More than a Twitter…

by Stepto
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The world is new in so many ways that it sometimes startles me.

I have a couple of copies of the new title Alan Wake.  One for me, and in my mind, one to give away.  But how?

I was standing in our kitchen typing up an email when I spied Rochelle sitting on the couch with Remington, Michael Bay’s second Transformers movie playing in the background.  I reached for my iPhone to grab a picture at the exact moment Remy yawned an enormous puppy yawn right in Rochelle’s face and I caught it and her reaction.

Seconds later, as soon as I looked at the picture (a feat that in my childhood would have required a Polaroid) I knew I had the answer: photo caption contest. So I asked the internet to caption the photo for my copy of Alan Wake.

Shortly after I had tons of entries in my inbox.  I’ll start off with the winner:

Remy_Rochto_Caption

Beyond it being a great Lost Planet in-joke, I loved the geekness of it.  I liked any entry that made you have to think hard about something.  I got a lot of “tonsil” jokes and teeth examination jokes and “I chewed up XYZ” jokes that I really enjoyed them.  But I got so many that I had to cull out the duplicates.  Here’s the others that I really liked:

"Thermometer goes here, K?"
"Go go gadget tongue!"
"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!"*
"And Jaws comes out of the water like this…"
"Feed me Seymour"
”Remy and Rochto’s contest of name that Pokemon soon came to an end when Remy realized he can no longer get his tongue back in his mouth after imitating a Lickitung.”
"Even my Venom impression is better than Topher Grace’s!"
"nice doggy, cute lil’ pooch, maybe I got a milkbone…"

Each of those listed above got a code for a Gears of War Ticker pet avatar item.

But the best part?  I could throw out a funny photo and generate some funny creativity. And people I don’t know and have never meet could get something out of it.

So, congrats Kyle.  Great work.  Your copy is on it’s way.

*I loved all the entries, thank you all.  But the Cthulu/Old Ones quote?  That nearly won.  Well done.

All of us, under its spell…

by Stepto
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Early in the morning on May 16th, 1990 I was driving to high school. Thanks to some AP credits my last semester consisted of three study hall classes and senior English, so my day didn’t even start until 10:30 AM. I was feeling pretty good, I’d been accepted into Southwest Texas State University, so college was covered. My last week of school was going to be a breeze, and after some goofing off time I was going to Europe for a month.

I’d gotten up early to run some errands so I was killing time driving around the few hours before class.  The radio station I was listening to was Dallas 94.5, The Edge. It was our local alternative station and was about the only place you were going to get to hear New Order or The Cure, etc.  I don’t remember what the song was that was playing at that exact moment.  But I do remember the music halting.  I thought I hit some type of weird signal dead spot but it was static, it was silence.  Then the DJ spoke.

“Listeners we are interrupting the morning show to let you know it has just been brought to our attention that Jim Henson has died in a hospital in New York.  He was 53 years old.  We will have a moment of silence to honor his passing”

My brain couldn’t process the words.

Just the previous week I had seen him on the Arsenio Hall show. He’d brought Rowlf with him and went through an extremely funny routine where Rowlf called Arsenio a “son of a bitch” then patiently explained it was the highest compliment a dog could pay someone.  I had grown up with the Muppet Show.  The Muppet Movie was a childhood staple and even into my proto-adulthood “Movin’ Right Along” remained one of my favorite tunes.

I drove stunned, and the moment of radio silence lasted roughly five seconds.  Then the opening banjo strums of Rainbow Connection played over the radio.  I pulled over. 

The hippest, edgy alternative station in Dallas played the entirety of that wonderful children’s song while I sat there in my 1985 Mercury Lynx that my father had just given me and struggled mightily with the something in my eyes. The rest of that day I was morose. I couldn’t even explain to anyone why, as 75% of the people in my high school were vacuous airheads who would shrug and say “oh yeah I like sesame street” without realizing just how brilliant Henson’s entire body of work was.

20 years ago our culture lost a powerful voice, one that shaped an entire generation of children and continues to shape them today.

So give Kermit a listen. And thanks Mr. Henson, for all you gave to us.

All of us, under its spell…

by Stepto
No Comments

Early in the morning on May 16th, 1990 I was driving to high school. Thanks to some AP credits my last semester consisted of three study hall classes and senior English, so my day didn’t even start until 10:30 AM. I was feeling pretty good, I’d been accepted into Southwest Texas State University, so college was covered. My last week of school was going to be a breeze, and after some goofing off time I was going to Europe for a month.

I’d gotten up early to run some errands so I was killing time driving around the few hours before class.  The radio station I was listening to was Dallas 94.5, The Edge. It was our local alternative station and was about the only place you were going to get to hear New Order or The Cure, etc.  I don’t remember what the song was that was playing at that exact moment.  But I do remember the music halting.  I thought I hit some type of weird signal dead spot but it was static, it was silence.  Then the DJ spoke.

“Listeners we are interrupting the morning show to let you know it has just been brought to our attention that Jim Henson has died in a hospital in New York.  He was 53 years old.  We will have a moment of silence to honor his passing”

My brain couldn’t process the words.

Just the previous week I had seen him on the Arsenio Hall show. He’d brought Rowlf with him and went through an extremely funny routine where Rowlf called Arsenio a “son of a bitch” then patiently explained it was the highest compliment a dog could pay someone.  I had grown up with the Muppet Show.  The Muppet Movie was a childhood staple and even into my proto-adulthood “Movin’ Right Along” remained one of my favorite tunes.

I drove stunned, and the moment of radio silence lasted roughly five seconds.  Then the opening banjo strums of Rainbow Connection played over the radio.  I pulled over. 

The hippest, edgy alternative station in Dallas played the entirety of that wonderful children’s song while I sat there in my 1985 Mercury Lynx that my father had just given me and struggled mightily with the something in my eyes. The rest of that day I was morose. I couldn’t even explain to anyone why, as 75% of the people in my high school were vacuous airheads who would shrug and say “oh yeah I like sesame street” without realizing just how brilliant Henson’s entire body of work was.

20 years ago our culture lost a powerful voice, one that shaped an entire generation of children and continues to shape them today.

So give Kermit a listen. And thanks Mr. Henson, for all you gave to us.

I was at w00tstock for Christ’s Sake!

by Stepto
No Comments

(NOTE: Youtube embeds are broken below.  I will try and fix them, I don’t know quite what is wrong but if you click on a Youtube play button it will take you to Youtube and you will have to come back to the blog to continue reading.  My apologies.)

There’s a moment in the film Almost Famous where 15 year old William, suddenly introduced to the world of rock and roll lifestyles, confesses his love to an overdosed groupie named Penny just before doctors kick in the door and pump her stomach right in front of him.

That is precisely what being a part of w00tstock was like…except instead of a stomach pumping, Penny confessed her love in return, magically purged herself of the drugs, and the two went out later that night to drink IPA’s and play Donkey Kong, Discs of Tron, and vector graphics Atari Star Wars all night at Ground Kontrol in Portland. And also Penny was multiple people both male and female who were part of the show and staff, and nobody actually had done any drugs and you know what, I think you get the point.  Which is: drugs are bad mmmkay?

As seen previously on Stepto.com, Wil (of the Wheaton clan), and Paul and Storm (of Paul and Storm) had invited me to participate in w00tstock 2.0 in Seattle, and 2.1 in Portland. What is w00tstock? I quote the website:

For decades, geeks were ostracized, picked on, laughed at and punished by the sun’s harmful UV rays. But there is only so long that a people can be kept down before they rise up against their oppressors; and, indeed, the dawn of the 21st century has seen the ascendancy of geeks and geek culture.

We now celebrate that rise to power–and let’s face it, nerds pretty much run everything now–with w00tstock, a special event for geeks of every stripe. Television host/special-effects artist Adam Savage (“MythBusters”), actor/author/blogger Wil Wheaton (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Stand By Me”) and music-comedy duo Paul and Storm (hey; that’s us!) present a night of songs, readings, comedy, demonstrations, short films, special guests, and other clever widgets born from and dedicated to the enthusiasms, obsessions, trials and joys of geek pride.

This is the dawning of the Age of Geekdom–and its voices will ring true at w00tstock.

Friday afternoon, May 7th 2010* I stepped into the back alley entrance of the Moore theater, feeling a little shaky with the enormity of what was about to happen.

I was going to be a part of w00tstock!

After some hand shaking, Paul, of Paul and Storm, took me aside and showed me the video intro to the show. An intro by the way that was to set up Wil’s bit at the opening but that Wil had not seen yet. It was a great moment when, from the side of the stage, Wil looked up from his Blackberry and saw…well, I could spend a lot of time recapping the w00tstock experience from the audience point of view. Instead I will start off by showing you the opening to the Seattle show, so that you understand just how in tune with the audience the creators of the event were:

Flashback to two weeks before. After submitting my ideas we settled on what my contribution would be. For the days leading up to the event I grew more and more excited and more and more panicked. I felt I had come up with a really funny sketch that would contribute to the tone.  But I had never actually done anything quite like this before.  Sure I had given presentations and done tons of public speaking and media work, etc.  But as nervous and freaked out as I was at the honor of getting to present at PAX, presenting in a show that people paid to come see…especially a show run by people who knew how to put these things on and were already people I happily paid to go see all the time…well.  I had to bring the A game.

I rehearsed my bit over and over, tweaking cadence and timing, finding the right gestures and beats.  It was the closest to acting I had ever really done.  By the night of the show I knew I could nail it.  But I didn’t really get confident until the show started.

w00tstock 2.1

The reason for that wasn’t so much the preparation, although that was critical. 

It was the instant camaraderie and bond the entire cast of the show had from the first few seconds of meeting each other.  All of us instinctively wanted to see each other’s bits just as much as the audience did. Backstage there were hugs and high fives as each segment played out. Jason Finn, drummer for The Presidents of the United States of America had us all laughing with backstage and onstage jokes, Hank Green and Molly Lewis totally rocked their music sets.  The AWESOME guys (and gal!) at Loading Ready Run actually helped me out with my bit and I had a great time meeting all of them. Mike Selinker and James Ernest, MC Frontalot, Matt Fraction, and B. Frayn Masters were also on hand as a Seattle guest in the case of mssrs Selinker, Ernest, and Frontalot, and the Portland show in the case of Mr. Fraction and the lady Masters.

And of course, Wil, Adam Savage, and Paul and Storm were always providing encouragement, advice, support, and were as gracious event founders as you could possibly hope to work with.

 

Both shows in Seattle and Portland ran long.  But that was just as much from the energy of the crowd as it was our time management. Both crowds were forgiving of mistakes, totally engaged with what we were trying to accomplish, and above all had their geek on. Backstage at both shows we were reading twitter streams and Facebook posts, incorporating new material and jokes as each show progressed based both off the audience reactions as well as little things that happened, be they small mistakes or otherwise.  In a way, the audiences were just as much a part of creating the experience as we were.

 

I don’t want to give away the full thing that I performed, even though there are Youtube videos of it, because I want to go back now and add to it or tweak it again because I think it’s good for another couple of performances. But I will say that getting to be up there on stage with so many talented and fun people, in front of so many amazing geeks, was a real highlight in my life.  I leveled up at least three core skills and many other secondaries as well.  My friend Mark took a lot of amazing photos at the Portland show.  Here’s my personal favorite:

w00tstock 2.1

Thanks guys.  I had one hell of a w00tstock.

*The Year We Make Contact, Bitches.

I was at w00tstock for Christ’s Sake!

by Stepto
No Comments

(NOTE: Youtube embeds are broken below.  I will try and fix them, I don’t know quite what is wrong but if you click on a Youtube play button it will take you to Youtube and you will have to come back to the blog to continue reading.  My apologies.)

There’s a moment in the film Almost Famous where 15 year old William, suddenly introduced to the world of rock and roll lifestyles, confesses his love to an overdosed groupie named Penny just before doctors kick in the door and pump her stomach right in front of him.

That is precisely what being a part of w00tstock was like…except instead of a stomach pumping, Penny confessed her love in return, magically purged herself of the drugs, and the two went out later that night to drink IPA’s and play Donkey Kong, Discs of Tron, and vector graphics Atari Star Wars all night at Ground Kontrol in Portland. And also Penny was multiple people both male and female who were part of the show and staff, and nobody actually had done any drugs and you know what, I think you get the point.  Which is: drugs are bad mmmkay?

As seen previously on Stepto.com, Wil (of the Wheaton clan), and Paul and Storm (of Paul and Storm) had invited me to participate in w00tstock 2.0 in Seattle, and 2.1 in Portland. What is w00tstock? I quote the website:

For decades, geeks were ostracized, picked on, laughed at and punished by the sun’s harmful UV rays. But there is only so long that a people can be kept down before they rise up against their oppressors; and, indeed, the dawn of the 21st century has seen the ascendancy of geeks and geek culture.

We now celebrate that rise to power–and let’s face it, nerds pretty much run everything now–with w00tstock, a special event for geeks of every stripe. Television host/special-effects artist Adam Savage (“MythBusters”), actor/author/blogger Wil Wheaton (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Stand By Me”) and music-comedy duo Paul and Storm (hey; that’s us!) present a night of songs, readings, comedy, demonstrations, short films, special guests, and other clever widgets born from and dedicated to the enthusiasms, obsessions, trials and joys of geek pride.

This is the dawning of the Age of Geekdom–and its voices will ring true at w00tstock.

Friday afternoon, May 7th 2010* I stepped into the back alley entrance of the Moore theater, feeling a little shaky with the enormity of what was about to happen.

I was going to be a part of w00tstock!

After some hand shaking, Paul, of Paul and Storm, took me aside and showed me the video intro to the show. An intro by the way that was to set up Wil’s bit at the opening but that Wil had not seen yet. It was a great moment when, from the side of the stage, Wil looked up from his Blackberry and saw…well, I could spend a lot of time recapping the w00tstock experience from the audience point of view. Instead I will start off by showing you the opening to the Seattle show, so that you understand just how in tune with the audience the creators of the event were:

Flashback to two weeks before. After submitting my ideas we settled on what my contribution would be. For the days leading up to the event I grew more and more excited and more and more panicked. I felt I had come up with a really funny sketch that would contribute to the tone.  But I had never actually done anything quite like this before.  Sure I had given presentations and done tons of public speaking and media work, etc.  But as nervous and freaked out as I was at the honor of getting to present at PAX, presenting in a show that people paid to come see…especially a show run by people who knew how to put these things on and were already people I happily paid to go see all the time…well.  I had to bring the A game.

I rehearsed my bit over and over, tweaking cadence and timing, finding the right gestures and beats.  It was the closest to acting I had ever really done.  By the night of the show I knew I could nail it.  But I didn’t really get confident until the show started.

w00tstock 2.1

The reason for that wasn’t so much the preparation, although that was critical. 

It was the instant camaraderie and bond the entire cast of the show had from the first few seconds of meeting each other.  All of us instinctively wanted to see each other’s bits just as much as the audience did. Backstage there were hugs and high fives as each segment played out. Jason Finn, drummer for The Presidents of the United States of America had us all laughing with backstage and onstage jokes, Hank Green and Molly Lewis totally rocked their music sets.  The AWESOME guys (and gal!) at Loading Ready Run actually helped me out with my bit and I had a great time meeting all of them. Mike Selinker and James Ernest, MC Frontalot, Matt Fraction, and B. Frayn Masters were also on hand as a Seattle guest in the case of mssrs Selinker, Ernest, and Frontalot, and the Portland show in the case of Mr. Fraction and the lady Masters.

And of course, Wil, Adam Savage, and Paul and Storm were always providing encouragement, advice, support, and were as gracious event founders as you could possibly hope to work with.

 

Both shows in Seattle and Portland ran long.  But that was just as much from the energy of the crowd as it was our time management. Both crowds were forgiving of mistakes, totally engaged with what we were trying to accomplish, and above all had their geek on. Backstage at both shows we were reading twitter streams and Facebook posts, incorporating new material and jokes as each show progressed based both off the audience reactions as well as little things that happened, be they small mistakes or otherwise.  In a way, the audiences were just as much a part of creating the experience as we were.

 

I don’t want to give away the full thing that I performed, even though there are Youtube videos of it, because I want to go back now and add to it or tweak it again because I think it’s good for another couple of performances. But I will say that getting to be up there on stage with so many talented and fun people, in front of so many amazing geeks, was a real highlight in my life.  I leveled up at least three core skills and many other secondaries as well.  My friend Mark took a lot of amazing photos at the Portland show.  Here’s my personal favorite:

w00tstock 2.1

Thanks guys.  I had one hell of a w00tstock.

*The Year We Make Contact, Bitches.