(Written a few days ago, but have been too lazy to type it in until now. Since then, to my delightful surprise I've been Boing-Boinged. Will wonders never cease?)

Greetings to one and greetings to all, from a rare night out for me at the Bar on Buena, just a couple of blocks from where I live (Uptown, Chicago, USA), having a Guinness and enjoying a random hour out of my apartment tonight. It's been a summer of a lot of ups and downs for me, as regular readers already know; first two months in a senior management position at this brand-new internet startup; then a disastrous end to that job, including getting screwed out of $3,000 in pay; which then led to me not being able to start the live-events schedule of my new arts center when I wanted, for lack of money, which frustrated me to no end. So then a decision to push off the live events until spring 2007, and to bring the publishing program up to now, and also to finally start a culture magazine about Second Life (SL), an idea I've been fiddling around with for six months now.

And so, at least a little cool thing has come out of all the chaos and frustrations; that even after just a week, I'm discovering that being an "embedded journalist" within SL is one of the more fascinating things I've done in a long time. And that's because SL is an endlessly fascinating thing, an entire virtual city 750,000 strong, with a landmass larger than Boston if you were to display it at actual size. And let's not forget, a place where all means of creating content is not only free but open-source, where creators can charge real money for their creations, and where none of the crap buildings of a physical city (the gas stations, the warehouses, etc) need to exist. And with no laws, an anarchy-based style of self-government, where almost nothing is illegal and there is no way to actually physically hurt a person. So you know, imagine moving to a place like Toronto, but where every building is some magical breathtaking thing, and where just about every vice known to humans has a legal cottage industry supporting it.

It's fascinating to be a coolhunter in such an environment, a reporter of the underground, because there's such a higher concentration of cool, underground things there. And since SL is such a close and complex approximation of reality, it turns out that all the traits of a good underground journalist are of benefit there too; but unlike real life (RL), it costs about nothing extra there to do the things that make for being a good reporter of the underground. Like take this basic lesson about life, for example; that if you want to be a Michael Musto or a columnist for Nerve or whatever, part of the struggle is simply to be seen on the scene -- to attend as many events as possible, meet as many people as possible, get the right people knowing that you're the one they should come to with gossip or interesting new things. But in RL, this involves a lot more than simply being inquisitive, a good writer and someone who doesn't judge others; it involves lots of expensive cab rides too, very long evenings out, hours upon hours of standing in corners of smoky clubs. It involves stamina and an expense account, the willingness (and fortitude) to do coke with the right people in some stinky toilet stall at three in the morning. Sorry to all of you who didn't realize this before; but if you want to be a genuine reporter of the underground culture, someone noticed by the mainstream, all the things mentioned above come with it.

In SL, though, most of these limitations are removed; one can travel there instantly to wherever one wants by free teleport, can safely hang out in their homey apartment all night instead of dark smoky clubs (or trash-filled alleys in some cases). I can be a socialite there, without the trust fund usually needed to support such a lifestyle. I can be Andy Warhol without the Factory, Tristan Tzara without Cabaret Voltaire. Anyone can, as a matter of fact, which is the other big pleasurable surprising thing -- that almost no one does. Given the chance to instantly visit a million cool things for free, most players of SL still stick to a tiny amount of choices, and then have the balls to bitch about how they never have anything to do.

It's this aspect of the human condition, when all is said and done, that keeps journalists like me and publications like mine in business; the desire to always want to know of the new and interesting, but not wanting to wade through all the extraneous crap that comes with finding it. If you're like me, you've probably assumed that this had mostly to do with the aforementioned money and energy constraints; so it's surprising to be in the grid and see the same lack of action among most, even with the money and energy constraints removed. But hey, I'm not complaining! Indeed, this was the final detail that convinced me to open the new blog and mag -- that I love checking out new things and writing stories about them, love interviewing random strangers, and will happily do it for money and notoriety if no one else is going to.

And I am in fact having quick and profound success with "In The Grid" (ITG); over 300 readers every day already, according to Google Analytics. That's after only a week and a half, mind you; it took me six months to gather that audience when I first started this personal journal. It's a role I relish too, I've discovered, being the hipster reporter/participant who's always in the know, well on his way to knowing everyone there worth knowing. It's old territory for me, after all; I always seem to fulfill this role, no matter what community or activity I get involved with, which I guess makes me a "connector" under Malcolm Gladwell's little "Tipping Point" thing. I thrive at being a connector, in fact; of randomly stumbling across a lot of stuff and saying, "Yes, this is going to be the one thing that a lot of other people will be interested in too." That's what makes me a good social bookmarker too, and what also helped me succeed as a self-publisher in the '90s.

And can I admit this? It's weird but true; that being a culture reporter in SL really brings out the queeny, girly side of my bisexuality, on top of everything else. Because to be a good culture reporter, you need to be a part of the culture; to show up to a lot of events, dress flash, be flamboyant, have no fear. Since I can change outfits in literally 30 seconds in the grid, in transit from one event to the next, this is precisely what I do; I burn through five or ten outfits over the course of one evening. Five to ten hairstyles, five to ten tattoos, swapping gender back and forth every other change. I hop from event to event, hyper-appropriate for whatever the situation is; unlike RL, this is what lets me go from a tech event to a fetish club without even slowing down, from a fashion show to a vampire ball.

I do this more as a woman than as a man, frankly; and that's because there's so much more cool shit available for women there. Seriously, it's worse than even RL; there are 10 times the amounts of stores in the grid, 15 times, for women's clothing than men's. And so I find myself shopping like a fucking girl would while there; making sure that I can find things that make me look pretty, that make me stand out, that are different from what all those other bitches (er, my fellow ladies) are wearing. God, I'm such a fag! I never worry about this shit as a man; just slap on a black sweater and black jeans, and you're good to go. So how funny for me to suddenly care about it in SL as a woman, flitting from fashion show to danceclub, half a dozen times over the course of an evening.

I'm glad for all the early successes I've been having with ITG, for sure; but it's also weird for sure that of all the things I've now attempted the last couple of years, the one most quickly taking off is a blog about a virtual city populated by cartoon characters. A little snobbiness on my part maybe? Maybe. More, I think, that is just still seems like such a surreal thing; that one could make one's living by reporting on player activity within a videogame. If it can't be explained to my mom in five seconds, there's still a part of me that doesn't consider it a legitimate career, you know? I think that's a thing that all creative professionals carry around with them, that never completely goes away. Even when you have success in a strange niche thing, you sometimes get tired of having to explain that strange niche thing to every person you meet at a cocktail party. I've been having to do long explanations at cocktail parties of what I do for over a decade now; I guess maybe I was looking forward to the day where I could simply say, "I own an arts center." I'm glad for the success I'm having with ITG; just that it's unexpected, I guess, and takes me straight back to the situation where it takes me ten minutes to explain to people what exactly I do. It's fun to be in that position at 23; you get a little tired of it by 37.

Sigh. I'm not complaining. I feel blessed a lot of the time that I'm in this position, to take several decades of professional experience and apply it to something cutting-edge, something a lot of my peers can't do because of being entrenched at traditional jobs. I don't know. I'm just still upset, I guess, that the live-events schedule for CCLaP didn't work out; that's something I had been working on for nine months, and the disappointment over it failing doesn't go away easily. So I'm the first-ever world-weary reporter for a virtual environment, perhaps. The Graham Greene of Second Life? The Bill Bryson? That wouldn't be so bad, I guess. There are worse things in the world to be than the Graham Greene of the Metaverse.

Okay, so thanks again to everyone's who checking out ITG these days; and I hope you'll all stick around and become regular readers. Talk with you again soon.