The Colonel T Show

(The following piece recounts my eight-hour commute downtown last Thursday, July 26th. About a third of the way through writing it I became frustrated with my progress and I put off finishing it until tonight. This happens to me a lot. The final 2/3rd’s consists of bullet points and a photograph.)

I woke up at 5:00 AM. Something heavy pressed on my chest. A book. Harry Potter. I fumbled for my bookmark, a folded 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper, inserted it, and placed the book next to my laptop bag on the floor.

I stumbled up the basement stairs, grabbed a Dasani, and climbed another flight of stairs to the bedroom. Flipped on the alarm, put two pillows on my head, and went back to sleep. These days I can simply will myself to sleep. Takes about five seconds.

56 minutes later, the alarm. Snooze.

6:09. Alarm. Snooze.

6:18. Alarm. Snooze.

6:27. Alarm. I consider one more snooze, but I then I remember I have a 9:30 class I’m not quite prepared for. Parched. Dasani. Bathroom. Today’s Thursday, a non-shaving day, and for that I’m grateful.

Half an hour later I’m in the Saab, laptop bag and Harry Potter on the passenger seat, and I’m gnawing on a square bagel, pulling out of the driveway. Mike and Mike in the Morning on the radio, although one of the Mikes has the day off. Seems like one of them always has the day off. They don’t have the right to take vacation; it breaks my routine and I’m a man of routine.

Route 38 is a four-lane road that runs east/west, and it’s the road I take daily to the train station. I see the Citgo station in the distance, which means it’s time to turn left. Red light. Backed up traffic. I wanted to make the next left turn light, so I drove onto the berm to sneak into the left hand turn lane.

At which point the Saab just…stopped.

The wheel locked, the dashboard gauges flatlined, the radio went silent. At 7:11 AM, I was dead in space.

My initial thought was…”Oh, I pushed the gas thing too far.” The Saab told me I had a good 40 miles remaining, but how accurate is that, really. (Ironically, one of the Mikes ran out of gas yesterday.) I conferred with Elizabeth via cell phone, and she concurred with my opinion — buy gas.

(Here’s where I got bored writing. The story finishes as follows.)

• Walked to Citgo. Bought a gas can, couldn’t figure out how to open it. Used a key to snap the top off. Gas spilled on my new pants. Fume boy!

• Filled the tank with a gallon of gas, car still wouldn’t start. I reek of petrol.

• Conferred again with Elizabeth, got the 1-800 Saab roadside assistance number. Tow truck arrives within three minutes. Amazing. Tow truck driver is the friendliest tow truck driver I’ve ever met. He’s possibly attracted to me. Creepy. Apparently doesn’t mind the smell of gasoline in his cab.

• En route, I BlackBerry into work — I’m not going to make my class. Nine students weep.

• At the dealership, the Saab guy (Norbert!) asks me three questions. Says he’ll call me when the car is fixed. Within five minutes a guy from Enterprise is taking me to my complimentary rental car.

• The rental is crimson Pontiac Grand Prix. Listen up, and listen well: This car had the most comfortable seat of any car I’ve ever sat in. I described it to my boss as “womb-like”. Lumbar ahoy.

• If I get to the train station by 10:40, I can make that train downtown. I’m making great time, and — nope, I’m stuck behind a freight train. Perfect.

• I get to the station at 10:41. Curses! No matter, there’s an 11:40. I’ll just chill and read some Harry Potter.

• Is there an 11:40? I check my BlackBerry. www.metrarail.com. No…no…NO! There’s a 10:45, which…which…I see leaving the station in my rearview mirror, which I could have been on if I hadn’t been fiddling with my BlackBerry. My luck rocks today. The next train? 12:45.

• I take a walk around the parking lot…to get some air…to stretch my legs. On one of the cars, I see this:
  

• 200 pages later, I’m on the train. 60 more pages and I’m off the train. It’s 1:45.

• The bridge I cross to get to the office is out. Of course.

• 2:00 PM, eight hours later, I’m at my desk. Turns out the car had a broken fuel pump…still under warranty. Total charge: $0.00.

• Fin.

Game: Star Trek: Tactical Assault

System: Nintendo DS (2006)

Genre: Crappy 3-D Space Combat Simulator

Why I Bought It In The First Place: A moment of weakness. Of the hundreds of Star Trek games that have been released, only four would I classify as “Great”. For the curious among you, they are 1) Star Trek 25th Anniversary, 2) Star Trek Judgment Rites, 3) Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, and 4) Star Fleet I: The War Begins (not technically a Star Trek game, but for a ripoff it sure got it right).

Given that there are zero Star Trek games I would classify as “mediocre,” a quick run of the numbers shows any Star Trek game, chosen at random, has a 99.41% chance of “sucking.” I saw Star Trek Tactical Assault come up on my Amazon “Recommended for You” page, and while I knew the game would be awful, I must have been on a second-hand peyote high and bought it anyway. Regret, thy name is Colonel T.

Assorted musings: Countless Star Trek games have tried to tie ship movement to the joystick; IE, “Push up to make the ship go forward! Push left to make the ship turn left!” Hey! Space is three-dimensional! Not in Star Trek Tactical Assault, it’s not. That whole control scheme lends to your starship feeling like a sluggish dogfighter, which completely misses the point. Hey, Sulu didn’t use a joystick! (Insert George Takei joke here — hey, that’s pretty risque of me!) Of course, the ninth Star Trek movie, Insurrection, features Riker piloting the Enterprise via the “manual steering column” (joystick) and now game developers feel totally validated with this design choice.

More Assorted Musings: After years of disappointment, I feel I’m qualified to state definitively why nearly every Star Trek game fails. Most fans imagine the Star Trek universe as a “real” place that they like to imagine living in. Most developers are lazy when it comes to the details of the universe. The problem is Star Trek fans are the most anal retentive people on the planet — they notice EVERYTHING. So you have to get the uniforms right. Get the technology right. For heaven’s sake, get the continuity right. Break the reality, lose the fans. It’s the (forgive me) Prime Directive of Star Trek game development.

Even More Assorted Musings: Star Trek Tactical Assault features neither tactics, nor assaulting. Discuss.

Will I Ever Play This Game Again? I played this game for an hour last December and didn’t pick it up again until last night. Yup! Still lousy! I’m done with it.

Describe It In Five Words Or Less: Starships are not X-Wings.

Score: 3 out of 10 (Extra Point Awarded for William Shatner’s new rendition of the “Space: The Final Frontier” monologue, which he reads over the game’s opening movie. It’s a great reading.)

A few of you have emailed that your recent comments haven’t been posted to the site, and today I found out why. Nearly EVERY comment has been going directly into the “Junk Comments” folder — including MY OWN comments.

(Granted, most of what I write is junk, but really, that’s for me to decide, isn’t it?)

Apparently spambots find my subject matter irresistible. I receive close to 200 junk comments a day, and despite endless tweaking, the filter isn’t smart enough to separate the occasional wheat from the voluminous chaff.

This leads me to something of a drastic measure, a procedure that I have dreaded implementing, but short of changing blogging software it’s about the only option I have left.

When you next go to comment, you’ll be asked to register. The process takes all but thirty seconds, and you only have to do it one time. Make sure you click the “Keep Me Logged In” checkbox and you won’t even have to log in every time; the whole thing will basically work the way it did before. 30 seconds of registration pain will save me hundreds of hours of maintenance over time. I’m totally over-exaggerating, but I crave sympathy and pity.

If you have any problems, questions, or suggestions, email me at timspaeth@gmail.com.

Die spambots, die!

It’s the Day of the Gods!

That means I’ve got 364 days to become the youngest captain in the history of Starfleet. James T. Kirk did it at age 34.

No pressure. No problem. No such thing as Starfleet.

(This is the premiere of my new recurring feature, in which I randomly select a game from my collection and reflect on its place in my life and the universe. I sure could use a name for this feature. Please post your suggestions in the comments section.)

Game: Kid Icarus

System: NES (1987) / Wii Virtual Console (2007)

Genre: 2-D Action Platformer

Why I Bought It In The First Place: Back in the 80’s, if Nintendo Power magazine told me to kill a drifter and trade his corpse for a sack of Alaskan prawn, I’d have done it. Comparatively, buying a recommended game was simple. 20 years later, I downloaded it on the Wii Virtual Console to see how well it’s held up after all these years. Answer: Eh, not great, but it’s still playable.

Assorted musings: In 7th grade, I fancied myself a Greek mythology buff. In retrospect, I was more of a Greek mythology bluffer (witty, huh?). I obnoxiously and perpetually corrected everybody’s pronunciation of the word “Icarus”. It wasn’t until years later I learned I was pronouncing incorrectly; I insisted it was “ih-CAR-us” as opposed to the proper “ih-car-US”. Shameful. Shameful.

More Assorted Musings: Every fourth level of Kid Icarus featured a complex and terrifying dungeon. These dungeons were guarded by grotesque abhorrations known as “Eggplant Wizards.” Armed with, well, eggplants, they would attempt to thwart your progress by throwing, well, eggplants at you. Colliding with an eggplant would transform your upper body into an eggplant, and you’d have to visit a nurse’s station to be cured. (I’ve always wondered why the Dungeon Administrator kept a nurse on-staff. Seems counterproductive.) The eggplants were nigh-impossible to avoid, and I used to spend hours backtracking through dungeons, going from wizard to nurse to wizard in the hope that I might finally sneak past. I hated those Eggplant Wizards. Hated them with a zest I cannot measure. Still do, to this day.

I mention this because one night Elizabeth ordered eggplant at The Olive Garden, and I swear to God I had a panic attack.

Will I Ever Play This Game Again? I seem to remember the last level having really great music (for 1986) so I’ll probably fire it up one more time and see if it holds up.

Describe It In Five Words Or Less: The eggplant is Satan’s vegetable.

Score: 6 out of 10

UPDATE: I’m done with the visual enhancements — the classic banner and font adjustments are complete! Re-read everything!

I’m working on some visual enhancements…such as the return of the classic banner and some font adjustments… expect some formatting oddities until I’m finished.

Like anyone is actually reading this…woe is me. Sympathy and pity! Sympathy and pity!

Visit my Flickr site, and enjoy three months worth of baby pictures. You’ll experience their first birthday, their second Easter, and all-around general cuteness.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/colonelt/

…You can breathe for the first time. How’s it feel?

Some quick hits on what’s been happening the last few months:

• David Hasselhoff, shirtless and drunk, ate a hamburger off the floor. A heartbreaking sight, to be certain, but what struck me most was this: Is that not the least appetizing hamburger you’ve ever seen? Is that what Wendy’s is trying to pass off as a burger these days? It’s all floppy and moist-looking. Dave Thomas died and the whole company went to pieces. You’d have to be drunk to stomach one of those things.

• Hey America, thanks a lot for ruining David Hasselhoff jokes. For years –YEARS — Hasselhoff mockery was my dominion solely. Now, even toddlers are all “The Hoff” this and “The Hoff” that. He belongs to mainstream pop culture now, and that’s no fun for me. Sure, I can craft a great Dirk Benedict barb, but it’s nowhere near as effective.

• Bob Barker ended his 35-year run as host of The Price is Right. I had the special opportunity to watch his last show with my mom, who introduced me to the show as a baby causing my first words to be “Bob Barker”. Bob gave a classy sendoff, offering a regular show with only some brief farewell remarks at the end. I was disappointed at the pricing game selection, however; indeed one of them amounted to “Guess Which of These Two Prices Is Correct.” Lame! Bob’s last show, and they pick that over “Cliff Hangers” or “Clock Game” or — for heaven’s sake — “Hole in One (or Two)”?

• As of April 1st, we are officially homeowners. Our neighbors are, on one side, two ex-Navy officers, and on the other side, a family where the husband is restoring a car in his garage. Bam, right there, I’m the least manly guy by about 800%. (Not helping matters was the electric lawnmower we bought just after moving in. We used it twice and I returned it; doesn’t that count for something? Good lord, have I taken flack for that purchase.)

  The car restorer is a very friendly guy, and I met him the day after we moved in. I could tell he very badly wanted me to be a car guy, and I hated to disappoint him. Within minutes he was talking about the Corvette (or Camaro? Dunno.) he’s working on. The conversation went something like this:

  NEIGHBOR: So weekends you’ll probably see me working on my baby — That’s a ‘72 Corvette in the garage. Right now I’m getting the torque ratios tweaked; you know the ’72’s engine block was a different form factor than the ‘73 — you wouldn’t think it’d affect the axle differential, but geez, it’s a real bear.

  ME (pointing at the Corvette): Red car.

  NEIGHBOR: Huh? Yeah, she’s a beaut. Not the original paint, obviously. ‘Bout a year ago I applied a clearcoat to replace that orange peel effect. A lot a people think that only happened to the early nineties models, but I’ll tell you, I had to do a full sanding, compounding, and polishing to get her looking the way she does now. Still not quite done, but we’ll get her there.

  ME: Uh. Say, are those the original headlights?

  And it went downhill from there. Sure, I could have told the guy the extent of my car biography; that I named my Mustang after a game show host and that I actually think it’s alive, but it was only my second day in the neighborhood — why set myself up as the “weird guy” so soon? Plenty of time for that.

• PantsQuest! ended. Since a PantsQuest! article was at the top of this page for three months, I suppose I should tell you the results. Elizabeth did indeed donate my special khaki pants to Goodwill, which completely shattered my inspiration, sending me on three-month diet of cupcakes and saki. HOWEVER, when we did the final weigh-out last month, my weight dropped from 227 to 219, a loss of eight pounds. Not sure how that happened, given I don’t look any thinner, and my pants don’t fit any better — if anything they fit worse.

• Sabs, of Evening with Sabs, is having another baby. This one will be a girl. Congratulations to him, his wife, and their son Nathan, who I had the pleasure of finally meeting when I was in Ohio last month. Nathan and either Madeline or Molly kissed goodbye at the end of that meeting, and it freaked me out a little bit. I’m sure Sabs was all “Oh, yeah, Nathan!” but just you wait until you have a girl, mister. Overprotection ahoy! (PS – I predict the genders of Sabs’ next three children will be “Boy, Girl, Boy” in that order.)

• I still love tequila and tequila-based drinks. No change there, for those of you concerned.

• Summer Movie Roundup. Spider-Man 3: Horrible. Transformers: Awesome. Still haven’t seen Fantastic Four 2: Return of Fantastic Four.

• If you actually still check this blog periodically, I thank you.