GR Mini Maker Faire

The Grand Rapids Public Museum hosted the Grand Rapids Mini Maker Faire this weekend. Despite the "mini" description there was plenty to see, with a good-sized list of exhibitors spread out through the museum.

Exhibitors fell into roughly three categories at the faire: community organizations, crafters selling their goods, and food. I was familiar with a lot of the community exhibitors: our local public library system, various and sundry crafting organizations, the Grand Rapids Children's Museum, the Grand Rapids Police department, and so on. The commercial booths were a widely varied bunch - everything from 3D-printed toys to handbags to paintings to dolls. Good variety on the food, too, from a beer booth to bundt cakes to hot sauce to popsicles.

Most of the exhibitors had one kind of hands-on activity or another at their booth. Lots of families present, with kids of all ages trying out everything from build-your-own-floating-robot to woodcarving. Robotics and 3D-printers seemed to be the most common themes - several booths that had one or both. But there were plenty of more traditional exhibitors as well.

There were also a few vehicle displays, including a one-man submersible that looked incredibly cramped but awfully cool nonetheless. The Grand Valley State Solar Garden group was showing one of their vehicles, and one guy had an electric motorcycle. Pretty amazing some of the things that people put together in their hobby time.

The one negative to this year's event was the long line to get in, if you had to buy a ticket. I think they may have had some technical issues that resulted in a long wait for those of us who didn't buy tickets ahead of time. A fairly minor issue, though, and once I got inside it wasn't overly crowded at all. As a museum member I saved about eight bucks on the entry fee, which I immediately spent on beer...wait time forgiven.

If there's a Maker Faire near you, it's well worth taking a few hours to go check it out. Whether you're a crafter yourself or not, it's always interesting to see the huge variety of things that people are doing and making.

Orphan Black

The main thing I learned from watching Orphan Black is that Tatiana Maslany must be a serious workaholic. She deserves that Emmy and the other awards she's garnered from playing half the roles on the show.

Orphan Black is a contemporary science fiction thriller series based on the idea that a shadowy cabal is messing around with the human body. Clones, DNA manipulation, body modifications. Over the five seasons, the characters go from blissfully ignorant to deeply involved, one layer of evil masterminds after another.

This kind of sci-fi thriller isn't a new formula, of course, but it's a solid premise if executed well. Which Orphan Black is, especially in the first 3 seasons. There's plenty of intrigue and mystery with interesting characters. Anyone who's read some sci-fi in this genre won't be too surprised by the larger plot points - there were several "big reveal" points that I saw coming a mile away - but it's still a fun ride getting there. I wasn't as impressed with the last 2 seasons in terms of plot, largely because it's just hard to sustain the suspension of disbelief as the stakes keep going higher. Eventually you become kind of numb to the ever-escalating danger and crazy mad science.

But that's all right, because there are plenty of great characters to follow into those last couple of seasons: several clones, their various friends and family, recurring villains, and new bad guys showing up on a regular basis. It's not always clear which people fall into which category, either, which is great. Keeps things really interesting when you're aren't entirely sure who is on which side. And even among the main characters who are clearly working together, there's plenty of interpersonal tension and drama, largely driven by the fact that just about everyone is flawed in some way.

What makes Orphan Black really unique is how Tatiana Maslany plays all those clone roles. There are four primary recurring characters, and at least five others with lesser roles. Each is a separate character, with their own personalities and appearances (and accents, usually). I thought she did an excellent job of really giving each one a unique feel, so that the viewer really sees them as different people. It's especially impressive when she plays one clone trying to pretend to be a different one, looking uncomfortable and purposely not-quite-perfectly mimicking mannerisms.

I had a great time watching Orphan Black, even when the plot-lines got a bit hard to swallow in the later seasons. Still a great show that I'd recommend to anyone who likes the sci-fi thriller genre.

K Project (anime)

The K Project anime series has a promising premise and themes, but doesn't do a very good job of executing on that promise.

In the world of the K Project, superpowers have begun to manifest in a small portion of the population. Most of that power is concentrated in a few individuals known as Kings, with a larger number of lowered-powered individuals forming clans around the Kings. The effect is limited to a small portion of Japan (for reasons made clear as the series goes on). The first season of the series focused on a murder mystery that leads to a conflict between Kings, while the second season expands to a larger conflict between more Kings. There's also movie in between that fills in some gaps between the two seasons.

The problem with the K Project, in my opinion, is that it constantly undercuts its own story and themes. The logic behind the Kings alone is inconsistent and confusing. There's mention of seven Kings, but the story never tells us who they all are. Each King is associated with a color and theme (red for chaos, blue for order, etc) but some don't seem to have a theme (like the Gray King) and one has no color. Supposedly the death of a King leads to a new King being chosen, but sometimes that doesn't happen for no apparent reason (such as the Gold King). Each King has a giant "sword of Damocles" that sometimes hangs in the sky above, which are never explained except that we know it's bad if they fall. There are several flashbacks that fill in some of the history leading to the Kings, but they leave so much out that it feels like we're only given a few random glimpses.

It's not just the Kings, either. The visuals are beautiful and largely take the subject matter seriously, but occasionally veer off into ridiculous fan service territory with panty shots and bouncing cleavage.  Serious themes like abuse of power and order vs anarchy are raised in the story, but they're used only as excuses to get clans battling rather than explored as complex issues.

There are some manga serializations and novels that are set in the same world. It's possible that the missing bits that I've mentioned above can be found there. If that's the case, I think they really should have somehow tied that into the anime - a simple mention of the manga stories in a post-credits scene would have sufficed.

The K Project isn't a bad series, but it could be much better in so many ways. There are better things out there to watch.

The Americans (FX)

I'd considered starting The Americans a few different times over the last few years, but there was always something else available to watch. Figured I might as well just wait until the show finished its run, which happened earlier this year.

The Americans is a Cold War era spy thriller, set in the 1980s. A pair of Soviet agents comes to America under assumed identities in the 1960s and sets about living normal lives. By the 1980s when the first season starts, Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings have two kids and are basically indistinguishable from your average suburban couple. Using their travel agency jobs as cover, they perform various espionage missions right under the noses of American counterintelligence.

In addition to the deep-cover family, other characters in the espionage game fill out the cast. An FBI agent lives next door, there are various sources and informants, and several of the Soviet embassy staff become important figures. I enjoyed seeing focus on characters from both sides of the undercover conflict. As you'd expect, there's a high turnover rate...not a safe profession, the spy game.

Spy shenanigans take up about half the plot, and I found most of it to be well written. Sure, you have to suspend your disbelief about the premise of the super-deep-cover setup, and the main characters miraculously survive all kinds of danger on a weekly basis. But that's par for the course on almost any television series. A lot of the spy action is centered around development of personal relationships with individual sources, but there's also plenty of sneaking around and even a few gun battles and car chases.

The time period in the 1980s makes it easier to accept all the disguises and sneaking, although I suppose modern spy thrillers manage the same even in today's cameras-everywhere society. Each season has some kind of big theme for the spying, from stealth aircraft to improved food crops, drawn from the big stories of the time. It was fun to see how the writers worked with the time period, from those significant plot points down to minor references like classic video games.

The other half of the plot comes from all the emotional angst that you'd expect in this kind of situation. Who is sleeping with whom, what lies are being told, the stress of hiding activities from your family and friends, and so on. I found it all interesting at first, though eventually it starts to wear thin. I thought the writers did a pretty good job of showing how the stress of the spy lifestyle wears people down over time, but in so doing there's a ton of repetition.

After about three seasons, I was more than ready for the Jennings family to finally move on from spies to whatever was next, good or bad. I'd kind of hoped that would happen in the fourth or fifth season, but instead it just dragged on in more or less the same vein. Some significant changes did finally happen throughout the final sixth season, which was the best since the first in my opinion. The last episode leaves a lot of loose ends, but there was enough resolved to make it a good series finale.

I'm glad to have watched The Americans, though I think they let it go on too long. If they'd wrapped it up around 4 seasons, that would have been about perfect.

Macross Delta

Two and a half years ago, I watched a bunch of Macross shows (Plus, Seven, Zero, Frontier). Macross Delta came out shortly thereafter, which was the whole reason I'd watched the earlier ones, but I didn't have any way to (legally) see it and eventually I kind of forgot about it. Well, a friend finally got the series recently and I was able to watch it.

The first thing you noticed in Macross Delta is the two significant differences from other Macross series. Number one: Someone writing this series really likes the magical girl genre. There's a group of young women named Walküre that performs songs to combat enemies (this is standard Macross), who change outfits during songs and dance around the battlefield with some kind of rocket-dresses (this is definitely new). Think of the "magic" part as being singing and combat dancing, and this is pure magical girl style anime. Number two: The enemy sings too, and uses it as a mind control device. In prior series, the "magic" singing has always been the province of the good guys, using it to disrupt the enemy. Occasionally an enemy might convert a singer to their side (as in Frontier) but mostly it belongs firmly on the side of the hero(ine)s. This time, the enemies are on the offensive with their songs and our heroines are largely on the defensive.

The major differences end there, and the similarities to other Macross series are legion. Young "play by my own rules" pilot gets co-opted into military organization, check. Pair of ace pilots on each side meeting in battle after battle, check. Love triangle with singer girl and military girl after hotshot pilot, check. Giant transforming battleship with aircraft carrier arms, check. Three female bridge crew and a gruff old captain, check. Refugees in space fleeing from enemy assault, check. And so on and so forth.

I enjoyed the development of the enemies from Windermere, which are revealed very early on after just a few episodes. It seemed to me that the writers put quite a bit more effort into humanizing this enemy than in most of the earlier series. We see the events that shaped the Windermere leadership's aggression as the series progresses, and time is spent to develop characters for several of the Windermere fighters. It reminded me a lot of the way that the original SDF Macross series handled the Zentradi.

Other character development was all right, but nothing special. I'd have liked to see more interaction between Windermere fighters and the Delta squad, which didn't really happen until very late in the series. Mikumo's fate was telegraphed so much that it seemed anticlimactic at the end. And the reveal of the identity of "Lady M" was wasted, in my opinion, coming as it did as an offhand comment in one of the final episodes. Surely they could have milked that for a scene or two!

I kept watching Macross Delta in the hope that there would be some kind of interesting twist that set it apart from what one would expect in a Macross series. But that never really materialized. Those two major differences that I pointed out at the beginning are great, but they're also just about the end of the deviations from standard Macross. By the time the final episode rolls around, it's not hard to predict how true love will save the day from some terrible fate. Which is fine and all, but so predictable that it feels a bit disappointing.

Senator Gary Peters Community Meeting in Grand Rapids

I've been to quite a few town hall discussions with my congressional representative, Justin Amash, several of which I've posted about here. But this was my first opportunity to hear from a senator, in this case Democrat Gary Peters. (My other senator, Debbie Stabenow, has not held any similar events in my area to the best of my knowledge.)

The meeting was held at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in downtown Grand Rapids. There's a nice auditorium there and it was mostly filled; a bit over 200 people would be my guess. I was a bit surprised that there weren't more folks, considering how rare it is for our senators to hold this kind of event.

The very first question set the tone for the meeting, when the question of supporting and co-sponsoring Bernie Sanders' Medicare-for-all bill was brought up. Senator Peters responded with a lot of talk about the Affordable Care Act: how he'd voted for it, the Republicans were doing their best to kill it, and he was fighting to keep as many benefits as possible. All of which may be true, but did not address the Medicare-for-all proposal and did not satisfy the crowd. Several more people followed up with health care questions, and several others just shouted repeatedly that the senator should be both fighting for the ACA and supporting the new proposal. Personally, I agree that change is needed, but shouting down your senator at an event isn't the way to change his mind.

The senator eventually moved on to other topics, trying to end the conversation by appealing for unity against what the Trump administration and the Republican party are doing. I'm not sure that went down well with most of the crowd. This experience made it pretty clear to me that the Democratic party has a long way to go if they're going to overcome the kind of divisions that hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016. Not a surprise, but still disappointing.

Other topics didn't get nearly as much time as health care, largely because the senator and his aides kept the meeting moving. The discussion did stay more civil, though. Here's a few of the topics:

• Supreme Court nomination: Senator Peters talked about pushing back against the Republican majority to delay any nomination until after the 2018 midterm elections (which is what the Republicans did back in 2016). His hopes appeared to be pinned on getting one or two Republicans to turn against any nominee that is put forward prior to the 2018 midterm elections. That seems unlikely to say the least. As far as I can tell, the only hope the Democrats have of blocking a nominee is to refuse to show up and thus deny the Senate a quorum, but that method wasn't mentioned.
• Border family separations: The lady who asked about this seemed woefully uninformed, as she thought there had been legislation passed to stop it (not true - it was an executive order) and for some reason thought that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had something to do with the process. But the senator did a fine job in response of talking about what was actually happening, and what he's been doing. Which isn't a lot, since the Trump administration is in charge, but at least he's been able to have his office check in at the detention centers and push for basic improvements like letting parents talk with their children on a regular basis.
• Interactions with police: An ex-policeman asked what is being done about the fear that many people, particularly those of color, feel when interacting with police. Senator Peters brought up the National Criminal Justice Commission and their work with both police and civil rights organizations.
• Campaign finance: The senator said he is in favor of reform, particularly provisions requiring disclosure of "dark money" sources and finding a way to combat negative advertising.
• Affordable higher education: State-level funding is the primary source, but the senator did talk about expanding federal grants like the Pell Grant program. He also mentioned tying student load interest rates to federal bond rates.

Thank you, Senator Peters, for holding these community meeting events. I'd love to see them more often, from both of our senators.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Fullmetal Alchemist has been on my list of things to watch for a long time, because it's considered to be such a good series by most anime watchers. Turns out I am not most anime watchers.

There's two anime adaptations of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. I chose the second, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, because some folks who had seen both told me that it was closer to the original material. I figured if I liked it, I could always watch the other one to see the differences.

The series starts off following two brothers, Ed and Al, who lost all or part of their bodies to an alchemical experiment. They're searching for a way to reverse the process and run into the usual assortment of roadblocks. It expands to include a huge cast of characters spread out over an entire country engaging in romance, politics, rebellion, pursuit of alchemical power at all costs, family arguments...a bit of everything.

I should say here that I understand why people like the Fullmetal Alchemist story. It's got drama and humor.  There's a character or two for everyone to like in the huge cast. It handles serious topics, such as ethnic genocide and dealing with lost loved ones. It builds up over 60+ episodes to a big final confrontation, exactly as you'd want to see from an epic fantasy storyline.

But...I just hated the style of the show. There's constant jokes about how short Ed is, along with various other recurring gags, which cease to be funny very quickly. Ed's awkward romance with a childhood friend is just painful to watch. Al has almost no personality of his own until very late in the series. The magic...er, alchemical...battles are incredibly cheesy. I'll give them one thing, at least the battles avoid the worst anime fighting trope of people screaming stupid fighting move names at one another. But I still couldn't really bring myself to care how over-the-top alchemical manipulation of rocks/fire/lightning/etc ended up knocking one person down. (Which is weird since I'm OK with cheesy battles in a lot of other series, but these just did nothing for me.) And worst of all, almost every episode has cartoon-style emotional explosions that take me out of any kind of narrative flow in those scenes.

So I just couldn't get into that good storyline because of the style. This is especially bad in the early going, the first 20 or so episodes, when the story is trying to build its foundations. It moves very slowly, the good and bad guys hardly ever meet one another, and the motivations of characters other than the brothers don't make much sense yet. So in that early going, you're left with mostly just the style...not good if you hate it.

I considered just stopping, but friends told me that it got better, so I persevered. And they were correct, because around the halfway point the story picks up significantly and is much more interesting. And yet, every time I started to get pulled into the story, some awful attempt at humor or annoyingly excessive battle sequence or character blowing their top in the middle of a conversation would show up and kill my interest. I did end up finishing the series, technically, but I was doing something else almost the entire time with the show just on in the background. I got the general gist of the story without focusing on every scene.

This series just fell flat for me. I suspect if I'd seen this back when it first aired almost 10 years ago, I might have felt differently, because I wouldn't have seen a whole lot of other anime with more palatable styles. But my tastes today just don't line up with what Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has to offer.