Spiffworld | Blog

I attended w00tstock last night with my daughter.  We weren’t sure she’d be able to go because she’d gotten the flu a couple of days before, but by the time show day rolled around, she’d beaten the fever and was in perfect health all day, which is good because she’s a huge Mythbusters fan and would have been extremely bummed out if she missed being able to meet Adam Savage (a w00tstock headliner).

Leading up to the show, my main question was “what the heck was w00tstock?” and “what would I be seeing if I went to w00tstock?”  It was being billed as a “celebration of geek culture”, which could be either really cool or really dorky, and still didn’t tell me much about what the show would actually consist of.  I can now report that w00tstock is sort of a geeky, funny variety show, with musical acts and humorous readings and presentations, where you find that you mysteriously understand every Star Wars reference and Pac Man joke that’s made the entire night.  It was a show pretty much aimed at me.

Paul & Storm provided the musical glue for the show, singing fun songs from their act which my daughter and I had seen from when they tour with Jonathan Coulton.  Wil Wheaton, famous from Star Trek: the Next Generation, was a co-headliner, and it turns out he’s very funny.  He had some funny video clips and read a passage from one of his books about a story from when he was eight years-old and got talked into trading his Death Star toy for a Landspeeder and five bucks (an abysmal trade, as every manchild in the audience immediately understood).  Kid Beyond, billed as a “human beatbox”, did some human beatbox-ey songs and had a short A/V presentation.  Molly Lewis played the ukelele (turns out she should have practiced a little more but the crowd loved her anyway ), and Adam Savage from Mythbusters gave a presentation about his 100 Wishes.  Turns out, quite a few of those wishes are things you’d think he’d have no problem with, like owning a pool table and having a secret passage in his house that you access through a bookshelf.  Some of them were a little tougher though, like wanting to have dinner with the actual Hellboy.

I had  offered to let them show any of my videos at the show, and they would have fit right in with that crowd, but it looks like they didn’t make the cut.  It’s too bad too, because I think my video for Paul & Storm’s “Live” would have been perfect to have played on the screen behind P&S while they sang the song.  As it was, Paul asked the crowd if anyone had seen my videos (the loud cheering indicated that many of them had) and he had me stand up and take a bow, which was great.  There was even one person who wanted my autograph on their w00tstock poster, which was an unexpected honor.

In an odd sign of the compactness of my social life, I recognized one person in the audience whom I’d worked with at Adobe (not directly, don’t know what department she’s in) and two guys who worked with me on Hotmail at Microsoft.  There was also one guy with long hair, a beard, and a puffy shirt that I swear I’ve seen before but can’t remember from where.

The entire evening boiled down to one thing at the end — my daughter was not going to leave there without obtaining Adam Savage’s autograph on a piece of duct tape we’d prepared for the occasion (we’d just watched the Mythbusters episode on duct tape the evening before).  Adam was happy to sign it, and when he found out that I was the guy who made the video for Jonathan Coulton’s “The Future Soon”, which Adam was such a huge fan of, Adam gave me a hearty handshake and congratulations for doing a great job.  So that was nice.

I had a fabulous time at Blizzcon, which wasn’t a sure thing going into it since I was going alone and could very well spend the weekend sad and pathetic and lonely (like I did last year). However, this year I got to hang out with Chris Fromlett from the “Dude, Where’s My Mount” machinima videos (and his lovely girlfriend, Teresa), and it’s always better to have a buddy at an event like this.

I won 2nd place in the machinima video contest, which was a huge honor. My entry was a modified version of “Cruel, Cruel Moon“. The only difference between the contest version and the original version is that I took out the copyrighted (probably) “American Werewolf in London” pix, which made the video less funny, but more legal, and had the added benefit of allowing me to lean on a lame technicality to get the video into the contest — the contest rules say the videos need to be “unreleased”. Well, the version of “Cruel, Cruel Moon” that won 2nd place in the contest had never been released. Like I said, kind of lame, but legal.

Blizzard, of course, announced the new WoW expansion Cataclysm, and I got to play the new races in their starting areas. The worgen look hawt, and there’s no question that between them and the goblins, they’re definitely the cooler of the pair. However, I actually had more fun playing the goblins. The goblins start out shipwrecked on a jungle island, and there are quests to do things like stop the monkeys from stealing your gear by tossing them bananas, and using goblin weed-whackers to mow down the carnivorous plants. Fun stuff. The worgen starting zone, by contrast, is much darker, with a definite old-England style to it (lots of men wearing top hats) so that it feels like Jack the Ripper or Mr. Hyde could walk around the corner any minute. The undead are assaulting your town and you have to fight them off, which is a blast to do while you’re in worgen form (not sure why anyone would ever spend any time at all in human form since it’s much less cool and there’s no advantage to doing it), but it’s definitely much “heavier” than the goblin zone.

Ozzy Osbourne was amazing. We weren’t sure if he’d just shamble on stage and mumble a couple of songs or what, but that guy went all-in, leaving nothing in the locker room. It was the loudest, thrashing-est, most bad ass show I’ve seen in probably 15 years. There was apparently some fire safety gear on stage, because Ozzy picked up a fire hose at various points during the show and just sprayed the shit out of the first rows of people with fire retardant (which was awesome). And there were buckets of water that Ozzy dunked his head in and then splashed out into the audience.

When he came out for his encore, he started mumbling something completely unintelligible into the microphone that we totally couldn’t understand. Something about Japan maybe. But then a little Japanese kid, maybe ten-years-old, came out on stage wearing a guitar that was nearly as big as he was, and Ozzy started “Crazy Train”, which made everyone go nuts. But then we noticed that this little kid was shredding the lead guitar himself, which made everyone go even crazier. The kid was incredible, and Ozzy, decrepit old guy that he is, even hefted the kid up onto his shoulder a couple of times while the kid nailed the solos. It was an absolutely fabulous show.

The dance, sound-alike, and costume contests were fun this year, but they weren’t as good as previous years. There was a guy dressed up like a summoning stone, which was awesome.

I also managed to meet up with a fan — Aeonesti. That’s always so cool when someone enjoys my videos enough to want to go out of their way to say hi. Hi Aeonesti!

This year’s experience renewed my feelings for Blizzcon. Last year was pretty boring by myself, but this year, with the contest win and the Ozzy concert, and having a buddy to hang out with, made this a completely fun experience, and I’m glad I went.

A couple of people have indicated that they’d like to meet up at Blizzcon, which is very cool. Since I don’t Twitter (tweet?), I’ll post to this blog entry whenever I’m at a recognizable spot where people who wanted to find me could do so. This is probably better than just posting the panels I plan on attending, since it’s nearly impossible to find someone in the seats once the panel gets going. Plus, if something unexpected comes up, I can tell people about it here. So stay tuned.

Just a quick note to say that it looks like I’ll be going to Blizzcon this year. I’ll be going alone like last year, which sucks, but it should still be plenty of fun. If you’re going to be at Blizzcon too and want to say hi, let me know.

Also, I’m getting really close to being finished with my newest video…

The guys over at WeGame.com are sponsoring a new machinima contest, this time with a Christmas theme. Almost $3000 in prizes. Big Time. But just like last time, they only want new machinima, which means that my “Podsafe Christmas Song” and “Chiron Beta Prime” aren’t eligible since they were released to the wild many moons ago. That’s a bummer because even though I’ve got a video in production (although “in production” is starting to feel more and more like a euphemism for “who knows when it’ll be finished?”) it’s not Christmas-themed, and there’s no way I could get a Christmas-themed video ready in time for the contest. So I’m going to have to sit this one out.

I think Jonathan Coulton only has one more Christmasey song, “Christmas Is Interesting”, and I doubt I’ll ever make a video for it. It’s too bitter for my tastes and I don’t know how I’d turn it into a WoW video. Paul and Storm have their “Way-Too-Early Christmas Song”, but that one’s not a good candidate for a video like mine either.

I guess that means I’m pretty much out of Christmas songs waiting to be made into videos at the moment.

Did you know Blizzcon was this Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday? I didn’t, until this morning when I was browsing through the convention schedule and noticed that it said Fri/Sat. All along, I’ve been thinking it was Sat/Sun. Thank Jeebus I caught that error today, otherwise I would have be-bopped into Anaheim on Friday, thinking I was a day early, but would have ended up missing half of the convention altogether. That would have been not good.

I guess now that I’m not travelling on Monday anymore, I’ll have to go ahead and take that Java midterm instead, which means I’ll have to study all weekend for the test. At least that’ll give me something to do in my hotel room besides watch porn.

Woo!!!!! I am going to Blizzcon after all! Oxhorn’s tip paid off and I’ve got a ticket waiting for me at will call when I get there. I am so stoked.

It’s going to be kind of a bummer to wander around the convention floor by myself, so I’m totally going to cover myself in “Hi, my name is SPIFF” stickers and “You know, CODE MONKEY?” stickers and see if I can find someone to pal around with. If you’re going to Blizzcon and you see a guy covered in stickers, be sure to walk up and say hi.

Now all I need to do is get a hotel last-minute, and get out of work on Friday and Monday (driving days to and from the Bay Area). Oh, and I’ve got a midterm for my Java class on Monday (no lie). Somehow I’ll figure out a way for it to all work out…

I made it to the show, and even peeled off some cousins from the wedding to help fill up the venue. Turns out, they didn’t need my help. I’d checked with the venue earlier in the day, and they told me they were planning on taking out the tables in the (very tiny) concert room which should allow about 120 people in there. They said the doors opened at 9pm, and if I got there by 8:30, I’d be good. They lied. We got there at 8pm and were at least a hundred people back in line. I asked a guy up front what time he’d gotten there, just to gauge how early I’d have had to get there to get front row. He was there at 6pm. Obviously, Lestat’s Coffee House underestimated the power of the Coulton.

So we stood. The room was so small though that that put us maybe 30 ft. from the stage? And lord almighty, was it hot. It was hellishly, goddamfuckinghot, that’s how hot it was. When you walked in the front door, you could feel yourself passing through the wall of heat, and as you were standing around in there, you’d take deep breaths of air that were almost the same temperature as your body and you’d seriously start to wonder if you were going to pass out. Turns out nobody did (although some people left because they thought they might), but it was that hot, and I am not kidding when I say that pumping my shirt like a bellows to keep my head cool(er) was the only thing that let me make it through the evening. I’ll bet being on stage under the lights was murder for those guys.

My nine-year-old daughter wasn’t going to be able to see anything standing in the back but it turns out that she got to go up and sit on the edge of the stage with a couple of other people. So for her very first Coulton concert, she spent the entire thing about four feet from the man. Pretty sweet.

I was honestly expecting Paul & Storm (the opening band) and JoCo to be a little listless for the performance given how unbelievably hot it was in there. But not these guys. P&S were great and JoCo seemed, if anything, energized by the heat, like a lizard on a rock soaking up the sun. Whether because of the acoustics of the room, or the sound guy, or just those guy’s voices that night, they sounded probably the best I’ve ever heard them.

I didn’t bother trying to memorize the set list or anything, but it was a pretty standard line-up. The only thing new, for me anyway, was getting to hear “When You Go”, which was nice. Also, for “Chiron Beta Prime”, they pulled a guy up on stage who, it turns out, was the voice for the robot puppet on Mystery Science Theater 3000. He seemed very nice.

When it came time to play the encore, JC turned to the kids along the stage, bent down and started talking to them. I couldn’t tell what he was saying from the back, but we figured out that he was trying to find their parents to make sure that they were cool with the dirty, dirty song he was just about to sing. He couldn’t match all the kids with parents though and finally Paul pointed out that it was nearly midnight and that if their parents were OK with them staying up that late at a Coulton concert, they’d probably heard “First of May” before, so they let it fly. My daughter had never heard the song before although we’d warned her that it was coming. She was kind of stunned. I don’t think she has any idea what the song’s actually about, but she just couldn’t believe the sheer number of times JoCo said the F-word in that song. We could see a little bit of her childhood innocence flake off during the number, but she’ll be OK.

All in all, I’d say that if you took out the standing for three hours and the riduculous heat, this would have maybe been the best JoCo concert I’d seen. And as I was telling my wife the next day, if I were 25 again, I’ll bet the standing and the heat would have actually made it even cooler. I mean come on, going to a tiny, crammed coffee bar to stand for hours in the blistering heat to listen to an internet rock star blow us all away? Heaven (for a younger man).

I can’t imagine anyone cares, but by a happy and completely unexpected coincidence, I’m going to be in San Diego for a relative’s wedding at the same time Jonathan Coulton is playing a gig in the same town. It’s not a 100% certainty that I’ll be able to make the show since it involves sneaking away from the wedding reception with the wife and kid, but I’d say it’s over 85% at this point. If you’re there too, I’ll be the guy wearing the black “Spiffworld” t-shirt (probably). Be sure to say hi.

Blizzard has announced Blizzcon 2008, to take place in Anaheim this October. They say it’ll be a bigger con, taking up three halls instead of just two, and it’ll be two days like last time. If I had to guess, given the timing I’d say that they’ll probably announce ship dates for StarCraft II and Wrath of the Lich King. That’s based on the assumption that they’re in Alpha or earlly Beta with each title right now, and should be able to work through enough of the bugs and whatnot over the summer in order to have a solid(ish) idea of a ship date by October. But who knows?

No word yet on whether or not they’ll be inviting back the machinima artists they invited to Blizzcon ‘07, myself among them. It was a total blast to be invited by Blizzard to attend the con last year and I would totally go if they invited me again. Would I go to the con if I weren’t invited? Probably not, seeing as how the tickets were $100 each last time and all of the info you’d get at the con will be instantly made available to the Interwebs and propagated across the globe for everyone to see. Still, being there live was quite an experience, so who knows…

Whether or not I attend Blizzcon myself, I sent an email to the Blizzard folks suggesting that Jonathan Coulton would make for fabulous entertainment at the convetion. He’s smart, funny, and geeky, he already has a WoW connection through my videos, and he’s even written a song for a video game (”Still Alive” for Portal). It’s a natural fit! Their response to my suggestion was perky and polite (a lot like the Stepford-like responses you get from GMs in-game), and they promised to pass the idea along to their planning committee. If Coulton were to play at Blizzcon, that would certainly raise the chances of me wanting to attend the con even if I had to pay for the tickets. Coulton concerts kick ass.