Achilles retired to his pavilion to sulk.
It's been a not-so-quiet-week in Lake Hellandgone.
Last Saturday I hiked the Billy Goat Trail with the lovely Ahn Hopgood and Brian Robb, shared Chevres, pâté, and crackers in the cold on a rock overlooking the Potomac, and scrambled up a challenging rock chimney like a much younger man.
Then I went as escort for the lovely Elizabeth Fanning to a fiftieth birthday for a Skinner baby at a mansion deep in the horse-and-hunt country of northwest Virginia. [Reference 'B. F. Skinner', behavorist psychologist, and 'Skinner box' in Wikipedia. I walked in the door, saw a framed collection of photos celebrating the life passage of the birthday boy, and noticed in the top left corner, at the beginning, something that looked like a rabbit hutch with a small object wrapped in swaddling clothes. That's what a Skinner box looks like. And the product of the Skinner box -- the birthday boy -- was a charming, clever man with a lovely wife, lovely children, lovely friends and family, and a lovely birthday party. So being raised in a rabbit hutch may be the way to go.]
Last Sunday I had dinner with the lovely Mark and Maureen Nelsons. Fondue, in fact. More than vaguely reminiscent of the Sixties. And received a lovely hand-selected gift basket containing, among other things, MORE Marmite and Vegemite, and Old Fart Wine. [I have since learned that they will be having a boy, and that Mark aspires for his son to achieve the high distinction ascribed to one of his ancestors, as discovered through genealogical research, to have been a 'pernicious layabout'.]
And this week was my last week working at Bethesda Softworks. This week both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the massively-multiplayer-without-the-other-annoying-players epic freeform computer roleplaying game, OBLIVION: ELDER SCROLLS IV, went Gold. And I went Retired.
Wednesday's Bethsoft farewell party [a Gone-Gold-Gone-Grey party] was lovely, with a cake in the shape of a tombstone. There were many public special moments, including a duel between myself and the the lovely lead programmer, Craig Walton, piling ever-higher-heaps of white chest hair, plucked with aplomb from our hairy chests, and placed in front of our blenching president-and-pirate-king, the lovely Vlatko Andanov. And, on the loading dock, gathered with the smoking crowd, the lovely [hair down to his ass] Louis Riley made me a hand-rolled farewell cigarette... WITH A FILTER IN IT!
There were also many very special private momemts, which I must pass over in reverence here. And even more special private moments during a decade of laboring with many talented and marginally sane geniuses.
But that is all behind me now. For I am retired. A free man of leisure, able to sleep late and lounge indolently to my heart's content.
So, of course, I awakened early the following Thursday AM, mind in ferment, and leapt from bed in my skivvies to work on my first freelance project, which had leapt into my lap in an email I found waiting for me Wednesday night when I returned from my retirement party.
But I am like a sheepdog. I love to work.
And I have a long list of personal and not-so-personal projects to work on in my Salad Days. ['Personal' here signifying 'no commercial potential', 'not-so-personal' meaning possibly remunerative.] Including the project of moving out of my Love Nest in Maryland and back to my Real Home with my lovely wife, Pat Rolston, in scenic Mount Tabor, New Jersey.
So what did I do on my first day of retirement?
Well, I got up early and worked in bliss for about five hours on the freelance project [simultaneously multi-tasking research and planning for my upcoming move]. Then I went shopping to squander the Electronics Boutique gift card my design department colleagues had so thoughtfully provided me as a please-go-away-now present. [For the record, I purchased THE THING, SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS, DEMON STONE, JOAN OF ARC, AND SPELLFORCE. God knows where I'll find time to play all those... oh, wait! I'm retired!]
Then I had dinner with the lovely Roberta Schwartz and Lawrence Schick at the Bistro D'Oc in DC, and went to see TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY at the nearby E Street Cinema. I went to see TRISTRAM SHANDY because I was informed I would see, graphically and explicitedly presented on the screen, a small boy's penis crushed by a falling window sash. Before entering the film, Lawrence, Roberta, and I rehearsed the various sorts of things that we could shout out in sympathy with the rest of the audience when they viewed this shocking scene.
Ken: God, no! Not again!
Roberta: But I TELL you! It was an accident!
We restrained ourselves, because we are decent and considerate film patrons.
I expecially admired one line from the film. Something to the effect of "TRISTRAM SHANDY was a post-modern work of art before there was any 'modern' to be 'post' of." Apart from fans of little-boy-penis-mutilation, I recommend the film to all lovers of literature and film. I suggest you read a review first, however. I loved director Michael Winterbottom's WONDERLAND, and loved screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce's MILLIONS, but this is a post-modern production that makes a glorious ironic-comic shambles of standard film and theatrical conventions, which is why I loved it, and why not everyone will enjoy it. [As Lawrence says, there were certainly some very anxious money men behind this film.]
TEAM OF RIVALS, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about Abraham Lincoln and his chief political rivals that he brought into his cabinet. Great stuff about high themes of politics, history, morality, personality, and domestic lives of the great.
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II: THE SITH LORDS: Heavy going for me. I hate the Star Wars setting, and really don't like the limited-environment puzzles and back-and-forth tasks of the gameplay, but I greatly admire the earlier work of the designers at Obsidian, and am told that this and the preceding KotOR are state-of-the-art computer roleplaying games. Well, maybe so, and maybe there are nuggets of gold here, but the play and pace are way too shallow and channeled to produce any sense of interest or immersion in the setting.
THE THING: I love the sense of place, and the mechanics of trust and fear in my NPC companions. But the narrative gameplay advances through painfully obvious procedural puzzles [find some object before the environment opens a new door to a new room with a plot advance]. These are probably inescapable conventions of mission-based adventure exploration, but spoiled as I am by the freeform, open-ended environment of OBLIVION, the first act gameplay is discouragingly weak. The set and sound design, and the mechanic of progressive threat of exposure to the cold [like a breathing bar when underwater], provides genuine tension and immersion in this exceptional hostile setting.
IDENTITY CRISIS, by Brad Meltzer: A graphic novel super-hero mystery. Read in one sitting, and greatly enjoyable. I am not a comic book fan, but this gives me a sense of how a delicately post-modern treatment of juvenile action-adventure heroes can have special resonance as well as genuine action fun and narrative suspense.
"Amelia Earhart's Last Flight", by Red River Dave McEreny: I'm at long last learning this [in C], one of my favorite tragic ballads. I was especially charmed to discover that this was "the first song ever performed on commercial TV (1939 World's Fair)".
"The Trapeze Swinger", by Iron and Wine [in C]: I heard this song first on the original soundtrack of IN GOOD COMPANY [an indifferent but pleasant film]. I love the sharp but oblique personal reference of the lyrics, especially the conceit of graffiti on the Pearly Gates ["Don't Look Down"], and the references to carnivals and trapeze artists.
Last Saturday I hiked the Billy Goat Trail with the lovely Ahn Hopgood and Brian Robb, shared Chevres, pâté, and crackers in the cold on a rock overlooking the Potomac, and scrambled up a challenging rock chimney like a much younger man.
Then I went as escort for the lovely Elizabeth Fanning to a fiftieth birthday for a Skinner baby at a mansion deep in the horse-and-hunt country of northwest Virginia. [Reference 'B. F. Skinner', behavorist psychologist, and 'Skinner box' in Wikipedia. I walked in the door, saw a framed collection of photos celebrating the life passage of the birthday boy, and noticed in the top left corner, at the beginning, something that looked like a rabbit hutch with a small object wrapped in swaddling clothes. That's what a Skinner box looks like. And the product of the Skinner box -- the birthday boy -- was a charming, clever man with a lovely wife, lovely children, lovely friends and family, and a lovely birthday party. So being raised in a rabbit hutch may be the way to go.]
Last Sunday I had dinner with the lovely Mark and Maureen Nelsons. Fondue, in fact. More than vaguely reminiscent of the Sixties. And received a lovely hand-selected gift basket containing, among other things, MORE Marmite and Vegemite, and Old Fart Wine. [I have since learned that they will be having a boy, and that Mark aspires for his son to achieve the high distinction ascribed to one of his ancestors, as discovered through genealogical research, to have been a 'pernicious layabout'.]
And this week was my last week working at Bethesda Softworks. This week both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the massively-multiplayer-without-the-other-annoying-players epic freeform computer roleplaying game, OBLIVION: ELDER SCROLLS IV, went Gold. And I went Retired.
Wednesday's Bethsoft farewell party [a Gone-Gold-Gone-Grey party] was lovely, with a cake in the shape of a tombstone. There were many public special moments, including a duel between myself and the the lovely lead programmer, Craig Walton, piling ever-higher-heaps of white chest hair, plucked with aplomb from our hairy chests, and placed in front of our blenching president-and-pirate-king, the lovely Vlatko Andanov. And, on the loading dock, gathered with the smoking crowd, the lovely [hair down to his ass] Louis Riley made me a hand-rolled farewell cigarette... WITH A FILTER IN IT!
There were also many very special private momemts, which I must pass over in reverence here. And even more special private moments during a decade of laboring with many talented and marginally sane geniuses.
But that is all behind me now. For I am retired. A free man of leisure, able to sleep late and lounge indolently to my heart's content.
So, of course, I awakened early the following Thursday AM, mind in ferment, and leapt from bed in my skivvies to work on my first freelance project, which had leapt into my lap in an email I found waiting for me Wednesday night when I returned from my retirement party.
But I am like a sheepdog. I love to work.
And I have a long list of personal and not-so-personal projects to work on in my Salad Days. ['Personal' here signifying 'no commercial potential', 'not-so-personal' meaning possibly remunerative.] Including the project of moving out of my Love Nest in Maryland and back to my Real Home with my lovely wife, Pat Rolston, in scenic Mount Tabor, New Jersey.
So what did I do on my first day of retirement?
Well, I got up early and worked in bliss for about five hours on the freelance project [simultaneously multi-tasking research and planning for my upcoming move]. Then I went shopping to squander the Electronics Boutique gift card my design department colleagues had so thoughtfully provided me as a please-go-away-now present. [For the record, I purchased THE THING, SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS, DEMON STONE, JOAN OF ARC, AND SPELLFORCE. God knows where I'll find time to play all those... oh, wait! I'm retired!]
Then I had dinner with the lovely Roberta Schwartz and Lawrence Schick at the Bistro D'Oc in DC, and went to see TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY at the nearby E Street Cinema. I went to see TRISTRAM SHANDY because I was informed I would see, graphically and explicitedly presented on the screen, a small boy's penis crushed by a falling window sash. Before entering the film, Lawrence, Roberta, and I rehearsed the various sorts of things that we could shout out in sympathy with the rest of the audience when they viewed this shocking scene.
Ken: God, no! Not again!
Roberta: But I TELL you! It was an accident!
We restrained ourselves, because we are decent and considerate film patrons.
I expecially admired one line from the film. Something to the effect of "TRISTRAM SHANDY was a post-modern work of art before there was any 'modern' to be 'post' of." Apart from fans of little-boy-penis-mutilation, I recommend the film to all lovers of literature and film. I suggest you read a review first, however. I loved director Michael Winterbottom's WONDERLAND, and loved screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce's MILLIONS, but this is a post-modern production that makes a glorious ironic-comic shambles of standard film and theatrical conventions, which is why I loved it, and why not everyone will enjoy it. [As Lawrence says, there were certainly some very anxious money men behind this film.]
TEAM OF RIVALS, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about Abraham Lincoln and his chief political rivals that he brought into his cabinet. Great stuff about high themes of politics, history, morality, personality, and domestic lives of the great.
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II: THE SITH LORDS: Heavy going for me. I hate the Star Wars setting, and really don't like the limited-environment puzzles and back-and-forth tasks of the gameplay, but I greatly admire the earlier work of the designers at Obsidian, and am told that this and the preceding KotOR are state-of-the-art computer roleplaying games. Well, maybe so, and maybe there are nuggets of gold here, but the play and pace are way too shallow and channeled to produce any sense of interest or immersion in the setting.
THE THING: I love the sense of place, and the mechanics of trust and fear in my NPC companions. But the narrative gameplay advances through painfully obvious procedural puzzles [find some object before the environment opens a new door to a new room with a plot advance]. These are probably inescapable conventions of mission-based adventure exploration, but spoiled as I am by the freeform, open-ended environment of OBLIVION, the first act gameplay is discouragingly weak. The set and sound design, and the mechanic of progressive threat of exposure to the cold [like a breathing bar when underwater], provides genuine tension and immersion in this exceptional hostile setting.
IDENTITY CRISIS, by Brad Meltzer: A graphic novel super-hero mystery. Read in one sitting, and greatly enjoyable. I am not a comic book fan, but this gives me a sense of how a delicately post-modern treatment of juvenile action-adventure heroes can have special resonance as well as genuine action fun and narrative suspense.
"Amelia Earhart's Last Flight", by Red River Dave McEreny: I'm at long last learning this [in C], one of my favorite tragic ballads. I was especially charmed to discover that this was "the first song ever performed on commercial TV (1939 World's Fair)".
"The Trapeze Swinger", by Iron and Wine [in C]: I heard this song first on the original soundtrack of IN GOOD COMPANY [an indifferent but pleasant film]. I love the sharp but oblique personal reference of the lyrics, especially the conceit of graffiti on the Pearly Gates ["Don't Look Down"], and the references to carnivals and trapeze artists.
posted by kenrolston at 6:24 AM
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