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Teflon, Gelatin, & Scurvy

I just bought the most kick-ass frying pan on Earth.:

I’m sure it looks nice enough in the picture. What you don’t get from this distance is the heft, the solidity, the balance of it. It’s the Hanzo sword of frying pans. I swear you’re intended to be able to wield this as a weapon. It’s made for power frying. You’ll never be defeated by another runny omelet. Your pancakes will be too scared to rebel.

I am also eating these:

These, for which I passed up spending time with Isaac Asimov, the last time I saw him alive. I now notice that they’re not really as great as I thought they were.

I kind of like this.

(August 31st, 2005 @ 7:10pm)



22 responses

Still waiting for red

aderack: Just because it’s right in front of me as I type this. I… the DS thing. The Sony guy. The DS outselling the PSP by FOUR TIMES, and furthermore selling more than every other console PUT TOGETHER. Gimmick. Limited appeal.

… Yeah. Don’t need to talk about it really. Just observing.

I’m kind of surprised, on a level, that people have started to notice the obvious. It doesn’t often happen. I mean. With the DS being the only interesting system out there now and certainly the most interesting thing since the Dreamcast, with Sony completely missing the point with the PSP, with the DS bringing in people who’d never been interested in videogames before…

I just wonder why it’s not available in more colors here.
ajutla: It’s funny as hell.
aderack: It’s… weird. They’re figuring it out on their own, and with only about half a year of lag. Maybe that says something. Like people are getting fed up.
ajutla: You can only play videogames because they are videogames for so long.
aderack: I mean. A couple of years ago, I don’t think I’d see people mocking the Sony guy the way they are now. You’d see Sony claiming the PS2 was the first Internet-compatible home console, and no one would call them on it. Even though, say, Sega had just launched Seganet. And PSO was only a few months away. And the Dreamcast wasn’t even the first, either.
ajutla: The big thing that characterized this generation for me was people noticing the rot starting to set in. Just–nothing really happened. And people realize this.
aderack: Maybe the stage is getting ripe for the Revolution. Especially since it’s supposed to be priced under $200 at launch (last I heard), compared to the 360 and PS3 — which, if you’ve not noticed, are selling in bundles that go past $1,000. And it’ll have the same DS thing going for it, it looks like, versus the PSP of the otther two systems. Also, the other two are almost indistinguishable, while the Revolution should stand out.
ajutla: To be fair, I’m pretty sure that $1,000-plus 360 bundle assumes you’re buying every launch game that will be available, even the ones no one is sure will be available yet. Still.
aderack: Yes. Still, the standard bundles are around $700.00. That’s the only way to buy the system from some retailers. It’s just — holy shit. Who wants to invest that much in a fucking game console?
ajutla: IT’S BECAUSE IT’S AN ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM NOW.

…except they’ve already done that before.
aderack: But no one will use it for anything other than playing videogames and maybe watching DVDs if they don’t have any better player.
ajutla: The psp/DS thing suddenly becomes very ironic with that idea in mind.
aderack: Oh. Yeah.

I guess Kutaragi got the wrong message when, for, like, a YEAR after the PS2 was released in Japan, the best-selling application for it was The Matrix. And people used it mostly as a DVD player until around the time the other two systems came out. It’s not because that’s what people want from a game console; it’s because there weren’t any cheap DVD players in Japan at the time.
ajutla: Right.
aderack: And the PS2 filled that gap.
ajutla: The thing is. Kutagari / Allard / et al have the idea that videogames are over. In a sense. And that you can build this big box. That you put your videogames in. And your other entertainment, too, while you’re at it.
aderack: Because the market’s stagnating, so they need to lean on other things until it magically recovers.
ajutla: And the market is stagnating because they’re leaning on other things.
aderack: Or more simply because they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
ajutla: That too.
aderack: They’re not really interested in videogames; just in being in the videogame business. And so fair weather friends and all…

Compared to people who are doing this for a business because, well, it’s what they do. So they have a vested interest. Not that Nintendo doesn’t have its own problems to address…
ajutla: It’s kind of telling that the most interesting feature about the Revolution, right now, is that you can play old games on it. Nintendo is looking forwards by looking backwards.
aderack: Making all of history current. That strikes me as important. The way that all of cinema is “current”, in a sense. Especially thanks to things like DVD and the recent restoration trends.
ajutla: Yeah. Videogames fade away. So you forget that you’ve FUCKING played most games before.
aderack: It’s a step toward, really, finally establishing just what the fuck videogames are and what they have to say.
ajutla: It solidifies things; it’s creating a critical mass–like, here, this is Videogame (1984-2005). It’s pointing that way.
aderack: Right. The first real state of the industry address.
ajutla: The design philosophy behind the psp is…sort of entirely the opposite of this. Right down to the UMD thing. The thing could have taken mini DVDs, you know. But. You should buy everything again. Always.

(August 26th, 2005 @ 11:29pm)



19 responses

Worlds

Occurs to me that the thing The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly has definitely in common with Fellowship of the Ring (more than the other two Rings movies), and indeed with things like Lang’s Metropolis and The Third Man and Nosferatu — basically every movie I find magical and involving — is that the movie’s world is in a sense the main character. There are other characers in the movie, with their own agendas that we follow. The main conflict or relationship, though, is between those characters and the world they’re in — which in most cases is their own world; they just don’t see all of the aspects of it that we do, because they live there. The characters exist to bounce off the scenery, to ignore it, to walk us through it, to give us contrast with it..

This also describes The Legend of Zelda. And Silent Hill. And Phantasy Star II. And Dragon Warrior. And just about every videogame I find magical and involving. Hell, Riven is nothing but environment.

In a certain meta way, it also decribes more postmodern fare like Charlie Kaufman and Treasure. In MGS3, Kojima does both at the same time! Resident Evil 4 tries to as well, though it’s a little more clunky in execution.

…

A thread here.

(August 26th, 2005 @ 10:36pm)



6 responses

Perspective

LttP focused things. everything became more well defined, limpid. for people who thought the important parts of the original had to do with the “gameplay,” the structure of the game itself, LttP was a masterpiece. for people who valued the original for its “ideas,” the way it made the player feel as if there really were limitless possibilities (even though this feeling was the product of haphazard design, more often than not), LttP feels neutered, and misses the point, sacrificing the idea of free adventure for well-crafted but unimportant gameplay.

That’s about it. Or even more simply, it’s a matter of the game for its own sake versus the game as inspiration for things outside the game. Objective versus subjective value. Definition versus ambiguity. A dead end and a mere strand in the larger endless net of life.

Since, you know. The games themselves are just things. They don’t really matter.

There’s a word for the worship of objects rather than appreciating what they suggest and stand for within the context of human experience. It’s not a terribly flattering one. Actually, there are several, and none of them are all that positive. It seems to say something about the relationship between human tendencies and ideals. We like the idea of hope, but usually don’t have the energy or will to entertain it for long.

Even just growing up is the same struggle. The same awkward balance. Generally in this culture people wind up feeling defeated by life by the time they’re middle-aged. Thus the stronger tendency toward conservatism in the elderly. This is kind of sad, from my perspective. A last desperate attempt to reclaim what’s come and gone, to make sense of a life that one never took the time to understand the first time around and now it’s getting on to too late. It’s a sign of despair.

I’ve gone through adolescence, a less than ideal first twenty or so years of my life. I’m past it now and I’m done despairing what there was to despair, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t really all that much. Time is too short and too interesting to wallow.

It’s a shame other people can’t get over their own problems the same way. Then, I guess that’s why I write the things I do. Try to offer some glimpse of how else things might be. Videogames are, I guess, as good a tool as any.

(August 23rd, 2005 @ 5:17pm)



No response?

Holy Moley.

From what I can tell, that ridiculous NextGen column of mine yesterday got the most hits of anything on the site. The piece with the second-most hits seems to be the J.Allard interview, where he drones on the thought process that led to the two variations of the Xbox 360 hardware. Not a bad topic; the kind of thing you’d expect on the top of the heap.

In comparison, my column got… let’s check again… something like every news piece on the site combined, times three.

So. Maybe that explains something?

(August 23rd, 2005 @ 1:51am)



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