that, advisory and leaving for choir districts at about 1:15 (Update on that later) I’m not doing anything today.

UPDATE: Choir got 92, 93 and 97 from the three judges and those scores are really good. You only need to get an average of 80 to qualify for state. Although it isn’t technically a competition we got more points than any of the other groups. W00T!

Well, frak me!

I can already see how well this is going to work. Two days in and I’ve already missed an entry. The hard thing about a blog is that by the time you are finished waiting for things to happen there is no time left to blog it. How irritating. I suppose I could just update two or three days a week, but then the entries would have to be über-awesome™ to make it worth it to me and the absolutely no people who read this thing. One blog that does a limited schedule and does it very well is Truman Capps’ http://hairguytruman.blogspot.com/ Truman graduated from Sprague last year and is something of a legend. I have been compared to him on multiple occasions due to my personality and our mutual possession of large hairdos, so I feel a kinship with him even though we have never actually met. Seriously, his blog is amazing. It updates on Sundays and Wednesdays. If you only read one blog for the rest of your life, leave this one right now and go read Truman’s. Okay? Okay.

I have an irritating habit of not getting into things at the right times. I was born too late for original Star Wars or Indiana Jones (Though Indy 4 comes out May 22!) and I am always late to even contemporary fandoms. For instance, when I jumped on the Firefly* wagon this summer, the show had been over for 4 years and the movie had been out for 2. I suppose there is an advantage to this as you don’t have to wait for more content but the downside (especially for Firefly) is that after you finish there is no more coming.

* For those of you who don’t know, Firefly is what can only be described as a space-western (Seriously, it has spaceships and revolvers) created by Joss Whedon, the same guy who made Buffy the Vampire Slayer and absolutely nothing else. The show is pure genius and funny as hell. Unfortunately, FOX did mean things to it and it only lasted for 14 episodes, 3 of which never aired. There is a link to the side to a site called Hulu, where you can watch certain TV shows for free with limited commercials. Watch Firefly. It rocks.

All of that to say, I have a new fandom to add to my list it would seem, Battlestar Galactica. Its fourth and final season started on Friday so I am 4 years behind. Yay. How I missed it to begin with, I dunno, I must have written it off as a remake of a lame 1978 Star Wars cash-in/rip-off (Which, technically it is). What sold me on it though, was the fact that Joss Whedon says it is his favorite show. If it is the favorite show of the guy who made your favorite show, it must be good. Also it is the favorite of Dwight Schrute. (And Mr. Curry, and Brad Paisley [I swear, look it up!], and that guy from The Soup, the list goes on…) So far I have only watched the mini-series that started the “re-imagining” as they call it but I have the episodes coming down the Internet tubes as I type and I’m off to watch the first actual episode now.

So, to recap: Firefly = Awesome, go watch it right now
BSG = Great so far, looking forward to the rest

Jordan Keagle is not a frakking Cylon. He thinks.

Hello world!

Hello Internet! Your favorite midget genius has a blog now. No, not Stewie Griffin, you dummkopfs! Look up the page. Do you see the big Star Wars title? What does it say? Get it now? Good. I’ll be here talking about stuff that happens. Read it. It just might be worth your time. Link to it on your blogs or Myspaces or Facebooks or whatever. I don’t have one and refuse to make one. There are Chi-Mos out there, man!

Okay, so I just got back from Crossler, my old middle school, where I have been helping with the tech stuff on the musical they are putting on. I’m helping because Brandon Warren and I are the only ones in the last 4 years (since 6th grade) that know how to run any of the equipment. Seriously. In 6th grade I asked to help and they said, “Okay, you can run lights. Here is the stuff, figure it out.” 7 out of the 8 lights are working though, which is better than expected. The multitude of cords gets pretty annoying, however.

Also, drinking 44 ounces of Mountain Dew over the course of 2 hours will make you really sick. Trust me. Just say no.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by Jordan Keagle. Learn from his mistakes, kids.