8BitKid: Living Bit by Bit

I’ve been reading Snow Crash, and this video reminded me of the “Rat Thing” that saves Hiro and Y.T.  This would definitely be an incredibly useful and incredibly awesome pet.

I have had a simple dream for many years. That dream: to have an arcade in my house. I have many fond memories of pumping quarters into “After Burner” and “Mortal Kombat” at the Tysons Corner Mall while waiting for movies to start when I was in middle school. I remember beating the X-Men arcade with the mammoth screen at the mini golf course in Naples, Maine. In college, I used to swing into the local record store to sneak in some games of “Street Fighter II” after class. More recently, I get my arcade fix from “Barcade” in Brooklyn when I happen to be in town.

However, my personal nirvana involves having some classic cabinets at home. As a starter, I am hoping to put together a unit that runs the MAME arcade emulator software courtesy of a small form-factor PC I have around not being put to use. Dream Arcades sells kits for assembly that get well-reviewed, and I think a cocktail cabinet might be a nice place to start. If I ever need to impress a house guest I can always throw a table cloth over it and pretend it is something a lot less geeky.

I spend every Monday afternoon volunteering at the 826LA writing center in Venice. If you are looking for a fun way to get involved in the community and work with kids, this is a great place to go. Beyond the homework assistance, writing help, field trips, and activities for the kids, 826 does a great job of entertaining its tutors.

To prepare for the impending release of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, 826LA East, the newly opened location in Echo Park, is going to be screening all three films this Saturday.  It should be a fun time with good people, so click below to get more info.

http://www.826la.org/events/565/indiana-jones-cram-session

My not-so-guilty Saturday morning cartoon guility pleasure has been Cartoon Network’s “Ben 10″ for a while now.  It is the story of a kid who finds an alien watch, called the “Omnitrix”, that allows him to shift his DNA to a variety of different alien forms, each with distinct abilities, in order to fight intergalactic n’er do wells.  He travels around the country with his grandfather, Max, and his cousin, Gwen in a motor home solving crimes and keeping order in an alien-infested world.  This weekend I watched the debut episode of the new season: “Ben 10 Alien Force”.

I forget at which precise point I stumbled across this show two years ago, but it struck me a well-written and fun adventure series.  Recently, the studio decided to relaunch the show.  In a brilliant move rarely seen in american animation, the creators felt that the time was right to get away from the “villain of the week” cycle and take the chance on exploring what would happen to the characters and their adventures once they got older.

For this season they accelerated Ben Tennyson and company 5 years into the future.  Ben is now a high-schooler who has retired his super-hero spurs and Gwen is continuing her over-achiving and excelling at martial arts.  The pilot opens with Ben and Gwen enjoying a normal life, but this all changes when they discover that their Grandpa, Max, has gone missing.  Their investigation into his whereabouts quickly gets them wrapped up in an alien arms deal, and it becomes apparent that Max’s disappearance has some serious implications beyond his absence.  Ben makes the decision to “go hero” once again and dons the Omnitrix.  However, the Omnitrix behaves differently this time around and Ben is presented with a variety of new alien forms to utilize.  As they fight their way through the first episode, their former foe, Kevin Levin, joins them in their search for Grandpa.  The three of them defeat their alien, arms-dealing foe, but find that they have just scratched the intergalactic surface of unraveling the mystery surrounding Grandpa Max’s disappearance.

In terms of evolving the series, I really appreciate that they decided to do this overhaul before the show got stale.  The characters have more nuanced personalities, and they have clearly matured.  The show also featured a darker feel, both in terms of color palette and tone.  I was initially reluctant to take the plunge into “Alien Force”, and so I let the new episodes languish on my Tivo out of fear that the retooling would ruin a series I really enjoyed.  Luckily, the creators assuaged my doubts with the pilot, and I am looking forward to watching the new adventures unfold.

While I was spending some quality time with my Tivo this weekend catching on my Saturday morning cartoon guilty pleasures, I came across a rather remarkable commercial. The advertisement was pushing Kellogg’s latest contribution to the breakfast scene: Eggo Muffin Tops.

Any Seinfeld fan can appreciate why this is such a hilarious product. The classic episode, “The Muffin Tops”, features Elaine going into business with Mr. Lippman in a muffin top business. Eggo’s new product begs the same question that Elaine solved: is a muffin top a quality treat if it never was attached to a muffin bottom? I am in dire need of a trip to the grocery store, so when I go I will definitely check these out to see if they live up to the hype.

For those that don’t know the Swedish techno sensation, Basshunter, check out this Wikipedia entry.  He tore up the charts with his thumping, incredibly geeky hits.  The first I’m sharing is “DotA”, a song about the custom Warcraft III game, “Death of the Ancients”.  Anyone who has a song referencing Ventrilo is okay by me.

I have been a fan of “VG Cats” for some time now. The brilliant mind behind it is Scott Ramsoomair, and he fills his comic with enough video game, 80’s cartoon, and internet meme tom-foolery to make any good geek giggle. His latest creation is a comic dubbed “Super-Effective” that covers the world of Pokemon. For any fellow Pokemon players, past or present (I won’t say which camp I fall into), it is definitely worth reading and is shaping up to be another hysterical romp.

So click here to go back to the first comic and catch up. There have only been three so far, so you’ll be up to speed in no time.

Last year was my first spring in LA, and with it came an amazing indulgent moment of geekery. The “i am 8-bit” exhibit brings together a phenomenal group of artists to create works inspired by this classic era of gaming. It featured a fantastic array of styles ranging from the hyper-real to the absurd. The opening-night party sported a gigantic Atari controller which people had to climb onto in order to play. I picked up this amazing Megaman piece, and my blue bomber bliss cemented my love of this show.

I check in with their website periodically to make sure I keep it on my radar screen. For the past couple of months it has said, “new site coming Monday!”. After enough new weeks came and went, I stopped taking stock in this claim. This past week, I was greeted with another message: “New Show. New venue. New website. August 2008.” So now we know that we will know more in the future. It isn’t much, but I’m still excited…

Last month I wrote about how students at Bowling Green State University were getting in trouble over the game of “Humans vs. Zombies” they were playing on campus. Specifically, they were banned from using Nerf guns and the university thought that the game was causing too much of a commotion and interfering with student life.

The game has continued to cause confusion on campuses, this time at Alfred University in western New York, where a student armed with a nerf gun sent the campus into a “lockdown”. The school and their police personnel found that the game was overly disruptive and were concerned about confusion that could arise over the toy guns. Administrators have decided to temporarily suspend the game while they explore ways to ensure that the game won’t pose a security risk or cause an unncessary amount of commotion. UMass Amerhest dealt with these problems by requiring players to register with the school and having them wear red armbands and headbands.

KTTV, the Los Angeles Fox affiliate, recently had a piece covering how “Humans vs. Zombies” is causing concern on college campuses across the country. In an age of hyper-tension among college administrations over campus security, it is easy to understand how having a bunch of students running around with toy guns shooting each other might cause anxiety.

However, I think it is also critical to allow these students to continue playing. LARPing provides a great way for people to escape daily stresses in a collaborative and constructive way. This game in particular, and the resulting campus dramas, could help normalize some of the apprehension on campuses. A flavor of the game must exist that can be a compromise between players and administrations. If colleges use this game to begin an open dialogue with students over their worries, it could help create an environment which could house the successful balance between campus safety and student fun. Clearly, people are on edge over any form of guns being present on campus, and this is a justified source of apprehension. A school cannot ask its students to constantly live in fear, and part of the recovery process is asking honest questions about what are acceptable boundaries and rules.

This past weekend I sat down to watch the latest Evangelion DVD. Gainax has returned their seminal anime series that debuted in the mid-90’s. The “rebuilds” are a revisiting of the original story, told in four new films. The first three will retell the happenings of the series, while the forth will present a new conclusion. I first watched the series in a bit of a bender when several college friends and I watched every episode in succession our sophomore year.

The DVD recently came out in Japan, and I finally felt mentally prepared this weekend to dive into the film. Although I missed not having the movie open with the original theme, Cruel Angel’s Thesis, I was instantly struck with the visual beauty of the presentation. The film has many shots similar (if not identical) to those that can be found in the original series, and so you can’t help but notice how much better everything looks this time around. Throughout my viewing I had a continuous string of “wow” moments as I smiled in appreciation at being able to soak in the visual upgrade.

In terms of story, the first film tackles the first six episodes of the series. While certain sacrifices have to be made in order to compress the story into the film-sized chunk, I actually enjoyed absorbing the story through a film’s narrative. They did an excellent job of not just making the film feel like a stilted stitching of the episodes, but instead they sprinkled various elements across the duration of the movie to help provide a cohesive story arc. Of course, the movie’s ending provides little closure, but I’d put it on emotional par with Empire Strikes Back, if not a little more upbeat.

I’m not going to even begin to delve into the mythology in this post; that is worthy of a book. I will say that if you haven’t experienced “Eva”, you owe it to yourself to do so. If you can happen to track down this DVD, definitely give it a watch.

- mp3 courtesy of “crime of innocence“