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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Follow the White Rabbit
Yes, it took me that long to recover from E3. Or maybe I knew that I would have to tell you about the Playboy Mansion next, and I've been delaying telling you because the topic has come up in conversation with friends ever since P. and I went, and don't you find even the most lively anecdote gets terribly boring when you repeat it for the fifteenth time? I'm a writer, not a performing artist. Big sigh. Okay, so anecdote repetition isn't exactly a world hunger-sized problem. I'll just get on with it, shall I?
This was an event to mark the beginning of development on a videogame called Playboy: The Mansion, in which you play Hugh Hefner himself. (For more on the game, check out my column here. And while you're at it, you might as well read my other E3 column here.) The beginning of development, mark you. They didn't even have a half-finished game to show the fifty or so journalists who gathered there. Kids, can you say vaporware?
Not that any of us were complaining. We were too busy drinking, smoking cigars and gawping at Bunnies. Yep, it was star treatment from the moment we stepped out of the stretch limo and into the courtyard of what is a surprisingly small and intimate dwelling. People really live here, you think; this isn't Disneyland. As if the Kleenex and baby oil on trays everywhere hadn't tipped you off about that.
We were being hosted by four Bunnies, including Miss May and the actress who played the blonde on Growing Pains. They were decked out in suede jackets and skirts -- just enough coverage to prevent gawping, although P. was there to slam my jaw shut if need be. She was, after all, my wife for the day. (That is, my e-mail to the pre-event PR point person read "would it be okay to bring my girlfriend?" and the reply read "no problem -- your wife is now on the guest list.") The pace was quite leisurely, no doubt deliberately so. I had enough time to down five cranberry-and-vodkas, smoke probably the largest and tastiest cigar of my life, and thoroughly amuse my bouche before the Bunnies began the tour. We could have been taking a turn around Peoria City Hall for all I cared at that point.
Nevertheless, I saw enough to confirm what we knew all along: Hef is a man to envy with every ounce of your internal green monster. It's hard to fault him on anything in his home. Nothing is large enough to be gaudy; most rooms have an almost historic quaintness in their modular design; everything is geared towards the comfort of guests. The zoo alone should be enough to prove he knows how to spend money. We had a fine time hanging out with the peacocks, the parrots, the flamingos, the spider monkeys -- and of course, the ever-so-cute bunny rabbits.
Daily Blah for... Friday, May 16, 2003
Die, E3, Die
Ah yes, E3. Did I forget to mention I was at E3 this week (translation for non-gamers: the Electronic Entertainment Expo)? Did I forget to mention, perhaps, that I went to the Playboy Mansion? Well, I am, and I did. Now it's Friday afternoon and I am so very ready to get the hell out of this show. The rumbling my-game's-louder-than-yours bass of the booths and the sheer adolescent gawkiness of the games geeks who clog up the corridors by stopping and gawping and pulling out a digicam every time they see a semi-naked my-game's-hotter-than-yours booth babe -- well, they start to grate on my soul every year about this time, and I always tell myself I'm never doing this again. This is my fourth E3.
My workdays have contained nothing but appointments with games companies since Tuesday. Each of them go something like this. You squeeze through the slack-jawed hordes to an ever-more crowded reception desk under epilepsy-inducing colored lights, and try to yell your name and the fact that you have an appointment to the surly-looking receptionist. She will yell "what?" and look at you as if you just crawled off her shoe. Eventually you will establish your identity and, after a little more work, the concept of appointments. It will transpire that there was a piece of paper in front of her with your name on it all the time. No matter whom your appointment was with, your name goes into the random PR person generator and come out with someone completely unknown and impossibly thin and tanned, who will always greet you with the same toothy smile and falsetto "hiiiiyyyy!" as if you were a distant cousin whose name she couldn't quite place, and this were a wedding. A full-on, Indian-style three-day wedding.
From this point on you will be treated like a rock star, plied with sugar snacks and sugarwater and swag, have all your jokes laughed at with the same false laugh, and be whisked in and out of conference rooms to see a dizzying selection of games in varying stages of completion. You will not have enough time to play any of them. You will not be able to hear them because the prefab felt walls are shaking. Some demos will interest you, in which case they will last two minutes. You will never see these games again. Some will bore you to tears, in which case they will last fifteen and contained a detailed examination of a dozen different customizable skateboards. You will receive calls about these games for the next month, "just to follow up."
You will spend about three minutes before and after each demo shaking hands and exchanging nothing pleasantries with each of the five poor slobs who spent the last year working on this piece of crap and are simply glad to see other human beings. Then you will wonder where all the time has gone, why all your appointments are overrunning, and why you don't feel like you've really seen anything that matters. Finally, the PR bunny will ask in the most nonchalant way possible: "so, do you know what you'll be covering yet?" You will say something noncommittal, and with a final toothy grin, she will drop you like a wet stone.
Still, I did get to go to the Playboy Mansion.
I'm never doing this again.
Green Code Reload
I had to do it. Even though I was on seven kinds of deadline and had run myself into the ground at E3 for two full days, I had to take two and a half hours off to go see Matrix Reloaded with friends last night at Mann's Village in Westwood. It was the perfect theater, and the perfect night -- opening night. The vibe, the cheers, the laughter as the curtain rose was incredible. You don't get that kind of sheer collective geek excitement for less than $10 everyday.
There were cheers at the end, too, but many felt disappointed. Including my friends (who had waited in line for three hours and raised their expectations beyond hope of recovery). The movie felt a little sloppy to them, a little rushed, a little sprawling. And so it was. Nobody could claim the sequel was more tightly plotted than the original, or the dialog as wittily concise. But by the Architect, it had guts. It had soul. It tried so hard, like the scarecrow, to have a brain. I respect its originality, its philosophical yearnings, its attempt to outdo the original concept. How many movie trilogies tell you not only that the world you know does not exist, but also that the world you thought existed in place of the world you thought existed may not even exist itself?
I'm glad I barely got any sleep last night, because the scene with the Architect would have given me nightmares. I won't spoil it for you, but there's a lot of the kind of reality-within-reality stuff that really messes with my head and makes me want to hide beneath a blanket. I have weird fears. Oh, and did anyone else notice the blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of both Presidents Bush on the Architect's screens when he's explaining that he had to create a world as evil as the original? Nice subliminal politics, boys.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 13, 2003
When I Get Older, Losing My Neuroticism
Isn't it wonderful when you see stories in the news that totally contradict what you were saying the day before? I may have condemned late twentysomethings to a life of desperate deception, but science has not given up on them. A new study by the American Psychological Association says our personality is nowhere near set by age 30. In what psychologists call the "big five" traits -- conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion and (to my mind the most sinister one) agreeableness, we keep changing throughout our thirties, generally in a positive direction. No word on whether "agreeableness" translates as "less likely to fake stories for a major national newspaper," or just "more likely to end every argument with 'yes, dear, I agree with you.'"
Daily Blah for... Monday, May 12, 2003
L'affaire Blair
Not surprisingly, my journalism school class e-mail list was abuzz today about Jayson Blair, serial fabulist and column inch-filler at the New York Times. One very prominent colleague went so far as to claim a previous relationship with Blair at another newspaper, during which he had been asked for -- and provided -- a "roadmap" for how Blair could get a job at the esteemed NYT (presumably a less convoluted cartographical device than the one currently being wanly waved at Israel). When we pressed him further on the nature of this roadmap, our friend refused to divulge a word until someone promised him a byline for his scoop. There is honor among thieves, but not, it would seem, among journalists.
We're all byline hungry, we hacks. I think this is what caused Blair's penchant for plagiarism. See, what interests me most about the disgraced reporter, when trying to suss out his motives, is his age: 27. That's the same age Stephen Glass was five years ago, back when he ripped a hole in the New Republic's credibility with his own admission of creative writing (with perfect timing, Glass is releasing his first novel this month). And it's roughly the same age Janet Cooke was in 1981, when she fabricated her resume, walked into the Washington Post's newsroom and made up the Pulitzer prize-winning tale of an eight-year-old heroin addict. Do we sense a pattern here?
There is a funny kind of pressure some of us late twentysomethings -- the type A's -- put on ourselves. We peer into the future and see the time-consuming task of raising children taking us from here to the end; the cradle, then the grave. If we're going to make our mark in our chosen profession, we think, the time is now. We become unusually hungry for respect and adulation. It gets personal. Stephen Glass said he confused people liking his stories with liking him. And how many of us can honestly say we haven't invented ourselves a little? Embellished our cocktail party anecdotes? Plagiarized a bon mot or two?
True, there's a huge difference between what we say in casual banter and what we write on the front page of the New York Times. But the Blair case is only shocking because of the august publication his roadmap took him to. If he had made up quotes for, say, the National Enquirer, or the Weekly World News, or for that matter most of the British tabloids, he would not be the talk show topic du jour. And whom do these publications rely on? Who stokes their engine rooms? That's right: byline-hungry hacks in their late twenties and early thirties. You've got to watch us. Ambition, attitude and active imagination make us dangerous.
I suppose this is the point where I make my own full disclosure: I have never fabricated a quote in a published story, nor have I plagiarized, nor pretended to be at the scene of a story by taking details from a photograph, as Blair did (which sounds like way too much work; why not just go there?). But I'm not so proud or morally arrogant as to believe I would never have done these things, had things worked out differently. After all, I did cut my journalistic teeth at those British tabs. At J-school, I was voted most likely to edit the National Enquirer. If I worked for a publication with a pressure-cooker environment and a tradition of subtle fakery; if I hadn't had such good friends, lovers and mentors ... well, I could easily have been among the legions of cases worse than Blair's. The hacks with no reality check. The ones who never get caught.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, May 08, 2003
Shed the Pounds, Seventies' Style
Ever wondered what would happen if you fell through a time warp and decided to start following the Weight Watchers' diet from 1974? No? Then, dear reader, you have not one jot of the imagination required to be a Daily Blah reader. Go. Begone. I banish thee.
Seriously. I'm waiting.
Still here? Good. Then click away.
How to Be a Bad Guy
More jealousy-provoking news from the my-job's-so-cool dept.: yesterday afternoon I got to go to a free showing of X-Men 2 at the Metreon. A local special effects company called Discreet had provided much of the software that made the movie, and -- contrary to their name, it would seem -- wanted to show off the results. Me, I wanted a few hours of guilt-free entertainment in the middle of my work day without officially goofing off.
I was also a fan of the first movie, and of the sensitive way Bryan Singer handled the mutant Marvel universe without sniggering at it behind his hand. In with the leatherbound superheroics, Singer seamlessly blended believable realpolitik -- in the shape of Senator Kelly and his McCarthyite mutant registration bill. X-Men 2 starts promisingly enough along these lines, with a mutant assassin attacking the Oval Office and the inevitable 9/11-style backlash that results. But this time round the villain, William Stryker (Brian Cox), turns out to be more disappointingly cartoonish than Senator Kelly. Stryker is an improbable cross between Dr. Mengele and John Ashcroft; a mutant-hating scientist who found the time to experiment on his own son and simultaneously -- we're never told how -- managed to worm his way into the White House in some sort of National Security role.
The longer the movie goes on -- and it does go on, about half-an-hour more than it should -- the less believable Stryker becomes. Which is a shame, because the central premise -- human race starts next stage of evolution, politicians play to knee-jerk panic and prejudice -- is, sadly, very believable indeed. The more we can place a villain in the subtle, shade-of-grey world of our experience, the scarier he becomes. I'm surprised at Singer, because he seemed to get it. What was that great quote from the Usual Suspects? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist. (And before you write in -- yes, I know that was originally a line by Baudelaire).
Speaking of subtlety -- and being discreet -- I was relieved that the special effects didn't try to wow you into submission. Particularly impressive were the shots where Cerebro displays every human being and mutant in the world. The figures start out as innumerable red and blue stars in the firmament and slowly come into soft, dream-like focus. Marvelous.
Woh. Cool.
It was very pleasant to be obliquely referenced in the tagline on the cover of this week's Time. Under "Secrets of the New Matrix," it read "we're the first to see the movie and play the videogame." That's me, that is! Well, the videogame part, at least (I still haven't seen the movie). Not only did this honor spring from a mere two-column story on Enter the Matrix, the game released next week alongside the movie, but I wasn't even here to write it. I tossed it off from London, in that Internet cafe, without my notes, mostly from the hazy memory of my visit to Shiny two weeks previously (during which I was indeed the first journalist to get my hands on the final version of the game). Thank God for factcheckers.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, May 06, 2003
Richard Marsh, Master Satirist
Everyone, this is Richard. (Hi, Richard). Rich, this is everyone. Richard is one of my dear college-era friends whom I can't believe I've known for ten years. He's a video editor and extraordinarily prolific part-time playwright. When I managed to meet up with him in London last week, he harangued me (in the nicest possible way) for not having produced a novel in all the time he'd known me. This was due, he knew, not to me having too few ideas, but too many. What he said over a few beers in a noisy South London pub made me laugh, and I insisted he write it down in my Treo. "Chris," it reads, "you are a beagle in the woods. There are too many scents. The colors are too bright. Remember: you only have one wet nose and four legs. This is my message to you."
On my return, he sent me this satirical Daily Blah entry, which amused me so much I wanted to put it in the real thing. Or at least, a bowdlerized version (sorry, Rich, but this is a family blog). It was entitled "The Daily Blah You Haven't Seen Like It Really Is If There Were Any Truth Or Justice In The World, Or At Least Me, Chris Taylor, Who Isn't Really Writing This But I'm In Character At The Moment":
Hello Blahjunky,
My name is Chris Taylor. I write for Time magazine (short for 'if-i-don't-stay-up-all-night-i-won't-get-it-in-on-...). I'm a charming fellow, if a bit short. I'm talking about my attention span!
I shouldn't really be writing this blog at the moment - I've got a story to write and - oh, btw - I'm moving house.
I have just had a three week holiday in Europe. I got stomach poisoning, and thirteen ideas for a novel. In fact, series of novels. They're not set on earth, they're set on a really cool alternate universe of my devising. Really cool, but unfinished. Universe one, I mean. That's the only really cool universe I've roughly mapped out so far. I mean, they're all great universes, but a bit fuzzy because it's quite easy to come up with an idea for a really cool universe, but finishing it off takes time. And that I don't have a lot of! I'm tech correspondent for Time magazine, and I'm really into music and alternative lifestyle experiments. OMG, have you seen what the imac can do with your digistills?
Oh deary deary me, I have to write this article for America's weekly Time magazine about the electronics industry. I live in San Francisco, California. Moving house is quite a bind!
As tech correspondent for Time (circulation 25 million Americans, many of whom use electricity almost daily) I often write articles about the obsessive documenting of the ephemeral and how the entry-point for archiving is so low that immensely pure truth can now be discovered almost by accident through the neo-Tourettic capture of the everyday. I have a degree in history.
Okay, okay - I know. I know! There's an article to write for Time mag, I know! But I gots to box up these LucasArts 1st-personers and like move house and then reprogram my i-pod. 'Cos boy do I pod. I do, I pod all the time, why be ashamed?
So, anyway (Strike a light! Moving house! Oy!) I've been Christ Aylor, Novelist.
I am a beagle in the woods.
Home Again, For the First Time
They invented the word "discombobulated" for moments like this. It is, of course, a tautology. Have you ever met anyone who described themselves as "combobulated?" My theory is we're all discombobulated -- some more than others.
Excuse me while I spray quotation marks liberally through the following paragraph. The discombobulation moment in question involves flying "home", which is 6,000 from my "home country," where I spent two of the past three weeks. This "home", however, is a place I have never lived in before, and right now, filled as it is with packing materials, feels less like "home" than my "home country". On the other hand, it is a more naturally "homely" place than the "home" I left across town, and moving in with P. makes it even more so (cf. earlier entry about home being other people). Yet she isn't exactly combobulated either, having entered an equally unfamiliar "home" with most of of her possessions stuck in yet another "home" across town. The enormity and surreality of the whole moving-in-together thing is just starting to hit us.
We were both pretty damn jet-lagged when we flew in on Sunday afternoon. I went to bed at 6pm yesterday, slept the clock round, and I'm still tired. There's little food in the fridge apart from milk, a bag of peas and a box of chocolate liqueurs, and finding a piece of cutlery in this mess is a major victory. I still haven't found my Netgear router, so we're using (some might say leeching) some kindly neighbor's wi-fi for most of our Internet access. Which neighbor, we don't yet know, but all I can say is hooray for Noe Valley -- where they don't lock their doors or password protect their wi-fi networks.
Daily Blah for... Friday, May 02, 2003
Holiday Reading
I'm way too much of a bookworm to be happy with just one or two tomes on vacation. It's all I can do to stop myself stuffing a suitcase full of novels and hefty nonfiction. Not that I'm a particularly voracious reader -- I just love dipping in and out of a wide selection of books, a chapter here, a chapter there. I'm promiscuous rather than prolific.
This time, however -- and this could be another sign of me getting old -- I have been very, very happy with just two books. The first is Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel. This is a kind of compendium of travel philosophy, but anyone who knows Botton's style -- he wrote How Proust Can Change Your Life and the Consolations of Philosophy -- knows it's much more than that. The author is a past master at putting grand ideas together in a very unassuming style: nutritious, honest, immediate, heartfelt, funny, full of those amazing small details in life we recognize but repeatedly miss, and free of big words. I love the line from Botton's trip to Barbados where, after being unable to stop his mind chattering away about its worries on a tropical beach, he realizes "I had inadvertently brought myself." And the chapter on Ruskin is, as P. says, worth the price of entry all by itself.
The second book is Iain Pears' Instance of the Fingerpost. It's a historical and highly literate thriller set in the murky world of 1660's Oxford. A single murder is seen through four different and very biased eyes, Rashomon style, and in the course of things we get a glimpse of a proud and scared society half-trying to haul itself out of the muck of superstition. Remind you of anywhere?
London Calling
So I mentioned the blog might become a bit more sporadic, but I only mentioned one of the reasons why -- the fact that I was moving. I forgot to mention the other -- that I've been on vacation ever since that dreadful, stressful day. Here I am in London after a whirlwind tour of my home continent: Newcastle, Durham, Alicante, Murcia, Madrid, Paris and Oxford. I've seen just about everyone who matters to me in England and Spain. Many of them have reproduced, with ages of the sprogs varying from three months to nine years. What an alarming development -- I never knew I was that old. Seriously, there's nothing more heartwarming than seeing bits of your friends' DNA recast in newer, cuter beings.
It's a slate-grey sky in London right now, and the lumpy Paddington pavement outside the internet cafe -- called, imaginatively enough, The Internet Cafe -- is filling with drizzle. I'm looking forward to a little San Francisco sunshine, but I know I'm going to miss my Brit fix when it's over. Last night I stayed up late geeking out on the BBC's local election results show. You just don't get that kind of hardcore political coverage in the US.
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