The greatest moment in the history of video games

From Wizards, with Fred Savage. Also keep your eyes open for none other than Jenny Lewis, lead singer of Rilo Kiley and the female half of The Postal Service.

IFD

So as you can see from my post last night, my Father's Day present was a way-cool trip to Lincoln Park for a delicious dinner at a killer Lebanese restaurant called Maza and then to the Elbo Room to see my favorite new Chicago band I Fight Dragons. They were terrific live we had a blast! Here's a YouTube clip of how they make their music, they're sort of vaguely Weezer-ish but with a slightly more fun and uptempo vibe and they use a pretty wide array of electronically-controlled MIDI synthesizers hooked to: Video game controllers.

Check it out.



Here's how the controllers work. Neat stuff. The guy playing drums and piano simultaneously with a Guitar Hero guitar and a Power Glove blows my mind a little.

At the Elbo Room with

At the Elbo Room with "I Fight Dragons"! Happy Father's Day to me!

American Soma

A dystopian literature-related internet quiz? How could I not?

(Note: Savannah Scholl Guz and I were on a panel together last month at the Pilcrow Lit Fest and I'm chomping at the bit to read this book.)

SSG: In American Soma, the title story imagines the mass drugging of the nation through popular foods, like pizza, coffee, and beer to assure the results of a presidential election. If you were in power and wanted to maintain it, what methods would you use?

MB: Two words: Video games. For the past four or five years, video games have outsold the box-office in annual sales. Everyone is playing video games, or near enough to everyone that you could reach a huge chunk of the population by exploiting things like content and product placement. True story; when Obama was running for election, I started seeing people in XBOX 360 Live games using "Barack" and "Obama" as their usernames. Video game commentary and political importance isn't here yet because we still think of it as a form of entertainment for children and juvenile men, but the reality is it's bigger than almost any other entertainment form and it's very cheap in comparison. Cheap=democratic, but cheap also virtually guarantees a widespread saturation of data. If someone could mold that...

SSG: In American Soma, there is a story called “The Fountain,” in which the dirty water of a dive bar toilet can make people younger. Considering injections of botulism toxins and painful chemical peels are now the accepted way to rejuvenate your appearance, would you reach into a scummy toilet in order to maintain your youth or regain it? And what's your unlikely fountain of youth?

MB: I have to say I probably would. And speaking as someone who once went on a grueling low-calorie diet and lost 84 pounds, I'm willing to turn my back on a variety of things I categorically love in order to try to shoot for an ideal that I'm not even sure I feel a genuine need to achieve. Why? In an information world, attractiveness is even more important than capital.

My idea of the fountain of youth? Stay the hell away from genetically-engineered food. If you are eating anything with hydrogenated corn oil or corn syrup in it (see also: everything) you are fucking up your body. The Amish eat dairy like it's going out of style, butter, cheese, milk, none of it pasteurized and none of it "reduced fat" and they remain some of the healthiest people you will ever see. The reason: they are outdoors every day and move around more than we do, and virtually none of their food chain is processed.

Imagine a world in which you could happily have all the butter/ice-cream/mashed potatoes/pasta/bread/etc, you could eat, and it would not make you obese. This exists in places where they don't put chemicals and unnatural additives in our food. Don't believe me? Go to Arcola, Il and have lunch at an Amish person's house. I've never seen so many carbs and fats on the same plate. It was too much food even for me, who has been known to pack away an entire pizza in a sitting. But every bit of it was organic and none of it from improperly-raised or treated livestock or genetically-engineered grains.

If you think you know some healthy, attractive people. go visit an Amish community. They positively glow with youth, and they have great skin, vibrant hair, strong upright posture, correct body-mass index, etc. And they eat steak and potatoes for BREAKFAST.

SSG: American Soma’s story “Postmodern Colonialism” is a not-so futuristic story that charts conquests achieved through capitalism (and sometimes, war). In host nations, protective compounds are created, in which American white collar employees are stationed and eventually cannot leave. Do you think this still lies in America ’s future? Or are we already there?

MB: It might, but I honestly hope it doesn't. Not because I really have a concept of what this sort of thing really means to the citizens of third world countries. I think it would be presumptuous of me to even prentend that I understand their point of view. I hope this never happens because the America I love is full of good people, and the system that does/might exist where Americans are unwelcome in other countries makes me feel a little heartsick. Entitled we might act, and enfranchised we certainly are, but under it all I know we're not such douchebags as all that. I like to fantasize that nearly any one person from any country who "hates" Americans could come to Chicago, spend a month here seeing what we're really like, and at least partially change their mind. It might be just a fantasy, but that's the America I live in, and the one that I try to protect and nurture.

SSG: American Soma is largely about a variety of personal or communal dystopias and imperfect worlds. By contrast, what three things comprise your idea of a utopia?

1) The abolishment of institutional punishment. I don't think governments should exist to incarcerate or execute people. I think people should be bound by the moral code of their individual communities and made to atone for transgressions in a palpable way. Locking someone up for fifteen years solves nothing. Serious breaches of the law should be punished by things like compulsory labor in charitable causes, compulsory participation in medical trials so we can improve our overall medical technology, compulsory relocation to rural areas or group living environments for community supervision. That sort of thing should exist for the small percentage of crimes that are not directly related to socioeconomic status. Which leads me to my next bullet point...

2) Socialism 2.0. Not communism, socialism. If the last year and a half have taught us anything useful about socioeconomics, it's that our version of capitalism does little or nothing to maintain the meritocracy and democracy that we cling to as its ideals. So we need to ask ourselves: why the death-grip on capitalism? Let it go, America. Much of what we do is already very socialistic in nature, let's toss out the rest of the stupid process and start fresh with a political structure consistent with the last century of human sociopolitical evolution. As we are now, we're still struggling with many of the same problems people in 1909 suffered from. I find that lack of progress telling.

3) Creativity encouraged, derivative entrepreneurialism scorned. There is a reason buzzards have no friends. They survive on eating the remains of other, more noble creatures. I think we as human beings need to start calling buzzards buzzards and focus on a world in which creativity reigns. Ultimately, those who create are the most valuable members of any society anyway. A culture is only as good as its best idea, and right now the people in this country who have ideas are like little mice under the sun waiting for the corporate birds of prey to swoop out of the sky and grab them. We cage people in the bars of expectation, partially because of capitalism, partially because of outmoded cultural taboos that have no real teeth anymore. In a digital world, where virtual experiences are quickly catching up with "real" experiences, why can we not have a world in which the concept of taboo melts away and gives rise to the creativity that the human race needs, and deserves? The concept of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) may be useful here.

Peace can be realized as a sort of comfort barrier to protect Group of People A from Group of People B via means of the digital world. After all, when I log onto Facebook only the people I like are there. Imagine a world where you could move to a community of people guaranteed to accept you for whatever it was you wanted to achieve in the world. In a more virtual world, you might even live in a "community" comprised of only people you get along with. Tired of listening to religious people? Unfriend them for a while until you change your mind or get bored. Abortion not your thing? In a more virtual world, you could demand that people who advocate abortion rights never, or nearly never, cross your path. You can tune out news of them the way you'd tune out a distasteful radio station or that one weirdo friend from college who you don't care to ever speak to again.

In "No Exit" Sartre demonstrated to us that Hell is "other people." If we want to ever reach Utopia, we need to realize that Heaven is also other people. Some other people.

And here we go:

In case you missed it, here's the interview. Special thanks to Amy and her engineer Scott for making me feel at home in front of the camera. I'm normally a bag of nerves when it comes to public speaking, but this was totally fun!

Interview from Printer's Row Literary Festival

Log in here to see me and other terrific Chicago authors like Gina Frangello, Jill Summers, Dave Reidy and James Kennedy get interviewed by one of my favorite Chicago people, Amy Guth.

Interview is at 2:00PM and it's live, baby!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chicago-tribune-printers-row-lit-fest

Stewie talking about how much Matthew McConaughy sucks.

"You are just awful."

Hilarious skit about baby owls

I heard this on the radio about a month ago on the way to work. Funny stuff.

Tori Amos sings with 5th graders

In case there's any doubt how awesome Tori Amos is, if you haven't seen it check this out. The first video has her show up at the mall-show of a 5th grade chorus that sings some of her songs and listen in, crying halfway through.



The second video has her leading the chorus and singing with them herself. The band teacher asks if she'll sing something and she says "Can they sing with me?" If only every celebrity was that cool.

Pilcrow Lit Fest: The Aftermath

I wanted to set aside a post just to talk about some of the terrific people I ran into at Pilcrow, because (1) putting them directly into the posts was going to make them very long and confusing and (2) I met a LOT of great people. Just as an aside, I didn't put any more photos in this post because there would have been too many to list. For loads of photos of the entire week of Pilcrow, check out the official site at http://www.pilcrolitfest.com/ and their flickr pool.

Again. like I mentioned in an earlier post, this is far from being an exhaustive list, but I thought I'd take a moment to give a shoutout to:

Savannah Scholl Guz, author of the upcoming American Soma, by So New Publishing. Savannah and I got to talk quite a bit about Big Brother, GPS marking, little-agro, The New Yinzer, reviewing reference texts, and dog barfing. We traded recommendations for movies and books, and speaking of recommendations: if you like dystopian social-minded fiction, you're going to love her new book.

Deb Lewis, who made the panel on writing sexuality very comfortable and effective and even went so far as to dig into the work of each author to really get to know us before we came out. Moderating panels is tough enough, but making first-time panelists feel comfortable, especially on a panel about sex writing, takes a really rare sensibility. Deb even introduced me to several of her friends later at Literary Deathmatch and helped me get my bearings about who was who, so a very special thanks to her.

Zach Dodson of Featherproof books, who took a few minutes while we were walking to our transportation to chat with me about their downloadable mini-books. I thought this was a terrific idea and he gave me a little bit of insight into why and how they make these happen. Zach is co-publisher of Featherproof and he moderated the informative book design panel.

Gina Frangello, author and founder of OV (Other Voices). Gina took a few minutes after our panel on writing sexuality to chat with me about her upcoming books and she shared with me that two of her books won Gold IPPY awards this year! Gina was delightful to talk to and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Lenny Kleinfeld and Ina Jaffe, who also stopped briefly after our panel on writing sexuality (of which Lenny was a contributor) and talked about wine and thriller-writing mayhem. Lenny has had some success recently in interesting wine venues in his book, as Shooters and Chasers has as a character an assassin who dreams of making a world-class Syrah. That's a notion I think we can all get behind.

Tim Hall, the moderator of our panel on social and political writing. Sometimes I think being cool and down to earth are like two opposite lines on a graph, but right at the point where those two lines connect is Tim Hall. He kept the social and political writing panel very relevant and interesting despite it being very early and despite me holding up everyone for an extra two minutes while I grabbed a beer. Check out his books here.

Gwenolyn Glover and David De Rosa, who I had the pleasure of chatting with several times over the course of the week and got to eat lunch with on Saturday. They, like me, are just getting connected to the Chicago lit scene, and we had some great conversation about learning how to put books together for the first time, graphics design, and cover design. One of the funniest conversations of the week goes to David, who suggested that if we were all serious about making some money at publishing, we'd all be writing teenage vampire romance serials right about now. This sentiment was echoed by Young Adult panel contributor Daniel Kraus, who says he reads 5-6 novels a week and approximately 70% of it is "vampire fucking".

I got to watch Literary Deathmatch with Suzy T. from the Book Cellar, who aside from being fun to chat with has the coolest business card I've ever seen (a little book!). I also had the pleasure of meeting and talking briefly with Joanna Beth Tweedy (The Yonder Side of Sass and Texas), Drew Ferguson (The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second), and Bobby Biedrzycki (Chicago's rad 2nd Story reading series). and Leah Jones's mom, Linda, who moderated the Young Adult panel.

I'm almost sure I've left a few people out, and if I did I apologize profusely. I have a stack of business cards, bookmarks, book cards, mini-books, mini-catalogs, pamphlets, and stickers to sort through, but most importantly I have a stack of new literary acquaintances that I can't wait to interact with some more.

And of course no account of Pilcrow would be complete without a very warm and heartfelt thanks to the people who invited me: Amy Guth and Leah Jones. It was very much my pleasure, guys, and I can't want to hang out with you again at the next rad Chicago literary event! Printer's Row, anyone? *nudge nudge*