trenchant.org

Despite iPhone difficulties, Ben expresses his excitement.

“It’s so much more intimate than a laptop.”

This is the part I heard that I hope is true.

And I am following lots of people, but it doesn’t appear any of them know where they’re going.

And some people follow me but I am not leading.

When a web page pops open a modal lightbox style dialog I reflexively hit cmd-w accidentally.

Then I retroactively feel like I’ve done the right thing.

Comedy = tragedy + time

Hilarity = tragedy - time + insensitivity

There’s a lot that’s entertaining about the current late night network comedy fiasco - something about the meta-comedy of comedians talking about their shows and their networks and their rivalries seems work well.

But what I find fascinating is watching Conan now that he knows his show is canceled, but still on the air, while he despises his employers and ridicules them. There seems to a wonderful joy and absurdity in the inevitability of cancellation combined with the bizarre game theory from arcane contracts that keeps him on the air for weeks using a network show to mock that very network.

By fascinating, I think I mean I find it very satisfying personally to watch.

Nathan asked me on Tumblr - what is the greatest video game ever made?

My (trite) answer is The Legend of Zelda. Here’s a reprint of why. (Have to try harder this year to get that word count up.)

The Legend of Zelda.

In my office is an enlarged version of the art on the original The Legend of Zelda NES cartridge. Beneath the iconic coat of arms and “The Legend of Zelda” it says “Experience the challenge of endless adventure.” The Legend of Zelda brings you this experience like nothing before or after it. Zelda evokes a sense of danger, wonder, and creates a place to explore that is worth coming back and re-experiencing 20 years later.

The controls are simple. You begin the game with nothing but the ability to move around. You then get a sword. Now you can swing the sword and defend yourself against enemies. As the game progresses the controls scale and before you know it you’re throwing a boomerang, shooting bows and arrows, sailing across seas, causing explosions.

Soon you’re exploring a large world but you find only some of which is accessible. There is no one telling you what to do, you can go anywhere you want, only limited by your abilities, skills, and equipment. Exploration is rewarded, but is also difficult. You experience more as you grow.

You might die. But you’ll probably learn something in the process. And you can try again.

Before Zelda lots of home video games kept the gestalt of arcade gameplay. If you look at Super Mario Brothers, it’s not that different than the Donkey Kong it evolved from but in a longer form. Run, jump, avoid obstacles, get from point to point. It’s fundamentally arcade like in the focus on quick reflexes and reactions - not problem solving or exploration or evoking emotion and experience. Zelda breaks that mold.

Zelda is brilliant in its minimalism combined with depth. And it was all represented on the screen in what we now think are primitive graphics, but the constraints of the hardware actually led to creating beautiful, iconic imagery. When we think of the “video game aesthetic” it’s these 8-bit graphics that stick with us more than the polygons of a decade or two later.

A few pixels leave more to the imagination. Ganon in his 8-bit version at the end of the 9th Labyrinth still seems scarier to me than any incarnation of him that followed, in part because of this.

It may be impossible for a large company to create and release a game as great the original Legend of Zelda now in some of the ways I love it. So much pressure exists to create things that are complex - both graphically and gameplay wise, and yet at the same time make them “accessible.”

Zelda never condescends to the player, and that is part of why exploring it feels different than video games today. I love the beautiful and moving Ocarina of Time, but I’m an adult and I don’t want a fairy following me around and telling me what to do.

For me, Zelda was about having the courage to go and explore and that it was ok to be scared but it provides opportunity to be courageous.

Zelda was also about what it was like to be alone. Unlike successors, it has a quiet loneliness to the quest. (There are no inane townspeople as in other RPGs.)

It’s impossible for me to separate Zelda from nostalgia, but I hope it’s more than that. I played the game for months when I was six years old. I felt like I had accomplished something significant when I finally beat it. It seemed a more complex problem than anything offered to me in school, and I knew that. I know it was important as a formative experience in my life.

They are becoming scarce.

A faster processor can’t bring culture to a product.

Earlier this week, my drain stopped draining.

It feels as though it’s all coming apart at the seams.

Like the seams of my shoes, which I had to stop wearing as I wore through the soft material in such a way that my heel was hurt every time I moved.

Later the cable light on the the cable modem flashed silently to indicate the internet wasn’t accessible.

And it was exactly then that I had a breakthrough on Wii Sports Resort Swordplay Showdown in the Waterfall level.

I was thinking of something Paul B. Davis said about computers and art and tool creation. It took me a while to dig it up, and it’s even better than I remember.

paul b. davis select magazine interview - from select magazine issue #2, dec 2001

the purpose of the 8bit stuff is just to investigate the aesthetics and mechanisms of computer representation through an interface to the computer which has been discarded by contemporary art culture - that being programming your own shit and understanding the fundamentals of the computing medium. the 8bit record gets its inspiration not from video game music, but from the spirit of investigation and learning about computers that was the foundation of the early home computer scene…early home computers had a different approach to the mass market - they believed that the average joe could learn to use computers both as a delivery system for commercial applications and as a platform for tool development. today you only see that in the linux community, which is great but not at all widespread and still seen as relatively hard-core and sort of isolated…

moms aren’t out buying their 8 year old kids books on how to port C++ applications to linux like they were out buying them books on how to program BASIC with an apple IIe 15 years ago. and it’s sad because the point is this - every bit, every representation, every piece of information in a computer is yours to fuck with. and the potential always exists for you to acknowledge that a computer is completely programmable in every aspect and that it’s most powerful function is to facilitate tool creation. because if you don’t, then the computer becomes solely a vehicle for content delivery to a captive audience (aka TV). in other words, if you don’t learn to use and understand your computer, then some big software company is going to tell you how. and what kind of art is going to come from that?

it’s most powerful function is to facilitate tool creation is what I’m trying to remember in 2010.

About to take off for another island flyover. Yes, I found the last three (i) points.

This is how I spent my youth.

Becoming a great chef takes years of practice. I started early. With plastic.

Main thing to note: my hair was pretty awesome.

Productive morning...?