March 30, 2007 4:43
A Little More Nerd Music
One reason I know I'm not a true nerd is that a) I don't think I've ever actually enjoyed a piece of machinima, and b) I don't see the point of large orchestras performing music from video games. That said -- and maybe I've said too much already -- I'm going to "embed" below a couple of YouTube clips of videogame music performances that have had a lot of replay value for me. Both came to my attention via Kotaku.
1. Halo theme music:
Check out the mid-gig Mario theme breakdown! Predictably the violinist, one Hanah Stuart, became an instant Internet lust object. Kotaku interviews her here. There's another video of the same group recording the theme here.
2. Speaking of Mario, check out a percussion ensemble doing the theme from Super Mario Bros. 2:
All eyes on Christine the marimbist as she pauses the game mid-set. Huge. She is so the new Hanah Stuart!
Also, huge props and no-prizes to commenter Josh Y., who alerted me to Five Iron Frenzy's amazing song "Wizard Needs Food Badly," and commenter Church, who hooked me up with an mp3. It was my first experience with nerd-ska, and it was worthy of the Gauntlet legacy.
March 30, 2007 11:15
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Trailering
The Grand Theft Auto IV trailer is here.
So yeah: it's set in New York City (here at Time we're trained from birth, like Spartans, to add the word "City" after every mention of New York, capital C, to distinguish it from the State), and in the present day (there are some up-to-the-minute jokes in the billboards). Looks like we've got some post-Soviet Russian Gangster action, too. There's a grim, heavy, gloomy, almost operatic vibe, very different from the sun-splashed 80's camp of Vice City. Interesting.
Obviously Rockstar is spinning this as an "event" game, which I'm reasonably happy to go along with. I've written and spoken a lot of admiring things about the GTA franchise, and meant them: the violence and sex doesn't really faze me, and I think it's genuinely advanced video games as a storytelling medium. And plus now they've updated the engine, it doesn't even look like crap anymore. (Though I wonder, now that the people look like people and not Tinker Toys and Easter Island statues, whether the violence will start to faze me a bit.)
1UP has some first impressions of the trailer here. And here's a sharp-eyed list of 10 things you didn't see when you watched it. They caught--which I didn't--that the music is from Philip Glass's very pretty score for the art-house stonerfest Koyaanisqatsi. So cultured, those CVGers.
Oh, and further reading: Wired has a great piece on the seedy, pulpy story of Rockstar and Take Two, the companies behind the GTA series, written by the brilliant David Kushner. If you haven't picked up his book Masters of Doom, about the early days of id Software, well, it's really really good. (Kushner's piece is doubly timely because Take Two's shareholders just ousted the company's board...)
March 29, 2007 2:14
The Potter Ultimatum
Just a note to point Potteristas to a very useful post at the Leaky Cauldron summarizing some of the speculation (500+ posts as of this morning) going on over there about the Deathly Hallows covers.
Much chatter about the so-called "love room" at the Ministry of Magic, which I basically have only the dimmest memory of what that is. I think the most interesting tidbit I'm hearing has to do with the idea that the scene on the back of the UK children's edition is of Durmstrang, suggesting that the wider wizarding world (WWW) has been drawn into the war over Voldemort.
In other news, there's a trailer up for the Bourne Ultimatum. It's about 33% material from the earlier movies, but I don't really care, I'm a huge fan of anything Bourne. There's something irresistible about their melancholy, hyper-naturalistic, deadpan action style -- those are the only movies (besides Ronin) where Europe really looks like Europe. But for God's sakes, I wish they would bring back Franka, the only actress I've ever seen Matt Damon have chemistry with. Make her a clone, make her a cyborg, but just bring her back!
March 29, 2007 11:29
Hugo Nominees Announced
I'll paste in the Novels and the Short Stories below, since those are the categories that usually get the most interest:
Novel
Michael F. Flynn, Eifelheim (Tor)
Naomi Novik, His Majesty’s Dragon (Del Rey; also, Voyager, 1/06, as Temeraire)
Charles Stross, Glasshouse (Ace)
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End (Tor)
Peter Watts, Blindsight (Tor)
Short Story
“How to Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things, William Morrow)
“Kin” by Bruce McAllister (Asimov’s, February 2006)
“Impossible Dreams” by Timothy Pratt (Asimov’s, July 2006)
“Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, June 2006)
“The House Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Strange Horizons, September 2006)
The full list is here. I miss the days when these nominations would come out and I'd read a decent chunk of them. I'll only add that Naomi Novik's Temeraire books are pretty great. And I really have to take a look at that Charles Stross guy. And in the relatively unsexy "Related Books" category, Julie Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon is pretty amazing. It's the biography of a woman who had, essentially, a secret identity as a pioneering male SF writer -- writing about aliens through a pseudonym became her way of dealing with her sense of her own strangeness. Who wouldn't want to know more about that?
March 28, 2007 9:24
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Cover Art!
I won't insult you by compressing it down to the width of this column: click here for the full experience.
From the press release:
“The front cover of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows features a dramatic sky of oranges and golds. It depicts 17-year-old Harry with arm outstretched, reaching upward. The structures around Harry show evident destruction and in the shadows behind him, we see outlines of other people,” said David Saylor, Scholastic’s Art Director who has designed all seven Harry Potter covers and created the distinctive Harry Potter typeface.“For the first time the cover is a wrap-around. On the back cover spidery hands are outstretched towards Harry. Only when the book is opened does one see a powerful image of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, his glowing red eyes peering out from his hood.”
A few first impressions:
-- Where's the scar? Beneath that tousled forelock, presumably, but it's usually more emphatic.
-- I've always felt that "Deathly Hallows" suggested an Orpheus-style descent into the underworld, perhaps in search of the departed Dumbledore. This cover does nothing to change that -- it could be an image of the underworld, with that livid orange sky, the murky watchers (at first I thought they were gravestones), the Colosseum-like structure. (A quote from the second Bill & Ted sprang to mind, when they first see Hell: "We were totally lied to by album covers!"
-- No wands. Are they going mano-a-mano? Or will Harry learn more about wandless spellcasting techniques?
-- Click back for a second to the cover art from the first book. Amazing how much Harry's grown up. And has he grown more subtly Radcliffean? I think he has.
-- It doesn't take a Richard Lacayo to notice that Harry and the Noseless One are echoing each other with their poses. They're antagonists, but there's an afffinity there, too.
-- What's with the drapery? Are those the curtains, closing on Harry's final act?
Update: links to the UK versions are here.
Second update: if you want to be lead gently, firmly and charmingly, and with forensic thoroughness, through the cover art for the various editions, give a listen to the Leaky Cauldron Pottercast #83. Melissa Anelli and Sue Upton, they speak some fluent Potter over there. The UK art -- the kids' version, anyway -- is much more detailed and rich in clues and symbols than the US version (it's much more hideous, too -- looks like a Mad magazine parody), and you really need them to break it down properly.
March 27, 2007 12:18
A Little Nerd Music: The All-Time Top 10 Nerd Songs
In the absence of any serious nerd news, I was going to post about how I've been blissing out on mc chris's latest album "dungeon master of ceremonies." But then I recalled a dream I had in which Joan of Arc told me I'd never be one of the Elect if I didn't post more top 10 lists. So I'ma go that way instead.
Herewith: the top 10 all-time nerd pop songs. You will notice that some artists are represented multiple times, which is a reflection of a) my personal bias, b) my personal ignorance, which I expect commenters will gently relieve me of, and c) the flowering of nerd music culture over the past few years. There's simply more and better nerd-pop and nerdcore out there than there ever has been.
OK. Less talk, more synthohol. The list, in no particular order. All lyrics quoted from memory.
1. Nerf Herder, "Mr. Spock." A beleaguered boyfriend reflects on how his girlfriend wants "someone more than human...to come to your wasteland, and destroy the robot." I think "destroy the robot" is the best euphemism for sex ever created. Plus: reference to Diet Dr. Pepper, a beverage I'm drinking even as I blog.
2. Kraftwerk, "Pocket Calculator." YouTube has it, straight outta Utrecht.
3. Thomas Dolby, "She Blinded Me With Science." The one time I saw Bowie live, Dolby was in the audience, two rows in front of me. My eyes were riveted to his beret.
4. The Lords of the Rhymes, "The Lords of the Rhymes." This was my first exposure to nerdcore hip-hop, and I wore that MP3 out (you can get it here). If anybody knows where they pulled that setting of "Rivendell Greeting" from, hit me back.
5. Nerf Herder, "Sorry." Sorry I wanted only to kiss you...
6. mc chris, "Fett's Vette." You want the Baddd Spellah remix, if you can find it. This track sent me down the rabbit hole of mc chris fandom, even if some of the Fett stuff is no longer quite canon since the prequels came out. Why did it take Western Civilization so long to produce a rap from Boba Fett's point of view? And why isn't mc chris on a major label? With a little promotion behind him he'd be the 300 of hip-hop....
7. mc chris, "Geek." Look, I could have filled this list with mc chris tracks, so a mere two is an act of severe self-discipline. "Can’t seem to catch a ride, can’t ever get a date./But in my mind 7 of 9 thinks I’m great."
8. MC Frontalot, "Penny Arcade Theme." I love Frontalot. He was the first nerdcore artist I ever got deeply into, and he's being promoted, in Newsweek and elsewhere, as the face of nerdcore. And a comely face he is. But to me he's sort of more of a court jester -- his songs are always clever, but they lack the anthemic reach and vocal virtuosity of mc chris's stuff. Whatever, he's still awesome. "You've got more game than Wil Wheaton..."
9. Frontalot, Jesse Dangerously, MC Hawking, "Nerdcore Rising." "We compile the assembler; we'd each make a respectable/Egon Spengler." Plus, a bitchin' cameo by a dalek!
10. Jonathan Coulton, "Code Monkey." He does like those Fritos. "Some day he have everything, even pretty girl like you..." Stream it here.
Yeah, that's right, no MC Lars, no Optimus Rhyme, no Hawking. What can I say, I have but two ears and one iPod. (OK, 3 iPods, but still.) Give it to me: who should I be listening to?
March 26, 2007 4:13
Those Top 10 Video Games Again
I'm going to -- as we say here in corporate America -- "circle back" to a post from last week about that list of the 10 most important video games that came out last week.
Some interesting comments on this one. I put my alternative nominees out there, and so did you. Your comments are in quotes, my annotations are in parens:
-- Pitfall
-- Wizardry
-- Ultima Underworld. "This one's a bit self-indulgent, since I played it to bits back in the day and loved it with all my geeky heart, but it also invented the basic interface used by MMOs." (I claim minor nerd royalty status from the fact that my brother was the designer on Ultima Underworld II.)
-- Wolfenstein 3D (I frickin' jumped out of the kitchen chair when I first heard my Apple IIe hoarsely bark, Ausweis, bitte!)
-- Madden Football
-- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. "Because after that, sex in video games were never the same ;)"
-- Pac Man. "Nethack didn't have a top-10 pop song about it." (Oh but it should! We gotta get Nerf Herder on this, stat.)
-- Final Fantasy. "Countless sequels, great movies, and excellent toys. This is a name that can continually be released with pride."
-- Adventure. "I still love the bouncing dragons. Here is a flash version of the game:
http://www.simmphonic.com/programming/flash.htm# "
-- Planescape: Torment. "Should get a mention for best storytelling." (This one got a couple of nods. On the same grounds, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Myst.)
-- Mortal Kombat. "It made violence popular and brought about the ESRB." (I thought Night Trap brought about the ESRB? But what do I know.)
-- Star Control
-- X-Com
-- Street Fighter 2
-- The Legend of Zelda
-- Pokemon. "Well it might seem silly but about a zillion kids started out with Pokemon, and the franchise is still going strong -- all these kids then went on to become videogame players for life, so I guess that ought to count for something."
There were a few different posts on the subject of Sensible World of Soccer, a game I'd never heard of, both in the "yay" and "nay" camps. I'll leave you with this exhortation from a more seasoned games journalist than I, Dave "Fargo" Kosak:
I had the same reaction when I saw "Sensible World of Soccer" on the list. I did a little digging and it makes a little more sense if you realize what a phenomena that game was in Europe -- apparently the game's theme song became a fight anthem played at soccer games. Which is pretty impressive.Still, I can think of several other sports titles that have made an huge impact in gaming that I felt should've been recognized more. But, I ranted about this already in my own blog:
http://www.fileplanet.com/fileblog/archives/2007/03/entry_227.shtml
Let's take this riot to the streets!
-Fargo
March 26, 2007 12:14
The Year of Nerd Cinema?
Earlier this year I was lamenting the pathetic state of nerd movies in 2006, and wondering why we weren't getting more of a bounce out of the runaway box office successes of LOTR, Spider-Man, the Matrix, etc., in terms of studios greenlighting geek flix. Now I'm thinking maybe we're seeing that bounce. This morning we have:
-- that Stardust trailer, finally. One of those Neal Gaiman newfangled fairy tales, with a strong Princess Bride flava. Robert de Niro, Ricky Gervais, a blond Claire Danes, etc. Be interesting to see how this plays -- I saw and quite enjoyed Gaiman's low-budget CGI-fest MirrorMask.
-- newly-minted golden boy Zack Snyder, who directed 300, has an idea for a zombie movie. Different from his other zombie movie. Sure, it's news, why not. You're not reading the politics blog here.
-- the Snyder thing reminded me that Las Vegas seems to be the hip city to destroy these days. Having rebuilt from the Con Air disaster, Sin City now faces zombies, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, and now the full Mad Max treatment in this surprisingly watchable Resident Evil: Extinction trailer. (Oh Milla Jovovich, what happened?)
-- You really need to watch the trailer for Day Watch, the second movie in what everybody calls the Russian Matrix trilogy, and I guess I will too. The epic struggle between dark and light causes a woman to drive a car on the side of a building.
-- Ain't It Cool News, the website where exclamation points go to die, links to a 'sizzle reel' for The Golden Compass, which is based on the Philip Pullman novel, and which New Line is hoping will be the new LOTR franchise this December. Many people I love and respect love those Pullman books. I don't, really, but that's because there's something deeply wrong with me, and even I can admit that Pullman has a wonderful visual imagination. I'm ready to see me some armored polar bears. (If I were you I'd hit this link sooner rather than later -- the footage has a leaked feel to it, and may come down.)
-- Ain't It Cool also has some long-lens snapshots from the set of the next Narnia movie, Prince Caspian -- some beach scenes that look to be from fairly early on in the story. Yeah, OK, basically they look like outtakes from somebody's junior high field trip.
March 23, 2007 4:02
Just Got My Copy of Wired
March 23, 2007 2:18
This Weekend in Geek Cinema
A regular roundup of geek-flick openings, judged irresponsibly by their trailers alone:
The Last Mimzy: Little kids find toys from the future that grant them wondrous powers. Said toys have a secret agenda of wonderment and wondrosity. Watching the trailer (linked above), you can see the totally awesome horror flick this might have been, had said toys turned out to be evil, and turned their winsome young discoverers into avenging hell-witches. Dwight Schrute cameos!
TMNT: It sticks in my craw to use the coolified acronym of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- it didn't work for NKOTB, why would it work now? Actually the trailer is more jazzily directed than you'd think, and I would probably love this if I were either 8 or high. Which I'm not. In fact I'm old enough to remember the original TMNT, which was a parody comic, before Hollywood stripped the turtles of most of their irony. (Interestingly, the co-creator of the original TMNT put some his cash windfall toward funding progressive comics. Good on ya.) Buffy, Morpheus and Captain Picard cameo!
March 23, 2007 11:37
Now Available In Paper-Vision: Webcomics
I've done a couple-three blog entries on webcomics, which I managed to roll up into a piece in this week's issue of Time. Some DVD-extra-type addenda here:
-- after my death I would like to be known as the guy who put Penny Arcade in Time magazine
-- we actually run a Penny Arcade strip in the print version. Disappointingly, it's one of their much more staid strips -- in fact it's not a very good example of what makes webcomics different from print comics. But the Venn diagram intersection of "Penny Arcade" and "what can run in Time magazine" is pretty tiny, and we weren't exactly spoiled for choice.
-- I had a really hard time distinguishing Mike's and Jerry's voices on the interview tape. Years of close association have given them very similar cadences. So there's a chance one or two of their quotes might be misattributed. Sorry about that.
-- I interviewed Scott Kurtz of PvP for the piece. Besides being a nice guy, and schooling me on various aspects of the webcomics world, he gave me an illuminating quote about why PvP isn't in newspapers. It was cut from the print piece at the last minute, for space, but I'll reproduce it here:
I'll have a newspaper editor who's a fan get excited, and they'll sit down and look at it. And the editor will say, yes, I like PvP, it should be in the paper. But we need him to only send strips that are about relationships, and none that really reference sex, and any reference to the word 'God' needs to be replaced by 'man.' Like if somebody says 'God, I'm hungry,' it needs to be replaced by "man, I'm hungry.'
Ah.
-- this is the inaugural installment of a regular column I'll be writing for the print magazine called Technoculture, about the intersections between technology and culture and social issues. I think too much tech journalism is either business-oriented number-crunching or uncritical gadget fetishism. I'm trying to get at the ways our own tools are reshaping us without us really noticing. You know, like all that stuff the cyberpunks picked up on. (Speaking of whom, there are a lot worse ways to kill 8 minutes and 15 seconds than walking around Belgrade with Bruce Sterling.)
March 22, 2007 12:16
If They Ditch YouTube, Will They Just Come Crawling Back?
So apparently News Corp. and NBC Universal, with the aid of Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and MySpace, are going to set up a video portal, in effect saying, "it's my Scattergories, and I'm going home" to YouTube.
A few thoughts on this. We've known all along that the YouTube revolution was not a unitary entity, that it consisted of two radically different kinds of content -- user-generated and corporate-generated -- sharing the same rather nifty organization and distribution apparatus. I find it very unlikely that removing the corporate content is going to cripple YouTube, which is, first and foremost, a community. I don't think the professional content is what's holding it up, though no doubt it does drive significant traffic. I guess now we're going to find out.
But I think that this new corporate entity, if it gets off the ground, is really going to miss the YouTube community. Sure, they'll have the "control" they're looking for, and they'll get whatever ad-revenue deal they weren't able to sort out with YouTube. But just like the prom is never as fun as the after-party, it's going to be really tough for NBC-NewsTube to replicate the scruffy free-for-all atmosphere of YouTube. Granted, YouTube is a big corporate business now too, but in some real sense it was community-built. It's got that grassroots, homegrown, organic structure in its DNA, and cloning that -- synthesizing authentic user enthusiasm in the lab -- is tougher than it looks.
Plus, the suits kinda tend to forget that YouTube isn't just about user-generated content, it's also about user-organized content. If you don't have people watching, ranking, rating, tagging and commenting on the clips, they remain this antiseptic wasteland of jumbled content.
It all reminds me of that episode of the Office with the two Christmas parties -- the fun one thrown by Pam and Karen, and the deadly one thrown by mean Angela: "These are all terrible ideas and none of them are on the theme of 'A Nutcracker Christmas.' I think you should leave."
Two more minor notes:
-- a lot is going to hang on Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube, obviously, which I'm sorry, but I don't see how Viacom is going to win without forcing a serious rewriting of the DMCA
-- I wish I knew more about what is going on with these busted negotiations between YouTube/Google and big media. My spidey-sense suggests that big media is asking for some really unreasonable ad split, and some assurances about how their content will be presented, that YouTube won't go along with. But who really knows? Maybe Google's folks are being jerks about it.
March 22, 2007 11:32
Karate Kid News: Sweep the Leg!
Like a YouTube-browsing cheetah, I'm pouncing on this video a mere two months after it was posted. It features a shockingly well-preserved Ralph Macchio and -- even better -- the reunited Cobra Kai! Do you have a problem with that?
The trailer chick gets the best lines: "It's over! Walk it off! His name is not Johnny!"
March 21, 2007 11:56
The 10 Most Important Video Games
Last week a Stanford librarian and a rather distinguished four-member committee released a list of the 10 most important video games of all time, recommending them for enshrinement in the Library of Congress. (Yes, this was last week. What, I was on vacation.) The New York Times has the story here. The list went as follows:
* Spacewar! (1962)
* Star Raiders (1979)
* Zork (1980)
* Tetris (1985)
* SimCity (1989)
* Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
* Civilization I/II (1991)
* Doom (1993)
* Warcraft series (beginning 1994)
* Sensible World of Soccer (1994)
I've been looking for a formal announcement that provides a justification for each choice -- if there is one, I can't find it. I think this is a great idea, but it barely scratches the surface, and come on, there are some really bizarre, ludicrously off-base choices on here. (Sensible World of Soccer? Sensible World of Soccer?)
Herewith my top 5 games that should have been on the inaugural top 10 most important video games list.
1. Pong. The game that brought it on home. Totally changed the consumer experience of gaming, from a strange, elusive, expensive pastime that happened in the greasy, sticky corners of seedy commercial establishments to a daily living-room activity.
2. Space Invaders. Not just for the way it popularized the arcade format. This was the Jaws of video games -- it created the category of the mega-blockbuster, but it was also deeply atmospheric -- its use of soundtrack and pacing to build tension were hugely visceral.
3. Rogue and/or Nethack. Somebody more knowledgeable than me should decide which, but the convergence of D&D and video games to create the ASCII dungeon-crawl genre, which begat so much of what followed, was fundamental. There are some letters are I'm still afraid of.
4. Ultima Online. The first massively multiplayer game that was successful on a mass scale. The innovations this game brought in creating and managing virtual societies and virtual economies laid the foundation for the bigger successes that followed -- Everquest, WoW, etc.
5. Dune 2. I don't know why. I never played it. But all the fanboys are yelling about how it should be on there. And fanboys are never wrong.
March 20, 2007 4:52
Harry Potter News: Emma's Dilemma
Will she, won't she, is she, isn't she. I'm hearing a lot of guff about Emma Watson waffling over whether she's going to be in the last two Harry Potter movies, but I'm still waiting for the news story that will clear up what exactly her damage is. I mean, is she (understandably) freaked out about being stalked? Is this one of those hardball salary moves actors sometimes pull (supposedly they upped their offer to 2 mil)? Or is she just too cool for magic school, as per her co-star Rupert "Weasley Is Our King" Grint: "Emma doesn't want to do it anymore. She's tired of being known as 'that girl from Harry Potter.'"
I do hope it's not number three. When the Potter movies were first being cast, I loved Watson -- she was so photogenic, and had so much more natural presence than the other two leads. But over time my celeb-crush on her has waned. She seems too much the alpha-Heather to play nerdy Hermione. Am I alone in this? Maybe it's just that ubiquitous snapshot of her drinking a beer.
March 20, 2007 2:31
Neal Stephenson Thinks It's OK to Like 300
OK, I'm going to get back to the regular two-a-day postings any minute now, for reals. But honestly, how's a nerd to concentrate? Somebody puts some crazy Russian version of the trailer for Stardust online, then (apparently) yanks it before I can watch it? Dangit, if Neal Gaiman writes something, and Ricky Gervais and Claire Danes act it out, I want to see it. Even if it's in Russian. Strike that, especially if it's in Russian.
And did anybody notice that the great Neal Stephenson uncloaked this weekend on the New York Times op-ed page to explain why 300 is getting such crappy reviews? Though I found his piece oddly, uncharacteristically incoherent. I'll blockquote the bit I agree with:
The less politicized majority, who perhaps would like to draw inspiration from this story without glossing over the crazy and defective aspects of Spartan society, have turned, in droves, to a film from the alternative cultural universe of fantasy and science fiction. Styled and informed by pulp novels, comic books, video games and Asian martial arts flicks, science fiction eats this kind of material up, and expresses it in ways that look impossibly weird to people who aren’t used to it.Lack of critical respect means nothing to sci-fi’s creators and fans. They made peace with their own dorkiness long ago.
He seems to be making two points: one, which I very much agree with, is that nerds watch movies with a different -- but equally valid -- set of references and aesthetic values from most professional critics. Two, that people are rushing to over-politicize 300. Well, I guess I agree with that too. But I don't think nerds shrink from political interpretations, like Spartans behind a shield-wall, as he suggests. They just don't let them overpower the other stuff that's in play.
Stephenson's author's note on the piece gives nothing away about his next project, post-Baroque Cycle. Anybody know?
March 19, 2007 9:54
Douglas Hofstadter II: Return of the Golden Braid
Freshly back from vacation, I'm going to "kick things off" with a pro forma link to some piece I wrote for the magazine! Actually this is a hugely important piece to me, in a personal way, because it's about Douglas Hofstadter, the guy who wrote Godel, Escher, Bach (no, we're not doing umlauts today), an incredibly brilliant, funny synthesis of math, art, music, philosophy, artificial intelligence, logic, Zen, wordplay, and assorted other intellectual bricabrac. It was published in 1979 and deeply influenced a whole generation of nerdly thinkers in diverse fields. When I was growing up Godel, Escher, Bach was basically a third parent to me and my siblings.
But I knew almost nothing about Hofstadter before I began to prepping to interview him. I didn't know, for example, that his dad was Robert Hofstadter, who won a Nobel prize for physics in 1961. Since GEB came out Hofstadter has published on a bunch of other topics, and done a lot of work with computer models of consciousness at the University of Indiana, but his new book, I Am a Strange Loop, is sort of his grand return to the themes of GEB. It's a very different book: not as flamboyantly playful as GEB, more stringently mathematical and more focused on his ideas about human consciousness. But it's still brilliant. It's also colored by the death of Hofstadter's wife, which was a colossal personal tragedy for him.
In the piece I briefly reference my sister's work as a mathematical sculptor. It seemed sort of mercenary to mention her name in the article, but I'll do it here: her name is Bathsheba Grossman, and you can see her stuff at her site.
March 12, 2007 1:49
New Halo Wars Screenshot
Another gorgeous screenshot from Halo Wars -- the Halo world RTS game -- has calved off the great secret Halo Wars iceberg and floated into the warm public waters of the Internet:
This is something called a Sparrowhawk – some kind of short-range Harrier-type VTOL unit? – caught in the act of stirring up circular whorls of dust. The image seems to come – via Kotaku – from a French website, where everything sounds so classy and lyrical -- the headline is "Halo Wars se montre timidement." Suddenly it's like Baudelaire was a games journalist.
In other news, 300 had a ridiculous opening. Fanboy power. This is good: it should give Snyder a free hand with making Watchmen.
Just FYI, posting will be light this week, as I'm on vacation.
March 10, 2007 2:43
Wil Wheaton: A Tribute
If you read this blog, you should really be reading Wil Wheaton's blog. In fact you should probably read his blog first. Then, if you have some free time and nothing better to do, you should read this blog. He is, along with Tycho at Penny Arcade, the gold standard of nerd bloggers.
I assume you already know who Wheaton is -- he played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Like a lot of people, I found his character annoying. And he interfered with my crush on his flame-haired TV mom Gates McFadden. Since then, however, he's become a very sharp, funny writer on all things nerdy: games, computers, poker, etc.; he's also written a couple of books. Of particular interest (to me anyway) are his making-of recaps of old TNG episodes, than which there is almost nothing I would rather read. Earlier this week he also posted a piece about meeting William Shatnere -- it's here, at Suicide Girls, which is kind of a fancy pseudo-porn site, so don't say you weren't warned. I'll blockquote a short excerpt:
Captain Kirk looked at me for a long time."So . . . you're the kid on that show?" He seemed annoyed.
My throat and mouth were dry, and my palms were sweating. My heart pounded in my ears, as I answered. "Uh, yes, sir. My name's Wil."
He continued to look at me. I carefully wiped my hand on the hip of my spacesuit, and extended it. "Nice to meet you," I said.
He didn't take my hand.
That should give the general tone. There is so much about Wesley I'm willing to forgive for this.
March 9, 2007 12:52
Watchmen, Tintin Tidbits. Crumbs!
A while ago I gave up reading Ain't It Cool News. I don't know why, maybe it was those big chunky sans-serif fonts. But I've come back to the fold lately, and I gotta say, they have the stuff. I hadn't heard about this curiosity: a test-image of Rorschach from Watchmen buried in one of the 300 trailers. You can tease it out of the YouTube footage, or you could just click through to a big version. Yup, that's Rorschach. (Not 'Rorshach,' as it's spelled in the story. Maybe that's why I stopped reading.)
There's also a pointer to a piece in the Hollywood Reporter about Spielberg producing a Tintin movie. I honestly can't imagine how that could be a good idea -- the charm of those books seems so bound up with those gorgeously colored little print panels, and its old-Europe vibe and Britishisms (crumbs!) And its weird near-sexlessness (I could never understand what the rapacious Madame Castafiore wanted with Captain Haddock). And I never understood how Tintin could knock out crooks with those tiny little fists? And when did he file his stories -- trust me, being a journalist is nothing like Tintin makes it out to be. Is all that quirky charm going to survive the Hollywood treatment? Must we take everything good and make it into an expensive movie?
March 8, 2007 1:26
Captain America Lies A-Mouldering in the Grave
So Captain America is dead. I know this not because I've read the comic, but because I've read the news reports about the comic.
Oddly enough I'm a fan of Captain America. I say 'oddly' because when I was a kid old flaghead wasn't considered one of the 'cool' comics -- he wasn't dark and edgy like the X-Men. He wasn't secretly a nerd. He was a big ol' jock with jingoistic iconography all over him. He was The Man. Nobody loves The Man.
But the weird thing was, I like CA more the older I've gotten. He's just so deeply unpretentious -- there's no power cosmic about him, no moaning and groaning about good and evil. He got his shots, and now he punches people (and whacks them with his shield) like I punch a clock. He doesn't sing a damn opera about it. There's a particular run of his, it must have been in the late eighties, when he was fighting the Red Skull and his Skeleton Crew, who at the time included the busty and rather tragic Mother Night, and the deeply awesome Taskmaster (I always wanted his powers), as well as headless Arnim Zola and his weirdly gelatinous Doughboy -- you read those issues, which were so rich and violent and sharply written, and so perfectly worked-out, and so unfussy, and you just said, yeah, screw those emo whiners, this is what I want. This is what it would really be like.
That said, I just can't get that worked up about his death. When an icon like Captain America eats a bullet, you know it's just a publicity stunt. An effective one, given the coverage it's gotten, but come on. There's going to be a clone, or some time traveling, or some alien medicine, or something. (There's already theories about this out there.) Guys like Captain America just don't stay dead. Why mourn them? Right? Name one instance where one of the big guys went down and stayed down...
March 7, 2007 5:58
Priceless Nerd Memorabilia Priced, Sold
Obi-Wan Kenobi's cloak -- the one that slumps to the floor, mysteriously empty, when Darth strikes him down -- has been sold at auction for 54,000 pounds. You can check out the auctioner's announcement here, official press release here. This odd detail jumps out from a BBC report:
While Sir Alec's cloak was missing, it was loaned to other films - including The Mummy in 1999 - and was even hired out as fancy dress. Its heritage was only realised during a stock-check two years ago, and since then it has formed part of a film memorabilia exhibition in London.
Yeesh. I'm sure its value is in no way diminished by the fact that it reeks of the sweat of the extra who played Pharaoh's Henchman #6.
The full auction catalog is here. There's a lot of impossibly choice nerdiana. Only 500 pounds for a black blazer (with white piping) from The Prisoner! And if I point out that it's egregiously misspelled, does that automatically entitle me to claim "A black robe with frayed detailing from the Dr. Who episode 'Talons of Weng Chainag,' 1976-1977"
March 7, 2007 2:13
Update: More on Sony's Playstation Home
Here's the demo:
OK, so this is cooler than I expected (though the Second Life-meets-XBox Live thing was essentially correct): a fairly clean, sane 3D environment for socializing, multi-player matchmaking, and sharing media. All to a chill-out ambient soundtrack, narrated by some chick with an anglo-australian accent.
For What It's Worth: I still think the idea that a 3D interface is a useful way to have these kinds of transactions is a ludicrous artifact of the early Web, informed by way too many rereadings of a very good book called Snow Crash. 2D is the future: adding that extra dimension just layers on a whole extra heap of graphic intensiveness and kludginess and imprecision that nobody needs. Even Stephenson's Metaverse fudged this -- I don't think he ever clearly explained the control scheme that allowed people to talk and move and transfer data and jump around and swordfight.
It certainly wasn't mouse-and-keyboard. Though maybe Stephenson never dreamed of the majesty that is SIXAXIS...
March 7, 2007 9:59
Gaming News: Sony Makes a Move Online, Apple Maybe Sorta Does Something
There's an incredibly vague piece in the New York Times today about Playstation Home, Sony's answer to Xbox Live. "As players progress through a game, they will unlock various virtual prizes that they can then show off to friends and rivals, the executives said." According to an earlier Kotaku post, this is implemented as a little virtual environment -- a room with a custom avatar in it, that you adorn with stuff that represents your achievements. That about sums up why I game: to decorate my little 3D virtual roomlet! I game to serve an electronic doll!
God, why can't I stop bashing Sony? There's just something so me-too and good-enough about this idea. "Hey, can you give me something that's basically exactly like Live, except with a little Second Life thrown in?" "Yes. Yes, I can." Prove me wrong, kids. Anyway, there should be more news out of GDC today.
In other news, Apple TV could serve as a gaming platform.
I actually kinda want Apple TV, though at the moment I don't actually own a television. If I did I might have watched Edward James Olmos, in an in-the-moment improvisation, spontaneously destroy a valuable ship model on Battlestar Galactica (as described in this podcast -- scroll to 42:20 -- thanks Metafilter.)
March 6, 2007 10:36
They Don't Know Dick. As in Philip K.
I got a funny feeling the other day as I opened a package and found inside one of the stately grey pre-publication galleys the Library of America sends out. The last five authors to be enshrined in the Library of America were Hart Crane, Saul Bellow, John Steinbeck, Capt. John Smith, and Thornton Wilder. If that sequence were one of those SAT math problems where you have to complete the sequence, the next logical term probably wouldn't be Philip K. Dick.
But there it was: a big chunky super-deluxe volume containing "Four Novels of the 1960's:" The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Ubik. Good choices, definitely. The book was edited by Jonathan Lethem, an interesting writer and apparently quite the Dick aficionado (snigger) -- I seem to remember from one of his essays that Lethem collected early Dick editions "back when it wasn't cool," and even helped out the Dick estate with some rare ones.
I was sorry he didn't write a critical essay for this edition, though - there's just a few footnotes, plus a fairly detailed chronology of Dick's life, which is about as messed up as you would think it would be. (Sample, from 1969: "Receives phone call from Timothy Leary who is attending John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "bed-in" in a Montreal hotel. Leary puts Lennon and Ono on the phone; they discuss their admiration for his novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and their desire to adapt it to film." Gods. Dick was quite the serial marrier, too, it turns out.
But the point of this post was supposed to be the sheer weirdness of the cultural logic that enshrines Dick in the Library of America. I mean, as much as Dick has been taken up by the academics as the "thinking person's" SF writer, he's still a pure genre player, and a huge dork: all twisty mind-hurting plot, with prose style and characterization pretty much as afterthoughts. He still belongs to us nerds! They can't take him away from us! I feel like some exotic aborigine, when the rich white collector comes and cherry-picks the bits of my indigenous culture that appeal to his "civilized" sensibilities. (Are you going to pay for that in Joe Chip money?)
[Random personal anecdote: The year after I graduated college I lived in a farmhouse in Maine. Completely isolated. I barely had money for heat, so I would only turn on the stove when I was desperate. I remember reading Ubik late one night and getting deeply freaked out by all the epistemological weirdness and huddling over the stove muttering, "Ubik is heat! Ubik is heat!" Good, good times.]
March 5, 2007 5:34
Firefly News: It's Always Summer...in My Heart
(More bits and pieces today, as I continue to cope with a debilitating illness and a brutal deadline, both. Keep those cards and letters coming.)
I'm a sick Firefly fan. I barely watched it when it was on -- lay its premature death at my feet, go ahead, I didn't 'get' it -- but I wore out the DVD set. And now I always get a pleasant little pulse of recognition whenever I spot one of its (notoriously multitudinous) cast members anywhere on-screen. Which, yeah, doesn't happen very often. (I skipped Slither.)
But now it turns out Summer Glau - wounded psychic River on the show -- will have a spot as a Terminator on The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Nice. I've always thought that her odd, otherworldly looks must make her hard to cast, so it's good to see her workin'. I hope she gets to kick some people.
(Cue random funny Serenity bloopers.)
[And now that I look at her IMDb page, linked above, she's got lots more credits. Oh, Summer, why was I even worried?]