Cromely's World: Geek Culture Part 02: w00tstock 2.0

2010-05-10

Geek Culture Part 02: w00tstock 2.0

On Friday night (2010-05-07) The GF and I ventured out to the epicenter of Geek Culture in Seattle that evening -- w00tstock 2.0 at the Moore theater. The show, billed as three hours of Geeks and Music was more like 3.5 - 4.0 hours, and was fantastic.

I'd like to write an insightful review of the show, but I can't. There was just too much awesome to break it down. I'd like to write a detailed commentary on each set. They were so amazing they deserve it. But I'd don't think I have the spare brain cycles for that right now.

So here are some quick notes.

Wil Wheaton's reading about his first Rocky Horror Picture show was great.

Paul and Storm killed with "Opening Band" despite being pelted with only two pair of panties (apparently Portland kicked our butts with that the following night).

Molly Lewis had one of the best sets I've seen her do.

Hank Green sang about Star Trek and particle physics. How could you go wrong?

We heard prerecorded musical interludes featuring George Takei. Catch his rendition of Springsteen's "Fire" someday.

I hadn't seen MC Frontalot before, but his Locutus meets Dilbert stage outfit was perfect for the audience. Unfortunately, his audio was poor. He's a Nerdcore hip-hop artist and the music overwhelmed his voice. I couldn't understand 90% of his lyrics so the performance lost something.

LoadingReadyRun had some great sketches.

Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse explained just what sort of folks he deals with enforcing community standards in the XBox Live universe. It was a surprisingly hysterical performance.

And Adam Savage, who just seems to love this audience, regaled us with tales from Mythbusters and Jamie impressions.

The show felt different than the one I saw in San Francisco. It felt a little less personal. Then again, there were probably more than 1000 people in the theater, which can't help but have a negative impact on the intimacy. At the same time, that lager crowd also made the whole show bigger. So it was no better or worse than San Francisco -- just different.

The performers released the show under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial, Share-alike license and encourage recording and rebroadcast. I manged to record about 60% of it before my camera batteries died. So if you want to experience the show from 6 rows back, and don't mind a little shaky camera work and an annoying laugh, watch any or all of the 22 clips below.

And when w00tstock 2.x comes to your town (next up are Minneapolis and Chicago) just go.

w00tstock Seattle Part 1