Category: People

I went on a shopping spree for this occasion because it turns out I was down to one pair of pants

October 12, 2009 /

I start a new job today! A real job in an office, where I have to commute, in pants! Well, actually I’m still contracting until the end of the year, but if all goes well I’ll be an employee after that. I understand the pants part stays the same.

I’ll be working in a little development shop with four guys, two blocks from Kara, making web sites work on your cell phone. (Not on my cell phone! My cell phone barely gets texts.) I have ranklements about the necessity of the change that I will not air here, in the interest of respect for metaphorical bridges, but it will be good to stop sitting around clicking the Twitbook and stuffing handfuls of trail mix into my mouth all day.

It’s going to be fun! I’m excited. Remind me that I said this in a month.

Nononymity

October 2, 2009 /

Carrie Fisher blogs, apparently, and the evidence suggests that she’s been doing a bit of back-and-forth with the Internet in her own defense. Basically, people think she doesn’t look like she did in 1983. I will allow you a moment of shock.

On my west’ard migration a year and a half ago, while I was bumming around San Francisco on my own, someone–Sumana?–suggested that I take a night and go see a play. By happy coincidence, I was in town at the same time as Fisher, who was doing her show Wishful Drinking at the Berkeley Rep. So I got a ticket and went.

I learned a great deal about Fisher that evening (I hadn’t even known she was married to Paul Simon), and in the process saw probably the only good one-person show ever. I also laughed a lot. How can you avoid laughing at the image of Cary Grant calling up a teenage girl, at her parent’s slightly deranged request, to lecture her soberly about the dangers of LSD–twice? Or at a still from the bridge of the Death Star about which she noted that “I weighed about ninety pounds here, eighty of which I carried in my face?”

It’s one thing to know somebody is a writer; it’s another to see her perform in a self-written multimedia showcase that includes jokes about her own electroshock therapy. I liked Carrie Fisher before then, almost as much for her guest spot on 30 Rock as for Star Wars (and that was all before I knew she tried out for Han Solo). After that show, like became admiration, and she was elevated to the selective ranks of people who have secured my loyalty pretty much for good. Even if her blog posts are littered with unnecessary punctuation.

(In case you’ve noticed that I started dating a short girl with a screenwriting degree, a taste for wine and a sardonic sense of humor within months of moving to Portland: shhh.)

It’s not as if I think the people reading my blog are among those going “oh no how did princess lea get fat :(.” But I feel the need to state this anyway: Carrie Fisher rolls with my crew. And before you write a word against her, consider the fact that fuck you forever, and die in a hole.

Shitcock.

This is why it is awesome to have awesome friends

October 1, 2009 /

I am unforgivably late in posting this, but Kevan sent along a photo of a one of those “morphing” lenticular Halloween images in which, as he points out, life imitates Anacrusis. (He asked whether it was a common image in the US or just a ludicrous coincidence; it’s been a few years, but I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.)

In other Battersea wonderment, I can’t tell you the secret reason why she discovered this, but Holly has alerted me that the Pharaoh of Exodus might have been (but probably wasn’t) named Dudimose.

Dudimose.

His son was named Dudimose II.

Puddlejump

September 5, 2009 /

Kara and I are going to Europe! Like, now! We’ll land in London tomorrow morning to visit Kevan and Holly et al, then fly to Denmark on the 9th to see her high-school exchange sister Britta get married, then hop down to France on the 16th for a Romantic Weekend in Paris.

I got to see very little of the continent while I lived over there, so this is very exciting. We are going to be broke kids with backpacks! I can’t wait to get peed on by a French hobo.

See you on the 21st, Internet!

Andrus

August 20, 2009 /

Kara’s Dad, Robert, along with her brother-in-law Ty, made a biographical documentary last year about the late illusionist Jerry Andrus. It’s a really, really good movie, unimpeded by the title Andrus: The Man, the Mind & the Magic. In particular, I found the breakdown of some of his optical illusions fascinating, and the close-up magic he demonstrates is unbelievable; one of the most interesting things about Andrus was that he used both to provoke skepticism and critical thinking from his audience, rather than to cultivate an aura of mystique.

If you’re in Oregon, you can watch an hour-long cut of the movie at 10 pm tonight on OPB’s Oregon Lens. I recommend that you do!

Thanks to everybody who commented on the project management software entry, by the way

July 16, 2009 /

A few weeks ago I attended my second Go Play Northwest, and as before, it was one of the best weekends of my year. I played a lot of games, and wrote up reports on some of them, including Attack of the Crimson Apes (with Danger Patrol), Steam Tank versus Marble Army (with Principia), and Saga of the Goblin Headbag (with Lady Blackbird). I also ran a game of Rubble (discussed), and played my second game of Mythender (discussed, although it may not make any sense). I played just enough of a game of Anima Prime to make me want more.

Finally, I played in a game of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach adapted to take place on Wall Street in 1986, which was very funny and which we will never discuss again.

I did manage to go the entire weekend without playing a single game with Jackson Tegu or Joe McDonald, which, I mean, what the hell guys. They were (along with John Aegard and the Richmond-Smiths) two of my most potent catalysts in getting involved with the Pacific Northwest gaming scene, and now they’ve retreated back to their frozen Canadia. This will be rectified, gentlemen!

GPNW alone is enough to make me reconsider moving to Seattle every year. Then I try to get anywhere in its blighted hellscape of streets and quickly discard that notion.

In which I pick on a universally-beloved mute cancer survivor

March 8, 2009 /

This essay presents me with problems, because I agree with its hypothesis, but not its premises or its conclusion, so, er.

I’ve said before that snarky writing is weak writing, after which a conversation with Holly led me to reduce my stance to “snarky writing is comorbid with weak writing.” Ebert and I concur on this. He goes on to state that blogs devoted to pure snark are dumb, and that gasping about the “gayest Oscars ever” because Hugh Jackman sat in Frank Langella’s lap is equally dumb; this is also true.

Then he defends Joaquin Phoenix’s current performance art spectacle as an “accomplishment,” and as “committing himself as an actor.” Sorry, Roger, but acting isn’t art in and of itself, and acting like a bewildered person with nothing to say, without letting other people in on the joke, is no achievement at all. (I have similar problems with Andy Kaufman, but at least he brought a Duchamp-like duplicity to the exercise.)

More essential to his argument is his assertion that the snarkers should leave! Oscar! Alone! Sorry again, but a critic of all people should understand that you don’t get to just declare that it’s not for you. Joaquin Phoenix and the self-righteous pomp of the Oscars deserve no better than snark, because they’re functioning on the same level. Scrape away the ornamentation, and there’s nothing worthwhile underneath.

But that doesn’t mean that snarkery is a noble satirical endeavor. Sumana (via John Hodgman) provides a better argument than Ebert: snark is just “meh” without the benefit of brevity.