WWdN: In Exile

my episode of gorgeous tiny chicken machine show

My episode of Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show won't be "officially" released until tomorrow, but thanks to my extensive contacts in the seedy and delicious underbelly of the Internets, I've secured access to the episode a full 24 hours early.

I did some interviews to support this episode, including one with Monsters & Critics that's pretty awesome. As soon as I get links to the other ones, I'll update. Because, uh, you know, everyone really wants to read a bunch of interviews that I did.

Ahem.

Oh! I have a bet with Greg and Kim that we can make the YouTube "most viewed" page before Friday night. I looked at my stats and saw that there's a little over a million people (holyshitomg) reading my lame blog . . . i can haz most views?

bring on the night . . . and the assholes

Anne and I took Ryan to see Elvis Costello and The Police at the Hollywood Bowl last night.

We bought our tickets months ago, and got the best seats we could afford. We took the shuttle from the Zoo to the Bowl, and were in our seats about ten minutes before Elvis and The Impostors took to the stage for an hour-long set that was just fantastic. He didn't play Lipstick Vogue, which is my all-time favorite Elvis tune, but he nailed all the other songs you'd expect him to play. Sting even joined him for Alison, which was pretty cool.

Did you know that Elvis Costello is 53? He was rocking it out like it was 1988 instead of 2008, and was clearly having a good time. Also, his keyboardist plays a Theremin. A Theremin! How cool!

He only played for an hour, and by the time he was finished, the Bowl was filled to its 18,000 person capacity as night fell.

The Police took the stage, and opened with a wonderful version of Bring On the Night that just sounded great. It started out softly, built to a powerful crescendo, and created a wonderful sense of anticipation for the rest of the show: The Police had clearly come to rock us.

I forget what they played next, but I recall thinking, "Man, they just sound awesome!"

This was around the same time that the woman behind me got on her cell phone and started calling everyone she knew to tell them how awesome Sting sounded.

I was annoyed, but thought I'd just wait it out. Once she went through a few calls to share her excitement with people who couldn't be there, she'd quiet down, I figured.

I was wrong.

The calls quickly turned from "I'm at the concert and they sound awesome!" to "So, what are you doing this weekend? Oh my god did you see [some stupid gossip thing.]?!"

I paid $60 for my ticket, before the Ticketbastard fees. Surely this woman had spent a similar amount of money. She really wanted to spend the show shouting into her phone?

Two songs later, I couldn't take it any more. I turned around and said, "Would you please try to talk a little more quietly?"

This is when I saw that she was near the bottom of one of these 32 ounce sangrias they sell at the Bowl. Perfect.

"Hold on," she said into her phone. "What?"

"I said, would you please talk a little more quietly? You're really loud."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Whatever, dude."

Something in me snapped. Before I knew it, I said, "Hey! I don't want to listen to your fucking phone calls. I want to listen to the Police."

Her eyes widened, like she wasn't used to people standing up to her.

Did I mention that she was probably in her mid-40s? Yeah, that's important. She was absolutely old enough to know better.

"WHAT?" She said.

"I paid sixty dollars to listen to The Police, not to listen to you."

"Well I paid seventy," she said, petulantly.

"So that makes it okay for you to be an inconsiderate asshole?" I said.

"Oh my GOD!" She said. I seriously felt like I was dealing with a child.

"Just be quiet, please," I said, and turned back around.

For the next twenty minutes, this woman loudly complained about me to her equally drunk, equally idiotic friends. She kicked my chair. She clapped her hands next to my head. She screamed like a teenage girl in a Beatles concert film.

In other words, this stupid asshole made about a third of her concert experience -- seeing The Police! -- all about trying as hard as she could to ruin it for me, because I'd asked -- politely -- for her to just be considerate of the people around her.

I ignored her the way you'd ignore a child who was having a temper tantrum and she eventually got bored and stopped. Just in time for the stoners to show up in front of me.

I want to break from my complaining about this crap for a second to point out that The Police put on a tremendous show. They've been playing the same songs for thirty years, but like Elvis Costello before them didn't show any obvious signs of "we've been playing this song for thirty years" fatigue. They sounded great, it was clear that they were having a lot of fun and enjoying each other's performances, and their energy was great. They were most certainly not phoning it in, and if we hadn't been surrounded by assholes, it could have been one of the greatest shows I've ever seen.

So, the stoners. Yeah, that was awesome. I don't go to a lot of concerts because the goddamn stoners drive me crazy, but these people -- again, clearly in their 40s -- were constantly sparking up like it was 1977 and we were at a Dead show. As they got more drunk and more high, they provided a nice balance to the asshole woman behind me. And by balance, I mean perfect equilibrium.

If I hadn't been there with my wife and son, I would have left, because it was so irritating. It's a shame, because it really was a fantastic show, even if they didn't play Synchronicity II, which is my favorite Police song ever.

I've noticed something in the last few years: the older the audience, the greater the number of assholes. It seems like younger people are more passionate about the music and more interested in enjoying the performance, while the older audiences (around my age, I guess) are more interested in getting fucked up and acting like idiots who are, for some reason I have yet to comprehend, are entitled to be as obnoxious, self-centered and inconsiderate as they want.

At least the idiots weren't there for Elvis Costello, so the entire night wasn't miserable. I just wish people would be more considerate of others, especially when we're all together in what is supposed to be a pretty awesome shared experience.

the R'lyehan tourist phrasebook

Elizabeth Bear's doing a series of posts where she shares things she overheard at WisCon. They're all pretty awesome, but this one is TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME:

12.) R'lyehan tourist phrasebook:

Help. I am being devoured by your octopus.

My species does not breathe water.

No thank you. I do not wish a fungus.

I'm sorry, no. I have claustrophobia.

You seem to have a frog in your throat.
You seem to have a frog in your soup.
You seem to have a frog in your pants.

Would you like a lemon drop?

(from Overheard at WisCon)

thank you for your service. thank you for your sacrifice.

Take a moment today to remember the people who have given their lives in the service of their country.

(Photo from flickr user jdcdc. Used under Creative Commons license.)

Fear and Loathing in Mushroom Kingdom

Joystiq is one of my daily reads, and a frequent source for my Propeller links.

While skipping around the Internets like a pixie this morning, I landed at Joystiq, where I was rewarded with this:

"We had two bags of 1-up mushrooms, seventy-five pellets of fire flower, five sheets of high-powered stars, a saltshaker half-full of raccoon tail, a whole galaxy of multi-colored turtle shells, hammers, POW blocks, laughers... Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious power-up collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."

You HST junkies will enjoy the additional text at Joystiq, which cites PixelGen, which cites ircimages.

Update: Livejournal user steelcaver says:

I'm constantly amused by the randomised collection of six-degree-separated things that surface on the internet; in this case, a page where an actor who once worked on a TV show that I watched is showing pictures based on a video game I used to play, created by some kid with an computer and image editing software. 

steelcave then discovers that:

thornleaf has located the image's original source, on suzyage4's DeviantArt pages.  The image displayed has been replaced with the original version from her pages. 

Six degrees, indeed.

in which blue light special is adapted for comics

I'm working like crazy on actual fiction writing, so my time and motivation for posting in my blog is a bit lacking, as I immerse myself in a dystopian future Los Angeles which is hopefully unique from all the other dystopian future Los Angeles (Los Angelesses? Los Angeli?) that we're all familiar with.

However, I'm taking a break from all that to point you, dear reader, to this adorable adaptation of Blue Light Special that I helped write for a comic called Blogjam.

I quite enjoy it, and the archives are absolutely worth digging through; there's some very funny stuff in there. Best of all, regular people like you and me can submit stories from our totally awesome lives in the hopes that they'll be adapted into future strips.

it's a good day to be a gamer

A Florida judge recommends that Jack Thompson be found guilty of being a complete and utter douche 27 of 31 counts of misconduct.

Tunis made 21 recommendations of guilt in relation to Thompson's participation in Strickland vs. Sony, an Alabama case in which the anti-game attorney represented the families of two police officers and a police dispatcher slain by 18-year-old Grand Theft Auto player Devin Moore. Tunis also recommended that Thompson be found guilty on four out of five counts relating to his 2006 attempt to have Rockstar's Bully declared a public nuisance in a case before Miami Judge Ronald Friedman. An additional two guilty counts stemmed from a non-video game matter."

While we wait breathlessly for the verdict to be delivered, we can play the Penny Arcade game! On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness is finally available for Mac, PC, Linux and from Xbox Live Arcade.

Just because I haven't packed enough pure awesome into one post: Harmonix announced yesterday that next week's Rock Band DLC will be the entire album The Cars, from the Cars. Time to watch Fast Times -- well, part of Fast Times -- over and over again in, uh, preparation.

in praise of the scenic route

The 101 between Ventura and Salinas is one of the most beautiful stretches of highway I've ever driven (and I've driven a lot of them). The highway winds up to San Francisco from Los Angeles, along the coast in places, but mostly inland through soft rolling foothills and quiet farming valleys. You'll see everything from vineyards to oil fields on the drive, and though it takes about an hour longer than the more boring but direct I-5, if you're not in a hurry, it's worth the extra time.

This trip provided me with some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever experienced on the 101: the grass on the foothills is golden, creating an inviting backdrop for splashes of color thrown across it by wild flowers. There was orange from poppies, yellow and green from wild mustard flowers, bright purple from lavender, and occasional bursts of bright green from grass that hadn't gotten the memo about dying off for summer. Around it all were gnarled oak trees, providing shade for grazing cattle and horses.

Once I got north of Soledad, towering Eucalyptus trees -- sixty feet tall, it seemed -- stood guard over vast green fields of lettuce and celery, as if the foothills had been somehow pushed back by farmers decades or even a century ago. Near Monterey, a heavy blanket of fog did its best to come inland, as coastal mountains held it back.

I saw all of this under clear blue skies as I made my way up to San Jose, accompanied by Dimension X on m iPod (an odd but wonderful soundtrack, indeed). I was tired and road weary when I finally pulled into the hotel parking garage nearly seven hours after I'd left my house, but it was entirely worth it.

that's no moon . . .

Plaid Stallions is one of my favorite stops on the Internets for Gen X nostalgia. While Propelling this morning, I came across their scans of Kenner's 1978 Star Wars toy catalog.

If you've read The Trade from Just a Geek and wondered just how awesome my Death Star play set was, take a look at Plaid Stallions' Death Star play set page.

Once you've fully appreciated how awesome and magnificent the Death Star play set is, scroll to the bottom of the vehicle page and take a look at the Landspeeder.

Then, if you will, join me in sending a nasty curse word back in time to the little bastard who convinced eight year-old me that it it was an equitable trade.

hear me on this week in geek

I don't do a lot of interviews, but for reasons that are best left a mystery, I've done a whole bunch recently.

One of those interviews was with a podcast called This Week in Geek. My episode is now up, so if you wanted to listen to me talk about geeky shit and don't want to wait for a new Radio Free Burrito, your long painful wait has come to an end.

Hey, when you're done, check out the Radio Free Burrito Mix Tape. My iPod thought I should hear it recently, and it totally doesn't suck.