(UN)PAUSED

Animated Stories

2012-01-16T15:07:00.001-05:00

A few months back, in the midst of NaNoWriMo, I heard about a show that a friend and fellow performer named Todd Bieber was putting together called "Animated Stories," in which audience members can volunteer to tell a five minute story of their choosing, and the best story of the night actually gets animated and shown at the next show. So I went to the show on a whim and dropped my name in a hat. I was picked fourth (I think) out of six storytellers that night, and I told the same story I told during my recent storytelling clas s about my experience as a hardcore Atheist dating a devout Christian girl at Williams college.

Long story short, at the end of the night they chose my story as the winner! It was an exhilarating moment - I'd only just started doing live storytelling, and to have my story win inspired me to continue telling live stories.

One month later, at the December show, the animated version of my story debuted, and just this week the piece got posted online, so I can share it now with all of you. I think it came out great - hope you enjoy it:

If you're in the New York area and interested in telling a story of your own to potentially get animated, Todd's show go up once a month at UCB East. Check the calendar for the next scheduled show.

Finally, as a sweet little bonus, here are some of the other stories from previous winners/special guests of the show. The first one's by Dave Hill, a hilarious musician/artist who tells of his experience with a fancy Japanese toilet:

I heard this one live at the same show I did, a great story about a tragic, smelly subway experience by Anthony Atamanuik:

And this one's from a guy who sort of killed a girl in elementary school. Tragedy + time = comedy gold, folks:

Finally, a story by writer/performer Chris Gethard, who was apparently an evil, evil baby:

-Matt

The High-Functioning Gameaholic

2012-01-15T12:27:00.001-05:00

Pictured: Matt Shafeek, as represented by Jeff Winger

We have a problem here.

You see, I’m kind of a High-Functioning Gameaholic. I have a serious problem that’s lurking right beneath the surface, but I get by just well enough that no one has to say anything.

Last time I wrote on this blog, I labeled my iPhone gaming habits as “finding my new drug,” and the more I think about it, the more literal I think I was being. I recently found myself in an endless gaming cycle on my iPhone, to the point where I’d play/update one game and be ready to play/update the next one. I was on a steady dopamine drip of mental pleasure, but for a man with excessive gaming habits who once gave up games for a year to try to find other things to do with his time, this seemed like I’d gone all the way around the ride and come back to the other side, ready to start a more advanced questline where the monsters are tougher but- ah, geez, there I go again.

Not embarrassing

The first game in this loop is Words With Friends, which started off as a handful of games of virtual/mobile Scrabble that I’d get around to in my spare time, but quickly snowballed into over a dozen simultaneous matches with different people, which might sound like a low number, but just imagine you’re walking around a beautiful park on a lovely day trying to take in the majesty of your surroundings, but in this park are more than a dozen people sitting at a Scrabble board (and some of them are at two), screaming your name, and telling you its your move. Now try and enjoy that lovely park, I dare you. Are you going to look at that rare black squirrel you just spotted, or are you going to try to find out if QADOXEF is a word?

Somewhat embarrassing

The second is Hero Academy, a recent release from a company I like, that was put out for free, and so naturally I had to try it. It plays like WWF, only this time instead of putting silly little letter tiles on a boring little board, you’re hacking away at your opponent’s crystal with knights, wizards and ninjas. You know, the kind of stuff that’s actually worthy of your attention...as a five year old.

True shame

And finally, there’s the game I’m frankly embarrassed to even admit I got addicted to (and this is coming from the guy who’s not embarrassed of his enjoyment of Hero Academy), called Tiny Tower. Tiny Tower is an insidiously simple tower building sim where you slowly build the world’s most illogically constructed tower, one floor a time. You construct a ridiculous combination residential floors and commercial floors, where the residents you put in have their jobs at say, the Vegan Food shop or the Putt Putt floor(?). In other words, you’re creating a sort of bio-tower, where everything everyone needs is in one location, and once you come in, you never ever have to leave. Your build upward is seemingly endless, unless at some people the tower gets to heaven and your tower’s residents take the elevator to the pearly gates and you’re finally released from the game’s unrelenting stocking and construction updates.

What’s funny about Tiny Tower is it's clearly made to be addictive, and there’s very little “game” taking place. Everything happens at a snail’s pace and you need to have “Tower Bucks” to build faster. You’ll gain a tower buck every now and again from the game, but if you happen to have a few real life dollars to spare, you can be swimming in Tower Bucks in no time (for the record, I've thankfully not purchased any, though doing so would have simply swapped the embarrassment of putting money into the game with the amount of time I put into it). The game has all the appeal of completing a To-Do list, with none of the actual work. Which is great and all, but I have an actual real life To-Do list I’ve managed to find myself neglecting all week, and it’s becoming a problem.

Pictured: Matt Shafeek, as represented by Jeff Winger

I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of game addiction, and I’ve always wondered how close I am to being a genuine addict. I play a ton of games, but I feel like I've never crossed that line. I’ve never had an all night gaming session. I’ve never skipped a day of work in order to play a game (or worse, lost a job due to playing one). And I’ve never had issues in any of my relationships - with families, friends, or significant others due to gaming. And yet, I haven’t finished reading a book since I got my iPhone, and I’ve written far less than I’ve wanted post NaNoWriMo (thank goodness I’m able to enact some kind of manual override when I plan things like that), and I find myself feeling generally mentally handicapped by the loss of attention I’ve had lately.

All of the iPhone games I’ve been playing capture a few seconds of genuine fun and, with the help of technology, either allow you to play them with anyone else who’s willing, or, have a perpetual updating system in place that keeps you coming back in the name of an endless grind. Either way, they’re all incredibly addictive for someone like me, and frankly, it’s a little scary.

Pictured: Matt Shafeek, as represented by Jeff Winger

I’ve never played an MMORPG like World of Warcraft specifically because from the description I thought I might get addicted to it. When EverQuest first came out some 10 years or so ago, I actually bought it, and had a genuine moment of clarity where I thought: “I’m already playing too many games as it is...I don’t think I can afford to get hooked on this.” I think I’m having a second moment of clarity right now.

Like I said before, I feel like a high-functioning gameaholic. I get by well enough with my addiction, its not causing any serious problems at the moment - but 'well enough' isn’t sitting well with me. So I’m going to have to give most, if not all, of my iPhone games a break for a while. My Heroes will not be graduating from their Academy, my Tower will remain Tiny, and the Words I will have with My Friends* will be in person (or more likely, via text or instant message).

-Matt

PS: I'd like to imagine Jeff Winger on Community is struggling with a similar problem.

Pictured: Matt Shafeek, as represented by Jeff Winger

*Ok well, I may still keep a few WWF games going. It's fine people, I can handle it!

My Favorite Gaming Moments of 2011

2012-01-02T10:41:00.002-05:00

Well, 2011 is behind us. Personally, I'm very happy with how the year went. Among many other exciting, wonderful experiences, I also had some fantastic new gaming moments, which, like last year, I'm going to share with all of you now:

Finding My New Drug
The Natural Side Effect Of Getting My First Smartphone

Hmm. Can I have an 'Even More Games!' folder in my 'More Games!' folder?

After having some great portable gaming experiences early in the year with Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and Radiant Historia, I put away my Nintendo DS and told myself I was going to be good and try to read more during the rest of the year.

Then I got my first iPhone.

Minutes later, I was downloading all the games I'd heard my friends talking about. And then I downloaded all the highly rated games I'd read about online. And most other games were only like, a buck, so it didn't take much for me to check out anything else that caught my eye. I came close to maxing out my 16GB of memory in a very short period of time, and I easily had more games for my iPhone than for any other system I owned. I officially had a new drug. And it was in my hand or pocket twenty four hours a day.

Though I downloaded and played a ton of games, only a handful got me truly addicted. Like our good friend Alec Baldwin, I immediately got hooked on Words with Friends, starting way to many games that really once started, amount to a everlasting back and forth experience until one person one day decides to cut ties. I also had plenty of 'nearly missing my subway stop' moments with Game Dev Story, Jetpack Joyride, Fruit Ninja, and perennial favorite, Angry Birds as well.

I was an early critic of a lot of these smaller mobile phone games, citing lack of depth and overall simplicity, but all of these games make these perceived weaknesses into great strengths and I can honestly say I've had some fantastic and downright addictive gaming experiences on iPhone this past year.

Making Rules Fun For Everyone
Participating In Some Epic Board Game Nights

The future of our relationship depends on your reaction to this photo.

When I quit video games for a year in 2008, I never had to consider whether or not board games needed to be included as well, since I really wasn't playing anything other the occasional game of Taboo or chess. Since then I've been lured into the sprawling world of what I've dubbed "epic" or "non-party" board games. I've referenced plenty of them here before, but between the two groups I play with semi-regularly, (in addition to my time at PAX when I discovered even more games and got to play a fantastic mini-AD&D adventure) I've had some amazing game nights with friends that I'm not sure I would have been able to give up 3 years ago.

Super nerdy games like Munchkin, Road Kill Rally, Last Night On Earth, Invasion From Outer Space, Ninja Burger, Battlestar Galactica, Arkham Horror and Dungeon Lords and many more all made their way into my weekly rotation this year, and like improv, its the kind of thing I can't see myself ever going back in. Board games rolled a natural 20, and scored a critical hit on my heart. Which is the nerdiest possible way to say I'm hooked.

Saving The World With A Friend
1 + 1 Makes Fun in Portal 2, Gears 3, Castle Crashers & More

The most adorable robots ever.

Some truly fantastic games came out in 2011, and I was lucky enough to play most of them (though Skyrim has been reserved for 2012 experiences), but as incredibly well written and engaging as games like Portal 2 and Gears of War 3 are, joining up with a friend for a full co-op campaign will always elevate the experience for me. I don't think I can spend more than a handful of hours in a row playing any one given game, and I rarely will find myself playing a game until the wee hours of the morning. But if a friend joins up with me, and is as into (or more into, which always amazes me) the experience, its easy to lose entire days or nights solving just one more room, or clearing one more wave of baddies before calling it a night.

I would probably not even enjoy playing XBLA games like Castle Crashers or Microbot alone, but with along with a friend or significant other I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time.

"I Think I Just Peed My Pants A Little"
Ridiculous, Hilarious, Competitive Games of You Don't Know Jack, Telestrations, Etc.

Games (and my quest to play them) are neither bound by boards or walls.

Noticing a pattern here? A lot of my favorite gaming moments of the year were spent in a room with friends. This moment may seem similar to some of the others, but here I'm specifically referring to the many laugh-out-loud moments I've had playing party games like You Don't Know Jack, Werewolf, Celebrity or Telestrations, all I've which I've spent some time talking about on this blog. Lighthearted (though those who know me know I'm always dead serious about winning) competition combined with games that are themselves funny (YDKJ) or that inevitably lead to silliness (everything else) lead to what what are easily some of my favorite moments of the year, period.

Creating A Controller Symphony
Reaching A Zen Moment Playing As The Dark Knight

All in a Bat-day's work.

Though most of my favorite gaming moments of the year have been spent with others, this particular moment was only possible through a necessary period of time alone - say about two, two and a half hours - which I spent angrily clenching my controller, restarting the same encounter over and over again attempting to get a five point achievement that exists solely for bragging rights. So please, read on while I commence said bragging.

This video is not me, but this is basically what I eventually accomplished. It may or may not look simple to you, but trust me, it is incredibly difficult:

If you've never played either the Arkham games before, the combat system is one of the best parts of being Batman. And this is in a series that truly captures everything that's awesome about being a totally badass superhero. Hand to hand combat involves precise button presses in conjunction with a careful assessment of the crowd of thugs you're attempting to pummel into the ground. I've dubbed it a kind of "Controller Symphony." I liken it to trying to play the piano while little ferrets scurry along the keys trying to bite your fingers. Except really addicting and fun, if that makes sense.

The experience was entertaining enough that while frustrating, I was never so annoyed that I ever considered stopping. And finally getting that tiny little ping, the acknowledgement and acceptance from my Xbox that I had finally done what I set out to do led to a shameless moment of pure pride.

Picture above: My finest hour.

I can't help but shake the feeling that I've lost a lot of my gamer cred since the days when I could wipe the maps in online shooters or wipe the floor in a Soul Calibur or Street Fighter 3 match. Little moments like these satisfy me enough to enjoy the rest of my life with the knowledge that, on some level at least, I still got it.

That'll do it for 2011. Happy New Year everyone! Looking forward to all the awesome gaming moments yet to come.

-Matt

The Twelve Games Of Christmas (Break)

2011-12-23T12:49:00.000-05:00

On The Twelfth Day Of Gaming,

My Schedule Showed To Me:

Twelve Super Villains

Eleven Wars-A-Gearin'

Ten Martians Zapping

Nine Songs with Dancing

Eight Hands and Foot-ing

Seven Storms of Bullets

Six Birds A-Launching

Five Bastion...Things?

Four Answers Buzzed

Three Kinds of Kongs*

Two Words with Friends

And A Dragon Roaming Skyriiiimmmmm

You guys, I'm pretty excited to play all these games.

Now, while I will be playing some of them alone, the real fun comes in playing many of these games with all my wonderful friends, family, and a special lady who is, I daresay, nearly as competitive as me (though way more pouty). Great games come and go, but all the amazing people in my life are what I'm truly thankful for, though I suppose this blog post suggests otherwise. I figured a collection of photos and descriptions of all of them would be a lot less exciting for the general public. But I digress.

Happy Holidays everyone! And Happy Gaming - if, you know, you love that stuff anywhere near as much as I do.

-Matt

PS: The names of the twelve games I plan on playing during the holidays, in case you were wondering, are:

12) Batman: Arkham City (still plenty of ass-whooping and riddle-collecting to do)

11) Gears of War 3 (love the series, need to finish the campaign and spend some time online)

10) Invasion from Outer Space (great board game)

9) Just Dance 3 (present for my mother for Christmas, sure I'll join her)

8) Hand & Foot (a fun 2-4 player card game)

7) Bulletstorm (snagged it for $10 recently, heard it was good)

6) Angry Birds (I'm addicted)

5) Bastion (finally hoping to get around to it)

4) You Don't Know Jack (I've talked about this one before)

3) Donkey Kong Country Returns (holding onto this for over a year. I need to get back to it)

2) Words With Friends (even more addicted)

1) Skyrim (the challenge here will be not letting this be ALL I play)

*Technically its two kinds of Kongs, but I think Cranky Kong makes an appearance in the shop, so cram it.

Batfacts!!

2011-12-13T16:17:00.000-05:00

So I just beat the main campaign in Arkham City. I still have lots of side stuff to do in the game, but I figured I'd take a little break and let my eyes do some blinking (they've gotten very dry) before diving back in. While I wait to dive back to the streets, I'll take a moment to share of my thoughts on the game and Batman in general here.

Look for some extra MS Paint work today to make up for the lack of actual content!

1) Combat in this game is such a sweet, wonderful dance. It is so incredibly enjoyable that I've slowly turned Batman from a weapon for justice - who fights only those who defy him - to a citywide super-bully that will stop mid-mission just to pounce on a few hapless thugs who have no information and are in no way getting in Batman's way.

2) If you haven't played the game at all, you should know that the Riddler has apparently hired a small army of enthusiastic goons to place question mark trophies, set up complicated electrical puzzles, and basically spray paint the color green EVERYWHERE throughout Arkham City, all in the name of proving himself intellectually superior to Batman, or something. And while I haven't collected everything and found him yet, I'm really hoping once I do, I'll be able to pick up the cowering, defeated Riddler, and HUG HIM. Because frankly, half the gadgets and abilities I've been collecting and honing for the entire game would be absolutely useless without his ridiculous 400+ trophies and puzzles. Batman owes him a world of thanks to justify all the crap he carries around with him. Of course, the experience has more than likely corrupted his mind. I can just hear him talking about it with Alfred now:

"Sir, do you really think you'll actually need to use this 50lb. Bat-chainsaw?"

"Don't question me, Alfred. The Riddler is insane. He put one of his trophies in a deserted, ancient underground city beneath Gotham, which was itself located beneath Gotham's sewers. I was barely able to get down there myself - and I'm the freakin' Batman. Oh - and of on top of that, I had to hit this button from like fifty feet and get to the trophy within ten seconds or it would close up inside of this annoying electronic trap!"

"It sounds like he's put quite a bit of effort into these...'riddles,' Master Bruce."

"You have no idea. It's driving me insane. I'm beginning to see green question marks everywhere."

"It sounds...quite tragic, sir."

"Wait a minute..."

"I'm going to need you to bend over, Alfred. Now."

3) I can say with absolute certainty now that I officially know more about Batman's Rogues Gallery than I do about any U.S. President. I can talk at length about the tragic origins of Victor Fries, Batman's tenuous relationship with Talia Al Ghul, or the many incarnations of the Joker, but I don't think I could tell you a single thing about what's his name, who's his face, or that other guy.

If only U.S. Presidents had more easily identifiable obsessions and/or origin stories.

4) The Joker has a steady, (insanely) devoted girlfriend. Batman has only has a handful of flings. You could argue both are equally devoted to their "life goals" - Batman to justice and the Joker to making Batman's life miserable. Yet somehow the murderous clown is the one who has found his better half. Sidenote: I also may be over-thinking things during my many jaunts through the crime-ridden streets of Arkham City. But is it so wrong of me to want the character I'm playing as to find love someday?

5) This is something kind of funny/awesome about Batman: NOTHING SURPRISES him. In the span of my 10-15 hours in Arkham City, he's suddenly come across one armed, hammer swinging clown henchmen, a giant man-eating shark (which, upon coming out of the water to devour him, was met with not shock, but rather, an immediately barrage of FISTS OF FURY) and trips to two separate drug-induced, surreal fantasy worlds where he's had to fight for his life. This is of course on top of your run-of-the-mill encounters with dozens of armed cronies and criminally insane costumed villains every 5 minutes. No matter what's going on, Batman is totally keeping his cool. And the funny part is that I wouldn't buy that attitude for anyone but him. I'd even put money on Superman being freaked out for a second before remembering he's a god.

Now I'm debating whether or not to try Skyrim next, or save it as a reward for my next big project. The bigger question is, when do I see myself having 100+ extra hours of free time?

-Matt

MaShaReCa NaNoWriMo

2011-12-01T16:11:00.001-05:00

50,118 Words. 29 Days (I somehow managed to finish a day early). NaNoWriMo is officially behind me. And what an exciting, stressful, wonderfully insane experience it was.

As promised (though I never did get around to that 'midway post' I promised, sorry about that) I'm going to recap the entire experience with WAY more pictures than you'd think I'd have relating to a month that revolved around sitting in front of my laptop.

Matt Shafeek's NaNoWriMo Debrief

1) The idea I came up with for my revolved around two ideas - tragic/misguided anti-heroes like Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars, Zuko from (my new favorite series) Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. Characters that clearly have some good in them but fall victim to their darker nature for one reason or another. Particularly Gollum interested me because the other idea in my story was that of an artifact - similar to the all powerful ring the Lord of the Ring's story revolves around - only with a twist. I thought it would be interesting to explore the idea of an artifact that granted its owner powers, but rather than corrupting them as they used/carried it, it forced them to deal with their demons - in other words, an artifact of anti-corruption, or enlightenment.

I won't spoil too much of the story here, in case I ever finish and want people to actually read it, but these ideas organically lead to a fantasy world where magic existed, and was prevalent among to almost anyone willing to study it (I made being a magic-user the equivalent of being a real-life programmer, basically), and I thought it would be interesting to explore a world where it had only recently been discovered, where the limits of magic were still being tested, and the use of it was still very controversial in some circles.

2) Prior to November, I spent many hours meticulously outlining my novel (still technically within the guidelines of NaNoWriMo, in case you were wondering) so I wouldn't get stuck while actually composing the story. And while for the most part I was never at a loss as to where my story was going next, I still got stuck plenty of times just thinking about some of the many details that come with creating a fantasy novel. I was creating a fantasy world, and as such, every original thing I came up with needed a name, a background and a description - if not on paper, then certainly in the back of my mind. Crops, forests, animals, characters, towns, castles, moons (I decided to have three of them), spells, weapons and magical items. This is to say nothing of the particulars of magic itself. How are spells cast? What is the cost of casting a spell? Do you just want to copy everything Rowling and/or Tolkien did? And so on.

If you're thinking about doing NaNoWriMo yourself someday - know that you can never do enough outlining. I bought the book below in October and it helped me out significantly. The book probably would have come in even more handy in September!

3) Having strong characters with clearly defined wants REALLY helped my story. I had a fairly easy time writing conversations and figuring out reactions events in the story, mostly because I had very well-defined characters that bounced off each other in interesting ways. Some of what they were saying almost certainly fell into the realm of cliche - things like my "anti-hero" protagonist brooding nonstop (until I decided he shouldn't do that anymore and having him just stop suddenly), and almost every other character using the term "m'lord" to anyone with a higher status - but uncliche-ing a page is certainly much easier than un-blanking one. And you can quote me on that elegant statement.

4) I did my best to find time whenever I could - lunch breaks, early mornings, late evenings, making up ground on the weekends, etc. (similar to when I was 'Paused,' I work REALLY well on a pre-determined schedule with deadlines) There was no trick, unless you count 'pacing' and 'carving out time every day' as a trick. I finished NaNoWriMo working a full time job, performing improv once a week, taking a writing class and still managing to have a social life. Now, the trick going forward is going to be behaving this way without an artificial deadline!

5) I had some fun on my #NaNoWriMo related Twitter updates, where I pretended to be writing an "urban fantasy novel" a la Twilight that involved underwater vampires, a cameo by Bella and Edward, and eventually, sky werewolves, (or "airwolves"). Every one of the updates mentioned this ridiculous story gained me some new followers. So, you know, that fake story clearly has some genuine interest. Feel free to take the idea and roll with it.

6) The No Plot? No Problem! novel writing kit - which objectively is like something right out of a 2nd grade teacher's arsenal - worked wonders for me, motivation-wise. It features a pledge that you sign, daily tips/affirmations, and best of all, a little chart to keep track of your daily word count (more on this in a minute). There was something very reaffirming about putting little gold starts on this thing every 2,000 words, and seeing the count go up as the month went on. Would I have finished the month without the kit? Probably. But I wouldn't have been smiling nearly as much the whole time.

7) Being an improviser definitely came in handy this month. For all my plotting and planning, every single actual scene was written in the moment, and sometimes the specific point of the story would change even if my outline dictated otherwise. Two characters that were meant to bond early on actually didn't, and a character that was supposed to be a major villain wound up becoming a much more nuanced character due to all the action happening in the moment. I'm sure I wasn't 100% consistent with my characters in every scene, but I'd like to think everything you're reading makes sense in the moment.

8) I found out I'm pretty good at writing dialogue and action scenes, and pretty bad at writing everything else. Describing environments, details (again, this could be due to lack of planning), and any general "lulls" in my story where my protagonist was just travelling, or in between major scenes wound up feeling a little trite.

Conversely, conversations with my characters always flowed out of me, and actions scenes are just plain fun to write. Those were also, not-so-surprisingly, the times when I'd lose track of time and my current word count and just write without that nagging feeling that I'm composing the first draft of a second rate fantasy. Actually, now that I think about it, the downside to my improviser brain is that I rarely have to think about things besides actions and dialogue on stage, and as such, I was very much working an unused muscle.

9) Speaking of word count - boy oh boy was that a double-edged sword. Having a specific number of words to hit daily (1667) focused me and ensured I'd set aside enough time to get my write on. I discovered that without letting myself be distracted, I could do this in about two hours every day. As you can see from the chart on the right, I was pretty damn regimented. I usually would aim to do either one day's worth, two day's worth, or half a day's work (I took one full day off as well), which generally translated to one to four hours worth of work.

Conversely, I could tell things were going slowly when I'd open up the calculator on my computer and start calculating first how much more I had to write that day, that week, the rest of the month, and so on. Also, doing the calculations on this chart were a wonderful way to pretend to be productive while avoiding what the interior of a medieval arena looked like.

10) I really like my story, and I hope to finish it sometime in the next few months, but more than anything this month has shown me (as I was shown last November when I wrote a blog post every day) how much writing I can get done if I'm motivated enough. I already have big plans for my writing in 2012, and I'd like to think, if nothing else, NaNoWriMo was the coup de grâce on a stellar year for me, creatively, that will hopefully lead to more risks and opportunities to come.

11) I would be remiss to not mention my good friend Karen Castelletti, pictured above with adorable pet parakeet (not a parakeet though, right, Karen? Please, correct me) who embarked on this incredibly writing adventure with me. We did a great deal on bonding over the course of this month while we both cheered each other on, answered each other's questions and provided much needed distractions (and in Karen's case, delicious hot chocolate) a few nights every week over the course of NaNoWriMo. Having a friend to do this with was vital, moreso than any other motivational accouterments, and I'm so very grateful to have had someone so smart, so easygoing and so very determined to write alongside me all month long.

Thanks a million Karen!

12) Finally, as you may, recall, I put a sticky note on my highly-anticipated reward copy of Batman: Arkham City that read: "Do Not Open Until You've Finish Your Novel!" which was a misstep on my part, since I didn't even consider the possibility that my novel would be incomplete at the end of the month. But I'm not sticking to the letter of the law here. I just went ahead and amended the note accordingly. And on that (revised) note, I'm going to go ahead and dive into Arkham City right now. Ta-ta!

-Matt

What's The Worst That Could Happen?

2011-11-09T19:03:00.000-05:00

Hello there, internet friends! I'm busy clickity clacking away on my novel for NaNoWriMo - 18,418 words and counting! - so I can't spent all that much time on the blog this month, though I do plan to put a little halfway mark post up with reflections on my experience thus far.

In the meantime, I'm going to put up a video I wrote and shot a few months back with some of my Phooka/Magnet friends. It's called "What's The Worst That Can Happen?" and it asks, and then answers this question with regards to approaching an attractive woman on the street (Spoiler alert: it ends with me getting kicked in the balls).

Enjoy!

What's the Worst That Could Happen from David Etkin on Vimeo.

-Matt

This Is A Story All About How I Told A Story

2011-10-25T21:08:00.001-04:00

I took a storytelling class with Moth Story SLAM Winner Adam Wade a few weeks back, and our class show was this past week. I've told monologues in improv shows before, but not since I regaled my classmates and their parents with the tale of Why Mosquitos Buzz In People's Ears back in 5th grade have I told a full length story in front of an audience before. It was a great experience, and one I hope to do it again sometime.

In the meantime, here's the footage of my set from the show. Longtime readers will recall this story as I told it on this blog some time ago, but I used the format to frame the story a little differently, so it's still worth checking out.

Enjoy!

Some thoughts:

-I had 6-8 minutes to tell my story. Initially this felt limiting - I couldn't possibly tell this EPIC tale in less than 15 minutes! But it wound up being a great exercise in editing and cherry picking the most important details.

-I go up on stage without a script almost every week for my improv shows and as such, I always think I'm totally over getting nervous before a show, but anytime there's a script involved - even when it's an experience I've lived through, there's always the fear of forgetting an important detail, and ruining everything.

-Every else in the class had great stories as well. One woman told her 13 year old journey to her first U2 concert, another told the nail-biting saga of getting her favorite bag of Gummi bears from Duane Reade before her train left the station. One of my personal favorites was the story of one of my classmates getting mugged in NYC at his poorest, and having absolutely nothing of value for the mugger to take. The encounter ended in the mugger walking down the street with him, giving him some job advice before parting ways with a handshake. Amazing.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm way behind on outlining my novel...

-Matt

Re-Paused!! (Kinda)

2011-10-20T22:29:00.000-04:00

You guys. This game came out yesterday. You get to play as Batman in it. It's the highly anticipated, critically acclaimed sequel to a Batman game I obsessed over for about a month a few years ago. I really want to play it, right now. I pre-ordered it weeks ago, and it's sitting in my living room right now. And while technically there's nothing stopping from me gorging on immediately (and believe me, this decision did not come lightly), I chose to put the extra time into outlining the novel I'm going to write for NaNoWriMo this year, as well as taking care of some other writing/projects I need to wrap up or put on hold starting in two weeks.

So - guess what this means? I'm totally RE-PAUSED! Though I'm definitely not committing to completely discontinuing all gaming for the next 6 weeks (lord knows I'm going to need something to cleanse the palette between extended writing sessions), I am definitely restraining myself from playing the game I want to play more than anything in the world while staying committed to the biggest creative project of my life. The way I see it, it'll be a great reward come the first of December.

I know, I know - what a tragic life I have, right? Woe is me!

Anyways, that's all for now. I'll have a few more things to post on this blog before I go dark at the end of the month. For now - wish me luck (again)!

-Matt

Opening The Vintage Matt Shafeek Vault

2011-10-15T12:52:00.002-04:00

My mother recently sold her house, and as a result I found myself having to rummage through every single possession I have in permanent storage. This led to some delightful trips down memory lane, as well as the gift of some great memoir fodder (look for a garage-themed piece later).

One of the best finds during the many hours spent sifting through my childhood were some of the little books I wrote as a kid. I loved writing short stories where my friends and I would go on wild adventures filled with, well, cliches and references to other adventures I'd seen before (what do you want from me, I was 8). They also happen to be pretty adorable, and make me yearn for the days when I could write a full story and not agonize over whether or not anyone will ever like it.

So I'm sharing a few of my discoveries here today. If you guys love them enough, I've got plenty more to show off in future posts.

This particular story is called: Adventures with Matthew: The Mystery of the Missing Jewel.

Adventures of Matthew and Friends - The Mystery of the Missing Jewel

Facts!

1) Apparently I wrote this story as a present for my parents during Christmas, which is pretty amazing, right? I mean, I did have a ton of money that I inherited from my incredibly rich great grandmama, but what could I have possibly bought the two of them that would have been more impressive than a story crafted from the mind of their own child?

2) Other than on the cover, where the titular character has apparently donned an undersized investgator's hat, our hero Matthew is generally always seen wearing his trademark green hat, along with his trademark blue shirt, orange pants and brown shoes. Also, note that this is marked #1. This was no one-off. I had big plans for this series, ladies and gentlemen.

3) In all my stories I incorporated a fair of my actual friends at the time, plus my brother Mo. But apparently, I deemed none of them cool enough (including myself) because I felt the need to introduce a fictional Joe Cool (check name) character, who wore black sunglasses and smoked cigarettes that inexplicably saved the day on three separate occasions! Joe is, to my knowledge, supposed to be our age, so it's important to realize I gave myself an 8 year old friend with a pack-a-day habit. For the record, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, so this wasn't wishful thinking on my part. I guess I just thought my group needed someone like Joe - reckless, carefree and oh so f-ing cool to be fully fleshed out.

4) This was the first time, to my recollection (I'll have to analyze my oeuvre a bit more carefully to confirm this) that I played around with perspective. Most of my drawings were drawn from the profile, with a character facing to the side, with only one eye, arm and shoe visible or facing out, showing their full body. But check out the spectacular bird's eye view on page 12. I don't know about you, but I'm impressed.

Ok, so next up we have Adventures with Matthew & Friends: The Video Game. That's right folks, not only was I a child novelist, but I was also a mother f-ing game designer.

Adventures with Matthew and Friends: The Video Game!

I only pasted a few pages from the instruction booklet here, but it's more than enough for you to understand my grand vision.

Bonus Facts!

1) I loved Loved LOVED imagining the possibilities for video games as a kid. I wrote up designs for a LOT of games, and thought of ideas for hundreds more. Most were sequels to franchises I already knew, but I came up with a handful of original ideas, too. Fact: I actually came up with the idea for Grand Theft Auto...in that I imagined an open world came where you could drive around an entire city and go anywhere you wanted. The actual premise to my game involved getting medicine for your grandmama and didn't include guns, car theft, or prostitutes, so I guess you could say Rockstar produced a bastardized version of my vision.

2) Erica, my real life cousin was the only female to be featured in the Adventures with Matthew and Friends series. As I recall, I ran every other girl I knew through an exhaustive series of tests (have you played any of these video games? How much of these games have you played?), and they all failed.

3) Note that all the kids in this game - including my then 3-4 year old brother - are holding a gun. This is a serious adventure people, and you can't expect to survive it without packing some heat! More importantly though - look at our returning friend Joe Cool. His gun has a cigarette sticking out of its barrel. I don't even know what else to say.

4) By this point I felt my friends deserved to get some recognition, though they're clearly not getting top billing.

Oh hey - did you get stuck part-way through this game that I made up in my mind? Well have no fear friend, because I also drew up a strategy guide!

How To Win At Adventures With Matthew And Friends The Video Game

Are you all as amused as I am by myself?

Secret Facts!

1) Are you noticing my weird obsessions with ridiculously over-sized jewels? Nowadays I'll take a jewel-less ring, necklace or nose stud imbued with magical properties over those giant blue monstrosities, thank you very much.

2) What you see on the cover inside Matt's backpack and around his belt and on his shoes were all the items/powerups I imagined you'd collect over the course of the game. If you think I thought this was kind of a fantastical image, understand that in my spare time I'd play out pretend adventures with as many video game-y items (magnifying glasses, gloves, empty bottles, four leaf clovers, plastic swords, garbage can covers) on my person as I explored the unknown depths of my basement and backyard. This was simply the lens through which I saw the world

3) This strategy guide was my brilliant way of showing all the cool stuff in my game. It was also the easiest way for me to bring all my awesome ideas into existence without a modicum of programming ability.

4) I loved those little secrets within games as you can tell from the last two pages here. I always thought the best reward to give a gamer when he beats a game is to give him MORE GAME, so most of my secrets involved unlocking new areas or tougher versions of old levels. I must have reigned in my imagination a bit though, because, with no time or budgetary constraints, why wouldn't I just have an entirely new adventure/sequel be unlocked? I suppose I was keeping my imaginary overworked programmers in mind.

So...not content to just leave my ideas sitting on the table, I actually wrote a letter to Nintendo at some point with some of my best, likely comically oversized gems. I didn't think to make a copy of the original letter, so I can't share exactly what I wrote, but what I do have is the actual letter they wrote in response to me:

Pretty awesome...

Right?

Final Facts!

1) Apparently I must have sent them artwork and ideas. They got away without having to actually say they were rejecting any of them by basically saying that "we don't make those decisions here - all that stuff happens in Japan. Sorry kid!" Pretty convenient, Nintendo Of America. Pretty convenient.

2) Note that this is a response from the Nintendo Fun Club which was a company-owned monthly zine that predated the more well known Nintendo Power (which was already being plugged in this letter). I scanned every issue of both periodicals with a fine tooth comb.

3) It's a good thing they didn't send me any free stuff because I probably would have sent them a letter a week forever. Kind of a reverse Andy Dufrane from Shawshank Redemption.

4) Nintendo could have gotten me programming if they had given me the slightest hint as to what to do to get my foot in the door in the industry. They could have also just as easily gotten me hooked on drugs, or stealing hubcaps off of cars if they had felt so inclined.

***

This is probably as good a time as any to announce I'm going to pick up where I left off during my early childhood and try my hand at writing another story (though to be fair, I have been doing a fair amount of writing, both fiction and non-fiction in the past few years). I'm going to enter National Novel Writing Month this year with a couple of friends. It begins November 1st.

It's an incredibly frightening commitment to make, and I have no idea if I'll be able to get 50,000 words on paper in 30 days, but all I can say is that I'm going to try. I'd like to think 8 year-old me would be proud of 32 year-old me. And what is life about if not trying to life you imagined yourself having when you were a kid?

-Matt

iPhone schmyPhone

2011-10-08T23:23:00.000-04:00

Big news guys - I just got my first iPhone! Naturally I wanted to capture the moment, so check out the video below for my initial impressions:

I know this video may stir up some controversy, but I refuse to hold back from how I feel. There is a decidedly unexciting feel about the default ringtones on the iPhone 4. There, I said it! And not even Steve Jobs or that new non-Steve Jobs guy can make me take that back.

Alright, well, I suppose I should click on a few other buttons before completely giving up on this thing...

-Matt

UPDATE: Whhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

In all honesty, the device is amazing. Four days in (I wrote this post on Tuesday, but it took me four days to get that video up - don't ask) and I can't imagine what my life was like before it.

After immediately downloading all the obviously productive/useful (Evernote, Google and Skype Apps) and more fun (Twitter, Netflix, Hulu) apps, I managed to wait a full 48 hours before going nuts and checking out all the games I've been hearing about for months. Aside from the really popular ones, like Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja, Cut The Rope and Words With Friends (if you haven't played any of these, definitely check them out), I've already discovered a few lesser known but really spectacular games like Game Dev Story and Jetpack Joyride. And my god...for $1 each for most of them, it's really hard not to go nuts and just buy everything. I'll probably have a ton more under my belt in a week or so. Remember this is coming after I just started checking out the games two days ago.

To reiterate: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

So, if there's anything you think I NEED to have/do with my iPhone, drop me a line. I'm all ears!

Great Moments In Video Game Time Travel

2011-09-23T09:31:00.004-04:00

Time travel is such a wonderful storytelling device. It's played a great part in some of my favorite movies, including everyone's favorite 80's classic, Back To The Future. Time travel has also played a big role in some great video games as well. And for my money, the next best thing to watching a character on screen get through a sticky paradox, it's getting through one of them on your own.

Great Moments In Video Game Time Travel
The following games are heralded for their (mostly) unique execution of time travel mechanics over the course of the game.

Day of the Tentacle

Appearance In This Timeline: June 1993
Console / Genre: PC / Point & Click Adventure
Clever Time Travel Usage: Triple Timeline Puzzle Solving

Day of the Tentacle came during the peak of point & click adventure games in the early 90's. It was LucasArts' sequel to their immensely popular Maniac Mansion, which had three characters roaming through a wacky mansion in order to stop it's owner, a mad scientist named Dr. Fred, from taking over the world.

Shortly after arriving back at the mansion in the sequel, Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne are forcibly sent through time by Dr. Fred to stop his pet purple tentacle monster - who has grown arms, superhuman intelligence, and a desire to follow in his master's footsteps and take over the world - from ever drinking the toxic sludge that gave him these powers. Trust me, it all makes perfect sense. Mishaps ensue, and the three are mistakenly thrown into three different time periods - present day, 200 years in the past, during the writing of the U.S. Constitution, and 200 years in the future, when the world has been enslaved by evil, purple tentacle monsters.

You swap between all three characters as you attempt to return everyone to the present and ultimately save the world. Events that take place in the past affect the future - which you discover early on when Laverne, stuck on the branch of a 400 year old tree in the future, needs to be rescued by chopping down a tiny sapling as Hoagie in the 1700's. And the time travelling device, known as "Chron-O-Johns," (fashioned from, you guessed it, porta-pottys) also act a teleportation device, also the passing of items between characters through time, a key element in puzzle solving.

Day of the Tentacle's puzzles are clever, the characters are quirky and the story is hilarious, with an extremely satisfying conclusion. More importantly, (for the sake of this piece at least) the game's usage of time travel is brilliant.

Space Quest IV

Appearance In This Timeline: March 4, 1991
Console / Genre: PC / Point & Click Adventure
Clever Time Travel Usage: Visiting Future Games In The Series That Didn't Exist Yet

Space Quest IV came from Lucas Art's rival Sierra On-line who had a line of great adventure series by the early 90's, which, on top of Space Quest, included King's Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, and of course Leisure Suit Larry (otherwise known as a Sex Quest). Space Quest had established itself has an irreverent comical sci-fi series, and the 1991 sequel used time travel to accompany it's recent leap to high quality VGA graphics (notably it was also one of the first games to use motion capture animation).

In the opening of Space Quest IV, perennial space janitor Roger Wilco is attacked by an old enemy's future self (you're going to have to roll with a lot of these) who has traveled back in time kill Roger, who remains "a blemish on what would otherwise be a perfect record of domination, terror and invincibility." Roger is saved by two mysterious men ([SPOILER ALERT] one of them is Roger's future son) and sent flying through a time warp that lands him in Space Quest XII. Over the course of the game Roger will visit Space Quest X, where he runs into a spurned ex-lover, as well as the original Space Quest, which still retains it's early 8-bit era looking graphics.

Honestly, the contrast between VGA and EGA may have been more stark in 1991.

It's a clever concept - revisiting old games you've played before and popping your head into the "future" to see games in the series that haven't come out yet. It's a shame the series didn't last long enough for us to actually play the full versions of the future sequels, to see how much more technically advanced they would have become by then. Instead, we just got a little taste of them in this quirky time travel adventure.

Radiant Historia

Appearance In This Timeline: February 22, 2011 (US)
Console / Genre: Nintendo DS / RPG
Clever Time Travel Usage: Complete Control Of Timeline Over A Branching Storyline

The game that inspired this blog post! Radiant Historia is a fairly traditional Japanese RPG in terms of its storyline and game mechanics, but where it stands out is it's usage of time travel. You play as Stocke (yes, a "stock" character) a solider in the middle of a war between two kingdoms, Alistel and Granorg. Before an important mission, he is given a magical book called the White Chronicle by his commanding officer. The book just so happens to contain the power to manipulate time and space, which he discovers while on the verge of death on his first mission.

Throughout the game, Stocke has the ability at any time to return to any point in the storyline, and shortly after discovering the book's power, he is offered a major decision that effectively splits the story into two. You're encouraged (and in fact, required) to play through both storylines because events that happen in one timeline will directly affect the other (you're comfortably rolling with these things by now, right?), and whenever you find yourself at an impasse, odds are you'll find your answer by messing around in the other timeline.

A lot of games these days come with important choices for the player that impact the storyline, and like any good reader of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure series, the reality is you really want to see what happens with every decision. This game happily allows you to do just that. And without having to worry about ever losing your character's actual combat abilities (he, and inexplicably, his teammates who technically aren't traveling through time with him maintain their levels, powers and items no matter where you jump in time), its a seamless transition from plot point to plot point, bouncing around the games chronology like it was an overworld map. Very cool.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Appearance In This Timeline: November 21, 1998
Console / Genre: Nintendo 64 (original) / Action Adventure
Clever Time Travel Usage: Playing Two Distinct Timelines Involving Younger And Older Self

Heralded as one of the greatest video games of all time, Ocarina of Time also just so happened to have a very cool time travel-related concept: playing as both a younger more innocent protagonist, Link, and an older, more interested in the ladies Link, both fighting to save princess Zelda and rid the world of the evil Gannondorf, a process that only ever lasts just long enough for the next sequel.

The Temple of Time is young Link's portal into the future. It's a little complicated, but basically the kid needs to be a little taller in order to wield the Master Sword, the ultimate weapon against evil (that and the game's titular magic flute). When you time jumping here you're not just aging, you're also bouncing between the young, innocent Hyrule (the world of all Zelda games) that is untouched by Gannondorf and a devastated Hyrule on the verge of total destruction. The world hasn't aged nearly as well as you have.

The best part is Link looking inside his tunic a la Big once he turns into an adult

Areas in the past might inaccessible until you have the proper equipment in the future, and certain areas are closed off or just destroyed in the future, meaning you'll have to visit them in the past. Young Link wields a slingshot, adult Link shoots a bow and arrow. It's a great concept that fills well into the usual Zelda formula. And clearly the creators like playing with time, as we'll soon see in a later Zelda entry.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Appearance In This Timeline: November 21, 2003
Console / Genre: PS2/Xbox/GameCube (original) / Action Platformer
Clever Time Travel Usage: Rewinding Time To Stay Alive

The original Prince of Persia defined its own genre of action platforming in the late 80's, and when the series was later revived in 3D in the early 2000's, it similarly redefined the way people moves through the world. The prince in each game of the series moves fluidly through his environment, dashing along walls and bouncing from pillar to pillar as if the constant threat of falling to his death was merely an afterthought.

In the 2003 release, the first in a trilogy, time plays a large role in the story as well as gameplay. Early in the game the Prince (the one from Persia) gains the Dagger of Time, which allows him to rewind time up to 10 seconds. By doing so, he can reverse damage from an attack, undo a missed jump that would have led to his death, or simply replay a kiss from the beautiful princess Farah over and over again. Ok, that last one is technically not an option, but simply because the two never actually kiss.

I'm listing this here simply to say that I won't be referencing this movie AT ALL.

There's something so simple yet so brilliant about being able to undo a recent action in a video game without having to backtrack and replay what you've just done over and over. It's such a great concept I kind of feel like every game should just by default hand it's main character a Dagger of Time just because. And we'll all just accept that yes, like bottomless pits and infinite henchmen, it is understood that time travelling daggers are simply ubiquitous in every video game universe.

The Misadventures P.B. Winterbottom
(*Also See: Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time)

Appearance In This Timeline: February 17th, 2010
Console / Genre: XBLA (original) / Puzzle
Clever Time Travel Usage: Using Duplicates Of Yourself To Solve Puzzles

Now this is fun. Set in the backdrop of a black and white silent-film era world, players control P.B Winterbottom, a man with a top hat who loves pies and will do anything to get them - even bending the laws of time and space!

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a simple 2D puzzle platformer where you create time clones of yourself in order to advance and collect/eat the delicious pies scattered (and often ominously floating) throughout the land. If you're curious as to how it works, imagine if you had to reach the top shelf in your kitchen - the one you purposefully put all the food that you don't really care about all that much in. Instead of a ladder or a stool, what you have is the ability to creates clones of yourself that exist briefly to give you a lift, toss you high into the sky, or, if you needed it, a pat on the back. Now imagine if you had the ability to make dozens of these clones, and think of the shelves you'd be able to reach, miles above the ground!

Technically, other games, like Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time did this first. But this one has PIES!

Now think about these time clones' brief existence, and what it must be like to exist for a brief moment by a 'master' version of you who created you simply to help him advance. Imagine the sort of thoughts that might be going through those clones' minds just before they disappear from existence forever. Kinda sad, right?

Chrono Trigger

Appearance In This Timeline: March 11, 1995
Console / Genre: Super Nintendo (original) / Action RPG
Clever Time Travel Usage: A Diverse Adventure/Party Spanning 65 Million Years

By the mid-90's Japanese role playing games, like PC adventures games, had really hit their stride. Chrono Trigger is still considered to this day to be one of the best Japanese role playing games to ever hit consoles. You play as Crono, a young man who's apparently taken the very common vow of silence many JRPG protagonists take. The story, which starts off with "boy meets girl who is secretly a princess" and very quickly jumps to "boy and girl meet quirky scientist who accidentally sends girl hurdling through time" slowly reveals itself to be about saving the world from an alien that's been building power over hundreds of millions of years, finally arising in 1999 AD (this universe, while entirely fictional, apparently still recognizes the Gregorian calendar).

Over the course of the adventure you pick up other characters from the different time periods you visit. You find a gallant knight (who just so happens to be a frog) from the middle ages, an affectionate robot from the future, and a badass cavewoman (very progressive) from the prehistoric era. Early on your characters are bouncing through time through varies circumstances, but eventually you find a time machine called the Epoch, and it's around this time that you get down to business.

You've got your Cavewoman, your Robot, and of course, your Frog Knight.

Chrono Trigger is also remarkable because it's one of the first games to feature multiple endings based on decisions you make throughout the game. This, on top of a new game + feature (which allows players to start the story over again with their characters levels, techniques and equipment) encouraged multiple playthroughs, which not only increased replay value but, you could argue - and I will - is it's own way of having the player get taught in his or her own little timeloop. I personally didn't escape this timeloop for over 100 hours. And you know what? I wouldn't take of that time back if I could.

Braid

Appearance In This Timeline: August 6th, 2008
Console / Genre: XBLA (original), / Puzzle Platformer
Clever Time Travel Usage: Various Time-Based Game Mechanics & Puzzles

Braid was a small indie puzzle game that took the gaming world by surprise in 2008, making many top 10 lists that otherwise included big budget powerhouses. Unlike every other game on this list, Braid is less about time travel itself than it is about the manipulation of time around you. At first glance, as you can see above, the game looks like a fairly standard platformer. And initially it seems like all you do is rewind time, a familiar trick that Prince of Persia had done years ago. But you soon discover that you're doing more to rewind time than just surviving. Certain items, environments and enemies are affected differently by the manipulation of time. So a time-locked key can be grabbed from a pit with no escape, then brought back upon rewinding your character's trip down, taking the key back with you through time as your arrive safely above the aforementioned pit.

Each world in the game manipulates time in a different way. On top of being able to rewind time in each level, you'll find worlds where time flows forward to backward depending whether the player is advancing left or right, a world where the character creates shadow, repeating versions of himself (like in P.B. Winterbottom) and one where he controls a ring that slows down time for everything around it. Your goal in every level is find pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that slowly reveal the story and allow you access to the final level.

The puzzles are really devilish at times, and the game really forces you to rethink the way you play video games. Showing might be better than telling here, so take a look for yourself:

I won't spoil the story here, partly because it's fascinating to experience, but mostly because it's actually kind of convoluted and purposefully ambiguous. Suffice it to say the final level of the the game continues the time manipulation theme and shows off a really clever, very much video game-specific way of revealing a clever storytelling twist. If you don't mind spoiling it for yourself, you can check it out here.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Appearance In This Timeline: October 26th, 2000 (US)
Console / Genre: Nintendo 64 (original) / Action Adventure
Clever Time Travel Usage: Repetition / Perfection Of A Three Day Timeline

Hey look, another Zelda entry! Majora's Mask came just a few years off of Ocarina of Time, and while it featured similar a graphical style and gameplay mechanics, it's story takes Link on an entirely new time travelling adventure. This time, Link finds himself in the land of Termina, an ill-fated name for an ill-fated land. Termina's moon is on a collision course with the planet, and Link has only three days to stop it before it crashes and destroys everything.

The conceit to this game (one that frustrated many gamers back in the day) is that three days is not nearly enough time to save the world, especially when those three days pass in an about an hour's time in real life. In order to beat the game, players must constantly rewind time the the 72 hour mark and make what little progression they can before the world comes to an end again. Items, weapons, and songs for your returning magical Ocarina are returned, but everything else is reset every time you jump back.

Man, that is one PISSED OFF moon.

As daunting as it seems, the game allows for a sense of progression (every time you jump back you're a little bit more powerful, and a little bit more aware of your environment) despite it feeling like a video game equivalent of Groundhog Day. Oh, and did I mention there were wacky masks that transform you into different creatures? No? Well, yeah, they're in there, and you can look forward to hearing more about them in my Great Moments In Video Game Masks piece somewhere down the line.

Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time

Appearance In This Timeline: November 28th, 2005 (US)
Console / Genre: Nintendo DS / RPG
Clever Time Travel Usage: Adventuring With Your Much Younger Selves

This game almost didn't make the main list, since time travel is mostly just a plot point in this game. But what makes M&L: Partners In Time make the cut is the fact that in this story (the 2nd of several great RPG adventures featuring Mario and his brother Luigi, who is comically unfit for adventure) you travel back in time and ultimately begin adventuring with infantile versions of yourselves.

Naturally you're looking to save the land and rescue the princess that's spent more time in enemy clutches than ruling her land. There's something kind of awesome about wandering around with Mario, Luigi, and two bite-size versions of them, getting into battles and using them to reach through cracks and crevices that the adults can't fit into. Oh, and you even get to meet and fight Baby Bowser! How awesome is that?

It's cute in a "Holy crap, I've just put two children into a life threatening battle!" kinda way.

Sadly you can't ever kill or allow the baby versions of Mario and Luigi to die, only to see adult Mario and Luigi slowly fade from existence. But that didn't stop me from saying "Oh-a-no! I'm-a-fadin' away!" in a thick Italian accent out loud every time the kids reached 0 hit points.

Honorable Mentions
The following games didn't have a particularly clever use of time travel (mostly it was a backdrop), but it was featured prominently in the game and made for some interesting and amusing moments.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Appearance In This Timeline: September 12, 2010 (US)
Console / Genre: Nintendo DS / Puzzle
Time Travel Usage: Coming Up Against An Evil Future Version Of Yourself

If you haven't played the series before, Professor Layton and his assistant Luke are puzzle solving geniuses who live in a world where the ability to solve puzzles is prized about all else. In one of the games, in a "battle to the death," the final boss has you solve a theoretical battle via a puzzle, and upon winning, concedes everything. The plot is consistently kooky, but the puzzles are oh so much fun to solve.

In this 3rd entry in the series, Layton and Luke are seemingly transported ten years into the future where an older, but very similarly dressed Luke tells them that London has been taken over by a mob lead by the now evil Professor Layton, and that he has summoned them there to help stop him. Because who better to take down an evil genius than a 10 years less experienced version of that evil genius?*

Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp

Appearance In This Timeline: June 16, 1991
Console / Genre: Arcade / Action Interactive Movie
Time Travel Usage: Wrecking Havoc Through Time

The Dragon's Lair series were less of a game and more of an interactive movie where the right choices let you continue watching and the wrong choices made the movie stop and asked you to insert more quarters. Though gamers quickly caught on that this was a bum deal, they still couldn't deny it was a pretty fun movie.

The sequel to the original 1981 classic, Dragon's Lair II upped the ante and sent it's hero Dirk the Daring hurdling through time to save his beloved Daphne. And the adventure doesn't take through time, it also takes you to some trippy fictional locations, like the home of Beethoven in the middle of a tripped out version of his 5th Symphony (5:05 below), to the Garden of Eden just in time to feed Eve her apple (3:46 below) and through Alice's looking glass for a quick jaunt through Wonderland (2:28 below). Check out this video playthrough and join Dirk on his adventure without investing a single quarter:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time

Appearance In This Timeline: September 18, 1991
Console / Genre: Arcade/ Side Scrolling Beat 'Em Up
Time Travel Usage: Turtles. In. Time.

There's really not much to say about this game, and I'm not being paid by the word, so in summation: every kid in the early 90's best friends, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, are inexplicably sent hurdling through time by Shredder. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael they must fight their way through various time periods (foot soldiers have been conveniently deposited in every era) in order to return home and save...the Statue of Liberty?

That last question mark wasn't me not knowing the answer, it was just me remembering just how little plot I needed to get by on in 1991.

Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?

Appearance In This Timeline: 1989
Console / Genre: PC / Edutainment
Time Travel Usage: Using Time Travel To Actually Learn Some Shit

The Carmen Sandiego series successfully tricked games into learning with three different series, asking them to find Carmen somewhere in the USA, the World, and next, naturally, somewhere in Time. Players would spend each mission in a new time period attempting to right whatever wrong Carmen and her cronies caused with their various misdeeds throughout time. Along the way, players inexplicably would learn facts about history, facts it would take many hours of the Disney afternoon to forget.

Time Gentlemen, Please!

Appearance In This Timeline: June 22, 2009
Console / Genre: PC / Point & Click Adventure
Time Travel Usage: Creating A Paradoxical, Universe-Destroying Timeline

Time Gentlemen, Please! is a point and click adventure game created by two big fans of the genre who missed their old favorite adventure games so much they decided to make a new one. It's actually their second game, taking place immediately after the events of Ben There, Dan That, in which heroes Ben and Dan are trying to stop evil future versions of themselves from going back into the past to make themselves leaders of the world (by now I'm sure you're just nodding in complete understanding to these plotlines). The story hinges on the invention of the coat hanger, and [SPOILER ALERT] the duo eventually muck things up with paradoxes and destroy the entire universe, eventually needing God himself to step in to press the reset button.

Back To The Future (The Game)

Appearance In This Timeline: December 22, 2010
Console / Genre: PC/Mac / Point & Click Adventure
Time Travel Usage: Something About A Flux Capacitator

I would be remiss to not mention this game, which continues the story of the original movie trilogy (and has the original voice of Doc Brown, Christopher Lloyd himself, as well as the world's greatest Michael J. Fox impersonator) and sees Marty McFly and Doc Brown hit up the 1930's and one again have to deal with alternative timelines that come part and parcel with messing with time travel. When will these two ever learn?

*****

That'll do it. If you guys think I missed any great moments in video game time travel, drop me a line.

-Matt

*[PROFESSOR LAYTON SPOILER ALERT] I clearly can't help myself with these spoilers, but the Layton game is fairly new, and a popular series so I'm sticking this spoiler way at the bottom so you can just stop reading if you care. I won't go into full details about what happens - but basically Layton spends the whole game suspecting something is amiss, and the truth winds up being about 1000 times more complicated than if someone had just invented a time machine. The big twist, the one that reveals that of course it wasn't time travel silly, time travel's not real! involves a second, fake underground London, a supervillain with apparently a near-infinite amount of cash to burn, and a Truman show-esque army of willing actors. What did I tell you about this series? Super kooky!

Baby Name Spreadsheets Are A Bundle Of Joy For Your Brain!

2011-09-06T17:25:00.000-04:00

You guys - a lot of my friends have been making babies recently. And each new bundle of drool and poop brings with it a tiny little piece of information - it's name - that my brain is ill-equipped to remember. I have a hard enough time remembering the names of my coworkers, cousins, television and video game characters (not to mention that guy I always run into at my improv theater that my brain has labeled "McBeardy") without adding a host of names of little monsters that I don't ever actually communicate with.

So to prevent any future embarrassment or an unfathomable number of 'how's the little tyke doin'?' incidents on my part, I made myself a handy dandy little spreadsheet to reference as needed. And I managed to have some fun with it too. Take a look, and if you find yourself in a similar situation, I highly recommend doing the same:

Now all I need is a smartphone to store this thing on. When's that new iPhone 5 coming out, anyway?

-Matt

Phooka: Creatures, Myths and Urban Legends - The Grapple Grab Show

2011-09-03T10:36:00.009-04:00

Phooka: Creatures, Myths & Urban Legends 8-26-11 from David Etkin on Vimeo.

I don't post many improv shows on my blog, mainly because as many television executives have learned over the years, something is lost in the translation from live theater to the television, movie or computer screen. However, despite whatever may be lost, I feel compelled to post this video, as I am particularly proud of this show.

Phooka, the team I've been on for the past 3 years, recently developed a form called Creatures, Myths and Urban Legends. We open our show by asking for a suggestion of an original - as the title suggests - creature, myth or urban legend. We then sit down on stage and establish a campfire scene where the group eventually discusses the legend (in this case, the Grapple Grab), we establish what kind of horrors await us as well as what kind of effect it's had on the town we're in.

It's a long watch and I know most people don't usually click on a 35 minute video on the internet, but if you ever have the time to check it out, please do. I had a tremendous amount of fun on stage that night, bouncing around on stage as the Grapple Grab (in what eventually became our little homage to A Nightmare on Elm Street) as well practicing my experimentation with the Kama Sutra with an incredibly willing, flexible teammate.

Phooka is: Angela DeManti, Maddy Mako, Steve Slate, Emily Shapiro, David Etkin, Jon Bander and Matt Shafeek. We perform weekly at the Magnet Theater.

-Matt

Hurricane Game Night With Matt Shafeek

2011-08-29T17:54:00.008-04:00

As I left my apartment to prepare for the ultimately underwhelming hurricane approaching New York City yesterday, I grabbed a few important items - necessities that were key to my survival. My three bags included clothes, toiletries, water, snacks, my laptop, a writing pad, and a ton of board and card games. Were I caught midway through my journey dangling precariously from a cliff with each of the aforementioned items about to fall from my grasp, after saving my laptop (which frankly, is mostly due to its financial value and host of valuable, earth-shattering secrets I could never allow to be uncovered), I'd risk my neck to save any and all games next. What I'm basically saying is: with any sort of limitations or Sophie's choice-type situation on my supplies, I'd be arriving to my shelter will little to no sustenance, attire or means of personal hygiene, but filled to the brim with time-killing entertainment for all to enjoy*.

I love games of all kind, but lately I'm especially into board and party games. Essentially, if I spend my gaming time socially with other human beings in the room, I never feel like I should have been doing something more productive with my time, which is both a convenient justification and a legitimate excuse. Spending time doing something fun with people I like is ultimately what I live for, and I'm always looking for more chances to do it.

But enough about me. As I've done a few times before, I'm going to write about some more great social board and party games today for you, my loyal readers, to use with your own time with families, friends, or strangers you've insisted are your best option instead. The three games I'm going to talk about today run the gamut from the more casual, to the more party-oriented to the more hardcore/serious time investment. The latter category of course is for people who can still look at a box of Monopoly at this point with fond memories.

Enjoy these three new games, and let me know if you ever wind up trying them out, or need an extra player!

Hurricane Game Night With Matt Shafeek
For Use In Any Natural Disaster, Work-Related Social Event Or Family Gathering In Which There Are Many Hours To Kill
[Note: Some preparation may be required, so be sure to read well in advance of your next natural disaster!]

"I know this seems weird, but trust me. We're playing a game."

Mind Meld
Category: Party/Social (Casual)
# of Players: 2 or more
Prerequisites: None (beyond reading these instructions)

The 'official' name for this game is lost on me - I've heard of a few others (they call it 'What Am I Thinking?' on The Comedy Bang Bang Podcast, and I think it was introduced to me as 'Mind Reader,' but nothing tops the title I've given it, straight out of Star Trek, which gives me extra nerd cred.

Basically two people are going to think of a word (or two) and they're going to say them to each other at the same time. The word(s) chosen can be anything, person, place or thing. They'll count down from '3' together, then each say their word over the other. Once the two words are spoken, the point of the game is try to find, together, the connecting word between the two. After a quick beat to think of a new word (applying time pressure makes this game a lot more interesting) both players again count down from 3 and try to say the connecting word at the same time, repeating as necessary (the next round is the common word between the two new words that were just said, and so on) until the two of you say the same word at the same time.

As an example, if one player's word is 'Mike Meyers,' and the other is 'Pork Chops,' obviously the word in between these two is 'Canadian Bacon.' That was an obvious one, I know, but I wanted to make sure you got the idea.

You don't lose this game unless you neglect to guess after the countdown. Technically words are not supposed to be repeated, but this rule usually gets tossed aside once the two of you have been dancing around 'The Sea Captain From The Simpsons' for seven minutes. Just establish which way you're playing in advance, it's totally fine either way.

This game could easily be played with a group of people, even at a party. Just have everyone go around in a circle, moving around the circle clockwise or counter clockwise (your choice readers - I'm tossing this rule out to you!) after each round. The way my improv team plays it, people can jump in at anytime, tagging one of the other players out (presumably the dumber one) if they think know what the common word is.

"Wait, stop flirting for a second, I'm trying to explain the rules here."

Quick anecdote: I was on a date recently where during a brief lull in the conversation (also known as "gamertunities" to me)(oh, and side note - this date was not going especially well) I suggested we play a game of this. After a few back and forths we arrived at the words 'Nightmare' and 'Blackout' which led to us saying "Date Rape!" at the same time on the next turn. We both had a terribly uncomfortable laugh. Needless to say I haven't suggested this game on another date since.

Hopefully that story doesn't ruin the game for you - it's definitely fun - but maybe play it with friends as opposed to recent acquaintances just to be safe.

You Don't Know Jack
Category: Party/Trivia (Casual)
# of Players: 2-4
Prerequisites: A video games system (PS3/Xbox 360/Wii) and multiple controllers

Let me start by saying I'm really not a big trivia guy. Jeopardy!, Trivial Pursuit, you name it, I'm finding excuses not to play/watch them. I generally prefer games that don't run the risk of revealing how embarrassingly little I know about the non-video game & television world at large. Having said this, I've always been a huge You Don't Know Jack fan. This trivia game series, while at times tricky, is so entertaining and fast paced along the way, that even if you seem to be getting all the answers wrong, still makes you feel like you're part of the action, and more importantly, that you're having fun.

Every round of YDKJ works basically the same. There are 10 questions, and during every question the sooner you buzz in (if you choose to, there's no penalty for not guessing) the more money you stand to win or lose. Throw in some bonus mini games like Dis Or Dat, screws, which force the other player to answer a question, and the game-ending Jack Attack, and you've a nice amount of variety to keep things moving for the fifteen minutes or so that each game lasts. The writing is excellent and the host is funny without being a distraction. You really do feel like you're on a game show with the people in the room with you.

The game runs for about $30.00 new and on the Xbox 360 at least, you can download the entire game on the system's online service. There are 73 'episodes' in the full version with at least 4 downloadable packs available for $5 each that bring the total number of episodes to well over 100. My sole complaint about the game is that the prize structure allows for wild swings in the final round, where each question (more like a fast-buzzing matching game) is worth significantly more than all the questions that proceeded it. It's an active choice on the developer's part to make players feel like they always have a shot, even when they're behind everyone else, but it can sometimes feel like the previous 9/10ths of the game was irrelevant, which can be frustrating for front runners who've been playing smart.

The game is more fun with the maximum of four players, but even a hyper-competitive two player is fantastic. Check out Gamespot's video review below for some more information as well as a good idea of what gameplay looks like (they spoil maybe one or two puzzle answers, but don't reveal the answers so don't watch if you mind this at all).

And here's another great review from Joystiq:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/09/you-dont-know-jack-review/

Dominion
Category: Card Game (Hardcore)
# of Players: 2-4
Prerequisites: The Board Game (plus any expansions you want) or else, one laptop per player

You'll notice I've labeled this game as hardcore. I realize this might scare a few of you away. So before I say anything else, I'm going to let this kid introduce the game to you. Watch as much of this as you can stand:

What we have here, as Hayden would no doubt adorably attest to, is a dangerously addictive game. To anyone who's ever found themselves sinking hours upon hours into any kind of game before, Dominion will no doubt tap into the same part of your brain, slowly releasing a steady stream of dopamine game after game while you slowly learn to master it. If that thought kind of scares you, back away slowly now. If you're intrigued, keep reading.

At its heart, Dominion is a card game in which you're trying to gain a specific set of cards known as Victory Cards. Every round you draw five cards from you deck to play with. All players start with a basic deck of 10 cards, but will eventually grow to have a wide variety of Victory, Treasure and Action cards. Action cards do a variety of useful things, like increasing the cards you have in your hand, trashing cards you don't want, as well as forcing your opponents to draw worthless cards and making them discard cards in their hands. Treasure cards are used to buy new cards for your deck at the end of every round.

While at first it might seem like you should buy up every Victory card you can as soon as possible, you'll soon realize that all Victory cards do early on is take up space in your hands, and you want to first build up the ability to make larger purchases before you start buying them. So you build your deck slowly over time, making bigger purchases that allow more cards in your hand or better treasure cards to make better purchases. Every turn has a player playing his action cards, making a purchase, then discarding all used cards. After all of your cards have been played, you shuffle everything back in and start using the deck again. This repeats until three stacks of available cards have been depleted or the highest level Victory cards (Provinces) have all been claimed. The player with the highest number of Victory points wins.

Games can last anywhere from about 10 to 25 minutes depending on the layout and the experience of the players. The game can be played by up to four players but unlike YDKJ, it really seems to be the most fun with just two.

Every game will have a different combination of cards available for players to purchase and use. This variety leads to a high level of variety and strategizing that can be incredibly satisfying once you get the hang of the game. I've seen no less than five people become incredibly addicted to Dominion this year alone, not including myself, who totally has his investment of time in the game under control..

Originally, Dominion was a card game with many expansions released over the years, and if you're interested in making the game as social as possible, this is the way to go. However, there is also an online game available at http://dominion.isotropic.org that reduces all need to shuffle cards or look up rules, as well as paying for the game, since it's free. This is my mode my friends and I have all taken, though it tends to make for some quiet parties.

Once you get the game, there's plenty of way to learn to be a better player. Playing against strangers online works for me, but if you want to bone up before getting your butt kicked (I love the game but am a low-ranked player with a terrible win/loss record), check out this page.

*****

That's all for today kids. I realize today's games are mostly for smaller groups, so if you're looking for games that accommodate more people, definitely refer to either of my previous games posts, where I discuss some of my other favorite group/party games:

Games Post #1: Celebrity and Werewolf
Games Post #2: Telestrations and Munchkin

At some point before the end of the year, I'll do a review of my favorite straight-up board games of the year for those of you looking to abandon all pretenses of leaving the house or even standing up on any given night.

Game on,
Matt

*and naturally, the ability to check and post on Twitter.

Well, That Was Easier Than I Thought (Rubik's Cube Redux)

2011-08-09T23:46:00.000-04:00

I have an update to my blog post from a few weeks where I discussed My Life As A Rubik's Cube. I recently received my Rubik's Cube in the mail, and as soon as I did I decided I wanted to record my first real attempt to solve it. Check out the video below (and apologies for the darkness, my new apartment is apparently in need of a lamp or two) and see how I did:

So there ya go. Either I solved one of the world's most difficult puzzles in less than ten seconds, or I also very recently discovered how to edit video. You be the judge.

-Matt

Adventures In Online Dating: Soul Geek (A Critique)

2011-08-03T00:14:00.018-04:00

A few weeks ago I was introduced to a new dating site I hadn't heard of before by close friend and fellow improv, video game and musical theater enthusiast Justin Moran. He told me it sounded perfect for people like us, and if he were single that would be the dating site he'd be on. I was immediately intrigued, and later the next day I logged onto the site and immediately created an account.

What followed were about two hours of heartbreak that I'm going to describe in great detail. Before I begin, I want to say that while I am about to critique this small, relatively unknown niche dating site, I sincerely hope I do not come across as an angry internet troll, but rather an opinionated man who is well-versed in the ways of online dating. A man who once ran his own small online service and a man who is of course, a total geek, who would very much like to see a well done dating site dedicated to people like him.

So without further ado, here are my thoughts on Soul Geek:

(Note: I did not pay the $9.99 monthly membership fee, so this review is simply based on the services available to me as a free member. I thought about paying the fee and giving Soul Geek a month in order to give the service a more thorough review, but I decided that due to lack of patience or frugality, I'd rather just write my review based on what I'd experienced before I'd given them any of my money)

The site, if anyone wants to see what I'm talking about: http://soulgeek.com

1. The site is unattractive, and the interface is dated.

Let's get this out of the way right up top. Some of these complaints might come across as a little unfair for a small business that probably doesn't have as much money to spend as some of the bigger dating sites out there. But the fact is, they're charging money for this site, and one of their biggest competitors (OKCupid, who I'll be comparing this to site to regularly) is free, is easy on the eyes and is much easier to use.

Look, I wore a Simpsons t-shirt nearly every day in high school. My desire to show off my obsession with the show (and to get dressed with less than 10 seconds of thought) was clearly stronger than my desire to look like I had any sense of style. Maybe that's the idea here - function over fashion. But I also never had sex in high school. So you know, there's that.

I really think even the site's formatting is clunky and dated. Take a quick look and tell me where you'd rather spend some time online:

Forget this rcjester guy, let's talk about that handsome Phil Proctor!

OkCupid, for comparison. I'm really throwing any kind of online anonymity caution to the wind at this point, it seems.

Aesthetic opinions aside, Rule #1 of internet business is to not make your customers embarrassed to be on your site. (Rule #2 involves not giving your customers epileptic seizures, which I'm happy to report this site is on the up and up with) And some of this stuff is super obvious - ditch the flashing banner ads, have a better homepage and find a more attractive color scheme. Also - they make you wait 24 hours to approve any changes you make to your profile. All this stuff was unacceptable five years ago. You might as well have a Myspace link at this point.

2. The sign-up/profile creation process is tedious and homogenizes geekery.

When you start filling out your profile, the site cannot wait to let you check the appropriately cheeky-geeky boxes that apply to you. Stuff like: Stuff I Enjoy: TAKING OVER THE WORLD, Faith: THE FORCE, and Languages: STANDARD FEDERATION.

Under 'Size of Penis,' I checked off 'Sword of Omens x3'

These would be cute and somewhat original entries had there not been a way for EVERYONE WHO SIGNS UP TO JUST SEE IT AND SELECT IT. Guess what % of people I saw who have Tribbles and talked Wookie? The answer: way too many.

Next, the profile you create for yourself on the site winds up being about 20% about you personally, and 80% about what you're into as a geek. I suppose this is sort of the hook of the site, displaying your 'geek badge,' loud and proud. But still - I personally would like to know that you're a normal, stable human being before we dress up like Cloud and Aeris from FFVII and I show you my Buster sword. But maybe that's just me.

When you sign up, you're supposed to check a box off for every single interest you have, and then on the following page you're expected to list all (or at least some) of the things you're into in that genre, and then describe why you like it. I found this incredibly annoying. Here's how my page turned out:

It's cut off in this image, but my final interest is: 'filling out agonizingly long internet profiles'

Seriously - if you want to know why I think video games or anything I'm into is swell, feel free to ask me. I'll be happy to tell you. But filling out the above section made me wish I was less of a geek, if anything. Too much work!

3. There are other kinds of geeks, you know.

I know traditionally geeks are into swords, lasers and pocket monsters, or pockemons, but I don't see why the site has to limit itself to just these particular interests. Maybe you're a food geek, or a tech junkie. Maybe you're a huge Quentin Tarrantino fanboy or you're obsessed with all things Apple. Maybe you've seen every episode of Shark Week ever made, and are desperately searching for someone to discuss DNA-attacking microsharks swimming in our drinking water with after a long night of lovemaking. Guess who can help you out with that? Not Soul Geek, that's for sure.

"Did you know that the mako shark...hey no wait, I was gonna segue that into some flirting!"

If a girl on OKCupid lists under her "favorites" section that she is a fan of Community, she instantly becomes 27.5% more attractive to me. I ran the numbers, this is a fact. So once again here's a competing (and still free) site essentially doing the same thing this site is setting out to do, but better. 'Brilliant Comedy' isn't a regular topic you can select under hobbies, and while you can dump it under the section entitled "extra stuff I enjoy" it feels like an afterthought, especially if it's something I'm into more than the other subjects.

You could argue that this site for a specific set of geek interests, but c'mon, this isn't J-Date. The wider you cast the net for the kinds of geeks you seek, the more people you'll have on your site. And people who aren't into the same things can easily avoid ever seeing each other. Case in point, I've already written: "DON'T MSG ME IF UR IN2 DR. WHO!!!" and "DR. HOUSE > DR. WHO (CARES)???" all over all my online dating profiles, and so far all Dr. Who fans and countless others have graciously steered clear.

4. The site adds no real value/features over it's competitors.

As it stands, without paying the monthly fee of $9.99/mo, you cannot directly message fellow geeks on the site. You can freely browse, do some version of "poking" (letting others know you're also not paying a subscription), and if you happen to be messaged by a paying member, you can supposedly respond (I have not been messaged as of yet, though I haven't checked in the past 10 minutes. Maybe I should one more time just to be safe. Ok, yeah, still nothing). But once again, with a slicker, cheaper competitor just a click away, it's incredibly difficult to drop money for the sake of a niche pool of people who are more likely to know what I'm talking about when I reference Leroy Jenkins.

I think the site needs to be more than a copycat version of all the other dating sites out there that are already established and doing it better. I can think of two things off the top of my head that would add value to the site:

(1) Meetups. There's a site called nerdnite that already does this, organizes events for geeks/nerds (I believe these two groups get along) in cities across the country. Soul Geek needs to either mimic this idea on some level (even if they're doing something on a very small scale, an organized board game night or movie screening for 10 people or something would be a start) or partner up with Nerd Nite (who also organizes speed dating nights, at least in NYC) to have some truly outstanding geek-related events that can bring in clientele for both groups.

Right now the Soul Geek site list upcoming cons, which is a start, but I would start thinking about getting booths or organizing events (speed dates, kissing booths, cosplay setups?) at these cons to spread the word about the site.

Finally, Batman and Rogue(?) have found each other.

(2) Games. Hey, geeks love games, right? Why not get some on this dating site for geeks! Start with small, facebook like-games, or dig deep and get some real D&D style stuff going. Allow me to run around slashing orcs while asking all the female avatars how they doin' (oh, and please, make sure only women are allowed to play as women. I'm so sick of being wrong). And some geeks I would imagine are a little shy, and this could be a way around the traditional route of blind messaging that's required on other dating sites.

'You guys go fight that monster. Trisha, you come over here and help me...buff my stats.'

Both of these things can be included as part of your paying membership, and/or maybe allow even non-paying members to partake in, at least a little.

5. Closing Thoughts

To be clear, the Soul Geek site isn't all bad. I do like that the site allows (and seems to encourage) stylized drawings to be one of your profile photos (but it wisely insists that at least one photo be real). And every profile comes with a fan fiction tab, which, you know, if you're into that stuff, is great. And the site is promoting an upcoming redesign which, for all I know, could be addressing all this and more.

I really would love for the site to be successful, and to be the destination for single geeks looking for love. In reality, any site that could potentially set me up with the video game/anime/role-playing/Batman-loving, attentive, gorgeous and independently wealthy woman of my dreams is a very good thing. I'm trying to help my odds here. Because c'mon guys - I still haven't met her yet!

-Matt

Role-Playing (Part 7)

2011-07-29T15:25:00.002-04:00

I'm closing out the Role-Playing series with the final entry, which brings everything full circle. I hope you enjoyed reading this series - I think I've worked on this more than on any other written piece. There were a few other sections I cut over time, either because they didn't fit the overall arc, they weren't working, or they just didn't have a purpose other than to show another amusing side of my life. But this trimmed down version feels right. Who knows, I may go back to it and add/subtract more at some point.

My next big move is going to be some a live reading of something I've written. Not necessarily from Role-Playing, though there are a lot of good stories here to be told. I'm going to sign up for a storytelling class in September and then depending on how that experience goes, I may pursue it further. Naturally I'll keep everyone posted on that here.

For now, enjoy the seventh and final selection of Role-Playing:

(FYI: Newcomers and those of you who haven't been reading this in order, this part makes a lot more sense if you read part one first)

Role-playing

Matt Shafeek The HARDCORE GAMER (CON'T)

PAX EAST / Boston, MA / march 2011

Our adventure eventually leads us to the lair of an ice dragon. We fight valiantly against the ferocious beast, and a number of times things look quite grim for the group – a concentrated blast of ice breath brings Eldeth and several others within 7 hit points of their life! In the end though, our collective efforts bring the enormous creature down, and victory is ours.

The DM congratulates the table of champions on completing their mission, and tells us how much experience, gold and treasure we have gained for use in future adventures. The heroes rejoice, tend to their wounds and divvy up their earnings, while the players give each other high fives and snack with renewed vigor. We’re told to write everything down on our character sheets, which I do, naturally accounting for the unspoken but assumed 5,000 extra gold pieces, Potion of Invincibility and +7 Flaming Axe of Scorchification that Eldeth found with her darkness-enhanced Dwarvish vision.

The group seems ready to retire from the dragon’s den, but Eldeth the Uncouth has one final play to make. I speak to the table as I gesticulate each portion of her move:

"I climb onto the dragon's chest and tear out its heart using my Great Axe. I hold it front of the group and shout: 'does anyone know if eating a dragon's heart will bring any kind of enchantment or power?'"

The table is flustered, along with the Dungeon Master, who is unsure of how to answer this unusual question on the fly, though honestly, I couldn't possibly be the first dragon slayer to ever wonder this. Undeterred, I continue:

"It doesn't matter, I eat it anyway. Nom nom nom."

I raise my half-clenched fist to my mouth and pretend to eat the heart, gingerly licking my fingers once I’m done for the full effect. My commitment to my character is outmatched only by my desire for more attention.

Our magical adventure comes to an end with the glorious ritual of filling out a brief survey card to rate our experience, our DM, and to let the all-powerful Wizards (of the Coast, LLC) know what other products we might be interested in purchasing. I have way too much leveling up to do with my Human Male / 32 / Single / Administrative character to invest any more in their guides, compendiums, or ever-so-tempting figurines right now. But I’m sure I’ll be back soon enough.

As Eldeth turns her back on the band of warriors she’s gotten to know over the past hour, she knows she’ll likely never see any of them ever again. She is thankful for the time they’ve shared. More importantly, she is thankful that they’ve so kindly tolerated her loud, attention-seeking, and sometimes flat-out obnoxious behavior.

My Life As A Rubik's Cube

2011-07-25T22:25:00.009-04:00

Here it is. My Everest.

This evening, on my bus ride home from work from Harlem to Astoria, I spotted a young man playing with a Rubik's Cube. It's a rare sight these days, but I'm sure Mr. Rubik would be happy to know there are still people frantically sliding around colored columns and rows left and right, keeping alive the last lingering fad of the 80's.

I instantly recognized that I was watching a pro. The kid rotated each section as if by instinct, barely ever stopping to check his progress. For a brief moment he had managed to claim the entire orange side, and no sooner had he accomplished this than he immediately continued on his mission, sacrificing his reward for a chance at greater glory. And as he casually rotated away what I considered to be any sense of progress, I got a little bit of agita. I wanted to stop him, or at least tell him to soak in the nine nicely arranged orange stickers just a little bit longer. I turned away to leave the boy to his fate, not wanting to relive my own experience with that devilish toy.

I'm a big gamer, and I take personal pride in the number of video games I've beaten over the years. I knocked out Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! for the NES, starting the game from the very first fight. If you have no idea what that means, know that this is a pretty big deal (ask any male who grew up in the late 80's/early 90's for confirmation). But I've never even come close to solving Rubik's Cube. And it wasn't because it's more of a cerebral puzzle. I've beaten plenty of those, too, jerks. I'm convinced I never solved more than one or two sides because once I got that far, I was unable to progress, for fear of ruining the sides I had already finished.

Objectively I knew (and had seen) that it was impossible to solve the puzzle this way, one color at a time, never allowing a side to undo itself once completed, but it didn't matter. Whenever I tried it, I'd delicately arrange my moves to avoid the completed side, and I'd get nowhere. Eventually I'd get frustrated and give up. At this point, there was always a part of me that wanted to just remove the stickers (or take the pieces apart) and replace them so it looked as if I completed the puzzle, but I knew this would have been an empty victory, like beating Mike Tyson with a cheat code of some kind.

I turned back to check on the audacious child and noticed that he had completely solved the Rubik's Cube, with every one of its six sides glistening in the bus' neon lights. I wanted to grab it from his hands and shuffle each section around wildly, returning it to him completely unfinished, but I knew he'd just solve it again, this time even faster. So instead, I sulked. After a few minutes, I got over my seething jealousy long enough to do some soul searching. I started thinking about the reality of the incomplete puzzle and what it represented in my life at large. I realized the agita I felt when I watched a side of the cube go from complete to incomplete was the same agita I felt when I tried making any major changes in my life. Creatively, professionally, romantically - the metaphor seemed to fit across the board. I hated making any changes to my life that sacrificed a single piece of what already "fit" in my life. What made me comfortable.

I want to pursue my dream job, but I still have to go to my current job 40 hours a week, right? Then when I get out of work, I can look for a new job at home for a little while, but what am I supposed to do, not watch TV or hang out with my friends any more?

I want to meet and date lots of beautiful women, but I hate bars, and besides, hanging out with my board game buddies is always a lot more fun than going out anyway.

I want to be a writer, and I'm gonna start writing all the time...as soon there stops being an endless supply of awesome video games to play and beat.

The pattern is obvious. In order to finish the cube, in order to get all of those sides to be the appropriate color, I'm going to have to get over this agita, and do what it takes to finish the puzzle. I'm going to have to give up a portion of whatever level of comfort I have right now in order to have a shot at getting everything I want. Maybe I'll only end up with three or four sides of what I want completed. Maybe I'll only get two of the sides, but they'll be the two most important sides to me. Maybe I won't finish with a single side matching - but maybe this new, asynchronously-colored Rubik's Cube that is my life will be awesome in it's own special way, a way that I can't even visualize right now.

There are so many possibilities! But first I've gotta make a move. Any move, really, as long as it messes me up in some way, nice and good. The agita will now be a sign that I'm headed in the right direction.

So on that note, off I go!

Yes, I bought a Rubik's Cube, but clever readers will also notice a few revealing Easter Eggs here, including how I need a DVD binder, how much I am stupidly willing to pay for shipping, and the last word I looked up for this post.

Ok, so, maybe this move is more symbolic (this blog post was the bigger accomplishment of the day, technically), and not so much agita-bringing or life-changing, but hey, if I can solve this damn puzzle after all these years, on top of also beating Mike Tyson back in the day, what can't I do, friends?

The answer: NOTHING!!!

Hmm, that double negative doesn't sound so great. Let's try this again: if I solve this puzzle and I beat Mike Tyson before when I was a kid, what else do you think I can do, friends?

The answer: ANYTHING!!!

There we go.

-Matt

PS: I will definitely post back here if and when I manage to solve it.

PPS: Am I allowed to look for strategies online, or is that cheating? I did take writing classes, you know. That's like, a kind of strategy guide for writing.

Role-playing (Part 6)

2011-07-23T12:55:00.001-04:00

Bad dates are a fact of life for singles looking for love. You've got to look at them as a stepping stone to something better. And in the meantime, all you do is keep your head up, remain positive and hope that these bad dates at least make for good stories. Good stories that I'm happy to share with you all.

Enjoy!

Role-playing

Matt Shafeek The Insecure Suitor

Sunset Terrace & Coffee Shop Bar / New York, NY / May 2010

I'm at a Time Out New York singles event at Sunset Terrace in the Chelsea, overlooking the Hudson River. The venue is appropriately named - there’s a gorgeous view overlooking the water as the sun disappears over the horizon. My friend Marcy and I were both "featured" in the Singles Isses that week, with pictures in the magazine and full profiles of us on their website, which could be seen as bold or desperate depending on your point of view.

As soon as I arrive I find Marcy, and together we survey the scene and start to gravitate towards a corner of the bar for the best of the room with the fewest eyes on us. After a few minutes I force myself to pull away, in an effort to prevent an evening of the two of us keeping each other safe from our insecurities. I turn and notice a good looking, tall, red-headed gentleman that Marcy clearly has her eyes on. I make some small talk, introduce the two of them, and I step away, mouthing “you’re welcome” at her from behind the red-head’s back.

I know that what I lack in height, hair, and wealth I have to make up for with confidence, so I walk around determinedly approaching as many women as I can attempting to fake it. I introduce myself as "Matt, page 18," which seems silly enough to be disarming and hopefully not too creepy. The first few women I meet tolerate my presence for a few minutes before making it clear with body language and eye contact that I can make them laugh all I want, but they're never going to sleep with me. A lot of the subtleties of courtship and sexual attraction are lost on me, but I've got a PhD in this one particular sentiment.

I notice Leia as I'm grabbing my second drink. She's short, seemingly of mixed racial descent (a mix, like me!), and she has really sexy lips, something I never really notice on a woman. I make up excuses for about a minute then finally sidle up alongside her. I use with my corny 'page 18' opener, which I've decided to stick with, despite its lack of effectiveness thus far (like Cinderella’s glass slipper, I‘m sure my line will eventually woo my one true love). As it turns out, most of the people at the party aren't actually in the magazine, Leia included. She doesn't know what I’m talking about at first, but despite the initial stumble we manage to hit it off:

"You know, I was self-conscious about coming to this event, but looking around there's actually a lot of really ugly dudes here." I say, doing my best to mix truth with fantasy. In reality, I'd felt inferior since I started talking with the tall red-head, but now I was staring right at him, shaking my head and wondering how anyone could ever be attracted to a man with such a well-defined chin, whose clothes all fit him just right.

"Yeah, heh, you're not wrong. There's also a lot more women than men here, in general." Leia replies.

"Yeah you're right. I guess I should just wait for all the attractive men to get paired off, then sit back and let the rest come to me."

“That would be smart!” she smiles, “but before you do that, let's get another drink."

After investing $15 into our conversation, Leia and I make our way to the terrace overlooking the water. The fact that she's stuck around this long indicates to me that we're either hitting it off, or she thinks she’s getting another free drink out of me. I ask for her number before the conversation and her current drink are totally exhausted. She gives it to me, and I immediately start looking for an escape before she has a chance to change her mind.

“Anyway, I should probably get going,” I tell her, “I’ve got a ridiculous commute home from here.”

“That sucks. I live like a five minute walk from here,” she brags.

“I see what you’re doing right now, but sorry, I’m not going home with you tonight.”

She puts her hand to her mouth, ever so-slightly embarrassed. I fight the urge to follow this line up with “but seriously, if you wanted me to come over right now, I definitely would.” Instead, I sense this a moment is as good an out as I'm going to get, so I thank my audience and wish her good night.

A week and a half later we find ourselves at Coffee Shop Bar in Union Square. I show up promptly at our prescribed meeting time of 7:30pm. She arrives twenty-two minutes late, which, given her unapologetic demeanor, seems right on time for her. She sits down, and starts drinking twice as fast as me, pausing every two minutes to answer her blackberry, which she has no problem clarifying: "gets more love from me than any man." Awesome.

Struggling to compete with her clear love of alcohol and electronic messaging, I bring up some of my favorite, super sexy subjects: long-form improv, video games and blogging (more ill-fitting glass slippers I can't help but force women to try on), hoping any of them will strike a chord. Unfortunately, even popular date topics like travel only seem to make her to drink and text more. I feel like I'm on a really shitty game show with bizarre rules I don't really understand, but a very clear view of my score, which is currently well into the negative.

The only subject that seems to get a reaction out of her is sex, which initially I’m more than happy to discuss. However, when she asks her first question of genuine interest to me, I quickly realize I'm in over my head :

"So where's the craziest place you've ever had sex?"

She finally turns away from the bar, giving me the most attention she's given me all night. But now I’ve got nothing to say. My honest answer to her question is: "someone else's bed?" but I know that's not what's she's looking for, so I imagine what a more sexually experienced version of myself would say:

"Craziest place? I guess probably a bar bathroom..." I shrug, casually. I figure I can make this story up on the fly, if need be. It would start with a seat liner and end with a flush.

"Ah, cool," she replies, entirely unimpressed, "You see these scratches on my knees? They’re from getting fucked in Central Park last week. What a dumb idea. They still hurt."

“Oh, wow,” I say, trying my best to react as if I was being told about her running her first half marathon, or that everything she was wearing was made of hemp. In reality, I'm sure I sounded more like she just told me she bites the heads off of small dogs. Or that she has casual sex with people in public parks with little regard for one of her most important joints, and has no problem humble-bragging about it.

A lot of thoughts race through my head at this moment, some of them prudish, most of them simply logistical: "Why would anyone choose to fuck in a park? How is that an improvement over a nice comfy bed, surrounded by four walls? What time of the day was this – doesn't the park close at night? Are you one of the culprits behind one of those awful used condoms I see on the street sometimes, wondering who the hell just HAD to have sex right here?" None of these comments would be met with anything but disdain, so I try to make up for what I lack in hair, height, wealth and adventurous sexual experience with a little bit of topical humor:

"See, that's too bad. If I was going to fuck you in the middle of the park, I'd make sure we were on a nice, grassy area. You know, so your knees wouldn't suffer."

Leia giggles and goes back to her blackberry, making it clear how she feels about me with her body language and lack of eye contact. The welfare of any part of her body is apparently not something I’ll ever have to worry about. I am unable to regain her interest again.

We decide to close out the tab a short time later, and as a fitting coup de grâce, my credit card is rejected. Not due to insufficient funds/credit, but for some reason the card is just unreadable by their machine. The bartender tries to make it clear to Leia that I wasn't being a bum, but by this point nothing short of thanking me profusely for her recent sexual reawakening would have saved me. Leia begrudgingly pays the tab and refuses what little cash I had on me. We make our way outside and the two of us exchange a delightfully platonic hug. I then wave goodbye to another girl I know I will never see again.

Every bad date I go on – even the ones that are obviously bad matches like Leia and I – feels like it leaves an inevitable emotional scar. One that makes me that much less of the hopeless romantic, like I was when I was 12 years old, hoping to swoop a beautiful princess off her feet like the hapless rogue Aladdin did, with a song, a dance (and of course, a magic genie to solve some of those tricky socioeconomic discrepancies). Over time I start to feel more like a bitter, jaded Aladdin, who’d rather just use his wishes on a lifetime supply of pizza, peanut butter cups and some kind of high-tech sexbot.

There is a side of me though, that's optimistic, who knows that no matter what happens, I’ll be fine. Because what I may lack in height, hair, wealth, sexual experience and sheer determination, I more than make up for with…a pretty funny blog, which will soon have this story posted on it. And nothing turns the ladies on more than pretty funny blogs with stories of bad dates with other women.

Role-playing (Part 5)

2011-07-15T14:17:00.000-04:00

My non-fiction writing professor likened my emotions in this piece to a feeling of "awe and schaudenfraude at the same time" which is totally accurate, though I'm disappointed she didn't go the extra mile and combine her description into the almost too obvious Sch-awe-denfraude. And it's too bad she didn't, because frankly, it would have totally gotten her better marks on her performance evaluation, or perfor-uation. But that's neither here nor there. Enjoy this next piece of emo-moir writing (ok, I’m done):

Role-playing

Matt Shafeek The Judgmental TV Critic

Matt's Apt. / Brooklyn, NY / October 2009

I roll out of bed at 10:05 on a Sunday morning and realize I'm late for Church. I throw on a shirt, slide into my slippers and quickly make my way downstairs to the first floor of my apartment. I grab a bowl, a spoon, a bag of Blueberry Muffin Tops cereal and a container of 1% milk and place it on the altar in front of my pew. I grab my blessed remote control, press the power button and scroll through the list of available morning sermons listed on the holy Digital Video Recorder.

My DVR list – the compilation of recorded television shows my cable box has so kindly saved for me – is one of three major 'Consumption Goals' controlling my weekends, weeknights and other pockets of free time I'm lucky enough to have as a single 30-year old who has been mostly unemployed for the past year. There's also my video game 'To Play' list, with 127 titles and counting, and my Netflix queue, which these days is more of a $9.99/mo afterthought. It's a daunting task, attempting to consume so much media in one’s lifetime, but you know, it's important to have goals.

The top entry on my DVR list the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live. I highlight the title and linger on it, debating whether or not the show is worth of my precious time. The truth is I have no business recording SNL in the first place. I haven't enjoyed it in years, yet I still finding myself watching it semi-regularly. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not just some kind of comedy masochist, nor is this my usual completionist need to have to see a show through to the end. The fact is there's a part of me that watches the show just to see it fail, which I suppose might make me more of a comedy sadist.

Writing or performing for SNL was, for a brief period of my young adult life, my dream job. When I first discovered the show in the early 1990's, it had just entered its glorious second Golden Age: the years of Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Chris Farley and Phil Hartman. There was literally nothing more exciting to me than the idea of being a part of something so wonderful, funny and dangerous. Anybody could write something, shoot it, rehearse and edit it to perfection and then throw it on the air. But to write a show in less than a week and perform it live before a studio audience and the rest of the country? That was just so goddamn bold. To be that confident in your ability as a writer and/or performer seemed impossible to me.

The show has an undeniably talented cast, and a team of writers that I'm sure have spent years of their lives devoted to their comedic craft. Some have written for the Harvard Lampoon. Others have worked the stand-up circuit or improv stage for years. Regardless of where they honed their talents, eventually they found acceptance, recognition and success in the warm embrace of Lorne Michaels. Most important of all they are now getting paid to be funny. I, on the other hand, am still very much a work in progress. I have lots of great ideas, but my words always seem to get mangled by my hands and mouth. I’d like to devote more time to my craft, but you know, those lists.

Despite the collective pool of talent involved, the show still manages to under-perform, and a part of me I'm not altogether proud of revels in this. I derive great pleasure out of seeing Kristen Wiig play the terribly annoying, one-note recurring character 'Gilly' to middling laughs, knowing I've done way funnier stuff. A sketch with Italian interviewer ‘Vinny Vedecci,’ a thin premise that goes on way too long, capably reassures my decision to never audition for this once-beloved show. Then there’s a bizarre parody of female pool players in the 1980’s that fails comedically on every level. My eyes widen as I soak in this disaster, and I lean back in the futon my mother donated to me and let out a heavy sigh of relief. I'm so lucky to have absolutely no connection whatsoever to this embarrassment.

I start fast-forwarding through the rest of the episode. I can’t wait to go online once I’m done to read the negative review on the A.V. Club, my go-to site for television criticism. I’m fairly confident in my assessment of what I’m watching, but reading a professional critic’s opinions will make me feel that much better. Emboldened, I’ll be able to spread the word online and off, telling everyone how those hacks have managed to embarrass the world of comedy once again. “I’m this close to just not recording it anymore!” I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen, wishing deep down inside that the A.V. Club would finally consider hiring me.

I stop to watch the SNL Weekend Update when I notice Andy Samberg coming on dressed as Scrooge McDuck. He’s ranting about his affinity for gold in a terrible Scottish accent and, against my better judgment, I start to smile. When Samberg follows every statement by pulling “gold coins” from a large sack with a “$” on it and tossing them everywhere, I start chuckling. And when it’s finally revealed that 'Scrooge McDuck' wasn’t always a duck, but is in fact suffering from a debilitating duck disease that comes from swimming around in pools of dirty, dirty money, I’ve fully surrendered. This bit doesn’t even really make sense, and is objectively kind of dumb, but logic and intelligence aren't always the major players in brilliant comedy, and Samberg’s commitment sells it.

During this brief moment, I’ve returned to my childhood, laughing along as nothing more than an audience member enjoying a terrific performance. I remember why, before the advent of digital television recorders, I used to stay up until 1:00 in the morning just to see what the writers would come up with next. How I couldn't wait tell all of my friends who missed the episode what the highlights were, and letting everyone know that I was “living in a van down by the river!” as often as possible throughout the day.

It takes just a few minutes for my crippling insecurities to come back to the surface. 'Wait, they just made a Ducktales reference, what is this, 1987? What’s next, a M.A.S.H. sketch? And okay sure, that was funny, but one laugh in 90 minutes is a terrible track record. Get it together, guys.'

I really need to stop watching this fucking show.

I Don't Know What's Worse, Losing To A Giant Rabbit, Or A Four Year Old Child

2011-07-06T11:55:00.007-04:00

I recently participated in another fantastic Improv Everywhere mission - The Carousel Horse Race. My veteran status as noted actor, improviser and athlete (as well as, perhaps, my height) all played a part in snagging the role of the veteran jockey, and Charlie went out all to make sure I looked the part. Though I honestly didn't know they worse such bright, awful colors.

We basically made the carousel in Bryant Park into a high-stakes horse race, complete with betting, announcers and a trumpeteer (spell check is telling me this isn't a word, but I'm sticking to my guns here). At first they were going to do it with all jockeys like me, but they decided it would be better with mostly children and just the one jockey for flavor. I wholeheartedly agree with this decision, and I say this fully cognizant of my bias as the singular jockey.

Here's the original video in case you haven't seen it yet:

A couple of fun facts/highlights, accomanpied with wonderful pictures by Katie Sokoler:

1) I watched a few jockey videos the before the event, and was determined to get the riding style down right. Unfortunately, when you're strapped in and bouncing on a large, non-moving piece of - I want to say mostly wood? - its a lot harder to bounce and whip so vigorously. My thighs were killing me about 2 minutes into each ride (we ran the event 3 times). I have a new found respect for actual jockeys.

2) I definitely scared some children during a few of my more heated racing moments, but I made sure to congratulate all of them on a good race afterward. In the above picture I'm pointing at a young girl who was not nearly as intimidated as I thought she would be. Also, I forgot to take my watch off, apparently.

3) Finally, here's my post-race interview, which features my vaguely ethnic character's bitter reaction to losing to a 4 year old child riding a giant rabbit. If you listen closely I'm being heckled in the background while I'm being interviewed. Everyone was clearly very committed to their roles. I love it:

I want to state here and now for the record that I will be filing a formal complaint with the Horse Racing Commission. Giant rabbits and children do not belong on the track. They belong in the fields and the playgrounds, respectively.

4) Finally, there was a report that one of the kids was juicing, but it turned out to just be actual juice, not steroids.

Well, that should just about do it. Any newcomes to my blog, thanks for reading, and feel free to stick around for some of the other fun stuff I post on here (check the FAQ). And follow me on twitter too: @mattshafeek

-Matt

Role-playing (Part 4)

2011-07-05T22:31:00.001-04:00

If there was one defining trait that has hindered me socially throughout my life, it's my need to be liked. And I think there's no better story to show that than this one. Enjoy.

-Matt

Role-playing

Matt Shafeek The Life Of The Party?

Lou Townsend's Apt. / Astoria, NY / December 2003

I'm at a birthday party for Lou Townsend, one of my favorite improvisers that I feel bold enough to call a friend. I’ve been a part of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade community for about a year now, and I’m finally starting to feel for the first time like I'm with people who "get it." Long-form improv blew me away from the very first show I saw, and I've been taking classes and spending as much time at the theater as possible ever since. Finally, my post-college years have some semblance of direction. I recently decided that if I became a brilliant improviser, everything else - the decision not to go to grad school, the crappy temp jobs, living back at home with my mother - would actually make perfect sense. I would no longer be wasting my life, I'd be sacrificing everything for my art.

The party is a huge event, taking up every floor of the three story apartment building. As I come in, I see the faces of people I'd been obsessively watching on stage for over a year now, in awe of their ability to make a room full of people laugh their asses off without the safety net of a script, pet or hilarious wig. I slink around, smiling at everyone and trying to figure out who might possibly recognize me. I'm a shade darker skinned than nearly everyone there, so I stand out even to those I don't know. I find the snack table and double dip some carrot sticks in ranch dressing before finding some familiar faces and settling in alongside them.

I have a brief conversation with one of my improv-idols Pete Mayer on the merits of Ben Folds' most recent EP. We're both big fans and I see this as an opportunity to bond with someone whose talents I figure I can start to siphon eventually. I start off describing my dislike of most of the songs but Pete is more than happy to engage me in a lengthy dissection of each track. Soon the fact that I know far less about Ben Folds' oeuvre (as well as music in general) than him is made very apparent, and I find myself slowly conceding to the fact that the EP is "actually pretty good, I guess." Right about then, another fellow performer from the theater comes over to me. His name is Sam Sloan.

Sam Sloan is the rare kind of guy you almost always see smiling. He's half Asian, half white (a mix, like me!), but otherwise fairly ordinary looking – medium height, medium build – though on the verge of husky – and he nods his head and says "rockin'" and "all right" as a response to almost anything, making him seem like the most agreeable guy on the planet. His confidence also makes him take up more space in the room than anyone else.

We exchange a few pleasantries and then, inexplicably, he starts tugging at my sweater and slowly begins to pull it over my head.

"Uh – haha, dude, what are you doing?" I ask, sensing some sort of bit. I'm as big a people pleaser as they come, but disrobing isn't in my usual repertoire of smiling, nodding, or laughing just a little more than I probably should have.

"What are you talking about? I'm not doing anything. This is a nice color on you, you know that?" Sam says with a wink and a nod, as if we'd been planning this out for weeks.

A few fellow party-goers start to notice this, and soon we’re the focus of the room. Sam pulls an additional layer off of me, a Homestar Runner t-shirt. As my protesting continues, he shushes me quiet with a noise normally reserved for babies on the verge of tears. People begin to laugh. Not wanting to ruin this great bit for the sake of a few layers – that frankly, I didn't need to wear anyway – I fight my natural instincts and play along, continuing to verbally protest but doing nothing to physically stop it.

Within a very short time I am down to my blue and gray Gap-branded boxer briefs, and at I am now beginning to regret the desperately passive stance I've taken thus far. An attractive but unfamiliar woman enters the room and she stare at me, wondering what she's walked in on. My eyes shift to Sam, who immediately becomes indignant and says to me:

"Shafeek! What the hell are you doing, why are you taking all your clothes off?"

"I...I don't know." I say, half playing along, half completely and utterly lost. "I'm...sorry." I'm now apologizing to others for the embarrassment being brought upon me.

More laughter. This bit has gone over quite well. I wonder if Sam and I can take this show on the road after tonight. We'll go town to town putting on shows where the audience will start to point and laugh before slowly realizing there's a look of forced acceptance on my smiling face, then they'll wonder, as I am right now, whether or not they're comfortable with what's going on in front of them. Or maybe they won't, if our test audience is any indication. Maybe they'll just sit back to see what happens next.

"Shafeek, you're ruining this party for everyone, what's wrong with you?!" Sam scolds me as he simultaneously prevents me from putting my pants back on.

I debate a few courses of action to salvage the situation. Turning the tables and taking Sam’s clothes off would probably show everyone that what's going on is a two-way street. I could even try to totally own it, excuse myself from him and walk over and double-dip some more carrot sticks, nearly naked. You know – exactly how I prefer to be at parties. Finally there's the simple option of telling Sam to knock it the fuck out (I realize now that if my first words earlier had been "Uh, haha, dude, what the fuck are you doing,?" this incident would have probably ended right then and there).

Unfortunately, I don't have the nerve to try any of these ideas, so I'm stuck standing there, wearing next to nothing and apologizing to people for what Sam has done to me. My only hope is that maybe this is some kind of hazing that happens just before you're put on a house team at the theater, and at some point moments from now Lou Townsend is going to come from another room a with new pair of clothes and 7 other hilarious improvisers that I'll soon be performing with every Tuesday night.

All of this thought is interrupted by Sam, who has started tugging at my boxer briefs. Instinct finally overwrites all conscious thought as I firmly push his hand away. Sam smoothly raises his hands, smiles and says "all right." There's an awkward beat and then, sensing an unfinished air in the room, I bow to everyone. Then I grab my clothes and run off to get dressed in the first empty bedroom I can find.

When I come out, I avoid eye contact with everyone in the room and try to shrink into a corner to be forgotten, but I feel like my title of "what's that guy's name? the one that almost got stripped naked at Lou's party?" has been firmly established.

I linger quietly for a while then eventually slink out when no one's looking, which seems like the most graceful way to handle the situation.

As I get outside, I pass a tall improviser with thick glasses that I don't really know. He's smoking a cigarette. He takes a drag and asks me:

"So what the fuck was going on up there? Were you stripping or something?"

"Ah, it was just a bit - kind of an inside joke, actually."

"Well, I didn't see most of it, but it sounded like everyone was loving it."

"Thanks dude. Maybe next time I'll wear some tassles."

"Hah, yeah, that'd be pretty fucking funny."

I leave Astoria hoping that this one conversation spreads throughout the party and when it eventually gets to Sam, he'll be drunk enough to let the whole event get rewritten in his mind. After all, improvisers make up their scenework, why can't they engage in a little revisionist history as well?

It's a small, kind of pathetic hope, but it helps me get to sleep that night.

Role-playing (Part 3)

2011-07-02T14:06:00.001-04:00

Ever work at a job that you didn't like, and have to attend pointless meetings that made you question your own existence? Well, I totally did, and it's the subject of the latest section of my multi-part series "Role-playing." Enjoy!

-Matt

Role-playing

Matt Shafeek The Disaffected Employee

[Redacted] / New York, NY / February 20XX

We're called in for a department-wide meeting on the status of operations. Everyone settles into a large auditorium that seats at least 200 people. I arrive late, and quietly pick a seat in the very back row of the packed room. Nothing could possibly interest me less than being here right now. I'm an administrative assistant, my level of investment in the growth or development of any part of the organization matters about as much to me as the personal life of a tapeworm's host does to the tapeworm. This idea makes me chuckle and I scribble some notes down in my notepad:

A tapeworm being forced to have a conversation with his host about the state of his life. The host's girlfriend breaks up with him, he's depressed, and the tapeworm is forced to console him in order to keep him alive/eating. [Sketch image of tapeworm rolling his tapeworm eyes inside the host's body. Outside the host is sobbing.]

Knowing I have absolutely no role in this meeting, nor any information that will be required of me to remember, I decide to take advantage of my complete lack of purpose and status. I challenge myself to never pay attention to what’s going on during the meeting. I'm going for the high score in my game of Borderline Attention Deficit Disorder (or BADD). I play games like these whenever I can to pass the time quicker, and it usually works like gangbusters. Unfortunately, when you practice the art of unfocused behavior as much I do, the brain starts to default to this setting full time, leading to an unfortunate loss of productivity when I'm actually trying to write or be otherwise productive elsewhere. In a sense I'm actually taking my non-work home with me, which is extra depressing.

The host is sitting on his coach, talking about where he thought he'd be by this point in his life. The tapeworm initially tries not giving a shit and just suggesting delicious foods for him to eat, but the host is sullen and not in the mood to eat anything. He pops a few anti-depressants which the tapeworm HATES and forces the host to regurgitate.

As the meeting rolls along, I figure I might as well scan the room for any new attractive women in the company. Whenever I see one, I look for a wedding ring. If she's got one, I get bummed out over the fact that's she taken. If she doesn't, I get bummed out that she probably still wouldn't date a guy this far down the corporate ladder. I decide to salvage my ego and stop looking halfway through.

So the host loses his job, and is miserable and depressed, and now the tapeworm is forced to come out of its host's body, get a job, work 9-5 in order to give the host enough money to survive [sketch image of a tapeworm in a suit in a tie sitting in a cubicle. He definitely has a motivational poster of some kind].

Running out of ways to entertain myself alone, I decide to take a look at what's going on at the front of the room. Rather than listening to the speakers droll on about a new database program that the company is going to start using (shit, I just lost, now my score is reset to 0), I start paying attention to whenever people in the room start to laugh.

A passing comment about part of a project falling behind and getting blamed on a fake fall guy (who totally isn't to blame) gets a short, concentrated burst of laughter. An easy joke about a presentation being only twice as long as the previous speaker's ridiculously long presentation gets some hearty, prolonged laughter with at least one loud hand clap in the crowd. It's contextual, it's a moment of levity after a lengthy period of dry discussion, I totally get it. Still...yawn.

The tapeworm, once he gets home from work, doesn't have the energy to crawl back into his host's mouth, so he just falls back on the coach at the host's home and orders some pizza himself [sketch image of the tapeworm sitting on the coach with his belt unbuckled and his tie loose. If possible, have him watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond - no wait, he actually has good taste - Veronica Mars].

I realize I'm now judging business executives making six-figure salaries who are presenting plans for a multi-million dollar operation on the basis of how well they make the room laugh. Something I know I can do better than them, and something they clearly couldn't care less about it.

I start judging them even harder.

The final bit of laughter I hear includes a repeated, supposedly ironic joke about the "simplicity" of an enormously complex data chart. It only ever gets a few random chuckles. Don't quit your day job, fellas. Seriously don't, because I could not run this company on my own.

The host sits down next to him, taking up as much space on the couch as possible. When the pizza arrives, the tapeworm pays for it, sits back down, opens the box and the host looks over and asks the tapeworm: "you gonna eat all that?" SCENE.

Soon afterward the meeting adjourns, and I quickly stuff my things in my bag and make my way out of the conference room and back to my desk.

I sit down, turn on my computer and look at my watch.

It's only 10:30am.

There's still six and a half more hours to go in the day.

Role-playing (Part 2)

2011-06-26T14:30:00.001-04:00

Today's entry gets a wee bit more embarrassing for our hero. But heck, I wouldn't be interested in non-fiction if I wasn't willing to share this stuff.

It takes a special mix of ego and ignorance to hand out a pop-quiz based on yourself to a room full of your friends, and I just so happened to have that mix right around my 19th birthday.

I'll leave the rest of the details to my story. Enjoy!

-Matt

Role-playing

Matt Shafeek The Narcissistic Quizmaster

Shafeek Home / Valley Stream, NY / January 1998

It's a few days after my 19^th birthday, and I'm standing on pins and needles. I've been planning this night for weeks. Most of my friends have stopped making a big deal out of their birthdays by now, but to me that's a tragic waste of an opportunity. Why settle for a boring dinner with a few close friends, where you blow out the candles from a cake (that you knew was coming but had to pretend you didn't), and call it a night? Is that really "celebrating" another year of your life? Nuh-uh. I have bigger plans.

My mother actually tried to put together a surprise party for me, which was a really sweet gesture. Unfortunately, several weeks before she tried to organize it, I had already begun reaching out to people, telling them to save the date near my birthday and not to make any other plans. I had a surprise of my own in mind for everyone else. She wisely decided to let me keep the reigns.

I've asked everyone to come over to my family's house in Valley Stream and meet in the basement for a party. It’s winter break just after all of our first semesters at college. I miss hanging out with all my friends from home, who just six months ago I was seeing regularly. Everyone agrees to come but there’s a bit of skepticism just below the surface. I know exactly why this is. For starters, I'm friends with a lot of different people who don't necessarily all get along with each other. I happen to pride myself on being a friend of the people. All people - jocks, nerds, the friendly, and the willing to tolerate me from time to time. You don't make friends in school by selectively picking and choosing the people who treat you right most of the time. No, you just accept everyone, and the ones that are jerks you hope will stop with the short jokes and eventually give you back your copy of F-Zero and the $10 they owe you.

My hope is that after today everyone will see how much fun it is hanging out together, and they'll all get along as big group forever and ever, making me the key figure in this global friendship unification.

The other cause for concern is that my parties and gatherings usually didn't involve any drugs or alcohol. And not just because I'm throwing parties at my parent's house (which was cause for concern #3). Beer and liquor happen to make me sick and marijuana has literally no effect on me (arguably the lamest super power ever), so I’ve become associated with sobriety by default.

None of this matters because what I have planned is going to be so amazing that everyone will soon forget their concerns. As people start to arrive, I let them settle in, I show them to the table full of snacks and sodas I set up, and I put on my Nintendo 64 to amuse the room while we're waiting for the others to arrive. I play an efficient, if somewhat controlling host.

Soon I have a crowded basement full of willing participants, which is more valuable than any present I could have ever received. Spread out over a futon, some folding chairs and a recliner are Bob, Geo, Dave, Ryu, and Justin, close friends of mine that I've known for years. There's Alethea, Debby, and Shoshanit, a trio of lady friends whose closeness came about mostly from me being super cool with having attractive female friends I'd never think to make a move on. There’s Danny, David, Jon, Josh and the three Jasons, who I've grown apart from since they’ve fallen in love with pot and Phish music, but they still love The Simpsons enough for all us to get along just fine.

And of course, there was Stacey, my longstanding crush (officially MegaCrush #3 in a series of longtime, unfulfilled MegaCrushes I'd developed since middle school). I’m always able to befriend each MegaCrush and get them to come to my birthday parties and miscellaneous social events (Stacey was even my awkward, pitying prom date – easily the emptiest victory of my life), so long as it is clear how very plantonic our relationship is.

I get the room's attention with a wave and a shout, and I formally thank everyone for coming. Some of them are still focused on the television screen displaying a multiplayer game of Goldeneye, so I shut it down to a chorus of boos.

"Ok guys, we're gonna do something really fun now. You ready for this?" I ask the room.

"Oh no - are you going to make us play some kind of board game?" Stacey asks. My dear, sweet, beloved Stacey. Your unsupportive tone is still sweet music to my ears.

"Nope, not now. We can do that later, maybe. Right now I have something even more exciting in store!"

I reach into a carefully hidden folder and pull out a single sheet of paper for every lucky partygoer in the room. I hand out a sheet to everyone, along with a pencil or a pen. Typed on each sheet is a quiz I’d spent hours writing just a few days before. The quiz is, of course, entirely about me. My life, my history, my unabashed love for the video game Zillion. It's meant to test how well everyone in the room knows their good friend Matt Shafeek. Questions include:

What are Matt's three favorite television shows?
How many issues of the Matt Shafeek Fan Club Newsletter[1] have their been?
What were Matt's first pets named?

I thought it was a brilliant idea. Soon everyone would be racking their brain trying to be the first to answer all of the questions, and to prove themselves to me. Everyone in the room was now on a game show where the grand prize was the satisfaction of knowing they knew me better than anyone else.

The quiz is met with a number of surprising reactions. Some people are snickering as they read, some are skimming and shrugging, and others are dismissing it entirely. I pace around the room with a nervous pit in my stomach.

"Shafeek, how the fuck are we supposed to know some of this shit?" Danny asks.

"Yeah, seriously. Hey, what's my great aunt's maiden name Shafeek?" Josh adds.

"Guys – come on, do the best you can. You can work together if you want, if that's easier," I concede, before retracting, "no actually, that won't work, forget it. Just answer what you can, and I'll tell you guys the answers when you're done."

I am now sweating profusely. Something has gone horribly wrong. How could I not have imagined that a room full of my friends wouldn't jump at the opportunity to fill out a super fun quiz about me? I must have made the questions too hard! How many of them knew about Link and Zelda, my pet hamsters that I had back when I was 9 years old? I probably told Stacey about them, but was she even listening?

Eventually my friends figure out the quickest way to end the awkwardness and they start answering whatever they can. After what feels like an hour but is probably closer to ten minutes, I call time and pick up a copy of my own quiz to read to everyone.

"Ok guys, does someone know the answer to the first country I ever travelled to?" Silence. I thought that was an easy one. "Ok, it was Barbados, guys, no problem."

"I didn't get that one Shafeek, but I think I know the answer for when you got your first pube, and it was yesterday, right?" Danny says. The room is filled with laughter for the first time all night.

"Haha, ok, that's funny man. But not on the quiz, so moving on..."

"Oh wait, I got another one. How many girls has Matt Shafeek kissed in his life? Is the answer zero, or less than zero?" Danny says, fully on a roll now. Jesus Christ, why did I invite him? And how could you kiss someone less than zero times?

"Alright, alright. I get it. We can stop doing this..." I say, blatantly pouting. This is my comeuppance for my ego-driven party planning.

"No, no Shafeek, come on, we love you. Finish your quiz." Danny says.

I reluctantly continue along. I get ribbed a few more times, but it looks like everyone else is enjoying themselves, so I try to take each one like a champ. We finish up, and for the sake of moving things along, the winner of my quiz is never named. Soon enough, everyone is back to just hanging out, the way they all seem to prefer doing things. The different groups all segregate themselves. I bounce around, eager to ensure the rest of the night goes without incident. At some point I find out Stacey is dating someone new, and I decide at this point that my life literally could not get any worse.

The night comes to a close and I say goodbye to everyone, knowing I probably won't see most of them again until the spring break, or the summer. I pick up all the leftover copies of my quiz, and toss them in the garbage. Just before throwing the last copy away, I scribble in one final question before saving it for posterity:

What event lead to Matt's disaster of a 19th birthday party?

None of them would ever forget the answer to that one.

[1] The Matt Shafeek Fanclub Newsletter was a gag I started in middle school and kept going through college. It was a self-depricating monthly piece of mostly made up news on my life that I'd distribute to my friends in the hopes of getting a few laughs. As popular at it was, suprisingly, throughout its entire 7 year run it scored me a total of zero dates.

Role-playing (Part 1)

2011-06-19T17:24:00.001-04:00

Quick intro and then I'll get right to the piece. The following was my final submission for my non-fiction writing class. It's nine very short stories that I basically formed together into one long piece. There's even a cool little narrative arc if you piece it altogether (something that came about that to a heavy nudging from my professor). I think that's all the set up there is. I'll post a new section every few days or so until it's done. Technically you should read it it order (for the aforementioned arc), but each story should theoretically stand on its own.

Enjoy!

-Matt

Role-playing

Matt Shafeek The Hardcore Gamer

PAX East / Boston, MA / March 2011

I sit down alongside a table with five other gamers. There's two short, bespecktacled twenty-something year olds, a quiet, heavyset couple, and a tall, lanky gentleman who I soon discover has a slight lisp. I say hello, introduce myself and get everyone's name. It's a polite gesture, even though I'll likely forget each one in minutes. It's just as well, as I'm not here to make friends. I'm here for the glory, the challenge, and of course, the treasure. I'm at the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston, a bi-annual, bi-coastal weekend-long gaming convention. The event is made specifically for gamers like me who dream of dorking out with our brethren in peace. Ten feet away is a man dressed up like Chun-Li, the (female) fighter from the Street Fighter series.

This is my third PAX in what I assume to be a lifetime of yearly attendance. Right now I'm playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (4th Edition) in a pre-packaged beginner’s adventure that’s been set up to give people a taste of tabletop role-playing. I used to play the older, presumably less advanced version of AD&D a ton when I was a kid with a lot more free time. For years I was pretty obsessed with it: a world filled with endless adventure, monsters, magic and glory was infinitely more appealing to me than schoolwork, sports, or learning to play the guitar. I could handle an uncomfortable situation with the business end of a bastard sword or a wand of fireballs, instead of sitting through boring history lessons at school, holding my breath as long as possible to keep from falling asleep.

I take a moment to examine my character sheet. I'm playing as Eldeth, a Female Dwarf Fighter (Slayer) / Level 1 / Good. Looking at her stats, I notice her Strength is at an impressive 18, while her Charisma is a lowly 8. I'm quite grateful for both of them, as they tell me exactly who my character is: a socially inept brute. The picture on Eldeth's character sheet shows a short, tatooed, angry looking woman adorned in thick battle armor (that still manages to show off a fair amount of dwarvish cleavage. Va-va-voom!) with a round nose and long, lavishly braided red hair. She is wielding a giant stone axe I couldn't see myself even getting off the ground. A quote under her name reads: "Return Them To The Earth!" which I now plan on saying regularly over the course of our adventure.

I'm joined by a Human Mage (powerful wizards that can cast all manner of spells), two Human Clerics (holy warriors that can heal in battle), a Human Warrior (similar to Eldeth, but lacking her dignified Dwarvish heritage) and an Elvish Rogue (wiley thieves that love to sneak up behind their enemies with a dagger in hand). We each take some time to learn the intracacies of our characters as well as the basic rules of the game for those who haven't played before. The game is played mostly in our collective imaginations, with each player armed with nothing more than a stack of oddly shaped dice (20 sided, 10 sided, 8 sided, 6 sided, and 4 sided, to account for any sort of odds the game might need us to make "checks" against – i.e.: "did your giant stone axe make contact with that fire demon's face?").

Our Dungeon Master - the person who controls the adventure, playing the role of narrator/God - sets the stage, and explains that we're all drinking together in our town’s local tavern getting to know one another. The mayor sees our worthy group and approaches us to explain his desperate situation: apparently a group of vicious kobolds were attacking all the merchants coming through the area, so the town was starving for supplies. Our well-intentioned but naïve cleric (naïveté, mind you, that comes from the player, not a stat) starts to offer our collective help to the mayor, but Eldeth - who I knew was wise beyond her dwarven years - quickly intervenes:

"You ignorant fool! What sort of world do you live in where you offer your services apropos of nothing!? Mr. Mayor, first we demand to know what sort of reward is being offered for our assistance in this matter. Then we shall discuss our willingness to put our lives on the line and return these kobolds to the Earth!"

There's laughter at the table. The Dungeon Master smirks, rolls a die behind her thick paper barrier and tells the group the mayor promises 25 gold per pair of kobold ears - a good price, perhaps better than we could have gotten without Eldeth's remarks.

We're off to a good start.

[PART 2 - Coming Soon!]

Little Gold

2011-05-30T23:15:00.005-04:00

Happy Memorial Day everyone! Do I have a treat for you today...

So - I took a non-fiction writing class recently, and I got to do quite a bit of writing for it, on top of critiquing, and perhaps most important of all, revising, which is a muscle I've rarely flexed on my own in the past. Having seen the the incredible results that come through revision though, I now most certainly see the value of doing it all the time.

I'm going to slowly put some if not all of my pieces from the class here on this blog. All of them will be revised to a satisfactory degree (i.e. until I get sick of reading my own writing), and given the extra special Matt Shafeek Seal of Approval. Some pieces will be longer and will probably be broken up into parts, but today's is a shorter piece I wrote for one of my first exercises in class.

Without further ado, I present to you: "Little Gold." Enjoy!

-Matt

Little Gold

Throughout my childhood I developed a nasty relationship with a lot of really unhealthy food. Candy, soda, chips, sugar, salt, fat. I had little tolerance for anything that qualified as less than flavoriffic. Though I was a mostly obedient child (my mother said my “terrible two’s” were mostly spent drawing and coloring) I put my foot down at mealtime. I only wanted to eat what tasted great. Nothing I ate ever contributed an ounce my near-skeletal frame, and any concerns regarding sugar intake, heart disease and cholesterol were decades away, so I saw no reason not to eat what I wanted, when I wanted, danger be damned. And what I wanted to eat was usually Doritos.

Doritos - named after the term “little gold” in Spanish - took a particularly strong hold on me at a very young age. I brought them with me to my elementary school every single day in my bagged lunch. During lunch I’d take a bite of my sandwich, and whatever kind of sandwich it was - ham and cheese, turkey, or peanut butter and jelly, I would always be sure to cleanse my palate with a chip in between each bite. I also had larger bags of them waiting for me at home for after school and then for after dinner. I started heated debates over the respective values of each of the two flavors: Nacho Cheese - which I thought of as palette-pleasing perfection - versus Cool Ranch - a bland, boring afterthought of a flavor, barely more worthy of your time than a disgusting bag of ordinary, unflavored Lays. I lived for the brief but delightful moment of licking my fingers clean after finishing a bag. If you asked me at this point in my life which one food I would bring with me to survive on a desert island for the rest of my life, there wouldn’t be a moment’s hesitation.

Doritos were my obsession. I even came up with what I thought was a brilliant snacking technique involving my crunchy ambrosia that I thought would revolutionize the way people thought about their food. One night, down to my final Doritos reserves in my bedroom, I decided the eat them a little differently than usual - I took one chip out of the bag at a time, and slowly licked off every last speck of nacho cheese flavoring on it before finally eating the remaining saliva-filled, soggy (but still tasty!) tortilla carcass. I realized that by extending the amount of time invested in each chip, you’d make a $2.50 bag last hours, possibly even days! This was a true moment of ingenuity, and to think I came up with it at the tender age of eight years old! Starving families would be able to survive on a single bag per week, and self-conscious dieters now had a way to indulge with only a fraction of the guilt! All it would take was a little bit of discipline. Discipline, that sadly, I myself couldn’t maintain.

My undying love for America’s favorite tortilla chip was tested on March 18th, 1987, a day that will forever live in nacho cheese-flavored infamy. In the lunchroom at P.S. 138, during the course of eating my lunch as quickly as possible in order to squeeze in as much outside play time as possible, a 1.5” wide triangular piece of nacho flavored goodness* lodged itself inside of my 7 year old throat, restricting the passage of air to my lungs.

I was choking, I was dying, I was being done in by a Dorito! “Fixthisfixthisfixthisfixthis!!!” was the only thought going through my head, shoving aside for perhaps the first time in my life concerns of this afternoon’s television and video game schedule. I stumbled and ran to the nearest adult, coughing and pointing at my throat. It was a 5th grade teacher, Mr. Barshay, who quickly summoned an incredibly resourceful lunch lady who jumped into action without a moment’s hesitation. Treating me like the tiny little ragdoll I was, she turned me around, placed her arms around me, made a fist with her hands, centered at my gut and pushed in and up. In and up. In and up. The culprit was soon dislodged and it came flying out of my mouth along with a whimper in an otherwise silent lunchroom. As my face slowly returned to its normal color, I thanked the lunch lady (who, thanks to a combination of confused shame and youthful ignorance, remains forever nameless and faceless in my mind), barely making eye contact, and quickly returned to my seat, hoping that the quicker I got there, the quicker we could all pretend what just happened never happened.

The next day over the loudspeaker our principal Mr. Post announced to the entire school the story of how a seemingly harmless tortilla chip nearly killed a second grader (who naturally, had to be named), but I was thankfully saved by a quick acting employee in the lunchroom. I buried my head under my arms to a chorus of laughter from my classmates, who certainly didn’t need the reminder. I hadn’t been this embarrassed since kindergarten, when I quickly discovered that other boys didn’t just drop their pants in front of the urinal to pee.

That morning, I was made fully aware of four brand new emotions: powerlessness, humiliation, irrational fears of eating and swallowing. Most of was the conflicting emotion of being betrayed by something I love. For two weeks I stayed away from that salty siren call, albeit mostly at my mother’s behest. Inevitably though, I was lured back. Whether it was sheer ignorance, addiction or an extreme form of brand loyalty (Bravos simply weren’t cutting it), I soon returned to my old ways, scarfing down Doritos less than a month after nearly being killed by them.

*goodness ingredients & information: ground corn, vegetable oil and salt, coated in cheese powder, buttermilk powder, wheat flour, whey protein concentrate, tomato powder, flavor enhancers, onion powder, whey powder, garlic powder, dextrose, sugar, mineral salt, food acids, flavor (natural), spices, and colors (#129, #150, and #110), deep fried, mass produced and marketed at the time by Jay Leno in a national advertising campaign (“Crunch all you want, we’ll make more,” I still remember him saying)

An Open Letter To Author and Game Designer Jane McGonigal

2011-05-20T00:20:00.003-04:00

Dear Dr. McGonigal,

Hi there! My name is Matt Shafeek. I'm a writer, performer and gamer from New York City. I started this blog 3 years ago when I decided to give up my lifelong habit of playing video games for one full year as a personal challenge (there was a contract signing and everything). It was quite an experience - I wrote more, I started cooking regularly, and I ran the NYC Half Marathon, amongst other things (you can read more about it in my FAQ if you're interested). It was a great year. But after it was over, there was no doubt in my mind that I still wanted to play video games. I loved them too much to give them up forever. Ever since that time I've thought a lot about what continues to draw me to games even though logically I clearly could be doing a lot more "productive" things with my time, like learning how to sew, or open up a savings account.

This is you! (In case you've forgotten, in which case don't panic the next time you look in the mirror!)

I first heard your name when a friend forwarded me your interview on the Colbert Report. I saw the interview, and was intrigued. But I was convinced buying your book would be somehow masturbatory - not because you're super hot (you are) and I really can't control myself (I can't), but because then I'd just have a book I could show off to all my friends that justified my addictive habits.

Then I missed your keynote speech while I was at PAX East this year, because, well, you weren't Wil Wheaton. But then I finally took a look at your book at the merch stand while I was there, and I decided it would be a more valuable purchase than another t-shirt with the Fruit Fucker on it.

Seriously, I can't get enough of this guy.

Reality is Broken was, for me, the equivalent of Einstein uncovering the theory of relativity, only way more personal. I shouldn't say that. For all I know, Einstein's discovery was deeply personal, and it totally made his year, saved his marriage, and maybe sex was better for him afterward. Who knows. The point is - you finally made all the pieces in my head make sense. You put into words what I've been trying to say for years using my very limited vocabulary.

It wasn't anything like the apologist manifesto I assumed it was going to be. You thoroughly explained why we all love games, and what draws us to them. Why we experience such thrilling highs and get them by seeking out 'unnecessary challenges' and 'hard fun' was incredibly insightful. "Fiero" [for any non-Jane McGonigal readers, it's the euphoria we feel after triumphing over adversity, something we are capable of doing over and over again in our games] is honestly a word I've been searching for my whole life.

Then you go on to posit what we as a society can do with that love to better improve our lives in the real world (right after we max out all our levels, open every last treasure chest, and beat the final boss in all our games, of course). And it's not just some empty theory - you back it up with tons of projects, many of which you started yourself, that show gamers in action, working towards a common goal of making a difference in the real-world. Really amazing stuff.

This is me! (Full disclosure: I'm not actually six feet tall. I am however, brilliant with photoshop)

Let me stop summarizing your own book to you and get to the point of this letter: I've been inspired by your writing, and your work and I would very much love to work for you and/or your organization in some capacity. That's right - you just fell for the classic "flattering blog post into resume drop trap." Don't worry - it happens to the best of us. But don't stop reading now, because there's definitely something of vital, earth-shattering importance to you coming up really soon.

While my game-creating skills are still in their infancy (technically I've made zero so far, but it is on my bucket list), I do have many other talents. I've written and performed in a one-man video game-themed show. I've been an improviser for the past 9 years or so. I also perform with a group called Improv Everywhere who did something at the New York Public Library, where your upcoming game is being held. I've also done quite a bit of writing on this blog. On the business-y side of things, I've managed offices, assisted an executive or two, and I even ran my own small business for a while. Finally, I belong to not one, but two different board game groups, who will totally attest to how much fun/beer I'm known to bring to the table.

What is there not to both love and hire here?

Jane McGonigal, the world needs people like you. And the world also needs people like me who are able to assist people like you in realizing their vision. After all, what are you even doing reading this right now? You have so many more important things you should be doing instead! If I was working for you, I would totally have screened this nonsense and flagged it as: "distracting - disregard."

So, in closing:

1) Thank you for writing such a fantastic book.
2) I'm Matt Shafeek, I think I'm pretty great, and hopefully by now you do too.
3) If there is ever an opening within your organization, I would love to be considered for it.
(I'm leaving this section bit-free to ensure there is no confusion about my very real intentions)

Have a terrific, stupendous, gamified day.

Sincerely,
Matt Shafeek (matt dot shafeek at gmail dot com)
McGonigite 4 Life

PS: If you haven't played Portal 2 yet, you totally have to.

PPS: Super bummed I discovered Find The Future too late to participate in its inaugural launch. But I hope to participate in whatever the second iteration looks like.

PPPS: You know you have both a Ben Folds and a Barenaked Ladies song named after you? Both songs are great, you should totally check them out them if you haven't heard them before.

Bill & Ted's Totally Awkward Reunion

2011-05-03T22:01:00.004-04:00

Twenty-two years ago, two budding thespians on the road to stardom made a movie together. Their names were Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. The movie was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, which was about two time travelling teenagers who pass their high school's history class by literally bringing historical figures back to the present to help give them the necessary edge to their otherwise complete lack of knowledge of world history. This is of course thanks to Rufus (played by the late, great George Carlin), who has traveled from the future in order to ensure that these two stay together in order to become Rock Gods that lead the world to a Utopian society, or something.

That's what I remember at least. I saw this movie at the age of 10, loved it, and plan on never seeing it again, lest my rose-tinted glasses shatter right on my cynical 32 year-old face. (Fun fact: Bill and Ted were actually based on two characters that the writers had created in improv scenes, so keep an eye out for my upcoming screenplay: Blue Collar Porn Addict and Repeated Alien-Sighting Mayor's Terrific Times Together)

After a successful box office debut, Mr. Reeves and Mr. Winter both reprised their roles as Ted. "Theodore" Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esq., respectively, in a not-quite-as-successful sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, as well as a brief animated series, my memories of which are limited to snippets of the theme song, which featured three of their signature catchphrases: "Excellent!" "Bogus!" and "Most Triumphant!"

Now, exactly 20 years since either actor has portrayed their prolific roles in these timeless works of cinema and animated masterpieces, there are talks of a third film being written to close out the inevitable trilogy. Given the incredible disparate paths Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter's careers have taken since 1991, I'd give almost anything to be a fly on the wall the first time they're in a room together once this film begins shooting.

Of course, there's no need to even wonder, because I'm going to play this thing out right now:

"Hey, man, could you get me a Fresca with my turkey club?"

"Keanu! Bro, it's me! Alex Winter!"

"Oh shit, hey! I uh, I'm so sorry man..."

"No problem man! Heh, you know, I didn't even recognize you at first. We're both SO OLD, amiright?"

"Well, there is a blog out there that's all about how I look like I haven't aged a day in 20 years, but sure, I'll roll with that. Anyways, how are you man? What have you been up to?"

"Well, I was on Bones a couple of years ago - that was fun. I played a criminal who liked to eat his victims, so all he left behind were...you guessed it! Bones!! And you know, a lot of muscle too, 'cause human muscle is not really edible. Anyways, right now I got this gig as the Mole King on Saul of the Mole Men. Have you seen Saul of the Mole Men?"

"Can't say that I have..."

"Yeah, well neither have I, actually. The Mole King has some funny lines though, and I'd like to think I did them justice."

"Great man, great. I'm...very happy for you."

"Hey, don't patronize me. I know it's nothing compared to being you know, a big movie star or whatever..."

"I didn't mean to..."

"Didn't mean to WHAT? Make the inevitable comparison to our respective careers? Huh, my time travelling compadre?? Jesus, look at you. You really let Rufus down, you know that?"

"Rufus? You mean, the character from our movies?"

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. You were never the smart one. And of course you still prefer this heinous reality."

"This...reality?"

"Goddamn it, Kea-nu, you played NEO for Christs sake! Think about it for a minute - why did Rufus tell us to never break up??"

"Uh, fuck, I don't really remember. Our band's music would save the world, or something?"

"Dear God you're so far gone it's PATHETIC. Wyld Stallyns' music was going to bring about a UTOPIA, Ted. As in, a perfect society!"

"Did you just call me Ted?"

"Yeah, I did Ted, or would you prefer I call you Theodore? Man, this is one totally bogus, sorry, SHITTY trip you're taking me on right now. Let's hurry up and get to the set so we can set things right."

"What are you talking about, set what things right?"

"You still don't see it, do you man? We created an alternate timeline, Ted! We took the phone booth one too many times and we wound up in this most un-triumphant world."

"Wh-what?!?"

"I know it sounds crazy. Even Rufus was brainwashed too. He was out there performing...stand up comedy. He wouldn't listen to me...so I had to put him out of his misery."

"You...killed George Carlin?!?"

"It's ok man! He was just a time-imposter! Once we hop back into the time booth, we can fix everything. We'll stop ourselves from ever making Bogus Journey, I'll make better career choices, and everything will be ok. Come on now, let's go!"

"You're insane. I'm not going anywhere."

"I think this gun with an intimidating white box around it begs to differ."

"Whoa. Ok, Ale-uh, Bill..."

"Say my full name. SAY IT!"

"Ok, ok - Bill S. Preston, Esquire. Happy? You win. I'll go with you.

Hey, I have an idea - why don't we air guitar one more time real quick, for old times' sake?"

"Really? You mean it? I'd love to. What should we air guitar to?"

"To righting wrongs, my most excellent friend."

"Ok! To righting wr-"

"My gun! You...you tricked me. You didn't want to air guitar at all!"

"I couldn't let you do it, Bill."

"Wait, you're still calling me Bill. Does that mean..."

"I still don't really know what to believe. I mean, shit, I wake up most days unsure if I'm trapped in the Matrix, or if at any minute I'm going to be attacked by demons from hell. Also I'm constantly check to see if my mailbox is a portal to the future. Maybe none of it is true, maybe all of it is. I can really never be sure."

"But..."

"But don't you see? Either way, this reality turned out amazing for me. You gotta respect that, bro. I'm a gazillionaire, I'm banging tons of chicks, and fuck, people follow me around taking pictures of me just eating sandwiches, wondering if I'm sad. This world is obsessed with me!"

"I guess you're right. Why would you want to go back to just being a time-travelling teenager when you already have it all? I'd probably do the same thing in your position."

"So now you understand why I have do this..." [CLICK]

"Yes, I suppose I do..."

"Party on, Bill."

"Party on Te-wait, wasn't it Wayne and Garth that said th-"
[BANG!] "Urgh...ughhhh."

"Rest in peace, old friend. And now, to fly away! Hmpppp! Damn. That still doesn't work."

[THE END]

I let my imagine run a little wild there. Wheeeeeeeee!

Interesting fact - although Keanu Reeves has experienced much more commercial/financial success, Alex Winter is now married with children, and much to my surprise (since I knew everything else I reference about him in this post in advance) Keanu Reeves has actually never been married.

Maybe there is something to whole "Sad Keanu," thing huh?

"How am I still not as happy as HIM!!!"

-Matt

A Couple Of Drops For The Bucket List

2011-04-11T22:47:00.002-04:00

I've started to feel a little older recently. More mature, more like an adult. And it's not just this random stiffness in my neck that's the cause of it (seriously, what the hell did I do to myself?). I think what I'm mostly feeling is the sense of accomplishment that comes with setting my mind to larger projects, and learning to enjoy the process of getting better at something over time.

To that end, I recently had a few thoughts about some new things I'd like to learn to do (or simply 'do') at some point in my life. Some sooner rather than later, others I'm fine doing while I'm struggling with incontinence in a nursing home in 50 years.

If you know me or have read this blog regularly for a while, you'll probably be surprised to discover I don't have an actual bucket list (meanwhile, my list of video games "to play" grows ever longer), but I've definitely got things in mind. While I've mostly given up on the idea of learning another language (I'm learning more and more every day how much I haven't actually mastered this language yet), and a musical instrument seems sadly unlikely (the stage is my instrument!). But I do have some other things on there that are mostly out of my element that plan on devoting some time to doing at some point.

What are they, you ask? Well, ok, calm down, I was just going to tell you:

Matt Shafeek's Bucket List Additions
(To A Thus-Far-Unwritten Bucket List)

#1: Learn To Dance

So, I don't know if you guys saw this video I posted after my PAX trip a few posts back...

...but I really can't dance. At all, like, not even that well in front of a video game begging me to do simple gestures that are easy enough for an infant to follow.

Let me tell you a story - every now and again my improv team Phooka will come out on stage to the theme from the Mortal Kombat movie. Maybe you've heard it? If you've heard a techno song, you've heard it. Anyways, every now and again, when the mood strikes me (and my teammates don't seem like they hate me at the moment), I'll run around the stage, bouncing around like a kid on crack, flailing my arms and legs around wildy, punching and kicking the air right inside my friends' comfort zones. I'll "throw" a spear out like my favorite character Scorpion would, and pull someone towards me, finishing my opponent/weary-eyed Phooka member with a vicious uppercut as I turn to the audience and finally take our teams suggestion.

I feel more comfortable engaging in this wholly embarrassing display of free movement than I do anywhere on the dance floor. You see, most of the dancing I did through the age of 22 or so was a bit. If I was on the dance floor dancing in any way, it was to make fun at how bad of a dancer I was (or, conversely, how silly I thought the idea of anyone dancing to the music was, which was admittedly a little hard to distinguish from the other bit). I probably got a few laughs doing it, but you know, in hindsight, I wished I just earnestly sucked for a few of those years so I'd have some modicum of skill now. Story of my life!

Anyways, I don't really have a particular dance in mind, but since I already don't speak Spanish, I'd love to not completely abandon any pretenses of my Puerto Rican heritage, and at least learn the basics of how to move my hips and my legs in unison in a non-sarcastic or embarrassing manner.

#2: Build Something Cool From Scratch

I can't wait to put my dirty laundry in here.

I recently discovered that I do this thing whenever someone's doing anything labor-intensive. I slowly begin to gesture like I'm going to help them, hoping that by the time I seem committed to help, they'll A) have already finished the job B) tell me "they got it," or C) get my help with less than 10% of the work left to be done, but still give me the obligatory thanks for it.

Turns out, this was a classic good news/bad news scenario. It did lead to a lifetime of "whew, lucked out!" moments where I didn't have to lift a finger, but conversely, I never learned to do anything with my hands that didn't involve a controller or a keyboard. I'm sure I've told this story on here before, but I got to college lacking a fair amount of basic knowledge, and during my junior year of college I spent easily five to ten minutes trying to figure out how a can opener worked.

So - I'd love to have at least one project in my life that doesn't come out of an Ikea box that I accomplish entirely on my own. I was inspired by this Zelda-themed treasure chest that true to my nature, would be be of little practice use, but would be absolutely adorable to have around. Besides, it's already motivated me more than any shelf, desk, or soap box derby racer ever has.

This is the kind of project I literally can't ever picture myself doing. Which is exactly why I have to do it, right? But I'm sure it'd be immensely satisfying once it was done. More satisfying, I dare say, than scoring 50 achievement points for popping 5 headshots in a row with my sniper rifle in Halo. Though not nearly as addictive, I'm sure.

Anyways, expects hundreds of facebook and twitter updates whenever I do get around to doing this.

#3: Create An Original Game

"You guys: this game is the shit. For reals." - a 9 word review by Matt Shafeek

This one sounds obvious, right? I mean, I love games so much, so clearly this must have always been my dream. Actually, that's totally wrong, and now I bet you're wondering if you ever even knew me at all, huh?

I've never thought about specifically making a brand new game up from scratch, which is what I'm saying here. The story, the rules, the mechanics, the art style, etc. And after several embarrassing displays in computer science classes and one failed C++ certification later has been enough to tell me I'm not going to be programming an actual video game anytime soon. Instead I turn to board games - which, holy shit, if you haven't played one in a while, have come a llooooonnnggg way since I was a kid.

I've mentioned some somewhat traditional games in the past, but some of the stuff I've played in the past year or so kind of blow my mind. A B-movie zombies versus the townsfolk game, where some players play as the heroes, and some get to play as the zombies? A totally-true to the series "are my fellow players Cylons or Humans" Battlestar Gallactica game? A game about building a FARM?!? Ok, I shouldn't have closed with that one. But it's really fun, trust me.

There's a whole new world of amazing games out there, and honestly, there really isn't any excuse to at least come up with a bare-bones template for something if I really put my mind to it. So that's what I'm going to do. I've played hundreds of different games in my life. Surely I must have some idea what makes for a fun game, right? Yeah, definitely! This one's gonna be easy! Should I have even put this on my bucket list? I'll just make it up right now...

Ok I've got it: A game about coming up with ideas for a game! Someone else go first!

Uh-oh.

Well, that's all for now. Also I totally want to learn to do some video-editing, but I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about it, so I'll leave it at that. Now when to get started on these? Well, I spent all this time writing about them tonight, so clearly not now. And tomorrow's too soon. Plus I've got a thing. Soon, though. Totally soon.

-Matt

Attempts

2011-04-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

"Hey, so, why don't we grab a drink tomorrow night?"

The words had come perilously close to leaving Eric Dunn’s mouth. The lovesick near-suitor didn't quite have the courage to ask out Deidre Hines from apartment 6C, but he was nothing if not well-intentioned.

The conversation had started off pretty well this time. He had segued smoothly from a brief conversation about their respective days, a conversation they'd had in the hallway outside their apartments many times before. Dee (as she liked to be called) was flipping through her mail while they talked, and Eric could sense the conversation was coming to a close, but an offhand line about some upcoming St. Patrick's Day festivities seemed like the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, instead of saying what he thought he wanted to say, his brain opted for a much safer choice:

“Yeah, heh, it’s too bad, really. I’m actually allergic to green beer. Ugh, if only they’d dye it orange, you know, then I'd be all set!”

Deidre gave Eric an adorable little smirk, added a “you’re funny,” then wished Eric good night as she turned her back and closed the door to her apartment.

Though he had failed, Eric was still mostly happy with how things went. He did make her laugh! Or, at least, he got her to tell him he was funny, which was probably just as good. In hindsight, he figured he probably should have said “purple” beer instead of orange, that would have been funnier. In any event, he'd definitely get it right next time.

Eric was all about practice. Or rehearsals. Or 'attempts', as he’d ultimately label each one. This past encounter was, in fact, Eric’s 27th attempt to ask Dee out. Not every attempt was made in front of her. Most of them weren’t, but regardless of the scenario, she always remained in the dark.

The prior failed attempt, #26, came just two nights earlier, when he noticed her at their local ABC store. After mentally preparing himself for forty five seconds in the chips aisle, he briefly focused all his intentions on a bag of Bugles and delivered what would hopefully still sound like an improvised speech about her 'needing to stop stalking him all the time,' and how 'if she really wanted to hang out, they should just grab a drink sometime.' It was always so easy to script what ought to be said. He approached her wearing a mask of confidence and called her name out from a few feet away so as not to startle her, something he noticed she was particularly susceptible to.

When she turned around to greet him, he noticed her hands doing their best to obscure the box of tampons she had just picked up. Shit. Suddenly his intentions seemed inappropriate. They were in public, she clearly hasn't expected to see anyone - though, even without makeup and wearing an oversized New Jersey Devils sweatshirt, he thought she looked as cute as ever. Calling a last minute audible, he told her he had to run but he was sure he'd see her soon back at their building. He plunged his sweaty hands into his sweatshirt pockets and thanked God he didn’t have to go through with it. He was also thankful that he wasn't there long enough to comment on the fact that his mother used the same brand.

Attempts #18, and #19 were made in the presence of close friend and confidante Emil, who at the time was being less than helpful to Eric:

"Ok, I'll be this girl. Ask me like you wanna ask her." Emil said, turning his back and immediately getting into character.

"No, come on. This is stupid." Eric protested. He was generally up for something like this, but right then he wanted serious advice.

"Hmm? Oh, hi Eric!" Emil said, in a voice 4 octaves higher than usual, "what's stupid?"

Eric grumbled, "Fine. Hi Dee. I was gonna go grab something from that new fish taco place on Center Street, do you wanna come?"

Emil demurely balled his fists and put them together, as he liked to imagine all woman doing when being asked such an emotionally-charged question, "oh - uh, I dunno, is this like, a date? Teehee!"

Eric then leaned back and crossed his arms, "Ugh, she's not gonna say that...is she?"

Emil slapped Eric across the face, shouting: "Who is she?!? Is that another woman!??!?! The date's off!!"

Eric assumed Emil would be taking all of this more seriously if Emil had any clue whatsoever what it was like to be single. Emil was currently married to his high school sweetheart, and hadn't had to deal with any uncertainty with women, or his woman at least, ever. Or so Eric assumed.

"Do yourself a favor," Emil finally said, after a hearty laugh and a large gulp of his beer, "and just get it over with already. No one girl is worth this much preparation."

"What about your wife?" Eric quickly responded.

"You know man, I asked Stacey out just before going outside to smoke pot by the bleachers with the guys. She means the world to me now, but if she had said 'no' back then? I dunno, I would have found the next pretty girl and seen what she had to say. You can't let any one girl dominate your mind like this so soon. There'll be plenty of time for that later."

Eric nodded his head in agreement, while his mind remained stubbornly on course.

Emil then decided to close out his performance. Pressing his hands against his chest, he whimpered: "Eric, baby, I have some bad news. I lost my boobs in a boating accident. Do you still like meeeeeeeee??"

His 5th, 9th, 11th, 16th and 25th time asking her out were done mentally at various times during his commute to and from his job. She appeared in his daydreams frequently, often bringing him back down to earth (relatively speaking) after a brief fantasy about flying through the streets as 'Nic Drune,' a superhero with a name based on an anagram from when he was 11, when he first learned about anagrams ('Nice Nurd' was also discovered, and quickly rejected). Drune had natural super speed, strength and the ability to, if needed, teleport, which Eric decided would always come at a cost - a full day of his life, to make the decision to use this power have a price.

Eric would often imagine Dee witnessing the impossibly handsome Nic performing a heroic feat, or perhaps herself being saved from a tragic fate, and afterward being so impressed that she couldn't help but run up to him to give him a kiss right on the mouth (there was also an X-rated version of this fantasy that you will be spared the details of). It was then that the mighty hero would scoop her up into his arms and tell her not to make any plans for Saturday night, double checking that she still liked Indian food, which was information gathered by his alter-ego.

Nic Drune never had to worry about being rejected, because the idea that he even could be rejected was ridiculous.

The very first time Eric asked Deidre out (but really didn't) was ostensibly no different than the other times, save perhaps for the free space in his mind. During their second meeting in January, he held the door open for nearly 20 seconds while she slowly made her way up the path into their building. She was on the phone at the time, but her smile and "thanks," - said in a quick breath between lines about repaying a loan and a friend who "should never have trusted Clarissa in the first place" - made it entirely worthwhile.

Moments later, in the elevator up to the 6th floor, Eric found himself standing directly across from what currently qualified as the love of his life. Dee briefly made eye contact with him as she listened to her friend expressing a very long-winded opinion. At that moment, she rolled her eyes at her phone, which Eric found incredibly endearing. Her friend was totally boring! He decided to agree with this sentiment immediately, flapping his fingers near his face while mouthing "blah blah blah" over and over. Deidre giggled, and Eric's heart soared.

Right then, because he could, because he feared he might never get to say it for real to her or to any other women this beautiful, and because in his head this seemed like the most logical thing to do at the moment, he changed the words he was mouthing to a much more specific:

"I..think..you're..gorgeous..will..you..go..out..with..me?"

He nearly closed this silent statement with "elephant shoes," but he quickly realized that was way too risky, and obvious. Besides, even he knew it was too early for elephant shoes.

Dee responded by putting two fingers to her head and pulling an imaginary trigger.

Eric blinked twice.

Realizing that responding with anything less than a smile would be crazy, he then upped the ante and rounded out the bit by reacting horrified to the imaginary brain matter all over his body. As he picked off an unlikely piece of medulla oblongata from his shirt, they reached their floor and Eric let Deidre get a few steps ahead so he could hear just a little more of her conversation without coming off as a stalker. He was rewarded with the discovery that she was never eating Korean barbecue ever again.

Eric slowly made his way into his apartment. He turned on the lights, dropped off his bag, and went into the bathroom, where he spent the next five minutes slowly replaying and perfecting his favorite parts of the elevator exchange in front of the mirror.

He'd definitely get it right next time.

A Few Of My (New) Favorite Things

2011-03-14T19:44:00.001-04:00

What does Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan, Korean Fast Food franchise Kyochon, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone's The Book of Mormon all have in common? If you guessed that they all have the same amount of syllables, A) you'd technically be wrong, because the "the" in The Sirens of Titan give it six instead of the five the others have and B) syllables, seriously? You think I'd bother writing about that? What's wrong with you? On the other hand...hold that thought for a minute.

The correct answer is that they're all awesome, and discovered by me just this past week! Some are old (Sirens, which is over 50 years old, yet so timeless it's no wonder Vonnegut is still so popular today, and I know realize some of my favorite movies/shows over the years [Memento, Lost] have been influenced by his work), some are new (Mormon, while currently still in previews, is an amazing production that outshines anything I've personally ever seen on Broadway) and some are just savory, succulent delicious morsels of ambrosia hand crafted by the Gods to bring about an orgasmic dance of tasting pleasure on top of our unworthy mortal tongues (Kyochon, makers of delightful chicken wings).

Road cone on the dome means its time to segue to PAX talk.

Yes, it was a fantastic week of discovery for me that began with above mentioned items and ended with perhaps my favorite discovery of the past few years, PAX, or the Penny Arcade Expo. And wouldn't you know it - my week of great new discoveries continued throughout the time I was there.

This shirt wins biggest smile-inducing product of the show from me.

Actually, no. This game about driving around a racetrack attacking each other and killing pedestrians wins.

What's amazing about PAX for me is that every time I've gone I've had really different experiences and yet, they've all been incredibly fun. The first year I spent attending tons of panels on the game industry, seeing live podcasts being recorded by game critics I follow back at home, attending the concerts, and trying to play some of the latest upcoming games, and meeting tons of people on the many lines that form for these events. The second year I wound up focusing on playing more video games - discovering lesser known indie titles titles, and spending a large amount of time just renting game systems or busting out my DS and playing it with friends during a good part of the day. This year without even planning it, I wound up mostly playing board games* with friends, which is quickly becoming my new favorite form of gaming. Like any good game, PAX can accommodate any and all kinds of player, even totally hip, trend-setting, ever-evolving ones like myself.

I got complemented on my "reaction work" here. I do think I convey: "Jesus! I'm being grabbed by a giant monster - why are you just standing there HELP ME!!" pretty well.

In the 'notes' section on the back, I made it a point to write: "total slut!"

I jumped into my first Dungeons and Dragons game in about 15 years while I was there, which was a total blast. I got to play an uncharismatic, dense but powerful female dwarf named Eldeth. My favorite moment of role-playing came right as the mission came to a close, when, after slaying a vicious ice dragon in a long, arduous battle, I asked, as Eldeth (if you've never played D&D before, half the fun is really playing your character): "Would eating this dragon's heart give me any kind power?" Before the DM had a chance to answer I quickly followed up, saying: "It doesn't matter. I eat it anyway."

That day we gained friendship, experience, and 56 golds coins a piece.

Did someone say cosplay? No, no one did? Well, I'm still sticking this here.

What stayed consistent during this trip is that every time I go to PAX I make new friends who are all friendly, quirky, and super excited to be amongst peers. They're all also happy to spend and entire 72+ hour weekend thinking about, talking about, and course, playing games. And that's ultimately what will keep me going back again and again.

Tonight I go see my good friend Justin Moran's production of The Spidey Project - a Spider-Man musical written, scored, and produced in less than 30 days, and made on a budget of $0, opening right before what was once the theoretical opening night of the $63 million dollar budgeted actual Spider-Man Musical. I have a feeling this show will round out my week (well, 8 days, technically) of memorable new discoveries very nicely.

Sirens of Titan and Kyochon Chicken,
Phantom Detective* and The Book of Mormon,
Penny Arcade and all the fun it brings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

This entire blog post, by the way, was just an excuse to justify writing out that not-quite-perfectly-rhyming diddy.

-Matt

PS: I played Dance Central for the first time at PAX and foolishly asked someone to record me playing. I almost didn't share this because I think I'm a terrible dancer (and a shame to my Latin heritage), playing a video game or not, but on the other hand, just last week I shared a video of me re-enacting the introduction to Space Ace, so what the hell:

*Look for a more in-depth post soon on all the new board games I discovered.
*This is a super fun DS game I bought for my trip to PAX. Haven't beaten it yet, but so far it's really great.

Regularly Hit By The Infanto Ray

2011-03-05T12:30:00.001-05:00

I've forgotten the names of almost every teacher I had in 16 years of school.

I can't recall most of the material taught to me in math and science post-4th grade or so.

There was a time when I spoke a very basic form of Spanish. This is no longer the case.

I know for a fact that I read the entirety of Johnny Tremain, The Scarlet Letter, and Hamlet. And yet, all I can recall is the shit I knew before I even read them (messed up hand, adultery, and lots of murdering)

And yet, without a moment's hesitation, I'm able to recall this at will:

Did I consciously choose to remember that over everything else? Or does my brain decide on its own every year while doing its annual spring cleaning, that this is just too precious to be thrown away?

-Matt

The actual introduction to the 1984 laser disc arcade game Space Ace, in case you're interested in knowing what the hell I was just spouting:

At Least The Adjustment Bureau Noticed You

2011-02-26T14:26:00.007-05:00

I recently saw the trailer for the new Matt Damon vehicle The Adjustment Bureau, and something about it affected me very deeply, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. Take a look if you haven't seen it yet:

When you break it down, the plot seems kind of ridiculous (on a second viewing I'm already wondering why the Bureau doesn't just make the adjustments they're so keen to make, rather than confronting Damon's character in the first place - wouldn't making him aware only incite him to rebel?), but the idea that there's a power or a force out there that's trying to control his/my life in some way and take away my choices generates a very visceral yet conflicting response from within.

As a way of helping clear up the message, just the other day the universe provided me with a great explanation of what was going on in the form of an excellent Radiolab podcast short called The Universe Knows My Name. In it, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich discuss fate and destiny, and use Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner to explore these ideas. Funny enough, this classic cartoon actually taps into some of the same concepts as the aforementioned movie.

Part of the popularity of the cartoon in the 1940's when it debuted (and to this day), was due specifically to its hapless protagonist. "He's an extraordinarily human animal," says Michael Barrier, and its about the predicaments he finds himself in more than anything.

They use the example of the trap Wile E. sets using a painting of a road set over a chasm. The plan being the Road Runner will run through the painting and fall to its death. Instead, he actually winds up going safely into the painting, and when the baffled coyote tries to follow, he winds up going through the painting and falling into the chasm. As it turns out, the Road Runner isn't Wile E.'s nemesis, it's the universe itself, which bends the laws of physics, gravity and apparently, picture entering in order to foil the hapless creature.

Barrier, along with the produces of the show explain: "I think all of us this latch onto this - 'how can this happen, the universe is out to get me!' Even though [it's] screwing you, at least it's noticing you. You know, it is kind of flattering in a way...on the one hand, it confirms our paranoia, on the other it kind of plays to our vanity."

It's a really brilliant concept to me. I've talked about being a narcissist in the past, and how I used to think of my life as a Truman Show before the movie even came out, and how video games tap into my innermost desire to be the center of the universe. So - an Adjustment Bureau would totally do that, right? You would clearly have to be important if you had creepy men in suits stalking you around, keeping tabs on you 24/7 and leering over you, post-coitus. I think about this, and my reaction to this is two-fold. Part of me is like: "hey, fuck you creepos!" and the other part is like: "well, yeah, obviously you're gonna wanna see this."

When I break it down, I'm not sure what's worse to me: the idea of the Adjustment Bureau showing up one day, tying me up and telling me to "get back on track," and to dump Emily Blunt even though she's smoking hot and clearly super into me, or hearing about the Adjustment Bureau, and slowly realizing I'm not in their book at all.

-Matt

PS: Of course I ultimately want the best of both worlds. I still play the lottery every now and again, and despite my longstanding Atheism, a part of me apparently still thinks some force out there recognizes how special/awesome I am, and deserving of all that sweet sweet cash, which would be the only possibly justification for putting money into some of the worst possible odds in the history of betting.

I guess the ultimate message here is:
"Universe, if you wanna help me get what I want, fine. But don't you DARE get in the way of me getting rich/laid!"

Valentine's Day Musings - How High To Let Your Freak Flag Fly

2011-02-12T14:55:00.005-05:00

The above comic (from one of my favorites sites on all the internets) squeezes an impressive amount of truth into just two panels. We spend a lot of our time growing up feeling like an outsider, wanting to connect and get along with others more than anything else. But somewhere along the way, by making small changes in order to make others like us more, or simply conforming to whatever we think of as "normal" in order to fit it, we actually become something really bland. And on the flip side, holding onto whatever you think makes you special can subject you to a lifetime of judgment and ridicule.

The concept of 'letting your freak flag fly,' that is - how much you wear your 'weirdness' - a very subjective term, that of course, is entirely relative - on your sleeve has been on my mind lately. It applies especially to the dating world, where you meet people who you'd like to impress with your uniqueness but at the same time be the ideal version of whatever the other person is looking for in a mate.

This past week on Community (a show I have an undying love for, and have discussed several times), Abed Nadir, the show's incredibly smart, confident and observing but socially awkward and unaware character attempts to simultaneously woo a gorgeous librarian with his best friend Troy Barnes (literally simultaneously, as in, they approach at the same time and inform the woman of their mutual desire - to which she responds: "Let's get one thing clear: this is the cutest thing that's ever happened to me.") Although Troy is Abed's best friend, he is night and day from him - he's emotional, he's slow to see what's going on around him, and he's still very unsure of himself and who he is. He does, however, have some sexy dance moves.

Abed (left), Troy (right), and an impossibly cute bookworm (center)

The long story short is that - in a deal only two really strong best friends could make - both agree to concede to whomever the Librarian likes best, and after seeing Abed conclude a thorough analysis of all 8 Saw movies, the girl chooses Troy, who ultimately rejects her because he couldn't see why she would reject Abed. It's a hilarious and moving little plot that ends with Troy telling Abed during a a lengthy hug that: "we'll find someone for us."

Backing up for a second, I want to discuss Abed's wooing technique (and having said this, I'm very aware I'm over-analyzing what is intended to be a comedic situation, but I still think it warrants a discussion). He chooses to talk to the girl about Saw movies for their entire exchange, something no dating guide would ever suggest. But he's letting his freak flag fly high, right? Wouldn't doing anything less be untrue to himself?

Later in the night, while Troy is talking to the Librarian (who totally has a name I don't remember and don't want to spend the time looking up, so she'll continue to be named this way ) on the dance floor, she tells Troy she'd "love to have [Abed] as a friend, but romantically he's...you know." What a bitch! At least Troy certainly thought so.

Abed showed his true colors and he got judged for them. He lost the girl. But couldn't he have done just a bit more to meet the Librarian halfway? If she was into Saw movies, that'd be one thing, but simply engaging a person in a conversation only you're interested is actually kind of selfish. He didn't have to hide the fact that he had thoughts on the legacy of the franchise, but he also was trying to get something from her - her attention, another date, sex, whatever. Unless she was already really attracted to him, nothing about that conversation was going to change her mind.

In their final exchange, Troy comes running in and tells Abed "she thought you were weird," to which Abed replies, directly and with the utmost confidence: "I am weird." Abed knows who he is, but when it came to getting the girl he didn't take his own advice from an episode last season, (probably due to the inability of sitcom characters to ever truly grow, something I've discussed at length) which perfectly summarizes the situation.

Last year's "Physical Education" was primarily devoted to the group trying to get Abed to approach a woman they were convinced had a crush on him. The episode focused on the question of how much Abed needed to change himself to seduce a woman, since as I've said, his 'normal' self can come off incredibly creepy and weird. Naturally, the group hesitates to tell Abed to be anyone but himself, but after they see him begin to approach her as both a vampire and a snake, they settle on encouraging his amazing Don Draper impersonation that successfully seduces his friend Annie in under a minute.

Man, an evil Abed would make for a whole different show!

Later, the actual approach goes well but is foiled by the fact that the girl they thought had a crush on Abed is actually is dating a douchey white version of him(!). As postmortem later the group has this conversation with him:

Annie: Abed! About yesterday...

Abed: Oh yeah, you guys must be pretty upset.

Britta: Why would we be upset?

Abed: Well I know how important it was for you that I get a girlfriend. So when Jenny went off with 'White Abed,' that must have really hurt.

Troy: Ahh...it did!

---

Britta: Abed, you know we just want you to be happy, right?

Abed: Yeah, I know. Everybody wants me to be happy. Everybody wants to help me. But usually when they find out they can't they get frustrated and stop talking to me. Or they trick me into buying them ice cream and then shove me in a clothes dryer. Which I didn't want that to happen with you guys so I wanted to make sure you felt like you could help me. The truth is, lots of girls like me because let's face it, I'm pretty adorable, and my aloofness unconsciously reminds them of their fathers. I'm more used to them approaching me*.

Britta: So we didn't damage your self-esteem or anything?

Abed: Britta, I got self-esteem flowing out of my butt. That's why I was willing to change for you guys. Because when you really know who you are and what you like about yourself, changing for other people isn't such a big deal.

Jeff: Abed, you're a God.

Abed's last line nailed it perfectly. He knows exactly who he is, and what he likes about himself. He did what he did that week for his friends, because he likes them and wants to make them happy. He's not necessarily doing himself a disservice by pocketing any particular behavior at any given time in order to make someone else happy, especially if that happiness and sense of belonging is something he wants. On some level it can seem like a sticky wicket, because yes, I don't think Abed would be happy pretending to be Don Draper for an entire relationship, but I'd like to think we naturally let the people we know get to know our normal' self over time. Call it 'slowly re-hoisting the freak flag,' whatever it is, it's part of every single real relationship we invest ourselves in, dating or otherwise. You can't hide it forever, or else if you do, what you're getting in return must be worth the incredible amount of effort you put in, otherwise you're a fool. And fools, unlike freaks, definitely deserve our scorn.

Something I held onto for a long time but now realize is false was the idea that I can't be into video games and also be attractive to women, since most women aren't really into games. And so being forced to choose, I of course would rather stick with the inanimate objects that won't ever judge me or force me to change. The truth is, I can totally have both - it just requires a little bit of thought and effort on my part. I probably won't ever ever wind up with someone who truly hates games, but that's not a very large portion of the population, and obviously for the best for both parties anyway. Being confident in that fact will make me that much more attractive to the ones that do like games or, more likely, are simply neutral about them.

And so I go forth, with my freaky 'video-game-playing, improv-loving, and frankly-kind-of-borderline-obsessive-relationship-with-Community' flag hoisted high in the sky. Ladies:

Happy Valentine's Day, internet.

-Matt

PS: In case you're interested, here's the most recent Community episode I referenced, for your viewing pleasure, (courtesy of Hulu) FYI - this video won't be active forever, as episodes only stay up for a month or so:

*Side note: if this is true, they should probably show Abed on a date at some point, because I'd be very curious to see that date, and also know what kind of girl Abed gets along with. As it stands, he and Troy's bromance seems to be the only affectionate relationship he's been in. I'm guessing a female Abed and Troy is what Troy and Abed, respectively, both need.

F@!#* You Craig Rowin!!

2011-02-03T00:22:00.001-05:00

I couldn't keep it in guys, I'm sorry. My response to Craig Rowin not actually getting the million dollars he requested and subsequently earned online:

(Warning: this video is entirely NSFW)

More context, if you're interested.

-Matt

How To Really Blow Out Your Meta Moment

2011-01-29T14:42:00.006-05:00

Ocean's Twelve was a disappointment, to put it mildly. The plot wasn't nearly as interesting, the 'caper' came out of left field, and the cast simply did not seem like it was having any fun. Ok, that last part wasn't true, but regardless, audiences definitely expected more. Perhaps the strangest moment in the entire movie was when, in order to steal some fancy jewel-encrusted egg, it is suggested that Tess - female compatriot to the team of ne'er-do-wells - pretend to be Julia Roberts, since she bears a striking resemblance to the actress. Of course, the character is played by real life actress Julia Roberts in a fictional story, so the whole concept is jarring and incredibly meta. Frankly, if they were going to go down this road, the movie should have actually played out like this:

"Hey guys - I have an idea. Tess looks JUST like Julia Roberts. We should totally use her in this heist!"

"Wow, yeah, bro, she looks EXACTLY like Julia Roberts! How did I not realize that shit before?!"

"Boys, how about we focus on how to solve our-"

"That's...amazing. You think we would have realized such a striking resemblance years ago."

"I know, it's str-holy shit, you guys! Look at Rusty for a second - who does HE look EXACTLY like?"

"Whoa! Brad Pitt! Fuck me, dude - you're like, his clone! Fucking nuts, bro!"

"Guys, stop. You all have to stop this now. There's a convoluted heist we have to get to."

"You know, it's funny, I've always kinda thought that, but no one's ever said anything to me."

"Well, I'm saying it. And while we're at it, does anyone think that I look kinda like..."

"Oh, fuck, who's that guy? He was in 'The Perfect Storm' with that douchenozzle George Clooney."

"OMG - do you mean Mark Wahlberg? Are you retarded?"

"Dude, wait a minute! YOU look just like George Clooney!"

"Hey, fuck you bro. I look nothing like that asshole."

"Guys, stop for a minute. Think about EVERYONE we know and have come into contact with, ever."

"Wahlberg's right. Fucking Don Cheadle, Andy Garcia, even that older guy who was totally Ross and Monica's dad on 'Friends'!"

"Ok, c'mon now, let's get back on track. We gotta pretend to fail at this heist, but secretly have everything under control in a secret heist we're not discussing at all. Or something."

"Shut up Tess." "Wait, what about that Asian guy? Who does he look like?" "Jackie Chan?"

"That's pretty racist, Ocean. He actually bears a striking resemblance to internationally acclaimed Peking Acrobats member turned actor Shaobo Qin."

"Wow, someone's a fucking geek."

"Ok, so uh, we're all celebrity lookalikes. Totes sweet. How do we capitalize on this shit?"

"I think it's obvious: we KILL all the actual celebrities and take over their lives, living like kings among men."

"Ye-heah! Sounds like a plan." "Next stop: Hollywood."

"Count me out of the next sequel, assholes."

-Matt

The Simple Secrets Project

2011-01-17T14:36:00.003-05:00

Don't click to look inside. That's just a permanent reminder I stole this image from Amazon.

So I have a new, big life project that I'm throwing myself into this year. It's somewhat in the vein of Paused (side note: I've starting trying to make "Paused" a buzzword for 2011, interrupting all manner of conversations where people talk about what they're doing with their lives to find a way to shoehorn in the term, i.e.: "Oh, so you're Paused on carbs right now,", "Ah, you've decided to give smoking weed a Pause for now," and "Totes, broheim. I've been Perma-Paused on SNL since the 90's too.") but rather than giving up an old habit, its more about adopting new ones. And the inspiration comes from this book I randomly stumbled upon last year.

Back in February a friend moving out of the country donated half a bookshelf worth of books to me. Amongst the huge pile of books I've yet to even scratch the surface with was one called 100 Simple Secrets of Successful People, the contents of which are fairly self-explanatory. Everything inside of it is stuff you'd hear from almost any life coach, guidance counselor or wise old man inside an ancient temple at the top of a mountain you'd have to spend a full week climbing. Stuff like: 'You'll Get What You're Afraid Of,' 'You'll Work Harder If You Feel Wanted,' 'Always Think About What's Next,' all sound advice that most people wouldn't argue with.

Initially nothing drew me to the book other than its tiny size, which lent itself to being read in about a day. So I breezed through it, thought: "yeah, totally!" tossed it into a pile and forgot about it. But towards the end of this past year I was gearing up for what was already looking to be a busy 2011, and rather than just filling it up with all manner of things to fill my calendar, I decided I also wanted to make some active changes to my mindset, which I'd been less than diligent about. I remembered the Simple Secrets book, and I thought about how while everything in the book was useful, practical advice, there was no way I'd naturally ever make more than one or two small changes to my life after reading that or any other self help book, just by the nature of being human. I wondered how I could take it to the next level, and figure out a way to get more out of the concepts and suggestions presented inside.

I decided to incorporate something I'd done years ago almost a gag (but also, totally not at all): my Video Game 'To Play' List that I've been keeping since I took my year off from playing them in 2008. So I started a new spreadsheet, listing all 100 items from the Simple Secrets book, and broke them all down into four categories: Level, Priority, Task and Progress. I hope you're ready for the breakdown, 'cause there's no turning back now.

'Level' is a simple self-measurement that I took, trying to be as honest as possible with how much I truly believed and incorporated the item in my life. Something like 'Notice Patterns' is easy enough to agree with and assume you do well, but the reality is I mostly look out for certain specific patterns (douchey behavior, level of eye contact, whether you're laughing enough at my jokes) and miss plenty of others. So I'd rank myself on a scale of Low to High and consider the next step from there.

'Priority' is how much focus I think I need to give to the Simple Secret in question. Some of the items inside the book are useful but not as practical for my life or where I stand at the moment. 'Your Work And Home Life Must Fit Together' is something I'll worry more about when I'm not a bachelor who mostly goes home just to sleep and make a slight dent his DVR. I rate these items on a scale of 1-5, with the 5's being the ones I think more than anything can and should be applied to my life right away. In other words the 5's are the Mass Effect 2's in my life, and the 1's are the Bioshock 2's in my life. Make sense?

'Task' is what I'm actually going to do about it. A LOT of the secrets in the book are things we've all heard dozens of times in our lives but really, how do you just start believing and doing it? 'Learn From Losses' is a great example - I totally should be learning from my losses, rather than screaming at myself in the mirror for 4 hours, but how do I start doing that? I eventually decided to break down all the necessary tasks into five specific behaviors: Mantra, Practice, Journal, Seek Out, and Improve Behavior. Many items wound up getting more than one task, but these five behaviors pretty much summed up what I felt I needed to it.

Some items are just ideas that need to be ingrained in my head, perhaps rewriting another, more negative line of thinking. Those are mantras, things I just need to repeat to myself all the time, until there's no question in my mind that I believe it. Practicing and journaling as just that - Whenever possible I try to practice the behavior in question, and I've started a private journal that I'm trying to write in regularly with all my thoughts, good and bad, to try to track where I stand with things. Seeking out involves communicating or working with others to help improve this behavior, or gain some perspective. And the remaining items I felt like I had a good grasp on (as Ralph Wiggum has put it, "[Getting A Good Night's] Sleep is where I'm a Viking"), I would list aspire to improve the behavior, because hey, everything I'm doing well do I could probably be doing better.

Finally, there's 'Progress,' which has started as an empty column where I'm able to jot down notches, or notes or whatever I want to update the list as I go along. It'll take a fair amount of introspection and dedication, but I think even a quick glance at the list every day will push me in the right direction on a lot of things. I did initially write down a custom, 'Simple Secret 101', which was: "Create A Ridiculous Spreadsheet As A Way Of Tracking Life Goals," to really feel like I was crushing it right out of the gate. but it felt like a cheat so I took it off.

So that is the Simple Secrets Project. It has no end date, it's not something I'm really making a big deal out of to friends and family (I've only mentioned it to a handful of people at this point, and well, now you, dear reader) and there probably won't ever be a moment where I scan down the list and say to myself: "I did it!" but I do think it'll be a good thing for me, as someone who thinks a lot about his life, but often times isn't naturally inspired to make the necessary changes. If this happens to sound just crazy enough to work for any of you out there, hit me up, and if you'd like to try it, the book is super cheap, and I'd be happy to set you up with a blank copy of the spreadsheet I made.

-Matt

But I'm too tired to go to sleep tonight
And I'm too weak to follow dreams tonight
For the first time in a long time I can say that I wanna try
To get better and overcome each moment in my own way

I'm not saying that I'm giving up
I'm just trying to not think as much as I used to
Cause never is a lonely little messed up word
Maybe I'll get it right some day

'Even If It Kills Me'
Motion City Soundtrack

From The Agent Jester File: No Pants 2K11

2011-01-12T11:09:00.002-05:00

Every January my new year kicks with a nice little routine I really enjoy: some planning/goal making (more on this in a future post), a birthday celebration (I just turned 32 last week), and the Annual No Pants Subway Ride. This year - the 10th anniversary in fact - I actually got be a General, which meant holding a megaphone and giving loose instructions to the many, many cold fans of Improv Everywhere. I even got interviewed, which was pretty cool.

I don't have too many new observations to make since last year, but I'll say this:

-Megaphones are awesome. The one I bought was incredibly large, at least with respect to my relative size. And even before I started trying to talk with it, just carrying it around with me on the subway ride over, I got a ton of looks. Just the expectation that I might be commanding attention with it at some point is enough to keeps all eyes on me, which you know, I'm personally a big fan of. I might consider bringing it with me to a bar at some point.

-The event definitely still makes feel like an old man. The 'No Pants' participants definitely skew on the younger side, and their ability at this point to stand in the cold with no pants (and sometimes apparently, just a sock on the crotch) far surpasses mine. The running (non)gag with everyone who'd been doing this since time immemorial was that "we were all getting too old for this job," "these kids today, don't know nothin' about nothin'" and that inevitably one of us would probably get killed in action just 2 days from retirement. These lines were all said in between various levels of icy breath cursing and hand-in-glove warmth adjusting.

-There's a shift I'm starting to notice with the female participants that I hadn't really thought about before, even though I suppose the writing has always been on the wall. A lot of girls see No Pants like Halloween, in other words, an excuse to dress in what would normally be considered inappropriately slutty and get away with any judgment because of the event. It's kind of brilliant, actually, though as an old-fogey, part of me does want to remind everyone that this event was always meant more to amuse rather than arouse. Of course, the fist waving stops the second I see someone like my very attractive friend Little Jenni:

Friends have permission to ogle, right?

So that's it. Another fun year with a group of people that had no idea 10 years ago that a silly idea like taking your pants off on the train would turn into a worldwide cultural phenomenon (50 other cities around the world in 24 countries!).

-Agent Jester

Damn It Jim! I'm A Doctor, Not A Guy Who Does Non-Doctory Stuff!

2011-01-06T23:07:00.008-05:00

I saw this poster in the city today and was instantly drawn to it. I have no idea what "Off The Map" is about (nor do I care), but the DANGLING STETHOSCOPE in this guy's left hand brought about an endless number of amusing thoughts I thought I'd share with you all today:

-First, my prediction of a typical episode:

"Dockta Mayhew, Dockta Mayhew!!" screamed the young, sickly Costa Rican child. "You bring us pills? Pills so we can [cough cough] be...better?"

"Shh-h-h-h" replied the good doctor, as he wiped his brow and reached into his bag to pull out the single item within. He sat the boy down, and looked him straight in the eyes: "Now, let's find out how fast your heart is beating. Hmm, pretty fast. Oh wait, now it's slower. Great. My work here is done."

Mayhew pulled the stethoscope from his ears, gave the bell a careful wipe, and he looked up and grabbed onto the rope of previously unseen helicopter that had arrived just in time to ride him off into the sunset.

[SCENE]

-So, yeah, I get it. The stethoscope is symbolic for a doctor. It clues us in as audience members what this guy's all about. But clearly there are more sides to him, right? He's not wearing the usual white coat, for example. He's also outdoors, in front a waterfall, which is not a practical location to practice medicine for a number of reasons. And look at how he's standing - that is not a typical doctor pose. Doctors are totally supposed to face people! Unless they're giving bad news. The worst kind of news really - the kind that involve them describing to a patient the symptoms that will come about from him kicking their ass.

-Did Indiana Jones, noted archeologist, walk around ancient tombs with one of those little dusting brushes in his hand the entire time? Of course not! He carried a WHIP and a GUN while he was exploring dangerous areas, killing voodoo priests/nazis, and seducing women. The dusting brush only came out later. Actually, no, screw that. He just blew away all that dust...like a MAN. Just like this guy should just smack people's chests and get a heartbeat reading based on that.

Hrm. This problem is strangely un-whippable.

- Getting off the stethoscope for a minute, looking at the tagline, I kind of wish the show was just blatantly named: "Doctor Without Boundaries" or "Dr. W. O. Boundaries, MD."

-Remember how on Lost, we were so curious what Jack's occupation was until that moment when he raised his left hand from off camera to reveal a scalpel? In hindsight, I'm really thankful the show decided against making that a mystery.

-Why not a bunch of needles in his hand instead, huh? He could be like, a needle wolverine. I think even tongue depressors would be a more practical thing to be hanging from his hand. You can make shivs, poisonous darts or wooden ninja stars or something out of those things.

-Having said all of this, all this making fun of the stethoscope business would be forgiven if in the opening scene of the show he strangles a guy with it, Jack Bauer style.

Aaaaannndd I'm done. I honestly hope the show's a totally amazing, deep, engrossing, emotional work of art that captures the zeitgeist and reinvigorates water cooler discussions all over the world, which will only make my ill-informed poster-based assumptions all the more brilliant.

-Matt

My Favorite Gaming Moments of 2010

2010-12-31T14:26:00.000-05:00

As 2010 draws to a close, it's time to pay homage to my favorite hobby. Rather than simply making a list of my favorite games (many of which you'll see here anyway) I've decided instead to share my favorite moments in gaming over the past year. So, without further ado:

My Favorite Gaming Moments of 2010

Uh, maybe let's let the big alien lead the pack

My Anal Retentiveness Pays Off
(Perfectly) Surviving Mass Effect 2's Final Mission

Mass Effect 2 won me over way before I stepped into the final chapter of the game, but the icing on the cake in Commander Shepard's quest to save the universe was the fact that plot-wise, every single character in the game that I'd spent hours developing a relationship with - racing through the cosmos, fighting aliens, saving planets, or just trying to bone them - were not automatically scripted to survive. Any and all of them (including you, technically) could die in the final mission. For those of you who haven't played many games, this is actually a pretty radical concept. Generally speaking, characters in game are only ever scripted to be killed at certain story-specific points, and the rest of the time you can only watch (or participate in helping) him or her get shot, slashed, drowned or burned alive only to fall unconscious and return to your side moments later.

The way you prevented this from happening mostly depended on how you were playing the game from the very beginning. If you were diligent in spending time with your crew, talking with them between missions, gaining their loyalty through side quests, and upgrading your ship through special tactics each of them knew (and naturally, wouldn't share with you until you became best buds) then you already had a leg-up. At that point, once you actually got to the final mission, it was mostly about just not making stupid decisions (i.e. have the chick with psychic powers to create the psychic force field, send the sentient robot anywhere dangerous, and keep the almost eager to die black guy on the back line of combat).

While there were many strategy guides available explaining what needed to be done, I never had to use a single one. Because I naturally (well, not always apparently as you'll soon see - but if I love a game enough, and I'm still having fun, certainly) play my games this way - with an anal-retentive level of dedication to seeking out every last morsel of content. So to be rewarded with the completion of the last mission, knowing that everyone could have died, but I saved them all thanks to my usually overzealous efforts was the icing on the cake of an altogether fantastic experience.

Not pictured: crippling self-doubt

An Existential Crisis, Overcome?
Creating a Deadly Metaphor Out of Super Meat Boy's Insane Difficulty Level

They say you can judge a man's character by how he faces his failures. There are moments when I'm faced with falling short of a goal, or rejection and disappointment, and during those times I'll mentally shield with myself with a moment of great success, a story of something I've overcome recently that proved that every failure is a chance to learn, and to overcome. And while I have my fair share of life successes, more often than not my go-to thoughts of success often come from a video game. That's a somewhat embarrassing admission, but what you need to understand is that at any given moment if you were to look inside my brain via some sort of brainwave interpreter, you'd realize my thoughts are mostly game-related to begin with. Hmm - that actually might be the more embarrassing admission, now that I think about it. Ah well, bleep blorp boop!

While recently playing the incredibly difficult Super Meat Boy - a game that often involves dying dozens of times in a row in order to complete a level - my ego was suddenly put on the line when I went through this thought process during a recent play session:

"Huh, this is hard. But that's how I like my challenges. The bar's been set, and I'm about to fly right over it. BRING IT ON SUPER MEAT BOY!!!"

24 deaths later:

"Wow. I still can't beat this shit. Maybe I should skip this level, or come back later. No, wait, fuck that, that's what Super Meat Boy WANTS me to do. Get it together, Shafeek! YOU SHALL OVERCOME!!"

17 deaths later:

"What. The. Fffffffffuckkk. This is an impossible stage. This stage is BROKEN. I HATE IT. RGRHGEIRGFGHDKH I HATE EVERYTHHHIINNNNGGGGG!!"

46 deaths later:

"I...I...I can't beat it. This is supposed to be something I do well. And I can't do it. Games are set up to be won. I have no excuses. If I can't do this...can I win at anything? I shouldn't just give up on this game...I should give up on LIFE."

84 deaths later:

"..." (with teeth clenched, and seriously angry controller gripping)

3 death later - Victory!

"WOOOOOOOOo!!! Yes, Yes YES! Oh, thank god, I'm not a complete failure."

Next stage, first death:

"Time for another game, I think."

I talk a lot about threshold that gamers sometimes pass where the game stops being fun, and I think this kind of exemplifies why I sometimes go to the point of masochism. The eventual victory (assuming I don't kill myself first) becomes that much sweeter.

Wow, I had no idea the title was so literal.

There's No Time To Think!
Realizing Sleep Is Death's Limitless Possibilities

I wrote a post a while back on this fantastic game, so I won't go on too long about how awesome it is here. But suffice it to say although I probably didn't invest as much time into playing it as I should have (I think a sequel or version 2.0 that was a bit more user friendly would do wonders for not only me playing it more, but also for me being able to convince others to play), Sleep Is Death's concept - two players creating a story together, where one plays and interacts in the environment while the other generates the entire world and all its content on the fly - is amazing.

I had some truly inspiring moments trying to react to inventive players circumventing the path I was trying to lay out, all the while trying to craft a continuous, plausible and hopefully entertaining narrative. And on the other side of the table, when I was playing I felt like a part of the storytelling experience. Which got me thinking: one particular angle I hadn't considered before now is how this game could potentially bond two gamers more than other cooperative or competitive setting. This game is ultimately about two minds coming together for an interactive, symbiotic storytelling and game playing experience.

Sleep Is Death is the ultimate sandbox game and an experience every gamers owes it to himself to check out.

(Mental note: bring this game to PAX this year to play with others)

Sorry, no time to chat. I've got other games to beat.

On Second Thought, Maybe I'll Just Save The World Now
Shelving Dragon Quest IX's Overwhelming Amount of Content

This is less a 'Favorite Gaming Moment' and more a 'Favorite Moment of Personal Clarity to Occur Whilst Gaming.' It also doesn't just belong to Dragon Quest IX, but this game is the most egregious example of a title that I really enjoyed playing but simply had to draw a line in the sand with, content-wise. I played Dragon Quest IX for easily over 100 hours, and still somehow only managed to scratch the surface.

It's probably not much of an exaggeration to say that Dragon Quest IX has a near endless amount of content. An incredibly large world with dozens of dungeons to explore, treasures to be found (and made, via the game's alchemy system), and of course, character customization. One small example from this last point - you could conceivably make your character(s) a maximum level warrior, then have him jump to a new occupation as a wizard, then a thief, then a priest, etc. Your character(s) would slowly become sort of a god. And you know, there was definitely a moment when I debated doing this. But then I realized that would take more than 3 years of train rides with my DS to do that, and the fact was I had other shit I wanted to do. So I made my half-warrior half-paladin who was just badass enough to beat the final boss - who, in games like this, was not nearly as tough as many of the worlds' other outside-the-main-storyline-enemies - and I put the game down forever, leaving a ton of content on the plate.

As I stated earlier, this sentiment is sort of at-odds with my Mass Effect 2 entry, but even in Mass Effect 2 there were things I chose not to do (ok, one thing - I did not mine every single planet in the galaxy for materials, but that was probably the one really really not fun thing to do in that game). The difference now is my OCD-like behavior in gaming officially has an expiration date - and that date is the moment I stop having a LOT of fun.

Side note: another game blogger's thoughts on this very topic/game. She apparently is still playing (or simply not finishing) DQIX, not seeing the point in beating the final boss both because she doesn't want the experience to end, and because when it does, it will inevitably not be a grand enough punctual mark on the time she invested in it. I say that sometimes that sometimes the punctuation mark really just needs to be the what keeps the game from being an endless run-on sentence in your life, even if that sentence started off awesome but then eventually overstays its welcome and soon makes it clear that no matter where it ends it's probably not gonna be worth all the time that went into reading and/or writing it - but that could just be more of a personal preference...maybe.

Sadly, by the time he built the Paddle Saw, all the zombies had hitched a ride to Miami

The Simple Pleasure Of Splattering Zombies
Killing Zombies in Dead Rising 2 with the Kitchen Sink

When I wrote two posts back in November on why I game, I listed my final reason as "Pure, Unadulterated Fun," and I think if I had to describe a concrete moment of pure joy I experienced this year, it was the simple pleasure I got out of discovering, creating, and using all the ridiculous duct-taped weapons I was able to use to fight the zombie horde that had taken over Fortune City in Dead Rising 2. Weapons like:

A Flaming Tennis Raquet:

A Fireworks Rocket Launcher:

A Shotgun/Pitchfork, or 'Boom Stick':

A Parasol/Leafblower, or 'Parablower':

And Finally, an ELECTRIC WHEELCHAIR:

I literally could not control the smile on my face while playing with these wonderful toys. Zombies are the perfect video game fodder, and this game (once again, only better this time) threw me into a large space with an endless supply of them, along with a ridiculous number of creative ways to destroy them. Good times, indeed.

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That should just about do it for this year. I still have plenty to mess with going forward in my backlog, and with Mass Effect 3, Batman: Arkham City, Portal 2 and many others coming out in 2011, I'm confident this little hobby of mine is no danger of lacking new, amazing moments well into the future.

Happy New Year Everyone!
-Matt

PS: A little something silly and non-game related with me that was shared with me, that I loved and feel the need to share with you: