EXT. EXPENSIVE COMPANY PARTY - NIGHT
A small concert stage in Los Angeles, being rocked by Jimmy
Eat World. Well-dressed white folks sway and boogie as
searchlights fill the sky.
JIMMY EAT WORLD
Next up, we have! From Incubus!
Brandon Boyd!
Kimberly screams and jumps up and down as a hard-rock din
cuts through the crowd.
KIMBERLY
Oh my god! Oh yes! Brandon! He
is so hot!
Kimberly bumps into John. John smiles.
KIMBERLY
'Scuse me! Oh my god he is hot!
JOHN
What?
KIMBERLY
He is hot!
JOHN
Who!
KIMBERLY
Brandon! Brandon Boyd!
JOHN
Who's he?
KIMBERLY
The singer! Incubus! He's hot! I
would totally kiss him!
JOHN
I wouldn't!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
Yeah, he's hot!
KIMBERLY
I'm Kimberly Antonym, what's your
name!
JOHN
John!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
John! John Pseudonym!
KIMBERLY
Good British name! Which booth are
you in!
JOHN
I'm not in any booth!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
I'm not in any booth! I just
wander the show floor and meet my
friends and talk to them! I
mingle!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
I mingle!
Kimberly smiles.
KIMBERLY
I work for the trade show! I'm an
account exhibit manager! I work in
West Hall!
JOHN
What!
KIMBERLY
West Hall! West Hall!
JOHN
Yeah, West Hall!
KIMBERLY
I hope you don't mind that I said
he was hot! I'm just being honest!
JOHN
No, he is hot!
KIMBERLY
Yeah!
JOHN
Okay, I'd kiss him!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
I agree, he is hot!
KIMBERLY
Did you say you'd kiss him?
JOHN
No!
KIMBERLY
Yes, you did!
JOHN
I was joking!
KIMBERLY
Here, have a drink!
John takes a swig from a tumbler.
JOHN
Jeez, what is that?
KIMBERLY
Vodka and Coke!
JOHN
What!
KIMBERLY
Vodka and Coke!
John smiles and nods.
KIMBERLY
Oh my god!
JOHN
What!
KIMBERLY
You have totally great teeth!
JOHN
Thanks!
KIMBERLY
I mean, your teeth are so straight!
Wow!
JOHN
Thanks! I try!
Kimberly takes a swig of vodka.
KIMBERLY
I would totally go to bed with him!
JOHN
Yeah!
KIMBERLY
Yeah, he's hot!
JOHN
That fact is established!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
I understand! You'd totally go to
bed with him!
KIMBERLY
I would totally go to bed with him!
JOHN
And when you're saying you'd go to
bed with him, you really mean,
you'd go to bed with me, right!
KIMBERLY
Yeah!
JOHN
So you're asking me to go to bed
with you!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
You're asking me to go to bed with
you!
KIMBERLY
Yeah!
JOHN
Why!
KIMBERLY
'Cause you're hot! I'm just being
honest!
JOHN
I'm married! Happily married!
KIMBERLY
What!
JOHN
I'm married!
KIMBERLY
You said you were single!
JOHN
What!
We’ve got thrills and shocks, supersonic fighting cocks
At the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1994, one particular SNES title on the show floor was being completely ignored, and I had the chance to examine it in some detail.
That SNES title was “The Flintstones: Treasure of Sierra Madrock.” Heck, you remember that one, don’t you?
Or maybe you don’t. Around 1994 there was a huge surplus of mediocre me-too licensed games built around similar recycled 2-D scroller engines for the SNES and the Sega Genesis. The 1994 Summer CES show floor had plenty of them. The basic game play mechanic was well known: you are the licensed character, you run to the right, you jump, you have a short-ranged attack, and you pick up powerups which give you ranged attacks. Bad guys move in predictable patterns except for a boss at the end of the level.
The designers of “Treasure of Sierra Madrock” did not require deep knowledge of their previous title, “The Flintstones,” in order to enjoy their new work. You jumped over the rocks, you punched the snakes.
Anyway, I had no competition on the CES show floor to play “The Flintstones: Treasure of Sierra Madrock.”
Everyone else was playing 3DO. In 1994 the 3-D revolution hit the industry like a tsunami and the sidescrollers all washed away. With the launch of the 3DO and the Jaguar in 1993, then the PlayStation in 1994, the 2-D scroller game mechanic got very dead very quickly.
Fast forward to the Mongolian cluster fuck of E3 2005. Between meetings, I wandered the West and South Hall and I did my level best to ignore the tits and the subwoofers. And truth be told, there were a handful of shockingly beautiful games out there.
This E3 2005 will be remembered as The E3 That We Decided In Our Hearts To Buy An HDTV. In particular, Top Spin 2, an Xbox 360 title by Indie Built, stood out as a tennis title with some great attention to shadows and character detail. Also on Xbox 360, Activision’s Call of Duty 2, done by Infinity Ward, got their building and sky textures just right in the demo level, and the result was a first-person shooter that will sell next-gen systems.
In the PS2 department, Capcom’s Clover Studio showed Okami, a stylized “nature adventure” that incorporates elements of Japanese calligraphy with an updated Viewtiful Joe engine. You take control of a sun god, embodied in a wolf. You can call down spells, painted on the screen by a vast Japanese brush as time is frozen; leaves and blades of grass flicker brilliantly about you. Beautiful. Won’t sell, but it’s still beautiful.
Around a third or so of the titles on the E3 2005 show floor fell into a category that we will refer to as the Formula. The Formula involves putting your licensed protagonist character in a third-person perspective view, Mario World style, and letting him wander around outdoors. He has a short-range attack that he uses against the bad guys, and he has a long range attack that typically works with short-term powerups, and the camera floats behind his head like a balloon on a leash.
There are several technical problems with the Formula. First, you will notice that, due to the camera angle in the Formula, we constantly look down on the protagonist from the ceiling, a few feet behind the character. This means that the majority of screen real estate is taken up by the ground. And the ground is in severe perspective, so unless you do some fantastic mipmapping tricks or procedural texturing, either your ground looks pixellated, or your world is small. You have to get your memory from somewhere. Second, the camera always seems to want to do the wrong thing in a Formula game. Typically it drags along behind the character until some bad guys come along, at which point it hops back to get the bad guys into frame. Going around corners or reversing directions during a fight sequence typically causes camera conniptions.
Those issues are surmountable, but this one is not: at E3 2005, there were just too many games that depended too heavily on the Formula.
PS3 and Xbox 360, supporting HDTV and HD-DVD, are coming out within a year. And as of this writing there is a bunch of licensed games for the old platforms that follow the Formula.
It’s Summer CES 1994 all over again.
Supply and demand will sort this out. I suggest that, come E3 2008, you will see very few Formula games on the show floor. Something better is coming.
And all your money won’t another minute buy
Pebble Beach, California, overlooking the most famous golf hole in the world. I’m sitting on the second floor of Club XIX. I’m nursing a Jack Daniels, eating beer nuts and wondering where the pebbles are. A seagull frets up and down the railing, eyeing my munchies. The sun will set in an hour and thirteen minutes.
I’ve carefully timed the last four foursomes. It takes twenty-one minutes, give or take three minutes, for a foursome to complete the eighteenth hole. There are some low fences and threatening-looking signs around the hole, but all the guards are on the other side of the hotel. No visible security to speak of.
My plan will succeed.
I have researched carefully the means of disposition of ashes after cremation. Although cremated human remains are typically ground to a fine consistency, the ash is particulate. Human ash is the color of bone; it consists primarily of small bone fragments. It is heavier than air, and thus it will not dissipate into the air if tossed. I have been warned specifically of this in advance, and I have accounted for it in my plan.
The guys in the foursome — well-dressed, male, middle-aged, clearly on corporate juice — pat each other on the back. I present a low-wattage smile to them, step over the fence and stride nonchalantly to the thick old tree on the fairway of the eighteenth hole. The tree is ringed by a small, hard border of compact yellow sandstone.
I pull the jar from my jacket pocket. I open it and hold it reverently. “Thanks, Papa,” I say, and I spread a tablespoon of ash onto the ground beneath me —
I look down. Now there is a light, but visible, smudge of white ash on the border of the sandstone.
If I spread all of Papa’s ashes where I stand, I’m going to make a mess. I close the jar.
I look down the course. Another foursome is about a hundred yards away and looking at me curiously.
Plan B.
The ocean. The ashes go into the ocean.
I walk to the ocean’s edge. The sky is steel gray, overcast, with hints of green and red sunset asserting themselves. I hear a golf ball bounce somewhere behind my head.
I open the jar and hold it reverently. “Thanks, Papa,” I say. I rear back and fling the contents toward the water, as hard as I can —
And the ash explodes into a great white dragon fireball! It jumps into the wind above me and rolls majestically down the course!
Well.
As I walk off the course I stop to fill the empty jar with sand from one of the sand traps. I have no idea why I do this, but it seems necessary. There are no pebbles at Pebble Beach. I went back to the car and cried a little. Los Angeles is only two hundred miles away. Hell, I can make it there tonight.
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
I can’t remember anything, can’t tell if this is true or dream
Hi! Thanks for reading my Craigslist personals ad. It makes me happy, that you are reading it, right now.
I am 6’3″, well-built, hazel eyes. What I am looking for is a woman. Basically, any woman will do, but ideally I am looking for a woman who also happens to be female. In principle she should also have been female all her life. But that is negotiable. I will understand if that is not the case with you. And I will support you in this.
I love long walks on the beach. I will appreciate and love you for who you really are. Even if you are a tad overweight.
Forgive me. I beg of you, my dearest, my most beautiful woman, do forgive me. I did not mean to imply that you were a blubber butt. Your butt is quite fine indeed. And I love you, for your butt, among other things.
Actually, it was a lie to say that I am well-built. In truth, I have no appendages. I lost them all in a high-stakes game of canasta. If I grow to trust you, I will tell you all about it. But we will not speak of it until then.
The part about me being 6’3″ was a lie as well. Actually, without my appendages I am 3’6″. But what does size matter? Nothing, if love is truly present in a relationship.
I have constructed a motorized device that permits me to navigate the beach without exerting myself unduly. The device consists of pneumatic drive units, including air-enabled crutches, that permit me to move with extraordinary efficiency, at speeds up to forty miles per hour.
I am typing this entirely with my tongue. I have a special keyboard that is coated entirely with Saran Wrap. I will never require you to clean this keyboard for me. I have people to do that.
However! My reproductive organs are highly functional. I have tested them thoroughly and am assured of their quality. You may be convinced that my reproductive organs are in great shape and will work as expected, when you need them to, where you need them to.
Ideally, you are a short woman. We will look better in photos if you are no more than 3’4″. But if you are a tall woman, I will understand and accept your freakish height, with unconditional love.
I collect dead spiders and keep them in jars in my closet. Hopefully you will not mind that. The spiders are dead. They will not bother anybody. Least of all you… my dearest.
You are the right woman for me. And you know that I know that you know that you are the right woman for me.
I require periodic turning to alleviate these festering bedsores. And my soul is yours, for the asking.
—
In related news, johnbyrd.org just passed 25,000 visits. Thanks, Mom!
And sometimes when it’s breezy I feel a little sneezy
Another funeral, today, for Justin Weiss. The room was full of friends and students. First funeral I’ve ever attended in which people laughed.
Sandy prepared a shrine for Justin: a five-card straight flush, several New York Times crosswords done in pen, golf clubs, a Jack Daniels gift box, a folded American flag.
They gave me a clear plastic jar with a red screw top. Inside that jar is the most valuable thing ever to enter my possession.
Now, I have a delivery to make.
But first, tomorrow, we catch a plane back to San Francisco.
I close my eyes only for a moment and the moment’s gone
Marcus Aurelius, old dead guy: “Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died. Secunda saw Maximus die, and then Secunda died. Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and Epitynchanus died. Antoninus saw Faustina die, and then Antoninus died. Such is everything. Celer saw Hadrian die, and then Celer died. And those sharp-witted men, either seers or men inflated with pride, where are they? For instance the sharp-witted men, Charax and Demetrius the Platonist and Eudaemon, and any one else like them. All ephemeral, dead long ago. Some indeed have not been remembered even for a short time, and others have become the heroes of fables, and again others have disappeared even from fables. Remember this then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere. […] Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
At five p.m. today the wife called and told me that Dr. Justin Weiss was gone. The family was all there, in room 2222. During my vigil, Papa’s brows were knotted through the wee hours into the morning light, but today his white face was smooth and calm. Sandy passed around shots of Maker’s Mark and joshed with us. I understood; it was what he would have wanted. The family talked and cried and laughed and talked. I touched his hand and his forehead and wished him a good journey to whatever hereafter is his destiny.
Both of my wife’s grandfathers died within the same week.
We don’t have to resort to souls to exist beyond death. Those who have died influence the living through our collective memories. We remember what they said and wrote and did, and those memories influence our current life choices. We read the completed lives of the dead, and we, the living, grow and change. Memory is life.
These are the essences of immortality and of souls, as I perceive them.
So here, then, is the continued life that I grant Papa:
From Papa I learned to take personal embarrassment as a source of amusement. From him I learned that poker is a good way to kill time with other men. From him I learned that it is OK to go to a shrink even if you are mentally healthy.
From Papa I learned that it is best to e-mail dirty jokes to as many people as possible.
From Papa I learned that your relationship with your parents determines much of your psychosocial lot in life. From Papa I learned that alcohol can be fun. From Papa I learned not to brag about academic accomplishments, and to be on good terms with as many people as possible, and to live a life of indulgence to the greater purpose of joy and not to self-destruction.
Waits at the window, wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Funeral today, a lovely blue day. So many things I’d like to say to the family. Tearful testimonials; an unfamiliar language sung in unison; dirt shoveled onto a pine box. Tonight, we lit a candle. I don’t know what to say to them.
Hearts unfold like flowers before thee, opening to the sun above
Today, we’re back in San Francisco. But a week ago, we went to the hospital to visit Irving Kalikow, ninety-three, inventor and designer for General Electric, numerous patents to his name, the other grandfather to my wife. He survived open-heart surgery by Dr. Vlahakes, chief of cardiac care at Mass General Hospital. Unfortunately, he had a series of minor strokes during the surgery. Some time ago, Nurn purchased a Radio Shack CD sound system for Grandpa Irving. The familiar strains of Ode to Joy gently resonated through the hospital room as we entered.
Irving’s eyes saw me, and his eyes brightened. His face had color, but every word was an effort. “Oh, you! I must tell you — Dan has told me that you created this beautiful music — that you wrote it — and I’ve been listening to it — listening to it all morning long — and it has given me such pleasure — all your beautiful music! I didn’t know — didn?t know that you had such skill! I didn’t know all the music — the music — that you had written!”
All the eyes of his family turned and looked at me.
I said: “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
Word came to us this morning. I reserved the red-eye tomorrow night, San Francisco back to Boston. Irving Kalikow has died. He was a good engineer and a great lover of classical music.
There will come a day and youth will pass away, what will they say about me?
We?re here at the Jewish Rehabilitation Center for the Aged to visit with Grammy Rose. She?s somewhere on Level Two and we have to go visit her. With me are: my wife, my wife’s father, my wife’s mother, and my wife?s sister. Basically, all the wife family that exists, is with me, right now. Keep that in mind.
We pass to the elevator as a roomful of wheelchair-bound folks nod and burble to a piano rendition of “Bye Bye Blackbird.” A pair of double doors is secured with an electronic keypad. We’ve arrived at Level Two. Level Two is for those folks who present some sort of danger to themselves, or to others. Each person in Level Two is fitted with an ankle bracelet that locks the doors tight anytime a Level Two comes within ten feet of the door.
The wife’s mother punches an access code, and the double doors swing open.
Behind the doors is a teeny little old woman in a white shawl and sweater, bowl-cut white hair, eyes wide, grinning placidly. She has a bracelet on her ankle, but it’s not Grammy.
“Who’s that?” I ask Amanda.
“Don’t know,” she says.
The wife’s father, the wife’s mother, the wife’s sister and the wife all walk through the double doors, and pass by the teeny little old woman. The teeny little old woman ignores them. I enter last. As I do so, the teeny little woman smiles deeply at me.
I freeze.
The teeny little old woman reaches way way up and places her hand on my face. She beams.
The wife, the wife’s father, the wife’s mother, and the wife?s sister all turn and stare at us.
The teeny little old woman says brightly, “I want you to get in bed with me!”
At this point, comedy breaks out.