the dotmatrix project

Erica and Dima are pretty steamed over my post from last week where I stated that Kanye West didn’t care about Bonnaroo people. I also called him a Diva in passing, which probably didn’t help ingratiate me with fans either.

Since that comment thread is now completely steeped in spiraling emotion from all sides, I’m going to clarify my thoughts here. If this topic is a deader horse to you than Secretariat, please feel free to move on.

I want to share some of what Kanye has said on his own blog today to help me flesh out my thoughts (read the full post for total context. Sorry or the all caps, they’re not mine):

[...] I’M FUCKING HURT BY THIS ONE. ALL I CARE ABOUT ARE THE FANS. JUST SAY THIS OUT LOUD IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE, “KANYE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT GIVING A GOOD PERFORMANCE.” CAN ANYONE HONESTLY SAY THAT ????????? HAS ANYONE EVEN TAKEN THE TIME TO AT LEAST DO THE MATH??? BONNAROO SHOULD HAVE RELEASED A STATEMENT IN MY DEFENSE BUT SINCE THEY HAVEN’T LET’S BREAK DOWN THE WALLS ON THIS TRUMAN SHOW AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY OCCURRED!!! FOR OVER A MONTH WE WENT BACK AND FORTH ON WETHER OR NOT WE COULD EVEN FIT MY STAGE AT THE FESTIVAL. ONE DAY THEY WOULD SAY YES… WE’D SEND THEM OUR SPECS THEN THEY THEY’D SAY OK… THEN THEY WOULD SEND SPECS BACK THAT DIDN’T FIT THE STAGE. WE WERE OBVIOUSLY DEALING WITH FUCKING IDIOTS WHO DIDN’T REALLY HAVE THE CAPACITY TO REALLY PUT ON THIS SHOW PROPERLY. THEY TRIED 2 GIVE ME A TIME SLOT WERE IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUTSIDE … I HAVE A FUCKING LIGHT SHOW DUMB ASS, IT’S NOT CALLED GLOW IN THE DARK FOR NO REASON SQUID BRAINS! MY PEOPLE WORKED OUT A COMPROMISED STAGE PLOT AND A 3AM TIME SLOT AND I AGREED. FAST FOWARD TO THE DAY OF THE SHOW. MY PRODUCTION MANAGER TRIED TO LOAD IN FOR 24 HOURS BEFORE I WENT ON STAGE BUT THE FESTIVAL WOULDN’T ALLOW US TO DO ANYTHING UNTILL PEARL JAM LEFT THE STAGE. PEARL JAM ENDED ONE HOUR
LATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT THAT POINT WE’RE RACING AGAINST THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT 4:20AM DON COMES BACK 2 THE BUS AND TELLS ME, ” IT WOULD TAKE 45 MORE MINUTES TO PUT ALL YOUR PYRO IN!” I SAY I HAVE TO GET OUT THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. [...]

Ok, let me try to present my thoughts in context to those comments:

“KANYE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT GIVING A GOOD PERFORMANCE.”

That was not the indictment I heard coming out of Bonnaroo.

People that I know, who were there, told me that Kanye’s attempt to put on the “Glow in the Dark” show by any means necessary was the problem they experienced. No one I know or any quote I’ve read has questioned his desire to put on the best show possible. People are questioning his decision to force his production setup into a situation where the outcome could affect the festival experience in a negative manner.

Speaking of his production setup…

[...] FOR OVER A MONTH WE WENT BACK AND FORTH ON WETHER OR NOT WE COULD EVEN FIT MY STAGE AT THE FESTIVAL. ONE DAY THEY WOULD SAY YES… WE’D SEND THEM OUR SPECS THEN THEY THEY’D SAY OK… THEN THEY WOULD SEND SPECS BACK THAT DIDN’T FIT THE STAGE. WE WERE OBVIOUSLY DEALING WITH FUCKING IDIOTS WHO DIDN’T REALLY HAVE THE CAPACITY TO REALLY PUT ON THIS SHOW PROPERLY. THEY TRIED 2 GIVE ME A TIME SLOT WERE IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUTSIDE … I HAVE A FUCKING LIGHT SHOW DUMB ASS, IT’S NOT CALLED GLOW IN THE DARK FOR NO REASON SQUID BRAINS! [...]

I understand that Kanye wanted to reach a different audience with his current production, but if Bonnaroo was having so many issues with the specs, why chance it? Either pull out all together or go with a toned down production setup, rock the mic and leave people wanting more. It’s not like he’s never rocked a set without the Glow in the Dark gear, right?

And I do understand that his whole show right now — set list and all — is dependent on interactions with this production. But if he’s that locked into his stage setup in order to perform, the decision to pull out should have been much easier to make. Similarly, Bonnaroo could have made the very same decision.

Obviously, the gig was important to both parties, so in the end his people pushed, Bonnaroo pushed back, they negotiated a reasonable solution that both parties agreed to and both proceeded to roll the dice of creating an uber headline time slot, which depended on everything running perfectly at 3am in the morning in order to come off.

[...] MY PEOPLE WORKED OUT A COMPROMISED STAGE PLOT AND A 3AM TIME SLOT AND I AGREED. FAST FOWARD TO THE DAY OF THE SHOW. MY PRODUCTION MANAGER TRIED TO LOAD IN FOR 24 HOURS BEFORE I WENT ON STAGE BUT THE FESTIVAL WOULDN’T ALLOW US TO DO ANYTHING UNTILL PEARL JAM LEFT THE STAGE. PEARL JAM ENDED ONE HOUR LATE!!!!!!!!!! AT THAT POINT WE’RE RACING AGAINST THE SUN!!!!!! AT 4:20AM DON COMES BACK 2 THE BUS AND TELLS ME, ” IT WOULD TAKE 45 MORE MINUTES TO PUT ALL YOUR PYRO IN!” I SAY I HAVE TO GET OUT THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. [...]

Reading his account, as a human being, I can totally feel for the guy. I absolutely picture him pacing around, losing his mind more and more as each minute passed and the chance for dropping a great performance slipped farther and farther away from his grasp.

That said, I have little pity for the business man Kanye West. He empowered “his people” to leverage his influence, genre expanding potential, etc. to negotiate the Bonnaroo people into allow him to take the stage following the headline act with this complicated setup.

Bonnaroo blaming Pearl Jam for giving the crowd what they wanted would have done nothing except send a message to all future potential headliners that their headline status doesn’t mean much in reality.

Both parties messed up big time. The show should have never happened, but the promoters wanted the crowd to experience Kanye West and Kanye West wanted the exposure of the crowd, so they both took the risk.

And the people who stuck it out til 4:15am suffered for it.

I’m going to append my previous post title to reflect this new found conclusion — in the end, neither party cared much about the Bonnaroo people.

After a long, hard week at work, all I wanted to do was spend a bit of my Saturday afternoon shooting up dirty, rotten scoundrels on GTA4. Of course, when I tried to fire it up today, I got nothing but a frozen screen.

I called up Gamespot and then tracked down the issue online. It’s a bogus fix — you have to disable half the features of the PS3 to get it working — but it’ll do for now:

1. Delete the game’s install data. This is done via the PS3 options. Scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Game’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Game Data Utility’ Enter this and locate the GTA IV option. Highlight this and press triangle once, from the menu select Delete. This will delete the game’s install information.
2. Delete the game’s save files. To delete any save files you will need to do the following. Scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Game’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Save Data Utility’ Enter this and locate the GTA IV option. Highlight this and press triangle once, and from the context menu select Delete.
3. Disable your Internet connectivity for the PS3. To do this scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Settings’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Network Settings’. Now scroll down to the Internet connection option and press x, now select the disable option. Once this has been done unplug the ethernet cable if you are connecting to the Internet if using this.
4. Disable the console’s information board. To do this scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Network’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Information Board’, highlight this and press triangle. From the menu select ‘Do not display’ Press X to confirm this.
5. Disable Media Server functionality. Scroll to Settings, now scroll up / down to ‘Network Settings’ select Media Server connection. Once this has been done press triangle and change the option Disabled.
6. Delete all of the system’s Internet cache. To do this scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Network’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Internet Browser’, highlight this and press X. Once you browser opens press the triangle button once, from the new menu highlight the ‘Tools’ option and press X. Scroll down the menu until you reach ‘Delete Cookies’ and press X. Confirm the files deletion. Repeat this for ‘Delete Cache’.
7. Turn off the PS3 screen saver. Use the cross media bar to scroll to ‘Settings’, select ‘Display Settings’. Now highlight ‘Screensaver’ and set this to ‘Do not use’.
8. Once this has been done, manually restart you PS3 by holding down the power button for 5 seconds it will beep once and then shut down. Release the power button and re-press it and hold for about 5 seconds. The system will then boot and reset all display settings. You will be prompted to reset your display settings to how you require them.
9. Once restarted please try the game again, you will be prompted to reinstall.

Once the game has started please turn off the following features:

1. The game’s auto-save. Press Start, Game, and locate the Auto-save option. Turn this off.
2. Turn off the game’s flicker filter. Press Start, Display and locate the Flicker Filter option. Turn this off.
3. Turn off the controller vibration feature. Press Start, Controls and locate the vibration option. Turn this off.

Back to blasting.

UPDATE: Ok, I’m pretty far into the game now and I think I may have run into another freeze bug, though it’s a bit different. I just blew up the mob in the Actions Speak Louder Than Words mission and I’m stuck on a cinematic view of the smoldering rubble. The day is slowly turning to night and all I can do is hit start to get to the pause screen.

Fuck. If I have to clear my saved files to fix this, I’m tossing the game. I’m too far deep.