Nostalgia not just for childhood literature but to things I’ve already linked to.
I’ve already linked to Aaron Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games project in a previous post, but I feel like I misrepresented it somewhat. For instance, the scope is broader than I mentioned: it doesn’t just include the Infocom-style computer text adventure games, but “a history of digital games without graphics.”
That includes stuff I hadn’t realized, like the fact that The Oregon Trail started as a text-only game written in BASIC, released the year I was born! And it also includes a story of the creation of The Cave of Time, the first Choose Your Own Adventure book. That’s full of interesting details I hadn’t known before, such as the fact that the CYOA games and contemporary computer games were developed in parallel, instead of one idea influencing the other. Also, that the format predated The Cave of Time and the disappointingly litigious CYOA brand.
The series is turning out to be more interesting than I’d first expected it to be, and I’ve gone from “I’ll have to check that out sometime” to “Am I actually going to have to subscribe to something on substack?” after reading just a couple of entries.
It also reminds me of why I first wanted to get into computer programming. I was about 10 or 11 years old, I was at my friend Jason’s house, and his family had recently gotten a Commodore VIC-20, the first “home computer” I’d ever seen. I was just amazed that you could type something and it would show up on a TV screen. They started to show me how it played games as well, and while I can’t remember what game they chose, I do remember that it started by asking you to type in player names. His sister typed in “ASSWIPE (JASON)”, which resulted in 10 or 15 minutes of the computer happily calling him an asswipe. I thought it was the most brilliant thing I’d ever seen.
The spark of inspiration took hold of me that day, and I vowed to commit my life to exploring the profound potential of interactive entertainment.
I like that Hasbro’s making high-concept, detailed toys for Ghostbusters fans, but it seems like an odd choice to recast Peter Venkman with the national disgrace Ted Cruz.
Not that anyone asked, but the reason I was looking at the Hasbro site was because they’ve announced a new toy figure based on the old Star Wars comic character Jaxxon the space rabbit. Nerds tend to take their fandoms way too seriously, and it’s good to remember every once in a while how much of it is inherently silly.
Last month, there was a retrospective of the Zork adventure game, by Aaron Reed as part of his 50 Years of Text Games series. As somebody who’s always loved the history, packaging, and stories surrounding these games — but has never much enjoyed playing the games themselves — I’m looking forward to reading the whole series.
I’m still comparison-shopping EVs, and I’ve got some questions.
I’ve been “researching” (read: watching YouTube videos about) electric vehicles for several weeks now, and a lot of the same ideas keep recurring: tips to speed up fast-charging time, maximizing battery life, maximizing range, etc. But never having owned an EV or spent a long time looking into them, there are a few things I can’t figure out.
I’ve had an entirely too charitable impression of car reviewers One thing I’ve learned from watching lots of car reviews is that car reviewers mostly suck. There are obvious exceptions, but as someone who’s never been particularly interested in cars, I’ve always just assumed that reviewers are well familiar with all the myriad details about cars that are lost on me. But I’ve been surprised by how many reviews get the basic details wrong, ignore aspects of the car that are obviously specific to a review situation, or go on about aspects of the car that are irrelevant to drivers that aren’t reviewers. Is it all Top Gear‘s fault?
What’s the deal with the front trunk? Speaking of terrible reviews: what the hell is this garbage review of the ID.4? The reviewer was biased against the car from the start, but that’s okay because I was biased against the review for being from a Gawker site. (Yes, I know that Gawker Media doesn’t exist anymore, but the taint is inescapable). What’s odd to me, though, is that this isn’t the only review I’ve seen to waste so much time talking about the lack of a front trunk.
It’s an absurd complaint. The closest I’ve seen to a reasonable explanation is that it’s convenient to keep the charging cable in there, but I’m not buying it. Is this supposed to be a real complaint?
How do Elon Musk’s fanboys justify a proprietary super charger network? I’ve been in the SF Bay Area enough to see a depressing number of men go glassy-eyed and speak in reverent tones about how Musk’s visionary work is going to save our fragile planet. I’ve been so eager to get into a situation of no longer talking to them, that I never got to ask them the obvious question: how do they justify making the super charger network proprietary and exclusive to Tesla owners? Obviously, the ubiquity of the network is a selling point for the cars, but wouldn’t it be best for everyone to encourage more EV purchases in the US, while at the same time charging non-Tesla drivers for the convenience?
Are crossover SUVs really as popular as people keep saying? The thing I found most surprising when I started comparing cars: there are almost no affordable options for 200+ mile range in a sedan, coupe, or hatchback. As far as I can tell, there’s just the Chevy Bolt or the Tesla Model 3. I understand that bigger batteries give better range, but I’m stunned that more manufacturers haven’t gone the ID.3 route, and that Volkswagen hasn’t made the ID.3 available in the US. The explanation was “Americans want SUVs.” I can’t tell if that’s a real thing or just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I haven’t been watching Tiny Secret Whispers on the streaming services, but I almost feel like I don’t need to after seeing Seth Meyers’s fantastic recaps on Late Night. His check-ins with Delgado, Packer, and the twins is my favorite recurring segment on the show.
I also saw a couple of trailers this week that look pretty interesting and/or genre-bending:
Kevin Can Fuck Himself starring Annie Murphy in what seems to be a combination sitcom/black comedy about revenge murder. Is it a series? A TV movie? No idea, but it looks interesting and is on AMC.
Made for Love will be on HBO Max and star Cristin Milioti, who has been in a ton of really cool stuff, but whom I will always think of as Your Mother. Highlights of this trailer are of course Ray Romano reciting “Crazy in Love” but especially “I thought those were metaphors!”
How Volkswagen Will Recycle Electric Vehicle Batteries. This is marketing material from Volkswagen USA, so approach with an appropriate level of skepticism. But I was interested to see that they seem to have a plan, since for so long I’ve been hearing naysayers claim that EV batteries are going to be just as big an ecological hazard in a few years as carbon emissions are now.
Disney’s also released photos of the remodeled Moana-themed rooms at the Polynesian Village resort. As much as I want the Polynesian to stay stuck in perpetual 1971, it’s pretty clear that guests paying those prices are going to want something that feels more current. I think it looks like they did a pretty great job of balancing Character-Filled-Disney-Hotel with Luxury-Hotel-in-the-21st-Century.
A fairly new YouTube channel makes getting pissed about the environment fun again
Well, that didn’t last very long. Earlier in the week, I was wondering whether it would be such a bad thing if I got an internal combustion engine car and just didn’t drive it very often. After discovering the Climate Town YouTube channel, I’m resolving to never buy gasoline ever again. Not necessarily because I believe I have a huge impact on the environment, but out of spite for the gas companies that I now hate so much.
I suspect the idea behind the channel is that the messaging around climate change has for so long been dry and boring, angry and alarmist, or guilt-tripping. Rollie Williams decided to make videos that were a call to action, but also kind of funny. It worked for me, at least: some of these were things I was vaguely aware of, but had either never put the pieces together, or I’d completely forgotten about them.
The “carbon footprint” is the one that really got me, because it reminded me of my history of being gullible and letting corporate marketing campaigns manipulate me. Back in high school, I would dutifully tear apart all of the plastic soda-can yokes before tossing them in the recycling, never once questioning why it wasn’t Coke’s responsibility to come up with something better than plastic soda-can yokes.
Fully Charged on the Hyundai Ioniq 5 Launch: I think this channel has been mentioned on here before, but it’s another attempt (with Robert Llewellyn of Red Dwarf) to put an entertaining spin on electric vehicles and cleaner energy
If you missed the video of the Perseverance Rover’s Landing on Mars, you really should watch it. I don’t understand how they kept their voices steady; I didn’t watch it until after I already knew what happened, and I was still nervous the whole time.
NASA also released audio recorded from the surface of Mars. But since the rover has its own Twitter account, I was just disappointed that they didn’t follow up the tweet with the video with one that said, “Well that blew up! While you’re here, check out my soundcloud….”
This week I’ve been a little pre-occupied thinking about the Teenage Engineering OP-1. Actually, that’s not quite accurate: for the past five or six years, I’ve been a little pre-occupied thinking about the OP-1.
It’s something I’ve talked myself out of, dozens if not hundreds of times. But I keep being drawn to it, even as someone who’s by no means imaginable a musician, much less a professional one. The problem is that no rational counter-argument has worked for me because the draw is largely irrational: from the industrial design, to the UI, to the sounds coming out of it, to the advertising, it feels like an object made completely to inspire fun and creativity.
Previously, the argument that I always used to talk myself out of it — apart from the eye-wateringly, guilt-inducingly high price — is that I can just use GarageBand on my iPhone or iPad and immediately get better results, since I understand much better how the tools work. That’s still undeniably true, but it also misses the point. It’s not just that a well-designed device with tactile buttons and knobs and cows and gorillas on the display is more fun to use. The whole process of not knowing exactly what you want and how to get it immediately is the whole point of exploring and experimenting.
(To a point. Over the years, I’ve gotten several of the Pocket Operators. They’re super fun and appealing at first, but I’ve quickly gotten frustrated with them and tossed them into a bucket to sit while their batteries corrode).
Anyway, here’s some interesting stuff I’ve see this week!
Composer David Bruce collaborated last year with Jeremy Blake of Red Means Recording, to do an orchestral arrangement of one of Blake’s now-iconic OP-1 compositions he does on YouTube. It’s a neat idea because it breaks down so many of the preconceptions about and divisions between different types of music and musical performance, suggesting that at its heart, it’s all about expression. Also an orchestral interpretation of an electronic beat drop is just rad.
op1.fun has a ton of individual sounds and sound packs available for downloading to the OP-1. (And other synthesizers, presumably). One of my favorites at the moment is the Lofi Hip Hop N Chill pack by “Lord_Shongo”
My first weekly round-up happens to be a birthday celebration
I haven’t been consistently keeping up with the Tuesday Two-Fer and Semi-New Sunday posts, but I’ve been feeling bad about it, which is at least something. I think I do better with scheduled posts. So I’m going to borrow an idea from writer Jim C Hines and devote Fridays to a link round-up, including anything interesting I’ve found over the previous week.
(For the record, I tried typing “Friday’s Alright” to get it a little closer to the song, but it almost physically pains me to type “alright”).
Today’s is a special entry because it’s Jason’s birthday, and he’s the best. Join me in wishing him a great day!
“Searching for Shelley Duvall” in The Hollywood Reporter also has nothing to do with birthdays, and is even more than a little sad, but there’s a wonderfully positive undercurrent to it. A sense that our humanity means so much more than the shallow and temporary trappings of celebrity.
I keep getting older and I keep taking pictures of it.
The last of the New Year’s traditions that I forgot about: for the past couple years, I’ve been taking a picture of myself every day and compiling them into a timelapse. I didn’t get every day of 2020, because 2020 was awful and there were a few months I didn’t feel like indulging in something so stupid.
But, like I’ve said elsewhere: time just keeps happening, even after you want it to stop, so it’d be a waste not to watch it happen.
It’s amusing to think that before I shaved my head back in May, I was a little “worried” that it wouldn’t grow back at all, or that it’d grow in solid white like my beard has. (I say “worried” just because I want to try the novelty of being one of those aging hippies with a pony tail or braid at least once in my life. I actually enjoyed being bald, and I’m kind of looking forward to white hair).
Turns out that I didn’t need to worry about that at all; not only has it grown back with a vengeance, I’ve learned that all the money I’ve spent on haircuts over the years was wasted, since my hair in a state of nature just gravitates towards late-1980s Game Show Host.
For the past few years, we’ve been able to take advantage of our friends’ hospitality and enjoy some fantastic Hawaiian-inspired osechi on New Year’s Day.
Since that’s impossible this year, I decided to stumble my way through making spam musubi, which although not traditionally part of the Japanese osechi, is always my favorite part of the spread and also one of my favorite parts of being a human on the planet Earth.
I even bought my own musubi rice mold to be able to make it whenever I wanted. Who would’ve thought that combining pork with lots of salt and sugar would be so good?
Today’s attempt started out with a lot of 2020 energy. There wasn’t enough nori left for more than three pieces, which I hadn’t realized until I’d already fried five. I’d put too much seasoned vinegar in the sushi rice, so it was overly sweet and tart — I haven’t had a sense of smell since I was little, but for some reason heated vinegar is one of the only things I can smell, so whenever I use it, I tend to get carried away. And I put a little too much sugar in the musubi sauce, so it ended up less “caramelized” and more “like burnt caramel.”
So I improvised and turned the remainder into a spam musubi bowl with an over-easy egg on top. (It’s probably safe, but I still don’t trust sunny side eggs in the US). It ended up tasting like bacon with burnt, salted caramel, with a sweet and tart under taste from the rice.
And I can’t say I’m mad about it, even a little bit. This was unplanned, excessive, and the result of a series of minor mistakes, but it was more delicious than anything I cook has a right to be.
So I’m taking this as the first good omen of 2021. Here’s to a year of continuing to fail upward!
As I’ve already said hundreds of times privately and a few times on this blog, this has been the worst year of my life, and I won’t be sad to leave 2020 behind and hope for a better 2021.
But built into that whole idea of the years changing is the idea that stuff just keeps happening, whether you want it to or not. Throughout this shitty year, occasional joyful moments popped up. In the past, I would’ve thought it’s petty, simple-minded, or tone-deaf to try and acknowledge mundane happy things in a time that was otherwise profoundly sad. But now, I think it’s even more important to acknowledge the things that bring you joy.
These are some of the things that made my 2020 suck slightly less. I’ve mentioned several of them already, but I think they deserve another round.
Dirty Projectors
I was trying to get to sleep one night, and YouTube recommended the silly, weird, happy video for “Break-Thru,” from a band I’d never heard of. For me, this was a bigger deal than just discovering a band I liked. It helped knock me out of a funk and get re-inspired about the whole artistic process, in a way that reminded me of seeing St Vincent on Austin City Limits for the first time, or seeing Talking Heads in Stop Making Sense for the first time, or seeing the B-52’s video for “Legal Tender.”
I think it helps that I don’t understand music at all, so I don’t have to turn off the part of my brain that tries to over-analyze and pick apart everything. I know that there’s something deeper and more interesting going on with this music, even if I couldn’t hope to explain what it was.
It also set me off on a quest to seek out more music I hadn’t heard before. That hasn’t really resulted in any other New Favorite Band Evers, but it has pushed me to hear some interesting stuff I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
Piranesi
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is such a wonderful book, and any description of it is going to be criminally reductionistic. For me, it was especially valuable this year because of its sad but hopeful tone — it was a celebration of wonder, faith, and naïveté that was neither cynical, nor blind to the genuine sadness and cruelty of the world.
The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse
I’ve already been a fan of the Mickey Mouse shorts for the past few years — it’s odd to realize that they’re no longer “new” — and so I would’ve thought The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse on Disney+ was a confusing and unnecessary re-branding. But there does seem to be a subtle shift in this new series. They seem more “dense” than the earlier shorts, packed with more gags and references than most viewers will catch in one viewing. One short will use Robin Hood and The Black Cauldron character designs when referencing The Brave Little Tailor; another one will be an extended cross between Xanadu and Mousercise crossed with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
They’re also hilarious. There have been some fantastic moments in the shorts up until now, but the new series seems to have a dozen laugh-out-loud bits in every short.
Rise of the Resistance
It seems like a lifetime ago, but we did actually get to go to Disneyland in February and rise the Rise of the Resistance twice. It’s a really impressive attraction, and I think the only reason I wasn’t more blown away is because I’d gone in expecting a 15 and it “only” delivered an 11 on a scale of 1-10.
We also got to tour Galaxy’s Edge with our friends Polly and Dan, back when seeing friends in person was a thing. I hope that makes a comeback this year. I usually get too much anxiety over having to schedule and make sure everyone in the group is getting to do what they want to do, that in the past I’ve just opted to skip meeting up with anyone during trips. If nothing else, I’ve learned to stop taking that for granted and make more of an effort to see friends.
The Mandalorian Season 2
I’ve already commented more than enough on my love for The Mandalorian, but it’s done such an amazing job of doing two completely separate and opposite things. On the one hand, it’s taken me back more effectively than anything else to the feeling of being a Star Wars-obsessed kid in the 80s, and being rewarded with these huge shared cultural moments with the release of the new movies. At the same time, though, it’s gotten me interested in Star Wars as an ongoing thing, instead of simply regurgitating, recombining, and re-celebrating the things I used to love.
Ditching Facebook, Mostly
I’m not bringing it up just to be petty; deactivating my Facebook account has genuinely felt like a weight’s been lifted. I’d be happier if I could delete my account entirely, but Oculus and Messenger are still too useful. I’m still on Instagram more than I should be, but “the magic is gone,” and I don’t feel as compelled to broadcast every single thing that happens to me. (Which, granted, is easier in a year when nothing is happening to me, but I hope I can keep it up going forward).
It also means I’m not at all compelled to dye my beard as a dumb New Year’s Eve stunt, so it’s already paying dividends.
Seeing Georgians Vote Democrat
I think the whole “red state/blue state” idea is not only simple-minded, but horrible for our entire democratic process. That said, until we can get rid of the electoral college altogether, it’s been encouraging to see a majority of people in my home state reject the wave of hateful, bigoted, obstructionist, selfish bullshit that has taken over the past couple of decades.
The entire country voted overwhelmingly for Biden — whether it was a vote for the Biden/Harris campaign, or a vote against the past four years, it has the same end result — and it’s important to remember that the Fair Fight and similar campaigns didn’t just create new Democrats, but instead energized the people who’ve always been there. We need to stop letting people convince us that the country is more homogenous and less diverse than it actually is.
I never thought I’d see my home state vote for a Democratic president again in my lifetime, so even though it’s entirely symbolic, and even though I know the Democratic party isn’t going to magically fix everything, just seeing the state “turn blue” has given me hope for the future.
Merry Christmas from as close as I can get to the tropics sitting here on my couch
This video from Tom Scott from 7 years ago remains a favorite, both as somebody who’s been a fan of the song “Mele Kalikimaka” for a long time, but never thought much about it; and as somebody who tends to get inordinately interested in weird quirks of linguistics.
Continuing the theme of somewhat-tropical Christmas: my unwitting life coach How Bowers released a new video on his Liquid Luau channel with a chocolate-mint-ginger-ice cream drink that sounds almost good enough to make me want to brave going to a liquor store. Mele Kalikimaka!
