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Dust Off that Cloak

nced Dungeons & DragonsIf you’re in your late twenties or early thirties and looking for the absolute bleeding edge in chic ironic pastimes, then Advanced Dungeons & Dragons may be your thing. The inaugural game was organized by my Behavior co-founder Chris Fahey and held a few weeks ago out in Brooklyn (naturally!) — I would’ve been there had I not been out of town.

Chris writes: “We thought that now, well into our adult years, maybe now we had the rich imagination — and comfort with our own identities — necessary to ‘properly’ play a fantasy role-playing game. We were bored with video games, we were high on Lord of the Rings hype, and we wanted to have a Dungeons and Dragons party.”

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Atomic Comic Book

The Atomic Revolution“The Atomic Revolution” is a gorgeous relic from America’s early love affair with its ability to split the atom. A kind of promotional brochure for the wonders of the atomic age that highlights the concepts and history behind what was then a brave new frontier, it was copyrighted in 1957 and has been apparently forgotten until now. The comic book artist Ethan Persoff recently happened across a copy at an estate sale and has kindly published some wonderful scans of its contents on his site.

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Home-plate Economics

MoneyballJust added to my Amazon.com shopping cart: Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” an up-close look at the Oakland Athletics and GM Billy Beane’s use of sophisticated statistical analysis to build a remarkably successful team from one of the lowest payrolls in Major League Baseball. This unorthodox method, which Lewis likens to value equity investing, is one of the most interesting ongoing stories in professional sports and has the potential to dramatically remake the game. Having read his past works, I’m convinced that Lewis is one of the most talented non-fiction storytellers working today, and I’m excited to see him tackle this story.

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We Did Can Do

Can Do FitnessAnother casualty of my time away last week was the timely announcement of the latest site launch from Behavior: the official Web site for Can Do Fitness, a chain of high-end health clubs in New Jersey. We built the site entirely in Flash, and it’s driven by a custom content publishing tool on the back-end to make class schedules available online. You can also explore interactive floorplans, newsletters, trainer biographies, ‘smart’ directions and more… it kinda makes me wanna get up from in front of my computer.

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Blind Ambition

The Matrix ReloadedMy little getaway last weekend denied me the opportunity to go see “The Matrix Reloaded” on opening night, a consumer ritual of which I’ve become very fond. Last night’s crowd for the 10:20p showing of the movie was tamer than I’d have liked, less prone to hoots, hollers and moments of mob ecstasy. I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed the movie significantly more with an opening night crowd, but in some ways it was a better context in which to have viewed it; less peer excitement to augment the absurd hype with which the movie has been promoted.

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Why Oh Why

AIGA DESIGNINGThe most recent manifestation of the AIGA’s new emphasis on demonstrating the business value of design is AIGA DESIGNING. This initiative’s centerpiece is a kind of universal framework for the development of design solutions — not necessarily a prescriptive approach to tackling any design challenge, but a method for structurally understanding how design solutions become reality.

[Full disclosure&#58 The AIGA was a client of Behavior when we developed Gain 2.0 for them in Fall 2002.]

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Call Me on My Gameboy

N-GageIf there’s a holy grail for wireless telecom companies, it’s the successful combination of mobile phones with something, anything else — digital cameras, MP3 players, personal digital assistants, whatever. The idea has a kind of fait accompli quality to it, but attempts to date have failed to yield major successes, at least within the U.S. That may change though with Nokia’s N-Gage, a hybrid mobile phone and gaming system. This is probably the smartest convergent device yet, combining a Symbian OS-based phone, networkable gaming system, Bluetooth, MP3 player… the list goes on and the spec sheet is very impressive. The missing ingredient is the pricing, which has yet to be announced and will be determined by carriers and retailers. If they can bring this thing in under US$500, it’s a winner.

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The Seaside and Cake

For my extended weekend getaway on the New Jersey shore, I packed my laptop and about a half-dozen unread copies of The New Yorker. I had high ambitions: I would check my Behavior email periodically, continue posting to my blog, and catch up on those back-issues. Somehow, it didn’t work out that way.

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No Escape from The Matrix

The Matrix ReloadedIn January, Newsweek ran a cover story on the two “Matrix” sequels. Premiere Magazine featured the first of those sequels under four “collectible” covers. Keanu Reeves is on the cover of GQ Magazine. Britian’s Empire Magazine has four holographic covers featuring The Matrix. Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss, Lawrence Fishburne and producer Joel Silver all appeared on The Charile Rose Show” last night. This week’s issue of The Village Voice includes an article called “Hacking the ‘Matrix’ Master Code.” The New York Times ran a puff piece on Sunday about the movie’s origins and influence on contemporary cinema. Atari’s companion videogame “Enter the Matrix” has sold 4 million copies in its initial order alone. A DVD of animated shorts called “The Animatrix” is being marketed now for an early June release. Officially sanctioned Matrix swag is now available for online purchasing at TheMatrixShop.com.

This list is hardly exhaustive, even. I’m still looking forward to “The Matrix Reloaded,” but all this media saturation is starting to turn me off.

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