Burlington and The Transporter

Second day of classes went well. I have Topics in Global History: Nation Building, and then Glacial Geology, both of which are pretty interesting thus far. Also dropped about 200 for 6 of my books, still needing to purchase my math and a history one.
Went over to Burlington today to visit some friends. Stopped by and visited Sarah for a couple hours, chatted about a great number of things, then went down and hung out with a group of friends from Camp who are still in the area. That was a lot of fun, hanging out with them, at wing night, a very popular venue for most Abnaki Staff. It was good to talk with them too, out of camp.
Picked up a couple of things from Borders and Barnes & Nobel. First, I bought the Transporter, a pretty cool movie, which I'll talk about in a second. Second, the Serenity novelization just came out, which I have yet to read, but will very shortly.
The Transporter follows a man, former Military, who makes a living driving things around, no questions asked. So when a girl ends up in his trunk, he doesn't really ask why, until the person he delivers it to tries to blow him up. From there, it's mainly him getting to the bottom of the problem, involving a slave ring and the girl. It's a pretty streight forwards plot, but it's quite a bit of fun to watch. It's a fun action movie. It's fast moving, action packed film. Storyline, there were a couple of twists in the middle which made it watchable, which make it somewhat interesting. Actionwise, there's quite a few good camera angles and shots during the filming as well. I'm also a fan of the main actor, Jason Statham, from the Italian Job, in which he also played a wheelman. Seems to be his popular role. I believe that he was also in Collateral, briefly. I can also see where he's been compared to Vin Disel, for they look and sound somewhat similar, as well as play similar roles. It'd be interesting to see them work together sometime, although I think that Jason is a much better actor.
The main problems are that the action gets ahead of itself at times, going over the top and unbelievable at times, which is a little bit of a disapointment. It's interesting enough that I'll go out and see the second one when it's released this friday.

1st Day of Junior Year

Started classes today at Norwich. I can't believe that I'm a Junior now, meaning that time really flies. I've been running into various classmates and friends from prior years, spending a lot of time catching up on summer vacations and lives. I've also been spending most of the day trying to figure out what my classes are for the semester. Added two history courses, attended another one that I'll have to add tomorrow, added a geology and dropped my independant project. On top of that, I purchased a meal plan, and now have to look into getting books. Joy.

Car Maintainence

So when I was out driving my car the other day, the brakes starting making funny noises. Finished what I was doing, then my dad took the tire off and we found that the brake pads had worn down to nothing, leaving me with a loud grinding noise. So while we were fixing that, we found that a couple of other random things were wrong. The rotors had to be taken off, and we ended up bending a socket wrench trying to get one bolt off. So my car's out of commission for a little while. Joy.

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm still only signed up for two out of the six or so that I need. Grr... Most of my friends are in though, hung out with them for a little while tonight. It was good to reconnect.

Oh yeah, Gateworld just opened up a new Serenity site!: http://www.gateworld.net/firefly/index.shtml

And, because I'm bored:

The Meme - WITHOUT LOOKING PAST THIS FIRST LIST, choose 12 characters from fandoms you know and love. (Taken from James)

1- Mal Reynolds (Firefly)
2- Lee Apollo Adama (Battlestar Galactica)
3- Hellboy (Hellboy Comics)
4- Spiderman (Spiderman Comics)
5- Han Solo (Star Wars)
6- Kaylee (Firefly)
7- Jayne (Firefly)
8- Frodo Baggins (Lord of the Rings)
9- Lyra (His Dark Materials)
10- Robert E. Lee (Coyote)
11- Luke Skywalker (Star Wars)
12- Kara Starbuck Thraice (Battlestar Galactica)

Deportation & Comics

My brother Dan went off to college today, the second kid in our family to do so. Dan was accepted to The University of Hartford down in Conn. where he's going to be double majoring in Music Education and I think Music Theory. It's going to be weird without him in the house, although I think that it's going to make things easier all around, at least for me, for a while. I'll have freer use of the car, and I found that when I went to Norwich, even though I was living in the house, I got along better with my sibblings. Probably the same thing will happen here. I gave him my contact information, AIM, E-mail and web addresses, so we'll talk during the year, that's for sure. I think that he'll enjoy college.

Over the summer, I've become more of a comic fan. I've begun to read more than just Star Wars Republic/Empire, broadening my horizons a little. The Amazing Spiderman was the first comic that I picked up, I love the author, J. Michael Straczynski, who also wrote the entire Babylon 5 series. Love Spiderman, then picked up the Fantastic Four, also by JMS, which has proven to be an interesting read as well. I've also picked up some random back issues of Iron Man, who's been a long time favorite, as well as Hellboy(Love the artwork) and Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. I've also accumulated random issues of other Spidermans, Sin City and Freaks of the Heartland, among others.
I was never really into comics as a kid. I know that I owned some, although I have no idea where they ended up, but the one or two X-Men comics that I did own confused me a great deal. I didn't really know what was going on at all during the stories, and really didn't know anything about comic art and storytelling to pay much attention anyway. I was more into the Marvel Trading cards. Third through Fifth grades in primary school, man, I loved those cards, and still have them, in a box. Those were more interesting to collect and just look at, at least at my age. Me and my friends would talk about them all the time, and during Recess, we'd play X-Men on the playground.
Star Wars Republic and Empire really got me more into comics. Working with the Unofficial Clone Wars Site (www.clonewarz.com), I worked at reviewing the Clone Wars comics as they came out. Looking back over the older reviews that I wrote, I can see that I had almost no idea what I was talking about, and as I wrote more reviews, I learned more about comic art and writing. Along the way, I've since talked to quite a few comic authors, artists and editors, all really cool people.

So, anyone have any recommendations for new books and series?

Over There, back here.

My friend Kyle got back today from Washington. I went to the airport to pick him up this morning. It was good to see him again, after a couple weeks. We spent most of the ride back catching up on various things that happened over the summer. He apparently didn't do much, worked around a little, but relaxed most of the time. He was pretty tired today, but we got him moved into his new apartment for the year.
While we were in Burlington, I picked up the pilot episode for a new FX show called Over There. It's the first show that I know about the war in Iraq. It's only 40 or so minutes, not too long. Thus far, it's kinda impressive, and has a lot of potential. The camera work and coloring is very well done, although I think that they overdo the handheld camera work a little, but with this type of show, it works really well. Storywise, it's a little cliqued, but as far as I know, right on the books for combat procedures, equipment and other things like that. Has a decent soundtrack as well.
I did a little bit of poking around about the show, with a couple of articles here and here. It looks like the show's not too popular with the soldiers who've seen the show and who have been in Iraq and in combat. The common complaints are basic things, like combat procedures. For example, a couple land mines are marked with flags, whereas in reality, they're hidden in something. Or as one truck driver said, they don't pull the trucks over on the side of the road. They park them in the middle, for the very reasons of what happens in the pilot. Things like dialogue and other things stuck out as well. It's all detail stuff, but it's really the details that matter. I think that the main problem is that it's a little too dramatic, and ordinary things, or things that happen out there just wouldn't cross over to the American public. So, with anything in Hollywood, dumb it down a bit, and you get a slightly more inaccurate version. I really don't know, not having been out there.
I think that the show will be a fairly big success, but I really hope that it doesn't become too political. Too right or left, that probably wouldn't help things at all. I'll definently try and track down more episodes here and there to follow up on it a bit. I'm pretty sure that this will be popular here at Norwich though.

The Cast of Over There

And finally, cool song that's pretty descriptive:

Aqueous Transmission
Incubus

I'm floating down a river
Oars freed from their holes long ago
Lying face up on the floor
Of my vessel
I marvel at the stars
And feel my heart overflow

Further down the river

Two weeks without my lover
I'm in this boat alone
Floating down a river named emotion
Will I make it back to shore?
Or drift into the unknown?

Further down the river

I'm building an antenna
Transmissions will be sent
When I am through
Maybe we can meet again
Further down the river
And share what we both discovered
Then revel in the view

Further down the river

I'm floating down a river

World Domination to Hippy Music

Just passing the time right now. My brother's off to a lesson, so I can't really go anywhere at the moment. Yesterday, I went into school to try and fix up some of my class schedule, got a couple of new classes that I can sign up for, bringing me back up to full time student status. I'll now have insurance. I guess that means I can get injured again. I also sought out one of my professors and asked him about the study abroad program, and he was very encouraging. I'm really hoping that this will happen.
I also ran into a couple of friends and people that I know. Good to see that I know some people already. The freshmen arrived on campus yesterday, and the Corps of Cadets freshmen (Rooks) arrived last Saturday, the 20th.
World Domination: I learned how to play Risk this summer, finally. I'd been meaning to learn how to play for a couple years now, and when my friends Sam and Dave bought a set, I finally figured it out. It's a very fun game, and I taught my sister how to play this afternoon. She's a good player, expecially for her first time, even though I took out a couple of her continents in a couple of turns. Now I'll need to get my brother to play, before he leaves for college.
The time that Keelia and I were playing, Phish, Rane, Carbon Leaf and Led Zeppelin came on my playlist while playing. Ironic.
Keelia also got her Driver's permit yesterday, acing the drivers test. She's the last one in our family to start driving, and she's pretty excited about it. Vermont's laws are kinda weird when it comes to driving. At 15, you can get a permit, and you have to drive with someone 20 or over with a valid driver's license. At 16 or 17 you can get your license, but you can't drive with anyone but family members, and only adults to begin with. 3 months later you can drive with sibblings, and after a year, you can get your regular operator's license. It's weird.

Now, back to scanning my computer for viruses and other annoyances.

Blogwarz

I've joined another blog, one run by the people at Starwarz.com - where my webpage is located. Check it out: www.blogwarz.com

The Phoenix Phenomenon

Who heard about a little show called Firefly three years ago? How about recently?

Okay, for those of you who don’t know anything about this, listen up: Firefly was a short lived show that FOX aired during the fall of 2002, and quickly cancelled it after 11 episodes. The show, created by Joss Whedon, who was also the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, centered upon a group of misfits in space, on board a little pile of scrap called Serenity. In the first episode, the crew picks up a pair of siblings, Simon, a naïve doctor and River, his psychic and sometimes insane sister. They also pick up a guy named Dobson and a preacher named Book. Dobson’s later shot in the face, but he wasn’t important. Rounding out the rest of the crew is Mal, the captain, Wash, the pilot, Inara, the ‘Companion’ (A high class prostitute), Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic, Zoë, Mal’s second mate and Jayne, the ship’s gun expert. Together, they have their various adventures, although now, the interstellar government is now after River and Simon. Sound like fun? FOX didn’t seem to think so.

So why has Firefly died, and now coming back as a feature film called Serenity?

The main and simple answer: The fan community, who call themselves Browncoats.

While Firefly was still on the air, it gathered a fairly small but extremely devoted group of fans, who a) knew what a good show was, and b) knew how to tell people. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep the show online due to poor ratings. However, it was when the DVD was released that the show really took off. The DVD Boxed set, available at Amazon.com and anywhere you can buy movies, became gold and quickly sold out in some places, taking some people by surprise.

It was also enough to spurn Joss and crew to begin looking for a new home for Firefly, and a feature film, called Serenity, went into the works, this time under Universal Films, which owns the SciFi channel. Great news. The fan community went nuts, and support for the film and series grew. When the first trailer hit, the Firefly boxed set jumped from about 200 on the amazon.com charts to the top twenty for science fiction DVDs. Two out of three comics have been released to stores, which have also sold out and gone to reprints due to demand. Actors in the movie and series have gone on film and told us that it was our support that brought the movie to life. For once, it pays to be a fan of something. And now, we have something cool to watch again.

This is probably the first time that a movie has been made out of a TV series that was cancelled due to poor ratings. But it’s not the first time that outcry from a fan community has brought back their special show.
During the winter of 2004, Farscape came back in spectacular fashion as a SciFi channel miniseries. Farscape was another TV show, this one run by the SciFi channel, which was cancelled due to lower than desired ratings. Farscape had a more successful run than Firefly did, burning through four full seasons before it was pulled. Once again, the fan community pulled itself together and websites formed that brought the show back to life in a similar, but new form.

This doesn’t seem to work all the time though. Anyone watch Enterprise? That show was on for several full seasons as well, and despite being on a broad access channel, it was pulling in lower ratings than the SciFi channel’s new Battlestar Galactica. (SciFi doesn’t reach as many people) We saw the same thing here; a small, dedicated group of fans came together, made webpages, went to conventions, wrote letters and all the usual things, even went to the point of trying to finance the show themselves, but only to have the show cut completely.

Why did Firefly and Farscape succeed where Enterprise failed? Surely not because Firefly and Farscape both begin with the letter F, where Enterprise begins with an E. There’s a number of other reasons and influences that probably caused those to continue whereas Enterprise did not.

First, Enterprise is a Star Trek show. They’ve been around forever, and have been one of the main influences on how Science Fiction TV is perceived. It’s huge, and when something like that starts to go wrong, people realize it, and back off. This happened with Enterprise, which started off strong, but lost a huge part of its audience quickly. Firefly and Farscape, on the other hand, were fairly new. The main reasons that they succeeded were mainly because they both had to work extremely hard to expand the audience AFTER they went off the air. This can probably be attributed to the quality of both shows, which are well written and acted. Enterprise was still on the air, had been on for longer and already had enough bad press against it that it was becoming hard to find a bigger audience.
Second, Star Trek has been around for a very long time, and has gone through a number of incarnations in the form of TV shows, movies, books and computer games. It’s essentially flooded the market. People are looking for something else, something new. This is probably one of the reasons why shows such as Stargate and Battlestar have surpassed Enterprise in the ratings game. In addition, it’s also fairly easy for Paramount to begin work on yet another incarnation of Star Trek, in hopes that this one will be better for the fan community. I wouldn’t hold my breath yet, but you never know…

Finally, Firefly and Farscape were highly original shows. They broke a number of the rules in science fiction up to that point and backed it up with some incredible stories, acting and set work that was completely different than Star Trek. The same goes for Battlestar Galactica, which seems to show that the networks have finally realized what a good thing is.

So, while you go to watch Serenity in theaters later in September, remember that it was a huge uphill battle that was mainly fueled by the fan’s enthusiasm and sheer energy that brought it to the big screen. As they said in the show: We’ve done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.
Well said.

Post-Camp Recuperation

I always hate the transition to real-life after camp. My sleep schedule is still out of whack, as is my food intake and daily schedule. It's tough trying to find ways to occupy my time. At camp, there are over a hundred people in fairly close proximety, where I'm able to talk with someone about something. Not so much here. However, I've been doing okay to be occupied. I took a good walk in the woods the other day, got some thinking cleared in my head and was treated to a beautiful view of the forest and a rain storm. It was refreashing. Went out with Blackwell, Sam and Eric last night to Pizza Putt, a pizza joint with miniature golf and lazer tag in the building. Together, Sam, Blackwell and I are known as the Geek Squad on camp. Eric is our off site member, and we all got together before we all go off to college for the year. Blackwell's leaving today and I'm off next week, as is Sam. Eric's going to work as a working stiff. (Sucker:-p ) . We ended up playing against another team of four guys who were there. We really screwed up the first time that we played, but did slightly better the second time around. I rode home with Eric, and we did some catching up on everything that happened over the summer.
I'm now working on an essay for Lexia, a study abroad option that my school is offering. I'm seriously thinking of studying in London, England for the Spring semester, if my finances allow for it. Let's hope...

Back At Home

Camp's now over for the year. The ten weeks that I spent there were quick, fun, sad, hilarious, fantastic, amazing, confusing, happy, stressful, adventurous, intimate, dark, light hearted, serious, relaxing, technologically inverted, loud, serene, and completely kick ass.
I'm sad to have left Abnaki, as I am every year. Me and my friend Sam were talking and something like this came up: Camp is just a location. Abnaki is us, and we take it with us where ever we go. I don't know if I'll ever see some of those people again, but I know that I will stay in touch with a good number of them in the future. This summer was definently life changing, as the others have been in the years before.
However, it is nice to have a reliable computer and internet to work with again.

Troubling Final Week

oi. Things can go from bad to worse very quickly. I just love my job. Here's the situation: Two of my good junior councelors were moved out to another village, and mine was going to be closed up. That switched and I have four of my prior staff members, and two new ones. One of the new guys is good. The other is not. The main problem is that he just doesn't have it as a counselor. He doesn't participate with the campers, opting out for various injuries that might or might not be entirely real. Along these lines, he doesn't do his job. He doesn't supervise his campers properly, and they get into fights and skirmishes. He also yells at everyone who tries to correct him and takes everything entirely too personally. It's frustrating to have someone tell me that I have to respect them when they're not doing their work properly, not following their own advice and are generally horrible. Gah! It's frustrating. Fortunently, only a full day left.

Katie

As some of you know, I'm a member of the 501st Storm Trooper Legion. While it's a group of people who dress up in armor, a great deal of charity work goes on. Much of it was brought on when it came out that the daughter of the founder of the legion, Katie, was dying of a type of brain cancer. She became the focus of the legion, and much effort was put into awareness and money for a cure was raised at various conventions and through a website campaign.
Katie died last night, at age 7.
I received an e-mail today from the people who were working on the 501st documentary, which was in part shaped by Katie's story. They broke the news. I read the e-mail twice, and cried. I not sure why. I've never met her, and no one else that I know knows anything about her. But after the convention, with everyone there, something touched me about her story. Maybe it was because she's the daughter of a Storm Trooper leader, or that the energy and devotion in that room was so much, but I cried when I learned that she was dead.
More information at www.forkatie.org. There's a link at the bottom of the page.

Transfered Staff

New Session this week, the last one. Two of my staff from the last five weeks have been transfered to other places. I'm annoyed. :(

The Island & Surprises

I saw the Island a little while ago, then again on my last time off. I really enjoyed it, and while it has it's flaws here and there, it's a fairly solid movie. The story, acting, action and cinematography was there, which really surprised me.
When I saw the trailer for The Island, I was interested, then I saw that Michael Bay was directing it. That was a bit of a disapointment, because his last several movies really sucked. Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II, all bad, in terms of plot. I remember watching BBII, and thinking, if Bay were to direct a movie about some Army Rangers or something, he could do an excellent film.
The Island has everything in it. It's not terribly original by any means. It borrows elements from THX 1138, Minority Report, Blade Runner and a number of other SciFi films. The result is a souped up, sleak version of this story. In the story, a group of people exist in a small environment, where they think that they're the only ones who exist on the planet, after a global disaster, the conamination. In reality, life outside goes on as normal, while the people in the shelter are Clones. They've been cloned from rich donors who are looking for extra body parts to continue their own life. The main character, Lincon, is an inquisitive one, and begins asking questions about everything, and eventually finds the truth, and with his friend Jordan, runs. From there on out, it's mostly action. Good action. It's over the top and exciting, with some very good camera work. Things go boom, and it's usually for a reason, although there are some times when there explosions that are seemingly out of place.
The story really worked for me here. It's got some serious questions in it, but it doesn't take itself too seriously at any given point. There are some jokes and light moments, and enough serious ones to counterbalance it.
Visually, the movie's really cool. Lots of rich colors for most of the film, making it very bright, a sharp contrast to Minority Report, which was very drab. There are some very cool things that they do with the camera angles as well.
I also picked up the soundtrack, which was a pretty good listen. It's taking a little while to grow on me, but some of the songs are pretty cool.
The main problem that I had with the movie is the various plots. Like in Minority Report, there are several smaller side stories, and like in Minority Report, there are some that exist, but ones that aren't paid as much attention to, such as the mentions towards the middle and end with the Clones re-aquiring their original's memories. My only other gripe is that at times, the action was a little too much, making it hard to see what was going on at times.
Other than that, it's a very enjoyable movie. I'll probably see it at least once more, and definently going to pick it up on DVD when it comes out. I'd love to see how Ewan McGregor played two of the same characters at the same time.
My really cool find this time around was that Best Buy is now selling boxed sets of the 1st Season of Battlestar Galactica. The US version isn't out for another couple of months, but demand for the entire season must be high enough to warrent them selling the British version of the series (There's really no difference that I can see, just a different and better theme song on this one). It's an entire step up from the episodes that I have saved on my computer from last semester. Much better quality.
I also picked up a book called the Kite Runner, a novel about Afghanistan. Amazing read. I really got into it quickly and blew through it in a week. The story is fairly depressing and hard to read a times, but it's such a good one. The basic plot is about a boy growing up in Afghanistan, and witnessing a fairly disturbing event to his best friend, something that haunts him throughout the rest of the story. He moves to America, where he and his father make a living. He returns to his homeland when he learns that his friend is dead, and sets out to find his son. Definently an author to look out for in the future.
It's almost the last session of the summer. I thought that my village would be closed for the rest of the summer because we only have 90 or so kids coming to camp next session, and in order to get better coverage, a problem that has been plauging us all summer, we closed down one village, originally Tamakwa, and had double coverage everywhere. Now everyone is coming to my village. I don't have the next two weeks without kids like I thought, and I'm somewhat relieved. Campers are one of the primary reasons that I come back year after year.
Now, sleep.

New Serenity Stuff

Two very cool things. First, there's a new International Trailer for Serenity, which can be found at this site: http://www.cantstopthesignal.co.uk/trailer. The other thing is that there are four tracks up from the soundtrack avaliable here: http://www.cantstopthesignal.co.uk/soundtrack/

w00t!

Day Off, New Session

Session 1 has now ended for the summer. Overall, I was fairly impressed with how we worked and how the kids were. There are several different types of sessions at camp. The main ones that we like to get people for are the two week sessions. These are the ones that we try and put the best of our programming into, mainly because we have more time and energy for it. It's also the times when we have the most returning campers, campers who have attended camp before, and have returned for more time here. One Week sessions are the opposite. We mainly have younger, newer campers who are usually coming for the first time. Because we want people to come for the two week sessions, we don't put many of our specialized programs into these weeks. Two specialized camping sessions are First Timer's camp, which is a one week session in the middle of a two week session, designed expecially for first timers. They have slightly different programing than the rest of the camp during that time. In the week that that is not taking up, we have mini-camp, which is designed for very young kids, who only come for three days. Finally, we have Champ Camp, a special program that is designed to bring kids with severe asthma to camp, where they can be educated about their conditions, and to teach them that they can do anything that they want in life, not being limited by asthma. This is the only time during the summer that we have a co-ed portion to the camp. We're going into Session IB, which is going to be our busiest session this summer, with 153 kids coming at last count. It's going to be either a fun or horrible week, with so many people. We have four additional staff volunteers coming back, some of our best former counselors, to help us with the work load. Hopefully, we'll be able to hire a couple of the CITs who are going through the program right now to help when they leave. I really hope that some do, they're outstanding fellows. One was kicked out today, mainly because he was getting too close to the kids, and not maintaining a certain amount of professionalism, and really wasn't good at listening to directions.
I was kinda saddened to see this last session go. There are several kids that I've seen coming for several years now that I'm really going to miss having around. They're well behaved and take a certain amount of leadership in the village, something that's great to see. I was told by one parent of one kid that as long as I was at camp, they were sure that their kid would have a great time. I was kinda shocked that they place this much faith in my work here, but honored by it. I'm glad that their son had an outstanding time, as he has for the past couple years.
Staff are on time off now. I got off and into Burlington, did a bit of shopping, and got some things that I needed. A USB stick, replacing the one that I lost, 84 cans of soda, a bottle of Cranberry Juice, which will vanish within the week, mark my words, a book called Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross, whom I've read in Asimov's. The book's good thus far, although I'm not terribly far into it yet. I'm also ammasing a small collection of comics: 3 issues of The Amazing Spiderman, written by J. Michael Straczynski, 1 issue of Astonishing X-Men by Joss Weadon, Fantastic Four by JMS and the first issue of Serenity by Joss Weadon. Of all of them, Serenity I is my favorite. I wasn't able to find the cover that I was looking for, Jayne's, but I picked up Inara's, which looks pretty cool. The story's good, dialog is fun, art is outstanding. I can't wait until #2 and #3 are out. Should be a fun trip, and it's awesome to read some new Firefly material. It's been far too long.
Found some awesome news today: The John Butler Trio is going to be playing at the Higher Ground, a local concert venue here in Burlington. I'm excited. I picked up their CD last week, and have listened to their stuff for a little while. They're a newer band from Australia, and when talking with Rhet, our Australian representative on staff, he knew of them, and also enjoys their music. Looking at the ad in the paper, tickets are $3 at the door and advance, which is more than amazing, and I hope that it's not a typo. Their show is the 20th of August, and I'm definently going to that. I told Rhet about it and his jaw dropped. First words out of his mouth was 'I'm going'.

Fun in the Sun

Another camp update, a bit late this time around. I've tried to update a couple times, but the internet is fairly slow.
It's now Session 1 here at camp, and things are going decently, at least on my end. My village, Mehkoa, is doing really well, and we have a number of really good campers in the village this session. I have three great Senior Counselors, one that's having a bit of trouble, and some good Junior counselors and CITs.
My dad has turned out to be an outstanding resource for me. Working at KAS, he's a manager, and supervisor for several people. I've called him a couple of times with questions about how to deal with a couple certain people in my village, and his advice was very helpful. I'm having one problem counselor that I had to talk to today with my supervisor. We had a good talk, put some things out that needed to be said, learned some things and made our expectations pretty clear.
The CITs are turning out to be a really good group, most of them. One's having problems with several things, but the other four are outstanding. They had their night off last night and they ended up playing Halo in my cabin for a little while. I killed them in one game with two more of them, then got killed with one on one. They said that they really enjoyed it and missed my village.
Classes are going well. I'm teaching Climbing with my supervisor, Rhet, who's awesome, keeping me on my feet and trying to make the class better than before.
Next session should be very busy. I think that every cabin in camp will be filled completely. Should be very fun.

Shakey

Check out day was today. Everything went well until about an hour into checkout, when a couple campers were almost killed by a runaway trailer. My village is at the bottom of a slope, not very steep. A road borders the village on two sides, and the woods border the other two sides. The cabins are looped in a crecent shape around the woods side, and one cabin is in the middle of that cresent.
During check out, we use a tractor and trailer to move luggage and things around the camp, allowing us to move things much more quickly than carrying them by hand. We recently got a new trailer, about twenty feet long with four wheels. Today, when the tractor went up the slope above my village, the pin that held it onto the tractor slipped off, and the trailer, being well balanced, started going backwards. In the village, kids were milling around, waiting for their parents. A couple of people were in cabin Caspian, and a group of six or so girls were sitting in a circle talking. I noticed a couple of them getting up quickly, and noticed the trailer coming back. I then noticed that the tractor was not attached to it, and it was rolling out of control towards the girls. I yelled at them to jump, move and run, which they all did. One girl barely made it out of the way. I jumped out of the way, and yelled at the two kids standing on Caspian's porch to move, and they were pulled out of the way by the councelor inside. I remember everything happening in slow motion, and the porch didn't even stop the thing. It demolished it, and stopped when it hit the cabin. Everything happened in less than a minute.
I don't remember exactly what happened after that. I remember running to the girl who was nearly crushed, made sure that she was okay, then to the kids in the cabin, who were really shaken. By then, everyone else in the area had run over, counselors and kids, and we told them to back up.

I'm still shaking. We almost lost a camper, maybe more. Evan said that I saved their lives by alerting them. That doesn't help anything though, knowing that... I'm just glad that everyone's okay.

War of the Worlds and Spielburg's Aliens

I saw War of the Worlds last night, and was pleasantly surprised, it was quite good. I've read the book several times, and it's certainly one of my favorite stories. However, seeing the previews for the Spielburg movie, I was getting very worried about a number of things. I was afraid that they would try too hard, do to much overacting and generally do a movie on the level of Independance Day, which is about the same story. Where ID4 had the story, it had horrible characterization and acting.
Spielburg has completeed the gamut with aliens now. Starting with some interesting, if somewhat unintersed aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, then to very friendly ones in ET, aliens with a plan in Taken, and now Aliens that are out to take over the world. He does a very goofd job with making them freaky in this one, even if he doesn't explain their reasonings.
It's interesting to see that Spielburg has gone from the good to bad aliens. I almost wonder if he has become more cynical with time. If his Ffilms are anything to go by, it's certainly a possibility.

Also, Barnes and Nobel just released the cover for Karen Traviss's upcoming novel, The World Beyond. It's amazing.

Start of Camp

Being a director is a little more stressfull than I thought that it would be. Lots of paper work to do, but when the people under you start to fuck up in various ways, it's a huge pain to deal with. We have a great staff here this year, but a good number of them are new, and a good number of the new staff are from out of the country, which leads to more problems when they don't know what they're supposed to be doing.
Other than that, things are going well. Lifeguarding is okay, having been assigned to watch various sections several times. Even the girls are that much of a problem, and are quite funny most of the time. They're very fun to be around, if a bit annoying at times. Next week will be the real challenge, when I get boys in my village this time around.
Several people here saw War of the Worlds last night. I'm hoping to see it tonight or Saturday, after hearing almost unamimous positive reviews for it.