And then there's the lovely and effervescent Abby Prince of WebProNews, who I came to know this past year. According to our sources she's getting hitched somewhere in Kentucky.
Congratulations to Roger and to Abby and their respective spouses-to-be! May God bless you today, and it is our prayer that you and your loved ones have a long and happy life together :-)
We have come a very long way in a short time. But there's still plenty more to do.
The past few nights have been spent on cleaning up the choreography for the bigger numbers. Last night it was work on "In The Beginning" and "The Naming", and that one was especially fun to watch. The two that I'm working on most in my spare time have been the dances for "Generations" and "Ain't It Good". I've written about it before here and I have to admit again: "Ain't It Good" might be the most difficult song of the show... but I absolutely think it's going to rock the house when we get to perform it. It might get easier to practice when we get everything so far as the stage floor put in place.
In case anyone's wondering why there aren't pictures to go along with these reports: I've been taking some, but have been asked not to post them here. I might be able to post a pic of me in costume sometime next week though. And I'll be getting a scan of the production's poster up soon too :-)
Best part of doing this has been getting to know a lot of new and interesting people. I don't think it's possible to work on a show like Children of Eden and put your heart into it, without bonding with each other somehow. Everything about Children of Eden contributes to a camaraderie that I think is going to go with us for the rest of our lives.
Just one more reason why I'm very thankful for the opportunity to be in this production.
Oh yeah, last night I wore one of the t-shirts that I made for Forcery. Most other people have been wearing shirts from productions they've been in. I didn't have one of those, so I thought "Okay, I'll just wear a shirt from the movie that I made!" Got a lot of people asking about it, 'specially the kids. I'm already thinking that I've wound up with a huge pool of talent that I could ask to help me out with my projects down the road.
Another update sometime next week!
That pic alone reinforces something that's taken me awhile to really grasp: that for all his dreaded reputation, Darth Vader is a pretty pitiful character. Imagine being a scorched torso with no arms or legs, not even able to breathe on your own, being surrounded by all of that intrusive technology just to keep you alive. Never mind about also having to use it to enforce the will of your dark master. Last week I was able to finally score - after months of looking - the Battle Damaged Darth Vader action figure from The Force Unleashed line. The girl at the checkout counter saw what she was ringing up and said "Oh God that's sick!" And then she said that she could no longer hate Vader as a character either, that it was "so sad" what happened to him.
Funny how our perception of things changes over time, eh?
Anyhoo, Star Wars Blueprints: The Ultimate Collection is scheduled to come out August 4th with a list price of $19.99, and will also include details plans of the Millennium Falcon (the current accepted version of the layout anyway), the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, the Death Star, and lightsabers and blasters.
I'm thinking, whenever I get the time, to include annotations for Forcery and Schrodinger's Bedroom as well. By the way, right now Video Annotations is a beta feature and doesn't support embedded videos (so you'll have to click on The Baritones link above to check it out). It's also automatically on by default, but you can toggle the feature with a new button that's to the right of the "full screen" one (it's the button that's pointing upward in the lower-right of the above pic).
Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the release of WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. AMC was running it last night and I wound up watching a good part of it.In case you've never seen it before, WarGames is about David Lightman, a high school student who's an unmotivated slacker in class but a first-rate computer hacker at home. David's real talent is running automated searches for systems that can be dialed into via phone modem, and then cracking their security. While trying to locate a new video game company's system so he can do his own brand of beta-testing, David unknowingly winds up accessing a computer at NORAD and nearly starts World War III from his bedroom.
A quarter-century later, WarGames still holds up extremely well. Practically all of the technology depicted is now horribly dated (look at the size of those floppies that David is using!) but in spite of that, and perhaps even because of it, WarGames has become a curiously good snapshot of both Cold War bunker mentality and the introduction of computers into civilian life. It is also, I believe, one of the more successful morality tales about the fear of nuclear war: WarGames is not a "political" film as many of the time were. And neither does it make anyone out to be "the good guys" and "the bad guys". The genius of WarGames's longevity is that it wisely adheres to its own lesson: that to win the game, sometimes you have to choose not to play the game at all.
I thought that WarGames also merited mentioning (in addition to it being a terrific film) because of the reaction that it engendered upon its release. With its depiction of teens hacking into school systems to change their own grades, and then breaking into military-grade mainframes and coming a hair's-breadth from nuking the whole planet, WarGames initiated unusual paranoia in the mainstream press about the power of computers. I remember one CBS Evening News report at the time that seriously questioned whether parents should allow their children to access the outside world via their personal computers at home. A magazine article suggested that computer modems be "locked up" just like firearms, to keep them out of the reach of teenagers. I even heard one pundit proclaim that there was no need for regular people to be able to log in to a remote system: that if you need to access your bank account, a friendly teller was just a short drive away.
And Bill Gates once declared that the average person would never have a need for more than 640 kilobytes of memory in a personal computer, too.
Such news stories were very fashionable in 1983, and looking back I think the corporate media unwittingly demonstrated the moral of WarGames. It was an unfounded fear but the press played on it, and it wound up embedding itself into the popular conscience. I know of one friend whose parents were so horrified at the prospect of "accidentally" breaking into an unauthorized computer system, that they didn't buy a computer at all until 1998! After their fears were allayed, they eventually got on the Internet and found that it was a fine thing.
Now to be fair, WarGames was not the first movie about computers going awry and driving mankind toward nuclear apocalypse. 1970's Colossus: The Forbin Project might have been the first to explore the theme, and of course there as also The Terminator. Many will convincingly argue that Dr. Strangelove had them all beat.
But WarGames was different: it wasn't only a computer glitch in a far-removed system or a demented military officer which we had to fear could doom all mankind. After WarGames, we were told that Jack D. Ripper could be anybody.
I don't know if the paranoia was completely without merit, though, but only because of one funny incident that happened to me. In the fall of 1994 I was using my first real computer to dial into various bulletin board systems, and there was one that had just started up in Eden. I tried to dial into it but instead of a computer I heard a voice telling me that "This number is not in service". I changed one digit in the prefix, thinking that maybe it was just the wrong number that I had been given. This time the modem did connect to another one, but the terminal window filled with gibberish. I changed the modem protocol, tried it again... and found that I had dialed into the computer system for the Eden branch of NationsBank (now Bank of America)! What was the first thing that popped into mind? Yup: WarGames. I hit the disconnect button so fast that I can still remember my heart pounding against my rib cage.
A few months after WarGames came out CBS began airing Whiz Kids, about a group of teenagers who built their own supercomputers and used it to solve crimes, and by that time the Great Hacking Scare of 1983 was in full swing. CBS execs were quick to emphasize that what the Whiz Kids characters did could not easily be pulled off in real life (which might have backfired: Whiz Kids had great potential but it was canceled after one season). The fear had pretty much diminished by 1987 when ABC's Max Headroom (a groundbreaking show that I've long thought has never been fully appreciated) came out, but it would still rear its head in the years to come, particularly with movies like 1992's Sneakers and Hackers in 1995. And then the success of Independence Day in 1996 finally turned the tables on the mistrust of computers as a tool. Suddenly hacking was not something that we worried would destroy the world: it could even save the world if it had to.
But for a long time, beginning in those strange days of 1983, there was a hesitancy to reach out and harness the computer: just as early man no doubt originally feared the flame. WarGames clearly announced that the digital fire, originally the province of the technology gods, was now a boon to mere mortals. And with it came a choice: we could use it to build, or to burn.
I like to believe that we have generally chosen the former.
EDIT 4:42 p.m. EST: This post has been Slashdotted! That's three times since this past August that this blog has been featured on Slashdot...
We're also getting lots of visitors today via the post about the DHARMA Initiative snacks, presumably from countries that are either about to start watching Lost Season 4 or are already at the season finale. Welcome to everyone who's found their way to this blog, however it is ya got here :-)
And it has been brought to my attention that Bill Gates apparently did NOT make the statement famously attributed to him about 640K of memory. Which is news to me 'cuz I was hearing that ever since taking C++ programming in college years ago. So I happily stand corrected.
Yesterday I bought a copy of Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide. I've long been a fan of DK Publishing's Star Wars books, which have been in the format of visual dictionaries and beautifully illustrated cutaways of locations and vehicles in the Star Wars saga.Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide continues DK's tradition in providing lush eye candy and detailed information, this time about a certain globe-trotting archaeologist. Written by James Luceno (who has been praised on this blog numerous times for his Star Wars work), the book covers most of the span of what we know about the life and times of Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr, beginning with the birth of his father in Scotland in 1872. Indy himself is born in 1899 and considerable space is devoted to his early exploits (which were documented in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series). The book pics up the pace with the events of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1935, on through Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, while also covering material that was introduced in various novels, comics and video games. And being that this is the season of (finally!) a new Indiana Jones movie, it's only fitting that there is sumptuous information regarding Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, including more about Mac, Mutt, and Spalko. The book concludes with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Indiana Jones movies, and some of the merchandise and marketing that has been done for the franchise over the years.
This book is going to be one that I will certainly appreciate having on my shelf for many years to come. However, it's not absolutely complete in my opinion. There is nothing at all about "Older Indy", the 93-year old version played by George Hall in the bookends for ABC's original run of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. In addition to how those aren't in the DVD sets and haven't been shown in the occasional reruns on television for some time, it's enough to make me wonder if George Lucas now considers those not "canon". Which would be a darn tragedy 'cuz the bookends with George Hall as Indy were awesome! And strangely, the events of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, considered by many to be the finest Indiana Jones video game ever and one of the best of the entire graphic adventure genre, are not mentioned at all (although Sophia Hapgood is referenced, as is the Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine game).
But in light of what else is in this book, Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide is still a must-have for fans of Indy. I particularly enjoy the cut-away illustrations for the buried city of Tanis, Pankot Palace and the Thuggee mines, and the Grail Temple (along with the catacombs beneath Venice: it turns out that St. Mark is buried down there too).
I was expecting nothing but goodness to come from Luceno and DK with their treatment of the Indiana Jones saga, and they have certainly delivered fortune and glory with Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide. Heartily recommended!
The deal was: Ballard would assist the U.S. Navy in examining the wreckage of two American nuclear submarines - the Thresher and the Scorpion - that were lost at sea in the Atlantic during the 1960s. At the time, there was concern that the Soviet Union might somehow find and exploit the sunken subs. The expedition was funded by the government and upon completion, Ballard would be free to continue his quest for the Titanic. All fine and dandy... except few people expected him to find the thing! Some in the Navy were alarmed that Ballard's discovery might arouse suspicion, but because of all the publicity about the Titanic itself nobody dared question the purpose of Ballard's mission.
Head over to the National Geographic website for more on the story.
Long story short: Charles Roark has offered me 25 minutes of free airtime this coming Sunday night at 8 p.m.
I'm taking him up on it.
All I'm prepared to say right now is that it won't be a live debate between myself and Johnny Robertson. He had that chance on Sunday night. Charles Roark is graciously letting me have this valuable time to present another perspective, and I'm going to use it as best that I can. Neither will it be an interview. I've something in mind and I'm sticking to it.
Besides, Robertson will have an hour and a half after I'm on the air all to himself, to do whatever he likes. I'm going to respect the time alloted to him as he will no doubt respect the time alloted to me.
So much for "Freedom is the right of ALL sentient beings!" ...
Here at last is the video of what happened.
Part 1 is up already. I'm working on Part 2 now and it might even go to a Part 3. But in the meantime, have at it...
Went down to the WGSR studio at 7 p.m. last night (now 7 hours ago) and waited until Johnny Robertson - of the "Church of Christ in Name Only", the hyper-legalist cult in these parts that is demonstrating so much hatred toward others, all in the name of Jesus Christ - showed up for his weekly live television broadcast.
Robertson got there just before 8:30 on his way to do his show. And I didn't hesitate to ask Robertson three big questions:
(1) How is what he is doing showing devotion to Jesus Christ, and showing Christ's love to the lost of this world?
(2) Where in the Bible does it say that if you are not baptized that you are going to Hell?
(3) "I'm here Johnny... so will you debate me live on the air tonight?"
Robertson never answered the first question, could not answer the second (apart from some saying that baptism is "a command" but he still could not demonstrate how the unbaptized person will go to Hell) and he adamantly REFUSED to debate me, saying that he already had "an agenda" and later on in the evening he seemed to imply that I'm "small potatoes" (my words) and that he much more prefers to debate well-known Baptist, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, etc. He kept citing that I don't have enough "knowledge of scripture". Although he denied it, I have to wonder if that means I have to have a doctorate of divinity degree in order for him to be interested. He also said that debating me would be "boring".
I videotaped it, folks. He videotaped me videotaping him too. I'll have it up later in the morning.
Oh yah, and Johnny Robertson also said that I'm not saved at all, because I was baptized in a Baptist church (even though I am not denominational at all, I was baptized while in college because I became a believer in Christ there and I wanted to do this before I graduated) and something to the effect that my baptism did not come because of repentance. Uhhhh...
I'm going to post the video on YouTube and then stick it on this blog, but after that I'm pretty much through with Johnny Robertson. My offer to debate on live television still stands though: he won't take it. In my sincere opinion, he's too genuinely afraid to take me up on it. Much of the time during two videotaped meetings (before and after the show) he kept trying to badger out of me which "denomination" I was. And it must have flustered him that I just consider myself a "follower of Christ" who worships with other believers. Robertson accused me of being a "renegade", something that he reiterated during his live show tonight also (and there's gonna be some really hilarious footage of that, friends and neighbors!).
Like I said, I'll have the video up later this morning. Trust me: it's a hoot!
EDIT 1:44 p.m. EST: Here's the link to the video.
It turns out that Dianne Odell HAD been baptized, in her family's bathtub, when she was 13 years old. She was taken out of her iron lung just long enough to accomplish it, against her doctor's recommendation. It's something that she very much wanted to do and thankfully, she got to do it.
My contention remains unchanged, as well as my question to Robertson, Oldfield and Fields: If someone is incapable of being baptized, does that mean that they are not saved?
How can a physical act possibly be connected to the salvation of one's soul? Is this not adding a "work" to the already finished work that Jesus did when He went to die for us?
Well, now Robertson is threatening to bring up how "wrong" I was on baptism on his show What Does the Bible Say? (which if truth in advertising laws prevailed should be renamed "What Does Johnny Robertson Say?") airing on WGSR Star 39 tonight. Robertson is apparently determined to make hay of this, and will no doubt gleefully point out that the lady in question was baptized. And Robertson spent almost three hours on my blog yesterday (I've got the records to prove it), looking for "dirt" no doubt.
Here are some of the remarks that Johnny Robertson has made in the past 24 hours...
Happy hunting obe oneAnd you don't think people know already where to find this blog, Johnny?
you will have to try harder than this
are you still going to call in?
If not Corey will get you (he lied Corey)are you all still searching for some instance where a person cannot be baptized?
it must be really tough on you all to be proved WRONG all the time.
I tell you this is fast becoming my favorite site.
Chris you are the best
our youtube going out to praise Diane (since you brought her up) is a great shout out to how the Devil really is stupid.
Diane was the # one google name yesterday. How well do you think you question being read on my show will do?
It may get you in the New York times again as the most unkind person alive.God’s word will be upheld.
Did yu think we would take a hit from the likes of Chris Knight when we teach the glorious gospel of the King.
You are hurting the causechris are you still calling in and debating on Sunday nite?
or did your little plan back fireyou reject the counsel of God when you refuse to be baptized and if you die
having done this all your days
then dont expect mercy as “rejecter”
I do say this with malice.
but it is the truthChris
you may won’t to go back and reread your comments
it was much stronger than this
and when I show it on TV it will be in quotesOh what has changed?
You don’t have a an emotional story to try and use to subvert people into taking your position?
Ok I am moving on. There is no truth here today.
Nice try Chris
I am still posting you tomorrow night.
Your comments are good to show how desperate folks are to defeat us.Chris
not so fast New Yorker (Chris),
I m not going to publish your blog boyee
just your latest blunder
Your attitude points all the way back to my original question from March: How is what you are doing giving glory to Christ?
Here is when I called into his show to ask him that, folks...
This is why what Robertson, Oldfield and Fields are doing is so terribly wrong, folks: they are using Jesus Christ as an excuse for how they like to swagger and bully people.
Johnny Robertson, I said that if you didn't respond with an answer to my question, that I was going to call in and ask. Lo and behold, you did respond. You have made it very clear that you believe that a person who is not baptized, is going to Hell.
So there was going to be no need for me to call in tonight anyway. You responded, and I'm content with that. Are you going to use that on your show tonight as well? Because that is all that I said that I wanted: an answer from you about this. And you provided one, whether you realize it or not.
But if you want a debate, Johnny... then yeah, I'm up for one. It's not going to be stilted in your favor though. We're not going to have your finger hovering over the "mute" button as it is all the time whenever someone calls into your show. You're going to have to face the fire as much as I would be facing it also.
So yeah: I'm challenging you to a real debate, live on WGSR Star 39, with a moderator. If you want to use the footage from it however you like afterward, it won't bother me at all if you do.
Let's have a real discussion on your demand for legalism, weighed against the simple sufficiency of the grace of God.
As we are told in Romans 3:22-28...
"This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.You would impose a law on us, Johnny Robertson. A law that is not mandated at all in scripture."Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law."
And nothing you are doing, is giving glory to God. Which is what is supposed to be the primary motivation for us as followers of Christ.
I'm as yet undecided as to what I'm going to do this evening, folks. I might watch this show, and I might not. If I just watch it, I'll probably be in a giggle-fit of laughter the entire time. If I'm feeling pokey, I might do some live blogging about it. There are some possibilities that enter my mind. We'll just have to wait and see.
About two months ago I called into Johnny Robertson's show What Does the Bible Say? on WGSR Star 39. Johnny Robertson (shown at right) is considered the chief ringleader of what I've come to call the "Church of Christ in Name Only" (COCINO for short), a very vindictive, mean-spirited cult working around Reidsville, North Carolina and Martinsville and Danville in Virginia. These guys have about three hours of programming on WGSR each week and they do nothing but attack anyone who isn't "their" brand of Christianity. Namely, they believe that if you are not part of what they call the "Church of Christ" (which is nothing like the Church of Christ that most people know) that you are damned and going to Hell. They also believe that a person must be baptized in order to be saved.
And they have an extremely ugly attitude toward anyone who disagrees with them.
So I called up Robertson's show one night to ask a simple question: "How is what you guys are doing giving glory to Christ?" And more to the point, I wanted to know how is what they are doing showing Christ's love and grace to a world that is lost without Him. How is what Robertson (along with James Oldfield and Norm Fields) doing, in any way, able to persuade those who don't know Christ about Christ at all? Because I can't see how their hatred toward others can do anything but drive people away from wanting to consider Christ at all.
Robertson and his cohorts are ultra-legalists of the highest order. It's all about following rules and regulations so far as they are concerned: which is exactly what Christ's sacrifice did away with for all time. I think it could even be argued that Johnny Robertson is trying to crucify Christ all over again. But I digress...
Robertson had no answer for me. Instead he told me to "go listen to Benny Hinn!" Here's the video again if you want to see what happened for yourself.
Then a few days ago I heard about a very sad story out of Tennessee, involving a woman who was by all accounts a devout follower of Christ, who passed away after a lifetime of unusual circumstance that did not allow for her to be water baptized as Robertson and the Church of Christ in Name Only demands. So I asked a question on this blog directed to Robertson, Oldfield, and Fields: "Is this woman now lost because she was not baptized?"
It got picked up by the Answering the Church of Christ blog and it's led to a rather heated discussion. There are currently 134 comments, including a few that I've made.
Well, none other than Johnny Robertson himself has chimed in. And according to my meter's records he spent about a half-hour on The Knight Shift earlier this morning, looking at a lot of stuff (including my post about how The New York Times had reported on the crazy TV commercials that some of us school board candidates did in 2006). Apparently he was looking for dirt on me.
This is what Johnny Robertson fired back with on Answering the Church of Christ...
On May 31, 2008 at 10:22 am johnny Said:Let me try to understand this: Johnny Robertson cannot confidently tell us that what he and the others in the Church of Christ in Name Only are doing is showing the love of Christ to others. So instead he chooses to attack me because I dared asked him that question... by mocking my being a Star Wars fan and because I'm involved in a production of Children of Eden?!?!?Knight said
In the end, that faith in Him is something that must transcend earthly terminology. To say that we are saved because we are "Christian" or "Church of Christ" is to deny the new creation that we are called to be in Him.
transcends earthly terminology"
talking about a gnostic!
Col 2:18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,you kinda got beyond yourself there chris star Wars New York posted ....I've a part in Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of "Children of Eden"(look at me everyone I am an actor toooooo!)
Star Wars, Johnny? Star Wars?! And Children of Eden?!?
I responded to Johnny Robertson thusly...
On May 31, 2008 at 11:24 am Chris Knight Said:A few minutes later I added...Dear Johnny Robertson,
So now that I have your attention, might I ask you again...How IS what you are doing possibly showing others the love of Christ?
You still haven't answered that.
And now you are attacking me because I’m a Star Wars fan, of all things?!
You're acting pretty infantile, dude.
I know it's you, by the way. I saw where you visited my blog earlier this morning, and spent quite a bit of time looking around on it.
So Johnny, once again: HOW is what you, and Oldfield, and Fields, doing, illustrating the love and grace of Jesus Christ to those who don't know Him? WHY should the lost of this world look at you guys and be persuaded at all?
You have nothing to show for your work, because it is not motivated in love. You are too enamored with your sense of power and leadership... but if you have not love, then these things are utterly worthless.
Why do you make yourself so big and God so very small, Johnny?
On May 31, 2008 at 11:28 am Chris Knight Said:Yes Johnny, I am a Star Wars fan. And it's something that I've never been ashamed of, or have ever felt it encroached upon my faith in God. You would no doubt be surprised at how many followers of Christ are also fans of this story. And it would probably blow your mind at how quite a few have found opportunities of ministry with it. As Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians 9:22,By the way Johnny, you're invited to come see the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of "Children of Eden". Performances are June 20-22 and June 27-29 at Rockingham Community College. Tickets are $10 for adults. More information is on the Guild's website at tgrc-nc.com
Among the themes of "Children of Eden" are love and forgiveness. Maybe you could learn something from it.
"To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some."Johnny, has it ever occurred to you and your bunch that maybe instead of puffing yourselves up and lording over other people, that if you humbled yourselves and brought yourselves lower, that God might actually bless your ministry?
I mean, is this really about you or is it about Him?
As it is now, Johnny Robertson - along with James Oldfield and Norm Fields - is a false preacher. He comes preaching another Christ: a Christ that would bind us in legalism all over again, instead of being free by His mercy and grace and love. The Jesus Christ of the Bible is not the Jesus Christ that Robertson and Oldfield and Fields preach on WGSR.
(Or as Mama Reyes said on Lost: "Jesus Christ is not a weapon!")
Johnny Robertson, again I am compelled to ask you publicly: How is what you are doing showing love of Christ and demonstrating Christ's love toward others?
I would very much like to know this.
EDIT 4:51 p.m. EST: Johnny Robertson spent two and a half hours visiting my blog today, on at least two separate visits. He was quite the busy bee, taking screenshots etc.
Wonder what he's up to...
Part of the aerobics that I'm doing right now is Jogging the long distance. It's really clever how this works: you don't use the Wii Balance Board at all. You just put the Wii Remote in your pocket (or if your pants lack pockets you can just hold the Remote in your hand) and then you start jogging in place. If you keep a brisk pace while swinging your arms in good wide circles you can work up a serious sweat. And all the while, the Wii is picking up your relative speed by how much the Remote in your pocket or hand jiggles about.
It's this use of the Wii's sensing technology that got me thinking...
Imagine a first-person shooter game like Doom or Halo for the Wii. Imagine having one Wii Remote that you use to aim like a gun at whatever it is on screen that you intend to shoot at. Now imagine two other Wii Remotes, one in each side pocket of a pair of pants that you are wearing. And to play the game you have to literally run through the map shooting at whatever bad guys there are while running and possibly even ducking for cover. The Wii will be picking up all of this movement as you play, including changes in body position and change of direction/speed (your velocity) as you run through the map. It would be like putting yourself directly in a game such as Gears of War... but instead of using a standard hand-held controller, your entire body - from your toes to your trigger finger - would control your in-game persona.
Can you imagine how much fun that would be? To say nothing of the workout that a person would be getting while probably not even realizing it.
There would be a few minor drawbacks for such a system though, but I think those might be fairly negligible. The most obvious is that to work like this the player must own three Wii Remotes. And there could be no multiplayer per this system. But with some minor tweaking, Nintendo programmers or whatever other company that makes this game could add the option of playing with only one Wii Remote along with a gun accessory and the Nunchuk add-on, and then possibly four players could do this at the same time. Or one Wii Remote could be placed in a pocket and pick up running while the Nunchuk controls movement and the Wii Remote operates aiming and firing, in which case two friends really could be running around shooting at each other.
That might even rival Boxing on Wii Sports for two-player fun on the Nintendo Wii!
If anyone at Nintendo or some other video game studio reads this and wants to play with it, feel free to do so. I'm not looking for any compensation for the idea. It just seemed like too neat a concept to not put out there and see if somebody could work with it. If this ever does become a Wii game, I would absolutely be the first in line to buy a copy (provided that everything else in the game was well-designed too, like the engine and graphics and sound and the story, etc. :-).
Just before the white light cascades over everything, I can't help thinking that what's going through Ben's mind is, "I'm going to die. Please forgive me." He knows he's going to be banished from the Island... and he doesn't know where he'll be sent to. He could wind up anywhere in the world, or anywhere above it or inside it. The next moment could find him on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, for all the good that it would do him. I like to believe that this was a "leap of faith" moment for Ben, and that when we see him materialize in the Tunisian desert that it was Jacob's doing.
Everything is orchestrated flawlessly in this scene, from Michael Emerson's performance, to the sets, to how we see the affect that Ben's action has throughout the area of the Island. And Michael Giacchino's music here: I will buy the Lost Season 4 soundtrack just for this, if/when it comes out.
In the two and a half seasons that he's been a character on Lost, this was the definitive moment for Benjamin Linus. And it's being widely agreed that this was the most amazing single scene of this television season.
So here it is courtesy of YouTube: Benjamin Linus working the frozen donkey wheel, and using it to move the Island...
Read more here at the BBC's website.
Kinda humbling to know that in 2008, in spite of all our technology and how we've thought that the entire Earth has been mapped, that there are still corners of it that "civilized" humanity has not been able to reach... and that there are people there.
I say, leave these folks alone. Let them be. If they ever decide for themselves that they want to go beyond their present borders, that's their choice to make.
