Canonical

August 30th, 2007Blog0 comments

As I run I’m listening to the audiobook version of Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It’s unusual in that the narration is a lot more “acted” than other audiobooks I’ve listened to. The narrator is taking a lot of care to do the voices in character and with the appropriate inflections. I’m not sure if I like this better than the standard practice, but it’s definitely interesting to listen to.

I think I’m going to have to read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged soon because of my interest in BioShock. I’m kind of dreading this but it looks necessary. It’s weird to initially be exposed to a satire of something before the original object it makes fun of.

It’s hot these days. Been running in the sunshine, so I’m two shades darker than normal. I’ve heard that George Bush doesn’t care about black people, so I’m a little worried for myself. Beyond that everything’s pretty good, though it feels very odd to not be in hardcore writing mode — i.e., actually putting words on the page. It’s been a week since I was in that mode, and I feel like I just got out of the pool and I’m not weightless anymore. The mode that I’m in — outlining — is like looking at the menu at a restaurant. You’re hungry and you’d feel a lot better plowing through food.

Spider-Man was sexually abused as a child?! — from Comics with Problems, an excellent repository of the weird and fascinating things that happen when comic book characters are used to teach kids about social issues. Example: A cartoon eagle teaches kids about gun safety — funded, of course, by the NRA.

Great quote I just heard: “People who refuse to grow up tend to grow old before their time.”

Sincerely

August 28th, 2007Blog1 comment

I found this very good blog entry off of one of my daily reads, Daring Fireball. The blog is from Mike Lee, one of the programmers at Delicious Monster. DM is known for their Delicious Library software for the Mac.

The subject of the post is about sincerity, and I think Mike Lee is right on the money here. It’s fairly easy to detect whether a piece of work is sincere or not — after all, most artistic work is about the pursuit of truth. There are a lot of ways that quest can go wrong, and most of the prime possibilities of that are fueled by insincerity.

When it boils down to it, a piece of work is a collection of choices. With each choice you have an opportunity to be true to the moment, true to the characters, true to the story; often a true choice is the hardest one to make, and is the one that leads into a dangerous but interesting place. Often there are also multiple “true” choices. A character charging into danger may be just as true a moment as having him/her back away in fear. Truth doesn’t seem to be so much an end as it is a force that a choice may be charged with.

I like Facebook a lot. I just started playing with it — my favorite application right now is Scrabulous.

Facebook is a million times better than MySpace. MySpace comes with too much spam and crap. Also music playing on certain peoples’ pages gives me a headache. Plus the interface is atrocious. If websites were mall food courts, Facebook would be the food court at Westfield Century City and MySpace would be the food court at South Bay Pavilion in Carson. If you’ve been to both of these places, you know that this is a dead-on analogy.

Forced Relaxation

August 26th, 2007Blog0 comments

I think it’s very important to force yourself to relax. To do nothing for a day. Read, play video games, eat junk food. It keeps you from burning out or taking your work too seriously.

I just finished a new draft of a project so I spent this weekend doing absolutely nothing. It was awesome. I took a nap today and had a dream where I was helping my friend Wes move and I accidentally dropped his bowling ball and it split in half and looked like a geode inside. Then I woke up and played some Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter Dos and BIOSHOCK. Bioshock still scares me. I can only really play it in the morning because then it’s less scary with the dawn chorus going on in the background.

I had a great time at a show on Friday that our good friend Dave was in; good theater energizes me. Then we went to Bossa Nova and I ate a steak with plantains. That de-energized me, but in a good way. Like colliding with a fluffy, snuggly cloud of good feelings. There was a small pile of what looked like sawdust on my plate. I was told that this was Yucca Powder for seasoning. It was breadcrumby and good.

To summarize: Relaxing is good. Now I’m primed and wanting very much to move on.

Currently reading:

I just started this and I have no idea to expect from this one — all I know is that I’ve heard very good things about it. I’m also in a subversive mood right now and would like some subversion from my reading material.

Evangelize Stuff that’s Great

August 20th, 2007Blog0 comments

HBO displayed some incredible wisdom today and renewed Flight of the Conchords for a second season.

I’m really happy about this. I just got the Conchords EP “The Distant Future” and am waiting for the full length album to release. If you haven’t seen this show yet, you must check it out. It gets my stamp of approval.

I believe very much in evangelizing stuff that’s great. There’s so much slag in the world that great stuff must be made visible to others in order to keep hope alive. Likewise, I’m also really interested in hearing what other people find great — especially smart people that I trust, since they tend to discover the most interesting stuff.

I read somewhere that people will often look at crappy movies/music/etc and say to themselves, hey — I can write a movie/music/book just as good as that crap! The anecdote went on to say that if you think like that, you should be thrown off a cliff. Do not aspire to mediocrity or to averageness. Seek out the best — what is the best to you — and aspire to do work that is as good as that. I spend a lot of time taking apart and analyzing the things I really love in order to figure out what makes them great. It requires emotional detatchment (which is hard when you like something so much) and a microscope for the fine threads that these things are woven from. But more often than not, you can get a big picture idea of what makes something great as a whole. One thing that great things often have in common is that the individual parts are excellent, but the summation is even greater — not just because of the combination, but because the elements elevate the entire thing in another direction.

For instance, the most recent ODC (Old Dirty Conservatory) Show. These shows will be getting a lot of evangelizing on this site in the coming months. These are amazing sketch shows with a lot of surprises. And whereas most sketch relies too much on surprises that are one-shot non-sequiturs or parodies, ODC shows feature surprises that are more like reveals — they tell more story. In fact, they complete the story, often in ways that are equally surprising and also incredibly funny. You’ll know what I mean when you go see their shows.

I love seeing great stuff. It’s like seeing the future open up in front of me, showing me methods and ideas I’ve never seen before — stuff that I can pick like fruit to incorporate into my own work. Basically, great stuff makes me better for having seen it. I learn something.

I Love to Laugh

August 18th, 2007Blog0 comments

Last night I went to the ODC (Old Dirty Conservatory) Show in Santa Monica. I highly, highly recommend these shows. Our good friends Randall, Ray, Matt Hill, Rick, and Dwayne Perkins are responsible for these shows, and they are so funny they should be illegal. Ecstasy is illegal, but these shows are not. It doesn’t make sense.

The shows consist of sketches, stand-up comedy, and hard core gangster rap at the end. Just kidding, it is just regular rap. But it’s humorous and highly entertaining rap! My favorite sketch last night was Juggs the Clown; if you were there you know what I’m talking about. If you missed it, go to the next ODC show. They just keep getting better!

I was walking around and encountered a camel. I didn’t think I would see one today. Camels usually don’t come to my neighborhood. This one was affiliated with law enforcement.

This makes me realize that carrying a camera around all the time is very useful. At the very least it makes people believe you when you say that you saw a camel in the neighborhood.

Gunplay

August 17th, 2007Blog0 comments

Behold, the Citizen Kane of first person shooter video games: BIOSHOCK. IGN sez: “This game is a beacon. It’s one of those monumental experiences you’ll never forget, and the benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured.”

That’s the highest praise I’ve ever read for a video game. Currently there is an ongoing debate as to whether video games are “art”. I think they can most definitely be. My trusty electronic dictionary states that art consists of “works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”. Any medium can become art when its attributes (those facets of the medium that set it apart from all other mediums) work together to achieve that beauty or emotional power.

For the medium of video games, that attribute is interactivity. As the maxim goes, books tell you something, movies show you something, video games let you do something. I believe that video games can be elevated to art if they elevate interactivity to an art — and you do that by presenting insightful, interesting, fascinating options to the player and let him/her choose. After all, the purpose of an artful book or movie is to present insightful, interesting, and fascinating ideas to the reader/viewer. Why can’t a choice (and the ramifications of that choice) be just as interesting?

I am reminded of one of my favorite games of all time, Deus Ex 2: Invisible War for the Xbox. That game was all about interesting choices. As the main character in the story, you would encounter NPCs who would give you offers and make deals during conversations. “If you do this for our faction, you will get X.” The fascinating thing was that you never, ever made your choice during the conversation. Your character would simply say, “I’ll keep that in mind.” You made your choices through physical actions — i.e., you come upon the person they want you to assassinate. Do you shoot him? Do you not? Do you turn on your allies and break your deals? The choices presented in the game aren’t made in dialogue — they’re made through pulling the trigger or not pulling the trigger. As we say in this country, Talk Is Cheap.

So I’ve played the demo of Bioshock. It’s already one of my favorite video game openings of all time. Another thing that games do well is immersion combined with accountability. Let me explain this. Movies do a great job of immersion but leave accountability up to the characters. You’re watching thinking, “How are these guys going to get out of this mess?” Video games insert you into the mess, and you are accountable for getting out. The pressure is placed solely on you. That’s a powerful thing.

Cancelled

August 14th, 2007Blog1 comment

News from the pipeline today: John from Cincinnati Cancelled.

I feel bad for David Milch, but honestly, part of me is kind of glad. That’s fucked up to say — like saying that you feel good that someone has died. But let’s get real here: Maybe now he’ll finish Deadwood. That show feels more important and far more interesting than “John” ever was.

Also, there’s a lesson to be learned here about accessibility. I gave “John” three episodes worth of viewing. That’s my standard amount of time I allow to determine whether I should keep watching a show. But if the show features Ed O’Neill — freakin’ AL BUNDY, whom everybody loves — and you can’t make it accessible, you’ve failed. The leading edge of this show, real or perceived, was surfer angst. And angst is a hard sell unless you humanize it from the get-go — classic case study: Hamlet.

If you want to do a show with Ed O’Neill (and he’s up to it), here’s my pitch: Do a modern verison of Mr. Chips in an urban environment. O’Neill’s character is a done-it-all, seen-it-all public high school teacher who has to steal supplies from Staples in order to keep his classes going. He drinks too much and doesn’t know it, and all he has are his students and hopefully that’s enough. If you want to expand the viewing demographic (and we all do), throw in a couple of fresh-outta-grad school new teachers and watch them writhe. And don’t tell me that I’m pitching Boston Public — this wouldn’t be a whiny soapbox show. It would be about extended families, sons and daughters who may not want to accept the mantle, and a father at the top who is slowly dying.

Now I’m hoping that HBO keeps Flight of the Conchords. Easily the funniest new show I’ve seen in quite a while. If they drop it, I’m leaving. Yes, that’s a threat.