What’s New with Wu

[what follows is discarded prose, a story I started that went nowhere]

Back in the third century BC, aiming to impress the world, Dionysius of Syracuse sent to the Olympics fancy pavilions and several teams of horses.  To entertain spectators, he hired professional actors to recite poetry.  “At first the multitude thronged together because of the pleasing voices of the actors” wrote a contemporary observer, “and all were filled with wonder.”   Unfortunately the poetry Dionysius chose was his own.   “But on second consideration, when they observed how poor his verses were, they laughed Dionysius to scorn.” Some, it seems, “went so far in their rejection that some of them even ventured to rifle the tents.”

At the modern Olympics the urge to impress the world remains, even if it has taken different forms.  The Dutch have taken Dionysius one better, making their pavilion out of a Museum the size of a large city block, renamed the Holland House, which is stuffed full of Dutch curiosities and equipped with spotlights that penetrate what they can of the Beijing sky.  The Holland House admits all foreigners, and Chinese who bear invitations.  Last Wednesday the main beer hall featured a man with a large orange swirl for a head, dancing rave style to Dutch techno music.   As Sherrisse Pham, a longtime Beijing resident put it, “that’s Holland for you.”

A more American way of doing things is captured by “Club Bud,” also set up for the Olympics.  Club Bud is an unlikely combination of the downhome Budweiser beer brand, and the snobby, celebrity-centered club culture of New York or Los Angeles.  A goal of Club Bud, according to a statement by marketing manager Mike Thompson, is to be “the hardest ticket to get.”  A velvet rope, generally unknown to Beijing, graces the entrance.  Instead of the usual celebrities, it is atheletes who are the attraction, along with American sports celebrities like boxing champion Evander Holyfeld.  Tickets for Club Bud are indeed difficult to come by, as only the wealthy, the connected, and the highly athletic are welcome.

But it is the hosts who are making truly Dionysiusian efforts to impress the world and themselves.  At the Olympic events, the venues, especially the national swimming center or Bird’s Nest stadium, are showcases first and sports arenas second.   For many locals and some tourists, the point is to get into them and be part of the Olympics – the sports, somewhere down below, seem secondary.  As Dai Lu, a young member of the communist party who attended swimming heats told me, “its the olympics and the architecture, its new beijing, that’s why we want to get in.”
…

So I am particularly proud of this piece about Olympic weightlifting that I wrote.

For some reason I felt very moved to write it, rather like the Dumpling Manifesto.

This is a picture of Vivian Lee, who is on the Australian team (the Australian record holder for 48kg) and something of a philosopher of the bar.

I’m in Beijing this week, writing some stuff for Slate.  The murder was about 10 mins from my house.

This struck me as a rather odd photo of President Bush.

This article Fan Feud - ran in the New Yorker this week.

Unsurprisingly, the fan reaction has been visceral, in all sorts of directions. I particularly like being compared to Rita Skeeter. Obviously there is much more I would have liked to have put in - there were hours of interviews, and great contributions from Sheryll Townsend that were cut in their entirely to my dismay. But overall the thrust of the article was to describe the feud over Steven Vanderark in fandom, and his punishment therein.

Ironically, the article itself seems to have led to even more feuding in fandom.
Melissa Anelli in particular feels she has been misrepresented; though I am not sure I see why. Briefly, I mention and quote language to the effect that her and other leaders in fandom have been strong supporters of Rowling, and tough on Steve Vander Ark. This no one can deny. It is also true that Anelli herself has a good relationship with Rowling, and is writing a book, on fandom, with her blessing. These are the facts - and I didn’t refer to her as having mushroom hair, so she ought be happy.

Perhaps I will end with a para that was cut from the piece that seems to capture things:

Sheryll Townsend, a forty-eight year old Slytherin and fellow member of Harry Potter for Grownups (she calls herself a “list elf”), said, “Fandom tends to eat their own.”

I’m not exactly the only one to write on Gygax, but hey why not. I originally started writing this for Slate but didn’t finish in time. However the good part is that means I can put in a bit of autobiographical and D&D-specific stuff that would never make it in Slate.

On Gary Gygax’s Ideas

I was once a D&D player – okay! I’ve said it. My first real character was a strong and charismatic paladin named, yes, “Timothy.” He was perfect in every way, more or less, and advanced slowly through the levels, and since he was basically supposed to be me, I was rather attached to him. One day, however, I made the mistake of going into a place called the Tomb of Horrors. (created, I might add, by Gygax). Rather, I was lured. Jason the dungeonmaster, who was also our babysitter, had a sadistic streak, and he goaded my brother and I and even Onil into playing a game that was way too hard for us. After a promising start Timothy was crushed lifeless by a large marble juggernaut. When the death came it was sudden, unavoidable, and completely devastating.

It was only a character but I took the death of “Timothy” a little hard. Hey – I was nine years old! I kept thinking there must be some way to bring in him back; but he lay buried under thousands of pounds of rock. And for some reason my babysitter never thought to say, poor kid, and bring him back to life somehow. He just packed up the game and said, too bad. Later on I realized that he had actually cheated to make us die – and I’m still bitter.

(The Tomb of Horrors)

After that my next character was a much safer choice. He wasn’t me — Drowdabeer was a dwarf whose chief attribute was that he was very hard to kill. Under D&D’s rules he could jump off a 100′ cliff and just brush himself off. I didn’t really like Drowdabeer quite as much as Timothy, but at least he didn’t die on me.

Instead and unfortunately Drowdabeer was a bit of a bully. For some reason I can’t quite remember, I’d often find a way to kill my friend Cory’s characters. Just as Cory was about to grab the treasure he’d find a poisoned crossbow bolt in his back. Maybe still bitter about the Tomb of Horros, I took it out on Cory.  Luckily Cory and I are still friends, and maybe his D&D misfortunes played some tiny role in making Cory into the hugely successful author and Boing-Boing blogger that he is today.

(Cory Doctorow)
I could go on about our old D&D game but this is actually supposed to be about Gary Gygax, who died last week. I never knew much about Gygax the man, and in fact I didn’t know what he looked like until just now. But I know an awful lot about Gygax’s ideas. For Gygax was our patron saint – the man who had his name on every book; the guy who played the game first and played it right. It goes without saying that D&D affects your mind in all kinds of ways. (At some level, for example, I think of the classes I teach as just a sort of academic D&D campaign.) But Gygax had his own ideas within that world — a sort of ethos, a way of thinking, that affected all of us D&D players.

(Gary Gygax)

1. The main thing that Gygax taught is that you have to be very serious and rigorous about fantasy. I hasten to mention that this is an idea that can go too far. It can turn you into to someone who wears chain mail to work or refuses to associate with anyone who isn’t “chaotic neutral.” But what Gygax was teaching is that you sometimes have to lose yourself completely to get anything. Like Daniel Day Lewis acting, you have to inhabit the fantasy completely.

2. Along those lines Gygax also taught that the project of fantasy is collective. When I was in elementary and junior high school, the golden years of D&D, this was easy. Onil, Sean, Cory, Raja, my brother David, even Jason – we were all kids ready to get out of our heads. It helped that we went to an alternative school (the Alternative Learning Program) that regarded cynicism as a sin. And we actually had time set aside for playing D&D at school - it was great!

(more…)

So I did alot of writing that I failed to write about here. For the NY Times Bits blog, I did a debate with Rick Cotton at NBC. There was a last segment that for some reason hasn’t posted.
I also wrote another Slate piece on the oddness of AT&T’s filtering plans.