GRABBINGSAND

You know … if I threw a party for fifteen of my closest friends advisors, I would hope that they stayed until the shin-dig was all over. If almost half of them decided that they’d had enough, I think I would start to doubt my abilities as a host. But that’s just me …

“Which one will you choose?”

You know, I thought all of the decision making was over and done with after November 2, but I was very wrong. With the importance of world politics set to the side and the fate of our next four years begrudgingly sealed from an executive perspective, the last few weeks have been filled with opportunities of a different sort. Every week of this past month or so has brought to bear yet another virtual distraction to divert our attention and lay waste to our wallets and time.

Video games are dropping like leaves from trees.

It started with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but this means nothing to me. Like the GTAs that came before it, the initial offering is only for the PlayStation line and I’ve never taken that bait. Sooner or later, it’ll find release of the PC or Xbox variety, but for now I can just live vicariously through PS2-enabled pals like Mr Gray and his tales of tagging and shovel whacking.

Then came Halo 2. Now, had this been during the summer, I could just grin and nod and say “Well, isn’t that just so nice for those Xbox folks.” Then I could wipe my hands of it and walk away. But, alas, I can no longer count myself among the un-consoled because I (we) received an Xbox as a wedding present. As Uncle Ben told spider-bitten Peter, with great power comes great responsibility. Likewise, with new technology comes more electronic accessibility and flexibility. So what could I do? Even NPR — the bastion of all the information you really need in your day — made a point of announcing the game’s release. But fifty dollars?!? I compromised and rented it, right on the day of release. I played a bit, got it out of my system and returned it. I even helped to review it. Need assuaged.

But the last seven days have been rough.

A week ago, Half-Life 2 became real. After six years of development and speculation, the sequel to the PC game to end all PC games arrived to extend that end beyond human comprehension. And to make matters worse, you didn’t even need to leave the house to buy the product. Just download the installer — the first run is free, after all — then just click to purchase. In seconds, the happy elves at Valve will be more than thrilled to turn up their bucket of electric happiness to fill your harddrive with gigabyte after gigabyte of crowbar-smashing, alien-possessing, scientist-screaming goodness. So far … I’ve been strong.

But wait, did I miss something from back in October? Oh, yeah. On the same engine that powers Half-Life 2 — the Source engine — is a new game from Troika called Vampire: Bloodlines. Now, I’ve been burned by White Wolf’s PC offerings before. The original Vampire The Masquerade RPG for the PC was very un-fun and looked much better on the box than in-person. But Bloodlines looked so good when I caught a glimpse in the dealer’s room at DragonCon. One reviewer has even compared the game play to the original Deus Ex — still probably my favorite single-person RPG ever. I might have to wear a wreath of garlic or something …

Then today, World of Warcraft went retail. I participated in the closed beta and even wrote about it for JIVE, but here comes the big test: will I pay to play? This is probably the toughest decision of them all, because I can’t turn around without running into yet another person willing to become a Night Elf rogue or an Undead priest. But frankly, I just can’t make a strong enough case for it. I’ve already got my current roster of multiplayer heroes to enjoy and I don’t plan on abandoning Paragon City too soon — it is still too much fun not only from a gaming perspective, but from a social angle as well. I’ve got friends in the City from up in Pennsylvania all the way down to Florida. Now, if they all decided to migrate entirely to a new diversion, we might pull up stakes, pack up our capes and move right along, but I think I’ve found where I want to be … virtually.

For now.

… from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that I have met The Artist Occasionally Known As H on the time-honored battlefield of tiles and squares, of letters and words. One against the other did we rail, offering volleys of Double-Letter Scores and Triple-Word Scores, until the dust settled and the tally was revealed.

I was sure I had him on the run, so I kept my higher flying letters in reserve for a final trouncing blow … but that opportunity never came and the final exchange left me with only the uneasy company that mercenary duo: Mr Q & Mr Z. With nothing to sieze on the board, those two turned traitor and joined forces with an incredibly potent two-letter Triple-Word to seal my fate and doom.

His 265 to my 234.

My originally intended title was going to be something generic, something like “How We Spent Our Friday Evening” — which would’ve been suitable, but terribly boring in the long run. See, it all started with a voicemail from Zip. I’m leaving work and I noticed a missed call. Hey, Zip called. He left a voicemail. “Hey, just wondering if you were coming to Tower to see Eddie tonight. Bye.”

Eddie?

Now, in my particular paradigm, there are very few Eddies worth knowing and even fewer that might be making an appearance at Tower Records. So I called. “Eddie? Which Eddie? The Eddie?” Yes. Zip confirmed. It was The Eddie.

So we went. And we have proof.

(More photos of Eddie in Atlanta available on Flickr.)

You have to love this photo of our former President, Jimmy Carter. What’s he doing? He’s splashing water out of a rain-soaked seat at today’s opening of the Clinton Presidential Center. Not for himself, mind you … he’s doing this for the former First Lady, Rosalyn.

Chivalry is so rare, yet takes so little effort.

(This post can be found in the opinion columns of JIVE under the same title.)

Perhaps it is too early for Marvel to accept their place in literary history.

As more people than usual know, comic book giant Marvel is planning to sue NCSoft and Cryptic Studios, makers of the phenomenally successful City of Heroes. Why? Well, let’s listen to what the lawyers have to say.

“Considering that defendants own no comic characters themselves, it stands to reason that the comic books to which they refer are those that depict the characters of Marvel and others,” wrote Marvel’s attorneys in the complaint. “Defendants’ Creation Engine facilitates and, indeed, encourages players to create and utilize heroes that are nearly identical in name, appearance and characteristics to characters belonging to Marvel.”

Stands to reason. Man, but I do get the creeps from presumptive legalese. Not only is the language incredibly patronizing, but the assumption that Marvel is the only reservoir of heroic imagination is beyond hyperbole. It is manifest corporate ego and it is ugly. Furthermore, it is unnecessary.

So let’s flip through the complaint. Can you really make a hero that is nearly identical in name to a copyrighted character on the Marvel roster? No. You cannot. The terms of service presented to every player of City of Heroes expressly forbids the use of copyrighted characters. To support this practice, they have established an extensive list of verboten names that will kick back any nomenclature that matches. However, the capacity of the human imagination is difficult to presume, so when someone encounters a nominal roadblock for a particular disallowed name, they will modify their designation to get around it. “The Hulk” didn’t work, but you still have “Teh Hu1k” or “Da Hulx0r” or any other permutation that looks ridiculous but still symbolizes the intended idea. It’s unoriginal, it’s stupid and it makes the particular player look like a 10-year old with a debillitating imagination deficiency. More than that, since the developers of City of Heroes don’t have a script to randomly generate the mish-mosh of l33t-speak and outright ignorance that make up this dyslexicon of clone-naming, there is no practical way to stop these bastard versions of popular heroes from entering the game environment. Even if you and me and all of our fellow heroes are vigilant and report every single clone we see, we can rest assured that someone will come up with an even more idiotic way to re-spell their favorite superperson. If only someone could develop an anti-asshat-ery filter.

That’s names. Now what about appearance? Can you make your own green-skinned gamma-irradiated rage-oholic? Yes. Mostly. Sort of. One of the strongest selling points of City of Heroes is the incredibly flexible character creator. Heroes can be customized through several individual details with a wide range of options for each. Add colors that can be designated to each of those options and you end up with a design system that is just as fun as the game itself. With this breadth of possibility, someone could make a massive hero with green skin (just one shade out of three or four), then give him purple knee-length pants and deny him footwear. At 30 paces, virtual or actual, you could say that such an avatar resembles The Incredible Hulk, but only just so. Honestly, to say that The Incredible Hulk could be manufactured from a finite set of parameters would be an insult to the memory of Jack “The King” Kirby. See, Jack and Stan “The Man” Lee created The Incredible Hulk in September of 1964, resulting in a world-recognized phenomenon published in comic books, novels, television series, children’s shows, cartoons and a recent blockbuster movie. To say that a legend with this kind of longevity can be stamped, pressed and produced by a pattern-based character generator is just foolish. And we’ve already said that a green guy with a thyroid condition cannot take the name of Hulk. Or The Hulk. And if we name him “Das Holken!” — well, we’ll just be tagged as a jerk and sooner or later, someone will report us and the name will have to change.

Lastly, let’s talk characteristics. We can make a science-based hero. Fine. One of the more telling point of City of Heroes character generation is the designation of archetypes and origins. And what is told is that all heroes of any sort seem to all come from one of five particular paradigms of origin: science, magic, mutation, technology or natural. If anything, comic book creators should be slightly embarrassed that Cryptic has managed to effectively categorize almost every single hero possibility under one of these five. You could say that one is missing: alien. But you’re wrong, because even an alien with in-born powers beyond our comprehension is still just a naturally-spawned being among its own kind. Pretty smart, I think. So to return to the question at hand, you can say that your green machine is scientific in origin. You could then select “Tanker” — a brutish hero who takes punishment and pummels things — and give him super strength and invulnerability. Now he is scientifically green, he’s strong and he takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ … but is he The Hulk? No. Because The Hulk is more than muscles and fists, isn’t he? He gets stronger as he gets madder, right? Not in City of Heroes. And what about turning back into his unassuming alter-ego, Bruce Banner? Nope. The City doesn’t even have alter-egos. And what about the tragic backstory involving Betsy Ross, the love of his life, and her father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross? A rogues gallery with the likes of The Leader and Doc Samson? Nah. The backstory is entirely up to you. Some heroes don’t even have one. So that hero is just a shell and is only as interesting as you, the player, make it.

No name. Vague appearance. General characteristics. No Hulk. Therefore, no Cyclops, no Human Torch, no Wolverine and no Spider-Man. Just approximations. Or rather … homages.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? City of Heroes has become one of the fastest growing MMOs of 2004 just because we were all brought up on heroes. We watched our Saturday Morning Cartoons and wore our Spidey pajamas and made towels into capes and ran around the yard with our arms outstretched. So naturally, even the adults we’ve all become cannot resist the opportunity to relive those childhood fantasies with people that grew up just like we did. So we stretch out our arms and rest our fingers on a keyboard and a mouse and we fly. We fight. We defeat evil and we grin widely. Because Marvel (and DC, Image, Dark Horse, etc.) gave us the raw material of legend. Our imaginations just had to pick up the threads offered to weave together tales of our own devising.

And that’s what Marvel is just unable to recognize. Maybe it is just too soon. Like it or not, comic books have contributed to our culture in a way not unlike fantasies from days gone by. The Ring-ing stories of JRR Tolkien, familiar to most of the planet, were derived from medieval tales of daring-do and a double-handful of folklore and English mysticism. You could probably stretch a taut thread from Tolkien back to Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur then on to the primordial roots of Arthurian legend itself. John Milton first encountered Hell through Dante. Shakespeare was inspired by Ovid. And what about the gods of Norse Mythology? Surely Marvel hasn’t forgotten the origins of their own mighty Thor? For just a moment, consider the fictions and fantasies that will arise in two hundred years. Four hundred years. Would any of us be surprised to see the development of a branch of literature that recalls the lives of brightly costumed folk battling evil with an array of clever devices or something not unlike super-speed or an inate ability to scale walls with little more than finger-tips?

Perhaps this is just the corporate face of mighty Marvel, one that sees only the bottom line and the dollar sign. If you read the complaint carefully, you see that their concern is not with loss of comic book sales or movie ticket income, but rather with their in-development plan to produce an MMO of their very own. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that Marvel decided to go the MMO route in 2002 — a year or so after Cryptic announced the initial development of City of Heroes. So naturally, somebody at Marvel is saying to themselves, “Why the heck would anyone want to pay for our also-ran MMO when they can already live out their own Saturday Morning Cartoon fantasies with City of Heroes? We better get “our share” of the money some other way.”

Marvel? Are you paying attention? Please consider the citizens of the City you’ve — in part — inspired. And keep in mind that every single player piloting every single hero can personally thank your own creators (as well as the talent at so many other drawing boards and countless typewriters) for offering some manner of inspiration that they then applied directly to their lives. Thousands upon thousands of seeded stories, just building upon legends born from “funny books” once thought worthy of nothing more than a scrap bin. All of us are profiteering from your creations not monetarilly — but in something far more precious:

Imagination.

Someone in the next chunk of cubes over has a hammer.

He’s hammering. In the morning.

Hopefully, he will not do it all the live-long day. Or all-over this land. Or this building.

I do not think he is hammering-out danger.

Thursday was Veteran’s Day. I had to work. My wife did not. Vet’s Day is one of those selective national holidays, optional to most corporations and mandatory to federal establishments. So it goes. For me, it is no trouble to remember the veterans in my family. My grandfather was in France in The Great War. His stories of World War I were spare and lacked detail. He prefered to remember things closer to home. Uncle Buster was in the Army Air Corps. Uncle Charley spent quality time on a submarine. Uncle Perry served as well and liked a government-issued uniform so much that he signed up with the Postal Service when he got out. Sometimes I think that their service was just enough to satisfy Fate, because The Draft missed my dad, so he didn’t have to miss any of my childhood or my older brother’s.

We turned Friday into a vacation day for both of us. It felt good to stay in, even just for a few hours.

The rest of the weekend was spent in the upper hinterlands, near the far end of Georgia 400. It was easy enough to tempt us. After all, we had some laundry to do and Nikki’s mom has these veritable Cadillacs of washer/dryer technology. Furthermore, Longhorn gift certificates were offered to seal the deal. How can you say no to steak? Our house-sitting responsibilities were few, mainly dealing with the twice-daily feeding of a remarkably cooperative horse and serving as a lap-on-demand for a very densely proportioned cat. The only exciteful came in the form of a feral unfamiliar feline who challenged the weighty and regal Dorian to a howling match. A couple of widely-chucked hunks of firewood later, Dorian was safely back in the house and Unwelcome Cat was off into the woods. The firewood missed him by yards.

I could’ve hit the “bad cat.” Sure. I was just merciful.

Interestly enough, we did make one sanity-saving trip to the outlet malls. We didn’t need anything and our recent acquisition of several Target gift cards has almost out-stripped our shopping capacity, but the sun was actually out and one can take only so much satellite television. Boots were purchased. A shirt as well. The human cacaphony of foreign tongues made me comment on the surprising international draw of this sub-suburban outlet destination. But most surprising was the find I made at the Borders Book Outlet. The books, well, they looked like standard remaindered fare. But they have a few bins of what look like bargain CDs at first glance, but they’re not. Some of them are actually decent and a little digging revealed a couple of gems for almost nothing. The best of the bunch was the copy of UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction CD from 1998. Back then, I bought it brand new and loved it, but the disc disappeared about four years ago. Who knew it would resurface at a Dawsonville outlet mall? I had to reclaim it.

And today, we’re all back to work.

After a modicum of badgering, the Right Reverend (and fellow Berry Alum) C. Joshua Villines has posted his incredibly compelling list of ways to come to grips with the results of last Tuesday.

1. Go ahead and get it out of your system. In the long run, using words like “jack-booted”, “buffoon”, “addle-brained”, “lackwit”, “illiterate”, “tsarist”, “brain-dead”, “moronic”, “incontinent”, and “village idiot” won’t facilitate dialogue and it certainly won’t convince anyone. If the fifty-nine million Americans who voted for the unrepentant prat haven’t already figured it out – this won’t help them. In the short term, however, it really does blow off a little steam. You can even string a bunch of them together to make your own private nickname for the Chief Executive. I’m leaning toward, “Semi-literate, lack-witted, imperialist buffoon.” [At some point you have to realize that there may actually be a kind and caring person underneath the earth-despoiling, empire-building façade; but it’s what he represents we’re talking about here. If he didn’t want to be called names, he shouldn’t be working for the forces of darkness!] Get it out of your system, then stop.

For the remaining nine ways, click here: Productive Ways to Deal with the 2004 Election Results.

Another day, another pair of JIVE-placed reviews: Pixar’s The Incredibles and Brian Wilson’s belated Smile!

Also, I’ve taken a stack of my older writings and reviews and converted them to posts. This rolls the archives back another pair of years, all the way to April of 1999.