• I presented two talks and a poster at the Games+Learning+Society 4.0 conference this summer, and ended up winning one of the poster prizes (for best theoretical poster)
• We went to two weddings: Matt & Jill’s (in Ohio), and Ben & Amanda’s (in Virginia)
• I hung out in DC for a few days with Liz, got to see Georgetown and meet her friends
• Now, I’m heading to LA tomorrow to give a talk at the Sandbox Symposium, then Boston next week to give a talk (for my advisor, Constance) at the American Psychological Association meeting.

So, yeah, I’m rather busy. In the midst of that, I did physical therapy for my perpetually bad back, submitted a paper to a journal, started writing another two manuscripts, and have my prelim questions coming into shape. Progress.

A few other things to note…

• I upgraded WordPress, but the upgrade broke all the categories. I dunno what to do about that, and I’m too lazy to fix them right now — expect that to be busted for a while until I overhaul the whole site
• I’ve been Twittering much more often than blog posting lately, and the Twitter feed is on the front page of this blog now. Go there if you want to see what I’m up to in a more timely fashion
• I’ve recently added WPTouch, a new plug-in for WordPress which makes se4n.org look readable and pretty via the iPhone/iPod Touch
• However, I’ve been spending more of my time reading blogs using Google Reader lately — so much that I’ve now started a new, miniblog type thing with my shared items from Google Reader. Eventually, this will be incorporated into this weird mish-mash of a blog I have, but for now, check out the link
• Though this has nothing to do with The Cake Saga (see previous posts), I found the first panel of the latest xkcd to be a little disconcerting:
  
  [Click for a larger image]

Okay, enough for now. Gotta go to a meeting, write Keynote slides, then pack for LA!

Oh, how I love the Internet.

If you saw my last post, you know that I recently had a few seconds of Internet fame that has stretched to approximately half a minute of fame by this point. The people behind the Food Network show Ace of Cakes — a show I’ve seen a few times, thought was sort of interesting, and then promptly forgot to continue watching — made a really great original series Star Trek cake. Being a Trekkie and one who thinks obsessive Trekkies are hilarious, I made a little joke in the vein of obsessive Trekkies which was promptly misread by a bunch of people, carried over to io9, and a few other places.

I’m still a bit flabbergasted by this — how in the world did “THIS IS A DISASTER I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY PUT SCOTTY IN THE NAVIGATOR’S POSITION I CAN’T BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE ARE SO CLUELESS ABOUT THE BASICS OF STAR TREK THIS IS A DISASTER” sound at all like a serious post to these people? For the majority of people on Trekmovie.com (where the comment was posted) — including the dude who runs the blog — it was an obvious joke. But, for others, they either have impaired senses of humor, or my fake-out was entirely too close to what many schmucks think Trekkies really talk like online.

Anyway, I’m having fun cataloging where else this little thing has ended up, and will share a few with y’alls:

First of all, Trekmovie felt the need to clarify that, yes, it was a joke, and graciously linked to my previous blog post.

Next, it seems Geekologie carried the story — though they attempted to get a dig in at me personally, they couldn’t spell my name correctly, oops!

Then, a bunch of others picked it up: Horrorthon repeated the Geekologie story, Joseph Dickerson (a very serious looking guy) linked to it, as did “Grinning Skull” (I kinda like the blog name, if not the blog itself), and Tweaks the Limbs. Tim posted an apology (being that he was one of the Trekmovie posters who replied to me in that thread), and Food Network Addict had a rather funny post about it (and the pic above), notable mainly because Mary Alice (one of the Ace of Cakes peeps) chimed in.

Then there’s the LA Times blog linking to it, and, of course, it got Dugg and promptly went nowhere. Oh, and I’ve seen it linked a few times on Livejournal, but Livejournal’s a cesspool, so I barely bother reading or commenting on those, I guess, other than this one, notable because of the awesome animated series LJ icon linked here:

Anyway, it’s amusing to see that, for a few people I don’t know out there, the phrase “THIS IS A DISASTER” became something of a mini-meme on Trekmovie for a day or so. And, I’m left with the conflicting emotions that a bunch of people eager to point fingers at nerds pointed them at me, when, uh, I was trying to do the same thing! Hoist with my own petard, I suppose.

One more comment from the io9 post made me laugh a ton:

OletheaEurystheus at 12:37 PM
@Box-of-Rain:
Actually it seems like half the internet didnt get the joke. Trekmovie has had to post a story specifically TELLING the rest of the people who picked it up it was a joke by a guy with a known sense of humor. This is the problem with the internet sometimes, blogs pick up on things that are in the know to only those people who post there and spread it around the internet like its fact… Its especially problematic of blogs that try to be “hip” by making fun of everyone else. IO9 (and Gawker blogs in general) is well known to be one of those types of blogs who try to manufacture hipness..

The bolded emphasis was mine and not the original poster’s, as I’m always going to emphasize when someone out there describes me as “a guy with a known sense of humor.” No one on Trekmovie knows me, and this OletheaEurystheus person is unknown to me, too. Yet, I have a “known sense of humor!” I’ve made it! I beat the Internet!

Finally, just to remind everyone the only proper and correct reaction to nerds, I leave you with the immortal words of John Goodman:

(… and Ogre).

But, hey, I just had to post about my 15 seconds of Trekkie nerddom fame. A few days ago, Trekmovie.com posted a few cute pictures from the upcoming season of Ace of Cakes, which features an original series Star Trek cake. Check it out:

Cute, huh? Of course, there’s a redshirted dude (Scotty? Leslie? I dunno) sitting where Chekov normally sits, so I posted a comment which, to my eyes, is about as tongue-in-cheek as you can get on the Internet:

6. sean - May 25, 2008

THIS IS A DISASTER I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY PUT SCOTTY IN THE NAVIGATOR’S POSITION I CAN’T BELIEVE THESE PEOPLE ARE SO CLUELESS ABOUT THE BASICS OF STAR TREK THIS IS A DISASTER

Har har, yeah, I poked fun at obsessive Trekkies. It’s easily apparent that I’m being absurd and ridiculous. All caps and “THIS IS A DISASTER” seemed to make that pretty obvious, no?

Well, no, as a number of Trekmovie responses indicated:

14. Tim - May 25, 2008

Ugh Sean you make us look all INSANE! It’s a cake…nothing more…it’s not meant to be canon. Just relax dude. Who gives a frak if the small little cake people are not sitting in the right chair. Lords of Kobol protect us all! If anyone saw the G4 Star Trek ads they ran then we all know that Spock doesn’t have a sanctuary where Scotty DJs

Secondly, Adam, I’d rather watch a show about baking unique cakes on the FOOD NETWORK than a show about 12 women who want to find a farmer for a husband.

18. Navigator NCC 2120 USS Entente - May 25, 2008

“12. Sean - May 25, 2008

lol #6 has a point. Scotty and Uhura are not in the right spots and Chekov is nowhere to be found. Even before Chekov came onto the show Scotty didn’t sit there.”

Actually Sean, Scotty DID sit at the Navigator’s Station on the bridge at the end of the second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before” because Navigator Gary Mitchel was dead. There is a picture of it at http://www.trekcore.com. I tried to post the link to the picture but it did not work.

Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

38. Gary Seven of Nine - May 26, 2008

Sean:

“Have you ever kissed a girl??!?!?!?!?!”

It’s an F-in cake. Turn-off your caps lock and and stop making trekkers look like such OCD losers.

Et cetera, et cetera. Again, fairly amusing — some of the hardcore readers of the blog thought I was being serious, no big deal, right?

Now I start getting a few anonymous, confusing emails and find that this has been picked up by the Gawker sci-fi blog io9, with even more hilarious results. A few choice comments from that blog:

joemono at 10:22 AM

THIS IS A DISASTER I think everyone should bookend all comments on this thread with that phrase THIS IS A DISASTER

Zantor at 11:44 AM

We are talking in depth about a little “Star Trek” Cake?
I remember when Trekkies were cool and fun. What’s this shit?
Set phasers for Get me the hell out of here!

victheremin at 12:42 PM

THIS IS AN ABOMINATION!
DAMN THE ACE OF CAKES!

I’ll chase him ’round the moons of Nibia and ’round the Antares Maelstrom and ’round perdition’s flames before I give him up.

The bridge crew’s arrangement notwithstanding, I’m not that impressed by their cakes. Unless the cakes are really tasty or laced with heroin for that extra “oomph”, someone in that company must have some serious connections for them to be the premiere cake supplier in their area.

Oh, this is just too hilarious. With just one off-hand jokey blog comment post, I’ve managed to annoy both the hardcore Trekkies and the people who hate them at the same time! I never thought my first time making it into a Gawker blog would be over a Star Trek cake, but you know what they say about gift horses.

Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I’ve posted — I keep meaning to redo this site so it’s less a blog and more a repository of my current research info, but I’ve been busy. I’ll try to get to that soon, but, hey, that might mean another month or so. Oh well, such is life.

Anyway, I’m flying out tomorrow for New Jersey and New York City, where I’ll be presenting a paper at the American Educational Research Assocation annual conference. My paper is entitled “Literacy Implications of Online Fan Debates” — a rather boring title for a rather fun paper. In it, I analyze the phenomenon of “timeline debates” around the The Legend of Zelda games.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, there has been a fair amount of discussion over the years as to the “correct” ordering of the stories in the Zelda series. That is, does A Link to the Past occur in the same timeline as The Wind Waker or in a different one? Does the original The Legend of Zelda occur after or before Ocarina of Time? These have been pretty esoteric fan debates, but are illustrative of how complex and “design-like” many fan debates are around games. I’m increasingly interested in how informal design practices evolve out of fan communities (around games, TV shows, etc.), and it’s looking more and more like this will be the core of my dissertation.

Anyway, here is a link to the PDF of the full paper, and here is a link to a PDF of the handout I plan on having for attendees of my talk to take with them. If you’re interested, please download and let me know what you think!

If you read this blog and will be in New York for AERA, please stop by and say hi!

P.S., I plan on going here:

Anyway, I’ll be tweaking the blog styles at the very least and possibly reorganizing the content on the entire site within the next few days. If you’re a regular reader (yeah, I know, that’s probably three people at this point), let me apologize ahead of time for any inconvenience. Hopefully the site will be prettier, more usable, and more informative after I’m done.

Found on Jesper Juul’s Ludologist blog.

A bit of background: To put it mildly, I have struggled with this game (and all MMOGs that I have tried). Previous to this semester, I had never leveled a character past the low 30s within WoW, and always had a great deal of difficulty in understanding how to simply play the game. This semester, however, our research team began our afterschool MMOG group with a set of 12-14 year old boys, and I was motivated to give it another shot. Playing with people seems to have made a big difference — not a surprise, really, but I’m pretty stubborn and prefer to solo whenever I can.

After a month and a half of diligent play on the warlock, I am up to level 42, and have my mount:

That’s my character, weeping atop his brand new “Felsteed,” hanging out in Dustwallow Marsh. (He’s weeping only because it makes for a more entertaining picture, he’s actually quite a happy zombie).

I noticed several things about my gameplay and the experience of working towards this goal that struck me as interesting:

First, the choice of character class made this much easier than it could have been — my character, an undead warlock, gets a “free mount” (costing 85 silver, as opposed to the going rate of 100 gold) at level 40. This altered my gameplay somewhat — since I knew that I wouldn’t have to earn a great deal of money in the game before being able to achieve the mount, I was able to focus on leveling the character through questing. This, I suspect, sped up the process quite a bit.

Additionally, though I had a lot of trouble leveling earlier characters past the mid-20s, I do appear to have internalized some basics about the game which I hadn’t consciously realized, ranging from interface issues (paying attention to the color of quests was something I hadn’t done in earlier attempts to play), as well as the geography of Azeroth (e.g., remembering that all of the troll-related quests in the blood elf areas are on the eastern coast of the continent). Read: “lol i, nub, l2ped.”

Finally, again, playing with that group of kids — a more-or-less persistent social group in which, by virtue of my age, I was positioned as an expert — helped to motivate me to continue playing. I genuinely enjoyed helping the kids learn the game and passing on whatever meager knowledge of it I had. This, I suspect, drove me to continue playing, as well as refining how I played by modeling it for the kids in the group. Some of them have now lapped me, but I don’t much care, at least I met my goal of getting past where I’d been before.

Yet…

Though I met the goal I wanted to reach for this semester, I still found myself wanting to explore a number of classes, and though making “deeper” progress within the game (by leveling past 40 on a single character) has been rewarding, I’m beginning to understand that perhaps I just enjoy different things than leveling in the game. My warlock (pictured above) is only one of my characters, and I have had fun recently playing other classes, rogues in particular. I’ll convey one odd story that seems to sum up, for me at least, the experiences I’m interested in having in this virtual world.

After my undead warlock was leveled to the mid-30s, I decided to roll a troll rogue, just for kicks. I found learning a melee DPS class to be challenging (given that I was so used to playing a casting class, and one which relied on pets), but terribly fun. Just the simple fact that you need to do more with an Assassination-specced rogue than with a Demonology-specced warlock made it immediately interesting, and a lot of fun (e.g., Gouge + jump + turn around + Backstab vs. pet + DoT + DoT + Drain; the jumping and spinning around is significantly more fun than just casting spells from afar, as I do with the warlock). I quickly leveled the rogue to the high 20s, and then began to flounder a little (I ran into the boring parts of the game, and was not thrilled with the idea of doing Ashenvale and Hillsbrad yet again).

Several weeks later (after neglecting the rogue a bit), the son of one of my colleagues asked me to run him through a dungeon in order to get gear for his rogue alt character. I happily obliged, as he’d done the same for me with his high level characters. The twist was that we played Horde characters and the dungeon he wanted to be run through was “The Deadmines,” a low-level instance deep in Alliance territory. In other words, an area I’d never really been to (especially not as a member of the opposing faction), and a dungeon I’d never run.

I ran him through, and found that there was a unique item that dropped in the dungeon — the “Red Defias Mask.” A “grey” drop, this item served no purpose other than a cosmetic one, and provided no additional armor, nor stats benefits. Yet, uh, it looked awesome!

I found myself excited about getting an item for my own troll rogue which was (1) was relatively unique looking and (2) to be blunt, indicated to people that I had to haul my characters to a hard-to-get area. Since the mask is “bind on pickup,” that meant I had to drag my level 28 troll rogue to the dungeon, ran part of it solo until the object dropped, and, voila, I had a Red Defias Mask within a few minutes.

However, here’s where the story got a little weird. Alas, the Red Defias Mask looks pretty stupid on a trolls. Given the way Blizzard designed the troll physiology (tusks, pointy noises), there’s an added patch of red cloth on the mask which makes it look … wrong? Oh, just take a look:

Isn’t that goofy looking? So, okay, I had the silly, useless object I’d been coveting, but it wasn’t terribly good looking after all. I couldn’t change the object, so I did the only rational thing and changed my character. I pretty much ditched my level 28 troll rogue, and rerolled an undead rogue last weekend.

Now, rerolling isn’t that strange of a thing for me — I’m quick at leveling characters from 1-20, and my major problem with the game is that I find myself wanting to do this more than many other players. I find the early levels to be enjoyable to do over and over again, just to see if I can do it better. My goals are odd, given the structure of the game leading players to level so they can partake in high-end play, but I found compelled to try a new race for a rogue, simply because I was enamored with the Red Defias Mask, and realized that it looked better on an undead character than on a troll.

I quickly leveled a new undead rogue to level 14 over an evening and a morning (around the level where it’d be difficult but possible to make the trek to Westfall, where the item drops), then researched online to see the best way to get the mask. The mask seemed to drop fairly regularly within The Deadmines, but at level 14 there was no way I could solo the dungeon, and getting low-level Horde players to go with me all the way to The Deadmines would be difficult. So, I decided to try to “farm” the item — which, if you click on the wowhead link above, indicates has about a 2% drop rate. So, I realized that for around every 50 Defias characters I killed, I should be able to get a mask.

Getting to the area where the Defias reside was a bit of a challenge. I’ll just dump out a lot of WoW locations and lingo here for anyone who already knows this stuff, as there’s no easier way to describe it — I had to take the zeppelin from the Undercity to Grom’gol in Stranglethorn Vale, and then try to walk up through STV, through Duskwood, and into Westfall, where The Deadmines and a number of Defias reside. The monsters surrounding Grom’gol were the most daunting part, as they were level 27 or so and up, and would be able to easily kill me at level 14.

So, after a number of tries, I figured it out and used this successful strategy: I took off all of my armor so that when I inevitably got killed, I’d minimize the damage on the gear a little (imagine a mostly-naked zombie running around amidst ravenous dinosaurs, and you can see why I’d enjoy this). My aggro radius at level 14 was huge, so I got killed pretty quickly, and then my spirit popped up in the STV graveyard. The nice thing was that this graveyard is on the border to Duskwood (to the north, the path I needed to take), so I just “spirit healed.” That is, I resurrected in the graveyard, which nearly incapacitates my character for a few minutes (I was happy to wait it out), and damaged all of my gear significantly. But, it was a shortcut past the high level monsters I had trouble with, and pushed me further on the path to my destination, Westfall.

I ran out of STV into Duskwood, and as long as I stayed on the road (and applied the rogue “Sprint” ability to get out of the way of the occasional monster), I did okay. I ended up in Westfall, then Stealthed (went partially invisible, another rogue talent), and worked my way up to a hidden vendor near the Deadmines who could fix the armor of Horde characters (a rarity in that area, which I discovered poking around WoWhead). I stealthed back out of the Deadmines town, and was set — now I could “farm” the Defias characters for the mask.

Long story somewhat shorter, after about six hours of farming for this thing (and killing around 100-110 Defias NPCs), I ended up getting it. I leveled from 14 to 16 just from the experience gained from killing those 100+ characters.

I commemorated the momentous occasion with several screenshots. Of the object dropping:

… and my undead rogue immediately putting it on:

So, now I have a Red Defias Mask. And a new rogue, which I’ve also now leveled up to level 28 after about a week of playing. I had no real reason to do this other than it seemed fun to do — but, really, isn’t that a significant reason? Y’know, it’s a game and all, and aren’t games supposed to be fun, occasionally? What’s ironic is how fun I found the most un-fun grinding I’ve done yet. Spending six hours killing the same NPCs over and over and over again is, on the face of it, the most boring thing one can do in a videogame, but I found it totally hilarious and strangely satisfying.

Rerolling characters is a way for me to both explore different classes/races, but also to hone my skills playing (at least at the n00b level I seem to be mired in). Similarly, I learned more about how to play the undead rogue and really refine my gameplay via the “boring” activity of grinding than I had learned on my previous, troll rogue. What initially motivated me rerolling the rogue as undead was rather silly and cosmetic, but appearances apparently do matter to me in this game. I love playing undead characters not only because they have the best Horde racial abilities (”Cannibalize,” while disgusting, is literally a lifesaver), but because I like their shambly gait, their dances, and the design of their areas. I actually found the experience of getting the mask to be more fun than leveling to get my mount — even if that’s considered “spinning my wheels,” according to the design of the game.

Well, hey, lookie here, I’m in the local paper!

Last week, Rob Thomas of the Capital Times called me up to talk to me about a paper I wrote for an educational psychology class last spring, on expertise in Guitar Hero. I’ve posted on this little blog about that paper before, but in case you missed it, here’s the original post I made about it over the summer. I’m pretty happy with how the article turned out, and it’s fun to see a little project like this end up getting some unexpected play in the local media.

Which brings up that I’ve been neglecting this poor little blog lately, and apologize for that. I’ve been too busy writing (two book chapters mostly done this semester, plus one journal article), taking classes, and, uh, playing videogames. Lately, that’s been more World of Warcraft than anything, but I have spent a fair amount of time on both Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band (imagine Guitar Hero plus drums and vocals), so I might as well post some initial impressions.

First of all, if you didn’t already know, there was a bit of an unhappy divorce between Harmonix and Red Octane (respectively, the game developer and hardware manufacturer behind the first two Guitar Hero games). Red Octane got purchased by Activision, Harmonix got purchased by MTV, and suddenly consumers ended up with a choice of two different fake-guitar gaming franchises. So, Red Octane/Activision/Neversoft = Guitar Hero 3, while Harmonix/MTV = Rock Band. In my opinion, the only real choice between the games comes down to money, as the games are light years apart from one another in gameplay, quality, and fun.

Guitar Hero 3 is, without a doubt, the worst game in the series. I bought the PS2 version, and didn’t get a new guitar (two plastic guitar controllers is enough for my little apartment, thanks), so I can’t comment on the Xbox 360 version, nor the Wii version. But, if the game itself is anything like the PS2 game, it’s the gaming equivalent of a band “selling out.” Neversoft are the new game developers for the Guitar Hero franchise and are developers of the Tony Hawk series of games. And, frankly, I’m not sure how many of them actually play musical instruments, because the weird joy of sort of playing a musical instrument seems to be gone.

In its place, we’ve now got some terrible anime-style cut scenes (featuring everyone in your fake band other than you!), inexplicable leather clad women dancers who come out on the stage to the sound of a guitar going (I kid you not) “bow chika bow bow,” not to mention on-screen drummers who can’t keep a beat. In terms of the actual playing of the game, not much is different — no terribly consequential new bells nor whistles, and the songs are, uh, okay, I guess? Generally, it’s a waste of time at best and offensively dumb at worst. The images of women in the game seem suddenly trashier and creepier than in the earlier games in the series, and playing guitar on it seems more like button-mashing than ever before.

But, back to the gameplay — whose bright idea was it to add a ton of difficult and utterly unnecessary guitar noodling at the beginning of “Holiday in Cambodia” so I’d have to actually go and use practice mode on a song I already know how to play on the real guitar? This kind of thing just pisses me off. Somewhere, Neversoft got it in their heads that the first two Guitar Hero games were fun, but not challenging enough for “real gamers,” perhaps, and added crap to songs (moreso than the previous two games ever did) in order to be challenging for seasoned Guitar Hero players. Not to mention that, though the set list for Guitar Hero 3 looks great on paper, the songs they chose are really not that fun to play, when all’s said and done. I keep going back to “My Name is Jonas,” “One,” and a few others for replaying, but the songs I thought I’d have fun playing (”Holiday in Cambodia,” “Kool Thing,” “Anarchy in the UK”) are truly boring.

Contrast this with Rock Band, a game that is so far and above Guitar Hero 3 in nearly every aspect, there’s just no contest. Playing Rock Band with a bunch of friends is a whole new experience — my throat is hoarse from belting out “Sabotage” yesterday, and playing the drums on Expert is, frankly, like you’re really playing the drums. The avatar creation is sleek and integrated into the game (even the loading screens feature your band in goofy poses with your avatar), and while I normally don’t think I care about such things, whaddya know, it turns out I find that kinda fun. Playing the guitar isn’t any different from Guitar Hero, really, but it’s the rest of the game which makes it worthwhile — the little things, from the way the crowd will sing along with you (even your guitar solos!) if you’re playing well, to the simple game mechanic of letting other members of your band save you mid-song should you fail. And the artwork and graphic design are just fantastic.

Plus, the songs: Harmonix chose songs I probably wouldn’t have ever considered (”Maps,” “Dani California,” “Suffragette City,” “Go With the Flow,” etc.) and they simply… work. Unlike Guitar Hero 3, the songs seem like a slightly more risky mix — how many regular Wal-Mart shoppers would even know who The New Pornographers are? But, it pays off. What Rock Band gives you is a set of songs that are genuinely fun to play as a group, even if one doesn’t know them before playing. It’s like an interactive mixtape made by a bunch of people who both know a variety of music, and know how to design good gameplay.

The only two flaws of Rock Band are the crappier guitar controller (I’ve already had to fix the one we bought due to the downstroke failing on the picking button), and the heftier price tag ($180 is what I spent on the Xbox 360 version vs. $60 for Guitar Hero 3). But, it’s worth every penny and (so far at least, knock on plastic) every problem with the guitar controller. Harmonix sure seem to be, first and foremost, musicians who develop games, while Neversoft appear to be game developers who hired a few musicians to help them figure out this new (to them) franchise. Rock Band is good enough that I will probably buy an Xbox 360 within the next few months, just to play this game (not to mention playing online, which still blows my mind).

If you can afford Rock Band, go out and get it!

Fox, Barr and McG Adapting Spaced
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
October 30, 2007

Fox is teaming with writer Adam Barr and producer McG for “Spaced,” a comedy project based on the Channel 4 series of the same name from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz masterminds Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox has handed out a put pilot commitment to the single-camera “Spaced,” which hails from Warner Bros. TV, McG’s WBTV-based Wonderland Sound and Vision and Granada America, which owns the format.

The project revolves around two strangers who pose as a married couple in order to rent an apartment.

Barr (”Will & Grace”) is writing the script, which garnered interest from several networks. He is executive producing with Wonderland’s McG and Peter Johnson and Granada’s Robert Green.

The original series, which ran on Channel 4 for two seasons, was written by Pegg and Jessica Hynes who starred as the fake couple, and was directed by Wright. It earned two BAFTA nominations for best comedy series and an International Emmy nomination.

————————————————————————-

UPDATE: From Edgar’s MySpace:

Oct 30 2007 12:10 AM

For the record on SPACED US, I have nothing to do with it. They haven’t even deigned to contact me.

Leave well alone I say.

Well, yeah. McG? Doing Spaced? Edgar Wright (director of the show), not even being consulted?

This is gonna be amusing. And utter crap.

I can’t believe it. Twice in my lifetime? Twice in three years? This is unreal.

The Red Sox are World Series victorious yet again, and I find myself just plain giddy today. I’ve been a fan of the Red Sox since I was about 10 and I got to see Carl Yastrzemski play during his final season. I was crushed in 1986 and pretty much stopped following the team for a few years. I remember the very moment I was wooed back into Red Sox Nation — Pedro coming out of the bullpen versus the Indians in 1999. I’ve been hooked ever since.

So, this is weird — two World Series victories, an extremely promising young core of players who came up in the Sox system (Youkilis, Ellsbury, Pedroia, Lester, Buchholz, Papelbon) and a bunch of excellent young players who were acquired from other organizations and countries (Beckett, Matsuzaka, Okajima). They’re primed to continue succeeding for quite a few years.

Which is why I’m going to repost A. Bart Giamatti’s “The Green Fields of the Mind,” which I believe I’ve posted here before (or at least on older blogs of mine). If just to remind us what it was like, just a few years ago. And to be even more happy that being a Red Sox fan is still as much as it is about the potential of having your heart broken as it is about hoping your team is left standing to spray champagne all over the place.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn’t this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game’s deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio–not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television–and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.

But out here, on Sunday, October 2, where it rains all day, Dame Mutability never loses. She was in the crowd at Fenway yesterday, a gray day full of bluster and contradiction, when the Red Sox came up in the last of the ninth trailing Baltimore 8-5, while the Yankees, rain-delayed against Detroit, only needing to win one or have Boston lose one to win it all, sat in New York washing down cold cuts with beer and watching the Boston game. Boston had won two, the Yankees had lost two, and suddenly it seemed as if the whole season might go to the last day, or beyond, except here was Boston losing 8-5, while New York sat in its family room and put its feet up. Lynn, both ankles hurting now as they had in July, hits a single down the right-field line. The crowd stirs. It is on its feet. Hobson, third baseman, former Bear Bryant quarterback, strong, quiet, over 100 RBIs, goes for three breaking balls and is out. The goddess smiles and encourages her agent, a canny journeyman named Nelson Briles.

Now comes a pinch hitter, Bernie Carbo, onetime Rookie of the Year, erratic, quick, a shade too handsome, so laid-back he is always, in his soul, stretched out in the tall grass, one arm under his head, watching the clouds and laughing; now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of him and then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over the center-field wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics as elegant as the arc the ball describes.

New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring, they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of the World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fifty years, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fisk would win. It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever. Now Bailey, picked up from the National League recently, big arms, heavy gut, experienced, new to the league and the club; he fouls off two and then, checking, tentative, a big man off balance, he pops a soft liner to the first baseman. It is suddenly darker and later, and the announcer doing the game coast to coast, a New Yorker who works for a New York television station, sounds relieved. His little world, well-lit, hot-combed, split-second-timed, had no capacity to absorb this much gritty, grainy, contrary reality.

Cox swings a bat, stretches his long arms, bends his back, the rookie from Pawtucket who broke in two weeks earlier with a record six straight hits, the kid drafted ahead of Fred Lynn, rangy, smooth, cool. The count runs two and two, Briles is cagey, nothing too good, and Cox swings, the ball beginning toward the mound and then, in a jaunty, wayward dance, skipping past Briles, feinting to the right, skimming the last of the grass, finding the dirt, moving now like some small, purposeful marine creature negotiating the green deep, easily avoiding the jagged rock of second base, traveling steady and straight now out into the dark, silent recesses of center field.

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he’d seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game–not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

Thank you, Red Sox. See you in March.

Can you imagine the dude on the right reconfiguring an matter/antimatter intermix chamber neutron flow configuration diagnostic? Okay, thankfully, they’re ditching all that crappy technobabble-era Trek with this new film, but still?

I’m excited by the change. The rest of the casting for the new Star Trek has been either unknowns or the occasional actor with good potential (and sometimes solid pedigree, like Eric Bana, who will be playing a Romulan villain in the movie). Pegg is the first actor who seems definitely cast against type, and I’m really interested to see what he does with the role.

This movie’s shaping up to be an expensive ($150 million!) experiment, and I’m hoping they pull it off. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Edit: I just changed the title of this post to something clever! Look how clever I am! Clever!

I’m thinking of writing a very long piece for the blog called “Why I Am Not a Gamer,” but have yet to figure out exactly the right tone to strike. This Halo 3 review reminds me that not only do I find myself increasingly uninterested in playing most games, but increasingly alienated from the prevailing social discourse around games… even from those “gamers” whose criticisms I would normally agree with. Halo 3, for all its hype, appears to be another one of those games that I just can’t understand the appeal of, and which makes me wonder if I can fully understand why it’s appealing to “gamers.”

At what point must someone who studies videogames and virtual worlds actually be “a gamer,” and at what point is it okay to study the media “from the outside”? Does studying videogames necessarily mean condoning (and thus reifying) the kinds of unsavory discourse that exists around games? I’ll try to explore these ideas in a few upcoming posts.

So, here are a fewTwin Peaks lolcats I have lying on my hard drive right now.

Plus, one more that I won’t paste as an inline image because, um, my family sometimes reads my blog and I’m embarassed I even made it. Suffice it to say, any family members that stumble on this thread and don’t get it, it’s, you know, based on a stupid joke lolcat. So, please don’t think of me as some kind of Internet perv or something.

Yeah, enjoy.

The name “pop cosmo” might be a little opaque at first glance, but it’s short for “Pop Cosmopolitanism,” a term that Constance has been using lately to summarize the goals of our work. By focusing on the ways that popular media (in the form of persistent online virtual worlds) encourage various learning and literacy practices, we’re arguing that they’re preparing kids for the demands of 21st century workplaces, and the responsibilities of being global citizens (hence “cosmopolitanism”). Here’s Constance’s introductory post, which better explains what we’re doing.

I made a post last week about our research into science literacy and the World of Warcraft official forums. It’s been an interesting project so far, and now we’re in the process of writing up some of our results, as well as determining what to do next. Here’s the introductory paragraph of my post:

Following up on Constance’s post from the other day, I’d like to talk a little more about our ongoing research into science literacy practices in the World of Warcraft forums. Based on the results Constance posted, we found a staggering amount of “social knowledge construction” occurring in our sample of posts to the official WoW forums. Constance gave us a taste of what the typical post to these forums looks like, but what about exemplary posts, and what might those tell us about science literacy in these online contexts?

This coming Saturday, we’re going to start our first afterschool groups, introducing adolescent boys to World of Warcraft. It’s been pretty nutty trying to get everything prepared and ready for them, but I think we’re almost there, and we’re excited to get the kids playing. More on that as it develops.

If you’re interested in any of this, by all means, go check out popcosmo.org, and let me know what you think.

How can a paper about the first text adventure game (written somewhere in the range of 1974-1976) still be groundbreaking? Well, as Jerz showed, via a multi-methodological approach looking at the game’s original source code (long thought lost and recently recovered), along with interviews with the author’s family, and a first-hand exploration of the cave(s) that the original “Colossal Cave” game (a.k.a. Adventure or ADVENT) was based upon. To wit:

This is sure to be a classic in interactive fiction (IF) research, and is one of the best analyses and histories of any genre of game I’ve ever seen. Thanks, Dr. Jerz, for reminding me why I love studying this stuff. Please note the link to his blog in the first paragraph — it’s highly recommended for those interested in interactive fiction and literacy.

Oh, and Jerz is also the author of interactive fiction himself. He wrote “Fine Tuned“, a game which Emily Short described as “A light-hearted melodrama set ca. 1910 about a heroic manly autoist, his sidekick, and a beautiful young opera singer.” I haven’t tried it yet, but just downloaded it and might give it a whirl soon.

There seems to be a slow bubbling resurgence in academic interest in interactive fiction these days, and I’m finding myself increasingly interested in the literacy and learning implications of this medium. First of all, entirely text-based games are holding a new allure for those interested in creating interactive reading experiences. But, most importantly, in the day and age of large development teams and larger development times for videogames, a free, easy-to-use, and powerful programming environment such as Inform 7 is appealing for those of us who’d like to experiment a little.

I’m working this term (in a course taught by Kurt Squire) on developing a small IF piece (in Inform 7) which I’d like to use to foster critical literacy skills in teenagers — the idea being that IF allows us to play off of the ambiguity of text itself (moreso than graphical games), and might that ambiguity be used to help us understand the reasons why different people interpret common texts differently?

I don’t want to say too much about a game that I’ve barely developed just yet, but I’m angling to have the game written by late October, and actually run it in a classroom (or afterschool) exercise with kids before Thanksgiving. Text-based games don’t seem too hard a sell for teachers and school administrations (as the link to reading and literacy seems obvious), but will kids react well to these games now? Part of me thinks they’ll react negatively (e.g., “Aww, you mean I gotta READ?”), but part of me is also hopeful that the “Harry Potter effect” might entice some kids to actually get engaged in a text-based gaming experience — it’s been two decades since this was a viable commercial game genre,

We’ll see, I guess. I’ll update more as my game develops.

Me, I’m going to go lie in bed and goof around with my new iPhone!

Here’s the entirety of her letter, along with the parts I found most interesting in bold:

August 21, 2007

American Psychological Association,
750 First Street, NE,
Washington, DC 20002-4242

President Brehm:

I am writing to inform you that I am returning my Presidential Citation dated 2/02/06 and awarded to me by then President of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Gerald Koocher. I have struggled for many months with this decision, and I make it with pain and sorrow. I was honored to receive this award and proud to be a member of APA. Over the years I have spoken at national conventions many times and had enjoyed an excellent relationship with the APA and its staff. With this letter, I feel as if I am ostracizing a good friend.

I do not want an award from an organization that sanctions its members’ participation in the enhanced interrogations at CIA Black Sites and at Guantanamo.The presence of psychologists has both educated the interrogation teams in more skillful methods of breaking people down and legitimized the process of torture in defiance of the Geneva Conventions.

The behavior of psychologists on these enhanced interrogation teams violates our own Code of Ethics (2002) in which we pledge to respect the dignity and worth of all people, with special responsibility towards the most vulnerable. I consider prisoners in secret CIA-run facilities with no right of habeas corpus or access to attorneys, family or media to be highly vulnerable. I also believe that when any of us are degraded, all of human life is degraded. This letter is as much about us as it is about prisoners.

In our Ethics Code we agree to promote honesty and accuracy. Our involvement in these projects has been secretive and dishonest. Finally, as psychologists we vow to do no harm. Without question, we violate this oath when we allow people in our care to be deprived of sleep or subjected to sensory over-stimulation or deprivation.

I cannot accept the August 19, 2007 Reaffirmation of APA’s Position Against Torture (Substitute Motion Three). Under this motion, psychologists will be allowed to continue working on interrogation teams that are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. This motion places our organization on the side of the CIA and Department of Defense and at odds with the United Nations, The Red Cross, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association. With this reaffirmation we have made a terrible mistake.

I know that the return of my Presidential Citation from Dr. Koocher will be of small import, but it is what I can do to disassociate myself from what I consider to be a heinous policy. All of my life I have tried my best to stand up for those with no voices and no power. The prisoners our government labels as enemy combatants are in this category.

I return my citation as a matter of conscience and in the hopes that the APA will reconsider its current unethical position. We have long been a wonderful organization that respected human rights and promoted tolerance, kindness, and peace. Nothing is more fundamental to our core orientation and professional service to others than our commitment to all people’s inherent dignity, safety and welfare. I hope my letter may be useful in restoring the APA to its long-respected and important stance as a beacon of integrity and kindness for all human beings.

Respectfully,

Dr. Mary Pipher

I question her last statement about APA’s “long-respected and important stance as a beacon of integrity and kindness for all human beings,” but the rest of it I buy. Rather than vote for a very simple statement denouncing the involvement of its membersin torture, the APA overwhelmingly rejected this statement and crafted a new one which tried to list specific cases which could be ethically justified and those which could not. That is, tacitly condoned Guantanamo and these other “Black Sites,” and posited the ludicrous assertion that if APA psychologists were not present, more prisoners would be dying. Isn’t that a pretty huge problem in and of itself when psychologists are protecting prisoners’ very lives? Ain’t that a red flag?

I considered myself a “psychologist” once, or at least a psychologist-in-training though I was never a member of the APA. I’m embarassed to have had anything to do with these people, as this kind of thing taints the entire field. The APA have a responsibility first and foremost to promoting human safety and dignity, though this has obviously always been lip service rather than an actively-practiced policy by the group.

While the act of returning an award may be only symbolic, the symbol is a good one, and one that I hope to see repeated until the APA gets the point.

I’m working my way through the “Canon” currently, and in a rather haphazard manner. A bit over a year ago, I bought Leslie Klinger’s new annotated Holmes, and read “A Study In Scarlet” (which, frankly, wasn’t a very good story) and “The Sign of Four” (which was). Traveling Europe last summer, I picked up a beat-up old paperback of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” at an OxFam charity shop in London, and read that in Rome. And, now, thanks to discovering the Notorious Canary-Trainers, I have been slowly working my way through the short stories, reading whichever one strikes my fancy (or whichever story my friends suggest I read next). So far, in the past week, that’s been:

“The Bruce-Partingon Plans”
“The Veiled Lodger”
“The Musgrave Ritual”
“The Blue Carbuncle”
“A Scandal in Bohemia”
“The Man With the Twisted Lip”

… with probably “Silver Blaze” or “Mazarin Stone” up next (two stories I can’t recall ever reading). Additionally, I’ve picked up hardbacks of each of Nick Meyer’s three Holmes novels (The Seven Per-Cent Solution, The West End Horror, and The Canary-Trainer), as well as a number of pastiches (The Bee Keeper’s Apprentice, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon), and some reference books ( The Sherlock Holmes Compendium and Encyclopedia Sherlockiana). On top of that, I found my old copy of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (the paper version, not the computer game), and plan to try to get my friends to play it with me soon.

Speaking of which… wow, this Holmes obsession is hard to explain to my friends.

Sure, they’re nerds like I am, but there’s something qualitatively different about gaming nerds and the kind of person who finds Victorian sleuthing fascinating. I’ve raised several eyebrows of friends by describing my current interest in Conan Doyle, and even though I’m currently in a graduate program trying to incorporate research on learning with new media and fandom, this is difficult to explain. Academically, I’m finding Holmes to be interesting because of how, as scholarly and fan communities, they have refined “fan theorizing” to an art — the kinds of attention to detail and erudition required to create new knowledge in these communities is simply staggering. But, as a fan, I am finding the content of Holmes’ world to be equally foreign to my current life as any game’s fantasy world, yet more appealing. The deduction and reasoning at the surface of the Holmes Canon is, to be honest, much more appealing at the moment than the hack and slash world of many videogames. That’s not to say, of course, that there aren’t many complex intellectual practices going on in and around games — that’s one of the central things I’m interested in studying in my research — but just that, for now, I’m finding Victorian detective work to be immensely satisfying and interesting.

So, a few more short blurbs on things of Sherlockian/Holmesian interest that I’ve discovered in the past week:

First off, it looks like there’s going to be a new DVD set of the complete Granada Sherlock Holmes TV series from the 1980s and early 1990s, starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. As a teenager, I was completely enthralled with these shows, and still have a few of them on musty VHS cassettes I taped off of my local PBS station. They were all released earlier on crappier DVDs with no extras to speak of, but now have been remastered from the original negatives (!) and come in a single, beautiful box with a few extras:

Bonus Features Include:
Sherlock Series Promo
Three commentary tracks
Daytime Live
Elementary My Dear Watson: An Interview with Edward Hardwicke
An Interview with Adrian Conan Doyle
Sherlock Museum Short
Spanish/English subtitles

So, the extras are a bit underwhelming, but an improvement over the original releases. And the transfers appear scintillant from the few images that are up on the Amazon page:

The only problem — it lists for $300?! Ugh, I might have to “rent and rip,” though I’m dying to buy this.

In other news, I’ve subscribed to Scott Monty and Burt Wolder’s new Holmes podcast, “I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.” It’s not bad so far, though I only understand maybe a third of what they’re talking about. I’ve listened to the first two episodes so far, and it’s interesting to hear the history of Sherlockian vanity presses, as well as the history of the Baker Street Journal. I’ll keep listening, and am happy to hear someone’s doing this.

One thing I noticed, however — since there are a few Holmes-related blogs and now a Holmes-related podcast, why isn’t there an (English language) Holmes wiki anywhere? Perhaps there is, and I can’t find it, but I find this peculiar, especially when modern (and, frankly, much more complex) media have had wikis devoted to them. I’m thinking of Lostpedia, Memory-Alpha, etc. — community knowledge about a fictional world that is collaboratively negotiated, all in public. I’m interested in the ways that knowledge get formed online, and find it peculiar that the only Holmes-related wiki I can find is in French.

There are a couple of explanations for this — Holmes enthusiasts tend to be older than fans of newer fictional worlds, and thus are potentially less attuned with the latest, greatest Internet phenomena, but since wikis have been around for several years, this seems unlikely. Or, perhaps there’s an ethos of scholarly knowledge-construction going on here and thus people are more interested in seeing (and arguing over) what specific individuals have contributed to Holmes scholarship rather than the relative anonymity of a wiki. Or, maybe … it’s just that no one has bothered to do it yet?

A wiki could be a fascinating experiment — what if every Sherlockian had the opportunity to contribute their own annotations to the “Canon”? It would be a simple task technically to set up such a site, but a potential nightmare socially. Since I’m quite new to all of this, I can only suspect there might be clashes of egos and pet theories in play on a Holmes wiki. If anyone even used it! Anyhow, just an idea.

More later, as my Holmes obsession branches into different directions.

The meeting was rather low-key and convivial; more a relaxed, fun reading group than anything else. I found it really fascinating to see the wide variety of different Holmes volumes everyone brought with them to the meeting — one man brought the Klinger annotated edition, a few people brought the smaller Oxford editions, and a number of older “Complete Holmes” editions (I had the tiny Bantam editions, the man next to me had the Barnes & Noble editions, etc.) One thing I saw was missing and, I think, might have been helpful was that no one had the Baring-Gould edition with them, so I’ll try to bring that next time.

Is this terribly relevant to the way the meeting went, or what we did? Nah, but it’s interesting to see that in a small community of Holmes afficionados like this, that everyone comes at it from a slightly different direction. I’d love to find out more of what motivated people to join this group, and what motivates them to continue — how much they love Holmes? The community of the group? Family? Other concerns? I’m obviously interested in how fan communities work, and certainly don’t plan to study this group without their express consent, but I’d be lying if I said these kinds of questions weren’t interesting to me. So, yeah, what’s motivated me to join up with this group?

As often happens whenever I get obsessively interested in something, I start gobbling up other media related to it. In the earlier Holmes-related post, I mentioned the radio dramas I found on my hard drive, and I’ve also been Netflixing several Holmes films. I most recently watched Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Silk Stockings, a very odd reimagining of Holmes and Watson, starring Rupert Everett as Holmes (yes, the Four Weddings and a Funeral guy), and Ian Hart as Watson (a.k.a. Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone):

Not horrible by any means, it was also not particularly interesting either. Every age reimagines older stories through the lens of the times, and so it’s no surprise that someone would make a Holmes story set during the Victorian era, but with the sensibilities of the 21st century: Psychological profiling, sexual fetishism, serial killers, etc. Thus, it comes off as … odd. Everett and Hart are competent, even quite good at times, but ultimately this feels like it could have been an episode of “Wire in the Blood” or any other relatively-current British crime procedural.

I wish there were more creative reimaginings of the Holmes canon making it to film — next up for me is the 2007 BBC Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, starring Jonathan Pryce as Holmes and, presumably, a bunch of kids as the Baker Street Irregulars. This seems a more promising approach to take, though still not quite as interesting as the heyday of film adaptations such as Billy Wilder’s Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and Herbert Ross’s The Seven Per-Cent Solution, based on the novel by Nicholas Meyer. Speaking of Holmes’s “seven per-cent solution” (the dilution of cocaine he’d inject himself with), here’s a kinda cool t-shirt I’m thinking of getting:

… based on Sidney Paget’s original illustration of Holmes, after shooting up. Available via this link.

Okay, enough rambling. I have to go clean my house, as my father and stepmother are coming to visit this afternoon!

If you never saw it, here’s the video:

Yeah, okay, great. Nice try, but not terribly funny, move along, right? Well, actually, no.

Turns out Barry Obama is — several months after this video’s heyday — offended and upset by the video. Huh? Here are a couple choice quotes:

“I guess it’s too much to ask, but you do wish people would think about what impact their actions have on kids and families,” Obama said during the interview, held in the den of a supporter who just had hosted a campaign stop on her front lawn attended by about 120 people.

“This is part of the process of politics that can be difficult, (that) is making sure that your kids and your wife and your family are insulated from both things like this and what I suspect will be at some point some negative campaigning,” Obama said.

What the hell? He’s worrying about his family being insulated from this video and negative campaigning only garners a little mention at the end? Oh, Barry, you’re gonna be in for a world of hurt soon, if you fear dumb little YouTube videos as threatening the integrity of your family.

In recent weeks, I’ve become less and less interested in Obama as a candidate — I just don’t think the guy’s close to being ready — and reactions like this show a surprisingly thin skin. Bill Clinton, for all his faults, would have handled a video like this with a laugh and a joke and, okay, maybe by trying to get the “Obama girl”’s phone number. But Obama takes the road of victimization, and that’s not something you want to do when someone is making — for free, mind you — advertisements that get people excited about your campaign.

The other day, while reorganizing my bookshelves, I came across Isaac Asimov’s “The Ultimate Crime” — I can’t find a full text copy of the story online right now, but here’s a link to a review of it. Basically, in the story, Asimov recounts a dinner meeting among a number of friends, one of whom is trying to address a vague part of the Holmes “Canon,” what the true topic of Moriarty’s The Dynamics of an Asteroid is about, as a justification for joining The Baker Street Irregulars, the worldwide group of Holmes fans and scholars.

It struck me that this is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been interested in studying in new media: The ways that fans of texts come together and reinterpret and “fill in the gaps,” sometimes via fanfic, but very often in terms of theories that have evidence marshalled toward them, are assailed upon by counter-evidence and reinterpretations, and are shaped via the use of argument. This is something I’m studying in World of Warcraft and The Legend of Zelda fandom right now, but also something I’ve found interesting in Lost and Heroes fans as well.

Anyway, I wondered if there are still active Baker Street Irregulars groups, and what they talked about. A quick Google search later, and I discovered that not only did Madison have a “scion” (an officially recognized group by the BSI, though none of the Canary-Trainers are BSI members) but that they were meeting this Sunday! They’re called the “Notorious Canary-Trainers,” from a reference in the Holmes story “The Adventure of Black Peter.” It appears that the group is open to the public, and that their topic for this Sunday’s (today’s!) meeting is a discussion of the story “The Bruce-Partington Plans.”

Now, I’m not much for superstition or fate or anything, but I do think it’s a weird coincidence that they happened to be talking about this particular (and not all that significant) story today. The plot of it features Holmes trying to track down a set of missing submarine plans that were stolen from Her Majesty’s Navy. Holmes’s brother Mycroft makes a rare appearance, and the mystery itself is pretty decent. However, it’s purely personal nostalgia that makes this story significant for me.

When I was a kid, I used to sit in the backseat of my parents’ car with a tape recording, listening over and over again to old time radio shows on cassette that my parents had bought me. The Shadow and Sherlock Holmes were always my favorites, and an adaptation of “The Bruce-Partington Plans” was the one I listened to the most. Surprisingly, I discovered just the other day that I had a copy of this specific radio show, starring Sir Ralph Richardson as Watson and Sir John Gielgud as Holmes. Click here if you’d like to listen!

Anyway, I decided to go to this Canary-Trainers meeting today, at 3pm. To prepare, I listened to that radio show once again, found another (older) radio adaptation starring Rathbone and Bruce and listened to it, a radio version from the 1960s, as well as watched the Jeremy Brett Granada television production from “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” in the mid-’80s. And, of course, read the story once again:

I have copies of both annotated versions (Baring-Gould’s original on top, and Leslie Klinger’s new annotated Holmes at bottom). Reading the story this morning, I skimmed both sets of annotations as I went along — it was a fascinating little exercise, and I don’t think I’ve ever really read a text like this before. Sort of amusing that I’ll do this with a Sherlock Holmes story rather than, say, Plato, but I’m not fretting about that too much.

So, I’ve listened to three different audio versions, watched a television production, and read the story with two sets of annotations. I’m probably prepared, I hope! I’m going to hop on a bus soon and head out to the meeting — their website says that guests are welcomed, so I hope it’s okay that I show up unannounced. I don’t hold any illusions that this meeting will be anything like Asimov’s great little short story, but I’m curious to see what it actually is like. Plus, I’ve always wanted to join a reading group for fun, and what could be more fun than the classic stories of the Master Detective?

Here’s what we know already:Nimoy’s very likely in it, Shatner’s not. The movie is going to deal with the earliest days of the Kirk/Spock Enterprise and will feature much younger actors playing Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. Zachary Quinto (Sylar on Heroes) has been recently rumored as being close to a deal to play Spock, while the earliest rumors that have since been debunked were that they were going A-list, seeking to get Matt Damon, Adrien Brody, and Gary Sinise for the big three. ILM is on board to do the special effects and have confirmed they’re doing the original Enterprise, most of the others who are involved are from Lost (Michael Giacchino is doing the score, the production folks are from Lost, Damon Lindelof is a producer, etc.). The screenplay is written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Abrams, apparently, which doens’t have many excited who saw MI:3 or Transformers, two other collaborations between Kurtzman and Orci. The screenplay, however, does sound potentially interesting if they can pull it off — their stated goals are make two films in one, interpretable and serving as a new entry to non-fans, and then littered with small, unobtrusive references to Trek to tie it into the show’s chronology. Abrams is producing, will direct, and it looks like at least some of the location shooting will take place in Iceland, which has some spots that would be perfect for an alien planet or two.

There’s probably more, but not much of it is consequential. Today’s the day we’re going to get some casting, more info than we ever have, and will likely even see a short preview of some of the effects or perhaps some kind of teaser trailer. They don’t start filming until the fall, with a summer or fall 2008 release.

I’ve been a Trekkie ever since I can remember, and have only ever been fanatical about the original series. I’ve never been the type to dress up and go to conventions, but I swallowed up all of the media I could about the original series back when I was a teen (I’ve already posted about my earliest Internet footprint, and reading that gives you a sense of the kind of intellectual problems the 14-year-old me was often wrestling with). I’m not the kind any longer to mindlessly just accept a new Star Trek film with bated breath (Star Trek V quickly weaned me of this habit), but I do admit to being somewhat hopeful about today’s news.

I’m excited by the opportunities that a “reboot” affords, as well as a renewed focus on the original, best Star Trek (ditching The Next Generation and on, which never really worked that well). I’m excited about the involvement of Abrams and his cronies (other than Kurtzman and Orci), based on the excellent Lost work they’ve done in recent years. I’m excited about the chance to sit down and see a fresh new take on Star Trek, really the first fresh new one since The Next Generation. This has the possibility to be a new kick in the pants to the franchise, like when Harve Bennett and Nick Meyer grabbed the reins with the second film.

What I’m not excited about are the screenwriters — their track record is awful so far. I find Zachary Quinto’s acting to be worse than sub-par, and him taking over as Spock is nigh-offensive to me. And until I see production sketches or other images, I’m scared that they’re going to try to modernize the look of the original show to such an extent that it will seem crass. I’m worried.

But, anyway, today’s the day. I’ll revise this post later with my thoughts once everything gets revealed. See you in a few hours.

Edit (7pm Eastern):

Well, looks like the Star Trek panel has come and gone, and we now have a new Mr. Spock:

… as I feared. On the brighter side, we also have an old Spock:

… as I had hoped! Nimoy will be in the movie, playing the older Spock to Quinto’s younger Spock. Since they’re going with the older Spock and have said they’re still trying to figure out a way to get Shatner into the picture as an older Kirk, I’m assuming that they’re going with the flashback from the 24th century approach. For those non-Trekkies reading my weblog, Kirk was killed off in the 7th Star Trek feature, Star Trek: Generations, while the last we saw of Spock onscreen was around 1991, and he was still running around in the 24th century. Since Vulcans can live 200 years, Spock was hitting middle age around the time of The Next Generation.

What has me most excited, however, is the new teaser poster:

It uses the original series font Star Trek BT, and I think that can’t be out of laziness. They’re making a concerted effort to be retro and appeal to those of us who cherish the original Star Trek. While I may be highly skeptical of Quinto’s casting, he is but one piece in the whole thing. They have not cast a Kirk yet, and did not reveal anything else about other roles cast, so, a bit of a letdown there. I can assume we’ll see Greg Grunberg in there somewhere, though, making this already an oddly Heroes-heavy affair.

So, to sum up, I’m not thrilled about Quinto, but what’s done is done. Let’s see if they can pull this off.

So, I’m sitting here thinking about why I don’t own an Xbox 360 yet — clearly, I’m now a poor graduate student, so I can’t afford one, but also there just hasn’t been anything interesting released for the system yet. At least not interesting enough for me to plunk down the dough. That looks like it might change soon, thanks to some music-related games on the horizon.

First of all, here’s Rock Band:

If you’ve known me in the past year, you know that I was a huge fan of Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II, but after the less-than-amicable breakup of developers Harmonix and controller makers Red Octane, I wasn’t sure where Guitar Hero was going to go. It seems as though Activision is content on rolling out more and more Guitar Hero games with more or less the same quality of content (though the ’80s pack, out this week, is not something I’m clamoring for). Harmonix and their new corporate overlords MTV want to make the game even more fun for multiplayer, and Rock Band seems to fit that bill.

The UI seems a bit cluttered, but I’m not sure how one gets past that when you’ve got to deal with a guitar, bass, drums, and vocals all represented on the screen — some have suggested that they should come up with some new notational system that incorporates all the instruments on one staff, but that’d just be way to hard for n00bs to understand. I’m happy with what I see from Rock Band and will probably shell out the $150+ to get it. That Harmonix knows good game design and knows good music is evident from the game’s initial track list (so far):

“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” – Blue Öyster Cult
“Enter Sandman” – Metallica
“Go with the Flow” – Queens of the Stone Age
“In Bloom” – Nirvana
“Learn To Fly” – Foo Fighters
“Main Offender” – The Hives
“Mississippi Queen” – Mountain
“Paranoid” – Black Sabbath
“Reptilia” – The Strokes
“Rockaway Beach” – The Ramones
“Say It Ain’t So” – Weezer
“Suffragette City” – David Bowie
“Tom Sawyer” – Rush
“Vasoline” – Stone Temple Pilots
“Wanted Dead or Alive” – Bon Jovi
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” – The Who

“Suffragette City” and “Rockaway Beach” are not songs I would naturally assume would make it into videogames, so I’m tickled by that. Plus, though I hate “Enter Sandman” (and that era Metallica in general), the fact that they got Metallica to be involved at all bodes well — since Rock Band promises to release entire albums of content online (first up, The Who’s Who’s Next I believe), perhaps we’ll get Master of Puppets on this thing eventuallly.

Additionally, here’s another odd music-related game which caught my attention:

Kevin H. posted about Eternal Sonata, an interesting looking new game coming out for the Xbox 360 — it appears to be about the adventures of composer Frederic Chopin (!?) through a series of fantasy worlds. Check out the trailer:

This kind of thing is phenomenally weird to me — initially exciting until one sees that, oh yeah, it’s just going to be a lot of slashing up of monsters and shooting stuff. If you’re going to bother to create a narrative that’s so original and daring, and render it so beautifully, why not introduce some new game mechanics? Maybe there’s more under the surface, but the trailer was really exciting until they got to the actual non-cut scenes.

Still, it looks interesting. Without knowing much beyond what was in the trailer, it strikes me as a novel way to do an RPG, but hopefully it turns into a novel way to play an RPG, which has never been a genre I’ve been terribly interested in. At least not in the digital forms its predominantly seen in.

Okay, time to take a nap and continue my recuperation.

Well, it’s finally nearly here. Tonight at midnight is the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and if you’d have asked me a mere six months ago if I’d have cared about this event, I would have laughed in your face. But, stubborn grumpy old me was finally convinced to read the books (thanks, Roxy!), and then briefly went nutso trying to convince all my friends, present and former, to read them (hi Audz, hi M).

What will happen? I don’t honestly know, as I’ve tried to keep myself as far away from genuine spoilers as is possible — even going so far as to delete any emails or random message board private messages that even hint at being a Harry Potter spoiler. I’ve become adept at skimming enough of a message to know that it’s going to be a spoiler, then trashing it. And, before you get any bright ideas, after I post this blog post, I’ll likely be offline for a few days anyway, so don’t try to challenge me on this one, smartasses.

That hasn’t kept me from speculating on what will happen. Here are my guesses, and perhaps in a few days I’ll post a spoilerful weblog entry seeing how off the mark I was. Note that these spoil various points from The Half Blood Prince, so if you haven’t read that, well, you’ve had plenty of time and I don’t care if I’m spoiling it for you!

• I buy the theory that Harry is actually Godric Gryffindor’s descendent. Roxy pointed out that the Wizard of the Month on Rowling’s website was Gryffindor, and he had the same green eyes that Harry has — it’s been pointed out many times that Harry “has his mother’s eyes,” but his mother was supposedly muggle-born. So, what if she wasn’t and didn’t know that she was a descendant of Gryffindor? There are a few implications to this: (1) Narratively, it’d make for a nice parallel to Tom Marvolo Riddle’s ignorance of his Slytherin bloodline, and there have been tons of parallels between Harry and Voldemort so far; (2) it would be a great end to the Dursley storyline for them to realize that they actually are what they loathe so much (since Petunia was Lily Potter’s sister); (3) it gives credence to the theory that Harry is a Horcrux, as we were basically promised that something of Gryffindor’s would contain a chunk of Voldemort’s soul.
• Deaths, lots of them. I suspect Hagrid, Mad Eye, Lupin, Tonks, and Draco will all die heroically. Yes, Draco — the end of the last book sowed the seeds for his redemption (albeit one that comes from a deep cowardice), and I suspect he’ll go out sympathetically. I would love to see Hagrid face Voldemort himself, as one of my favorite nearly-forgotten bits of the storyline is that Hagrid is the only contemporary of Tom Riddle’s around, and had his life derailed by Tom (back in Chamber of Secrets). Will either Ron or Hermione die? There are rumors that Hermione’s going to bite it, and I just can’t see that happening. The slow build-up of the Ron and Hermione romance hasn’t eve