Too much realism

I still have a few news stories from the weekend to comment on. Christina Aguilera got married to which my local morning news said “Sorry guys she is off the market.” To which I replied, “For the sake of basically all guys out there I would like to thank the guy who jumped on that grenade.” Seriously, I can’t see an attraction her in any way, shape or form. I’ve got to go with the Peter Griffin from Family Guy statement “I find you offensive to all five senses.”

However, it is important to note that she married a record company executive, which just proves my point that I am so in the wrong line of work. Have you ever noticed how many times this happens. Mariah Carey, Shania Twain, every other week some record exec or producer is marrying the new hot voice. That never happens in my job. And unless being able to calculate the present value of a cash flow stream becomes a really, really attractive trait, I really don’t expect it to happen any time soon. Just another example of how the world is conspiring against me.

On a completely different note, there is an incredibly good article on ESPN’s Page 2 about the new Xbox 360. I’d link to it but come on, like I need to give Disney any more income than they already have. Anyway, the entire gist of the article is that as video games have become more and more realistic they have become much less fun to play. We’re at the point now that you can see the stitching on the uniforms but that has actually made the characters become more unreal and more difficult to relate to than 10 years ago.

It’s actually a really interesting question in robotics and graphics. When images are primitive it is actually easier to humanize the images and relate to them. Case in point: Yoda. Which Yoda do you connect more to the brilliantly animated fighting Yoda or the puppet? It’s the puppet by a huge margin. You feel sad in Jedi when Yoda dies, even though you know it is simply a puppet. The animated character, while much more realistic, never has that emotional tie. It’s like that in video games as well. You look at the new generation games and all you notice is how they are not quite human. In the year of my life that was spent playing Dr. J vs. Larry Bird One on One I never asked that question. All I wanted to know was how to shatter the backboard. I really think that this is going to turn into an important point for the gaming industry. We can produce high definition games, the problem is will anyone really want to play them.

I think that is going to be it for the night. The CDs are being made, for those who are still interested. I’ve had a little bit of an issue in the manufacturing process: apparently the plant decided that The Best of Night Ranger took priority over my work. I tried to explain to them that Sister Christian for twelve consecutive tracks technically doesn’t constitute a best of disc but they weren’t buying it. Oh well, seriously if you’re interested let me know. Sharing music will help out my karma. Of course, doing something for good karma is actually bad karma so I’m screwed either way.