Author: Wil

I saw Phil Hellmuth at E3 today, in what I think was the Yahoo! Games booth (I’m not entirely sure, you know, with the cold medicine and everything.) He was taking questions from a huge crowd about poker, and doing what Phil does best: talking about how great he is, and how he only loses when some jerk puts a bad beat on him.
Phil is truly one of the greatest players to ever sit at a table, and he can absolutely beat anyone in the world, but his Shatnerian ego makes it very hard to enjoy watching him play.
However, ginormous ego or not, I just read that Phil did a really cool thing: he was all set to host the Phil Hellmuth Poker Challenge this weekend in Houston, Texas. Somewhere between 600 and 1000 players would pay $500 to attend a seminar taught by Phil, and then they’d play in a tournament that would send the winner to the Main Event in the World Series of Poker next month in Las Vegas. Best of all, the event would raise an estimated $250,000 for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
That is, until some anti-gambling busybodies in Colorado caused the charity event, which would raise money to help people who are stricken with breast cancer, to be shut down.
The whole story is at Pokernews.com:

“It looks like we have been shut down,” said Chuck Frierson who, along with Dale Hunsucker, were the local organizers for the event. “Players who have pre-registered will be receiving a full refund.”
“It started to unravel last week,” Frierson told me. “It seems a person from an anti-gambling organization in Colorado heard about this event and contacted the Harris County Sheriffs Department regarding its legality. We were looking to hold the event at Reliant Park, which is part of the Reliant Stadium grounds that are overseen by the county. Reliant Park gave us a great area to present the tournament and the expected crowd that would be there for the festivities.”

Isn’t that awesome? Some anti-gambling nutjobs decided that it was very important to spread their crusade to an entirely different freakin’ state, and shut down a charity event.

“It’s very sad, because we have run these type of events in the past without an issue. Recently, we raised $105,000 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The $105,000 was after any expenses we had. It was a great tournament for a great cause and we thought this one was going to be bigger.”
“We were expecting about 600 people,” lamented Frierson. “With that number, it was conceivable that we could have raised around $250,000 for breast cancer research. If we had 1000,” Frierson paused, “it could have been $350, maybe $400,000…The charity is the one who is hurt the most, with the players who wanted to participate being hurt as well.”

Wow. I hope those douchebags in Colorado are proud of themselves.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Stephen Lynch, who is a writer for the New York Post. He wrote:

I’m doing an article, the working theme of which is “the end of the geek golden era.” By the end of May, “Star Wars” will be over, “Star Trek” will probably be over. The “Lord of the Rings” movies have been wrapped up, no more “Matrix.” What do we look forward to now? Will geeks still rule the world?
I admire your blog and thought you would be a great person to comment on this. Thanks for your consideration.

I have learned to be wary of the Mainstream Media, but after a quick review of his articles, Stephen seemed like a good guy and the subject he was covering is something that I’m pretty passionate about.
I wrote back:

I actually think it’s the beginning of a new golden era for geeks: technology is putting massive computing power in our hands, we’re never more and a few hundred feet from the internets, we’ve got our own network (sci-fi channel) and the big summer blockbusters are all inspired by comic book movies. HHG comes out this year, it looks like Peter Jackson is going to do The Hobbit, there’s talk about a movie based on The Watchmen in 2006, and there’s a Firefly movie due out as well. Don’t overlook Sin City, or Hellboy, and don’t forget the new Battlestar Galactica! (Ron Moore is even connecting with geeks using the unprecedented medium of podcasting commentaries *for free* on all the new episodes, as well as communicating directly with the show’s fans via his blog.)
I think the end of Star Wars is long overdue. The new movies are an absolute abomination. It’s hard to figure out which sequel to The Matrix was worse, and Star Trek Enterprise had little in common with Star Trek beyond the name. There was an explosion of geeky goodness in the last few years, and now it’s time to step back, and . . . well, thin the herd, I guess. We’re at the dawn of a new geek era. The sun is only setting on the prologue.
This is just off the top of my head. If you’d like to talk with me, let me know and I’ll give you a call today. If you’d like to use any of this material, let me know and I’ll rework it just a little bit so it sounds less like e-mail.

So Stephen and I played phone and e-mail tag for a few days, but we finally connected and had a great conversation about geeky movies, where I tried to make it clear that, though I really hated Episode I, and nearly walked out of Matrix Reloaded, I am very optimistic that we are at the dawn of a new era of geeky goodness. I expanded my thoughts about thinning the heard, by pointing out that there is so much great fantasy, sci-fi, and comic book stuff out there now, the audience is less willing to accept any pile of crap that happens to have a laser gun or a dragon in it. Studios have realized that they can make movies which appeal to geeks and mundanes, without alienating either audience. This means that we should see more Spiderman, and less Catwoman.
Stephen’s article We Fans Bear Up for a Long Geek-end (har) ran in today’s Post. It’s absolutely hilarious:

May 19, 2005 — If you feel a sharp pain today

That sinus thing I had last week is trying very hard to move into my chest. Im exhausted after being awake for three hours, and my cough gotten . . . well, I’ll spare you the details. Guess I have to go see the doctor, after all. Dammit.
I spent the entire day down at E3 with Xeni and a kick ass posse or ultranerds, doing a story for NPR‘s Day to Day on the intersection of Hollywood and the video game industry. It should run tomorrow, and I can’t wait to hear it — we got so much great material, it’s a shame we’ll have to cut so much of it out. It’s a good argument for podcasting: since a podcast is always going to be timeshifted, it can be as long or as short as you want it to be. (Speaking of podcasting, I listened to Card Club on Lord Admiral Radio on the way down and back. It’s the first poker podcast I’ve heard, and I really liked it.)
As usual, E3 was so crowded and loud, I had a very hard time separating the substance from the style. It’s sort of like being in a giant venn diagram of sound effects, game monitors, music, lights, props, 50,000 decibel game demos, people talking, and the occasional booth babe. The problem is, everyone is trying to be louder than everyone else, so after about 20 minutes in the South hall (which is more crowded and therefore louder than the West hall) all I wanted to do was leave, or at least put on some noise cancelling headphones.
I know I saw some cool stuff, because I said something like, “Hey, that’s cool!” But the cold medicine and that really neat exhaustion I feel made it very hard for me to actually absorb it.
The best part of the day was how I got there and home: on the Metro Line. It’s rare that the MTA can conveniently (read: without riding a bunch of different busses and taking three times as long as it does to drive) get me where I need to go, but the convention center is one of those places. I really enjoy taking Metro, and I hope that Los Angeles will leap into the 20th century and continue to expand light rail and subway service.
I have to go lie down for about 65 hours now, or until my ears stop ringing, whichever takes longer.

I hate unsolicited e-mail, of any kind. Period. I don’t care about whatever alleged virus warning you heard about from your aunt’s neighbor’s secretary, or the kid who just wants to get ten thousand e-mails before he dies from cancer. And I’ve already collected my $5000 from Walt Disney, Jr. and Bill Gates, thank you.
I’m also not very impressed with the Mainstream Corporate Media, who are thoroughly obsessed with that fucking Runaway Bride, or the incredibly stupid Michael Jackson trial, but can’t seem to find space or time to cover the Downing Street Memo and ignore the whole Jeff Gannon / James Guckert story. Why do you think so many Americans are turning to the BBC or Guardian UK for news about our country? It’s not because we hope to catch the latest cricket scores between stories; it’s because the Mainstream Corporate Media in America is a miserable failure.
Sorry you had to endure that rant. It’s important for context, because these two things that I can’t stand intersected tonight, when I got spammed by the Wall Street Journal with a “Dear Blogger:” letter.

Dear Blogger:
Check out today’s free features from The Wall Street Journal:
A buyer’s guide to the next-generation of videogame consoles.
[link removed – no google ranking for you!]
More companies are monitoring their workers’ online activities. But not very many monitor the boss’s.
[link removed – no google ranking for you!]
Plus, WSJ.com now offers an RSS feed of our free content with a 30-day archive:
http://online.wsj.com/xml/rss/0,,3_7077,00.xml
[Okay, this is actually good. On the same day the NYT decided to move even more content behind the stupid wall of subscription, it’s nice to see that at least one member of the Mainstream Corporate Media understands that RSS is cool, and a 30 day archive isn’t the best thing, but it’s a step in the right direction.]
All of WSJ.com’s free content can be found at [link removed – no google ranking for you!]
And please feel free to email me if you’d rather not receive these emails; if you’d prefer to receive them at a different email address; if this particular email is off-topic; or if you have any comments or requests about WSJ.com’s free content.

Oh? Can I please? Okay. Let’s try this:

Dear Corporate Media Spammer:
Checkout how lame it is to send form letters to spam bloggers with your crap!
Checkout all the free content that’s already on the Internet — and let me clue you in on a big secret: if it’s newsworthy, we’ll find it. Spamming us with “Dear Blogger:” e-mails is not the best way to spread the word about your fabulous free content.
Did you know that there are already sources of tech news that respect our intelligence? Take a look at Wired Technology News or Arstechnica.com. They get read and linked because they don’t spam us.
Did you know there are news sources who actually report the news, rather than repeat whatever the popular media narrative or White House Talking Point is? Check out Knight Ridder or Consortium News!
And as long as I have your attention, (especially you talking heads on cable news) please realize that you’re not part of the problem, you are the problem. If you think I’m wrong, I have two words for you: Terri. Schiavo.
And please feel free to email me if you ever decide to get some spine when you report on Dear Leader; if you’d prefer to cover stories that actually make a difference in the world, like sending over 1500 Americans to die for a lie, instead of still more in-depth coverage of the aftermath of the Scott Peterson trial; if you care to explain why you think spamming bloggers is a really smart thing to do; or if you have any comments or requests about why we should pay attention to you at all.

See, if the Mainstream Corporate Media ever mentions blogs or bloggers, it’s to either 1) suck up to the douchebags idiots liars at Powerline, or 2) pointedly declare that blogs and bloggers are so irrelevant. So why does The Wall Street Journal think it’s a great idea to spam us?
This is an incredibly stupid move. I don’t know anyone, blogger or otherwise, who enjoys spam. I can’t think of a single person who is going to respond favorably to this ill-advised tactic.
I received two different e-mails like this from the Wall Street Journal, seconds apart. I immediately replied, and asked to be removed from the list. To their credit, while I was composing this entry, I was informed that I was removed, with brief apology.
So after they did the stupid thing, they did the right thing. Personally, I think the best thing to do would have been to not spam us at all. The smarter thing (that would have at least shown a little understanding of the medium they’re hoping to infiltrate) may have been to send an e-mail that said something like,

We’d like to reach out to bloggers, and make weblog readers aware of our free content. If you’d like to help us, reply to this e-mail, and we’ll tell you how to get set up. If you’re not interested, please accept our apologies. This will be the only e-mail you ever get from us.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who got a “Dear Blogger:” e-mail from the WSJ, and I’m interested to see how other bloggers react.

My friend and BBC Producer, Chris Vallance, has been in Los Angeles for a few months, working full-time on a podcast called Pocket Planet Radio. I did an interview with him when I was in Las Vegas for the WPT. (I just listened to my segment, and noticed the strangest thing . . . I sound exactly like my younger brother. That’s weird.)
Chris is a talented producer, and his wonderfully dry British humo(u)r comes through in everything he does. His podcast will always be entertaining, so check it out.