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August 31, 2010

It's This for That

The Inflation of Absurdity

A website has been making the rounds over the past few days, called It's This for That. It's one of those simple, satirical text generators, of which there are dozens by now. This one target's today's technology startups, answering the question, "Wait, what does your startup do?" with a simple ...

August 10, 2010

Top 10 Ways Bartenders Screw Up My Old Fashioneds

Plus, how to make one properly.

The Old Fashioned is one of a few common cocktails for me, both when I'm at home and when I'm out. However, when ordering one at a bar, the likelihood of something going mildly to terribly wrong is disturbingly high. That in mind, I present the Top 10 Ways Bartenders ...

July 12, 2010

Social Games on Trial

NYU Video Game Seminar IV

Jesper Juul has been organizing videogame theory seminars at NYU. This week, I'm going to be participating in the sixth iteration of said series, "social games on trial." Aki Järvinen will take the pro-social games position, and I will fill my court-ordered role as naysayer. The official announcement appears below. ...

July 6, 2010

Thank Galt I've Stockpiled

Let's Laugh at Libertarians

After a few days talking about Marxism here and elsewhere, I figured it would be good to spread my wings and pick on libertarians. Here are two specimens. First, from cartoonist Barry Deutsch comes the 24 Types of Libertarians (or click on the cartoon for a legible version at Deutsch's ...

June 28, 2010

I felt a little like Oppenheimer

Gary Yost on Videogames

Gary Yost, creator of 3D Studio Max, on videogames in San Francisco Magazine: Several years later, Autodesk saw Yost's work and gave him a contract to start developing three-dimensional design software. That got Yost jazzed up; his father was an architect, and he loved the idea of helping to build ...

May 20, 2010

Endless String of Meaningless Buzzwords

The Onion on Foursquare

Leave it to The Onion to say what we're all thinking, or should be, about Web 2.0 "social games" like Foursquare. "Foursquare is a little bit of everything—a friend-finder, a local city guide, an interactive mobile game," said company cofounder Dennis Crowley, as if reading from the same tired script ...

April 30, 2010

To Twee

verb

I'm still using Twitter, for better or worse. But I realized today that I quite frequently abort my tweets before posting them, usually due either to mounting ennui or anticipatory shame. Therefore, I hereby coin the following: "To twee" is to type something into Twitter but then not post it. ...

April 5, 2010

Philosophy Book Guy

I would like to return your quote-unquote Critique

Peter Gratton's letter to a a student, and Graham Harman's response to it, reminded me of an observation I've wanted to share about academic discourse in general. There's a fictional character from The Simpsons known as Comic Book Guy. Offering sarcastic quips about his "favorite" comics and television shows (often ...

January 2, 2010

Please Stand Clear of the Closing Rights

How Disney and Zazzle conspire against me (and you)

I've reported twice on my experience selling things on Zazzle, the custom on-demand online print service for apparel and paper goods. First, just over a year ago, I mentioned the t-shirt designs I had made to riff on the Disney World monorail announcer notice, "Por favor manténgase alejado de las ...

November 25, 2009

Arch-Obscurantist In the House

A note from my critics

I have many critics. Critics are helpful, wonderful creatures who produce as much pleasure as ire, partly because they provide amusement as often as commentary. Normally I don't respond to the more vocally invective ones, but I'm making an exception for "videogames bitch-site" Remedial Waste. They offer the Remedial Lexicon, ...

November 20, 2009

Oh Woe Is Oprah

A Billionaire's Blight

Am I missing something here? Oprah, who has a net worth of roughly $2.5 billion and can do whatever she wants, is crying and soul searching because she is ending her talk show so that she can restart it on her own cable network? ...

October 29, 2009

If You Follow Me...

Twitter and Subtlety

In June 2007, Ian McCarthy and I started performing Wandering Rocks on Twitter each Bloomsday. My original explanation of our project began with the phrase "I do not like Twitter." I hadn't realized it until today, but back in June (almost exactly two years after our first effort), my name ...

October 15, 2009

Art on Spec

Thoughts on Kickstarter

A relatively new service called Kickstarter, which describes itself as a funding platform for artists. Writers, filmmakers, musicians, and other creators can post projects to the site with attached budgets, which visitors can fund via pledges. If the budget is met within the specified time, the project gets funded. Otherwise, ...

October 12, 2009

Disney: We Own the Concept of the Castle

Fun with Infringement

Almost a year ago, I wrote about my modest success selling t-shirt designs on Zazzle.com that artfully depict the Disney World monorail announcer's characteristic Por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas. In that piece, I also drew attention to the ways products like this exert fandom by commercially exploiting holes ...

October 8, 2009

She is beautiful, and I love her

New Yorker parodies the New York Times

This is already a month old, but I'm just seeing it now: the New Yorker ran a set of satirical New York Times videogame reviews, in response to the Seth Schiesel fawn over The Beatles: Rock Band (to which I responded strongly, in case you forgot). My favorites: A princess ...

September 7, 2009

"Life goes on within you and without you"

On The Beatles: Rock Band

Last week, the NY Times published Seth Schiesel's effusive review of The Beatles: Rock Band. Calling the game a "transformative entertainment experience," Schiesel argued that it "may be the most important video game yet made." Schiesel's logic is sensical: the combination of Beatles + videogame gives baby boomers something ...

July 1, 2009

Letter of Inquiry Template

With apologies to my journalist friends

Dear Expert, I am a journalist writing for Publication, a newspaper/ magazine/ website serving a Major Market or Niche Audience. I am working on a story about Your Area of Expertise, although I'll admit don't know much about it. I wonder: instead of doing research myself on the story I ...

June 2, 2009

Every Computer Animated Film Ever

A universal plot summary, summer 2009 edition

It's time to test my theory of computer animated film plots against the latest examples of that form, DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens and Pixar's Up. In case you are too lazy to click through, here's the theory again in its entirety: After the worst of a long series of well-meaning ...

May 12, 2009

Quarantine, Surgical Masks, and Biohazard Suits

The Insane Japanese Response to Swine Flu

A week ago, I wrote about the irrationality surrounding so-called swine flu, in the context of Killer Flu, a videogame Persuasive Games created about seasonal and pandemic flu. This week, I received an unexpected email from the organizers of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, which is scheduled ...

February 21, 2009

Boil Me Elmo

A product concept

Who wouldn't buy one, I ask you? Just imagine how the whistle would sound. ...