Monks, Condoms, Bullets, and Booze

An Act of God

2010-12-30T05:42:00.011-05:00

When the ur-blizzard hit and turned New York City into fucking HOTH on 26 December 2010 I was intensely sad at the thought of missing it. Some people think my approach to cold is crazy, but I have a tendency to turn anything truly painful into a life-affirming experience. Whether I learned this from the Marines, reading Boethius, or a hardy Presbyterian upbringing is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, when I am tromping through snow with the wind pelting my face with micro-sickles of ice, I force myself to remember that as long as I’m feeling pain I’m still alive, so it can’t be that bad. If the weather gets particularly gruesome I go full Lieutenant Dan and start asking God if that’s the best he’s got, this while my ears are threatening frost bite or the Las Vegas sun is stripping moisture from my throat or eyeballs.

Missing the New York blizzard was in many ways like missing a major sporting event or concert. All my friends went. Their Facebook status updates and Twitter feeds were constant reminders they were all attending a party of sadness to which I had to send my regrets due to prior obligations in Florida. There are three broad types of New Yorkers, and if pressed (sometimes when you truly don’t care) we can all argue extensively about who loves the city more. Natives, non-natives, and tourists. We all hate each other. I am clearly of the last ilk. New York anneals the strangers who become its citizens. The close confines of living and walking become second nature. What first seems like universal rudeness eventually shows itself to merely be brusque and, when you go somewhere else, is a longed-for frankness. The weather is brutal, but it marks the passage of time the way medals accrue on a soldier's uniform. Shopping in Tampa is so simple and casual, whereas getting your Christmas shopping done in one day in Manhattan is an achievement so rare as to be mythic.

After wandering around the country for years looking for something like Home, I've grown attached to New York in a manner less befitting a city than a long-term girlfriend or wife. Sure, we have spats-- we might even yell at each other-- but there's real love there. When I return to my city my friends will all have tales of adventure and derring do with my metropolis girlfriend. They will talk about being barricaded in their homes behind snow with their families, about the subways being covered in snow. I will tell them how Florida was not as warm as it should have been, although my mother's car often seemed like a greenhouse because her air conditioner wasn't working.

Truth be told, there is nothing I could have done. I know this. The snow started falling the day after Christmas, and travel through JFK has been next to impossible since then. I watched the weather reports with a strange meteorological parody of survivor’s guilt and thanked Heaven that since my flight was on Wednesday at least my travel wouldn’t be affected. I religiously checked TripIt, the site/phone app I use to track my flights, and there were no signs of change. It looked like I would be home Wednesday morning at 8am. Tuesday night my phone rang, though, and a JetBlue recording told me my flight had been canceled. I called them immediately and received something like the following phone message:

“We’re experiencing extremely high call volumes, and all our operators are busy. This call will end now. We’re doing the best we can to fix everything, but please try your call at a later time.”

After which message the JetBlue 1-800 number hung up on me. I was not surprised, so I shrugged and went about my business. After all, even counting all the above I couldn’t complain too much about being in Florida.

The next morning I woke up at 06:30, two hours after my 06:05 flight would have required, and I called JetBlue while I still had sleep in my eyes. A message told me I would be on hold for more than an hour. No problem. I walked my dog with my speakerphone on. I bought coffee at Starbucks with my speakerphone on. I went about my day for an hour and a half, and while making my rounds on the Internet, the 80’s rock hits Jetblue plays to make your wait seem less awful stopped, and I heard the familiar buzzing of a ringing phone.

An operator picked up…

…for approximately one second.

I don’t lose my temper with customer service people. Never mind that they’re usually inured to furious customers; I’ve found, over and over again, that you catch more flies with honey. When I got cut off from my JetBlue agent I plum ran out of honey, and the bottom of the pot was filled with a whole lot of f-words screamed at high volume. Or so my mother reported to me later.

I tried calling a few more times and received the same voice message as the night before. I scribbled an e-mail quickly and tried to contain my venom, cf. above re: flies/honey. I think the most annoyed things I said were, “I don’t have an unlimited calling plan,” and “This is unacceptable.” I had tickets to a fabulous party on New Year’s Eve, and I’d swim to New York before I stood up my beautiful date. I had to get to New York, and here I’d missed the blizzard and run up against an impenetrable wall of customer service. Though a seasoned traveler I did not know what to do, so I decided to do the only thing I could do at a time like this.

I complained on Twitter.

08:32, @thompsonplyler: “After an hour and a half on hold with @Jetblue, I got disconnected when the operator picked up. Now I can't get through. Was not mad before.”

Oh, yeah, that's the stuff. That felt gooooood. Sure, I only had 130 followers, but they’d know how angry I was with Jetblue, yes siree!

08:35, @thompsonplyler: “Running out of hate for United States airlines. @usairways is the worst, but @JetBlue has been so terrible through this weather.”*

Now we were cooking. I started a mental clock. In another hour and a half, I was going to unleash vulgarity Hell, because I'm a classy guy.

08:37, @thompsonplyler: “Buy more whatever you need to buy to handle this customer service crisis. Outsource what you need to. Fix my flight, @Jetblue.”

I knew from my fuming at US Air** over Twitter that my words were just hitting some wall that was probably never observed by even a low level worker bee, and this was the digital equivalent of leaving prayers in a corporate wall. Still, I had vitriol to spare, and it’s not like I had a flight to catch.

It turns out some prayers get answered.

08:38, @Jetblue: “@thompsonplyler Please follow us; we'll DM.”

I believe my first action, upon seeing that message on my monitor, was to sit and blink repeatedly for ten solid seconds.

08:38, @thompsonplyler: “@JetBlue Followed. I can scarcely believe I'm interacting with a human.”

08:40, @Jetblue (in a direct message): “Believe it!! What's your reservation number? Do you need rebooking options or a refund? ^gt”

08:41, @thompsonplyler (in a direct message): “I want to get to NYC as soon as possible. I'm blown away right now. XXXXXX”

08:49, @Jetblue (in a direct message): “There are thousands of customers throughout all airlines being reaccommodated. Typically we aren't seeing options through 1/3 or 1/4.”

I was afraid of this. The news showed shot after shot of people standing around in airports, and the backup was likely to be overwhelming Jetblue. Although I was glad to be interacting with a real person—shocked to be doing so through a corporate interface at Twitter—my heart thudded to the ground. I was going to miss New Year’s Eve in New York City, and this on the tail of missing the big blizzard of 2010.

08:50, @thompsonplyler (in a direct message): “To be clear, you're saying you don't think I'll be able to get back to NYC before 1/3 or 1/4? Ugh. Okay. Damn. This is even if I spend $$?”

Before you read the next line, I want you to take a minute and dust off your nearest copy of the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah. I’ll wait.

08:51, @Jetblue (in a direct message): “BUT - a miracle just happened and I had one seat pop up for you on 12/31.”

FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT REIGNETH!
HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!

08:52, @thompsonplyler (in a direct message): “You're a god/goddess. Book it. n.b. I have and paid for my dog.”

Like any man who’s recently had a religious experience, I shouted it from the mountaintops to all 130 people waiting in the Twitterspace—waiting on tenterhooks each one of them—to see how the drama of my return trip unfolded.

08:57, @thompsonplyler: “Currently in DM chat with @Jetblue, where my situation is being resolved. My jaw is on the floor right now. Thanks @Jetblue and @Twitter!”

09:48, @JetBlue (in a direct message): “It's Lindsey, actually. Sorry - dealing with a lot of DMs. You’ve been rebooked. Let me know if all is well.”

KING OF KINGS! AND LORD OF LORDS!
KING OF KINGS! AND LORD OF LORDS!
AND HE SHALL REIGN FOREVER AND EVER!
HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!

09:55, @thompsonplyler: “Lindsey, the @Jetblue Twitter ninja rep just fixed all my flight travails. Heading out on Friday, and I'll make in time for NYE. Bazinga!”

09:57, @thompsonplyler: “Hey, @USAirways, you should learn how to do customer service from @Jetblue. Got my whole problem solved over @Twitter. For comparison, when I presented my ire and frustration to @USAirways re: their pet policy a few months back, I received a form letter. @Jetblue ftw.”

So there you have it. This Friday I’ll be on my way back to New York City, where a beautiful woman will not be disappointed, all thanks to Jetblue (especially Lindsey, @linzlinzlinz on Twitter) being ridiculously on the ball with modern technology. I’ve been completely ignored by US Airways in the aftermath of customer service problems, and the other airlines have never been much better. I was not an early adopter of Twitter. I thought it was nothing more than the newest iteration of carving dirty limericks on bathroom stalls: here’s my stupid brain, now let’s see how many idiots can read its contents! During the 2009 riots in Iran, angry Iranians used Twitter to broadcast the injustices of the local authorities. That was when I reassessed Twitter as a real force in the world and began to see how powerful micro-updates like Twitter could be. This was nothing like that, though. This was me ranting into the wilderness and cursing the name of the gods, only to have them turn an ear to me and ask, “What seems to be the problem?”

Welcome to the future.

*-- Earlier this year US Airways refused to let me fly with my dog because he couldn’t turn around in his carrier. This carrier has a big, honkin’ Delta on its side and has carried my dog on every airline except the ridiculous and poorly catered U.S. Airways. I try not to mention airlines on my Facebook or Twitter without badmouthing them because all I can do is vote with my wallet and spread bad word of mouth.

**-- US Airways: “We learn from every crash.”

Sharing Google Reader Articles on Twitter

2010-12-17T17:37:00.003-05:00

Despite an exhaustive search of the first five links offered by a Google search for "most popular rss readers," I am not sure whether the rest of the Internet is as enamored of Google Reader as I am, but for my purposes the word "Internet" is synonymous with Twitter and Google Reader. I was so zealous about Reader that I urged my friends to share links through Reader rather than Facebook or Twitter. Given that Reader's user statistics are COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND and Facebook is the third largest country in the world, you can imagine how successful my campaign was.

Even on my end, though, I have trouble figuring out how to share whatever I want to share with my friends. I locked down my Facebook by culling people I was only ever acquaintances with and shoving almost everyone else into a limited profile ghetto. About 30 people can see my full profile, and the rest get referred to my Twitter account (the result of this awesome social backlash, by the way, was NOT an upsurge in my Twitter following).

There's the rub. If I want to share anything with the random people of the Internet, I have explicitly told people to follow my Twitter feed. Yet, I have asked others to share (and I continue to share) via Google Reader.

Enter twitterfeed.com.

This handy site will stream any RSS feed directly into your Twitter feed. Following the steps on the cleverly named article "How to Share Articles in Google Reader on Twitter" at Quick Online Tips (from the very nearly Jurassic 2008), my shared items now feed into my Twitter, all with a single click!

Got a Novel?

2009-10-07T08:51:00.001-04:00

I know I'm not the only one among my friends who has a book in his head but keeps finding five or six or a skadillion reasons to save the book writing for another day or year. Maybe it's something in the air, but November 2009 sounded just about right time (not too vernal, not too autumnal) to find out if I'm actually a novelist or whether I'm just a creepy little voyeur writing down people's tics on the subway. Not that these are mutually exclusive possibilities. Why November, you ask? Because November is National Novel Writing Month, which means that if you join me in this endeavor you'll also be joining a ton of other writers around the country who are trying to do the same thing, albeit with books that will be far inferior to your masterpiece... if you ever just get around to it. The goal is 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30, which amounts to a little less than 1667 words every day. (For a quick reference, this note is 532 words.)

All this doesn't warrant a note on facebook cross-posted to my blog, though! What the Hell is going on? Telling the unfamiliar about NaNoWriMo warrants a posted link at best. And if I just wanted to rally my friends who might maybe perhaps be interested, I'd do just that and maybe send a group e-mail. And on November 4th I'd be too tired to write. On November 12th I'd be too sad. November 23rd I wouldn't feel creative. Et cetera ad nauseum and all the other reasons writers give themselves to avoid the responsibility to play God.

No way. I am going to write this novel. So let's make this interesting.

If you want to participate, and you live in the New York area, I'm starting a pool. $300 per person. Everyone participating who gets to 50,000 words gets their money back AND we split whatever's left in the pot from whomever didn't finish. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare or Stephanie Meyer. Shit, my novel is probably going to run long, so I'll say right out that you don't even have to finish. You have to reach 50,000 words. In the worst case scenario everyone finishes and walks away with a novel. In the best case scenario, I split a huge pay day with you (cf. above re: I am going to write this novel)

If you're like me, that number made you wince. $300 is a Playstation 3, a 32GB iPhone, or enough pizza to provoke a lard-induced haze that will help you forget that you didn't nut up to being a novelist for yet another year. The number is supposed to intimidate you. It's supposed to seem too expensive. It's supposed to be an amount of money that's hard to lose. That's why I chose that number. It's not a funny amount of money to lose, and it's a pretty exciting amount to win, even if you have to split it with someone.

If you live somewhere else and want in, lemme know, and we'll try to figure something out.

Anyone else want to write a book?

Batman: Arkham Asylum

2009-09-16T23:47:00.000-04:00

When I attended New York City Comic Con earlier this year, I saw a panel with some of the people behind the Gears of War series. An audience member asked a question about one of the more absurd elements of the game, although I can't recall if it was the weight of the weapons, the auto-healing, the amount of ammo the characters carry, or what. The developer onstage responded, "If Cliff were here, he'd say, 'gamism,' and that's what I say to you. Gamism."

It shouldn't surprise me that Cliff Bleszinski, a man who has held dominion over a staggering amount of my leisure time with the Unreal series and Gears of War games, had a perfect and succinct term for the parts of games that are necessary for the user experience but demand suspension of disbelief. Why are there so many ammo crates lying around before major battles? Gamism. Why do none of your wounds turn septic? Gamism. And cetera.

Gamism has analogs in every medium, really. In the first five minutes of The Hurt Locker, the audience sees what actually happens when you are in the kill radius of a large explosion. As I watched the character's face explode all over the faceplate of his EOD suite (MSRP: $16,985), my mind stacked images of Stephen Segal, Indiana Jones, Mssrs. Skywalker, and various Jameses Bond flying through the air against an angry orange and yellow backdrops. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. I thought. It doesn't ruin the movie for most audience members, though. In fact, it's probably an unpleasant shock for men raised on action movies to discover that when they are in the presence of an IED or other explosive device in the real Iraq or Afghanistan, they cannot save themselves by running toward the camera and leaping forward with their arms outsplayed.

I’m not a lone voice screaming in the wilderness. In a recent interview at Kotaku, Assassin’s Creed designer Patrice Desilets discussed the design decisions the AC team made to immerse the player fully in the experience… and the concessions to gamism made during the development of Assassin’s Creed 2 in order to avoid losing the player.

Games, unlike movies or books, are burdened with the need to entertain the player at every step. Being frustrated by an interface or being clueless as to what to do next or being bored with repetitious tasks is not entertaining, so

All this is to say that I know why all the stupid Riddler puzzles are scattered around Arkham Asylum, but I can’t help but cringe every time I see a fucking green trophy shimmering behind a grate. I’m Bruce fucking Wayne, haunted eternally by the specter of my parents’ murder. I don’t sleep. I have split personality disorder, as the game points out during the brilliant Scarecrow toxin sequences. I am the Dark fucking Knight. So why am I taking time away from my mission to put the Joker in his place so I can see where the Riddler hid a question mark I can only see in my “detective vision”? Gamism.

As gaming has matured, the presentation of the material has raced down and up the Uncanny Valley, and the effect is to subconsciously elicit greater expectations in at least one surly gamer. The Joker and Batman are rendered gorgeously, and Arkham looks like a place you might be able to visit. The whole effect is compromised with every damned Riddler puzzle thrown in—let’s face it—to give the gamer something else to do. But that last bit is the entire ticket: if you didn’t get to hunt down more Riddler puzzles, you would feel cheated out of a complete gaming experience, and there would be precious seconds or minutes when you might not have something else to do!

On top of all that, Paul Dini was NOT the main talent behind Batman: The Animated Series. That seems to have been Bruce Timm, if Dini’s subsequent work in the comics is any indication. The Arkham Asylum script is a mess despite top-notch performances from Kevin Conroy and Luke Skywalker. No one should ever be allowed to write Batman except Jeph Loeb. (Incidentally, Loeb should never be allowed to write anything except Batman).

I’ve rarely hated and loved a game as much as I did Batman: Arkham Asylum. By the end I was foaming over the shoddy script and the pissy concessions to an ADD-addled marketplace. When the stealth and fighting elements are good enough to inspire active leaderboards, do you really need anything other than combat and stealth set pieces strung together? I submit you don’t. Rent it. You’ll enjoy it. I’m going to punch a wall now.

The Stakes are Never Higher: Death in Fiction

2009-09-16T02:42:00.002-04:00

My show last night was a huge success. I dare say it was the best performance I’ve turned in to date. The booker for Jimmy Fallon was in the audience, but I haven’t heard a whisper. If he wasn’t impressed, that’s alright. Three years of performing is still young in the world of stand-up, so if my stuff last night wasn’t good enough, I just have to be Zen about my own growth and development as a performer and as a writer.

Now I’ll talk about video games. That always makes me feel better!

I am going to spoil the unholy bejesus out of the things I talk about here, so if you’re uncomfortable with that, don’t read.

I. Fallout 3

Throughout this year I have kept vivid memories of the last mission I played in Fallout 3. When your character stumbles on Vault 112, the scene is quiet but the feeling of the vault is nonetheless haunted. You guide your vault dweller into a simulation chair and in a flash of light you are no longer scavenging the wasteland as a warrior for light or a scourge in the night. You are in Pleasantville, fully black and white, and the air is thick with menace. Welcome to “Tranquility Lane”. I had my first jaunt through Tranquility Lane shortly after Fallout 3 was released, and I was simply playing it at the wrong time of night in the wrong state of mind. It more or less sent me under my bed and refusing to revisit the Capital Wasteland until the beginning of September.

It turns out I turned in my Pip-Boy 3000 just a hair too early. Vault 112 is where your vault dweller finds his erstwhile father, the original wasteland wanderer whose exodus from Vault 101 prompted your character to forge his wayward destiny at the game’s beginning. Remember, kids, never give into fear.

After your character finds Dad, there are a bunch of relatively boring missions that revolve around rebuilding his great scientific work, Project Purity, a machine designed to purify the millions of gallons of irradiated water in the Capital Wasteland (Go fuck yourself, I told you there would be spoilers). After one of these missions he is forced into a corner by the game’s Big Bad, a representative from the putative elected government of the Capital Wasteland. Forced to choose between giving his work to The People or The Bad Guys, Dad sacrifices himself by massively flooding the Project Purity area with radiation, killing the bad guys and giving you time to head for the hills. It’s all very noble, and Dad is played by Liam Neeson, who continues the Bethesda tradition of being a highly paid actor who phones in his video game lines and gets killed off (as Patrick Stewart did in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion).

Yet I was utterly unmoved. The same game that chilled me in the dead of night failed to elicit any kind of reaction when the main character’s motivational force dies right in front of him. If the same scene played out in the cinema, there would be a close-up and moody lighting. The glass would be fogged with radiation and Dad would be gone… until his hand pounded on the glass and with his final strength he rasped into the intercom, “Run!” Not so in Fallout 3. Your plastic person watches another plastic person lamely collapse to the tune of Liam Neeson’s worst performance.

II. Call of Duty IV: Modern Warfare

COD4 has a slew of amazing death moments. The gameplay treats death like an action movie, although it doesn’t fetishize the violence the same way Fallout 3’s VATS system does with its exploding heads and flying limbs. Nonetheless, there are two jaw-dropping moments that not only highlight the power of the medium but really give death some heft. The first instance is the second mission of the game. The player is dropped behind the eyes of the president of a nameless Arabic country. The president cannot move for the duration of the sequence. He just watches helplessly while his country is overthrown in a military coup. You as the president are eventually tied to a post before a firing squad. There you meet your executioner. He bleats a terrorist screed and raises his pistol. To that point, you the player have had near total control of the camera. No more. The world is out of focus save for that pistol as it’s lowered to the center of your vision…. BOOM.

Later in the game, that same son of a bitch sets off a nuclear bomb in the same country, this time while the player is in control of a U.S. Marine. Your Marine crawls around in the exploded landscape a bit before dying. After that point COD4 is played through the eyes of a British SAS commando, and your job is, more or less, TO AVENGE YOUR OWN DEATH. Rarely has so much emotion been so easily given to a player’s desire to push forward on the control stick and shoot everything wearing an enemy uniform.

III. Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin has acquired a reputation for killing characters. He teaches the reader early not to get attached to anyone who would be an obvious series protagonist in another series. Whatever direction you think the story is going to go, don’t count on it. GRRM will kill that character. Late in Storm of Swords, a brilliant chapter describes a scene of tainted revelry that ends in the death of two major characters, one of whom has been the reader’s point of view for the duration of the story to that point. The scene is shocking and painful to read. I was grasping at my neck while I read in the airport. The characters die within a page of one another. Nothing but black and white on a page, nothing fueling the experience but George R.R. Martin’s imagination fusing with my own. No graphics. No Liam Neeson. No nuclear explosion. Just a punch in the gut unlike anything either of the above games provided.

IV: Final Fantasy

I cried when a.) Aeris died b.) Squall almost missed Rinoa in space c.) Yuna ran through Tidus.

V: Planescape: Torment

I wasn’t always an avenging advocate for video games as art, despite the less than manly effect Aeris’s death had on me. My eighth grade self’s reaction to a 3D model’s death seemed a far cry from The Godfather. Then I was asked repeatedly what could change the nature of a man. The stink of death is all over your character in this game, and even though each death doesn’t resonate, the meaning of your own mortality is Torment’s raison d’etre. At some point you ask how much of you is the sum of your thoughts, the sum of your actions, or neither. Who are you, and if you are going to be judged, what goes into that ruling. I was raised on a healthy Bible diet, yet it was Planescape: Torment that left me a drooling wreck on the floor with these kinds of questions.

VI.

There can be little debate that video games are going to be the most important medium of the 21st century. That said, all art is about synecdoche, about shaving away some sliver of your understanding of the world as you understand it and rendering it in the truest way you know how. It’s tempting to write off the lack of investment I feel in Fallout 3 (or Oblivion for that matter, although the latter never tried anywhere near the personal stakes Fallout 3 aims for) as a response to the character models that are somewhere near the bottom of the Uncanny Valley, but that doesn’t explain the emotional effect of Final Fantasy VII or COD4. Modern Warfare’s characters are animated better than the mannequins in the capital wasteland, yes, but the investment has little to do with the realism of the characters. Did anyone cry when the lieutenant got pwned in Gears of War? Of course not.

It’s heartening and frustrating to watch games evolve but not quite make it. The guys at Bioware say they’re going to make us cry with Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, and if anyone can, I believe it’s either those guys or the bad motherfuckers over at Obsidian.

Whether it’s The Notebook or Titanic or Wedding Crashers or Annie Hall or Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamozov or Hamlet or The Aeneid or The Metamorphosis or The Metamorphoses or The Pillowman or Mama Mia!, we have a wealth of entertainment options in the wide world showing us experiences removed from the adrenaline push and competitive accomplishment cycle that define the modern gaming world. The landscape will change as gaming is accepted as just another medium. I can accept that, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing the modelers, coders, and myriad other development personnel who worked on Fallout 3 could sell a moment of climactic horror after their months of development in a moment of climax with the same fluidity that George R.R. Martin was able to render with only a page of text.

New Facebook Fan Page

2009-02-06T16:14:00.001-05:00

I changed the URL here to reflect my website and contact information better, and I also set up a Faacebook fan page... Which is sort of like virtual digital masturbation a la 2009. If you're interested in keeping up with my comedy or when Second Eulogy is screening or when any of my other projects come into fruition, check it out:

Facebook Fan Me! NOW, NOW, NOW!

Killzone 2 at 1Up

2008-12-11T12:29:00.003-05:00

There's an enticing video preview of Killzone 2 at 1up.com, and I highly recommend you check it out, if only for the footage of what looks like it might be the best-looking game to date. I hate to admit when I am dazzled by sexy graphics, but I bought an XBox360 and Gears of War without knowing anything besides the fact that it was the most beautiful shooter I'd ever seen. Killzone 2 looks to give the same endorsement for the Playstation 3, which is desperate for such a boost.

Here's the 1up preview.

My favorite part of the video is where the, umm, pizza-inclined David Ellis says, "One thing I think they're going for and I think they've gotten right is the kind of... the general confusion of war." Really, David Ellis? You have a lot of experience with the confusion of war? I have more thoughts on this for later. Check out the video.

Auditorium

2008-12-05T17:05:00.003-05:00

I am stunned by Auditorium. I usually click on whatever Tycho posts because the man has shown excellent taste over the past ten years, but I was unprepared for Cipher Prime's demo. If you haven't clicked the link above, do so now:

PLAY AUDITORIUM

When people who care about such things talk about "games as art," everyone has a different idea of what such a classification would mean. Gamers haul out Aeris's death or Rez's "synesthesia" or Braid's relative maturity or Bioshock's lofty creative ambition spread against a brilliantly realized world, and they say, "Surely, this is art!"*

All of those may indeed be art, although I think there are valid counter-arguments for whether or not some of them are good art: Final Fantasy VII, as a whole, reads like it was written by and for sixth graders; Bioshock is far more shooter and environmental design showcase than anything else, and the Rand-esque story elements feel tacked on, probably because they were added fairly late in the development process. Rez is beautiful art.

Auditorium is nothing less than an interactive poem about the creative process. It is the anti-Roger Ebert. Light spews from a single source, and your goal is to guide the light particles around the board so that they hit these panels, these line stacks. When the line stacks are hit, they cue a small music piece. The boards start simply and build, so by the time you are on the eighteenth stage, you are assembling fairly layered musical riffs.

So you have the notion that the creative process is, fundamentally, composed of very few parts. An individual piano has only eight keys. How many core colors did any of the masters use? It was finite. How many words does it take to form a sentence? The core elements are simple. But only with careful, artful arrangement, only with trial and error, can you finally stumble on that moment when your work, your piece, is made whole.

I know it sounds like overblown praise for the game. Keep my reading in mind when you play it, and see what you think.

Play Auditorium!

*-- The people who have this argument may or may not be concerned with whether or not games SHOULD be art because, dammit, they're fun. While I like pleasure for its own sake as much as any other product of the internet porn generation, and I will NEVER play a game that doesn't entertain me, I think this argument is silly. There are too many horrors and problems in the real, real world that to turn one's eye away from them for mere pleasure, i.e. pleasure that doesn't uplift the spirit through art or competition or social congress, is almost certainly a waste of time. There are many ways to have fun, and many of them aren't self-indulgent artifacts from your most childish self. When I call Auditorium the "anti-Roger Ebert," I am in no way chiding Mr. Ebert for a largely correct perception. There is dreck on the shelves both in the form of poorly constructed entertainment and in the form of wonderful entertainments that "represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic. " Note that I say this in full awareness that I am often guilty of this same form of time wasting. That doesn't mean I'm right, and it doesn't mean the distinction between mere entertainment and art isn't an important one to make.

Left 4 Dead

2008-11-16T01:00:00.002-05:00

I am between jobs right now, so I can't really afford to purchase Left 4 Dead when it comes out on Monday, but I have been having so much fun with the demo that I am concerned it might be a controlled substance.

I have a friend who likes first person shooters, but only if he gets to kill other people. Some people don't like video games at all. I respect both of these opinions, even if I do not understand them, much in the same way I look at sports fans. But if you like video games, and you dislike zombies, and you like accomplishing zombie-killing related goals with your friends, this looks to be THE game.

There are previews all over the internet, and if you watch the footage on GameTrailers, I think the game speaks for itselfalong with the Valve pedigree. I think the best bit of polish for my money is the voice acting. I have lamented with anyone who would listen that most of the time people in video games rarely sound like they're living in the same emotional reality as the ones implied by the assembled polygons and specular lights. When military folks in video games yell, they sound wooden and almost bored. A fervent, "Oo-rah!" never sounds as enthusiastic as I remember, and when people are under mortar and bullet fire, they never, ever have the panicked, fear-twinged strain in their screaming voices that you would find in even the weakest horror movies. (okay, not the WEAKEST horror movies, but an awful lot of 80's slasher films)

Left 4 Dead is the first game I can recall where the people, these gun-toting badasses left behind after a zombie infection, sound exactly as they should for the circumstances. The first inkling was the introductory cinema, where the witch wakes up and Zoey screams, "Run like Hell!" Amazingly, she actually sounds like a terrifying undead creature just stared at her, and she is about to be run down by super-zombies, i.e. she is terrified. The effect is multiplied during play. When these people are pinned by these nightmare creatures, they are definitely afraid for their lives. They, these super-everymen capable of accurately firing dual-wielded pistols from the hip, are VULNERABLE. It lends so much to the atmosphere that I find myself picking Louis not because he's any better than the other three characters-- I don't think they play any differently at all-- but because he sounds the most believably scared when a Hunter Zombie straddles him and starts tearing chunks out of him. (Besides Zoey, but she's so scared it actually makes me uncomfortable).

Left 4 Dead. The demo's out for PC and XBox360. It's one hell of a ride. Check it out

Away from Games: Toward Armageddon; Why I Hate American Politicans and Sarah Palin

2008-09-12T17:36:00.000-04:00

The aftermath of Sarah Palin's ascent to the international spotlight has shown yet again what a circus the American political process is. As a veteran and a citizen of the United States, I would like to appeal to anyone overseas who might be reading this: just as you are aghast, so are some of us embarrassed, to put it mildly. At this point, trillions of innocent 1's and 0's have lost their lives in the service of defending or excoriating John McCain's vaginally-advantaged running mate, and after reading all the available material... I am still going to vote for Obama, just like I did during the primaries.

For those who want an even-handed look at her excellency, check out Newsweek's cover story from this week. I'm left of center, certainly, but it strikes me as a balanced piece, considering the author applauds Palin for her grit, resolve, and tenacity even as it shines a light on the issues her detractors point to as signs of extremism, cronyism, or corruption.

What astounds me about the campaign season is not the craven, cynical way the Republicans mount smear campaigns through ad hominem television commercials and deceptive, anonymous e-mails. If it works, it works. Even though I believe elections should be about issues, my inner pragmatist won't pretend that contestants in a competition should avoid a strategy that enables victory. I don't agree with it from a moral standpoint, seeing as we are talking assigning a finger next to the big, red button marked "NUKE'EM," but politics and government have always been and will always be about treading the gray waters of ethical compromise.

No, I understand competition, the lust for power, and the desire to win at all costs. What alternately depresses and enrages me is not the actions of the gladiators but the behavior of the audience in our American coliseum. The pliability and simplicity of the American people for whom the Carl Rove playbook is written speaks to the same systemic problems that lead the people of our country to watch reality TV, eschew books, gorge on McDonalds, and buy into implausible financial scenarios like those that spawned the subprime mortgage crisis.

Tuesday the news and blogs were alight with McCain's new ad implying Barack Obama compared Governor Palin to a pig. In fact, the ad took comments by Senator Obama vastly out of context, so much so that they might have appeared in a high concept comedy parodying the Presidential race. I'd like to believe the American people, the same Americans who have wisely shown an enormous disapproval of President Bush, will shame these tactics at the ballot box. Between a whimpering economy and a tough-talkin' Russia and two wars and healthcare and education, the next President is not sashaying into the post-Clinton primrose surplus the way George W. Bush did. Whoever puts his hand up and swears to dutifully execute the office of the President come January 20 has a monstrous task before him. I want to believe we the people will take seriously the issues at hand and discount such meaningless, spiteful invectives.

But then again we are the same nation that crowns American Idols and whose need for celebrity gossip can only be sated by the joint efforts of Us Weekly, In Touch, and Life & Style. Watch how the gulf between the candidates buckles with every shot fired, if the polls are to be believed. (I should counter my cynicism here: these are the same polls that dismissed McCain around this time last year.) Who cares whether this person can shoot a moose? Lehman Brothers is imploding. We just regulated the two largest mortgage lenders, and we did all this while trampling the grave of Bear Stearns. This as we hemorrhage billions each month for two Middle Eastern war fronts. Why does anyone waste any air time or pen time on how she feels about sex education?

Then there's the fact that she's attached to the McCain ticket as the vice presidential nominee. The VICE President.
Remember that time when Vice President Gore... uhh...
Oh, and remember when Dan Quayle really shook things up when he... uhhh...
Yeah.
The Vice President golfs, attends military base openings in states with low population, and occasionally is asked to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. How can this woman have anywhere close to the valence she is having in the election? Dick Cheney is an anomaly, easily the most powerful Vice President in the country's history, and that was because his candidate is a stooge! I agree it's important to inspect her given her proximity to the real job, but it's a rather grim prospect to ignore that dude with white hair who looks like a lizard, the one running for President, while the Barracuda is being trotted out for a dog and pony show. You sometimes just have to stand in awe at the political sleight of hand the Republicans pull out every four years.

New Gamertag. New Me. Buckle Up.

2008-09-12T12:34:00.003-04:00

At the end of last year, I abandoned video games for a while. Sure, I would still poke my head into World of Warcraft, and I sank about twenty hours into Burnout:Paradise, Grand Theft Auto IV, but for the most part, I put video games at arm's length in order to focus on my screenplay. With the first draft finished in June, I have slowly returned to video game land. Blissfully. Reconnecting with the strategic part of my brain that determines running routes in Halo 3, Star Power timing in Guitar Hero, or character decisions in Mass Effect has been like coming home. While I am glad to have made the more important things a priority, my time as the prodigal son of video gaming has forced me to come to terms with the fact that, for better or worse, playing video games is one of my favorite hobbies. Long may I play, Dear God, long may I play.

Sadly, my homecoming was not meant with universal joy. Microsoft, for one, was not eager to see me again. Apparently there were nonplussed by my decision to leave because it also included a decision not to pay them. In reply, they cancelled-- "irrevocably cancelled" my XBox Live account and everything attached to it. Let us all enjoy a moment of silence for the gamer formerly known as ImpureAscetic.

RIP

You can click that link and see what once was and what is no longer. You cannot see that ImpureAscetic still has 2000 MS points floating around. But it does. I asked the Microsoft representative, "Why is all my information there, alive and well, and inaccessible to me for purposes of play? It's like my gamertag is in a glass cage, and we're waving at each other, but we're both fine."

"Don't think of it as a glass cage," the Microsoft rep said, pausing for effect. "Think of it as an open casket funeral. You can see the gamertag as it was, and you can wave to it, but it's stuck permanently how you left it."

I cracked up and conceded. Honestly, I'm embarrassed to want the account back so badly. I am embarrassed to have been taken in by Microsoft's fictional status marker, the Gamerscore. Will that number help me get a job? Will it improve my standing with friends and family? Will my girlfriend love me more because of it? No to all. It merely notes the investment of time and the quality of the time invested. It denotes memories of success (Little Sister Savior in Bioshock. Because I'm a goody-goody) and failure (the Long Road Ahead achievement in Guitar Hero II, for failing a song on Easy. Thank you, marijuana!). Considering that the people for whom the Gamerscore carries any weight are generally virgins under the age of 16, I suppose it's enough to have my virtual Lenin's tomb in place for my old account. Nevertheless, it's a ridiculous policy decision on Microsoft's part.

Even more frustrating is that all the gaming I've accumulated in 2008 has been on the PS3. I wouldn't mind pushing through Soul Calibur IV, GTA IV, or Burnout: Paradise for score.... but I'm not going to pay for the games again to do it. I guess I'll just have to work with what I have and build my score as God intended, little by little, bit by bit, forgetting the rotten corpse of my defaulted and dead Gamertag.

Old and busted: ImpureAscetic
New hotness: NervousWrecker

Whiskers. Dirty Fur. Lusting for Cheese... The Race

2008-05-18T23:40:00.002-04:00

I start work tomorrow. It is the first time I have truly been a part of the corporate machine. I will work in an office or cubicle. (I'll inform tomorrow.) I will have to check in with HR.

Unlike the Marines, this job can fire me.
I am not the owner of a company transacting with other companies this time.
I do not call the shots. I cannot decide that this month I will take less work.

My stomach is in a figure-eight.

Thoughts after House to House, Thoughts on War

2008-05-09T13:04:00.004-04:00

After finishing House to House by David Bellavia, I wiped tears from my cheeks and thanked God that I was blessed with the crises that plague my life. I lament stupid diet decisions (a meatball sub instead of a grilled chicken wrap, oh no!) and the various false starts of my work ethic. Never in my days have I had to smack a doped up Islamic extremist in the face with a Kevlar helmet right before he attempted to bite my nuts off. Bellavia's outstanding memoir of his time in Iraq, focusing on the November 2004 siege of Fallujah, recounts such an encounter, a moment shortly before he kills his enemy in a grisly, deliberate fashion.

The Iraq War and War on Terror are voting issues for me. McCain says he refuses time tables and he is fine if we carry out this conflict for the next hundred years. Right. So don't vote for that guy!

Regardless of how you feel about War with a capital letter, I urge you to pursue the endless volumes of knowledge out there and form your beliefs based on something headier than the crap I usually hear when people talk about armed conflict. "Well, people should stop killing each other, man! War is bad, you know?"

I know, man. Pass the bong!

A real statement on the meaning of war is difficult to compose unless you can appropriately assess how you would act someone handed you a rifle as a bearded zealot ran toward you with a bomb wrapped around his chest, Allah and murder in his eyes. Don't worry that you have no idea. According to the Newsweek piece excerpted from Fareed Zakaria's book, The Post-American World, the world is safer now as a whole than it has ever been. Zakaria presents a compelling argument for this, although I'll have to do some more research so see if I really swallow it. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people, even people working every day in Iraq, who do not have such first-hand knowledge , so it's hardly a crime on your part.

We are modern humans living in a post-Enlightenment age. You and I know that ripping another's life away is wrong. I hear the pitter-patter of Birkenstocks, but I think we must not surrender to naiveté as a salute to our love for our fellow humans. Loving your children means setting rules and boundaries, issuing discipline or hugs as required by the situation. As your brother, your son, your lover, and your ally and enemy, I hope no one reading this thinks I speak too obviously when I say what I believe you already know: there must be soldiers.

Someone must carry the rifle or sword. Someone must stand on that wall, run in those boots, clean that ammunition. Float your fingered peace signs. Dance with flowers in your hair, and move to San Francisco. Somewhere, someone angrier than you, stronger than you, someone with more hate in his heart will exploit your kindness and goodness. Before he strikes-- or at least as soon as he strikes-- he must feel a soldier's boot on his throat if freedom from oppression and tyranny is to continue to gain a foothold around the world.

"An AC-130 Spectre gunship rumbles overhead and spits out greetings to the insurgents with its whirling Gatling guns and 105mm howitzer. There is nothing more terrifying than the sight and sounds of that gunship. With its wings banked, it unloads an unbelievable barrage of bullets and shells into its targets. 'Grrrr... Boom-Boom... Grrrrr....' The AC-130 is the closest man has come in imitation to the fist of God."

Humans are amazing. We are jaded by MTV and PS3, but if you take a breath, I hope you can still astound yourself with our capabilities. It was one of your brothers in nature who ripped an atom apart, one of your brothers who played golf on the moon. I can, right now, use Skype to learn Chinese by speaking to someone in China. We have bent the world around us to our wills, and the testament to human dignity and the power of higher intellect manifests in our temples to Mammon and God, our medical marvels, and, yes, the ferocious power we can wield when we seek to destroy.

When any country wields as much concentrated might as the United States, it is imperative that we, the scions of Descartes, Kant, Aristotle, Mill, Jesus, King, and Gandhi, wield that might with restraint and respect. The more we eat from the tree of knowledge, the higher the standards we must hold for ourselves.

This we have not done.

Read about the disgusting politics that precipitated from that horrible Tuesday morning in 2001, the so-called War on Terror, in Ron Suskind's One Percent Doctrine. Read about Wolfowitz's, Rumsfield's, Cheney's, Rice's, and Bush's presumptuous, despicable misunderstanding of the war Americans would face and the costly mistakes they made when they sounded the bugle for war in Thomas Ricks's Fiasco. Watch No End in Sight for more of the same. For extra fun, watch Spike Lee's When the Levies Broke to reinforce what happens when good will and capital are misspent. Then read Enemies and learn about the threats our government leaders ignored in their pursuit of Saddam Hussein-- good stuff like that in One Percent Doctrine and Fiasco as well.

(For that matter, read the Bob Woodward books on President Bush. Do not call President Bush and idiot or a puppet. It removes his accountability, obscures his monstrosity. Besides, George W. Bush can't be THAT stupid: he's the President of the United States. "So what?" some people say. And you're... what? A partner at your firm? A mill worker? A second unit director? A nanny? A chronic masturbator? Give credit where it's due, and don't steal accountability from such a man, a man who has so completely failed in the most important of his life's duties.)

Through all the murk surrounding the Iraq War, there are men on the ground actually fighting it. These are the men who sweat and bleed, the men who die so we can have this discussion. At NYU I heard a lot of people bitch about the President and the war, people who don't know the difference between officers and enlisted, who don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. If you live in the USA, it's your right to say what you want, even if you're Heidi Montag-- a woman who I feel perhaps should have her tongue removed-- but I would submit that if you don't know what or where Al Anbar is, if you don't know who Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army are, and if you flinch at an American body bag without smelling for a whiff on context, you should probably stop talking about the war and go back to watching Dancing with the Stars. You look stupid.

There are real heroes on the ground over there. There are courageous warriors persevering through chaos and tragedy unlike that which any outside the uniformed services have ever known. It's impossible for any of us who have not struggled through the fire and smoke and din of combat to even consider what the word might mean for people like David Bellavia, who endured the fiercest fighting of the Iraq War. Thanks to House to House, a book that often found me forgetting to blink or swallow, we can have some idea.

In an appendix, Bellavia seems to argue for staying in Iraq until the mission is done, the McCain point of view:

"Crtitics of the war only offend me when they misconstrue passion of the mission for some jingoistic partisan dogma. I lost some of the most beautiful people I will ever know in this struggle. They had dreams. They had children and wives, mothers and fathers. And they volunteered to go and fight, two and three times in succession, for a purpose. For me personally, there is no other way I can honor their commitment without supporting an honorable completion of the mission for which they perished."

Here, the water is murky. In our current economic crisis, do we honor the living or the dead by spending billions each month on the war in Iraq? By pulling out are we spitting on the graves of those who died for our freedom in Fallujah? Do we fight until the IIF has enough organization and morale to continue the mission in the absence of an American armed presence, or do we own up to the mistakes by our leadership, i.e. President Bush and his Entourage of Evil, and redouble our efforts in pursuit of the real enemies.

After all, the enemies in Fallujah were imported. Bellavia calls them the insurgent all-star team: Czech, Pilipino, Saudi, Pakistani, and more. The hateful Islamic zealots are merely fauceting in Iraq. Would America not honor the dead more by making good on the promises of September, 2001, the promises that inspired men like Bellavia to join the military in the first place? It's not that we don't have the money, power, intelligence, or resources to fight the right fight. It's that those things are tied up in Iraq's red herring. In an ugly way, it's almost as if Iraq and September 11 cancel each other out. Can America stomach another mass deployment of troops, even to chase Osama Bin Laden, even in the name of the Twin Towers? I don't think we can.

Even so, without reading such dramatic first-hand accounts as David Bellavia's, we are merely ranting from Ivory Towers. I encourage you to pick up a copy for yourself so when you speak of ending or continuing war you can speak with authority, not merely on the gases of mistaken media input. I can't recommend House to House highly enough.

Facebook Applications

2008-04-28T13:27:00.001-04:00

Here's how I roll: I hate facebook applications. Facebook already makes my privacy-dar beep in a constant panic because I don't trust my blue-backgrounded overlords. The proprietors of the applications are, I suspect, even LESS benevolent, and I won't taint my profile with their wares. So
a.) don't send me application requests. Ever.*
b.) if I turn down an application request, that's why.

* - unless you're a dick, in which case, you know, if sending me annoying things robs you of time to do something TRULY counter-productive toward society, by all means, send away)

I'm employed!

2008-04-28T11:31:00.005-04:00

I graduate NYU on 14 May 2008, and I start my first day of work in the real world either on 19 May or 27 May, depending on whether my immediate superior decides that college graduation is a big enough deal to warrant a week off. My thinking is that I've already had plenty of unscheduled time of late, and I am keen to start learning.

The position is a Flame apprenticeship where I will use my IT skillz to keep the networked Flame clients running effectively while learning the fundamentals of the software from an art and design perspective. While I work, we will develop a timetable for my development, which is to say if I am a shitty Flame artist after a year and a half on this job, they will can me. Sounds fair to me.

Anyway, I'm excited to get a job that's hardly a monkey gopher position and which leads to a lot of opportunities in the real world of film development.

Broadway Comedy on the 26th!

2008-04-23T13:56:00.003-04:00

Just a reminder, folks:
I have a big show on the 26th at Broadway Comedy Club!
Bring friends!!
It's gonna be a great show.
318 W 53rd St. b/w 8th and 9th
7:15pm
$15 w/o reservation
$12 w/ reservation: (212) 252-4261
2 drink minimum

I hope I see you guys there!

Army of Two Credits

2008-04-14T10:54:00.005-04:00

I finally picked up Army of Two today. I'm looking forward to playing through it with a couple of my friends. God bless co-op multiplayer!

Also, check this out:

Damn, it's pretty cool to see your name in credits, special thanks or not.
You should all pick up this game, and after you're done playing it you should scroll through the credits!

Comedy News!

2008-04-11T09:52:00.008-04:00

Thanks to everyone who came to the show at New York Comedy Club last night. The caliber of all the comedians was unusually high for that sort of show, and all my guests received a real treat. Hector Luis, the mastermind behind the whole shindig, knows how to put on one hell of a show. If you live in the New York area, stay tuned to MNN for news on his show Laughing Matters. If you weren't at the show, it might seem unreasonable for me to ask you to tune in to New York Public Access... but if you were in attendance, I am sure you want to see more Hector!

I also booked another good gig yesterday, such as any bringer show is a good gig!
Check it out:

If you want to go, you'll also want to save the $3 by reserving a spot before the show.
Call (212) 252-4261

I gasped when the booking lady at Broadway-- a total sweetheart named Marissa-- told me I was going to need TEN PEOPLE. I was like, "Lady, I'm a comic. I'm neurotic, and I avoid sunlight whenever possible... I don't KNOW ten people!"

So I did what I had to do: I went to VistaPrint and filled out the above design for free. From here until April 26, as I gallivant around town, if anyone so much as smiles at me, I am thrusting a turgid postcard right in his or her face. Boo-ya, street marketing, whut!

On a totally unrelated note, I want to point out that I am the weight loss fucking master. I don't want to say much more because I feel like it's bad juju, but I really should write a book. I think I'll call it, Be active, Pay Attention, and Stop Eating Garbage!

I think I'd sell a trillion copies.

Thanks again to everyone who showed up last night, especially the people who found out from this blog. Here's my schedule over the next few weeks:

Tuesday, 4/15
Five Spot Soulfood
8:00pm
459 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn (map)
$10 Cover

Saturday, 4/26
Broadway Comedy Club
318 W 53rd St. (map)
7:00pm
$12 cover, 2 drink minimum
cover is $15 w/o reservations: (212) 252-4261

Monday, 5/5
507 Bar and Grill
9:00pm
507 Grand St., Manhattan (map)
$10 Cover

Saturday, 5/10
Gotham Comedy Club
208 W 23^rd St., Manhattan (map)
5:30pm
$12 Cover
Call (212) 367-9000 for reservations

Additionally, I frequently perform at Geoff Kole’s Comedy showcase waaaay uptown at 107^th St. and West End Ave:

Most Fridays and Saturdays
Underground Lounge
955 West End Ave., Manhattan (map)
9:00pm
$10 Cover + 2 Drink minimum

Comedy Reminder! Come See Me!

2008-04-02T20:39:00.002-04:00

Comedy Reminder:
New Talent Night @ Gotham Comedy Club, 5 April 2008
This Saturday, 2008 April 5 @ 5:30pm
$12 at the door

Call the club in advance at 212-367-9000 for reservations. I hope to see you there!

Dead Fantasy is Amazing

2008-04-02T12:47:00.000-04:00

Last night, J-Money showed me Dead Fantasy II, which one of his friends had posted about on his blog. I know I'm late to the party since this movie was released on 23 March, but there's no way I could see this and not talk about it here.

Some of you are watching that and seeing characters from your own video game experiences. I don't know if it's better or worse to recognize the ladies in the movie. J-Money loved the movie, though, and he didn't recognize anyone.

So I guess it's settled: Dead Fantasy II is amazing.

Immediately curious, I Googled the movie and discovered a.) who did it and b.) what else he's done.

His name's Monty Oum, he lives in Providence RI, and he currently works for Midway Games as a fight designer.

He also worked on Dead Fantasy I (obviously)

and Haloid.

Hot damn!

Mac/Firefox horseshit

2008-04-01T16:54:00.004-04:00

First, if you are using Windows and Internet Explorer, you are wrong.

Everything from terrible security to wonky support of W3 standards to the interface designed by the same feral lepers whose fingerprints are all over Office 2007, using IE on Windows means you either a.) bathe in the sweet morning dew of utter wrongness every day upon waking or b.) you are ignorant of Firefox's glory.

Firefox used to have a feature that made it occasionally difficult to recommend. It had a memory leak that caused it to consume Avid/Photoshop levels of RAM when you were browsing, say, The Best Page in the Universe. That, of course, makes the baby Jesus cry.

They have long since patched Firefox's one problem, so not using Firefox means you're just being contrary, stagnant, ignorant, or stubborn. Or you work for the U.S. Government, and they won't let you work with an open-source web browser.

Get Firefox, weatherfox, mouse gestures, and browser sync. Then report back to me on how utterly awesome your internet experience is. I'll wait.

If you're using Linux, you know about Firefox, and you're probably using it or you have a very good reason not to use it. Fair enough.

Now.
If you're using a Mac, it's a tough call.

Safari is a nice browser, and it can be freakishly fast, but I honestly like a little bit more flava in my corn flakes. A little frosted zest delivered by Tony the Tiger, er, fox. But if you like Apple's sleek interface, it's not weird that you would want to surf in what seems like a native environment. If you have an Intel-based Mac, the decision to use Safari or Firefox is largely one of personal preference.

Not if you're using a PowerPC-based Mac, though. Fuck me hard and fuck me long do I fucking hate my 2004 Mac sometimes. Firefox runs at approximately the same speed as a drunken, blind sloth whose umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck when he popped out of his mom. Yes, yes, I use PowerPC optimized builds, but there's no substitute for an up-to-date, native client. So I end up using Camino or Safari, not because I like or want to, but because I want Google to return search results before the next stage of human evolution.
"But Thompson, you clearly know about Camino, the Mac-optimized browser from the Mozilla Foundation! Doesn't it work well?"

FUCK YOU! Yes, Camino works perfectly well... unless there's a Java plug-in or Flash plug-in that believes it needs Firefox. In that case, fuck Camino, the internet says.

That's what happened to inspire this rant, incidentally. Google recently posted that you can install the Google Gears browser extension on Firefox to edit Google Docs offline. Google Docs is a TERRIBLE idea if you deal with any kind of sensitive information whatsoever, since you have to store the data off-site (duh), but for those of us who aren't working in troop locations or large financial projects, it's a lovely feature-poor word processor and spreadsheet application, and it's nice that Google is finally offering the ability to edit and work in Google Docs offline. NOW IF ONLY I COULD GET IT WORKING ON CAMINO OR IF SOMEONE WOULD RELEASE A FUCKING FIREFOX BUILD THAT WORKS QUICKLY WITH THE POWERPC architecture.

Okay.
I'm okay.
I'm back to my happy place with my penguin power animal, just like Brad Pitt.

Screenwriting Circumstances and Software

2008-03-31T11:52:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow is the first day of April's Script Frenzy, from the same people who bring you National Novel Writing Month every November. My goal is to have a first draft of When Heroes Come Home, proofread, by May 1, so this coincides perfectly.

From the resources section of the Script Frenzy site, I found an amazing site in Scripped.com. If you ever written anything in screenplay format, you've probably heard of/stolen/pined for Final Draft. If you're a thief, you don't need my help. It's extremely easy to find illicit copies of Final Draft for either Mac or Windows on a BitTorrent tracker site like mininova.org. But if you like the law, and you don't fancy spending $229 on yet another word processing program, Scripped might be the answer.

It acts like a less bloated version of Final Draft, which is what you should expect from a free web-only package.

The Script Frenzy site mentions another free scriptwriting client called Celtx. I've used it for a few weeks-- it appeared to be the only game in town for Linux until I found Scripped.com-- and it's like a poor man's everything. EP Budgeting, EP Scheduling, and Final Draft, all made a little dumber and more interactive. Some of its features are WAY more friendly than counterpart programs, but there's a generally Spartan feel about the entire package. I recommend it if you're truly, truly broke, but I don't think Celtx is ready for primetime production.

Batman Unauthorized

2008-03-30T23:21:00.001-04:00

I'm a sucker for semi-literary analysis of my favorite pop culture phenomenons.
Poke around here for some interesting discussion of Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
The now defunct-Slayage site offered fascinating academic takes on Buffy: the Vampire Slayer.
I recently purchased a copy of Batman Unauthorized, an excellent collected series of articles that cover everything from why Batman needs Robin, why Bruce Wayne doesn't retire, and a whimsical look at how much money you would have to spend to actually be Batman.*

The articles are thought-provoking and highly readable, although they fall short of fully-formed rigorous academic analysis of the character. Even so, the book was a great find, and I've already gone to the publisher to look at various takes on Superman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. Not for everyone, but damned fine reading if you're into superheroes and comics.

*- $296,207,612 after you factor in IBM's Blue Gene for the Batcomputer. I think Batman would probably go for a more radical design with smaller power footprint, so let's subtract the computer and end up with $6,207,612... oh and your parents have to die tragically in front of you. We'll call that a floating cost.)

Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2008-03-29T13:15:00.000-04:00

Walking around Manhattan, it's hard not to wonder who this bitch Sarah Marshall is. As an ultra-savvy consumer of new media (aka "a couch potato"), I understood immediately that I was being sold a movie, but the campaign didn't work on me. I had no wish to see any movie that didn't have the good grace to sell itself with pictures of the cast against well-doctored one sheets.

"Fuck you, innovative marketing campaign!" I screamed in the streets every time a taxi with the Sarah Marshall ads drove past.

But my reluctance is a fluid thing. Much like sexy Filipina sex slaves, I can be bought. Clutching my Chick-Fil-A Sandwich, I was accosted by a man with orange flyers who said the magic words, "Do you want to see a free movie?"

"What movie?"

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall," he said.

I had since learned that so-cute-she's-sexy Kristen Bell was playing said Sarah Marshall, which had me sniffling with interest. And this was free. Sold!

And what a great decision it was.
Last year, Knocked Up was easily the funniest movie in theaters, perhaps one of the funniest movies released in years. Judd Apatow directed that movie, and his fingers are all over Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which he produced. He is apparently the funniest guy on the planet. Besides maybe Jason Segel, who plays the protagonist, Peter Bretter, and who wrote Sarah Marshall.

At the beginning of the movie, Peter is a schlub dating a rising TV star, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). He attends movie openings and walks on red carpets, but he is rarely in the focal point of the papparazzi's lens. Peter composes the music for Sarah's TV show, a CSI-inspired parody co-starring Billy Baldwin (who admirably and ably lampoons himself and the CSI Head Dudes like David Crusoe). He pounds out his low and ominous tones because he's obsessed with his girlfriend. Shortly after we learn all we need to know, Sarah dumps him for another man. To recover from his sadness, Peter jaunts to Hawaii, where Sarah always wanted to go... and where she is actually staying with her new boyfriend, lothario rocker Aldous Snow. (played to hilarious perfection by Russell Brand) There he also meets the beatiful and super-cool Rachael (Mila Kunis), stoner surf-instructor Kunu (Paul Rudd), and Aldous Snow die-hard fan Matthew (Superbad's Jonah Hill). Peter and Rachael start to hit it off, Aldous and Sarah start to hit the skids, and the credits roll.

The writing is honest, hilarious, and raunchy. There are several full-frontal shots from Peter (I'm laughing as I type this), and a major turning point at the end of act two features a fabulous but awkward oral sex scene (nothing is shown). This movie definitely earns its R-rating, but as long as the blue humor doesn't put you out, this will probably be the funniest movie of 2008. The superb cast goes a long way toward making this happen, particularly Jason Segel and Russell Brand. Brand is a swine of rockstar proportions, but he is completely at ease with his decisions, so the audience loves him, even though he's the one schlepping the protagonist's girl.

It's hard to pinpoint the leading crew members' roles in a movie like this. Certainly, the production design is fantastic, although it won't win any Academy Awards because I don't think they had to hire a seamstress or actually forge metal weaponry. Nevertheless, each location tingles with a verisimilitude that was obviously overseen by people with exacting attention to detail. Director Nick Stolle wrangled masterful performances from the actors and serviceable camera work from his crew, i.e. the camera stays in the background and doesn't call attention to itself. Because this movie has a simple goal: tell an honest, funny story. It succeeds admirably, and I can't recommend it enough. ***& 1/2 (out of ****)

Stand-up Comedy Clip

2008-03-28T15:21:00.000-04:00

After much futzing with YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, I finally managed to upload a decent copy of my newer stuff onto the web.

Enjoy!

I have a few scheduled dates coming up where I'd love to see you.

April 5 - 5:30pm
Gotham Comedy Club
New Talent Night
$12 at the door
*** It's a bringer. I need four people, so I hope I see you there.

April 10 - 10:00pm
New York Comedy Club
$10 at the door
*** Also a bringer. I need six people for this one, and it's in front of a national booker. I don't like to choose between my children-- help me, William Styron, you're my only hope!-- but if you're saving up your Thompson Plyler comedy points, I would like you to go to THIS one.
Because of the booker.

Also, any time I'm in the city on the weekend, I'm almost guaranteed to be at the Underground Lounge trying out new stuff at Geoff Kole's Comedy Showcase on Friday and Saturday night-- yes, that includes tonight. This is also known as "telling dick jokes in a dungeon."

Almost every Friday and Saturday night, 9pm
Underground Lounge
955 West End Ave, on the corner of West End and 107th St.
$10 at the door, $10 drink/food minu

Go.
Pay.
Laugh.

Comic Books: Nerding Out

2008-03-27T13:32:00.005-04:00

I recently rediscovered Powers at the urging of a friend. Like many of the escapes in my collection, I had somehow overlooked my hojillion volumes of Brian Michael Bendis' and David Oeming's amazing series. I recommend you do not do the same. Read Powers ASAP. It's some of the best picture/word pairings since the ancient Egyptians scribbled on tomb walls.

I mean, it's hard-boiled superhero crime fiction. If that doesn't sound like something interesting to you, I submit that you are, perhaps, a child molester.

On the subject of comics, I've never shown anyone the work from the ashcan I produced last year around this time. I have contacted the artist to obtain a version with words, but I don't know how relevant that will be, since she changed the words a good bit. Instead, I'm uploading the art and the script. I figure it should be entertaining for about six of my twenty readers.

Denial of Blood, Ashcan Script (PDF)

Click on the thumbnail to see the larger image:
Page 1

Page 2

(Fortunately my enormous typo survived the translation to art. He's supposed to say
"I was born the same year Julius Caesar besieged Alesia.")

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9

Page 10

When I saw Brian Michael Bendis (and Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction and Seth Meyer and Bill Hader) speak at the comic book round table in New York earlier this year, I talked to BMB about this project, about my concerns with the artist and the way her work fell far short of my expectations, despite looking at her portfolio extensively before actually commissioning her for work.

BMB acknowledged it as a problem and said many new writers are so excited to see their characters that they don't push as hard for quality. This was very true with me. Wendy's art is gorgeous. But while her style is fantastic and beautifully surreal, the facial expressions were rarely right and at times absent, even in moments where we absolutely MUST see what's happening on the character's face.

Moreover, I was too timid in what I asked from her, so when I received page 9 and the monster is facing in the utterly wrong direction, I didn't demand to have it changed. We had a battle over the panel on the bottom right of page 4 which essentially ended with her saying, "I'm the artist." After that, I was reluctant to ask for compromise or push for my way because, yep, I was just so damned excited to see my characters visualized on paper.

The final product really is beautiful. It's just not my book. Check out Wendy's homepage and see what she can do when she has a proper vessel for her gift. (Also, there are some of the worded versions of these pages on her site.)

Battlestar Galactica is great! (story) is dumb! (physics)

2008-03-20T05:04:00.005-04:00

Wow. Battlestar Galactica is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on television. People have been raving about this show for years, and I have avoided it the same way I avoided Buffy for the first five seasons. Oops!

My mouth is agog.
I am absolutely blown away.
Battlestar Galactica is amazing.

If you haven't seen this show, hurry up and get on with it.

That said, the physics are annoying, as they are with virtually any space-based science fiction. It doesn't matter how well people do speculative science, writers always seem to forget what we already know about the world. Sometimes the scientific amnesia is so integral to the plot or character that forgetting the basics of physics is fundamental to your enjoyment of the show. Take the Hulk-- the green one, not the one with the idiot family in Florida. The Hulk grows to 600% or 1000% of his body mass almost instantly without fuel or a substantial energy influx. This is simply not possible according to the first law of thermodynamics, which is as close to an inerrant law as exists in the known universe: matter and energy CANNOT be created or destroyed.

But if you want some green-skinned smashing, you have to suck it up and deal.

Science fiction is often the worst culprit in this regard because some interesting speculative science often sits right next to an egregious offender of known science. I'm looking at you, Star Trek. Yes, we make new scientific discoveries all the time, and yes, we don't know what sort of miracles will allow faster-than-light flight or intergalactic colonization, but we do know some things, things which are unlikely to change with any advances, like the law of conservation of mass.

The first physics problem is an obvious one, the well-known fact that in space no one can hear you scream. Every time I see a space flight movie, I cross my fingers during external shots: please don't let there be sound in space. And with rare, rare exceptions like Firefly/Serenity and 2001 Space Odyssey, there's always sound in space. Yes, even in Alien, where such features of space were used as a marketing point!

Watching Battlestar Galactica, I smiled when I saw fighter-craft hurtling through space and the big drum music kicked in.... then the planes whizzed by the camera. Dammit! Then the explosions, and the deactivated planes thunking against one another with loud metal-on-metal noises. In space. Ugh.

Also, I wish someone would implement a style of space battle that is remotely feasible in real world terms. I can't say it any better than Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics:
"We would also like to point out that observing an exploding spacecraft in outerspace would be quite dangerous compared to observing one on Earth. The shrapnel and debris from exploding spacecraft would attain very high initial velocities just like they do on Earth. However, with no gravity to pull them to the ground and no air drag to slow them down, the debris would travel outward in straight lines virtually forever until they hit something.

Distance from the explosion would reduce the number of projectiles striking a spaceship. However, impacting pieces would have the same kinetic energy they had right next to the blast. A spacecraft would have to use the time afforded by distance from the explosion to raise its shields or risk annihilation. Being in a desperate battle surrounded by exploding ships and having no shields would be certain death."

This means that when those Psylon fighter craft explode while traveling at silly-fast speeds, they would each be like cannon blasts. They wouldn't just stop flying and veer off into space the way it's depicted in the show.

Here's the thing: we don't know a damned thing about sentient robots. We don't know a damned thing about large-scale FTL travel. That's all theoretical. You can call it magic, and it works. These other things, we DO know about. We deal with them with our actual space programs, with our actual space stations. (Speaking of space stations, what sort of ninja magic control over gravity do we have in the future where we don't need to rely on centrifugal force as the means to simulate gravity?) The spacecraft are always designed to be recognizable as ships to the audience, so they either look like boats (Star Wars starships) or planes. (B:G planes, Star Wars X-Wings)

The space shuttle looks like a plane because it is designed to go from space to the atmosphere, which means it has to operate like a plane at that point. Think about the amount of vertical thrust required to get the shuttle into orbit. Hint, it starts with T-Minus 10,9,8... It's a LOT of fuel and vertical thrust. In all likelihood, when we reach individual manned craft, most of them will stay in space, and special shuttles will ferry people to the surface of the planet as needed. You would NOT have a craft like Serenity in Firefly or the air/ground transport ships flown in Battlestar Galactica. (unless they're using a SUPER-powerful fuel source we haven't conceived of, which is not crazy since Earth is a legend in the time period of this show)

It boils down to limited design philosophy and pandering on the part of the show's producers, writers, and directors, a philosophy shared by nearly everyone involved in designing shows featuring space combat. I mean, theoretically, we are going to get there. There have been talks about manned mission to Mars and beyond. Scientists have many ideas for viable FTL travel, all of which are theoretical at this point.* So I'm interested to see what it might actually look like! How would space battles actually work, since conventional warfare encounters all sorts of problems in the zero-gravity of space.

At any rate, although I find myself watching Battlestar Galactica and saying, "Dead.... Dead... Dumb... Ridiculous... What the fuck?" during the science gaffs, I'm still knocked on my ass by the quality of the writing, the pace of the storytelling, the precision and authenticity of the cast, and the impressively rendered special effects.

*- And it has to be some sort of FTL exception like wormholes or the like, since you can't just "go really fast" and get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, cf. the theory of relativity. This is the greatest plot problem in Joss Whedon's recent Astonishing X-Men finale. The aliens of Breakworld have fired a giant bullet at Earth... which really isn't a problem, because no matter how fast it's going, it won't reach earth in any of the X-Men's lifetimes unless it has some FTL capability, which it clearly does NOT in the comic.

Movie Review: Jumper and Next

2008-03-19T14:08:00.003-04:00

In his notes at the end of Justice League of America: The Tornado's Path, author Brad Meltzer says, "The long lasting beauty of comic books has nothing to do with big breasted women in skimpy costumes. The true beauty of comics is its history. What distinguishes it from so many other mediums-- nowhere else does the tapestry of stories create such a giant quilt." With this in mind it can be frustrating for a fan of superhero comics to watch superhero movies based not on established intellectual properties but on "original" ideas. While the authors won't mock normal viewers with service to fanboys like many comic book movies, untested characters can leave the viewer scratching his head, wondering why they didn't just make another Superman movie. Maybe one based on Supreme Power or Red Son. That would be something.

History isn't everything. Robert Kirkman created a vibrant and exciting world with Invincible that is very nearly everything good about superhero comics. Even farther off the path, Brian Michael Bendis' Powers, a gritty look at superheroes from the level of ordinary people, is some of the finest storytelling in any medium. Indeed, even the mega-popular Heroes on NBC has giddy moments that reminds superhero fans why they fell in love with the genre to begin with. Many authors have proven it is possible for superheroes to be compelling without relying on characters established by DC and Marvel in the 40s and 60s, but the alchemy of creating interesting original ideas has thus far had a difficult time in the transition from paper to silver screen.

Next
In April 2007, director Lee Tamahori and a fleet of screenwriters attempted to perform superhero magic by taking Philip K. Dick's "The Golden Man" and turning it into a steaming pile of movie excrement when they made Next. I hope Nick Cage and Julianne Moore were paid a lot for this movie. Jessica Biel looks pretty, but I guess this was a break from her attempt at being taken seriously as an actress with fare like The Prestige, since her work here as the perfunctory love interest is barely recognizable as human.

Briefly, Next's protagonist is Chris Whogivesafuck, a Vegas magician who can actually see into the future for 90 seconds at a time. The one exception to this rule is Jessica Biel-- for no explicable reason-- into whose future he can see hours and days ahead. Julianne Moore plays an FBI agen who discovers Cage and believes he can help the FBI find a nuclear bomb that's been stolen by... some random people. I don't even think the writers know who the bad guys are in this movie. They don't even have names!

I blame Tamahori. I can't believe a grown-up made this during waking hours. What did he spend his time on during the shoot? He clearly didn't supervise the actors, and the special effects look like they were made with the trial version of Maya. They would annihilate the viewer's disbelief, if the immersion wasn't already shattered by Nicolas Cage's wooden performance. The camerawork is uninspired and perfunctory. The script is all over the map, and... you know what? Just don't see this shitty movie. 0 stars out of ****

Jumper
The recent Jumper fares better, albeit only by comparison. I was excited to see Jumper because I am a fan of Doug Liman's previous work (Go, Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith), in particular his flair for inventively staged action sequences. Even so, my concern for original superhero properties was well-founded, I wish I had downloaded the DVDRIP from DUQA from a BitTorrent tracker site like mininova instead of paying for a movie ticket like a good little MPAA customer.

Jumper follows a David Rice (Hayden Christensen), a man with the power to teleport anywhere in the world instantly. What does Jumper follow him doing, exactly? Well, that's the problem with the movie. Much of Jumper is spent exploring David's powers and his (and other jumpers') relationship to an ancient organization of holy warriors called Paladins, represented chiefly by Samuel L. Jackson's zealot named Roland. When he's discovered by Roland and the Paladins, David returns home to wish goodbye and/or abscond with Millie Harris (Rachel Bilson), the girl he had a crush on when he first teleported and left home for good. Alternately helped and hindered by Griffin (Jamie Bell, in full brogue), David eventually does what all superheroes must do. Unfortunately, the movie spends so much time on the setup that it runs out of gas by the time David has so save the girl and stop the bad guy. Jumper ends on a note that hints at a sequel, but given its box office performance, I can't imagine that will ever happen.

Director Doug Liman did not disappoint me from a technical standpoint. When there is no action on screen, he has a knack for making the viewer feel like just another guy on the ground. When the superpowers kick in, Liman jerks and spins his camera chaotically while always keeping the important bits on screen. Liman is a virtuoso, and his clever technique is hampered by David S. Goyer's (Blade, Blade 2, Blade: Trinity) plodding script.

Hayden Christensen proves here that he is exactly as good as his material. When his script is day old dog shit (Star Wars), he turns in two day old dog shit. When his script is merely passable, as it is here, so is his performance. When he gets Life as a House, he actually tries and turns out a good performance. I bet he would make a terrific Hamlet. Samuel L. Jackson casually electrifies the screen and plays Samuel L. Jackson, again. His character is the weakest link in the script, and his performance suffers as a result, sadly. Nevertheless, he's Samuel L. Jackson, so it's fun watching him do nearly anything. Rachel Bilson is fine but forgettable. I suspect her career will be over soon. Jamie Bell is excellent but given the short shrift in the script. The more I found out about his character, the more I wished he had been the protagonist.

Where Next was a catastrophe at every level of production, Jumper is diverting but ultimately forgettable entertainment that could have been something special with a tighter script. Maybe in the unlikely sequel. ** & 1/2 out of ****

When proposing new superhero legacies for the big screen, Hollywood suffers, as it often does, from weaknesses in the formative stages of the filmmaking process. While Invincible, Supreme Power, and Powers all break from the superhero canon, they all work because they rely on strong writing and powerful characterization, ideals that transcend medium or genre. If Hollywood wants to make a good superhero movie, they don't need whiz-bang effects or globe-trotting locations; they need rock-solid scripts that have been vetted for honesty and power of craft, not merely for palatability by the largest segment of the audience. Look no further than Next to see what happens when you pander to the lowest common denominator.

21 March @ Broadway Comedy Club

2008-03-18T10:46:00.003-04:00

I will be performing at the
Broadway Comedy Club
at 10:00pm on Friday, 21 March.

It's on 53rd St., between 8th and 9th.

I need at least four people to show up, so I hope some of you can attend. The show will be $12 and, I think, a $10 drink minimum. When you go to the club, say you're attending the Geoff Kole show.

Tech Stuff: Media Tomb and the PS3

2008-03-18T07:55:00.001-04:00

For a few days now, I've been trying to use my Ubuntu computer as a media server. Between my three computers, my PS3, and my XBox360, makes a lot more sense to have all my media in a centralized location accessible to my other devices.

The media server application I chose was Media Tomb. It's free, it's open source, and you can install it on your Mac if you're not afraid to play with the Darwin/X11 interface. Other have detailed the installation process with far greater utility and detail than I ever could, but I want point out some traps I ran into.

First, the PS3 won't detect your Media Tomb server unless they're on the same subnet, i.e. the first three octets of their IP addresses are the same and their subnets match. By default, Media Tomb was not using Ubuntu's IP address; it chose a 172.x.x.x address and started humming. To fix this, I edited the config.xml file and included the IP and PORT tags under the SERVER tag. I gave my Media Tomb server a hard IP address reflective of the 192.168.1.x subnet all my TCP/IP devices share. When this worked, I slapped my forehead hard because if you know about TCP, it's pretty fucking obvious. Nevertheless, I never found anyone talking about it online, so I thought I'd include the information here.

Oh, and if you want a custom icon to appear where you share your media, the folder is
/usr/share/mediatomb/web/icons

The final product can be seen here (against the CoD4 PS3 theme, natch):

Good Links:
Media Tomb Homepage
Setting up Media Tomb on a Mac
Setting up Media Tomb on Ubuntu

Movie Review: Funny Games

2008-03-17T15:47:00.000-04:00

This review contains spoilers.

Before discussing Funny Games, you need to understand what kind of movie it is. It is not a fun date movie or new spring blockbuster. This movie doesn't exist in the same universe as 10,000 B.C. or Jumper. Funny Games is not a pleasant movie. This is independent art house cinema and it's dark; it leaves even less room for hope than No Country For Old Men. Many people go to the movie theater for entertainment, and Funny Games does not seek to entertain its audience but rather to engage them. It succeeds at its goals, but it's hard to name a movie whose goals are so different than most moviegoers'.

Again, I want to warn that this review contains spoilers. I spoiled myself before I went to the theater, and I believe Funny Games works even if the ending is spoiled. Dare I say its strange combination of distanced emotion and intellectual intent work better when you know what's going to happen. I highly recommend this movie to those looking for a darker cinema experience. If that sounds like you, see Funny Games and come back here. I'd love to discuss the movie with people who have seen it. Or just read ahead if you don't mind me spoiling the ending.

SPOILERS AHEAD:
With Funny Games, writer/director Michael Haneke remakes his own 1997 German feature of the same name. The movie quickly introduces us to the protagonists, husband George, wife Anna, and son Georgie (Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and Devon Gearhart, respectively). Shortly thereafter, we meet the villains, a pair of psychopaths named Peter and Paul (Brady Corbett and Michael Pitt, respectively). The family is just beginning their summer vacation when the strange young men come to their house from the next door neighbors looking for eggs, first insistently, then rudely, then violently.

When Paul kills the family dog, Lucky, the tone of the movie, ominous until that point, shifts to violent. Over the film's 107 minutes, the young men gradually reveal murderous intentions; they break George's leg, force Anna to undress, smack Georgie around and far, far worse. All this is done in the context of "games" and "bets" announced by the more level-headed (but far more malevolent) Paul.

Scattered throughout the movie are numerous thriller tropes designed to hold the audience's hand and offer a way out. One by one, all vestiges of hope are lost. Paul even references the audience's empathy and inherent desire for the family's salvation in one of the few asides when he breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly. The film even goes so far as to give Anna a bright moment of fleeting, violent heroism, only to have Paul pick up a remote control and rewind the action a few seconds in order to thwart her. If you play video games and watch this movie, it will be hard not to think of the thousands of times you have saved and reloaded. I was reminded of the recent Prince of Persia games, which allow players to rewind time and correct errors in gameplay.

One of the potential problems with Funny Games is how deeply self-conscious it is. This is a movie that constantly reminds you of its status as a movie, and is deeply aware of the media landscape into which it has been born. The extent to which you buy what Haneke is selling will greatly impact what you think of the movie. Numerous references are made to pop culture and media. Paul and Peter refer to each other alternately as Beavis and Butthead or Tom and Jerry. After the first family member is slain, the camera lingers for a small eternity on a NASCAR race, and the sound from that race fills the speakers in the aftermath of the murder. Perhaps more than anything else, Funny Games conjure the imagery, mechanics, and spirit of video games. The villains seem disconnected from their crimes and refer to the brutal beginning of the third act as Level 2. Then there's the save/reload moment. In a sense, the killers are the protagonists of Funny Games because they are the forward movers, the agents of change, but they seem unconcerned about their own agency and impact.

Director Haneke wants you to be aware of the context and the ways that the movie ignores cinematic custom. Although the movie is deeply unsettling, Haneke's villains never jump from the darkness, even when we expect them to. This is a horror movie where the audience is denied the "Boo!" moments we have come to expect from the genre. Also, Haneke and cinematographer Darius Khondji are unafraid to keep plant the camera and leave it in place for minutes or to deny us the opportunity to watch the real action. One of the consistent critiques of Funny Games is that it is the independent film version of torture porn, but Haneke rarely shows actual violence or nudity. Indeed, part of his intention seems to be in asking us why we demand to see what we demand to see, to challenge us everywhere from the jarring soundtrack to the unconventional camera choices to the breaking of the fourth wall.

The performances are outstanding across the board. I won't nitpick except to say that Naomi Watts is about as good as actresses can be, and young Devon Gearhart produces one of the most authentic performances by a child actor I've seen in a very long time. The entire cast is superb.

On with the spoilers: the family dies. Georgie and George are shot, and Anna is drowned. All the deaths occur off-screen. The movie ends with the killers arriving at another family's home in search of eggs; it occurs so close to Anna's death that we sense she is still sinking to the bottom of the lake.

Funny Games seems to be an almost poetic critique on media and society, and it is not subtly so. As the killers shove the bound and gagged Anna into the water, they discuss the effects that seeing real people portraying fictional events could have on the real world. With this coda, Haneke begs the audience ask the longer-range consequences not necessarily of this movie-- which Haneke probably knows won't make a dime at the box office-- but of the societal circumstances which gave rise the events like those depicted in Funny Games, the environment that could produce people like the Columbine killers or the lunatics responsible for the awful Petit family murders last July.

Haneke points his fingers squarely on the media and the society that consumes and produces it. He seems to say that our technology has found us turning against our best and true selves, that we have harvested (or will soon harvest) a generation of young men too distanced from reality to be stopped or understood but too alien to be helped. While his use of violence to protest violence might seem hypocritical, I have to wonder what the alternative might be, especially when the worst acts are never shown on screen.

Obviously, this is a cynical movie. No Country For Old Men offers hope in its final moments with the children who help Chigurh. There's a suggestion that things could go either the way of Chigurh's evil or Bell's nobility, opposing faces of hope and pessimism. Funny Games views its world as doomed. These killers will get away with it over and over again, and so will their allegorical counterparts in the real world, Haneke seems to suggest. In what it tries to accomplish Funny Games is a masterpiece, but it is not entertaining per se. It's art, and the box office is not a suggested donation; most people probably wouldn't want to pay to see it.

*** & 1/2 (out of ****)

Thoughts on Once

2008-03-07T14:28:00.001-05:00

I just watched Once with my girlfriend, and it's absolutely heart-stopping. The credits ran many hours ago, but the more I consider my viewing experience, the more I am impressed with the artistry of the movie's presentation. If you haven’t seen it, I ruin the ending in what I say below. If you haven’t seen Once, but it looks like a movie you might want to see soon, I strongly urge you to hurry up.

When we consider the monolith of the modern film marketplace, we tend to assume the multiplexes will consume a movie like Once like one might consume a Chicken McNugget, i.e. hungrily. 10,000 B.C. is the final result of sacrificing thousands of other potential movies on the altar of spectacle. That's why you hire Mr. Emmerich, the movie's director, in the first place. Once is the polar opposite of Roland Emmerich's oeuvre. More than any other movie in recent memory, I think Once exemplifies that, yes, you can do what Stephen Spielberg does. It just won't look as pretty, and you probably couldn't afford to remake Indiana Jones for budgetary reasons. But this movie appears to be shot on a DVX-100 or one of its cousins-- the same camera used to shoot the terrific documentary Murderball.

A small film demands a small plot. With that requirement, Once satisfies at a deep level, even if it's not the most visceral cinematic experience in the world. Every shot of the movie I said to myself, “This cost absolutely nothing to make, and it's absolutely. Fucking. Wonderful." The outcome plot doesn’t matter a lick to anyone outside the confines of the story (and the audience). That this movie was even noticed at the Academy Awards represents the little shred of hope remaining in the Pandora's Box of General Modern Movie Quality. (That Pandora really needs to learn she can't be opening every closed container she sees.)

The characters in Once are middle-class people who wear the same clothes from day to day and go to work, going to work in ordinary jobs; the main character works in a vacuum cleaner repair shop. They don't fight spies or cure cancer. They live. And they sing. There is grit on the surface of the film not like the dirt on Martin Scorsese's crime dramas. Grit more like the crud under your fingernails. Which is not to say Scorsese's or Spielberg's movies aren't excellent and true. They just aren't about the people next door.

The moments that haunt the audience as the protagonists interact or struggle alone are often framed by song. The most engaging moments of the movie's drama are laid before us with melody and lyrics. This is a movie about music and its power to move, its power to draw people together or push them forward. At some level it's about two people finding things that matter to them. Although I don't ordinarily listen to the sort of music played in the film, I nevertheless enjoyed the soul that pounded through the movie's music and performances.

The aforementioned singing pushes the movie into greatness. I'm not sure if the whisper-thin scope of the events portrayed would have held my interest if they weren't framed by the soulful singing at the movie's gargantuan heart. Once seems like a bittersweet love story, but that is just a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of love between a man and a woman. This is nothing so conventional. The music transforms what we expect in a male/female relationship on-screen. It's less a romantic love story than a fable between a man and his muse. I expected to watch a date movie with nice romantic music. Instead I watched a vivid parable about the mechanics of artistic inspiration. This is emphasized even more by the film's rigid pragmatism. Here's the spoiler: he doesn't get the girl. He does get "a" girl, but it's the girl who cheated on him and inspired him to write all the heart-breaking music you've heard for an hour and a half. This is ground-level filmmaking, a glance at happiness not as something that comes on sweeping, swooning chords as a couple makes out against a sunset backdrop, but rather as a wispy thing that we try to eke out of hard reality whenever we can. The irony recalls no less than Casablanca.

Comedy Shows!

2008-03-06T16:33:00.001-05:00

Here are some upcoming dates if you want to see my pretty face:

Every Friday and Saturday in March (except the 22nd)
Underground Lounge @ 107th and West End Ave.
9pm
$10 at the door
$10 drink minimum

Wednesday 12 March 2008
Broadway Comedy Club @ 318 W 53rd St, 10019 [map]
10pm
$12 at the door
2 drink minimum

.m4p to .mp3: a solution!

2008-03-05T22:43:00.000-05:00

In light of Apple's utter failure to support Linux, I had to scour the internet for a means to easily and legally convert my music to a non-DRMed format. Since the dual-boot miracle, I have been purchasing my music with Amazon's sans-DRM system, but that was no substitute for the thousands of tracks I have paid for with the iTunes Music Store.

I found my musical salvation with Tunecab, a no frills software that converts iTunes DRMed music to non-DRM formats for the low, low price of $39.99. I would have preferred a lossless solution, but this was the best I could find in my search.

RIP, Gary Gygax

2008-03-04T17:38:00.001-05:00

Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died today. If you mention the words "Dungeons and Dragons" around people who don't play, the normal reaction is for the listener to avert his or her (especially her) eyes, mutter something derisive, and to disavow all knowledge of you. I have convinced girlfriends to play video games, read comic books, and watch the Extended Lord of the Rings trilogy in uninterrupted sequence. But Dungeons and Dragons is a hard sell. It's not for everyone. There's a peculiar alchemy at work in the mind of a Dungeons and Dragon player-- of any pencil and paper role-player. He must be enchanted by a hard system designed to replicate some of the peculiarities of life and chaos of battle, and he must believe that a Saturday afternoon/evening well spent is a Saturday afternoon where he's pretending he's a Tolkienesque character who must abide by that hard system. More than these, in order to enjoy himself, the player must have a strong imagination. A STR 18, DEX 11, CON 14, INT 10, WIS 15, CHA 17 must not merely conjure notes in a system, values to be inspected against certain die rolls; they must summon in the player's mind a certain type of person,

Although Dungeons and Dragons enjoyed a heyday of popularity in the early 80's, various elements swept it under the table and into the exclusive province of nerddom. As computerized role-playing games like Diablo and World of Warcraft have obviated the need for a player to keep track of his own dice rolls and eliminated the need for a game master to referee events, the field of potential players is even narrower, since the kids who merely want the escape and the numbers and the sense of progression have retreated to their screens, and the gamers who want story and imagination have retreated to a tiny corner of the gaming universe. It's hard to imagine, but playing Dungeons and Dragons is nerdier today than it's ever been.

Like I said, it's not for everyone.

Even so, it's hard to calculate the impact of Dungeons and Dragons. Consider its role in keeping fantasy in the public consciousness as a genre to the impact it has had on thousands of video games. Peter Jackson was no stranger to Dungeons and Dragons, and every single game that uses HP to indicate a character's health pays homage to Dungeons and Dragons. More than that, though, consider the more amorphous indirect benefit. Imagine an intelligent child falling in love with systems and even after he has long abandoned the games themselves, he still hold a near-romantic place in his heart for applying systems to reality, and he applies that love to engineering, to medicine, to genetics, to chemistry, or computer science.

If the recipe for a pencil and paper role-playing gamer is peculiar, the recipe for that pastime's creator must be outright bizarre. There is a gap between those who take leaps of inspired creation and those who reap the benefits of that creation. Although you might have never played a single game of Dungeons and Dragons, and even though you might not be able to understand why anyone would, I hope you understand that the world lost someone special today with the death of E. Gary Gygax, the father of role-playing games.

RIP, Gary. Hopefully you rolled a 20 on your salvation check.

Neitzsche and Spandex

2008-03-03T17:11:00.000-05:00

Some of my favorite superhero stories have had at their hearts the issue of how people would react to beings with powers far outside the human norm. The Stan Lee meets Ayn Rand component of any story elevates it to the core of our dedication to superheroes throughout time, whether they are called Hercules, Aeneas, or Captain America. How do the people appointed to rule attend to those who have power that falls outside the traditional models? It seems the conundrum of how We deal with Power has always gripped audiences, whether they have watched Achilles face off with Agamemnon or America face down the Incredibles.

This theme permeates all superhero comic books, although it is the primary force of storytelling in a handful, and the results have frequently been excellent. Supreme Power, Secret Identity, and Red Son use this angle to craft some of the finest Superman stories ever told-- even if the first is not actually about the last son of Krypton. In 2006, the theme was the bulwark of Marvel Comics' pitch to readers with their Civil War. "Whose side are you on?" the ads asked: the side of people or the side of those who think they are above people.

This weekend I watched the "Cadmus Exposed" arc from the first season of Justice League Unlimited. "Cadmus" stands as a tentpole in an already outstanding show. This is some of the finest storytelling I've seen on television. The denouement is a bit disappointing since it devolves into a slugfest, but I suppose that's how the Iliad and Odyssey ended, too. I won't ruin it for anyone, but the government has put the dots together and figured out what would happen if the Justice League decided they didn't want to play anymore. The name of their solution to this imbalance is Cadmus. Batman and the Justice League uncover Cadmus, and the result is mayhem. Highly recommended.

Status Update!

2008-03-02T17:59:00.000-05:00

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to see me perform this weekend, and thank you to everyone who has come to see me perform in the last couple weeks! I several big shows coming up on 12 March at the Broadway Comedy Club, so if you're waiting for a more convenient location to see me perform, this is it.

Also, thanks to everyone who has supported me with my writing exercises, thank you so much. I envisioned receiving and reading those paragraphs as a bit of a nuisance, but people have been pushing me to return to it because they actually enjoyed reading the exercises! I hadn't counted on that! I have indeed slacked on the exercises, but I haven't been faltering. I'm working my ass off on my screenplay for When Heroes Come Home, and I'm really excited to get it poised for show. Nevertheless, I greatly appreciate all the people who have been pushing for me to return to the exercise writing mailing list.

Your Applications Can Go To Hell!

2008-02-27T15:58:00.000-05:00

I don't think I'm shocking anyone when I announce that I really don't like spam. Mr. Counter-culture, I know! I don't receive too much in my real inbox because I've been religious in my refusal to give it to anyone who is not, in fact, a human being. I don't think ill of spammers, except that I want them all to die. But not painfully. I just want people who spam to vanish, a la The Rapture.

I like to think I would never spam someone. Even if I stumbled on two hundred fifty million dollars in Nigerian war funds, I don't think I would try to find several thousand lone American e-mail addresses to help me... what do they want you to do with those Nigerian e-mail scams, anyway? I assume they want money.

This is why I detest facebook applications. I used them for a bit. SuperPoke was my gateway application. That or Werewolves vs. Vampires (vs. Zombies vs. Slayers, etc.) They were fun. They were cute. They were harmless.
Then I quit cold turkey.
I had to.
A horrible page-- less a page than a fel contraption wrought by sinister code-- this page showed me the light. Moments before the page appeared, I had completed one of the personality test applications. Before the interweb would tell me, yes, I am a bit of a show-off with big ideas who has trouble with organization, and I'm very emotional, it wanted me to send the same test to as many of my friends as I could!

As I pointed out above, this was not my first rodeo. I don't mean to brag, but I was a rather highly ranked vampire slayer in my application heyday. I have sent requests and massages and written on people's FunWalls. Maybe I rebelled because I found the test itself so unpleasant. Maybe I was staring into the light, like this was the facebook equivalent of my Road to Damascus.

But I could never return to the ignorance of before. I had to face a simple fact: facebook applications are little more than an ingenious way some companies and developers have discovered for you to spam your friends. And I really don't like spam.

No Country For Old Men; It was a book first!

2008-02-26T01:38:00.002-05:00

I dislike the Oscars because I don't find it sensible that each year the assorted Academy members reward the "best" among their own. "It's an honor to be nominated," is often said through a smirk, but if you believe in the power of movies as art, I don't see how you can argue with that statement. Let's look at the Best Picture nominees this year:

I'm sorry to everyone who gets excited about the Academy Awards, but how can you tell me whether Juno, Atonement, or Michael Clayton was or was not a better film than No Country For Old Men. This edge thins in the fuzzier categories. In a field of excellent acting, how can you say one masterful performance was definitively better than another? What about production design? Editing? The entire concept is silly. Yes, I know which movies and performances most moved me, but that is invariably (and, I think, obviously) a matter of preference. I am not claiming that all movies are created equal, mind you. Juno is certainly better than Superbad which is unquestionably better than Wild Hogs. If you disagree, your parents did not beat you enough. Nevertheless, although there are rough demarcations of quality, they disperse to meaninglessness as movies reach their peak powers as forms of expression. Is Juno better than Knocked Up? I'm not sure.

I used to think the Academy Awards were an According to Hoyle Big Deal. I remember wanting to watch people receive their golden statues as much as I wanted to unwrap Santa's gifts. Now I think it's just masturbation. To all the nominees who "lost" last night, I salute you!

Ironically, I write that after my personal favorite movie from 2007 took the big win last night. I thought No Country For Old Men was one of the best films I had seen in a very, very long time. After leaving the theater, I was tempted to say it was my new favorite of all time, but I will have to wait to see how it stands up to repeat viewings at home. As of now, I'll have to merely say it was a masterpiece, the likes of which all filmmakers and artists can look to for inspiration.

Some people have found it somewhat abstruse, and I don't blame them. After finishing the book, I was banging my head against my desk for a good month or so. Although No Country is one of Cormac McCarthy's most straightforwardly written books, it does not hold anyone's hand. After Sunday's festivities, I thought some people might enjoy reading my thoughts after finishing the novel. I wrote this to clarify my own ideas on the book, but maybe it will help some of you pierce the veil.

Oh, and be warned: here there be HEAVY spoilers. I am assuming you have either read the book or seen the movie, because I give the whole damned thing away in this post.

*****

I finished No Country For Old Men. After this and The Road, I'm fairly certain Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author. We are living in grim times, and I feel in my gut there's a reckoning on the way. I'm not alone. I can hear it in the wind like Midas' donkey ears. This reckoning is inevitable. Whether it will come under shouts of, "Allah," under the banner of nature's wrath, or under a mushroom cloud in Chelsea or West Hollywood, I cannot say. But there is a sense, marrow-deep that we humans have sinned against ourselves, whatever God or spirit is out there and hanging his head at our actions; we have been disloyal to the cause of our own existence, and we will pay dearly, unless we can somehow right this situation. If indeed we can right this situation.

Pain is nothing new, but the rate at which pain can be dealt by the few and the powerful is very new to us as a species. Humanity's ability to affect itself has never been greater culturally, economically, and of course militarily. And we live in a world where the dollar is not a means but an end. For that, I think, we are paying a heavy price.

The manifestations are not subtle. In Chicago last weekend, my girlfriend pointed out a housing project you've probably heard of called Cabrini-Green. I had never heard of it, although I realize now I'd seen it depicted in media as disparate as Good Times in the 70's (reruns, of course) or the 1994 feature, Candyman. My girlfriend mentioned the project had a terrible reputation, and she mentioned one crime in particular:

In 1997, a 9-year-old girl was found in a stairwell, a battered husk of a person. Her throat had been stepped on. She had been raped. Rat poison in her throat. Acid-- acid-- in her eyes. She survived, but these days she is blind, mute, and bed-ridden. Although it doesn't come up in Google searches, I suspect among her scars she can list heavy cynicism and bitterness. These things happened, even in Clinton's America. These things happen.

This little girl had to face the burden of the lower classes in American housing projects, was raped by the shockwaves of white flight and urban renewal. These things--our alienation from our fellow man, our desire to create borders instead of growing closer with love-- take many shapes; sometimes Israeli missiles lighting the Lebanese sky on fire; sometimes temples to Mammon collapsing on a sunny day in September.

Cormac McCarthy's terse, chilling No Country For Old Men examines the effects of moral dissolution and inquires what the effects might be and from whenst it might have come. His style is terse. Sentences are short as a rule, and he seems to have a distaste for nearly every conventional rule of punctuation. With his minimal, methodical style, McCarthy leads his audience, we the wretched, through the Tex-Mex wasteland, through a drug deal gone horribly awry, an allegory for McCarthy's take on the real American spirit, on greed, on love, on opportunity, and the real nature of evil.

Hunting in the Texas plains, Llewelyn Moss comes across a scene of carnage. Several men lie dead, their vehicles eviscerated by automatic weapons, and not a soul can answer the question why. Surveying the scene further, Moss discovers the fulcrum upon which the rest of the plot rests: a satchel filled with 2.4 million dollars. In a moment of self-interest, Moss decides to take the money, fully aware of the consequences.

"You think the boy has got any notion of the sorts of sons of bitches who are huntin him?
I don't know. He ought to. He seen the same things I seen and it made an impression on me."

Moss sends his wife away to her mother's and proceeds to cut off whatever loose ends might be following him. An Army sniper in Vietnam, Moss is no stranger to death, but he's still a man. His pursuer is less that than a force of nature, a demon in the form of the savage Chigurh. The novel opens with Chigurh slipping handcuffs under his legs and choking a deputy in the county courthouse; not choking but squeezing so hard with the cuff chains that it ruptures the deputy's carotid. Chigurh is every bit of a monster, but interestingly he's also the only character in No Country for Old Men without a crisis of conscience.

The story is narrated and each chapter preceded by the ruminations of Sheriff Bell, a man at the end of his rope as he looks on what he sees as the twilight of man's goodness. He was a coward during his service in World War II, and he doesn't have the stomach for the sort of monstrosity he sees in people's eyes and actions in the modern day.

"I read in the papers here a while back some teachers come across a survey that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come across these forms, they'd been filled out and sent in from around the country answerin these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talking in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they got one of them forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back to the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide. So I think about that. Because a lot of time ever when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I'm getting old. That it's one of the symptoms. But my feelin about that is anybody that cant tell the difference between rapin and murderin people and chewin gum has a whole lot bigger of a problem than what I've got."

Stepping aside from the grim tone, I am reserved about what Bell is saying here. I feel confident that the citizens of Stalin's Russia, the Jews under Hitler during these halcyon days, and numerous women in the Muslim world might question that we were somehow mystically better people back in the day. I don't think the black communities of the 30's would look back on the old days with fondness. "Why, oh why, aren't we getting lynched in the open anymore?"

But the sense that somehow our open greed, greed as Gordon Geko styled virtue, and the subsequently diluted community ideals have caused us systemic, society-wide problems is a hard feeling to shake.

Returning to the brutal antagonist, Chigurh believes his actions to be inevitable. He does exactly what must be done. He is beyond good or bad. "Evil." He simply acts in accordance to his truth. During a telephone conversation, he tells Moss that if Moss brings the money to Chigurh, his wife will not be slain. Moss tells Chigurh to fuck himself, tells Chigurh that he will not have trouble finding Moss because Moss will find him. After he successfully dispatches Moss, Chigurh makes good on his promise and meets Moss's wife, Carla Jean, in her bedroom.

"You give your husband your word to kill me?
Yes.
He's dead. My husband is dead.
Yes. But I'm not.
You don't owe nothin to dead people.
Chigurh cocked his head slightly. No? he said.
How can you?
How can you not?
They're dead.
Yes. But my word is not dead. Nothing can change that.
You can change it.
I don't think so. Even a nonbeliever might find it useful to model himself after God. Very useful, in fact.
You're a blasphemer.
Hard words. But what's done cannot be undone. I think you understand that. Your husband, you may be distressed to learn, had the opportunity to remove you from harm's way, and he chose not to do so. He was given that option and his answer was no. Otherwise I would not be here now."

Moss pursued his greed. Given the opportunity to do the right thing and walk away from greed and inevitable bloodshed, he chose greed. Moss was allowed to sacrifice himself for his own actions, "I wont tell you you can save yourself because you cant... [but] You can bring me the money and I'll let her walk. Otherwise she's accountable." But he truly believed he could defeat this unstoppable force whose brutal and horrible capabilities he had at that point experienced firsthand. Moss knows
how the whole thing will end, but he is blinded by greed-- a greed he is so set in defending that he doesn't even know what to do with it-- that he fails to correct his own mistakes. Moss represents the men who live their lives daunted by the weight of their own existence, who can be drawn from their own destines by greed. Chigurh is the inevitable comeuppance of man, the evil consequence of evil that cannot, will not be stopped.

In the epilogue, Bell is talking with his uncle, himself a sheriff, wheelchair bound and retired:

"He said that if you don't follow the law right and wrong won't save you. Which I guess I can see the sense of. But it dont change the way I think. Finally I asked him if he knew who Mammon was. And he said:
Mammon?
Yes. Mammon.
You mean like in God and Mammon?
Yessir.
Well, he said, I cant say as I do. I know it's in the bible. Is it the devil?
I don't know. I'm goin to look it up. I got a feeling I ought to know who it is.
He kindly smiled and said: You sound like he might be getting ready to take up the spare bedroom.
Well, I said, that would be one concern. In any case, I feel the need to familiarize myself with his habits."

(It's interesting to note that McCarthy never spells out who Mammon is. He's known in an off-hand way by characters who follow the plot but aren't directly tied to it, i.e. Sheriff Bell and his uncle.)

We as a society are blinded by our multitudinous options, hyperactive open-minded absorption of ideas and the inheritance of an individualist dogma that refuses to accept the idea that we are-- all of us-- part of something bigger, whether we like it or not; the concept can expand outward and be called Jesus or God or Brahma or Allah. Or it can extend merely to the level of touching one individual human being or animal or plant or building at a time. But we are not alone in this world. No man is an island. But Mammon's fingers spread far and wide, touching us in our most unholy parts and dragging them to the surface, corrupting us from the inside out, letting us march as examples to others of how to be, even as we are what we should never have been.

The only thing we can trust is love. It's the only thing we can all agree on, however we vector it. We all know somewhere that actions guided by love are those which bear the most fruit. Indeed, this is how Mammon lives. Part of love is beautiful self-interest; but that self-interest, in order for us to be our best selves, must spring from a place that acknowledges the respiratory systems of those around us. The problem seems to be that love's definition is so often perverted by those who would apprehend its power for their own. It takes a hero to stand in the shoes of Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, Jr. It takes a hero to motivate the masses to move their fingers into a collective fist for the force of good.

The grimmest part of McCarthy's prognostications is his sense of inevitability. "Hold on to the love you have," he seems to say. Some people will be good (selfless) and some evil (selfish), as illustrated by the boys at the end of the novel when Chigurh has hurt himself. But as our society swirls down the funnel, as chance dictates the birth of a good or evil man, just as it determines how a coin falls, perhaps we have come too far, loved Mammon too much. And a reckoning is on the way.

We need heroes. We need another Martin Luther King, Jr. Perhaps another Jesus of Nazareth nes Christ. We need someone whose words and voice shout louder than YouTube, MTV, louder than the Presidents Bush and Ahmedenjad, louder than any IED or bin Laden. But in this day and age, where the resources one commands to shout one's voice are the very keys to one's own downfall, from whenst does such a hero come?

Why You Should Stop Using iTunes Music Store

2008-02-24T00:09:00.000-05:00

I thought you might like to know that you can purchase DRM-free music from Amazon.com in MP3 format for $0.89, a full ten cents cheaper than you can get the same music on iTunes. If you don't want to hear me rant about technology and monopolies, that paragraph is the point of this post.

I sometimes forget that a lot of people don't have strong feelings about software developers like Apple and Microsoft. People buy the line that Microsoft Windows is for suits and number crunchers, and they equate Apple with the sleek design sense and the ubiquitous white earbuds. Apple's pretty and it "just works." Microsoft is boring but sometimes needed for certain software. That's where it begins and ends with a lot of consumers. I get that. I'm not asking you to install Ubuntu; just stick with me for a bit.

In terms of corporate motherfuckerdom, Microsoft is hard to beat, but that's how you reach the top of the mountain. I don't have the time to cite the myriad instances of Microsoft's corporate barbarism, but here's a short list:

Basically, if you know anything about the company's history, you know they are sharks. This ain't news.

People in the computing world often uphold an illusion that Apple is somehow the hippie computer, the choice for people who like choices, the computer for the masses. Apple has spent a lot of money to help you believe this, cf. their "Switch" ads and the recent "PC vs. Mac" ads.** That's the pretty battle, the one that pits Aqua vs. Aero.

The more interesting battle is waged by the people who own stock, the people with business degrees, the people who chew through their nails over Q1, Q2, and 52-week highs and lows. Apple vs. Microsoft is really a story of competing business strategies. Both are dragons who hate having their hordes touched by outsiders, but they employ very different signature strategies. Microsoft's classic strategy has been to spread the net wide and allow the largest number of vendors and manufacturers to use their industry standard products: Windows, Office, Windows Media protocols. When a competing technology comes along that threatens their strangehold, they embrace, extend, and extinguish.

Apple's philosophy is that of vertical integration. Apple wants to control every aspect of the interaction, top to bottom. Buy a Mac with Apple parts that use Apple software and are serviced by Apple. For most people, the more relevant example is their iPod/iTunes. Buy music from the iTunes Music Store which you can only listen to in iTunes or on an iPod. Top to bottom, Apple controls how you experience your music. They have kindly allowed us to listen to MP3s on our iPods, but they consider that purely an evil of the marketplace into which they entered. Or have you not tried to listen to an Apple encoded MP3 on another media player yet? To Apple's credit, they have built a better mousetrap in most ways; I have an iPod sitting next to me, and I recently pushed my father to pick up a MacBook.

But Apple is still not the land of pixilated milk and honey. As Microsoft strikes with a hammer when it senses its monopoly is in danger, so does Apple when it senses a threat to its vertical integration. Key to Apple's hegemony in the music market, or so it believes, is the success of its DRM scheme, the ironically named Fairplay. Fairplay isn’t as draconian as it could be or as the record companies would have originally liked, but it is still a bitch. From the iTunes help file:

Many of the songs you purchase from the iTunes Store are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). These protected purchases can be:

Played on up to five computers
Synced with your iPod
Synced with or streamed to your Apple TV
Burned to audio CDs or DVDs (you can burn a song an unlimited number of times, and as part of a playlist up to seven times)

Apple recently caved to the difficulties presented by their DRM-limited tracks and began to offer DRM-free tracks... for a higher price. Again from the help file: "The iTunes Store also offers songs without DRM protection, from participating record labels. These DRM-free songs, called 'iTunes Plus,' have no usage restrictions and feature higher-quality encoding."

These restrictions seem reasonable until you have to reconfigure a playlist based on an album so you can burn it and give it to an eighth friend. Until you forget to remove machine permissions and hit your sixth machine. These are far-fetched, but it shouldn't matter. Compare the beneficence Apple bestows on you with the rights you are granted when you purchase a CD: make unlimited copies unlimited times in any format for any platform. By supporting iTunes standard format, you are supporting a corporation's right to tell you what to do with something you have purchased.

Some developers have attempted means of circumventing Apple's DRM. JHymn and MyTunes are early examples, both of which have been quashed by Apple's software upgrades. Some might argue the sane move is to sidestep the upgrade. Unfortunately, after iTunes 6.0, such a maneuver would prohibit the user from purchasing any more music from the iTunes Music Store.

If you like to work in Linux, you're simply screwed, since Apple doesn't have any solution for Linux users. The only solutions I've found all resemble the half-ass tools from Tunebite which play a song in real-time an encode the playback to a new format. If you have more than a thousand tracks-- and I know I'm not the only one-- this is a process that can take days of uninterrupted computing time!

And so we come to my point.
I want you to pay LESS for MORE freedom.

Amazon sells music without DRM for $0.89, a full ten cents less than Apple. The selection isn't quite the same as the iTunes Music Store, but you can change that by shopping there.

We all have iPods. I'm not asking you to change to an open source operating system or purchase an OGG capable media player from iRiver. I'm asking you to spend less money by shopping at a slightly different store where you won't be treated like a criminal, a store that-- at least for the time being-- thinks it's in your best interests to do what you want with music you've purchased.

*- Okay, I'm being a bit hysterical here.

**- A MacBook or PowerMac or any Mac isn't a PERSONAL COMPUTER? Really? Really? Are you fucking serious? You're a PC, and you're a Mac? So what, is every Mac actually a Cray supercomputer? Every time one of those ads plays, you should write in black sharpie on the bottom of your screen: "Apple thinks we're all dumb motherfuckers who have no idea how to speak English!"

Free Gerstmann!

2007-12-04T01:47:00.002-05:00

After the recent firing of Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot, I posted the following on the Gamespot forums:

"I have been using Gamespot for years; my profile is a testament to that, I think. I have been a paid subscriber since they first offered the option. I just read the Penny Arcade piece which brought the whole Gerstmann thing to my attention.

I don't like Jeff Gerstmann's style. I think he tries too hard to make his pieces too colloquial. As a reader, I am usually annoyed with the "tone" and "style" of his reviews, but not enough to prevent me from subscribing to Gamespot Total Access. His reviews were honest and fair, even if the man himself is annoying and seems like someone I would avoid in person.

This is far from some superlative "worst act of journalism imaginable", but it's pretty much the definition of selling out your audience in the name of corporate greed. Gamespot has for years been the most even-handed reviewer, a quality I appreciated SO MUCH I was willing to pay for it. This reputation is based SOLELY on reviews by Gerstmann, Kasavin, and Navarro. I am an irritated gamer who makes enough money to own all three next-gen systems and buy any game I feel like, and I do so. I am, in other words, your target demographic.

I want to tell you to f* yourself. I want to call you ugly names. But I know that words and their meaning are lost on you. So I am speaking the only language you seem to understand: I have cancelled my subscription to Gamespot Total Access.

Good luck, Jeff."

Call of Duty 4 paper in progress

2007-12-04T01:47:00.001-05:00

I posted the following on the Infinity Ward Call of Duty 4 boards:

"I don't know if the developers read these forums, but I couldn't find a contact link on the website. I am writing a college paper for a class on the history of animation, and I am using Call of Duty 4 as a milestone for the future of cinema.
I have some interview questions I'd like to ask the developers, but if anyone here would like to add constructive thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

What follows is not the paper but my initial thoughts. If someone could pass them to someone relevant to the development of Call of Duty 4, I'd be greatly appreciative. Beyond that, I'd love some coherent feedback and constructive criticism, especially if you could compare and contrast with feature animation:

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As most people close to the hobby are probably aware, cinematic storytelling has been a holy grail in video game development for years. It's not uncommon to read something along the lines of "The game is like an action movie!" in reviews for games like Grand Theft Auto or The Getaway. Unfortunately, when cinematic storytelling is pursued in a video game, it is often at the expense of the very interactive elements distinct to gaming as a storytelling medium. The exceptions to this are few and notable; consider the opening tram-ride in Half-Life; the hydrosphere entrance to Rapture in Bioshock.

Most of the time the great story-based games resort to so-called "cinematics" to expose their narratives. It's not too far-fetched to say the Final Fantasy series is little more than four or five mini-games attached to a single meta-structure:
1.) a resource management game for character growth and development
2.) a battle game where your party kills assorted enemies
3.) an exploration game where said party encounters the various outputs of Square's art department
4.) non-interactive cinematics or in-game cutscenes
5+.) Occasionally Square throws a real curveball with a card game or chocobo racing.

The movies aren't necessarily gameplay elements so much as gameplay incentives. If the player is not invested in the actions of the system, the only reason he will continue to fill spheres or acquire licenses is to find out why the big bad has done what he done. As a rule, the vaunted Final Fantasy series never relays important narrative information during interactive segments. It might even be in a design bible.

Final Fantasy is only a highly successful microcosm of an overall trend in gaming. The use of cinematics to break from interaction permeates the industry, whether the game is Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, or Gears of War. .

Call of Duty 4 limits the non-interactive scenes to the most basic exposition: the name of the viewer is Sgt. Jackson, USMC; he's in the Middle East; he's here with the Marines to stop Al-Asad. Then the camera swoops through Jackson's eyes and the player is immediately involved in the action. Remarkably, CoD4 maintains the pace of an action blockbuster over its relatively short playing time. During that brief duration a frightening narrative unfolds mostly through the eyes of two protagonists, although there are a handful of breaks when the player controls either a gunship in support of the squad the player was controlling in the previous mission, the captain the player has been following up to that point in the game, and the deposed president of a nation under siege.

That perspective switching is key to CoD4's powerful mastery of narrative. The player is initially thrown behind the eyes of "Soap" MacTavish, a new member of the elite British SAS. After a thrilling first mission from Soap's first person perspective, the player is thrust behind the eyes of Yasir Al-Fulani, the deposed president of an unnamed Middle Eastern country. After the player watches Al-Fulani's country go to ruin under a military coup, he watches still through Al-Fulani's eyes as Al-Asad, one of the story's three antagonists, shoots the player/Al-Fulani in the face. While it's not the first execution filmed through the eyes of the executed, it's difficult to overstate the impact of that moment provided by an interactive camera.

Later, the perspective switches to Marine Corps Sergeant Paul Jackson, who is in the Middle East trying to halt the coup begun with Al-Fulani's execution. The player participates in several missions with Jackson before Al-Asad kills Jackson in a nuclear explosion. The following mission finds Soap MacTavish's team searching for Al-Asad after his detonation of the nuclear warhead.

The story elements are gripping popcorn-slinging narrative on their own, but when the story is invested with the investment of audience participation, the tone is something undelivered by cinema, novel, or previous video games. It is something new. Gamers are used to saving the world. But most people are probably unused to avenging their own deaths.

The game doesn't end on a happy note. The world is arguably a worse place after the events in Call of Duty 4. Although the primarily villain-- a Russian who supplied the terrorist Al-Asad with the nuclear bomb which killed Sgt Jackson-- has been stopped, Soap MacTavish and Sgt Jackson's squads are dead. A nuclear bomb has taken countless lives after a bloody coup d'etat in the Middle East. The ending is bittersweet at best. The game is punctuated with grim moments reflecting on the nature of war. Every time the player lets his character die, the picture blurs and the viewer is treated to a thoughtful quote by this or that genius; are sometimes bloodthirsty, sometimes melancholy:

"My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth." - George Washington

"Let your plans be as dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall
like a thunderbolt." - Sun Tzu

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV
will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein

CoD4 seems to take a page from Freidrich Neitzsche as asks players to become the abyss into which they stare; it submerges the player in lifelike violence; it traumatizes, wounds the spirit, and begs its post 9/11 audience to consider the world around them, to weigh the value of human life.

While it is easy to extol Call of Duty 4's virtues in storytelling, Infinity Ward did not produce the first story-based game with emotional weight. However, there is much to be said for the power of their presentation. Although the characters in Call of Duty 4 are clearly computer-animated, they feel only a few years behind the man-puppets of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, a movie that while technically excellent fell largely short of narrative cohesion or evocative power. Despite the game's inferiority to Final Fantasy on a graphical level, the high stakes subject matter and the interactive storytelling find the audience or player more committed to the events on-screen than the higher-cost production of Spirits Within. What's more, modern technology allowed Infinity Ward to utilize filmic tropes to aid the interactive storytelling. The developers play with light and shadow like Hollywood cinematographers. The player sees every important moment with a blurred depth of field that echoes what a film might use in the same place.

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That's what I have so far. Love to hear your thoughts.

Finally, to Infinity Ward, thank you.
I was a Marine from 2000-2004.
I lost one of my best friends in Anbar this January.
You have crafted a marvel of nightmares and beauty.
Your work is a testament to the power of video games as art, and I have forced every gamer I know to look through Soap and Jackson's eyes.

Thank you so much.
Semper Fidelis"

I wish I were a video reviewer...

2007-11-15T11:09:00.000-05:00

I've been playing a ton of video games lately, and it's been great. I often feel guilty about the role video games and technology play in my life, but as long as they have so much sway, I feel it's probably best if I find a way to make these indulgences productive. I have the technology to record videos and take screenshots and record video of myself for game reviews. There's no reason why I couldn't post reviews for a video game review site here on Blogger.

Here are my initial prospects for video reviews:
Rock Band
Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat
The Witcher
World in Conflict
Assassin's Creed

Moreover, if I can reasonably argue that I run a gaming website, I can write off game-related expenses for the sake of taxes. This would be a good thing.

New blog: writing well and sometimes here

2007-01-14T13:25:00.000-05:00

Every now and then I read someone's writing, and it fills me with dread about my own. Neil Gaiman consistently kicks my brain squarely in the ass. Worse, the first volume from his Books of Magic series gave me a rather aggressive nightmare, the kind that worms its way back into your thoughts long after you are done with it.

I don't know many people who don't enjoy good fiction. I know a lot of people who don't like to read, per se, but most people like living in stories for a little while, even if the medium doesn't involve black and white flitting before their eyes and images dancing only in their brains. My own tastes gravitate toward science fiction and fantasy except the actual writing in those genres is often sub-par. And by sub-par I am trying to be polite instead of saying it's crap. But there are superheroes. Like Neil Gaiman.

He's so obnoxiously erudite in subtle, skull-smashing ways. The way he describes ancient rituals. His hulking knowledge of mythologies from across the globe, spanning throughout time, his ability to cobble together fantasy lives for people who never were. He's never taken a task like, say, manufacturing an entire working language, Anthony Burgess style. But he's also forsaken things like Burgess' at times impenetrable prose. So it's a trade-off.

Whatever. My mind is still reeling from the nightmare.