Tag: CNN

Rain, rain, go away

Today has been the most low-key day of my Florida vacation yet.

So far I’ve been relatively lucky in the weather department (humidity not included), but I was inevitably going to run into a bit of… Torrential rainfall.

Someone really let Kyogre out of its ball this afternoon.

Now to be fair, the rain did make for perfect “dunking on California” Tweet material:

California, eat your heart out. pic.twitter.com/EJe8oyp7cb

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) August 1, 2019

And I was able to get this nice picture with Grandpa as we watched the rain come down:

But those are the only “positives” to list about this crazy brief storm.

We had to cancel most of our plans, as the museum we hoped to visit is primarily outdoors, and the rain didn’t exactly cut down on the obscene heat.

Everything was wet AND uncomfortably hot.

Hurray.

At least the rain itself didn’t last long enough to become a dangerous hurricane. And staying local has its benefits.

Grandma and I went to the gym again this morning. Then we visited the supermarket to pick up some ingredients for our improvised make-your-own-sandwich dinner.

On the way to the supermarket, we stopped by the local library so Grandma could pick up a book she put on hold.

In classic voyeuristic fashion, I took the opportunity to get a good look around. Because libraries are always cool places to visit.

This one certainly was:

And they know that weebs are a key demographic.

Beyond that we spent a lot of time figuring out what to do around the house, and there were a good amount of options.

For one we watched a lot of T.V. now that the Democratic Debates aren’t an active concern. Family Feud was, as always, a big hit. As was the two-hit combo Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

I also had the personally interesting experience of finding out that there’s a version of old-school RuneScape you can play on mobile.

Thanks to Brutalmoose’s video for alerting me to its existence, I decided to give the old game a whirl again. It’s been interesting to jump back into an old favorite I played with my cousin Josh with more insight and experience.

Like… I’ve spoken with someone who works at Jagex, the company that made Runescape, fairly recently.

Wild stuff.

Good thing I wrote a bit of my book this afternoon before finding out the mobile game exists. Otherwise I would have gotten absolutely nothing done.

After all that, the night ended on an interesting note. Grandpa left to go play cards with some of his friends, so Grandma and I were left to our own devices. She whipped up some chocolate pudding that we ate while playing a family favorite board game: Rummikub.

Usually we play with more than two players, as it’s one of my Mom’s preferred pastimes with her parents. But the game worked out all the same.

And that’s that. Like I said, it was a low-key day all things considered.

From what I’m aware, our plans before I go home Sunday night include trying to hit up the museum and that fancy restaurant we’ve had to postpone because of the weather. We might even go to the horse racing track.

Whether or not the weather allows us to keep up, we’ll have to see.

Three bug bites in

Ooh boy, time to write about my day as Democrats yell at each other in the background again.

Last night I mentioned going to swim in the pool today.

I made good on that promise, because how could I not?

It’s a beaut.

The water was also perfect today. Just cool enough to counteract the heat without freezing my toes off.

Fun fact, while I was getting that picture of the pool I noticed all of these cute old pictures of my grandparents that made me smile:

Also there’s a terrifying cat statue.

It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

A return to the pool also meant a return to one of my favorite pastimes: Watching geckos climb all over the mesh fencing.

Look at this little guy, he’s so sweet.

Yet in a jarring turn of events, I found it was easier to watch the geckos than ever because I’m officially too damn big for the pool.

The deep end is 6 feet. I’m 6’2 or so.

Last time I came to Florida I was definitely not tall enough to stand in the deep end with my head above the water, which means it has been longer since I’ve been here than I thought. That blew my mind.

But before going for a swim, wading in the existential dread of time and noticing my growing collection of bug bites, I helped Grandma throw together french toast.

A nice, hearty breakfast. The kind of breakfast that I needed because part of my day was spent working out computer issues for both grandparents.

Here’s Grandma being cute at the computer, though. Before I make you cringe.

For Grandpa I simply helped update their computer software and readjust his settings back to normal.

But for Grandma… Poor girl… I had to show her that she could scroll further down the website she was on to get to a link.

I finally understand what it’s like for my Dad to be technical support.

Luckily, after that technical supporting and writing the next portion of my Pokémon fanfiction (because that’s still a thing and you can read the first six chapters here), I reaped the reward of some BBQ from Lucille’s.

But if you’re like me and thinking about this Lucille’s, you’d be wrong.

We went to THIS Lucille’s, which also happens to be a BBQ restaurant chain.

Except this Lucille’s is better because the staff wore shirts that said, “The Biggest Rack in the Business.”

It was a hilarious joke on the female employees, but even more hilarious on the male employees. Equal opportunity racks.

During the time in-between these events, today was a good day for video games.

Fire Emblem Heroes dropped a banner for the newest game’s loli dragon prophet:

My only real issue is that her dragon form is just… Herself?

It’s very bizarre.

Also I spent some orbs and just got my fourth Legendary Lyn, so I’m salty and moving on.

Moving on to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which dropped its newest DLC fighter just last night!

Hero is one of four protagonists from different games in the Dragon Quest series.

My personal favorite of the four choices is Eight from… Dragon Quest VIII, appropriately enough. He’s got a sweet bandana and a little mouse friend.

Plus he’s very photogenic. Check this out:

I actually like the Dragon Quest additions a lot. The stage based on the tree of life Yggdrasil is cool, the music additions are solid and the character is fun to play as.

He’s got a mix of Link’s swordplay and Robin’s charging magic attacks. But then he also has a Metronome-style RNG wheel of magical spells that are insane.

Just look at this thread:

ok so to recap

Hero has (a thread): pic.twitter.com/QFYqXEYRZd

— Tylor (@theSirToasty) July 31, 2019

How Sakurai allowed this character to exist is beyond me.

Then again he also has the option to literally kamikaze himself, so 10/10 amazing character.

Now we wait for Banjo to show up. In the meantime, I’ll be in Florida for a bit longer.

Supposedly we’re hitting up a museum tomorrow. So stay tuned for that!

Floridian Voyeurism + Yesterday Review

We’ve settled in for the night to watch the CNN Democratic Presidential Debate, so I figure it’s as good a time as any to start my second day debrief.

Despite being exhausted by jet lag and obscene humidity, I woke up early to accompany Grandma at L.A. Fitness.

She got me a temporary membership at her gym for the week, and it had all the same amenities that I’d normally use.

Though it was arguably more fun because I could stand above the crowds with cardio machines on the second floor:

While there I got to meet all of her gym friends. It was a little weird, but in an interesting kind of way. Like looking into a person’s secret double life.

After that we hit their local supermarket to perpetuate my vague sense of voyeurism.

The gym and supermarket were nice reprieves from the heat, which I’ve come to find are godsends because WOW is it ever hot in Florida.

Grandma and Grandpa decided that we should go out to the movies later in the afternoon to continue our A/C hopping.

We saw Yesterday, that film which asks what would happen if The Beatles suddenly didn’t exist.

I have… A lot of things to say about Yesterday.

But I’ll get to that later. Don’t want to conflate my dislike for the movie with my enjoyment of the day.

If nothing else the experience of going was worthwhile, even if the movie wasn’t.

We were going to a special restaurant for dinner until storm clouds rolled in. So we shifted plans and went to a less outdoors-y experience with Renzo’s Pizzeria.

Grandma and Grandpa say they’ve been going to this sweet little Italian joint for years, and I can see why. The pizza was very good.

Had to be that guy and photograph my vacation food. Sorry.

As was the company. I got to hear the stories how Grandpa quit biting his nails (a request from Grandma when they were dating) AND how he quit smoking (thanks to a bet with someone who was supposed to lose weight and wound up gaining it).

Also, this was a thing:

From far away the mouse looked like it had demon teeth, but it just has the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff mouth.

Which is way funnier.

After dinner we came home, had some tea, put on the debate and the rest is history.

But I think it’s time for a much less divisive subject than politics: Movies.

I’m going to tear Yesterday apart under the cut, so if you don’t care about that sort of thing (and I wouldn’t blame you), go ahead and get back to your lives.

Tomorrow I’m thinking it’s time to finally hit the pool, so stay tuned for that and other exciting developments.
Continue reading “Floridian Voyeurism + Yesterday Review” →

Into the orchestra

Another year, another Spring musical by the Redondo Union Theatre Arts Program.

This time around, my alma mater put on Stephen Sondheim‘s take on Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Into the Woods.

The show had live music by a pit orchestra, in which my sister took part. When they did Crazy for You last year it was the first time in a long time that a musical had live orchestration at RUHS, so I’m glad to see the tradition continue.

Editor’s Note: I thought I wrote about that show but apparently not, so forgive my semi-random link up there.

I don’t have too terribly much to say about the show itself. The theatre kids put on a nice performance that I would say shined most in its stage design.

To create the titular woods, stage hands dragged tree stumps into the mid-ground, and logs were lowered onto them from the ceiling. It was a really neat little effect that got enhanced by fog machines.

Those gave everything a mysterious Midsummer Night’s Dream forest vibe.

And of course, the music was wonderful. Which I only say in part because this post is a shill for my sister (who deserves credit, but still). Even though the sound mixing was not optimal and a lot of the actors kind of got lost in it.

The only major complaint I have about the show was an odd framing device added on top of the story.

They decided to have Into the Woods, in the context of their continuity, be the content of a book being read to a lost little girl in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The stage set up as a disaster relief area before the show.

Bit of an oddly paired metaphor.

It didn’t bear enough of an effect on the story to ruin it necessarily, but at the same time the fact that they didn’t elaborate on it much just left me asking why it was included at all.

I suppose I will say that it contributed to an immersive theatre-going experience.

All the kids got to mess around and play their hearts out in the aisles of the auditorium before the show. Asking audience members if they’ve seen family or friends lost in the hurricane, requesting food in exchange for voodoo crystals, so on and so forth.

It was a lot of fun, and added to a nice overall presence through things like a faux red carpet backdrop in the lobby:

Didn’t get a picture with the backdrop because I’m stupid.

Pretty cute stuff.

That’s just about all I have to say about the show. It was originally going to be my main blog post of the day before I exhausted myself last night and decided to save my Us review for earlier.

But I didn’t want to leave my sister hanging. Especially after I got such a cute picture of her.

So you’re getting two-for-one today, and I don’t have to feel as bad about skipping another day of writing in March.

Succumb to the rabbit lore

The fact that we’re seeing our third Spring banner gave me an existential crisis.

I felt like the banner with Sharena and Alfonse just appeared, but it was 13 Paralogues ago.

Not sure what happened over the last year, but I don’t think I’m down for this whole passage of time thing. It’s starting to scare me.

Even if cute bunny characters kind of make up for it.

Palla — Eldest Bun-Bun

Pegasus Carrot (Might = 12, Range = 2)
- Effective against armored foes. If unit has weapon-triangle advantage, neutralizes status effects and disables skills that prevent follow-up attacks during combat. After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts Defense and Resistance -7 on target and foes within two spaces through their next actions.
Draconic Aura (Cooldown = 3)
- Boosts damage by 30 percent of unit’s Attack.
Swift Sparrow (A Skill)
- If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
Disarm Trap (B Skill)
- When attacking in Aether Raids, if unit ends movement on a space with a Bolt or Heavy Trap, cancels trap’s effect.
Hone Fliers (C Skill)
- At start of turn, grants Attack and Speed +6 to adjacent flying allies for one turn.

Marisa — Crimson Rabbit

Flashing Carrot (Might = 14, Range =1)
- At start of combat, if foe’s Health = 100 percent, grants Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance +2 during combat.
Reposition (Range = 1)
- Target ally moves to opposite side of unit.
Speed/Defense Link (B Skill)
- If a movement Assist skill is used by or targets unit, grants Speed and Defense +6 to both involved units for one turn.
Flier Guidance (C Skill)
- Flying allies within two spaces can move to a space adjacent to unit.

Bruno — Masked Hare

Ovoid Staff (Might = 12, Range = 2)
- At start of turn, restores 7 Health to unit and adjacent allies.
Martyr (Range = 1)
- Restores Health = damage dealt to unit +50 percent of Attack (minimum of 7). Restores Health to unit = half of damage dealt.
Miracle (Cooldown = 5)
- If unit’s Health > 1 and foe would reduce unit’s Health to 0, unit survives with 1 HP.
Attack/Defense Push (A Skill)
- At start of combat, if unit’s Health = 100 percent, grants Attack and Defense +5, but if unit attacked, deals one damage to unit after combat.
Dazzling Staff (B Skill)
- Foe cannot counterattack.

Veronica — Spring Princess

Veðrfölnir’s Egg (Might = 14, Range = 2)
- Grants Speed +3. At start of combat, if unit’s Health ≥ 75 percent, grants Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance +4 during combat.
Glimmer (Cooldown = 2)
- Boosts damage dealt by 50 percent.
Green Duel Flying (A Skill)
- Grants Health +5. If unit is 5-star and level 40 and unit’s stats total less than 170, treats unit’s stats as 170 in modes like Arena.
Chill Resistance (B Skill)
- At start of turn, inflicts Resistance -7 on foe with the highest Resistance through its next action.

Talk about a bizarre blend of characters.

Bruno and Veronica make sense in the footsteps of Alfonse and Sharena (even if the Paralogue story confuses everything). However, this being Bruno’s first and Veronica’s second non-canonical appearances as units is pretty weird.

They also have forgettable skills. Bruno is a healer with healing attacks, and Veronica is just a better Spring Camilla.

Two years worth of power creep, yo.

Palla is probably the most solid unit. She’s a flying red dagger that’s built to kill strong armored bois like Surtr, and with her Whitewing sister Catria appearing last year we have a cool progression to Est in 2020.

Cool all around.

Marisa is the real surprise. Because I love the game I can’t complain with more Sacred Stones representation (even if I wish we had new characters), but she doesn’t seem to mesh well with the others. Despite having an amazing character bio.

Plus her skills are very basic.

Yet being lukewarm on my opinions toward Marisa means she’s prime material to get unexpectedly summoned in my first round:

The fact that most of her quotes are about watching rabbits as research is incredible. Really makes up for everything.

Marisa was special from being a Sacred Stones rep, but the only other character I’m interested in is Palla. Don’t know if she’s worth pulling for alone, so I might save my orbs.

Paralogue 32: Regal Rabbits

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Now, let’s get into the real meat of this banner: That sweet Rabbit Lore.

Like I teased earlier, this Paralogue does some bizarre things with the status quo of holiday units.

Right off the bat we have our world’s Loki trying to convince Veronica to go to the festival:

She does so using Bruno’s appearance as leverage, but this just raises a bunch of questions.

Usually special units are from alternate universes to explain how two of the same characters exist in one place.

But Spring Bruno and Veronica are just our versions masquerading. Technically we are getting our world’s Bruno and Veronica, just dressed as alternates.

Yet there’s also a Spring Loki while we have regular Loki — but the Spring version is still ours according to the Paralogue.

In other words: It’s all a fucking existential mess.

Except none of that matters because the whole reason they’re there is to see whether Loki is lying to them:

Bet you didn’t remember that storyline is still going on while the Order of Heroes fights death herself.

The Order never appears here. Which is a nice change of pace as we saw with the 2019 Valentine’s Day banner.

The whole Paralogue centers around the Embla family. Palla and Marisa have a totally disconnected mission that feels like they’re conducting goofy business as usual while two canaiving people sneak around.

By the end we find out what that treasure is, and it’s arguably the most interesting thing about this:

I certainly didn’t see Taguels being referenced. Especially so soon after Panne got added into our ranks through a Grand Hero Battle.

While I started to question the relation of rabbit people to a festival where people dress like rabbits, Intelligent Systems doesn’t give any answers. They simply tease a continued treasure hunt with Loki telling Bruno and Veronica where they can find the answers.

Even if we have no idea how Taguels are supposed to help with their blood curse.

Guess It’ll all come together eventually, but at this point we’ll just have to table the discussion and get back to our non-Playboy Bunny lives.

Speaking of real life, did you all hear that Google is planning to launch a console for streaming video games?

Because I think it’s a very interesting concept that I’ll have no interest in buying. I prefer cartridge/digital download games that don’t rely on constant internet access, personally.

I just figured that would be a better segue out of this post to show that I pay attention.

That said, let me know what you think about these Spring units! And let me know how you feel about the endless march of time.

Because… Yeah, that still hurts.

Live from Studio City

In case some of you weren’t around this morning to see what I’ve been up to today, here’s the real brief teaser I put out on social media:

Just another beautiful, sunny Friday up in Studio City. pic.twitter.com/1cqML7yj1R

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) March 15, 2019

However, assuming you might be reading this in some far-flung future date where Twitter is dead in the aftermath of terrible social media toxicity, I’ll lay it out in good, old-fashioned text:

The Cal State Fullerton branch of the Society of Professional Journalists got an opportunity to tour the CBS2/KCAL9 broadcast center in Studio City, California this afternoon.

However, assuming you might be reading this in some far-flung future date where the Internet is dead after a nuclear apocalypse…

Well you wouldn’t be reading this anyway. My entire joke would fall apart well before I started it.

So I’ll stop wasting your time.

My dad worked at the station for about three years as an Information Technology Manager, in-part helping to build out some of the infrastructure that we were able to see today.

In fact, I personally helped build bits and pieces when he took me to work with him. Crawling under tables to plug-in computers and stuff.

Because he still has some friends at CBS, he was able to get our club president Harrison in touch with Dan Haight, the Director of Broadcast Operations and Engineering.

As the Secretary for our chapter, I figured the least I could do was help us get a tour at a professional newsroom. Luckily it was a successful venture!

The broadcast building from behind, on the sixth floor roof of the parking structure.

I got to Studio City pretty early and had the chance to look around at the entertainment side of the house first.

That included a whole host of fancy-looking lots as well as named buildings, street signs and more.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

But more importantly, it included a lot of brief looks at areas where different TV shows are currently being recorded.

The one that stood out most to me was Last Man Standing. Not because I watch the Tim Allen sitcom, but because of where the show was:

The home of Seinfeld? Now that’s a sound stage that could tell some stories.

Even if most of those stories are technically supposed to be centered in New York.

~*~Hollywood magic~*~

Here are a number of other discoveries I made, all lazily compiled in a slide show because I’m pretty tired after a number of hours on the freeway.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

However, arguably the most important discovery I made was off the lot:

Don’t know if this is a business officially affiliated with CBS, or if it’s just some business owner with a lot of ingenuity to capitalize on the major job provider in the area, but either way I’m a fan.

After my little self-driven tour, it was time to head back to the broadcast center for our official tour!

… Except traffic was apparently not great today, so I was the first one there and had to hang out for quite some time before the rest of the group arrived.

Gave me a lot of time to look around at the big stuff in the lobby.

It was actually a lot of fun watching folks wander in-and-out, usually stopping by the security desk to see what was on the news with the guard.

After Dan arrived to take us around on the tour, I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures. Got caught up in just checking everything out.

So the best I’ve got for visuals in this stage are the couple of pictures we took as a group that got posted on the SPJ account:

Thanks to @CBSLA for hosting some members of our chapter and showing us around the newsroom! pic.twitter.com/FsIyP17n0h

— SPJ FULLERTON (@FullertonSpj) March 15, 2019

Obviously, that’s where I got my featured image from. I love the image Harrison got of us all looking into a news camera.

We found out that the area where we took that picture is going to be reworked soon for a new project CBS is working on to get live news broadcasts to mobile phones easier. All with the hopes of attracting that young audience that doesn’t watch traditional TV anymore.

Then we got a look around the newsroom, everything from the assignment desk to the online story stations and editing bays.

Afterward we checked out a couple of the shows currently recording, or preparing to record, during our tour.

First was the weekly Veteran’s Voices show, where a few actors were sitting in as the anchors so they could make sure all the shots were right.

After that we saw the end of the News at Noon with Sandra Mitchell, sitting alongside the weather lady Alex Biston.

Fun fact, this weather update was actually what we watched her record. Live. It was pretty cool, and she took some time to chat with us afterward!

The most interesting thing about watching the news broadcast was the fact that those two were the only people on the entire set. Everything else was fully automated.

I can’t help but feel it would be disconcerting to record an entire broadcast like that with nobody else around on a big sound stage… But I suppose it’s the kind of thing that Internet personalities do all the time in the 21st Century.

It was kind of cool to see how much technology has advanced I suppose, even if it wasn’t a great sign for getting jobs in the industry.

Finally, we were in one of the big control rooms just in time for Donald Trump’s speech on the New Zealand attacks — which I’ll use the CNN story for just for the sake of variety.

It was pretty amazing watching almost every screen in the room change to show the President’s face, both for the CBS channels and their competition.

While we were checking out the fully automated sound deck beside that control room, another one of my Dad’s old friends showed up. Bob and Dan got to talking, which led them to telling our tour group about how much they enjoyed working with Dad and missed him.

Which was a very sweet thing to see.

But that was pretty much all there is to say about my CBS tour. It was really cool, especially on the verge of graduation when I need to start thinking about things like work more avidly.

… Plus, I got to write it off as networking with reporters for my internship.

So I really can’t complain about that.

Unraveling more YouTube recommendations

You can spin this blog post today one of two ways.

Perhaps this is a public service for all of those affected by the over 10-hour Facebook outages that affected the social media platform and its company’s holdings (including Instagram and WhatsApp) for some reason other than a denial-of-service attack — an issue which they, in my opinion, hilariously had to go to another platform to report:

We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

— Facebook (@facebook) March 13, 2019

Those folks addicted to these apps like I sometimes become with Twitter are likely looking for something interesting to do to bide their time.

Interesting, time-wasting YouTube channels happen to be my area of expertise.

… Or, perhaps this post is a futile effort to write something on my blog daily, after a day of two-hour Comm Law exams and finishing my listen to Ender’s Game while at the gym where I could not come up with anything better than yesterday despite saying I would. But in place of that interesting subject matter, I’ve simply decided to guise my lazy alternative in the guise of the solution to a social media-driven turmoil that has long ended by the time I began writing; all due to the aforementioned requirements.

But I think we all know which is the true answer to the question.

That said, I’ve delayed the inevitable long enough.

While my parents travelled around California going to different doctor’s appointments on Monday, I was in charge of my sister back home. We more-or-less spent the afternoon sitting beside one another on the couch doing homework and watching YouTube videos.

Among the usual line-up of Game Grumps and Super Beard Bros. videos taking up time, we were recommended a strange looking think piece on the “Sonic the Hedgehog Bible.”

That’s the kind of offer we couldn’t refuse.

So we didn’t.

And thus we discovered the magic that is Unraveled: A show by the gaming news website Polygon, helmed by their video producer Brian David Gilbert.

As someone who appreciates few things more than highly-analytical, well-produced and funny content deeply examining video games, this YouTube series earns my highest recommendation.

The show, in essence, takes huge amounts of data and information from the video games themselves or from real-world (often governmental) organizations that can be used for video game applications and just distills them down into quippy 15-minute binges that use massive amounts of paper for on-the-wall diagrams with rarely an apology.

It’s a beautiful sight to behold.

While we started with their Sonic Bible episode, I was also a big fan of his dive into madness on the Legend of Zelda timeline, breakdown of hundreds of Mega Man Robot Masters and look at how Bowser’s army would be organized in relation to the U.S. Army.

An oddly prescient piece considering Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé announced his retirement just a few days after it dropped, leaving it in the hands of a man literally named Bowser.

I won’t say I’m much for conspiracy theories… But the truth is out there.

Anyway, yeah. That’s my recommendation for the night.

If a YouTube show can get my sister of all people excited to watch deep-diving video game content, you know it has to be good.

So give Unraveled a look, if you would.

Featured Image courtesy of Gaurav Shakya via Wikimedia Commons

The Concept of Cash

Has anyone ever stopped to think about how strange the idea behind money is?

Probably a silly rhetorical question, as commerce is something that many people have thought long and hard about over the course of human history. But I don’t exactly mean the concept of different monetary systems or the merits of different economic theories like capitalism vs. communism.

I’m certainly nowhere near enough of an expert in any sort of financial realm to be able to begin to tackle those big ideas.

However, recently I’ve been contemplating a different bizarre aspect of money that relates more to a psychological sphere of thought. Namely the idea of ownership when it comes to money, particularly in the much more nebulous 21st century where the lines between the physical and the digital are blurred more and more.

I could point to a number of places as the genesis of my thinking on this subject, though two primarily come to mind off-hand.

First is my sister, who loves to tell the story of an old man who approached her as she worked the concession booth at a Redondo Union band event. Apparently his idea of small talk was telling a couple 16 year olds that they should be careful with the money they were handling because all U.S. bank notes supposedly have some trace of cocaine on them.

He’s not even wrong if this 2009 article from CNN or this 2018 Snopes piece are to be believed, but still. Weird thing to just casually talk about.

The second place is my mall adventure with Juan the other day, where one of our stops post-mall loitering was the bank so he could deposit some money.

I probably have another post incoming sometime soon regarding stuff from this trip that’ll make it relevant again, but for now just know we went to the bank after all was said and done.

Both of these small, seemingly disconnected events kind of evoke the same cliché: You never know where your money has been. An unarguable idea, especially looking back at the lede to that CNN article I linked where the author talks about how frequently money is passed from person-to-person through anything from paying for goods at a store to dropping $5 on the ground by accident.

But I’m not here to examine the idea of your money having been touched by anyone and everyone at some point in the past, per say. Rather, I’m more interested in the much smaller idea of casually calling it ‘your money.’

At its core, money is the symbolic representation of a totally imaginary concept called worth.

That is, symbolic unless you go into the minutia of things like the cost of materials needed to print a penny versus how much a penny is symbolically worth… But that’s going pretty far into the weeds.

What I’m looking at is the idea that we, as a species, have collectively decided that slips of paper have been assigned a value that essentially boils down to a more simplified form of bargaining. Instead of trading a sack of flour for two chickens, we’ve come up with a representation of how many paper slips each sack of flour or each chicken is worth, that way there’s a universally tradable object allowing someone to buy anything they want rather than being restricted to getting chickens.

Naturally there’s an infinite number of complications to that idea when it comes to things like the universality of currency if we all have different currencies worth different values. But like I said, I’m not an economist or a financial guru, so let’s just go with a more simplified world view here.

The creation of a universal representation of wealth has also crystalized an idea of what it is to be a wealthy individual. Sure back in the day you were the king if you had X number of chickens or acres of land, but there were people who could argue they didn’t need chickens or land if they had different goods.

In today’s society, money is literally the deciding factor because money can be used for almost anything.

That’s why people will go around talking about their net worth, how something like their stock options give them a billion dollar value. Because that symbolic value is worth something in that it’s usable for almost any kind of bartering one can imagine.

But in 2018, that’s where things get complicated and interesting to me. You can say you have $100 available right now, but do you really have the physical Benjamin in your pocket? Or do you have $100 in this nebulous digital concept called a bank account?

Now I know bank accounts aren’t technically completely nebulous, since there are physical places where one can deposit and take out physical bills. But here’s the thing: Even those physical bills aren’t technically completely your property, despite the fact that your inherent worth says you have that much available.

When you deposit a dollar in the bank, there’s no guarantee that when you take it back out you’ll be receiving the exact same dollar. It’s more likely that the bank just has a pile of dollars hidden away somewhere that they peel bills off of for anybody that needs it at a given time.

Also yes that probably isn’t how a physical bank works, but again. Not a banker. So any real life bankers out there please don’t get mad reading my description.

Just go with it for the sake of this hypothetical.

The idea extends beyond banks as well. Like I mentioned before, purchasing items creates an interesting dynamic. That dollar “you own,” once handed over to the cashier in exchange for whatever it may be, goes into a cash register. But if you go back to that store one day and get cash back for having too big a bill, you aren’t guaranteed to get the exact same dollar you handed over long ago.

That dollar probably disappeared as soon as the person behind you in line that day used a bill that was too big and got cash back. Now it’s suddenly a representation of that person’s wealth rather than your own.

As usual I don’t necessarily have a larger point to this discussion beyond it being an interesting train of thought into something most of us more than likely take for granted in this fly-by-night world we live in.

But next time you go to buy that new video game or receive a paycheck and toss those singles around like you’re the king of the world in a strip joint, maybe you’ll think about this post and give your psychological perceptions of money a reexamination.

Those bills you’re tossing around? They aren’t yours, as you might think. No matter how hard you worked to earn them in the first place.

They’re just a symbolic representation of the work you put in given a physical form that allows you to barter without trading away any actual goods. No matter how many times you kiss that wad of cash, happy to be worth something, just remember that the second you put it down it’ll be the property of whoever picks it up next.

But also maybe think about the fact that you’re likely kissing money that has cocaine on it. Because let’s not forget, that money could literally have been held by anybody before it was held by you.

Entertainment Beat Report – Feb. 15, 2018

From here on out, my Entertainment Reporting class assignments are primarily going to be weekly updates on some of the major things that are happening in the video game industry.

I got some of my friends who tend to pay more attention to gaming news aggregates to help out on compiling a small list of some of the big things that happened this week, so my first attempt at doing this is probably going to resemble a listicle more than anything else. Just a few headlines, links and some summary paragraphs. Might wind up changing things later depending on how much I like that, but for now I think it’ll work out pretty well as an easy way for me to approach these.

That said, let’s get on with the news.

Overwatch League Stage one concludes with New York on top

Blizzard’s widely popular first person shooter has been driving the eSports scene lately with a competition between the game’s top teams from all around the world.

Stage one of the tournament ended on Feb. 10 with matches between London’s team and both New York’s and Houston’s teams. London won both games.

However, in the overall standings, New York is on top with 9 wins and only 1 loss. This puts them over the next four teams, who are all tied in their 7 win to 3 loss records, but have different standings overall.

Stage 2 will begin with three matches on Feb. 21. This stage will feature five weeks of play in Blizzard’s Burbank arena.

I’ll admit, I’m not personally a huge Overwatch buff, but I know all of my friends adore it. They certainly aren’t the only ones either, as the game has been hugely popular since it’s release.

I actually wrote on this topic for our Mock Newsroom this week, which took me down a deep dive into the world of competative Overwatch. It’s definitely not a world I travel in often, so it was an interesting experience to say the least. If nothing else, I suppose I like seeing eSports get a lot of traction – which is something I’ll touch on in a bit.

New Nintendo Labo video shows complexity of games

This morning, Nintendo showed off their latest gaming innovation more with a video detailing the first Labo Variety Kit that’s going to come out on April 20.

Labo, for those of you who are unaware, are essentially special holsters for the Nintendo Switch that give players new control schemes to play specific games. The twist is that you create the holsters — called “Toy Cons” in a fun little allusion to the consoles main controllers, the “Joy Cons” — yourself with cardboard cutout sheets and auxiliary pieces like rubber bands in activities reminiscent of arts and crafts projects.

When they were first announced, I know I personally had some concerns regarding how in-depth of an experience these somewhat gimmicky additions to the Switch were going to be, but it seems like they have some promise to be more than just tech demos based on what the newest video shows.

The first Variety Pack will contain five Labo projects: An RC car, a fishing rod, a house, a motorbike and a piano.

The RC car seems well thought out, with the Switch’s portable touch screen being used as a controller while the detached Joy Cons control how the car you’ve created moves. Not only does it show how impressive the “HD rumble” tech can be, it also makes use of the Joy Con night vision capable camera to promote self-propelled movement toward certain stimuli.

The fishing rod uses the Switch’s screen to simulate an ocean environment that you drop a fishing line into using a fairly complex looking cardboard fishing rod. The rod has Joy Con holsters in two major areas that allow you to simulate the act of reeling in fish, with the aforementioned HD rumble simulating the feeling of fish tugging on the hook. The game itself looks to be a rather simple fishing simulator, but has a nice and pretty looking aesthetic that I think will make it worth trying at least once.

Personally, I just hope this kind of functionality comes back for games like Animal Crossing and the Legend of Zelda, which are fairly well-known for their fishing side-games.

The house Toy Con seems to be used for the 2018 equivalent of a Tamagotchi. You remember those, right? The little key chains that would grow a creature inside and was later somewhat co-opted by Nintendo for the Pokéwalker in HeartGold and SoulSilver? Hell you don’t have to look very far for the allusion, there’s basically an 8-bit guy similar to Tamagotchi in the background of the house.

There’s a cute amount of interactivity with the house itself, where doing things like shaking the screen will create an earthquake inside, and the Joy Cons can inhabit different plug-in additions for the house that do things like change the time of day or the environment inside.

Oh, also there’s a portal reference in there. Can’t argue with that.

The overall experience seems simple, but there appears to be a good amount of depth with mixing and matching the plug-ins, and I do enjoy the aesthetic. So… We’ll see how good it is in execution.

The motorbike reminds me of one of those arcade cabinet racing games where you sit down in what’s essentially a simulated car or motorcycle. The controls appear to be fairly realistic and more complex than one might expect for a children’s console arts and crafts project, but Mario Kart Wii didn’t exactly handle the “realistic steering” thing well, so I’m reserving judgement on this one. There’s also a sandbox mode where you can create your own open lot driving areas with a scanner using the Joy Con camera and a track by simulating how you’d want to drive in real life.

Those additions are pretty cool, honestly.

Though… Now that I’m thinking about it, why isn’t this a Mario Kart game? More than any other object creation here, I think this one feels the most like a tech demo just in the sense that it seems like exactly what Mario Kart 9 should be. Another thing I hope we’ll see functionality return for later, I suppose.

Finally, the piano looks like a simple version of an actual keyboard you could go out and buy. It even does that thing where you can make each note play a silly sound if you plug-in a Joy Con knob. Apparently you can also make sounds through the vibration of a Joy Con by placing it on different objects, which is interesting… But not necessarily interesting enough to save this from being a little too simple to look that appealing. For me anyway.

My sister will probably love it though. Plus, I did used to mess around on Garage Band a lot… So who knows.

I’ll admit, I’m personally more excited about this technology after watching what Nintendo has planned. Now we just have to wait and see how successful it is on the market.

Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer shows Sora will visit worlds of Toy Story, Monsters Inc.

Now here’s something that’s right up my alley. As much as Monster Hunter World and Dragon Ball FighterZ have given me that mad heartache for a PS4, they likely won’t be as big a system seller as something like Kingdom Hearts 3.

A new trailer for the game came out this week at the D23 Expo, and even if not very much was revealed as far as a release date goes, there was plenty of gameplay shown off to get excited for.

We see through the trailer that Sora, Donald and Goofy will be turned into toy-sized Warriors and into monstrous versions of themselves when the visit the classic Disney and Pixar properties of Toy Story and Monsters Inc.

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t necessarily have a lot to say about this trailer right now. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks just as beautiful and fun as it has in earlier trailers we’ve seen. Hell, I even have some great things to say about it regarding the return of the dream creatures from Dream Drop Distance and the incredibly transcendent experience of hearing Woody and Buzz talk like they’re in a Japanese anime.

But… This game has been pushed back so much, that not getting a more specific release date than “2018” is disheartening to say the least. Seriously, Kingdom Hearts 2 came out 13 years ago, and Dream Drop Distance came out six years ago.

The last time a major announcement for the game came out was at E3 in 2015. News isn’t exactly out around every corner.

Let’s just hope more comes out at E3 this year.

Twitch garners more viewer traffic in January than CNN, MSNBC

This is arguably the most esoteric thing on this list when compared to more specific game-driven news, but I found it really interesting.

According to Investor’s Business Daily, January 2018 had more people tuned into various gaming channels on the streaming service Twitch than were watching CNN and MSNBC.

It’s fascinating to me that something like this can happen with how enmeshed in our culture things like CNN are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of watching people play video games, so I understand the appeal. But it’s still impressive to see that Twitch had 962,000 average concurrent viewers compared to CNN’s 783,000 and MSNBC’s 885,000.

The article stipulates that a good amount of this attention is coming from popular competitive games like League of Legends and, conveniently enough, the debut of Blizzard’s Overwatch League.

They say over 10 million unique viewers tuned into the League during its first week, which is honestly kind of hard to fathom.

I don’t have much personal insight to throw into this story, I just think the numbers are fascinating and I wanted to share them. If anything, I think this might make for a good entertainment news story, something I have to write soon.

So stay tuned for that.

These four things weren’t the only things that happened in gaming this week, of course.

A remake of Shadow of the Colossus has blown people away with how beautiful it turned out to be.

Leaks suggest that the Crash Bandicoot N-Sane trilogy may be coming to both PC and the Nintendo Switch in the near future.

Bungie’s Destiny 2 had an update called the Crimson Days and Blizzard’s Overwatch characters will be getting new outfits based on the Chinese New Year.

There’s plenty going on out there if you’re looking for it, so keep watching for the latest news. I’ll be back next week with more, so look forward to that!

If you enjoyed this kind of post format, let me know. After all, I’m still trying to work out exactly how I want to do this whole Entertainment Reporting beat notes thing, and there’s a bunch of weeks left in the semester to iron it out.