Itty Bitty Bumper Boats

Shrunken tourists at West Edmonton Mall.

Canada Day 2005 in Miniature

A "small" crowd showed up for the Barenaked Ladies concert on Canada Day, 2005.

Honey, I Shrunk the Car

In 2006, I brought Sylvia on a road trip to Leaf Rapids, Manitoba. The shrinking car phenomenon was not the strangest part of that journey.

The (Really) Little Church

In 1981, my grade six class went to Drumheller for a field trip. We saw the famed Little Church, and I took this photo from atop a hill. Thanks to tilt-shift trickery, now the church really does look little.

Mini Honolulu

Here's a far more convincing example of the tilt-shift process. I actually shot this from a helicopter over Honolulu, but it looks as if you could reach down and play with the miniature buildings and boats.

The Earliad in Miniature

Tilt-shift photography creates an illusion that reduces life-size scenes to the scale of model railways. Here's an example I created by using the tools at tiltshiftmaker.com:



They may look like toys, but that's our camper and my grandparents' farmhouse circa the early 1970s.

The technique seems to work best when photo subjects are at middle to long distance.

Trek Bowl

According to TrekMovie, an ad for the new Star Trek movie will air during this year's Super Bowl. Now I'm faced with a real conundrum: do I sit through three or four hours of sports on the off-chance of seeing some new footage from the film? There's a good chance they might just air the same old trailer. On the other hand, Super Bowl ads are famous for their cleverness - what if Paramount comes up with something really cool?

Ay ay ay. What to do, what to do? I suppose the ad will run on the Internet the next day, anyway...

2 II or not 2 II...II

(Notice the irony in the title of this post...)

In response to a comment on the last post, here's how I might retitle parts II and III of the Back to the Future films:

Escape from the Future
Back to the Ranch

The Rambo films had an odd titling sequence. The first film is First Blood, followed by Rambo: First Blood Part II, followed by Rambo III, followed by Rambo.

How about...

First Blood
Rambo's Revenge
Blood of Patriots (the ham-handed flag-waving and violence in this film has to be seen to be believed - I think this title really suits it)
Last Blood (I haven't seen Rambo, but judging by the previews, this film looks bloodier than the first three films combined. Last Blood gives the film the ghoulish finality I imagine it needs.)

To be fair, there are plenty of good sequel titles out there. I was quite tickled by the irreverent Live Free or Die Hard, and I've always loved Scream, Blacula, Scream.

2 II or not 2 II?

I watched French Connection II a couple of days ago, and it occurred to me that it might be the earliest incidence of a Roman numeral being appended to a sequel. I think Quatermass 2 might be the first numbered sequel, period.

Personally, I prefer the James Bond approach when it comes to sequels - a unique name for each film. Imagine if the producers had gone the other route, and Dr. No had been called James Bond, followed by James Bond II, III, etc. James Bond XXII doesn't look nearly as good on a marquee as Quantum of Solace. Everyone understands that Chinatown and The Two Jakes are connected narratives; how lame would Chinatown II have been? It sounds like a new subdivision.

Sometimes a numbered sequel makes sense. Not only was Quatermass 2 the second film in the series, it's also the name of a rocket in the film, Quatermass' second ship. Robocop 2 employed a similar conceit.

But French Connection II is, well, just a convenient, marketing-friendly name for the sequel to a popular film. This is how it goes with a lot of sequels - tack a number after a brand, and bam, you're good to go. Sometimes it makes sense, but other times you wind up with abominations such as 2 Fast 2 Furious or TR2N. (How do you even say that? "Tr-too-n?"?)

Take the Superman films. Superman was followed with II, III and IV, subtitled The Quest for Peace. Superman is at least as recognizable as James Bond - there's no excuse for lazy titles like these.

Superman II featured three Kryptonian bad guys who survived the explosion of Krypton thanks to Superman's dad, who had thrown them into the Phantom Zone (read: "space jail") before the planet blew up. So in a sense, Jor-El was a father-figure not just to Superman, but to the three villains; he gave them deliverance from doom, if accidentally.

The three villains dressed in black for the entire film, and they had all of Superman's amazing powers. However, being villains, they used their powers for evil. Superman II could have been called, say, Dark Legacy, and marketed thusly, aping the Bond style:

"He saved his only son from a doomed planet..."



"But Earth's greatest champion wasn't Jor-El's only legacy..."



"Christopher Reeve is Superman - the Man of Steel - in Richard Donner's..."

"DARK LEGACY"

In French Connection II, Popeye Doyle, the protaganist of the first film, continues his obsessive pursuit of an elusive French drug lord. Doyle steamrollers over all opposition to pursue his goal, but on the way he winds up getting hooked on heroin himself. Since the film is about obsession, and the drug comes in the form of white powder, the film could have been called White Whale, with a nice double meaning.

In Superman III, Clark returns to Smallville, rekindles an old romance, and faces (of course) kryptonite. If the producers could have seen the future, they could have stolen a great episode title from Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - "The Green, Green Glow of Home."

What about films that take their titles from TV shows? Star Trek is the first example that comes to mind, and the first film in its big-screen series was called Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

That is a terrible name for a movie - at least from an artistic perspective. The original story was called "In Thy Image," an evocative title that would have been a far better fit for the film's ponderous dignity. At the very least, they should have just called it Star Trek - we know it's a motion picture, there's no need to hit us over the head with the information. At least the new movie is going that route. (But then, what choice did they have? Were they going to call it Star Trek: The New Motion Picture?)

Sequel or not, a film's title is an integral part of the work, as important to the feel of the piece as any other facet of the art. I wish more producers would recognize that.

Mr. Woods Goes to Metropolis

As chronicled in Superman #359 (May, 1981), I was once compelled to fight Superman with my awesome psionic abilities. But with my mind addled, I didn't stand much of a chance. Here's the whole battle (click to embiggen!):



Strangely enough, if I had psionic abilities, this is probably exactly how I would approach a battle with Superman - with goofy dialogue, a silly costume and jousting.

I Don't See the (French) Connection

Actually, I just finished watching 1971's Best Picture. It's unlikely I can add any new critical insights to a well-regarded, thoroughly analyzed film that's nearly 40 years old, but one thing struck me; the music sounds like it belongs to a different kind of movie, perhaps a Hammer horror film, something with Ingrid Pitt and Christopher Lee.

The music is pretty minimalist - just an eerie, sustained tone or two whenever there's a need to build suspense. Just an unsettling "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..." as Gene Hackman hunts through an abandoned building with his gun drawn, or when he spots someone suspicious across a crowded room. It sets up a disturbing dissonance, and I can't decide if it's a matter of directorial intent or an artifact of the times that doesn't play today the way it did in the early 1970s.

It's possible that the unsettling music is meant to comment on Popeye Doyle's mental state. He's an obsessive type, who doesn't seem to care how many innocents are hurt during his relentless pursuit of...I was going to say justice, but Doyle's motivations are never really fleshed out. He pursues criminals because he's a policeman, seemingly without any thought of higher ideals. When he accidentally kills a fellow policeman near the end of the film, he expresses no remorse whatsoever. When he regards suspicious citizens, he looks at them with the eyes of a predator, and the music seems to paint Doyle as a dangerous creature.

And yet, this film doesn't attempt to reverse the typical good/evil dynamic. The cops might be rough around the edges, but the villains cause enough mayhem to justify (in the mind of the audience) the brutal police response.

The music doesn't seem so out of place when you consider the world in which the characters live. It's a dangerous, dirty place, full of world-weary cops and ruthless criminals. Ordinary citizens barely figure into the film at all, and when they do, they are almost always victims.

Perhaps The French Connection is a horror movie after all...

Remember Wrong-Way Feldman?

Wrong-Way Feldman, of course, was the famous aviator who made two accidental trips to Gilligan's Island, and failed to rescue the castaways both times. He was an inept navigator.



I was driving down the one-way section of 118th avenue today, returning from a New Year's brunch at Michael and Naomi Snyder's place. And lo and behold...what's this? That 18-wheeler...it's...it's going the wrong way, a la Goggles Paisano! The Amish casserole I'd just eaten gurgled menacingly as I gaped in disbelief.



I gulped as the vehicle bore down upon me, like the malevolent trucker in Duel. Was this the end of Earl J. Woods?



Well, no. As you can see here, the truck was actually being towed backwards.

The Promise of a Better Tomorrow

Sylvia and I rang in the new year by wearing these silly hats and playing two games of Settlers of Catan (Cities & Knights expansion). Both games were very close, and we won one each. Sylvia sure is competitive...

Things I'd like to do this year:

1) Finish "Journey to the Edge of Nowhere."
2) Visit friends in Vancouver and Victoria.
3) Write and sell something with my name on it.
4) Buy a recliner and/or sectional.
5) Relax on said furniture and read the Harry Potter books. (No spoilers, please!)
6) Watch the new Star Trek film in IMAX on opening night.
7) Host some board game/wine and cheese/bad movie nights at our place.
8) Work out. Seriously. It's getting ridiculous.
9) Build my bookshelves.
10) Post at least 100 times to this blog - hopefully with content worth reading rather than the usual filler.
11) Take a photography course.
12) Take a graphic design course.

I'll post when I accomplish each of these mighty quests! Not a bad project for 2009.

2008: The Year in Review (Or: Why Earl Hasn't Been Blogging)

Yes, this is how old I was the last time I blogged...



2008 has been a weird, wacky year. In late January, the Alberta Liberals asked me to run in the provincial election - in Premier Stelmach's constituency of Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville, no less.

The Premier chose not to show up for our debate.

With little preparation and only a few thousand dollars to spend, I was realistic about my chances. But my family and friends really came through for me, Sylvia most of all, and I treasure the experience. In the end, I lost by a mere (cough) 10,000 votes or so.



And of course, the Alberta Liberals lost the March 3rd election by an even wider margin. (This photo of us watching the results come in ran in the Edmonton Sun. They really captured the moment...) For the last few months, we've been dusting ourselves off, figuring out what went wrong, and doing our best to serve as responsible opposition. That's what public service is all about.



One good thing happened on March 3rd - Sylvia started her new job. And she's performed superbly thus far. Sylvia is a very dedicated public servant doing important work for the Alberta Pensions Administration Corporation, and I couldn't be prouder of her.



Losing the election also meant I had the freedom to attend Gaming & Guiness III over at Steve Fitzpatrick's place...unfortunately, I wound up with a horrifying headache just a few hours into the fun. The rest of the gang had a good time, though, geeking it up with tiny armies of orcs, trolls, and space beasties.



Norma and Claire, who served as Sylvia's bridesmaids at our wedding, presented us with an evening at the Fantasyland Hotel as a wedding present, and we finally took advantage of the opportunity in April. Huge hot tub!




Later in April, I was seized by a bout of temporary madness and attempted to combine two of my favourite board games - Bruce Lee Game! and Zombies!!! - into one mighty epic, Bruce Lee vs. Zombies.

"What the hell? I can't possibly win, even if I roll all tens!"

With typical eloquence, Mike expresses his opinion of my creation.

Playtesting did not go well. There's a reason that professional game designers exist. Oh well - it was nice to see Colin again, anyway - he made several trips back to Edmonton this year.



In June, the University of Alberta Press launched a collection of Lois Hole's speeches, edited by political writer Mark Lisac. I couldn't be happier with how the book turned out - Mark did a superb job. Bruce Keith, my old colleague at Hole's, was kind enough to send me a couple of shots of the event.



A couple of times a year, Sean and I visit our parents to annoy them with shenanigans, and Sylvia tags along to watch with stunned bemusement.



And then there was Pete, and his sinister list.



Sylvia's dad celebrated his 65th birthday this year, so we went over and jammed. I cannot actually play guitar, which is why I'm not posting the video. Mr. Boucher is very good, though.



Yolande came back from her studies in Ottawa to visit, and Sylvia and I enjoyed a delightful lunch with her. She's such a sweetheart, and she's going to be a great journalist.



Along with the election, the biggest event for Sylvia and I was our first anniversary, which we celebrated with a trip to Honolulu. By bizarre coincidence, presidential candidate Barack Obama arrived for a vacation of his own just a few hours after we did. So, acting on impulse, Sylvia and I braved the heat and the crowds and wound up just a couple of metres away from Obama at the one and only rally he'd give during that visit. It was quite an experience. The man's an incredible orator, and it was fun picking out Secret Service agents.



Of course, there was a price to pay. It wouldn't be a real Earl vacation without an agonizing case of sunstroke.



We also took a submarine voyage. Here's Sylvia on the sub deck, preparing to board. We only went 100 feet or so below the surface, but it was still pretty cool - especially when the sub made that "ah--OOOOO-ga" sound and the pilot shouted "Dive, dive dive!" It had all the makings of a James Cameron epic. I got a kick out of the very excitable Japanese tourist, who shouted in rapid-fire wonder, waving his arms over his head at the sight of the artificial reefs, tropical fish and giant turtles.





Sylvia enjoyed playing on the beach most of all. She's so tiny that the waves tossed her around like flotsam (or is it jetsam?). I had to rescue her a few times, and she wound up with so much sand in her ears that a post-vacation trip to the doctor's office was necessary. "I've never seen anything like this in my entire practice," the doctor said, laughing as she flushed the pebbles out of Sylvia's ears. "Oh my God, Sylvia. Oh my God. What were you doing?"



On August 11th - the actual date of our first anniversary - we attended a luau. The food was merely okay, but the entertainment was great. Those fire dancers are pretty awe-inspiring.







Like good tourists, we also splurged on a helicopter tour. The views were beautiful, but I was most interested in the history - it was quite something to see Pearl Harbour from the air, and to follow the route the Japanese Zeroes took during their 1941 sneak attack. And of course, I was thrilled to witness pop-culture touchstones such as the dock the SS Minnow departed from (seen above) as well as Gilligan's Island itself, and the forests of Lost and Jurassic Park.





Our hotel had a great little restaurant - I loved the virgin strawberry daquiries, and drank them up like liquid candy. Delicious.





On our last day, I took a quick solo tour of Pearl Harbour and downtown Honolulu. The USS Arizona memorial was a quiet, sombre place, as you might expect, so it was a good thing that I ended the trip with some Hawaii Five-O shooting locations.



Our parents and my brother came over for Thanksgiving for food and Wii bowling. Mom turned out to be pretty good, which isn't surprising given her real-world bowling experience. According to family legend, she once cast a strike in the wrong lane.



We celebrated Sylvia's 40th birthday in October, and this unidentified young woman joined in the revelry. Sylvia's blue hair was clearly a big hit.



On Halloween, Sean was attacked by a miniature skeleton. Oooo, scary!



In December, Albertans (at least those who were paying any attention) learned that Dr. David Swann would take over from Dr. Kevin Taft as leader of the Alberta Liberals. David Swann is a wonderful man, a terrific human being, and I have high hopes for his leadership. A warm, gentle, and overwhelmingly compassionate man, David is the kind of person that makes you proud to be an Albertan.

Kevin Taft made me proud, too, and Albertans owe him a great debt. Kevin took on the toughest job in Canadian politics, rebuilt a party that had been on life support, and led the official opposition with integrity and honour. He would have been a great premier, and I feel deeply privileged to have worked for him. Thankfully he's staying on as MLA for Edmonton-Riverview for at least this term, so Albertans will still benefit from his insight and dedication.



And of course, there was Christmas. A new tradition is developing: Sylvia's parents visit for Christmas Eve, then we head to my parents' place for Christmas day. Always a pleasant way to end another spin around the sun.




Santa Sean





May 2009 be a year of peace and fulfillment for you and yours and all the citizens of Earth.

The Annex

I co-wrote and directed this video, prepared for last night's Legislature Press Gallery Christmas party. After a couple of weeks of hard work and stress, I wasn't at all sure whether or not the crowd of MLAs and reporters would like it, so I was very relieved when people laughed at all the right spots - and quite enthusiastically. My coworkers told me that Premier Stelmach, Health Minister Ron Liepert, and a number of reporters and broadcasters all had very nice things to say.

Whew. I was worried, because the video I prepared in 2006 was, frankly, terrible.

There are a few inside jokes here, since the video was directed at MLAs and members of the media, but there are still some chuckles for the wider Alberta audience.

I'm very grateful to Amanda Krumins, who came up with the idea of parodying The Office, to Kim Dewar, who acted as cinematographer, to Derek Volker, who handled the props and music, and to the Alberta Liberal MLAs and Alberta Liberal leadership candidate Mo Elsalhy, who were such good sports about the whole thing.

I'm most grateful to Kevin Taft, who provided the hobbyhorses and indeed the idea for the hobbyhorse scene. Kevin's self-effacing sense of humour really shines here.

Chicken Surprise

We ordered a chicken and wing meal last night. Tonight I opened up the box again, anticipating leftovers...and discovered that one of the chicken wings had a bonus: a breaded, lemon-spiced chicken foot attached and ready to eat.

Suddenly vegetarianism doesn't look so bad.

Ridley Scott's Board Runner

Ridley Scott will direct a feature film adaptation of Monopoly, the board game.

I suppose there's a chance that the famed director of Blade Runner and Alien could pull this off, but frankly, it sounds idiotic.

I envision a Cannonball Run-style chase movie, with the lead characters (dog, iron, thimble, top hat, Mountie, etc.) in pursuit of Mr. Moneybags.

I suppose Johnny Depp will relish the challenge of playing the thimble, or perhaps the top hat. Is Benji still alive? He/she can play the dog. Jeremy Irons would play the iron, of course. Benton Fraser would play the Mountie, who would at some point quip, "Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200." Delivered with wry irony and a wink.

Characters will bankrupt themselves in an attempt to buy up all the property in the city, searching for Mr. Moneybags' buried treasure, which will, of course, wind up buried under Boardwalk. Or perhaps Baltic Ave. for irony.

In the end, the characters will realize that they're all playing pieces in some twisted game of fate, and will eschew their capitalistic fever.

Admiral Adama will cameo at the end with a cryptic, "It's a shame she won't pass go and collect $200. But then again...who does?"

Tagline: On Park Place, no one can hear you scream.

Kevin Taft's Farewell Tribute

I'm a little late posting this, but several weeks ago I had the honour of assembling a tribute video for Kevin Taft, outgoing Leader of the Official Opposition, and his wife, Jeanette Boman. You can see the video here. It's at the centre bottom of the front page.

Emotional Fallout

Preppie 2 was the first computer game to evoke an emotional response from me. I played it at my cousin Darwin's place, on his Atari 800. The game was a variation of Pac-Man, only instead of eating dots in a maze and avoiding ghosts, you painted the floors of a sorority house and avoided giant frogs.

The game's music, graphics and sense of humour gave it a whimsical, innocent charm that I adored. At the time I thought to myself, "This is what's wonderful about human culture."

That was more than twenty years ago. Today, I'm about halfway through Fallout 3, the much-ballyhooed post-nuclear roleplaying game, the third, as you may have guessed, in a series.

Fallout 3 is a bleak game, played out on the ruined, atomic-scarred landscape of an apocalyptic Washington DC. Ruined junk and debris are scattered across the landscape, and feral dogs and mutated insects hunger for your flesh. People are uniformly impoverished; bottlecaps serve as cash, and old vacuum cleaners, tools and even tin cans are valuable. Everyone is armed, frightened, and pessimistic.

And yet there's a melancholy beauty to be had in this game. The 50s aesthetic, however rusted-out and radiation-soaked, has an irresistable appeal. Rocketship-themed gas stations and Nuka-Cola vending machines dot the landscape. Faded propaganda posters brighten up crumbling walls. Old computer records, books and notes paint a picture of a happier time. Surviving radio broadcasts play popular hits of the 40s and 50s - particularly "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire," by the Inkspots, an ironic counterpoint to this world's fate.

It's a violent game. In my search for my father, I've had to kill over 60 people so far, and hundreds of mutated monsters (the game keeps track). And even though my victims are pixels, not people, I feel deeply saddened. For in a world like this, every life is precious.

More than anything else, Fallout 3 reminds me exactly how much we have to lose. The Washington of our world is home to incredible architecture, priceless archives, great works of art - and of course, millions of human beings. Now multiply that by all the thousands of cities across the globe, each with equal value.

I grew up living with the fear that a nuclear holocaust would destroy all that. In the 1990s, that fear faded away. We seem to be facing a more gradual catastrophe these days.

But Fallout 3 reminds me that all manner of self-inflicted horrors could yet be unleashed on humanity. I hope we're wise enough to play out our violent impulses in the virtual world, rather than the real one. The world of Fallout is a fun place to visit - and every second I play, it shows me how lucky I am to live in a world still brimming with life.