Richard Dansky's Blog, page 34

A Little Late But Live

New Storytellers Unplugged Post - On Revisiting Past Glories Heard and Seen

Check it out here.

The Movies Of Your Youth

Usually, when you go back and revisit something beloved from your youth, it doesn't match up to the memories. Maybe the production values that wowed you as a kid aren't up to snuff - you can see the zippers on all the Dr Who costumes, after all. Maybe you've built it up in your mind to an impossible level, so that no actual creation outside your mind's-eye can suffice. Or maybe something that was awesome - and I use the term advisedly - when you were 14 and had seen a lot fewer movies (or a l...

Game Narrative Summit Discount

Have I mentioned the 15% discount on Summit registration you get with what's on the other end of this link? Of course I have.

William Gibson at Duke

He's taller than I expected. Tonight's reading was a chapter out of the new book, entitled "Muskrat" - the chapter, not the book - followed by a short Q&A. Many familiar faces in the crowd (not terribly surprising, really), though not quite as full a house as one might have expected.

And afterwards a small caravan of folk headed over to Elmo's to discuss things probably best not mentioned in a public blog over dinerish comestibles. A good time was had by all, except perhaps the broccoli casse...

DBTs on Cabarrus Street

Enjoyed the hell out of the outdoor concert down in front of the Lincoln Theater last night. The Truckers didn't come on until nearly dark and most of the wine-sippers watching the festivities from their condo balconies had given up on the night. I'd estimate there were a couple of hundred people in the street proper, graybeards in Jerry Garcia t-shirts and serious-looking men with shaved heads and goatees dressed all in black. A couple of hipsters, a couple of reversed ballcaps (most were th...

Pottery Night in the Carolinas, Part II

Back to the pottery studio tonight.

The first time I tried this, it was a horror show. I barely remembered how to set myself up at the wheel. Centering clay was an adventure. Freshmen taking Pots for Jocks shot me pitying glances. You get the idea.

Tonight, I could center the clay. Lock the left arm, shape with the right hand. The flesh remembers, even after all these years. Fits and starts and shapes half-made falling back into clay, and by the end of the evening I'd made two or three things r...

Wiffleball in the cul-de-sac

After spending an hour chasing after my nephew's line drives as they bounced merrily into the recesses of various neighbors' yards, I now have a much greater appreciation for all the time my father spent playing catch with me when I was a kid.

Also, if we ever get the the kid's swing leveled out a bit, he's going to be a monster. He already hits curveballs.

Yom Kippur in the afternoon

The second coolest thing I saw today, family excluded, was a fallen log in the Eno River. There were ten turtles on it, in a wide range of size and species, and they were just sitting there, sunning themselves. Somewhere upstream a small girl was shouting "Turtles! Turtles!" One craned his neck to acknowledge the noise. The rest? They were turtles.

I saw a couple of dads fishing with their daughters, faces beaming with paternal pride as one of the little girls hauled in what had to be her firs...

Game Writing Workshop at GDC Online

Just to let folks know, there are still a couple of slots available in the game writing workshop at GDC Online in Austin, October 5-6. If you're interested in game writing, I highly recommend checking out the Game Narrative Summit. If you're attending the Game Narrative Summit, I highly recommend sending me something you want critiqued for the game writing workshop :-)

And if you haven't signed up but are going to, keep watching this space for a discount coupon on conference registration. It's...

Stranded

Once upon a time, I had my stay in England forcibly extended by the particulate (and particular) exhalations of an Icelandic volcano whose name I won't even attempt to spell for fear of accidentally invoking something Lovecraftian. Another one of the stranded, a gent named Andrew Losowsky, found himself indefinitely in Dublin and decided to put together a magazine made up of content generated by the folks whose travel plans were interrupted. When I stumbled into the project, he suggested I wr...