I haven't felt this miserable...

...since my first dog died when I was eight years old. Seriously. And to make matters worse, I wasn't even able to watch the game (out for dinner on a campus visit).

Video Games, Narrative, and Hollywood

So, although I really don't have time to write this, I have to react to the recent article in the LA Times warning movie executives to stay away from video games. I found the discussion over at Joystiq. Here's a selection (link to LA Times article, you can get a password here):

Hollywood can’t win at video games. Because 13-year-old boys spend hours zapping asteroids or stealing virtual cars, movies based on video games would seem to be the logical follow-up to the comic- book-to-movie frenzy. Screenwriter Josh Olson, who was rewriting the “Halo” script (Peter Jackson was to direct) before the movie fell apart, says video games “have aimless cycles. You go to A, shoot some monsters, then go to B, then start over and do it again.” Iraq doesn’t sell. Though Hollywood did its high-minded darnedest to enlighten us with Middle East political treatises such as “Lions for Lambs,” “Redacted,” “Rendition,” “In the Valley of Elah” and “The Kingdom,” the masses have spoken and the verdict is: We’ll take “Spider-Man,” thank you.

RULE #1 | Step away from the video games. Transforming this medium’s weak narratives to film hasn’t been as successful as with comic books

Sigh.

First, what does Halo and shooting have to do with Iraq? Bad paragraph, bad paragraph! It will serve as an example for my teaching presentation at Western Illinois next week on logical development.

More to the heart of the matter, video games really don't make good movies. But its because their narratives are different from those of films. They are longer and more subtle [think: Final Fantasy VII or X]. Like books, you cannot always translate the internal monologue and character development to the big screen [think: Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid 2]. They are interactive-much of their catharsis depends on the players implication with their avatar [think: Silent Hill 3, Shadow of the Colossus]. Of course, there's plenty of flat, meaningless games that do follow aimless uninspired story lines with 2 dimensional characters [though I don't think Halo is one of them- try anything put out by Nintendo whose found a way to put out another "but our princess is in another castle" storyline]. And there were plenty of shitty movies before people tried converting every superhero, whether analogue or digital, into a big screen success. There are plenty of books that don't make it to the silver screen, and don't make it into any book clubs, either [I'm talking to you, Susan Warner's Wide, Wide World].

Video games are their own medium. And no, I don't think that they will necessarily translate well into other mediums. Why should they? To offer a different perspective, video games are outselling the movie and the music industry combined. 21st century attention is going in different directions. Soon, I imagine games will increasingly look back to movies and books for inspiration. We'll have to wait and see if these older narratives can lend themselves to making compelling games.

Sane Intellectual Property Laws, Take 237

Here's a follow-up to my rant over at Mxrk the other day (which followed up a rant during an MLA interview), my first intellectual property rant of 2008. Chances are it shouldn't be the last- though daughter and dissertations will probably mean otherwise.

Marc Fisher over at the Washington Post recently reported that the RIAA is now targeting users who have copied files from legally purchased CDs onto their personal computers or MP3 players. Let me highlight the keywords: legally purchased, personal computers or MP3 players. According to the RIAA, any copy -repeat: ANY COPY- of a song is illegal. From the article:

At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

Sigh. Mother-f@#king sigh. Why shouldn't the RIAA take this position? I mean, I'm surprised they didn't stumble upon this sooner. When one stops to imagine the untold millions billions the RIAA has made thanks to the changes from vinyl to analogue cassette and then from those cassettes to compact disc, it makes perfect sense that they would push for this. Think of the billions of dollars they would stand to make if we had to repurchase entire CD collections as MP3s. [On a side note, my wife got me my first iPod for Christmas-- I've spent the last two weeks burning CDs. Perhaps I should expect a letter from the RIAA?]

Normally I wouldn't be concerned about such nonsense. Except in this case the nonsense has made it all the way to the supreme court. Nevermind the Sony ruling [the pillar of contemporary intellectual property law] or the common sense understanding that purchasing media affords the buyer the right to listen to that media at her convenience. This is what happens when we allow politicians with little knowledge of or experience with digital technologies to make laws. This is what happens when we use legislation designed to protect the public performance of sheet music to govern the distribution of digital files. Ruling the personal remediation of legally purchased files illegal would make the Digital Millennium Copywrong Act seem rational. Anyone who has talked to me on this subject for more than three seconds realizes how pathetic the last statement is.

So here's my solution. In 2008, I'm a solution-oriented kind of person. No more rants, now I'm making plans. Here's the plan, you are going to love it. Here is the list of everyone in the Senate who voted in favor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

<plan>DON'T VOTE FOR THESE MORONS..

Brilliant. The plan has more than one stage. Here's stage two:

VOTE OBAMA</plan>.

Show about Nothing

As a baseball fan and a rhetorician, I feel compelled to write something on the Mitchell report. But since I'm in the midst of grading, and my baby's making that "you better be ready to pick me up" face, I'll keep this brief.

The media has consistently framed the Mitchell report as a sign of Bud Selig's complicity in the steroids era. Selig, thinking of his legacy, needs a public display that says "I cleaned up the steroids problem." He is worried, this argument goes, that he will be remembered as the commish who turned a blind eye. This very well might be true.

But I would argue that the obsessive media coverage of steroids and baseball is also significant. It represents the media's guilt over the summer of 1998. I was a cynical and sophomoric 22 that summer and remember looking at McGwire and Sosa and thinking one thing: "juice." I do not believe anyone educated enough to write for a newspaper or work for a television station could look at those players and not suspect that there was something non-natural going on. Especially people who have access to locker rooms. Especially people who could see the bottles of Andro. I know 1998 was way back before Google--but I'm pretty sure professional reporters could talk to doctors. The obsessive media coverage of performance enhancing substances is an implicit acknowledgment of culpability. They know they should have acted on what we all suspect. Their claims that "we didn't have subpoena power" is hollow and shameful. And they know it. So now the witches are contributing to the hunt.

I don't mean to come off as some superior know-it-all. I knew they were using drugs and didn't care. If a professional athlete is willing to risk health and future to smash a ball 400 feet, awesome. 500 feet? Even better. See-- I told you it was cynical and sophomoric. Only one thing makes me care about the issue now, pathetic as it is (and I mean that in the most rhetorical of senses): the children. A trickle-down economics goes something like this: if I want to make the majors, I got to make the minors, if I want to make the minors, I have to get the scholarship, if I want to get the scholarship, I have to start, if I want to start, I have to make the team, if I want to make the team, I have to play AAU, etc. At the end of the chain? Steroids. I have a 12 year old nephew who plays baseball, and he's already aware of teammates using performance enhancing drugs.

But I won't buy into the excessive hype over the history of baseball. I laugh when people ask "how do we compare Barry Bonds to Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth?" A better question would be: how do you compare Hank Aaron to Babe Ruth? Consider:

• Changes to the composition of baseballs and bats
• Radically different dimensions to ball parks
• Changes to the height of the pitcher's mound [for those who don't follow baseball, this might be the greatest change of all]
• The development of closers and middle relievers [who radically change the way the game is played--back in the 1930's no one through more than a few breaking balls an inning for risk of blowing out their arm, with specialty relievers and pitch counts, pitchers throw the nasty with particularly more frequency]
• Oh yeah, the competitive impact of minorities on the game
• The introduction of weight rooms [Cal Ripken once discussed how when we came up in the early 80's players were discouraged from lifting weights. Common wisdom was that muscle was slow. Apparently they weren't aware of "twitch" muscles]

There's probably more changes that I just can't think of right now. My point is that there are so many changes in the history of baseball that we choose to ignore: steroids is just the line in the sand. I feel that history will view the steroids phenomenon as the first public foray into the ethics of cybernetic enhancement- the first time that science threatens to greatly impact the composition of a human being. It will not be the last.

Romantic Rinse Cycle

The all-consuming job search, coupled with adorable baby daughter, doesn't leave much time for blogging (or anything else, for that matter). But I did want to take a few minutes to explain how parenthood has alerted my wife and I to how gender identity is constructed through toys. Yes, that's right, toys.

Here we are, enjoying an episode of House (if memory serves), when a commercial for the PlaySkool Rose Petal Cottage comes on. Seems innocent enough at first--think detailed play house. Now imagine the look of horror that grows on my wife's face as the advertisement shows a happy little girl learning how to: cook, clean, arrange the furniture, and put laundry in the washing machine. That's the real clincher: just as the add says something like: "watch your little girl's imagination grow" it shows the little girl stuffing clothes into the Rose Petal Washer (sold separately, of course).

Sigh.

As ideologically disturbing as the ad was, I must admit some enjoyment at watching my wife's face turn from disinterest, to awe, to moral outrage (for those who don't know, my wife won't allow anything Disney in the house since in their moives women are allowed only two courses: death or finding a man). I think, as the years roll on, Christmas is going to be fun, if only because I can totally see my dad thinking this would be a great present...

A Sign of the Apocolypse

I had another post written up and ready to go last night, when I came across this NYTimes article on a chef suing several posh New York restaurants for stealing her menu. I laughed it off, dismissed it as crazy, and went to bed.

But all morning the lunacy is driving me crazy. And I think its because is seems to me that capitalism is beginning to fight itself. And the side of capitalism I support is clearly losing. Let me explain.

First, let me share the portion of the article that raises my blood pressure:

Charles Valauskas, a lawyer in Chicago who represents a number of restaurants and chefs in intellectual property matters, called their discovery of intellectual property law “long overdue” and attributed it to greater competition as well as the high cost of opening a restaurant.

“Now the stakes are so high,” he said. “The average restaurant can be millions of dollars. If I were an investor I’d want to do something to make sure my investment is protected.”

Ms. Charles’s investment was modest. She built Pearl Oyster Bar for about $120,000 — a cost that in today’s market qualifies as an early-bird special.

She acknowledged that Pearl was itself inspired by another narrow, unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her restaurant’s look, feel and menu.

Let's ignore the obvious: that her restaurant was inspired by another. We've all read Lessig, we know most of our classics are adaptations of other classics, that the fetish of original thought is a perversion of some Romantic ideals injected with steriods. What really bothers me is Valauskas' comment that an investor [in a restaurant] would want to do something to protect an investment. I completely agree. Do you know what she can do? Cook a better lobster roll. Cook better fried clams. Just f#cking cook better.

Isn't that the spirit of capitalism? Free-market competition. We all have access (at least theoretically) to the materials, now who can put them to best use? Or, I should say, that was the spirit of capitalism, which is now lost under an "protect ip" culture that makes Big Brother look like a comforting Uncle. Again, Lessig spelled this out for us: applying 19th century [PHYSICAL] industrial property laws to a 21st century [INTELLECTUAL] service economy is going to stifle our society's ability to create and compete on a global level.

I understand that the design of a restaurant, like the design of a website, is work. And that work should be rewarded. That work should be protected from theft. But not adaptation. The contemporary disdain for any kind of remixing or sampling is becoming more and more reactionary to me. And now that I'm about to be a dad, I 'm thinking about what kind of world my son/daughter will inherit. If things continue like this, then it won't be one in which America is near the front of the first world. This post is one of my contributions (with teaching, with digital activism) to changing it. So, if an adult Thomas Edward or Rowan Margaret happens to find this post, daddy did what he could, which wasn't much.

Sigh. At least I got that off my chest (catharsis is good).