“Things I have Worried About” Tales Of Mere Existence

This is actually completely amazing. The art, the direction, the deadpan delivery, and the sheer universality.

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Inception Featurette

This film had better bloody well be at least half as good as it looks.

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Wear your own bloody costume

So Penny Arcade Expo has finally put the ban on booth babes.

Good.

To make sure they’d understood what the gaming community really wants, they took the unusual step of actually asking them.

“6,313 people took the poll, with 60 percent of respondents either liking or loving the ban on booth babes. Only 12 percent of respondents hated the ban, putting public opinion firmly in the anti-babe area. The major addition to the policy stipulates that the models need to be “educated about the product,” and “partial nudity” has been banned. Models can dress up like characters from games and wear revealing clothing, as long as it’s true to the original character.

The numbers are striking, and the rule saying models need to know about the product is important. It seems that those going to PAX want to see and learn about the games, not ogle scantily clad ladies who pretend to really like having their picture taken with sometimes-stinky gaming fans.”

Even though I’m several thousand miles away from PAX, I voted in the poll on point of principle.

It’s not that I’m adverse to appreciation of beauty. After all, my own admiration for the male form borders on the fetishistic. It’s just that beauty is about so much more than looks that when we are invited to admire someone solely for where the features land on their face, I feel like it’s debasing the whole thing.

My absolute lack of any kind of respect for models aside (I mean, seriously – we as a culture worship people for being tall, thin and plain. Last time I checked, there wasn’t any actual skill involved in being tall, thin and plain, so what can we possibly find to admire?), the idea of hiring models to attract people to your booth is something I’ve never understood.

Isn’t your game interesting enough for people to want to know about it unless they think they’re going to get laid with the vacant-looking girl in the hotpants?

Then there’s the whole thing about booth babes always being female. I used to joke that we should have male booth babes to balance it out – but really, if a guy stood there with a well-oiled six pack, I’d think he was just as f***ing ridiculous.

I’m glad they’re still allowing cosplayers, because there is a skill involved in creating elaborate costumes based on your favourite characters – that’s called art and craft. Make it about the costumes, and not just cheap titillation for adolescent boys with no social skills to get a real-life girlfriend. (Think stereotyping all gamers as adolescent heterosexual boys with no social skills is offensive? Good! So stop acting like they are.)

So now PAX is laying down the law that the people hired to flog the games must be appropriately-dressed and knowledgeable about the games.

This is the bit I don’t get: that they ever bothered with the models in the first place. The actual game marketing people are all over the press anyway, and they’re good-looking, socially-skilled people of either gender who know about the product. I’d think having my photo taken with someone who’d actually had a hand in producing the game would be cooler than some half-undressed random stranger.

Metablog: Me, Me, Me

Chatting with a colleague earlier, she said that I should be pleased about being contacted about one of my posts because it must be good to know that people are reading it and I’m not just waffling out into cyberspace.

Well, I am just waffling out into cyberspace – because if I don’t have other people to talk to I just wind up talking to myself – but if other people enjoy what they read here, tant mieux.

The one thing that’s really struck me about digging the stuff out of the attic lately is how surreal it all is. Looking back now, it just doesn’t feel like it was me at all. I’m the most boring person in the world, and I find it very difficult to believe that I led that life and hung out with those people. I haven’t even mentioned the half of it – I feel like a total wanker if I even start to talk about how life was back then. I remember arriving at an industry bash, aged 16, and a someone saying, “We all wondered when you’d get here,” and quoting, “Well, if there’s one thing worse than being talked about, it’s not being talked about.” I barely leave the house any more.

I spent a lot of time in London in the early 90s before moving there in ’95. It was the centre of the world – the pinnacle of British indie and the ultimate time for industrial and alternative rock, and I loved it all with a ridiculous passion. Much as I laugh my head off at the absurd things I wrote at the time, I wasn’t exaggerating in terms of how much I enjoyed those shows. The press at the time used to sneer at some of the bands – “the Scene That Celebrates Itself”, they dubbed it – because instead of headline-grabbing rivalries, they’d all be friends with each other and with their fans. Whatever scene, all the bands were like that.

If I say these bands were “normal people”, I mean it. Hanging out with them was the same as hanging out with anyone else after the gig – just kicking back with a couple of beers and maybe going out to a club. If there was any excess of the sex-and-drugs persuasion, I never saw it. The most shocking thing I saw was cEvin Key toking up at eight a.m., and I only ever met one (self-professed) groupie, and she wound up managing the band she liked. The first time I met James from the Manic Street Preachers, he made everyone a cup of tea.

Best Concerts Ever: Full Top Ten

I’m being nagged for my top 10 favourite gigs. This is, of course, just shows that I’ve been to. I caught footage of mid-70s Led Zep on TV the other day, so I’m pretty sure better shows have been played.

1. SMASHING PUMPKINS/FILTER
Wembley Arena, May 1996

(Review here)

The highlight of all highlights begins as the Pumpkins play another untitled track with incredible tribal percussion that threatens to cause the roof to cave in. The deep rumbling basslines resonate around the room, booming up through the floorboards. The sound is clear and pristine tonight, perfect conditions for a little experimentalism. Jimmy Chamberlain shows his true ingenuity as a drummer by holding the steady, complicated rhythms together as Billy and James churn out guitar lines in a vaguely Eastern-sounding fashion. The sound swells and holds for a full eight minutes before dying down to the percussion-based theme, and then something extraordinary happens.

2. RADIOHEAD/MANICS
Reading Festival, 1994

Saturday’s headliners Primal Scream were oddly disappointing – even if they had Dave Gahan as a guest star – because there was just no possible way they could have beaten the back-to-back double act that was Radiohead and the Manics. Two bands I personally rooted for, as much for their good-natured personalities as their music, and they never sounded better. I always felt afterwards that Richie had used this as a test run: see if they could survive without him before doing his disappearing act. I remember the surprisingly gorgeous James Dean Bradfield – a regular at the PR agency where I was doing an internship that summer – saying, “I gotta go play in front of 50,000 people” with a mixture of pride and terror to which I could only smile and wish him luck. They pulled off the challenge admirably. Radiohead were their consistent, excellent best.

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