Weblog

I just wanted to get on here quick and tell y’all that I like two things and they are romantic emo anime and Torpedo Crepe, the hot dessert crepe and bubble tea cafe on Irving and Suydam.

I did not know of either of these likes until tonight. The romantic anime happened after work, when I was recovering from a soul-crushing day with a nice herbal shoulder wrap I’d found, and decided to just relax beneath its lavender-scented heat and watch an anime on my computer because I am what’s known as a modern-day warrior. I’d recently seen the movie Your Name with Angelica and we both thought the movie was phenomenal, so I searched for other films from the director and found an early one called 5 Centimeters a Second. The title comes from how quickly cherry blossom petals fall to the ground. I learned this in the first few minutes of the film, as two childhood friends ran through the cherry blossoms between loving shots of suburban streets and traffic signs, and one asked the other “will we we watch the blossoms fall together next year?” in a voice over as their blue–pink shadows were cast against the sidewalk and you could just tell they would not be together next year and immediately I thought, “Yep, this is the thing for me. I am all about this movie and now identify myself by it.” It filled me with such natural, familiar goodness, like when you eat a bunch of kale and suddenly feel strangely fantastic cos your body needed its iron. Romantic emo animes are my iron.

I told my friend Ryland about this during dinner tonight, cos if there’s one other thing I like it’s catching up with friends. We met up at Lucy’s for banh mi and vermicelli and he told me of his job and current writing struggles, and I told him of my progress towards becoming a solarpunk technowizard. (My progress: slow but sure). I am v. happy for his friendship, because we know each other from all sides, and can see each other’s ideals, and the paths we are trying to take, and where we are coming from. And this makes his opinion far more frank and honest and cherished. I’ve been in a bit of a hermitage, moving away from the comedy path I’d been on with its constant social media and content milling and thoughtless self-promotion and getting way deep into a strange technomagical space. But the tech space I find myself is so in the clouds and esoteric that it’s hard to tell what’s truly world-changing and what’s academic jackerish (that’s gibberish you jack off to). friends help you separate this. In other words, I told Ryland about my sneakernet conferences and computer cleansing rituals and he was supportive but roasting me where needed, and told me I should do what makes me happy but post more about it so other folks know about it too.(I am still writing, I told him, it’s just on an alternative internet, and then he properly made fun of me.)

After dinner we were still restless, and decided to go find a cafe. As we were walking we passed a friend of ours headed to a pizza bar to meet a roommate to discuss how their constant flirting with other roommates is creepy, unwelcome, and rude–but hopefully discuss it in a nice way. Our friend was reasonably stressed, but still found time to stand on the corner and talk to us about booming octopi populations. He’d read an article about this, he said, about how the oceans are inexplicably filling with octopi, and he’d thought of me; because if there’s one thing I like it’s octopi and their status as an emergent civilization. He promised to send me the article and headed on his way and now I had that pleasant feeling of enjoying the current moment, but knowing i’m going to go home soon and read something coooooool. (and horrifying cos of global warming and general imbalance, but animal’s adapting to overtake this world is cool).

Ryland and I walked up Irving and the convo turned back to the internet, and how your approach to what you make changes when you write it on your own site instead of someone else’s. We also talked about where we should go for a drink, and I recommended a kava and kratom bar nearby–cos if there’s two things I like it’s homemade websites and natural heroin substitutes. But I couldn’t recommend this place with full gusto because it is so needlessly expensive and faux-fancy, and both of us just wnated somewhere bright and quiet with big deep booths. Luckily, we passed Torpedo Crepe and it’s display window filled with beautiful eggy dessert bouquets. This place looked much better than a hipster fauxpium den, so we went inside and found true heaven.

Torpedo Cafe has it all, guys. Egg Waffles and Crepe dishes for the ovo-eating friends, and coconut milk bubble tea for the vegans. bright clean atmosphere and big deep booths in the back. Big TV’s on the wall that are turned off and unplugged. A framed artist’s map of Melbourne. A stereo that only plays Demi Lovato, Carly rae Jepsen, and acoustic T. Swift. It has such a sweet suburban vibe that I miss so much living here. Ryland filled me in on other romantic animes I’d like, and how some of the best movies in recent years are linked to the Digimon film, and how he’s in love, and doing well, and pleasantly mystified by it. As we talked, two teens came in for a date and literally just read through a black and white composition book together while they sipped on each other’s bubble tea and Demi Lovato’s “Heart Attack” played and I loved all of it.

Then we said goodnight and I walked to Ridgewood listening to this phenomenal Hundred Waters song, “Blankets” while it rained v. soft and there I met Angelica outside a bodega with silverblue christmas lights all around its windows and we walked home together and this list of likes has to end somewhere so I’ll just say thank you for reading this, you who I like so much too!

I am in the downtown of Indiana, beneath a sprawling mass of skybridges connecting every restaurant, hotel, and theatre, and there are nerds everywhere. Gencon is huge, like 20,000 people huge, and though the actual con doesn’t start until Thursday we’ve all gathered here early. When else can we be in a city where literally everyone wants to play a boardgame, so of course we want to be here as long as possible.

It really is absurd here, and it’s taking some getting used to. Without the con, this part of town would feel absurd anyway. It’s filled with large chain restaurants, so the whole area looks like the faux downtowns that pop up around a suburban movie theatre, with the nice tree-lined walking paths between the Best Buy and the Applebee’s.

Last night, I met my friends at our hotel and then we walked around the downtown: past the Regal Cinemas and the Buca di Beppo and the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and P.F. Chang’s to finally end up at a Steak and Shake. And every person we passed was either homeless or a super specific nerd, or some overlap of both. I’m in a city i’ve never been to before, but in a part of it that is consciously designed to be instantly familiar, and now filled with people who all look way too much like me.

Except not really–cos I do not keep up with my nerd creds and culture as enthusiastically as most of the people I see. I am honestly intimidated. I saw a dude at the crosswalk wearing a GI Joe shirt, but part of the GI Joe insignia was replaced by the millennium falcon. I don’t understand what this means, and this was one of the more accessible t-shirts. A woman in front of me picking up her burger wore a shirt that I think was a scene from reservoir dogs, but all the characters had masks that made them look like boba fett but also lesser-known DC superheroes. the shirt was probably meant to be all of these references at once, but based on a sentence once uttered on a podcast about some other pop culture fact, and then this sentence was illustrated and turned into kickstartered apparel line. She is undoubtedly not the only person here wearing this shirt.

My friends and I caught up on our lives, and our cities, and what games we wanted to play. But then we also talked about Steven Universe, and solarpunk, and the best moments from the last competitive Street Fighter championship, and specific subgenre of music we’ve been getting into that is meant to emulate the feeling of playing ridgeracer. So I know our conversation was equally intimidating gibberish to someone else.

There are several large hotels all around the convention center and all of them are filled. We are in one of the dingier one. It’s going through construction so much of the center lobby is shut down and covered, but even without that it’s designed like some post-apocalyptic galaxy prison, with 20 floors of identical grey doors all facing each other like a ringworld.

On each floor, every other window is lit up a pale yellow against the gray, indicating that there are folks inside that room and they’re likely playing some obscure euro game or homemade RPG. I’m on the 20th floor, and it’s 1am, and I can still hear chatter down below from the late night gaming happening in the closed restaurant lobby. This is one hotel in a downtown block of hotels. The con has not yet started. All of this is still the prelude.

I am currently at the Laguardia airport at the Indianapolis gate waiting on the plane that’ll take me to Gencon. There’s a man to the left of me who’s spent the last half hour discussing with someone on the phone that if they’re going to fly out for Thanksgiving to fly out of Newark. He is insistent that if they fly out from there they will save 20-30 dollars, but they need to order their tickets today. I don’t know why the person on the other end of the phone doesn’t understand this, and I don’t know why this man is so insistent about $20, or even why they are planning Thanksgiving tickets now. I assumed everyone at this gate is also going to Gencon, the best boardgaming convention in the country, so all of us should have better things on our minds than Thanksgiving or Newark.

This will be my first time going to Gencon, but I’ve been a boardgame fan for years. Actually, at this point, decades. The height of my boardgaming love was around 2010, but I’ve recently gotten back into it in a big way. But it seems like this subculture moves so fast, that a game that’s only 5 years old is already a verified classic, and anyone who played a game in 2007 is treated like an elder. I am an elder boardgamesman, yet still flying coach on American Airlines out of La Guardia. For I am elder, but also humble.

I’m not really a con-going sort, but I was invited to Gencon from an old friend; an elder friend, one who I haven’t really seen since college. We’ve talked much since then, but it’s always been online. So I am excited to play games over four days and see the bright hot midwest, but I’m mostly excited to just see my friend in person–to see their face again and hear what’s new before I ask if they wanna play Reef Encounter while we wait for a cab from the airport, cos of course I brought games with me.

Gencon will have thousands of games, multiple libraries of classic and hot games plus an entire dealer’s hall of new games to try–but I still had to bring a few. I’ve made it a practice(compulsion?) to always have a game on me–simply because I always want to play a game. And it’s bad to come to any party, or family gathering, or bank visit, and ask everyone there “hey wanna play a boardgame? I brought a pretty sweet eurogame about tax collecting we could try”. You have to bring it up only in the right moment. But if you find yourself in that moment, where the party is winding down and someone asks if there’s any boardgames, and you didn’t think to bring one with you? that’s even worse. that’s an embarassment I never want to experience, so have a fantastic climbing/shedding card game that plays 3-8 players on me at any time.

For this trip I brought that game (Fuji Flush) plus the games Reef Encounter, Fabled Fruit, Yomi, and Gosu. And I know the friends I’m meeting will be bringing 4 to 5 games themselves, so our hotel room will have 15 games to play at any one time and I can’t tell you how excited I am. As excited as a middle aged businessman finding out that he can save 20 dollars if he flies out of Newark. and let me tell you, i’m sitting right next to that man, and he’s still talking about it, and you best believe he is excited.

I just returned home to Queens after a month in my first love/home Funwater, and I think the travel back acted as a symbolic rebirthing. This was not intentional or wanted, necessarily–like, I’m not eagerly looking for a rebirthing, but the journey had such heavy-handed symbolism that I don’t know what else to call it. It was like going out to a restaurant for a dinner and instead of bringing out what you ordered the waiters bring you a slice of cake, and when you ask for silverware they bring back candles and a wrapped gift. And you say, “Oh, you’re throwing me a birthday party? Is that what’s happening?” And the waiters deny it, say they’re just a restaurant, then start singing the birthday song.

I had gone back to Funwater because my family was all moving away. All of them were packing up and heading to the midwest, and this might be one of the last times for the family to all hang out in our childhood town. I was able to stay for a month because my company has an office in Funwater where I could work remote. It was this office way back when where I used my barbering skills to secure the job that brought me to New York City. On the first day back, I found out this office is likely closing and everyone was discussing whether they need to start looking for jobs and whether they too should leave town. I spent much of the trip in heavy conversations with my friends about what any of us are doing with our lives, and trying so hard to be happy. Then my parents called and said they were moving earlier than anticipated and I needed to grab all my old things before they were thrown away.

I came to Funwater with a duffel bag filled with clothing and netrunner cards(in case anyone wanted to play netrunner!). I left with so much more. I’d kept most of my boardgames in my parent’s garage, and they’re too beautiful to part with, and so I replaced all the clothing in my duffel with games; then also packed two large boxes to check-in with games too, and kept them from moving on the flight by filling the cracks with my clothing. I also found a fully functional (but decade old) macbook, a ton of useful wires, and some old electronics that I’m too sentimentally attached to. These last things were too delicate for check-in, so I grabbed a carryon bag and stuffed it. When I left for Funwater I brought two laptops: a personal one and a business one. On my last day there, the IT guy asked if I wanted to upgrade my work laptop (since they had a bunch extra from another office closing). I said yes, he said to also hold onto the old one, and I could clean it when I got back.

And so this is what I carried with me to the airport on the final day: three large boxes stuffed and taped with mysterious things; A backpack filled with: three laptops and all their chargers and wires, two small boxes of premade netrunner decks, a journal,5 pens, a Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Leguin book, the book “Techgnosis”, a tarot deck, Jodorowsky’s guide to tarot, a beginner’s guide to alchemy and a large textbook I had been gifted called “PSYCHEDELIC SHAMANISM”; and a carryon bag filled with: another laptop, a ps2, a super nintendo, controllers for both, wires for both, a bunch of other wires that looked good, several games for both, and a handful of blank cassette tapes. I’d packed all this so well, then Angelica pointed out that I’d forgotten my binder of Netrunner cards (i don’t know why I packed so much netrunner), and so I would have to just carry it. On the ride up, while trying to place back some cards that had fallen, I got a deep papercut and so entered the airport carrying the binder with one bloodied hand.

I, of course, was stopped at security. It was the bag of wires and machines that did it, and not the bloody hand or backpack filled with magic and psychoactive craft. The security guard unzipped the bag and cassette tapes spilled out all over and he asked me, “What exactly do you have in here?” And I explained in order and he said, “Get a PS4!” I said I’d consider it.

And so here I am, the brilliant butterfly fresh from the coccoon–a coccoon of firewire cables and accessible esoterica, of sentimental german boardgames and obsolete technology that I feel awful just tossing out. And here I type to you, in my sweltering Queens study on my new online diary with all my possessions now here with me. I am fresh from a trip that felt too symbolic, surrounded by unpacked thigns that all feel talismanic, and I am here to say, “Oh, hi! how are you!”