bloody_peasants wrote an actual Quantum Fox story! I like it much better than any of its Anacrusis predecessors.
Category: Plugs
Holly launched her food blog! Yay! You have to understand that these aren’t fake foods covered in shellac and developing fluid: these are real things that I get to help eat. That alone, so far, has been worth the trip.
Of course, now it’s my night to cook and I am experiencing more stage fright than ever did on an actual stage. It’s not as if I’m trying to live up to the house standard. I just want to avoid the part of The Birdcage where they all take one sip in unison and then quietly, carefully, put their spoons back down.
How have I not written about this yet! My uncle John has returned to blogging, and he’s busily winning merit awards with his fantastic collage pieces, of which I own two, which means I am also a winner.
“This offer is not connected to posting our site on your blog but we will be very happy if you will write about us!”
I got some pretty neat spam today: Booksprice.com offered me a free copy of either Snow or My Name is Red by, er, “Price Nobel Winner Orhan Pamuk” in exchange (except not in exchange; see above) for my blogging about their site. Not a bad deal. I’m guessing they found me through Technorati–anyone else receive similar email?
The other way they might have found me is that I’ve written about Bookfinder before, and it’s sitting right on Booksprice’s target market. I tested both services against my go-to out-of-print book, Orson Scott Card’s Maps in a Mirror: Booksprice’s results returned a little faster, but it found only copies of the reissued paperback from a few years ago, whereas Bookfinder found multiple copies of the original hardback at comparable prices. Winner: Bookfinder!
On the other hand, Booksprice calculates shipping for you, and it also looks for used CDs, DVDs and video games. Pretty tempting. I doubt it’ll find anything cheaper than the best price you could get on eBay, but it’s probably less hassle.
I’m not interested in either of the books they offered, but I’ve done my part and I’d be happy to give one of them away. If you are interested, shoot me an email and I’ll either give them your address or give them mine and pass the book on to you.
This is the first time I’ve actually been offered goods (or money, or services) for PageRank. I’m on the A-list now! I will take my free convention passes in pairs, please.
Hey Louis Villains. I’m running an in-store demo of Dogs in the Vineyard this afternoon at the Louisville Game Shop, and if you like games that tell stories you should come.
This is the first time I’ve ever run a game for people I didn’t know. I’m kind of nervous!
My dignity, like a bottle of Gauthier ’88, shatters on the prow of Alison’s new blog.
Been meaning to do this forever
If you like microfiction, The Fabian Society is pretty great, pretty often.
The Law of Meta
To do meta well, you must first do well the thing within. Checkerboard Nightmare did metahumor and it worked, because Kris Straub was already a skilled humorist; by contrast, almost all webcomics attempt it within their first couple of weeks and fail, because their creators haven’t developed any skill at comedy. So you can see why I’m worried about Studio 60.
Not that Aaron Sorkin’s not a funny writer–with Mitch Hurwitz out, he’s the funniest writer on network television–but he’s not a sketch writer. Sketch comedy is hard, and even harder to do consistently. The best writers in the history of the format have had a hit rate of maybe one in five; even in the age of viral video, the only success Saturday Night Live has found on the intertube was a fluke that relied on hip name-dropping and the tired joke of white guys and gangsta poseury. And that’s out of what, three hundred skits a year? William Hung has a better batting average.
Even if Studio 60 focuses mostly on the weekly downtime and not the show proper, eventually it’s going to have to back up its premise that Matt Albie is good at his job. That means showing us a sketch at least every few episodes. Last night they went as far as showing us the cold open, and it was just a joke they made five minutes earlier repeated to music. It was a nice dramatic moment, with the orchestra and the bold statement of purpose. But it wasn’t funny the second time through, or the third, or the tenth.
A special case of the Law of Meta is the Law of Writing A Character Who is a Writer. The law is: don’t. Doing so almost invariably turns into massive self-indulgence and, worse, annoys me. Even Sports Night couldn’t escape that toward the end. And given that Studio 60 is already nicking from SN (homage to Felicity Huffman, fights with Standards and Practices, I understand next episode the power goes out), well, you understand why I’m worried again.
But I want to see the next episode now.