Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
borrowed and never returned
I could write a nice essay about how I 'expert-matize' myself every year or so. It's a bit odious, but hey, I'm (it's why I'm) a Renaissance man! Sometimes those research binges include consumerism, sometimes not.
--D.D. Tinzeroes, personal communication
I think this is either the bullseye The Key or no more than a centimeter away. As I remember, I've had at least 10 mini-expert eras since, say, puberty, and from each of those eras I've retained a talisman. I do mean a talisman: an object holding much of the meaning and significance of the time and the person I was when that thing was so important to that Fat back in the before-now. 
(The magic is in the peculiar blend of context and content--a particular frame enclosing the thing on a background, which is the time, & thus I'm the thing linking the 2, constituted in part by that very relation.)
Lee Ranaldo once nailed it, declaiming laconically
borrowed and never returnedin a song whose ensconcing record I listened to nearly obsessively for a terrible winter back in my Denver days.
emotions, books, outlooks on life
And every time I did "expert-matize" myself in my field, at least so well as I could, educating myself about histories and markets, thinking hard about things themselves and turning to milieux I'd always, always always seek out...reviews. Reading a review of something with which you're already familiar is the proper approach--preferably you're in fact intimate with what's being reviewed--you're having a conversation on a topic that allows you to speak with some knowledge. Which is to say, you're becoming part of at least some sort of community.
And if that makes you want to wear a t-shirt, a badge, or adopt a uniform or whatever, I claim you've earned that.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
top ten for 2009
In no particular order, just as they occur to me.
1. City of Saints and Madmen and Shreik: An Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer
2. The Year of Our War and No Present Like Time by Steph Swainston
3. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
The first 3 there are basically the canon 'New Weird' writers/books, but these books/authors are some great reasons why its probably fair to say my preferred reading genre is more fantasy than scifi these days.
4. Mother London by Michael Moorcock
This book cements Moorcock at the center of my literary universe, a sun of impossible size and brightness.
5. Dandy in the Underworld by T. Rex
2009 involved a lot of Marc Bolan, the adding of the entire main T.Rex discography to my personal collection, in fact. But that album, that song, his last, I dunno, I guess there's some 12 or 13 year old boy I used to be that still says this is sorta what rock and roll is/was supposed to be like. Its sentimentality but you also suspect sneakily something else is there, something simpler and pure that can't be found anymore.
6. Slade in Flame by Slade
Slade at their peak are great and Slayed? and Slade Alive and the singles from before Slade in Flame ('Cuz I Luv U', etc) are also great but Slade in Flame is a tour de force.
7. Dr. Who DVDs from Multnomah County Library
Support your public library! I've been watching the available smattering of John Pertwee episodes pell mell, but MCPL has a strong selection of the Tom Baker years which I've been doing my darnedest to watch chronologically. Unfortunately they do not have the very first story i ever saw ('Underworld') which I am not even sure is available on DVD (reviews and synopsis point towards it being rather mediocre).
8. For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music
'Do the Strand' and 'Versions of You' are total jams.
9. Swords Against Death by Fritz Lieber.
A great volume of Lieber's Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories, but the one about the birds with the women of Lankhmar wearing cages over their heads as fashion statements is unbeatable and gives Lankhmar that tangible being-there feeling that you also get visiting Meiville's New Crobozon or Vandermeer's Ambergreis or Swainston's Fourlands.
10. Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo.
I aquired all six of the Dark Horse collected volumes of Akira this year, and the first three are a bit of a drag, given that if you've seen the movie you're reading a lot of material you've already seen, with some other stuff which is not in the film that you probably over-focus on because its unknown. Volumes 4-6 are fucking dynamite, though, and really cross over into top-notch sci-fi writing territory. And the final twenty pages or so qualify as the sort of 'revolutionary sci-fi' Moorcock spells out in his essay 'Starship Stormtroopers,' Viva the Greater Tokyo Empire!!!
-d.d.
1. City of Saints and Madmen and Shreik: An Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer
2. The Year of Our War and No Present Like Time by Steph Swainston
3. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
The first 3 there are basically the canon 'New Weird' writers/books, but these books/authors are some great reasons why its probably fair to say my preferred reading genre is more fantasy than scifi these days.
4. Mother London by Michael Moorcock
This book cements Moorcock at the center of my literary universe, a sun of impossible size and brightness.
5. Dandy in the Underworld by T. Rex
2009 involved a lot of Marc Bolan, the adding of the entire main T.Rex discography to my personal collection, in fact. But that album, that song, his last, I dunno, I guess there's some 12 or 13 year old boy I used to be that still says this is sorta what rock and roll is/was supposed to be like. Its sentimentality but you also suspect sneakily something else is there, something simpler and pure that can't be found anymore.
6. Slade in Flame by Slade
Slade at their peak are great and Slayed? and Slade Alive and the singles from before Slade in Flame ('Cuz I Luv U', etc) are also great but Slade in Flame is a tour de force.
7. Dr. Who DVDs from Multnomah County Library
Support your public library! I've been watching the available smattering of John Pertwee episodes pell mell, but MCPL has a strong selection of the Tom Baker years which I've been doing my darnedest to watch chronologically. Unfortunately they do not have the very first story i ever saw ('Underworld') which I am not even sure is available on DVD (reviews and synopsis point towards it being rather mediocre).
8. For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music
'Do the Strand' and 'Versions of You' are total jams.
9. Swords Against Death by Fritz Lieber.
A great volume of Lieber's Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories, but the one about the birds with the women of Lankhmar wearing cages over their heads as fashion statements is unbeatable and gives Lankhmar that tangible being-there feeling that you also get visiting Meiville's New Crobozon or Vandermeer's Ambergreis or Swainston's Fourlands.
10. Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo.
I aquired all six of the Dark Horse collected volumes of Akira this year, and the first three are a bit of a drag, given that if you've seen the movie you're reading a lot of material you've already seen, with some other stuff which is not in the film that you probably over-focus on because its unknown. Volumes 4-6 are fucking dynamite, though, and really cross over into top-notch sci-fi writing territory. And the final twenty pages or so qualify as the sort of 'revolutionary sci-fi' Moorcock spells out in his essay 'Starship Stormtroopers,' Viva the Greater Tokyo Empire!!!
-d.d.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
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.
Friday, September 25, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
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:
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
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
Sunday, August 23, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
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"?
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"?
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