I’m generally a big fan of Denis Leary. Rescue Me is a great TV show, his bit on Coffee Flavored Coffee is consistently in my rotation when I’m in the mood for listening to standup, and I even enjoyed his role in Demolition Man. Naturally, I thought a book would be a great fit for my Leary fix.

Sadly, I’m left a little torn about Why We Suck. Denis Leary labels himself as “Dr. Denis Leary” in the book – he’s not actually a physician, he’s as much as Doctor as Doctor Phil is a doctor. I don’t mind that so much, but what I do mind is the fact that the book seems really uneven. The whole book can easily be summarized as a rant against the stereotype of a dumb American. He goes down the checklist and makes fun of the required categories: Lindsey Lohan, American Idol, Food, Top 40 music, Republican Politics, Racism, etc. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve heard a lot of these jokes before and I felt like napping every time Denis went on a diatribe calling George W. Bush a buffoon.

However, the book is really strong in one department, and that’s Denis reflecting on his own experiences growing up and the dynamic of an Irish Catholic family.  The stories of childhood friendships and rivalries, jokes about his family, and a particularly entertaining story about him working as a janitor and finding crazily efficient ways to clean a table.

I really, really wish the book had more personal stories from Leary because that’s where he really shines. Be it exposing his conversations with his mother about his smoking habits, his marriage anecdotes, or even the real sappy “I love my kids” stuff.

Overall, not a purchase I would make again, but if Leary ever expands it to include more personal stories, I’m game. If you’re looking for a really good book by a comedic celebrity, my vote still goes to Bruce Campbell’s autobiography.

That doesn’t make them any less fun.

Batman Begins

Click here to view the embedded video.

You don’t really think of Batman Begins as a typical feel-good training/fighting movie, but it happens to have one of the best montages out there.  While it’s not really music you would work out to, it does still have some prime motivation.

BloodSport

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This was a tough one. There are so many hilarious Jean Claude Van Damme training montages out there that picking just one would be incredibly difficult. I went with this one for two reasons: 1) It’s Van Damme’s breakout role. 2) The stretching device that Van Damme puts himself into at around 5 minutes in makes me cringe.

Never Back Down

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Let’s get one thing straight – Never Back Down is a horrible movie. It has two things going for it, however. First is a great theatrical trailer and second is this training montage. Sure, it has emo music, but the raw combination of Dijimon Honsou and Kettlebells cannot be trifled with.

Rocky IV

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a great one boys and girls. Rocky IV’s training montage is the best training montage from any American movie ever (why only American? Well, the next one will explain why). This has everything a great montage should have. What’s especially exciting is that this montages follows what I like to call the montage cycle:

• Phase 1 – Initial training – protagonist is doing well, but slipping up in some parts.
• Phase 2 – Break, where the protagonist suddenly rediscovers his will to train.
• Phase 3 – Freight train of training tom-foolery.

Fighter in the Wind

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is it boys and girls – my favorite training montage of all time. This too goes through the montage cycle, but the phase 3 portion of the cycle has a song choice that absolutely CRUSHES any other montage I have ever seen.  The man cries while eating beans, he breaks rocks with his bear hands, does thumb pushups, and climbs an ice mountain while barefoot. All to a song which I can only equate to a poor man’s Nightwish.

Do me a favor and comment on your own favorite montages.

]]> http://www.imranmalek.com/blog/my-top-5-favorite-training-montages/feed/ 1 http://www.imranmalek.com/blog/bioware-hits-another-one-out-of-the-park/ http://www.imranmalek.com/blog/bioware-hits-another-one-out-of-the-park/#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:27:26 +0000 Imran http://www.imranmalek.com/blog/?p=132

I have a confession to make – I am blisteringly addicted to Bioware’s latest game, Dragon Age: Origins. I’m not quite sure what it is about it, but there’s just something about the game that I find ultimately really, really entertaining. Is it the setting? The combat system? The characters? The story and story mechanics? Well, it’s a combination of all of the above.

The Setting

The setting in Dragon Age: Origins can best be described as what would happen if Lord of the Rings was written by Frank Miller. It’s a fantasy realm with the typical trappings – elves, mages, rogues, ogres, golems, but it’s really, really dark. The elves aren’t the Lord of the Rings holy elves with polished columns. These elves are the scum of the world, relegated to either slums or remote forest communities. The mages aren’t benevolent wizards, they are religious apostates that are continuously tempted by “blood magic” (magical acts that require the lives of others to perform). The rogues…well they were always seedy but these aren’t the kind hearted rogues that eventually turn to the side of good, these are cold hearted killers. I’d go on – but you get the idea. The game also isn’t afraid to show blood, so much so in fact that there are moments in the game where the post-battle blood spatter creates some really comical images. Much like the one below (please note, I didn’t even take this image, the game took it for me as it considered to be an “important story screenshot”). I’d go into why the character is half naked, but come on, you know it’s so much better without the story.

The Combat System

If you’ve played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you’ll feel right at home in Dragon Age. Granted, the combat system originated in Bioware’s Baulder’s Gate games, but I never played them and my closest exposure to them was in fact the evolution of that combat system in SW:KotOR. This is a tried and true, old school western rpg system. It’s turn based, but the game doesn’t pause at every turn – so you have to think on your feet as your stacking moves. On top of that, the game offers your own set of miniature AI programming tools (this is really barebones, so don’t expect a command prompt or anything) that allows you to tell your ai teammates exactly what to do in any given situation e.g. “If player character is surrounded by 2 or more enemies cast sleep spell.” There’s a lot of logic going on with each turn – how much damage are you rated? What’s the chance of a successful hit? What’s the chance of a critical hit? How will poison affect you?  – All this happens in the course of a second, and it happens with a really well done animation set and some really nifty sound effects.

The Characters

Alright, the characters are pretty cookie cutter I admit it. There’s the holy sidekick hero, the malevolent witch who is a reluctant ally, the sadistic beast-thing, the smarmy yet funny assassin, and even the innocent warrior priestess who took up the fight to defend her faith. The thing about it is, however, they’ve got enough personality and interaction between them that it’s actually really good. You can just be walking along the world with two random party members and they will actually strike up a random conversation…with each other. I cannot even fathom how long it took Bioware to record all the lines of dialog in this game – I can also not fathom how much of it goes unheard because people just haven’t exposed themselves to it. Also, I love the voice acting – that is all.

The Story/Story Mechanics

While the story itself (so far at least) is pretty typical, the way its told and the dynamic nature of how its told is really surprising to me. There are just so many options in this game as this story progresses, and unlike other games with lots of moral choices, the choices come back to you. I just got through a story mission where my dead father confronted me on actions that I took throughout the course of the game. Woah. On top of that, if you’re playing as a meaner, angrier character you will laugh at just how audacious some of the options are. Is a child possessed by a demon? Forget exorcism, just kill the kid. Do you need to find a key to some door? Forget it, ignore the door, break it down and kill everyone inside. Need to convince someone to fight for you? Put a knife to his throat and threaten him to die.

I’m not even done with Dragon Age Origins, but I wholeheartedly recommend it. Do yourself a favor – set some time aside (we’re talking a day or two), curl up (?) in front of your PC, and get ready to have some fun. The game is worth it, and I really hope Bioware keeps the franchise alive. Between this and the upcoming Mass Effect 2, it’s already been a great year for an RPG fan.

Friday

The event began with a few hours of networking greased by copious amounts of alcohol (which I did not partake in) and pizza (which I also did not partake in, as I knew I’d be eating horribly for the rest of the weekend anyway). I got to meet a lot of cool people, and from a personal perspective it really felt like I had a really easy time talking to everyone at the event. One of the networking issues that I still have to work on is being able to “work the room” better without rudely disengaging from conversations (to anyone I talked to, don’t take this as an insult, I just wanted to get to know as many people as possible. I had one horrible wrinkle though – I didn’t get my business cards to come in on time before the event, so I was left with nothing when people offered to trade cards with me (can we just get to the government implanted identify chips so I can just scan people I meet with my keychain?) Oh, and before I go any further, let me just say that every time I see the Microsoft NERD facility I am more and more impressed, that is an awesome event venue and I hope that more people choose to use that venue for any tech events here in Boston.

Once the networking subsided, we went through the pitches. We had more than two dozen ideas come through during the course of the evening and without going into any particulars I will say that there are a lot of smart people near Boston. One problem became pretty evident though – many of these smart people don’t have the oral communication skills to present their ideas effectively. This idea is further evidenced by the fact that by the time the pitches were wrapped up and voted – the pitch that ended up winning was the one that arguably had the best presentation. The presenters couldn’t rely on powerpoint or flashy visuals (they weren’t allowed during the pitch process), so the recognition went to the pitchman with the most charisma. His charisma worked, as I joined his team (along with 6 others!). The idea was simple: create a web comic aggregator that gave comic consumers a streamlined way to view their webcomics without having to navigate RSS feeds or bookmarks as well as provide authors with tools to monetize and analyze their comics. We had a big team, we had a big idea, and we had the youngest person at the weekend (a 15 year old code cruncher named Bruce). Now all that was left was execution.

Saturday

The first day of development started off with some breakfast graciously provided by the startup weekend crew. Bagels, donuts, and coffee – not my usual choice for meals, but I went for it anyway. In retrospect, my diet was probably one of the reasons why I found myself crashing into a sugar/calorie coma towards the middle of the day.  We began by having a scrum, something that I was exposed to while at gamerDNA, but never really got into a real one until Saturday (I’m a self proclaimed business development person, so I still need to work on my development skills). We spent over an hour pitching ideas – no idea was too small or too large, and we filled both sides of a whiteboard with our brain dump. After the dump, we discussed each idea point by point until we decided on a solution that we could complete in 48 hours. One thing I noticed right off the bat, however, was that our startup was missing the all important answer to the question on the minds of every investor: “How do we make money from this?” For now, we just resigned to “banner ads”, with future opportunities for affiliate marketing with comic authors and user currency options for supporting comic authors. One thing I noticed more than anything was that in this idea trimming process each of us became aligned with the vision of the product – we wanted to create a webcomic viewer that put the authors first.

We had a large team, so we split into three: a development/backend group, a marketing/business group, and a product management/front end group. I of course was in the marketing group paired with a social media veteran who was already making wordpress, twitter, and facebook accounts as soon as he booted up his machine. I spent my team working on a strategy for rapid user growth (since our revenue was dependant on it) and also tried to figure out the best way to get authors to allow us to let them bring in content. We all got to work on our individual tasks, while our team leader walked between teams doing regular checkups and acted as a “voice of the vision”, ensuring that whatever we were working on aligned with the vision of the company. Throughout the day, we had visitors from the tech industry walk around and provide us with advice, including legal teams and new media marketing expert Justin Levy.

By the end of the night, we were all getting tired, but we had agreed on a focus for the weekend – the first iteration of our site would be something similar to “hot or not” but for web comics. This would allow readers to read their favorite comics or discover new web comics while also engaging with the authors through voting on their favorite strips or series. Our team leader was also a front-end developer, so he took on the task of building the front end while the rest of us trudged home and went to bed.

Sunday

Fueled up with another round of bagels and donuts, we got to work on producing the prototype website while also focusing on the presentation that we would be making 9 hours later. Throughout the day I noticed that many teams were really hitting their stride, it wasn’t uncommon for me to walk by a laptop screen and see a great looking logo, some awesome concept slides, or even fully functioning prototypes. The social strategy was also in full swing, as my twitter feed became clogged with product announcements and hubris (nothing is wrong with this, evangelizing your product is necessary).

We were all getting pretty tired, and we could tell that we were also starting to get on each other’s nerves. It became increasingly difficult to focus but at this point we all knew that if we didn’t get things out the door today, we’d be throwing away a valuable opportunity.

Our presentation strategy was unique – I think the best way for me to describe it would be to call it the “Steve Jobs” approach. We would put our team leader on stage and pair him with extremely simple graphics. The goal was to sell the audience on our idea through putting our CPE (chief product evangelist, I just made this up) in front of the audience. This person was our team leader. After sitting through some fantastic presentations from the likes of ReleaseQ, Motini, iZaazu, and doodlebugging, our leader got to the front and delivered the presentation. Unfortunately, the lack of sleep and unique presentation strategy hit us and the jokes that we thought were funny when we wrote them didn’t quite hit the audience in the way we wanted. Regardless, our team leader was as charismatic as ever and was able to brush off some probing questions from our audience.

We didn’t end up winning (that honor went to the fine folks at doodlebugging), but I can say I came home happy. I had been bitten by the startup bug, and the connections that I made will serve me for years to come I’m sure.

Thanks to everyone who made startup weekend a great time, and I look forward to seeing all of you in 6 months!

I’ve recently begun reading a series of books that I first got turned on to from a PopCrunch list of the Top 10 Most Disturbing Books of All TIme, when I read the list, the first book that I wanted to take a look at was American Psycho. I admit that I saw the Christian Bale movie before I ever thought about getting the book, but the movie – although disturbing in its own right – does not hold a candle to the overall level of insanity presented in the book.  Just a fair warning before I go any further – this book has some seriously disguising imagery. I grew up on Mortal Kombat and Robocop and I have no problem with the level gore presented in either Hostel or any of the Saw movies, but this book actually made me turn my head away in disgust a few times.

The book is about Patrick Bateman, a human representation of American excess. He was born into a family of wealth, had an Ivy League education, and currently work at a prestigious Wall Street firm where his work day mostly consists of selecting new business cards and making lunch and dinner reservations for himself and his other trust-fund baby friends. The author, Bret Easton Ellis, goes into excruciating detail in describe every aspect of Patrick Bateman’s life. Patrick obsesses over “fitting in” – he knows exactly what designer clothes anyone is wearing and by the time you’re done reading the book, you’ll have heard the term “double breasted sport coat” more often than you will ever need to. The first bit of the book discusses Patrick’s daily routine, he wakes up, works out (and brags to the reader about his chiseled physique), takes a shower, applies all the latest fashionable colognes/face masks/ointments to make sure that his face looks young (even though he’s 26). His apartment is expensive and is full of ridiculous knick-knacks – including a $15,000 tea set. Occasionally, Patrick needs to rub elbows with the “common people”, and he makes the experience seem almost like pulling teeth, like his interaction with his building’s security guard – whom Bateman silently chastises for the donut that he see’s on the guard’s desk.

As the book progresses, you start seeing bits of Patrick’s dark side start to bubble up – from muttering threats to kill waitresses under his breath (in graphic detail), to elaborate descriptions of human anatomy, to moments of bone chilling depravity. Towards the middle of the book Bateman see-saws between boring descriptions of his day or his friends and completely violent and unbelievably disguising acts including, but not limited to – decapitation, cruelty to animals, consumption of human flesh, and describing Phil Collins (I’m serious, if you’ve seen the movie you know what I mean but Bateman’s rant on Genesis is so out of place that it almost cracked me up.) You really start to feel like you’re in the mind of a completely insane psychotic killer, and by the time you’re done with the book you’re left with no resolution – almost as if the book has made you crazy yourself.

I think what really makes this novel good is the fact that by the time you start to near the end of the book, you become just as schizophrenic about Bateman as he is himself. Your feelings towards him bounce between disgust to esteem at the drop of a hat and it’s not until he does something completely inhuman that you realize that he’s sucked you in.

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated my blog, but I figure if I schedule some time every day to update it, I’ll have something regular in no time. This post is about a very fun subject, and it’s my completely impersonal look at the rise of one of my favorite comedy writers – Dan Harmon. Dan’s currently the creator and executive producer of the show Community on NBC, a show that I am an absolutely huge fan and to be it feels like the best comedy to come on TV since The Office. Strangely enough, I had never even heard of the show until I heard an interview with Dan Harmon on NPR as I was surfing through radio channels and I heard Dan’s voice. I had a little bit of joy in my heard when I first saw his executive producer credit, mostly because I’ve seen some of his past work and it was about time Dan got the recognition he deserved.

I was first exposed to Harmon through Channel101.com an internet tv network where anyone could submit a 5 minute “pilot” episode for a show that would then be voted by current show runners (of which there is a maximum of 5 currently running shows). Every month I was treated to some really great videos that circulated around our college apartment. Some of my favorite shows from Channel 101 include Groove Fighters, Yacht Rock, Your Magic Touched Me, Your Magic Touched Me: NIGHTS, and the ever popular House of Cosbys. With Cosbys, Channel101 got some moderate celebrity when the official Cosby camp filed litigation. Dan himself frequently used some of his celebrity connections (mainly Jack Black) to create some high profile content on Channel 101, but something tells me the site has yet to really “make it big”.
While working on 101 and probably other projects, Harmon wrote the movie Monster House with Channel 101 co-creator Rob Schrab. While I’m not sure how many re-writes the script went through before it got on screen, Harmon probably got a nice paycheck out of it and I can only assume he parlayed that success (and a relationship with another well-known comedy celebrity), to produce The Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central. Harmon stayed on the Viacom bandwagon and he tried to create a version of Channel101 on VH1, Acceptable.TV. The show was good, but the concept wasn’t ready for prime time as the show was unceremoniously dumped after 7 episodes (in favor of some reality show knockoff of another reality show I’m sure). Still, Acceptable.TV had some good gems, like this one starring Dan Harmon himself:

I like to pretend that throughout all of this Dan Harmon lived in a cardboard box with a netbook until one day he discovered a Community college, where he, despite his alcoholic breath and disheveled looks, was able to blend in with the student body and come up with inspiration for this crazy new comedy series on NBC. In reality, he probably just rolled up with a script, made it funny, and cast Chevy Chase (also, I’ve never been part of the “HAHA CHEVY CHASE ISN’T FUNNY” craze, but I am so glad to see him back).
So, do Dan and I a  favor – watch Community on NBC, keep a good show on TV because you know they’ll just replace it with a clone of The Office if it doesn’t work out. I really love the show, and you might as well.

“Breathe”

When you’ve got someone on top of you trying to get your arm into a kimura, your thinking about a lot of things – How am I going to get my arm free? How do I flip him over so I can counter him? What the heck did he have to eat for lunch in order to smell this bad? There may be one thing that you’re not thinking about: Am I breathing? Periodically taking controlled breaths can do a lot for you – it gives your muscles much needed oxygen to keep yourself going, it allows any movements to be a lot more effective when you make them (try exhaling when you throw a punch as opposed to holding your breath), and most importantly it helps you relax.

“You’re switching your stance”

One of the fundamental aspects of a combat athlete is his/her stance. It allows someone to move quickly, deliver effective strikes, and gives a foundation for someone to build effective combinations.  In general, those who are right-handed maintain a stance with their rear leg back, while lefties do the opposite. There’s no doubt that your rear leg is the side that you’re most powerful at, so the kicks that you’re pulling off and the punches that you throw from that side are going to have the most effect (and offer the more satisfying sound when you hit a heavy bag).

However, in order to get that sound, or to just get a more comfortable position, you might want to switch your stance before you throw a kick. If you find yourself stepping forward, alternating feet, or even sliding your back foot up so that you’re square against your target – you may have a more powerful strike, but you’ve switched your stance, and your strike is no where near as quick. Not to mention the fact that by switching your stance, you’ve totally revealed your intentions to your opponent (called telegraphing).

“Reload.”

Ok, they don’t quite say “Reload”, but it’s a whole lot more memorable than some of the long explanations that you’ll hear for this.  Basically, it’s like this – when you punch, the easy thing to do is let your hands fall to your sides or lazily get back to the ready position. Similarly, when you kick – it’s very easy to just relax your quads and let gravity take care of the rest. This isn’t a good idea.  You want your punches in kicks to come in the same way they went out, just imagine some suddenly hit rewind once you made contact so your body returns to your neutral stance.

“Use your whole body”

There’s a lot you can do with your arms, legs, neck, or whatever – but if you’re not supplementing it with your whole body, your technique is going to be lacking some power. When grappling, this is even more important – sure you can try to throw someone around with your arms, but when you use your legs, arms, and back in unison – you’ll probably end up being a lot more successful, and a lot less tired. In the striking game, it’s pretty easy to tell when you get roundhouse kicked by someone who used their hips as opposed to being kicked just by the leg. I’ll give you a hint – one of them leaves you black and blue.

“Keep your hands up”

Come on, you had to see this one coming – if you’re anything like me, your first few months of training will be filled with coaches making sure that you keep your hands up at all times. There’s really no need for an explanation on this – if you don’t want to go down like a sack of potatoes, glue your gloves to your eyebrows and keep them there every time you strike.

Another week, another game down in a weekend Poopsock session, and I will say that FEAR 2 was an enjoyable, albeit stale experience.

I’m not going to go into the details about the first game’s history or the story because the game does a pretty good job of catching you up with the story and moving forward at a brisk pace.

I will, however, throw a few words in about the gameplay. I’m really starting to suspect that I’m getting some serious console shooter fatigue because even though this game had everything I loved about shooters, including great, powerful weapons, glorious gore, and of course the requisite slow motion (which is, still, pretty cool).  I guess ultimately my problem with this game is that it reminds me so much of Monolith’s other game, Condemned 2.

I really enjoyed Condemned, and FEAR to me just seems so similar to Condemned (they use the same engine, after all) that I kept wishing for my character to drop the gun, put up his dukes, and go to town.

I will address one bit of the story, though – the ending. The game ends so abruptly and so nonsensically that I really think they just totally rushed the ending so they could just get the game out on time – that, or they really, really, really want to make a sequel.

The game’s totally worth a rental, but not much more beyond that I’m afraid.

I’ve been trying a lot of new things with Fitness lately. First, I decided to drop crossfit entirely – the program really rocked me into good shape, but for reasons that I’ll be getting into later, I’ve decided to drop it in favor of the Westside Barbell routine – particularly, Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards. Why? Well, Crossfit has a lot going for it if you’re using that as your main source of physical exertion – but for me a lot of my conditioning work is being redirected in the form of Martial Arts training – 5 days a week.

I’ve started to train over at Redline Fight Sports here in Cambridge, MA, and so far I’ve been absolutely loving it.

Let me give you an idea of my schedule:

• Monday – Jujitsu
• Tuesday – Ketsugo
• Wednesday – MMA
• Thursday – Russian Sambo
• Friday – Rest/Conditioning
• Saturday – Jujitsu part 2

So far I’ve been getting the best sleep of my life, and the added weight training has been putting me in my place – but for the first time in awhile I’m feeling like I’m working at 100%. It’s always great to get to work and realize that the shape you thought were in is nothing compared to the shape that’s demanded of you.

Oh well, it’s time to put up or get out.

The next game in the Resident Evil franchise recently dropped, and despite my initial aversion to the control scheme (“Tank controls can’t work in the post Gears of War world”), I have to say that the game has once again gotten its hooks in me and I am happy to admit that I believe that Resident Evil 5 ranks near the top of the series (The all time favorite for me is, was, and always will be Resident Evil: Code Veronica). 

I will say this right off the bat – if you enjoyed Resident Evil 4 you’ve made it half way, because Resident Evil 5 is pretty much Resident Evil 4 in HD. Well, with one extremely important addition.

CO-OP

The frequently used gaming adage of “Everything’s better with coop” is pretty much dead on, and when you put CO-OP on top of an already good game, you get a fantastic game. 

Throughout the whole game, you see little indications that the design really is for coop, from things as subtle as level design tweaks that put you in an elevated position watching over your partner sometimes to blatantly obvious actions and quick time events that require you and your partner to hit buttons in synchronicity. 

Yeah, the combat is still Resident Evil 4 style, but the addition of Coop moves to actually makes them pretty darn fun. Have your partner shoot the enemy in the knee and then use that opening to deliver a mighty uppercut to see what I’m talking about. 

The story is typical Resident Evil, with a tighter connection to previous games – so if you’re into that, great! If not, well, the narrative doesn’t exactly get in the way – you just need to realize that there are big monsters that need to get shot at.

Speaking of big monsters, the boss fights are pretty darn good as well – the extra edge offered through cooperative play make some of them really fun. The often used example of this is the phone with the enemy with a vulnerable spot on its back, so in order to attack it your partner needs to get the monster to focus their attention while you flank and pump some rounds into ‘em. 

The only major frustration I had with the game was the fact that even now the game really relies on Quick Time events. The frustrating coop quick time events make things even worse, as if your partner suddenly misses, you have to repeat the entire sequence from scratch – not exactly the best way to promote team bonding if you ask me. 

After you beat the game, you get the standard set of unlocks but the highlight for me was the Mercenaries mode, which throws enemies at you and your partner while you try to build a combo meter – I’d honestly be willing to drop 20 bucks just for that. 

Overall, if you’ve got a friend to play with, you really should Resident Evil 5 a fair shake – just don’t play it split screen, because the split screen for this game is absolutely abysmal.