Blog Posts - Jay Peterson

The Aussie confiscation and lack of effect

10/4/2015

Because I've already had one Aussie take my name in vain (Love you anyway, Jennie), I might as well address the Australian question, since I've seen it slung about this weekend.
Ignoring the cultural and size differences (24 million vs 300 million), they've kinda become a yardstick for people looking for something to compare it to.
In 1996, the Port Arthur massacre happened. It was huge by anyone's standards with 35 dead and 23 wounded. The only mass shooting that's even come close in my lifetime was sandy hook (27 killed, 1 injured, most of them children).
The resulting ban was more of a registration, licensing and buyback program (for those with guns they could no longer legally own).
The two big questions on everyone's mind:
1. Did it prevent mass shootings? and,
2. Did it at least prevent murders and other attacks?
The answer in both cases? Not really.
But that's because there weren't that many to begin with.
Here's a look at Australia's violent crime levels. If you look at the murder rate, it's dropped from a 1.7 in 1993 to 1.1 in 2011.
But that's only a drop from 333 in 1993 to 276 in 2011.
In fact, violent crime in all categories in Australia peaked in the years following the gun ban, dropping after 2001.
As for mass shootings, they still happened after the ban. The Monash university shooting is the most famous, but there's also the Wedderburn shooting, the Sydney hostage crisis last year. They're less common, but they still happen.
The tool of choice for mass murderers in Australia seems to have merely changed. Fire is the name of the game down under, with the Childers Palace backpackers fire, the Churchill fire, and the Quakers hill nursing home fire, all of with killed 10+ people apiece.
So, there you have it. Down under ain't here, and a ban didn't work for them in the first place. So quit acting like it did.

https://aic.gov.au/dataTools/facts/vicViolentCol.html

You're an actor? Learn to shoot a gun.

9/25/2015

Don't worry. The idea throws some people for a loop. But there's a logic to it. Syd Field famously said all drama is conflict. And "show, don't tell," is the most-cited rule one of filmmaking. Which means sooner or later, an actor is going to be performing a physical conflict. And the number one interpersonal weapon of our time is the handgun.

(Do handguns come out in every conflict? No. But if you look at what crops up again and again, pistols are in the top three along with hand-to-hand and improvised weapons.)

Effectively, shooting's as essential a skill to an actor today as skill with a rapier was to Shakespeare. We're in the middle of a more or less equivalent era.

And now there's some wondering how I got to that conclusion. Let me elucidate.

Shakespeare lived during the rise of the rapier, a weapon that's lousy on a battlefield but proved handy for civilian use. The design also made it easy to customize for those who liked to flaunt their wealth and style. And while any gentleman could (and many did) take the time to use it, there were a number of (usually younger and hot-tempered) men who practiced as often as their lifestyles would let them.

At the same time, a number of masters popped up, establishing schools and writing manuals. Agrippa and Morozzo already had manuals published by the start of Shakespeare's career. George Silver, Fabris, Di Grassi, and Capo Ferro were all published by the time Shakespeare had penned his last play.

What this meant was that every year, more and more members of Shakespeare's audience were educated about rapier combat: how it worked, what was possible, what was likely, and what was preposterous. He and his actors needed to know their stuff or pay for it at the box office (or in flying tomatoes).

Fast forward to today, where the handgun (a weapon of extremely limited use on the battlefield) is being owned and carried by more average Americans every day, in a trend that's been lasting 30 years or more. In 1986, 16 states banned ordinary citizens from carrying concealed weapons. By the turn of the millennium there were only seven. The last holdouts (Illinois and D.C.) had their laws struck down by Supreme court decisions in 2013. Today there's an estimated 12 million concealed license holders all across the country.

An entire cottage industry follows the customization and decoration of these weapons, from the commercial to the gaudy to the beautiful.

And since the 1960's the practice of handgunnery has evolved from a training system for police officers into a martial art. Masters like the late Jeff Cooper, Mossad Ayoob, and Don Mann are writing books and teaching classes across the country. Different schools of thought and techniques are cropping up all the time. My own gun classes for actors evolve about every six months nowadays.

In other words, safety and aesthetics aside, it's getting harder and harder for an audience to suspend disbelief in an untrained gun-toting actor. So if you're going to tread the boards, you might want to get in some range time too.

Call a weapon a weapon

6/24/2015

There is a trend throughout my profession that few know about. If I've mentioned it, it's only been in passing. And I don't think I've ever written how much it's disturbed me.

There's a trend, surprising as it may be, is a refusal to refer to weapons as weapons. Typically, this is a reaction to post-columbine academia, which shits its tweed trousers at the thought of weaponry on campus. Insisting on terms like "theatrical props" or "sports equipment," is a levee against the storm of bullshit for drama departments, fencing teams, and the like to take what refuge they can in.

(The fact that establishing schools as weapon-free zones has been a miserable, blood-soaked failure is another matter. Campus carry becomes a fact of life in more states every year, and progress in that arena continues. But it is only tangential to the matter at hand.)

I can understand the need to placate the huge bureaucracies that control your fate. I know that a humanities discipline can ill-afford to rock the already-shaky ivory tower. And no fencing team wants to share the sad off-campus fate of NSDU's team.

But in the long run (15 years since Columbine, as I write this), this irritating fiction does more harm than I think anyone realizes.

For one thing, it kills credibility. It is impossible to hold up a sword, with a straight face say, "it's a prop, not a weapon," and not look like a godsdamn tool to anyone who's been remotely near a scrum. Worse if it comes from the lips of an instructor. Because now not only have they been stupid enough to say it, they're someone in authority with enough stupidity to say so. Even if an operator is willing to give benefit of doubt (and most will throw said individual right into the mental "fuck this idiot" pile), they'll be distracted for the rest of the session. Their attention will be split between following the lesson and watching the instructor like a hawk, ready for the next asinine thing to come out of their mouth.

For another, it shows a lack of respect for the weapon. Refusing to call a spade a spade encourages one to treat it like something else. In a world where a news commentator throws an axe, misses his target and hits a drummer, we need MORE respect for a weapon, not less.

Yes, weapons inspire fear in those unfamiliar. Familiarity should transform that fear into respect, not unthinking complacency. Such thinking is exactly what leads to "justs." It was "just" a bread knife that went 4 inches into an actor's torso in Tuscon, AZ. It was "just" a throwing axe that fortunately didn't seriously injure a West Point drummer.

On yet another level, it's just dishonest. When I began selling knives, I've been asked why I didn't use this payment service or that retail service, and my answer would take them aback. "They don't allow weapons dealers to use them," I'd say. To which they would be dumbfounded, saying, "But you just make training/prop/theatrical knives."

As if that makes them any less knives. This fundamental dishonesty rankles me.

(I'd like to point out now to all my gentle readers, the ridiculously easy segue into American weapon politics this could lead to. I'm not gonna go there, 'cause it's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. But I easily could go there.

Be grateful for that, motherfuckers.)

Lastly, it lets us hide from the nature of our stories. Drawing a "theatrical prop" with a dramatic flair and all thoughts on spectacle ignores the fact that thousands died on the point of that "prop." In doing so we do no justice to our stories, nor those whose lives they were based on.

Am I saying that every story told with these weapons should be as grim as a drill instructor at a funeral? No. Not at all. And the fact that we're somehow conditioned to expect that is part of the problem. Taking up arms does not confine or relieve someone of the human condition. On the contrary, it brings that condition into a new level of vivid detail. One lost if those extensions of their bodies and will, their weapons, become just another prop to put on the table and have ready.

Ink and blood

3/5/2015

The Sgt. Major of the Army is taking a closer look at the Army's tattoo policy after being surprised by objections to stricter regs. The Marines' new Commandant hasn't mentioned any revisions to his own branch one way or another.

In the Times, the Sgt. Major seems taken aback at the scope of resistance to the new regs. I think I might have the reason he's looking for.

It's a trope-near-cliche to think soldier=mindless drone, though the truth is the exact opposite. Heinlein said it better than me, in that it's true Caesar (and likely Napoleon) could use mindless drones by the score, but a modern force has nearly no use for such. The USMC mantra of "improvise, overcome, and adapt" has been nothing less than crucial in the War on Terror. ROE's have changed on the hour. Packs of turbaned Macguyvers made and placed IEDs in a race against our TTP's countering them. Our PA and CA people spent the entire war against the ropes thanks to their propaganda machines. And in every case, on every front, we improvised, overcame, and adapted.

The U.S. doesn't have a military that shuts up and blindly does what they're told. They've had one that takes initiative, solves problems, and keeps on going for the duration of GWOT.

In short, the good Sgt. Major has a lot of creative soldiers nowadays.

But the thing about creative people is, they need an outlet. And fixing problems on the fly doesn't always cut the mustard.

Uniformity is a good and noble thing. Now that I no longer run the risk of appearing in one, I can appreciate the beauty of a pass in review, and the sight of a thousand moving as one. But individuality is there as well, whether we like it or not. Our modern warriors are kept uniform in most aspects of their individual lives: clothing, hair, speech, what have you. One of their few outlets is their very skin, their tattoos.

And what a canvas for a warrior's creativity it is. Our stories are forged in blood and finished in ink. What media on earth is more fitting, then, than the one media that encompasses both? It is in our very bodies that we mark our stories. Stories of those who stood at our left and right and those who we left safe home. Stories of those who fell at our side and those who fell at our hands. Our thoughts, dreams, visions, memories, nightmares, all that we are displayed in our flesh.

Just the other day I heard of a fellow veteran who had what I believe will soon be an iconic symbol: A crossed-out number 22. A pledge to himself not to become one of the 22 veterans who take their lives daily.

A professional appearance will be kept, I believe, if tattoos are not visible while wearing full dress uniforms. Otherwise, our creative warriors should be permitted their stories.

Gun Law News: The Look-Alike Weapons Safety Act

2/24/2015

Hi, Kids! Say hello to the Look-Alike Weapons Safety Act of 2013.

What does it do?

- Current commerce code says that imitation guns sold in the U.S. have to be either completely made of bright-colored material or have a bright orange plug in the muzzle. This Act changes the law to only allow imitation guns with their entire body brightly colored.

Um, Why?

Ostensibly the law is a reaction to the deaths of Tamir Rice and John Crawford. Both were holding realistic airsoft imitation guns when they were shot and killed by police in 2014. The idea being that easily removed or covered orange tips are no longer a viable safety measure in helping police identify a fake from a real gun.

Will it work?

Without getting into a pages-long lecture about the factors that play in a shoot/don't shoot scenario, the short answer is "pretty unlikely."

What are the side effects?

The airsoft sport will suffer, as realistic weapons are a big part of the sport's appeal. Certain reenactors (WWII in particular) will find their supply of weapons drying up overnight, as will the entertainment industry.

What if I just buy some of these bright orange ones and paint them black?

Depends on whose lawyar interperets the commerce code. On the one hand, if they're yours, then you're not buying, selling, or transporting over state lines, you might be good. On the other hand, they might be "entered into commerce." Nobody's so far been charged with the current law, so there's no real case studies to follow.

So, worst case scenario, it's a Federal Offense with no precedent. If you want to risk some prosecutor wanting to make an example of someone...

Wait, isn't there a waiver or something for the entertainment industry?

Technically, yes, but it's a one-at-a-time waiver from the Secretary of Commerce. From what I hear, similar waivers are available today for doing without the orange tips. I'm told the office processes only a handful of waivers a year.

So, get a waiver and make my John Woo tribute series! Let the Hollow-eyed hippies have their bullshit!

Not so fast, cupcake. YOU might be willing to do the paperwork for however many fake guns you want to own. How many manufacturers do you think are willing to? How many wholesalers? How many retailers? This law intentionally shrinks that market to custom fabricators willing to do the paperwork (and cheerfully pass the expense, time and effort on to you).

That Sucks! Who's responsible for this bullshit?

That would be Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Yes, I know we're all shocked that this comes from a California Democrat.

Fuck That! I'm moving to her district and voting her out!

Good initiative, but a little extreme. Besides, she's already retiring. And then you're stuck in California, which has an identical state law that went into effect in January.

Wait, you mean this bullshit can become law?

Maybe. California's law was signed by Gov. Brown back in September, and Ohio (where both Rice and Crawdord lived and died) has a similar bill going around at the state level.

Federally? Unlikely with the Republicans controlling both chambers, but unlikely doesn't mean impossible. I give it one chance in five, and that's being generous.

That's all for today, folks.

~J

The meaning of Knife

2/17/2015

Had knives on the brain for a couple days. Partly because I'm working on an order of them, partly because I'm drafting a knife class with some ideas I've had running around. So in the interest of seeing them inscribed before they escape my head, enjoy!

**********************

With a ~very~ few distinct cultural exceptions, the knife has never been a preferred weapon among humans who had to fight. Especially not among those who fought regularly and often. Human primary weapons are the spear, the bow, the sword, the pike, the rifle. These are the weapons that come up again and again when combat happens. Distance weapons. Long, back off, fuck you, die over there weapons. Those were what professionals used. If a professional used a knife, it was because their primary weapon was unavailable or rendered useless. A knife was a weapon of those already in the cacky. A soldier using the knife happened when shit already hit the fan.

Exceptions? yes. The assassin with the stiletto? They're not there to fight. They're there to kill, and then leave. Ideally, fighting won't happen.

The knife does have it's place of supremacy, though. It is humanity's penultimate tool. I don't care how ass-backwards you are. Even those who didn't figure out a wheel or fire learned quick that a sharp edge was a damn handy thing to have around.

And it's those tool users I'm thinking of when I rack my brain trying to think of a knife as a primary weapon. The Pukko of Finland? Tool. A Gurkha's Khukri? Tool. The fact that they're devastatingly effective weapons doesn't stop them from being tools first and tools more often.

This tool/weapon divide also explains something else I've been unconsciously doing: NOT using a reverse grip. It's a grip and movement only used in fighting with a knife. Nobody chops vegetables for dinner with a reverse grip on the knife. I don't sit down and eat a steak using a reverse grip. Old-timers don't sit on the porch whittling old sticks in a reverse grip. It's first and foremost a fighting grip, which makes it feel a bit unnatural in the hand.

Which brings up another thought: what's the difference between a knife fighter and someone who finds themselves in a fight and happens to have a knife? Which do we see more of onstage? On screen? On the page? on the news? on the blotter?

There's some more pondering to do. This could get interesting.

~J.

I walked past the American Sniper in the chow hall once. Here's my story.

2/12/2015

Not really. To my knowledge, I've never met Chris Kyle, chow hall or otherwise. I do know my unit and his team were both in Ramadi, Iraq during the summer of 2006, and I vaguely remember some guys with the Punisher logo on their armor passing through once or twice. The only face I can even vaguely recall is Mark Lee's, and even then I'm not certain (lots of people rocked Burt Reynolds porn 'staches in country back then).

I am on the other hand collecting my various thoughts on American Sniper and the world's reaction to it. Because frankly, I'm kinda tired by now. I'm tired of flag-waving cousin fuckers petitioning to have Kyle awarded the Medal of Honor (No. Hell no and fuck no, all right? The man's career is one of the most scrutinized of the war. He's earned the chest candy he has. If there was anything remotely worthy of the medal in his work, we'd have known years ago. A movie didn't change that). And I'm really, really tired of hearing every latte-chugging bitterness studies major who ever cried "Privilege," sniveling about how "dangerous" it is. Fuck you.

As far as my personal review, here goes...
********************
(I'm gonna try to avoid spoilers here)
The advance press has had the usual moto-boners from the right and sniveling and handwringing from the left, fairly typical. But I think part of the conflict beyond the usual has been exactly how we're supposed to see Kyle.

Part of it, I think, is that American Sniper isn't what I would consider a War movie. It's instead a biopic of a warrior. Kyle's trade was in the hunting of human beings, something that draws argument as to if it even can be understood by those who don't experience it. But that was his trade and craft, of which he stands as a master to modern eyes.

One of the glaring holes we have in western societies is in how we treat our warriors. We seem to have our pigeonholes of "shining hero," "PTSD-scarred victim," and "sociopath," with no place, it seems, for quiet professionals or average joes and janes, let alone the compassionate or intellectual among their ranks.

Cooper plays Kyle in a way I've seen in many, many veterans of this war: compartmentalizing themselves between warriors and family men (even in the same person), gallows humor, vigorous sexual energy, and as tight self-control as one can muster.

The home-life scenes are nearly brutal in poignancy, seeing Taya's near-desperation to understand who her husband completely is butting up against his helplessness at finding any words that could possibly enlighten her. I think it's a tearful exchange that has taken place in dozens, if not hundreds of forms over the last decade and a half alone.

(As for whether I've managed to cross that line of understanding, being far more a wordwright than Kyle ever was? The Jury's still out. There are very few I implicitly trusted with both thought and experience at the time, fewer still that are still with us, and I have asked none of them if they truly understood.)

On the technical side, the parts of Iraq felt like Iraq, and even showed progression through the years (bunched up patrols and the tactical carry everywhere in 03-04 melting into up-armored humvees and MRAPS by 2007). Even little touches (Did everyone have a hooch door that closed with a 550-cord-and-water-bottle-suspension system?) kept it real.

It has a touch of contrivance with the use of 2 main villains (though not quite as bullshit as the Pashtun village of badass that was written into Lone Survivor). It also doesn't quite show enough of the impact that Kyle's work with other veterans had.

In other words, it's among the most powerful depictions of the wars I've seen yet. On par with Generation Kill, and ahead of Lone Survivor. Worth the Oscar nods it's received.
(For those curious, The Hurt Locker was excellent mood wrapped in a preposterous story, while Zero Dark Thirty was 2 hours of Jessica Chastain being impatient followed by the slowest and sloppiest raid ever)
**************

So, the movie had a soft open on Christmas in a handful of cities, and started getting serious buzz. Then it broke records opening in January.

The Hollywood set shit themselves. Michael Moore and Seth Rogen were the most high-profile foot-in-mouth disease sufferers, while various pundits and bloggers screeched about how the film didn't show history right (read "how the narrative they've been raised on always told them it was") .but there's a more direct way to answer the question of why a film wasn't made that, "looked at the big picture" (translation: cry about how evil we were for GWOT) or "further examined the human cost of war" (translation: why was kyle shown as a troubled but ultimately consummate professional and family man instead of a broken, quivering victim like he should have been)?

The answer in Hollywood terms is:

Those films were already made. They universally sucked and made no money.

Content aside, look at the combined gross of Stop-loss, Green Zone, In the valley of elah, Home of the brave, and The Hurt locker. Don't forget to look at gross receipts vs budgets.

Now look at the same data for Lone Survivor and American Sniper. Act of Valor is its own animal, so ignore it for now.

Small data pools, to be sure. But showing today's warriors as people instead of yellow ribbon reasons, villains and victims is already looking a lot more profitable. The first set of projects had studio backing and A-list talent. They also had hand-wringing, confused victims of the Big Bad Bush, just as the latte left wanted. Their stories sucked and they failed as films, period fucking dot.

You don't get to blame it on flyover country either, kids. One of American Sniper's highest-grossing theaters is in NYC.

((Sidebar for a mild spoiler/plot hole: The single-action revolver Kyle draws on his wife in the final scene is a non-firing replica, and was in real life. This is why Kyle's blatant disregard for firearm safety, (holding a gun on his wife, walking around with his finger on the trigger, leaving a cocked pistol unsecured on a shelf,) makes any sense.
The fact that it's a replica is mentioned in the book, but not the movie.))

I found on a random Facebook feed a I found a rather hostile objection to how a woman and a child were depicted as trying to kill Americans with a hidden bomb.

I wonder where their rage was a decade ago, when AQI were actively recruiting all demographics for exactly that task? For a good long time, Al-Qaeda was the biggest equal opportunity employer in the country. Man, woman, child, elderly, pregnant, retarded, they didn't care. If you could carry a bag or wear a vest and mosey your way in the direction of some American troops, they had a place for you. Ground zero of a crater, to be specific.

(Not kidding about pregnant suicide bombers, btw. Boot camp buddy of mine was at a vehicle checkpoint hit by one. They found out she really was pregnant because a 6-month-gestated fetus was one of the larger pieces of the bomber left intact.)

But none of that has mattered to the Hollywood set. The cries of racism went on, despite Kyle's own interpreter calling bullshit. While moviegoers in Baghdad seemed to on the whole enjoy it, the screaming went on that it was "rewriting history."

Yes, kid, it was being rewritten. And not in the narrative you approve of. Tough shit. If you'd paid attention you might have learned something.

Changes to the story and characters were nothing that wouldn't happen in any biopic adaptation. Events happen close to each other instead of years apart. Multiple similar people wind up represented by a single character.

Long story short (and I'm talking to you, Lindy West), Chris referred to the Iraqis as savages because a good chunk of them behaved that way.

"Bare minimum, (Kyle) was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people."

'Brown people?" Fucking really? Depressingly bigoted of her. Sadly unsurprising. Amy Nicholson was about as bad in her screed on Lone Survivor last year. Not a godsdamn one of em can be bothered to tell the difference between a Shia and a Sikh, but trigger pullers like me are the asshole here?

**********************
I'll admit recently to wondering if there are those of my acquaintance who think me "hate-filled," or that I have, "taken pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people?"

And if so, however do they stand to be in the same room? or type in the same corner of the net? Morbid curiosity?

It's a fascinatingly unknown place, not only of psychology, but of etiquette.

At times, I am tempted to say to such folk, "fuck off. Ask me not for direction nor duration. Simply orient as you see fit and fuck off beyond what horizon you approach."

But today, with Dr. King quotes flying about, what suits my own thoughts is more, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

********************

Americans treat their heroes funny. We only really have two kinds. We weren't even a country when the idea of a hero being the result of a Gods' inability to keep their dick in their chiton became old-fashioned. We were formed with the idea of "paragon of virtue" being the definition of a hero. And it's had a good long run. Sir Galahad to Captain America. And then things changed. Our heroes became harder. Uglier. Antiheroes more often than not. And if anyone looked like the old-school paragon heroes, it's just because we hadn't found their ugly yet. People stopped seeing heroes as something to emulate, and started seeing them as suspicious for having their flaws hidden instead of hanging out.

We don't look for heroes anymore. We look for hero flaws.

My personal definition of a hero is someone who risks themselves for the sake of those they have no particular loyalty to.

I served with quite a few heroes. Most would not consider themselves such. One or two would try to punch me if they heard me call them so. They are heroes still.

I wear on my wrist the name of a man who fought and died in ways Leonidas himself would envy. He was well read, with a passion for history and chess. He was also a two-fisted, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed skirt chaser who'd been kicked out of half the titty bars between I-95 and the Carolina coastline. He was still a hero. Maybe despite that. Maybe because of it.

Ultimately, that is what assclowns of West's ilk have failed to understand. That heroes truly exist. They do not have to check off all the right boxes or use the proper euphemisms to be so. Warts and all makes them heroes still.

They fail to understand that us in uniform are not uniform in our minds. We are more than heroes, villains and victims. We are vast in our views and thoughts, bound by our experiences, not ideology. We are human. Deeply, passionately, terrifyingly human.

That is what West and her ilk fear: that we are entirely human, perhaps even great humans, who think and act so differently we might have come from Mars.

How terrifying that must be for her.

After all, what if we're right?

Yuletide

12/22/2014

Nearly at year's end and still hard at work at one project for another. Filmed my last shooting day of the year last week, stored the gear away from that, ordered some new supplies.
I also managed to get the new broadsword rack built in the labs.

Barbarisms: Black Friday Edition

11/28/2014

Black Friday is to raiding like New Year's Eve is to drinking: a violent, messy, crowded, bad-smelling amateur hour fine-tuned to drive even the most cool-headed professionals to frustration.

We Barbarians form hordes for protection, efficiency, and communication among raiders. Go figure civilization would bollocks it up so hard as to turn it into a system where it's every marauder for themselves.

But if one must give the home field advantage to the merchants, some ways are more barbaric than others. Read further to live, thrive and survive on this, the Blackest of Fridays.

Rule one: Cunning over Ferocity.

There's a time and place to storm the gates wearing nothing but blue paint, a fat wallet and a blunt instrument. Trying it on Black Friday just means you'll be mistaken for a Gators fan. Or worse, a Colts fan. To successfully navigate Black Friday, be where the Berzerkers ain't. If the rush is for electronics, be somewhere else looking for clothing. If toys are what needs to happen, head for jewelry.
Yes, the choicest bargains are where the mob gravitates towards. But by that point, limited supplies just ensure you're playing dice with your own bodies. If you must indulge, it pays to stack the deck, so wear your biggest and best spikes.

Rule two: Research thoroughly.

Every merchant knows that once they have you in the shop with "buy" instead of "burn" on your mind, their job's half done. The sales of this day, while seeming frothing mad at first, are finely calculated to get your leather-and-fur-clad ass in the doors, there to have your senses heavily assaulted by the display racks. It thus behooves you to be nowhere near their establishment without a specific mission in mind. Know what specifically you look for, and which abode both has the item at the best deal on hand. and the lowest capacity for other bargain-charging scum like yourself.

Rule three: If possible, form a horde

For those who can't resist the siren call of chaos, your odds become better by forming a band of other leather-clad layabouts. Discuss each member's primary and secondary goals. Spread out among the shops as best you may. Divide hunting responsibilities and grounds, so that the band itself will be able to cover more territory than its individual members.

Rule four: If all else fails, raise the drawbridge and wait out the siege.

'Tis one day. Seriously, folks, make it more about leftovers and preparing for the fun of winter than dealing with the hassle. Chaos is like beer and leather unmentionables: provided you know what you're doing, tis' much more satisfying to enjoy those you and your friends make yourselves rather than indulge in what's made by easily distracted amateurs.

EDIT: And if you be wanting to perpetuate the Barbaric nature of the ladies in your life, the Labs have cooked up a new, internet-only edition of our famous Princess T-shirt!

Available in a standard T-shirt, unisex tank top or women's fitted Tee, available in a variety of colors just in time for the holidays.

How to watch videos (and know what the hell you're watching)

11/8/2014

It continually amazes me how the suspension of disbelief is enhanced by a camera. The whole cliche about how film school ruins movies for you forever? Only if you let it. If a story actually grabs your attention, then you pay no mind to what you as a professional know was a green screen or a camera trick or something else.

Even when there's no script, cameras play tricks with us, telling a story that brings us along. And because we think "it's just a camera, it doesn't lie," we're convinced that what we're seeing is a whole and unambiguous story. This is even more so with the increased call for body cameras to be worn by law enforcement.

But what you see isn't always what you get.

Let's look at an example. This one's been making the news lately.

So what are we actually looking at here?

Video opens from the backseat, after a stop, and after backup has been called (you can see the second police vehicle in front during a pan. pretty standard boxing-in technique in a non-highway area like this). The windows are rolled maybe a third of the way down, just low enough to speak with the officer and pass over ID and such. A woman (the driver) loudly mentions one of the cops drawing a weapon.

So now we have three events that happened before the camera turned on: Pulling over, a cop drew a weapon, and backup was called.

Why would the cop draw a weapon? Based on the fact that everyone is still in their seats at this point, my guess is the passenger reached for their ID quickly (out of nervousness?). Reaching for ID quickly (from a pocket, a glove compartment, or a bag) looks an awful lot like reaching for a weapon quickly. Regardless of the outcome of that, backup would be called. Again, my guess, the officer retreated as the passenger dropped the bag, and called for backup. No way to tell if the officer actually got the passenger's ID or not (the adults in the car keep using the phrase "my information")

(Bear in mind here that police work generally regard traffic stops as one of the more dangerous "routine" aspects of the job. Through the 90's, roughly 5-6K cops were attacked at traffic stops per year. About 10 were killed per year.)

Back at the video, the officer suggests it's a good idea for the passenger to step out of the car. The passenger asks to speak to a "white shirt" (which urban dictionary tells me is prison slang for a supervising officer). Some unintelligible back-and-forth.

The driver mentions the passenger was going through a bag looking for his information when the officer drew a weapon (which lends credence to my earlier guess).

The passenger is told that he can open the door or it can be opened for him. When neither he nor the driver open it, the cops do. The window is smashed with a hooligan tool, the door is opened, the passenger is tased, pulled from the car and cuffed.

So, we've SEEN what happened (middle of a pullover, request for a supervisor, refusal to exit the vehicle, smash, taze, cuff).

We've been TOLD what some in the video CLAIM happened before (pulled over for a seat belt, family in a hurry to visit a deathly ill parent, passed information to the officers)

We can SEE what had to happen before to reach the point where we began (car pulled over, backup called)

That is IT. Anything more we glean from this video involves A) outside sources (a separate interview), B) conjecture or C) both.

((Side note: Interestingly enough, it looks like filming began long before this version, but that part of the tape hasn't been released in it's entirety by anyone. A Fox32 news broadcast showed clips of it, (the driver claiming she's already given her license, talk of a deathly ill family member, a Lt responds to the passenger's request for a white shirt with "look at my shoulders, dumbass. I got bars.") but doesn't show the entire thing. (it's from about 0:50-2:15 on this video below) The dashboard cam from the cops hasn't been released to the media.))

But, you may say, this was amateur hour. A Cellphone video taken by a 14 y/o kid. How about a police body cam?

Well, ok. But those have their limitations too. Let's look at this one.
(Be advised, this shows a police shooting)

So what did you see?

Here's what I saw.
- The camera's picture quality dropped dramatically the second he entered the house. This is because even high-end cameras don't adjust themselves to levels of ambient light anywhere near as quickly or efficiently as the human eye can. If you're ever on a movie set, you'll see a LOT of lights hanging around the place. The reason they're there is to compensate for that limitation in the camera as well as design the look for artistic reasons. OK, back to the police shooting.

- The camera is placed on the officer's chest, probably around the second shirt button. Unfortunately, this means the picture is blocked by the officer's arm each time he uses his radio. (the microphone is mounted on the right shoulder. The presumably right-handed officer is keeping his primary hand on the weapon and pushing-to-talk using his left hand).

- Because of the camera's placement, it shows what's in front of the officer's torso, which isn't necessarily what's in front of his eyes (notice how he turns back to speak with the woman outside early on, and the camera moves a little bit? His head was moving more. The camera didn't show what he was seeing at that time.

Because the camera is just below his arms when in a firing stance, we also can't clearly see his target, as it's blocked by his arms and weapon.

- On the other hand, we do see the officer's actions from start to finish, word choice, his travel along the continuum of force, and the immediate aftermath.

So, now we've established a few things.
- Cameras only show what's in front of them at that moment in time.
-Cameras do not necessarily show what the wearer sees.
And most importantly
-Cameras cannot provide context, interpretation, or conjecture. Only human beings can do that.

So, how do we find out what a video's actually showing us?

Step one: Watch it.
Just watch the damn thing the way you normally would. Beginning to end. Get all the surprises out of your system.

Step two: Watch it again
Now, watch for what's overlooked. How did it start? Where is the camera? Who's operating it? Are you watching from when the camera turned on or are you watching a clip?
Stop it after a few seconds and write down what you SEE, and what you DON'T see.
If you don't see something and think it's there, ask yourself "why?"

Step three: watch with the sound off
See what you've missed. Sound has a serious effect on how we perceive something.

Step four:
Write down three things
- what the camera SHOWED
- what the film IMPLIED
- what conclusions you are making based on CONJECTURE from the first 2.

Any idiot can pull out a camera and claim it "proves" X, Y, or Z. And because we as a culture are extremely attuned to suspending our disbelief of what appears to us on a screen, it's easy to convince us that a film "shows what really happens" (ESPECIALLY when it fits in line with our personal beliefs about what happened in any given circumstance).

Just remember, cameras may not lie, but camera ops are sneaky bastards and video exhibitors are the spiritual successors of PT Barnum himself.