How to Get to the Bottom Of a Puzzling Phenomenon

I was going to write about the idea of creating a CGI Hitler and having Andy Serkis or someone play him through motion capture, but I have thought of something only tangentially related but much more pleasant to discuss.

Spoilers for the first season of Picard:

Okay. One complaint people always have about digitally de-aged actors or CGI representations of long-dead actors is that they never look quite real.

Most Star Trek fans love the character Data, played by Brent Spiner. As the years passed it became difficult, and eventually almost impossible, to use Data in any shows or movies because he is an android who doesn’t age, while Brent Spiner is a man who does age, and has aged. (As have we all. I throw NO SHADE at Brent Spiner.)

Data appeared in the first season of Picard, but they just used makeup and carefully chosen camera angles instead of digital de-aging.  The thing is, one of Data’s primary character traits is that he doesn’t look quite real. They spent hours applying gold paint and contact lenses to Brent Spiner to make him look less like a human being, then he used his training and skill as an actor to make his movements just artificial enough to be noticeably uncanny. Data was the PERFECT candidate for computer de-aging. Looking artificial would have played into his characterization, not taken away from it.

Furthermore, all of data’s appearances in Picard were either in visions Picard had or inside a computer simulation; situations that, themselves, aren’t supposed to look real. Specifically, the scenes in the computer in the finale could have been done quickly using a game engine and the lack of quality would have made perfect sense.

I know the way they went probably cost less money, but it feels like a terrible wasted opportunity.

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How to Examine Why You Do Things

I grew up in a dust- and wind-intensive environment, where open-top trucks hauling dried manure drove past our house at top speed many times a day, every day. My family consisted of my mother; three boys; and my father, who worked outdoors in the dust with grease-covered machines.

At a certain point, I believe my mother just resigned herself to the idea that the house was only ever going to get so clean.

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How to Understand How Things Ever Got This Bad

I believe I’ve mentioned them before, but back in the ‘90s, AT&T had a series of ads promising incredible things technology would allow us to do in the future. In almost every case they were right about the final function of the device but wrong in some way about the mechanism. They had video phones with big CRT displays, GPS systems where all of the data was stored on a series of CDs, that sort of thing.

One of their predictions was a tablet computer that would allow you to “send a fax, from the beach.” Some people laugh at that because who sends faxes anymore, then they send an email with a pdf attached, which serves the exact same function. I look at that ad and what jumps out at me is that they predicted a world in which you are never out of touch, and as such your employer expects you to be on call to perform work tasks no matter when it’s needed or where you are. I know more than one person for whom that prediction came true.

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How to Manage Your Expectations

Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz from American Pickers are fighting, and Frank’s no longer on the show. Also, Bam Margera is suing to keep the next Jackass movie from ever getting released because he isn’t in it. My first thought was that Frank and Bam should do something together, like a show where Frank buys an antique, then Bam smashes it over his own head or something. Now I think it would be more interesting if the two shows simply trade. Send Bam out driving around rural America in a van with Mike Wolfe for days on end looking through old barns, and let Frank get launched out of a giant slingshot into a pool full of lube. I don’t know which of them would find it more unpleasant, but I’d love to watch both of those shows and find out.

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How to Explain Your Planned Celebration

That is exactly what Ric said when I told him I was getting married. In his defense, marriage has not been kind to Ric, though I can think of a few people (including him, if you catch him in the right mood) who might argue he was not kind to marriage either.

Note from Missy: Many years later, I can still say with absolute certainty: no surprise is a pleasant surprise. They’re all awful in unique ways.  So thank you, Scott, for 25 wonderful years of no surprises!

Note from Scott: That note from Missy came dangerously close to expressing a sincere emotion, which I abhor just as badly as Missy hates surprises.

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How to Try Something New

There will be no attempt at humor in this commentary, just an honest opinion.

I’m about to give what will sound like the advice of a privileged person, and maybe it is. I’m doing okay these days, but I spent most of my life broke, and I’ve moved from one home to another more than the average person.

I’m here to tell you, professional movers are not cheap, but they are 100% worth the money.

Our usual M.O. when moving was always that we’d roll into moving day with everything packed, I’d go to the nearest convenience store and buy a gigantic beverage to nurse over the course of the morning, go to the truck-rental place and fight our way through their bureaucracy to procure a truck that always turned out to be too small, then Missy and I and whatever friends we could lure to help us with the promise of pizza would spend the rest of the day making multiple trips to and from the new place. When everything was moved, we would clean out the truck and fill it with gas, return it (addition from Missy: upon which we’d pay more than we expected, because the per-mile charge and various fees really add up), then drive to the new place to start unpacking and arranging.

The first time we hired professional movers, we had everything packed like before (We’ve never hired professional packers. We do that ourselves.) I went to get the customary giant beverage, and returned just as the movers arrived. I asked what they needed me to do to help, and their answer was, “Stand back and enjoy your drink, sir.”

Less than three hours later everything had been removed from the old place (down one flight of stairs), delivered safe and sound to the new place (up two flights of stairs) with no damage to our things or either apartment. I ask you, what is that worth?

For the record, we’ve used this company in two different cities and had good experiences.

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How to Talk Through a Tough Choice

There was a Canadian rock band called The Guess Who. I’ve never thought it was a great name for a band, but before that they were called Chad Allan and the Expressions, so I think you have to agree, The Guess Who is an improvement.

Anyhoo, I bring The Guess Who up because they had a song called “Bus Rider”. It is one of the most direct, aggressive musical insults I can think of before the advent of Hip Hop and diss tracks, and the target of the band’s ire is . . . people who work at day jobs (so, the vast majority of their listeners), as near as I can tell.

Here are the lyrics.

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How to Handle Someone Who Wants to Know "What's Bothering You?"

I suffer from resting angry face. My maternal grandfather had resting angry face. My mother had it too, and when she went out looking for a mate, it’s no surprise that she chose a man she believed also had resting angry face. (He didn’t, though. Turns out he was just angry most of the time.) Now me and both of my brothers have resting angry face. Photos from our family vacations always look like they were taken just before the yelling started.

I try to combat my resting angry face by smirking a lot. I find resting smug face is more socially acceptable . . . barely.

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How to Deal with a Thought You Don't Want to Think About

The idea that soap scum even exists in this day and age offends me. Soap is the substance we use to clean things. One thing it definitely should never do is leave any sort of residue behind. It would be like if sandpaper always left wood slightly rougher.

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How to Write a Story Where Your Superheroes Turn on Each Other

Depending on how you look at it, The Knifeketeer is either the least useless or the second least useless hero in my team. (I considered saying “most useful,” but “least useless” seems more appropriate.) The Judger doesn’t do anything, she just comments on what has been done. Omnipresent Man and Mr. Everywhere actively avoid getting involved. Rocket Hat is very effective, but only at fighting one specific person. The Knifeketeer is the only one going out, fighting crime, and getting his hands dirty. Well, more bloody than dirty, but the point still stands.

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