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December 24, 2005
It's Christmas in Pasadena
A few observations. First, everyone I know seems to be getting to the point where not only is it inconvenient to go back to the ancestral home for Christmas, they actually don't want to, either. Plus all our parents are going diasporic as real estate prices soar and they look to feather their retirement nests. This season we're losing the old Durff homestead, center of all my friends' activities from first grade onward. I don't know what next year will look like.
Pasadena is completely alien. Mom keeps going into hysterics about how it looks like Disneyland -- gaudy, overly cheerful stucco buildings with no flavor to them whatsoever, springing up everywhere, four stories tall. The old buildings like City Hall and the library are such a relief among them. All of the apartment buildings are running empty, because the honest people who used to live here can't afford the rent. They want Hollywood and Downtown people to come live here. At least they also want them to take the train to work, and to walk down the street to go shopping. Damned if that's gonna happen, though.
I'm trying to figure out if I should be concerned that Christmas seems like just another day to get through this year. Usually it's a big seasonal marker, but that role seems to have been taken over by finals, spring break, the beginning of the semester... and more than anything else, January, which is now when I go to Seattle if I possibly can, because I can't think of a better place to unwind or better people to unwind with. Is this a bad sign, or just something that happens to you when you get old?
The whole social contract of Christmas is bugging me again... gotta buy something of proportional worth for everyone you know, especially if they gave you something last year... it's gotta be new, and tangible... it ought to be thoughtful but because of the pressure and because we live so far from each other these days it never is, you just go to the store and play word-association ("Grandma makes me think of... gardens! I will buy her this book of photographs of gardens") until something fits. I'm trying to think if any other culture now or in the past has done like this. I can think of cultures where rich people are supposed to show off by giving gifts to the whole town, or where a host offers his guest his best wine or horse or daughter, but nothing like this.
Sylvie and Nick are in the other room talking about it.
"Ever notice how Christmas sucks?" Nick asks.
"Yeah, it's when people let each other down... or get mad at each other," Sylvie says.
"I give you something for Christmas!" I say, as if hurt. Then I fart as loudly as I can muster.
Posted by me at 1:26 AM | Comments (0)
December 17, 2005
Barney vs. Tupac
My friends and I used to have some sort of grudge about Barney... I don't feel it as viscerally as I used to... not really sure what that was all about... but I sure do still appreciate a thorough sullying of his squeaky-clean image.
Posted by me at 8:42 PM | Comments (1)
December 12, 2005
Bouganvillea proposes a topic
Introducing Bouganvillea (right), my troll shamaness on Icecrown. Today I realized she should probably be the one to demonstrate to Dr. Broughton my ideas about Lev Manovich's The Language of New Media. Now I have to teach myself how to make machinema. In the next 72 hours.
As I was /saying this and photographing Bou, a halo-name floated onto my screen, and I realized sheepishly that even though I was way out in the outback, I wasn't alone.
Rather than comment, the Tauren bruiser who found Bou began to dance with her, and make flattering comments about her name, and the appropriateness of her hair color to it.
By the end, I had Skeg enrolled in my proposal!
Dr. B's response to this: Loved the images! I am guessing the last image was supposed to ahve me (foreground figure?) say back something to you (camera? viwer? in the affirmative! ANyway I cant figure out how to operate this scanner so youre out of luck.
His assumptions about interactivity were off (though how does one respond to a hastily thrown-together machinema storyboard which serves as a pre-emptive dog-ate-my-homework note, anyway?), but I guess the paper is all about introducing him to the conventions of gaming, anyway. And now I have an excuse to play WoW for work, for once.
Posted by me at 11:45 PM | Comments (1)
December 11, 2005
Republican Crap.
You know, like a figure of an angel resting on an American Flag, watching over a fireman. Or a stabbing device covered with icons which tug at the patriotic heartstrings. Buy them to support liberal organizations. Isn't that clever? I wish I'd thought of it when I was trying to shill for nonprofits and the IMC.
The darker irony of this is that probably some of the cash spent on these items wholesale goes to companies in China. I like my irony multilayered, don't you?
Posted by me at 3:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 10, 2005
Warcraft Diary: The Radical Naked Baby Triathlon
Some time ago I was hanging about in Rachet as Bouganvillea, when all of a sudden a swarm of unclothed, low-level gnomes (and one or two human males, equally nude) appeared out of nowhere and began to dance with anyone and everyone they saw. This caused considerable ire among the gnome-haters, but I thought it was brilliant. I haven't laughed at a bunch of naked dancing small people in such delight since my younger sisters escaped from the tub and went running down the street at age five. Or maybe since Ally McBeal made me regret I'd known about the Dancing Baby meme before most people I knew.
Of course, because I was Horde and they were Alliance, I had no way of asking the gnomes what was going on. So I /whispered Jess. She was pretty sure it was part of one of these marathons which goes on in game, where everyone develops a gnome character and sends it racing, unclothed, through the world, dying and levelling up slowly as it progresses. Which would explain why few of the gnomes I saw were over level 5.
However, after a note from another classmate, I'm now wondering whether these kids were on their way to a protest. I'd heard of these going on in Star Wars Galaxies, but this is the first time I'd heard of it in WoW. Like the marathon, this was predominantly naked gnomes, most of which seem to have green hair for some reason.
And they have great names, some of which you can see in the pictures. Wewontgo... Malcolmx... Unionrep... Weneedlovin... Fixdisclass... Mixed in with Ankleshanka, Stinkyfeet, and Shatpants. And the guild name is Warrior Union. Utah Phillips meets Penny Arcade. We have ideals we draw on when we take up protest, apparently, and it's being done as creatively here as it's done in the streets of Seattle or Philly or DC at protests against the multinational organizations. Interestingly, the same commands are issued by the authorities when the protest gains force, and the same complaints about the protest are made in the comments as I've heard made against the WTO protesters:
(from a GM:) "We appreciate your opinion, but protesting in game is not a valid way to give us feedback. Please post your feedback on the forums instead. If you do not comply, we will begin taking action against accounts. Please leave this area if you are here to disrupt game play as we are suspending all accounts."
(from commenters): "What it looks like is that a lot of people are unhappy. They dont want to take the time to think about how to fix this issue, they just wanna demostrate in game that they are unhappy. Although many players might not pay attention to the forums, I guarantee you the community relations team and the designers read suggestions. The people you need to get through to are not going to "crack" because 50-100 asshats sit on a bridge dancing. Besides who would take a mostly gnome protest seriously...."
"You showed up, you got noticed, you made your point. They asked you to leave, you didn't, you got suspended. Good for Blizzard. If you aren't going to listen to the referee then get the hell off the field. If you make the referee throw you off, you shouldn't even be allowed to come back. That just tells me you're an ass and shouldn't be playing games online. Learn to have a little respect for other people before coming back into a multiplayer environment."
And of course, there's a dozen posts reading GET A LIFE, THIS IS ONLY A GAME, THIS IS NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST LIKE TIANANMEN SQUARE, DON'T FLATTER YOURSELVES. True indeed. My question is, if you participate in a protest in-world, does it begin to make you wonder if you could do the same in real life?
Posted by me at 11:55 PM | Comments (1)
Custom Cooptation
I've just posted an article over at Adorablog about an art show featuring My Little Ponies. Didn't want to put up any metacommentary there -- it's not really in the editorial vision of the site -- but I just need to say that I think I understand how grafitti artists felt when some of their number began to be invited to do gallery shows in the early 80s. Not that I'm a pony customizer myself, but I've been writing, in fascination and in concern, about the custom community for long enough that I feel a little protective of them.
Here's this giant show, in part sponsored by Hasbro, heavily attended by major fashion labels and high-profile artists, which has taken what is honestly a folk art movement and put it in a gallery -- without, as far as I can tell, giving an invitation or even a nod to any of the Folk who invented this art form. And half of the ponies in the show are really no more or less imaginative than the ones the customizers do. Why should Paul Frank and Baby Phat get recognition for their uninspired pony customs when any old customizer may throw together Final Fantasy or Disney-themed customs and never once be recognized as innovative? Why might she be seen as "pathetic" when a handful of Japanese professional artists get seen as "clever" for doing the exact same thing? I guess I wouldn't be half as irritated by this if the ponies at the art show weren't selling for such a pretty penny. (Because you my not visit that link: the highest figure in that image is $15,000. Fifteen THOUSAND dollars for a reconstituted hunk of plastic. Lowest runs a couple hundred, which begins to approximate numbers I've seen for customizations of Breyer horses.) And I'm finding rumor on the net that Hasbro disapproves of the pony custom community. (I do imagine things like Borg ponies give them no end of legal headache.)
The one great thing I think came of this exhibition (not sure if it's still running, but I have to say I am still dying to get in there, at least for the sake of posing these questions to the curators) is this ugly little number. The article which introduced me to this exhibition says that the artist never liked the toys she saw as a child, because they were too pretty and she felt too ugly to identify with them. As an adult, she makes lopsided stuffed animals -- as well as this bulging-eyed, huge-nostriled, dull-haired monstrosity. Which really makes you think about the effect of not just introducing Barbie to your children, but any toy which is clean-edged and sparkly and perfect.
Posted by me at 1:12 PM | Comments (0)