The Joys of Coffee

Was a time, not too long ago, that I'd given up on caffeine.

Despite a (somewhat crippling) addiction to the restorative powers of that wonderful, crystalline xanthine alkaloid (thanks, Wiki!), I decided that it was in my best interest to lay off the black stuff, and instead rely on the old-fashioned restorative powers of a beautiful morning to wake me up and get me through the day.

That worked, for a little while at least. And then I met Mr. 14 Hour Day. He was not so kind, let me tell you.

So I once again decided to make a change in my dietary habits and now I am happily caffeinated thanks to a double shot of espresso each morning. Sure, it's more than what I was consuming daily for the past couple of years, but a double shot a day is nowhere near the amount of caffeine that I would put away at the height of my Caffeine Haze.

Which is a long, roundabout way of me justifying my new coffee habit.

I know it's a slippery slope for me, but I truly plan to limit my caffeine consumption to just the double shot in the morning. I don't drink soda, or tea, and I don't eat chocolate or anything else that has caffeine in it, so it's really and truly just that morning fix.

Used to be, that morning fix was Part One in what would undoubtedly be a near-hourly exercise in self-caffeination. I'm determined to not let that happen again, as I was simply consuming too much of the good stuff.

By now, you're all wondering why in the world I've decided to use this space to talk about espresso. The answer to that is quite simple. It's Tuesday, and since last Thursday, I've woefully neglected my responsibilities on this blog.

Coffee, obviously, is on my mind. And if Nathaniel gets to write about pie...well, I get to write about coffee.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I purchased a new computer this weekend, and I am currently sitting outside doing some work on it. And, as I'm looking up at a rather large tree directly over my head, I can't help but wonder if the Apple Care Protection Plan I bought covers me against Dive-bombing Squirrel Attacks.

Meh. I'm sure it'll be fine...

Go Have Some Pie

Borrowed from Serious Eats: Pie of the Week: Mallomar Pie. Sounds delish.

Sunday Spotlight: The Two Guys from Andromeda

If you've been keeping up with my articles on GameCola or listening to the latest video game buzz, you'll know that Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy, the Two Guys from Andromeda (of Space Quest fame), are making a new adventure game. This was the most exciting video game news I'd heard since word of Mega Man 9 first hit the streets--I signed up for every fan page and mailing list the Two Guys had, and eagerly awaited every update.

If you know anything about the way I normally operate when I get wind of a new entertainment project of interest, this might sound a little uncharacteristic of me. Once I know something exists, or is going to exist, I tune out all news and spoilers unless I'm particularly confused or concerned about the finished product. Under normal circumstances, I'd be excited to know that the Two Guys were together again and working on a game.

However, I'm the biggest Space Quest fan I know. In fact, I'm one of the only Space Quest fans I know. I'm aware of a few people who've played some of the series, but any mention of the games is usually in passing, and because I brought up the topic to begin with. When you feel like the lone champion of a cause, it's not unusual to be all the more zealous about it to keep the interest alive; both for this reason and because I enjoy the games enough to be a zealous fanboy to begin with, I've managed to get this notion in my head that I'm some hotshot Biggest Fan Ever.

I'm fully aware that I'm not the Biggest Fan Ever. I never made my own fangame (though I thought about it) or dressed up in costume as one of the characters (though I thought about it), and I didn't hang around on the Space Quest message boards for over a decade in the hopes that this long-dead series would miraculously be revived (though...actually, I'm not much of a message board guy, so I never thought about it). But now that Space Quest is suddenly back with a vengeance--the SQ2 VGA remake, Incinerations, Vohaul Strikes Back, and now the supposedly unrelated Two Guys project, all in a matter of months--I am overwhelmed at the mere thought of being the Biggest Fan Ever, because there's no way I'd ever come close to meeting the requirements.

The Two Guys' official website is bursting with content that I can't keep up with. Podcast interviews. Weekly contests. Minecraft levels built to look like Space Quest locations. "Let's Play" videos of Scott and Mark playing through all six Space Quest games together. I'm unaccustomed to being on the front lines of a developing fandom, and I simply don't know how to process this much geek input. Even when I was at the height of my involvement with my YouTube channel and fully immersed in Mega Man, I wasn't just being a huge fanboy, but a mentor and an entertainer and a friend. I've never thrown myself purely into the consumer side of a fandom the way some people have, and it's almost sickening to hear the real Biggest Fans Ever talking about how profoundly comprehensive their knowledge and experience of the Space Quest fandom has been...up to and including being on a first-name basis with the developers.

What's striking about this so-called "Space Venture" project is how close to the fans the people responsible are. The cult of celebrity too often elevates people to a godlike status, and it's almost unsettling to have the Two Guys who are so revered by their fans offering so many opportunities for fan participation in the development of this project. Maybe it's the dawn of a new era where celebrities are just regular people with cool jobs, or maybe it's the start of an unhealthy obsession with deified developers who have deigned to step down from their crystal palace in the clouds to walk among the morals for a spell. Either way, I feel barely qualified to be along for the ride.

More and more of my fandoms are going mainstream, and mainstream is going more and more social. I'm losing my identity as a geek because now everybody's a geek, and because there are bigger geeks only a few clicks away. I'm not longing for the days of being ostracized for my interests, but I'm starting to wish that all the time I've spent as a consumer of fandoms still gave me the same amount of geek cred that I used to have. It seems you can't just like anything anymore; you have to live it to be a true fan.

I'm excited that Space Quest is alive and well, and that the Two Guys are back together again on a new project. I don't think I could ever be devoted enough to go beyond just plain "excited," however. Instead of throwing myself wholeheartedly into being a follower of the "Space Venture" project, I'll show my support the way I always have--by playing the game when it comes out, and by participating in whatever capacity suits me until then. For now, I'm content to check in here and there to see what's new, and that's good enough for me. I'm not the Biggest Fan Ever--and I don't have to be to enjoy the fandom for myself.

(Trying to Justify this) Shameless Saturday

Ya know, part of me kinda feels bad about posting these YouTube embeds on Saturdays, since it is a cheat on my part and it is most certainly shameless self promotion. But at the same time, I'm really happy with how this week's "Santino's Foreign Exchange" came out, and I think you guys might dig on it.

(And for those of you out of the loop, this is the YouTube show that I help write over at WWE.)

I'm really excited to be a part of the show, and besides, there's a rather large number of you Exfanders out there, so posting here gives the show a nice little bump in the numbers. Which is good for the old self esteem.

But besides all that, the show taps into geek culture, and so I think it has a place here.

In the few weeks I've been fortunate enough to be a part of the show, we've run an Indian Jones parody, a Ghost Hunters parody, and we have some cool comic book-y stuff on the way. We've also started an epic Beard War, and if you've ever seen Nathaniel, then you know that beards definitely will always have a place on this blog.

So here you go: Hot off the racks, here's today's episode!