Glass Shallot by Adam Baer

Stop Mattel from Scrabulous Facebook Raid!

[Cross-published on The Huffington Post]

Though I've somehow ended up as a professional writer, I never enjoyed Scrabble as a kid. I found it too wonky, or maybe I just had too small an attention span—when I had free time from music or words, I preferred to let my mind rest. Figuring out the exact place to drop a word like "fanworts" so that I could "achieve a righteous bingo," as my school's Scrabble fanatics liked to say, didn't seem like fun to me. I preferred smashing tennis balls. Or figuring out my taste in film.

But then, a few months ago, I began writing an article about social networks, which led, of course, to joining Facebook. I don't blame anyone else for what ensued. But yes, like most of America, I became quickly obsessed with the devilish social network, rife with time-wasting "apps," especially because I had a lot of time on the road, in isolation. Far be it for me to read more than I had to read for work: I could figure out what German philosopher I think like—well, according to whatever college sophomore created the personality quiz of the day (these were and reamin hardly trustworthy exams of one's values, but that's what's kind of fun about them--OK, not fun, but pleasantly distracting).

But with Facebook came a more virtuous diversion: Scrabulous, an interactive way to play a "scrabble"-like word game--a take on the form--with your "friends" wherein you were also given a list of all the geeky two-letter words acceptable to the dictionary and a game board that wouldn't allow you to throw down an invalid word. As well as a way to look some words up should your vocab need a little jumpstart. In fact, you could even throw down a word you didn't know as long as it worked. Say, "amu": the name I gave myself as a toddler. Apparently, "amu" is a word, according to Scrabulous dictionaries, which are close but a little looser than Scrabble dictionaries. I use "amu" all the time now. And I still haven't bothered looking it up. I've also used the word "speedo" much to my editor-friend's chagrin. And I'm not cheating. This is the scrabble-like variation for me, I decided. I can play this. I can use it to reconnect with true, far-flung friends. And I can win at it! [S]crabble--the form, not the product--is finally fun for me.

But today I learned of an extremely sad if predictable piece of news. Reuters is reporting that Mattel, the corporation that has the rights to Scrabble, the product, outside the U.S. and Canada, has asked Facebook to remove its Scrabulous application. Hasbro, Inc., the company that holds the U.S. and Canadian rights wasn't mentioned in the story. But I'm sure they won't be far behind.

Surely, the makers of Scrabulous, which can be played over the Internet or through e-mail—i.e. you don't need to use Facebook to play it—were aware of the inevitability of such a problem. But I don't see how it can't be rectified much in the same way that a thousand companies make Tetris-like clones. Does a company that owns the rights to Scrabble own the rights to the idea of the word game?

According to Wikipedia—purveyor of all accurate information (ahem)—Scrabble is also known as: "Alfapet, Funworder, Skip-A-Cross, Spelofun and Palabras Cruzadas" throughout the world. In fact, when Alfred Mosher Butts invented the game in 1938, he created a challenge based on another: an older word-related game he had fashioned called "Lexico." It was then sold to a Connecticut lawyer, then to other game manufacturers. (Parker Brothers rejected the game!). And it's even been a daytime gameshow hosted by none other than Chuck Woolery.

My point? It's part of popular culture, a recipe that can be reinterpreted like a pot pie. And now no one can own the idea of the game. Maybe certain companies own the rights to Scrabble's name and certain words for techniques used in that official game product. But at this point in time, this word game we're discussing should be considered a public-domain challenge. Much in the way a crossword puzzle isn't owned by anyone. [S]crabble is a form—it has become a form. It isn't just something you can buy. And you can't claim ownership to a form. Well, you could try, but that just wouldn't be cool. Intellectual property here is a rather vague matter, and I'm glad in this instance.

Expectedly, upon hearing this news, many of my friends contacted me, including one prominent computer software executive: What are you going to do now? she asked. She knew of my obsession. My answer? Create a Facebook group promoting a new way to play and to fight Mattel. Scrabulous has certainly brought me a lot of time-killing joy over the last few months. But it's also given me a whole new and improved way to procrastinate, which is part and parcel of the writer's trade. In the past, when I was trying to avoid work, I'd watch a film, play a sport, or sit by my pool listening to music. I might even sit and do nothing. And that's not the same as meditate. I'd rarely engage my mind in anything productive. But Scrabulous has given me a way to procrastinate that makes me a better thinker and writer. I can now drop "fanwort," "luteolin," or any of my recent lucky bingos into conversation and yes, my current writing assignments. I also think it's sharpening my logic at a time when the Internet and even some of my work is dismantling it.

Sure, I'm the most unlikely Scrabble devotee you're ever going to meet. But that's exactly why the scrabble-challenge-loving community should heed my call. It's the form we love, and the online version of this game only builds love for that. In fact, I now want to play the official board game with friends when I have free time. I'm more likely to purchase a fancy, branded Scrabble set. But if Scrabulous leaves Facebook—leaving me to answer one more ridiculous personality quiz (let's be honest: these aren't making me happier or smarter) or to send one more virtually hatching egg gift to a person I see every day--I may not want to continue this new love affair with word games. It's that tenuous, this love affair. It's hanging by a virtual string.

Left to my own devices by the demise of Facebook Scrabulous, I may just retreat to the procrastination of yesteryear and rarely desire to do anything that a lazy writer didn't used to do when he was trying to avoid the next assignment. I may turn to some far-less self-improving activity. I may look for answers in the (pomegranate juice) bottle. In public conversations. Or in a Wii!  So let's band together and fight. If we don't, it will be a longstanding shame. For my readers, Scrabble, and for thousands of other virtually social, procrastinating writers me.

pitching: our leaky tent

A little birdie tells me that an awesome new anthology of writing edited by Shallot supporter and writer extraordinare Bonnie Tsui will make its way into stores this April. The book is called "A Leaky Tent is a Piece of Paradise," and it will feature an essay by yours truly on tennis courts, their identities as built landscapes, and how they can serve as stages for people to play out social dramas. Want more info?

Here's the catchy description:

Warning: This is not your parents' nature writing! A distinctly contemporary take on the genre, "A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise" features original essays by twenty gifted writers, all 30 and under, whose strong and diverse voices redefine nature writing for the 21st century.  Editor Bonnie Tsui's cast of accomplished contributors wrestle with integrating nature into daily life while putting down roots—often in urban environments. Included here are The New Yorker's Andrea Walker on learning to hunt with her father; noted fishing author and painter James Prosek on the mythology and mystery of eels; writer Hugh Ryan on being taught how to pitch a tent by a six-foot-tall drag queen at a Radical Faeries camp in Tennessee. Other stories are unusual in subject, like Christine DeLucia's meditation on life cycles in Massachusetts's Mount Auburn Cemetery, and Adam Baer's argument that the outdoor tennis court -- carefully constructed as it is in a natural surround -- is the built environment in which is he is allowed to be primeval and, at last, to grow into a man. Theirs and the other writings in this collection illuminate questions about self and place, belonging and rootlessness, and the meeting of created and natural landscapes. Brimming with insight and humor, "A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise" rewards us with new perspectives on personal identity in relation to nature, and on the impact of landscape and place on our lives.

Want more? How about an excerpt from my piece? Oh, fine, you convinced me.

A tennis court isn’t nature dressed up but nature objectified, manipulated, pounded even by bulldozers and will. .... A tennis court, explicitly manufactured—grass courts don’t look like grass, chain-link fences offer views of what's outside—feels open and closed. You can often see a tennis court's limits and setting at once. It’s an honest construct...A tennis court placed in the outdoors is as much a way to think about your place in the world as it is a space to think about your place in the service box. ...In the end, a tennis court is a metaphor for humankind’s progress and the limits of that progress: it’s a product of the industrial, and yet it’s most useful to people interested in accessing their primal selves... For all of their civility, tennis courts are revelatory, confessional spaces that, in their uncommonly organized nature, expose contradictory elements, forcing powers to struggle with one another or vibrate in rhythm, or both. Tennis courts are like music staffs. Systematic but open to invention, they’re breeding grounds for anomie and communion altars at once—natural imaging centers where you can’t help but submit to a CAT-scan of your spirit.

I've obviously left out all the juicy stuff: the blood and guts, the fights, the sex scenes. Pre-order the whole book for this story and a whole lot more from Bonnie's impressive karass!

the games we play

Bleary-eyed as a flu victim can be, I recently found interest in how Radosh takes compelling issue with James Suroweicki's Slate piece about the dangers of videogame graphics that skew too real, and I'm with him. But I did write a piece for The New Republic over a year ago, pegged to the release of the first Atari Flashback, that made a few claims fairly pertinent to the argument. My take?

[A]s game-developers create more sophisticated real-life-like titles, it becomes harder and harder to simply "play" a game. What emerges instead is a highly corrupting and advanced form of intriguingly retro Dungeons-and-Dragons role-playing: The game, which on the surface practically begs for you to play with a buddy in your living room, is so complex, so enveloping, so escapist, you become a part of it yourself, and hence lose any ability to socialize honestly. In the latest version of John Madden's football game, for example, there are so many mind-numbing plays and customizations for you as coach to choose from, you may as well be playing yourself (in fact one option is to simply call a play and let the thing unfold in front of your eyes without manipulating the control pad). Faced with the broad cultural proliferation of such games, network football telecasts have even begun to emulate a 2004 video game's camera perspectives, creating for TV-watchers a violent reality flip-flop and hence coloring real sport trivial and fake (if not oppressively real) on the tube.

Dumbed down, have you not noticed how all football telecasts look like Madden these days? For that reason, I'm down with Radosh on how zombie-ish the players look in Top Spin tennis. It's when the characters don't look zombie-ish but realish that we have a problem. Interpretations of reality are always fun things to escape the real with, true attempts to reproduce reality are what give me the heebie-jeebies.

culture essay high

Tomorrow my review of Jonathan Lethem's "The Disappointment Artist" will run in the S.F. Chronicle Book Review. You can read it now by clicking on the above link. I just did, and I'm surprised, as I often am, to see a record of what I thought about a piece of cultural writing. In my review I hint at how Lethem really helps establish the personal culture essay as a pulsing, worthy form, and though the argument arrives in passing, I'd say it's the most important part of the thought process Lethem's book inspired in me. Where can you read personal culture essays anymore? You can read critical reviews written in a literary manner (oh, if I had just another $.50/word for the amount of times an editor had stricken my personal experiences from a piece about a work of art). You can certainly read personal essays about life experiences in all types in magazines (though even they are becoming more and more rare). But seldom now is it that you can find an essay about a writer interested in examining him or herself through the culture he or she consumes, studies, enjoys. The revelation makes me sad, for that's in part what I wanted to do with my writing from the get-go.

take me out (of business)

The Sony PSP is out. You've undoubtedly read about it in your local newspaper. It's a video iPod-cum-tiny Playstation built on the Nintendo Gameboy mold, spread wide.  And it's Sony's one shot to win back some street cred among people who actually choose to spend their money on middlebrow gadgetry. You see, Sony's electronics division hasn't been doing so well (surprise). The company's frighteningly overpriced Vaio laptops don't really provide anything unique -- and by now only sway style whores who fear the Mac switch.  The Network Walkman, Sony's answer to the iPod, isn't selling, mostly because it requires users to sign onto converting their music to the company's proprietary ATRAC audio file format. Even Sony's Cyber-shot digital cameras -- one of which I recently purchased on the recommendation of a professional paparazzo -- force you to spend more on recordable media (its Memory Stick duos cost way more than proletarian CompactFlash cards). And let's not forget that our beloved Sony innovators (from Japan) are trying to adapt to a new CEO, Howard Stringer, a Brit. So you can see why the PSP has so much riding on it. Sony isn't going to lower its prices. It's going to try to use a handheld gadget to power the conglomerate through its tough times -- much in the same way Apple used its iPod. The problem? The PSP isn't an iPod. For one thing, it requires you to buy new games *and* movies recorded on a proprietary Sony format (yes, the company would hate it if you could actually use its products in conjunction with other brands -- especially since it owns the rights to so many films). More damning, the product isn't unique. Sure it can surf the wireless internet, sure it's cooler than the Texas-Instruments calculater-chic Nintendo DS. The problem, though, is that it forces you to adapt to it -- as opposed to the iPod, which *invited* you to try it out. On top of this, Sony is marketing the thing with perhaps the most overplayed anthem of the year, Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out." I suppose we are supposed to listen to the youthful hipness of the song, the message of its lyrics, and associate it with this lifestyle-changing object the way others have associated U2's "Vertigo" with the discombobulating brilliance of the iPod. But here, too, Sony has tried to hard and thought too little. "Take Me Out" can't be a new anthem. It's already been played between scenes in the staid NBC "Friends" spinoff "Joey" (to name just one common place it's everpresent). It's already the soundtrack to the bridge-and-tunnel Friday night parties that happen in has-been clubs. It's already commercial. It's devoid of originality, and that's antithetical to a product promising to revamp one's life. Sony, what are you doing? With all your resources you're making a mockery of yourself. It's well-intentioned of course. But if a 28-year-old pajama-wearing writer who has never worked in either the consumer electronics or entertainment business can figure out your weaknesses, that's got to be a sign that signing a new CEO should just be the beginning for you.

holding 'em

We had to be the only people in the café talking cards. Across the room an aging “90210” alum dished on a “trite” new pilot. To her right, a rapper expressed confusion over green-tea lattes. Sitting outside the Hollywood hullaboo on the establishment’s quietly humble wood-planked side-deck, a casually dressed Dave Foley explained the finer points of “Texas Hold’em” between sips of a dark Mexican beer. Learn how you, too, can become the next host of a TV poker show from one of America's most underrated comedians. A N.Y. Sun Dave Foley interview continues below...