Gabe and I don't really see each other at PAX shows if we aren't on stage together; that's not just how our thing works. Plus, we are both introverts who have somehow been drafted for Maximum Social Exposure, so a certain amount of the time there is spent in our climate controlled rooms waiting for our bars to fill back up.
The Penny Arcade iRacing league rolls on. Tonight we're racing the Dallara F3 car at the Daytona International Speedway. I'm going to attempt to participate in the livery theme of "pets on parade" but this might just end up being a big photo of one of my cats stretched across the entire car. Last week was so close to being decent that I still have nightmares about that final lap. I've moved on, and hopefully so have the people whose races I ruined because I'm a fool have as well. I've got Kara spotting and my son Gabe producing tonight's race which starts at 8:00PT but expect the Pit Crew to open closer to 7:30PT. Kara and I won't not be drinking!
I was watching some streams of it, the new Amalur, or… the Old Amalur, all the Amalur we really got. Honestly, I don't think Gabe is super off here. When you change the lens you look at it with, slot one in that says this is an earnest indie's love letter to an era, it's a lot more fun than it should be. And the feel isn't wrong either, because these motherfuckers swung for the Goddamn fence.
One of the ancient rites of our people is the PAX 10, historically a physical space to honor and explore the umami richness of the Indie scene. Because PAX Online is unfettered by your crass physicality, we can expand the number of titles we feature here substantially. Which is a good fucking thing, because we had more submissions this time than ever. Over double, literally. Sounds like everybody's been busy…? Here they are - your PAX Online Indie Showcase.
The first day of school here involved - I would say - an incredible amount of clicking.
If you would like to see my stalwart ally Mike Krahulik and I eviscerate the cowardly and writhing Gary Whitta and (Not That) Will Smith this afternoon in the Tie-breaker of the century, hit up our channel at 3pm PDT. The wheels came completely off our second game, there was an issue with the churning slash hateful Sea, and having angered Poseidon as a boy that was never gonna work out super well for us. But since then I've made the proper obeisances, and promised my daughter Ronia into his damp service if only he will grant us victory today. Man. I started this post out with a lot of grim momentum and now I'm wondering if I'm even gonna get out of this fucking round alive.
When we were trying to figure out the strip today, this fucking monster tried to kill the only hope I've allowed myself to hold onto for this, the dumbest year.
Hearing Gall Bladder advocate for decorum is pretty rich, but it's true. There is, in fact, a context in which rule adherence is a big focus for him. Not for me, though. In fact, the more decided upon a structure that he is, the more likely I will be to gnaw at the roots of Yggdrasil. Disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. This is a service we provide one another, whenever one of us is in danger of being way too up our own ass.
Recently we "hatewatched" the Percy Jackson movies, though... hatewatch may be too strong a term. It wasn't like a Two-Minutes Hate type thing. We didn't all stand up at the same time and yell at the teevee. Let us say that we as a family watched these films with minimal charity. But we extracted all sorts of novel ironies, disparities between the films, the books, and the myths they were inspired by. If you really, really watch a movie as close as you can with four other people, any one of which can pause the film at any time and unburden themselves, it might take you three nights to watch a movie this way and it did. We digested the film, in the manner of a python.
I just wanted to drop a link here to last night's Gabir Motors stream. We were finally able to show off the new stream overlay that Dabe and my son Gabe have been working on for a couple weeks now. It's still very much a work in progress but already I think it's the best looking racing stream on Twitch. I'm certainly not the best driver but they say you should dress for the job you want right? It's been about six months now since I started this sim racing journey which is hard to believe because my enthusiasm hasn't tapered off a bit. This is odd for me as my attention span means I spend about two weeks max on any new thing I try. The long running exceptions to that rule being golf, D&D, and now racing. You really don't need to know a thing about race cars to enjoy these shows. We try and break down the action so that anyone can understand what's going on. It's a shockingly complicated sport for something that looks like a bunch of guys turning left for a few hours. Last night's oval race is a great example of that and since these races are pretty quick, catching up on past episodes is easy. It's not like you have to back through months of 5 hour episodes to know what is going on with Gabir Motors. Every race is brand new and the only thing you can guarantee is that Mike Racecar is gonna leave it all on the track. See you in the Pit Crew!
We haven't announced the full lineup for the Acquisitions incorporated game at PAX Online, but you can take this as an announcement that an announcement is coming shortly. Technically, this might be considered an announcement that there even is a game, so if you were wondering, you can now take that part of your brain and put it back to where it was - tending a gnawing, monstrous dread which only seems to grow as you observe it, until the dread and the bedrock of your identity are commingled and inextricable from one another.
I wouldn't say our Comedy Weapon - the geoscynchronous platform I'm addressing you from now - strikes unerringly. But I would say that we have attempted to engage with the form often enough to suggest that we know something about its elusive dynamics, at least enough to propose that not everyone can do it and most attempts fail.
We have a few strips written out ahead at the moment because Gabriel firmly situated in his personal pit of horrors, that of being strapped to an inclined concrete wedge while dentists, warlocks, and necrophiles dance in frenzied arcs about the dias. You might think of this as an exaggeration, and it might be an exaggeration as a description of dentistry as practiced on Earth, but it is not an exaggeration of the terror it inspires. If anything, I have softened its terrifying, serrated edges.
I think I have had fun every time I've been golfing. That said, I rarely play; I'm there primarily to engage in anthropology.
Tonight’s Penny Arcade league race is going to be a doozy. We are racing the Dallara F3 car at Road America. This car is much faster than anything I’ve raced in iRacing so far and it’s also a brand new track for me. I’ve been practicing for a couple days now but there are so many blind turns and tricky sections to this track that just getting around it cleanly is a challenge for me. The league had a little practice race last night and I spent most of the time in the pit. I’m going to keep practicing as much as I can this afternoon but I also have to draw a comic strip today. We’ll see just how prepared I am when the Pit Crew opens up tonight at 8PT over on our Twitch. Come join me for what is almost certainly going to be an evening of “racing”.