Notes & The New spanning_time Creed

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

- The above phrase appears in a very excellent article from the Washington Post. It describes the results when a celebrated violinist took up his instrument to play in the arcade of a Metro stop during rush hour. Great exercise, and a very worthy read despite its length. If that article doesn't reinforce the spirit of this here blog, we don't know what does.

- spanning_timer Ario spent the weekend in San Francisco. He was lucky enough to be there for the ultimate in s_t events: Bring Your Own Big Wheel. For this event, adults grab a big wheel (you know, the one for kids) and race down San Fran's hilly streets. Much like our own Idiotarod, it involves costumes, drinking, and a whole lot of fun. It's definitely on our list of things to catch someday. For now, view the link above. We'll share pictures once they show up on Flickr.

- Last night's video game festivities were more fun than we expected. They certainly need more marketing help (we'll remind you next month), but with the dual tournaments for Guitar Hero 2 and Street Fighter 2 (on the Super Nintendo!), they've got an idea we're willing to support. We came in third in the latter tournament, which was surprising since we spent the bulk of every match trying to make sense of the oddly mapped controller buttons.

Dusting Off the Cobwebs - Console Gaming Competition

So where have we been the last month or so? Well, we hit SXSW and came back exhausted from that, and since then have been busy with...important work stuff. In any case, we were prodded by a reader this weekend, so we're back after a bit of a blog-break. Here's something we promised to fill you in on once we had more details.

Tonight is the start of Console Chaos at Rebar. It's a monthly (2nd Mondays) video game competition sponsored by Pink Godzilla. The only new details we have to offer are that doors are at 7pm, and that the cover is $5. They haven't really offered much information outside of that. But who needs more details anyway? It's video games, it's competition. Just show up and get humbled by someone that's wasted more time playing games than you spend sleeping (and no we're not referring to ourselves there).

Blogging From the East Coast

We just had a long post eaten by Blogger, so we're going to be a bit more brief this time around. We're typing this from our less event-filled home in Virginia, where we'll be for the next few days of our Turkey Day vacation. Last night we made a trip to Jillians and saw a couple of noteworthy games we'd like to share with you.

Possibly our new favorite arcade game is Panic Park. Released in 1998 by Namco, the game cabinet features two horizontally-aligned levers, one for each player. These levers move along the same track, giving players the chance to bump, nudge, or otherwise alter their opponent. The game itself doesn't feature one involved narrative, but instead consists of 5 randomly selected mini-games, each of the "collect the coins," "avoid the barrier" variety. Very simple to pick up, and addictive once the competitive juices start flowing - nothing like bumping your opponent into lava at the last second to take the win. We don't know of this game existing in Seattle, but we plan to work on that, with emails to both Gameworks and Jillians. We're big-time bloggers here, so we've got all kinds of pull.

The other "game" isn't a game at all, but a horse-racing simulator. Derby Owners Club allows players to create, train, and finally race their own horse. We're not sure if this is ultimately for cash and prizes, but you can actually save your horse's stats and take it with you. This wasn't a casual game in the slightest, with the players there keeping tabs on their progress in notebooks, discussing strategy on occasion with the others there. We didn't get it at all, but couldn't help but to be fascinated by it, which counts for something, right?