Year of Our War

The Year of Our War
Steph Swainston
(2004)

This book has single-handedly grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me solidly over into the territories of contemporary fantasy. I had wanted to read Mieville's Perdido Street Station and was curious about the New Weird writers (Vandermeer and Harrison, specifically, though Swainston and Mieville count towards this group as well), but picked up Swainston first because I was interested in reading something not written by a dude for a change (also a big factor in reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell).

The Year of Our War opens with some fantastic combat prose, think the Illiad infused with modern tactics and logistics, of humans and Awians (flightless humans with vestigal wings) against a horde of insects told from the perspective of Jant, the Emperor's Messenger.

Jant can fly, you see. He's half Awian and half Rhydanne, a sort of cat-people from the mountains that have a slender physique and a lightweight build which make the otherwise useless Awian wings suddenly functional. Jant is also immortal, by which I mean he can't age, but can be killed, by virtue of being a member of the Emperor's circle. Certain individuals, by being the best at certain things – the best messenger, the best archer, etcetera, are granted immortality by the Emperor and get to live at Castle and assist the nations of the Fourlands against their common enemy, the insects. Jant also has a problem with needles.

A crucial mortal leader dies in combat with the insects, setting off a chain reactions of events that brings the confederated nations to the brink of war with each other and annihaltion by the insects And the thing is, its kind of the circle's fault, since immortality is bequeathed on a set of skills specific to combating the insect hordes, the aforementioned slain mortal leader meets his end going overboard trying to catch the Emperor's attention so he can win immortality.

The entire book is full of these sort of complications, but is also bereft of exposition. History and world building, socio-political critiques, Jant's drug problem, all of these are dropped at the reader in the narrative. So the plot carries one along at a quite rapid pace while leaving in its wake a vibrant and rich setting. Swainston gives us the double thrill of a bang-bang-bang plot and the wonder of world-building at the same time. The Year of Our War is a true treat and I recommend it whole-heartedly.

-d.d.

chrono-heat death of the universe

An Alien Heat
Michael Moorcock
(1971)

The Hollow Lands
Michael Moorcock
(1974)

The End of All Songs
Michael Moorcock
(1976)

In a distant future, the denizens of earth enjoy access to nigh unlimited power. With the use of rings which harness practically divine energies generated by vast abandoned cities, they know no hunger, no cold, no want. They reshape their bodies, fashion buildings, clothing, even living things and the very land itself with a thought and a twist of a banded ring. Even death does not hold its thrall here, as friends simply reconstitute the dead (the philosophical wrangle of this is never broached: is a person who is reconstituted from the memories of others really the same person?).

In this future without want, without fear, humanity confronts its oldest nemesis: boredom. The years are passed fashioning elaborate themed parties. Most of these are inspired by history, which the inhabitants of the future mangle gloriously.

Jherek Carnelian's taken a fancy to the late 19th-century. His preferred mode of travel is a flying, jewel-encrusted steam locomotive(!!). His 19th-century style ranch features robotic U.S. Cavalry which slay a herd of buffalo every day. He's particularly fascinated with the 19th –century concepts of Virtue and Love, and how the two relate. When a time traveler from the 19th century, and a woman nonetheless! arrives in Jherek's time, he decides he will fall in love with this Mrs. Amelia Underwood.

Then follows the tricky business of getting Amelia over to his place, his near-helpless courtship, her disappearance back into time, Jherek's pursuit and return. Oh, and the End of Time is approaching, a sort of chrono-heat death of the universe, directly due to the massive energies consumed by the power rings.

I decided to read this series because Michael Moorcock called it a "favourite" and I thought that an interesting thing to say.¹ You'd think this was a quirky sci-fi tale but really its more the romantic fantasy – I have to confess to a certain thrill to Jherek and Amelia's first kiss. Either way, the Dancers at the End of Time possess a general lack of violence or the threat thereof which I'm not entirely used to in my sciffy/fantasy readings², but which I found both refreshing and enlightening.

-d.d.

¹ From a quote from his website:

"I have a number of favourites, depending which genre you're talking about. I like Dancers at the End of Time but probably Gloriana's my favourite fantasy. Elric's my favourite fantasy character. Mother London is my celebration of London and it's probably my favourite book, though I think the Pyat sequence is probably the best thing I've done in that I had incredibly high ambitions for it and do believe I pulled it off (which I wasn't sure I could do). Then there's Jerry Cornelius. Mrs Cornelius is my favourite character. It's really like asking a mother to choose between her children."

Okay, so he only says he "likes" Dancers at the End of Time, but I've already read Gloriana and the Elric Books, so I figured that gave me a reading list of Dancers, Mother London, the Pyat books, and the Cornelius quartet. The Cornelius books are next on my list.

² Jherek and his friends can't even comprehend the threat of physical violence, or even death By extension, when warned of this impending End of Time by an alien messenger, they are maddeningly dismissive of its import. In fact, since said annoucement is made at one of the aforementioned delirious parties, its shrugged off as poor taste and cheap theatricality.

paper forms of escape

Great. With all my Gundams in storage at my mom's house, now an old college professor of mine turns me on to these:

• http://www.piperoids.com/


• http://www.kami-robo.com/index_en.html
  

Papercraft has been one of my favorite spectator-only crafts for a couple years now, after I saw mockups of some of those absurdly cute tanks from Advance Wars, but I'd never had the slightest desire to participate. Until now.

Kinda digging on the aesthetic of the Piperoids, but I can see the cutesy/minimalistic palling rather quickly. (Never had the slightest use for Kozik stuff, for example.) Much more up my alley are the Kami-Robo, with their Kinnikuman (U.S. M.U.S.C.L.E.) vibe. Like, check the flow chart.

-Fat

drunken double feature

Oddly(1) hesitant to speak too strongly, I suggest that if you don't like District 9, you are not my sort of person. A blend of Alien Nation and Day of the Dead and the Office, it's a thrilling blend of genre craftsmanship and decent politics.

G.I. Joe continues the stupefying career arc of Steven Sommers. With his usual blend of wholly forgettable villains, blankfaced skinny betitted chicks (unfortunately always given far too much to do) and an obsession with racial stereotyping, he shoehorns in all your favorite figures of action: ninja, bland guy, black dude with big guns, shuffling minstrel--along with backstory and characterization lifted straight from Star Wars.

It's probably as good a G.I. Joe movie as could have been made by anyone at all. There's a stretch in the second reel where nothing blows up for a preposterously long time, but that's mostly offset by a stunningly hot sequence later where a brutal beating is intercut with a flashback sex scene.

Under no circumstance should anybody involved with this movie profit by their involvement. Other than that, mildly recommended as a scene-by-scene exploration of the reasons why Team America: World Police was a parody.

(1) An expensive town, Santa Destroy seems incapable of supporting an adequate beer theatre. Thus I have taken one of my primary loves off the menu, and essentially no longer allow myself to go to the movies.

There are, however, exceptions.

Of late have I taken to bottling up, hitting the theatre and sneaking into a second feature. In this way I can basically afford to indulge in this activity that has defined my entire life.

for all the wrong reasons, I can no longer hope

Not quite dead yet, you see.

2 weeks ago, I managed what will likely be my biggest jaunt of 2009, a week traipsing backpacked around the world's biggest trees, next to the world's biggest ocean. Camping trips are, 4 years in, still very much a novelty for me (decidedly a town boy) and the jars and stubs imposed by a week mostly deprived and out of doors inevitably do violence to my (way of) life.

I brought more than trail mix home from this trip.

First, after a bookless, image-free and silent week, I needed a fair orgy of consuming. Both to shop and to wallow. Somewhere along the coastal trail I attained the belief that I am become old, a decision/realization with a single exponent: I am now too aged to wear tshirts alone.

Thus the first leg of my journey to acquire and to consume--to the flea market where I could seize collared shirts. I found many potentially suitable items, and settled upon one, a red plaid with short sleeves and a dynamic cut. (The remainder of my cashes I did disperse amongst the shadier aisle of the parking lot for 3 dvds for gentlemen, for another thing I did lack for 1 week was self-love.)1 Enough.

Soon I browsed the mediocre shelves of my nigh-local Game Store. Ah, finally a with-manual2 copy of Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection.3 Also an copy of a (auteur 'lert!) Suda 51 rarity: Flower, Sun and Rain. Minutes and coffee later I graced the localish book store. Not entirely my favorite, this one yet yields reliable...finds. Though not treasures. This trip I succumbed to the worst of my impulses and bought Spook Country, which, yes, I already own alongside the newest Cometbus, which I may never read4, and a pair of paeans to albums that I adored and thus shaped5 me: Use Your Illusion I & II and Double Nickels on the Dime.6

Naturally after still more coffee I went home and read You Can't Win. Then Spook Country.7 I'd read Use Your Illusion at the coffee shop. But how far can that tiny consuming-leg really go?

After work monday, I scoured the Broadway Goodwill on the way home. Alas but that this Broadway Goodwill is utterly unlike its Portland homonym, where never once did I fail to find; this Santa Destroy version is barren, bereft. Nary a shirt combining stain-lacki with the presence of every button. Nary a book of interest. Tuesday's infiltration of the Chinatown Salvation Army would prove substantially worthwhiler.8 2 passable shirts. (One recieved violently mixed reviews, which is exactly the sort of reactionreception I hope for when I'm buying emblems of grownupity which I hope will camouflage me at work.)

Also I scored an unopened copy of the Dark Crystal9, a GCN copy of The Sims: Bustin' Out and Aronofsky's shatteringly wonderful the Fountain. All of that for 5 wing-wangs. Also a cookbook, but I'll let Collision detail that messwreck.

Sims: Can't play. Need another memory card, which I recall is a tough motherfucking (item to) score. Deal with that another time, perhaps.

Gottlieb: the knock on their tables was always: boring. Beautifully built, Gottlieb tables were marvels of engineering but had all their design chops focused on how shit works, and not on what a player might want or be interested in.10

The game is similar, and the techology is clumsy, with meh camera angles, oddly intrusive glass reflections and a very poor decision about the flippers: having to pull the triggers all the way = total garbage. But this joint decidedly isn't 100% weapons-grade bolognium. Nor is it just 'pinball so I like it'. It's good pinball. So I like it.

Methodical and demanding, these tables insist upon skill and patience in equal measure. Probably this setup is the proximal inspiration for Dream Pinball, a DS game I have written easily 10,000 words about. Words you will never read.

Flower, Sun and Rain. We rep Atlus hard here in Reviewiera. Because we both like and respect those motherfuckers. You know what you're getting: enthusiastic and attentive forays into all that is niche.11 Porn for enthusiasts. The surprising thing is that they don't seem to garner all that much underground analysis. The press digs the shit out of them, this much is obvious, but I don't see a great deal of interest among the hobbyists.12 This is all by way of a digression, because while I like and respect Atlus, it's Grasshopper who I melt for.

Grasshopper games will always provide me with menu/item text that redeems even the lamest title.13 Contact, probably my favorite game, had equipment description 1liners that elicited genuine laughs. FSR is similar. Most of the game involved plowing thru dialog--not dialog trees, just plain dialog--and looking up (painfully telegraphed) answers to (usually transparent) puzzle-questions in a guidebook that lives in your inventory.

So it's good that those 50odd guidebook pages are well conceived and competently written/translated. Game's a real slog & noone could deny this. But--it's a Suda 51 game, and he's the most interesting postmodernist in the industry14--the game knows it's a slog. It's supposed to be a slog because all adventure games are slogs and it comments on the trudges it inflicts. This aware commentary doesn't entirely mediate the slogness, but I'll take a game that notes the limitations of its genre over one that simply recapitulates them.

Also a few moths back I indulged in another denigrated pleasure, scoring 3 Milestone shooters, 2 of which I already owned, for the Wii. The Ultimate Shooting Collection, comprising Chaos Field (GCN), Karous (DC), and Rdio Allergy (both, sorta). This version of Chaos Field sucks compared to the GCN version, so fuck it. Karous seems much the same--still a moody romp with a difficulty level nicely tuned for a man who likes but is not terrific at shooters. And Radio Allergy is simply the midpoint. Not so hard, not so accessible/easy (=a certain kind of fun).

Shooters are a weird genre. I've written at least 40,000 useless, unilluminating words on them, as their conventions seem to me to be absolutely constituative of the formal pleasures of the videogame medium: pattern-based skill challenges with increasingly interesting realtime pictures. Yet all I seem truly to respond to within the genre is that which seems to leave the devoted enthusiast community cold: Milestone, Iridion II, while the consensus good/formative pieces, like Xevious or Gradius or whatever, I find...well, too hard. And utterly unengaging.15

Also I play I lot of Alien Syndrome But that's probably for another time.

1. And my sometime lady has of late quit the city across from the city by the bay, repairing herself to Portland. More of this anent, perhaps.
2. As I am 1 stickler, by volume, not weight--indeed. No settling occurs.
3. Did you know I once sold Gottlieb pinball machines--or anyways was paid to try to do same--when they did in that market bring up a savagely pedestrian 3rd place to Bally/Williams slash Sega/Data East? 'Tis true.
4. The last one was That Bad.
5. Deformed?
6. That latter a long-craved and -deferred replacement for a book I oncet loaned a coworker. My mistake and my loss.
7. My Gibson/Stephenson sketch really really is coming soon. Please anticipate it.
8. Allow me now to welcome Substantially Worthwhiler--or Trash Idolizer--to the Reviewiera tribeclan. Moiety? Despite his laughable assertions re: Heata, we' e pleased and proud to have this man On Our Side.
9. This was a HUGE hit in Japan upon its release, and I attribute essentially all aesthetic features of JRPGS to this film. Seriously. Go watch it before you come with your Tezukafied Disney bullshit.
10. This is parallel to my take on Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, which I happen to adore despite the fact that not a second of its ample preparation time was spent giving a dang what anybody would/wouldn't like.
11. Interestingly, the localization enthusiasm/attention levels are often greater than the inspiration/excecution levels. Meanies might dub this "turd polishing". I prefer to think of it as "genre exemplars, respectfully treated".
12. This may be because marks are too busy digging on the games to write longwinded internet pieces about them, while the smarks feel pandered/catered to and therefore get suspicious any time somebody actually gives them what they want.
13. Hitting the ever-popular "not the best, but the best at things I care about" note. See also Yoot Saito.
14. A guy who deploys a preposterous control scheme, to cram home the notion that this is a light-gun game you're playing without a light gun? "Here is a game you'd forget in a week if you were playing it the way it was meant to be played. Now you'll remember it forever b/c it's almost--almost--unplayable. Ah, Killer 7. Ah, Suda 51. You're not Carpenter, you're not quite Tarantino, but I think maybe you're Paul Verhoeven. Or, if you keep making things as wonderful as No More Heroes, David Cronenberg.c
15. My suspicion is that this doesn't actually have anything to do with me not getting the genre or me misidentifying the important tropes. I think it's just a matter of certain styles combining with a certain lack of patience/skill. Which admittedly maybe means I just don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

a. Best movie of the 90s? Good performance from De Niro? I recall exactly zero De Niro performances that weren't either vomitous self-parody (Midnight Run, say) or tainted and ruined by memories of same (Casino, for example).
b. Yes, still.
c. I really intended not to explain this claimpoint. The idea I have is here is a formalist. Which is to say a historian and traditionalist who is also obsessed--obsessed--with the potential (effects) of the medium. So Cronenberg sees the Matrix and says 'hey, an action movie can tell 2 or 3 parallel conflicting stories simultaneously'i and comes up with Existenz, which tells 2 or 3 conflicting parallel stories simultaneously, and he makes an action-thriller with almost no action, no thrills, but incredible visceral impact.

Goichi Suda does the same thing w/ Killer 7. He notes that if you control the player's movement, as in a rails shooter/light gun game, you can (a) drop in some really keen camera angles and (b) dictate the story-flow absolutely. So you get a game with the most convoluted storyii imaginable, staggeringly nifty presentation and (c) mechanics you have to fight unstintingly to access (a) and (b).

i. Maybe he saw Total Recall, too. Not impossible, I guess.
ii. "Story"?

shallow are the ashes (of the children of men)

[Being the 7th installment of stuff I've been reading recently.]



Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Suzanna Clarke
(2006)

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, one Mr. Norrell has assembled the greatest library of magical texts in all of England, and with a showy display at York, revives the art of Practical Magic (as opposed to mere Theoretical Magic). Desperate to assist the war effort, he brings a Minister's young wife back from the dead with the assistance of a Faerie (the Man with the Thistle-Down Hair) in order to win favor with the Cabinet. He goes on to aid the British navy, conjuring up fleets of ships made from mist to blockade harbors.

It is around this time one Jonathan Strange makes Mr. Norrell's acquaintance and becomes his apprentice. Strange journeys to Spain where he operates as a field magician in the service of Wellington's army with much success.

However, when Strange returns his opinions of the practice of magic have changed to a more laboratorial approach, as opposed to Norrell's more bookish approach. Norrell also fiercely opposes any contact with Faeries, while Strange desparately wants their assistance, as the greatest English magician, The Raven King, was faerie educated.

The Man with the Thistle Down hair continues to abscond with English men and women, eventually driving Strange to Venice, and causing him to become captive in a tower of billowing darkness.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a weighty tome clocking in at the 800+ pages mark. It is written in a Jane Austen style, but I have to confess I've never actually finished any actual Jane Austen or the like, so I suppose in a way it’s an Austen-style but actually reads a little easier. On reflection, individual chapters are really brilliantly paced – a steady build to the next event, while the characters behave according to the norms of the period. Physical and social settings are era appropriate, sometimes delicious.

The real brilliance lies in the footnotes, which contain a detailed fictional bibliography of the History of English Magic. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Norrell and Strange are very (very) minor league English magicians, only doing their best to stand on the shoulders of giants. Especially the Raven King, a human raised by faeries who appeared in Northern England and acquired the same from the English king as a kingdom of his own (a claim he technically still holds – George III is only northern England's steward and caretaker), who takes on the dread proportions of nightmare as his history is revealed footnote by footnote.

The book is not for everyone, however, mainly due to the period-authentic pacing and writing style (easily slow and plodding, if one is impatient), and, as above, the main characters are rather mundane and not even supremely talented at the practice of magic.

Still, it’s a fresh piece of fantasy ("steampunk" even, of a sort), and one shouldn't just read Lieber and Moorcock forever (tho' one certainly could).

-d.d.

your hands, my heart: what's so hard about that

Finally made it to a Warriors game last night. Pretty good turnout for a game late in a futile, ruined season; some culture shock, though. The crowd was undeniably Into It, with roused cheers never more than a half-decent play away. And the booting of evil-team failure was as robust as ever I've heard--when some cat missed two consecutive dunks, the rafters went a'-rumblin' for sure.*

And the crowd--to my relief but lack of surprise--passed my bush-league test, by cheering fairly well for the feat of the evening, a hesitation move perpetrated by Chris Paul, resulting in a truly wonderful cradling the ball stride goalward and gorgeous layin. In general, they seemed sure the Warriors would lose, getting ugly at 4-0 Hornets with around 9:45 left in the first. Late, when the game was tight, there would be total silence as Chris Paul plied his vile trade on the perimeter, and surging gouts of noise when West did brick off the glass, and the Warriors took to the offensive (tentatively and glitching).

Oakland boasts a crowd entirely ready to be won over. It's lovely, and a remarkable departure from the Portland crowd, richly blending entitlement and ignorance.

Unfortunately, my Portland-style commitment to heckling didn't go over for shit.** In the third, when my snack-bar excesses began to get on top of me, and as the Warriors gave up the bulk of their halftime lead, the furry hipster twits next to Abe and me were heard to enquire "Whoa. You ever been to a game with this guy before?" Whatever. Fuck you. White people wear sweaters to basketball games.

A few notes. When you show up and the home team has six guys in the layup line? Bodes ill for the evening's competitive balance, no? When the opening tip is botched, a fellow is entitled--indeed likely--to thoughts writhing toward the freeness of the tickets and the eleven dollarness of the pale ale. Early, it was Warriors 10, Chris Paul 10, David West 2.



At around 15-12, some cub with a vast, unmanageable head moved in front of me. With some despair, my eyes scampered around for a while.

I will not understand why the franchise's banner is relegated to the side of the arena, essentially invisible. True, it's 34 years old, but that seems a poor reason to quit wallowing in it.

In the first half, the Warriors' unvaunted offensive sets seemed to me to bespeak a philosophy running something like "if we don't run any plays, they can't defend them!". This is particularly amusing given the lengthy, po'-faced coverage in local media on the topic of Nellie's revamped offense. (Halfway thru the season, he realized he didn't have any point guards, and if you can't run a real offense, you might as well have one guy trying to break down his man off the dribble while four guys camp on the 3-point line, waiting for their defender to do something stupid. PROTIP: their defender will eventually do something stupid.)

Sobersided analysis aside, if you've got a backcourt of Crawford and Ellis, you might actually as well just let them freelance a lot and spend your evenings hollering "pass" every couple possessions. Beats actually trying to design sets cohering around Stephen Jackson's (functional, Raphaelite***) insanity.

Eventually I remembered the atrocities perpetrated by David West--second in a noble lineage of History's Greatest Monsters at the four from Xavier--vis-a-vis my crippled foray into fantasy basketball this season. My thoughts turned away from my second trip to the bar (not the snack bar) and turned towards a fraught yearn that somehow, some way, my words could reach the man and ruin his life.

Alas.

The evening bloomed into a middling example of late-season meaning. Hornets exposed as a pathetic mockery of a contender, with CP3 a selfish gunner incapable of involving himself with any team member. Warriors demonstrating again such a thorough commitment to pointless, head-down freelancing that they must actually be being coached into it. Warriors fans intense, tense and grateful.

Fat, fat, happy, drunk.



*After the second dunk-butchery, CP3 ran down the board and took it to the hole himself, unopposed breakaway. The cat who'd missed the two dunks was right next to him, wide open obviously and necessarily. This savage violation of every rule of point guard play led me to bellow "Paul, you're in the hall of fame of bush-league hacks!" This was recieved like the introduction of pornography to sunday dinner.+

+I should note that I adored (major swathes of) Andre Miller's Nugs tenure, which featured nigh-endless callings of his own number. My rule of thumb was that if he had eight assists, he'd probably only actually passed twelve times. The difference is that nobody worth listening to ever said Andre Miller was a good point guard.

**At a Lakers game some years back, DDT at one point reduced me nearly to tears by hollering "Tonight we raze the peninsular villages!".

***The other one, the Ninja Turtle.

Heckling is, I think, an exponent of Portland's peculiarly thorough involvement with localism (equally describable as Portland's compleat obsession with its piddly, second-rate self). Since everybody on stage is literally your neighbor and peer, there's no barrier to abuse, no separation between performer and audience.++

Now, Oakland is at least partially infected by the Bay virus of self-importance and utter absorbtion into self. The difference is that Portland at least knows it's no first-rank city; the Bay genuinely believes it's a cultural heavy hitter, on a par with New York, London, Paris. Which blends the annoyances of the second rate with the frustrating asininity of the delusionally self-important.

But, since Oakland thinks it's great, and thinks its products matter in the grand scheme of things+++, some jagoff in a black sweater hurling abuse at a putative MVP candidate is likely to be a nutjob worth ignoring, rather than one voice amongst a panoply of same, perhaps an initiator of conversations and a positer of position.

And yes, I do get that heckling is a twerpy manifestation of smug hipster claims to importance, wherein the act of judgment is held to be at least equivalent to any act of creation.

++This, by the way, explains why a heavy metal band like Poison Idea is such a conundrum for categorizers of music. In formal terms, they are undeniably purveyors of moderately competent heavy metal. However, there's something not easily definable about them that queers and clouds the issue something fucking fierce. Best way to explain it runs: it's metal played by punks; they're from Portland.

+++With the exception of Neurosis, they don't, they really really don't.

write a new tune

I don't that often do this, but this review actually made me laugh out loud. More than a single time.

In other news, I'm broke as a joke, working 50-hour weeks to try to make up for it, and desperately craving the following:
new hat (black, summer weight)
new shoes (two pairs Starburys, prolly)
MadWorld
House of the Dead: Overkill
Grand Theft Auto DS (I keep trying to remind myself that it's a driving game, and I basically can't stand driving games)
new front wheel for my commuter bike
new brake cable for my fun bike
new bike bag (I loathe my backpack)
new pants (bike wreck shredded my work pants, and nothing else I have is entirely appropriate for an office environment)
DVD player (so I can enjoy my new Venture Brothers Season 3 dvd)

Oh yeah: I'm going to a Warriors game tonight. So I got that goin' for me.

I'm inclined to go finish high school to make her notice that I'm around

As DDT muses on Astro Boy and upon Akira versus Blade Runner, I read somebody finally telling my truth about Watchmen: great mostly because historically important, not so much because of its actual success in/of execution.

For ten years or so, I've been wondering if maybe I loved it so much b/c I was so embedded in the superhero genre. What would somebody think of Watchmen--or the Dark Knight stuff--if they HADN'T grown into a Marvel Zombie as a reaction against their father's love of Superman comics? My contention is that the primary genius of these works is that they reimagine certain genre conventions; as such, they may be smarter and more interesting than straight works in/of that genre, but they have less energy and actual invention (as opposed to reaction) than straight genre pieces.+

Or maybe I'm just suffering from Watchmen fatigue, b/c I read it at like 14, and read and reread it in my obsessive way(s) and have been hearing everybody ELSE babble on about it for a year or so now. (See also my recent suspicion that Moore, for all his smarts and skills, doesn't have much to say.)

At some point, I should go back to my Levi-Strauss, bone up on my structural study of myth, and show that Watchmen is the most structually* perfect** piece of mass-market art ever made, probably.***


(Image stolen from http://www.goulfinger.com/hhcrematia.htm.)

I don't know why I never thought to google her before. I literally grew up on Crematia Mortem, a KC version of Elvira, with more wit and smarts. Late-night horror flickering on a too-small tv, all the ads tiny local businesses, up late on jellybeans and the sheer adrenalized pleasure of being up late for its own sake. Nothing like this exists anymore, probably. There have, naturally, been greater losses, but some cursory googling and clicking I find myself heartened by the reasonable amount of information out there. Gone and lost, yes, of course, but at least not forgotten.

Quick reviews:
Phoenix Wright (DS): Pretty good. Point-and-click "adventure" game, basically just a reading game. Like playing an episode of Perry Mason. Nothing in the world wrong with playing an episode of Perry Mason.++ I have a minor quibble that all the stores are lighthearted stories about murders. It's a wierd disconnect. I'm impressed by how quickly and thoroughly the makers make me care about Phoenix's (quickly murdered) mentor. Not sure how they do that, exactly; might be the titties.


(Image stolen from http://www.ace-attorney.net/content/images/artworks/gs1/mia.jpg.)

Jake Hunter (DS): Pretty good. Even more of a reading game than Phoenix Wright--actually basically a visual novel. And not a very good novel at that. Got HORRIBLE reviews and I can't really tell why. Not a great value for money, I guess, but for 20 wing-wangs, I really am not prepared to bitch too much.

Touch Detective (DS): Lighthearted point-and-click adventure game; much more of pixel-hunt and DESPERATELY ANNOYING puzzle play than reading play. I love the visuals, loathe the puzzles, am basically enthusiastic about the whimsey. There's a LOT of whimsey. Typical Atlus game--wonderful style, but substance that's undercut by its insistence on difficulty.

Hotel Dusk (DS): If you play only one point-and-click adventure game with a HEAVY reading component, give Phoenix Wright a skip and try this one. Couple really wonderful puzzles, well-honed noir text, and an exceptional sense of tone, with resignation nicely leavened by humor.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (GCN). Finally got my GameCube back, and dicked around with this for a few nights. It really is absolutely gorgeous and fairly dull with only one player. Maybe I think it's dull because I really suck at action RPGs. But this is just a less hip version of the equally beautiful, and equally dull, Phantasy Star Online. I have a minor plan to browbeat DDT into buying a DS so he and I can annihilate space and play the new DS version of Phantasy Star Online, but I don't think this will ever happen... If it DID happen, then my penchant for creating support characters maybe wouldn't get me killed all the fucking time.

Oh, who am I kidding? DDT would pick like a ranged magic user or something, I'd pick a ranged combat person, and we'd get squashed constantly b/c we refused to just play a fucking tank.

Alien Hominid (GCN): ABSURDLY hard run-&-gun shooter. One-hit kills, stiff controls, good but tension-enhancing music. I'm playing it on medium, and really the only version of the game I can play at all is "how far can I get before I have to continue". Brutal and not actually very fun (similar to PN.03, actually) but weirdly suffused with genuine joy. It's clear that the art--all of the art--was loved as it was being made, and that carries me through pretty far. Well, as I mentioned, I don't actually get far, but it keeps me coming back to try to perfect and polish my performance of the tiny fragment of the game I'll ever actually get to see.

Viewtiful Joe (GCN). All the good stuff about Alien Hominid, but substantially more accessible, without being in any sense easy. I will likely never finish this game--it's one of the first ones that I picked up when I picked up my GCN for the second time--but playing through the first few bits has been one of the most reliable pleasures the medium has ever offered me.

Onechanbara: Zombie Bikini Slayers (Wii). Because my main problem with Zombie Revenge really was that all the player characters and bosses weren't hot half-naked chicks. There are some wonderful things about Japan, and this infinitely stupid game is one of them. Plus, it demonstrates beyond any disputation that No More Heroes got a hell of a lot right about its combat, b/c all the criticisms more or less unfairly levied against it are actually accurate when it comes to Onechanbara. But come on. You're playing a game with "Zombie Bikini Slayers" in the title. The fuck did you expect?

+The pirate stuff, while still striking me as basically pointless and baffling in its inclusion, is a straight exercise in genre tribute. As such, it's energetic and fun in a way that nothing else in Watchmen is, really. Except maybe for the romance comic tribute denoument, when Dan and Laurie get to gad about in exciting new wigs...which also, of course, is another genre exercise.
*In the sense of structure as known by structuralists. This word probably should have been structuralist-ally.
**In the sense of "complete", not in the sense of "good". It's finished off exactly the way it was supposed to be, for better or worse.
***Don't laugh, but Star Trek: Nemesis is also structurally perfect. Misbegotten and dull, but perfect.
++All punks love Perry Mason. I don't know why.

Streets of Astroboy

Turns out the world if full of Astroboy graffitti.


image:Narisa


image:jesper11


image:wadem


image:wednesday Mc Shiver


image:dier madrid; image:UfO


image:rotokirby


image:Rubira; image:nettsu


image: sensemaybenumbed; image:The Daemon


image:ScottD_Arch


image:fooishbar

It goes without saying, the last one's pretty awesome.

-d.d.