All in all it kicks ass.

This week covered Grunge – trying to see where it fit and talking to the artists to see where they felt they fit into the big picture of heavy music and metal. Which leads me to my point:

Back in the day, ‘typical’ grunge folk (the artists, fans, bands – the scene) struck me exactly as the stereotype portrayed them…as whiny, mopey, pretentious faux-intellectuals who took themselves too seriously and were too cool for anything.

Upon seeing these people 20 years later as full grown adults in their 40′s and pushing 50, I was surprised (or maybe I wasn’t) to find that nothing has changed. Except it’s even more eye-roll worthy and rage inducing to see them still acting like that.

I can sum up most of the interviews like this, “Heavy music before us sucked. Heavy music since us is a rip off…and sucks. You’re stupid if you like anything else. Music reached perfection back in my day when I was coming of age and I don’t realize that everyone thinks that about the music they grew up with. I’ve become exactly the walking stereotype I claim to stand against. Get off my lawn.”

These people were lame 20 years ago and they’re still lame today. Not enough of them killed themsleves. But there is hope – many of the bands are getting back together so there just might be some additional overdoses and shotgun blasts in their futures. We can hope, right?

—

And Geico brought back the stupid-ass wee-wee-wee pig for a new commercial and I hope whoever made that decision goes on tour with one of the fucking reunited grunge bands.

1. Overall it was a decent 12 show run. It started strong, got better, leveled off and sunk into a slow decline over the last four-ish episodes. The last few were definitely the worst.

2. Regardless of episode quality, it seems obvious that the writers had a general 12-episode story arc in mind. The story was told and it was good. I’m not sure if I care about the baby – or what happens to it though. Which leads me to…

3. Seems like this year was about the house and next season will be about the baby. That’s kind of a neat concept if they go that way. I can imagine a few seasons of 12 or 13 episodes each telling one major story arc and ending with the catalyst for the next story. Again, with that said, not sure I give two fucks about what’s to come with Constance and her grandson.

4. I suggest the house is no longer the focus because it feels like the stories there have been told – at least enough of them. With so many dead roaming the place, it just got sillier and sillier and I think that was a big part of my dislike as the season wore on in the last few episodes. The mystery disappeared and it became more a soap opera about ghosts. If season 2 does stick with the house, I’m not sure how long they’ll hold my attention.

All in all, a pretty cool show. Glad I watched.

One of my favorite bands was Saigon Kick (unfortunately famous for “Love Is On The Way” in the early 90′s). Owl Stretching is their Guitarist/Vocalist and a few other guys who’d been officially or unofficially in the band (or not) making new tunes and it really sounds a lot like old SK.

We came home on Sunday to find the DVR telling us we had nothing recorded. Odd, since we had a shitload recorded. We tend to record, save and watch in chunks and there was stuff as old as 4 or 5 months on there waiting to be viewed. Even weirder was that it was telling me that 100% of the space was available, but indicated that there was about 17 hours of HD space. That’s weird because the DVR held about 100 hours of HD and 17 hours is about what was left with what we had sitting on the box.

Called AT&T. Essentially, the hard drive went. They sent out a replacement. It came yesterday. It’s a much newer model, has more capacity and seems to handle the ‘whole house DVR’ thing much better than the old box – which would lag and get out of sync. So that’s a nice upside to losing all the shit we had recorded.

My wife took the opportunity to try to weasel some compensation for our loss – it was a longshot, but you’d be amazed at what she has to give at the hotel sometimes, so it was worth a try.

This is where AT&T customer support failed in a major way. After the tech couldn’t help she was given to a supervisor who seemed to be just as unempowered. When my wife asked to go over her head to an actual manager, she was told no managers were in (it was Sunday evening) and to call back tomorrow and she could speak to the manager. The next day, the runaround got even greater with each person on the phone just passing the call along to someone else who wasn’t empowered to try to satisfy our complaint. It finally ended at the supervisor level again where this one offered the most compensation (still not even closer to what felt like an honest effort to appease an angry customer), informed us that the supervisor the night before was full of shit and pretty much lied to get my wife off the phone and pass the problem to the people on the next day and that no one above her on the totem pole would ever talk to a customer because it’s not in their job description.

Pretty much, if a level 1 tech can’t solve your issue to your satisfaction then it gets passed to a ‘supervisor’ and after that…well, sorry.

She suggested we try the AT&T site to contact someone higher up, but you can’t seem to. It just pushes you to the same phone numbers and the same unempowered employees.

Flat out. AT&T doesn’t want to hear it.

That was a little disappointing. Seems to be getting that way more and more. The one that always irks me is the customer survey that only asked certain questions or asks them in a certain way so that you really can’t express displeasure. I can’t think of an example offhand, but too many times when I have an issue with something and try to fill out the customer survey I can’t help but think they’re worded in a way to elicit the ‘correct’ response and keep satisfaction scores high.

But the new DVR is pretty kick ass.

I find this way more interesting than it really is. It’s funny on the surface and yet there’s something profound about photos of people at the exact moment of being startled or scared.

Our seats:

And if you want to be an extra-good stalker, you can watch the show as it aired on TV:

They edited the fuck out of the Orton/Rhodes match. The beatdown went WAY longer live, was rather brutal for the current “PG” product the WWE is selling and had the crowd popping like mad – total ECW-like chants for Orton to keep beating the fuck out of Rhodes. Tons of blood.

Let me try to sum up our feelings – we were disappointed and enoyed it at the same time. That’s the parental view. My daughter couldn’t have cared less either way. My son had a pretty good time.

It felt a little too much like we paid $20 a ticket to play with someone else’s Lego collection. I think I expected less “here you go, have at it” and more “look at this, here’s how this works, try this” from things. It seemed like too many of the areas were just “build something here” stations presented in different ways. For instance:

- There were Monochromatic Group Build areas. A neat idea. Tons of 2×4 bricks in one color for you to get creative on – by yourself and with others. Particularly notable creations got placed on pedastals and dispalyed for the duration of the session. Neat enough. Except that there were four of these areas (one pink, one green, one blue and one yellow). On top of that there was a Target-sponsored area that was essentially the same thing with red bricks and the added twist that you were designing a structure for the Target dog (whatever its name is – spot?). So five of the activity areas were building something with one color and one size of brick.

- There were a couple of different areas that were essentially the same ‘free-build’ areas presented under different pemises. Creation Nation took your creation and placed in on a large, blank floor map of the USA, creating a sort of skyline from the things the kids built. The Lego Construction Zone was the same thing, expect instead of a on a map, your creation was placed in one of several glass display cases where it stayed until more room was needed. The Big Brick Pile was just a big-ass pile of legos that kids were climbing on and throwing at each other. A neat idea on paper, but just a bunch of Lego bricks to dick around with in reality. Two large areas were also taken up by Duplo Build Areas where younger kids could fuck around with the oversized baby version of Lego bricks. The Mystery Mural Build let you take a small, numbered tile place colored 1×1′s in a predetermined patter on it and then place it on a big lego wall that, when finished, created a 2D mural of a city skyline with a nod or two to Pittsburgh tossed in. The Race Ramps was more of the same but with wheel pieces. There were some small ramps set up so you could race with friends or family or whatever, but nothing organized. Mostly kids whipping he cars down the ramp to crash and break them.

- The Model Museum and Brickscapes were essentially the same thing – cool Lego creations you could look at and take photos of. The Brickscapes were in glass display cases and often little “Eye Spy” things you could try to find. The Model Museum was just a small collection of those bigger statue-like creations…and even then, it turns out those are hollow with steel skeltons. They also has an “Adult Fans Of Lego” area where bonafide grown-ups were showing off creations. Simultaneously interesting and horrifying.

- Lego Games was exactly what it sounds like – sign up and wait 10 or 15 minutes to play one of the Lego games they sell. Lego Universe? Same thing. Wait in line for 20 minutes and sample the Lego Universe online game. The Video Game Gallery consisted of two (yes two!) kiosks. One had Lego Rock Band 2 set up to try (one game) and the other had three DS units attached running the Ninjago DS game. That’s right. A total of four kids at any given time could be checking out the video games.

- The Lego Retail Store and the Lego Marketplace were exactly what they sound like – chances to spend money. The catch was that the Marketplace had next to nothing beyond what looked like a small collection of the least popular licensed Lego items – watches, bracelets, shirts in odd sizes and a Bissel Brick Sweeper thing. Looked like a non-powered push vaccum to me. The Retail Store had nothing you couldn’t find in any Wal-Mart, Target or Toys R Us…and it had a 20-to-30 minute line the entire time. People were waiting a half hour to buy Lego sets that they can get anywhere.

- There were also some areas with local groups trying to sell you something – Boy Scouts, Radio Stations, Schools, the Pirates, whatever. There were raffles and Legoland info with a Legoland trip giveaway too.

- The best parts (and what I expected more of) were the areas with actual Lego builders interacting with the kids. The Master Builder Academy was a chance to get hands-on with the MBA product (yes, a sell, but…) and have a Master Builder there to answer questions and help out and stuff. The catch was that there was a limited number of classes. We got in line to sign up within 10 minutes of entering, waited 15 minutes and got one of the last spots of the day. The Activity Area also has a Master Builder on hand with various group activities and games going on. It felt a little unstructured, but was fun. There were also supposed to be Master Builders there with live Demonstrations, but we either missed them or they weren’t very prominent (I suspect the latter).

And that was it. The place really started clearing out about halfway through. We left about 45 minute or an hour early and felt like we were stretching to make it that long. As I said, I expected less “here you go, have at it” and more “look at this, here’s how this works, try this” – the Builders are fucking Rock Stars to these kids. There should have been more opportunity to see, hear and talk to them and less piles of Legos lying around for you to dick with presented as something more than Legos lying there to dick with. Set up little clinic areas. Set up a small stage and chairs and let these guys talk to groups all day. Let them give tips, answer questions and get the kids excited about the product and the possibilities. That’s where this thing really missed the boat to us.

With all of that said, I’d still give the experience a positive review. Definitely go and check it out. The price is right and you can blow a few hours surrounded by all things Lego. On the same note, I wouldn’t go again unless I knew there were major changes made. There’d really be no reason to.

Not sure how it’s possible to think of something positively, but also be able to say it was disappointing. Somehow Lego pulled it off.