Broadway Trips

David Mamet’s latest play, November, a comedy featuring a dysfunctional President seeking re-election, opens this week at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway. Previews started in late December and reviews from the blogging world has been mixed.  Nonetheless, with Nathan Lane at the helm, tickets will be a rare commodity before long. The play is scheduled to run at least until July.

For those of us unable to make the journey to Broadway, David Mamet will be extending the November experience by blogging, as Charles H.P. Smith, on the official November site.

I subscribed to the blog but have yet to receive any notice of new material, although a new post was uploaded on January 10th. Perhaps it will really go live on Opening Day?…

(Photo by Scott Landis, USA Today)

Phillip Linden (aka, Phillip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs) picked up an Emmy last night at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The statuette was awarded in the category of Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for Best Use of Commercial Advertising on Stand-Alone Broadband Devices (Personal Computers). The project which garnered this was The L Word in Second Life shepherded by Showtime and Electric Sheep.

Congratulations to all involved!

The latest CSI:NY mystery was released on Friday. Celebrating the new year in style, this one involved a corpse found embedded in the Times Square New Year’s sign. The clues to this particular case, however, have brought us back to Venus, still on the loose. As this game is scheduled to end in February, according to the original timeframe, pre-writers’ strike, it’s fitting that the loop would start to close at this point.

Found the clues and analyzed them. Unfortunately, one of the card, said to be at the location where Venus was last spotted by the lead detective, could not be found. Quite a few of us went up and down the said alley, without much luck. However, an interesting clue was located. Not exactly sure what it means at this point, but hopefully more light will be shed shortly.

2008 is now underway and I can’t wait to see what it has in store for us. I’m stoked. I’m tickled as to where the whole virtual world, and Second Life in particular, will be going. I spent my last moments of 2007 and my firsts in 2008 in Second Life, dancing with other CSI fans at Club Random (darn good classic rock music and great company). As sad as this may sound to some people, it was a nice and relaxing way to ring in the new year.

Venus has been sighted around SL and I’m keeping track. But with the writers’ strike still going on, it’s anyone’s guess if this mystery will ever get solved. I was sad to read shortly before the holidays that Electric Sheep, the company reponsible for marketing and managing the CSI:NY project in SL, among others, had to lay off a third of its workforce. Clearly, the virtual landscape as a viable marketing platform still has a ways to prove itself. What does this mean for the CSI:NY project?..No clue.

Stay tuned…

Received this email today. I had signed for their special free download over the Labour Day weekend. Note the limited time offer…

******

A Gift for you…

Nettwerk Music Group and the Vancouver Sun is please to announce
another free digital download album. It’s Seriously Westcoast Vol.2 -
Happy Holidays. Seasonally themed and features 15 songs from such
artists as Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan, Medieval Baebes, Jars of
Clay and many more.

This special digital album will only be available for a limited time
starting on Saturday, December 15 at 12:01am for 48 hours only. To
download your album go here
http://www.nettwerklists.com:8080/r.html?uid=1.9.2lj3i.2d.ep6e8wyn2x

So, tell all your friends to come and download some great holiday
music.

Best Wishes and Have a Safe & Happy Holiday Season.

Everyone at Nettwerk & the Vancouver Sun

The latest CSI: NY mystery was released on the weekend. All Shook Up brought us into the festive season with the murder of a well known window decorator, found drowned into one of her giant globes. The crime scene was pretty straightforward. The crime lab was a bit more sophisticated this time, with three different analyzing stations instead of the usual one. I had to confess, though, I found this mystery a bit more difficult to unwind. I was really hesitating between two of the suspects. In the end, I picked the right one, though I could argue my other suspect also could have been the killer. Dragging a dead weight up a ladder?…Hum…I’m not sure about that one…

The next Venus sighting is scheduled for this Friday. Stay tuned…

Thanks to an i-Report today, filed by Chad Kanawashi, I learned that Will Smith’s upcoming movie, I am Legend, will also use Second Life to bring gamers to its dark world. According to the website:

I Am Legend: Survival is a multiplayer first-person shooter / RPG game playable in the 3D virtual world Second Life. The game transports players into an eerie replica of over 60 acres of New York City set in the chaotic year preceding the movie, I Am Legend.

I took a quick tour of the game’s Orientation pad in SL. This game is definitely aimed at the PS3 generation. You have a choice of four characters to play: infected or non-infected human or infected or non-infected dog. (Nice nod to the furries community in SL…;) ) I’m not sure how far I’ll venture into this world, preferring brain to brawn games, and not being too quick on a trigger. I’ll try the non-infected dog role and see where that leads…Stay tuned.

The movie opens this Friday, December 14th, in RL.

Resumed my search for Venus last night, despite atrocious lag inworld. I’ve been averaging 4-5 fps in the past week. Reasonable frame rate is usually around the 15 mark. Makes for some pretty jerky and delayed movement. But, with another sighting reported, I ventured in, determined to find the latest card.

One of the fun aspects in SL is the lack of gravity. You can build floating structures and flying, without the aid of any contraption, is a common way to move around this virtual universe. The creators of the CSI:NY mystery are taking advantage of this feature and taking us all up to a new level. The first mystery (High Flying) involves a floating platform (the Pegasus skydiving pad), where one of the suspects is interviewed. While we had been teleported directly to that pad  during that investigation, I didn’t realize it was up in the air until I tried finding Venus last night. According to the sighting report:

“A tourist on the Pegasus skydiving platform spotted Venus on a nearby rooftop. Head to the Venus crime lab to study the picture, then head downtown to figure out where Venus was when the picture was taken. If you’re lucky, you’ll recover some evidence from her perch.”

Using the camera control I was able to look up from the site of the first crime scene and find the platform. Now I had to get up to it. I use a laptop without a mouse, which makes flying a bit of a challenge. Add the lag factor to it, and flying becomes more of an art than a science. I got acquainted with the movement control panel which helped me a lot, especially with flying upwards.  Thanks to a major clue from the log report back at the lab, I found the proper rooftop. Landing on it was not as easy. After much trial and error, I finally found the best way to do it: crash your avatar on the adjoining wall, then use the down arrow key to lower yourself to the rooftop. Not very graceful, but, hey, it worked!

I found the card and took it back to the lab for analysis. There’s trouble brewing….Stay tuned!…

Despite the ongoing stagehand strike, which hopefully may be resolved today, David Mamet’s new comedy, November, started rehearsals on Monday. It is scheduled to preview on December 20th, and open on January 17, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway. It stars Nathan Lane, Laurie Metcalf, Dylan Baker, Michael Nichols and Ethan Phillips.

“Set just days before a major presidential election, November involves civil marriages, gambling casinos, lesbians, American Indians, presidential libraries, questionable pardons and campaign contributions.”

Nathan plays incumbent President Charles Smith, fighting for the unlikely chance to be re-elected. This marks Nathan’s third foray into the political arena. His first was as Congressman Charlie Lawrence, in the eponymous very short-lived sitcom. In 2008 he will be seen in Kevin Costner’s upcoming movie Swing Vote. All well-timed, no doubt, to coincide with the real presidential elections in November of 2008.

Tickets are already on sale, with ebay scalpers asking $250/ticket. Photos of the first rehearsal are available here, courtesy of BroadwayWorld.com.

(Photo by David Hume Kennerly)

I had heard of the Second Life Cable Network inworld, but I had yet to explore it until today, when I read about it in Massively, the successor to SL Insider. The breadth of programming was a surprise. Everything from a Shopping Channel, Business channel, Lifestyle, Community channels and including a Sports channel, featuring ice hockey, sailing and snail races…I tuned in to the last laps of this race. A real nail bitter…

Also in the mix is the Music Channel. SL has always been a great venue for artists to reach new audiences by streaming live concerts into SL. The SLCN has a few of those shows archived and available as podcasts.

The nicest thing about all of this is, though you can stream these shows inworld, through special tv sets, you can also stream them on the web via Quicktime. The SLCN has been in operations for a while now. Wow, is all I can think at this point…