August 2010 Archives

Image Carcassone

A few nights ago I played a game called Carcassone. In it, players draw tiles from a pile that have natural features as well as man-made cities, houses, and roads on them. The goal is to complete and claim structures by placing the land tiles on the table. For instance, a player gets points for a complete road, a city surrounded by walls, and the space around monasteries. It's surprisingly intuitive, and far less complicated than I am probably making it sound.

Before I go on, I want you to know that this game is a lot of fun and that you should play it or buy it at your earliest convenience. I already secured a good price on a set and bought it with birthday money (thanks Jim and Sherri!).

Two things struck me about the game. First off, it gives constructing human habitation a very organic feel that seemed more accurate than games like Sim City. Sure, those simulators give you more tools and options, but Carcassone quietly suggests the uncontrollable and unpredictable way that humans spread out. Though there is strategy to the game, it feels like you're not playing against your opponent so much as an unseen and progressive creativity that is not your own.

Second is how the look and play of the game put natural and manmade geography together. You have to work around fields and other features and find a way to make them work for your strategy. Like the unseen human force, the natrual world is another absent opponent.

Growing up near cities and suburbs, I am honestly not used to thinking about the world in this way. I've considered nature to be a commodity, because living next to a lake is better than living next to a factory; or as a hinderance, because these trees keep dropping dead limbs into the yard.

This feeling was stirred again yesterday when I read this article in Wired about new maps showing how humans have changed the landscape. The subjects of the article make the claim -- which I found quietly shocking -- that we're living in a new geologic age based around human's use of the natural world. We no longer live in Biomes, but in Anthromes.

Image: Wired

“You now have a biosphere that’s completely transformed by people. Biology goes on in the human context, not the natural,” he said. “And given the idea that most of ecosystem form and process is created by and ruled by human activity, how did it get to be that way?”

Carcassone isn't really like this, and maybe because it uses a medieval motif and setting instead of a modern one. Perhaps that's why Sim City is so different despite having so many superficial similarities to Carcassone. I don't know for sure, but it does make me want to run into the hills and build a house like Falling Water with a boulder at the hearth and a river underneath.

I'm sure this feeling will pass, but I wonder how well I would do in a Carcassone world.

I came across this video in the NYTimes Bits blog this morning. The video, which I've embedded below, shows Steve Jobs in 1997 launching the "Think Different" campaign. It's funny in these days when everyone has an iPod, every college student is equipped with a MacBook, and I use an Apple-made cell phone that I still think of Apple the way Steve Jobs talks about it 13 years ago: as underdogs and visionaries.

Apple's most iconic ad was the famous 1984 ad, and Jobs mentions that in the video. But based on my preceptions of the company nearly 15 years after this campaign aired and probably a decade since it ended, I think you can make a very good argument that this was a more successful series of ads.

I'm not a fan of advertising, and to be honest I find marketing kind of distateful, but what I admire is the successful communciation in Apple's ads. I think most people, regardless of what they think about Apple's products, perceive the company in much of the same way as Apple's consumers and fans do: as outside the mainstream despite being mainstream. I'm looking at this video and reflecting on Apple's old ad campaigns not as an exercise in successful marketing, but as an exemplar of creative communication.

When writing, I often struggle with how to show a reader a scene, or an idea. Over the the years I've come to realize that the only way to do this is to write invisibly. You can tell your audience about the staircase and how grand it is all you want, but the manner of the description and the way it interacts with the story is going to tell the audience far more. Professor E.S. Rabkin once said in his class (and I hope he will forgive me because I am sure I am about to misquote him) that the greatest sentence in Science Fiction was "The door irised closed behind him," for this very reason. These few words tell us boat loads about the door and the world that door exists in without ever addressing either.

This is why I find these ads so noteworthy. They say so much about the company, how it perceives itself, and how it wants to be perceived without ever talking about the company. I need to take notes.

I swear, this isn't going to turn into the Scott Pilgrim blog, but apparently there was a brief animation made to support the film that I wasn't aware of until yesterday. Assuming that you, gentle reader, are like me and also missed it, I thought I'd post it here for posterity.

My only beef with this lil' cartoon is that the actors are better at their roles in the film then they are at voice acting, and I think the Kim Pine actress missed the mark entirely on the cartoon. But it's cute, and fun, and if you're a fan of the book then you'll probably get a kick out of it.

Good ol' Cathy Fisher has started up this website where she (and others) discuss heady issues in comedy today. She's graciously extended me the opportunity to contribute to her site, and I finally took up that noble cause today with a discussion about what makes the new film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World so awesome.

My main point in the post is that Scott Pilgrim belongs to that special fraternity of comedies that goes well outside the standard format, and discusses it as a spiritual successor to the likes of Annie Hall and Crank 2: High Voltage without looking derivative itself.

I hope I don't come off as pretentious, but that's really how I felt. I was sitting in my car, at the 88 Drive-In and thought "this must have been what it was like when Annie Hall premiered."

What I didn't talk about was how the original comic series by Bryan Lee O'Mally stacks up against director Edgar Wright's vision of the story. That's a discussion for another day -- if ever, because the source v. movie discussion particularly tiresome. I will say that Wright's movie is very much his own vision, and stands apart from the books in a very good way.

Anyhow, go read this thing I wrote, and go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World because America needs more movies like this.

I've always had a soft-spot for the Batman cartoons because of my love of the original that aired on FOX Kids in the early 1990s. Though I am sure my memories of it as a cutting-edge and daring cartoon are colored by my childhood adoration, I do look back fondly on it. Hence, my interest in the following conversation:

Cousin Phil: Have you seen the new Batman cartoon?

Me: Is it that "The Batman" thing?

Cousin Phil: No, it's worse. But there's an episode where Batman fights Neil Patrick Harris with song.

That was really all I needed to hear. Within the hour we were on YouTube and I watched with amazement as the greatest, silliest thing to ever happen to Batman since he fought Predator unfolded before me.

Besides being over the top bizarre, the episode also showcases some of the most sexist writing to grace children's television in some time. Everything that comes out of Black Canary's mouth is so outrageous that it's actually laughable.

There's so much great happening here. The costume changes, the reference to the Bat-tosi, oh rapture! And to top it off, a song about how everyone hates Batman. Perfection!

What can you say, except that it sure was one hell of a death trap. But really, Black Canary, couldn't you have done something other than sing about how you're going to die?

And what about that ending! Green Arrow and Black Canary share a tender moment while he sings a song about her, and she sings a song about Batman. Uncomfortable! I guess it's a minor point now that all governments have collapsed due to worldwide looting and everyone's been deafened.

Though I am making fun of this show, I can't help but respect it. It's pretty daring to do something like this on a kid's show, especially something as all-out and completely sincere. Kudos to whomever greenlighted this, and to Neil Patrick Harris for proving, once again, that he can do anything.