You've probably noticed that I haven't been updating this journal much lately. That's not going to change in the foreseeable future; I don't know why, exactly, but I've drifted away from LJ in the past couple of years, and even when I've made a deliberate effort to revive my interest in this journal, it hasn't produced any lasting effect. So I've decided to stop resisting the truth and give in to the inevitable.

I'm not going to delete this LJ, and I don't plan to give up on ever updating again; but future updates will almost certainly be a) very rare; and b) friends-locked; and since the waning of my interest in LJ applies to reading other people's journals as well as maintaining my own, it's highly unlikely that I'm going to add anyone else to my flist.

What's more, I've been going through old entries and selectively deleting or flocking entries that I found embarrassing, annoying, out of date, trivial, no longer representative of my beliefs and/or feelings, excessively revealing, dishonest, or otherwise not something I want on the internet with my name attached. I don't like being weighed down by the thought of all the stupid crap I put up on LJ when I was an LJ-addict who updated every day; I don't want to be judged by it, and I don't want it to be part of my self-image as anything other than a vague memory of something I used to do. I don't want there to be publicly available documentary evidence of my youthful stupidity or my temporary excessive enthusiasms.

This is a slow twilight rather than a sudden nightfall; I'm only making this announcement in case any of you were wondering why I'd gone so quiet/where my old posts about [TOPIC] had gone. Apart from the aforementioned deletion/flocking of old entries, nothing's really going to change around here.

There are no videos of Road Show online, which speaks well to the security at the Public Theater, or perhaps to the courtesy of the theatregoers. But there is one video from a previous version of the show, which was called Bounce and which had a brief run in 2003. Just from looking at the list of songs, it's clear that the show's changed a lot since 2003, but this particular song is exactly the same in Road Show as it was in Bounce.

A little context: Addison Mizner is on a train to Florida, hoping to cash in on a building boom, when he meets Hollis Bessemer, the rebellious son of a rich industrialist. Immediately smitten, Addison asks Hollis why he's going to Florida, and in "Talent" Hollis explains his dream: to create an artists' colony in Palm Beach. This is a second-best dream, since originally he wanted to be an artist himself, but he wasn't good enough:

So many talents!
Wasn't I blessed?
All of them good, some of them better
None of them best
Just enough talent
To know that I hadn't the talent
So I put my dream
And my self-esteem
To rest

Short review: SUPERB.

Long review comes later. For now, I'll just say that I fucking loved it, and it is a source of great regret that I can't see it again immediately, or buy a CD of the songs, or ferret out clips of it from YouTube and watch them over and over again. It was clever, it was funny, it was moving, it was beautiful. A++ would cross the Atlantic again.

An excellent performance of a very good play. Terrific cast: Jeremy Piven, Elisabeth Moss, Raul Esparza... he was the one I really wanted to see, and he did not disappoint. He was thrilling to watch, as were the other two.

The Ethel Barrymore Theatre is lovely: old-fashioned, in that highly decorated way; crystal chandeliers and richly patterned carpets. A couple of minutes before the performance was due to begin, there were still a lot of empty seats towards the front of the section I was in, so the ushers told us we could move forward if we wanted; and I did, which meant I paid $50 and got an $85 seat. See what I mean about this trip being too easy?

Ah, but to make up for it, I spent a lot of time today wandering aimlessly in the general vicinity of the Village, vaguely looking for somewhere to eat and not finding anywhere that was both attractive and in my price range. Eventually I gave it up as a waste, and made my way back to the apartment, my feet aching. There is a nice-looking and cheap burger place very near here which I will go to once I've recovered.

*

New Yorkers and their dogs:
-A man walking two dogs on leashes that were attached to his belt, which struck me as courageous in the Yes, Minister sense of the term. If they'd been chihuahuas, it would have been reasonable; if they'd been St Bernards, it would have been suicidal. As it was, it was merely risky.
-A woman walking a small dog (probably a dachshund) whose hindquarters were wheeling around on a custom-built cart.
-A young man trying to coax a very recalcitrant bulldog down Greenwich Street. The dog's expression very clearly said that he was bloody well staying put and not having any of this "walking" nonsense.

*

Serendipitous find of the weekend (so far): Charmingwall, a teeny tiny gallery on West 4th Street that sells original paintings and prints for $20 and less. I bought one by Rachel Cox which is so utterly gorgeous that I can't believe I actually own it.

I found Charmingwall while I was trying to find the Public Theater, and failing because I was using the Google Maps directions, which are a hell of a lot better than nothing but not omniscient enough to tell you that on such-and-such street there are roadworks on the left side, so you'll have to cross over and that'll change how you get from A to B. While I was attempting to get back on track, an elderly-ish woman with one of those personal shopping trolleys asked me for directions to the TJ Maxx. I had to regretfully tell her that I was a tourist and didn't know where it was, but I was rather chuffed to have been taken for a local. I think it's the hat.

Speaking of clothing: I have ben wearing a little black dress -- very little -- and patterned black tights, and it has got me Noticed. I haven't seen any other women wearing short skirts, which is probably why. In weather like this one's always tempted to cover up completely, but in fact the tights are beautifully warm and comfy, and I've been walking so much that I haven't been cold at all.

I think the cold weather is a major contributor to the ease of this trip. Walking makes one warmer, which is a very good thing in winter and a very bad thing in summer; my previous trip was in summer, so naturally it was a bit hellish.

*

Sondheim tonight! Squee!

Every time I mentioned that I was going to see Ute Lemper perform while I was in New York, all I ever got was blank stares. Nobody knows who she is, apparently. Well, I know, and so do the 150-odd others who were in Joe's Pub tonight to watch her perform; and she was fabulous. Sexy and charismatic and my God, that voice. I was especially thrilled that she finished the set with three classic French songs, which I hadn't expected: "Amsterdam", "Milord", and "La Vie En Rose". Her bilingual "Amsterdam" sent chills down my spine.

My enjoyment was marred by two insoluble problems: I got hit by the full force of jet lag while I was queueing to get in, which left me much too sleepy to fully appreciate the show, and the guy sitting next to me obviously wasn't enjoying it much. He kept fidgeting, which was very distracting. But no matter: I have the memory, now, of Ute Lemper grabbing a napkin from the table nearest the stage (and apologising when a piece of bread fell out of it onto the floor) and miming scrubbing floors before letting rip with a blistering rendition of "Pirate Jenny". "Und ein Schiff mit acht Segeln und mit fünfzig Kanonen wird liegen am Kai..."

The thing that is weirding me out about this current trip so far is how easy it's been -- not just the bits where I was religiously following cartographer's instructions, but the bits where I said to myself "I have no idea which subway exit I want, so obviously what's required here is for me to stride out in a purposeful manner as if I knew what I was doing and read the street signs until I know where I am" and it's worked. Then there's the bit where I glanced at a not-very-informative sign outside a shop and said to myself "that there is a swanky deli/supermarket type place like Fallon & Byrne, and I bet they do ready meals, and I should probably get myself one because even though I'm not hungry now I will be soon and I'd rather not scout for restaurants in the dark in an area I don't know". And lo, it did indeed turn out to be almost exactly like Fallon & Byrne, albeint with a different set of brands, and I got myself a big box of salad at the salad bar on which I am now contentedly chowing down.

It's been stress-free and easy, which is great, but disconcerting. I crossed an ocean in a flying machine made out of metal, for God's sake! I mean... I'm not complaining. But I kind of feel like I won a small but significant prize in the Lotto on a ticket that I found on the street. Lucky and happy, but also unnerved.

On the other hand, I also bought a $3 bar of chocolate, and it's pretty nasty. I was already aware that the EU regulations on chocolate are to the US regulations as Robocop is to Police Chief Wiggum, but I was hoping the sheer swankiness of the stuff would be protection against the otherwise lax standards; apparently not. Or maybe I'm just too accustomed to the crazy high standards set by Dolfin and Green & Black's and Divine and the like. Even ordinary Cadbury's tastes a bit cheap to me these days. Now that I think about it, I'd usually spend more than (the equivalent of) $3 on 100g of chocolate in Dublin...

I can't believe I'm actually here... I haven't been out of Ireland for a year; I haven't been to America in eight. This seems more like a daydream than anything else.

It may not seem obvious from what I've said so far, but I'm having a terrific time. I'm just a little dazed, and as I said, the ease of the journey (which I've been fretting about for weeks) has left me a little bit off-balance. But in a good way.

This is just to say that while I may be updating LJ and Twitter this weekend, I won't be reading my flist (or the Twitterers I'm following), and I'm probably not going to bother catching up afterwards. I can be reached by email (puritybrown at gmail dot com), but even there, I'll probably leave non-essential mails for my return.

I have had a buzz of "going to New York! going to New York! going to New York!" at the back of my head for weeks. I'm so excited!

Today was one of those days when there's not much to do in the office until about 15:00, when suddenly the little bits of work that were a little bit behind schedule crash down on us and we're scrambling to get things finished until then end of the day. I spent the dead hours of the early part of the day playing online text adventures (of which more later) and randomly websurfing; and in the course of websurfing, I found myself looking at the Open University's website and idly contemplating going back to college. And for a painful moment, idle contemplation transformed into profound yearning, and I felt that my life had become empty and meaningless since I'd left academia, and would stay that way unless I went back.

I do miss the cut and thrust of intellectual debate; I miss being in an environment where it is taken for granted that ideas are to be taken seriously. One of the things that makes me happy to live with my parents is that I can talk about ideas with them -- it's one of our favourite family pastimes -- when I so often can't with anyone else. Not at work, for sure; not often with my friends. I miss philosophy -- that feeling of wrapping my head around a concept that I've never encountered before, that makes the world appear to shift a few degrees clockwise or anticlockwise. My instincts are philosophical -- my first reaction when I encounter an argument is to find its weak points regardless of whether I agree with its conclusions, and I miss being in a milieu in which that kind of attitude is considered only right and proper.

As long as I'm outside academia, there are parts of me that just don't fit. And to a certain extent that's probably always going to be true; I am too odd a person to fit perfectly anywhere, but the parts of me that fit with academia are so crucial to my sense of self and of self-worth that staying away is becoming painful.

I considered applying for a PhD nearly five years ago, and I opted out, because I wasn't ready. Am I ready now? Not yet, not yet; but soon. (I have a thesis topic: the effects of publishing conditions in France, the USA, and Japan on the aesthetic and narrative properties of the comics of each respective country.)

Part of what pushed me in this direction is seeing the text adventure/interactive fiction Violet mentioned on Crooked Timber. Violet is about a PhD student who really really really needs to work on his/her dissertation; his/her delightful Australian girlfriend Violet has threatened to go back to Australia if s/he doesn't write 1,000 words today. (It's very good, and not too long; I thoroughly recommend it. I was rather entranced by Violet, and by the bizarre contortions the main character has to go through to make him/herself write.) And even though Violet portrays a pretty negative view of academia, it still made me nostalgic; it made me want to go back to that place, that social environment, where being an intellectual was neither a crime nor an embarrassment but the status quo, where being serious and thoughtful and wordy and bookish made you fit in, not stick out.

I wasn't ready five years ago, at least as much because I was shy and awkward and socially avoidant; but I've gotten much better at that kind of thing. I think, maybe, I could really do it. Not now, not now; but soon.

(You may have seen an earlier version of this post -- I deleted it because after I hit "post2, I realised that my research had been inadequate, and then Firefox went kablooie. The EEE doesn't like it when I try to watch YouTube in two tabs at once.)

Evening Primrose was an experiment: a TV musical made in 1966 and starring Anthony (Psycho) Perkins and Charmian (The Sound of Music) Carr. The copyright owners of the short story on which it was based are being tight-fisted, which makes it unlikely that there will ever be a DVD release of the original. Which is a shame, because it features some of Sondheim's most lyrical songs, including "I Remember".

The story of the musical concerns a poet who flees the world that rejects him and decides to live in a department store. While he's there, he discovers an entire society of people living in the store who never leave, among them the young woman Ella, who has lived in the store since she was a very small child. In "I Remember", Ella tries to conjure up the world outside, a world she yearns for and barely remembers, with similes drawn from her life in the store: "I remember sky! It was blue as ink..."

Here's the original by Charmian Carr (there are some glitches, which is to be expected in a bootleg of a 40-year-old TV show):


Although the show itself is relatively obscure due to the aforementioned tight-fistedness of the copyright holders, "I Remember" has been recorded a number of times and is pretty well-represented on YouTube. Highlights include a very well-adapted choral version, and this a capella version by a man called Albert Sammons Jr, which works about ten times better than it has any right to do.

I feel I have been shamefully neglecting this LJ lately. I've had all sorts of Thoughts, and either no time or no energy or no inclination to put them into words.

Work continues to be mostly good. Tiring, but interesting. I think I underestimated just how tiring it would be; it's less irritating and dull than being a secretary was, but at the end of the day I'm still wiped and in no mood to socialise or do anything more taxing than surf the net or watch TV. I don't even play video games on weekdays; I don't have the energy.

I have watched the first season of Mad Men. It's a bit good, isn't it? Terribly clever and complex and rich. It sometimes wavers on the edge of becoming The Gosh Weren't The Early 60s Dreadful Show (the smoking! the drinking! the sexism! the racism! the underwear!), but it never quite tips over, because the characters are so rounded and human, and are very much rooted in their time and place, without being stereotypes of The Madison Avenue Executive, The Dutiful Housewife, The Beatnik Artist.

If likeable characters are a sine qua non, Mad Men is not the show for you; they're all more or less dreadful, but in such believeable and interesting ways that I was utterly riveted.

I have realised that in my previous plans, I was overestimating my salary and underestimating my tax burden by a significant amount. Sigh. I won't be saving as much as I thought I would, and it'll take me longer than I thought to pay off my credit card, alas. But it will still happen, and that's something.

I have written 28 pages of the script for my aliens-invade-Ireland graphic novel. On the one hand, I had hoped to have written 100 pages by now, which was clearly an unrealistic goal (I did manage to write 5 pages a day when I was working on my Marvel Epic pitch, but then I didn't have a full-time job at the time), but on the other hand, it's further than I've got with any other comics project, mostly because I've tended to think in terms of miniseries in 22-page instalments, rather than full graphic novels; old-fashioned of me, frankly, although it has the advantage of letting me off the hook for the plot for the chapters after the first.

The hardest part is working out the specifics. I know that my heroine is going to go upstairs to her friend's hotel room, break the door down, and get the medical bag; but breaking that down into specific concrete actions that will look good on the page is harder than it sounds.

The way Sondheim works involves a lot of rewriting shows on the fly to accommodate actors and audiences and to tweak and perfect the balance between music, lyrics, plot, character and staging. This can result in different productions being significantly different from each other, which is common enough in musicals, although the extent of the differences is, I think, rather greater with Sondheim than is typical. Songs are added and removed that completely change the tenor of the show as a whole; Assassins without "Something Just Broke" is a different show, and you could say the same for Company with "Marry Me A Little" as its finale instead of "Being Alive".

The changes made to Follies are a little less dramatic, but still significant. "A Country House" was added for the 1987 London production. It's a duet in which the wealthy middle-aged couple Ben and Phyllis try to negotiate their way out of the dry patch their marriage is going through, and it's a great example of Sondheim's gift for catching the essence of a complex emotional situation with simple words; and of his unmistakeable dry sense of humour.



The above version is from the 1987 London cast recording. This version with Carol Burnett and George Hearn is from the revue Putting It Together. I don't like it as much because, as with all the numbers from Putting It Together, its tempo is too slow, and the orchestration is a bit clunky and obvious. Still, Burnett and Hearn do a good job.

So, I finished Assassin's Creed. I won't say I got to the end because THAT WAS NOT AN ENDING. Here's a tip, game developers: if the only way I can tell that the game is over is because the little Xbox achievement pops up telling me that it's over, you're doing it wrong. I know they wanted to set it up for the sequel, and I'm not bothered by the complete lack of closure -- the story's not over, and that's fine, that's good, that gives me something to look forward to -- but leaving me hanging like that, with no clear in-game indication that that was all there was, unless I performed a specific action that I didn't really have any reason to perform and had to consult a freaking walkthrough to find out about? That is just not cricket.

...the crazy thing about my experience with Assassin's Creed is that I have an enormous number of complaints to make about the game -- more than I can make for almost any game I've ever played, including some that really irritated me -- but my overall verdict is still highly positive. I mean, considering how much I hate it, it's bizarre how much I love it, and vice versa; and it's the love that wins out, even with all the times I've been tempted to smash my TV in with my controller. The combination of unique and thrilling gameplay, a compelling story with an unusually clever structure, and a fascinating and gorgeously realised environment, is more than enough to make up for the repetitive level design, frustrating combat, and mildly laughable stealth system.

There's a conference of judges happening on Friday, so the courts aren't sitting; our manager sent us an email suggesting that if we wanted to take a day off (out of our annual leave, of course, but not needing the usual 4 weeks' notice), we could; and I did, and I'm really looking forward to it. Surprise 3-day weekend! Woohoo!

I'll probably just play Assassin's Creed the whole time. That's what I consider a productive weekend. Because holy crap I love that game. I'm fully cognisant of all its flaws -- I just don't care. It's lodged hooks into my brain. I love the story, the characters, the setting -- the setting, my God, why aren't there more games set in more-or-less accurately-reproduced historical periods, instead of a vaguely fictionalised present, a somewhat plausible future, or a secondary world? Playing Assassin's Creed has made me want to learn about the Crusades and the Hashshashin and the Knights Templar and the golden age of Islam, because I'm getting a taste of all of it through the game, and I want more.

( Slashy musings )

I am posting this entry from my brand-new ultra-tiny ultra-cute surprisingly-functional EEE PC.

It's so tiny. You know how tiny it is? It's so tiny that the only way for me to view a YouTube video without the edges being cut off is to view it fullscreen. It's so tiny that I could stick it on my graphic novel shelf and most of the GNs would dwarf it. It's so tiny that it is a PC that Mr Trunks the dwarf elephant, Vice-Mayor of Tiny Towne, would consider too small for his purposes.

Well, you know. A tiny bit too small. (Awwwwwwww!)

It is super tiny is what I'm saying, and it is going to take some getting used to. I am already being baffled by Linux, which didn't take long, even with the super-user-friendly custom distro that's pre-installed. But I shall learn.

I'm going to try carrying it around. It's so light and small that, unlike with most laptops, that's something I can do without it being a Big Deal requiring advance preparation and a special bag.

I am ever so excited! I feel like I'm living in science fiction.

A Little Night Music is a farce or comedy of manners (depending on how you look at it) based on the classic and brilliant Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night (which was also remade by Woody Allen as A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy). The main plot concerns the tangled relationships among six upper-class Swedes that come to a head when they all spend the weekend in a country house on Midsummer Day. Each one of them gets a song explaining their inner turmoil and motivations; all of the songs are written in variations on waltz time. In "Later", the prudish and repressed Henrik Eggerman, a minister-in-training going through a delayed adolescence, complains about being constantly put off by everyone around him and never getting to actually experience anything. This version is from the TheatreMemphis production of 2004.



There was a film adaptation of A Little Night Music in 1977 which cut some of the songs and shifted the action to Austria, thereby renaming Henrik "Erich"; this video includes the film versions of "Now", "Soon", and "Later" ("Later" begins at 07:45). The film version is much-maligned by Sondheim fans, but the three songs as presented in this video are not done badly at all.

I really like the concert version by Bernadette Peters, even though (as the poster of the video notes) she gets her shoe tangled up with her dress at one point and has to lie down on the stage to disentangle herself. She keeps singing throughout and manages to incorporate what she's doing into the song. What panache! What a performer!

And, saving the best for last: one of the most interesting Sondheim-related videos on YouTube is this video of Sondheim himself coaching a London Guildhall student through the song. Fascinating stuff.

Awesome little short film, "Why The Irish Dance That Way":


Hair hats.

Belle Waring of John and Belle Have A Blog: "John and I have religious beliefs that prevent us from using blog control. We're just ready to accept however many blogs God's going to bless our lives with."

Mia Kirshner: devestatingly beautiful and stunningly talented actress, and also originator and compiler of I Live Here, a graphic exploration of what it's like to live in a crisis zone. Also, she's donating all her royalties to Amnesty International (which reminds me that now that I'm less poor than a church mouse, I really should re-join AI).

I've mentioned this in other places, but I'll mention it here, too: The complete Elfquest is being put online by the series creators, Wendy and Richard Pini. Most of the series is already up, and they're working on the rest. Elfquest is seriously good, and I'm a bit shocked it's taken me this long to get into it.

If you are Irish and believe in full and equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens, MarriagEquality have some suggestions on how to bring that about.

And finally, a story recommendation from the excellent sf webzine Strange Horizons: Kimberley Ann Duray Is Not Afraid, by Leah Bobet, a thoughtful and intelligent exploration of the nature and meaning of race in the present day.

The thing is, it looked so obvious for so long to me that McCain couldn't win that I don't even feel happy. I haven't heard a single positive thing about McCain, or a single negative thing about Obama, for weeks; and I was telling myself that complacency was dangerous, that I shouldn't take for granted that the results would be what I wanted them to be, that the disappointment if McCain won would be so fierce that I shouldn't get too excited. And I didn't get excited (although for the past few days I've been breaking out into foolish grins every time I see Obama's picture); and now that it's actually happened, it feels... inevitable. As if it could not have been otherwise.

I expect that from where a lot of Americans were standing, it looked different: they had access to more information than I did. But this election result is not just about this election. It's about the fact that the US has suffered under one of the most apalling presidencies in its history for eight years, and the American people are sick of it. They've been sick of it since well before this year's campaigns began. This election was not just an endorsement of Obama (though holy hell, he is going to have a comfortably long honeymoon period), but a rejection of George W. Bush and all his pomps and all his empty promises.

I told myself not to get complacent, but the disgust at the Republicans' way of ruling the country and the massive groundswell of support for Obama were so huge that I didn't really believe McCain could win without there being vote fraud involved -- on a scale even wider than in 2000. And the McCain/Palin campaign frankly didn't strike me as competent or organised enough to pull off something like that.

Here's to eight years of sanity, my friends. Sanity, civility, and decency. Let us hope and wish and pray that Obama is everything he seems to be, and can continue to be what the American people need him to be once he's reached the Oval Office.

I am so ridiculously into Assassin's Creed at the moment. There are criticisms I could make of the game. I could say that the main character is a dick, that the autosave system frequently dumps me in awkward places after an inconvenient death, that moving through the Kingdom is deeply tedious because of all the soldiers on high alert and the bug that makes my horse disappear if I desynchronize, that the whining beggar women and shoving lepers are really freaking annoying, that the investigation missions are a bit samey. I could say all of that, but the game is so much goddamn fun that it doesn't matter. Its frustrations are so very very worth the joy it brings: sneaking up behind a guard, shivving him quietly, throwing his body off the roof and listening to the pandemonium below; running and leaping across the rooftops of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus; climbing to the top of a vertiginously tall tower and leaping off to land safely in a haystack on the ground.

I like almost every bit of the game (even the wordy unskippable cutscenes), but probably the parts I enjoy most are the parkour-style jumping-running-climbing bits, especially when there's no pressing need for me to go anywhere in particular, and I can take my time figuring out how best to reach the roof of a building that looks particularly scalable. And part of that is the gameplay (why, yes, I am looking forward to Mirror's Edge with crazy levels of anticipation), and part of it is the environment: it's so beautiful, and so interesting, and so unlike anything I've seen in any game before.

And it's real, too: one of the most startling moments so far was when I realised that that tall building with the golden dome was the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam which stands in Jerusalem to this day, and that, hey! The game wanted me to climb it!

I couldn't bring myself to do it at first. I mean, sure, it's just pixels and polygons, but... it's the al-Aqsa mosque. I'm not a Muslim, but I tend to feel that any site that's regarded as sacred by many people over a long period of time becomes ipso facto sacred: the love and reverence that they pour into the place lingers for a long time afterwards. I looked up at the golden dome and the gorgeous multi-coloured inlays, and I found I didn't have the heart to climb it as if it were just another guard tower.

I got over that qualm the next day -- because it is just pixels and polygons, really -- and I've got to tell you: the view from the roof of the al-Aqsa mosque is spectacular.

The Frogs is a very very very loose adaptation of the classic comedy by Aristophanes. This is the opening number, in which two of the actors invoke the blessings of the gods of the theatre, and instruct the audience in the proper way to behave. It's one of Sondheim's funniest songs.



The above version is an audio-only version from the 2005 recording, featuring Nathan Lane. This version by Bronson Pinchot is taken from the revue Putting It Together, and the lyrics were adapted accordingly, and rather well, though the joins show in a couple of places.

So I'm thinking of getting myself an ASUS EEE PC. One of the little green ones with a 2GB solid state drive and Linux. Because I want to get a netbook, and I was comparing prices on komplett.ie, and hey! Turns out I'd be paying €166 extra for a Windows netbook, which is ridiculous considering that the 2G Linux version only costs €209. And then I thought about it, and I realised that most of the programs I use are available for Linux anyway (programs I use most often: Firefox, OpenOffice.Org Writer, Gimp... also Winamp, which I would miss, but there are alternatives). Gaming was the big hurdle for me for years, but now that I have the Xbox, even that isn't a big deal. To be sure, I never finished Deus Ex and I never started Deus Ex: Invisible War, and they're not the only PC games I have on the shelf that I have either never completed or never played, but that's not a good enough reason to avoid taking the plunge into the warm (and only slightly shark-infested) Linux waters.

Let me add: If I do go for the Linux EEE, I will not be asking any of you for tech support, because seeking technical computer-related assistance from people is a great way to turn warm affection into burning hatred on both sides. Er. In my limited experience.

It's technically Monday, but the sun hasn't risen yet, so I'll call it Sunday. Today's Sondheim video is "Move On", from Sunday in the Park with George. This is the climax of the second act. Where the first act was about Georges Seurat and the painting of his great masterpiece "Sunday afternoon on the island at La Grande Jatte", the second act is about his great-grandson, also called George, and also an artist, troubled by the compromises he has to make to create his art and losing confidence in his creative powers. In "Move On" he sees a vision (or a ghost) of his great-grandmother, Seurat's lover Dot, who urges him to keep going with his art:

Stop worrying if your vision is new
Let others decide that for you
They usually do
You keep moving on!



The above video is from the transcendently wonderful original production with Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin, which is available on DVD. This version, recorded at the 2008 Tony awards, is from the recent revival starring Jenna Russell and Daniel Evans and featuring some very clever and innovative set design. The original is so good and so unified in all its aspects that it's hard to imagine that the revival could have topped or equalled it, and Jenna Russell's singing is a bit breathy in this video. Still, the use of digital screens to allow the painting to appear, piece by piece, around the actors, is probably a better realisation of Sondheim and Weidman's concept than anything the technology of the 1980s could permit.

There's also this concert version by Bernadette Peters singing solo, which is interesting; it loses a lot by not being a duet, but Peters is always worth seeing.

( So, I finished Mass Effect today... (cut for major spoilers) )

On a more general point: it occurred to me while playing the game that designers must be constantly trying to strike a balance between first-play value and replay value. They're not always mutually exclusive, but with an RPG there's always the problem that on your second playthrough, you already know what the story is, so you can't get the thrill you got the first time around, and almost no RPG has enough depth or complexity in its story to make it worthwhile to go through a simple replay that introduces no new elements. (Notable exception: Planescape Torment, which looks significantly different the second time you play it, even if you don't change The Nameless One's behaviour at all.)

To maximise replay value, you have to include things like real choices -- by "real choices" I mean choices that have an effect either on the game world or on your character, where you must take either path A or path B and not both, and where it does make a difference which path you take. Other things that increase replay value include: unlockable benefits (e.g. you can only play Mass Effect on Hardcore difficulty after playing the game through completely at least once); different means of resolving the same quest that depend on different skillsets (Arcanum is a game that plays very differently if you play a technologist than if you play a mage); having to choose from a selection of NPCs to form your team (i.e. you can't have all of them with you at once); and morality meters, which may or may not overlap with "real choices", but definitely affect the flavour of the game (in Mass Effect, it's Paragon/Renegade; in KOTOR, Light Side/Dark Side; Torment had nine possible alignments which affected which items you could use).

To maximise first play value, you have to make sure that there is no essential element of the game that is blocked off from a player who makes particular choices -- be they story-related, related to character skills, NPC-related, or what-have-you. And oftentimes, it seems that the things that frustrate me about CRPGs are the story and level design elements that get fudged in order to increase first play value at the expense of replay value. There's no particular reason why every option should be open to every character regardless of their skills. Sure, flexibility is good -- it's nice to have the option to either pick the lock of the door or blow it up with a grenade -- but in some cases, I feel the game should just say "look, this bit's for people who can shoot guns. If you can't shoot a gun, bugger off." Life is not perfectly flexible, and when games are perfectly flexible so as to conveniently fit whatever skillset you happen to have, I feel condescended to. I don't have to get everything on my first playthrough, guys. Not if that means breaking my suspension of disbelief.

I also tend to think of cutscenes and voiced dialogue as maximising first-play value, but in the case of Mass Effect, I'm not so sure. Maybe because they put a lot of effort into making sure that the actors doing the dialogue would be good, and would have a diverse range of voices; and the dialogue itself is well-written, and the choices your character makes, both in action and in dialogue, change what other characters say.

I certainly intend to replay Mass Effect at some stage, though probably not for a while; I want the experience of the first play to fade a little bit so that the whole thing doesn't feel like so much deja vu. It's a flawed game in some ways, but the flaws are mostly minor and technical; overall, it's superb.

I've quit my role as a contributor to the Forbidden Planet International Blog. Concerns had been expressed about how often I was posting and how good my posts were (i.e. not as good as they used to be), and while my immediate reaction was to suggest a probation period of a few weeks in which I could try to get back up to speed, on reflection I decided it would be better if I just quit straight away and outright.

To be honest, it's a bit of a relief. My job is quite demanding, and I just don't have the time I used to have to pay attention to what's going in comics. The fact that I was an ongoing contributor to the FPI blog was once a source of pride and joy, but lately it had become a source of anxiety and pressure. And while it was a terrific opportunity (I was particularly delighted to get the chance to interview Jason Lutes), on balance the negatives outweigh the positives at the moment.

Mono no aware and all that. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; a time to contribute to group comics blogs, and a time to cease contributing to group comics blogs.

90% of aesthetic disagreements come down to people yelling My fun is better than your fun! at each other in more complicated language. And I'm sick of it. I really am. I don't have the energy to sort out the 10% of substance buried under the 90% of "how dare your taste be different from mine!"

Some people just don't seem to be able to fathom the notion that other people have fun doing things they find torturous. If they see somebody doing something they, personally, would not enjoy, and apparently enjoying it, they automatically assume that something else is going on: they're doing it for the money, or the attention, or because they think it'll win them cool points with the in crowd. They couldn't possibly be really enjoying themselves. And I just don't get this. How can you reach an adult age without absorbing the fact that there are people who enjoy things you don't? You don't have to share their tastes, but how hard is it to grasp that the things that repulse you don't repulse everyone else?

For example: I hate Top Gear. Hate it, loathe it, despise it and everything it stands for. I hate it so much I can't be in the room when someone else is watching it. It unleashes a visceral distaste that borders on nausea. (Yes, this is an extreme reaction.) But I have friends who love it, and although I can't even begin to understand why, I would never dream of questioning the sincerity of their enjoyment. Same goes for professional wrestling, and Formula 1 racing. The source of their appeal baffles me, but I don't have to understand it in order to appreciate that it exists.

Anything that's associated with school is particularly likely to get this reaction. How could you possibly like reading poetry, or doing maths problems, or analysing texts? Obviously you don't really like doing that; you're just doing it to look clever, to advance your academic career, to make the rest of us feel stupid.

To which I can only say: No. And also: the fact that you would rather assume bad faith on the part of others than consider the possibility that they are different from yourself does not speak well of you. And furthermore: fuck you very much. I like what I like, and I resent like buggery the suggestion that I'm just putting on airs.

I've never seen Merrily We Roll Along. Not many people have. The debut production closed after a whopping nine performances, and while there have been revivals that tinkered with the basics in an attempt to make it more audience-friendly, none of them have been very successful. A lot of reasons have been cited for the flop: the plot ran backwards, which must have been confusing; the cast were very young and inexperienced; the set resembled a high school gym and has been widely described as "ugly"; and the story is kind of cynical and depressing. Not that "cynical" or "depressing" were new things for Sondheim, but maybe the fact that this Sondheim musical was about a pair of friends who wrote musicals made the audience suspicious. Going meta can be a dangerous move, especially when you're trying to appeal to a wide crowd; there's the risk of coming across as insular or sef-indulgent. Maybe that's another reason why Merrily We Roll Along was never a success.

Regardless, here's "Franklin Shepard Inc", as performed by Raúl Esparza, in which main character Frank gets thoroughly berated by his best friend Charley for caring more about money than art. This is a perfect example of the way Sondheim can switch from comedy to tragedy and back again within a few lines, while saying something pretty serious underneath it all. The more I watch this video, the more I find in the song.