Life 2.0... Finally

Sweetie and I have been wanting to see Jason Springarn-Koff's 2009 Second Life-based documentary Life 2.0 since forever. Tonight we found it available to stream on Netflix and immediately watched it.

I'd been looking forward to seeing the film. I didn't remember anyone panning it, so I began watching in anticipation. The first hint that something was amiss was the mournful cello playing.

Now I love to hear a cello. I fell in love with the instrument not via Tchaikovsky or Mozart, but on the title track of the Bee Gees' album Odessa. That cello is haunting. Tonight's cello seemed to be playing a dirge.

It was a logical choice for the soundtrack. The movie was, as Sweetie wrote in an online review immediately after seeing it, relentlessly negative.

Springarn-Koff's film follows four Second Life avatars over a period of a year or so, with periodic head shots of SL founder Philip Rosedale, an appearance of the real-life financee of one of the avatars and, occasionally and briefly, the filmmaker's avatar. In the tradition of Frederic Wiseman, there is no voiceover.

The movie opens with avatars and online lovers Amie Goode and Bluntly Berblinger. Berblinger describes their behavior as emotional adultery; the film maker immediately cuts to the two, who live thousands of miles from one another, meeting in real life. Emotional my ass!

Berblinger and Goode are tracked as their SL relationships end their marriages and Berblinger leaves Alberta for Goode's home in Westchester, NY. Not surprisingly, things immediately fall apart and Berblinger, after a scene in which he shows his abusive side, heads back home.

A second arc follows 11-year-old female avatar Aaya Aabye, who is compulsively played by a young man whose visage is initially obscured by shadows. Eventually he is shown full-face, which made Sweetie and I wonder if, as the filming progressed, Springarn-Koff was pressuring him to increase his exposure. Aabye is eventually killed off (account closed) by her maker with his engagement still intact, but an ensuing discussion results in his financee leaving. The unnamed young man then creates a young male avatar and comes to consciously acknowledge that he had been sexually abused by his father when he was a child. As a mental health professional I'm often skeptical about such recovered memories, so it's entirely possible it's something he cooked up in his head. It's also entirely possible that it happened. I hope he is seeing a therapist to sort himself out.

The Human Behind Avatar Asri Falcone

A third arc follows designer Asri Falcone, who was doing quite well as a fashion designer and creator of luxury homes in Second Life until a content thief made her creations widely available in world. As she had given up her real-life position to work 15-18 hours a day with prims, her finances were thrown into crisis.

Both Sweetie and I were expecting a balanced or even positive film about Second Life-- that because of what we had heard when the film was released. We didn't get that. From the funereal score to an opening shot which cuts from two married-in-real-life avatars cheating in real life to a scene in which a man with a face obscured by darkness talked about his 11-year-old female avatar to a purposefully filmed shot showing the flaws of the house in which Asri Falcone's human lives in (yes!) her parents' basement, Life 2.0 is meant to show Second Life's creepy side. The cinematography accentuates this by focusing on parts of the faces of the humans in the film. You know what, fuck Jason Springarn-Koff. He's an ass who set out to trash Second Life and he managed not to get caught in it, at least by some reviewers (the New York Times got it, though!).

There’s no excuse, though, for one reprehensible sequence in which the camera descends into the basement of a Detroit home, while a cello saws ominously on the soundtrack, and creeps up behind a large, pajama-clad woman at a computer, primarily to shock us with the visual contrast between her Second Life avatar and her actual body. It’s enough to make you want to escape the real world.

Of all the avatars, I felt sorry only for Asri. Here was a talented, hard-working, positive woman who lost a business she worked for years to build to a scuzzbag who copied and sold her wares because of a bug Second Life should have damn well fixed and who was compensated only a few hundred dollars when she went to court.

Asri is no longer in Second Life; she deleted her account due to thievery and griefing (her account was hacked, large sums of money stolen, and her inventory deleted, most likely by the sumbitch who she took to court. Today she operates with a new avatar and has rebuilt her business. God bless her for her courage and stamina. Most people would have left the the world for good.

There are lots of great films about Second Life. Jason Springarn-Koff didn't make any of them.

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Life 1.0 Intrudes

My New Kitchen Floor

If I've not been writing here much, it's not because I don't want to. It's because my laptop has been acting screwy in Second Life. My desktop is dead and every time I think I'll have funds for a new motherboard, processor, and memory, something expensive in my house or on my car breaks. I also got an opportunity to put much-needed new floors in my kitchen and bathroom (my ex-roommate Christine did a marvelous job putting tile in the bath and sheet vinyl in my 1940s kitchen). Chris gave me a huge break on price, but it was still expensive.

On the way home after taking a friend to the airport my Miata's brake pedal went to the floor. By using engine braking and the parking brake I was, skillful driver that I am, able to stop before I hit the car stopped ahead of me at the intersection. The Miata is in the shop getting new brake lines now. Let me just say having AAA lose my car instead of taking it to my mechanic as they were supposed to was a freak out.

Since I can't really build or use my Second Life camera, I'm not doing much in world. I miss blogging here, and will continue to write as things happen. It's just that not much is happening!

New Marble Floor in My Bathroom

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Bowl Haircut

 Just in case my readers were thinking I was kidding about bowl haircuts...

Here's my mom and dad staging a haircut. They always claimed not to remember the bowl haircuts, but I certainly did. One Christmas they gave me this photo, framed.

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And the Winner Is...

Here I am going all Lady Godiva in Exile's Counting Stars hair. It's one of two styles I bought at the Hair Fair this year.

It's mesh, I believe, but I like it because it seems to move. And even better, it covers my big-ass head without me having to wear the alpha.

Here's a back view:

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Hair Overload!

Chey's Prim Hair Might Stick Through Her Shoulders
But It By God Moves when She Does

All, right, enough is enough.

My bloated inventory still has thousands of items from the Hair Fair-- notecards, landmarks, images, HUDs, and actual hair styles-- 95% of them mesh.

After hours or wearing and photographing hair and making hardly a dent in the demos I picked up, I've had it. Next time I'm in world I'll dump the entire shebang, except for the freebies. You can expect a post soon on free hair, but I'm done with the Hair Fair. There's too much of the same.

I know, I know, the fashionista mafia will be sending their knee-and-elbow team around to twist and distort my avi, but I had to say it anyway.

Some of the mesh hairdos look nice, but they sit rigidly on one's head like an upended bowl of spaghetti. They don't move when you do, or when the wind blows, or ever. Moreover, when the mesh is rigged, it can't be resized or moved around on one's head-- and if you don't wear the often bad invisble head-obscuring tattoo, your scalp shows.

I'm not a big fan of sculpted hair, either, and won't be unless and until the Lindens add flexibility. That leaves prim hair.

I like prim hair, and specifically flexible prim hair. I know flexible prim hair goes through your shoulders sometimes, and yeah, that's a pain in the ass, but it just does it for me way better than a plop of rigid chewed Double-Bubble.

Mesh hair is like a badly-applied wig in real life. When a wig blankets your hair, covering everything, it looks artificial-- but pull a few strands through and blend it so observers can see a place or two where your hair is attached to your head, and suddenly, as any drag queen knows, that wig looks like real hair.

Happily, a few creators use a combination of mesh and flexible prims to create nice looking hair that moves. You must wear the mesh and attach the prims, but it works well for me, and I just bought at least one such product. I'll do a blogpost about it soon.

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Okay, Maybe Not This One

"Hair emergency! Hair emergency!"

"What is it now?" asked Sweetie.

"Look at this hot mess!" I cried.

"Oh, yes," she said. "The bowl."

"What bowl?" I wailed.

"The bowl the hair makers pass around when they get stumped. They put it on your head and there's your haircut."

"My mother used to do that with my father," I said, "but I never expected to be subjected to the bowl myself!"

"The path to platinum fashionista status is not an easy one, grasshopper," she said.

I cringed. "I can expect more of this abuse?"

"Just click Read More," Sweetie said. "You'll see soon enough."

Arrr! This One Was a Freebie, Matey! It's Not THAT Bad. Is it?

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Chey Wears Hair Fair Hair

No Blow Dryer in the World is Gonna Help These Bangs!

Sweetie and I hit every single vendor at the recent Hair Fair. We know we hit every one because the layout, unlike many product fairs we've visited in the past, was logically constructed; we eventually wound up back at our starting point.

I have to say, I took demos from every one of those vendors!

I've not yet worked my way through all the freebies and demos (computer problems), but I've worn more and photographed more than 100 styles. You'll see many of them below the fold.

Mesh is of course the big thing this year. Most is rigged, meaning it can't be adjusted. Like sculpted hair, it's immovable-- although some hair makers add a second wearable object made of flexible prims.

Many of the creators have a big problem with bangs, as you'll see.

And now, the hair.

First, some styles I would consider buying.

Lola's Tango No. 13

Lina by Ayashi

Blush by Azure, or Azure by Blush

Sorry, I Don't Have the Fashionista Designer Name Recognition Gene

Calico by Delora, or Vice-Versa

Lore-Dana by Emo-tions

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