Saturday Night Fever remake: Should we put on our boogie shoes again?

First, let me clarify that there is no Saturday Night Fever remake, this is just some idle thinking on my part. Apologies if anyone got excited at the thought of seeing a white disco suit on the big screen once more.

Saturday Night Fever is usually considered a classic film (it stands at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and film critic Gene Siskel declared it his favorite movie ever) and had a lasting cultural impact stretching well beyond its 1977 debut. It helped usher in the era of disco, made John Travolta a superstar and did the same for the Bee Gees. It was a new kind of musical in which music was part of the fabric of the film but where no one suddenly broke out into song. At its core it was a coming of age story in which the young and impudent Tony Manero has to decide whether to break away from his dead-end life in Brooklyn (“Life going nowhere, somebody help me”) for something better in Manhattan.

A lot of people would argue there’s no need to remake the movie. I wouldn’t disagree and am always a bit dismayed when classic, highly-regarded films get remade into inevitably inferior new versions. There are plenty of good but flawed movies that are ripe for improvement via remake but they lack the cachet of a classic and so get passed over.

So if I don’t necessarily want a Saturday Night Fever remake, what am I going on about? I happened to be listening to the soundtrack while on my usual lunch walk (side note: the 8-track version–which I owned, dang it–has a live version of “Jive Talkin'” that blows the doors off the CD/digital studio version of the same song. Why they used a live version on the 8-track I don’t know and probably never will, alas) and it suddenly popped into my head that, given that the film is close to 40 years old it’s perhaps more of a surprise that it hasn’t been remade yet. This led to thinking about how it might be handled if someone greenlit a remake.

Here are the possibilities as I see them:

  • the Psycho approach. In 1998 director Gus Van Sant made a mostly shot-for-shot remake of the 1960 classic Psycho. Many saw this not only as inferior to the original, but a pointless experiment in duplication. Given the film was both a critical and financial flop, I doubt this approach would be considered. Also, Saturday Night Fever is as much of its era and wouldn’t necessarily translate to being modernized as Psycho was (see the last entry below for more).
  • a comedy remake, also known as the 21 Jump Street approach. The TV series was played straight but the movie remake and sequel play it for laughs and it works, mainly because the premise of 21 Jump Street is flexible enough that it can be stretched without breaking. While it’s obviously possible to make a comedic coming of age story, I think it would change the tone of the movie enough that it would come off more as a parody than just a different take. Speaking of…
  • an outright parody. That scene in Airplane! is enough. As are the other million parodies already out there.
  • the keep-it-faithful remake. This would keep everything as faithful to the original as possible–setting it in 1977, making the disco central, keeping the characters and story the same. It wouldn’t be a shot-for-shot remake and the biggest question would probably be whether to re-use the songs or create new ones that sound like they are from 1977. It would be challenging and some might still argue a bit pointless to take this approach. It also might come off as unintentional parody.
  • the keep-it-faithful-except-not-really remake. In this version the story and characters would stay the same but the trappings surrounding them would change. Instead of being set in 1977 and having everyone go to the disco, it would be set in 2016 and everyone would go to…wherever people go now. Since the music is such a fundamental part of the film, weaving throughout both the background and foreground, it might prove tricky keeping the feel of the original while updating the music. There’s a variety of popular genres to pull from–hip hop, electronica and its many variants and offshoots–but could any of them replicate the feel of the disco music of 1977 and serve as the basis for the film’s dance competition? It’s possible and this is probably the best approach to take.

Simon Cowell was apparently interested in a remake back around 2009 but it looks like nothing came of that. In a way it’s too bad because I suspect it might have been entertainingly awful.

I also thought about a possible remake of 1980’s Xanadu, which featured Olivia Newton-John and the music of ELO. Watching any clip from the movie–and I do mean any clip–quickly convinced me that it would be impossible to remake this without lapsing into parody, whether intended or not.

Discipline and writing…why does this sound familiar?

From one of my aborted attempts at reviving a journal comes this snippet on writing, which was penned (literally, as you can see) on my 25th birthday:

Waxing on writing with ink

In case the image stops working, here’s the text in convenient text form:

In truth, I like to write. A daily journal is an exercise in writing and an exercise in discipline. Everyday I must pour out thoughts on these pages, and attempt to be at least reasonably lucid and/or coherent. Through this daily regimen I will sharpen and hone my writing skills, I will cause the juices of creativity to practically sploosh out of my ears. Occasionally, I may even record something profound (do I have a straight face as I write this? I’m not tellin’).

This is culled from the first entry in the journal. It was followed by one more entry, after which none followed. Even all these years later I can appreciate the rich, flavorful irony reading through this paragraph of filthy lies.

On the one hand it’s nice that I recognized the need for discipline in writing back when I was still young enough to be at my sexual peak. On the other hand, I apparently didn’t keep a straight face while writing any of this (see: giving up on this very same journal after two entries). On the third hand grafted on Frankenstein-style, I have kept writing since that 25th birthday, even if the dry spells have occasionally been prolonged droughts.

More writing exercises and other writing…soon™.

Run 424: A nice mid-June run in mid-April

Run 424
Average pace: 5:22/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 27:02
Weather: Sun and high cloud
Temp: 19ºC
Wind: low
BPM: 158
Stride: n/a
Weight: 166.9 pounds
Total distance to date: 3415
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

Another curiously warm early evening run. My goal was the same as it has been the last few runs, which is to maintain a steady but not especially blazing pace, all the better to keep my lower body intact. I figured since it was actually for-real warm out that I might naturally run slower anyway.

I was wrong. Instead, although I was fairly steady, I improved to an overall pace of 5:22/km, my best for a 5K this year. The right leg felt slightly creaky but not actually sore. Paradoxically, my BPM was back down again, to 158. I guess my body is finally getting used to running again.

Also, no dogs. Yay. Sorry, dogs, you’re just a tad too unpredictable in your unleashed state, which many of your silly owners leave you in.

Not much else to report, just generally pleased again by the results.

Note: The original post showed the temperature as 194ºC. This has been corrected to 19ºC. Running in temperatures approaching 200 Celsius is neither recommended nor endorsed.

Run 423: The Sun Run at Burnaby Lake

Run 423
Average pace: 5:50/km
Location: Burnaby Lake CCW
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 58:36
Weather: Sun and high cloud
Temp: 14ºC
Wind: low
BPM: 162
Stride: n/a
Weight: 166.2 pounds
Total distance to date: 3410
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

It was sunny and warm today and despite the official reported temperature of 14ºC both at the beginning and end of the run, I’m pretty sure the watch was being kooky and it was warmer than that, probably closer to 16 or 18. It was not overly warm, though, just enough to get a very light sweat going.

Today was the actual Vancouver Sun Run so I wasn’t sure how it would affect crowds at the lake. As it turns out there were quite a few people, walkers and joggers alike. And one cyclist who zoomed past me on the Avalon Trail. Grr. There were a few minor incidents of trail-clogging but nothing significant. The side trails proved to be a good choice today as I encountered no one on all three (note, unless otherwise stated, a full 10K loop of the lake will always include the three side trails as they generally get a lot less traffic).

My pace was a lot more deliberate vs. last Sunday as I didn’t want a repeat of the soreness in the upper right leg and on that count, I was successful, as the leg felt much better. I ended up only two seconds off last Sunday, which is still ahead of most of my longer runs this year, so it’s all good.

I also successfully changed music using Siri mid-run. This always feels like a major triumph to me because I expect Siri to automatically garble anything I say while jogging. Stranger still, I felt three of the ten taps that mark off the kilometers while running, the most ever. I also got an annoying Slack notification mid-run and am a bit puzzled why it practically vibrates the bone in my wrist while the ones specifically for running are these minimalist little taps. It seems legitimately backward. I’d say there’s probably a setting but the watch actually has very few and I’ve already turned all the “taptics” up to 11.

The left foot felt a little sore on the walk back but nothing major. My BPM was up slightly from the previous 10K but that is almost certainly due to the warmer weather and greater exertion required.

Overall, I am pleased with today’s effort. I’m also beginning to stretch now in an effort to reduce further injury. I’ll be sure to report any ironic stretching-related injuries here.

Book review: The Super Natural

The Super Natural: A New Vision of the UnexplainedThe Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Strieber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This one is kind of bonkers if you think the world and the universe around it are pretty much known things. If you’re less certain (just what is dark matter, anyway, and why is there so much of it?) then the you may find the ideas presented to be intriguing, even as the authors make no absolute claims on any of the evidence they bring forward.

The premise of The Super Natural is that the various unknown phenomena reported around the world–everything from UFOs to alien abductions, apparitions, implants, strange lights and more–are real and explainable, and point to a larger reality that most people lack the perception and skill to interact with in a meaningful way, or even at all. Further, they suggest the possibility of parallel universes that may intersect with ours at times. On top of that, there’s a lot of theory on what happens after you die and whether or not the soul exists. Finally, there is a common belief between the authors that some kind of intelligent plasma energy may be behind most of this.

Pretty bonkers, right?

Whitley Strieber is well-known for his books about what he calls the visitors, starting with Communion. His experiences have been largely ignored by mainstream media or openly mocked (he expresses regret for coming up with the phrase “rectal probe”, two words that have launched a thousand jokes over the past thirty years). His chapters largely consist of him recalling and expanding on experiences he has previously described, as well as bringing in some new ones. He offers theories but is very careful to commit to none of them, keeping his mind open to other possibilities. He doesn’t think the visitors are aliens from another planet, a common misconception people have with his experiences.

Jeff Kripal is a historian of religions and his chapters focus more specifically on the theories behind what may be going on, with different techniques offered as part of a “toolbox” for examining and cataloguing the unknown.

In a few instances the authors disagree on specifics but overall they present a united front in believing the likeliest explanations of all this weird stuff lies in intelligent plasma energy that exists perhaps in a dimension outside of ours and may be trying to teach those who are receptive what lies beyond our physical form and physical dimension. There are suggestions that these other beings live outside of normal space and time and to them we seem pretty primitive with our living and dying and not being able to fly around as spooky balls of energy. But the good news is they consider us teachable.

There are no good explanations on why these more advanced forms of life want to teach us or why they are being relatively coy about it (I say relatively because there are thousands of UFO sightings, for example, and even well-documented cases rarely get reported by conventional media, so while these various phenomena may be unknown, they are not exactly rare). Perhaps we’re just really slow learners. Maybe our nukes scare them. They still kind of scare me.

Kripal in particular also goes into detail about what is real versus fictional or imagined and how we may essentially make our own reality. One example he recounts is about an academic colleague who was making blueberry muffins (mmm). He finished mixing the wet ingredients then rinsed out and set the empty honey jar on the sink counter to dry. He went to get a tin of flour off a shelf and, surprised by how unusually heavy it felt, dropped it on the floor. He sifted through the spilled flour and found the honey jar, caked in the flour. He looked at the counter. The jar was no longer there. It had moved on its own. Neat! And weird.

Kripal explains:

Apparently, that is what the human mind-brain does when it is participating in a dimension of reality that is quite beyond our primitive “mental” and “material” categories of thinking (and our primitive science, which assumes the same division to work at all). It tells itself a story that involves otherwise impossible things and then acts out that story with physical objects. If those objects are available in the immediate environment, it uses them as props, like Dan’s honey jar. If they are not, it creates them “out of nowhere.”

He goes on to say these odd events happen to “mess with us” (that is a direct quote), to shake up our view of the world as one in which the mental and physical are separate things. It’s all very trippy, like trying to count to infinity.

In the end a skeptic is unlikely to be convinced by the evidence presented by Strieber and Kripal, but their ideas are interesting and entertainingly presented. The way they both hold back from making absolute claims seems less a dodge and more a genuine admission that they–and us–really don’t know for sure what it happening out there. But something certainly seems to be.

Meanwhile, I can’t even get the TV remote to teleport into my hand. If the mental and physical are really one, I wouldn’t mind at least a few perks before evolving into a super-intelligent ball of light.

View all my reviews

Run 422: The no news is good news run

Run 422
Average pace: 5:26/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 27:27
Weather: Sun and cloud
Temp: 12ºC
Wind: moderate to high
BPM: 159
Stride: n/a
Weight: 167.3 pounds
Total distance to date: 3399
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

After the soreness of Sunday and the weird explosion of pain Tuesday morning, I headed out for tonight’s run with a bit of trepidation. Fortunately the right leg held up and only felt a bit stiff afterward.

It was brisk and a good breeze was blowing but it made no difference once I got started and got all sweaty and junk. I deliberately used caution, aiming for a slower but steady pace and in the end I paradoxically beat my last 5K pace (a statistical tie at 5:26/km but still). My BPM also dropped back down to 159, It seems the key to a good run is to not be stupid and macho. Who knew?

CLAWS ~or~ How an 11 year old tries to write a blockbuster novel

While rooting through my old school junk (so old it pre-dates the internet, compact discs and tipping more than 15%) I found a story called CLAWS that I wrote using my Smith Corona portable typewriter. I typed it out on small-sized paper to make it look like a paperback. Maybe I had a dream of binding or stapling it all together when done to further enhance the illusion. I dreamed big back then.

CLAWS was inspired by Jaws and more importantly, by the 1976 Jaws ripoff, Grizzly. Basically it was a monster movie as written by an 11 year old. I considered myself pretty good at spelling but apparently I was not so good at hitting keys on a typewriter. This would be reinforced twenty years later when Mavis Beacon caused me to curl up on the floor in a fetal position, vowing to never touch anther typing program ever again.

What I’m saying is there are a lot of typos, even just on the first page included below. This is what happens when your spelling checker is an actual dictionary and your delete key is waiting for you 15 years in the future. I give myself props for getting “its” right, though.

Reading it over, I’m struck by the staccato, Hemingway-like prose, sentences delivered like quick machine gun bursts.

The year was 1956.
It was an April morning.
It was a savage animal.
But would this stop the beast? No.

Too bad so many of the sentences appear to be in random order. Or maybe I was making a statement on the unpredictable nature of nature.

It’s like watching someone throw clay then realize that “throw clay” is an expression, you don’t literally throw it, so they go pick up the clay bits from the other side of the room, come back to the pottery table and then fashion together something that has all the required elements of whatever it is they’re making (probably an ashtray), but with everything about it just slightly wrong because let’s face it, they already threw the clay across the room, they’re probably not destined to make great art here.

CLAWS: Terrifying. And that's just the typos.
CLAWS: Terrifying. And that’s just the typos.

But man, did I ever know how to end a first page. How it fought to live in man’s civilization? You have to read on to find out what happens. I picture CLAWS trying to fit in at boarding school. “He keeps mauling the other students,” Miss Pennington said. “It’s just not proper.”

The not-so Ever-Continuing Saga of the Round Balls

Way back when parachute pants were not worn ironically (or were still worn at all), I made a series of comics called The Ever-Continuing Saga of the Round Balls. I did 11 issues in all, each lovingly handcrafted by hand. The ongoing story was just a bunch of nonsense to allow for topical jokes and sight gags. The balls were on a quest to find Pia Zadora. For people born in this century, she was the 1980s equivalent of Paris Hilton, more or less.

The cast of characters was large and impressive. There were magic talking bean bags and mice, nefarious enemies in the form of rocks, adventures on tropic islands and more.

I have lost all 11 issues. I have no idea where they are. It makes me sad.

I tried to revive the comic about a year after the last issue but it never took. Below is a gallery of all that remains of those unfinished Round Balls comics. I’d say I’d go back and revive the comic except it was a lot of work and I ain’t no artist.

But it was fun and satisfying at the time.

What 30 years of aging does to you

In my case, it greatly improves my appearance. I submit the evidence below.

NOTE: Images may frighten young children. People with heart conditions should use caution.

Exhibit A
Student Identification card, 1980
Age of subject: 16

Pretty. Ugly.
Good god, where to even start?

There are many things wrong with this picture. First, I want to clarify that the off-center right-side is not an artifact of the scanning. The card was printed that way because technology in 1980 still lacked the ability to make straight lines.

Now, as for me, there’s the acne. Unfortunate, but a common part of being a teen for many. My grad photos have the acne airbrushed out, but it wasn’t an option for a mere student ID card.

The weird tilt of the glasses suggest my head is as horribly misaligned as the graphics on the card. This is not true. At the same time I have no good explanation for why the glasses are not sitting straight. The tinted lenses were annoying and I ditched them shortly after this photo was taken. Possibly after seeing this photo, when I finally stopped crying.

The slightly-parted lips show my teeth at their worst, making them look uneven and British. Which they were. I apologize to the British with nice teeth.

The hair. It looks like it is slowly making its way around to devour my face. I compensated for its thinness by growing a lot of it instead. It was a pain to groom so I mostly gave up, as you can see. I graduated high school with enough sense to have somewhat shorter hair than pictured here.

In summation: yech.

Exhibit B
Self-portrait without flash, 2010
Age of subject: 46

selfie without flash
Selfie without flash, 2010

As the caption notes, this picture was taken without a flash on a digital camera, so there’s a bit of noise as a result of my tampering with the brightness and contrast.

Let’s compare and contrast with the student ID photo.

The acne is gone. In exchange I am a 46 year old adult instead of a 16 year old goofball.

No tilt to the glasses because I opted not to wear them for the shot. But they wouldn’t have tilted anyway because by 2010 the Earth’s axis had been corrected or something.

Mouth closed so teeth are a delightful mystery, as intended.

The volume of hair has been reduced by 400%. Some hair has slipped to the chin and upper lip. Ears are proven to exist. The overall effect is pleasing, though the onset of male pattern baldness is plainly visible. To my credit I’m not especially trying to hide it, either.

The bright yellow shirt pops out at you. It’s friendly and inviting. It got me a date.

Overall, then, I went from an ugly duckling at 16 to a full-grown duck starting to lose its feathers, but knowing how to highlight its remaining plumage in a pleasing way. That analogy may suck, but all analogies do.

I generally don’t take good photos but nearly all of my school photos post-puberty are hideous. And that is why I share them, to teach the young kids of today to not be hideous. Wear your glasses straight. Wash with soap. Use a comb.

No run: The Walk

I was going to run tonight but then my leg exploded.

This is a slight exaggeration.

On Sunday’s run the muscle that went kablooey in my upper right leg last August started to ache a bit. Concerning, but yesterday (Monday) it felt a lot better so I was no longer as concerned and I planned to run on my normal schedule tonight.

Very early this morning the same muscle felt a little more sore instead of a little less sore, as expected. At first I shrugged it off as sleeping in a weird position and stretching it or something. The run was still on.

Just before getting up I stretched my legs, as one often does before rising. This resulted in a sensation in this upper right leg muscle that can be compared to (pick one or pick all):

  • 500 matches inside the muscle all being lit simultaneously
  • Satan suddenly possessing the muscle and attempting the Linda Blair head spin with it
  • a machine specifically designed to create pain suddenly teleporting into the muscle and activating

You get the idea.

I’m not sure how the simple act of stretching caused such an explosive burst of pain, but it did. I took two Alleve and tried resting (I passed on work since the incredible pain would probably prove distracting) but there was no position that went from “yes, this hurts” to “no, this doesn’t hurt” or even “yes, this still hurts but is tolerable.” So I got up and padded around, sat, had tea, got up, sat down again and so on. A few hours later the Alleve finally had some effect or the muscle relaxed sufficiently to become an ache.

It remains a dull ache tonight.

I decided a run would be unwise, plus it looked like rain, so I probably saved both my leg and my nipples*.

However, I felt a walk would be okay so I headed out and walked the river trail, touching the gate at the far end before returning. The weather was a light drizzle for about the first two-thirds. It changed to, well, steady rain for the last third, meaning I got drenched.

Still, it was nice to get out.

The Apple Watch proved flaky again, as it has before in inclement weather (or when I’m wearing a jacket, I’m not entirely sure what the trigger is). It tracked my run up to 7:20 p.m. then stopped on its own. I got inside at 7:24 p.m. so it didn’t miss much, but still, the only way to stop a fitness activity is to:

a) swipe through several screens until you get to the one where you tap the End button
b) force touch (press hard) on the activity screen until you get the same screen with the End button

Notice both of these require you to tap a specific, small button on a specific screen. There is, to my knowledge, no other way to make the app stop. And yet it did.

There’s a way to lock the screen. The next time I’m out and the weather turns bad I may try it to see if it prevents this from happening. I’d prefer it to just not happen, though. I don’t mind AI in the watch but I’d rather it not be rogue AI.

 

* don’t ask

Apple Watch: Time to improve

A few months ago I decided to get an Apple Watch. I’m not always an early adopter but my partner wanted one and so I jumped in, too.

In the time (ho ho) that I’ve used it, I’ve found it’s a convenience I appreciate but one that is also not necessary. I wouldn’t want to forget to wear it but there’s nothing it does that can’t be replicated by other devices and in some cases, these other devices can perform the same functions better, though not always at a lower cost.

And speaking of cost, Apple recently cut the price of the watch, an unusual move for a company that normally never reduces pricing on products until the next version comes out (rumor has it the second version of the Apple Watch will debut before the end of the year). This underscores how the entire smartwatch market is immature, as Apple is apparently trying to boost sales only a year after the watch debuted.

For reference, I have the space grey 38 mm model with the black sports band. This is about as subtle as the watch gets, looks-wise, and it fits decently on my skinny wrists in a way the 42 mm version wouldn’t. The band and watch are both comfortable to wear all day.

The problems with the watch range from minor to downright existential. Ultimately you ask yourself, what is it for? To tell time? A $10 watch can do that. To allow you to see notifications without pulling out your iPhone? That’s a nice feature but is it really worth hundreds of dollars? What else can it do?

If you are looking for a killer app on the watch, you won’t find it. I don’t have an issue with this–a smartwatch is by design made to do multiple things, so I don’t think it needs to have one must-have function. No one buys a smartphone just to take phone calls, after all–a $40 flip phone can do that (and in some cases can do it better). But if the watch can do a lot of things, can it do them well? How many are genuinely useful vs. gimmicky?

Here’s how I use the watch and how I rank the usefulness of each function:

  • Show the time. It is slightly less convenient that a regular watch for this, as you need to either tap the face or turn your wrist in order for the display to light up. This is to conserve battery life and I suspect it will be an issue for all smartwatches using OLED/LED/LCD displays for some time to come.  Nonetheless, the time is always accurate and unlike a regular watch you can choose from a variety of faces. The one I use also shows temperature, calendar events, alarms, the date and my activity. Tapping any of these takes you to the respective app, saving additional steps in navigation. Showing time is obviously a critical function. Sometimes the wrist gesture doesn’t get detected, which is annoying, but I’m not too bothered by it.
  • Notifications. You can customize these to match your iPhone or set them differently. If you turn everything on you’ll probably have your watch tapping, ringing and dinging constantly for half the day, after which the battery will be dead. I have it set to allow select notifications, some accompanied by a sound or tap, others showing up with the little red dot that says “mysterious notification has arrived.” I quickly got used to notifications on the watch and it is genuinely nice to not have to dig out the phone to check them. This works especially well for less-important notifications because now I just glance at my wrist to see them. They seem less annoying this way.
  • Playing music. Navigating your iPhone music collection with the watch works about as well as you’d expect on such a small screen and lists scroll fast, making it more tolerable. The best way to place music is via Siri and generally this works well, allowing for a truly hands-free experience. Sometimes Siri misunderstands (it interpreted “Play the album ‘Pyramid'” as “Play the album ‘pure mind'”) and sometimes it just flakes out completely, like when I said, “Hey Siri, play the album ‘Time.'” This exact command has worked perfectly before but this one time (ahem) Siri dutifully showed what it had heard on the watch face (which was exactly what I had said) then proceeded to play “Girl U Want” from Devo’s Greatest Hits.
  • Tracking activity. The built-in activity app tracks calories, stand time and exercise, allowing you to customize each. Throughout the day it reminds you to stand or shows you how close you are to a goal–these things can also be customized–and awards achievements when you hit your goals. The app works well and you can check more detailed stats on the iPhone version of the app. I feel like there should be a web version, though, for times when you really want to dig in.
  • Fitness/exercise. I use the fitness app for outdoor walks and runs, both of which will use the built-in heart rate monitor and the phone’s GPS. The results are fairly accurate and as long as you are specific with your commands, launching activities via Siri works well (“Hey Siri, start an 8K outdoor run”). Running offers customization on what you see during the run and taps at set intervals. For me it taps every km and at the end, though I’ve only ever noticed the taps exactly once when on a run, it’s just too subtle to feel when you’re moving faster. After the run, you get a breakdown of time, distance, pace, average BPM, calories burned and splits. The data seems fairly accurate, certainly good enough for me, especially since it is consistent, but I miss having a map of the route. Since the app uses the GPS in the phone, I’m not sure why it doesn’t do this. Still, it’s so convenient to use that my TomTom Runner Cardio has sat neglected for months.
  • Heart rate monitor. I check this occasionally, more for novelty than anything. It’s an essential part of the fitness app, though.
  • Text messaging. This works reasonably well, letting you use canned responses, adding customized ones via the phone or using Siri to dictate text that can be sent as audio (which seems silly) or as text. Again, you can often skip pulling out the phone and there seems to be some intelligence driving the options that come up for replies, suggesting that the watch tries to learn what you respond with most often.
  • Phone. Yes, you too can be Dick Tracy. The phone function works but I only use it by accident. This is one case where you really are better off pulling out the actual phone.
  • Third party apps. I’ve tried a few like Weather Underground’s app, but they often take several seconds to start up. That doesn’t sound like much but on a smartwatch, where you typically interact with the display in very short bursts, a few seconds feels like a very long time. As a result I’ve mostly abandoned third party apps. If I’m representative of other watch users, it doesn’t bode well for the health of the watch’s app ecosystem.

All of the above, save for the last two, I find useful and would miss if they weren’t available. But none are essential. I can’t tell someone that any of these functions are worth a minimum of $400 Canadian.

But worse than that, the watch feels unfinished, less a 1.0 product and more a 0.5 one. Third party apps perform poorly. This just isn’t acceptable. Sometimes the watch will feel sluggish when running the built-in apps. There is a strong sense that it is under-powered.

There are a bunch of ways to interact withe the watch. You can swipe, you can tap, you can “long press” you can force touch (press hard), you can use the digital crown (in multiple ways, not just by rotating it), you can use the other side button. And where and when to use any of these is never particularly clear or intuitive. I like options but it feels like the UI is an unwieldy amalgamation of iPhone conventions fused with new, watch-specific ones. And despite all these ways of controlling what is happening, I think the watch could use another physical button or at least allow re-mapping of the side button (which is dedicated to contacts, except when Apple decries otherwise, like when you long press it to restart the watch). In all, the interface seems muddled.

It also seems fiddly. I have often tapped a button, seen the button highlight to acknowledge the tap, then do nothing. It almost seems like I need to aim my finger at a particular angle on the face to get the tap recognized. Perhaps this is an artifact of me being left-handed but having the watch on my left wrist and thus using my right hand. On the plus side I am in some tiny way probably becoming slightly more ambidextrous. I’ve already mentioned the wrist gesture to check the face occasionally fails to be recognized.

Battery life has been fine for me. It’s supposed to last a day and I can do all the usual stuff, plus track a 10K walk and another 8K of walks without the watch having to slip into power-save mode. It also charges relatively quickly. Still, I’d like to see a minimum goal of having the watch face be able to stay on all the time and still have the battery last a day. I wouldn’t wear the watch at night regardless, so I’m not bothered by not being able to use it as a sleep tracker, but battery life is really at the minimum of where it should be.

In the end the Apple Watch is nice but uncompelling. Despite limitations, it has effectively replaced my running watch (for now, at least) and has allowed me to keep the phone tucked away while still keeping track of things. In fact, the watch means I am much less likely to miss a notification or phone call. But this is very much an unfinished product in a still ill-defined category. I don’t think smartwatches will go away any more than regular watches will, but we are probably another revision or two from an Apple Watch that lives up to the full potential of the format. If you can afford one, especially at the new lower price, and know what you’re getting, I don’t think you’ll experience buyer’s remorse, but you’re not missing out on a brave new world by waiting a little longer, either.

In which I interview myself (Part 2 of 2)

When last we left me, I was promising that the second part of the interview with myself would feature “growing up in Duncan, writing, singing and UFOs.” On we go.

Note: As before, the interviewer (me) has been named Dopple for short.

Dopple: Welcome to the second part of the interview.

Me: Thanks, it’s great to be here on the internet. This new carpeting is very nice.

Dopple: Let’s start with some sports talk.

Me: If you insist.

Dopple: I do. How do you feel about none of the Canadian teams making it into the Stanley Cup Playoffs this year?

Me: I already thanked the Canucks for another year without riots. Overall I am nonplussed. I know in some way I should be at least somewhat outraged but I just don’t care that much. Players and teams themselves move around so much it makes the whole exercise of loyalty kind of silly. Last year a co-worker was pumped over the Blue Jays during their playoff run. I pointed out that only three players on the roster were Canadian citizens. He didn’t seem to like that.

Dopple: Tell me about your singing.

Me: Usually done in the shower or with the headphones on when no one else is at home. I’ve been told that I have a great voice (by a roommate coming home early and listening to me wail away before entering the apartment) and more or less been told to never open my mouth again. Realistically, my voice has a fairly limited range and if I stay within those limits, it’s acceptable. I can do a decent Elvis or Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is actually a lot of fun to imitate. If I try to imitate someone like Billy Joel or Jeff Lynne (can you tell I’m old?) my vocal cords start aching almost immediately. Trying Geddy Lee would likely result in permanent damage to my singing and speaking abilities.

Dopple: Have you ever sung professionally?

Me: I sang in a few plays. I soloed “Down in the Valley” in grade 11 for “Dark of the Moon.” I even learned to play guitar but really I just learned where to put my fingers on the guitar in order to produce sounds reminiscent of the song “Down in the Valley.” I didn’t know a chord from a strut. I didn’t get paid for any of this, so the answer is no. My only reward were all the accolades I made up in my head.

Dopple: What was it like growing up in Duncan?

Me: The actual city limits, for reasons unclear to me, are very small, so the population has always hovered around 5,000. This makes it fairly tiny by city standards, though with the outlying area it’s actually more like 43,000 (according to Wikipedia). For growing up it was fine. I didn’t get in any fights, I had a bunch of good friends, my family got along relatively well, I did fine in school. I grew up in the 70s and early 80s so it goes without saying I had bad hair. But we all did, so it was a bonding thing. A horribly hideous bonding thing, but one all the same. I remember when our first McDonald’s opened in 1978. It was a major cultural event. If you wanted a Big Mac before then (I didn’t, I had a thing for the Filet-o-fish) you had to drive all the way to Victoria. Two years later we got our first Wendy’s. It was fast food but the way you ordered was completely different than McDonald’s. Someone would come by while you stood in line and took your order down on a pad of paper (because you could customize everything), then you worked your way to the counter to pay and collect your food. It seems very quaint now.

Dopple: That sounds very bucolic but surely there was a dark side to Duncan.

Me: It was more beige than dark. There were bad kids. A lot of people drank too much, including my dad. There were drugs and we had a weird family that lived at the end of the street for awhile and the RCMP would visit semi-regularly. A nine year old kid got run over by a cement truck on the Island Highway a block from my house, prompting the installation of the third traffic light as you pass through the city. Even today there are still only three lights when you drive through on the Island Highway. Also, I’m pretty sure I was kind of addicted to arcade games for awhile. It was mild as addictions go because I didn’t have an endless supply of cash, but I spent enough time in the three arcades (I remember The Saucy Dragon downtown but have forgotten the names of the others) that I got my first full-time job at age 19 working in an arcade. Handing out quarters was not a particularly challenging task so I helped kill the time by writing my first novel, using a pencil and six notebooks. I still have the notebooks today. The novel is bad and unfinished, but I had incredibly neat handwriting, which was actually printing.

Dopple: What do you think of UFOs? Do they exist?

Me: You don’t want to know more about Duncan? I can go on.

Dopple: Maybe later. Unless you have a Duncan UFO story.

Me: In fact, I do. My grandfather–my mom’s dad–owned a Texaco station outside town on the Island Highway (south of town, on the way to Victoria and until 1978, the McDonald’s in Victoria). He and his wife lived in a small home in a large yard behind the station. As I recall, the area around the station was mostly woods and fields of wild grass. One night they heard something outside and when my grandfather went to look he saw a UFO hovering above their house. His response was to get a shotgun and shoot at it. It flew away and as far as I know, never returned. Could you blame it? I guess my grandfather really didn’t like trespassers, regardless of what planet they came from.

Dopple: So you believe in UFOs?

Me: I don’t know what he saw but a UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object and there are thousands of reported cases. I don’t think the question is whether they exist or not–they clearly do–but what are they? Many are just a case of mistaken identity. Some may even be swamp gas. But the number of truly unknown cases is enough to confirm we don’t know everything that’s going on up in the sky. If you ask me if UFOs are extraterrestrials visiting from other galaxies, I would say I don’t know. It seems like a long way to travel to mostly just watch us.

Dopple: What about abductions, cattle mutilations and all that?

Me: Again, I don’t know. I don’t have any cattle. I’ve never been abducted, either, unless you count being made to go shopping with my mom when I really wanted to stay home and play video games.

Dopple: Moving on. Let’s talk about writing.

Me: Okay.

Dopple: You write.

Me: Yes.

Dopple: Don’t be difficult.

Me: You can’t stop me.

Dopple: I think I can.

Me: Fine. Yes, I write. I’ve written since I knew how. That sounds like stating the obvious but what I mean is I’ve written creatively since first learning how to write. My grade three teacher (one of them, actually–I had four because grade three was an experimental “open area” learning experience) read this silly stream of conscious story I wrote and the comment she put down, the only comment from a teacher I can clearly remember, was “Kid, you’re a scream!” It was truly inspiring to me.

Dopple: So you kept writing through school.

Me: Yes. In grade five a bunch of us wrote stories that would be shot with a single black and white camera as “movies”, which seemed incredibly exciting, even futuristic, at the time. The class voted for several and mine was one of the winners because I included vampires. You can never go wrong with vampires. I kept writing short stories and plays and things and that first unfinished novel when I was 19. When I moved to Vancouver I started writing more sporadically and sometimes went years without writing at all. I did keep a journal for a year or so, around 1987. It was mostly filled with sarcasm.

Dopple: Why did the writing become intermittent?

Me: Some people are born to write. Stephen King cranks out books like I crank out CO2. James Patterson writes a new book every two seconds. These people are obsessed, compelled. They can’t stop. I am not like that. I am easily distracted. I don’t get passionate about my writing (or my reading). I read a lot but I don’t try to educate myself, particularly. I keep writing in the passive voice and have to go back and fix it all the time. I write stories that go nowhere and peter out. I put it off. I make excuses. I doubt my ability. The list goes on and on, like a roll of toilet paper that never fully unravels.

Dopple: A colorful metaphor.

Me: I’m full of ’em.

Dopple: Do you still write?

Me: Yes. I made a vow to write every day, mostly on this blog if nowhere else, and I’ve stuck to it reasonably well. It enforces discipline, which is a key thing I’ve always struggled with.

Dopple: How is it going now?

Me: Okay. It could be better but it could be much worse, too, or non-existent. I’ve got a number of projects so I try to rotate between them so I’m always working on something. But it is slow-going. I still struggle with focusing, with putting butt in chair and just doing it, Nike-style.

Dopple: I’d like to know more but it’s getting late. Can we continue this later?

Me: You mean do a Part 3 of 2?

Dopple: Yes, exactly.

Me: It’s a date. But no kissing on the first date.

Dopple: Liar. Like, super liar.

Me: Quiet, you.

Tune in next time in which we find out if I do kiss on first dates, more about writing and other creative pursuits and who knows what else. Probably something dumb.