Category Archives: Basement Basics

A Long, Strange Trip.

As mentioned here, my laptop has been angry with me for going on 4 months or so.  This cause me to retreat away from my usual comfort space of Team Fortress 2 and MMOs, and try to find ways to amuse myself.  I went two totally different directions – Facebook games, and diving back in the Xbox 360.  It’s come back now, in time for me to test SW:TOR and get back in to WoW for Cataclysm, but the damage has been done.

Facebook games are what they are.  I found a couple nice card based ones that occupy me well enough (Eredan and Urban Rivals, primarily, though Clash and Tyrant are in there too).  It’s the 360 part that’s really interesting to me….

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‘Ware the anger of video game widows

Dee made a post about a woman named Jillian R, a “Phoenix Early Childhood Parenting Examiner” (citizen reporter, in other words) who posted what amounted to a rant on video game players and how they ignore families.  My first impression was this is a woman who has dealt with being a “video game widow” in the past, and she has a very large axe to grind because of it.  A video game widow, as the name suggests, is someone who has become ignored by their Significant Other due to the latter always playing video games.  Internet widows are a related flavor.  While Jillian R tries to lend some legitimacy to her post by mentioning “research” that will appear in forthcoming articles, this first post is really nothing but an internet rant.

Her basic argument – that video games take away from family time – has been applied to practically every hobby of the past 50 years.  Golf, cars, crafts – you name it, someone has been a hobby widow of it at some point.  The argument is not without merit, as there are some people who do completely ignore other responsibilities in pursuit of their interests, but it’s not isolated to video games nor is it the inevitable outcome as she tries to argue.  Case in point: I know several families who make playing video games a part of their family life.  They all play together, have fun, and strengthen family bonds.  I also know several people who may not play with their families but are nonetheless in healthy, happy, long-term relationships.  I’m just one person; multiply that by the number of gamers out there, and you can’t claim that video games destroy families.

The rest of her arguments are just plain juvenile.  The money thing?  How much does a family outing to the movies cost these days for a family of four?  Let’s see… assume $9 tix for the parents and $6 for the kids, plus candy and sodas for everyone, you’re looking at $50-$60 for two hours of entertainment, about the price of the average new release video game.  The difference is the game will last you ten hours minimum, and likely more.  Plus, if it’s a game for the family, you can all talk while playing.

How about the “sex appeal” of male gamers?  I don’t know about her, but most people I know don’t pass judgment on the worthiness of a mate based on a single attribute.   The gamers I know run the whole spectrum of individuals – male and female, husky and thin, short and tall, passive and aggressive, liberal and conservative, pale and tanned.  They play sports, shop, pet their cats, feed their kids, and weed their gardens.   Does having a green thumb make you “unsexy”?  To put a personal note on it, my girlfriend does not like video games in general, but that has not impacted our 3.5 year relationship.  She also recognizes it for what it is – a hobby, and something that her own daughters enjoy.  It’s something we even do – gasp! – together, and she and I both enjoy watching her 10 and 7 year old play Guitar Hero; laughing, smiling, and having a good time.

The short of it is that people like Jillian R are the reason this blog exists.  Too many of them have some bizarre, biased view of geeks as pale, fat, mouthbreathing, socially inept soda suckers who spend all their time in their mom’s basement.  While I’m sure there are some who fit this stereotype, the great majority do not.  By painting video gamers with the broad brush of family haters, she does nothing but show the world her own insecurities and past pain with someone who did ignore her.

Out of the closet basement theater and into the streets

The way I figure it, one has to be hardcore geek about something if they’ll agree to wear a fur coat for it.  In Texas.  In August.

Granted it was for a job, and only the second one I’d ever had, but I still think it says something.  I’d begun working at the discount/second run movie theater that was about 10 minutes from home the fall after I’d turned 16.  It happened to be a Cinemark theater that had been closed for the summer as it expanded from two screens to four.  For the grand opening weekend, they were making a big to-do with balloons, big advertisements…and the Cinemark corporate mascot Front Row Joe out front to greet the kids.

Sadly, ordering the costume from the corporate office didn’t mean corporate also provided a shmuck to wear the damn thing in 98-degree temperatures with 60% humidity.  Which is how I wound up in the suit that first Friday afternoon.  As miserable as the experience was (one friend told me afterwards by the end of the day I was the most lethargic costumed figure he’d ever seen), there were three things about the experience I am thankful for to this day:

1)    That as a weight loss program, it was quick and effective.  I’m pretty sure I lost at least 10-15 pounds sauna style, and being the first person to wear it that weekend, I didn’t have to endure what it must have smelled like by the end of that weekend;

2)    The job was the first I had to provide me free movies as perk.  This would be akin to a drug dealer giving one of his pushers a free ounce of cocaine for every ten he sold;

3)    Because the Internet didn’t exist, I would not have any knowledge of what furries are for another 15 years.  As such, I wasn’t irreparably traumatized at the consideration of what might have been done with/in/on that suit before it came to our theater, and only have to endure the odd shiver down my spine as I consider that time in my life.  Though I must admit typing the previous paragraph leaves suddenly in desperate need for a hot shower to wash away tainted nostalgia.

I digress.

Movies have been the go-to entertainment choice for my family for as long as I can remember.  My parents simply don’t typically do culture on any level outside of that, and within cinematic territory they are almost disturbingly mainstream.  As such, my childhood consisted of a steady diet of celluloid junk food, though some of the classics did manage to sneak their way in.  But for the most part, if it was in the top 10 box office figures for a given year between 1980 and 1990, chances are good I saw it, possibly with my folks.

(Related nostalgia point: nothing is as surreal as listening to your typically uptight Catholic Hispanic mother talking with awe and wonder at the sight of Mel Gibson’s ass after seeing the first Lethal Weapon.  And now I’ve got material for therapy…)

Coming to college and continuing to work in movie theaters helped broaden my tastes and interests.  More genres were readily available to me, piquing my curiosity to explore unheard of names that would become favorites.  I owe an old friend from high school more than he’ll ever know for introducing me to Akira Kurosawa at UT’s Hogg Auditorium.  But couple of funny things happened on my way to full-blown movie geekdom.

I became a repository for a ridiculous amount of useless movie trivia.  I’m particularly skilled it seems at freaking people out by remembering whole scenes from films verbatim, or pulling the title out of thin air from a description as vague as, “It had Kevin Bacon in it and they were doing this thing…”

And I developed (in my mind at least) a reputation as being that guy.  The cranky ijit in the back of the theater muttering under his breath about derivative plot twists and uninspired direction.  How I’ve read better lines in fortune cookies.  You know the drill.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember to stop and dislodge the film can up my ass and remember that is, in the end all just entertainment.  That funny means different things to different people, and that not all people take the same thing away from the same movie.  I have a long celebrated two-hour argument over Fight Club to remind me of that, if nothing else.

And yet, sometimes I feel like declaring yourself a “geek” becomes a cop-out excuse to turn your brain off and blindly accept whatever gets put in front of you without any dialogue or independent thought at work on any level.  Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News probably did as much or more to mainstream film geekery as anybody, and for that I will always be thankful.  

That said, reading his gushing praise of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made me think that if Spielberg presented Knowles a shit sandwich to eat, Harry would produce a column that gushed over the shade of brown the shit he consumed was and thanking George Lucas for trimming the crusts off just the way he likes it.

I think geekery can be more discerning than that.  Whether that’s true or not is something we’ll be able to discuss in these pages over time.

Enough with the previews.  Fire up the projector.

My basement

For me, coming out of the basement means something else.

It’s suddenly realizing that I’ve got 3 kids, a wife, and I could reasonably be called a mid-level executive, when 10 years ago, I couldn’t imagine having kids, thought being a manager was the worst thing I could ever do, and knowing that I would eventually find fame and fortune as either a senior *nix admin, a freelance RPG author, or both.

It’s suddenly looking around and realizing that all that stuff I’ve always wished I could afford isn’t the stuff I want any more (although I’m still gonna get one of those museum replica lightsabers when my wife isn’t looking).

It’s finding that, given the choice between going to a game night and staying home to help with the babies, I’m staying home to help with the babies (at least most of the time).

It’s realizing that I’m at the point where I’d rather just pay someone for a computer, instead of building one myself for half the cost, because the time I’d spend figuring out what’s top of the line and putting it together is worth less to me than the money.

It’s seeing my 15 year old daughter play WoW the way I used to (obsessively repeating instances until she has all the loot, running them 15x in a night until the right item drops, picking people randomly and whipping them in to shape), and listening to her wax sarcastic to everyone, wear a Star Wars shirt, and get annoyed about things that I used to rant about.

But it’s also playing MMOs on the couch with my wife, because we can afford new laptops, and that’s how we relax in the evenings.

It’s finding that it’s okay that I don’t have subs to comics any more – I can wait for the TPBs, and read 10 issues in a night, then hand them to my wife.

It’s finding that things I learned being a geek suddenly come back to help me later on.

It’s training myself out of my old habits, and learning that, in fact, you *can* learn to be a leader, even if it seems like a complete waste of time.

It’s realizing that I’ve found a niche in my career where being endlessly fascinated by patterns, details, minutae, and semantics is actually exactly what I need.

It’s waiting for the elevator and thinking “You know, I bet you could gather data for a week on stops and travel, and find the optimal floor for the elevator to wait on by time of day and day of the week, to reduce either the total distance traveled, or the time spent waiting per spot.” Then realizing just how few people there are in the world that think that way, and how that makes you valuable to a very specific group of people.

It’s having days when you have to explain to people, repeatedly, why you can’t average averages, why correlation does not imply causation, why you can’t just change one thing without others being impacted, and why, really, reports that aren’t repeatable and validateable are not, in fact, reports at all, even if they’ve been submitting them for months that way.

It’s learning that, the only reason your company is failing a key metric is because no one has sat down and said “What, exactly, goes in to this? And who, exactly, is part of the process? And why, exactly, do none of those people talk to each other?” then just asking the questions, and fixing the issue.

It’s being in Wal-Mart and deciding that, yeah, you’re gonna pick up 5 sets of the Star Wars characters you don’t have, and not being embarassed at the counter, or feeling like you have to say they’re for a child.

It’s finding that being a little eccentric at work gives you a bit more freedom, as long as it’s backed up by being good at what you do, and a couple subtle reminders that you are far more geeky and scientifically oriented than they could ever imagine.

It’s realizing that, were I to meet the me of 10 years ago, neither of us would really recognize the other, but we could still talk books, movies, games, and comics.

So yeah, I’m out of the basement, and I’m finding that life outside isn’t exactly what I expected. But damn, is it a good life. For all the cliches about not understanding what it’s like to be a dad until you’ve been one, and finding your purpose is to provide for others, and how much your life changes when you’re a husband, a father, a provider, and a quasi-grown up, they’re all really true.

Meta Geek Tagged

If you know these men by name, you're an Office Space geek.

If you know these men by name, you're an Office Space geek.

Being a geek to me means loving something to the point of marginalization. Anything.

Do you argue over whether 50 Cent is fiddy or fitty? Rap geek.
 
Do you know the individual ERA of your team’s entire bullpen over the last five years? Baseball geek.
 
Have you mentioned Thac0 at a party? D&D geek.
 
Can you recite the measurements of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Neil Bort? Teabag geek. (Could. Not. Help. Myself.)
 
It’s about marginalization. When you get passionate, does the conversation start flowing with you or does it stop and eyes start rolling? It’s “geeking out” when your passion surpasses the audiences tolerance for your obsessive interest. Now, this doesn’t mean a group of people can’t be geeky about a topic because within the group they aren’t marginalized. It just means if that room was full of average people, the dedication to the “geek out” would be relegated to, well, those geeking out. Believe me, when I start discussing Lockean linguistics with gamer friends, I can tell from their reactions that I’m the geek. 
 
So you aren’t either a geek or not a geek. Everyone’s a geek about something, likely more than one something. So you’re not a geek, you’re a geek about X. Like Curly said in City Slickers, it’s up to you decide what that one thing is. Except I still think it can be more than one thing. So it’s more like City Slickers two where Jack Palance’s zombie twin showed up.
 
But what about terms like dork and nerd? Okay, we should do a little parsing since it’s a clear definition we want. If geek implies obsessive interest, I think these days it does so without the added burden of intellectualism contained within nerd–and dork is just a diminutive without classification. Geeks have something to be geeky over, dorks are just “not us” without any burden of addressing what makes them dorks. It’s self-evident that a dorks dorkery is such because they simply are a dork and thus not us. Seriously, it’s hard to parse the term dork and not sound like a 5-year old. Embarrassingly hard. In fact, I concede the line of thought for now on its own silly merits.
 
So geekery is like a metatag. When you have a marginalized interest that you spend way too much time on per societal norms, welcome to geekdom. You’ll find a lot us around–everywhere you look. This is a place to revel in that obsessiveness.
 
My geekery? Game systems, words, rhetoric, football, politics, linguistics, philosophy, 80s pop culture, and addressing minutia in overly analytical ways…
     

On definitions.

It’s hard to say whether or not a geek has come out of the basement, as one must define “the basement” before this statement has any purpose or meaning. It seems there are essentially two interpretations:

  1. The basement is literal, as in the cubby hole in which the geek seeks comfort, outfitted with the tools of their particular geeky flavor.
  2. The basement is figurative, an expression encompassing the comfort zone surrounding someone and their geeky hobbies that encompasses not necessarily a place but also the people who serve as companions and/or confidants.

As an architecture and gaming (video, board, and RP) geek, the first interpretation interests me as physical space. Everything from the kitchen table to a home theater falls within this category. Some geeks only engage in their chosen hobby in a particular locale, either out of necessity (a video game console is generally required to play video games) or preference (the kitchen table has the memories of countless campaigns etched into its scarred surface). “Coming out,” in this case, generally means removing oneself from this ensconced location (or a similar venue) and going somewhere where the activity in question may be observed by those who do not participate. Perhaps this means a coffee shop for a pen-and-paper roleplaying group, or a gaming room at a convention (such as what Austin had during SXSW).

Other people will pursue their interests wherever and whenever they can. To them, space matters not, for the pursuit of the activity is tantamount. They still insulate themselves from the outside world, however, through their environs and/or companions. Gaming in the living room or the local hobby store is no different to the guy with his trusty dice bag and clip board of character sheets in his backpack. The second interpretation applies more to this type, as coming out of the basement means removing themselves from the protective bubble shielding them from what they interpret as the “outside.” An example for our dice-toter may be teaching his RPG-neophyte friends how to play D&D at home.

Naturally, these two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and may depend on the hobby in question. As I mentioned earlier, some require special conditions or equipment, or they may require multiple people. Technology has a hand in blurring these lines, however. Thanks to portable game systems like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, a video gaming geek can “come out of the basement” in a park or on public transportation. Laptops, PDFs, and dice rolling programs allow RPG geeks to throw dice almost anywhere. Coming out of the basement, therefore, is getting easier to do. The preponderance of technology in our lives makes the executive sitting on the commuter train, staring and poking away at a little box cradled in his hands barely worth noting. Maybe he’s reviewing today’s meeting schedule on his Blackberry, but perhaps – just maybe – he’s finally tracked down that elusive, rare Pokemon.