Broken Saints Blog-a-Plenty

(I just had this hit my inbox from hardcore BS peep EGGPLANT, and had to share it with the ‘hood. Included for your amusement is a chat log he attached with our saintly shop-keeper JOSHSPAZJOSH. Enjoy…and keep ’em peeled for a newsletter sometime tomorrow. For now, I need to sleep and process all the Wiicent information from E3. 😉 bb)

[23:07] The Eggplant: punchthecode.net is up!
[23:08] joshspazjosh: nice
[23:08] joshspazjosh: wait
[23:08] joshspazjosh: why
[23:08] joshspazjosh: what is its purpose
[23:08] The Eggplant: should i let brooke know about it?
[23:08] The Eggplant: i DON’t KNOW!
[23:08] joshspazjosh: it’s so weird
[23:08] The Eggplant: viral marketing?
[23:08] joshspazjosh: lol
[23:08] The Eggplant: yeah…. exactly
[23:08] joshspazjosh: tell Brooke now
[23:09] joshspazjosh: send him an email
[23:09] The Eggplant: and then what?
[23:09] joshspazjosh: he will go insane
[23:09] The Eggplant: uhhhh
[23:09] The Eggplant: okay
[23:10] The Eggplant: brooke at brokensaints.com right?
[23:10] joshspazjosh: yeah
[23:11] joshspazjosh: he will go nutes
[23:11] joshspazjosh: yeah not just nuts
[23:11] joshspazjosh: nutes
[23:13] The Eggplant: how does this sound:
[23:13] The Eggplant: http://punchthecode.net – I’m not sure why I made this nor does it really have any purpose.
[23:13] joshspazjosh: lol
[23:13] joshspazjosh: he’s going to go insane
[23:14] joshspazjosh: you should have told him “tell FOX”
[23:14] The Eggplant: i’ll mention that you said he’ll go insane and “nutes”
[23:14] joshspazjosh: and they’ll buy it from you for $1000
[23:14] joshspazjosh: and turn it into a viral marketing site
[23:14] The Eggplant: i might as well just copy and paste this conversation
[23:15] joshspazjosh: whatevs

He doesn’t even need to compensate…

It began with the usual 3hr flight from Van-city to the 10th Circle of Hell known as LAX.

With no extra baggage in tow, I whipped downstairs to the passenger pick-up zone and waited for good friend and legendary BS booster Fallen Angel to snag me from Hades jaws.

Little did I know that the fleshy face of God herself would be there to soothe my weary heart with warm banter, mild flirtation, and genuine interest in all things saintly. With a promo copy of the saga in her sweaty songstress mitts, I ran to the curb and officially began the weekend’s festivities!

LA freeways are another demonic device. Often, the only respite is to watch for very important people whizzing past you in very expensive machines – like a modified version of the old Punch-Buggy game, but rated by the driver’s level of celebrity and/or substance abuse record. The fellow in the pic to the right helped me rack up a formidable score…(bonus points if you can name the car, as it’s an old love of mine)

Cut to an evening of dive-bar karoake – now and forever established as ‘tradition’, thanks to the singular culture shock…and lingering fears of the non-bottled beverage and unlicensed firearm variety. But I fondly digress…

The next day, my mind and body – if not my very soul – were on loan to a wing of theEvil Empire. The marketing and PR crews that greeted me were interesting enough fems and fellows in their own right, if only for an uncannily natural grasp of Newspeak and a collective cubicle-sheik fashion sense. Hands were grasped. Plots were plotted. Glorious new packaging was ogled. And then, almost as soon as it had begun, I was whisked across the way for the now-standard ‘I’m in town so I might as well be productive‘ pitch. And it was…fun…in the ‘overtly comical’ sense. Particularly when my impassioned plot synopsis was interrupted mid-superlative by completely unrelated telephonic perk queries from this fellow. God bless those precious early seconds of lazily-managed speakerphone.

By now, the sun was setting with a smoggy shroud in the West, but our new distribby pals couldn’t let me slumber with an booze-free bloodsteam. A dearth of slickster attire on my part got more than its fair share of ogling here, but any discomfort was soon remedied by orgiastic consumption…and the pleasant result of corporate facades being dropped, and genuine humanity coming out to play. A wonderful night.

And then along came Saturday: early morning NPR, Green Tea Blackberry Frappuccinos, and easy HOV lanes all conspired to take my hand and swing it merrily through the oak and flowered gates of the SoCal Renaissance Fair. Eager throngs in all manner of period dress and dialect, excellent live performances of the comedic and/or physically adept variety, euphoria-inducing raspberry mead, and truly monstrous roast turkey legs (big enough to thrill the size-wench in all of us) made for a fantastic and festive experience. (snoopers of the Flickr variety might have a chortle and guffaw at my costumed expense)

All in all…? I’m starting to glean that I might actually have a life – indeed, perhaps even one possessing a scant degree of merit to various kin and the occasional passerby.

How did heck did that happen?

🙂

A biting and politically-conscious giggle as I hit the Death Star and also drink myself back through time for a few days.

Gotta show respect to Stephen’s balls, man…they’re practically Hindenbergian.

b

BEGINNINGS..?

…to the big show! We’d strongly suggest you plan a San Diego getaway for the third week of July.

Why?

Well – as has been the proverbial par for the course in the Clan of the Broken Saint – some scintillating surprises are in store.

Next week’s newsletter promises to be a doozy of the knock-you-on-your-ass variety. If you’re new to this whole schmozzle, go back to the main page and sign up lickety split.

Interesting times ahead…and omens are everywhere.

B

Waiting with peeled eyes and perked ears for the long-term effects of tomorrow’s immigration protests.

Anyone smelling the first faint waft or…dare I say it…revolution?

THE POWER OF PEP’ COMPELS YOU!

Originally uploaded by INCOGNITO.

I will not resist

This pizza was meant for me

a slice of the truth

🙂

DID NINTENDO SMOKE WiiD???

Ok.

I had NO inkling of this.

So many opinions.

So much mockery.

But the big question still remains.

At E3…Will Wii Rock You?

Discuss.

CHASING THE WISH…

(Hey gang, this was passed on to me by creative brother-in-arms James Curcio of Join My Cult fame. The blurb below may be ‘press releasy’, but the concept stirs up the cooler aspects of projects like EA’s Majestic. Totally worth a scope…)

It began in 2003 as little more than a dream, a crazy idea to tell a story in a new and different way. What if the fictional characters of the story you were reading suddenly began to contact you, through phone calls, email and instant messages, and even at actual real world meetings?

What if they presented themselves as real and involved you in their lives and struggles, so that you actually changed the world in which they lived? What if there were items that you found or that arrived at your home that were important to those characters and their stories, and vital to the things they were trying to achieve?

It began with a story told many times before, an ironic tale of a wish gone wrong, and one man’s quest to set things right again and regain his life. His struggle and the power of his belief attracted thousands of online helpers to his side, in an experience that changed many who participated in it forever.

Starting in February 2003, over 10,000 people discovered Chasing The Wish in its original incarnation as a piece of interactive fiction called an ARG or Alternate Reality Game. Chasing The Wish provided real time, immersive interaction for over six months, incorporating dozens of fictional websites, characters, and real world items and interactions, while attracting international media attention and coverage from the BBC News, the NY Times, and many other major newspaper and magazine sources.

Since 2003, the creator of Chasing The Wish – Dave Szulborski – has become an influential force in immersive marketing and entertainment, with his games, stories, and puzzles playing key roles in several critically acclaimed and award winning marketing campaigns. Dave was part of the creative team behind the MIXX 2005 Campaign of the Year, the Audi cross media event called The Art of the Heist. In 2006, Dave has already designed interactive elements for international marketing projects for General Motors, Hewlett Packard, and a major feature film for Dreamworks. His book about Alternate Reality Games, This Is Not A Game, is widely recognized as the authoritative reference source about ARG history, emergence as a genre, philosophy, and game creation.

Now, in Spring 2006, Dave has brought the world of Chasing The Wish back to life in a series of beautifully illustrated, full color graphic novels, with the help of an incredibly talented team of artists. But, like before, the story is too large to be contained by any one medium, and readers of the graphic novel series will discover that Chasing The Wish is far more than just a comic book, as the story once again crosses over to the Internet, the real world, and their own backyards…

Witness the power of THERMITE, slicing through metal like butter at 2500 degress.

Wow…

And just think of the many potential applications.

Separate ways now

But a new quest is looming

for the BS Crew