Jonathan Coulton

Will Wright just did a demo of Spore, which I’d seen before online, but seeing it again reminded me how much I want to play that game. He also talked a little about the philosophy behind it, generative systems, the idea of finding the right balance between power and simplicity when you’re allowing players to create game content. All of which dovetails very nicely with Brian Eno’s work – he showed some of 77 Million Paintings behind him as he spoke. Kickass!

I should mention, if you’d like to check any of this stuff out, they’re streaming the whole thing live. There’s a schedule on that page. I’m playing sometime on Saturday, but there are a lot of big names between now and then.
Did I mention that I really want to play Spore?

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here, but this year I’ve been invited back to play at Pop!Tech, that zany happening in Camden, Maine that is simply chock full of CEOs, superscientists, and cutting edge entertainers. I flew in last night and went to the opening reception, and was reminded how awesome this place is. (Just a warning, over the next few days I’m going to do a lot of name dropping and bragging about the famous people I meet).

I shared a car from the airport with Ze Frank, whose current project is The Show, a year’s worth of producing a new short video every weekday. Having just finished Thing a Week, thinking about this makes me want to throw up. Ze also just started supporting this effort with this microsponsorship thing, a brilliant idea I should have thought of when I still had some content left in my poor, tired head.

And then last night I had some beers with Ze and Kent Nichols of Ask A Ninja. (See what I mean? I’m not worthy.) Kent told a great story about meeting Marlon Brando, so great I don’t even care if it’s true.

At the moment I’m finishing breakfast at the hotel, and in a minute I’ll walk to the opera house to hear Will Wright and Brian Eno talk about emergence. Good morning.

A half-hour show about a startup company with puppets (the show I mean, not the startup). They used Code Monkey at the end of episode 3.

A very kind review from Fangirl Magazine and an equally nice write up from comic dude Josh Way. It’s nice to be nice to the nice.

I’m up for a Mackie! They’ve nominated Code Monkey for best original music in a machinima production (this is from the Ill Clan video). The Ill Clan also snagged a few nominations, as well they should.

Eric sends this image, which may not make sense to you unless you have seen this.

Norman, a German person, tells me that “Re: Your Brains” is ranked number three (as of episode 39) in a poll they’re running in their PodParade podcast. How will it fare in episode 40?!

If you looked at the front page of the Sunday Boston Globe business section, you may have seen my pretty, pretty Second Life avatar and an article about how musicians like me are using the internet to be musicians like me. In a related story, eMarketer thinks I’m a marketing genius, but fails to credit my laziness.

And my favorite, Bry sends in his tribute to all the Thing a Week songs, sung to the the tune of The Presidents. Awesome.

Here are way to many photos of our appearance at Cody’s in San Francisco. See what a good time you missed?

While John and I were in LA we stopped in to see and be interviewed by The Sound of Young America’s Jesse Thorn, the young whippersnapper who makes old radio people feel old and sad because he is so young and awesome. There’s an interview with John and an interview with me, as well as some extra discussion about this whole cat care disaster, and a couple of songs I played live in the studio.

As they say in the cop movies, I’m getting too old for this shit. I would have loved to spend some time walking around beautiful San Francisco today, but had to crash out in the hotel instead. Now I’m off to Cody’s to do the Hodgman thang, and then back to NYC tomorrow for a few days, where I hope to sleep this cold away.

Thanks to all you folks who came out last night, that was a really fun show. As usual, you demonstrated that Seattle audiences tend to be the biggest and most enthusiastic, even when I’m high on store brand DayQuil, croaking my way through songs I don’t play very well on a good day. And the crowd at the Hodgman reading was simply enormous, maybe 300 people. Totally kickass. We love you west coast, bye for now…