I saw a few episodes of The Walking Dead back in the first season. What I caught was just random, when I just happened to turn on the TV during its time slot. The show looked interesting, but I just couldn’t reliably tune in at the right time. Then last year when we got Netflix, I managed to watch eight or ten episodes in a row.

I really like the Zombie Apocalypse genre, and this show had some really interesting episodes, but taken as a whole, I just couldn’t love it. The main characters made too many stupid mistakes. Among many problems, the zombies seemed to appear out of nowhere like freakin’ ninjas. Living bad guys could track and seemingly teleport like wizards. Every time it happened, it just took me out of the story. So I gave up watching it.

Then on our Walt Disney World vacation last month, I saw this in the resort parking lot:

Neat.

This prompted me to try watching the show again. I cherry picked a few episodes, (the attack on the prison, and a few following). There were a few instances of stupid by the characters, but nothing terribly bad to me. But the story is just so damn depressing. So much bad happening to everyone. I can’t stand it. I don’t want to watch a show that makes me depressed. So, again, I’m giving up on The Walking Dead.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit13 has an Xbox. His favorite game, (the game he plays most often), is Halo — he has three games of that series. I tried playing Halo with him once just after he got it for Christmas last year, and I just couldn’t get the hang of the controls. Friday night I tried again, and still, using a console controller for a first-person shooter game leaves me flopping around dead, quickly and repeatedly. I’m hopeless trying to aim with a controller. (I’m great with a mouse and keyboard on a computer game. Game designers: make games that can be played multiplayer across platforms!)

But while playing with him, and listening to him regale me with his knowledge of the Halo universe history, technology, and aliens, I remembered that I have the movie Aliens in my DVD collection stored in the cabinet under the TV. He’s 13 years old now, so I wanted to show him this classic sci-fi movie of my generation. I explained that not only is it a classic flick to watch, it has some great one-liners he can quote while playing Halo.

Such as:

“They mostly come at night. Mostly.”

“Game over, man! Game over!”

“I like to keep this handy, for close encounters.”

“We got nukes, we got knives and sharp sticks.”

Saturday midday would be our best opportunity to watch the movie, as Calfgrit9 would be at a friend’s house for a birthday party. We dropped CG9 off at the party, and on the drive back home, I told CG13 the story of Alien, the predecessor of Aliens. I explained, in detail, how Alien is a horror movie based in space, in which one alien wipes out a whole crew of a space cargo ship. CG13 doesn’t like jump scares, and so I know he wouldn’t like watching Alien at all. But one needs to understand the story of the movie to really get the most enjoyment out of the sequel.

“And then Aliens starts out with Ripley’s escape pod being discovered 57 years later,” I finished. He saw similarities between the Alien story and the Halo story, and he told me more about it.

At home, we settled into the den to watch the DVD. Throughout the run, he wanted me to give him a heads-up about upcoming scares, and I gave him several seconds warning for each one I could remember, (which was probably 90% of them). I’ve watched this movie at least four or five times in my life, and I seem to pretty much have it memorized — I surprised myself with how well I remember every detail.

This movie really is very good. It well stands the test of time with regards to its story telling. The way it builds from the anti-climatic tension during the initial “assault” by the colonial space marines, to the action-satisfying battles later and the climatic end fight with the alien queen. Great stuff. Great writing, great directing, great setting. But two things stand out — one was noticeable as an error, or fault, from the first time I saw it, and the other is only noticeable now, after 30 years of technological advancement in the real world.

The error/fault that I noted way back as a teen in the mid-80s is: why is there no crew on the orbiting spacecraft? CG13 noted this problem when the plot came  to the point where the characters had to get the second drop-ship to come pick them up. It’s one of those plot errors that I often complain about in movies I find bad. Fortunately for Aliens, though, I can get over one plot problem hump and still enjoy the movie. It’s when there are numerous plot problems, throughout the film, that ends up making the whole thing really, really stupid and bad.

The other thing we both noted during the movie, and then discussed after the movie, was how sci-fi/futuristic equipment ideas have advanced so much over the years. In Aliens, the colonial space marines are wearing and using gear and weapons less “futuristic” than what our modern-day marines and soldiers are wearing on real world battlefields. A (non-Kevlar) helmet, a rigid and thin chest plate, and a 10-millimeter “pulse rifle” — the only thing even a little futuristic of these things is the digital ammo counter on the rifle.

Modern movies and games take a longer technological leap with imagining future military equipment. The armor in the Halo games not only covers the entire human body, but essentially gives the man inside super powers. This difference in how creative people thirty years ago and now think about and anticipate what the future will look like is so vast that it makes me wonder just how wildly short of reality our current sci-fi predictions will be.

Fortunately, regardless of how pathetically under-teched the future seems to be in the Aliens universe, Calfgrit13 still liked the movie. And he says he’s looking forward to using the cool quotes while gaming in Halo with his friends. I’m going to get such a buzz the first time I hear him say, “Let’s nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

Bullgrit

We spent last week in Walt Disney World. A WDW vacation in early-mid September has been our family tradition for about 8 years now, (although we’ve missed going a couple years). But this may have been our last such trip. Next year Calfgrit13 goes into high school on a traditional school year calendar, so he won’t be out of school, (tracked out of a year-round schedule), in September.

Below are some simple photos I snapped off-hand during our trip. These aren’t the “savers” we took for any photo album, or anything. These are just quick shots I took with my phone, not intending to keep or share them beyond days the were actually in WDW.

Let me show you an example of how great September is for visiting WDW — very low crowd level, and few neighbors in the resorts. This is a pic from the door of our rooms, looking out into the parking lot, (empty! — that’s our silver van on the left, first parking spot beside our rooms):

Another example of crowd levels — our boys with their nana at the bus stop:

Me sitting outside at the Caribbean Beach resort early one morning:

Calfgrit13 is very competitive, (like his father), when it comes to games, so we, of course, had to compete against each other on the shooting/scoring rides.

Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin — my score on the left, CG13’s on the right:

Toy Story Midway Mania — my score on the left, CG13’s on the right:

We really concentrate on our games:

This is an amazing Lego display at the Downtown Disney Lego store — it’s made of thousands of Lego pieces:

Bullgrit

We’ve started watching the TV show Cosmos, (with Neil deGrasse Tyson), on Netflix. I first got Calfgrit9 to watch the first episode with me, and it captured his interest and imagination. During and after the show, I answered his questions about science and the universe, and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.

A few days later, we brought Calfgrit13 into the second episode, and he, too, found it very interesting. Then a couple days later, again, we all three watched another episode.

I’m glad my boys are both showing interest in science and our universe. Although I have an “Arts” major, (Bachelor of Arts in English), I am fascinated by science, especially astrophysics. I literally have Stephen Hawking’s books and NdT’s books in the drawers of my nightstand, beside my bed. I’ve read a handful of other such texts over the years, and I just love learning about the universe.

I graduated with the English degree, but I started my college career, (the first three years), in Computer Science, with all the math that major requires. And I currently work in a job and company that has me surrounded by scientists and engineers, (though, sadly, not “space scientists”). It really makes me happy to see both my boys interested in science — they both make A-level grades in their science classes.

A few weeks ago, we also watched an older show, Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed, through YouTube. I consider this a scientific-ish show because magic tricks are as much science and engineering as they are showmanship. It’s fun to see how the tricks are actually performed, and it shows my boys that you can and should question and think about what someone presents to you.

I want my boys to understand the concept of the scientific method. I want them to think, examine, and inquire about the world, the universe, and what other people present to them. I don’t want them to fall for myths, misunderstandings, and lies. It’s fun to wonder, “What if?” about things, like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, ghosts, and such. But I also don’t want them easily fooled without giving these kinds of things logical thought.

Will this make them better people? I don’t know. But I do hope it will armor them against ignorance, misdirection, and deception. And besides, it’s my experience that although looking at the world more scientifically may reduce the thrill of the little unknowns, (like Bigfoot and ghosts), it opens up more interesting questions about the big unknowns.

Bullgrit