Video games beaten: Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS), Heavenly Sword (PS3), and Braid (360). Layton had a laughably threadbare plot to cover its collection of 130 puzzles. In the game, everyone you interact with will only talk to you after you help them solve a puzzle that they’re stuck on; everything you see reminds you (or the Professor) of a simply delightful puzzle. A murder occurred early in the game, too, which implied a scene in my head where the blood splatter on this wall reminds me of a simply delightful puzzle! The game never lived up to the promise my mind made on its behalf.

I cannot adequately convey how much I want to play the Layton in my head.

Heavenly Sword, in contrast, was worth playing. The story (though short, as reviews noted) was interesting, and King Bohan—the “bad guy” that you have to take down—stole pretty much every scene he was in. Using the sixaxis controller to maneuver arrows and such after they’ve been fired was absolutely godawful at first, but with practice became one of the most satisfying mechanics of the game.

Braid is a combination homage to Super Mario Bros. and a unique puzzle game. It’s one of those games where if you know what it is, it needs no explanation—and if you don’t know what it is, you should just play it without being spoiled for the full experience. The final level blew my mind.

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Movies watched: Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance: Brian had borrowed this from Nate, and after watching it, passed it off to me to watch. (That was, oh, two years ago.) Earlier this month the unthinkable happened: I felt like watching a movie and remembered that I still had Nate’s DVD sitting on my shelf.

People apparently have very different reactions to the movie, which consists of video and music, but no plot, no dialog, no characters. The first part of the movie is dedicated to desert, clouds, and water; later on humans make their appearance digging for oil and stringing power lines across the desert. Finally the film moves into cities proper, with all the buildings and activity those entail.

My reaction: I want my life back. The music did nothing for me (though one section had a particularly jarring chord that might have driven me to murder), and the scenes of nature were the most boring twenty (I think; I dared not look at the clock, lest it make the time feel like even more of an eternity than it already felt) minutes I’ve experienced in a long, long time. My take-aways from the movie: 1) Thank God for civilization, just because we actually do something when videotaped, and 2) some conclusion about how humans going up a set of escalators are like hot dogs at the Oscar Meyer plant. Most of what I saw to take away from the movie were ideas that I had already considered, and so found dreadfully dull—especially since there wasn’t anything else to the movie. Yes, people in cities can have a hot dog-like existence—that’s why I live in a small town, thanks.

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New TV Shows Watched: Marin and I caught the first five minutes of Fringe this evening. Our initial impression was that it was trying to be a modern-day X-Files… until the show cut to some secret group discussing various players in the show. Marin marveled at the “tell, don’t show” technique they employed; I was taken aback by the breakneck pace used to fill the show up with pure, unadulterated cheeze. Apparently the lead female is someone so dedicated to her job that she took down her own husband, at great personal embarrassment; also there’s some guy in an insane asylum that is “considered the logical successor to Albert Einstein,” and can be told “secrets that would rock the very foundation of our country” because “they’re nothing that he couldn’t learn by asking his dad, or by deducing with his IQ of 190.” Serious not-quite-quote.

I was literally stunned. I then laughed so hard I cried.

I’ve seen The X-Files. Fringe is no X-Files.

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Miscellaneous: I served as a groomsman in the wedding of two friends this last weekend. This was the first wedding that I’ve been involved in, and also the first wedding that featured actual dancing during the reception. (Both bride and groom are ballroom dancers, many of the guests were ballroom dancers, and there was a portable dance floor on the scene.) The whole affair was a nice combination of formal (the wedding proper) and informal (the reception afterwards)… they actually rick-rolled the reception (my fault; I introduced them to the concept), and consequently a bunch of us can now say that we’ve hustled to Never Gonna Give You Up. Later they played the Gaston song from Beauty and the Beast (i.e. a “manly” song), and the groom and another lead (not me) took turns leading the other in a viennese waltz.

Probably my favorite moment, though, was when a wheelchair-bound relative—who had earlier talked to me about taking dance lessons, and professed a desire to dance—was dragged out on the dance floor by the bride’s mother and given his chance to shine. He looked pretty darn happy, even if he didn’t really have much control over what all they did.