Today in coping with existential dread:

"Hmm...a qualified public servant or a
ranting racist, misogynistic, fascist clown..."

You know, this has been bothering me for awhile and--huh? The election? Oh yes, absolutely. I can not fathom why we, as a nation, are even still entertaining this felonious goon who, by all rights, should be serving a life sentence for his role in the attempted coup. I've just not been talking about it because I think my anxiety around it is literally killing me. Instead, I've been avoiding the news and trying to think about anything else while we wait for a bunch undecided voters in Pennsylvania or wherever to decide our fate as a democracy.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

-people beaming

(source: memes)

So instead of dwelling on that, I've been thinking about the transporter on Star Trek and whether or not it kills the people who use it. I bring this up because I've come across a few internet memes lately about how every time a character steps into the transporter, it converts their molecules into energy and then beams that energy to another location where they are reassembled. So in a sense, the person who materializes is not the original, but an exact duplicate created from energy of the original's molecules. 

Chief Miles O'Brian, seen here doing
what he does best: murder.

Real life physics seem to bear this out. I did an internet search of the question: "does the transporter kill people?" and the science-based answer is generally yes: that the act of conversion into energy destroys the original object. Sort of like how someone standing next to an atomic bomb when it detonates is instantly atomized by the explosion. The only difference here is that the atomizee can be put back together. The question then is, are they still the same person? Are we unique instances in space and time or are we essentially molecular NFT's: not bound to a single server, individual, but transferable from place to place as long as the code is intact?

The answer is that any amount of time
thinking about this is too much. Any.

What is the self? Are we a unique assemblage of atoms? If those atoms are rearranged, are we still us? Or are we our memories? If the person who materializes on some planet has all of our memories, are they us? And perhaps the most important question: how much time thinking about the transporter on Star Trek is too much time? I guess for me the answer is one of narrative logic: the transporter works because the script says it works, and if indeed it was essentially a murder machine, no one on the show would step into one. 

Are these important questions? Of course not. But unlike questions about how or why someone could be undecided or God-forbid, enthusiastic about a guy whose first presidency was an objective disaster that ended in a violent insurrection, mulling over the philosophical implications of a TV show's plot contrivances doesn't give me an ulcer. 

Sorry, that's unfair. I should say a violent insurrection he instigated and then supported.

Schmadoken

Pictured: my crushing anxiety.

Two weeks! Yes, it's been two weeks. Sorry? Like I said, we've been busy getting our show up and a running, and doesn't matter. The point it's up and for the first time in awhile I have a few minutes to chime in about nonsense. Specifically video game nonsense. Even more specifically, Astro Bot. Huh? Yeah, I know the election is looming on the horizon like grinning, creepy, anthropomorphic moon ready to crash down on us and condemn us to a populist authoritarian hellscape likely run by an addled, electoral college-winning septuagenarian. 

I'm not judging, but video games are
slightly cheaper. You should give'em a try.

This is just how I hide from reality, ok? Anyway, Astro Bot. Have you played Astro Bot? Maybe not, maybe you're an adult. Or maybe you're someone who escapes the grim reality of 21st century America through drugs or scrolling Instagram. Either way, I'll explain. Astro Bot is a 3-D platformer which, for non-nerds is a genre of video game categorized by a character running and jumping through a three-dimensional environment. So think like, Crash Bandicoot or the 3-D Super Mario games. 

Astro Bot is a cute little robot who runs and jumps his way around different planets, fighting evil robots by punching them in the face, and rescuing his robot buddies. Also by punching them in the face. He interacts with the world almost entirely through punching, but it's all robot on robot violence, so I guess that's ok. 

I can't help but wonder if people in the future won't look back on
this kind of thing like we look back on sixteenth century bear-baiting.
Although that would presuppose that there are people in the future...

When your ten, you don't really question
why Dr. Wiley would build a robot angler fish.

I'm only an hour or so in, but I'm struck, punched in the face if you will, by the similarities to other games. Like, borderline actionable similarities. Levels are selected via an outer space map almost identical to the one from Super Mario Galaxy, and the levels within are very reminiscent of Super Mario Odyssey. Some of the robots you battle are squat R2-D2-types with big expressive eyes while others take the form of robotic animals right out of 8-Bit Mega Man or Sonic the Hedgehog. It's a fun game if platformers are your thing, as they are mine. But between the art-style and gameplay there is an inescapable sense of, you know, I've been here before going on here. 

Above: the $100 Nintendo Alarmo
alarm clock with wake you up by directly
stimulating your nostalgia gland.

It's essentially a 3-D Mario game reskinned in PlayStation intellectual properties: Astro Bot's spaceship is a PS5 console. His landing craft is a controller. Many of the robots you rescue are robot-versions of Playstation game characters. Nintendo does this all the time (Mario Kart, Smash Bros, that alarm clock thing) and it never bothered me, which is, I suppose, because I'm familiar with the characters. I personally just don't have the nostalgia for say, Jak and Dexter to make this endearing.

Disney's 101st Airborne Lawyers
division, deploying over your house.

I'm not saying don't play it. Neither you nor I own Nintendo stock or anything, so it shouldn't make any difference us that this is Copyright Infringement: The Game. But is it? Copyright infringement, I mean. I'm just wondering where, if anywhere is the line? Should there even be a line? Nothing is created in a vacuum, and all art is in conversation with other art. Star Wars was just Flash Gordon with the serial number filed off, but who cares? But God help you if you make a Star Wars fan film, or a ROM hack of Metroid. 

Similarity is not a bad thing. Astro Bot is just more Mario Odyssey so, I'm not mad about it. A thousand years ago (in 1994) Capcom sued Data East over their Street Fighter knock off, Fighter's History  for being, you know, a Street Fighter knock off. Which it is, but Capcom still lost. Evidently, they don't own street fighting, which, of course they shouldn't. And now there are hundreds of one-on-on fighting games. Some are crap, but plenty of them are good and wouldn't exist if everyone lived in fear of getting sued for iteration. 

"Schmadoken!"

-Ray, Fighter's History

(no, really, his name is Ray)

Today in shameless self-promotion:

Hey, how's it going? Oh good. Sorry, it's been a minute. I've been very busy. We're putting on a show. Wait, where are you going? Come back! Don't you want to hear about my community theatre project? I mean, your eyes are kind of glazing over...Huh? What's that? You don't want to hear about it, but you're going to pretend to be interested while mentally planning what you're going to do for dinner tonight? 

Although, c'mon, I think we both know where this is going...

We're not just surfers and a soul-crushing
cost of living, we also have a vibrant arts scene!
But seriously, one-bedrooms are like $2,500/mo.

You know what? I'll take it! So if you live around here--Santa Cruz, California--and like community theatre and/or feigning interest in other people's extracurricular activities (and who doesn't?), you should come see our show. It's called Who Killed Simon Braggart? and it's running for four shows only: October 18th, 19th, 25th and 26th. It's a gritty, queer, comedy, noir murder mystery set during the golden age of Hollywood and get this, it's immersive. What even does that mean? Good question, I'm glad I pretended you asked.

Embarrassingly awesome...

So you know how when say, fans go to the opening night of a new Star Wars movie Jedi wearing robes and brandishing plastic lightsabers? It's like that, only slightly less embarrassing. Here, the premise is you're attending a 1940's film premier, so you'll want to dress appropriately. Fedoras and suits, evening wear with faux fur stoles, that kind of thing. When you enter the theatre you're going to find yourself in a reception party before the movie 

Oh, you looked suddenly interested when I said movie...well, let me walk that back a minute. This isn't a movie, but rather a play set at a movie premier. But that's even better, right? Whoa, whoa, come back, you've made it this far. 

Pictured: a typical play-goer.

In my defense, what's even going 
on in this scene? Like, for real?

Look, I love movies as much as the next person, but theatre is different. And no, not just because of the giddy possibility that someone might botch a line, but because you're engaging with something live and in person instead of passively taking in a written by committee, carefully calculated for maximum corporate synergy, CGI-stuffed, cacophonous, product of a commercial industry. Again, I'm not knocking movies but...well, ok, I am knocking movies, but I mean, I still go to those too.

Anyway, we have a fabulously talented cast, a rockstar crew, and I wrote it, so you'll probably hear me recycle some jokes I've made on this very blog. Only they'll be much funnier coming out of our actors' mouths. It's l'art pour l'art as the French would say. Ok, they probably wouldn't and that is super-pretentious, but why not come get super-pretentious with us?

Again, so sorry. This has been a shameless plug, but if you've been
taken in by my sweaty, self-conscious pitch here's where you can get tickets.