This event is called tubing.

The basics of “tubing” are thus: You get a floatation vehicle (usually an innertube or innertube-like thinger), go to a spot at the top of the river, get in the water, and float down to an exit point. You spend between four and five hours on the water, in the sun, talking, relaxing, and (usually) drinking.

I smoke cigars every now and then.

What you do is this:

Get a group of friends. Five to ten is probably optimal. Pick two points on a river: a entry point and an exit point. They should be about ten miles apart on the river (not by road). Everyone meets at the exit point and parks their cars.

At this point you’re going to leave about half of the cars behind. All of your people get into half of the vehicles, carrying all your equipment, and drive to the entry point and park.

At this point you all inflate your flotation vehicles, get in the water, and have an awesome four or five hours.

When you get out at the exit point, you get in the cars left behind and drive back to the entry point. Then you split to your cars and go home. Sometimes you have to leave people behind at the exit point and then pick them up.

I’ve done this a pack of times now and each event is different. I always learn some new tricks and tips about what makes the difference between an afternoon that is excellent and a one that is a disaster.

I am now going to share my knowledge with you, so that you need not repeat our mistakes.

1) Never Split the Party. – Seriously. With a group larger than 5, you may find this to be a problem: people drift apart, get split by currents and such. This is not a problem as long as you can see each other, but if your group fragments to the point where you can’t easily get back together, you’ll need to reconnect.

This is most easily accomplished by beaching. The group in the front should beach to the shore and wait for everyone else.

This idea leads us to…

1a) Never Get Out of the Boat Alone. – If it starts to get cold, or you move too slow and night begins to fall, make your decisions as a group. If a few people get out of the water early, the party gets split. I have personal experience about how this is a Bad Idea, with Bad Results. Either everyone gets out of the water or no one does.

2) Cans Only. No Bottles. – Beer is awesome. We love beer. You must only purchase beer in cans because, simply, bottle break. They break, and they get on the river bottom, and then you might step on them. Or they might slice open your floatation vehicle.

Get yourself a mesh sack. Put your full cans into it and let it drag in the water. The river will keep them cold.

When you have empties, crush them. Keep your empties in a different sack – you can leave this one out of water if you want. There’s two reasons for this: a) Crushed cans can possibly puncture your fresh brews, and b) You’ll sometimes find people who want your empties to recycle.

3) No liquor. No Psychedelics. Don’t get Fucked Up. – Stay with beer. You need to not get totally hammered. There may be moments where you have to think quickly (like, oh, you’re about to float into a downed tree). Liquor will dehydrate you pretty quickly and gets you more drunk faster. You need to stay hydrated in the sun, so drink light beers: pilsners, Coronas, etc.

As far as psychedelics go, ohman. Having some people in your group who are totally fucked up this way turns them into Persons of High Maintenance (see below).

4) Avoid Persons of High Maintenance. – This is a personality thing, and something you’ll need to know about your people. You want to avoid bringing your friends along who are High Maintenance. The ones that require a shit-ton of attention and help for everything. You know what I mean: people who require others to inflate their floatation vehicles, or are totally incompetent at paddling, or whatever. Everyone needs to be reasonably capable of taking care of themselves.

This extends. When you get on the river, sometimes it will be cold, or slow, or there may be other problems encountered. The best people take charge about this; most bear these problems well, but there are some people who will complain endlessly. These people are also Persons of High Maintenance, because they demand that the River bend to them.

Further, inviting your friends who get aggressive when they get intoxicated should be avoided as well. My friend Cary related an anecdote to me about this. He once went out with some friends, who invited friends, And one of these guys got super drunk really early on – and then started shooting the other people in their flotilla in the face with a super-soaker at point-blank range. After about an hour of this, Cary just cut the douchebag loose from the flotilla.

This actually leads to…

5) Have a Super-Soaker. – While on the river, you will encounter other parties. Most of them will be very relaxed and friendly. However, from time to time, you’ll encounter a pack of douchaholics. They will have super soakers. And they will possibly want to start a marine battle with you. You must have at least one weapon. This is a deterrant. You shouldn’t have to use it; just be willing to. No one wants to get nailed with one, so just showing your teeth will be sufficient.

6) Never Tie Your Flotilla. – You’re on the river. You’re having a great time. You want to hang out with your friends with very little effort. Everyone’s got a rope, right? Let’s just tie in to each other.

Bad Idea.

We lost a raft today because of this, and some people almost got injured – possibly killed.

At the top, I said, “You can tie up but make sure that those ties can come undone at a moment’s notice.” After a while, we forgot that this was important and just tied on. Towards the end of our trip, we ended up floating into a submerged tree. Josh was instantly capsized and only survived by grabbing onto the “beer wheel”, and Val and Randor’s floatation vehicle was annihilated on the tree stump.

Because we were tied.

This tragedy would have been avoided if we could have split apart.

Here’s how to do it correctly: Tie multiple ropes to your flotation vehicle. Then hand those ropes to others. They hold on to them with their hands, or drape them around things, or whatever. You really only need loose cohesion. The ability to instantly separate is of paramount importance.

7) Have Paddles. – So, yeah. Paddles. You don’t really need a long paddle, but having one (or preferably two) paddle blades is essential.

There will be times when you will drift too close to the shore and are in danger of running into draping trees. You’ll need to get out towards the center in a hurry, and it’s just not going to happen if you’re in a Flotilla Formation and everyone is just cupping water.

There are few things more enjoyable than hitting a “rapids” area while in Flotilla Formation. And then, there’s few things lamer than getting becalmed or trapped in the eddy that occurs right after those rapids. You need to be able to get out of those places and back into the current.

8) Get Good River Shoes. – You can’t do this barefoot. You’ll be stepping on rocks and sludge and slime and other bad things. Find some footwear that you can get wet and not worry about – but most importantly will not come off. Flip-flops are not acceptable unless they also tie around your ankles.

I personally use a pair of low-top Converse Chucks. Surfing footwear works well, too.

9) Stash a Towel, a Change of Clothes and a Hoodie at the Exit Point. – You’re leaving cars there already. Pick one, and everyone dumps a change of dry clothes, a towel, and a hoodie there. The hoodie is super-important, even if it’s in the hottest part of summer: the water is cold. You will be chilled getting out of it. You should also store your “dry” shoes here: no one wants to drive home with wet feet.

10) Stash of Food at the Exit Point. – Even if you bring hella sandwiches on the float, you’re going to get out of the water feeling pretty hungry. This is a good time for some granola bars. It’s especially important if you have to leave people at the Exit while others go to get the cars.

11) Everyone Buys a Dry Sack. – Well. Not “everyone” but have a two or three. These can be purchased at any camping goods store. Get a bunch of ziplock baggies. Put all car keys in ziplocks, and then all phones. Put this stuff in the dry sack.

12) Split the Car Keys. And Cash. – You should have a stash of cash money. Enough for cab fare to either the entrance or the exit point. Double this amount and split it among your dry sacks. Same with car keys: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s possible you could lose a dry sack, so you can’t let yourselves become completely screwed.

Aside from all of this, always be aware of your surroundings.

It is easily the best film I have seen this millenium.

Future archaeologists will regard this film as Christopher Nolan’s high-water mark. I say this with melancholy and hope that my prediction is misaligned. I don’t know if anything Nolan makes again will be this collected and that fills me with mourning for masterpieces yet to be made.

Inception braids several genres together in a manner most masterful. It is a caper story and a psychological thriller, a romance tale and an action vehicle, a puzzling mystery and a con-artist yarn. I felt a brilliant dizziness watching these plates juggled, breathlessly waiting for breakage.

You see, I wanted the story to implode because I wanted to have written it.

Spoiler: I was denied the satisfaction of schadenfreude. All of the story’s shenanigens pay off in a satisfying manner.

Have I discussed what the meat of the plot yet? I haven’t? Hrm. I’m not sure it’s possible for to do so cogently. You see, Inception is about dreaming. To explain the storyline is to retell your dream from last night. Events only make sense in the context of their own timelines, realities, and dreamers.

The plot of Inception is strong and easy to follow. However, like the dream-stories it spins, Inception is more about the feeling and experience of the dreaming rather than any crude linear timeline. And why would Nolan want to talk about timelines anyway? He already did that.

The movie is filled with small hedges towards its philosophic underpinnings. At one point, the team’s “dream architect” imagines into “reality” two large mirrors facing each other, which then display an infinite number of Ellen Pages and Leonardo DiCaprios receding into the far forever,

turtles

all the way down.

None of those are the real versions of the characters. Not even the physical bodies between the mighty marbled mirrors: they, too, are figments within a dream, avatars of their sedated, sleeping selves.

That scene forms the existential seeds of the forbidden apple-of-knowledge within Inception’s Garden of Eden. The idea of disassociated reality repeats through the film, over and over again (turtles all the way down). There are some Deep Core questions concerning the nature of existence and our perception of it: are there dreams within dreams within dreams?

Nolan twists and spins the story back upon itself with this idea, creating a climax that occurs at the same time in four different realities, each running at a different speed – and does so in a way that the audience is never left to wonder “which reality is this scene occuring?”

It’s masterfully done.

I could easily spend several hundred words discussing the film in the context of other existential films (like Dark City, one of my favorites). How the movie is what I had hoped the The Matrix trilogy would have been, or how the film’s final scenes call back to Blade Runner.

However, to do so may very well dilute what Inception really is, and I don’t want to do that.

Dear reader, if you carry even the slightest degree of respect for my opinion about matters such as these, you will see this film.

And do it before someone stupidly spoils it for you.

There will be spoilers in this review. I am sorry for that; I tried very hard to write about what, exactly, made this game so powerful to me without doing so but was unable. If this is a problem, you should stop reading now and simply know that I give this game the strongest positive review I can, and you should buy it immediately. Spoilers come at the end of this; they’re marked.

Let us begin.

Redemption is from the same family as Rockstar’s flagship series, Grand Theft Auto. They are not brothers, however – there are obvious genetic differences, and, in many ways, RDR has more in common with Bully than Grand Theft Auto IV, despite using the same engine.

It is the year 1911 and the “old west” is quickly becoming a faded memory. You play John Marston, a former outlaw. John turned a new leaf many years ago: he married, had a son, bought a farm. He has been living that life for fifteen years, despite having a notoriously intemperate disposition. He wants nothing more than to be left alone, to be happy with his wife, to raise his son, and maybe earn a few dollars from his farm.

This being the world of guns, however, it doesn’t last. His wife and son are “taken into custody” by government agents. They want him to track down a few members of his former gang. These men have gone off the reservation and the feds are calling in their chips: capture or kill these guys and you get your idyllic life back.

Thus we set our story’s stage.

The game’s story unfolds from this point. I’ll get back to that later. First, let’s talk about the actual “gameplay” itself.

Redemption is filled with the standard third-person combat mission styles. Go here, kill people, go somewhere else. Most storyline missions are muscle attached to this basic spine. However, like Bully (and unlike GTA), the real meat lies in the secondary and non-combat missions.

Early on, you will find yourself herding cattle, hunting rabbits, taming horses, and skinning coyotes. You’ll find treasure maps. You’ll chase down horse thieves and rescue damsels in distress. You’ll test your strength in arm wrestling, your wits in card games, and your dexterity in a wicked little game with knives and fingers.

You will find yourself dueling in the streets of a ghost town at high noon. Shoot the gun from your opponent’s hand and earn extra honor or simply blow his head off to stay alive.

Think back to every western movie you have seen. Those elements are here, and you’ll be part of them.

The game world is massive in scope, though I think it is physically smaller than many other sandbox games. Each of the three main regions has several sub-regions, each with their own flavor. We start in a region called “New Austin”, representing Arizona and Texas. Eventually, you move south into Mexico, and then north to the Great Plains (replete with the last buffalo) and the snow-covered Rocky mountains.

The terrain is terrifyingly beautiful. Human beings are few and far between but the land never feels desolate; there are always coyotes and raccoons and vultures to keep us company. It is vibrant in a way that Liberty City is not and can never be.

Much of your time will be spent riding horseback. Rumor says that the developers spent a huge amount of money doing motion capture on the equine species and it shows. Horses are an integral part of the Redemption experience and riding them to their fullest capabilities requires some skill. You’ll learn the basics early. Mastery will not come for some time but it is satisfying when it does.

The voice acting through the entire game is, in a word, stellar. I thought I had heard good voice acting in a game before. All those previous reviews where I said the voice acting was good? No, no. Those guys are average now. This game sets a new bar for quality, and it does it twice (you’ll understand when you complete the storyline).

The music is subdued and perfect. It hints a blend of spaghetti western noir with burgeoning jazz sensibilities – especially in the later acts of the game. It’s a fluid thing, almost intelligent, and only ever serves to enhance the mood. The music serves strongly in the game’s Crowning Moment of Awesome, but it does so with the subtlety of switchblade between the ribs: silent, efficient, powerful.

There is an underlying sadness to the game. This comes not from the main story but is rather indicated by subtext: it is 1911. The west is gone. The savage Indians are not-so-savage anymore; civilization has arrived and it carries with it the death of the Old Ways. But, as John says, those Old Ways never really existed except inside the nostalgia of those trying to forget.

The story of the game draws from the great westerns of the past fifty years. It sings of The Searchers, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The game’s final chapter echoes the death of the west as played out in The Shootist. Each of these films – and many more – are homaged in some interesting and loving way.

Like GTA IV, Redemption‘s skin covers a story that is cinematic in scope. However, where GTA IV’s Niko Bellic is driven forward by the whips of vengeance, Redemption’s John Marston is motivated by the love of his family and the fear for their safety. Boiled down, John Marston is a father first and a gunslinger second.

This path leads us to the game’s Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Here there be spoilers.

In the third act, there are several missions that climax with John finally killing the leader of his old gang. The federal agents, true to their word, let him go and John returns home to his wife and son.

One might think that the credits should roll. But they do not. Instead, there are several missions (maybe ten or so) wherein John re-integrates with the farming lifestyle. He kills crows for his wife. Buys cattle. Herds horses.

John is a father. Most of the missions at this point are about developing a relationship with his fifteen year old son, Jack. He teaches Jack to ride, to shoot, to hunt. He is a father.

It’s a dynamic shift in the narrative. It’s smooth. The music (pay attention to it) changes through this; it becomes less adventurous and more contemplative, following John’s patterns. The impatient among you may want to skip the dialog sessions, but I urge otherwise: listen to Abigail’s nervous chatter about John’s time away from them. Hear Jack’s frustration at his father leaving them.

It’s important.

Because, as expected, the law men return. And hell follows with them.

There is a dénouement afterwards. The story picks up again in 1914. You will play Jack, now a man. And his story is one of revenge.

I cannot impress upon you how great this game is.

In the United States of America, there exists a large group of people who believe in the Rapture. For those of you who never went to Sunday School, the Rapture (sometimes called the “Second Coming”) is the equivalent of the Christian apocalypse:

The baby^H^H^H^Hadult^H^H^H^H^Hundead (?) Jesus will come down from Heaven, say hi to everyone, and then take only the worthy and good back up into the clouds with him. This has the effect of leaving all the sinners on Earth, presumably to spend the rest of their lives lamenting the fact that all the killjoys disappeared.

(I’m going to point out that I have “Second Comings” fairly often as long as I’ve not had too much to drink. But I digress.)

So, okay. Let me just get this out of the way: According to these people, I am going to Hell. I mean, eventually. Not tomorrow. I’m definitely not getting past the Pearly Gates.

This means that once Undead Jesus calls the faithful home, I’ll be one of the Left Behind, which I think I’ll be okay with since it means that I finish out my days with rampant gambling, boozing, and sodomy.

But those poor people! The ones called home? They probably had a bunch of shit left undone. People they hadn’t judged. Abortion clinics they hadn’t bombed. Whatever.

So here’s the crux of my plan:

Rapture Wills.

If you plan on getting “taken up”, you probably want some shit done. I expect that the Rapture happens a lot like, oh, a hurricane, or an earthquake, or a Republican convention. There’s going to be lots of sound and fury followed by nothing. So it’s like dying only there are probably fewer hookers killed in the process.

Which means you need a will. “In the event of my Rapture, I want someone to tell Cindy that I think she is a skeevy whore and is going to hell.” Or “Please provide for my pet dog” or even “Please provide for my retarded brother Billo.”

I figure I can charge a one-time fee of a hundred bucks for this. It’s like Jesus insurance.

And you know that there are people willing to pay this.

So, the question I am left with is this: is it ethical for me to bilk money out of these people?

Let’s be clear: these are people who believe that I am going to hell. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t give me money in the first place. They already don’t respect me, and I sure as fuck don’t respect their loopy asses.

And, honestly, if such an event did happen, I probably would go about honoring the wills. Because I’m That Guy.

Thoughts?

(Also, I own the domain “rapture-wills.com”)

Here is why:

One of the film’s subjects, Chuck Yeager, is probably the baddest motherfucker still living today. In fact, he’s probably in line for being one of the Baddest Motherfuckers In the Fucking Universe. And few people know who he is.

I know, I know. It’s a big thing to say that it’s actually Chuck Norris is the baddest dude walking, but that guy, for all his karate, sushi, kung-pow, and other Asian words, is a pale fucking shadow to Chuck Yeager.

First off, Chuck Norris can’t fly a plane. Second, Chuck Norris never really did shit except get his ass kicked by Bruce in Fury of the Dragon, star in a bunch of films where he wished he was Chuck Yeager, and inspire a bunch of young kids to take Tae Kwon Do for a few months before giving it up.

Also: Who fights in cowboy boots?

Now. Back to Yeager, since we’ve established that Norris is just a figment.

First off, okay, Yeager Broke the Fucking Sound Barrier. He is widely regarded as the greatest pilot of all time. Seriously: the best pilot who has ever lived, ever. Aside from his post-war test pilot accomplishments, during World War II he proved himself to be a total fucking bad ass by scoring an Ace in a Day – that is, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one day.

He did this before he turned twenty-two.

But wait, there’s more!

He got shot down over France. This happens. But did he let that keep him down?

Hell no. The motherfucker’s from West Virginia. Oh no; he joined the fucking Maquis and built bombs (which his dad taught him to make) to fuck up the Germans.

Later, and hand to $DEITY, this is the baddest ass thing ever, he carried another dude (who had lost his foot) over the Pyrenees mountains, evading German gunfire, in the snow, while barefoot.

When downed pilots were attempting to home, they were sent in pairs to a series of safehouses over the mountains. Yeager and his partner were in a safehouse in the mountains and his partner (rather stupidly) hung his socks out to dry in the crisp winter air.

A passing German patrol saw the socks, realized the cabin was not abandoned, and opened fire into it with machine guns. The assault blew off his partner’s foot just below the knee.

Chuck grabbed him, made a makeshift tourniquet, threw him over his shoulders, and ran out the back. He did not take time to grab shoes or socks.

When he returned, he was one of the few people allowed back into air combat (policy was that pilots who had previously been shot down were not allowed back into air combat, in case they were captured, tortured, and could give up Maquis intelligence.)

Okay, so post-war. We all know that he broke the sound barrier in the X-1. (and if you don’t know this, you should write a stern letter to the education department in your home state, because you are seriously fucking lacking in history).

Did you know that he did this with several broken ribs? He had been thrown from a horse two days previous and hid the injury from the Air Force so that they wouldn’t ground him.

He was passed over for the astronaut program, despite being more qualified than anyone else, because he didn’t have a college degree.

The motherfucker landed a plane in the streets of Hamlin, WV, just to see his lover. He could (and did) pilot on a dime and they turned him out for lack of a piece of paper.

One day, he took out an experimental plane (which would become the F-104 Starfighter) and shit went bad. He flew it into space. In hindsight, probably not a great move. It stalled, died, and went into a tailspin. So he ejected.

The ejection seat (which is on fire at the bottom, because it’s got a jet on it) spun around and hit him in the face of his helmet, breaking it. This had the added effect of setting the rubber in his helmet on fire. So here he is, plummeting from 30,000 feet with his fucking face on fire.

He landed safely and they took him to the hospital where, for the next several months, he underwent an “extremely painful and experimental” procedure where they peeled any scabs that grew off his face in order to avoid burn scarring.

Oh, but we’re not done.

After this, he took command of an Air Force base during the Vietnam conflict and by 1970 he had been promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. Yeah. A fucking star, bitches (he was later promoted to Major General in a post-retirement promotion).

And he never got a fucking New York City ticker tape parade.

Why do I know this? Because he’s from fucking West Virginia.

And that’s how we roll.

I kick myself for not having heard Dimmu Borgir before because they put on one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long, long time. It was an awesome theatrical spectacle. A+++ WOULD WATCH AGAIN.

Even better, I would have called them a band that was parodying Dethklok if it were not that Dimmu Borgir has been around since 1996 or so. They had the face makeup, and the spiked boots, and the lead singer was decked out in satanic armor replete with pentacles and a kind of chainmail skirt. Long hair, swirling around in circles. Smoke, lasers, tempos: at one point, KBK leaned over to me and said, “I fully expect to see an army of Mordhaus goons come to the stage.”

I swear to fucking $DEITY, the lead singer said, literally, “Good Evenings, Sans Fransciscos! We ares the Blackest of the the Blacks!” Only it was the Nathan Explosion voice speaking like Skwisgar. (And none of that makes any sense unless you know fuck all about Dethklok).

I could go on for a while about how awesome the Dimmu Borgir (which means “Dark Cities”) gig was. They were a very, very tight band. They were tight musically, they were tight thematically, and their light show was just . . . well. I never really pay much attention to lights. And this time, I did.

(We skipped the first three bands. There were five: Danzig, Dimmu Borgir, Something, Something, Something. We missed Something[cubed], opting for burgers and beers instead.)

Then we were treated to a wonderful diatribe from a roadie about how if anyone took any photo of any kind with any kind of device, camera, phone, or otherwise, it would be confiscated and we would be kicked out and probably beaten.

And I said, “Because it’s going to be ‘pudgy’ Glenn.”

And Lo! I was not far off. More like “Old Glenn”.

Lemme give the dude props: he’s in his fifties. And, despite some pudge, he’s still pretty stocky. His hair is thinning, but it still swings when he headbangs.

Honestly, the Danzig set was . . . not very tight. I’m being kind there. It was “sloppy”. When he sang lines, maybe only half the words made it into the microphone. But this show wasn’t about that: it was about nostalgia – especially for KBK, who is a huge Misfits fan and I know that Danzig was one of the first shows she’d ever been to.

And, in that regard, he pulled it off. He was one of the most enthusiastic performers I’d seen in a long time. He was very much engaged in the crowd – not only them, but also his crew (musicians and roadies). This may be because it was the last show of the tour (and the roadies were doing all sorts of weird shit, like bringing pizzas around the stage while the band was playing). Doesn’t matter. They were having a lot of fun, and it infected the crowd.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and I hope KBK is pleased with her birthday present.