Category — Uncategorized

I’ve gone ahead and launched a music blog with Matt from Alert Nerd, hopefully not the last joint project we’ll be announcing this year, but certainly the one you should have the least reason to care about.

Poisoned Letter is an Elvis Costello blog. Ever the fan of elitist obscuria, I’ve gone ahead and named the site after a scathing ur-version of Brutal Youth’s “All the Rage.” Right now, there are a couple of saccharine testimonials to the influence of the artist on our angry young geek lives, but we promise that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Check PL out, maybe subscribe to a feed, whatevs.

If you buy your cat Kittywigs.

On the real.

Look, I’ve always been pretty against putting clothing on your pets. I think it’s just strange and a little creepy, but I understand that that’s only an opinion. If you want to put a sweater on your dog at Christmas or whatever, that’s fine. I can look the other way. No moral outrage, just personal preference.

But this? This shit is fucked up.

A serious note from Bully’s cookie provider, John:

There’s no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she’s sympathetic to the situation but who doesn’t have a clear answer to my question: “What’s Comic-Con’s policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?” She directs me to the nearest security guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there’s little that can be done.

“I understand that,” I tell them both, “but what I’m asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what’s the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?” But this wasn’t a question either could answer.

Really?

Because that’s pretty ridiculous. But rather than condemn the asocial mouth breathers who perpetrate the kind of harassment John’s talking about, the sort of assholes who probably believe that the Open Source Boob Project was like a manifesto or a galvanizing call to action that should have sent fetishizing, unloved nerds gropingly into the streets en masse, I’m simply going to be alarmed by the fact that something so big, so populous and so plauged with these kind of in-plain-sight cases of purely malicious sexual harassment doesn’t already have a policy in place about this beyond “report the incidents with the names of their harassers,” which is - frankly - an idiotic policy when you consider an event like SDCC, which has thousands of people who don’t know each other and probably aren’t wearing a legible nametag unless they’re a VIP, press, or an exhibitor. And some of those people are in costumes. A lot of them, actually. The douchebag who tripped over my laptop’s power cord at WizardWorld Philly? He took off and I never got a good look at him because he was wearing a costume and because he was spry. And all that happened to me was the inadvertant destruction of my property, not attempted rape.

You know, if any of this stuff happened at a pro football game, the clods responsible would be detained at the very least.

I doubt that, if you’re reading this, you’re one of the asshole types responsible. I like to assume that my readership has high standards. But you probably know at least one of those types. His behavior damages the hobby, it drives people away and it perpetuates the bullshit golly-gee manchild view of our culture that gets on your nerves every time you see a comics-related story in a newspaper or on TV.

Hopefully, we’ll see CCI do something about this before next year; hell, maybe before Baltimore next month. Realistically, I don’t know. In the meantime, let’s just try not to be assholes and also not turn a blind eye to this kind of behavior when we see it.

Have this trailer:

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Listening to: Kevin Church’s Broadcast

A few weeks ago, I tweeted about the need for a relevant Twitter drinking game. There are one or two out there, but they don’t really capture the true Twitter user experience. I’m bold enough to try my hand at it.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. Every time a total stranger follows your for no discernable reason, take a drink.
2. Whenever a bot or spammer follows you, take a drink.
2A. If the bot’s avatar is one that’s also used by at least two other spam accounts, take an additional drink (for each).
3. FAIL WHALE - CHUG!
4. Every time you vanity search on Summize (ahem, search.twitter.com), take a drink.
5. Every time Danny Sullivan drinks a Diet Coke, take a drink.

Any suggestions? Comment!

So, I guess Liza Garza didn’t go home as soon as I thought she would, despite her ‘beautifully basic’ food that was inaccessible to the home chef, her consistent problems connecting with the camera while she was cooking, and her grating personality when she wasn’t. Every week that Lisa stayed on the show, I found myself pausing the show to complain about one of three things to my wife:

1. Enough with the duck confit. It is the chipotle to your Bobby Flay, Lisa.

2. Stop talking about how expensive your clothes are.

3. After breaking down in tears at the very thought of meeting Martha Stewart, I have a very hard time believing that you have the same level of fandom for either Paula Deen or Rachel Ray.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about the winner of The Next Food Network Star. I like Aaron McCargo, Jr. He consistently delivered great food throughout the show. He has a cool, easygoing personality and can be pretty funny (Vegas buffet presentation aside). I’ll be checking his show out.

It’s also pretty obvious that the selection committee wanted Aaron to win, especially after the pre-finale stunt (”OMG all three of you made it to the finale!”) that kept Aaron from getting the boot after his most phoned-in performance of the competition. “If a runner stumbles just before the finish line,” Bob Tuschmann asks, “do you throw him out of the race?” I don’t know that reality TV correlates with a foot race as neatly as you’d like, Bob. He had the weakest performance that week and probably should have gone home. But still, I’m glad he won.

It’s pretty clear from their programming over the past year that Food Network is continuing to ‘dumb down’ its programming, shipping the more high-end culinary talent to Fine Living or forcing them to jump through hoops for their viewership (see Michael Symon’s foray into Dinner:Impossible for continued evidence of this). Which is not to say that Aaron or his food are dumb, but that more than any other finalist, Aaron exuded an air of “I’m the next Guy Fieri, only less jackassy.” That’s what Food Network wants, otherwise I wouldn’t have to put up with Fieri’s Beat-esque rants about “hijacking the bus to Flavor Town and driving it at 55 miles an hour down the Taste Highway straight into my mouth!”

The person in the competition that I really feel bad for is Adam Gertler. The dude really stages a stunning comeback in the final few eps and shot a great pilot. Not only did Adam not win, Food Network basically let us know he didn’t win halfway through the finale when they aired a promo for Ask Aida, which is the exact same concept as Adam’s show, only without Adam.

I think the removal of fan voting from the finale was a smart move on the part of the selection committee - historically, the fans have gotten it wrong every year. I just wish they’d be a little less obvious in their agenda next time around.

Driving home from work, I saw the sweet old lady who lives three doors down walking Einstein, her shaggy black dog, and not incidentally an animal about as big as its owner. And it struck me that, while I know the dog’s name, I’ve been living in this neighborhood for three years, have had several friendly conversations with this woman, and I don’t know her name. In fact, the only people who live on my quiet little street that I actually know are Curtis and Theresa, the grandparents who live next door.

It’s not a fact I paid attention to until this evening, but I think it bothers me.

Part of the problem is that, when we moved in, we tried exceptionally hard to not interact with our neighbors. The house across the street was empty, the house to our right was empty, and the house behind ours was full of ill-behaved children who used our yard as both a thruway and as a depository for their toys, trash and other leavings. During one of my abortive attempts to learn to play the guitar ‘for real’, I wrote a very rudimentary song entitled “Stay the Fuck Off Of My Lawn.” It was a song about and to these children. I hope beyond hope that wherever they’ve moved to, they’re in juvenile hall.

The problem came to a head when I chased one of the little brats off of my property for trying to beat a stray cat with a stick. I was angry at these devil children, I felt old for being the kind of guy who chases kids off his property, and I felt genuinely bad for the poor cat, whom my wife would not let me keep.

Something had to be done. So I hatched a plan.

To prize passage from their yard to ours, the children had to cross a hedge between our properties. As an outward sign of my negativity, I stopped trimming the hedge. I called it The Hostility Shrub, and after two years, it really began to look the it, a gnarled and wild verdant thing clawing up toward the sky. With time the Shrub scared even me; the last time that I mowed the lawn, I was afraid to get too close to it for fear of some kind of creature leaping out of it at me.

My wife believes that the Hostility Shrub is a handsome excuse crafted to explain away my hatred of lawn work. I point out that it worked; the old neighbors moved away earlier this year. I was ready to cut the hedge down to a reasonable size when, after asking to borrow my lawnmower, the new neighbor proceeded to rummage through my garage without taking anything and just generally be creepy. He doesn’t mow his lawn, which may be his own version of The Hostility Shrub aimed at me. Which I very clearly don’t deserve.

Or maybe I do. Hell, I’m the 29 year old curmudgeon in this story, so why not?

I think tomorrow, I may cut the Hostility Shrub down and try to be a more cordial neighbor. Maybe I’ll make scones for the family across the street - it might be weird because they’ve been moved in for two months, so we’ll see.

Though the second issue of Grok isn’t out yet, I’ve gone and created a map of “Misspent From The Outset,” an essay about the ’secret origins’ of my geekhood, using Flickr.

Take a look at this experiment in locative journaling. Then maybe revisit all of your old geek haunts and do the same.

For those of you wondering why The Unknown and Comics On The Green didn’t make the list, the short answer is that they’re still in business and that I still shop at both locations, so I can’t very well wax nostalgic for them.

I talked some last week about the big Slamdance 2007 article I wrote for eToychest. I may have talked about reprinting it here since Jason’s old site is lost to the ephemera of the Web. And today’s announcement that the games festival is closing its doors is as good a reason as any.

Enjoy.

With the loss of 6 of its 14 finalists and one of its sponsors, last week was not a good one for the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition (GGC). The flashpoint for the withdrawals was the quiet removal of Super Columbine Massacre RPG from the list of finalists on January 5, 2007.

An edgier counterpart to the consistently more mainstream Sundance Film Festival, the Slamdance Film Festival takes place each year in Park City, Utah, on the same dates as its more fashionable cousin. Now in its 11^th year, the festival was a major force in the discoveries of geek-favorite film directors Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins) and Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), among others. Over the past few years, however, the festival has also been noteworthy for another group of indie darlings – independently developed video games.

Now in its third year, the GGC has been a showcase for outstanding and innovative games made by small developers, artists, and students. Thanks to the controversy stirred up by Slamdance co-founder Peter Baxter’s decision to remove Danny Ledonne’s role-playing game from the list of finalists, though, some are wondering whether the competition will still be around for a fourth. The festival has no plans to reinstate SCMRPG for screening.

“We don’t dispute their legal right to make this decision, but we do object to the decision in principle and are invoking our right to rescind our support,” says Tracy Fullerton, the Co-Director of the University of Southern California’s Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab. The University’s Interactive Media Division was a sponsor of the Slamdance competition until January 9, 2007, when Professor Fullerton released a statement indicating that the removal of SCMRPG “undermines the credibility of the festival as a venue for independent games and invalidates the reasons that USC Interactive Media had been proud to sponsor this year’s student prize.” In an interview with eToychest, Fullerton expands on her statement: “The decision … changes the nature of the contest. In effect, it communicates that Slamdance will honor the best independent games that are not too controversial.”

In the past, though, controversial games have been screened at Slamdance. Waco Resurrection, a game where players assume the persona of a resurrected David Koresh, made the list in 2005. “Waco,” according to Fullerton, “is a good example of a controversial game that they screened in the past, and supported in the same way they’ve supported countless controversial films.”

Of course, film is a respected entertainment medium, while gaming is constantly under the scrutiny of industry watchdogs like Jack Thompson. In the context of this perceived double standard, Slamdance’s ruling on one game has become a line in the sand for many regarding gaming’s legitimacy as an art form. “This would’ve never happened to a film in the same circumstances (and the same subject matter),” says Super Columbine Massacre creator Danny Ledonne.

Ledonne’s game hearkens back to 16-bit role-playing games stylistically, but the similarities end there. Players guide a party consisting of Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold through the events surrounding the infamous shooting on April 20, 1999. Players plant bombs, sneak out of school to arm themselves, and attack their classmates, many of whom opt to pray or do nothing at all instead of fighting back, in turn-based combat. The game is exhaustively researched, and uses its dialogue and flashback sequences to investigate the shooters’ motivations. Following the party’s double suicide, the game resumes play in Hell.

“Why can’t more games engage players in a cerebral way?” Ledonne asks during an email interview. “There’s no reason for games to be equivocated to toys when they can be crafted more like a documentary film or a political cartoon… or even something that doesn’t really exist yet because games are still “coming into their own” as a form of communication and art.”

While SCMRPG’s detractors claim that the game was selected only for its controversial value in the first place, there has been a swell of support for the project. In her official statement regarding the withdrawal of fl0w from the competition, developer Kellee Santiago says succinctly, “it deserved to be there.” Professor Fullerton has also played the game and comments that the experience was “deeply disturbing, but it made me think about the events in a way that no other media has done…. I won’t say I enjoyed the game, but it was certainly thought-provoking.” Finalist Jason Rohrer, who has chosen to remain part of the competition, says the game “surpasses any other video game that I’ve played in terms of artistic achievement.”

Late last week, Rohrer posted an open letter to the finalists on his Web site, pleading with the other contestants to reconsider their withdrawals. The developer, whose game, Cultivation, is based on an ideal of compromise, believes that both sides’ stubbornness will destroy the Guerilla Games Competition. “I would not be shocked if this was the last year that Slamdance holds a game event,” he confides, noting the dearth of game screenings and the withdrawal of funding as prime reasons. It is a sentiment Danny Ledonne agrees with, though for different reasons: “Who would honestly submit an edgy game to Slamdance next year after this has happened? Only time will tell, of course, but the outlook for the GGC isn’t so good right now.”

As events have unfolded, Slamdance’s motivations have been attributed to many factors. According to Danny Ledonne, when he was first notified that his game had been pulled, the threat of sponsors’ withdrawal was the reason why. According to Tracy Fullerton, however, sponsors were not notified about the decision beforehand. Four days later, Slamdance released its official statement on the issue, citing “moral obligations,” also echoed in press interviews with Peter Baxter. A third convolution of the story, stemming from a letter sent to the GGC finalists, explains that the fear of legal action over Ledonne’s unlicensed use of music and images was to blame.

On the other hand, Ledonne believes that Slamdance knew what it was getting into. “Slamdance GGC director Sam Roberts contacted me last October and encouraged me to submit the game. I expressed hesitation based mostly on licensing issues but over the next few days he assured me that this wasn’t a concern….” An email sent to Sam Roberts for comment was forwarded to Slamdance’s publicist, who has not responded at this time.

The real culprit in the controversy, according to Jason Rohrer, is the press. “Several finalists have called the communication coming from the festival organizers “inconsistent.” However, I now believe that they were simply struggling to react to the media firestorm that Danny lit,” referring in particular to Kotaku’s exclusive on the subject.

At the moment, none of the withdrawn finalists have responded to the open letter urging them to return to the contest, and only four games will be screened at Slamdance. As reported by MTV News, a panel related to the controversy has been added to the festival’s schedule. Slamdance runs from January 18 through January 27, 2007, and the awards for what may be the final Guerilla Gamemaker Competition will be presented on January 23 at 8:30pm.

I’m sorry to see the Games Festival go. Other people might debate its value, but I think it was a great platform for raising the visibility of games-as-art. At least until things went off the rails. It’s abundantly clear that the minds behind the finalist list wanted to create controversy, but not too much controversy, walking a line that led them to pick Danny’s game to generate buzz, drop it when the clamor it generated became loud enough, and then simply run back into their shells when sponsors and finalists protested the decision. And I can’t speak for what happened internally at Slamdance to lead to the doors closing, but I certainly think that this whole mad affair led to a severe loss of credibility on the part of the festival, a crippling loss when your branding is supposed to be hip, edgy and challenging.

In the spirit of fair, balanced blogging, I want to give the men and women of the 501st some equal time. Every year, they spend thousands of dollars and hours helping worthwhile causes and being geek ambassadors to the outside world.

And you might not know it, but they don’t all dress like space Nazis. In fact, some of them (along with members of their sister organization) dress like:

thieving droid slavers and amoral hagglers;

brutal, mother-assaulting savages;

ruthless guerrilla fighters (maybe there aren’t any Ewok “Denizens of the Empire” but give me some license, here);

and terrorists exploiting stolen technology. Stolen Imperial technology that will eventually lead to the wholesale destruction of the Carida Academy.

And then there’s the Jedi [Not Pictured] who represent a hollow, failed society rife with its own ourouboran corruption.

Why not celebrate the steadfast Duros, some of the best shipbuilders and swashbuckling fighter jockeys in the galaxy far, far away?

Why not rehabilitate the reputation of the poor Mantellian Savrip, long though to be nothing more than a mindless beast?

So, kids, before you dress up as a Star Wars character, remember that no matter what side you take in the Galactic Civil War, you’re probably a bad guy. Unless you’re the Duros.

And especially remember: