for the title, think “Office Space”.

Cleaned a bit, downloaded a couple demos and trailers from Live, walked the dog for a while, took some photos, did some laundry, cleaned & reorganized the “office,” and basically had a relaxing, calm day. Tomorrow, I’m gonna try to bike to the Y, while Ei-Nyung drives. That should be sort of entertaining. 😀

Hmmm… Not a whole lot else, really. Chillin’. Set up an appointment with the insurance agent to consolidate all our insurance policies. That’ll be fun. Gotta make an appointment with the DMV to get my scooter permit renewed so I can take the damn test to get my license, finally.

Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll start working on this design I’ve been planning to write up. Talked to a friend of mine, and he’ll be doing some conceptual drawings – I’m super-psyched to see what he comes up with…

Yeah. Otherwise, not a whole lot going on. Not a bad way to be, for a while.

title pun “credit” to eingy

I’ve been downloading episodes of Top Gear again, getting caught up on stuff now that it’s not being shown on Discovery anymore. And when it does resume, it’s apparently going to be a “US Version” which is basically going to suck.

Man, I wish more shows had the production values, and the style that Top Gear does. Their sort of ridiculous approach to everything is charming in and of itself, but the sheer *style* that exudes from their photography, and with which they deliver the dialogue is just incredible. I’ll leave an episode running while I’m cleaning a room, just to listen to it. Not to mention the use of music is fabulous – there’s always some perfectly-timed piece of music that fits exactly with whatever it is they’re doing at the time…

I’d love to see more shows with the production values of Top Gear, but I can’t really imagine what. A cooking show? Oh yeah.

Hrm. Where to start?

I suppose I should mention that tomorrow’s my last day at my current job. That’s pretty interesting, in and of itself. Gives me time to write, to weed the garden, to paint, to cook, and to take care of the dog.

It also requires that I find another form of employment post-haste. Weird thing is, I quit a job that’s *really hard to get*. And though now I have experience with the process, the “proper” official title, and a couple relatively high profile games under my belt (one success, one less so), I feel like at least getting interviews should be easier.

And perhaps they are. I’ve had three phone interviews, one of which turned into a full-blown interview interview. The two that didn’t didn’t because I was missing a critical skill that the position required – no big letdown there, as I knew they were looking for something different. This job seemed to be a pretty good fit, though, and given that I got the interview, I was feeling pretty good. Afterwards, my feelings were somewhat mixed – it’s the first interview I’ve had in a couple years, and didn’t give my best showing. Still, I thought I did ok.

So, disappointment naturally looms, if you actually read the title of this post. Apparently, there’s still *some* possibility it’ll come together, but that’s pretty damn remote at this point. Which sort of sucks. I think this is only the second time I’ve ever gone to an interview and not gotten an offer. On top of that, I thought I had a reasonable showing, so that was pretty disappointing, again. *sigh*

There’s a reasonable number of companies in the area that have potential openings for me, so I’ve still got some things to chase down. But still, rejection’s disappointing, and the uncertain future, though full of potential, becomes a little more worrying.

Man. So, Google Video now has the stuff from C-SPAN for the Colbert performance, and Bush’s thing with that lookalike guy. I figured, WTF, I should watch the Bush thing, just to see whether there was anything even marginally funny about it, and holy shit, no. It’s genuinely one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Obvious, stupid jokes, completely hamfisted delivery, and makes fun of some of the most inane and idiotic crap I’ve ever seen. Holy shit.

In comparison, Colbert is incredibly witty, relevant, and genuinely a lot *less offensive* than the President’s performance, to me. It doesn’t trivialize important issues – instead, it sheds light on how badly the administration has botched those issues. Bush’s performance, on the other hand, shows that he simply doesn’t understand anything about what he’s talking about.

Bleah.

WARNING: really fucking stupid.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1921276117304287501

So, a friend of mine did her first triathlon today, and finished like a champ. Made me think of way back when when Sean and I used to do these things in high school. Made me miss the experience, to be perfectly honest. Not just the triathlons, which were fun in a really unique way, but just the sense of getting up really early, full of nerves, ready to do something you’d never done before. It was like that before every swim meet, triathlon, mountain bike race, whatever – before every ridiculous thing that I did, where the potential for failure was high, and success would require every ounce of strength or cunning I could muster.

Heady times. Sitting in a lake, ready to go completely nuts for the next two+ hours at 8 in the morning is a unique feeling. You’re tired, from having gotten up at 4:30 to get to the competition site, but you’re also amped up from the nervous energy. Maybe you’re lucky, and you’re sitting in the water as the sun comes up – the breaking dawn casting a warm glow over the punishment you know awaits.

It is sort of strange – I felt the same way somewhat way back when after I’d watched the Last Samurai – sort of a sense of, what do I prepare myself for? What conflict do I face? What battle do I desperately hope to win? And lacking such a battle, how do I fulfill that desire for purpose?

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060501/1whwatch.htm

“Colbert’s routine was similar to what he does on his show, the Colbert Report, but much longer on the topic of Bush, suggesting that the president is out of touch with reality. Aides and reporters, however, said that it did not overshadow Bush’s own funny routine, which featured an impersonator who told the audience what Bush was thinking when he spoke dull speech lines.

In fact, some aides crowed over reports that the president easily bested Colbert in the reviews of both comedy acts.”

bwahahahhahahahahaha! The President bested Colbert? Jayzis – will the press just print whatever the administration says without considering for even half a second what they’re writing?

Ah, yes, make, tell, type. Keep up the good work, journalists.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/29.html#a8104

Stephen Colbert totally owns the President right to his face.

Holy smokes, I honestly thought Colbert was going to be yanked from the stage at times. It’s awesome, and Mr. Colbert has a fan for life in me.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/27/congress.oil/index.html

Right. That’s … hilariousesque. Why not just let Congress make the laws? Every time – EVERY TIME Congress has abdicated their role, and given some power to the executive branch, we’ve gotten screwed. Hello? Fool me three, four, ten times, shoot me in the goddamn head? And by “me” I mean Congress, ’cause I’ve never been fooled by monkey-boy.

This is modified from something I wrote to some good friends of mine. Thoughts on what I want out of the work that I do.

—

Museums are interesting things, though. There are good ones, and bad ones. The National Gallery in London? Excellent. Gives you a sense of history, and most importantly, context. Explanations describe this particularly work’s place in history, you get to appreciate its immediate aesthetic value, and the pieces it’s placed next to are often also works by the artist, or works that had some influence on that particular piece, or the movement it belonged to. The Louvre? Excellent. The Tate Modern? Not so much. Not because it was a “modern art” museum, but rather, because the way the exhibits were set up was extremely poor – each piece had no context, and in modern art, fundamentally, context is such a huge portion of *why* something works, or doesn’t work, that without the context, a Pollock is reduced simply to squiggles of paint on a canvas.

The interesting thing about being immersed in thousands of years of art, and finally *getting it* – seeing the progression over time, seeing the phases of certain styles, schools of thought, or even perceptions of what art *was* opened my eyes. I’ve been so concentrated on modern media, such as film and comics, that it’s like comparing the history of say, Boston, as a city, to Rome. Seeing the development of painting over six hundred years, or seeing how the Egyptians and Romans told stories through sculpture, or saw what’s lasted through the ages, and what still provokes an emotional or aesthetic response, even thousands of years later… it changed how I think about art – about expression, and what I *want* out of my career – hell, out of my *life*.

A friend of mine died last year – had an Esctasy-induced heart attack. Stupid waste of a life. But though Kevin (Frostybyte) had been a “hacker” when I knew him, in the years after college, he’d grown into an artist. He created these astonishing LED sculptures that were just … amazing – an amazing combination of engineering and artistic expression. After he died, some of his more current friends had posted various video clips of him, or photos of the things he had made.

I don’t remember the exact phrase that he used in one of the interviews someone had recorded with him, but when asked why he did what he did, he said something to the effect that people don’t look around enough, and appreciate the world around him. The things he made were bright. Blindingly so. His goal was essentially to create things where the light was so bright as to be disorienting – to force the viewer to reassess where they were – to look around, and notice the world around them.

I thought to myself, “I knew Kevin – I knew he was smart. When did he get wise?”

It’s that sort of wisdom – that sort of drive, or vision, or passion that changes the world. Changes how people perceive things, how they understand the world around them. Will Wright does that through games. Kevin did that through his art. Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, David, Da Vinci – they all did this in their time.

I work in games at a fortuitous time. The medium is in great flux, and fundamentally, there have been very few pieces of videogames as “art.” Rez qualifies, I would say. It’s an interactive experience that evokes such a sense of … immersive reaction. It’s not about a story, characters, or anything that one would associate with traditional narrative – instead, it creates a feeling, through the interactivity, that I find almost completely unique to games. Ico, though more character oriented, is like staring at an older painting, and seeing the interplay and symbolism in how the characters are portrayed – the interactivity in Ico is like learning to understand the characters in a great painting through observation.

So, there are a few examples where games manage to evoke something totally unique – but for the most part, people haven’t really figured out that games are really *art*. Like, ART. Not just that they are artistic, or contain artistic qualities. The medium is like a canvas – like a camera, or a paintbrush – the medium is a tool that can convey something to the viewer – but we have a tool that has more potential than any medium has come before, because the potential is there to engage the user in a way that no previous medium ever has.

Do I think I’m the person who’s going to upend the genre? Who will really be a Picasso of our time?

It would be extraordinarily arrogant of me to say so.

But at the same time, I’m not willing to close that door. I’m not willing to settle for less.

So, after getting back from the honeymoon, I’ve been waking up early. Yesterday, at 6am. Today, at 5:10. Not tired, but I’m sure I’m going to crash halfway through the day. I can’t imagine doing this on a regular basis for business (yes, you know who I’m looking at) and remaining sane.

There are worse fates, I suppose, but it’s going to be unpleasant this afternoon when I crash, face down on my desk.