Chapoulie, During, della Negra, Kinoshita and the rest of the hot french mustard

didn't blog this weekend. was knee deep in O.C. land. however, squeezed in a party on saturday night, at Chapoulie's, Mr. Alchimicinéma. Had lovely time with him, several bottles of champagne, various sundry characters, and met Mr. Elie During in person. He's the new hot french philosopher guy, after writing about Bergson, Matrix and Tron...the essay, which I can't find, is in french, and I had a copy of it before I was fully bilingual, so I cannot deign to go into the details. I think he wrote something else for Litterature mag, on the prototype in art. Strange stuff ...apparently also obsessed with new media work.

But, Mr. During is a nice guy, and easily my favourite new acquaintance of the night, despite only having a short snippet conversation that was centred on Castle Wolfenstein. What was nice was how normal he was. I mean, imagine if you met a young Derrida/Sartre, and managed to corner him in a small bustling party filled with art intellectuosos, you'd expect him to hold on tight to his laurels or keep the steady patter of flip canny witticims...but nooooo, this guy is great to talk to, not an ounce of arrogance, quiet and shy.

On the other hand, harrumph, must caution myself to stop gushing about people who I know nothing about and focus on real things, and real people that I know. Will order his book first thing in the morning.


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On Sunday I also went out (say it ain't so!!) to the Pompidou to go to a conference on the Sims that some guy was putting on. The round table discussion consisted of a gamer, the C.K., the head bossman at ElectronicArts (Sim's Producer), some other dude, and Alain della Negra, Dacnar's good buddy from school. He and the Kinoshita, his lovely Japanese wife, made a film on the Sims, except it's actually good, minus all those 3D stiffies.

Yanyways, the film seems to have spent the right amoung of time in the oak barrel because it was a stellar hit at the conference. CONGRATULATIONS! Good work guys!

Whole conversation on the Sims, though, was slightly (y)aw(n)ing and bizarro. But, found the discussion on avatars much more interesting. After all, the invention of the notion of the avatar in fiction dates far back to the first diarists who used alter egos, and can be traced all the way to this point here, in my blog. It seems that we are heading towards the full physical realisation of our split self, one that we can perfect and fully implement all our neuroses and eccentricities or dreams or....

OOOhhh, humanity...how narcissistic we really are. but of course it makes sense. the more depressing real life gets, the more avatars we spawn. The illusion factory is the only weapon against mass societal rioting. Whoaaa! Did I just say blogging is turning us into a bunch of beached jellyfish, incapable of doing real damage and drying up slowly in the sun? Did I?

Did you?

OH MY GOD! Dacnar just caught a fly with his bare hands! Garrrr!!!