Now that I’m more or less caught up on work and the such…
After spending the past few weekends out of town for lesbian weddings, comic book shows, and the such, it was just nice to sit back in the neighborhood and hang with Joe whom I hadn’t seen in quite a while.
MK & I had dinner with him and June on Saturday night. We got to hear about Joe’s latest gig (I won’t spill the beans as to what he’s working on now, but let’s just say the big man upstairs is involved), plus tales from being on the road with Dr. Chud, including the fun times he had when the Misfits dabbled with professional wrestling. I love stories that involve being terrorized by The Macho Man Randy Savage.
Then we saw Rumplstilskin, another shitty direct to video horror flick that takes a “classic” fairy tale (at least the ones that most people don’t care about or aren’t all that familiar with) and gives it a stupid modern spin on it (modern being the early 90′s, during that hazy time where all facets of culture were still in a nebulous state… the 80′s were over, but Generation X still didn’t have a hold on society just yet). On top of the long laundry list of stuff that’s wrong with the movie is the slowest, most drawn our car chases I have ever seen; each must have been 30 mph, tops. That and the baby that’s Rumplstilskin’s target; the poor thing spends the entire film scared out it mind, to the point that you just know that some seriously deep psychological damage is going on (you jut know its fucked when it stop crying and just has a look of absolute terror permanently etched on its face). I bet the kid… who has to be 14-15 by now… probably spends all his time setting fires and doing whip-its, if only to make the “scary face” go away from his dreams.
Afterwards we caught the last half of SNL and as expected, it was pretty lame. Not only was there no Bear Country, but even the guaranteed to not miss Debbie Downer sketch was fairly boring. Yeah… I don’t why I bother to watch either.
The next day MK received even more awesome feedback from her latest book Pale Fire, so we had a celebratory lunch at the Daisy Diner in Park Slop (well, we were gonna have lunch there anyway, but we also had cake!). Plus I finally got my copy (I forgot to get one at SPX)! Its easily one of the best comics I’ve read all year. And I’m not just saying that cuz… you know… she’s my girlfriend and all. Then she went off to Jersey while I headed towards Willamsburg to meet a bunch of video game geeks.
A while back I tried getting the ball rolling towards a meet-up for all the New York based Insert Credit members, and it was finally happening. The place that was decided upon was Barcade, which I’ve avoided in the past simply because of the idea of a bar that panders toward hipsters via nostalgia and video games was simply too much for me, but I’ve always been curious and this seemed a good enough reason to finally check it out. And I gotta admit, it wasn’t all that bad. Despite it’s location (the walk from the subway towards the bar was absolutely unreal… everyone in the neighborhood are simply all too cool for you… it was like being in the middle of a photo shoot for Paper magazine or something), the place itself is just huge space with arcade machines against the walls, nothing fancy. And the bar had plenty of great, and super cheap, beers (plus the bar guy that night was pretty cool).
Another reason for my hesitation was that I simply did not know what to expect. I’ve been to an internet message board only meet-up once before, for YayHooray, and it was… rather uncomfortable. I always knew I was that I was the odd man out around there, since its a place for mostly designers and arty farty hipsters, but nothing drove that message home clearer than me trying my best to talk to said folks in person and failing miserably. I just couldn’t relate to their problems, such as dealing with Flash MX or CSS quibbles, trying to squeeze the most amount of booze and sushi from company expense accounts, entertaining VCs, or getting all excited for the new Mars Volta CD. Since then I have stopped going to YH, though its mostly due to annoying bitchy types that seem to now run the place. If you think gamers are annoying, then you haven’t hung out with graphic designers from DUMBO. At least gamers have an excuse for acting like maladjusted spoiled teenagers, since most of them actually are. Though YH still has a few cool folks around there, but anyway….
I was also weary that things would be a too Insert Credit-ish for my tastes. My biggest fear was that everyone would be sitting around in a huge circle (and on the floor), with someone asking aloud “But what truly make a game a game?” followed by someone else’s thirty minute dissertation of how they each button press in Silent Hill 3 is unique and how they speak to his soul. Thank God it wasn’t the case. In the end, only two other folks showed, but they were both totally cool guys (including dhex who besides being someone I had been long look foward to meeting in real life, but was nice enough to buy a copy of Unlucky from me). I was only going to be there for just an hour or so, but we hung out the whole night. Yes, we talked about games, but plenty of other stuff as well. All in all, it was a loads of fun, and it was too bad that Robin couldn’t make it out (he’s a lurker on the boards) but he had his own shit to take care of.
Later that night I had some crappy Chinese food to soak up the booze. I knew it was going to be bad… everyone knows that you should never go to a Chinese joint just as they’re closing… but it was late and I just didn’t feel like cooking at that point. Then spoke with Katie and found out she’ll be coming into town at the end of the month for some My Little Pony art show. I was hoping for a low-key month, but I guess I was wrong. Aside from this art show, there’s the clam ‘n jam, a big party that MK’s old boss from her days of selling italian ices throws every year, DigitalLife, the Games 4 Change conference, with a major chiptunes show happening the same Saturday night that Brian just gave me the heads up about, as well as the super hero wedding I’ll be attending on Halloween (I’m going to be Superman disguised as Clark Kent, with MK going as Lois Lane). Plus there’s other stuff going on that I’m sure I’m forgetting about… Hey I remembered something! Joe has some stuff that’s on display at the MF Gallery for their Halloween art show.
Katie also passed along a link to the cartoon journal she just started. And it should come to no surprise that it’s super cool. That reminds me, from Todd’s own cartoon journal, here’s an entry about all the fun that was had at SPX, including us tormenting that mouse guy. I just love how Todd did my hair…
