For the past few months, I’ve been maintaining another blog for an online class I’m taking.

I haven’t mentioned it until now because that other blog is dumb and boring.

But, in the off-chance that you’re at all interested in the history of blogging, I recently posted a long and boring article on the subject. (Sneak preview: this post is the closest Reini Days has come to matching the original purpose of weblogs.)

There are also some other posts over there. The best is probably Cheeky Behaviour. It’s mostly about cheeky behaviour.

– Reinman

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Note: Big assist on this post from Reinman’s younger-er brother, the Hermit (a.k.a. BB2, a.k.a. Manny Ramir-Andrew Bank One Ball-Andrew).

I love The Empire Strikes Back. Obviously. But there is one moment that doesn’t make a lick of sense.

So, following the Dumbest Battle in Movie History, Han Solo and company are fleeing from the Imperial fleet. With four TIE fighters and a Star Destroyer already hot on their tail, Han sees two more Star Destroyers heading straight toward them.

“Great. Well, I can still out maneuver them,” he says, throwing the Falcon into a twisting “dive.” (I love that in order to make the Falcon go “down” Han first has to pull a special lever, as though “up” and “down” aren’t mapped to the normal flight controls.)

What follows is a wonderful little sequence — the Falcon momentarily escaping, while the three Star Destroyers nearly collide. I love the chaos we see in the Star Destroyer bridge — the howling (distinctively Imperial) alarm, the grinding noise as shields slam against shields, the crew losing their balance from the impact — it all reinforces the immense size of these ships.

And then we cut from the chaotic to the ordered. From below, we see — for, really, the only time in the trilogy — the wedge-shaped Destroyers in their full geometrical glory. They crawl toward one another, looking not as though they’re accidentally ramming into each other, but rather as though they’re completing some grand, celestial puzzle — of course they’re supposed to fit together like that.

But here’s the nagging question — how did the Star Destroyers get that close to each other in the first place? Maybe the Destroyer captains simply forgot that ships can go “up” or “down” in space. Maybe they were using flat, table-top charts, having not yet invested in those fancy “three-dimensional” charts that the rebels use in Jedi. Slashes to military spending and all.

Even so, let’s take the engagement to its logical conclusion. Let’s say the Falcon did not suddenly dive down and continued on a straight course. If that were the case, the Star Destroyers…would STILL collide into one another.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that colliding into each other was the plan all along.

Here’s what I think happened. I think the captain of the middle Destroyer saw the other two ships coming toward him, and he saw a golden opportunity to not only take out the Falcon but to do it in style — he decided to physically “crunch” the Falcon in between the hulls of the Destroyers.

And his plan might’ve worked, too, if one of the Destroyers hadn’t chickened out at the last moment.

My theory isn’t as ridiculous as it seems. By this point, we’ve already seen the fingerprints of that renegade Imperial officer. As a young lieutenant on the Death Star, he was the one who decided to try to crunch Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie in the trash compacter rather than, say, posting three squads of stormtroopers outside the only escape hatch.

Piloting a walker during the battle of Hoth, he was the one who decided to take a half an hour to try to crunch Luke underfoot rather than, say, shooting him. Vader — who is obviously a fan of not only killing but killing with style — appreciated the attempted crunching and immediately promoted the officer to Star Destroyer captain.

(In the original cut of Empire — before Lucas started screwing with the film — you can see the pilot ejecting straight up into an awaiting shuttle right before the walker’s head explodes. And no, I don’t know why the head explodes when Luke throws the charge into the middle of the walker’s underbelly.)

So, the accidental, near-collision of the Star Destroyers wasn’t an accident at all — it was an inspired plan, a work of true genius. And so now only one question remains — what is the name of that daring young officer, that brilliant captain?

I won’t tell you his name, but if you search your heart, you’ll find you’ve known the answer all along.

– Reinman

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As a bookend to the Jilb’s post about her favorite fall things, here’s a re-post from the (new) old Bee blog.

What do you think about when you hear the word “fall”? Sky-diving? Cliff-jumping? Tripping on your laptop cord? Those are all wrong.

We’re talking about the season. Autumn. Fall. Now what do you think about? A bountiful harvest? The leaves changing? No. You think about Gene Hackman driving through the Indiana countryside accompanied by Jerry Goldsmith’s sublime score.

Because that’s what fall is.

A lot of guys will tell you fall is football. They’re wrong, because I once saw a shirt that said “Football is Life.” Football can’t be two things.

Others will tell you that fall represents aging and death. They’re the sort of people who read books and have poetry blogs. Your best bet is to dangle a modifier in front of them. They’ll bat it around for awhile until they get sleepy. Once they’re out, turn on NPR at low volume, then go down to the basement and watch Hoosiers.

It’s a good movie

– Reinman

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You may have already seen this Gears of War 3 trailer on TV, but if not, watch it right now — it only takes about a minute.

You’ll get chills if you go into it wanting chills.

There. I just got chills again.

How about you? Nothing?

All right, go back and re-watch it, but this time, go into it with the knowledge that this brief trailer covers roughly 15 years of these characters’ lives (you’ll see Dom’s beard “grow” as the trailer progresses).

Watch how the single, unbroken tracking shot gives the impression that these soldiers have been fighting virtually non-stop for years.

Watch the transformation of Marcus, the main character in the trailer. Watch, at the beginning, the nod he gives right before he tosses the grenade — his expression confident, self-assured, a little cocky even.

Then watch his face at the end, 15 years (and two games) later, as he surveys the chaos and destruction around him — his expression a mixture of weariness, disbelief, hopelessness, and, lastly, determination.

Watch the brief glance he shares with Dom, his brother in arms. There isn’t time for anything more — and nothing needs to be said.

So go ahead and watch again — I’ll wait.

Still nothing? Either you’re made of stone, or I’m getting too sentimental in my old age.

(I’m going with the latter. I’m probably about two years away from sobbing uncontrollably at the end of the end of those schmaltzy Folgers commercials — and not for the same reason I currently sob during Luvs’ “Poop, there it is” commercial, which I would classify more as Rage-Sobbing.)

Anyway, the Gears trailer is awesome — and this from someone who has never played any of the Gears games (for a variety of having-kids reasons) and who probably won’t play Gears of War 3. For this post, I had to look up the names “Marcus” and “Dom,” and I learned about the 15-years thing in a comment following the video.

And that, more than anything, is why I admire the trailer so much — it moved me even though I have absolutely no knowledge of the story, no history with these characters.

I know one thing for sure — if the rumored Gears movie ever happens, I’ll eagerly go see it. I’ll see it because, if the same artists who created the game and the game’s trailer are responsible for the movie, I’ll be confident that I’m in good hands. They’ve absolutely won me over.

Now, the quality of a trailer does not necessarily forecast the quality of the movie (see Watchmen), but it’s often a pretty accurate indicator (even though directors typically don’t cut the trailers for their films — maybe quality inspires more quality).

For instance, no one could quite figure out how they were going to pull off making a movie about Facebook, but then that Radiohead trailer debuted, and we realized we would be in good hands.

In 2005, there was a trailer that began with a pretty interesting premise — a wanderer, journeying to distant, snow-capped mountains to train with a secret society of modern-day ninjas — when HOLY CRAP THAT’S BATMAN! After years of nonsense, we knew that the bat man was going to be in good hands.

It works the opposite way as well. This weekend, the Jilb and I saw What’s Your Number? (not Dolphin Tale as the Jilb claimed in Monday’s post — that was a trick). The trailers I’d seen beforehand had hit all the usual cliches — a bad sign since lazy trailers typically mean lazy movies — so going in, I had the feeling I was in shaky hands.

And shake they did — like an electric football game sitting on a running washing machine in the bowels of an asteroid that is not entirely stable.

Which trailers have left you feeling as though you would be in good hands?

Which trailers have left you feeling shaky?

Which movies ended up deviating (good or bad) from the feeling you had gotten from the trailer?

And am I allowed to be a fan of Gears of War without having played any of the games?

– Reinman

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Quiet, Mad Men. Shut up, Breaking Bad. I know that one of you is actually the Best Show on Television. But you know what? Neither of you has Ron Swanson.

In fact, neither of you has six Ron Swansons superimposed against an American flag.

Images courtesy of the fan site "Mr. Ron Swanson and His Glorious Face"

Actually, Parks and Rec doesn’t have six Ron Swansons superimposed against an American flag either. That would be ridiculous.

Here’s the point — Parks and Rec currently holds the prestigious title of Reinman’s Favorite Show of the Moment and Also It Has to Be Still on the Air at the Time He’s Watching It — In Other Words, It Can’t Be One He Discovered Through Re-Runs or on DVD Like Freaks and Geeks, Otherwise Freaks and Geeks Would Obviously Hold the Title for 1999.

And now, in an effort to contribute information to the internet, I am going to provide the complete list of shows to have held that title (which, for personal reasons, I have chosen not to repeat):

1984 – 1986: N/A

1987 - 1988: Sesame Street (For some reason, my favorite segment was the one where you followed that ball around some sort of psychedelic shopping mall/menagerie/bowling alley while hippies sang “1-2-3-4-5,  6-7-8-9-10,  11-12.”)

1989 – 1990: Ducktales (This was my first experience with continuing, mutli-episode story arcs. I remember the time-traveling Bubba Duck saga blowing my six-year-old mind.)

1991: Talespin (I never hear this one mentioned when people of my generation speak nostalgically of childhood shows, but make no mistake about it — Talespin was awesome.)

1992: Darkwing Duck (“Suck gas, evildoer.”)

1993: Star Trek: The Next Generation (Nerd…)

1994 – 1995: The Tick (The biggest gut-punch cancellation of my life — I had absolutely no warning. I turned on the TV, expecting to see the follow-up to another brilliant Speak episode, and instead I got some piece of crap garbage crap dump toilet brown crap called Eagle-Crap-Jerk-Riders. I was so traumatized that the piece of crap theme song is still burned into my memory. I’m still so mad about it I can’t even write coherently.)

1996 – 2002: The Simpsons (I hung on about two seasons too long.)

2003 – 2005: NFL football (This was a dark period — in retrospect, it should’ve been Arrested Development.)

2006: Friday Night Lights (The favorite of favorites — the only show I’ve ever aggressively pestered people to watch. In fact, I’m going to pester you right now. Watch it. It’s the best. You’ll love it. Unfortunately, it can only qualify for one year on this list because the show got jerked around so much. Season 1 was the only one I enjoyed “purely” as it was airing. Season 2 was a little disenchanting, and I caught the last three brilliant seasons through a combination of re-airing on NBC, Hulu, and DVD.)

2007 – 2008: The Office (I still love The Office, but we can all admit its best days are behind it.)

2009: Lost (I was all in during season 5 — and then, well, then that other season happened.)

2010: Modern Family (A good show that got a huge bump because ABC was the only channel I got that year — I mean, Wipeout was in the running for goodness sake.)

2011: Parks and Recreation

Five thoughts on Parks and Rec:

1. Of all people, it was the inclusion of straight-laced Ben that pushed the show over the top for me. He arrived at the same time as Chris (Rob Lowe), a character who is a million times funnier (all it takes is one “AnnePerkins!” and he’s already got me cracking up), but Chris was just one more crazy/funny character on a show that had a wealth of them.

Ben, however, brought that essential quality of being the stand-in for the viewer (this used to be Anne’s roll, but she started to go a little crazy herself during season 3).

Ben is the only one who doesn’t crack up at Crazy Ira and the Douche’s radio bits. Ben is the only one who is dumbfounded when everyone — Ron included (or more accurately, especially Ron) — seems to be pathologically in love with the miniature horse Li’l Sebastian.

Ben and his conspiratorial glances at the camera (trademark: Jim Halpert) keeps the show grounded somewhat in reality, which, by contrast, makes the crazy things that happen around him seem even crazier. (And like fellow straight-man Jim Halpert, Ben gets to be really funny on occasion as well, especially in pressure situations.)

2. I love the way Parks and Rec portrays police officers. The show avoids the easy cliche of the out-of-shape, donut-scarfing cop. Rather, building off the model established by the brilliant Louis C. K., the police officers on Parks and Rec are professional and polite, but also almost painfully stiff, conversing with Leslie and others in a clipped, jargon-peppered dialect — making for a respectful portrayal that doesn’t have to sacrifice humor in the process.

3. Ron Swanson is the evolutionary Hank Hill — a staunchly conservative character who nevertheless is beloved by audiences across the political spectrum.

They are both men of simple passions. (Hank loves propane; Ron loves meat.) They are both routinely victorious over hippies/euphorians. (Hank often literally kicks euphorians in the ass; Ron wins a cook-off by serving a plain all-beef hamburger patty on a plain bun.)

But only Ron rocks a sweet, sweet stache. (I did, after all, call him the evolutionary Hank Hill.)

4. My only complaint against the show is that it occasionally ventures a step too far into Crazy Land. There’s the mural of the traveling magician who visited Pawnee and was burned at the stake — in 1973. And there are smaller moments that aren’t as obviously crazy but still break the illusion of reality, such as when Ben appears on a daytime talk-show and a graphic labels him “Human Disaster.”

These are funny moments, yes, but they feel undisciplined. Parks and Rec is a fantastic show — it shouldn’t have to resort to breaking the “reality” it has established just to go for a couple of easy laughs.

5. Number 4, though, isn’t really a big deal at all.

So that is, literally, all the thoughts I have ever had about Parks and Rec.

Tell me what you think of the show.

Tell me if you have seen the show. (I probably should have put this one first. Oh well, I already typed it this way — there’s no way to change it now.)

Tell me your list of favorite shows, year-by-year.

And tomorrow, remember to watch the season premiere of Parks and Rec — the Greatest Show in Television History.

– Reinman

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I’ve been watching the Boise State / Toledo college football game off and on throughout the evening. Why? I would say it’s about 5% interest in Boise’s pro-prospect QB Kellen Moore (so far, impressive, though the doughy, bullfrog-like facial features don’t exactly inspire confidence — but on the other hand, Ben Roethlisberger has gotten away with that look for years) and 95% the fact that I’m still, after all these years, mesmerized by sports in HD.

(“Look at that definition — it’s so…so…high,” I am often heard remarking to no one in particular. By the way, this is the part where I’m supposed to make a joke about HD being so awesome that I’ll watch any sport as long as it’s in HD — including curling. But that’s just not true — curling sucks, especially in HD. No, I pretty much just stick to the four majors: football, baseball, basketball, and jai-alai.)

During the game, I noticed something that I’ve seen during a number of other sports broadcasts — something that invariably leaves me feeling a mixture of annoyance, mild amusement, and general discomfort (or as I like to call it — the Vikings Fan Experience! Hey-oh!).

This particular instance happened during the third quarter of tonight’s game. Toledo, trailing big for much of the contest, just intercepted the ball and returned it inside Boise State’s 20. The home crowd was going nuts, sensing that this was the last opportunity to get back into the game. But on their second play, Toledo fumbled the ball, Boise State recovered, and it was, essentially, game over.

If you are a Toledo fan (and, really, who isn’t at this point?), it was a devastating moment, punctuated by those crowd reaction shots we’ve all come to expect — the guy with the painted chest clutching his hair, the wide-eyed young lady holding both hands over her mouth. It was during one of those reaction shots — a group of undergrads staring forlornly at the field — when one of them, a blond-haired girl, looked up and noticed that she and her small group were on the jumbo-tron. And then the craziest thing happened — she was no longer forlorn.

Her face lit up, and she started jumping and waving like a crazy person, and a split-second later, the rest of the group joined in her in a jumbo-tron induced frenzy. I guess the fumble and the nationally televised beat-down of your favorite team wasn’t so bad after all, eh blondy?

In those moments, I always feel for the broadcast production team. There they are, doing their darnedest to capture the agony of defeat, when those obnoxious fans have to go and spoil the whole thing. It’s almost, in an odd way, as though those fans are breaking the fourth wall. The “story” says they’re supposed to looked shell-shocked and depressed, but once they see thesmselves on screen, they “break” character and start behaving like buffoons — ruining the carefully unfolding narrative in the process.

My only solace is how most broadcast teams refuse to reward those morons. The director will linger on an unaware, depressed fan for a good five or six seconds, but as soon as the fan notices he’s on the screen and starts jumping up and down like a three-year-old high on Pixie Sticks, the director can’t cut away fast enough. It’s like, Hey Tubbs — if you wanna stay on the TV, keep with the saddy sad.

In the case of tonight’s game, though, I’m willing to cut the fans a little slack. They were, after all, cheering for Toledo. Maybe being on TV for a split-second was more important to them than allegiance to their nationally-irrelevant football team. Which is why such buffoonary is even more perplexing at major events like the World Cup.

(Side note: These “sad fans noticing themselves on the jumbo-tron and instantly turn into smiling, waving lunatics” shots are only possible at certain types of games/stadiums. You’ll never see this sort of shot at an NFL game — not because the fans aren’t buffoons, far from it, but because NFL stadiums have their own, internal production teams for the material that’s shown on the jumbo-tron — material that is different, of course, from the broadcast you’re watching at home. The “buffoon” shots, then, are only possible in venues that aren’t set-up for internal television production, and thus, those venues show the national broadcast on the jumbo-tron. Such venues typically include lower-tier college stadiums, World Cup sites, etc.)

Anyway, buffoon shots are especially annoying during World Cup broadcasts because soccer fans are supposed to be the craziest, most die-hard sports fans in the world — the sort of fans so passionate that their version of doing The Wave is to flip over a row of cars and light them on fire. They’re so dedicated that their version of chanting “Let’s go team!” is to murder an opposing fan.

But hey, who cares that you traveled halfway around the world only to watch your favorite team go down 3-0 in the final, knowing that they won’t have another chance at this for another four years, if they’re lucky enough to even make it this far — who cares about any of that because look! You’re on the big Tee-Vee!

Just once, I want to see a depressed-looking fan notice himself on the jumbo-tron, blink once or twice, and then return looking dejectedly at the field. For me, that would be the most exciting moment in television history.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a big jai-alai match on next. Rekalde’s been coming on strong as of late, but it will be difficult for him to counter Arregui’s wicked backhand.

– Reinman

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Without delving into the boring details, I’ve been permanently locked out of my old Blogger account. (I’m not the only one.) And so, when Blogger threw me lemons, I recreated the entire “You Never Can Tell with Bees” blog on WordPress — and I did it using nothing but freshly squeezed lemon juice (and text).

You can see the new and improved Bees blog here: www.reinmanblog.wordpress.com.  And by “improved” I mean “noticeably crappier.” For instance, some of the formatting was lost in translation, and I haven’t yet moved the comments over. But the original posts are more or less intact, in all their bee-hating, wiki-bashing, movie-self-promoting, Wii-chasing, yourethemannowdogging glory.

A few scattered thoughts:

1. I had forgotten how bee-centric the first few months of the blog were. I mean, I wrote about bees, like, a lot. That must have been back when I cared about things like “theme” and “focus” and “quality writing.”

2. I complained a lot about crappy television in 2004.  And looking back, it makes sense — 2004 was a pretty bleak year. Reality TV was beginning to fully hit its stride (bad), The Simpsons was starting to stink (bad), and that was about it. If only I had known a television renaissance (Lost, The Office, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Parks and Rec, Community, Modern Family) was just a year or two away. (And yes, it was my own fault for not catching on to Arrested Development sooner.)

3. Going through the old blog, post-by-post, was kind of like going through photo albums with the Jilb and the Princess. It’s weird realizing how much of my life I’ve already forgotten. For example, the Jilb and I got engaged smack dab in the middle of the Starting Tomorrow shoot. Who knew?

4. As the night wore on, and as I continued tediously copying and pasting post after post, I began getting mad at my old self. “Stop posting so much!” I yelled at my old self.  That was right around May 2006. Mercifully, my old self listened.

5. My old blog was so self-referential it was nauseating.  Thank goodness I made it through that phrase.

– Reinman

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