Painting Madame X

Some of you may remember "Dead Bob," the barker for our Blackwood Mausoleum attraction last Halloween. He's none other than local legend Bob Diven - comedian, musician, artist, and actor. And now he's a playwright and an even more accomplished actor.

Tonight, we went and saw his one-man show John Singer Sargent: Painting Madame X at the newly-renovated Rio Grande theater in downtown Las Cruces. What a great show! Bob wrote and performed the play, and it was directed by another local legend, Academy Award Nominee and Tony Award winner (for Children of a Lesser God) Mark Medoff.

Bob's masterful performance gives you a compelling window into the very private life of John Singer Sargent, a victorian-era painter whose rising status in French painting circles was cut short by an unwarranted scandal about an enigmatic painting he submitted to the Salon de Paris in 1884, and the terrible choice he had to make in response to it. Filled with wry humor and subdued emotion, the play examines the unexpected regrets that can affect us for the rest of our lives if we cease, even for a moment, to be true to ourselves.

I particularly liked that during the course of the play, Sargent actually works on sketches for a mural. As the story of Sargent's life unfolds, so does the mural behind him start to flesh out in form, and, just as the mural remains largely unfinished at the end of the show, you feel like you have learned much about the real Sargent, but that there remains great depth in the man that remains a mystery. Bob is a talented painter and sketcher, and as such, he brings a genuine presence of a painter to the performance, both overtly through the sketches he makes while speaking in character, and implicitly as the author and actor by bringing the sensibilities of an experienced painter to the screenplay and delivery. The result is a very compelling and thought-provoking show, and I'm very glad I had a chance to see it.

And you can see his show too. Bob is looking to tour Painting Madame X around the state and beyond, and if you know of a venue that could feature it - museums, schools, theaters, etc. - be sure to check out the Painting Madame X web site for details. If you are in New Mexico and your organization qualifies, the New Mexico Humanities Council will subsidize the cost of bringing Bob to perform for you.

Flash app showing Coalition force casualties

BoingBoing posted a link to a Flash-based visualizer showing Coalition casualties in the war in Iraq. Each frame of the animation represents a day, and it plays back at 10 frames per second. Each flash represents a fatal attack on Coalition forces.

This is a very good use of Flash to help visualize complex data. If you watch the animation, it's clear that the violence is not slowing down, nor is it contained, and it's much clearer than anything you've heard a pundit on either side describe. Be sure to check out the animation.

But more disturbing, though, is when you watch the animation again, only this time, you uncheck the USA casualties so it doesn't show where US soldiers died. The difference is staggering. We are bearing a huge portion of the fatalities for this war, way more than all the other countries helping out combined, including the UK. Even if it's just proportional to our deployment there, that just underscores the fact that this is a "coalition" in name only.

I'm pretty liberal, but I break with the party on the withdrawal issue. I don't think we went in for the right reasons (i.e., fabricated WMD claims, fear- and hate-mongering over 9/11), I don't think we were prepared when we went in (i.e., weak medical preparedness, no exit strategy), and I suspect we're making more enemies than we're killing over there. But now that we're there, I think we have a duty to stay there until the place is stable again. It's only going to make matters worse if we withdraw and let Iraq settle its differences with a region-destabilizing, bloody civil war brought on by a vacuum of power of our own creation.

But visualizations like this sure test my resolve on that stance. My gut reaction is to get our people the heck out of there. This must be why the White House prevents the press from reporting on returning caskets, even when they are photographed anonymously - reminders of the human cost of war do little to raise people's "patriotic" support for it.

Kingdom Hearts 2 out tomorrow

I don't often look forward to the release of video games, being more of a developer than a player, but a game is being released tomorrow that I am looking forward to. It's Kingdom Hearts 2, the sequel to the surprisingly good collaboration between Disney and Square. I really enjoyed the first installment because the gameplay was good and the character modeling, animation, and integration were outstanding. The game areas were themed to particular Disney movies, so you could explore the jungles of Tarzan, fight in the arena of Hercules, and even visit Halloweentown from Nightmare Before Christmas (my fave, natch). They were rendered with such detail and care that they felt like extensions of the movies - it's not often that movie-themed video games are fun, so it's quite an accomplishment to make a fun game that uses multiple movies.

I've been looking forward to the game on an abstract level because of this for the last year or so, but tonight was the first time I actually went and looked at some screenshots, and now I'm looking forward to it on a more visceral level. It looks like they did some really fun things with the Disney lands for the second installment.

First, they are keeping and expanding upon Halloweentown, which is, of course, a tremendous bonus considering the interests of yours truly.

Next, they're visiting the world of The Lion King, which normally I wouldn't be too jazzed about, but check out the design on Scar. If the animation is half as good as the character modeling, that character is going to pop.

They're also visiting the world of Mulan, which is a treat, since I really enjoyed the visual design of that movie. They nailed the character design and the humor.

This time, they're even visiting worlds from the live-action movies with an area for Pirates of the Caribbean, complete with flesh-rotted zombies. I've always had a soft spot for the classic dark ride, so I'm happy to see that in there.

But the real kicker is that one of the lands is straight out of the original Steamboat Willie, rendered in black and white with simpler character designs and furniture that rocks to the music. You even get to steer the steamboat. Very cool, and an unexpected nod to the historical roots of Disney animation.

There is other stuff in there, too, like you get to fight in another Hercules level, you get more yawnworthy Winnie the Pooh sidegaming, and we apparently finally get to meet Belle from Beauty and the Beast (who is by far the coolest of the princesses, 'cause she has that dark-side jones-for-the-beast thing going on), so it looks like a lot of gameplay hours. Unless they really drop the ball on the gameplay, I'm pretty sure I'm going to like this one as much as the original.

I'll be making a trip to pick this one up tomorrow.

Scary Flash Games

I found a few fun little Flash games recently that are really well-produced considering it's a lone garage developer putting them together. They're interactive horror adventures in the vein (pardon the pun) of Hellraiser and Evil Dead. The first one is called Exmortis, and the second, a sequel, is called Exmortis₂ (found by way of Jay is Games).

The first game feels a little rough around the edges, and has a few game elements that it shouldn't, like having to do some events in an apparently arbitrary order. But it develops a surprisingly strong tone for its unique fictional world, which gets even stronger and more distinctive in the second installment. There are some good jump-scares in the game, rare for a Flash game, and it is fairly forgiving in the instant-death department, considering the subject matter.

I won't engage in spoilers here. Just go check out the games - be warned, though, they're not for the squeamish.

That must be why people smoke after sex

The British Medical Association has published a study that shows that smokers are much more likely to be impotent. And the more you smoke, the larger the danger.

When we did our tobacco education project a while back, we went with the philosophy that talking about the health risks of smoking was ineffectual, because the target audience was young and feel invincible. Instead, we went after the social risks of smoking: bad breath, yellowed teeth and fingers, the stink of tobacco that follows you around, and the money you could otherwise spend on CD's, DVD's, etc.

We couldn't have used this information in our project, since it was aimed at kids, but this sounds like the ultimate social deterrent to smoking. If you light up, you won't get up. If they're smart, the anti-smoking health organizations will start leading with this study. I see an ad where the smoker watches in puzzlement as the cigarette he's holding starts drooping...

More Death in the Family playtesting

We played more Death in the Family, my card game about the Machiavellian intrigues of a twisted clan of nobles in a gloomy manor house, this weekend.

Unlike my previous game, Sex Farce, which had an almost perfect game balance right off the bat, this one is proving very difficult to make right. We've playtested it many times, and each session has provided great improvements, but the game still took a good two hours to play, and could have taken longer if there hadn't been a series of murders in the first round. It's quite frustrating to make some changes only to discover that, while they solve the earlier problems, introduce new ones which are just as problematic.

Still, I'm convinced there's a good game in there somewhere. I love the core game mechanic that models the backstabbing, conspiracy, and corruption; it's the stuff around it that tries to bring that mechanic to a full-fledged game that is problematic. If I can get those ironed out, I'm certain it would be a great little game.

As usual, this play session generated a lot of ideas for improvements, but we didn't have time to immediately test those ideas, so I'll have to wait for another time to see if those improvements work. It's a slow process relying on the patience of your friends for playtesting, because, really, no one wants to play a game that drags on forever, even if they know it's playtesting rather than straight-up entertainment. Thankfully, I've got some friends who are patient enough and good-natured enough that they're willing to do it every once in a while. Heh.

Gaming Weekend

My friend Kurt is hosting a marathon gaming weekend this weekend, and it's been pretty fun so far. Here are some games we played, and what I thought about them:

Before I Kill You, Mister Bond

This easy and quick Cheapass game has a great premise: You're a villain building an evil base to lure secret agents to kill. When you capture a secret agent, you can just kill him for the listed number of points, or you can taunt the secret agent for huge multipliers to the agent's value, but by doing so, you risk the secret agent escaping and blowing up your base. Very clever, very fun, and a nice game mechanic.

Guillotine

I was really impressed by this game. There's twelve nobles lined up to get their heads chopped off, and players take turns beheading the first noble in line. Each noble is worth different points - Marie Antoinette is worth lots, while martyrs are worth negative points. Then, you play cards to shuffle nobles around in line or do other fun things. Another simple mechanic which makes for a good game.

Chez Geek and Munchkin Bites

These two games are pretty similar. Play cards that give you advantages and points, and the first person to reach their point goal wins. Chez Geek was fun, but Munchkin Bites was really slow for the first round through the deck. It finally started picking up near the end, but by then, we were weary of the game.

We're getting together again today, and the plan is to play Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings game and playtest my own Death in the Family and Sex Farce.

And so it begins

We've had our first disturbing look at the thought processes of least radical of Bush's two supreme court nominees. Roberts wrote the dissenting (thank god) opinion in a case about warrantless searches.

Basically, the question was whether or not you lose the right to be free from warrantless searches of your home if someone you live with decides to waive that right. If the police come to your door wanting to search your apartment, without a warrant, and your roommate says yes and you say no, then, the court ruled, the police need to get a warrant to search the apartment. This makes complete sense - your roommate shouldn't have the right to take your constitutional freedoms away from you any more than the police should.

But Roberts apparently disagrees. His point is basically that requiring the police to get a warrant in this case makes it harder on the police. Well, duh. That's kind of the point - you don't want it to be easy for police to search your home without a warrant. Why does he think that provision against unreasonable search and siezure was put into the Constitution in the first place? But more disturbing, Roberts seems to be of the mindset that removing an inconvenience to a police officer - forcing him to go talk to a judge before coming in - trumps you being able to exercise your constitutional freedoms.

Remember - there are times in one's life when you don't really choose who you live with, like that first college dorm roommate. Think back to all the people you've lived with over your life, and ask yourself if you would be willing to let all of them be the custodians of your personal freedoms. Yeah, that's what I thought. That dysfunctional idiot you lived with for five months back when you were a college sophomore is not a good judge of your best interests.

What does Roberts have to say about that? Hey, "sharing space entails risk." Yes it does, but one of those risks shouldn't be that you waive the right to your constitutionally-protected freedoms.

Jungle Jimmy gets Hitched

BoingBoing posted a link to an awesome site today. It's called Superdickery, and, among other things, it makes a compelling case that Superman is not the bastion of all that is good and pure that he is often made out to be. This is done by simply presenting a series of Superman comic covers.

And not only does Superman come off as a massive dickhead (apparently, he's left Lois to die quite often - I guess she's as resilient as the Man of Steel is), he actually seems to go to incredible lengths to be that massive dickhead. Case in point:

Yes, you read that right. Apparently, in this issue, Superman became a witch doctor so he could set Jimmy Olsen up to marry a female gorilla. Which of course begs the question: why wasn't that the plot they used for the third Superman movie?

Watch Luke grow up

Next, on a very special BlossomStar Wars...

Looks like the Sci Fi channel is in talks to create a Star Wars television series, set between episodes III and IV, wherein you watch a young Luke Skywalker growing up. While I guess I'm on board with a Star Wars series, this premise sure sounds like a mistake. Considering Luke was whining about nothing interesting ever happening and how wet-behind-the-ears he is, clearly, not much of interest happened to him during the formative years before the two droids came into his life. So either they stay true to that, and we get teen angst dramas set against a space-desert backdrop (do landspeeders have back seats to make out in?), or they break that and have Luke fighting off stormtroopers and Sith lords, which has to be explained away with some contrivance to set things right before the start of Episode IV.

Seems like it would have been a better strategy to focus on the general Star Wars universe, with new characters, than to try to shoehorn a series around a character that has so much rigidity to his story already. I guess I'm just worried the show will "Jump the Womp Rat" before it even finishes its first episode. All I know is: the first time Luke has to choose between being popular and befriending a poor Sandperson who's being picked on at Tatooine High, the show's getting turned off.