tomorrow is my thirtieth birthday. Hurrah! I made it! I didn't choke on a thin heroin balloon in the Mission district of San Francisco or freeze in a puddle of brown urine in a Japanese backwater lodge. I haven't caught any life-threatenening diseases, how hard I've tried. Haven't gotten myself shot in spite of a few close calls.

Limbs all present and accounted for. Eyesight deteriorating but usable. Hey I should make a web page about my poor vision -

I'm thirty; that's an age when I'm supposed to have some sense of my strengths and weaknesses. What do I have to show for myself? A several thousand page hypertext about my life to date? more writing! keep up! or explore other media.

I wonder what my life's work is. Living! That question of purpose looms less large with years. Life can be an art. I want to make art. I want to have kids. But right now I just want to get my shit together.

Wondering what to do with this personal holiday, I thought I might be alone. Facing some black page and writing. Wandering in the forest. Maybe I should have -

but Ben talked about his own birthday collective, friends came and stayed together in tents in a warehouse space and my mind was suddenly blown open. I realized I liked holidays and I'm always working to understand and augment intimacy. So I planned a birthday patterned after my Christmas experiences growing up - relatives coming from far and wide and sharing bathrooms and eating each other's foods. I opened my house for a three day thirtieth birthday party and invited friends I spoke with to drop by, sleepover and talk.

To jump-start it all, I invested some of the frequent flyer miles I had piled up - I spent 150,000 miles to fly Svante and his family over here - his 2 year old daughter Lo, and his baby-mama Anna. Svante was the reason I visited Scandinavia over ten times during my 20s; he found my web site in 1995 maybe and promoted me as a speaker there. It lead to a ton of work for me and a chance to visit places like Arbrå and Demonbox with him. So I thought I would repay the favor and use a far off visitor to anchor this party.

Open-ended: come over and hang out! I said. Anytime between Friday and Sunday. It was dangerously unstructured - some friends threatened to disrupt anything too peacable and sensitive. But enough people showed up with good intentions - with supplies from Sharon's basement I brainstormed art activities for the daylight hours, so Saturday people sat with scissors and glue and sparkles and crayons and made masks and hats and drawings and sculptures.

The entire weekend was girded neatly by loving food - the first day I was in a panic because my self-appointed chef Lulu didn't arrive until the night and I had nothing to feed my guests. Fortunately I had some perishable mail waiting - Ryan had sent a cooler full of Salt Lick BBQ we devoured until Lulu arrived. She then proceeded to feed us pecan pancakes with strawberry syrup, homemade refried bean tacos. Blessed vegetarian love magic. Gentle food binding! A reason to wake up. I baked cookies and cauliflowers - three flavors of cauliflower including chili-lime-butter cauliflower which was everyone's favorite. Who knew?

People came and left. Some slept inside, some slept outside - somewhere between five and seven people were sleeping here both nights. I was worried beforehand - about blankets, about one tiny bathroom. About forks. But it went well enough to almost be considered relaxing. Not what one thinks when one imagines a "three day sleepover 30th birthday at my house." I didn't have designs on debauchery, but it's hard to imagine predominant sobriety with that much unfocused time. Still, somehow that's what emerged - Robin wrote on her site afterwards: "I went expecting to sleep very little and drink a lot - but the exact opposite occurred".

So it was a healthy affair. Perhaps the heart of that was a conversation on Sunday morning - around a table a group of us sat; I asked each person to talk a bit about the year behind them, the year ahead, and some personal goals. It was fascinating to hear my friends present themselves; many of them are facing choices about what to do with their lives - where to live, what work to pursue. People in motion, reaching for fellowship outside of their locality.

This stood in marked contrast to the Swedes, Svante and Anna, who spoke of having so many wonderful nearby friends in Stockholm where they live, even in their apartment building, that they can share child-rearing, work and social pleasures together. They were the last to leave, Tuesday morning; we spent Monday enjoying the wintertime sun and surreality at Venice beach boardwalk. It was strange to think they would be landing in a place dark at 3pm and snow deep just a day later - deep in community bound by heavy weather.

Leaving me all this social energy to absorb in the sunshine of a starkly empty home. The days after this party were tough. There was a bit of a crash, a depression really - I was sick, my house was empty, I had memories and left-behind crafts to handle. And I think that was good, like pickled ginger for the mind. I was left from my birthday with a portrait of my social surroundings. Many of my fellows appeared to be in flux, inbetween a commitment to ideals, a curiosity about family-making, a desire to get a handle on money and some urge to settle mostly in spite of their hyperactive curiosity.

I was left wondering who I was - do I have too many choices? Thinking back to the talk around the table it was easy to wonder if too much travel or exposure had left some folks listless. It was a nourishing occasion, I think - what I wanted: friends mingling like family, familiarity, proximity, surrounding, creativity, making stuff, enjoying people, casual. The fire pit stayed lit for most of the weekend. There's some strength in that. Maybe enough strength to stand back and see myself with less fear.

Some of my life-choices appeared in high relief. What am I doing in school? Does that really match my goals? What about some of the long-term intimate relationships in my past that are now more distant? Could I have worked them out better? Should I have? Have I learned the lessons I needed to, to be a better partner in the future? Do I want to keep from being alone?

I stood in the doorway of my empty office - set up as an ideal I remember it from my cyber-maven twenties so it's neck deep in media products and screens. No space for clay or paint, I notice. Not much space to roll the bones. I've hemmed myself in with circuits. And that's fine, and optimal some nights.

But maybe it's not too late to switch up. It can't be too late! It's still only yesterday, with a bit of tomorrow and a ton of today. Man I got a few phases ahead of me, right? Aging is evolution.

but I can see a life taking shape around me - I'm not dead but I have to cop to my choices and the life they outline. For one, my terrible computer-aided posture: I am a web wraith, you can see the curl in my bones. Someone this weekend said I had translucent skin.

Post party is the first time I've been sick in about a year. After quarterly coughs, I learned how to be well - guzzle Emergen-C and sleep a lot at the first signs of sickness. But the party planning pushed me into a throat scraper. So I have chicken soup on the stove, and I'm drinking white wine from the bottle. Something to take the edge off the ache in my back.

Tomorrow on my birthday I have a meeting about the USC Interactive Media department web site. I think I might catch a museum show of plasticized bodies (close as I'm likely to get to cadavers just now). There's a 7.30 showing of The Life Aquatic with Souris and Silvio; I expect that will bring me some joy. With brewer's yeast on top. Great pleasures here. Always work to be done to be worthwhile, to contribute. I feel strong for the people in my life. Touched, honored, grateful.

A month of winter break confronts me now - I'm waitlisted for a 10-day silent meditation retreat in the middle of nowhere - ten days of no talking, no reading/writing, just sitting silent. I'm eager to see what that would do to me, after I get over the media-withdrawl shakes I mean.

But I'm waitlisted, and if I don't get in there's plenty of other projects to keep me busy. I say to myself, when are you going to pick one? Pick one thing and just do it? Heh. I've decided to grow a mustache. Until it hangs over my lips! All sixteen blond hairs. Why not? Something to do when you're thirty.

My semester has officially come to a close. I would say I feel a great sense of relief to be homework and task free for the next few weeks, but I've overplanned a bunch of work and collaboration and energetic socializing to keep me from approaching relaxation.

One semester done - one sixth through my time in grad school. Wow! Thinking about the rapid passage of time makes me ever more eager for this project; time passes, it might as well be in some guided stimulation. At least at this point -

People ask me, how is school? How do you like the program? What are you learning? Here's excerpts from a letter I wrote recently on that subject, included below. For another perspective on my school/social context, you can photos from an Interactive Media Division party I hosted at my house last weekend.

USC Film School's Interactive Media program is very young; that's clear. There are experienced faculty, who have put time in on some respectable projects. Not so many from the commercial video game side of things, but digital artists, online game makers, experimental interactive media makers. There's a slight slant in the program towards interactive media art, which reflects the fact that they have just begun integrating a new focus on games.

I'm a first year student; I have eight required classes this year. None of them are about games specifically. I'm learning about film, writing, animation, production, collaboration, interactive media theory. All of which seem important. Other students grumble that they want to make games, and they want commercially-focused classes where they learn how the market works. I don't care so much, I'm happy to learn the other material first - it's a three year program, I figure we'll get there in time. We touch on games in our other classes just a bit, but I have the feeling in a year or two, they'll probably start the game track students off with something game-oriented immediately.

Specialization is a challenge here - we just had some first-year students build an experimental arcade game cabinet that used physical movement of the machine mapped onto game controls. That's the sort of interactive installation art that we've seen the faculty present - if the first year students studying games were spending all their time writing game design documents, they might not have done something outside of the screen like that. So I like this little bit of forced mingling, at least in the beginning.

We spend time with the other students, future TV and film writers and producers. I have the feeling that's not going to last, but I hope it does. Many of them seem to have a mix of admiration and dumbfoundedness for the Interactive Media Division students: they're not sure exactly what we study, but they keep hearing video games are the "next big thing." We're such a few folks in a much larger division; sometimes we seem to be a little bit off the collective radar of the film school. I'd like to see some grassroots-style spreading of the Interactive Media charm with some regular open houses for the whole film school to see some of our games and projects and maybe just play some games on our big screens.

There's a great aura of possibility here. I'm hip to it - I thrive on it. Envision something, and it seems like they'll say yes. There's dynamic people coming through, there's money around, there's facilities. The only drag for first year students seems to be required classes. Maybe it's because I'm about 5 years older than most of the other students; I've got some additional perspective: this program is young, so it's listening to student ideas. But the students need to come up with and push their own agendas. That's not coming easy to all of them.

I'm trying to figure out how I feel about students playing games in class. We're studying games; is it alright to play Worlds of Warcraft during lecture? Or play Yahoo Word Puzzles during student presentations? I think it's rude, but I wonder if I'm just old-fashioned. I'm doing some research on effective means of maintaining class focus during "Backchannel" - internet-enabled collective knowledge sharing during class - using chat, shared documents, search results projected onscreen during lecture to promote student engagement. Gotta keep up with the kids.

I knew that the program would be project-oriented going in, still it's been a whirlwind of films and Flash applications. Terrific fun, I must say, looking back on my first semester. Learning to make films was magic. Part of the Hollywood vibe that the school has - there's some problems there, but the magic goes a long way.

My chief problem with that part of the program: we're making digital media, the Interactive Media program encourages us to use the web, and personal weblogs to write about our school assignments, but the film school says they own every inch of tape we shoot, and we can't share our videos on the internet. That bugs a few students, and seems to point out one of the areas where the Interactive Media Division is on a different, more future-friendly track than the surrounding film school.

We've had these great Wednesday night meetings, where the division gathers, speakers come in, they serve food, we have some chatting. It's a good social thing. Not enough parties throughout the year perhaps; people were working hard. I would like to see more game nights, more social events (ie, off campus with alcohol). I'm doing my part; I just had a division party this weekend, and faculty and students mingled into the wee hours. That made me happy as a host.

So that's a bit of a first semester data dump. My next semester, we're going to have a brief unit on games. Will I be designing any games in Spring 2005? It's not clear. Several of the students have gotten very fired up about a grant (from EA I believe), sponsoring student-driven game design projects. A friend of mine is listed on four of the seven teams; he wants badly to make a game next semester so he's charging ahead into that. It's a sort of entrepreneurial approach that seems healthy - a few of the first year students have really pulled themselves together to bring ideas to the table. So there's learning outside the classroom, which I expect to ramp up.

Most first year students move to LA about three weeks before school starts, so this first semester is a time to get their lives together, establish themselves in a new city and a new work/learning situation. I'm expecting second semester some of them will exercise more of their preferences, demanding more of what they want from the program. We'll see.

Me, I felt like I had so much on my plate in school, and I'm expecting next semester to be the same. I took on a lot of responsibilities and relationships; I want to maximize my time on the ground. I'm enjoying the sort of start-up environment where I can make my own breaks.

Finished my final schoolwork film yesterday:

A video essay about interactive media, literacy and vocabulary, and video games. Interviews with Malcolm McCullough, Liz Goodman, Doug Church, Jessica Hammer and Greg Costikyan.

Damn it's cold. Fingers cold, icy chill in this little room where I work. I hear it was in the 20s in Los Angeles last night, and as another night looms, I'm taking up shivering to keep my blood flowing.

There's heat working in my house, finally, blessedly, but I spend my waking hours in my house mostly perched in an 8x8 foot thin-walled shack out back with all my media machines. I was hoping the heat from the computers might raise the temperature in here; obviously I'm not hacking hard enough.

I've got a ton of work to do to finish school this week: final projects - two films primarily, and a presentation. To help me get ready, I deleted 3913 appointments from my datebook as I was working to synchronize my Treo. Now I'm spending hours recovering them. Shivering, stomach in knots from stress, I realized I could take steps to improve my state of being: I put on a sweater and a stocking cap. I read a buying guide for space heaters and imagined owning one. I lit a candle. I put on Apocalypse Now, which I used to watch about every six months between the ages of 14 and 18 but I haven't watched it now for probably at least a year. I know the lines, the sound effects, the experience of descent is so familiar. Watching it is comforting, and provocative because I know more about film now since I've studied it; I appreciate the technique, the artistry more deeply.

I'm not any closer to finishing my own films but at least my heart is warmer.

I have three final presentations to make at school next week; two of them involve videos. I gotta edit down a total of about seven hours of raw footage on two separate subjects into two separate coherent 5-10 minute shorts: one fiction, one documentary. Whee!

I do love this work, or else I wouldn't have snuck a third video project into this weekend: I had planned to tape this holiday to have a record of my Mother's recipe for Thanksgiving eats. When she broke her wrist, I had to cook for my family; fortunately my Uncle was there to be head chef, allowing me a hand free to do some taping. Then, four hours of editing later, I end up with this ten minute short film about this occasion. Keywords: Thanksgiving, Nebraska, Turkey, rural/urban, ecumenical, fracture, stuffing.

The more time you have to edit, the shorter and tighter you can make the draft. Too many other assignments looming to spend more time on this now. I'm just glad to get something produced quickly - better to air some of my favorite bits now, rather than letting the footage mold while I carry the "should edit something together outta that" in my head. My family seemed to enjoy it! They probably got most of the jokes.

Thanksgiving 2K4 - ten minutes - 77 megabyte Quicktime

Briefly, my self-crit: there's some obvious technical problems here - a few of the shots are wildly over-exposed or badly backlit. Some effects compensation on the latter only begins the healing. Better camera work would be best - have to figure out how to stay on top of my camera technique while I'm running and gunning.

The largest problem in this video - inconsistent or inaudible sound. Uncle Jim is missed for too much of that long conversation in the kitchen. Subtitles are an incomplete solution. Ideally I would get a mic attached to my camera that could pick up sound a few meters in front of it - drawing focused sound from forefront subjects.

You can see my setup in the photos Robin took during my recent interview with Doug. I have a small reasonable mic - I just today discovered that I can attach it to my camera! Uh, duh - never noticed that before, or forgot. Gonna experiment with using that as my primary mic in the future!

There's some music spread throughout - some is reused from other recent films (a permissible sin, perhaps, considering the time constraints). But then there are brief moments of silence as titles play - maybe some kind of underlying track could be comforting, or at least continuing room tone during those moments.

As for content, the movie could use some tightening. Some sections run long. If the audience is family members, the patience level is probably high enough to permit this cut. But for a general audience more introductions and explanations might be necessary. For example, who are these characters? Some names or relations might be useful; again, for a broader audience.

At least any broader audience that watches this film through will come away with a simply smashing recipe for stuffing.

In terms of filmic influences here, definitely Les Blank's "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers" which I finally saw after years of hunting - there was a special screening at USC for their 75th anniversary, and I got a chance to meet Blank and hear him speak about his craft. I asked him about how you can get your camera so close to food and to life and to people's details and keep the trust up and he said, basically, you've got to establish and keep good relationships. And that takes time! He said.

Blank's "Garlic" reflects something deeply earthy and wholesome, celebrating life and taste and passion across culture and language. It has a sun-dappled optimism, treating the quotidian to a depth of inquiry and exploration meant to reflect accessible joy. It was touching and exhilarating.

Bit of writing about games recently; school has me busy, but I'm finding ways to overlap extracurricular writing with my class discussions or projects. I interviewed game designer Doug Church for Gamasutra; he presents a strong case for the intrinsic qualities that games and interactive media present over films and linear entertainment. The article is here (registration required), and I wrote more about it here: on my IMD blog.

And I've been contributing a piece or two for Game Girl Advance recently; Jane posted something there a week or so ago and it seems to have revived the site a bit.

Natalie convinced me to ditch the bulky shower door, to open up the tiny bathroom here. She offered a lovely white fabric shower curtain as a substitute; it definitely made my bathroom look more sophisticated than its most frequent user.

That curtain picked up a few blemishes, so I washed and dryed it. Now it's lost about 20% of its width and height, so it no longer covers the plastic liner down past the lip of the tub. Minor inconvenience really, but not so good looking.

I started wondering what kind of shower curtain I'd like to get to replace it, if I had my druthers. I like to think about learning stuff during down moments. For example, it would be great to have a poster of basic Arabic letters and sounds hanging in front of my toilet, so if I forget reading material when I'm sitting on the can, I can always brush up on the written language of the Middle East.

Needing a new shower curtain makes me wonder what I could learn as I clean myself, or if I look left from my throne. So far it looks like the best I could do is a World Map: this one has nice flags along the bottom, but looks like it loses track of Africa. This one devotes more time to "great sites" than world flags; after seeing the fantastic-looking flag of Macedonia on Wikipedia, I'd rather look at that than a sepia-toned pic of the Eiffel Tower.

I suppose I could get a Map of the NYC Subway System to study as I shower or shit, but that's not too relevant for me now. Unfortunately, there's no map of the LA freeway system available yet. Neither is there a Dymaxion Map shower curtain - now that would be neato.

I'm sure Natalie would not be happy to hear that I'm thinking to improve upon her vision for white plain modern simplicity. Maybe I should take a moment and acknowledge the wonderful peace and tranquility that comes from the plain white face of the shower. But I like casually studying stuff! I need to find Learning-Shower-Curtains.com - or maybe there's a way I can fashion my own.

Spent about 11 hours today shooting a movie; I was the director, with a crew of four other people. I had a script I loved that someone else had written, and a team to lead putting it together. Now the film is in the can, as they say, and within our small crew the task of editing falls to me. I love editing, I do, getting my fingers on the controls, setting the shot sequences, fading ins and outs, sound levels, foley, all the tweaks of film geekery have grown on me immensely. In some ways it was hard to imagine turning over the footage I directed to anyone else.

But film-geekery control-freakery means I have a film to edit, in the next week. Three hours of footage condensed to eight minutes. And another eight minute film besides that, with a deadline only two days later. So that's many hours of editing to be done in the next ten days. It's finals time in film school. Project, project, project. I decided to go to grad school in part because I realized I would be making stuff. Well here I am, making stuff, and I'm so deep in media stuff I'm making I can barely see. Driving home from the Sunday shoot, I picked up a cheese burger and fries and root beer and had a Tecate alongside it and passed out on my couch watching Slacker for the first time. I would go to bed now for solace and surrender but my electronic life has gone unanswered in a day; bad footing for the week ahead.

A trip to visit my family looms for the Thanksgiving weekend. I had some plans for pleasure during that time; maybe some relaxation, even a recreational personal film. Now I'm trying to figure out if I have enough portable hard drive space to get all my formal capturing and editing done while I'm on the road. There's this sense that what I'm doing is temporary - finishing this semester will put me 1/6th through the film school/interactive media studies experience. But this is it, I'm living my life. Online. Not even Aikido can save me - I still feel a little bit zoned out. Many thin blue lines running behind these eyes. The semester ends on December 2. I will then face about six weeks of no serious plans. How to promote my humanity during that period? First, finish my school work. I'm learning storytelling! Still.