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PAX!

In Board Games, Seattle, Travel, Video Games on August 31, 2011 at 4:42 pm

PAX is, bar none, the best convention I have ever been to.

Granted, I don’t have that much experience with cons. I’ve been to Seattle’s Emerald City ComiCon and once went to a Star Wars con in Japan. I’ve also turned up at several geeky gatherings in Portland, but I’ve never really traveled with the sole intent of going to a convention. Until now, of course. It was entirely worth it.

Being able to go at all was something like winning the geek lottery- PAX had long been sold out, and it was by pure fortuitous chance that I was able to get a three day pass at face value. Pass in hand, I made my way up I-5 with the photographer extraordinaire Sarah Giffrow and two other lovely Portland geeks.

Day One: I Am Surrounded By Shiny Stuff and Don’t Know What to Do

Upon arriving at the Washington State Convention Center, I had only a vague idea about what was going on. I knew that there were panels, exhibits, and free-play areas but had no coherent idea of how to address them all. I flipped through the schedule and, not really knowing what to do, just wandered into the main exhibition hall.

The hall is probably the most “normal” part of PAX. It’s all exhibits by major game companies promoting various triple-A titles and new releases. The screens are huge, the lines are long, and noise and light pulsate from displays that range in size from big to huge. I don’t really try to stay current with my gaming habits (the last game that I got really into was the original Dawn of War) so the new releases didn’t hold much interest for me, but the exhibition hall was amusing in an over-the-top sort of way.

Wanting to do something that did not have the volume turned up to 11, Sarah and I attempted to get in line for the Wil Wheaton panel. We thought that we would most assuredly have a spot, given that we were there an hour ahead of time. The line, though, was closed. Wheaton is a popular fellow at these events.

We wandered around the indie games exhibit for a while, and were somewhat amused by a booth promoting a game called Uncle Slam. “It’s like Punch-Out but with presidents.” The game’s concept was amusing enough, but the poor play control got in the way of my enjoyment. For my comments, they gave me a t-shirt.

We ended up playing some Marvel VS Capcom 3 in the console free play area, which I found to be an absolutely wonderful space. PAX goers could sign up to play games on current-generation consoles and stay there as long as they liked. It was a great space to try out new games, and it also served the function of being a place where people could chill out, sit down, and yet still do be doing something PAX-related.

I got a text from a friend of mine, and we ended up joining him and his wife for a panel on indie RPG design. I wasn’t initially excited about it, but it was kind of inspiring to hear self-made creative types talk about what they do. After that, we got some dinner, played some Steve Jackson card games with people, and went to bed. It served as a nice introduction to the whole thing, and the next day I was able to much more coherently enjoy the event.

Day Two: You Will Stand in Line and Like It

One of the main things that I’d wanted to see at PAX was Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade actually make a strip in front of an audience. Even though it was one of the first events of the day, I knew it would be popular. I took my place in line in front of the main theater an hour and a half early. My expectation would be that I’d spend most of the time reading, but someone shouted “JOE!” and I ran into someone else from Portland. The line ended up being quite the fun social hangout. People were playing card and dice games, I ended up having a nice chat with some complete strangers, and various PAX volunteers (amusingly known as “enforcers”) kept things interesting by giving us stuff to do. Several of them were handing out pipe cleaners for people to make pipe cleaner art (there were some very magnificent specimens- later on, one woman ended up making a pipe cleaner Sonic Screwdriver), enforcers gave out candy and buttons to people who could answer trivia questions, and several beach balls ended up getting bounced around the crowd. (At one point a beach ball got lodged in a fire escape and had to be rescued by a rather daring gentleman. He was cheered as a hero, and was pretty much our very own Spiderman.)

I appreciated all of this. If participants are going to spend a lot of time in line, then the line might as well be interesting. There was very much a carnival atmosphere in the air, and by the time we all went into the main theater, we were already having lots of fun.

Tycho and Gabe (aka, Jerry and Mike) both have fairly good stage presence, and it was clear that they were quite happy to be in front of their fans. Tycho wrote a comic script in the first few moments of the event, comically pretending to make typos and punctuation errors. For the rest of the event, Gabe’s drawings were projected onto a large screen, and various fans asked them questions.

I found the relationship between the Penny Arcade guys and their fans to be kind of wonderful. Neither of them seemed standoffish or inaccessible, and frequently fans presented them with whimsical gifts such as stuffed animal microbes. It was amazing to watch Gabe/Mike draw. It really is true about skilled people making it look easy. What he was doing looked extraordinarily simple and intuitive, but only because he’s been drawing for years (I guess it’s fair to say that at this point, it’s simple and intuitive to him.)

The whole thing was excellent, and later on I met up with Sarah again to see a live recording of the Acquisitions, Incorporated podcast. It was pretty much the PA guys, Wil Wheaton, and Scott Kurtz all playing D&D, but they were amusing enough to make it a whole lot of fun. Later on I went to a panel all about gaming’s relationship to the LGBT community, and ended the evening playing the Battlestar Galactica board game until about 1:30 in the morning. (The game perfectly captures the paranoia and desperation of the show- I kind of want it now.)

I went to bed immensely satisfied

Day Three: Portland Geek Pride

On day three I wandered about a bit more, played a whole lot of Marvel VS Capcom III and Street Fighter IV, and realized that as much as I like fighting games some guys are just mind-bendingly skilled. I also went to a panel on freelance game journalism, which is relevant to my interest, but none of that is what I want to focus on. No, day three was all about the Omegathon.

The Omegathon is a competition wherein a small number of lucky PAXers are randomly selected to participate in a tournament-style gaming competition. Five rounds precede the finals, and various preliminary rounds can feature games as disparate as Dance Central or Mario Kart.

The final round of the Omegathon acts as a closing ceremonies of sorts for PAX, and one of the players was actually from Portland. Normally I wouldn’t have had any kind of emotional investment in the outcome, but one of the guys was from my general geographic area, and that changed things.

Several Portland geeks crowded near the front of the theater, bumping up against the stage in a manner that reminded me of mosh pits. None of us knew what the final round would consist of- in previous years it had been claw games and ski ball, and is usually something whimsical or weird.

So, we were very surprised when a familiar eight-bit theme started playing. Two televisions were set up side by side, and the final round was to be competitive Legend of Zelda. Whoever got to the first piece of the Triforce the fastest would be the winner.

A large mosh-pit like conglomeration of Portland geeks proceeded to absolutely lose their shit, and shouted various bits of high-volume encouragement at their representative on stage. Including myself. I was utterly emotionally invested in the outcome of this game, solely because one of the guys who was playing was someone I’d seen before at Geek Trivia.

When something like this happens, I sort of mentally prepare myself for disappointment. I try to cope with losing before it happens, which I’m sure is probably unproductive in a lot of ways. There was no need for that here, though. Our boy from Portland actually won, and got himself a trip to the Tokyo Games Show.

I can understand why soccer fanatic feel the way they do. It was exhilarating to be part of a large, cheering group, all of our various enthusiasm bent on one thing.

I went home exhausted, and satisfied, but also sort of wishing that I didn’t have to go back into the real world again. There’s something nice about hanging out with a bunch of like-minded people, and simply playing games together, striking up impromptu conversations, doing things off the cuff with people you’ve never seen before. That can happen in the real world, certainly, but it’s far easier for that to transpire when you know everyone in the vicinity shares something with you. You’re all there for the same thing, and common ground has already been established.

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Dear Portland Trailblazers: Get a New Mascot

In Athletics, Portland on August 19, 2011 at 12:02 pm

Pioneer Courthouse Square was filled with people the other day for an Arvydas Sabonis event. The former Trailblazers center drew quite a crowd, and various Blazer-themed decorations fluttered in the wind.

There was also this monstrosity:

I’d forgotten all about Blaze, the Trailblazers’ feline mascot. I didn’t like much seeing him, given that he’s about as compelling a luckwarm bowl of unsweetened frog eggs. I don’t follow basketball closely, but I do have an affinity for the Blazers- I remember rooting for them back in the Clyde Drexler days. I like it when they do well, and was really quite thrilled when they managed to actually beat Houston at the end of last season.

The Blazers, though, really need a new mascot. Blaze seems forced and awkward. He is too cute and insubstantial, and there is nothing quintessentially “Portland” or “Blazerish” about him. Dress him in other colors, and he could be the capering cat of any team. A good mascot should be a standard-bearer. Blaze is a mere placeholder.

A while ago I was talking with some friends, and we all decided that a better option would be to replace Blaze with a sasquatch.

The Seattle Supersonics had the right idea when the did their mascot. Take a look at this:

See that? That’s awesome. Yes, it does kind of look like Teen Wolf, but I’m willing to live with that. Bigfoot is something particular to the Northwest, and a big furry ape is a symbol of our region and would do way more to jazz up the crowd than a cartoon cat in athletic shoes. Now that the Sonics have moved to Oklahoma City, the sasquatch is basically up for grabs.

Portland Trailblazers: Ditch Blaze. Use bigfoot as a mascot. Do it. I guarantee you everyone will love it, and no one will miss the stupid cat.

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I Guess They Get Together and Talk About Elevators

In Uncategorized on August 16, 2011 at 4:45 pm

Spotted today, in the lobby of a fairly nice hotel:

I couldn’t help but imagine them all watching The Lift together to blow off steam.

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Seattle Has a Most Nifty Library

In Art, Seattle on August 15, 2011 at 3:25 pm

Architecture goes stale fairly quickly, and when it does, it’s painful. What looks cutting edge and futuristic in one era can quickly look dated and of its time a scant decade later. Whenever a slick new building is put up that seems to be on the bleeding edge of design I think to myself how well it will be received in five, ten, or twenty-five years time. How will it look after it’s been used, or when it’s dirty? How will it look with rain splatters all over it, or when it shows signs of habitation? Will it always seem cutting edge, or will it soon seem to be a brief emblem of its time period?

The Oregon State Capitol is a good example of this.

I’m sure it looked quite cutting edge in the late thirties when it was built. Back then the future looked was austere and deco-inspired. Now its merely the blocky remnants of what a past decade thought the future looked like.

The notorious Portland Building is even worse.

While I do think that hating it is sometimes a fashionable affectation, it’s hard to admit that it doesn’t look of its time. The thing positively bleeds 80s-ness. It’s practically the architectural equivalent of a Patrick Nagel print.

Buildings like this carry a certain embarrassment with them- there is the tacit assumption from the architect, the city planners, the property managers, and everyone else involved with raising them that the conventions of one era will carry over into another. Buildings, after all, generally stick around for longer than people, art installations, wardrobes, or music collections. Once they’re up, we have to deal with their aesthetic choices for some time.

That said, I really enjoyed seeing Seattle’s public library. I don’t, by any means, think that we should just stick with austere, safe modernist or classical designs. I like buildings that have shiny flourishes to them. The above two, though, don’t pull it off very well. Seattle’s library, though, did it a much better.

The exterior’s fairly unremarkable, but the inside has all kind of flourishes that actually work pretty well, like the outward-bent window-walls on the second floor.

Not only is it kind of off-kilter, but it also lets tons of natural light into a reading space. It’s functional as well as quirky. There’s also the red halls above that make it look like you’re walking around inside the living guts or some giant creature.

Splashes of dramatic color about, usually contrasting dramatically with each other.

Most dramatically there are the bright yellow escalators which pop out excitedly in front of their dark background.

The whole building left me very satisfied that something can look both new and exciting (hopefully) not end up dated and stale in five years time. The building seemed functional and inviting (again, there was lots of light) and nowhere did the weirdness of the design seem to get in the way of the use of the building. What I liked most about it, though, was that it didn’t seem to take itself too seriously.

It seemed as if the designers were self-awaredly attempting to make something that was not necessarily cool or fashionable or futuristic, but fun. Seattle’s library doesn’t try to convince you that it’s the vanguard of a Brave New World or on the bleeding edge of fashion. Instead, it tries to be charming and amusing, and succeeds in doing so. Charm and wit retains their freshness far longer than any attempt at being “cool.” I don’t doubt that the library will continue to amuse visitors, even as the Portland Building languishes, perpetually showing up for the future wearing another decade’s fashions.

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“Is that a TIE fighter?”

In Seattle on August 2, 2011 at 9:21 am

This past weekend I had a lovely trip to Seattle to visit some friends. While I was there, I accompanied photographer extraordinaire Sarah Giffrow to Gas Works Park so she could take pretty pictures of old rusty industrial stuff. On our way there, we went down a series of steps (actually a miniature park called the Wallingford Steps) and noticed something:

“Is that a TIE fighter?” one of us said.

Amidst the various tiles depicting wildlife and sea creatures of various sorts, there did indeed seem to be a TIE fighter. For a moment I thought that perhaps it was something else, and we were just seeing things. Other people have noticed it too, though. Even if the artist did intend it to be something else (or just an abstract pattern) I don’t care- there is a Seattle park with a TIE fighter. Now Portland needs to hide an X-wing somewhere, so we can even things out.

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"You’re Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!"

In Movies on July 14, 2011 at 10:40 pm

The Room is a terrible movie.

It’s developed something of a reputation as one of those movies that is called, variously, the worst movie ever, so bad it’s good, and the ultimate midnight movie, etc. It’s gained in popularity with late-night screenings that occasionally have the writer/director/producer/star Tommy Wiseau in attendance. It’s one of those bits of pop-culture ephemera that for some time I knew only by reputation and hadn’t bothered to consume. Recently, though, I had a few folks over to my place and, aided by various brain-killing beverages, we gave the movie a watch.

Most movies that are known for being terrible are known for their awful special effects and horribly contrived genre conventions. Plan 9 From Outer Space is emblematic of the kind of B movies that are traditionally known as the Worst Ever.

You get the idea- badly delivered lines clustered with cheesy sci-fi jargon, costumes that are impossible to take seriously, and storylines that reach for epic status and fall woefully short. That’s the traditional kind of Worst Movie Ever. The Room is not like that at all. The Room is more like this:

It’s like they only rented the flower shop for thirty seconds, and only did a single take.

The guy speaking, by the way, is Tommy Wiseau, the writer/director/producer/actor auteur behind The Room. He is like that in more or less every scene, and his line reads and terminally awkward demeanor are what make The Room a truly weird and awful movie. Here’s his most famous line:

The plot is mainly a love triangle between Johnny (Wiseau’s character), Lisa, and Johnny’s best friend Mark. Lisa is engaged to Johnny but has fallen out of love with him, and subsequently starts boning Mark because hey, why not. After that, bad things happen. There are a number of other plot lines as well- Lisa’s mother at one point reveals that she has breast cancer, and a friend of Johnny and Lisa’s apparently owes money to loan sharks because he has a drug problem. These plots never show up again. Not even in the scene they’re in. Take a look:

Did you see all that exposition? All that backstory? Did you catch that big dramatic reveal “I definitely have breast cancer”? That’s it. That’s the entirety of that storyline in The Room. None of that information is ever important ever again. Breast cancer floats in, says hi, and then is never heard from again for the entire run time. The same thing happens with drugs and loan sharks- stuff from which a whole plot can make just floats into a scene and then dissipates into nothing.

And then there’s the sex…

The Room is front-loaded with sex scenes, first between Johnny and Lisa and then between Mark and Lisa. Even with ample nudity, the sex scenes manage to be utterly and completely unsexy and completely devoid of anything that could be coherently construed as erotic. The sex scenes are set to hideous nineties R&B songs and lacy curtains hang from bedposts. Red candles flicker in the background, roses figure prominently, and it has a weird stilted softness that suggests Tommy Wiseau might not actually know how making the beast with two backs actually works. It’s as if he’s gotten all of his ideas about sex from soap operas, soft-core pornography, and romance novels. It’s all about as sexy as watching someone clack Barbie and Ken dolls into each other while playing Celine Dion in the background. Having my eyes and ears assaulted by Tommy Wiseau’s notion of strangled, plastic eroticism made me glad that I had a trusty bottle of Ninkasi nearby- the beer was far more physically pleasurable than anything going on in the film seemed to be.

The romantic relationships in the movie fall apart, dramatic shouting happens, and eventually there’s something like a climax and the movie’s over. It’s all terrible and bad and awful but, really I sort of enjoyed The Room.

It’s fun to watch because it is utterly singular. There are other bad movies out there, but they’re bad because of their production values or cliches or because they’re merely studio cash-cows. The Room, though, is bad because Tommy Wiseau doesn’t seem to really have a handle on how actual human beings talk, act, have sex, do things, or even buy flowers. He doesn’t seem to know how to act like any version of a convincing human being, and seems to live in a world slightly askew from ours. He may very well have some kind of mental disability (which would make me feel bad for laughing at him) but it’s sort of diverting to see the world from such a weird perspective.

The Room is not something that I’d recommend watching alone. Get some friends, stock up on beer, and prepare for an incoherent mess. It’s bad, sloppy, weird, and amateurish- but at least it’s also somewhat interesting. That’s more than you can say of a lot of films.

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Adventures in Euphemisms: "Bath Tissue"

In Consumerism, Language on June 21, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Earlier today I was at Fred Meyer and looked up. I saw this:

I’d seen this before but never really thought about it. Fred Meyer, it seems, is politely refraining from using the dread phrase “toilet paper.” Their in-house brand does the same:

Okay, technically it says “bathroom tissue,” but it’s basically the same thing. I got to wondering if any of the brands of toilet paper in my immediate vicinity actually proclaimed what they were- paper that you use after going to the toilet. I looked about and did not see a single one. Not one brand of toilet paper actually used the words “toilet paper” on their packaging. Instead, there were lots of pictures of cute puppies:

Or cartoon bears:

Or babies:

The entreaties to softness, light, and general distance from things excremental even extends to invocations of the celestial on packaging. Juxtaposed, of course, with a baby:

I looked around for some kind of generic or earth-friendly brand that maybe dared to call itself by its true name, but found not a one. The only copy I saw was that recalling softness and, sometimes, absorbency. I wasn’t put out by this because I think that “toilet paper” is the most fantastically well put together diptych of words in the English language- I simply appreciate honesty. No one says “I’m going to pick up some bath tissue,” or “Hey, sweetie, pick up some bath tissue on your way home,” or “Crap, guys! We’re out of bath tissue.” No human talks like that. We all call it toilet paper, but the aisles and packaging assume that the general population are too demure to be assaulted with such vulgar words.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera said that kitsch is the denial of shit. He meant that literally. Denying that certain gross biological things happen to us is a form of intellectual laziness and naivete. I’m inclined to agree with him, and it seems that the most shit-denying place on earth, the kitschiest piece of real estate in existence, is the toilet paper aisle.

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This is Ironic, Right?

In Crazy People on June 14, 2011 at 4:54 pm

Please let this be ironic. That is the only palatable reason I can think of for this thing being on N Mississippi.

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A Found Card

In Crazy People on June 11, 2011 at 8:14 pm

A neat, orderly little stack of these cards were inside the lobby of my company’s building earlier today. I’m just going to choose to believe that it’s all part of a work of satire, or a clever hoax, or a whimsical piece of performance art. All of those options seem far more appealing than a true believer earnestly searching for something that’s not there.