June 2005 Archives

It's 5:30am Friday local time... we've been up for hours already, thanks to another weird sleep pattern day.

After the last weblog entry, we met up with another couple and took a shuttle northward to Ilsan, where Holt Children's Services operates a live-in community for the disabled. Our tour guide was a Korean-American adoptee from Michigan who is volunteering at Ilsan Holt Town for six weeks. She took us around the property and told us about the work they do there to care for the 300 residents, all with varying degrees of mental illness and physical disability. This is also where the Holts themselves are buried, so we got to visit the gravesite of the American couple whose post-Korean War efforts to help the Ameriasian war orphans blossomed into the wonderful public service organization that has allowed Rhonda and I to form a family. When you're standing there, you can't help but imagine the ripple effects their lives have had. Amazing.

We were back in Seoul early afternoon, and Rhon and I did some more aimless city wandering. I finally found a video game store. Spotted a PlayStation logo on a corner and followed it down into an underground mall zone. The store was closed when we first arrived, maybe on a lunch break? So we did some circles and came back later. Outside the store was a vending machine with the most awesome little toys in it, including a set of WarioWare figurines. Of course, you have to have 500 Won coins to use it, and we had none. So back at the hotel I made change out of a 5000 Won paper and we're going to head back to the game store in a little bit. The toys you get around here in vending machines are well above anything you find in the States, finely detailed and well crafted. I'm buying plenty.

Almost picked up Nintendogs, the DS puppy simulator that isn't available in the US yet. I'm afraid the game will have too much Korean text for me to handle, so I grudgingly passed. Saw the Korean version of Katamari Damacy on the shelf.

We stopped in a CD store... that also sells a ton of cassettes, oddly enough. We were specifically looking for traditional Korean baby music, and we were able to converse enough with the clerk to find something. We're going to show it to the foster mom and see if she can tell us if there's anything on there Clark already may know and like.

Related sidebar: during our first meeting with Clark, we saw how the foster mom sung to him in Korean. So when we were alone with him and he grumbled a bit, we thought maybe we should sing too. But being as our minds were still stalled from the whole overwhelming experience, the only thing I could summon up to sing was the opening humming lyric from Katamari. Haw!

Around 4pm yesterday we stopped by an Outback Steakhouse for late lunch/early supper. Yes, yes, more American meat-related crap. Unfortunately, they were still serving off the lunch menu, which has zero vegetarian options. We ordered a bunch of sides (steamed veggies, steamed rice, french fries) and enjoyed that instead. They also gave us a serving of kimchi, which, dammit, I tried and liked. It was nowhere near as scary as I had expected.

The waitstaff out here has been all young folks, maybe students from one of the many nearby universities. They have all been helpful and understanding, and I always remain humble and gracious. Many of them have laughed a bit when they realize I have no idea what they're saying. At Outback, our server pulled out some all-English menus to help us out, and we managed to sign and nod our way through the usual end-of-meal questions. I'm assuming she asked us things like "any last soda refills?" "cash or charge?" etc. Just before we paid, she showed up with two doggy bags... we accepted them, but we had no idea what was inside. Did she package up the four fries and leftover kimchi for us? Did she ask us that and we agreed? Down the street we opened them up: pre-packaged bread loaves!

We stopped by a convenience store on the way back to the hotel, then passed out around 4:30pm. That explains why we've been awake since 1:30am today.

Today we have our final meeting at Holt, where they give Clark to us. That is at 3:30pm, so we're going to kill time with some shopping. Then an entire night in Korea with him, and an early bus out of Seoul Saturday morning.

So. Our son.

The agency's office is right along a busy main Seoul street, and it was teeming with people when we arrived. Before we arrived, I was envisioning a white hospital-like building, but it felt more like a reconditioned high school. Lots of little side rooms and warm colors. It is super humid in Seoul right now - Monsoon season! - and the lobby was insanely hot. There were other families also meeting/picking up their children, from all over the world... some right there in the lobby. Plus nurses bustling about, a reunion tour group hugging and laughing. And then us just sort of standing and not knowing who to talk to. One of the nurses said "baby meeting?" and ushered us up the staircase to meet the social worker, Mrs. Lee, our son, and our son's foster mother.

Of course it was emotional. Rhonda was handed Clark right away and the two of us just held him and cried. We've been at this for so long... and yet with the surprise call last Friday, it still didn't seem real until that moment. We all talked (Mrs. Lee translating for the foster moster, who spoke no English) and laughed. I took pictures. The foster mother told us about his feeding times, how he sleeps, how he plays. She showed us how to hold him... he was tired and on the cranky side, but he did fall asleep in Rhonda's arms. That's a comfort. They left us alone in the room for a little bit as they arranged a visit with the doctor downstairs.

At one point, I played my big card: reciting "thank you for loving our baby" in Korean. (Thanks, Linda!) It sounds like "oo-dee ah-gi sarong heh jwuh suh kamsa hamnida" and I have been practicing for days. I think I surprised both of them quite a bit, judging from their reaction! In a situation like this, we couldn't thank the foster mother enough, but one sentence (probably full of lousy intonation and off-kilter consonent sounds) was all I could manage!

That last bit (the "kamsa hamnida") means "thank you," so we've been saying that all the time out here. I can also say "hello" (annyong haseyo) so I get to initiate all the conversations. Of course we had not prepared for a stay in Tokyo, but I reached into my pop culture memory and used "hello" and "thank you" for our Japanese hosts as well. Konnichiwa and domo arigato.

The foster mother took him into the doctor, happily gesturing for us to follow. The doctor, like Mrs. Lee, spoke English, and she did a quick checkup with the foster mother's help, occasionally telling us the results. Motor control, stool check, the usual baby stuff. Since the babies aren't allowed to travel out of the country if they are ill, it was nice to get a clean bill of health from the doc.

Then we hung out in another sideroom, while a dozen more moms and babies milled about in the lobby. Rhonda figures it must be baby check-up time, and we just happened to be their during a slew of end-of-month appointments. We wished we could have found out the names of all the babies there, to see if any of them are the future children of friends we've made in adoption circles that we know are waiting for the call.

At this point, Mrs. Lee was off working somewhere in the office, so we were along with Clark and the foster mom... most of our communication was baby stuff. Clark got a bottle, the three of us played with him. He has recently discovered his fists, so there was a lot of baby boxing. It was a complete treat to hear the foster mother interact with him in Korean, using the Korean equivalent of peek-a-boo (kah-koon!) and humming a traditional Korean lullaby. Plus, she repeatedly pointed to us and said "ohma" (Mom) and "appa" (Dad) while she was playing with Clark. Sigh!

They needed to catch a bus home, so Mrs. Lee returned, went over the plans for Friday, and we said goodbye. Not literally, I have not yet learned "goodbye" in Korean. There was a lot more kamsa himnida going on. Then we walked back to the hotel, calmly, even in the terrible humidity.

It is expected that you dress up for your visits, so I had dress slacks, dress shirt and tie... which of course makes me perfectly uncomfortable. We didn't even bring jeans, since that's a good way to earmark yourself as a wealthy foreigner (we saw jeans on sale for about $70 in a nearby chain-looking clothing store.) So I've been dressy for the entire trip.

Here's where we made a mistake: we passed out in the hotel from 4 to 7. Kind of blew our time zone acclimation in one evening nap. We woke up hungry, so we hit the town (after a stopover in the computer room) and found a Pizza Hut.

I know, it's so lame to visit another country and go to a despicable American commercialized food franchise. But there you are. Once I got my hellos and thank yous out of the way, we ordered by pointing. Yes, it was more expensive than a Pizza Hut back home. However, it was a billion times cleaner, the staff was a billion times nicer and attentive, and you don't tip in Korea. Then we walked up and down a bunch of trendy looking city streets until about 11:30pm. Felt completely safe.

Back in the hotel, we watched some Korean and Japanese television. The last thing I saw was a panel discussion on RoboTech, no lie. There seemed to be hosts (one of whom was very Comic Book Guyish) and several guests, maybe even the original creator of RoboTech, I don't know. Even before they showed some clips, I recognized the word "Macross" (the Japanese title for RoboTech), which made me feel pretty damn smart. Earlier we saw a Korean hidden camera prank show that was funny... we had no idea what they were saying, but you could still figure out the pranks via body language.

I've been up since about 4am, however. Beat Kirby Canvas Curse as dawn took the city. Showered early so I could jump on the computer while people in the US might be awake. It is roughly 7am local time, Thursday morning. IM access seems to be down at the moment. It was working fine last night - talked to my sister back in PA - which sort of left me marvelling at how cool and universal the internet has become. The last time we left the country, back in 1999, internet cafes were still a largely unknown and expensive thing. Today internet access is free and everywhere; this hotel even has free access in your room if you bring your laptop. We considered bringing the iBook along, but chickened out at the last minute. Sure do wish my phone worked here, though.

Total long distance weblog coming at you from a hotel PC in Seoul.

Today is day three of our trip, or day two depending on your time zone, I suppose. We're already acclimated to Korea time, which was neatly accomplished by not sleeping much on the flight, then getting a massive energy boost when the third plane flight for the night was cancelled. Back on EDT, I'd guess we were up for a day and a half total.

Flight 1: Baltimore to Detroit. Detroit must be the airline's hub world, because it seems such an unlikely stopoff point otherwise. While waiting, I played some 2P DS stuff with a young lad on his way to his grandparents'. He saw me with the DS out (playing Kirby) and approached me with a "excuse me, want to play two player?" We did some Mario64, Yoshi Touch N Go, and even the Ping-Pong dealie in WarioWare Touched. We talked about trying it on the plane - meeting up in PictoChat - but we bailed when the flight crew banned usage of electronic devices that transmit. No one said anything to me about playing it, so I doubt they would have known the difference between single-player action and secret two man multiplayer anyway. Unless there's a button in the cockpit that senses local propriatary wireless networks sprouting up back in coach class.

Flight 2: We had no time at all to hang around Detroit; we had to get right into the line for boarding. Of course, after we boarded, a mega-group of high school students showed up late... after the airline had already given up on them and started giving their seats away. So we had a pretty sizable delay (an hour?) while they sorted all that out. Also, the runway was melting in the heat and it took more time for that to be fixed. I don't know how they did it... probably just threw some 2x4s over the puddle. So we were pretty concerned about missing the Tokyo-Seoul flight.

Of course, on a 12 hour flight you need to occupy your mind with more items than worrying about landing time. We nabbed the seats right in front of the front-projection movie screen, which is not as cool as it sounds. It was out of focus. The extra legroom was nice, however. I didn't watch the movies anyway. Listen to this: feature 1 was Coach Carter, then Racing Stripes, then The Wedding Date. What kind of second-run house crap is that? I alternated between an hour on GBA or DS, then a half hour off, battery power being a concern. Rhon watched the first two movies, then slept through the third. I was actually forced to watch the third because I was all played out by then... so I guess 10 hours must be my Game Boy limit. Debra Messing looked like she had to gain weight for the role. Dermot Mulroaney was weird; I never really believed in the emotional shift he supposedly goes through mid-film.

So far, every flight has personally served Rhonda's vegetarian meal 20 minutes before anybody else gets food... and they did not have me down for similar. I complained the first time (and received somebody else's special order veg supper... Elizabeth Helmig, sorry about that, but I ate it anyway!) but I gave up for the mid-flight snack and breakfast meals. Not really hungry anyway, surprisingly.

As we inched closer to Tokyo, it looked like we would be in a major hustle to make the Seoul connection... which I considered a bummer because I wanted some time to dope around the Tokyo airport and shop. I mean, Tokyo. Three out of five big Joe obsessions were born in Japan, with new ones arriving almost monthly.

We joined the throng at the Seoul flight and met up with another couple on their way to pick up a child with our agency. (Not a surprise; Rhonda had talked to them on the agency message boards.) But while we were exchanging stories and photos, the announcement came that our flight was unfortunately cancelled. Rescheduled for 7am the next day. So, wow, a night in Tokyo!

Of course, the airline handles everything by that point, herding 200+ people through the gates and forms and buses and to the designated hotel. So, in effect, I get the extra time in Tokyo that I wanted... at no cost and with almost no thought invested to it! Rhon was less interested in the stopover, simply because we're not there and we should be. Of course, we're still inside the Narita Airport district, not in awesome otaku-friendly Akihabara or anything like that... but I still enjoyed being there. Toilet: heated seat, plus bidet mode. Television: fascinating. And get this, the hotel seemed to be run by ANA (Japanese airline), which is the very airline that has the Pokemon brand as an official sponsor (painted planes and all that) so the gift shop had a healthy Pokemon section! Bought Clark a Pikachu puppet. Almost forgot: our luggage was already loaded on the cancelled flight, so our night in Tokyo was entirely based on our carryon... no change of clothes. We slept in those awesome Japanese-style robes that sort of look like a kimono.

After being ferried back to Narita, we were sheeped onto the Seoul flight. It was intended to depart at 7am but didn't actually move until 7:45. And, I didn't mention this yet, but our first scheduled meeting with Clark was for 1:30pm. You have to meet several times before you get custody. We figured - and we were accurate - that we would get in to Seoul in plenty of time to make the 1:30 appointment.

Something else I did not mention... we never really finalized our hotel in Korea. We tried to make reservations online, but it was so last minute we were over the Pacific before we could get any confirmation. So we flew into Seoul not really knowing if we had lodging or not, plus we were already a day off from our arrival date anyway! Crazy.

But you know, it's a hotel, and Seoul is a modern city eager for tourists. So we took a bus to our theoretical hotel anyway and hoped for the best. We checked in, and I don't think they had our online reservation at all, but it didn't matter. Even after the delay and everything, we made it to our hotel room with an hour and a half to get ready for our meeting. Also note: our hotel is a ten minute walk down the same street as the agency, so it's an easy, fun walk to get there. We freshened up and went to meet our son.

I'll pick that up next entry. Suffice to say, he is beautiful and wonderful and we can't wait for our second meeting.

Today's unbelievable news: we got Clark's travel call today, meaning he is ready to come home!

Now, this is about a month ahead of when we expected to get the call. Which is about a month ahead of when parents are told to expect the call. So the whole system must have accelerated like crazy lately for us to get Clark before he turns four months old.

So we're a little unprepared. The nursery is more or less fine; we finished his room last weekend. The work world is another story. Both of us figured we'd have another month to set up contingencies and training for our subs... and now we're both bailing out on FMLA with nary a meeting. As happy as we'll be bonding with our new baby, I don't imagine our offices will be as contented.

Beyond the work issue, we get to scramble to make travel arrangements, housesitting and set up for a bare minimum baby arrival. For example, we have no baby food or formula. Duh-whoops! But we have this weekend to devote to the last minute prep work, so I'm not too worried about bringing Clark home to a house with only Tang and Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper to drink.

The adventure begins Monday with our flight to Korea, with brief stopovers in Detroit and Tokyo. It will be a long flight, so hopefully we won't hit any of those luddite flight attendants who get nasty about Game Boys and the like. I'm picking up Kirby Canvas Curse tomorrow just for the occasion.

We'll be in the Land of Morning Calm for five days, back in the US next Saturday. We might have 'net access while we're there. If so, I hope to spit up some weblog updates live from Seoul. We'll be taking pictures, naturally, but look for those once we get back (unless we have really nice web access and an image editor.)

If you've been keeping track, you'll note this trip directly conflicts with our annual migration to Columbus for Origins. Well. It is a harsh irony that the travel call arrived right alongside our one single planned vacation for the year (for the last five years, really.) But I think it's obvious which trip we'd rather take.

We are wildly excited. The end of our adoption journey is coming, and sooner than we ever would have anticipated. I feel such a massive, soothing relief right now - even in the face of one of the longest plane flights available and the unknowable challenges to come. It's just so nice to know that we made this happen, and that it is almost over.

At last year's Origins, I bought some advance packs of WizKids latest, Pirates of the Spanish Main. You build little 3D pirate ships and send them after treasure sitting on wild islands, confronting enemy ships with cannon and boarding. It fits much of the criteria I enjoy in my tabletop games: there's lots of tiny physical pieces and it presents a lovely visual landscape when the ships and islands and such are all out on the playing field. Plus, it's collectible, a la Magic/Pokemon/everything else.

Chris and I both glommed onto it last year, Mike and the rest less so, but still willing to play it. And after the convention ended, none of us ever played it again.

Until I, more or less randomly, brought it into work last week. Now I'm feeling re-Piratized. In the year since it debuted, WizKids has released two additional sets, Of the Crimson Coast and Of the Revolution. And I was happy to note that all three sets had been revised to include a much clarified rulebook. This weekend I picked up a handful of new packs, mixed them with my original Origins 2004 set (that promo ship they gave away is awful!) and now I have a 30-point fleet for each nation. Except America, for some reason I have been unable to pull a single American ship. Shrug.

Pirates is about as much of a miniatures game as I can stand. A couple years ago, I was desperate to get into a miniatures game. Since I was mad into Doomtown at the time, I bought heavy into Great Rail Wars. I built an awesome miniature western town, painted up tons of lead minis... and then never really played the game. I think Mike, Scott and I played a full game maybe once.

My problem is that, as much as I love the visceral, tangible tiny world, the rules are always complicated and non-intuitive. I suppose if I dedicated all my time to memorizing the manual, things would have gone smoother, but, as a casual newbie, 2/3 of any attempt at playing was spent flipping through the rulebooks. I never even thought seriously about GRW's later rules that allowed for trains and horses and other vehicles; I could only barely control a couple of posses confronting each other in a burned-out frontier street.

When Mage Knight first hit, I thought that would be my solution. Instead of the usual wholly independent lead figures, MK showed up with this neat little clicking dial built into each figure's base. So attack and defense stats were highly obvious for each piece, and the clicking could simulate the character's skills fluctuating over time.

So I bought into that... only to realize that MK had inherited the same old problem: list after list of additional abilities that you needed nearby. Sure, they color-coded them so you can find them easier, but I still found it a game breaker, especially when you find out that a red block over the attack number means something different than a red block over the defense number. What sealed the deal was that Mage Knight's gameworld was yet another bland fantasy setting, teeming with elves and trolls etc. I recently unloaded my entire MK collection (not much, about 100 figures) on eBay.

WizKids then applied the Mage Knight clicky base to the superheroes of DC and Marvel Comics, which of course is a theming I can definitely get behind. The color problem persisted, so I never bought more than a Marvel starter and some DC ToyFare exclusives. Never been played.

Clearly the struggle for me is finding a vibrant visual reality with a simple, fast, easy to parse ruleset. And Pirates is about as close as anything that wasn't a video game.

The ships look cool, you get to disassemble them as they take cannonball hits... and the newer sets introduced cute tiny forts to build, and the ability to set ships on fire at sea, including great billowing smoke clouds that you can stick to the ailing ship. It scales nice, so you can field a small 30 point fleet or amp up that build cap for a longer game. Special abilities - always the fun-killer in other games I've tried - are all laid out on the punchcards. Consulting the rulebook never goes much farther than looking down at the cards sitting in front of you.

The punchcards hold all the stats, and you can put the ships back in them for storage. They're made like credit card plastic.

The only fiddly bit is found in almost every game of this type... the inexact nature of movement and piece placement. When a ship leaves the table so you can apply damage (by tearing off one of the masts) or as you arrange the move path, players simply aren't going to always put the ship back down with precision. A millimeter here or there can mean the difference is whether one ship is in range of another's cannons. That always irks me a little bit, so I have to consider Pirates a loose game in that regard. I'd hate to play it at the tournament level, because I can't imagine myself accepting floating pieces like that with a championship on the line.

One major plus to Pirates is that it's cheap. You don't have to invest near the amount of money to come up with a playable fleet that you need to build a working deck in a CCG. Fleet building is also much easier than deckbuilding... I could easily see novice gamers learning to customize from available parts; you're only adding up piece values, after all.

So today I was wondering what other similar punchcard type games WizKids could create. WWII sea battles would be awesome, and we're just now hitting the time that you're allowed to fictionalize WWII to the extent that we fictionalize historical concepts like "pirates" and the "old west." And keeping WWII restricted to the war at sea pretty much neutralizes the nastier elements of the past: we'd be able to avoid the atomic bomb and the Final Solution in trade for Pearl Harbor and kamikaze pilots. Maybe even allow some kind of sidebar minigame with dogfighting planes... WizKids tried doing air battles in a semi-WWII fashion with Crimson Skies (another clicky base game, and yes, I bought that one too) but it is dead, judging from its placement on the WizKids website (hidden under "Other Games).

A revamped Car Wars would be much cooler under the Pirates-style presentation. 3D cars with removable hoods, roofs, doors, tires (clean-painted on one side, damaged on the other). Attachable weapon sets. Crap, drop the Car Wars brand (Steve Jackson has relaunched it five too many times already anyway) and work up a Grand Theft Auto game. Instant riches.

Let's step away from vehicle-based games and imagine a 3D tabletop Katamari Damacy game. Grabbable items are scattered about the table and when players roll them up they get slotted into an open plug on the katamari ball. With all the junk you can collect in Katamari Damacy, it's a great fit for the random booster design.

Huh. Maybe I should get on that.

It is interesting to me that, historically, it's always the Republicans who go after PBS. Given that PBS is supposed to focus on family-friendly educational and informational programming, you'd think it would be exactly what they espouse. The ugly truth is probably that PBS also dips into nasty liberal waters - with shows that question the GOP's central agenda of religious dominance - and that's why Republicans consistently get tired of spending federal money on the arts.

PBS supposedly gets only 15% of funding from the government, which is a number I don't believe. The rest comes from "viewers like you," or, more accurately, "local corporations looking for easy ways to score points on their community service charter." Ideally, PBS shouldn't receive any funds from the government, thereby abolishing any shred of influence they could exert over programming. No one in this country would trust a newspaper published by the White House (although most media is instead run by bright-eyed young morons fresh out of journalism school)... so why have a state-run television station.

I think we need to step back and examine what the American public actually gets out of PBS. Not a whole hell of a lot. It's an old, dying concept. In the days before cable, yeah, PBS often stepped up with shows that you simply could not get anywhere else... some of them actually worth watching. They had the monopoly on safe kids programming; the only venue for Americans to see entertainment shows from England and Canada; art, cooking and DIY shows that became household names; plus documentaries, theatre, global exploration... an impressive schedule all around. Now, everything PBS used to do, somebody else does better. HGTV, Food Network, Nickelodeon, TLC, The History Channel, Bravo, BBC America. The only price we pay is commercials.

PBS lost it all the same way your local stations lost their historical beachheads of programming: movies and reruns. Cable took all of that away, slowly but surely. Cable - nee variety, choice, and convenience - is what America wants, leaving PBS and local stations struggling to find something, anything that people will watch. The local affiliates at least have local news... PBS has nothing.

(Speaking of local stations, I'm intensely annoyed that PBS doesn't have to air the FCC-mandated TV ratings. As if PBS programming is somehow magically appropriate for all ages at all times!)

If PBS disappeared, Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow and all the other kids shows would gladly be snapped up by The Disney Channel or Nick. Either one could easily put together their own "family friendly" kids network by combining some of their existing shows with the PBS library. The only reason PBS still gets cred with parents is because everything is done soft, no Power Rangers action or Pokemon selling, so it is a more trusted babysitter than other kids nets. Other networks would - and do - recreate that safe feeling. As for whatever else PBS still has exclusively, same situation. Hell, most of PBS's classic shows - This Old House, Monty Python - jumped to cable long ago.

And as far as PBS's legendary advertising snottiness goes, that ship not only sailed, it was painted like a circus, packed with cotton candy, and charges $5 admission. PBS's successful kids brands are just as prevalent in Toys R Us as the so-called "half hour toy commercials" found anywhere else. What the holier-than-thou types failed to realize decades ago was that people want to buy things. You may not be watching Clifford and getting a blatant Thomas the Tank Engine commercial halfway through, but both shows have plenty of merchandise staring at your kids whenever they enter any store anywhere. What's the difference? At least one of them is honest about it.

I've seen Sesame Street lately. There's commercials on after it, just like anywhere else. Just shorter ones.

Does Levar Burton honestly believe that Reading Rainbow couldn't do as much good on a kids' cable channel? Or even as syndicated product on a local station? Is PBS the only acceptable outlet for Dragon Tales, Nova, and Julia Child?

And the pledge drives... PBS has been making their ongoing failure public for so long that everyone just assumes they will continue to always be just $50 away from falling off the planet. And with dwindling viewership, the drives have become even more desparate... you're enlisted for life as soon as you give them $25, forever on the rolls for direct mail and phone calls.

I just don't see a need for it at all. PBS has been outmoded. I'd rather see the government's money spent on items that aren't duplicated up and down the dial. I'd rather see local money put toward more effective means. I'd rather not have to put up with the snotty attitude of PBSers who think their entertainment is somehow better than anything else out there. It is increasingly hard to justify the existence of PBS, and the whole original purpose of it was co-opted decades ago.

For the record, I also think local non-PBS stations are on the chopping block (just not as close to the blade) for many of the same reasons. Why have them at all? is the question. You don't think NBC wouldn't rather just become cable-only and skip the local affiliates entirely? There's no need to worry about losing antenna viewers, they're all dead. The only thing local stations can offer is local news... and how many of those do you really need, per market? Everything else is just a negotiation away from moving somewhere else. The Simpsons to Adult Swim. Wheel of Fortune to GSN.

Yeah, I'm talking myself right out of my job... but I think it is inevitable. Were it not for local advertising, it would have happened already. Thankfully (for my career, anyway), there is a need for local companies to advertise on local stations, the lack of which is the big reason why PBS is habitually addicted to life support. And as long as the local cable outlets continue to do a terrible job of local spot production, local TV stations can thrive on video production, as well as promotion of the shows that haven't bailed to cable, and by trading on the local brand name of the stations themselves. At least two of those, however, are losing battles.

Whenever I see one of those logic puzzles, I think of Grandma. The kind where they give you a couple clues - Jimmy ordered the steak dinner and wants to sit beside Sarah, The person who had dessert was in chair #5, etc - and you have to figure out the order around the table. She always had puzzle books like that around to keep her mind sharp, and we would do those together when I was elementary school age.

Whenever I think of DisneyWorld, I think of Grandma. She lived in Orlando when I was very young, and we spent the spring/summer of TMI with her in Florida. After she moved back to PA, my family took her with us on several vacation pilgrimmages back to DisneyWorld, the last time being the week that Disney/MGM Studios opened. She loved the Carousel of Progress attraction, and I would poke fun at her for that. Grandma also had The Disney Channel back when it was a pay channel, and that was always a special part of our visits to her house.

Whenever I see Betty Boop, I think of Grandma. Like many of her generation, Grandma loved Betty Boop, and the character's surprising niche-market renaissance in the late 1980s meant we could always find some new Boop trinket to give to her. On the last day I saw her when she was still semi-lucid, Grandma couldn't remember Betty Boop's name, but she could still recite the famous "boop boop ee doop" catchphrase. The power of cartoons to reach across decades and through the fog of failing memory!

Now I have a new way to remember her: a small white teddy bear she won by playing Bingo at the nursing home. A huge pile of bears had been donated, and whenever somebody won, they could pick a bear out of the pile. Grandma won three times that day. As we cleared out her room this afternoon, I claimed one of the three prize bears. Even though she only saw my son in a picture - and that was so recent that I can't be sure she even knew who I was, much less him - maybe I'll pretend that she picked that bear out for him.

So when I see that bear in little Clark's room, I'll think of Grandma again.

All the second issues of the four pre-Infinite Crisis miniseries are out. Which world-shattering event will lead into Infinite Crisis? I'll be surprised if it's just one. It seems silly to imagine that three of them will wrap up nice and tight while the fourth blows the DCU wide open.

Rann-Thanagar War #2. I find this one the least interesting, despite including the Green Lantern Corps. (And hey, isn't that one of Kilowog's race on the cover? I thought Kilowog was the last of his kind!) See, I'm not a big fan of when the characters all head off into outer space and junk... especially when guys like Batman get thrown out there. Although I respect the cosmic background of the Lanterns, my favorite GL eras have always been the earthbound ones. I think I get weary of the outlandish scope of it all... because there is always ridiculous amounts of Muppet-esque, homogenous alien cliches. Since I prefer character-driven storylines, the big epic space battles with copy/pasted alien cultures just fail to impress me.

And this one is turning into one giant DCU alien war, with endless streams of non-human soldier characters eating laser in every panel. The Khunds all look the same. The Thanagarians all look the same. The Rannians all look the same. The Tamaraneans all look the same. It's draining. What really annoys me is the inevitable ratcheting-up of the carnage, with cities being razed and planets getting purged. As soon as you start blowing up planets, you lose the ability for the reader to empathize with the drama of it. And it's really difficult to maintain any gravitas for what happens next, because you've already blown up a planet full of millions of people. It's like the Empire taking out Alderaan in Star Wars: that ends up being the only truly badass thing the Empire ever does because it is an untoppable achievement. The rest of the movie is filled with Empire lowlies who can't shoot straight. They manage to build the universe's ultimate weapon yet fail utterly is designing a way to protect it.

Anyway, I will be disappointed if this is the thread that leads to Infinite Crisis. Because then we'll definitely be chucking Batman and Flash and everybody else on spaceships, fighting aliens, and getting mired in the kind of dopey writers' amateur hour where anything can happen because it's sci-fi.

And where's Darkseid stand in all this?

Day of Vengeance #2. Terrible cover. Has almost nothing to do with the story inside. Not a bad art piece, I guess, just irrelevant content.

Great hook to kick off the story: without a mortal host, the Spectre has lost his powers of scale when judging sinners! So he punishes a child who stole $6 exactly as he punishes a murderer. Gruesomely. And as bad as that is, it gets worse when the ethically confused Spectre starts taking advice from the new Eclipso.

But here's where I am lost, and it has to be leading into a big explanation in upcoming issues or else there's a major continuity breach somewhere. The first issue shows Spectre going nuts and bearing down on the DCU's magical community. The Enchantress escapes from Spectre's latest donnybrook and recruits some help from Ragman, Blue Devil, Detective Chimp and a couple magic-users I don't recognize. Their goal is to stop the Spectre before he kills them all, in a misguided fit of vengeance against pure magic.

I get that there's a couple flashback scenes in this one, showing how Eclipso/Jean Loring (I'm still upset about that, by the way) convinces Spectre to go after magic-users - including some brief throwndowns with Phantom Stranger, Dr. Fate and Madame Xanadu - leading up to his big offensive from which Enchantress barely escapes.

What I don't understand is page 7, where they show Enchantress herself, seemingly in possession of Eclipso and bolstered by her erstwhile teammates, talking Spectre into going on the killing spree in the first place. My guess is that the team eventually figures out that they actually need Spectre to go crazy, so they travel back in time in order to force him into it. But nobody mentions that, and after the possession scene they go right into planning their strike against Spectre, so the whole thing is very confusing.

I don't see this one as being the sole trigger to Infinite Crisis either, simply because of how difficult it is to get the magical characters and the super hero characters in the same room together.

OMAC Project #2. I'm still uncomfortable with the portrayal of Max Lord. It is truly out of nowhere that he would have been a secret villain overlord all this time. We probably should have gotten some kind of JLA book last year that hinted at this; some way to lead readers into that concept. Instead, they recently did two Giffen-age Justice League stories that featured Max as we knew him then: the crafty businessman with a sense of humor and a penchant for ridiculous marketing! I'm not convinced we won't see some sort of evil twin or similar old saw trotted out to explain this change in Max. If not during this story, then undoubtedly in some future one where the writers of tomorrow decided to undo the damage to good ol' fun times Maxwell Lord.

What's nice about this one is that it deals directly with the real point of Infinity Crisis: the liberties taken by the League with the minds of the villains they fought... and with Batman's. That Law and Order stuff with Sue Dibny's murder was a good read (except for the final revelation, bleah), but it's the lobotomy of Dr. Light that is the true ripplepoint.

Pissed off about their secret vote to alter minds and memories, Batman builds a super spy satellite to watch the League's actions. Somehow - we don't know how yet - Max Lord gets ahold of it, and his plan is to... well, I don't think we know that yet either. But it's safe to assume it's not a benevolent plan, since the execution of Blue Beetle last issue and the cleansing of Max's co-leaders in Checkmate this issue. (A scene which, by the way, has huge staging problems.)

Best line: Batman asking why Booster Gold is invited to a top-level summit between himself, Superman and Wonder Woman. "Diana, why is he even here?"

And I'd love to know what they argue about once Max turns off audio to the spy feed he has on that meeting. In a series of panels, you can clearly see Superman put his hand on Wonder Woman's shoulder, followed by her scowling and pushing it off. Shades of Kingdom Come, that is.

A nice companion to OMAC is the "Crisis of Conscience" storyline that just started in JLA #115. Also deals with the ramifications of Identity Crisis, and signals the end of that terrible Crime Syndicate story.

Villains United #2. This one has the best twist. There's two villain teams here - which is the twist that comes out of issue one - Lex Luthor's group that has enlisted almost every villain in the DCU, and a mysterious team of six relatively minor villains that wants to take down Lex's intiative. The laws of storytelling suggest that the small group will be the underdog squad that miraculously succeeds against all possible odds. That was the setup in issue one, made all the more expected by the amount of page time devoted to the smaller team.

Well, in this issue the six are betrayed, and captured by Lex's group. Haw! Try and predict that one, fanboy!

Not that the underdogs can't still win, just that I never would have guessed they would get so completely shut down on their first mission in the second issue.

I was also shocked by Catman's decision to don his costume for the (failed) Secret Six strike. I was all set to respect his Ka-Zar look in #1, and then we get an unflinching reminder of the character's origins in 1960s crapland with that yellow-and-orange cape-and-cowl number.

It is still way too early (#2 of 6) to predict how we get to Infinite Crisis from here. I think the key is to look at what small Crises can be dealt with before launching into the big Crisis. Rann-Thanagar is easy to write off: the war ends. Most likely some impossible peace treaty will be brokered at the last minute, or we'll find out that Thanagar wasn't blown up after all, and the status quo of outer space can return. Day of Vengeance feels to me almost like the original Books of Magic miniseries from 15 years ago... a big story for the Vertigo expatriats but barely a blip for anybody else. And since the DCU's major players are the super heroes, you sort of expect the Crisis is going to center on them.

That leaves OMAC and Villains United, which could easily dovetail into each other. You have Lex Luthor's amazing alliance of villains on one side, Max Lord's shadow organization on the other, and the heroes - infighting and largely oblivious - stuck in the middle. Since the Max thing is so wonky and Checkmate has never been much of a name brand, the logical assumption is to have Batman's stolen spy satellite fall into Luthor's hands... but of course villain team-ups never work out because their egos never cooperate.

Three years ago a close friend found out she was pregnant. Joe and I had been trying for 6 months at this point and I was certain we too would find out very soon that we were expecting. But as her belly grew, my hopes shrunk. And while she was going into labor, we were beginning a long series of infertility testing and treatment. What made the disappointment worse was attending all three of her baby showers. I couldn�t even go near the baby section of the store without having a meltdown so I found myself giving books and other �safe� gifts. It is hard to explain to someone who hasn�t been there how you can be so happy for them and so sad for yourself, but that was exactly how I felt as I watched her open gifts.

Fast forward to last month. It is finally our turn to be the couple expecting. We have the most beautiful little boy waiting in Korea to be our son. We first saw his picture on May 12th and every day I wake up and look at his photo and smile. We have waited so long and worked so hard to be this little boy�s parents.

Just 4 days after our referral, summer session started at the local university where I am pursuing my teaching certification. I had already signed up for a course which met 4 days a week and I decided the class would be a good distraction as we wait for Clark�s travel call. As it turned out attending class and work was brutal especially when all I really want to do is work on Clark�s nursery. But tonight was my last class and after staying up past 3:30 a.m. to finish the final requirement of the course, I was ready to get this last class over with and move on to baby related endeavors.

But tonight�s class was special for another reason too. During our break I was surprised with a mini baby shower! I truly was surprised and overwhelmed that this group of people who were also up late and had busy lives had somehow found time to buy our son gifts. I found out that one classmate in particular, Rose, had organized the surprise and in addition to this class she has another, which also had a project due tonight. As I started to write out the thank you notes I realized there was too little space for me to tell each person how much tonight meant to me.

Just a few weeks ago I told my husband under no circumstances did I want a baby shower. I didn�t give him an explanation, but it was because I still associated them with the sadness I had felt for so long, and deep down I felt I didn�t deserve all the attention. What is ironic is that it took the kindness of people who didn�t know me then and who in all honesty don�t know me very well now, to change this association and make me realize that baby showers aren�t about being pregnant, they�re about the birth of a child and celebrating the amazing transformation of two people from a couple to a family. Tonight the gifts were priceless and the cake sweeter because they were for my first baby shower.

I�ve learned a lot from this class in the past four weeks, but the most important lesson was the one I learned tonight from 16 people who�s only objective was to do something nice for the girl who cried the first night of class when she told the room about the little boy in Korea who was going to be her son. Thank you.

Planet GameCube (which is probably already contemplating their new domain name) has another news article I'm going to dupe and comment on. This one is about Iwata's latest comments on the Nintendo Revolution, DS and Wi-Fi.

Today Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced that Nintendo will operate one thousand wireless access points in Japan to encourage the growth of its online Nintendo DS games. Iwata also confirmed strong third party support for Nintendo's online strategy, with "25 software makers" pledging their support for the online gaming service.

Obviously the key detail there is "in Japan" but it is still a great idea, particularly for kids and those from less-tech-savvy households. Imagine if every Toys R Us or GameSpot had a little wireless network for DSs (and PSPs) to latch onto for free downloads and local matchmaking. The reality is that most people don't have wireless networks at home, and they aren't likely to set one up anytime soon. Which leads into Nintendo's next bullet point:

Nintendo will have downloadable online demos of DS games, which can be downloaded from home, and the company will sell a wireless access point that attaches to PCs via a USB drive, making DS and Revolution connectivity straightforward for those currently without a wireless network.

A Nintendo-branded wireless. Sure, it's another way for Nintendo to shake you down for some extra bucks (if you don't already have a LinkSys or an AirPort)... but I would wager that it will be the simplest thing in the world to do. Probably not much more complicated than "plug this into the USB port of your internet-net connected computer." I don't suspect it will act as a true wireless signal for laptops etc, nor do I guess it will work with the PSP... Nintendo will likely keep this limited to their own tech. If this hits the States and costs less than $30, I could see lots of households getting it without even realizing what it truly is; it just becomes another accessory for their DS or Revolution, magically connecting both to the internet.

GameSpot also confirms what PGC suspected: Revolution Virtual Console downloads will not be free, though he suggests Nintendo may provide special promotional offers: "We believe that there's a number of ways that we can use the system, such as to offer a bonus download with the purchase of a new game, or allow some games to be downloaded during a limited time during a campaign period."

Who thought this would be free? Adoy. Nintendo is not going to just give away their catalog of old games. They've made a lucrative side business out of re-releasing their classics every couple years for every new platform. I'm not even sure the extent to which I'd even take advantage of this, considering my usual stance of out with the old, in with the new. I could see me grabbing Super Mario Bros for a night, or checking out some recent-old games that I missed due to bad reviews (like Starfox Adventures), or showing off some classics to my son... but it's nothing I'd pay big bucks for, certainly nothing I'd pay a monthly fee for access.

Finally, Iwata elaborated on recurring comments about complex games, explaining that Nintendo feels large games are important, but an overabundance of them is folly. He claims that consumers have a limited amount of time, and most can only play one or two huge titles a year. Nintendo hopes to encourage a variety of games of varied scales and prices.

I say that one is nuts. "One or two huge titles a year"? No way. Hardcore gamers blow through tons of huge titles a year. Most games I play to completion clock in around 20 hours. Huge games hit the 40 hour mark. Truly massive games, like Pokemon Sapphire or GTA: San Andreas, will approach or break the 100 hour barrier. You can do plenty of 20 hour games in a year. He's only correct if he's talking about the 100-hour behemoth games... yes, those do tend to trump all else for a couple months, but those are already pretty rare to come across (outside of MMORPGs).

And even kids and casual gamers: they're still always looking for something new. They may not finish a game, but they'll still be done with it and ready to buy something else. This is why casual gamers rent games. How many kids out there own - but didn't finish - Paper Mario, Sonic Heroes, X-Men Legends, Spider-Man 2, Crystal Chronicles, Metroid Prime 2 and Pokemon Coliseum? I'd call all of those big (or biggish) 2004 Cube games in terms of marketing hype and time to play... and I'm sure three quarters of those are in every young GameCube owner's library.

Part of the scalable nature of video games is that they must meet the needs of the casual/young gamer who just pops in to play some levels and have some fun, as well as the serious completist. To say that most people need only one or two "huge" games a year is to forget all of that and assume that the audience gets laser-focused on one single game for six months at a time, with only minor breaks for a "lesser" game like Mario Kart, which is absurd. Maybe Nintendo themselves can only output one or two huge games a year (which has never been the case to date) but we still can take plenty of good sized games from third parties to fill in the gap between first party releases.

Of course, who even knows what he's talking about when he defines "huge." Racing and sports games can suck up a lot of time, but I doubt they're considered huge games, simply because each game is functionally equivalent to the next one. Most licensed games, like Spongebob Movie or Yu-Gi-Oh Whatever, might have gigantic ad support, but are usually forgettable cash-ins. Mario Party and WarioWare have stupidly large amounts of unlockables and nearly infinite replay value, but their very nature probably precludes them from being huge releases. Pikmin 2 - another big 2004 game - has genuinely huge gameplay, but has proven to be a comparatively unsellable franchise... not huge.

Aside: I just read the most awesome thing about the new stranded-on-an-island DS game Lost in Blue. You have to cook your own meals in the game, collect the ingredients from around the island blah blah blah... but then to do the actual cooking, you have to close the DS and open it again when you think the appropriate cooking time has passed! Leave the DS closed up too long and you'll overcook! PUT THAT ON THE BUY LIST.

The first day with a new WarioWare is always a humbling one. Nothing makes any sense, you can barely string together 10 wins in a row. It takes dedication to achieve that WarioWare harmony where you can recognize a mini-game in those initial escalating seconds and respond with the correct button-pressing to Eat! or Deliver! or Avoid! or whatever.

Twisted is the fourth WarioWare game and the second one this calendar year. I can still vividly recall the world before WarioWare, so being up to a quartet of games (for three different systems) seems absurd. Just as Touched was a demo suite for the DS, Twisted has a gimmick of its own: a gyroscope. Most of the games are played with no button input whatsoever, just a quick tilting of the entire GBA. For example, there's a hacky-sack game where you have to tilt the GBA to the right to get the right leg to connect and kick the ball back up... ditto for the left leg. So to properly bounce the ball between legs, you're actively leaning the GBA in either direction.

As cool as it is - and there are lots of extremely creative uses of the tilting scheme, particularly when the game starts re-interpreting classic NES games into twist-fests - I'm surprised that most reviewers consider Touched the lesser game. Touched got a bad rap for feeling repetitious... that all the stylus input seemed the same. And yet Twisted operates on simply tilting... and most of the games are won just by a couple controlled jerks left or right. I don't see how one can slam Touched for samey-gameplay yet laud Twisted when it has a similar problem. I chalk that up to the general anti-DS feeling commonly seen in game review mags these days. If a DS game doesn't use every single DS-specific feature (Wi-Fi, same cart multiplayer, touch screen, microphone, sleep mode, blah blah blah) it gets kicked in the ass.

And although Twisted has the most hidden unlockables - like, over 100 or them - I still stand behind Touched as having the better input controls. I dig that stylus. Twisted's biggest failing is that some games require so much tilting that you can no longer see what you're doing.

I see the three core WarioWare games (original, Touched, Twisted) as all being more or less equivalently awesome, just with different areas of concentration. Original sticks with d-pad and A/B buttons, Touched is mostly stylus control and some mic input, Twisted is gyroscope and some minor use of the A button. All three have standout moments in design and quirkiness.

Sure makes you wonder what they'll do for the next one.