Café Christina

Vox still isn't working properly for me, so I haven't been blogging lately. I can't edit any posts, but I've been in touch  back and forth through email with Six Apart customer service and hopefully we can figure out just what's going on.

I have things I'd like to write about that have been clogging my brain for the past couple of weeks. Such that I may write some entries anyway, with the hope that if they do need any editing later, that I might be back to using a functional system soon. I'd hate to have to shift my entire blog over somewhere else, though it may be something I'll look into if absolutely necessary.

I can't seem to edit any posts nor reply to any comments. Is there something going on with Vox?

If there's one place I tend to see a lot of ridiculous advice filled with stereotypes, it's in dating advice pieces. When I go to check my email over at Hotmail, the start screen usually links to one or two. If I'm bored enough and the titles sound suitably ridiculous, I might read them just to see what kind of awful advice is given within. Today's links represent very common pearls of pseudo wisdom on offer in these types of articles.

While I admire the fact that MSN's Dating section seemingly strives to have articles addressing both the male and female side of each topic they've chosen to highlight, often these pieces simply fall back upon tired cliché. Today's advice is one piece on five places never to take a man on a date, and five places never to bring a woman.

Right away, I expected some stereotypes, but these pieces really came through on that front.

From the "Don't take a woman here!" piece:

• Sports bars
• Theme parks
• Chain restaurants
• Gross-out comedies
• Paintball
• Meeting your mother

Who is this woman kidding? One of the best dates I've ever had took place partly at a TGIFriday's, where my boyfriend specially requested a table from where I could see the TVs over the bar and be able to keep up now and then with my baseball team in the playoffs that night. Even though he hates baseball.

Theme parks? Says who? I know several women who'd love to go to a theme park. I've been to Disney World four times. I've been to Disneyland Paris, which is actually also a popular date destination for French youths. If my guy took me to a theme park, I'd have fun. It's certainly different and cute. It isn't patronizing like this writer makes it sound.

Paintball would be fun! Not as a first date, but if you're together for a while, it's certainly something different to get in the trenches and have a bit of friendly competition. I find that friendly competition with each other creates sexual tension, and that's often rewarded very nicely later.

Gross-out comedies? It depends on what you mean. I'm far more disturbed and grossed out by horror films. Comedies, if they're good, are fun. Maybe men and women have somewhat different general preferences, but we are still human and share a whole lot more than we differ on.

"Meeting your mother" is misleading. The writer talks about spending copious amounts of time with the man's mother. Who wants to spend copious amounts of time with your significant other (male or female)'s parents, especially on a date? This one is nonsensical.

Saying one should "never" take a woman to these places is so ridiculous. Do you know what might lead to an increased chance of dating success? Knowing your date's interests. My boyfriend knew that I loved baseball, and when he asked for that table with the view of the game, he showed me that. Someone who takes the time to get to know me would also know that I enjoy theme parks and am casual about all sorts of movies.

Overall, the writer of this piece just comes off as shallow, sexist, snobby, and extremely prissy. Maybe you might be, Nicole Kristal, but the majority of women are not.

Part II tomorrow.

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been busy with a few things, but I always come back to writing.

Made these for my boyfriend's birthday last month:

Picture037.jpg

Yes, they're cupcakes made to look like 1up
mushrooms from Mario games. I borrowed the idea from a shirt over at ThinkGeek. I figured 1up suited a birthday. My boyfriend told me he wanted to keep it low key, and didn't want a big cake (which I've made for him before), so I considered cupcakes a loophole. Luckily, he found the whole thing cute and liked them.

Truth is, I'd planned them a couple of weeks earlier, and I was very happy with the way they came out. I didn't do a practice run, and nor had I ever made this recipe before, but everything was amazingly good. They all disappeared in less than a day!

Picture035.jpg

The recipe for these cupcakes is here. I have a standing request from my boyfriend's mother to make her some now. She asked him to ask me for them after she tried mine. It's cute. I plan to make some, probably this week, and decorate them with little yellow flowers. Something springlike awaits.

Otherwise, not much notable has happened. Been reading and writing a lot lately. Both for fun and professional reasons. Looked into the possibility of going to J-School. Trying to get more of my writing out there as well as nurse a business idea I've been hatching lately.

I logged into MySpace today to find that they had begun listing AMBER Alerts on user home pages upon login. I took a look at the listing and noticed something.

Skin Color: Hispanic

We're a society that needs to categorize everything into easily digestible bits. Perhaps this is just one of our human characteristics. But the last time I checked, "Hispanic" wasn't a color. There is no listing for race under this child's description, and I suppose they would have put Hispanic under that listing had there been one. That wouldn't have been right either, as Hispanic is not a race, but an ethnic category.

Our skin colors range from the palest to the darkest. We may be of any race. This is something that I'm still amazed some people don't know. We are not all a certain stereotypical shade of brown. We are White, Black, Asian, and anything else under the sun. There is no one "Hispanic" skin color. It isn't a color to begin with. I wasn't sure if the designation there on the alert was a product of confusion or simple ignorance.

While I applaud the growing inclusion of Latinos in the American collective awareness, there's obviously still a great distance to go. Most people's images of us don't necessarily mesh with the reality of just how diverse a group we truly are. On television, we are either Ugly Betty or Dora the Explorer. What about someone like Edith González? Sammy Sosa? The range of Latino faces is so vast and rich.

Edith_gonzalez

Show us a beverage you absolutely can't stand the taste of.

Picture 123

Mass Effect PC

When a console to PC port arrives with issues like poor optimization or a lack of graphical upgrades, this is naturally, disappointing. Bioware's Matt Atwood, in an interview over at Eurogamer, insists that the upcoming May PC release of Mass Effect will be different:

"We get questions about if we're going to do new content [for the PC version], but what's the real value there? The game is so robust with this content. What makes the most sense is to focus on making the keyboard customisable, increasing the visuals, making the controls very natural and add things like squad commands and hot-keys for Shepard's biotic powers and weapons; make those things that, honestly, when people make ports they just don't do. They just get it going and that's it. And that's not what BioWare's about."

No new PC-exclusive content is a bit of a bummer, but the rest is still good news. He also touches upon downloadable content planned for both the PC and the Xbox 360:

"We obviously know more than we're ready to talk about, just to be completely honest with you. But I think you'll see more planets, I think you'll potentially see more races - you're going to see really great content."

If you'd like more on the newer, shinier side of Mass Effect, the rest of the interview, along with the accompanying PC screenshot gallery should whet your appetite.

I seem to discover music long after everyone else does. I don't know if I have an aversion to buzz or what.

I've just started listening to Amy Winehouse, and I understand much of the praise.

During Funcom's GDC presentation, Game Director Gaute Godager responded to a reporter's question about player-versus-player combat, and the problem of ganking with a potentially worrisome solution: Don't join a PvP server.

Depending upon your point of view, this is either the most logical thing in the world or a complete cop out. Godager's statements reflect what seems to be a complete free-for-all option on these servers. At least several months ago, it seemed that there would be safeguards in place to prevent players of very high levels from attacking or engaging players of much lower levels. The rules appear to have changed, and PvP, while in some cases restricted to within designated areas, seems to be open to a large problem with griefing.

Most MMO players know that griefing can be extremely frustrating to deal with, especially in the lower levels. These cyber bullies can even turn players off from renewing their subscriptions. So why make this decision? It seems the vocal members of the PvP audience, in many instances on the official community forums, figured that if the game were aiming for realistic, violent, and mature combat, then it might as well be "realistic" in this aspect as well. Thus, as the game currently stands, a bored level 80 may attack and kill a level 25 without consequence.

I'm not a big PvPer. I engage with friends or guildmates, or occasionally one on one when I'm in the mood. The promised rules blocking high level characters from ganging up on low levels represented the one thing making the possibility of playing on a PvP server remotely tolerable. I don't want other people to dictate how I spend my game time or be allowed to ruin my fun via griefing. If my character has a fair shot of beating someone, then that is tolerable on a PvP server. But to allow free-for-all attacks is just inviting trouble. Bad decision, Funcom.

Tlmbwylogosmall

    The musical begins as the film does, with the song "Fathoms Below," with some new lyrics added and minor changes made. The staging of Prince Eric's ship on the water is incredibly well done. This set piece hangs in the center of the stage, while waves made of some sort of glass or plastic stir about. When the song is done, the ship moves upward on those "waves", and disappears, leaving us with a gentle blue lighting scheme, and our introduction to the undersea world. The song here is "Daughters of Triton," also extended with some new lyrics, and it is the first time we meet King Triton (Norm Lewis), Sebastian, and Ariel's six elder sisters. This is also the scene in which I first felt weird about the production. when coming onto the scene for the number, aside from Lewis, the actors were skating.

    My first thought was that it looked like something out of Disney on Ice. And they continued to skate, to simulate the gliding motion of swimming. In fact, everyone who plays an underwater denizen in this musical, with the exception of Sherie René Scott, who plays Ursula, skates. It's very weird at first, but after a few moments, the fluidity of the whole thing grabs hold. Though sometimes now and then you notice that they're skating again. What ran through my head at the time was that this show would never have been possible if Heelys were not invented.

    Going in, I'd read only that the show had mixed reviews, but I hadn't read up too much on the production design, because I wanted the experience to be as fresh as possible for me. I didn't know about the skating beforehand, and so it was a bit jarring. What I'd expected was more harness work (which the show does include), but as I mentioned, eventually the whole skating thing melts away for the most part.

    The costumes were the first thing I noticed after the skating, and they are delightful. They require one to suspend disbelief to some degree when it comes to tails and Sebastian's crab limbs, but somehow, it all just works beautifully. They are inspired and whimsical. The only costume I had a problem with was Flounder's. They didn't seem to know what to do with him, placing the young actor in a yellow t-shirt with blue spots on it, yellow shorts, bright yellow Heelys, topping it off with his hair sprayed blue.

    Anyhow, after the "Daughters of Triton" scene, we are finally introduced to Ariel (Sierra Boggess) in a new song, "The World Above". And what a perfect Ariel she is, from the look down to the voice, she makes this role all her own. Her acting, gestures, and vocal tone are all flawless. Her signature song, "Part of Your World", is turned into a stripped down, much more subtle affair than its film counterpart. She is alone in this staging, and she carries it beautifully, with sparkling emotion and power. She's really quite the discovery.

    This production makes sure to give every character his or her time to shine. Ursula, who already has "Poor Unfortunate Souls" to belt out deviously, gets a new showstopper, the campy "I Want the Good Times Back", in which Sherie René Scott chews scenery with the best of them. Her characterization and strong voice seize control and she steals every moment she's on the stage. I particularly loved how she brought a real freshness and originality to her role. It would have been an easy path and a big mistake to attempt to imitate Pat Carroll's style. This Ursula is a little bit Noo Yawk, a little bit Vegas showgirl. My only minor quibble with her performance was that it was a bit too brief. The way she meets her end leaves her nowhere near as threatening or evil as she could have been. The Vanessa subplot from the movie was scrapped (unnecessarily), and she never turns into a larger than life scary villain.

    Instead, Scuttle gets several songs. I like that they let him have some extra time (and Eddie Korbich is very good), but the silly song "Positoovity" could have been scrapped for more substantial things, like extended Ursula time. There is also an inexplicable reprise of "Under the Sea" right after the song itself finishes. This feels like a weird type of padding. That song is supposed to end suddenly, and Sebastian is to notice Ariel is gone. Instead, he just remains oblivious while they tread through more song and dance for another minute or two. Pacing fails a bit here, and that time could have been spent in a much better way. The later "Les Poissons (Reprise)" is handled much better and actually serves to move the plot along.

    However, Prince Eric (Sean Palmer) gets two absolutely lovely numbers. "Her Voice", whose melody is partly based on "Part of Your World", and "One Step Closer", whose melody is based upon the film's instrumental track "Jig", originally used in the party ship scene. Little touches like these being included made the film fan in me fall even more in love with this production. Other peripheral characters like Flotsam and Jetsam even get a song, and the happy, Motown-esque "She's in Love" showcases Ariel's sisters and Flounder in a fun extension of a short scene from the film.

    Of the new material, "Beyond My Wildest Dreams" is the highlight for me. It is sung by Sierra Boggess from the point of view of inside Ariel's mind after she's taken to Eric's castle after being rendered silent by Ursula's spell. The sheer childlike excitement of the lyrics, Boggess' performance, and the sweet, flighty vocals are a real form of magic. No wonder I've been listening to it constantly since the other night. "If Only" is a touching quartet, characteristic of classic Broadway, and it made me cry.

    Overall, however, my excitement was not unwarranted. The acts are slightly uneven, but when everything works, it works incredibly well. There are some notable differences from my beloved film, but this is a beautiful one in its own way.