broom's blog

Once the Musical

Once

记得在某个地方看到说近七八十年来broadway show的价格稳定的保持在电影票价的十倍。我一年估计是去不了十次电影院的，但是待在纽约总觉得broadway show一年还是应该至少去一个。

这次去看的是Once，在某网站找到巨便宜的票：80$两张！虽然是orchestra的最最后排还靠边的位置，但是这3折的价格也算是物超所值了。何况这个剧的剧院很小，比Mamma Mia，Billy Elliot那几个剧的剧院小太多，所以就算坐在最后一排也没什么问题。Once是2011年的新show，刚出来那年还是个off-broadway show，没记错的话这个剧只有12个演员，基本上就是个off-broadway show的规模。但是2012年就变成broadway show了，还一口气拿了包括Best Musical在内的一堆Tony Awards。明年貌似就要到西岸去演了。另外去了之后才惊奇的发现这个剧居然有字幕！舞台旁边有个小小的电子显示屏不停滚动显示字幕，可能是因为这个剧里面有几个角色的口音比较奇怪吧。于是这大概是我历次看broadway show里面理解率最高的一回了。

整体来说这是一个比较青春的剧，吉他钢琴弹唱为主，夹杂了一些民族乐器和舞蹈。故事写得不错，虽说是爱情戏但还满扣人心弦。男主演唱功了得，我去看的这场女主演是替补，个人感觉稍微有点弱。有个拉小提琴的长腿女配角倒是很出彩，查了查资料也获得了Tony奖的最佳女配角提名。看下来的感觉是小而精致，推荐。

另外值得一提的是这个剧最后是没有encore的，但开场之前有很长的preshow，就是全体演员在台上表演很多首。所以推荐提前半小时入场。

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

I don’t like this game.

I’m kind of a lame CoD player: almost only play campaign mode offline, and almost always at normal level. Competing FPS game online is not my thing. I feel that is a too “professional” entertainment.

The first CoD I played might be 3 or 2, then all the way to this one (Black Ops 2 is actually the 9th). This game series is like long action/shooting/military theme movies to me, playable and exciting. It had served this purpose well until this one.

I really can’t appreciate the “strategy” mode brought by black ops 2. It’s like a crappy RTS, hard to control, hard to win, hard to enjoy. I passed the first one at the 3rd or the 4th try, and failed a few times on the 2nd one, then I gave up on this mode. It seems they forgot why CoD became popular: fast revive and fast resume! This mode broke it and frustrated me.

There are both modern and old-time guns in this game, but few of them gave me a powerful or interesting feeling. Instead, most guns made me feel weird. And those “super weapons” and “bonus small games” didn’t shine either, and some of them were quite awkward.

Well, this game does have a few brave imaginations, such as shooting planes with RPG on horse back, and sniper which can charge and shoot through walls and armors… But it is far worse than previous ones to me.

5 Years

My contract started on 12/17/2007. Though I had been working as an intern for a few months before that, the official date is still an easy way to remember. It’s like the marriage certificate date.

In this fast-changing industry, it may not seem usual to work 5 years straight in a company. But I do see lots of old friends around here, who have been with FreeWheel for 3 or 4 years or longer than me. It’s comforting and heartwarming to see them.

When I joined FreeWheel, I didn’t imagine I would switch from a web developer to an integration engineer, then to a technical service specialist/manager. It was also a surprise to me that I lived in NYC now, so different from California, my 1st impression on US. And I love this great great city.

Thanks FreeWheel for all these experiences and opportunities. See you on the road!

Breaking Bad

最近一段时间看完了Breaking Bad的1~5季，前四季Netflix，第五季BT下的。。

这是一个男人戏，主角的妻子已经是戏份最多的女角，但其实也不算多。剧情里面爱情纠葛的成分少之又少，很符合我的期待。总的来说这个剧就是讲一个身患癌症的化学老师为了给老婆孩子攒钱，找上一个现在是街头小混混偶尔贩毒的学生，很有末日感的开始制造冰毒的故事。这生意自然很不好做，一波三折各种不顺。于是这个剧一上来的两大悬念就是主角的病，以及他的“事业”进展。看过一季之后就会感觉悬念层出不穷，编剧的水平很强，至少到第四季结束都编得很圆很好看。拍的手法也是很不错，不是平铺直叙而是搞了很多小花样。每集片头曲之前的那一小段绝对是亮点。。

这个剧既然主角是制毒的，自然少不了对毒品这个争议话题的一些探讨。主角的观点是相当自由化的，拿美国30年代的禁酒令和现在的禁毒类比，或者还提到了香烟。最近美国两个州的休闲用大麻合法化，我甚至怀疑是不是和这个剧对大众舆论的影响有关系。不过剧里也展示了种种吸毒者的可悲下场，对可卡因和海洛因这类烈性毒品的态度还是很坚决的。说实话我是很惊讶看到这种如此热门的剧对毒品的态度如此暧昧的。这个片分级是分在TV-14，也就是14岁以上才可以观看，但感觉上还是有点恐怖，十六七岁的青少年看这个真的ok？

最后要说一句这片子里新墨西哥的风景真的很棒。。。

Cards Against Humanity

As its official site introduces, this is “a party game for horrible people”.

The rules are extremely simple: one player draws a question, the other players pick an answer from their hands (each player has 10 cards). The player who draws the question reads all answers and picks his/her favorite one and give the “awesome point” to that player gives this answer.

This game is awesome because of those hilarious questions and answers. And please be aware that most funniest cards are “inappropriate”. I have to say this card game is full of sexual and racist stuff, but in a good way. So make sure you’re playing it with a group of people who can have fun from it! Then it will be awesome! This game is not for decent people, no.

Note for ESL readers: you probably should have more native English speakers in the game, otherwise “dictionary time” will be too much.