I had to fly to LA twice last week, so I knocked out two totally lovely novels.
Monster Island by David Wellington: A zombie novel that manages to both hit the center of the genre and introduce innovative elements. I liked it.
Everyman by Philip Roth: My favorite living author has written another amazing novel, centered around one of the most fascinating, intense topics at hand…death. Highly recommended. (And if you haven’t read the Human Stain, you should.)
Yesterday, I flew to LA to participate in a panel hosted by MTV News, featuring Cliff B., Will Wright, David Jaffee and me. The event was held in an Hollywood/Melrose art gallery called 1988. (I got up on Monday morning at 5am, flew out for the show, then returned to Austin on the same day and got into bed by midnight; all in a day’s work…)
“i am 8 bit” is an art show dedicated to video game characters. This is the second year for the show, so they had something like 200 pieces.
The panel itself was fun. I feel lucky to have been invited. It should be on MTV News this week or next. (If anyone could Tivo it, I’d be eternally grateful. Let me know…)
Anyway, I thought I’d share some of my low-res photos. The artwork itself was amazing.
Will Wright (the Sims, Sim-City)
Me at “Gallery 1988”
David Jaffee (God of War) and Cliff Blezinski (Unreal)
Pac*Man in Heaven
My favorite…haunting Pac*Man and Q*Bert
Cool metallic Pac*Man ghost
Street Scene
One wall
Metroid Prime
Surreal Pac*Man
Link to the show (and access to credit for the artists involved):
i am 8 bit (Gallery 1988)
Very cool…a map of the US, depicting game development hotspots:
Game Dev Map
Sitting around, after work, with candles burning and a CD playing low. Another Monday past. Wish I was on a beach…
It’s sooo hard to avoid American politics right now. Our government is totally corrupt; companies basically buy policy, to the benefit of the powerful, at the detriment of the average Joe (or Jane). Rush Limbaugh arrested again for drug-related problems. Six conservative politicians got caught trading votes for sex (by a group providing them with prostitues and limo service…remind me again of why the conservatives hated Clinton?). Oil prices. Fundamentalist religious values infecting and corrupting science. The administration’s efforts to squash alternative energy (and literally altering the text of scientific reports…when the administration’s “editor” got caught, he quickly resigned and went to work for a petrochem company…I mean, fucking hello…). Wiretapping civilians. Secret prisons. Torture. Iraq. Global warming (yes, it’s real…). Darfur. Sudan. Rumsfeld undermining the military (in ways that are routinely disasterous for our troops). Unanswered questions about 9/11. Karl Rove, architect of misinformation. Right-wing politicians moving back and forth between petrochem companies and government offices (in critical places like the FDA…conflict of interest?). The conservatives weakening “expensive” programs for the people (FEMA, Medicare, et al), then pointing to them as failures and asking to dismantle them (…who does this benefit? Who does it hurt? Follow the money…). Tom Delay and a thousand other paid-for-politicians. Agent Valerie Plame being outed by the Republicans for political gain (to support a lie). The totally Orwellian information coming from Washington (…spelled out by the just-released annual report, a massive increase in terror attacks equals, somehow, that the world is safer from terror…that’s their response to the report? Really? Examples of the Orwellian language abound…a bill introduced that allows companies to put more mercury into the air we breath is called Clear Skies, WTF?). Secrets. Lies. Etc.
However, fuck it…today I’m all about the science of happiness. Short, but interesting as hell.
Also, there’s a test to find out how happy you are, relative to others.
I am going to get some exercise today, run some errands, hang out with my g/f and play some Oblivion (I hope).
Howard Zinn, at it again. I’m embarassed to admit that I learned about Zinn and read A People’s History of the US after seeing the movie Good Will Hunting.
Interesting article: