An interview with my nephew

[imomus]

Before leaving Scotland I interviewed my nephew Robbie, who turns 12 on Friday, about computer gaming, his big obsession. The interview is a bit murkily recorded, so probably only hardcore game nuts (or big Robbie fans) will listen to the whole thing. We discuss whether gaming has eclipsed pop music, whether you can tell someone's favourite game by looking at them, whether people over 30 can game, how the Gamecube measures up to the PS2, the pleasures of retro, whether games have auteurs, and Robbie's plans to be a game environment or character designer when he grows up.

Robbie Interview (16.49 MB mono mp3 file, 36 minutes)

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Monkey's uncle

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

This has nothing to do with Robbie or the subject at hand, but here is as good as any place to tuck this secretly away...



Due to travel and other distractions, I've neglected "Click Opera" for a month (having also become too much the scold there), but Momus has come back to nag me in my subconscious: This morning I dreamed it was 1995 again--and there was Momus on the American TV show "Saturday Night Live," with long glossy hair and dressed like the character "Hombrecito" in Herzog's "Every Man for Himself and God Against All," one of my favorite movies. (Hombrecito is an Incan who plays the nose flute and wears three jackets to protect against "the evil breath of humanity.") Momus was talking like Jack Kerouac and cracking jokes about traveling America by Grayhound. Could this be the portent of an upcoming American tour, provided Bush is deposed first?

When (minor?) celebrities show up in my dreams, it's proof of the paucity of my imagination. Do we owe them an appearance fee or simply an apology? Whenever Momus shows up, which has been a scant number of times, he's always acting something like Virgil, pointing into the abyss. Likewise, Liza Minelli is in the permanent cast of my nightmares, for some reason.

Sorry. Maybe I should simply remain anonymous, when I can be everywhere and nowhere, everyone and no one. Every man for himself and God against all?

Anyway, I think there's a Momus birthday coming up soon and "Click Opera" will soon be one year old, so I say "Happy Birthday!" twice and "Happy New Year!" once. Momus is a little dancing ray of sunshine in all our lives--well, maybe sometimes closer to a glowering Scots gloam--but anyone who ever stops by here owes him a hearty drink and an even heartier "thanks."






PS At my own untended "Live Journal" site, where the weeds are poking up through the HTML tags, I've just posted an unfinished little nothing from last summer, which I dedicate to N. C.