The Burdens of Command: Mass Effect 2 Review

After four days of serious binge-gaming, skipping workouts, and sidelining my already-minimal social commitments, I decided to take a brief break from Mass Effect 2. Commander Bryce Shephard, my space marine protagonist, had just totally blown it. I thought his relationship with Miranda Lawson, a slinky commando, was going somewhere – until he ordered her to back down from a near-gunfight with another crew member. After the perceived slight, any attempt to talk was ignored, and further attempts to reconcile were given the cold shoulder.

He made a leadership decision, I told myself. He made the right choice. But I couldn’t stop chewing over the scenario. I slumped into a strange funk, pouring successive vodka cranberries, justifying my logic.

Right or wrong, Shepard’s call had its repercussions. I lost Miranda. She was killed in action. Sure, it was a suicide mission to begin with, but it didn’t blunt the cold, lonely ache of staring down at her casket.

Mass Effect 2 is a game about choices. As Shepard, commander of a starship on a suicide mission, you choose where to go, what to do, and most importantly, who to trust, love, fight, kill and save. While the game’s fate-machine is less complex than it might seem at first, Mass Effect 2 is a powerful, deeply personal journey. It is simply one of the best games of this generation.

If you know the basics of Mass Effect 2’s story – you’re sent on a suicide mission; members of your team can indeed die – this review is spoiler-free.

Welcome Back, Commander

Gamers new to the franchise might feel a little disoriented by the complexity of the Mass Effect universe. Here’s the short version. In 2148, humanity discovers technology that flings them across the cosmos and drops them at the doorstep of a wildly diverse, intensely political galactic UN called the Citadel. While mini-wars erupt in the fringe territories, the Milky Way is enjoying a lull of peacetime.

As Shepard, commander of the stealth frigate SSV Normandy, you are the bearer of bad news – an ancient race of sentient machines called the Reapers are preparing to purge known civilization. Surviving both galactic politics and legions of cyborgs, Shepard saves the Citadel, securing humanity’s place among the stars. He’s the hero.

Mass Effect 2 begins two years after the epic conclusion of the first – for reasons plenty obvious to the gamer, but smothered by the spoiler blanket – and the galactic landscape is different. While humanity continues to gain political traction, the Citadel is burying its head in the space-sand over the Reaper threat, forcing Shepard to work with Cerberus, a pro-human fringe group of dubious ethics.

Led by the Illusive Man, a Colonel Kurtz-ish figure voiced by Martin Sheen (irony!), Ceberus thinks that a string of attacks on human colonies are harbingers of another Reaper attack. Rather than adopting the Citadel’s see-no-evil policy, they send Shepard to investigate.

It’s obvious Bioware wanted Mass Effect 2 to be its The Empire Strikes Back – a darker, more complex and morally ambiguous sequel, superior in sophistication and execution to its predecessor. Make no mistake: Bioware could have reproduced Mass Effect with minimal adjustment and scored high marks with the critics. The fact it they started practically from square one, reinventing not just the mechanics but the very concept of Mass Effect, makes its accomplishment all the more overwhelming.

Mass Effect 2 is the first time since Half Life 2 that a game has exceeded my expectations. And as a devotee of the original, rest assured that my expectations were absurdly high. Taken as the sum of its parts, I can safely call it my favorite game on the Xbox 360.

Talk, Shoot, Strip-Mine

Here are its parts: Mass Effect 2 is a role-playing game with an emphasis on character and conversation; it is a cover-based shooter a la Gears of War, linear but tactical; it is an exploration game similar to the Star Control series, in which you shuffle your little starship around a vast and colorful galaxy, scanning planets and collecting (read: strip mining) resources.

Mass Effect 2 The Shooter is a dramatic departure from its predecessor. Mass Effect walked and talked like a shooter, but retained the statistics-based, dice-rolling core that drives most RPGs. Consequently, the action felt detached and plastic, lacking a certain oomph.

Bioware disposed with the dice for ME2, and the benefits are widespread: Shepard runs faster, turns sharper and slides into cover like a brass-balled space marine, not the product of a spreadsheet. Combat feels emphatic, kinetic, alive in a way Mass Effect never was. I’m sure many ME veterans will fire share my first impression: This is how it should have been all along.

As an exploration game, ME2 is both enhanced and reduced from its former self. In ME, players explored planets in the Mako, an armored personnel carrier that seemed somehow lighter than air, bouncing off rocks and pirouetting off cliffs. It was a nightmare to control, and made exploration a tedious affair.

The internet cried out against the Mako, and Bioware listened: the quirky APC is nowhere to be seen in ME2. Exploration is instead conducted through a planetary scanner – you move the reticule until a handy mineral-o-meter goes bananas, and then you launch a probe to reap (strip mine) the goods. It’s more efficient than Mako-prowling, but it’s too shallow to be anything more than a diversion (side note: check out the descriptions Bioware appended to each planet. Dudes did their homework).

But ME2 truly shines as a role-playing game. To really get at the heart of this game, we need to revise our definition of an RPG. Everything’s been simplified – or, more charitably, streamlined – from ME. Instead of allocating skill points, you’ll simply upgrade a character’s talent along four tiers. Instead of juggling inventories and upgrading individual weapons, your party will automatically use the most powerful or advanced weapon at their disposal. No more upgrading the weave of their armor, the barrel of their gun or the ammunition in their clip. That kind of micromanagement is gone. Hardened RPG fans may bemoan its loss, but I hardly missed it.

Instead, the focus is quite simply on playing a role. You’re commanding a suicide mission, and your success depends on your ability to recruit the right people and earn their trust. Every decision has a repercussion, and Bioware has gone to immense lengths to ensure that ME2 doesn’t boil down to one or two main cause/effect paths.

Through their actions and words, players craft a character with unprecedented depth and detail. You can credibly view your Commander Shepard not as a videogame avatar, but as a creation of fiction. Even more so if you import your character from ME – almost every decision you made in the first game has some ripple in the second. Bioware ensured that I returned not just to a franchise, but to a character, distinct and utterly unique.

I mean, when I stepped onto the deck of the SR2 Normandy, I felt a rush of fondness and familiarity that I haven’t felt in a videogame since, well, picking up the crowbar in Half Life 2.

An Issue of Character

Some have criticized ME2’s main quest lacking the depth and complexity of its predecessor. How loudly can I disagree? I think it points to a shallowness endemic in the gaming community. ME’s story was complex, yes, but not particularly deep. We’ve seen the “Aliens attack from the outer reaches and only one man can stop them all” story before. It’s Halo. It’s every space marine yarn ever spun. It doesn’t matter that the Reapers are a race of thinking machines that older than cosmic dirt, or that they roll around every few millennia to obliterate sentient life in the Milky Way. With all due praise to Bioware, it’s all been done, and better.

But Mass Effect 2, like all good fiction, is first and foremost about character. You’ll spend most of your time gathering your crew and gaining their trust. You’ll drop by their quarters for a chats, which you’ll look forward to, thanks to top-notch writing and voice acting. Over the course of the game – for me, 30 hours of substantive playing – you’ll become attached to them. Particular favorites are Mordin Solus, the Salarian scientist with a highly-caffeinated delivery (you can get him to sing a Gilbert and Sullivan number with enough coaxing) and an ends-justify-the-means outlook, and Thane Krios, a stoic reptilian assassin with a monklike disposition and deep, tragic guilt. When Thane confessed that I was the first friend he’d made in 10 years, I teared up a bit.

I was absolutely terrified to lose any of them.

And lose them you most certainly can – this is, after all, a suicide mission, and Bioware isn’t screwing around. One of my friends lost two on the final mission; An IGN.com writer ended up losing all but two. I played my cards right and only lost Miranda Lawson. And believe me, that loss haunts me.

But ultimately, I know exactly why Miranda died. It’s simple: I sided with the other crewmate in the squabble. I assumed that Miranda would get it, seeing as I’d been successfully wooing her for a while. I assumed, in essence, that she was more human than she was.

I could gloss over the math with an explanation – Miranda didn’t trust me, and wasn’t fully focused on the mission, therefore – but really, it’s a simple if-then statement. If Miranda scorned, Miranda die. It somewhat undermines the otherwise convincing humanity of Mass Effect 2’s cast. If I’m meant to truly value and fear for their safety, their fate shouldn’t be left to such simple mechanics.

While I’m quibbling, let’s get this out of the way: why do otherwise sophisticated games (hi, Bioshock) rely on shoot-the-glowing-weak-points boss battles to resolve their main quests? I mean, is this just some sick homage to all the games you’re better than?

That said, the tenor of humanity running through ME2 is far beyond anything in its class. In a recent post, Destructoid’s Brad Nicholson said he simply couldn’t stop thinking about Mass Effect 2. This is the mark of good, powerful storytelling – it sinks its claws into you. It occupies your idle moments. It has Nicholson, and me, and legions of gamers straining towards the future, aching for Mass Effect 3.

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Keeping up with which Kardashian has been to the White House

To paraphrase from the Oscar-nominated film "Up in the Air" - Grown men love athletes because they make millions of dollars and date supermodels. Children love athletes because they follow their dreams.

What Oscar-nominated actor George Clooney didn't mention: Celebutantes love athletes because, if they're successful enough, they can provide a one-way ticket to the White House. Not to live there in any official capacity - just to visit.

For non-diplomats, meeting the president is a rare honor usually reserved for kids on field trips and a select few who happen to be attending the right event at the right time. One of our illustrious contributors here at Charge Shot!!! is one of those select few, and has a photo to prove it.

But another group of people that get a special introduction to the commander in chief are the members of a professional sports team that has recently won a championship. This group was not overlooked by reality TV stars and celebrities-for-no-reason Khloe and Kim Kardashian.


CHAPTER 1: How Khloe Made It

On August 27, 2009, television socialite Khloe Kardashian threw a party at LA's Halo nightclub to welcome LA Laker acquisition Ron Artest to town. At the party, she met Artest's new teammate Lamar Odom and sparks immediately flew. Kardashian and Odom became romantically involved, and after a whirlwind month-long romance, the two got engaged. They were married September 28, just in time to feature the wedding on a special two-hour season 4 premiere event of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. (The special premiered November 8, 2009 and drew 4.1 million viewers.)

Fast forward to January 25, 2010. The happily married couple made their way to the White House, along with Odom's Laker teammates. President Barack Obama hosted a meeting to congratulate last year's NBA champions, and everyone on the team got a "plus one." Khloe and the other Laker wives got a personal tour of the White House before meeting the prez along with their hubbies.

CHAPTER 2: Kim's Aspirations

Rewind to Khloe and Odom's wedding. The ceremony took place two months after older Kardashian sister Kim split up with her star athlete boyfriend Reggie Bush, running back for the New Orleans Saints. Kim couldn't accompany Bush back to the Big Easy when time came to start practices because of her commitment to filming her series, and the pair split rather than deal with the complications involved in a long-distance relationship for another year (they had been dating since 2007).

But when younger Khloe tied the knot, it reminded Kim how much she missed having Reggie in her life, so she jumped on a plane to Nawlins immediately after the reception to try and win back her man. At this point in time, the Saints were 3-0 and would not lose a game until December. We all know what the Saints went on to accomplish in the playoffs, and when Obama throws his annual congratulatory get-together for the Super Bowl champs, you can bet your shares in D-A-S-H clothing boutique that Kim will be there with bells on (barring a second breakup, of course).

CHAPTER 3: Illegitimate Attempts

The Kardashians are not the first socialite family to try and infiltrate the inner sanctum of the White House. We all remember the embarrassing events of November 24, 2009 where a prominent Virginia couple - Tareq and Michaele Salahi - somehow made it past security to attend a state dinner honoring the Prime Minister of India. They waltzed right past the secret service (they were screened for weapons, so no one was in any immediate danger because of the mixup), and although a reporter purportedly recognized them and knew they weren't on the guest list, they still made it right down the receiving line and shook hands with some of the most influential men in charge.

Apparently if you look the part and play up your charm and influences, security will pay you less attention than regular old gatecrashers. Hey, it happens to hot girls in clubs all the time, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Just who are these infamous Salahis, who thought they could so brazenly jeopardize our national security just to have some cool pics to post on their facebook pages? Tareq Salahi is a polo aficionado and scandal-magnet, most of which stem from controversial dealings involving his family's now bankrupt Oasis Winery, misuse of proceeds raised by his various "charitable" events and foundations, and widespread bill-skipping in general. His wife Michaele Salahi (nee Michelle Holt) is a model, lobbyist, and professed former Miss USA pageant winner and Washington Redskins cheerleader. However, both organizations have repeatedly denied these claims.

Michaele is also an aspiring reality TV star, having been in talks to star in the upcoming "Real Housewives of D.C." series. In fact, a camera crew from said series attempted to accompany her into the White House on that fateful November night, but were turned away at the gate.

Maybe the Salahis' party crashing was just a stunt cooked up by the "Real Housewives" team to jazz up the premiere of their show. Maybe the Salahis are just entitled dicks who spend money they don't have and go places they're not invited. Maybe both. But either way, they should learn a lesson from the Kardashians: you're only famous enough to get a legitimate invitation to meet the President after you've starred in a trashy reality TV show, not before.

Another lesson the Salahis can learn from the whole situation: it's not necessarily fame or power or money or influence that makes it okay for obscenely wealthy socialites to show up at the White House - it's just who you're sleeping with.
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24 in 24 Words – Day 8, Hour 7

Episode 7 - “10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.”

Spoilers after the jump!

Cherry Jones twiddles her thumbs while President Slumdog evils up the place. Starbuck plot is still dumb as hell, but Euro Jack kicks ass.

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – Pop/Rock Piano Edition

A recent running topic on Charge Shot!!! lately has been the outdated catalogue of music genres.  As Jordan wrote a few weeks ago, many of the terms are obsolete, especially the ones less concerned with the music itself, like “indie” or “alternative.” 

This week we’ve got Sunspot, who straddle variations on mainstream rock, calling themselves the “Cheap Trick of geek-rock and Van Halen for nerds.”  Pretty ballsy comparisons there, guys.  They hail from Madison, Wisconsin, a beautiful town that doesn’t get nearly enough attention.  So good on you, Sunspot, for striving to raise Madison’s profile even just a tick. 

Providing a nice counterpoint to Sunspot’s alternative rock is the piano music of Italy’s Livio Amato.  I can’t read Italian at all, but if you do, you might enjoy his website.

Enough stalling, let’s get to some rides.

You know that section of your now-shuttered record store labeled “Pop/Rock”?  It was chock full of albums filled with tracks that sounded like “Neanderthal.”  The bass line switches between a bouncy mainstream punk feel and a rumbling, monster-in-the-basement sound.  Sunspot has some metal aspirations – crunchy riffs abound – but they refuse to fully commit.  I imagine a band meeting where someone points to a framed Foo Fighters poster on the wall and tells the guitarist to ease up a bit.  To be honest, I didn’t have much time to consider the music, as I was incredibly distracted by the lyrics.  The opening lines, “Virtual murder, pixelated death/We can kill each other, with no regrets,” sound like a comment on violence in the Internet age.  The words don’t get much more sophisticated than that, however, and the prechorus line “Now I’m fucking my PC” just grates on me.  The ride is rather perfunctory, an afterthought to an afterthought of a song.

The first couple bars of melody in “No Place Like Home” call to mind traces of The Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen A Face.”  It’s not one-to-one, but the notes he’s using as touchstones between phrases remind me so much of that chord progression.  I suppose invoking the Fab Four is rarely a bad idea, especially since here it’s preceded by a thumping bass that only would’ve made it on a Beatles record in a Ringo song.  The song’s about shedding your hometown like so many molted skins – a sentiment many can identify with as they start post-collegiate life.  The music and lyrics don’t quite live up to their promise, however, leveling out to become four minutes of completely inoffensive rock.  Toward the end, a few sweeping red curves spice up the ride.  Just don’t expect any epileptic fits on this one.  Those aiming for places on the leaderboard should definitely aim to nab the Butter Ninja bonus for collecting nearly all of the yellow blocks.  I didn’t see too many along the way, which should make that an easy addition to your score.

“Crepuscolo” is surprisingly vibrant for a piano-only track.  There’s plenty of traffic to slough through, even if it doesn’t always match up with Amato’s dexterous fingers.  Upon hearing the alternation of dense chords and spritely melody, I was instantly reminded of several titles from the indie game scene.  Specifically, I’m thinking of the opening music for Today I Die, a touching little game by Daniel Benmergui.  The rising arpeggios connote an emotional buoyancy, someone’s rising feeling that they can surpass the obstacle before them.  Not a bad message for someone playing Audiosurf, trying to make it to the end of the track unscathed.  The traffic activity did confuse a few players, however.  Ko Tao points out, “Almost all of my other piano tracks are 2-digit traffic and straight uphill, no matter how intense the actual music is.”  The challenge here is a surprise, but a pleasant one.

Just like “Crepuscolo,” “Sogno Agitato” generates a high volume of traffic for a piano track.  The only other instruments are some light strings in the background, but they do little more than support the movement of the piano.  Shocked may not be the right word, but I did find it curious that there’s another piano piece out there called “Sogno Agitato,” by someone named Suzanne Ciani.  I couldn’t find anything linking the two, so it must simply be coincidence.  Babelfish informs me, rather circuitously, that the title means something like “agitated dream.”  I definitely hear Amato invoking the journey of a dream: starting sweetly, adding turbulence, and then building hopeful suspense.  Surfinonbeatzzz believes it “sounds like a movie score.  In the first part somebody died and in the second part that somebody was born.”  Conversely, hellfaucet describes it as “sexy, suspenseful bathtime  music (in winter).”  I wonder what sexy, suspenseful bathtime music sounds like in spring.

Author’s Note

All songs were played on the Pro difficulty at least twice using the Eraser and Vegas characters.  Nothing witty to say this time around, sorry.

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The Agony and the Ecstacy of Being a Comic Book Fanboy

Reading comic books is an experience akin to being a baseball fan. You pick a particular book, character, writer, artist, or publisher based on some early personal experience and you stick with them for years, through thick and thin, boom and bust, feast and famine, just like a sports team. No matter how tough the going gets, they're yours and you'll always come back to them.

For me, my character of choice is Spider-Man and my house is the House of Ideas, Marvel Comics. My devotion to America's favorite webslinger can be traced back to a routine doctor's appointment around the time I turned five. As it is with most children, visits to the pediatrician were fairly traumatic and my boomer parents knew the best way to get me to go through with them was to present me with rewards for being a tough little trooper. My childhood doctor's office was located next door to the College of Comic Book Knowledge, a comics shop seemingly built into the front of its owner's house.

Spider-Man came into my life via an unusual route, Ren & Stimpy. In kindergarten, I was a humongous Ren & Stimpy Show fanatic (and I still am). On that first voyage to the Comic College with my father eighteen years ago, I bought a Ren & Stimpy comic, but specifically a crossover comic: "The Amazing Spider-Man vs. Powdered Toast Man". While Powdered Toast Man may have been the first superhero I was exposed to (and I do mean exposed), Spider-Man was the first to capture my imagination. Trade paperbacks of The Very Best of Spider-Man (featuring the origin story among many other classics), The Return of the Sinister Six (where Doctor Octopus concocts a scheme to poison the world's cocaine supply and thus turn the 80's ruling class of coke addicts into his loyal minions, I read this when I was six years old mind you), and a Spider-Man vs. Venom collection soon followed.

My youth was one of worship for my Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Peter Parker was my hero and idol. My moral compass and life model. In my young eyes, he could do no wrong.

So you can imagine I might have been disheartened when, a few short years ago, Spider-Man sold his soul to the Devil.

In a controversial move, Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada took over an arc called "One More Day/Brand New Day" of The Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man's and therefore Marvel's flagship book, from its regular writer J. Michael Straczynski. Quesada's brief time as author saw Aunt May mortally wounded by a Kingpin-backed sniper's bullet meant for Peter in the wake of Marvel's Civil War. Despite being friends with Doctor Strange, having a good working relationship with several gods and otherworldly beings, being a member of Earth's Mightiest Heroes- the Avengers, and you know...being a superhero, Peter had no means to save his beloved geriatric aunt from the sweet embrace of death. However, an opportunity to save May's life came from Mephisto, a demonic character and the Marvel Universe equivalent of Satan. Mephisto, Prince of Darkness and Father of Lies, offered to prevent an elderly woman with a long history of health problems from dying in exchange for erasing Peter's marriage to Mary Jane from existence.

In essence, Lucifer un-opaquely offered Spider-Man a retcon.

Retconning (from "retroactive continuity") is the unfortunate but oftentimes necessary comic book practice of erasing confusing, inconvenient, politically incorrect, or unpopular events from the continuity of a long-running title in an effort to keep things making sense. A good (or maybe a bad) example of retconning might be the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy; Boba Fett used to be a silent badass with a mysterious past, but when Episode II came out he was clone of some douchebag named Jango and was responsible for the Clone Wars. A recent comic book retcon is the inclusion of Captain America as being part of the Weapon X project that would eventually create Wolverine and other characters.

It was clear from the beginning that Quesada was making this drastic change because he hated Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker's longtime love interest and wife. Quesada felt that a character as schlubby and down-on-his-luck everymanly as Peter Parker lost his edge if he got to come home to a really hot supermodel. Now, this isn't the medium for me to debate the merits of the Mary Jane character, but I will say that I have been an MJ fan since I was a little boy so I think Quesada is a hack and deserves to be put up against a wall and shot for his crimes against all of us Peter Parkers of the world who would just like to daydream that they could have a beautiful redhead as a girlfriend who didn't mind if we dressed up in red and blue tights and stayed out late fighting crime.

IamnotprojectingIamnotprojectingIamnotprojectingIamnotprojecting...

Anyway, Quesada's move of making Marvel's avatar of common decency and underdog goodness strike a bargain with the forces of evil to save the life of the only mother he ever knew at the cost of his marriage, not Mary Jane's life or soul mind you, she still exists in Marvel continuity but she and Peter just never got together, was pretty lame and was seen by most fans as such. It's a really transparent effort to correct some of the in and out-of-universe screw-ups perpetrated by the Marvel bullpen and a classless grab at making the books closer to the movies. Spider-Man had recently revealed his true identity to the world on national television at Iron Man's behest during the events of Civil War, which saw the Marvel Universe split down the middle between heroes who wanted to disclose the truth to the public in the name of security and those who wanted to keep do-gooding the old fashioned way (there was a whole national security vs. privacy thing in there that was beat over your head pretty thoroughly). After Mephisto's reality-altering magic spell, everybody oh-so conveniently forgot that Peter Parker was Spider-Man and writers no longer had to deal with that messy factoid. Mary Jane was gone and Peter was back to his old "I can't pay the rent!" bachelor crises, and Harry Osborn was brought back to life for good measure. Whatever.

This all happened around the time of Spider-Man 3's release, so my faith in comic books was pretty much shattered for a short time. But Marvel has recently promised a move away from these big, confusing, and uncharacteristically dark crossover events like Civil War that make retcons so necessary in favor of a new direction called "The Heroic Age". The current literal crossover to end all crossovers Siege is set to resolve all this and begin a return to good old fashioned comic book storytelling. Siege depicts a Götterdämmerung-like battle in Asgard between the forces of evil led by the former-Green-Goblin-current-Iron-Patriot Norman Osborn and his Dark Avengers (long story) and a resurrected Captain America and every good guy ever.

Marvel has ensured readers a new equilibrium will be established after these events conclude in the spring, I can only hope that, for the sake of the medium, Mary Jane is a part of that. Continue...

Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 45 - The Roots

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

I've been doing this project for almost a year now, and I've listened to a lot of interesting music. But thus far I've skirted around one of the biggest forces in popular music today - rap. Except for a brief dalliance with OutKast last summer, my rap listening has been entirely music that is decades old - Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, and Run-D.M.C.

I don't know why I've been avoiding rap music. It's not a question of taste - what rap I've been exposed to I've found intriguing. But there's something very intimidating to me about the entire field of hip hop, even more so than most popular music I know nothing about. My parents exposed me to classic rock, and the white-boy indie music that's churned out today is not terribly far from my nerdy academic sensibilities. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm not the targeted audience for rap music, and there's something about that that makes me feel like a poser merely for listening. On Friday night, as I kicked back in my khaki shorts with a glass of wine and a crossword puzzle, I couldn't help but notice that the Roots CD I had put on didn't really fit the rest of the scene. I kept waiting for the Cool Police to come in and tell me to turn that music off and put back on a violin concerto or Vampire Weekend or something. In my mind's eye, the Cool Police always look like my black neighbors, who I'm certain are judging me through the walls when I listen to this.

This is all ridiculous, of course. If you haven't heard, we're living in a post-racial world now, and hip-hop is arguably the most influential and prominent genre in popular music today. The counter-cultural icons of yesteryear are now thoroughly mainstream (Exhibit A: Last night's Superbowl half-time show), and I'd argue that rap artists, from their politically-charged lyrics to their crazy celebrity antics, are the true musical superstars of today.

Which means I should probably buckle down and start listening to more rap and stop worrying if that slightly tan looking dude is judging me for listening when I have my window rolled down at a stop light. But it's a different kind of music, and as a result I found it hard to do this week's write-up. Rap music has its place in the history and present culture of popular music, but it also has its own traditions and rules which I'm hardly familiar with. (What's with the skits? The nicknames? Why does every other track have a guest vocalist?).

I'm also not as familiar with even the basic terminology, so I hope you'll forgive me as I try and wade through this. I'm going to try and make an effort to put more rap artists on my listening list, and hopefully I'll learn enough during the process to not embarrass myself when I talk about it.

If I approach something entirely the wrong way, don't be afraid to berate me in the comments. But just keep in mind that I'm a skinny white kid with a Beethoven bumper sticker on his car that's trying his best.

WEEK 45

ARTIST OF THE WEEK: The Roots

WHAT I KNEW BEFORE: Really, I was only familiar with the Roots because they're currently the house band on the subpar Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (in fact, they're probably the only consistently good aspect of that show). I was intrigued enough by their all-over-the-place style of jamming to choose to listen to them for a week; as it turns out, their recorded material is somewhat different in tone, the most notable distinction being the lack of a full-time sousaphone player (seriously).

MY LISTENING: I listened to Things Falls Apart (1999) every day this week, and to Phrenology (2002) three times, as these seemed to be the two most highly-acclaimed Roots albums. I also listened to Game Theory (2006) and Rising Down (2008), as those were the other two Roots albums that happened to be available at my local library.

WHAT I LIKED:

Like I said, most of what I can compare the Roots' music to is older rap from the 80s and early 90s. And, in that regard, their music is lot denser than old-school hip-hop. Gone is the single rapper laying lyrics atop a single tape sample; rather, the Roots' tracks are intricately layered and deep, in the sense that it feels there's a lot of textural levels of the music to explore. Part of the Roots' claim to fame is that they use few recordings during their live performances, rather playing all the backing beats themselves. This sort of performance certainly shows through on their CDs, as the tracks are filled with complex drum parts, backing vocals, squealing guitars and electrifying keyboard parts. It could have ended up sounding flashy and overproduced, all glitz and no substance, but I think the "live performance" aesthetic helps to ground these songs. That most of these tracks wind their way through funk, soul and other disparate genre influences only makes it that much more interesting.

The Roots are also deep in another sense - their lyrics tackle serious subjects like domestic violence, while name-dropping prominent black figures like Chinua Achebe and W.E.B. DuBois. I wasn't expecting the music from a second-rate late night show's house band to tackle such subjects, so I was surprised to discover that a lot of the Roots' music is grounded in this political and social activism. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting and so it took a few days for me to get on board with this sort of music, but by Thursday I was admiring the well-crafted, very intelligent lyrics. "Inevitably, hip-hop records are treated as though they are disposable," implores a voice in "Act Won", the opening to Things Fall Apart. "They are not maximized as product, not to mention as art." The Roots, at least, seem to be trying to change this.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

I don't think I listened to a single Roots album this week that was less than an hour long. It seems like with each CD they're trying to outdo themselves, cramming everything they possible can onto the disc. To call it "overambitious" would be an understatement; every album is another attempt to make the definitive alternative hip hop masterpiece, and I'm not sure if they ever really succeed. I'm all for incorporating a variety of influences into your music, but the endless sound collages and spoken poetry went a little too far for me. A few times, like "The Return to Innocence Lost" at the end of Things Falls Apart, and the epic "Water" on Phrenology, degenerate into what amounts to a bunch of sounds cobbled together to drift aimlessly for ten minutes at a time. I much preferred the Roots when they concentrated their efforts on shorter, less artsy tracks.

WHAT I LEARNED: I usually do my listening while working on schoolwork or cooking dinner, but I'm not sure if rap music is best suited for those endeavors. The Roots especially were a different kind of music, more emotionally draining and in-your-face, harder music to multitask to. I was able to appreciate the music more while driving, or going on a walk, when there was nothing else to distract me. Whether this is a phenomenon that applies to all hip hop, or just the Roots, remains to be seen.

FURTHER EXPLORATION WOULD ENTAIL: I really have no idea where to begin. Wikipedia tells me that Roots frontman ?uestlove headed a "neo soul and hip-hop informed musical collective" called the Soulquarians around the beginning of the century, with other musicians like Mos Def and Q-Tip (who I've at least heard of), and Talib Kwali (who I actually saw perform once). I suppose this would be a place to start? Perhaps?

BEST SONG YOU'VE HEARD: "The Seed 2.0"

For the second week in a row, the default choice, as it's possibly the only song you've heard.

BEST SONG YOU HAVEN'T HEARD: "The Spark"

NEXT WEEK'S ARTIST: Van Halen

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Writer’s Jukebox – Regina, Country, and More Country

I had grand plans to present a trifecta of Steph, Gene, and Jordasch this week.  Steph’s always good for name-dropping artists I had no idea she’d be interested in.  Jordasch often serves up unique takes on bands I’ve gotten complacent about.  And Gene…I treat his stuff like an exciting fantasy novel, filled with kickass groups whose names I’d swear weren’t real.  Too bad Gene got a big fat job and couldn’t participate (congrats?).  While I can’t even begin to fill his ginormous Italian shoes, I will attempt to fill his slot for this week’s Jukebox.

Of course, the week I replace a writer is the week I’m the odd man out.  Both Steph and Jordasch are riding the country train this week, while I’m off in the indie songstress world.  Weird, right?

Craig – Is it possible to get tired of Regina Spektor?  Mmm…nope.

I spend a lot of time in transit listening to podcasts, so I don’t move through new music as often as I’d like.  On the occasion that I spend more than five minutes in a car, I usually end up just choosing something I’m familiar with.  Example: I threw on Them Crooked Vultures today.  I believe I’ve said more than enough about them.

Would it surprise you (given the prevalence of TCV) that another artist getting regularly play on my iPod is Regina Spektor?  I picked up her latest album Far in the fall, and I circle back to it about once a month.  Some of her vocal theatrics – glottal stops, what might as well be yodeling, adorably amateurish beatboxing – can be excessive, but she makes up for it with clever metaphors and soulful crooning.  “Two Birds” tackles its central image from every possible angle, painting a heartbreaking image of an all-too-common relationship.  The chorus of “One More Time With Feeling” - “Hold on, one more time with feeling/Try it again. Breathing’s just a rhythm” – gives me chills.  I can’t imagine anyone who’s had a loved one in the hospital wouldn’t be similarly affected.

My favorite track on the record by far is “Dance Anthem of the 80s.”  It runs the gamut of Regina’s tricks, from a weird Sibelius voice interlude to stuttery vocals to athletic melismas.  It’s silly, epic, and endearing.  On her previous record, Begin to Hope, I could listen to her sing the word ‘better’ forever.  On Far, it’s how she sings ‘sleep’ in this track.  Just beautiful.

Stephanie – Who knew Alison Krauss had protégés?

My boyfriend has been trying to balance out my musical preferences by exposing me to Metal, and so I naturally have to balance out his Metallica with my Bluegrass -- my secret long-time love.  Being a devoted fan of 27-time Grammy darling Alison Krauss, I’m willing to give anything she produces or endorses a reasonable chance. This attitude is what led me to discover an album called Secrets by Sierra Hull, the new 16-year old sensation of the picking world.

Hull is a precision mandolin player who is highly talented while still having enough baby fat on her cheeks to be cute rather than pretty. Her vocal and instrumental talent is shocking for someone so young, though it’s hard to accurately judge the quality of a young artist that is backed-up by one of the most established bands in the genre. Supported by Alison Krauss and her Grammy-winning band Union Station, it was hard for me to believe that the album wouldn’t sound good. Hull is clearly vocally influenced by Krauss, singing with a clear voice that has a gentle simplicity and strength.  I have always appreciated how Alison Krauss hit her notes without an over-excessive amount of vibrato (often with none at all), and this is a talent that Hull has set out to imitate in her music.

I would recommend this album to those who appreciate and enjoy strong female vocals and the gentle harmonies of bluegrass, but Sierra Hull is still quite obviously young. More interesting for me will be seeing where her career goes from here.  Will it follow in the footsteps of her sponsor and mentor with a successful long-term career brimming with awards, or will she fizzle out and fade into the recesses of time?

Jordasch – T. Bone Strikes Again

I'm of two minds when it comes to country music:  I grew up listening to it with my dad in the car on the way up to our lakehouse, but it's not a form I've been comfortable with until recently.  I'm still not completely at home with it; I went to my first country concert this past summer and felt, more like anything else, like I was at the zoo.  Except all the animals drank Miller Lite.  Incidentally, I enjoyed the hell out of myself.

So although I regard country fans (and some country artists) from a nebbish, This American Life-esque perspective, because of my upbringing (and the fact that country aims almost unfailingly at familiarity) there's something about the genre that feels natural to me.  I was understandably excited, then, when I heard about Crazy Heart, a tantalizing bit of Oscar bait featuring a Waylon Jennings-like outlaw country star played by Jeff Bridges.  The movie's not perfect, but the soundtrack nearly is.  In addition to a introductory course of classic country music going all the way back to honky tonk pioneers like The Delmore Brothers and the Louvin Brothers, the Crazy Heart soundtrack features some of the best original music since O Brother, Where Art Thou? (not coincidentally also written by T. Bone Burnett).  Tracks like "Fallin' and Flyin'" feature the kind of plain-spoken wisdom that has characterized great country music since its inception.  Jeff Bridges' voice possesses just the right amount of grit and whiskey to be completely appropriate for the material.  A truly outstanding listen that also happens to feature the front-runner for the Best Original Song Oscar ("The Weary Kind").  I'm smitten.

That and a bunch of Spoon.

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After the Jump: Space Buttresses

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Another week, another podcast! This one concerns itself largely with Oscar nominees and also some other things, including Ernest Borgnine, our music libraries and the forthcoming Bioshock 2.

Music this week is from the Emerald Hill Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a game which you can play on literally anything with a screen, from Game Boys to refrigerators.

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The Late Shift: A Belated But Pertinent Book Review

I grew up in an expressly Letterman household. For years, I never even understood that there was even another late night show to choose from. 11:35 pm meant that Letterman's smug grin was gracing our screen, no argument, end of story. It wasn't until I got my own 11-inch television for my sixteenth birthday that I sometimes stayed up late and watched Leno, in an act of teenage rebellion surely unmatched in the history of youth.

Still, by that point in time, the fabled Late Night Wars of the early 90s had become stagnant. My parents had passed down rumors of the former vitriol between Letterman and Leno, but that conflict seemed like a relic of the past by the time I started watching late night shows around the year 2002 or so.

However, the recent late night spat between Leno and Conan has inspired many television critics to go back and compare that First Late Night War to the Second. Though sadly out of print, Bill Carter's 1994 book The Late Shift was available at my local library, and I checked it out in order to gain a little perspective about the battles for that coveted 11:35 slot, both past and present.

A bit of history: while today we're awash in network and cable programs to watch after the news, once upon a time, there was only one late night variety show. Johnny Carson reigned as King of The Tonight Show for thirty years. As he was preparing to retire in 1990, David Letterman was viewed as the natural successor. Letterman had risen from his humble beginnings in rural Indiana to host his own show at 12:30, Late Night with David Letterman, and his humor was widely acknowledged as being smart and edgy, though though not necessarily very marketable. So when Carson retired, The Tonight Show went to Jay Leno, a stand-up comedian of some moderate acclaim who had guest-hosted the show a few times in the past. Critics considered this a financially smart but artistically cowardly decision - promoting the mediocre but more palatable host over the more unconventional wildcard. The decision made Letterman so upset that he eventually left NBC to start his own show on CBS.

Let's see: we have a younger, quirkier host who is more popular with the younger audience, being passed up by the brass at NBC who prefer to stick with the status quo - a vanilla, unthreatening, boring choice. Does this sound familiar?

Karl Marx told us that history happens twice, one as tragedy, once as farce. He might have gotten it backward - while Conan's recent dismissal is an undeniable tragedy for The Tonight Show, (one in which both Conan and Leno seem genuinely offended), the Letterman-Leno skirmish of 1993 plays out more like a comic opera. Carter chronicles how, after Leno had been hosting The Tonight Show for a few months, NBC went behind his back and offered the show to Letterman. But Letterman smelled something fishy; he desperately wanted to host the legendary show, but his distrust of the NBC Network led him to jump ship and set up a show at CBS - a show that, for the first time, was a consistent challenge to The Tonight Show in the ratings.

The conflict boils down to a lot of mid-level producers standing around in a office talking about contracts, but Carter has the skill and wit to paint very vivid characters, giving the reader what feels like a true insiders' glimpse of how television works. The most memorable character is Helen Kushnick, Leno's agent. Kushnick is portrayed as a spiteful harridan who ruled The Tonight Show with an iron fist - first planting false rumors to newspapers hoping to push Carson into an early retirement, then demanding that NBC give Leno contractual rights to The Tonight Show, and finally blackballing celebrities who dared to appear on any other talk show (this decision helped drive The Arsenio Hall Show to an early grave, as celebrities were too scared about incurring Kushnick's wrath to appear there).

Kushnick is the true villain of the story. Leno, on the other hand, is portrayed as sincere guy, if a little too naive for show business. I came away from the book with a new respect for Leno the person (if not for his sense of humor); he's a man with a dogged work ethic and a good deal of loyalty to his friends and coworkers, a man who often doesn't seem to understand how the system works. Leno's puppy-eyed Oprah interview, in which he expresses bewilderment at being the bad guy, makes much more sense to me after this book. This is a man who lives life convinced that everyone is out to get him and he is always the victim. In one memorable scene, Carter chronicles how Leno was so worried about his future that he hid in a closet during a staff meeting to eavesdrop and make sure he wasn't on the chopping block.

Letterman is also portrayed as insecure, but a different kind of insecure - a man prone to temper tantrums after recording his show, believing that he'd done a horrible job. And some of Letterman's battles are truly petty (at one point, Letterman almost lost his chance at an NBC contract because an executive was upset he was uninvited to a party Letterman threw).

But, colorful characters aside, the true value of this book comes from the history of television it so engagingly presents. Before reading this book, I had never realized what a cultural institution The Tonight Show is. The book portrays all the major players tiptoeing around the legacy of Johnny Carson (a major part of Letterman's decision to leave for CBS was that Carson advised him to do so). For thirty years, The Tonight Show was all there was after prime time, and my young self hadn't quite realized how sacred such a show is in the land of Hollywood.

The most fascinating part of The Late Shift, to our modern sensibilities, is the chapter at the end chronicling Conan O'Brien's rise to prominence after Letterman's departure for CBS. The book takes great care to emphasize how difficult it is to put on a nightly variety show, evening after evening, and still manage to be funny and friendly (Chevy Chase and Pat Sajak were two memorable failures). Here was a young man who had literally no performing experience, picked up from the SNL writer's studio to head one of the most taxing enterprises in television. That we know that Conan eventually rose to the very top (if but for a brief time) only makes the story more remarkable.

However, the more I read this book, the more I realized that Conan was never Tonight Show material. This is no knock against his abilities; I think he's a very talented star. But I realized how much the Johnny Carson aesthetic still dominates the cultural force that is The Tonight Show, even twenty years later. Conan was never at his funniest during his seven month tenure, hedged in by demands to cater to the lowest common denominator while still retaining his youthful, college-aged audience from Late Night.

Letterman realized that the weight of The Tonight Show's history would infringe on his style, and eventually gave up the job of his dreams to obtain more creative control at CBS. Here's to hoping Conan lands on his feet at some other network in September, one that gives him more freedom. In the meantime, the Second Late Night War will eventually fade into history, simply one more notorious event in the chronicle of an American television legacy. Who knows what will happen next?

Although if the Third Late Night War is destined to be a struggle between Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon, whoever wins, we lose.

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Taking the Super out of Superhero

Every culture needs its mythology.  The Ancient Greeks told stories about a Pantheon of horny, buttinsky gods and goddesses.  Royals and commoners alike of Elizabethan England flocked to the theater to watch plays about horny, buttinsky monarchs.  In the United States, we have superheroes.

Superheroes.  Men and women possessing incredible abilities.  Moral lessons woven in the very fibers of their being.  Garish costumes aside, they represent the best (and sometimes worst) that mankind has to offer.  Superheroes face insurmountable obstacles and somehow find a way – occasionally with the help of some super friends – to surmount them. 

To accomplish great feats, many costumed crusaders wield superpowers.  You know the drill.  Superman flies (among other things).  Cyclops shoots lasers out of his eyes.  Batman’s…rich (more on that later).  These flashy powers make great fodder for videogames, which thrive on subtle variations of the “Go there, Shoot that guy” template.  There’s also a high chance that someone into comics is nerdy enough to care about videogames.  Bingo, bango, established customer base.

There’s just one problem: games rarely get superheroes right. 

Modern games, in an effort to hook the stereotypical, increasingly time-crunched player age 18-34, routinely dole out rewards.  Ignoring the social disease that is the Gamerscore (mine’s 9689, by the way), developers usually award the player new abilities and mechanics as the game progresses.  I say modern, but this practice goes all the way back to the original Nintendo (Famicom, for any Japanese readers out there).  Just look at the Mega Man or Metroid series and you’ll see franchises based on the careful dishing out of powers and upgrades to reward the player for time spent with the game.

Unfortunately, this organizing principle of player empowerment is at loggerheads with what is alluring about superheroes.  Part of a superhero’s appeal is his or her vast array of abilities.  Translating this to a game means locking key aspects of a hero’s identity (i.e. his powers) behind arbitrary experience and upgrade systems.  No one wants to play as Superman unless they have full access to his considerable arsenal: flight, ice breath, laser eyes, x-ray vision, super strength, et cetera (I’m looking at you, Superman 64).  It also rarely makes sense for superheroes to improve at wielding their abilities.  No amount of punching dudes in the face is going to justify an increase in the range of Spider-Man’s Spider Sense.

These scenarios often result in the player starting a game with a Superhero Lite, stripped of his memorable powers until later in the game.  This is rarely justifiable in the fiction without making it some kind of origin story.  And seeing as how the major comic houses reboot a character every five years or so, I generally don’t trust game writers – with their short resume of impressive stories – to handle the task of explaining why Magneto can’t pull iron out of people’s blood at the beginning of the game but please just wait until he gets to Level 15 when he can cast Kill You So Fast With Your Own Blood.  Games shouldn’t waste time toying with the fiction; they should enable players to play through it.

Attempts to skirt the issue of funky fiction typically result in less than stellar original properties.  Take 2009’s Prototype.  Developer Radical Entertainment has experience making games based on the Hulk, and it shows.  You play as Alex Mercer, a douche of a protagonist the likes of which haven’t been seen since the first Assassin’s Creed.  A mish-mash of free-running, clunky espionage, and helicopter-kicking, Prototype feels less like any sort of superhero story than a love letter to breaking shit.  Mercer handles like a drunken gorilla and so does the narrative.  I used to wonder why companies so rarely launch new superheroes.  Now I know.  They end up with crap like this.

The luxury an absolutely forgettable story like Prototype’s affords is the ability to justify why a superhero might gain new powers along the way.  He’s discovering the full extent of superness, one hollow plot twist at a time.  Real superheroes don’t have this luxury.  Tomes of canonical backstory exist in online repositories, supplying nerds with ammunition to call shenanigans on any incongruous plot lines or character reinventions.  The rich character histories are double-edged swords for game designers, providing years of minable fiction but sowing a minefield of logic problems for those with even a passing knowledge of superheroes.

Marvel’s tried to obscure the issue by stuffing Smash Bros. levels of fan service down the player’s throat.  The Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series operates under the assumption that nobody will notice that Wolverine getting better at regenerating makes absolutely no sense when they can control a party of Iron Man, the Hulk, Johnny Storm, and Deadpool.  It doesn’t help that this Throw the Comic Encyclopedia At You technique is also an attempt to disguise Gauntlet-style gameplay so shallow the Charge Shot!!! crew renamed it simply Combo!  Yes, Iceman can surf on frozen air molecules, and Jean Grey can summon Phoenix abilities.  But it’s all so abstracted that the rewards feel minor.

An outstanding exception to the rule is Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum.  And I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Batman is one of the few superheroes without any real superpowers.  Sure, he’s rich and smart and sneaky, but he isn’t the fastest being in the known universe or an Omega-level mutant or imbued with the power cosmic.  He’s a guy in a suit with some gadgets.  This fragility factors heavily into the gameplay of Arkham Asylum.  Engaging armed enemies is almost certainly suicide, so stealth becomes incredibly important.  Trapped on the island, Batman is at the mercy of villains like the Riddler, Scarecrow, and Joker, and must play along with their schemes until an opportunity to strike presents itself.  There are of course logic issues regarding his upgradable armor and equipment (why doesn’t he just grab the Ultra Batclaw the first time he goes to his cave?), but an excellent Scarecrow sequence toward the end totally justifies all of the gaminess.  Plus, he starts the game with enough combat prowess and a well-stocked inventory of tools that the player feels like Batman from the get-go, not some neutered Dark Knight knock-off.  Few games so accurately capture what it would feel like to actually be that badass. Videogames will continue to rely on the world of superheroes (just as film has) because it’s so familiar it would be hard not to stumble into an audience.  But that’s no excuse for stale design tropes impinging on the superhero experience.  Batman: Arkham Asylum set the bar high by telling a cohesive, compelling story that hits all the Batman touchstones without trying to reinvent the wheel or cripple the hero.  I refuse to play another superhero game that fails to live up to its protagonist’s promise.

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My Music Library, Past and Present

For a site so preoccupied with the here and now and, indeed, the distant and murky future, it seems we do a lot of griping about how we’ve lost something in this digital transition - that our Modern Lifestyles lack an intangible quality that no one can quite describe but everyone wants to complain about.

Most of those complaints center around the decline of the physical product, of the tape or disc that we can hold and look at and show off. It wasn’t so long ago that music buffs wanted to be John Cusack in High Fidelity (yes I know it was also a book but raise your hand if you read the book, yes that’s what I thought), with a gigantic meticulously-organized music library taking up an entire room of your house.

I knew a guy like that in high school. I wanted to be that guy. When I sat down late this past Sunday to clean up my iTunes library, I realized that I had become that guy without even knowing it. It didn’t feel as good as I thought it would.

The Big Bang: My Music Library’s Chaotic Ascendancy

Personal anecdote time: I was a late bloomer when it came to music. I didn’t own my first CDs until the turn of the millennium or so, and I had only been mining my parents’ music library for a short while before that. Back in those heady days, the ancient computer I had in my room was barely suitable for playing MP3s, and the only place to get those was Napster, where a 5 kb/s file transfer rate was cause for celebration.

As such, CDs still reigned supreme, and once I had a job I was in every two-bit used CD store I could find snapping up obscure albums by the Meat Puppets and Live, trying valiantly to flesh out my underdeveloped taste in music. This was the way of it for several years.

Then, in late 2003, I scraped together every cent I had and bought my first laptop, a Compaq Presario 2175us that is actually still running to this day – this was a time when having a laptop itself was a novelty, regardless of the shittiness of said laptop’s innards. That laptop came with Windows XP, and Windows XP shipped with Windows Media Player.

This opened my eyes to a whole new world of music organization – instead of my increasingly cumbersome CD shelf, I could import the songs to my hard drive. For the first time, all of my music could fit under my arm. That was the beginning of the end for my physical music library, and I only brought my CD collection to college for one semester before giving it up as a pointless, backbreaking endeavor.

Goodbye, Discs: The Digital Revolution

Now, up to this point, the acquisition of new music was always a memorable and personal experience – at its peak, I could tell you where and under what circumstances I picked up every CD in my collection, and I knew most of them front-to-back. This is because acquiring new music was more of an investment – by the time a CD was nestled in my shelf (organized in alphabetical order by artist), I had to go out, find it, risk the potential scorn of anyone with me or of the hipster douchebag at the checkout counter, and finally pay for the thing. Of course I’m going to listen to it.

Not so now. I sat down this weekend to do the first ever full-scale purge of my music library since it started on that first laptop in 2003 – some of the files are that old, and have survived an iTunes migration, several computer replacements, and a near-catastrophic 2006 incident that deleted about half of everything. Those songs were in the minority – most was music acquired haphazardly through college, where my music library quadrupled in size in a year and I borrowed everything I could get my hands on.

This means that there are songs in my music library I have never listened to. There are artists I know nothing about. There are entire albums that I don’t remember acquiring. In just a couple of hours, I had deleted four hundred songs, and there’s a lot more to go through.

None of this is bad, necessarily. I’ve been exposed to more music than seems possible in a very short time, and I’ve found it all more easily than anyone could have just one decade gone. But still, as with so many things, there’s a Something that isn’t there anymore. I’m not as deeply and personally connected to my music library anymore, and I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way.

One’s music library can be a reflection of one’s personality – you can learn a lot about someone by thumbing through their songs. My music library still is a reflection of me in most cases, but even with the undergrowth cut back a little it’s not as concise or as telling as it was five years ago. Mixed in with my favorite songs and the artists with whom I identify are albums and songs I’ve never gotten around to, stuff I had been recommended or that I thought would be interesting to listen to that I set aside for a rainy day and never picked up.

Likewise, some of the music that I do remember adding to my music library is less dear to me because it was much easier to come by, and because other music was easier to come by – with most songs just a couple of clicks away, it doesn’t take much time to find something new and keep what’s in your ears right now from making as deep an impression as it would if it was the the only album you could find in the store.

Now, Let Me Boss You Around

Today, take a minute to examine the stockpile of digital music you’ve acquired and take some time to really get a good look. Delete some things you know you’re never going to listen to (so long, The Dead Milkmen’s Beezlebubba), or some music you thought you’d try that you just didn’t like (check you later, Interpol’s Antics).

After that, reacquaint yourself with an old, forgotten favorite (Slim’s Interstate Medicine), or go out of your way to listen to something for which you never made time (Gomez’s Split the Difference). Not only will you like yourself for it, but it’ll also give you something to tell us about in the comments!

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Mopping Up Culture Vomit: Film Years

Though we're already in the second month of 2010, I'd argue that the celebration/mass picking-apart of the films of 2009 isn't over until they hand out those golden naked guys. The name "Golden Globes," incidentally, sounds a bit stranger in that context.

It's old hat (and quite fun) to rail against each year's crop of Oscar nominees, but I endorse a more chronologically-inclusive brand of movie-bitching. Sure, you can argue about what the best movie of the year is, but you might come dangerously close to coming to a consensus. If you're really in for an interminable bout of critical wankery, forget best films of the year: how about best film years? Batman Begins (eh), Pulp Fiction (better), and Sin City (GAH) as my three favorite movies of all time. Oh adolescence, how you humble me.

It took a quintessentially liberal arts film class (which I took during my freshman year, in 2005) at my alma mater to put me on the path towards filmic elitism (I think I may have mentioned the guy in this class who said, "This movie has no plot like a painting has no plot." Gross).

It was just a few years after my nose began to turn upward, then, that 2007 rolled around. The year of 007 (sorry) had a profound effect on the way I consider each year's film landscape. At the beginning of both 2009 and 2010, I've found myself thinking, "Well, that was no 2007."

2007, after all, was a veritable embarrassment of silver screen riches. It brought us a spectacular post-modern action/comedy (Hot Fuzz), a brilliant Barry Lyndon-esque western (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), two of the best animated films in recent memory (Ratatouille and Persepolis), two radically different, but equally incredible, documentaries (No End in Sight, perhaps the best documentary on foreign affairs ever made, and King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters), and, lest we forget, two automatic entries to the "greatest films of all time:" There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men.

It's really the presence of these two last films that secures 2007 a place in the annals of film history. It's rare, after all, that one classic film is released per year, let alone two. 2007 was such a great year for film, in fact, that it led the A.V. Club to introduce a short-lived feature (which I'll be damned if I can find) debating what the best year for film of all time might be.

Among people who actually think this kind of crap is important, 1939 usually emerges as the front-runner. That year brought us Stagecoach, The Rules of the Game, Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Wizard of Oz. Fairly unfuckwithable, especially considering those first two make my personal top ten list.

The 1970's were also a particularly fruitful decade for filmmaking, and 1975 sticks out even in an excellent period. '75 is home to Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon, Jaws, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

But what might have caused such artistic kismet? It's hard to say, especially considering the vast differences between the film climates in which these two years sit. 1939 is situated smack-dab in the middle of the Golden Age of Hollywood, when the filmmaking industry was dominated by the so-called "Big Five" studios (Fox Film Corporation, RKO, Loew's, Paramount, and Warner Bros.). These studios earned their "big" status by being fully (vertically) integrated corporations (that is, having substantial holdings in production, distribution, theater chains, and contracts with talent). The system didn't afford talent with much (any) freedom, but that didn't seem to tangibly reduce the quality of films produced.

The '70s saw filmmakers truly shaking off the yoke of studio oppression, experimenting with more frank depictions of sex and violence. Movies like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, The Exorcist, Chinatown, Halloween, and Apocalypse Now were violent and nihilistic on a level that would have seemed inconceivable during the studio era.

These two eras, then, have only the excellence of their filmic output in common, which begs the question: what climate encourages the best filmmaking? A unified studio system that puts talent under constant pressure to produce? Or a more ad hoc approach to filmmaking, as we have in the modern era?

It doesn't seem that either force exerts a conclusively positive pressure on filmmakers. And, because of this, it's hard to argue that any significant change in the filmmaking landscape (like, for instance, the rise of independent film in the 1990's) will have a truly positive or negative effect on the quality of films.

In the end, it's a crapshoot. Continue...

Reader’s Rehab: Bolano's 2666

Ex-English Major Syndrome can be broken into two components:

Biblio-amnesia

Symptoms: Inability to clearly recall the plot, setting or characters of a book read as recently as a week ago; confusion of plot, setting or characters with another book; omission of plot elements or characters.

Biblio-anxiety

Symptoms: Inability to commit to a given book for more than half its length; sudden conviction that one should be reading something else entirely, right now; perpetual guilt for being unread in the Russian formalists, the new critics, the new historicists, the deconstructionists, Proust, Joyce, Tolstoy, Bellow; Cervantes; preoccupation with the physical act of reading; literary amnesia.

I majored in reading. I store my books in three separate shelving units. If there’s one constant in my 25 years, it’s a book by my bed. So it feels strange to realize that, in the past few years, I feel like I’ve only really read a half-dozen or so books.

Accredit it to any number of excuses. I work. Sometimes I work out. I’m supposed to wedge a social life in there, right? But when it comes down to it, I do my most significant reading on the toilet, before bed or during my lunch break – times when there’s nothing better to do.

Am I just lazy, or is there some deeper trauma? In order to find out, I resumed a book that stopped me cold a year ago: Roberto Bolano’s 2666.

I chose Bolano’s posthumous opus in hopes it would serve as a truth serum: do I read because I’m conditioned to read, or because I love to read?

2666 was a publishing event. By the time Natasha Wimmer had finished translating its 893 pages, Bolano had already been dead five years. Wimmer’s translation of The Savage Detectives had been published to rapturous acclaim in 2007, and her Chilean novelist, dead by liver failure (via heroin), was more than popular – he was in vogue. The line for 2666’s launch party stretched around a New York City block. Bloggers blogged, twitterers twittered, and the Bolano was suddenly the new Marquez. Even Time Magazine named 2666 its book of the year.

Given its sheer dimensions, I suspect 2666 is a book more bought than read. From where I stand on page 272, it’s fantastic, but it’s something of a Ulysses, Joyce’s oft-lauded, seldom read masterpiece – a book not read, but conquered, picked up for the self-satisfying audacity of the project.

Am I just trendy, a literary poser? I didn’t make it through The Savage Detectives, and as with my first waltz with 2666, I halted after the first section. But I remember liking Bolano’s seamy realism. It was funny – and not the cold, mannered “funny” you might point out in some stick-up-its-ass book like Johnathan Franzen’s The Corrections. It made you laugh, smile, and genuinely happy to be reading (as opposed to, say, overdosing on prescription painkillers. The Corrections and I parted on bad terms). No, Bolano came to his readers with a forceful, persuasive romanticism, mouthy and cocksure and full of heart.

So I settled down with a cup of coffee and flipped to book two, “The Part About Amalfitano.” Amalfitano is a mentally displaced professor freshly arrived at a university in Santa Teresa, Mexico (a stand-in for Ciudad Juarez). As the chapter wears on, his displacement verges into schizophrenia, but before he hangs a geometry text on the clothesline, we learn about his wife, Lola, and Bolano’s magic crystallizes.

It was Lola, Rosa’s mother, who always traveled with a weapon, never going anywhere without her stainless-steel spring-loaded switchblade, Amalfitano remembered as he smoked a Mexican cigarette, sitting in his office or standing on the dark porch. Once they were stopped in an airport, before Rosa was born, and Lola was asked what she was doing with the knife. It’s for peeling fruit, she said. Oranges, apples, pears, kiwis, all kinds of fruit. The officer gave her a long look and let her go. A year and a few months after that, Rosa was born. Two years later, Lola left, still carrying the knife.

A simple story told with simple language, set to the casual cadence of an afternoon conversation. I would kill to write like this, I thought. It was a reoccurring sentiment as I rolled through book two, especially as Bolano guides his character into madness, succeeding where so lesser writers dependably fail.

Is this why we read? To admire? To gawk at 2666 like American tourists gawking at Michelangelo’s David?

For some, perhaps. English majors are taught not to bother explaining a book’s greatness – in some schools of thought, “greatness” is relative and irrelevant, at best a selling point and at worst a product of historical pressures. They see “great” as a hollow and counterproductive descriptor.

And I agree. Calling a book “great” fails to do anything more than set it among books like Great Expectations. In terms of nuts-and-bolts analysis, it’s useless to the critic.

But there is, under all the analysis, close-reading and deciphering, a reason we read. And who says it needs to be any more complicated than a need to read a great book?

Maybe 2666 is teaching me how to read again.

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Business Models: Play it Safe or Risk/Reward?

Ever notice how there seems to be less and less original content making its way onto movie screens lately? We've seen a dramatic rise in remakes, reboots, spin-offs, and adaptations of proven material in recent years, which points to an overall shift in the industry away from what's novel and towards what's established. Of course, if you're going to finance a movie, it's a safer bet to throw your money behind a franchise that millions of consumers have already thrown their money into. But a lot of times focusing on what's established isn't quite as lucrative as focusing on what's establish-able.

The cover article of this week's "Variety" magazine outlines the new business practices taking shape at the Disney company under new CEO Rich Ross. Disney's strategy for 2010 and beyond is to "make movies that define the Disney brand - and that can be exploited on TV, DVD, online, and through games, theme park attractions and merchandise at its Disney Stores." Hey, it never hurts to have a diversified revenue stream, right?

But what if diversity in money-making areas comes at the expense of diversity in content? Here's a direct quote from Ross: "Going forward, we will focus almost exclusively on making branded films from Disney, Pixar and Marvel." (Disney acquired the comic book giant on the last day of 2009.) A Spiderman reboot that puts Peter Parker back in high school will probably net a fair bit of coin for the Mouse House, but how much potential for expansion is there when your five year plan basically consists of trotting out slightly different variations on well-worn themes?

What we have here is a spectrum of business models. On the one hand, we have Disney's strategy: playing it safe and banking on consistent performers to continue performing consistently. On the other hand, we have a strategy that's usually taken up by smaller and more independent studios: find a premise that's interesting or compelling, then try to get people to see it. This is the motive behind film festivals like Sundance, the 2010 edition of which just completed some pretty high profile sales. Sundance topper John Cooper: "We were showcasing the best, most original work, not what might be commercial. But all of a sudden, what's good has commercial potential."

To bring in a non-entertainment related example, Sports Illustrated's Tim Marchman recently gave a pretty good rationale for adopting the Sundance business model: "the hardwired human desire to hit a jackpot. [Baseball t]eams are more willing than they should be to bet a lot on the small chance that a player will be really great, and curiously uninterested in paying for a sure thing." Suffice it to say that if such great baseball general managers as Billy Beane or Brian Cashman were to apply for a job at Rich Ross's version of Disney, they'd promptly be laughed off the lot.

I don't mean to keep picking on Disney - I'm sure most big studios operate in the same way - it's just that I just happen to have their upcoming slate ready to hand. Alice in Wonderland and Prince of Persia come out this year. They're redoing 80's era classic Tron. Robert Zemeckis is re-adapting Beatles-inspired Yellow Submarine. There's a couple of movies based on Disneyland park (Jungle Cruise and Tomorrowland) and one based on a snippet from a Disney legend (The Sorcerer's Apprentice starring Nicolas Cage as presumably the Sorcerer - he's a bit long in the tooth for the apprentice). And then it's off to sequel town: National Treasure, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Enchanted are all getting companion pieces sometime sometime down the line. And that's not even counting the inevitable Marvel-inspired comic book fare.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and no one can say for sure whether this slow and steady tactic in terms of content development will eventually win Disney the box office race. The fact that two of Disney's 2009 remakes - Zemeckis's 3D Christmas Carol and The Rock vehicle Race to Witch Mountain - failed to impress certainly isn't encouraging for the rehash-everything-you-possibly-can strategy. But maybe it's just a question of scaling down and picking projects carefully - Ross recently nixed a McG remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea because he didn't think it was sufficiently brandable.

And if it's a question of branding, I'm inclined to trust Rich Ross, the mastermind behind Disney Channel mega-franchises High School Musical (two sequels, a stage show, a reality TV spin-off, numerous video game adaptations, and High School Musical on Ice) and Hannah Montana (movies, concerts, and an actual music career for star Miley Cyrus). He certainly earned the right to make the big decisions for Disney, and it appears he's going to make some lucrative ones.

But what will be the consequences of such box-office/branding inspired decisions? We'll see Disney's coffers increase for sure. On the surface, the plan looks like it's nice for the consumers, because it provides lots of movies that lots of people will want to see. But in fact, this system really just treats each audience member as a walking cash machine with a smattering of freewill - just enough to decide which big-budget tentpole productions he or she wants to patronize on any given weekend.

But the real consequences of such business practices have to do with the way the films themselves are treated: as commodities to be exploited rather than as pieces of art. I realize that distribution and marketing are handled by different groups of people than the actual creative teams that make the movies. But how must a director feel when his film is financed by a corporate-structured megastudio that only cares about his work insofar as it turns a profit at the box office?

Sure there are people who get into show business for its artistic aspects, but the terms will always be dictated by the corporate types, because they're the ones that have all the money. Because, at bottom, show business is a business, which are usually best run by businessmen. If you think this is a revoltin' development, let me leave you with the immortal words of Arthur Jensen from Network:

"The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, no oppression and brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for which all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused..."
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And the Losers Are...

Oscar nominations were revealed today, and with the expanded field of ten Best Picture candidates, there's a pretty interesting group, ranging from the artsy (An Education) and the politically relevant (The Hurt Locker) to action flicks (Avatar, District 9) and feel-good schmaltz (The Blind Side).

However, what fun are the Oscars without criticizing the Academy's choices? While the expanded Best Picture field might have ensured everyone's favorite movie got a nod (well, almost everybody's - sorry Star Trek fans!), there are still some crucial roles overlooked in the other categories. Below, a brief summary of who I feel should have made the list

1) Matt Damon for Best Actor in The Informant!

Why is the Academy so quick to recognize the hams in overwrought melodramatic tearjerkers, and so slow to acknowledge that it takes just as much skill to play a role for laughs? In The Informant!, Matt Damon is Mark Whitacre, a chubby, bumbling white-collar worker, and he plays it so well that the audience forgets this is the same man who played super-soldier Jason Bourne. Damon's portrayal of Whitacre will simultaneously have you howling with laughter, wanting to punch him in his mustached face, and even feeling a little bad for the guy.

2) Michael Stuhlbarg for Best Actor in A Serious Man

In A Serious Man, Stuhlbarg plays unlucky professor Larry Gopnik with the perfect touch of naive confusion and existential frustration. He spends the entire time reacting to things going on around him, but rarely has a film contained such a passive character who still manages to dominate the screen. His role is simultaneously restrained and over-the-top, which is very difficult to pull off. Black comedy is a tough genre, but Stuhlbarg toes the line between comic and tragic perfectly.

3) Alfred Molina for Best Supporting Actor in An Education

Molina plays Jack Miller, a plump working-class parent in 1960s Britain who wants only the best for his daughter. At the beginning of the movie, the audience suspects it's going to be a standard "mean domineering father" role, but by the end, Molina has created a far more complex character - a man who is simply confused as to how to raise his child. For once, the audience feels sympathy not only for the rebellious door-slamming teenager, but also for the angry father on the other side of that door.

4) Duncan Jones and Nathan Parker for Best Original Screenplay for Moon

For what amounts to a slow-moving film set in only one room where Sam Rockwell talks to himself for two hours, Moon is surprisingly suspenseful. In an homage to classic 1950s style science-fiction, the movie takes one interesting concept and teases it out to its inevitable conclusion, but it's done with such style and grace that the viewer can't help but admire the sheer craft of storytelling that the movie achieves. Science fiction is often dismissed as immature or juvenile, but Moon is a masterpiece of threading a narrative out of very minimal elements.

And finally, Razzie nominations for the worst of 2009 cinema were announced yesterday. I have less to quibble with here (although GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra was sort of a fun movie for a lazy Saturday morning). But I feel the Razzies overlooked one crucial film:

5) Knowing for Worst Motion Picture

Yes, I know that Roger Ebert listed it as one of the year's best films, but one should take that more as the evidence of the critic's growing senility than anything else. I attended Knowing hungover with a group of friends, not expecting much. I got even less - a ridiculous faux-Twilight Zone scenario that would make Rod Serling blush. The concept is ludicrous and inconsistently applied, the conclusion is mind-blowingly absurd, and Nicolas Cage's bug-eyed confused-face style of acting is the worst I've seen since the remake of The Wicker Man. Even discounting my hangover, this was one of the most surreal cinematic experiences I had in 2009.

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