Hired by Play Magazine

It’s official. I’m writing a piece that’s going to be in the Los Angeles Times. And I’m getting paid.

It’s about anime.

Wallace

Via Dadahead:

“I know that you know as well as I do how fast thoughts and associations can fly through your head. Youcan be in the middle of a creative meeting at your job or something,and enough material can rush through your head just in the littlesilences when people are looking over their notes and waiting for thenext presentation that it would take exponentially longer than thewhole meeting just to try to put a few seconds’ silence’s flood ofthoughts into words. This is another paradox,that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person’slife are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn’teven the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of theregular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so littlerelation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-another-word English weall communicate with each other with that it could easily take a wholelifetime just to spell out the contents of one split-second’s flash ofthoughts and connections, etc. – and yet we all seem to go aroundtrying to use English (or whatever language our native country happensto use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people whatwe’re thinking and to find out what they’re thinking, when in fact deepdown everybody knows it’s a charade and they’re just going through themotions. What goes on inside is just too fastand huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketchthe outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant. The internal head-speed or whatever of these ideas, memories, realizations,emotions and so on is even faster, by the way – exponentially faster,unimaginably faster – when you’re dying, meaning during thatvanishingly tiny nanosecond between when you technically die and whenthe next thing happens, so that in reality the cliché about people’swhole life flashing before their eyes as they’re dying isn’t all thatfar off – although the whole life here isn’t really asequential thing where first you’re born and then you’re in the criband then you’re up at the plate in Legion ball, etc., which it turnsout that that’s what people usually mean when they say ‘my whole life,’meaning a discrete, chronological series of moments that they add upand call their lifetime. It’s not really like that. The best way I can think of to try to say it is that it all happens at once, but that at once doesn’treally mean a finite moment of sequential time the way we think of timewhile we’re alive, plus that what turns out to be the meaning of theterm my life isn’t even close to what we think we’re talking about when we say ‘my life.’ Words and chronological time create all these total misunderstandings of what’s really going on at the most basic level. Andyet at the same time English is all we have to try to understand it andtry to form anything larger or more meaningful and true with anybodyelse, which is yet another paradox.

“…the whole my whole life flashed before me phenomenonat the end is more like being a whitecap on the surface of the ocean,meaning that it’s only at the moment you subside and start sliding backin that you’re really even aware there’s an ocean at all. Whenyou’re up and out there as a whitecap you might talk and act as if youknow you’re just a whitecap on the ocean, but deep down you don’t thinkthere’s really an ocean at all. It’s almost impossible to.”

–David Foster Wallace, “Good Old Neon”

A Full Week and an Empty Wallet

Last week was exceptionally full. On Monday night, Jim and I performed our show at UCB NY. The house was seventy or so people, and many of them were unfamiliar faces. Our show was met with tepid response; much of our material was new and untested, and though Jim and I laughed a lot writing things like,

“Knock-knock.
Who’s There?
Your Husband is Dead,”

…it didn’t seem to entertain much of the elderly audience. Our tried-and-true material went over just as well as always, and Brendan’s show that followed was fantastic. After the show, I met Sergei from TGQ, and we had drinks at some local shit-house bar.

****

Tuesday morning, I woke up early and went down to Ground Zero. I took the subway past the closest station, and then walked back towards the site in grey, cool rain. The sky was low with clouds, and the street smelled like hot dogs and acid.

I was expecting to be moved — so many of my close (and somewhat callous) friends have returned from Ground Zero shaken. But I felt nothing. I didn’t even think the site was overwhelmingly large, which is the most common refrain I’ve heard from visitors. It was just a hole in the ground, certainly big enough for a couple buildings, but not any larger than I would have expected. Maybe my detachment was due to never seeing the towers in person; perhaps the site is more personal when it’s not just a pit, but negative space — a hole in the sky where there wasn’t one before.

Maybe it’s because I slept through 9/11.

I grabbed a sandwich and flew back to Los Angeles for E3.

****

I hate to couple both of these entries together, but that’s what the week was for me. I went from Ground Zero to the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo. And there, I made a bunch of new friends; writers and artists from The Gamer’s Quarter and Insert Credit.

This was my first E3. I’ve been dreaming about them since I was a little girl, pouring over the dog-eared pages of EGM magazine, squinting at low resolution photos of new games and new hardware. For those of you who don’t know, E3 is where game companies preview their next year’s worth of gadgetry and entertainment. The name is really self-explanatory. On Wednesday morning, I went to downtown Los Angeles at 8am, and nervously entered the convention center. I didn’t have my pass yet; there was a possibility that I wouldn’t even be allowed into the exhibit hall. When I went to the media room, I brashly demanded a badge; Wes had told me the night before, “Act important.” From the look on the badge-handler’s face, I’m guessing this wasn’t necessary.

From there, I met up with Josh Kushins, (who is always at the events I want to go to, thanks to Bender-Helper), and went into the South Hall. And then immediately to the Square-Enix booth. As always, they had girls dressed up like Mithra. The corporate of a lifetime.

We headed into the S-E theater and watched the premiere of Final Fantasy XIII, as well as footage of older titles already available in Japan. Thirteen stars a female lead, designed by Tetsuya Nomura.

It’s the second time I’ve been under whelmed by the announcement of a new Final Fantasy; the first was when XI was proclaimed an online title. Given my history with XI, however, I can only imagine that I’ll love this new game. And now that I’ve written that sentence, I’m starting to get anxious. 2008 is a long way away. Time from disappointment to blind excitement: One Paragraph.

I toured the halls and phoned the few people I knew from Gamer’s Quarter; it was decided that we’d all meet up after the show ended, and then head out to dinner. I can’t say I’ve ever made more instantaneous friends. Really, everyone was fantastic. And we all spoke the same language: Geek. The ten of us headed to Little Tokyo (not my idea!) and played video games in the Mitsuwa mall for a couple of hours, before getting ramen.

At the ramen table, we all reintroduced ourselves and someone suggested we play our cellphone ringtones. All but two of us had game rings. I almost cried. I mean it. I’ve never met anyone else who uses a chiptune as their ring, and here was a full table full of like-minded people. We laughed at extremely specific geek bits, and then and Wes treated us all to dinner. It was magical.

The next day, I was one of the first 10 people into the west hall, and was determined to play Nintendo’s new console, the Wii. By the time I walked to the booth, the line was already four hours long. This new, inexpensive, system is certainly going to be the winner of the next generation. It has novelty, a huge library of emulated games (the damn thing’s going to play Turbo Grafix titles!), and the smallest footprint of any of the new machines. And that damn amazing controller.

I didn’t play the Wii until the following day, and instead toured around the halls with TGQ people on Thursday. I was introduced to smaller titles and development houses, and tried out some virtual reality stuff in Kentia hall.

Finally, on Friday, I stood in line for an hour to try out Nintendo’s magicbox. It was fantastic! The control was responsive and intuitive, and the games were quirky and loveable. Unless I get a job on TV, I can’t afford the 600 dollar PS3. No matter what happens, though, I’ll be in line on launch day for the (rumored at 199$) Wii.

Too bad about that name, though.

Friday afternoon, TGQ and IC went out for Thai in Thai-Town, Los Angeles, and then headed back to ’s house. We watched a DVD by Mega64, a video-game sketch group paid by Ubisoft. Extremely specific, to be sure, but they have an audience and they make money. And, the shit was funny! I don’t know if you’ll get much of the jokes if you’re not a gamer, but you may want to check it out, anyway.

Soon after, we had our bittersweet goodbyes. Matt gave me a stack of Gamer’s Quarter book-marks to hand out, and I’ve already distributed about a quarter of them.

****

Finally, in Call-to-Adventure news, you can now purchase prints of my original photography through Paypal. Soon, I’ll be filling the gallery with new pictures. Please support my hobby by purchasing some ART. One can never have enough ART.

Saturday Night Live

Last night, I watched Saturday Night Live from the writer’s room.

Jim and I walked down to 30 Rockefeller, and stood outside in cold, dry wind, waiting for our friends to show up. When Pete Gross, Deb Downing, and Brendan Hunt all arrived, we headed in and received our passes to shoot past the lines and walk into the offices of SNL.

Tall, white walls and thin hallways led down to the least imposing room I could imagine — this was the epicenter of a thirty-year legacy, and it felt like a common corporate office. A bowl of pencils was tossed in the middle of a conference table, a flatscreen monitor showered us with the feed from downstairs. There were some couches, and a fridge. And many scripts. Behind a thick grey curtain was a huge window that looked down onto the stage and the audience. I watched the Red Hot Chili Peppers prepare for the cameras, and caught a glimpse of Steven Spielberg. I don’t type these names to drop them; I write them because I’m shocked that time and space allowed our paths to intersect. Do you understand? Tom Hanks walked by me a few times; I wasn’t star-struck, but I was startled that there’d ever be a reason for us to pass by each other in such pedestrian ways.

I don’t watch SNL usually; my exposure has been limited to two bits on the internet over the last five years. It was pretty great to watch the process, though. Jokes were handwritten and rushed down to the stage; I watched as John Lutz rewrote bits for sketches that were cut-on-the-fly. The atmosphere wasn’t anxious or tense, though. These were just people doing their job. Liz Cackowski ran up and downstairs to be in background bits, or when she asked Hanks a question during his monologue. Seth hung out with us for much of the filming; he wasn’t in any material last night, which sucked as his parents were there. Then again, I guess they’ve seen the show before.

After, we all headed down to Dock’s for dinner and drinks. Docks was dark, stiff, and expensive. This was the official after-party, with cast members and writers sitting next to the band and the guests. Kristen Schaal and Scott Speiser were there, too; we had a Shanley 7, Northwestern mini-reunion at the SNL mixer. I got to say hi to Liz Cackowski, but was pretty planted at Seth’s table for much of the night. It was nice to run into Boom alumn Becky Drysdale. We chatted for a while about lesbian fundraisers, and she apologized for not being able to make The Jim and Heather Show on Monday.

Jim whispered that reservations for our show were now topping 60 people.

When the party started to wind down around 3am, we piled into Seth’s limo and crossed town to UCB. There, the after-after party was raging crazy. The stage was a dance floor, and a DJ was playing crowd favorites like, “Poison.” You know: That Girl is Poison. I found John Lutz again, and talked for a couple hours (neither of us are dancers). We reminisced about Chicago Pizza and doing the Jam at I.O., back when I was younger and he was the host. Finally, Schaal, Speis and I took the subway home at 5:30am (after we dragged Schaal away from her pen-pal, Sandberg). It was a pink-and-blue morning, and my father’s red tie smelled like whiskey. I fell asleep in Brooklyn as people started going to church.

NYCNYCNYC

Hey Everyone! I’m in New York City.

Tonight I did a show at Kristen Schaal’s Hot Tub. Jim and I did “Drawings,” from our two person show, with some minor changes.

I’ve had a couple drinks, so I’m going to stop writing now. More later! (Hi, Mom and Dad.)

Job Hunt, New York, E3

So, as you all know, I quit my “job” at Yummy on Tuesday. In the last two days, I’ve applied for two jobs, one as a writer at NextGen.biz, and the other as a graphic designer at Break.com. The NextGen site is gaming culture, so there’s an obvious connection … but Break was really out-of-the-blue. I got a call from them yesterday; they had spoken with Joe Kelly about my Crime Scenes poster, and were wondering if I wanted to work as a full-time graphic artist and web designer. Unfortunately, my web design skills are awful. I don’t know Flash, plain and simple. But Photoshop? Sure. And I could probably fake my way through Illustrator, too.

Next Gen wrote me this morning and said, “We’ll keep you on file.” But all is not lost! I’ll be sending a proposal to The Escapist, and I also have a pretty significant lead at Play. And I know a couple guys at Square-Enix, USA. And a friend is going to pitch me to … (mumbles) E.A..

In other news, tomorrow at 7:00am, I leave for NEW YORK CITY.

To all within hearing range, come see my first-ever show in New York, at Upright Citizens Brigade:
The Jim and Heather Show, MONDAY at 8:00PM!

I’ll be shouting this again Sunday, so don’t worry about forgetting.

Also, I’ll be making some new friends at E3 next week. Maybe someone there will give me a job.

double gross

I just quit my job, after delivering to a woman covered in lesions who tipped me 1.30 on 60 something.

The race is on to find another job, and quick. I’ll transcribe again for a while, but if you know of something I should do, send me a message.