Friday, September 29, 2006

The Approval Matrix

Finally back in Berkeley after a whirlwind week of Come Out and Playing in New York City, meeting with other MacArthur Foundation research grantees (looking at the ecology of games and youth culture), and attending the MIT Emerging Technologies conference in Cambridge, where I met the other TR35. Oh yes, and also cookie rolling in Cambridge-- it's been awhile since I rolled (a year?) but I wanted to resume, in anticipation of upcoming trips to Hong Kong, Delhi, Udaipur, Agra, Singapore, etc. (If you're curious, the Cambridge installation was oatmeal-cranberry "dunkers" underneath some public canoes by the Charles River.)

Lots to catch up on, a million things on my mind, but a couple quick comments that I am theming around the subject of "The Approval Matrix":

First, Cruel 2 B Kind made New York Magazine's awesome Approval Matrix as the most brilliant event to hit NYC last week, and perfectly poised between high-brow and low brow. Other events listed include the Mets clinching their division, Madame Butterfly opening at the Met, and "Saddam Hussein says to 'agents of Zionism' that he will 'crush your heads'', inadvertently channeling Kids in the Hall". (hee hee.) I am teh happi0r!!!

Speaking of approval matrices, now that the game is post-World Premiere, Ian and I can finally start officially "approving" the requests we've received to host C2BK games. There are wicked many. I'm going to jump on that this weekend, so if you submitted a request, look for an email soon! We've got requests to run games in really interesting places as far as China, Australia, Ireland, and the UK, as well as more locally all up and down the West and East Coasts and across the rest of the country (LA, SF, Seattle; Florida, New Jersey, Boston; Madison, Phoenix, Shaulmberg; and so on).

Basically, the benevolent assassins are taking over the whole world. ROCK!

There's no limit to how many games can be run in any town or city, so feel free to request a game-- you tell us date, time, and location; we create a registration page for your players; they sign up; the game runs automatically! You can even play too.