WWdN: In Exile

in which we get the band back together

Last night, Anne and I took our friend out to dinner for his birthday. We invited Nolan to come with us, but he said it would be "boring grown-up talking" and even though he loved us, he'd rather hang out at home.

Allow me to translate: "Wait, I can go with three lame adults to a restaurant, or I can stay home, listen to music as loud as I want, and play Xbox the whole time? You guys have fun, and don't worry about hurrying back on my account."

When we pulled into the driveway after dinner, I could hear very loud rock music coming from the house.

"That sounds like Wave of Mutilation," I said. "I love that he's listening to the Pixies!"

I opened the door, and saw that Nolan wasn't just listening to the Pixies. He was playing the Pixies on Rock Band. The song ended as I closed the door behind me and walked into our living room.

Anne said, "Will you come back to our bedroom and help me fold clothes?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'll be right there."

I turned to Nolan.

"What the hell?" I said.

At this point, I should back up a little bit. I ask Nolan to play Rock Band with me every day, and every day he says he doesn't want to, because it's not that fun for him. I know, I know, I'm doing my best to correct this egregious defect in his personality, but I think we all remember how clinically insane we all were when we were his age.

"What?" Nolan said, innocently.

"I ask you every day to play Rock Band with me, and you always say you don't want to play because it isn't fun."

He put the drumsticks in his lap -- oh, yeah, he was playing drums, which is my instrument -- and deadpanned "Well, I'm not having any fun."

"I'm personally hurt," I said as melodramatically as I could. I put my hand over my heart. I sniffed. I pushed out my bottom lip.

I sighed, heavily.

"Would you like to play together?" He said.

"Heck yes I would!"

I ran to the back of the house.

"Hey," I said to Anne, "Is it okay if --"

"Did you want to rock out together before we put away the clothes?"

"Yeah," I said, "Nolan and I were -- wait. Together?"

"I need more cowbell," she said.

And that is how, for the next hour, the three of us played Rock Band. Together. On a school night.

saturday morning flashback

Set the wayback machine for the early 80s, Sherman. Any Saturday morning will do . . .

I was such a nerd, I thought Timer was actually kind of cool. He taught us how to be healthy through song!

I was such a nerd, I thought the Dungeons  & Dragons cartoon was really cool.

Except for Uni. I hated that stupid little Scrappy Doo idiot.

Remember how excited you were to see your favorite video games become cartoons? The only thing that could have been better for a kid in 1983 would have been turning your favorite video games into a cereal!

Hmm . . . on second thought, maybe not.

Happy Saturday, everyone.

Angel One Review at TV Squad

My review of Angel One, which is part of the Top Five Most Painful TNG Episodes Ever, is up at TV Squad.

If you missed this morning's preview (and if you did, what the hell, man?) here's another bit of Mojo for your Nixon:

When they get to the planet, we discover that the women are all statuesque beauties with perfectly feathered hair, and the men are all refugees from Planet Simper V. After a tense palaver with the planet's only two leaders with any opinions whatsoever, Mistresses Beata and Ariel, the away team is sent to their room to think about what they did while mommy and mommy talk. Like all kids who are sent to their rooms, though, instead of contritely thinking about what they did, they plot against the people who sent them there.

Troi says that pretty much everyone in the room was freaked out about something. Maybe it has something to do with the Odin crew. Tasha's insightful analysis: "Why? Good question." Data (and the audience) wonder what they'll do if the Mistresses deny the existence of any survivors. Hey, that's a good question, and probably something we'd all like to be prepared for, right, Riker? Actually, no. Riker petulantly tells Data, "Let's not look for problems." Yeah, because looking for and solving problems just isn't the way we do things in Starfleet, dog.

Of all the reviews I've done so far, this was the hardest for me to write. I didn't work on the episode for more than one day, so I don't have that many behind the scenes memories. The final product is so unbelievably horrible, it was a challenge to do more than write, "This thing was stupid, this thing was also stupid, this thing should be retconned, this thing was lame," etc.

So I wrote the first draft, and I asked Andrew to give me some help with the rewrite. I figured that he would have his own take on it, and would be able to help me find jokes where I was missing them. He did, and so far, the jokes everyone is picking out as their favorites were all written by him. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so direct your praise for Worf's sinuses and Riker's wait for command in Andrew's direction. He also found a gag to go with the vase, which I wanted to put in, but just couldn't find on my own. The snu-snu, though, was all me, baby. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.

The column was getting long, so I didn't have space to include something that I think it historically important about this show. If I only had a blog where I could share the additional information, I'd say . . .

Angel One is mostly crap, but the original story  sounds like it was pretty cool. Larry Nemecek's Star Trek The Next Generation Companion (which is a surreal experience for me to read, because it speaks to the fanboy and cast member in me simultaneously) says that "Heavy rewrites changed Patrick Barry's original story -- a direct, action-filled, allegory to apartheid using the sexes instead of the races to make his point." Larry gives more plot details in the book, which I won't reprint here because I think that probably exceeds fair use. Director Michael Rhodes says that a big reason this story falls flat was Gene's determination to strip any conflict out of this script, and that Gene decreed that there was "no place for conflict in Star Trek." I hate to be critical of Gene, but I clearly remember Rhodes and several members of the cast sitting on Stage 6 one morning, absolutely incredulous that anyone could think that interesting drama was possible without conflict.

You know how you're a kid, and your parents are arguing about something, and you know they're arguing but they tell you everything's fine, we're just talking, so go back to bed? That's how I felt during this entire episode (even though I wasn't working on it, I was there every day to go to school.) The actors hated it. I mean, they really, really hated it -- almost as much as I hate Dick Cheney. I haven't been able to confirm this with people who allegedly participated, but I've heard from other Star Trek alumni that some of the actors hated this script so much -- it was even more sexist and stupid in one of the drafts that it is in the final cut, if you can believe that -- they refused to work for a day or so until various things were rewritten. Some people would say that's a case of actors being difficult, but I'd say it's an example of how much we all cared about the show, and how we all wanted it to be awesome and successful.

Oh, and if you Digg it and Propel it, a talking goat will bring you a box of wine, for free! If that doesn't wax your skis, I can assure you that Digging and Propelling will get you laid. And who doesn't like that?

(Heh. "get you laid" sounds like 9th grade tough-guy talk during lunch. It also makes me think of Beavis and Butthead, for some reason.)

Angel One Preview

Sometime soon, my review of Angel One will go live on TV Squad. Until it does, here's a little preview:

While Data and Trent are off seeing the wizard, Riker gets ready to play dress up for a meeting he has with Beata. She's sent him one of the hideous twink suits, apparently unaware that body wax and muscle definition have gone out of favor in the Federation. Tasha and Troi and throw up in their mouths a little when they see it, one of the first times in TNG when we can clearly see the characters sympathizing with the audience, instead of the other way around. Riker gets really defensive about the whole thing, and essentially accuses them of being jealous, because he's putting on a Siegfried and Roy costume to go meet up with Beata, who is "a woman, and an attractive one."

Oh, brother. Can we get a tiger sent down to Angel One?

. . . what? Too soon?

Back on the Enterprise, Picard is crankier than usual, and Dr. Crusher says he's just too sick to stay in command of the Enterprise. As she escorts him to his quarters, he gives command to Geordi, who is all too happy to get away from Worf, who is about to shower Geordi and everyone in the first ten rows of the arena with a Klingon Sneeze. Turns out that those forehead ridges are just extra sinuses. Ouch.

Geordi approaches the captain's chair, and a ray of awesome breaks through the clouds of crap that have obscured most of this episode: As he sits into command, we can feel how much Geordi respects the responsibility he's been given, and just how cool it is to sit in the big chair. Worf starts his scan and quickly locates the Odin survivors.

(Personal aside:  LeVar and I were the only two original cast members on TNG who were self-proclaimed Star Trek fans. I never asked him, but I wouldn't be surprised if this moment meant a lot to LeVar, personally. I know that when I got to sit in the captain's chair in Farpoint, even though it was kind of silly and lame, it still meant a lot to me. Fun fact: when we weren't rolling, nobody ever sat in the captain's chair except Patrick. Sure, we'd get visitors who would want to have their picture taken in the chair, and it was a popular stop for studio executives who wanted to impress people, but for all of us in the cast and crew, there was a very real reverence for the captain's chair.)

Okay, that wasn't as little as I thought it'd be.

That's what she said!

Oh boy. It's going to be one of those days . . .

in which my brother wins a contest and i am proud of him

My brother is a hell of a photographer, and is on the verge of turning his hobby into something much, much more.

He took this picture last year, and it instantly became one of my favorites. This morning, he told me that he'd recently entered it in a contest that had hundreds of other entries.

Last night, he totally won the GRAND PRIZE! His picture will be part of a traveling exhibit up in Montana, where he lives, and will be put on long-term display in one of the biggest banks in his small town. He says that the prize package is pretty cool, too: "My wife and I get to go to Yellowstone next winter, stay overnight in the park, and get to go on one of those awesome snowcat bus thingys that takes us to old faithful!"

I convinced Jeremy to release his winning image under a Creative Commons license, so WWdN readers could create awesome derivative works from it. If you make something cool with it, let me know and I'll link to your creation in this post.

Jeremy's only been seriously taking pictures for a few years. I know that I'm not an impartial observer here, but I think it's pretty clear that he's uncovered a hidden talent.

I'm really, really proud of him. Congratulations, Jeremy!

Click the image to embiggen at flickr. You may also want to follow links to Jer's website and flickr stream.

Reader Contributions:

fatsvernon did this cool mashup of my work with my brother's work.

Reader TB did a Fark-ish mashup of his own. Tennis, anyone?

N used Jer's photo as the backdrop for a stick figure comic. It's funny.

i'm on wired's game|life today

Wired.com's game|life blog does a feature where they ask someone from the gaming community two questions, one about the gaming industry, and one about something that's completely random.

Today, that person is me:

Do you think it is possible videogames will ever achieve the sort of widespread and universal acceptance of movies? What has to happen in order for a game console to become as commonplace as a DVD player in the average home?

Wheaton: I think the greatest barrier that videogames need to overcome is the cost. Anyone can get into a movie for under $20. However, to play a videogame, you need to invest hundreds of dollars in the system and anywhere from $20 to $60 for the game. It's a trade off, of course, because most movies are around 90 to 120 minutes while the games with great narrative storylines (Bioshock, GTA: San Andreas, Mass Effect) can last between 90 and 120 hours, and can be replayed differently many times.

There is also a fundamental difference between the movie and videogame experience that can't be overlooked. Movies are very passive experiences: we sit down and hand over control to the filmmakers for a little while. We have no say over what happens, and not a whole lot more at stake than our money and our time.

Videogames, on the other hand, are by their very nature interactive experiences that, among other things, test our reflexes and problem-solving skills. With the advent of sandbox games, we can explore entire worlds in ways that simply aren't possible in movies, and a good game gives us the opportunity to invest a great deal of time and energy into it. I personally love that, but it's clearly not for everyone.

There's more at game|life. If you check it out, I'd love to know what you think.

i'm kind of in love with magnatune

When I was up until 2 in the morning reading The Last Colony, I wanted a little music to fill up the rest of the room. My friend Andrew (yes, that Andrew, who edits all my books. Say thank you to Andrew if you liked Happiest Days) turned me on to Magnatune dot Com a couple of years ago, and since I hadn't been there in several months, I decided to check out their ambient music. As it turns out, ambient music is perfect for filling up a dark and quiet room while you read an awesome science fiction novel.

If you don't know what Magnatune is, I'd like to do you a solid and spread the virus: Magnatune is not evil. It's an online record label, owned by awesome people, who sell all kinds of music without any DRM at all. You can buy digital versions, or you can have them mail you a CD. Their artists don't give up any of their publishing rights, and they get 50% of every sale. Did I mention that buyers get to choose how much they pay for something? Yeah, how awesome is that? You can pay as little as $5, or as much as $18. If you really like what you've bought, you can give it to three friends for free. Yes, for free, as in beer.

Everything in their catalog is Creative Commons, and non-commercial podcasters can license all of their music for free. This makes me happy because I've always thought it was profoundly stupid of the music industry to force podcasters -- who could be providing their artists with thousands of dollars or more of free publicity -- to pay idiotic licensing fees. They have an enormous range of artists from Classical to Jazz to Rock to all forms of Electronica. I don't like everything in the catalog, but there's so much in there, it wasn't hard at all to find a lot of stuff I do like.

Examples: When I was reading The Last Colony, I listened to Trances-Drones by Robert Rich, because I freaking love dark ambient. In fact, back in the early 90s, my friend Dave and I DJ'd several dark ambient chillout rooms at after hours clubs. We were called feck. I was Frank Booth and he was Silent Bob. It was awesome.

Today, while I've been Propelling and breaking this story that I'm really excited to write, I've been listening to Knives to the Treble, by Burning Babylon, which is the fattest, smoothest, heaviest dub I've heard this side of King Tubby and Scientist. I liked it so much, I bought it for $10. Before the day is over, I'm likely to buy Stereo Mashup, because I lub me some dub style onna record, so pushit ovah now ya roughneck. Wheel i' tup!

Uh. Sorry about that. It sounded boss in my head. (Boss? What the hell is wrong with me today?)

I agree with pretty much all of the philosophies behind the founding of Magnatune, both as a creator and as a publisher. I hope that WWdN readers will check out their artists, and share them with friends and family. You can preview every single song in their catalog, and even stream entire albums for free. If you're looking for a place to start, check out the Magnatune Compliations. The 2006 SXSW compilation, the 2005 Red Hat Summit compilation, and the Electronica Compilation are all great starting points.   

Scalzi and the Hugo 2: Electric Boogaloo

It's not every day that I can say, "Hey, one of my friends is nominated for a Hugo."

It's not every day that I can say, "Hey, one of my friends is nominated for a Hugo. Again."

It is, however, embarrassing to me that while I can now say, "Hey, one of my friends is nominated for a Hugo. Again," I never actually read the goddamn book that's nominated, though I bought it on the day it was released, and consistently face it out when I see it in book stores.

So, yesterday, I set up a chair in the back yard, grabbed some iced tea, and started reading The Last Colony.

At 2 this morning, I finally forced myself to put the book down because I was too tired to comprehend it, and didn't want to miss anything. I'm a little more than halfway through, I guess, and while I've wanted to do nothing more than blow off all my work for today and dive back into it, I've been responsible to the point of avoiding extended trips to the bathroom, whether I really have to go or not.

Oh, shut up. You've all done it, and if you haven't done it, it's because you don't have kids who wouldn't leave you alone to read unless you were making stinky with the door closed.

I don't know what my endorsement is worth, but if you've read my blog long enough to have an idea of whether or not we like the same things, you should go get this book right away, though I'm guessing most of you already have, since I'm so late to the party on this one.

I loved all the books that John set in this universe: Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Sagan Diary. I love the characters, I love the setting, and I love how massively fun they all are to read. I love them so much, in fact, that I have the lettered versions from Subterranean Press. That's a lot of love, my friends. The Last Colony had some very big shoes to fill, and it's wearing them quite nicely. If you're looking for an accessible, intelligent, well-paced series that won't let you down in the flavor department, I urge you to check out these books. The cool thing? John wrote them so they all work together, but each one stands alone, like the farmer's cheese, so you don't have to commit yourself to them all to enjoy just one.

I would bet, however (if I were a betting man, which I sometimes kinda am) that after reading one of them, you will want to read them all, and you won't be disappointed.

i made some funny

My friends Greg and Kim are brilliant writers, and wonderfully creative people. I met them at ACME, where I had the pleasure of performing with them both, and writing with Kim.

Greg has a company called Mediocre Films ("They're better than they sound") that has created some hilarious shorts, including Phone Call to God and Shoes. Kim is the executive producer on a web-based series called The Guild, which just won a YouTube award, (it will sit nicely on a shelf with the eleventy billion other awards they've won) and the two of them collaborate on the Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show.

Greg and Kim have a friend named Ponce, who has Down syndrome. Ponce is an actor and a comedian, and they worked together to come up with a series of comedic shorts they could release on YouTube. They call it Retarded Policeman, and it's really, really funny.

Greg and Kim are doing with video and sketch comedy what I'm doing with publishing: refusing to take the traditional route to reach an audience, and having a lot of fun while we do it. Greg and I have been trying to find a way to do a Mediocre Film together for a long time, so when Greg offered me a chance to work on Retarded Policeman, I grabbed it.

I'm sure this will offend some people, but I want to make it clear that nobody is exploiting or making fun of Ponce, or anyone who has Down syndrome. If that was the case, none of us would have done it. If anything, it's making fun of how arbitrary and, well, retarded police stops can be. This episode makes a reference to Episode 4, which was really funny until it wasn't.

If you liked this, you should totally watch Episode 6, which I think is absolutely hilarious and the funniest one yet.

rock band gets more awesome

Last week, Harmonix sent out a pretty major software update for Rock Band. Most of the gaming blogs I've read have focused on how great the new online music store is, but have glossed over or completely ignored what I think is the real news in this update: Harmonix has address and fixed two issues that almost broke the game for many players.

When I wrote my Rock Band review for the Geek in Review last year, I said:

To unlock new venues, your band must amass a certain number of fans. The number of fans you gain each gig is determined by the difficulty level of each member of your band, so you reach “fan caps” where the game comes to a halt until you can successfully play at a higher difficulty level. For some players, this isn’t bad at all, and is a good motivator to try harder levels. For casual players, though, it totally sucks. I know plenty of people who love to play on Hard, but have no interest in playing on Expert. The way I understand this, unless Harmonix removes the fan cap (which I think they’ll have to do, eventually) some people won’t ever be able to experience the entire game. That’s just fucking retarded. Not everyone wants to play the game on Hard or Expert settings, and preventing those people from enjoying the game the same way Hard and Expert players do is stupid and wrong.

There is an even bigger problem, though, that almost breaks the game for me: it’s infuriatingly repetitive in multiplayer career mode, especially at the beginning. As you advance through different cities and unlock new gigs, you’ll be faced with challenges, where the audience randomly picks songs for you to play. The RNG that decides the songs is thoroughly fucked, and frequently results in forcing you to play the same song three times in 30 minutes. If it’s a song you love, not such a big deal; but if it’s a song you hate – like Wanted, Dead or Alive, for instance – you’re screwed. If you’re trying to introduce new players to the game who are used to Guitar Hero’s “one and done” approach to playing songs, it can be a massive turn off.

The new online store is great and all, but I don't know why more gaming blogs and media haven't made this front-page news: Harmonix has fixed the stupid fan cap, and they've made the game much less repetitive in World Tour mode.

Check it out:

Revised Fan Caps: To allow Easy, Medium, and Hard players to progress further in the Band World Tour, we’ve increased the number of fans that you can earn before hitting the cap. Easy players can now travel across the Atlantic, Medium players have a wider range of venues they can play at, and Hard players on the Xbox 360 are now able to unlock the “One Million Fans” achievement.

More diverse songs in Band World Tour: If you’ve ever cursed about having to play “Say it Ain’t So” or a Metallica track multiple times in the same hour, then you’ll be glad to know that we’ve tracked down and fixed the issues that triggered these very repetitive moments in Band World Tour.

Awesome and awesome. Thank you, Harmonix! I think my bands, Zombitis and Mr Snüggles, are about to hit the road again.