scot hacker's foobar blog

Just finished watching Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about the invention of modern skateboarding in Santa Monica in the 1970s. I didn’t grow up in LA, but did surf and skate the 70s away, worked in a surf shop throughout my teens, and spent a lot of time reading Surfer and Skateboarder magazines (and later Thrasher). The scene was so different than it is now, and that’s a hard thing to communicate – the zen and the style and the pure inventiveness of everything that was going on in the skate world at that time. Skating is more radical today, but the pioneering part of it is mostly gone. This movie communicates the vibe of the time period so well, it’s eerie. It’s a look at a part of the 70s that never really gets talked about, but that pretty much was my life. Amy didn’t skate a lick, but totally loved it. You just want to grow your hair out, cut an oak deck out of a desk drawer, glom on some urethane Cadillac wheels, and drain a pool. The soundtrack is absolutely righteous.

Amy received some sad news today – photographic historian and friend Peter Palmquist was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Emeryville today. Probably never knew what hit him.

Palmquist had created the world’s largest collection of photographs of early California, and had catalogued and described them meticulously. He was in the process of turning his immense collection over to Yale University. We visited Palmquist in his home in Arcata last July, and spent days going through his amazing archives – he had built six libraries on his property just to house the collection.

He also sponsored Amy’s book of photographs, Surrogate, simply because he believed in her and her work. He chose one unknown artist per year to sponsor, and asked nothing in return.

Amy has had a difficult evening. So many true and poignant cliche’s here, about the way the people who contribute the most to the world are taken from us before their time, about the need to carpe diem because tomorrow you may be hit by a bus, about the tenuousness of life, about the need to tell people whom you appreciate how much you appreciate them…

Palmquist is one of those people most will never hear of but who made their lives count, and who enriches the lives of generations to come by his contributions.

Quite a bit of interesting discussion tagged onto the end of my Unreal Tournament post. Without trying further to identify ambiguous forces like “the cause of violence in America” (note that I never said “the cause” but only implied that it was undoubtedly a cause), I want to ask an honest question of everyone who thinks it’s acceptable for children to play violent video games:

What’s worse: Rape or murder?

If you think murder is worse and you let your kids play games that involve pretending to murder humans or humanoids by the hundreds, then surely you would have no objection to a video game where your character ran around raping women or girls, right?

Those of you who have posted here in defense of murder games: I would very much like to hear your defense of rape games, and to learn why you intend to let your children play them.