I've always been fascinated by the left-field ascent of a trend, a movement, even just a turn of phrase, as when snark … the word … went from non sequitur to ubiquity to backlash in the blink of an eye, or when that Hasidic reggae rapper starting popping up everywhere. And while we're at it … there's the increase in the arbitrary insertion of a period to create a sort of oh-so-clever stopgap, followed by a sentence fragment.

Which totally drives me crazy.

Start the tally.

Not that it's a contest or anything, but put one notch on my party belt. Local video-game publisher Gamecock Media hosted their second annual EIEIO pre-SXSW party. Low temps and turnout made for a less than crazy party vibe, but it wasn't for lack of trying on Gamecock's part.

According to his giddy, thoroughly contagious, prescreening happyrant, Zack Carlson, mad genius programmer for the Alamo Ritz's free, weekly "Terror Thursdays" midnight shock-show screenings, "the best Japanese horror movie ever made, ever, period" screened last night to a packed house of curious, wind-whipped-but-pleasantly-blotto film fans. And wouldn't you know? You missed it! (Not to worry. It shows up on TCM at 4 in the morning from time to time.)

In conjunction with the SXSW screening of In a Dream, a doc about Philadelphia mosaic artists Isaiah and Julia Zagar directed by son Jeremiah, Isaiah will be building a free, large-scale mosaic piece in downtown Austin March 6-10. Isaiah's looking for 10 to 20 volunteers to assist with the project – no experience necessary. For more, go here.

Maybe you read about Heather Gold in last week's Interactive issue and ever since you've been wondering what she meant by that whole revolutionizing-the-talk-show-idea. Well, then, just maybe this is your lucky day: Heather will be hosting a special broadcast of the The Heather Gold Show – titled "Opting Out" – on Monday, March 10, at Scholz Bier Garten (1607 San Jacinto) at 8pm.

On the proverbial couch are Evan Williams, Nick Douglas, Jane McGonigal, Ben Brown, and Jonathan Coulton. The night is free for badgeholders. Don't have a badge? You can check out her show online here.

In this, our trigger-happy state, it makes sense that At the Death House Door – an exploration of the death penalty through the eyes of Rev. Carroll Pickett, a former death-row chaplain, now an anti-death penalty advocate – will have its world premiere at SXSW. But the filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) want to get you talking now.

Sad news: Gary Gygax, the man behind Dungeons and Dragons, has died at his Lake Geneva home, aged 69.

The truth is that every role-playing game, whether tabletop or electronic, owes a huge debt to Gygax. Less an innovator than a visionary that could see the potential of fusing dice-rolling with high fantasy, he realized halflings were cool 30 years before Peter Jackson. He was a co-creator of Chainmail, the system that he later turned into D&D. The original Gen Con, now a series of massive gaming conventions around the world, was held in Gygax's basement in 1967. And, yes, it was Gygax that changed the business model of role-playing games, so that instead of buying one game, fans would buy supplement after supplement, rule book after rule book, and then when the new edition came out, the fans would leap for those updated stats.

But maybe Gygax will be best remembered as the man who made geekiness a communal activity. For that, we, the nerdy teens who had something to do on a Friday night other than read comics, and the imaginative adults that they became, salute him.

Following on from the news that SXSW '05 breakouts the Duplass Brothers will be getting their new movie Baghead shown at this year's festival (plus, as revealed here, a midnight sneak preview), another SXSW veteran is re-emerging: Darkon, which won the SXSW '06 audience award for documentary feature, has finally got a DVD release.

The film about the weird and wonderful world of LARPing (that's live action roleplaying to you) got its world debut at the Convention Center that year, with cast and crew in attendance. When I spoke with co-directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel at the time, they pointed out the value of film festivals: They'd spent over a year dedicated to making this film, hanging out with the Darkonians (as they call themselves) and standing in cold, wet fields in Maryland. But because they'd been living the film, they both said they weren't sure whether it was any good or not. Talking to them after a screening, they seemed struck by both surprise and elation that a room full of strangers (who all could have found something else to do) not only sat through their movie, but gave them a standing ovation afterwards. Which has to be nice.

To call the Maysles Brothers (Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens) iconic in the world of documentary filmmaking is a little bit like calling the sun yellow, the grass green, the price of oil outrageous... Well, you get our point. So it was a particularly ballsy move on the part of Celia Maysles to pick up a camera and dig into the backstory of her deceased father David and somewhat-estranged uncle Albert.

We haven't seen her new film, Wild Blue Yonder, yet, but we hear Al doesn't come off that great in it... and apparently, Al agrees. "[A]s you see in the film, I come off as the bad guy," he told The Reeler in a piece published two weeks ago. (Thanks to SpoutBlog for the link.)

Check out the Chronicle's SXSW Film issue (on the streets and the web next Thursday) for Anne S. Lewis' interview with Celia Maysles, and about a gadjillion other SXSW Film-related pieces.