Don't let the title mislead you - I came to Texas for Mother's Day and didn't just send a text. I couldn't think of a good gift, so I came home. Mom played her 'we can do anything you want' card by choosing to eat at Chuy's, her favorite Tex-Mex place. Hey, it's what makes her happy.
Anyway. The text exchange took place not between me and her, but between my mom and her boyfriend. This exchange was dictated to me and not peeked at or otherwise obtained by sneaky means.
For the first time, I write from an airplane.I'm on the way to Austin for the weekend to reunite with a college club that has a permanent place in my heart and soul: the Japanese Association at UT. Today's their once-a-year spring festival, and for the first time we alumni have used the occasion to try to get an alumni chapter off the ground. Amazingly, everyone's taking it seriously. Alumni such as myself are reuniting from around the world, with thanks to our fearless leader known as Tots. He was the founding president, so he has much more heart-and-soul invested than I, but the guy's so hardcore he flew from Singapore to Austin to see his baby grow up just a little more. When he did this, it was hard to keep saying no to coming in from Cali for a weekend. So here I am. As I sit on the plane, I get more and more excited. This weekend is more than a reunion with the boys [my affectionate name for my old roommates], or a reunion with a group of wonderful people not unlike a fraternity. [UT readers, take heart - that takes on a positive meaning at most other universities, I've learned. And that's how I mean it.] And it's certainly a lot more than an 18+ party late at night in downtown Austin. No, this is a return to my youth. Grad students are generally in their late 20s and begin to feel the age. Lines to the effect of "I'm not in college anymore" or "I can't do that anymore" are said with shocking frequency. The all-night fun and parties don't necessarily end forever at 25, but they do take more effort than they used to. And they still might end all together at 30. We'll see. Tonight's party will be the only way to do it - with the same group I traipsed around with three years ago. At the same nightclub, even.The moral of this story is that there is a difference between 22 and 25 or 26. And that opportunities like this will be rare, even if our little alumni association takes off in the best possible way. Alumni associations are for networking and helping current members of the club get jobs and the occasional trip down Memory Lane. Partying's an afterthought. We're all still young, but that won't last forever. People will continue their inevitable spread around the globe, and convocations like these will host fewer and fewer people who have little spaces in my heart for being there with me when we did it all the first time around. Tonight's gathering already lost one soldier to work-related conditions. As I sit on the plane, my phone is blasting the same albums I blasted three years ago in my car: m-flo's Astromantic, Crazy Ken Band's 777. After I land, I get to party with my favorite one-time roommates, and I get to enjoy quality time and party some more with a group that has always taken care of me and had my back. Never mind my notoriously expensive tastes. My drink may now be Maker's Mark or a well-aged Suntory, but for now, I'm drinking Jack and Cokes and eating Cheese Nips, as if it were a UT football game day. For a night, I get to be 22 again. The words "I'm so happy I could cry" don't really hold water - the feeling I have isn't happiness. It's still positive for sure, but it's a deeper sensation than happiness, something that touches the soul more than happiness. But as I sit on this plane, I'm tearing up a little nonetheless.
Some recent pictures of things I've come across: Tencent, a huge Chinese portal, was at GDC a few weeks ago. They apparently have a cowboy penguin mascot. Who knew? In NYC, the cool new spot is the High Line, a derelict train line running above Chelsea repurposed into a linear park. It's actually pretty great - wonderful views, a good walk, and some great common space design. Last night, the undergrad Japanese associations at UCSD threw their annual festival. For me, it was familiar territory and a very fun visit back to my own undergrad days. The munchkin doing the ring toss is the daughter of one of our Japanese government representatives (who got rounds of applause from the assmbled undergrads watching the ensuing cuteness of successfully tossing a ring) and the taiko drumming group put on a great show with a little bit of American showmanship and cute smiles. That, combined with $3 Japanese beer, made for an outstanding night.
Oh, man. It's time to get caught up on some gaming action. This was originally the 'Valentine's Day edition,' given the timing of when I played all these things, but then school came along and decided to get all evil for a month and change. Now I'm back to a reasonable everyday schedule, so it's time to share my thoughts on some games and music. I want to get on to new things, so I'll be making this quick.Grand Theft Auto: Ballad of Gay Tony The best GTA game made. Fascinating characters and a tight (but not short) storyline filled with high-octane action sequences. It's like playing a Michael Mann movie. Or a Michael Bay movie. But good either way. If you play one version of GTA IV, make it this. Forza Motorsport 3 Truly a great racing game. Even feels good using the Xbox 360 controller, which is odd since it's a controller totally set up for action games. I think the great racing games are less about moving around the track and more about diving headlong into car culture. In this regard, Forza and DiRT have both been great recent games in the genre. I have to confess, though: I'm still a Gran Turismo man, and the only reason I haven't poured 100 hours into FM3 is that I know I'll put more than that into GT5. If Forza finally let its players revel in gearhead culture, GT5 will be the damned Smithsonian of car culture by comparison. Brace yourselves for this one I put a few hours into World of Warcraft.Yes. I, the blakerson, played WoW.The economics of this game are very different from my last foray into the game several years ago. Basically, back then it was "I'm paying for this punishment?" and then Blizzard spent years tweaking the psychology of leveling and loot accumulation and then gave me a year's subscription for free. So now, my experience was "Hey, this ain't bad.. where my friends at?" To answer the requisite questions: Blood Elf Rogue, got to somewhere around 16-18 before play tapered off. Perfect Dark This one's a last-second addition. A wonderous HD port of the game was released on Xbox Live Arcade, finally sating the innateneeds of former Goldeneye players who needed a re-release ever since games started getting re-released. Good news: It's a 60fps, 1080p, re-textured redux of the original game, with tons of local and online multiplayer options including co-op and deathmatch modes. It's got a throwback mode, which lets you play on the game's three redone Goldeneye maps using just Goldeneye weapons. It's still addictive well over a decade on. Bad news: It's not Goldeneye. Between the rights to the game (which lie with Nintendo), the assets (which live with Rare, now owned by Nintendo's rival Microsoft) and the James Bond franchise (Activision), it'll never get re-released. You don't get to go back and run through the Dam and the Facility and so on in single-player, repeating all those missions that drove you nuts when you were thirteen. There are only three familiar multiplayer maps. Still, well worth $10.OK, time for some music.Specifics - Lonely City and II Two white guys from Toronto who've got their hip-hop down. I think I've heard "Take Me Back" a thousand times and it's still smooth. Funky DL - The 4th Quarter A brother with American-sounding rhymes from London's East Side. Utada - This Is the One A J-pop star tries to make it in the US. She's been huge in Japan since her youth, but like many Asian pop stars the transition hasn't been easy despite her native English. Going full-blown slut on her first English-language album didn't seem to work, so she hunkered down and tried harder and came away with something better the second time around. She's coming on my Internet radio pretty frequently, and I can't seem to turn her off. Honestly, who can say no to a line like "chemistry like apple and cinnamon"? Hey, want to share some music? Join Dropbox and let me know you've joined.
