Week #47 History Choose Your Own Adventure - Websitr

Yet another idea I came up with while talking to James Call. This one we actually talked about in person, as he's visiting the west coast this week.

The idea's fairly self explanatory and has probably been done before in some capacity still it's too good of an idea not to write up.

The essential concept is to use the old "choose your own adventure" format but apply it to world history. The website would simply follow history then at crucial moments it would give you a series of options as to what should happen next. Like the "Nazis win the war" or "Bill Clinton is impeached" or "Alexander never left Macedonia"

Depending on what option you choose we tell you what would happen next and what the world would look like.

This is an idea that's really perfect for James but I think to make it really work it would have to be a huge website so we'd need a lot of people's help. It would be awesome if we could get Mike Webber to work on the site so it could look something like this.

Week #41 Larry’s Idea for a Comic - Web Comic

Originally when I started this blog I wanted to feature some projects by other people. Alas this never really worked out.

However last week I received the following email from my good friend and fellow comic book geek Larry Luna.

I decided to make it this weeks project:

“I was thinking a good idea for a comic strip would be for any group of us to all tell the same true story but all from our own perspective. For example, with out seeing or being influenced by each others strips we would each write/draw a strip telling a funny or interesting story we all experienced. So if there were four of us at said "story" we would end up with four different versions/strips of that story. I got the idea when I talked to james about the time I punched him in the balls. Hearing his perspective was hilarious, so I think that should be our first strip, The mishap prom where the prom king got socked in the balls mid performance by a drunk mexican and a dog ferociously barked from the audience. I think this should be one of many random web comics on a webcomic blog we need to finally start.”

It’s a good idea and one everyone involved in is really excited about. What I need to do my part of this comic is find someone to draw it. Preferably someone who wasn’t there and doesn’t know the people involved. That way we can add a whole new element the Rashomon angle of this project.

Week #30 Reviewing the Reviewers - Website, book

I was pretty swamped last week with the Mishap Prom so that's why there was no post. But now I'm back (if maybe a day later than I would have hoped.)

This week's project is one that's still very much in it's larval stages. I came up with it a while back when I was looking for the phone number for the Li Po Lounge. The Li Po is a drinking establishment in Chinatown very close to my heart; after all this is where my theatre company Sleepwalker's Theatre was essentially formed. Still it is not a place oozing with swankyness, nor does it try to be.

It is my belief that all forms of criticism should be based on whether a project or place succeeds in what it's attempting to do. Therefore I was a little peeved when I saw on the Li Po Yelp page, next to some glowing semi-ironic ones, a few reviews disparaging it's dingyness, criticizing it's bathroom and even one that mentioned the "pervy chinatown ruffians".

After my initial irritation I began to wonder a little about the people who wrote these things. Where did there impulse to criticize come from? Where does that impulse come from in any of us?

To answer these questions, as well as give reviewers a little taste of there own medicine, I thought it would be cool to create a website where we review the reviewers. As a start I thought we'd review each person who's posted regularly to Yelp in a very methodical way. Read all their reviews and point out recurrent themes and make thesis's about where there impulses and quarks came from.

The natural extension of this would be to write a small book where you review famous critics in mainstream media the same way they review movies, books, food and music.

I'm not sure how hard this would be to do as a website but I do know the amount of work it would take to actually write the reviews might not be worth it. Still if this website existed I'd read it.