Tag: grumpy cat

  • Post-fest

    Honestly the best thing I saw at SXSW, maybe?

     

    The hardest blog posts to write, I’ve found, are the ones you don’t want to write but feel you have to write.

    Someone else has already wordplayed a term, “Oblogatory,” out of this, right? I’m afraid to Google it and fall down a rabbit hole.

    In fact this whole blog entry should have been called “Rabbit holes” because for the last few weeks, I’ve been allowing myself to slip down into them in order to not talk about South by Southwest Interactive.

    You guys, you have no idea how much I don’t want to talk about SXSW anymore. Last week, at a meeting with one of my editors, I fretted that I honestly have no idea whether I should keep mining the festival for stories and trends or move on in case readers are just completely sick of SXSW.

    And that’s the weird part. I’m not really sick of it. I had a pretty great time at the festival and I’m not one of those people who gets online and bitches every year about how it’s not the same as it used to be or that last year’s was so much better or whatever. Every year is different, even if some things stay the same on the reporting/working side of things and I found lots to be excited about and keep me busy.

    But it was the busy that really killed me this year. Some years, I have so much fun and so many cool things happen that they far outweigh the sense of work and I end up feeling euphoric about the experience. This year, as seems to happen on odd-numbered years, I came out more exhausted than exhilarated, my body a wreck from carrying a heavy laptop, walking and biking in rain, and just keeping incredibly long hours with not enough sleep.

    This was a problem even after the festival. The way it usually works is that I spend weeks gearing up, work the five days (Friday-Tuesday) straight through, come in to work Wednesday to write a wrap up and then take a few days off to rest and recuperate.

    Things went fine until I went in to work that Wednesday when the fest ended and was completely paralyzed, buried under a mountain of blog posts, essays and emails about the fest that I felt I had to get through before I could properly articulate what it all meant.

    Distractions kept coming up and by midday I wasn’t even close to getting through that stack. And then the day ended, my deadline passed, and still I had the barest flicker of an idea of what I had seen that could tie it all together. My brain was shutting down, having been scheduled to detach from the festival by day’s end. It ran away without me.

    I spent that night at home barreling through and writing anyway, trying to make something cohesive out of an experience that has gotten bigger than my ability to write authoritatively about it, at least in that moment.

    The column, much longer than budgeted, was turned in and pushed through the system to be published the following Monday.

    That Thursday night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up, remembering things that should have been in that column, threads I should have followed and memorable bits I forgot to include. Then I would remind myself, half-awake, that the column was already too long and nothing more would fit. But my brain wouldn’t stop working. It just whirred and whirred.

    And that really scared me.

    It’s why instead of writing a bunch of follow-up articles and blog posts related to the fest, I’ve tried to move on, mostly unsuccessfully. Two months+ of obsessing about one thing and trying to outpace everyone else in somehow mastering it as a subject hollowed me out this year. It’s taken a while to not feel antsy even thinking about it, honestly.

    So enough about that. I’ll link later on in this post to most of the stuff I wrote/was a part of during the festival, but honestly, I can already use another break from talking about SXSW.

     

    Things that are not SXSW:


    Video games

    Post-fest meant I had some free time to do things like vacuum the filthy floor, which accumulates child-crumbs on the daily, and to finally play some video games for the first time in months.

    I finally got my hands on a Nintendo Wii U which is great in some ways (some of the games are OK, I love the overall design) and terrible in others (sloooooow menus, very limited GamePad connectivity range) and really cumbersome update/install processes that seem to come up with every single new game you insert or buy online.

    I also played a bit of Tomb Raider (much better than I was expecting), a great downloadable game called Bit.Trip Runner 2, Lego City Undercover and most of all BioShock Infinite, which is taking up most of my gaming time right now. BioShock was my favorite game of 2007, though to be fair, Team Fortress 2 came out that year and I’ve spent many more hours on that. But that’s only to say I’ve been waiting a long time for a proper follow-up after I was let down by BioShock 2, which I didn’t bother finishing.

    Infinite is gorgeous and brave in a way that so many games aren’t and I’m enjoying just falling into that world and taking my time with it.

    Kickstarter and tabletop gaming

    e552933abbf07c4ced415b7f0f4721bc_large

    Speaking of games, I seem to have developed a quick-spreading intense addiction to both Kickstarter and to tabletop/board games all of a sudden, mostly due to one great game called “Zombicide.”

    My brother owns it and was part of the original Kickstarter last year.  We’ve played the game a few times and I really have grown to love it. It’s complex and takes forever to play, but it’s just really well-designed, has gorgeous miniatures and just really puts you in the mindset of trying to survive a zombie apocalypse; it’s basically a high-end Walking Dead board game.

    This year, they rolled out a much more ambitious Kickstarter campaign for a Season Two game and an expansion.  At first, I was just going to let it go by because my brother was planning to get it anyway and he’s the only person I play with. But he said, “What if I move someday?” and that got me thinking I should get my own copy and then I decided I should just get all three and then the stretch goal items hooked me in even more and before I knew it I had pledged a couple of hundred dollars to a game I’m not even sure I have room in the house to store.

    You guys, the Kickstarter was so exciting. I downloaded the Kickstarter app and started checking it every day for updates and new stretch goal items and it was just such a sorely-needed rabbit hole for me to fall into at the time. The campaign finally ended on (Easter!) Sunday at more than $2.5 million, making it break the record for a Kickstarter board game project. Last I checked there were over 30,000 comments from geeks completely obsessing over every detail of the game, its components and its (incredibly generous) stretch goal prizes.

    I won’t get the games until September, but I’ve also fallen into a sub-rabbit hole of looking into how I’ll paint the figurines. Suddenly I’m researching acrylics and brushes and X-Acto knives and watching paint tutorial videos.  I’ve also been playing the “Penny Arcade” card game and I gave my brother a copy of “Cards Against Humanity” for his birthday.

    I’ve unwisely mentioned this ugly new hobby to a few people (which I haven’t even started; I’m in pre-hobby mode). A co-worker astutely noted that this was also a hobby of the 40-Year-Old Virgin. Other friends expressed sorrow and chagrin at the way I’ve managed to find a new geek low on the eve of my 38th birthday. Hey, better late the never! Now go away. I’m gonna be painting some zombies. I may dip them in Army Painter dark shader.

    Disney World

    Here we go...

    We booked a trip for June to Disney World. I’ll have a lot more to say about this soon, I’m sure, but we waited until the girls were both potty trained and until they were old enough to appreciate the trip.  It’s crazy expensive, but we’ve been planning to do this pretty much since Lilly was born so we’re just going to hand over the wallet and enjoy it.

    Easter: a stomach bug intrudes

    Easter weekend was great except for the part where Carolina threw up four times in one day. She rallied enough to enjoy the first of two big Easter egg hunts and you wouldn’t have known she was sick (except for the puking), but by the next day, she was tired and much worse for wear, having gotten gunshy about eating anything.

    She seemed to be getting better but then Lilly threw up and suddenly we had two sick kids in the house and the terror of worrying that we’d get it too.

    So far, so good on that front. The girls are recovering, we haven’t gotten sick ourselves (yet! hope not!) and after juggling our work schedules around and waiting through a day when no more puking happened, they should be back at school soon.

    Like I said, it didn’t seem to slow them down during Easter:

    Cascarones '13

     

    Lilly makin' faces

     

    Carolina gets aggressive

     

     Writing stuff

    It sure doesn’t look like it around here, but I’ve actually been writing every night, even when I’ve been feeling sick from brutal allergy attacks. The only time I didn’t write was during SXSW and that was, of course, lots of work writing.

    I hit a writing milestone this week, the halfway mark on something I’ve been working on since December, and that filled me with hope. It’s probably the most sustained amount of time I’ve spent on one writing thing in a really long while and I just keep thinking, “If I can just keep writing three pages a day, it will get done. Just three more pages. Three more pages.” I tell myself that every night, even when I’m nearly falling asleep at the keyboard.

    Screen Shot 2013-04-02 at 11.10.56 PM

    The comic plugs along, proudly posting every single Wednesday even during crazy festivals that may draw my and Pablo’s time and attention away.

    Since last we spoke, Meany has tried some terrible stand-up comedy, our Kickstarter addiction was turned into a comic and we addressed the cute sloth from the movie The Croods.

    The sketch show/play I helped write, Pulga Nation, that I mentioned last time went really well. I didn’t think I’d get to see it, but it turned out the Friday night of SXSW Interactive allowed me enough time to slip away and catch 20 minutes of the early show and the entirety of the late-night show. I was thrilled to see it and so tickled to hear two audiences laugh at these jokes we wrote. There was a talk-back after the first show in which a person asked me why we killed off an elderly character so soon in the show. The same person told me afterward that the same sketch I wrote did not need a blowjob joke. “But that was the best part!” I said brightly. The man was not amused and shot back, “No, no it wasn’t.”

    Blowjob joke notwithstanding, the production did very well and we’re already meeting to talk about what’s next. I don’t know if the show will be re-mounted, toured or what, but it sounds like everyone involved wants to keep working together and that there’ll be more Mexcentrics in the future. So that’s really good news.

    Really, I’ve been good except for the parts where I was so sick I had to stay in bed for most of a Saturday because of allergies or the part where my daughters have been vomiting as if for comedic effect. Spring came early and it’s filled me with hope and purpose in some ways and frustration and impatience with the parts of my life that don’t feel like they’re keeping up.

    Anyway, here’s the SXSW coverage and other Statesman stuff I was busy writing since the last update. It’s a long list. Strap in!

    Some Vines I shot at the fest (Mashable listed me in ones to follow during SXSW):

    And a few more photos, ending with my encounter with Grumpy Cat.

    LEGO Man

     

    My beautiful work lawn

    Daniel Tiger + Curious George

    Peter Sagal, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer

    Guitar Shawn is guitaring, probably named Shawn

    Tina, Me, Emma and Grumpy

    Damn, girl, you’re telling me.

     

  • I Disappear

    I’m about to disappear into the hidey hole of South by Southwest Interactive, tomorrow in fact, which is not new. It’s become so routine, in fact, year after year that at my house we don’t even panic and scramble over it, we just know that those five days, Daddy is gone and we need a little extra help and planning.

    But there’s some weirdness that this is the most public I’ll be all year, out from around 10 a.m. till probably 1 or 2 a.m. every night, meeting new people and seeing old friends. But at home, I’m just gone and disappeared. It’s like SXSW Interactive, for one week of the year, is a second family and I’m all Charles Kuralt up in there.

    And then I’ll be so exhausted when it’s over I’ll stay home and miss all the Music fest stuff as I hibernate. My kids already think I’m some kind of bear, so perhaps this will comfort them.

    ANYHOO!

    Here’s all the stuff I’ve been working on the last few weeks. I’ve been writing and typing so much for so long lately that I truly feel my fingers might fall off and it was all I could do to round this up, but I know that if I don’t do it now, on the eve, it will have to wait till after the festival and the hole will be much, much deeper.

    Here’s the roundup and thank you for your patience. I’d like to write more essays here but the truth is that I feel like I’m spending lots and lots of time writing either for work or for the other projects I’ve mentioned that there’s barely anything left but fumes by the time I’m done. I’m hoping things will settle down in a few months because some of these things are winding down or eventually they’ll be completed.

     

    Work stuff

    I hadn’t written anything for CNN in a long while for lack of me pitching them any ideas, but they were kind enough to let me write about SXSW Interactive as I was already gathering intel for the Statesman and doing lots of interviews.

    CNN-SXSW 2013

    My article, which was actually written almost a week ago, was about whether the hype at SXSW Interactive is dying down and if the festival has peaked (and whether that’s a good thing.) Since the article was sent in, my email inbox has a’sploded and now, I fear, the hype is even bigger/worse than last year. Somehow I had forgotten that people like to knock on our door at the very last minute with news and information and that this always makes life harder for everybody. But I think there’s still some good insights about the fest from the people I interviewed.

    For the Statesman, of course, things have been hugely busy leading up to the fest.

    This Thursday, I did a big Life & Arts story on free official events at Interactive.

    Tardar Sauce (aka Grumpy Cat) Photo by me

    In a very strange series of events, I met Grumpy Cat, the Internet meme sensation and even took a photo and shot a Vine video (below).

    Emma Janzen and Tina Phan on our staff did a great video and I make a short appearance getting all cat-love on poor Grumpy Cat.

    Further back, I did a Digital Savant column rounding up reviews of an Acer W700 Windows 8 tablet and the great Studio Ghibli-animated game Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. This week’s column was also about SXSW Interactive, a preview of the first two keynotes from adventurous entrepreneur Elon Musk and design guru Tina Roth Eisenberg.

    The recent Micro features were “What is jailbreaking?” and “What is Google Glass?”

    Speaking of Google Glass, I was on NPR’s On Point With Tom Ashbrook recently talking with Amber Case and Ben Chigier about wearable computers and user interfaces. It’s a full hour, but there was lots of great discussion and questions from readers. (An emailer told me I talk too fast and that they could not listen to me.

    And from the random files, I interviewed LeVar Burton about a Holodeck project AMD is working on as well as Demand Media CTO Byron Reese about his upcoming SXSW presentation.

    I also drew a very ugly picture of what the PlayStation 4 might look like.

     

    Non-work stuff

    The new sketch show that I helped write, Pulga Nation featuring the Mexcentrics, opened tonight.

    It’s weird not being there for the opening and with the festival starting, not even being 100 percent sure I’ll be able to see the show. I caught a rehearsal the other night and all the nights spent in theaters rehearsing during the 10 years of Latino Comedy Project came flooding back and I remembered how much I missed it.

    It’s a mix of people I’ve worked with for many, many years and new people. It’s exciting and fun and seeing words that I wrote up on a stage again, especially when the words are coming out of the mouth of my friend Patti, who makes me laugh always, has been a thrill. The show runs through Saturday. If you’re in Austin, please try to catch it.

    Grumpy MeanyOur Space Monkeys continue to thrive. Their Twitter account is starting to take off and the new comics, I think, have been really good. And we’ve been consistent, posting every week, no exceptions.

    New comics include one about the horrible game Aliens: Colonial Marines, a strip about an evil Higgs boson particle and this week’s comic about Grumpy Cat (kind of a coincidence, that). I also did a surprise birthday ¡Pescados del Mar! comic for my brother, drawn in my own horrible scrawl.

    And because I hate to leave the girls out, here’s a Vine I posted of them playing at a gymnastics center for the first time. Those children lost their damn mind having so much fun.

    I’ll be back after SXSW, post-hibernation.