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The Muppets

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Seeing The Muppets a few weeks back was truly a trip back to my childhood, with a nice modern aspect. But, let’s start at the beginning.

First, is the Toy Story “Short” that prefixed the movie. In a word, wonderful. In fact, the short was nearly worth the price of admission all on it’s own. It was humorous, cute, and all and all, enjoyable. I guess there was another Toy Story short before Cars 2, but as a fellow reviewer said here, “No interest” (Cars is probably my least favorite Pixar movie).

So to the movie, The Muppets. It was extremely enjoyable. Funny, cute, and a great trip back to the glory days of the muppets. The story is told from a “Muppet” who was raised in a normal family, who loved the Muppets, and gets a chance to travel to Hollywood to see Muppet Studios, etc. The story progresses from there, and we see the far distant Muppets rejoined for a story that ends up smelling a bit like UHF (telethon to raise enough money to save the station, only without Michael Richards), and the story ends up being “Be true to yourself, or be there for someone else”. Singing is there (and presented much like it was in Enchanted, there it seems perfectly natural, but people are aware they are singing), as is the concept that the Muppets are perfectly normal. Some might argue that the story was overly silly, but I think it struck a great cord of honesty to Jim’s Muppets, and what the Muppets may become in this new generation. It’s been at least a decade since the Muppets were relevant. Honestly, it’s about time they showed back up.

I’d highly recommend the movie, and fully intend to go see it again either in the normal theater, or the cheap theater in a month or two.

[xrr rating=5/5]

NCAA cartel? really?

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An often vocal, of nearly everything UO, posted on his site today about how the NCAA is a cabal, and works to enforce a student athlete population to work for free, and live on 1 year scholarships, etc. The story has been covered in several other locations as well, and there seems to be a very conspicuous missing piece of thought: “fairness”.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the NCAA probably WOULD work to pay the players if they thought it would be fair. Working for a university with deep athletics pockets, I imagine it would probably benefit us to be able to pay our athletes, and give them longer scholarships. But our neighbors to the north would probably be crying foul all the way to the NCAA. Think the days of Norte Dame football are done? Let them pay their athletes and see how fast they return to being a power house. By limiting what schools can give their athletes, the NCAA levels the playing field and allows public schools to really compete with the private ones.

Yes, the NCAA would limit it to a $2000 stipend, and the number of scholarships. But I would argue once this starts, we’d end up like professional sports.

It’s actually MORE amazing that the man that runs UO Matters didn’t realize that doing something like this would put even MORE pressure on the academic side of a university if the athletics departments are suddenly on the hook for paying athletes, or giving them longer scholarships, etc.

Do I think it’s right that student athletes work for “free”? No. But I do think it’s one of the only ways to make things fair, and prevent situations where a “University” becomes an “Athletics University”. Just imagine what Phoenix University, or something like them, could do with the ability to attract players with money, scholarships, etc.

Portal 2 Plush Turret w/ Sound

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When I first saw ThinkGeek advertising the Plush Portal 2 Turret, I thought it sounded extremely cool. I waited patiently for them to come into stock, and promptly ordered one for early December. Upon receiving it, I thought it looked extremely cool, but was a bit disappointed with the performance of the motion sensor. It basically required shining a flashlight into the “eye” (which is actually a small black tube opening below the glowing eye). The motion part worked great, and knocking it over resulted in various sayings from the game.

A quick examination of the “eye” found a stray piece of plastic in the opening, but still lousy performance. A quick email to ThinkGeek resulted in a prompt response of “seems defective”, but alas, they were out of stock. Rather than ship the old one back for a refund, I decided to wait until they had them back in stock, which was about 2 weeks later. At that point, I contacted them again, and they promptly shipped out a replacement, and rather than having me ship the old one back, just asked me to toss it. Cool! The new one arrived a few days later, and low and behold, it worked great. It could “see” me walk by in the hall, and would respond to other motions. Examination of the newer unit did seem to indicate they had made minor adjustments to the “eye”, in that the black “straw” that directs light back to the sensor was shorter, which would no doubt allow more light to get to the sensor.

All and all, the product is great, and ThinkGeek’s service was exemplary.

[xrr rating=4.75/5]