Nina and I helped Beau out with his project Vanderpuss last summer. He spent the next six months or so editing it and prepping it for release. The DVD company sent him his first run a few weeks ago, and he finally screened it for everyone on Sunday at Cake Shop. He gave a funny speech to introduce the subject matter of the film, and he'd arranged for some bands to play before and after: There was a folk / anti-folk type dude who alternated between an acoustic guitar and Beau's day-glo painted electronic keyboard; he sang several crypto-misogynist songs about his problems with "blonde actresses." Then there was I'm Turning Into, a trio of plaid-clad dudes I'd actually been meaning to check out anyway. They were good! And they put out a strong vibe of enjoying themselves. Beau'd also managed to book a band called Eula, fresh from SXSW, who played jangly, punky guitar rock. They kept hyping the film, either ironically or earnestly referring to it as "Vanderpussy."
The movie itself was -- I don't know. I like it, but I'd already seen it several times and worked hard enough to blunt my own self-consciousness that I can't really tell how coherent it is. At the time we shot it, it seemed to be reasonably intelligible, a tribute to Beau and Doug and the other people who ginned up the ideas and the dialogue, so I'll trust that that hasn't changed. And it got laughs in the right places, and Drew as Vanderpuss was obviously in command of the material. It was fun!
Warning: Computer bullshit.
A little while ago, I finished a project of my own. I released an initial version of a software framework I'd been working on, in some form or another, ever since I graduated from college. It's called gzochi, and it's a system for developing multiplayer network games. I'd begun building it -- or feature prototypes of it -- around the time that Blizzard's World of Warcraft was really firing the consciousness of the media and the game-playing populace, and also at the same time that the Free Software folks were pushing both for Free implementations of popular bits of software and for Free game libraries and games. What I had in mind was a rich framework, a piece of software that would comprise, say, 90% of a working game. The only thing to be supplied by a downstream developer would be, well, game design, specified in as semantically direct a way as possible. Every other aspect of the application, from server-side persistence to client-side rendering, would be managed by the framework. Suffice it to say, this idea was worryingly vague and prohibitively ambitious. In fact, I spent the next several years side-tracked by the work required to create the systems that would support my hypothetical framework.
The time I spent working professionally in games -- at Rebel Monkey -- was a net negative, life-wise, except that I got to build some software on top of a Java game development framework called Project Darkstar that was tackling some of the same problems as gzochi. (Trivia: the Monkey actually hired Jeff Kesselman, the lead developer of that project, as its CTO. For about five months.) Instead of proposing a single, all-encompassing data model on top of the games it hosted, the PDS framework provided a set of container services that game applications could choose advantage of. Forget gaming: Project Darkstar is really more of a transactional execution and persistence framework. And the design of the system dovetailed with some lessons about software I was slowly internalizing at the time: One-size-fits-all software solutions are hard to develop; data modeling is the hardest and most important part of software engineering; the best way to expose software functionality is via thin, decomposable layers. So when I got the idea to pick up gzochi again, I decided to scrap what I'd done back in 2004 and re-implement it as a clone of PDS, using languages that I actually enjoy writing code in, C and Scheme. As a validation of that impulse, the past couple of months have been pretty nuts. I don't think I've ever had code come to me as easily as it has been for this project. And I just released an initial version! I'm going to take a break for a while and work on something else, but I'm bedeviled with fantasies of games to build.
Nina and I joined a gym over the winter -- for three months, I should say, beginning on New Years Day, so our membership is just about up. We went with Body Reserve, over on 5th Ave. and Union, which Tom and Jill have gently mocked over the years for its dopey eagle-with-a-barbell signage. They call it "American Dream Muscles." But they had the least aggressive terms and they priced competitively, relative to their offering, which seems, well, correspondingly modest. I hadn't exercised in a gym since, I don't know, college, but the qualia seem to be largely the same: There's a clammy, grimy texture to everything you touch, and a faint, not unpleasant worn-sneaker smell throughout. I was going primarily to run on the treadmill during the cold months, but I also pushed myself to branch out to other machines and exercises. I use the free weights, glaring at myself in the mirror as it seems is customary. I use one of the abdominal "crunch" machines. I do the thing where you pull down on a bar and it lifts up some weights, a kind of seated chin-up. Is it working? Unclear. I've got this little hot dog body, you see.
Bad Movie Night continues unabated. Recent selections:
- Snowboard Academy: A miscalculated slobs-vs-snobs comedy that pits snowboarders against skiers -- as if the distinction were somehow important -- in a tussle for liebensraum at a fancy resort. The always unhealthy-looking Corey Haim plays a degenerate 'boarder who somehow becomes the ambassador for his "sport," asserting that "snowboading is new, it's happening, it's hot, it's fresh." A beef jerky-textured Jim Varney makes an appearance as a hack road comic who's inexplicably promoted to management. The movie attempts nothing and goes nowhere.
- Undefeatable: We were pretty excited to see this one, as it's the source of a famous Internet video called Best fight scene of all time. It is actually a very good fight scene, cartoonishly destructive and unnecessarily shirtless, but the rest of the movie is richly silly as well -- the guy who gets his eyeball poked out at the end is a wild-eyed caricature of a villain with an Oedipus complex that drives him to kill. But the funniest part for me is how seriously the film takes the martial arts pedigree of its stars, John Miller and Cynthia Rothrock. There are multiple, endless scenes of lame dudes in sweatpants delivering very serious-looking practice punches to the air. It's as much of a boner-killer for the concept of karate as people who pronounce it kah-rah-tay.
I went out to Maxwell's on Sunday night to catch the WFMU Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia, the big karaoke party that signals the end of their annual two-week-long fundraising marathon. I know I'm not supposed to merely tolerate it, but I not-so-secretly love the marathon -- my favorite show, the lively Prank Patrol, brings out The Wheel Of Fate, a full complement of tortures unbecoming the middle-aged hosts: This year's edition promised underwear trading, foot kissing, and briefs full of coffee grounds. The other shows on the station get a whole lot more personable as well, since even the music shows with the most taciturn hosts are obligated to devote half their air time to shilling. You get to experience non-naturally-occurring DJ combos: Frangry vs. Station Manager Ken! Billy Jam vs. Bronwyn Carlton! Tom Scharpling vs. Terre T, pretending they're not real-life married! And Scharpling's show is always a stunner, even if it lacks the sweaty desperation of some of the less popular programs. I've pledged (to 7SD) the past several years, partly out of the goodness of my heart, partly out of a desire, as Andy says, to hear my name said on the "ray-dee-oh," but I'd never had the nerve to make it out to Hoof & Mouth. I decided to try it this year after watching a joyous video of last year's, and so I bailed early on dinner at Surfish with Eve and Jon and took the F to 14th for the switch to the PATH.
The hardest part of making it to Maxwell's is the trek down Washington Ave. When I was younger and more attuned to discomfort, my spirit revolted at the thought of walking eleven long blocks to my destination, especially in the cold -- that street really focuses the wind on your business. But I am older now, and I persevered, taking opportunities to peek into the windows of ground-floor brownstone apartments and check out the anti-Obama tchotchkes inexplicably on offer for St. Patrick's Day at more than one pharmacy. Hoboken's a pretty town, I thought. There's a sports bar on every corner, but I could live there. It's what I always think.
I knew I was at Maxwell's even before I saw the sign, because I caught sight of Ken in the window wearing his "vinyl suit," a set of armored plates built out of fire-wilted records. He was wearing a kilt, too, but not much else. Irwin Chusid and Therese were there, too, in a little reserved part of the front of the house where they'd set up a remote broadcasting system to finish out the fundraising. The real action was in the back, where the Sinfonia (a bunch of musically adept FMU DJs) were playing. I arrived in time to catch the end of X. Ray Burns' performance, delivered naked to the waist, his beard pointed like a satyr's. After him came songs sung by Bryce Kretschmann, Keili Hamilton, Lamin Fofana, and other DJs with familiar names and sometimes familiar faces. I picked out a bunch of WFMU luminaries in the crowd: AP Mike (Lisk), Frangry (whose real name, I overheard, is Francine), Andy Cohen, a guy I think might've been Kevin Nutt from Sinner's Crossroads. The big performances came at the end of the night. Ken invited "The Queen of WFMU," Terre T, to the stage, and she turned in a high-octane performance of "Ace Of Spades," quite possibly one of the most difficult songs ever to play or sing. And then it was time for "The King of WFMU," a characteristically disheveled Tom Scharpling, who sang "Communication Breakdown" and, as he'd hinted he would, "Killing In The Name Of." To make the latter song radio friendly (a feed of the festivities was going out over the air) he edited its refrain to "Fudge you, I won't do what you tell me." The appreciative mosh pit that had formed roared it right back at him. Upon finishing, he dropped the mic and stepped off the stage into the crowd, half rock star, half Joe Lunchpail.
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