To Be a Gorilla
On Friday night I met up with Katelin at her place. After meeting some family members, we all drove downtown to a typical Hamilton club I'd never been to before: Absinthe. Katelin's brother Graham and his band Coming Up for Air had a gig at 11:30 that got pushed back to about 12:00. It wasn't my favourite music, but it's all about supporting friends and whatnot, so doing that felt good.Something stuck with me from that night that I didn't expect. As we were leaving the club we were chased by the unique sounds of a guy who'd decided to get up onstage afterward and do his thing - solo. I assumed he was a regular there, and he was one of those types that you see at every club and concert: grungy, long-haired dude who sits/stands at the very front for the entire show head-bobbing ultra-enthusiastically to every song. So we're leaving, and his angry, roaring riffs accompanied by his own grunting intensiveness chased us out the door. Katelin's young cousin made some distasteful comment, clearly baffled as to why anyone would sound so unpleasant on purpose. I said that he was just expressing himself, to which the young fellow replied, "I don't think he's expressing himself. I think he just wants to be a gorilla."
I didn't laugh at the time, but it made smile later. Probably because, the more I think about it, the more I think there really is a lot of truth to the Gorilla theory. More on this later.
Anyway, I played some WoW when I got home and accomplished some geeky feats that I won't bother going into detail about.
Saturday night I was hoping to see Snakes on a Plane, but my friends that I'd have probably gone with saw it on Friday. (Miscommunication there. Oops.) So instead Rockwell and Luke and I rented Four Brothers, mostly by virtue of the fact that it was filmed in Hamilton. We knew it would be bad and, shock of shocks, it was. One of the four brothers in it looked a lot like the character Lion from Virtua Fighter 4 though, which was cool. Around 11:00 Rockwell and I left Luke's and walked around for a few hours gabbing it up. We ended up talking about Rockwell's latest idea for a videogame (an MMO) that features "savages" as avatars. The value of the idea is centered around the hope that this game would completely break free from the mold that every MMOG on the market or in development currently fits into.
We discussed potential features of such a game at some length before I headed home, and it got me thinking about that Gorilla theory again. Peter's game idea depends on the assumption that many gamers, (and most importantly, many people in general) have some kind of primal urge to be act like a total savage from time to time. I don't know how common a trait this is, but Rockwell's game concept sounds like something the Gorilla Guy from Absinthe would really get a kick out of - and maybe, (hopefully) a lot of other people would too.
PS: Something else of note. Yesterday there was a buzz on the internet about some girl who claimed that she was going to perform Seppuku at midnight on her webcam. Apparently the IRC server where people thought they could view the live feed got flooded and I don't think anything happened, but I haven't been looking for details about it either. The premise alone of people tripping over themselves for the chance to see a misguided teenager dissembowel herself before their eyes is, to say the least, a little daunting. I include this piece of information in my post mainly for the purpose of documenting it, and also because it ties in perfectly with this entry's Savagery theme.
posted by Dave @ 1:03 PM
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