All these places have their moments

Here’s a story. You are on the cavernous Blue Ship, hurtling through space at eighteen point five miles per second. The nine hundred people who live, work, love, play and die on the Blue Ship are here because their great-grandparents committed their lives and the lives of their offspring to the trip.

The designers of the Blue Ship equipped it with a canonical library of digital books, music, and all other recorded knowledge and art authored by mankind. They also provided the inhabitants with a sports arena, a food preparation area, a medical facility, and a theater.

You have lived your entire life on the Blue Ship. Your great-grandchildren, should you decide to bear them, will deactivate the transit crystal, break the welded seam on the titanium door, and once again breathe the warm air of home.

This is the only life you will ever know. This is the only life your shipmates will ever know.

You may live your life by delving into the various prepared entertainments that the ship’s designers have provided for you: an endless catalog of books, movies, and artistic recordings, and creative and academic works of every imaginable type.

Or you can exit your rest cell, tap on the doors of your neighbor’s cells, and try to interest them in a game of cribbage. Or distract them by telling knock-knock jokes. Or you can make fun of them, or hate them, or love them. Or talk existential philosophy with them. You can even try to get a volleyball league together.

Or ignore them, all as you please, and draw concentric patterns uninterrupted in your rest cell. You are stranded on the Blue Ship, screaming at eighteen point five miles per second, and you can never, ever leave this place.

Also, there are nine hundred people here who can never, ever leave this place either.

Do what you will.

I tell you one and one and one makes three

I drank two cups of coffee before rehearsal for Aaron’s play. Rehearsal was in a two-story townhouse on South Van Ness in the Mission. The townhouse is shared between four twentysomething dot-com escapees. In the kitchen there is a glass-walled cupboard, circa 1950. The cabinet contains sippy cups, white dot-com mugs, clear glasses stolen from a nearby restaurant, and Ball jars. No two glasses in the cabinet are the same.

Aaron’s writing and directing. “Okay, this time on the Corporate Head speech, can we try it in your voice?”

I nod. “Alternative culture,” I say. “Holds no threat!” I’m channelling Adolf Hitler. “We sell it back to them! As if! It were! By them!” Zieg heil!

Aaron beams. “Great! Five minute break!”

I find the bathroom. Someone’s taking a shower in there. A roommate gabbles on a cordless phone next to the bathroom. “Mom!” she says. “What? What?”

“Excuse me,” I ask her.

“Wait a second,” she asides to me. “Mom? Did he say that? I can’t believe he said that!”

“Is there another bathroom around here?” I ask.

She raises a finger to me in a don’t-interrupt-me warning. “Mom? That is so completely out of line! I totally can’t believe he said that!”

The sound of someone splashing in the shower, humming tunelessly.

I waited. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah? No! That’s so totally not right! I just can’t believe it! Are you sure that he said that?”

At this point I went back to the kitchen, took a piss in one of the mugs, and placed the full mug neatly back into the cupboard. Actually, that didn’t happen, but it’s a funnier ending than “I waited twenty minutes and gave up.”

Thanks in no small part to Marin, I successfully bullshitted my way into the writing team for Stand Up, It’s Thursday Night. Shows are in production now for the next season, starting January. Here are some new bite-sized scripts for you: Interrogating Einstein 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Suddenly I’m this punk rock star of stage and screen

Apparently I’ll be playing the part of Devon in a staged reading of The Pocket Pal on November 16 at 111 Minna. The author is trying to get financiers and assorted rich people to show. Come by if there is absolutely nothing else going on in your life.

There’s a television show airing on UPN 44 next January. It’s called Stand Up, It’s Thursday Night! They’re bringing me in for a “second interview” based on my comedy sketches: Amazing Dudes, Security Officers #1, and Security Officers #2. Wish me luck, friends and neighbors.

And you remember the jingles used to go

The lights had been on in the stuffy bedroom for about an hour, and the temperature was way past ninety degrees. Phane (pronounced Fan-ny) and Yoga (pronounced Yo-ga) fiddled with the 16mm camera, readjusted the lighting, pulled a tape measure to my nose, fiddled with the camera again, put a yellow gel on one fresnel lamp, and tweaked the lighting again.

Sweat poured off my nose as I lay crumpled in the bedsheets. Marin, playing my love interest, said, “Can we get a tissue for John?” Marin swabbed off my forehead and powdered my nose with a compact.

“Okay, we’re ready,” said Phane. “Action.”

Grope-kiss-grab-roll- “And cut. That was very good.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “That was two seconds of film. You don’t need a second take?”

“No,” said Phane. “Let’s move on.”

Yoga readjusted the cels and spun some knobs on the camera. He removed the gel from another fresnel and checked light levels again. I took off my socks.

“Look ashamed,” said Phane. “Look down and look ashamed.”

I looked down and looked ashamed. “Cut,” said Phane. “Perfect. Let’s move on.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t feel very ashamed there.”

“No, it was perfect,” said Phane. “Would you like some pizza?”

The actors ate pizza and talked. “My first time doing a love scene,” said Marin.

I toasted her. “I’m honored.”

“How do you think the film will turn out?”

I looked down and looked ashamed.

We just got a letter, we just got a letter

Today’s reader mail is from Henry, from Pennsylvania. Henry’s a fundamentalist Christian who has downloaded the music we arranged and recorded for All The Way Home. He writes:

Hello,   You people SICKEN me.  You are nothing but
some CALIFORNIA scumbags who THINK they understand where
the bluegrass scene came frome.

Don't get me wrong...it's not about "butcher holler". 
Hard times is hard times.  But THEATER TRUOUPES are NOT
allowed.  YOU SUCK.    No matter how you do, you will
STILL SUCK.

We're not cartoons, dude.    We're everywhere. "country
folks" is anybody who isn't yuppie/hippie SCUM.  Everybody
who actually works, lives, believes, and DOES REAL
LIFE.    We HATE you, friends.     You are WORTHLESS. 
From the fake-ass "jonbenet scandal", you're NOTHING.  
You're pretentious suburban TRASH, pretending to a
heritage you wouldn't be worthy of being THROWN OUT OF.   

It's not where your FROM, friend, it's what you VALUE:   
REALITY,     HOME,     FRIENDS (chosen for reasons OTHER
than conformity and "clique")      VALUES   HUMANITY      
LOVE      SO you can BITE me, friends.    You are nothing
other than poseurs, and worthy only of LAUGHINGLY VIOLENT
put-downs!     SCREW OFF, JERKS!      PS...  The women
who played NUNS in NUNSENSE in our local THEATER TROUPE,
did NOT ask for admitance to the local CATHOLIC
COMMUNITY.    comprendez vouz, scuzzbags???? Ps.     BLOW
ME.

There’s a camera rolling on her back, on her back

Got an e-mail from my agent. “A friend of mine needs help. He’s directing a short. Film, not DV, should be good for your portfolio. He’s looking to cast the part of the Lover. Are you available for a Sunday shoot?”

She sent me the script, such as it is. Let’s see… Lover has a stone-cut face, a bright smile and is broad shouldered… Wife and her new lover move to the bedroom… Lover kisses the wife on her lips… Lover takes off his t-shirt and is unzipping his pant…

Hello? “In actuality, there’s no nudity and very little physical contact,” my agent said. Well.

Help! I’m being stereotyped as a sex god!

You need a man who’s got finesse

I took the other half of the blue pill and watched My Wife Is an Actress, naturally enough, with my wife. At the end of act one, she said “I’m a bit sleepy,” and yawned.

“Off to bed with us,” I said, trying to sound masterful.

So it was about ninety minutes from the time I took the pill to the time we went to bed.

Boy howdy, let me tell you what a difference those ninety minutes were.

You know those plastic tubes that refrigerated cookie dough comes in? They’re called chubs. Think chub. Think chub with an evil self-purpose, a diabolical chub, a chub what am chub.

Oy vey. I’m recovering from the bruises.

I’d like a million of you over myself

The majority of the roundeyes at Tokyo Game Show this year were the ones performing on the trade-show stages, dancing for the benefit of Japanese game publishers. It wasn’t always this way. Four years ago, when the US game industry was on less lean times, there were more white faces here. I’m guessing all us gaijin are saving our money up for GDC in 2004.

Four years ago, TGS was a collection of well-lit, stodgy kiosks with a few demo dollies populating the show floor. In the past four years, Tokyo Game Show has decided to become E3, and so this year it was a deafening roar of subwoofers and light displays and two-story papier-mache models and hundreds of pushed-up chickies in microskirts. This environment, while highly entertaining to a straight white guy, is possibly the very least conducive environment imaginable for understanding the quality of a bunch of games. I had ninety minutes where I wasn’t in meetings. So the handful of game notes I present here are my best guesses at how these games will actually play, but don’t take them as gospel. I was distracted.

There was an unusual number of beat-em-up games on the show floor. (Think Golden Axe in 3D.) Koei seemed to be attracting a lot of show-floor attention with Shin-sangokumusuo 3. Square Enix showed Drag-on Dragoon, which had a less pretty beat-em-up mode and a very pretty dragon flight mode.

Square Enix also showed a very basic looking title called Kenshin Dragon Quest. The game itself was unremarkable except for the presence of a sword peripheral and receiver. There was a receiver at the base of the television that could detect the location and orientation of the plastic sword with respect to the receiver, and so people were waiting in line six deep to take a virtual swack at some poorly rendered enemies. The game system is self-contained; apparently the receiver contains a tiny bit of CPU horsepower, enough to render a few sprites. If this bit of kit comes ever comes to the US, it should be relatively inexpensive.

Without a lot of fanfare, Konami showed Firefighter F.D 18, a rethink of Sega’s old Saturn title, Burning Rangers. Konami has improved the smoke and fire particle systems quite a bit; they’re pretty and dramatic now. The controls are very easy to pick up. Games of this genre, in which you play a firefighter or an ambulance driver, really ought to sell better in the US than they do; Konami can probably get an E rating with it, and it’s a cool-looking game that parents might not object to.

NCsoft showed Lineage 2. Two words: Everquest. NCsoft clearly wants a piece of Sony’s online market and the presentation of this online PC game is pretty darn similar to Everquest. They used the Unreal engine and the characters and scenes were quite detailed. NCsoft put some marketing muscle behind Lineage 2 at the show and they took some care to make sure all the game text and help was in Japanese.

Surprisingly, the Sony EyeToy got a lukewarm reception on the show floor, possibly due to a bad two-level booth design that made it inconvenient to actually walk to the demo machines. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that US customers will snap this thing up when it hits US shores. The basic package includes a cheap USB camera and a pack of twelve party games, including the ever-popular Kung Fu. In Kung Fu, you smack down an onslaught of cartoonish bad guys, Jackie Chan style, by swinging your fists, legs, head, or any other objects you happen to have around your living room. The EyeToy peripheral reminds me strongly of Sega’s Samba de Amigo maracas controllers. Sega mistakenly made only 10,000 pairs of maracas for the US market, and rabid fans bought out all Sega’s stock within a few days after release. Let’s hope Sony has the sense to send over more EyeToys if they sell out.

I envision a future TGS where some publisher has the guts and finances to build a trade show booth entirely encased in a twelve-inch soundproof wall. Inside the wall, you can play the publisher’s video games in relative peace. Perhaps you wear headphones, and you experience the game in a situation roughly resembling a home-use scenario. To do such a thing would require a heroic quantity of confidence in a publisher’s products. Until then, it’s subwoofers and microskirts for the lot of you.