Friday afternoon tidbits

By the time you read this post, I will be watching District 9. I am expecting it to be awesome. While I'm doing that, why not check out these links?

-The big story this week was the New York Times' massive article about The Beatles: Rock Band. It's an extensively reported piece with quotes from all the big players, plus some insightful commentary about the value of music games (some of which echo what I wrote about earlier this year, here and here). Excellent reading. I also realized just now that it's The Beatles: Rock Band, and not Rock Band: The Beatles, in contrast to Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: Metallica. Not that there's much to take away from that, but it's interesting.

-A rather bizarre conversation developed earlier this week, between Penny Arcade's Gabe and Tycho, on the subject of pick-up artists. Amanda Marcotte wrote a perceptive response to their exchange, with which I agree almost fully. I just want to say this: I know Gabe isn't some cretinous, cave-dwelling woman hater, but perhaps because of that, his comments go far toward illuminating the unfortunate mindset that many in our community seem to have about male-female relationships (which we also talked about a bit last week). Still, this isn't a problem exclusive to the gaming community, for better or worse.

-Since we're getting all political here, take a gander at L.B. Jeffries' explication of TIE Fighter as a post-9/11 parable. It's a fascinating and educated take on the nature of empire, which also reminded me that TIE Fighter was freaking sweet.

-Bill Harris's running series about playing through the NHL playoffs with his son nearly melted the ice around my cold, cold heart. I recommend you start from the beginning, because otherwise you probably won't be quite as mushy as I was when you get to the end.

(As I said to Dan Bruno on Twitter, this whole experiment -- in which Bill actually made a playoff schedule for him and Eli to follow -- reminded me of Ben Abraham's Far Cry 2 perma-death experiment, which is still ongoing.)

-Congratulations to Simon Parkin for his Games Media Award nomination. He's one of the best, and in very good company.