[TR] Update and other thoughts

Six days without a post is the norm for much of my time on this blog, to the extent that I still, STILL have not yet posted my 500th piece on this site. But it's a bit off from my recent posting habits, so let me assure you, I've still been banging my head on the brick wall that is the Internet, but it's been at a different part, and this time I've begun to see deeper cracks appear.  Team Respect has been live for six days now, and as of right now we've racked up 92 twitter followers, an entry on the debacle "Pratfall of Penny Arcade" timeline, 25 forum members (who have collectively posted 93 times) and 37 likes on facebook.

To be fair, we haven't really been trying on facebook, because nobody we know has any finesse with it.  My twitter chops have the likes of Melissa Harris-Perry and Harry Shearer tossing me @replies. My facebook chops have people in my circle of friends telling me "cool story, bro." If anyone were to offer advice or assistance, that would be killer.

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Valentines Day came and went, but the discounted chocolate remains, as does the bottle of gin my Other of Primary Significance got me for what we refer to as "Hetero-normative Teenybopper Bullshit Day," which rates rather above the "teacher valentine" chocolates I got her and leaves me playing catch-up. It's Rogue Spirits Pink Spruce gin, and having sampled a fair number of juniper-wrought liquors, I have to say this is my favorite. The gin has been infused with spruce oil and seasoned in Oregon Pinot Noir barrels, which come in along with various citrus elements to strike the first chord. It middles with cucumber which continues to the tail end, where it's joined by the juniper and grains of paradise, a peppery spice famously employed in Sam Adams Summer Ale.

I've yet to use it in any mixed drinks, as it's delicious on its own or with ice, but I suspect that combining it with Lillet at martini proportions with a twist of lemon would yield agreeable results. I shall report back when I've tested this hypothesis. Enjoying it in any form you choose along with the lyrical stylings of Garfunkel and Oates comes with my unqualified endorsement

May we all be spared of our parties taking a turn for the douche.

Peace

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Start by admitting
From cradle to tomb
Isn't that long a stay.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Only a Cabaret, old chum,
And I love a Cabaret!

I'd never seen the show until last night, but I think Cabaret might now be my favorite musical, narrowly edging out Pacific Overtures-- which rarely gets put up, possibly because it includes Uncle Sam represented as a villain in Kabuki style and in general recriminates Western imperialism-- which I completely recommend, and if you don't get the chance to see it onstage, it can be seen in 20 parts on Youtube.

The song quoted above-- and indeed much of the show-- is often taken out of context.  I'd heard it before, but last night was the first time I'd heard it in it's intended, heartbreaking tenor.  The realities of the Nazi uprising had just begun to penetrate the veneer of the carefree escapism of the Berlin nightclub scene, and this was the last hurrah before it all came crumbling down.  The actress who performed it was brilliant all throughout the show-- as was the entire cast without exception-- and the memory of it still gets me choked up.

Not having seen the show before I can't say for certain if this is the exception rather than the rule, but this production of Cabaret was put up at an actual nightclub; Oberon in Harvard Square, which is a beautiful, sexy place all on its own.  The cast mingled and flirted with the audience, and made the scene changes almost completely seamless as it took place in all parts of the house; a sort of inverse theater-in-the-round.

And oh yeah, did I tell you whose production this was, and who played the part of the host?

AMANDA FUCKING PALMER

Which makes a ton of sense if you're even vaguely familiar with her work.  I mean, check out the video for Leeds United, from Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

Gender-bending is pretty much pro forma for Cabaret, and unsurprisingly, Amanda took it up to eleven.  Of all the males in the cast, only five of them were cast as men.  Amanda herself only occasionally appeared onstage as a female, most of the time portraying the male emcee.  When she performed the number "Two Ladies," neither of the ladies were played by biological females (the hell if I know how they do outside the theater).  I stood alongside the two ladies I was with at the show and we grinned devilishly, only one of us knowing that this song was coming.

In short, if you happen to be in the Boston area between now and October 29th, fucking see it.  It's far too brilliant to be missed.

Programming note:  Venture Brothers, which is to my mind the finest incarnation of Western Animation, started the second half of it's fourth season, with another episode tomorrow.  You can expect me to have something to say about it soon thereafter

Appropos of nothing, riding bikes in the rain on consecutive nights is to the common cold what a hammer is to a nail.

I went to a concert on Saturday.



Paul and storm are some funny motherfuckers.

When I saw them, when they got to the part where they called for the crowd to issue different "ARR,"s, one of them was, "who was your least favorite Star Trek character?"

"CrushARRR!" bellowed the crowd.

"HEY!" came a voice from the crowd. The surly audience member charged the stage, and glared at Paul and Storm, then the rest of the audience.

It was Wil fucking Wheaton himself, known for that day, the next day, and the previous day, as the Prince of PAX.

The Penny Arcade Expo has gone on for three years now, though until this year the event has only taken place in Seattle. In their enduring wisdom, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik decided to open up an incarnation of the con on the East Coast. Less wisely, they chose Boston's Hynes Convention Center-- which to their credit would have easily accommodated the numbers that attended any previous PAX-- which was quite simply inadequate to contain the teeming masses of gamergeeks. It of course stands to reason that any region containing both Boston and New York City is going to furnish plenty of con attendees. But the fuckers on the West Coast who'd already had their PAX seven months earlier saw fit to get on planes and come here. Which meant that this PAX needed an attendance cap, and three-day passes sold out before anyone actually knew what was going to happen there.

This was the Pax East Saturday Night Concert, which went on well past the time the T stations close-- which meant I needed to walk for two hours before finally collapsing into someone else's bed. It was worth it. The closing act was Jonathan Coulton, who's famous in the gamer community for writing Still Alive-- the closing credits song to Portal-- which he performed.

Both Coulton and Paul and Storm make most of their songs available for free on their websites, and charge for the higher-quality files while holding out their Paypal tip jars. I fully recommend checking them out. Same goes for MC Frontalot, who headlined the Friday concert but who I didn't get to see because that particular night my feet were aching so much that even with the benefit of public transportation it was painful to get back home.

PAX is a gamer con dedicated not only to video games, but also roleplaying games, card games, and board games. And I'm not talking about Monopoly or Clue or any of that (albeit often entertaining) bullshit. These people play games like Arkham Horror, which takes place in the Lovecraft universe and the object of the game is to not lose your freaking mind.

I could tell you all about the expo hall, the demos for yet-to-be released games, the (amazing) custom equipment being shown off, or anything else that gaming journalists are no doubt writing previews about as I'm typing this. But that's far from the most remarkable thing about the event. This is a place where about 10% of the people go in costume, under the expectation that others will want to take photos with them. I saw a group that came dressed as the entire cast of Team Fortress 2. Weirdness of all kinds is commonplace there. On the escalator I ran into two guys, one of whom was holding a sign that said "Free Hugs." his friend had a sign that said "Deluxe Hugs: $1."

In case anyone reading this encounters something similar, the extra dollar isn't worth it.

But even as someone who, having played video games for over two decades now, never believed in any of the bullshit propaganda that politicians and family values activists from have spread about gaming culture, I was overwhelmed by what I saw there. When we were lining up to see Wil Wheaton's opening keynote address, I somehow managed to lose my three-day pass, which the saner people in the crowd had put around their necks as soon as they had them. I ran back towards the registration desk with a panicked look on my face, and stopped when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Is this yours?" said someone who was old enough to be my mother.

"Yes. Thank you."

she kept her hand on my shoulder.

"It's ok. Everything's ok. You can calm down now."

I looked around to make sense of the situation but no, there was no kid in sight. She was here for herself. Awesome.

At the Q&A panel with Gabe and Tycho (Jerry and Mike to the Census), there were many heartfelt testimonies as to the importance of Child's Play, a charity the two of them dreamt up that donates toys and videogames to children's hospitals. I had planned on stepping up to the microphone to tell the story about how when I was seven years old and stuck in Boston Children's Hospital, breathing with the help of a tube that came out of the wall, I was able to distract myself with the help of a cart that was wheeled in with a TV and an NES. It was the first time I'd played a videogame (Super Mario Brothers) all the way through.

But there were plenty of those stories there, and better ones, and told better than I would. Some of them made me bury my face in my hands and pretend to have a cold. But that wasn't what impressed me the most. A man stepped up to the mic with a framed set of trading cards that had been made special for PAX, by the attendees. He came up to the stage and handed it to Tycho, who said "Stay right the fuck there."

He went back behind the curtain and came out with a box with the Intel logo. It was a brand spanking new, top-of-the-line Core i7 microprocessor. Without taking a closer look at the box, I couldn't tell you how much it was worth for sure, but it's somewhere between $550 and $700. He had it in his hands for about a second before he donated it to Child's Play.

I'm proud to consider myself a part of the gaming community, and that's why. Despite the way the media used to (and sometimes still does) portray us-- in fact, the first Child's Play toy drive was reported to have been done by a "local Catholic school" and to have been worth "nearly a thousand dollars." Despite the fact that the haul-- consisting of seventy Gamecubes, four crates of GBA SPs, and twenty bins of toys-- had been valued at an estimated $175,000, and despite the fact that the local press outlets were told explicitly who was responsible for it.

The media has a history of going out of its way to make gamers invisible where they aren't being portrayed as a bunch of drooling, murderous, antisocial slobs.

It's gotten better since, but I have a long memory. This year, for instance, CNN's coverage of Wil Wheaton's keynote was merely inept, rather than deleterious. It helps that games are now a bigger industry than Hollywood. If you have a spare hour and like oratory, I've included the keynote below. Having been there, I can tell you that it was to geeks what Obama's 2004 DNC speech was to Democrats. In it, he spoke of how games help us create new worlds together.

Assuming that you didn't watch it, and I mean, I get it, it's an hour long, I leave you with this, my favorite line from the speech:

"While all destruction is essentially the same, when you create something, it's different every time."

Lessons

I've just found out that this blog looks its best in widescreen. I know you're all on the way out to go and get shiny new monitors at this new information, but stick around a bit.

Somehow until last night I've managed to live in this town with next to no exposure to live comedy. This is, of course, impossible in Chicago, where if you're into theater at all you are required by law to investigate the sketch, improv, and stand-up comedy there. I was in violation for maybe about a week when a cop stepped over two drunken underage freshmen fucking on the sidewalk, brushed past a gaggle of streetwalkers, declined a proffered bong as he passed by a stoner circle, and tapped me on the shoulder I turned around and he looked at me and he knew I was hiding something.

An hour later I was buzzed onstage at the open mic with a guy who looked friggin exactly like Ray's brother on Everybody Loves Raymond.

And I could have sworn it was the same guy hosting the show the other night. It wasn't. How many comedians, I wonder, make jokes about people who mistake them for Ray's brother. Maybe one per major city? Maybe Brad Garret gets royalties?

Anyways, it was fun.

My brother had me take his Flying V in to my guitar lesson on Friday so that my instructor could check it out. He said, in his professional opinion, that it was "friggin sweet" and that I should show him the back of my hand for his utter refusal to practice such an instrument.

He also introduced me to a blues band from the 90s called The Red Devils, who in their time were considered a promising force. The band recorded material with Mick Jagger which is now consigned to bootlegs. They were on the verge of making it big before the lead singer was shot by his girlfriend. They tried to revive him. With cocaine. It didn't work, so they tried it again. Four more times. Official cause of death? Cocaine overdose. The dosers got two years. The shooter got none.

Anyways, they are fucking awesome. I'm learning some of their riffs now, which are fun as hell to play, including one originally played on harmonica, which Brian was able to transcribe to guitar, which may in fact be a new technique.

Anyways, here's some Youtube of the band. I've yet to find a live clip of the particular song I'm looking for though



fuck yes

Also, it has become apparent to me by way of my asshole downstairs neighbor and his (admittedly sweet) loud stereo that EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY SONG EVER WRITTEN HAS THE SAME FUCKING BASSLINE. Dudes who play bass for country bands: come up with new riffs or I swear I will saw your fingers off. Did you really think that the White Stripes never had a bassist? They couldn't find a replacement with the last name White is all. I couldn't tell if it was their sibling or their offspring but it doesn't matter anymore.

Oh and also

SOX FTW!

Kevin Smith was right, Alanis is god

When an insanely popular hit song can be savagely burned simply by singing it sincerely, it's telling what sort of state music is in.

On the other hand, there's Alanis.

If you don't love Alanis, you're wrong.

Plain and simple.

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For the "No Shit" file


Conservative radio assholes around here have been mocking the Kyoto protocoll and in fact any effort to curb emissions due to a supposed lack of conclusive proof, which is I suppose what is required to fight pollution but not what is required to fight a war. I wonder if even a declaration of 90% certainty is going to move them. Should it come up I'll be sure to call in.


Also, apparently the largest donor to the attack campaign that Bush had no ties to (nudge nudge wink wink) has been rewarded with an ambassador post during the recess and may even draw a salary for it despite the fact that federal law that prevents recess appointees from being paid.

On this day, a Friday, when 2000+ years ago a man was nailed to a tree for saying it would be great if we weren't dicks to each other, who never in fact said that he was God despite what others said. Given what happened on this day back then and the fact that since then the latter teaching has caught on far better than the former, and in fact a number of people have lost their heads and reputations for not embracing the latter at the hands of people who clearly weren't embracing the former, being myself no longer an embracer of the former but in fact a firm believer in the latter, and given the nature of the rest of this post, I declare this also to be yet another Fuck You Friday.

This is not, I say merely to disclaim, meant as a sleight on those who believe in and practice both of the aforementioned teachings, however silly I personally find the latter (After all, like I said, Alanis is god). But to require the latter in defiance of the former is to lose my respect, by any meaning of the word.

I've decided that this bit should have been its own post, so I've redacted it from below and bringing it up here. For something a bit more angry and maybe a bit more universally relevant, there's a recent-ish post below

I thought I'd write a bit about the album that Eric Clapton and JJ Cale cut together. I forget if I'd talked about it before. It's old news, but I finally get what the deal was with it. JJ Cale, of course, is the man who wrote two of Clapton's biggest hits, "Cocaine," and "After Midnight," both of which were curiously absent from the album.

To put it bluntly, it was pleasant sounding enough, but did not by any means live up to the expectations that come with the prospect of a Clapton/Cale collaboration. One might buy Cale's wax if one wants mellow background music as he's got a knack for that on guitar, and I'll be the last to deny that he's all manner of artful with it. Laid back, and yeah, it was a pretty sound and I would not be at all embarrassed to be responsible for such an album. But I'm not Eric Clapton. And I was confused as all hell by it until today, when I saw the dvd of the Crossroads Guitar Festival of 2004.

Fantastic, by the way. I absolutely recommend that you watch it. The list of performers alone should sway you, if my vote of confidence isn't enough. And Clapton plays with a number of him. One of the great things about the guy is that he loves to play music with other people, and won't hesitate to back off and play guitar 2 for a little while to let the other guy's style bleed into the song. Which brings us back to JJ Cale, who he played with at the festival. He gave some fucking great performances that day, including the best version of "I Shot the Sherrif" I've yet heard. But when he played with JJ, he played like he did on the album. He played well, but he wasn't being Eric Clapton. He was being the guy playing with JJ Cale. And so we arrive at the crux of all this: He absolutely refuses to show anyone up. And that's a good thing, but he applies that principle overzealously to the extent that he won't take lead when he's clearly the better guitar player. And I'm not saying he should have overpowered Cale. The two could certainly have coincided, each doing their thing, and come out with a great performance. And hell I'm not complaining; they did sound good. I just think it's interesting. I guess the thing of it is that for Clapton to be at his best, he needs to be playing with people he has no need to worry about showing up. Which is why the Cream reunion was so good. He was playing with two of the most highly regarded musicians for their respective instruments, and if he came off as the sole star in that concert it's only because his was the only name among the bunch that everybody knew.

So that's the conclusion I've drawn, in case anybody was interested.

Also, I happened upon this Rolling Stone article that John Mayer wrote about Jimi Hendrix when I was researching Mayer after seeing him on the Crossroads dvd. He's got some serious grace on electric guitar, and his take on Hendrix is certainly worth a read. I could talk forever about Hendrix. He lit the ears and the soul on fire with his guitar and his voice. It's hard for me to understand someone who doesn't appreciate him. One sees him in modern culture as some supernatural being, and the sounds he coaxed from a guitar certainly serves to justify that view, but listen to his words and you see him for what he was and still is; a man flying through the aether of the universe and the collective unconscious, letting us all know what it felt like. And that's what he'll always be. A reminder that a human being can touch that insane energy and be its conduit and make it one's own. He shaped universes and put them on wax so that we can visit them in our spare time. And god damn if you aren't better for the visit.

Right now I've got the Zeppelin live dvd playing, and that's some serious tunes. Zepp is pretty high up there on my lists of bands I wish I got to see live. Anyways, that's all I've got for you now.

Laters