We’re staying at Kaylyn and Nick’s house! It rained like craaaazy - East Coast rain, the kind we don’t get out West. Today’s ride was pretty tough - the first 40 miles or so was on the New River trail, so it was a wide dirt trail. Then we stopped at this restaurant - I thought I recognized it, and it turns out that I did! Because it’s part of bike route 76, the TransAm, so I was there in 2016. The Draper Mercantile. Then the last 40 miles was just basic urban riding. We stopped at Sonic and got limeades. It got pretty hot. Tonight is a big party; we got huge pizzas, and hung out inside their house - everybody with masks on. It’s so fun being here. I can’t believe tomorrow is the last day.
This morning we had Don’s Diner - Don and Cassie made us breakfast sandwiches. I rode most of the day with Caleb. We talked about relationships, about being a lawyer, about a bunch of random things. Most of our ride was on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is beautiful and has very little traffic. I got a great shot of Rob and Zach riding along from an overlook. I still felt strong riding but it’s starting to drain me. I stopped at an old mill. We’re in the meat of the riding now. In the evening we rode into Galax and stopped off at a Dairy Bar where we bought Boston Shakes, which turned out to be a milkshake with a scoop of hard ice cream on top, and hot fudge, whipped cream and a cherry. I wanted to buy both of our milkshakes and the bill was $6.78, and I said “but I wanted to pay for both”, and it turned out that was the price of both. That’s rural areas for you. We ended the ride on the New River bike trail, which is where we’re going to spend most of the day The campground was along a river, and we went in swimming, which is one of my favorite activities. The evening was spent in some pretty serious conversation about relationships, Scotland, and the fact that the members of the Space Force are called Guardians.
Today was the first real day of riding. The riding itself was amazing, as always. I am surprised at how strong I feel, physically. There is one guy here - Mike - who clearly destroys me and everyone else, but other than him, I feel like one of the stronger riders. I guess all those trips up Mt Diablo kept me in pretty good shape.
The Blue Ridge parkway is beautiful. No question about it. Oh! I saw a bear today. i made a choice to ride out across a field of heather to visit a restaurant where I could buy some beer and a diet coke. The place itself was nice; the lady was really sassy and I overheard her saying to one of her long time patrons that the deal to finally sell the restaurant was about to go through, so that makes sense. Tasty turkey and bacon wrap. But anyway - I saw a bear! It wasn’t as big as I would have thought. Perhaps it was young. But it was definitely a bear, loping right across the road into the woods. It either didn’t see me or didn’t care.
I find my thoughts drifting in some strange directions and starting to coalesce around some new ideas. Continuing on with the theme of yesterday, I feel like different things are coming to mind. I still want to have some adventures, and I still want to find a fullfilling career. But the more I live, the more I dream about things like a stable relationship. I have been talking to one of my other friends Joe tonight about dogs, and getting my own dog. Most of the folks here - people I’ve known off and on for years - are in committed relationships, and many have dogs. Some of the older ones have kids. I am often struck, as I am in this setting, by how truly alone I am in the world, and it makes me sad, but it also crystallizes my thoughts around the idea that establishing friends and relationships has to be the most important thing.
I’ve seriously been considering canceling the Scotland leg of my trip. Part of that is because of all the COVID scares and nonsense and the idea that I might get trapped there. But also there’s started to be this creeping sense that maybe I don’t really want to go. I dream of settling down, and having strong relationships, not of having amazing adventures. I wonder what I’ve set myself up for with all this flying around and moving around. I wonder why I’m headed up to Bend when I know I like Oakland. Why don’t I just really invest in one place - make friends, invest in the friends I have, connect deeper with them. Yes, its true that a lot of people I meet in the Bay Area are not that great - but a couple of them are, and I could spend more time and invest in those people. Even the ones that aren’t perfect; especially the ones that aren’t perfect.
I am reasonably content with life. I miss Oakland. I miss my home. I miss my friends, and playing board games with Robin or talking about picking fruit trees with Nataly. Clearly being out here is fun, in a way, but maybe it’s not the kind of fun I’m looking for anymore.
Today I met the team. I am exhausted; mentally, physically. I think I have been carrying around a lot of stress that’s now expressing itself just through meeting all of these people that I know from the past. It’s a positive thing of course, but I just feel the weight of all the time under the bridge. I feel content, and comfortable, but a bit distant as if everything is viewed through a soft lens. When you squint, everything feels normal - a big group, hanging out, eating vegetarian chili and chocolate cake homemade by one of the rider’s sister, who is apparently a chef. But there are signs: the masks we all were given, the fact that we’re all sitting outside and not using the inside of the house, the signs that point the most direct route to the bathroom so we don’t linger. We’re camping every night, which is not something we would normally do.
I just feel very tired. I feel the weight of things from the past. I think this trip will recharge my batteries, slowly. Anyway: it’s still hot, it’s still green. I had lunch with Mike Platania: everything is just the same as it always was, which is both comforting and a little odd. I feel like I am slowly learning something about the way life works, and the rhythm of things. Most people don’t change as often as I do.
Mmm, hotel rooms. Today I woke up in Catawba, a bit disheveled and stinky, and the plan was to ride about 20 miles to Blacksburg and visit the ancestral home of Bike the US for MS, then 30 miles back to Roanoke. But got about 2 miles into that plan and realized “hey, this is a bad idea”. I’m not used to riding while carrying all of my stuff, and the Virginia hills around here are really steep and hard to ride. I was worried about my bike, too - I have electronic shifters, and I forgot my damn charger!! Which means if the battery dies I can’t shift, and when you’re in the hills, that’s a death sentence. So I got a room at the Holiday Inn with a hot tub, and I lived the life of luxury - free printer, laundry machines, clean room, air conditioning. It was pretty great. I pretty much just sat around, got over some of my jet lag, and played video games. Haven’t really had a day off like that in quite a while. Ate at some local Virginia diner; had the chicken wings, they were pretty tasty. Just that kind of day.
Today was the first day of my grand 2021 bicycle adventure. I haven’t talked much about it in this space, but it’s been in the planning stages for quite a while. For posterity’s sake, I will run down the bare facts: about 2 weeks ago I did, in fact, quit my job at Apple. Monday - I guess that’s yesterday, holy crap that seems like a long time ago - was my last day. I drove all the way down to Sunnyvale, to an office I’d never worked at, to a desk I sat at exactly once, and dropped off my computers, made a phone call to Cassie, ate at the mediocre company cafeteria, and left exactly as I came - as a ghost. There’s not much to say about my time at Apple, and I guess that’s sorta the point. Today, at 7 am, I hopped on a plane headed to the East Coast. I landed at 5:39 in Virginia, where I met my friend Michael Struble who chatted with me while he vaped and I put together my bike so he could grab my empty box and store it for me. Then I rode about 20 miles, chasing daylight up into the rural Virginia hills to stay at a hostel way out in the middle of nowhere. I’ll be meeting up with the Bike the US for MS folks, riding about 5 days in Virginia, then heading to Scotland - assuming I pass my Covid tests - for 9 days of riding out there, then a quick trip to Disney, followed by Walnut Creek for 2 days, then Bend, Portland, Vancouver, and finally school.
I wish I had some really intelligent thing to say right now, something pithy. Riding up here was hard, and rewarding. I got super sweaty and ended up in the dark. In the old days, rides like these built up my confidence. But I have that confidence now, at least about this sort of adventure. The kind of adventure I really want to have now is a quieter one, I’ve realized, full of kids and dogs and settling down. That isn’t to say I’m not looking forward to this, but it’s different this time. I’ve come full circle from the very first time I rode out of that place at 1970 Hayes into the Kerouac unknown. I don’t feel the call of the wild so much.
Anyway, rural Virginia is very very green, quite hot, pretty humid and super hilly. It’s pretty, and I can’t wait to meet my friends.
For some reason, I feel particularly compelled to write in my blog today, so I’m going to roll with it, with some stream of consciousness stuff that perhaps will be of interest to me in years to come. I watched a few times this week a movie which I’ve seen many times before but which I try to watch every now and then when I think I need to hear its message. It’s called The Shift and it is made by Wayne Dyer, who is hard to describe but I guess best known as a sort of self-help dude and motivational speaker. But that doesn’t really do him justice. He’s not full of himself like many are, and while he believes in meditation and such it’s really his message about authenticity that resonates with me. I speak about him in the present tense but unfortunately he died just a while ago…hold on let me see when. OK actually it was in 2015. So I guess it’s been a while. But I was introduced to him before he died, I remember that. Not sure when I saw the movie first, I can’t recall. Somebody showed it to me, but I forget who. (I sorta forget everything today, I have a bit of a weird headache and some tension in my neck).
Anyway the movie is an interesting artistic vehicle because it’s this unique - and, it turns out, uniquely effective - combination of fiction and non-fiction, set around a semi-fictional weekend at Asilomar down near Monterey and the idea that he’s there filming some stuff about his most recent book, while a bunch of families and other folks are just there staying for the weekend for their own reasons. There’s a rich obnoxious dude there with his wife who’s going to announce that she’s pregnant, a mother of two who’s feeling cooped up by constantly needing to be there for her husband and kids, and the erstwhile fictional documentary filmmaker, who is trying to make his “masterpiece” but finds out he lost the funding. You watch all of them go through their own shift while they have what Dyer calls their “quantum moment”, which is just a way of saying that sometimes when you hit rock bottom you get to a point when you realize that what worked for you up until that point - what Dyer calls “the morning of your life” - just isn’t working anymore in the “afternoon”.
It’s a message that really resonates with me because basically what he winds up saying is that you get to a point when the only thing that really matters to you is being able to be yourself. Which is funny because a lot of people might say the point is to do good, or be successful, or find inner peace or whatever, but he basically says it’s just plain and simply about being yourself. He plays around with different ways of putting it - following your Dharma, letting go, a “future pull”, letting God work through you, etc. but it just basically boils down to authenticity. And I really resonate with that because I think I have gotten to that point in my life - or at least will very soon. I’m honestly done caring nearly as much as I did before about what people think of me - my father, my mom, my brother, my many dates and partners, my coworkers. I just don’t care anymore, not because I suddenly grew a spine or because I had an epiphany but rather simply because I correctly recognized that whatever perils lie down the path of being yourself, the suffering you endure going any other way is way, way worse. It’s sort of a self-serving thing and the great paradox is that it turns out it’s also the way to wind up doing the best things for other people. It’s kind of a happy accident about people that when you let them be themselves, they want to do good things for other people. I sincerely believe that a lot if not all of the violence and problems of today come from sets of people who just don’t feel like they can be genuine or be themselves.
Maybe more about this tomorrow.
Today I am most proud of my walk. I took about a 10k walk today, just to clear my head and think about some things as well as get some exercises. I’m grateful that I have the health and the time and inclination to do something like that, and I’m grateful to myself for making that choice, when I could have told myself I was too busy or otherwise filled up my day. I walked around Walnut Creek and it was really nice - I got lunch and sat in a park I’d never been to, stopped by the bike store, exchanged my soda making canisters, and mostly just slowly ambled around while listening to my meditation app. Even the cold don’t bother me. It was a very peaceful moment.
Today what I’m most proud of - and yes, I’m still counting it as today even though it’s 2 AM - is beating Portal 2. I started it at about 3 this afternoon and I just finished! I did cheat two or three times, using a walkthrough. I wanted to finish before I went to sleep and it was dragging, but I really wanted to see the end of the story. It’s an amazing game, but really what makes it so good isn’t the gameplay but rather the art and the narrative. I don’t want to spoil it because most readers here who are interested have already played it and the few that haven’t, well, you should go play right now! It’s a masterpiece and it reminds me how rare really quality storytelling is in games, but how awesome and effective it is when it happens.
Today what I’m most proud of is….this blog itself! I have been doing this for many years. Hold on, I’ll look that up. Yikes, 2014! So, 7 years. I haven’t gotten famous or popular, I think my most-liked post has about 20 likes or so, and I have maybe 50 comments in the whole 7 years. But I’m still glad I did it, because you have to be important to yourself, and it’s a sign of my commitment to document my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I look back through my old posts and it’s interesting how far I’ve come but also how I remain largely the same upbeat and positive person I’ve always been, constantly looking toward a better future. I don’t really regret any of my posts, and some of them I really admire. And some of my photography is really good.
But mostly I just admire my own commitment to keep this going, without anything riding on it. I’m not getting paid, I’m not getting famous, it’s just pure writing for its own sake.
Here’s to another 7 years!
Today what I’m most proud of is my growing barbell collection. Fitness has always been important to me, but it’s always been more about cardio. I’ve run 5 marathons and ridden across the country several times, but I just never was able to get into weightlifting. I always found it intimidating and I think it spoke to my lack of self-esteem, especially about my masculinity. But recently I’ve been working with a personal trainer, and he’s helped me to come to understand the importance of it. And because of the pandemic, we haven’t been able to work out in a gym, so basically if I wanted to work with him, I had to go buy some weights. Because it became mandatory, and because I did it one weight at a time, I was able to make progress in an area of my life I’d never been able to do much with before. And now I find myself the owner of really quite a good collection of weights, up to 50lb. Of course it’s what I do with the weights that’s important, but today I’m just focused on this nice, clean organized set of weights. The weight rack I just purchased from Dick’s Sporting Goods and set up a couple of days ago. Looks nice, doesn’t it?
Today what I’m most proud of is a server that I set up. This requires a bit of explanation: In about a week or so, as part of a larger team, I’ll be participating in something called the MIT Mystery Hunt. It’s a sort of puzzle-solving competition which has been going on for many years and is pretty famous. It typically centers around the physical MIT campus, though for years now it’s had a large online component. But for obvious reasons, this year’s contest is entirely virtual, which seemed like a great time to get involved. As part of a team of about 20-25 folks, most of whom I know from my Austin/Trilogy days, we’re going to enjoy solving puzzles and doing a sort of online scavenger hunt for the better part of a long weekend.
While we have no expectation at all of winning or even coming close, organizing 25 folks to solve over 100 puzzles - at least a dozen of which might be going all at once - is a challenging task. So I took it upon myself to set up an instance of code which some of the leading teams use to organize their efforts. It’s based on a web platform and deployed on a Google Compute Instance. While there were some good instructions, it still took a bit of effort and work to get it deployed, so I’m proud of getting it up and working. Over the last couple of days we did a sort of “dry run” on a smaller puzzle contest called the Puzzle Boat, and it worked great.
If you want to check it out - or join our team! - just let me know. I won’t post the link here because I don’t want web robots to harvest it, but I’d happily show it to you!
Today what I’m most proud of is that I finished a 3D printed design that I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. It’s for a set of hexagonal storage compartments that you could mount on a wall, and I mounted it on my wall. It’s something that I wanted because I want to put tiny electronics parts in it, but more so because I am working on my 3D printing skills. I’ve got two printers now - a slightly busted Monoprice mini printer that I fixed up, and then a Creality Ender 5 Pro that a friend recommended and was fun to put together. Makes me feel good to have accomplished this, and also I think it looks pretty stylish. If anybody has any recommendations of things to 3D print let me know!
Today what I’m most proud of is starting the new semester at school. I’ve re-enrolled at Central Oregon Community College (remotely), and this semester I’m taking two classes: HST 105, the Spread of World Religions in the 600-1600CE time frame, and ENGR 201, an introduction to digital electronics. I’m proud of this for lots of reasons: because the content of these classes says something about my diverse interests, because I was able to get up this morning to attend my first class, because being in school is something I’m good at and makes me proud, and because it’s helping me chase my dreams.
I already learned a lot of cool things in the lecture this morning, and one of them was about the nature of thoughts which become universal; that is, the distinction between those religions which caught on globally, such as Buddhism, and those that did not, such as the worship of the feathered serpent gods in central Mesoamerica. It’s interesting to think about which ideas I have or have encountered which have universal applicability, and which don’t. And that’s just Day 1!
I’ve realized that one of the things I really miss is posting on my blog. And one of the aspects I miss the most is posting about positive things about myself and accomplishments of mine. Even if nobody ever reads them, posting here makes me feel better about myself and serves as a reminder of things I’ve accomplished. So my goal here is to post one small accomplishment every day and what it means to me.
Starting here with January 3rd, this morning I rode the Tire Bouchon route in Zwift, which was about 65km. This was notable because it was the last route badge I needed to have completed every single Zwift route (for which there is a badge). I believe there are about 80 badges, ranging from rides of 3km to a route of 173km. Accomplishing this is a sign of my commitment to fitness, as well as a sign of commitment to commitment itself, to following through with something. Some of these routes I rode several years ago, so it’s been a journey, literally as well as figuratively.
This won’t be the end of my Zwift journey, though I’m likely to focus more on my in-person riding once the pandemic lets up.
This one is about the election.
I think Joe Biden is going to win. Everything I read seems to point in that direction. I’m not a fan of Donald Trump, so I’m happy about this. I wanted Mr. Biden to win, I voted for him, I’m glad he’s going to win. So, you know, yay.
My joy, though, is tempered a great deal by the fact that Mr. Trump got - at current count - over 48% of the vote of this country, and possibly as many as 268 electoral votes. The margin here is absolutely razor thin, in every sense of the word. And two of the people who voted for him are my parents. And they are sad. Very sad. They see this whole thing as a giant, ugly step back for America and democracy.
We must stand against racism. And authoritarianism. The scourges of populism and nationalism. We must. And yet somehow we have to do that, and retain our humanity.
I’m saddened by the anger in the responses I see, all across the spectrum. I don’t want to directly quote any of my friends, but I’ve heard Trump supporters described, in the heat of the moment, as racist, sexist troglodytes, evil goblins who want only for the downfall of civilization so they can dance on its grave. And I understand that temptation. Being subject to racism, sexism, transgenderism, ageism, or just good old fashioned “the government doesn’t care about me” ism is traumatic, and anger is a trauma response.
But does it bring you joy, to hate so many of your fellows? Is it bringing you happiness?
Some of those people, undoubtedly, are ugly on the inside. Some of them are truly terrible: white nationalists, authoritarians, greedy sons of bitches. But: 48% of the whole country? You’re telling me that tens and tens of millions of people who live here are just knuckle-dragging racists? Too stupid to think their way out of a rhetorical paper bag? All of them?
I am not saying that they are not wrong. I think they are wrong. But being wrong is not exactly the same as being evil. It is, of course, no less urgent a cause. I am not suggesting that we stand by and quietly let authoritarianism take over our country simply because we are afraid of standing up to our neighbors. But that is not the same as vilifying them.
When you describe them this way, are you sure that isn’t just a convenient way to other all of them so you feel better about your group membership? Isn’t that, in some ways, the exact sin you are accusing them of? Does it help you be happy to think of them somehow as evil? Is it bringing you joy? Is it hard to accept that they are merely wrong?
This post is not really about the election - not really. It’s really about time, and economics, and racism, and nostalgia. But it’s worth mentioning, for those who read this in the future - or me, in the future (hi, me!) - that today, November 3, 2020, is the Presidential election here in the United States.
Like a lot of people, I was feeling some…weirdness about this election. I happen to be in Jacksonville, Florida, visiting my parents. This is where I went to high school. I brought my bicycle on this trip and so, without any real clear sense of where I was headed, I set out on my bike this afternoon, just to get the jitters out. I picked a sort of downtown direction, mostly because I’d never ridden that way, and I had half a thought that I would try riding the Skyway, the weird monorail that Jacksonville has (which I’ve written about in the past and is worth a whole post in and of itself).
As I got towards downtown, it occurred to me that I was going to be riding awfully close to my high school. So I decided to stop by.
A few things are worth clarifying at this point. First of all, I haven’t been - physically - to my high school in at least 20 and probably closer to 25 years. I graduated in 1994, 26 years ago, and - although I liked my high school and have positive memories of it - I just never went back. This is an interesting fact in and of itself, and it points to a couple of things about my life, and about Jacksonville. Probably the most relevant thing it points to is the vast gulf between different areas of Jax. My parents and I lived in various different areas of Jacksonville, but all of them out towards the east, east of the St. Johns River and well towards the beach. At some points we actually lived in a different city, Atlantic Beach. It’s worth noting here that Jacksonville is, physically, huge - the fifth largest city in the world, by land mass. It takes almost an hour - more, with traffic - to drive from my parents’ house to my old high school.
(Some of you may wonder: didn’t you go to your neighborhood high school? And the answer is no; Jacksonville, like many Southern cities, tried a system called Magnet schools, where they put the best schools in the worst neighborhoods, to try to attract suburban white kids into inner cities. It worked, sorta: we went there, but then we just went straight home. Being in downtown Jacksonville meant about as much to my high school experience as being on the surface of the moon).
I’m not really sure exactly how long it takes to drive because, well, we never go. Like, literally, my parents and I never - ever - go that way. We just don’t. There’s nothing there that draws us. No restaurants. No culture. Nothing. When I leave my parents’ house, it is more likely that I am headed to California than that I am headed to downtown Jacksonville.
That’s weird, right?
When I lived in SF, I went downtown. Portland, San Diego, Austin, New York City - I often lived outside downtown, but I went downtown fairly regularly. More in some places than others, but yeah, I went there. And I’m a person who loves to explore. I’ve been to almost every corner of Austin or Portland or Oakland because I like to see what’s there. Even the “scary” parts of Oakland were totally fun and full of culture to explore, even if yes, I did lock up both my bike wheels. But I don’t explore Jax - at least, not that way.
But today, I did. I rode down Myrtle, over 13th, down Bay. I took the Skyway. I stopped by my campus. And the high school was appropriately nostalgic for me. It hasn’t changed at all - at least physically, on the surface. I didn’t go in and wander around because, of course, school is in session and that would be creepy. But there’s still the same diagonal courtyard, the same weird double doors. It’s smaller than I remember.
I rode up, of course, on my bike. And this felt deeply weird. You see, I have never - not once in my life - ridden my bike to my high school. Not when I went there, and not since. It turns out, there’s a bike path - pretty nice! - about a block and a half away from the front door of the school, but I found it totally by accident; I had no idea it was there. I’ve literally never - ever - gone in or out of that school except in a car; either one I drove myself, senior year, or - before that - one driven by my parents. Occasionally I took the school bus, but even that was fairly rare.
That’s weird, right?
But this time - for the first time in my life - I rode around. I rode around the area, hit up the Westside. I tooled around for a good 15-20 minutes. And here’s what I learned: downtown Jacksonville, especially compared to the part of Jacksonville that my parents live in, is a completely and utterly different culture. A different country, really. A different planet. And: it is the land time forgot. It looks exactly the same as it did in the 1990s - and even then, it looked old. It is very African-American, of course. And it is also very poor. But I have been to other poor places, and other Black places, and what struck me about downtown Jacksonville, the word I couldn’t escape, was stagnant. It was stagnant: stagnant like a buzzing fly on a hot Southern day. Stagnant like a broken-down Datsun on blocks in a front yard. Nothing was happening. There were no new businesses. No construction. Nobody was putting up new signs - not even for the election. Nothing was for sale. No bike lanes, no construction crews, no orange cones. People live there, of course. Cars were driving around. But nothing was happening.
What makes this especially jarring is that the area where my parents live - also, I remind you, technically the same city even though an hour away by car - is the opposite, all frenetic activity; new businesses, new strip malls, new Mayo Clinic, new apartment complexes and condos and gyms and even a place that only does Live Action Role Playing. In short, the American Dream - as we conceived of it back in the 1950s - is alive and well in White Jacksonville, but in Black Jacksonville it is as dead as a doornail.
That’s…weird, right?
I mean, no, of course it’s not weird. We read about this all the time, of course. Systemic Racism. It’s a thing. But it’s weird to literally ride your bike between Boomtown and The Land Time Forgot. It’s weird to one minute be surrounded by new Chipotles and the next minute riding past a house whose roof has been in the same state of mild disrepair since I was 18 years old. It’s just Weird.
And it’s even weirder when it’s around your high school.
Let’s talk about art, and let’s start with music. When I was doing a lot of dating, a question that often came up was what sort of music I liked. Often - and still to this day if you catch me in the right mood - my answer would be “I like to listen to terrible music.” This is an answer that of course is designed to be funny and sarcastic. An asshole answer. But, like many asshole answers, it hides a sort of gleaming truth. The fact is, I discovered long ago that most of the music I like - most of the music I really like - is stuff that most other people would find pretty unlistenable. Terrible, even. In the beginning, when people asked, I focused on music that I sorta liked, that I knew was palatable to most people. I like Paul Simon, for example. Saw him in concert and he was amazing. I like Madonna. I like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
But if you told me that I never again could listen to Madonna, I wouldn’t really be that sad. Madonna is music I listen to when somebody else puts it on. When it’s on at the gym or in the grocery store. When I’m alone, in my quiet moments when I want something that I and I alone will listen to, I listen to terrible music. I listen to Freezepop. I listen to 8-bit chiptune versions of old 80s hits. I listen to the Goonies soundtrack on repeat. I listen to Blue Man Group and They Might Be Giants. And that’s just the more normal stuff. I listen to people playing bells in pentatonic harmonies. I listen to a webcomic writer who has a side gig writing intentionally bad rap music that he goes out of his way to beg you not to listen to. I listen to video game soundtracks. I listen to crap. If you had to sit and listen to my musical catalog, you would probably conclude 2 things: 1) I might be insane, and 2) please don’t do that again.
Smash cut to the last 4 days, where I’ve been replaying a video game that I consider one of the best, if not the best video games of all time. It’s called Star Control: Origins. For the moment, it doesn’t matter much what it’s about. It’s a sequel to what’s widely considered one of the finest games of all time, Star Control 2, which came out 25 years ago and I played in high school. Star Control: Origins (SCO) is, in short, sublime. It is well-paced. Comedic. Entertaining. Well put-together. It flows naturally from story-beat to story-beat like a well-written science fiction novel. It has some fun game mechanics and some surprises. It is perfect? No, of course not. It has occasional typos and game bugs now and again. Parts in the middle drag a bit. Some of the bonus content is a little soft. It gets too easy near the end. And yet, if I were trapped on a desert island with only one game, this is the one I would take.
Thing is: I’m pretty much the only one. Oh, there are people that like SCO well enough. It has about a 60% review rating on Steam. One famous critic gave it the 4th best game of 2018. But mostly it was met, commercially and critically, with a collective yawn. It didn’t sell all that well. It ended up mired in this weird legal controversy I won’t go into. And it sat in the shadow of its predecessor, which was, as I mentioned, a game that would sometimes get mentioned in top 10 lists of best video games of all time. Nobody is clamoring for a sequel.
Here’s a little secret: I think SCO is better than the old version. Sure, Star Control 2 is a classic. I had lots of great hours with it. But it’s showing its age. First of all the technical details are limiting. The art is very, very old. The music is 1980s era video game music. The dialog is all told in text. You can’t speed the text up. The game is paced the way games of that era were paced: which is to say, slow. Games back then were expensive and were measured on the number of hours of gameplay they provided. The first 2 hours of the game all you do is run around and collect minerals. Yes, there’s some amazing writing. Yes, the world feels alive. But it takes a long time to get there, by modern standards. So, yeah: the modern one is just way better.
To put this in context for those of you not up on video games, I just tried to convince you that The Monkees are better, musically, than The Beatles.
So here’s the thing I finally learned about art, and beauty: it really, truly is in the eye of the beholder. Now, I do think there is such a thing as bad art, or artlessness. There is art - a lot of it, really - which is so lacking in skill, or message, that nobody would seriously consider it to be good. And of course, there is some art which rises to a level that few seriously question its quality. (a la the Beatles, or Shakespeare). But there is a wide, vast gulf in between of art which speaks to some people, but in a really, really uneven way.
I think Clue (the Movie) is superior filmcraft to Gone With The Wind.
I think the filmmakers behind Marble Hornets, the YouTube series, are better than the ones behind the movie It.
I like Star Trek: The Next Generation better than 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I think the Mona Lisa is honestly kinda boring, art-wise.
And, yes, I like The Monkees better than The Beatles.
And I’m OK with that.
As I watch my stock plummet, I feel like it’s finally time to address the Coronavirus. Like the 900 pound elephant who craps all over the room, I’ve mostly been trying to just not stare at it too hard, but it’s here, it’s real, it’s happening, and this is a blog where I write about my thoughts about the world and so it’s time to address this. I wish I had a clear sound bite for you about how i feel about all this. One of the reasons I’ve been hesitating to write about it was because I didn’t. So here are my complex, adult, non-sound-bite-y things to say about the Coronavirus:
First, I have to admit that part of me warms on the inside seeing humanity take an important scientific event seriously. It feels like science is always warning us of this, that or the other thing and mostly people just shrug and look the other way. I see people doing rational things like washing their hands and not shaking hands. I don’t see a lot of pseudoscience. I know there are stories of people not eating Chinese food because of fear of the virus, but mostly I get the sense that people are trying to use their heads.
Second, I don’t think there’s anything really to be all that worried about, at least in terms of the actual physical consequences of the virus. Like, I’m not personally worried about the impact on my health. I think this will mostly all blow over and everyone will be fine in the end.
However, that is cold comfort for anyone who is actually affected by the situation. Some people will, regretfully, die from this, and that’s a shame. I worry a little about my parents, who are older. I worry for my friends that just had a baby (though the disease doesn’t seem to do much to kids).
Perhaps most importantly, I worry about the very real consequences that very real people are currently experiencing as a result of the psychic damage and panic associated with the virus. Just in the last few days I, personally:
- Lost a ton of money in the stock market
- Watched the Game Developer Conference get canceled for the first time ever
- Was told I had to work from home
- Watched SXSW get cancelled
And I know there’s more to come. What’s happening here - regardless of the medical consequences - is heartbreaking for some folks. And it’s hard to know what to say. I mean, I know that for me personally the right answer is to just live my life the same way I always have. I’m not scared. But I won’t fault my friend too much if he doesn’t want to take his kids to the park, or if my parents don’t much feel like going to a football game. I mean, the disease is real, and it will affect some people. It’s disingenuous and rude to say it’s a big nothing.
And, finally, there’s the politics. It’s obvious that Donald Trump is not equal to this moment. On the one hand, I feel compelled to say, in the interest of fairness, that some of his protests are correct; people are overdoing it, there is too much panic, and some of it is unfairly directed at him. Having said that, the man is tone deaf, and it may finally be coming back to haunt him. His government - the one he chose to put together - is now made of toadies and climate deniers, and it turns out they aren’t very good at dealing with a scientific crisis. They’re not even good at being kind and compassionate while they screw it up. They come across like what they are: trust fund babies who just found out they failed chemistry because their effort to buy the answers to the test didn’t work. I absolutely want them to right the ship and turn around their response to this, because real human lives are on the line. But if they don’t - and that’s up to them really - the only good consequence of this whole sad thing is that we will soon get a chance to express our displeasure.
So, those are my complex thoughts. It’s sad, it’s probably ok, and maybe this is just the way the world works now.
The only thing you really need to know about the new Sonic movie is that there’s a heartfelt quiet scene near the end of the film where the camera zooms in on him, and the theater got completely quiet, and then a two year old voice in the first row just went “Sonic!” and everybody clapped.
It’s not a perfect movie. The plot is cliché, some scenes land a little weirdly. I walked out for 4 minutes to go to the bathroom and didn’t miss anything. But for what it is, and what it was trying to do, it was really fun. Jim Carrey is, of course, amazing, and the guy who voiced Sonic did a really good job. The movie’s emotional scenes, whether they were funny or dramatic, landed correctly and felt right. There was even some funny subplots I wasn’t expecting.
I’d give it a solid B+/A-. If you know who Sonic is, you’ll get a kick out of it. If you think you’ll like it, you will. If you don’t, well, yeah, you can miss this one; it’s not great literature and it won’t win any Oscars.
Still, it bodes well for future video game movies!
