PAX! much that is good is here. many of my kin, as with the star trek cons, roam these halls – yet there is a different frequency which they ride, if only by degrees. gone is the sci-fi memorabilia, the wandering klingon, the kirk/spock slashfiction. instead, i find my brethren indulging in cosplay and the church of nintendo and musing upon the ‘old days’ of the 1980s, back when it ‘all began’. our heroes are not actors, but rather game designers and programmers. rather than watching ‘wrath of khan’ for the hundreth time, we cheer on ‘the wizard‘, the fred savage vehicle about the ‘nintendo videogame championship’, and the very screening i’m sitting in. the crowd roars to any reference or appearence of the oldschool games; truly, there is nowhere else that this film would be shown to such an enthusiastic crowd. for that matter, i don’t know if there are any other fictional videogame-specific films *about* videogames – there are certainly plenty films *of* said games (street fighter, resident evil, mario brothers, etc).

the penny arcade guys hosted a panel earlier, to a crowd of about 500 young men (and women!). lots of fun; nostalgia, support group, confessional – a little something for everyone. mike and jerry really had their hands full with this sort of face time, but i don’t think anyone left unhappy (including them, hopefully).

i met some of the speakeasy guys, who were hosting a gamecloud booth. they were really cool – the coincidence was a pleasant one.

red vs. blue. now wrap your head around this one: it’s a series of short films using the Halo engine about these soldiers, who have long conversations about silly or banal things, and then get shot or blown up in various ways. the characters all have defined personalities and take part in a consistent storyline. the voice talent is comprised of various folk whom the creators know and/or have recruited. it’s as if they made a first person shooter into an RPG, and then made *that* into a soap opera. it’s a lot of goofy stuff and crude humor, but they take it quite seriously (as does their huge fan base). they distribute their films on their website, apparently with microsoft’s blessing (helps advertise their game). they’re on their 4th season; lotek first introduced me to it a couple of years ago, back when it was part of the background of obscure fan films and net foolishness. now these guys are rock stars, if the fans are any indication.

the penny arcade guys are their own phenomenon, though – they have served as the ‘central node’, if you will, for much this sort of thing. in other words, there’s no real degree of separation between the fans of PA or homestar runner or red vs. blue or console/PC gamers or 16bit musicians – seemingly, all of them live on the same planet. PAX is simply the next stage of evolution, much the way trek cons were for the scifi / fantasy / LARPer / filking tribes. it will be interesting 5 or 10 years from now, to see what this phile is up to, how they’ve grown, what they’re into – with the grateful dead and trek gone, could they be the next big fancult?

concert: line wrapped around two sides of the conference center, no mean feat. but everybody got in – easily about a thousand. first act – tuxedo-clad concert pianist playing old computer game themes. notables: mega man theme, final fantasy theme, pac man theme blindfolded. how and where else could you see a hundred+ late teen/early 20 kids rocking out to piano music? he had them doing ‘the nod’ for pete’s sake!

second act – optimus rhyme, a sort of shy, thinking geek’s ‘soul coughing’, who sang of computers and cars, space travel and calling in sick. there was one more act, the NESkimos, but regrettably i had to take off prior to their set, because it was almost 2am by this point and my right arm was killing me for some unknown reason.

pictures from friday PAX are here.

humans have asked about the absence of the ‘comment’ feature; rest assured, it was not taken away because i grew weary of your thoughtful responses. rather, there is a problem with the template – mainly, that it is as old as blogger, and was created in a dark time, before things like comments (and titles, for that matter) existed. the existence of the comment option on this blog has relied on a questionable html hack that i have had to dispense with, given its unwieldly form and function. i contacted the original creator of the template, begging for help, but have heard nothing thusfar.

the logical thing to do would be to upgrade to a newer, fresher template, allowing for the aforementioned newfangled features, but i cannot bring myself to let go of the old one, whose name is ‘Bold Lines’. stay tuned; comments will return one way or another. in the meantime, you can email me if the desire strikes.

Y: someday VR will be so advanced, it will be nearly indistinguishable from reality. people will be able to pretend to be anyone they want in cyberspace – any historical figure; marilyn monroe…

X: i was just getting ready to say marilyn!

Y: …abe lincoln…

X: a gay abe lincoln.

Y: …and indentity theft will take on a whole new meaning. people will have the desire to copywright not just their work, but themselves. death itself will be redifined by laws protecting such people. but despite the risk, hardly anyone will do the obvious thing, and simply stay out of cyberspace completely.

X: perhaps they won’t legally be able to. like, you have to have an email address these days…

Y: i can’t think of anyone i know who wouldn’t use a holodeck if they could. you could be anyone, fuck anyone…

X: of course sex would be popular.

Y: always has been, always will be. sex, food, shelter… what’s the other one?

X: don’t you think the holodeck would be a terrible distraction, keeping people from seeing the world, the real world outside?

Y: art is a reflection of the world, but it is not the world. is all art also a distraction? i think it helps us define the world in ways that aren’t always obvious to the casual observer. we can see the stars at night, but then we look at a painting by van gogh, and we never see them the same way again.

X: but you can’t live inside van gogh’s paintings, walk around, play characters…

Y: not yet. does your concern imply that there’s limits to what art should be, for the good of the human species?

X: are you saying that the holodeck would be used just for reflection?

Y: i suppose not. i guess it could end up replacing the real world for some people, because it would be better – you could control everything…

X: that’s it right there. control.

Y: …but it could also do fucked up things to people, for when they leave the holodeck. like, if i played a version of GTA where i truly *am* the guy running around, stealing cars, shooting people, it would be sort of a let down to go back to the real world, where there are consequences for such behavior.

X: consequences – that’s the other thing. people don’t want to take responsibility for anything.

Y: they don’t need the holodeck for that.

X: no, but it could exacerbate the problem…

Y: …or it could give it an outlet, but i don’t know if that’s good or bad.

X: for instance?

Y: what would a pedophile do in a holodeck?

X: they couldn’t allow that.

Y: why not? why allow simulated killing, and not simulated sex?

X: both already exist in different forms. but you shouldn’t encourage people, or validate their behavior if it’s immoral, if they pose a threat to others outside the holodeck.

Y: any act between two people that occurs without mutual consent is immoral. but i hear what you’re saying – it’s degrees. i don’t know where the line should be if it’s not real, if it’s just pretend. these are decisions we’re going to have to make as a society eventually.

sometimes, when you’re confronted with an important decision or you’re at some sort of crossroads, you find yourself looking for living metaphors. ‘if i catch this feather, it means that i’ll get the job.’ ‘if i take the long way, past the lake, it means i haven’t sold out.’ ‘she loves me, she loves me not.’ and so forth. the thing to remember is that regardless of your performance in the little tests the universe is seemingly handing out, you still have to do something that relates directly to the problem at hand.

it’s nice in tv shows: we watch the character slowly unpack, and we know she’s going to tell her father the truth… even though the conversation in which she does so may not be shown. such story conventions have the potential to trick us into thinking that if the universe sees us making a silent decision of some sort, everyone and everything will magically acknowledge and respect it. but i think we have to radiate our own light, and make it real for ourselves, lest we slip from self awareness into self indulgence.

rialto beach: on the western edge of olympic national park; light sand, billions of smooth stones, black sand, driftwood the size of giants. sea stacks, rocky island remains of ancient shores, a million years lost to tide and time; peace and beauty prevail.

ruby beach: further south; bleak, windswept, alluring with its tide pools full of starfish and mussells and barnacles. i often wonder what any hypothetical deepwater intelligence might think of us, here in its outer space, shuffling and poking about in the forbidden mountaintops.

meditation

contemplation

starfish

moon and tree