i hate these goddamn things. oh well; this blog had to jump the shark at one time or another – it might as well involve robots.

snaps to Julie O and angelika for this one (LJ side).

a bit more laid back today, but no apparent drop in attendence. spoke for awhile with a girl dressed as sophitia from soul calibur 2; she is a costumer, and we discussed design, misconceptions of others in regards to her outfit and the SCA. she also designed the outfit for ‘strawberry spankcake’, which was a nod to the satirical PA character (which was itself a riff more on american mcgee’s ‘alice‘ than S.S.) that american greetings forced them to rescend, owing to the sensitive nature of their powerful ‘strawberry shortcake’ brand, or something. bastards. meanwhile, to my left, an enforcer is being politely flirted with by a ninja.

got the nice guys at red vs. blue to help me send greets out to lotek, via a hastily-written sign. he found it ‘wooterific’.

saw janna again today – almost didn’t recognize her ‘out of vinyl’. she was deep in thought creating a ‘city of heroes’ skin for herself, so i elected not to disturb her.

found out today that there’s about 7000 people registered at PAX this year. amazing.

witnessed the procession moving the omegathon prizecage from the exhibition hall to the theatre – quite a sight, enforcers swarming around it like stern worker bees as they slowly trestled it into the depths of the conference center. this con is the perfect opportunity for that fleeting moment in the sun for so many of these folks – i can’t think of where else this sort of thing is so readily accepted and celebrated. this is their superbowl, their burning man, their lollapalooza. perhaps the members of every subgenre, circle and clique deserve such a gathering. beats killing each other in urban and desert warfare by a damnsight.

is that one of the things the internet has encouraged – grouping with similar minds, wherever they may be found, rather than with those in your physical community? this trend may have created a fair amount of dissonance and single-mindedness in the short run, but i want to believe it will ultimately encourage a union of the ‘human family’, trumping that of any nation, creed or color. or so the ad-copy goes.

i know i haven’t talked a lot about the games themselves, or reported on who won this or that tourney – there are others better qualified to this task, i feel. beyond the fact that i really don’t play the newer games much myself, i suppose i’m more interested in the larger experience, the mood, the flow, the stories that people share, the ways they interact. i certainly won’t claim to have captured it all, or even most of it; such a feat would require you to, well, be here, and perhaps be several people at once – much of what i experience is wordless and sublime. maybe what’s here will at least satisfy casual interest, and encourage the curious to look further.

pictures here; share and enjoy.

mc chris was awesome, dirty talkin’ and representin’ all the white hip-hop nerdish. he’s done voice work for adult swim, most notably ‘mc peepants’. my favorite bit: “allright ya’ll, i wanna see those muthafuckin cellphones in the air!” predictably, almost everyone in the audience proudly held up and waved their phones and GBAs to the beat. goddamn right.

minibosses tore it up with blistering versions of ‘mega man’ and ‘contra’ – i can only imagine what the original composers would think. it’s amazing the power music has, beyond any other form of reflection of a given subject or theme – it runs deeper, flows further, somehow. the energy of the crowd was palpable – this is our music, our roots, our time, our people, given validation, truth, respect, hope.

as before, you can find pictures from this day here.

party at heather and brian’s!

so nice to see them again; met some other cool people as well. their house looks so good – clean lines, minimalism, matching furniture. vegan sushi and such – yesss! they rock. joriel and i were having such a good time, i hated to leave, but tonight was my only chance to catch mc chris and the minibosses back at PAX – happy compromise via new friends, who offered to give joriel a ride home later (after i left, she had her own adventures, happily enough). off with me, then, to the show…

just got autographs from the PA guys. mike (gabe) was quiet, didn’t say much; jerry (tycho) was introspective when i asked him about how it felt being a celebrity now. he paused, thinking about it, and looked a little sad. ‘it makes me feel bad’, he said. ‘i hate that now people have to wait to talk to me.’ he said he had always thought of himself as incomplete, not totally able to connect to people. he initially believed that the newfound fame and popularity would help complete him in some way, “make me into a real boy”, as he put it. instead, he feels that in some way the problem has been compounded. he’s a big guy, bald by choice, but in that moment he seemed so fragile. i tried to reassure him in some way, suggesting that such insecurity might help keep him humble, which is not a bad thing in itself. hopefully i didn’t come across as condescending, an issue i struggle with myself. he seemed like a genuine, likeable person, and i hope things stay ‘real’ for him and mike as all things PAX continue to evolve.

exhibit hall was open today; in line for a VR thingy called inside a huge rotating sphere, met jenna – we discussed spirituality, the war, and how the location of one’s center of gravity is gender based. she has an intriguing job, as an ‘eraser’ – she collects and then destroys the medical files of the deceased.

jenna did fantastically in the sphere; she destroyed her enemies (wandering bots) and looked cool doing it. i fell down a lot, cursing said sphere. the experience was interesting; a fuzzy rendering of the olympic park in munich (which i visited in the 80s, oddly enough) via two tiny TVs, while a fiberglass sphere does its best to roll out from under you. jenna did her best to cheer me on, bless her. i exited dizzy and humble – apparently, the smaller you are, the better.

still, it was fun, and the russian guys running it were cool. i asked them to give me the ‘non-combatant’ version, since i knew it would challenging enough just figuring out how to walk around; one of them said that he prefers that version, and they only added the ‘shooter’ one because they figured ‘that’s what the kids would want at PAX.’ and they’d be absolutely right – only old guys like me would want to wuss out.

they’ve been working on various prototypes for awhile now; their next one will forgo the vr goggles. instead, the image environment will be projected onto the sphere from outside, surrounding the occupant inside via their own eyes. not sure how the directionals would work, but it sounds promising.

the US army has a booth here, in a not-so-subtle fashion; among the other game booths hawking product, they’re pushing ‘america’s army‘ – it’s like unreal or halo, except it takes place in the real world, in real countries, depicting actual battles. they easily had the most number of computers available for sampling game play; several soldiers in uniform were working the booth, which was decorated with a full-size military humvee and other various equipment. something about the army selling a first-person shooter starring themselves, ostensibly as a recruiting tool, seems a little troublesome. i know it’s been out for awhile, but we’re talking zero degrees of separation here, so let’s call it what it is – modern, current warfare as entertainment. according to the ad banner at the booth, ‘america’s army’ is rated T for Teens. n-n-n-n-nineteen, that is.

watched a screening of ‘the gamers‘ – dreadfully silly, but consitently full of fun moments and ‘inside jokes’ that RPGers will dig.

off to a party. more PAX later.