Social Game Design

I'll be honest -- I wasn't expecting much from this book. The authors (Tim Fields and Brandon Cotton) freely admit they wrote it in just 14 weeks. I don't envy them the task of trying to write a book about something changing as rapidly as the world of social games. The book came out a year ago, and already, by not talking about the clever structures of Puzzle & Dragons and Candy Crush Saga, the book feels terribly out of date. And by no means, overall, can I say that it is a great book. However -- it has some great parts. The chapters that summarize monetization methods and business terms for social games are completely worth the price of admission. Without a doubt, these chapters present these more clearly and succinctly than any other source I have found, and I very much plan to make them required reading in my game design class. In short -- this book is worth a hearty skim, and also worth keeping around for reference if you are working on social or F2P games.

One-Handed Basket Weaving

I had heard of Rumi, but not really read any of his works. I found this little volume in a second hand shop, and thought I would check it out. I was absolutely stunned. How could poems written in the middle east in the dark ages simultaneously cut to the heart of Christianity and Zen Buddhism while sounding as modern as if they were written yesterday? Consider this, for example:

Singular & Plural 

As human beings have an intellect
beyond the animals, so True Human Beings 

have an intelligent soul
beyond ordinary awareness, 

and it is all one thing,
their knowing and doing.

David didn't build the temple.
His son Solomon did,
but David built it too!

We speak of saints and prophets
and awakened ones in the plural,
but that's not the way it is. 

Dogs and wolves are competitive and disparate,
but the lions of God have one soul. 

I mean, that doesn't sound like 13th century poetry to me. Weirder still, read The City of Saba, and try to imagine that it was not written today, but written a thousand years ago. So, how can it be? Is Rumi a time traveller? And the answer is: well, it isn't 13th century poetry, not exactly. This is a translation by contemporary poet Coleman Barks. Weirdly, Barks does not read Farsi. Rather, he'd been reading the English translations of the original poems, and felt they seemed stiff, and well, not what they really wanted to be. So he undertook to translate the literal English translations into poems that felt more true. Interestingly, he's done this with the help, approval, and encouragement of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a Sufi mystic from Sri Lanka who has read and studied the originals. Somehow Coleman first met Bawa in dream, and then later in real life. Anyway, I find the poems intensely thrilling. They feel alive and wonderful and clever and true and wise, everything that I seek from poetry. Rumi wrote A LOT, and Barks has gradually been working on his own versions for decades, so there is much of it to explore, and I'm looking forward to that. And while I get a lot out of the poems, I think I might get even more out of the success Barks has had with his intense boldness, and his Emersonian resolve. It is just more evidence to me that when something feels true, though the world may tell you it is wrong, you should follow it with all your heart and soul. 

Weasels Ripped My Flesh

I've been a Zappa fan for about 25 years now, and though I've had this album since college, I never really listened to it. Partly the creepy cover keeps me away from it, and then the first track is just a painful cacophony. There are definitely some solid songs on here, but there is no unity to this album -- things don't feel connected in any way, and compared to other Zappa albums, it's not much fun to listen to. Better, probably, to just pull the good tracks out and stir them into your MP3 player.

The Mummy Market

I last read this book maybe 35 years ago. At the time, it meant a lot to me -- I believe I must have checked it out from the Riverview School library at least three times. In any case, it made a deep impression on me. So many elements in it have haunted me my whole life -- the independent schoolchildren who manage to rid themselves of their cruel caretaker, the treehouse, the password, writing down instead of sideways, the search for their true mother, and most of all Mrs. Cavour. She is the elderly neighbor who serves as mentor to the children. In this book, I first learned about Latin, as Mrs. Cavour uses many Latin phrases in her Wisdom. Not too long ago I tracked down the magic chemistry set books, remembering that the old lady mentor in that book speaking Latin... but now I realize that the two characters became fused in my mind. Perhaps Mrs. Cavour's greatest piece of wisdom: "There is no joy in an unequal battle." What I remember most about this book is that it was the first time a book made me cry.

The most mysterious part of this book is the author. Nancy Brelis appears to have written no other books. The writing in the Mummy Market is beautiful and inspired. The inside of the book is like a holy place. It was published in 1966, and does not seem to have been reprinted. It was quite difficult (and expensive) to get my hands on a copy. How is it that the world did not embrace this magical book? Apparently, a movie of the Mummy Market was made, "Trading Mom", 1994, in which Brelis gets a writing credit. But who was she? Internet poking reveals her husband was a journalist named Dean Brelis, and they had a daughter named Tia Brelis who was the director of Trading Mom, but she appears to have directed no other films. and I can find no other information about any of these people. It's very strange. Perhaps, as Mrs. Cavour explains, it is an example of a contemporary enchantment. Perhaps we all knew who Nancy Brelis was, but have forgotten, somehow. 

"Naturally you don't remember her. Memory would break the spell. That is the way of enchantment," said Mrs. Cavour. "When you do break it and get her back, you will remember quite clearly. She isn't lost, you know. Only mislaid." 

Under the Big Top

As a former professional juggler, stories about the circus are always interesting to me. I never toured with a big tent circus, only with little performing troupes. Some of my friends used to tour with big circuses, and they would all say the same thing, "God, the politics!" And this book, by writer Bruce Feiler, completely backs that up. He took a job as a clown with the Clyde Beatty Cole Bros. circus for a season, and carefully interviewed every act. The book gives a magnificent picture of the realities of the circus, the incredibly hard work and challenging conditions, and the politics natural in what is effectively a small travelling village. One thing that I had never realized -- the backstage arrangement of personal trailers is generally set up the same in each venue, so that it really is like a little neighborhood that is always laid out the same way, even though the neighborhood is in a different city each week. At times, the book gets a little full of itself, and I got the sense that the author, realizing that his book had the structure of Moby Dick, hoped to make it equally weighty. I can't say it is that weighty, but I will admit that I teared up at the end, and that I was quite pleased to learn so much about touring with a large American circus without having to do all the work!

Zero Hour!

This is a pretty straightforward 1957 suspense film, with a somewhat ridiculous plot. See, this former WWII pilot named Ted Striker ends up on a commercial airline flight during a storm, and due to an unexpected mass poisoning on board to everyone who chose the fish for dinner, both pilots are unconscious and he has to OH MY GOD THIS IS EXACTLY THE PLOT OF AIRPLANE!

First, I want you to check out how EXACTLY this is the same movie as Airplane!: 

I must have seen Airplane! maybe ten times, and I had no inkling that it was so directly satirizing this obscure movie. When Airplane! came out, it was a revelation. The world had never before seen a film that had so many gags per minute. Mel Brooks has talked about how it changed everything for comedy movies -- post-Airplane!, the pressure to cram in more comedy per second became intense, and if you didn't, your movie looked old-fashioned and out-of-date. When Airplane! came out, it was truly a wonder -- how could they have such structure, and be so zany? It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Now the secret is obvious -- they were able to have both insanity and structure by completely borrowing the structure from Zero Hour! I don't think this diminishes the film in any way, but it gives some hint to what makes for good comedy.

Interestingly, I made a similar discover about another, similar film: Mel Brooks' 1974 film, Young Frankenstein. Again, I had assumed that this comic masterpiece was a completely original take on the 1931 Frankenstein. I was shocked to sit down and watch the 1943 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and realize that Young Frankenstein is very much a satire of that much lesser known film, in which a man afflicted with lycanthropy seeks out Doctor Frankenstein's castle, with a hope of curing himself. Sure, there's no Wolf Man stuff in Young Frankenstein, but the rest is all there. Some of the dialog, much like Zero Hour! / Airplane! is also a direct lift into Young Frankenstein. Also notice this... Airplane! came out 23 years after Zero Hour!, and Young Frankenstein came out 28 years after Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Maybe that's just coincidence, but it would seem that there is a certain amount of comedy magic in making a strong parody of something that is 25 years behind you. That seems to be the same formula that both Happy Days and That 70's Show used.

I know -- this makes me seem nuts, and I probably think about this stuff too much. But I like to think this happened: In 1966, Woody Allen made What's Up, Tiger Lily, where he overdubbed a Japanese film. Mel Brooks saw it, and said, "That's kind of funny, but it could be much stronger", and reached back to the 40's to grab Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and used it to create Young Frankenstein. Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker surely loved that film, and thought back to their childhood about the ridiculous Zero Hour!, and used that to make Airplane!

Creative process is a secret thing -- but every time I tease out someone else's, it gives me more confidence about my own.

Jugglers Galore

This is a book to get lost in. I found it at the recent IJA festival, where the author, Paul Bachman, was curating an incredible collection of historical juggling props, photos, and paraphernalia. Paul self-published it via iGuruPublishing.com, and the result is a handsome hardbound volume with a charming homemade feel. The paper is soft, almost a kind of pulp paper, but it shows the pictures nicely, and doesn't have that slick, chemical feel that so many art books have. Instead it is light and pleasure to hold and flip through. Personally, it has reinvigorated my interest in plate spinning and balancing -- a branch of juggling that has fallen somewhat out of the limelight. I feel certain it is the kind of book that one day a child will discover on a grandparent's bookshelf, and be lost looking through the hundreds of amazing pictures, emerging hours later, changed forever, the dream of juggling permanently imprinted on their soul.