I’ve received this message from a close friend, and have been asked to help – all I can think to do is put it here and hope that the internet does what it’s best for. (Oh, and to register myself, which I’ve just done.)
Dear Friends,
Warm greetings to all and I wish I weren’t writing under these circumstances.
Our only child Devan needs your help. He’s four and has a rare form of high-risk leukemia. His life depends on a bone marrow transplant that they hope to do after 12 weeks of chemotherapy. What is difficult is finding a donor match and we haven’t found one yet.
You or someone you know might be the person who can save Devan’s life. All you need to do is a simple cheek swab to find out. The organizations below will send you a kit. Donating is easy – these days it’s much like a simple blood draw.
1.PLEASE, REGISTER NOW. The test is easy & free, but processing takes time (10 weeks in the UK), and Devan doesn’t have much. Register below.
2.PLEASE FORWARD THIS ON TO OTHERS. Anyone can be a match, but those who are mixed Indian/Caucasian have an even better chance of helping Devan. Please, please, forward this to everyone you can. By forwarding this email to at least 10 people now, we can spread the word to 50,000 possible donors within 48 hours.
3. VISIT DEVAN’S SITE – www.matchdevan.com – we will be including details on how to organize your own drive, valuable information on leukemia and FAQ’s on registering and donation.
This is the final chapter of our Iron Man 2 international online campaign – a free PlayStation Home mini-game giving each of Home Europe’s 1m+ users the chance to win one of just TEN super-exclusive Iron Man suits.
A PPC/VeeMee co-production, it launched just over a week ago, and from what I can gather it’s been pulling quite a crowd, which is no less than you’d expect from what Joystiq has described as ‘maybe the greatest thing to ever happen to PlayStation Home ever’.
From a personal point of view it feels like a major achievement, representing as it does the culmination of so much of the more interesting and experimental work we’ve been doing over the last few years, spun together into a wickedly compelling and cost-effective promo.
Or maybe that’s just a sense of fin de siècle, blended with a heavy dose of hubris. Because, as it turns out, this is my final project at PPC. I’ve got a month’s notice to see out, after which I’ll be setting sail on the high seas of independent consultancy, freelance production and general digital jiggery-pokery.
A bold decision on my part, given that neither Emma or I now has a steady income, nor any savings to speak of. And that we have two children to nourish, and a mortgage to pay off. And that the ‘Eurozone’ – whatever the fuck that is – looks like its about to collapse, just as Britain finds itself devoid of the majority government capable of guiding us through times of such excrutiating economic uncertainty. A brave decision. Foolish even.
But fortune, as we know, favours the foolish. And my instincts, moral and tactical, have always stood me in good stead, career-wise at least. Everything’s telling me that this is the right thing to do, and the right time to do it.
I should reach the frontier in about six months. With a little luck, the network will pick me up.
This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off...
To mark the occasion, and the brilliantly punchy, polished production values I’m seeing here, I give you Star Wars, in just over two minutes, as reported by a kid (and friends) packing the mother of all Lego collections:
I like the look of it. But what I like more is that I, like most of the rest of the world, know virtually nothing about this movie.
Nolan, Like JJ Abrams, understands the value of intrigue. The massive buzz around Abrams’ CLOVERFIELD had much to do with the title-less teaser trailer that turned up, and the anti-campaign that followed, establishing a deliberate distance between the alpha moviegoers and the experience that was waiting for them inside the cinema:
These kind of online campaigns aren’t about bombardment, or scatter-gun marketing. They work around timing, budget, a well thought out strategy, and a creative brief articulated in terms of the cohesive experience it will deliver.
Of course, this doesn’t work for every movie. Some films still have to be sold the old-fashioned way (especially if they’re shit). And it doesn’t work when you’re bringing a book or a comic to the screen – fans tend to just obsess over how faithful a representation it will be.
It’s working for INCEPTION though in terms of keeping me guessing (and blogging. It’s worth stating that we’ve had nothing to do with this campaign, I’d disclose it otherwise.)
And yes, two weeks out we’ll get the customary media blitz, with ‘Leonardo Di Caprio’ and ‘From the director of THE DARK KNIGHT’ written in big old letters. For the majority of movie-goers this will probably be the first time they’ve even heard of INCEPTION.
For the rest of us, it will be confirmation that the wait is over.
I’m sitting in New York’s Gotham Bar & Grill with Annie Ok. We’re about to have dinner, after several glorious hours talking bleeding edge tech against the epic backdrop that is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Annie and I have met before but never in the flesh. Last time was across the table of a booth at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. I was Iron Man. She had dual clerics strapped to her thighs.
That’s why we were there, Iron Man, his first outing. Annie was helping PPC with a fan art thing we were doing in Second Life, I was modelling a wearable version of his suit we’d had made up.
We’re teasing each other (which is to say she’s teasing me) over the odd minor fuck-up, and talking turkey about the next big thing. That was my brief for the visit – what’s next? (One meeting in, and that question’s almost certainly been answered.)
All of this is happening through this amazing new medium we’re calling Actual Reality™. It’s not bad. The whole gravity thing is a bit of a drag, but this bottle of wine more than makes up for it, and my steak just arrived. I’m having it real, and bloody as hell.
Annie’s also been telling me about ‘My Life as An Avatar‘. It’s an art project she’s working on looking at how we choose to represent ourselves online, and how we come to understand and relate to other people according to the choices they make.
This is her latest video, a beautiful work of machinima, shot in Second Life:
In the context of Annie’s work the term ‘avatar’ has infinitely broad application – it can be anything from a single colourless pixel through to an infinitely complex 3D model. A likeness can be as explicit as that of a photograph, or as abstract as a choice of colour representing a particular mood. Perhaps there is no likeness, or even an anti-likeness – something conceived to deliberately mislead, disguising one’s true nature or motives.
Annie’s interest seems to be in the things people project onto each other’s avatars, imbuing them with attributes originating from our own hopes, desires, assumptions and expectations, how we moderate our behaviour accordingly and, by extension, how we invite others to behave in relation to us using these outward representations of ourselves. As Annie puts it,’a primary focus of the series is private moments and the observer’s perception projected on to the observed. This not only applies to avatars but to everything, including other humans, animals, objects, movies, artwork, etc’.
I’m on the flight home, and I’m back to thinking about our conversation. I’m thinking about my life as an avatar. Years in the ether, drawing and redrawing myself for the various communities and individuals demarcating my own emerging digital persona.
Avatars, I’ve had a few; favourite photographs; transient anthropomorphic 3D bodies; playful responses to whatever meme happens to be doing the rounds at any given moment; even the crosses and squares of various other chat rooms and forums, the simple ubiquity of which invites its own interpretation.
With sightless eyes I’ve watched sparks ignite, epic friendships borne out of chance remarks, springing up to signify life online – life, as an avatar.
I’ve met Annie Ok in a dozen different worlds, under as many different names, with as many different avatars. There are threads, areas where the likeness overlaps, themes emerging over time, coalescing into human being.
Actual Reality™ is just one such world. Life is multi-channel now, and this is just meatspace. And the real reality is an amalgam. Above the table, I get to see that smile in the flesh. Below it, my ferrous family jewels are looking down the barrels of a pair of dual clerics.
This is the first of a series of videos we’re producing to promote the release of Iron Man 2. As you can imagine, the comics geek who ends up being paid to fetishistically realise tiny corners of the expansive Marvel Universe has to pinch himself every now and then to check that it’s real. Especially when he gets to play First Boffin in the intro.
The next #VHSMovieClub is at ScooterCaffe on Monday 5th April. If you’re interested in coming this post ought to answer most of your questions. If it doesn’t you can always @VHSMovieClub on Twitter to find out more.
It’s 7.30pm last Monday, at the ScooterCaffe in Waterloo.
About twenty people have gathered downstairs in the stylish basement bar we’ve borrowed for the night. Some of them I know, some are complete strangers. All have answered the call of the first open-invitation #VHSMovieClub.
And all are now sitting patiently, having watched me fuck around with cables for the last forty-five minutes, working my way steadily towards the end of my tether. I can’t get the VHS player to work.
Somebody’s on their way with a copy of John Carpenter’s The Thing on DVD. We’re screening The Thing because it was my cousin Max’s favourite movie. He passed away in his sleep in November, aged just twenty-nine.
The day I heard he had died, in a state of alcohol-addled shock, I became obsessed with finding a copy of Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic on VHS. Four pints, five charity shops and several hundred cassettes later, I found it. Virtually the last tape, on the last shelf, in the last of my not-for-profit last-chance saloons.
And now we can’t watch the bastard thing. Not unless I can get this VCR and that projector to start to tango in the next two minutes. Not unless… hang on. What’s that little button. Haven’t pressed that yet. It’s marked ‘Super P’.
What the fuck is ‘Super P’?
You little beauty.
* * *
This a short excerpt from an article I’ve recently written about #VHSMovieClub. It’s for a friend of a friend, who’s putting together a journal about all things defunct. I’m hoping it captures the moment of abject terror I experienced at the prospect of having to resort to DVD at our last #VHSMovieClub – and the heavenly surge of relief as The Creature from the Black Lagoon first flickered into view, heralding the start of Max’s memorial double bill.
It was a great way to watch a classic creature double-feature, but it felt strange to have so many good people in one place and not to get to say more than the odd word to any of them – two movies pretty much monopolises a Monday evening, unless, like one or two reprobates, you’re prepared to stick around afterwards for shots on a school night.
With that in mind, we have something a bit different in mind for the next event, happening at the same venue, ScooterCaffe, from 7pm this coming Monday – that’s April 5th. It’s called #VHSMovieQuiz.
The format, as with all things #VHSMovieClub, is charmingly redundant. We’re basically talking pub quiz, sandwiching a movie screening. Except better, because pretty much every round is ‘Movies from the 80s and early 90s’. Oh, plus some sort of observation round. Think Krypton Factor for movie geeks.
And movie geeks we have, not least because Miss Geeky’s Movie Geeks of London appear ready to join forces to make this one of the moviest, geekiest comings-together ever staged. Should they put in an appearance, going on previous #VHSMovieClub events, attendance may even enter double figures. Enough for two small quiz teams at the very least, and all the excuse we need to temporarily appoint ourselves the Justice League of VHS Movie Geeks of London.
As for the main feature, it’s time to get back to basics. #VHSMovieClub only started because, returning from a trip to the local charity shop and finding myself incapable of deciding which movie to watch, I resorted to straw polling Twitter. With that in mind, anybody coming along on Monday is invited to bring along a movie of their own, and we’ll do it much the same way. Could be a bit of a lottery I know, but I guess we just wing it and hope that Stephen Fry doesn’t turn up with a copy of Peter’s Friends.
So there it is. We’ve set up an event on Yahoo! Upcoming and the usual Twtvite, both of which seem like perfectly serviceable ways to indicate that you might turn up. Coming as part of a fully-formed quiz team is even better, although any one team probably shouldn’t have more than four or five members.
Ah, and the prize. No idea. It’ll probably be pretty crap though, that’s how #VHSMovieClub rolls. If it’s prizes you’re after, best head for the bingo.
I was back up in Inshriach recently for a stag weekend, a highlight of which was the walk to the pub on Friday afternoon, taking us through four hours of spectacular Cairngorm countryside.
It included a mile or so along the shores of Loch An Eilean, a fair size loch not far from Walter’s place. I took a few snaps, if only to post them here, for posterity:
Oh and there’s this one. Sorry it’s so small. It’s a shame as well, because the devil’s in the detail:
