when will it all end?

Via Kotaku, a story about an Indian man who broke the world record for most hours spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV in a row: 40.3.

The Mumbai, India resident started playing at his home on September 4 at 10:00 a.m. and wrapped up on September 6 at 2:00 a.m., taking only four breaks. His marathon play session was observed by observers and has earned its place in the Guinness Book, surpassing the previous record of playing GTAIV for 28 hours and 1 minute.

So now the Indians are better than us at science, engineering, wireless router tech support, and sitting around on their asses playing GTA? I weep for America's future, Glenn Beck-style.

This just in: we're winning the culture war

I didn't get much of a chance to read up on the blogosphere today, but I noticed that several of the writers I read commented in amazement at the Washington Post's decision to publish an editorial by Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, entitled "America's Secular Saboteurs." These bloggers quite accurately pointed out that the content of this piece is unhinged and naked bigotry, and argued that its publication reflects extremely poorly on the Post's editorial standards. The truth is quite the contrary. The Post has done a great public service in giving this column such a prominent platform, as it ably illustrates the desperation and intellectual bankruptcy of religious conservatism in 2009. It would take far too much time to point out every instance of ignorance and historical contradiction in Donohue's piece (read it yourself and they'll likely jump right out at you), so I'll only address what I see as the highlights. The editorial's first paragraph:

"There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom; sexual libertines seek to upend the cultural order by attacking religion; artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity; Hollywood relentlessly insults people of faith; activist left-wing legal groups try to scrub society free of the public expression of religion; elements in the Democratic party demonstrate an animus against Catholicism; and secular-minded malcontents within Catholicism and Protestantism seek to sabotage their religion from the inside."

The standard practice in this type of writing is to identify your ideological opponents as a marginalized but devious band of schemers seeking to deceive the larger body of honest citizens into complicity in their agenda. By contrast, Donohue rattles off a laundry list of conspirators: educators, sex enthusiasts, artists, civil libertarians, the Democratic Party, and even unnamed fifth columnists within Christianity itself. Note that this 'paragraph' is actually only a single hysterical sentence. One can almost feel Donohue's paranoia rising with each successive semi-colon. Indeed, given the vagueness of his language, Donohue may well be including up to half of the U.S. population under his "cultural nihilist" rubric.

Shortly thereafter, Donohue pinpoints his villains' sinister logic:

"If societal destruction is the goal, then it makes no sense to waste time by attacking the political or economic structure: the key to any society is its culture, and the heart of any culture is religion. In this society, that means Christianity, the big prize being Catholicism. Which explains why secular saboteurs are waging war against it."

The magnitude of ignorance displayed in Donohue's equation of Catholicism with the essence of American culture is nothing short of breathtaking. The heyday of American anti-Catholicism to date took place in the nativist movement of the mid-to-late 19th century, when Catholic immigrants began arriving en masse to United States from Europe. The reaction from the largely Protestant populace was to mount a campaign of violence and economic and social marginalization against Catholic immigrants for - you guessed it - their perceived lack of allegiance to American culture. (Feel free to watch Gangs of New York for a fictionalized primer on the religious politics of the era, but be sure to fast-forward through the scenes where Cameron Diaz has speaking roles). In fact, as recently as 1960 John F. Kennedy, still the only Catholic to hold the U.S. Presidency, had to take pains during his campaign to assure the electorate that he would not be beholden to Papal authority in making decisions as President. Beyond the typical religious-right "religion is the primary arbiter of culture" fallacy (which I'll return to later), it's nearly impossible to argue that American history and culture are synonymous with Catholicism without ignoring a great deal of salient historical facts.

Donohue later follows with this bit of revisionism:

"There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult. And when someone finally makes a film that makes Christians proud, he is run out of town. Were it not for Mel Gibson, there would have been no "Passion of the Christ." But for every Harvey Weinstein who likes to bash Catholics, there is always someone else waiting in the wings to do the same."

Mel Gibson was not "run out" of any town for making The Passion of the Christ. Donohue conveniently neglects to mention the very public incident in which Gibson was caught driving while intoxicated and proceeded to sexually harass a female arresting officer, all the while spewing the kind of rank anti-Semitic beliefs that he had so vigorously denied holding during the run-up to The Passion of the Christ's release. Isn't it interesting, in this context, that Donohue prefers to pin Gibson's downfall on the likes of Harvey Weinstein (what kind of last name is that, anyway?)

"The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State harbor an agenda to smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America. Lying about their real motives, they say their fidelity is to the Constitution. But there is nothing in the Constitution that sanctions the censorship of religious speech. From banning nativity scenes to punishing little kids for painting a picture of Jesus, the zealots give Fidel a good run for his money."

No. What Donohue and those who think like him fail to understand is that these groups and their supporters, with very few exceptions, have no designs on censoring private religious expression. Rather, they push back forcefully on the fiction that religious belief, in general or particular forms, is an intrinsic part of American society and should receive official sanction and support as such. Preventing public property and money from being employed to display a nativity scene or a statue of the Ten Commandments is not religious censorship and is no way equivalent to denying private citizens the right to do the same with their private property. Rather, it's a judicious assertion of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which remains deeply ingrained in American culture no matter how loudly the Donohues of the world disdain it.

"Catholics were once the mainstay of the Democratic Party; now the gay activists are in charge. Indeed, practicing Catholics are no longer welcome in leadership roles in the Party: the contempt that pro-life Catholics experience is palpable. The fact that Catholics for Choice, a notoriously anti-Catholic front group funded by the Ford Foundation, has a close relationship with the Democrats says it all."

I'm sure that the gay activist overlords of the Democratic Party are quite pleased with President Obama's speedy and bold moves to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces. More fascinating is the rapid sequence of assertions that (1) the Democratic Party does not welcome "practicing Catholics" (2) there exists a group called Catholics for Choice, which in fact has a close relationship with the party, and (3) Catholics for Choice is "notoriously anti-Catholic." The message here is fairly obvious: personal religious belief and identification mean nothing when it comes to determining whether or not a person "counts" as a Catholic, while toeing the Church's anti-abortion hardline means everything.

Donohue concludes with this gem:

"The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels."

Let's leave aside the more explicitly disturbing connotations of asymmetrical breeding as a strategy to achieve cultural and political goals for the time being and focus on the real implications of what Donohue is saying here. In a single sentence, he's managed to neatly encapsulate his view that children are little more than empty vessels to be indoctrinated with an unaltered version of their parent's religious, cultural, and political beliefs, for the purposes of continued engagement of a vaguely defined and ever-changing enemy on a metaphorical field of battle. It is inconceivable to Donohue that, absent some nefarious outside influence, children raised in a conservative religious family could grow up to become atheists, homosexuals, members of Catholics for Choice, or any other of the myriad means of "deviancy" that populate his worldview. To him, these are not their choices to make. They are to be made for them by authority; specifically, by a glorious singularity of parental power and religious dictate.

Bill Donohue is a grubbing fascist with not one shred of respect for the United States of America's rich and dynamic culture of individualism, mutual tolerance, and democracy. He makes no secret of his profound contempt for American citizens who fail to reflect in full his personal prejudices. All of this is abundantly clear in every sentence of his idiotic and vile editorial. We are fortunate to live in a time where this can be made clear, and even more fortunate that Donohue himself has chosen to discredit himself so thoroughly and nakedly on the public stage. It's clear that Donohue imagines himself to be a holy warrior leading a vast army of the devout to a divinely ordained victory. His writing reveals him to be little more than a cheap dictator huddled in a bunker, cursing the names of imagined conspirators under his breath, while promising his dwindling camarilla a glorious triumph in a war that he has already lost.

Why you shouldn't buy an e-book reader

Hot on the heels of the success of the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble announced the impeding release of a competing e-book machine called the Nook. Despite the terminally retarded name (couldn't they have named it FantastoBook or something? Grow a fucking pair, gadget marketers!) it actually sounds pretty cool.

There's still no way in hell I'd buy one, though. Consider this: the major social benefit to book reading in our modern age is the ability to lord it over people who either (a) don't read or (b) spend most of their time reading bullshit young adult fiction. The corollary to this is the ability to arrive at a rough estimation of a person's intellect by the size and content of their bookshelf or show off your brilliance through the size and content of your own. That's why I have a handful of antiquated books on psychotherapy that I didn't pay for and have no intention of reading, yet keep in plain view in my apartment. The whole point of books in this day and age is that they're retrograde and inefficient. A healthy book collection is the perfect complement to your useless liberal arts degree.

The e-book reader fucks all that up. First off, you can't tell what other people are reading on it and nobody can tell what you're reading, effectively ending the time-honored social ritual of reading a book in public to make yourself look smarter. Also lost is the ability to sneer at another person for reading Deepak Chopra or one of those "inspirational" books where a retired pro-football coach tortures personal anecdotes into dubious metaphors for achieving success in business. Worse, the Kindle/Nook ruins the convenient more books = smarter person shorthand by being the same size whether you have one book or a couple thousand. Consider: despite the fact that everyone now owns an iPod or comparable MP3 player, all of which can hold a couple thousand songs at a minimum, the average number of songs kept on such devices is somewhere in the 300s. All most people do is copy the 15 or so greatest-hits albums they own over to their MP3 player and call it a day. Similarly, I bet most people who get an e-book reader once the market expands more mainstream will probably buy the Twilight books and maybe one or two other things and just read those over and over again, and no one will ever be the wiser.

In conclusion, buying an e-book reader forfeits a great deal of the educated American's established avenues of pretentiousness. With the economy being the way it is today, that's a price we can't afford to pay. It's bad enough that HBO had to make it to where we can't look down on people for enjoying television anymore. Now we're gonna turn reading books into the functional equivalent of browsing sports scores on a BlackBerry?

Proof of my greatness: part one

Andrew Sullivan linked to a blog post tonight by some libertarian blogger named Peter Suderman pondering whether or not video games are supplanting B-movies. This caught my attention primarily because I wrote a blog post a little over two years ago making essentially the same argument on the eve of the release of Halo 3. I doubt that Peter Suderman was copying me, seeing as the post was on my friends-only MySpace page (mind you, I was writing back in the heady days of 2007, before it was scientifically proven that using MySpace marks you permanently as a member of the urban poor) but still, chalk me up as being ahead of the curve. Adding to my greatness, I also predicted in this post that The Dark Knight was going to be good, that Halo 3 was going to be better than any of the bullshit blockbuster movies of summer 2007, and that I'd never wind up seeing the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. All of which came true! The entire post is re-printed below so you can bask in my reflected glory.

The hype around the release of Halo 3 this week generally says that the game stands a good chance of bringing in more money on the day of its release than any entertainment event, ever. Traditionally, of course, big-money openings are the province of blockbuster action movies, with the current champ being this year's god-awful Spider-Man 3. The comparison poses an interesting question: namely, how long is it going to be before big mindless summer blockbuster action movies are rendered irrelevant by video games? My line of reasoning is this: of all the action films I saw this summer, the only one that strikes me as particularly notable is Live Free or Die Hard, and that's mostly because I expected it to suck and it didn't. I saw Transformers, but I can't remember a goddamn thing that actually happened in it. Obviously, the less said about Spider-Man 3, the better. In fact, pretty much the only one I didn't see was Pirates of the Caribbean Go To China or whatever it was called, which I decided to skip when I found out it was like 3 hours long. Clearly, I haven't played Halo 3 yet, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that it's going to be a lot better than any of those movies. With the level of production value and interactivity that games offer in the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 era, at some point, we have to ask ourselves what the point of watching some CGI robot blow shit up is when you can do it yourself from the comfort of your own home? Obviously, action movies will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, given the fact that box office takes are still rising and I still hear a lot of people talk about how they can't handle the amount of buttons on modern video game controllers. But you have to wonder how long that's going to last given the fact that by this point, the bottom half of the crucial 18-25 demographic came of age in the Playstation 2 era, and more and more of the types of people who might not have played many video games in past generations (read: girls) are getting into the hobby. My guess is that summer event movies will survive the transition, but they're going to have to step their game up a peg by emphasizing the elements that film does better than video games, like story and performance (I'm crossing my fingers for The Dark Knight to represent the critical step in this direction), because they aren't going to be able to compete much longer in terms of sheer visceral experience.

Where The Wild Things Are review and thoughts on children's movies

Spike Jonze's film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are is a masterpiece. The cinematography and art direction create visually stunning tableaus throughout the entire running time. The script is an evocative and nakedly emotional exploration of childhood. Max Records, the child actor who plays the main character Max, is note-perfect. The Wild Things, voiced to perfection by a variety of well-regarded actors and actresses, are completely convincing as characters and never come across as whiz-bang special effects despite the obvious technical virtuosity involved in their creation. The movie steadfastly avoids pat moralizing and tiresome postmodern wink-and-nudge reference smuggling. To sum, it's difficult to summarize Where The Wild Things Are as being anything besides a complete artistic triumph.

So why the hell do I feel so uneasy about it?

Where The Wild Things Are is an adaptation of one of the most famous children's books of all time. Presumably, it's very faithful to the source material. Re-reading children's books hasn't been a high priority of mine in my adult life, and I don't have any kids of my own, so my memory of the book outside of the more iconic images from it are a little hazy. However, it's been loudly praised by author Maurice Sendak, who served as a producer on the movie, and the quality of the production marks it generally as a far cry from the corpse-fucking live action Dr. Seuss movies from the beginning of the decade. Despite all that faithfulness and care, Where The Wild Things Are isn't a children's movie. It's a movie targeted largely, though by no means exclusively, to millenial hipster types. In some ways, it's probably the crowning achievement to date of that culture and ethos, partly because of the sheer breadth and wattage of the creators - Spike Jonze! Dave Eggers! Karen O! - but mostly because of how it zeroes in on the tension between childhood fantasy and adult emotional complexity that undergirds so much of the hipster zeitgeist.

But, unlike the book, it's not made for kids, and it's got nothing to do with the content of the film itself, which is straight down the middle PG stuff. I think that the real crux of the issue has to do with the inherent difference between books and movies as media. Children's books are mainly designed to give young kids a visually oriented story that they can, ideally, read with their parents. It's supposed to be a tactile experience, where the kid can go at his or her own pace, looking at the pictures, sounding out the words, and asking mom or dad about what's going to happen next before turning the page to find out. The whole process takes a half-hour, forty-five minutes tops. In contrast, watching a movie, especially in the theater, is a passive experience. The kid sits in the dark and watches things happen until the movie's over and then he or she can talk about it, because while it's going on, any talk will fetch a quick reprimand and annoyed looks from the nearby people in the audience. Even a short movie requires sustaining this for an hour and a half.

As a result, most kids movies are designed to give repeated manic bursts of attention-grabbing fun. This is a large contributor to why most kids movies are so unbearable to anybody over the age of 12. Take, for instance, the trailer for the upcoming Jackie Chan movie The Spy Next Door, which played before my showing of Where The Wild Things Are:


Looks terrible, right? The Spy Next Door, as near as I can tell, has the exact same plot as Vin Diesel's 2005 movie The Pacifier, which in turn had the exact same plot at Hulk Hogan's 1993 movie Mr. Nanny. There's probably three or four more identical movies in between those two that I'm just not aware of. The reason that Hollywood gets away with this is that the target audience is (a) not old enough to be cognizant of the fact that an identical movie was made just four years ago and (b) more concerned with high-spirited action and fun than plot, character, and originality.

That's not to say that ALL kids movie lack those things, of course. Pixar's entire output, and corresponding boffo box office numbers, are more than enough proof that kids can appreciate heartfelt characters and a well-crafted and resonant story. The thing of it is, though, is that Pixar's movies and other "quality" kids movies provide plot and heart without skimping on a generous dose of the action and funny antics that are the perpetual hallmarks of the form.

Where The Wild Things Are doesn't really have much of that. That's a credit to it as an artistic and thematic work; the film would have been a total abortion if it were reworked to include a wacky sidekick and an extended chase scene. Be honest, though: if you were 8 years old again, would you rather see a movie about a kung-fu expert, a sassy Average American family, and the dad from Hannah Montana, or one about a bunch of monsters sitting around in a forest talking about their feelings? Because the latter is literally the plot of Where The Wild Things Are.

I could be wrong about this. Despite the bluster of the preceding paragraphs, I don't really know that much about kids. Maybe they'll absolutely flip their shit for an allegorical psychodrama about childhood. Maybe they'll just groove on the cool creatures and pretty pictures and wind up liking it. In that case, hey, problem solved (more accurately, problem non-existent). I certainly think that Where The Wild Things Are will provide a hands-down more rewarding experience over the course of growing up than any one of the dozens of DreamWorks CGI movies produced each year. I'm seriously considering seeing it again just to enjoy the experience without wondering what the kids in the audience think about it in the back of my mind the whole time (after all, why should I give a shit?). But my gut tells me that Where The Wild Things Are is going to go over a lot of little heads. And wouldn't it be ironic if thousands of kids were to be bored to tears by one of cinema's greatest depictions of being a misunderstood child?

Paranormal Activity review

Having sold $7 million in tickets over the weekend despite playing in only 160 theaters, Paranormal Activity is already a huge hit. It's already received a good deal of mythologizing news coverage, and thanks to a grassroots Internet campaign where people cast votes to bring the movie to their city, is probably ingrained enough in the mass consciousness now to get a wide release in the next couple of weeks. Paranormal Activity tells the story of Katie and Micah, a young couple played by two unknown actors named Katie and Micah, who begin video-recording their home life in the hopes of capturing the supernatural events that have been happening to them at night and have seemingly followed Katie around for her entire life. The onscreen action unfolds entirely from the point of view of the couple's camera, and Katie and Micah are the only significant characters who appear onscreen, with the exception of a "ghost expert" who only appears briefly. The film's naturalistic camera work, sound design, and judiciously paced scare moments ramp up the sense of tension throughout, focusing particularly on the characters' growing unease with their surroundings.

Let's stop a minute and acknowledge that the details of Paranormal Activity, from the style right down to the marketing, are extremely reminiscent of 1999's mega-hit The Blair Witch Project. And indeed, I think that your feelings about The Blair Witch Project will probably prove to be the best predictor of how you'll respond to Paranormal Activity, at least in terms of how scary you'll find it to be. I know people who were genuinely frightened by The Blair Witch Project, but to me it came off like an hour and a half of rustling leaf sounds and vaguely spooky stick men capped off with a two-and-a-half second death scene. Similarly, I could tell that a lot of people in the theater watching Paranormal Activity with me (a surprisingly big crowd, given that I went to an 11:15 AM showing) were really scared, but the movie never really rose to that level for me. Even though it builds tension effectively, and has some very creepy moments, I wasn't ever really able to make the mental leap from "door closing unexpectedly" to "abject terror." I think that's more of a reflection of what I find scary than the an indictment of craft on display in Paranormal Activity, and I expect that my opinion of this aspect of the film will be in the minority.

Unlike The Blair Witch Project, however, Paranormal Activity has other virtues beside scare value. First of all, it really nails the intended naturalistic feeling, particularly in the acting. Katie and Micah are among the most believable couples I've seen in a modern film. Katie Featherston's performance is particularly phenomenal, in how her work never feels like she's playing a character in a film. I found myself liking both Katie and Micah quite a bit, which is a positive contrast to how I felt about the main characters in both Blair Witch and Cloverfield. Also, the plot smartly makes the issue of the camera a way of exposing the dynamic between the two main characters; Micah insists on it over Katie's objections and takes a flippantly combative tone toward the haunting that's completely discordant with Katie's emotional turmoil. As the film progresses, their different approaches to the issue increasingly drive a wedge between them.

On a certain level, Paranormal Activity almost plays like an art-house breakup drama with a ghost story in the background. Even thought it's reasonably clear that this was part of the intent, I wish the creators of the film had played up these elements even more. In particular, there's a kinda-foreshadowed plot development in the last five minutes of the film that could have easily been introduced earlier in the third act, which in turn might have opened up more of an arc for Micah's character (I may expand on this more in a post in a couple of weeks once the movie goes wide, so as not to spoil it - watching Paranormal Activity really made me reflect on what I find scary in movies). It's a bit of a nitpicking criticism, but I think that if Paranormal Activity did as good a job of resolving the haunting/relationship trouble parallel as it did setting it up, it'd have a shot at being a real classic. As it stands, it's a very well-crafted horror film that's worth getting excited over. Don't succumb to the coming hype about it being the scariest movie ever made (or the inevitable coming backlash against its overexposure, for that matter) because it isn't. It is, however, a worthwhile movie that's probably best experienced on the big screen with a large audience, and if you think you're interested, I'd suggest that you get together with some friends and go as soon as it opens near you. If nothing else, it'll make for a hell of a fantastic alternative to Saw VI.

Leave General McChrystal alone!

The political chatter of the week is quickly coalescing around U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, who last week publicly stated his support for a large troop increase in the war in Afghanistan and his belief that a more narrow approach that does not revolve around ensuring political stability, as has apparently been advocated by the Vice President's office, will not be effective in securing the U.S.'s strategic interests in the region. Much of the published opinion has been critical of McChrystal, with at least one commentator going so far as to dub it a "plain violation of the principle of civilian control." The idea, it seems, is that McChrystal is trying to force Obama's hand into giving him what he wants through press leaks and public pronouncements.

I'm skeptical. McChrystal's job isn't to avoid having a professional opinion on the conduct of the military operation that he is in charge of overseeing, and he isn't required to refrain from sharing his professional opinion with others, except, I suppose, in cases where it would threaten the operational security of his stated mission. Rather, McChrystal's job is to obey the orders of the commander-in-chief, Barack Obama. As far as I can tell, he hasn't disobeyed an executive order or even communicated an intent to do so. All he's done is state a tactical preference based on his analysis of the situation. If Obama doesn't like how he's behaving, he's free to relieve him of his command, as presidents have frequently done to military generals throughout U.S. history.

Yes, McChrystal's comments go against the grain of chain-of-command protocol as it's typically understood, and yes, it's hardly good decorum to put your boss on the spot. But, as is so often the case, what's bad for discipline and protocol is good for American democracy. Lest we forget, American men and women are currently on Afghan soil putting their lives at stake in this conflict, with the potential of more joining them depending on the decisions made. Let's also remember former General Eric Shinseki, who Donald Rumsfeld threw under the bus in the George W. Bush days for having the sheer balls to suggest that the U.S. bring enough ground troops into the invasion of Iraq to maintain order in the country. The American people didn't get the benefit of the full debate then. I'm not about to argue that they should be denied it now.

All this isn't to say that Obama has to take McChrystal's advice. There's no telling whether or not he's even right about Afghanistan. After all, if the Iraqi people had greeted the U.S. invasion with party hats and kazoos, like Bill Kristol promised, and begun throwing Sunni/Shiite get-to-know-you block parties as soon as that statue of Saddam hit the concrete, no one outside of a few military historians would even know who Eric Shinseki is right now. Obama's the President, and the decision is his alone to make based on the facts and strategic objectives as he sees them. Does he expose himself to more potential criticism because of McChrystal's statements? You bet. But that's the burden of leadership.

I'm a strong Obama supporter, and I genuinely don't know what the best course of action in Afghanistan is at this juncture. I trust him to weigh the alternatives and make an appropriate choice. But I also expect him to be open and accountable to the American people about the reasoning behind that decision, and having this discussion take place in the public sphere will only serve to motivate that transparency. Obama's supporters don't owe him any protection from the political risk that tough decisions entail. We'd be better served by advocating our own views and values, whatever they may be, in hopes of having our own influence on the outcome (advocates of full withdrawal are probably in for lean times on this front).

And if things don't go well, maybe in 2012 we'll wind up with President Mitt Romney, aka the only American executive to preside over a government that's both legalized gay marriage and mandated universal healthcare.

Halo 3: ODST review

It's on some level kind of pointless to review a new Halo game, and not only because every release in the series is destined to rack up huge sales figures regardless of critical reception. Rather, it's because the fundamental gameplay experience of playing a Halo game hasn't really changed since the first game came out in 2001. This is coming from an ardent fan of the series, someone who practically minored in the original Halo for the Xbox in undergrad. Believe it or not, we played that shit for two solid years in two-player splitscreen deathmatch mode. A deathmatch with two players is the first-person shooter equivalent of hitting a half-deflated volleyball against a basement wall and trying to hit it again before the second bounce, but who gives a fuck? Halo is just that much fun to play, and it's pretty well stayed that way. Yeah, Bungie has added a bunch of new guns, prettied up the graphics, and increased the sense of scale, but the only real earth-shaking change the series has seen is the addition of online multiplayer, which came about five years ago with Halo 2. At this point, you either know whether or not you'll like a Halo game, or you haven't ever played one.

For a series that seen so little substantive iteration in its core mechanics, the campaign mode in Halo 3: ODST is clearly geared as a throwback to the original Halo: Combat Evolved. You have to worry about finding healthpacks again, they've brought back a variant of the fan-favorite scoped pistol, and you can't dual-wield weapons anymore. They've also removed the vehicle-jacking mechanic, although you can still jump on a tank and throw a grenade in the engine to blow it up. Ostensibly, this is because you're playing as an ODST, a different and less powerful type of elite space marine from the main series' part-cyborg Master Chief. However, in the classic style of not fixing what isn't broken, there's not a great deal of functional difference in how these changes cause you to, except for making cover a bit more important in gunfights.

I was hoping that ODST would be a bit more narratively focused than the other Halo entries, as I think the Halo mythos is actually fairly compelling for a video game (I know), but it really isn't. ODST does feature the voice talents of several actors from the late, lamented Firefly TV show, which is probably a treat for people who care about that sort of thing (i.e., not me). There are some new-to-Halo bits grafted on in ODST, such as the vaguely non-linear gameplay in the New Mombasa overworld that forms the bridging device for the story segments and the discoverable audio logs in the vein of Dead Space/Bioshock/Batman: Arkham Asylum that tell the story of a young woman attempting to escape the city. Probably the best addition is the night-vision goggles, which are used extensively in the free roaming city bits; in most games, "enhanced vision" modes are very useful in gameplay but ruin the art design (Arkham Asylum is a particularly egregious offender in this area), but in ODST the effect is slick and more subtle.

I have a feeling that the relative brevity of the campaign in ODST might be a sticking point for some; it's probably only about seven hours of gameplay all told. I'd recommend that you play it in short bursts of an hour or so at a time, which is much easier to do because the missions are shorter than Halo 3's. Additionally, play it on at least 'Heroic' difficulty, which makes it more challenging and more fun; as with Halo 2 and Halo 3, the easier modes remove a lot of the flavor from the game.

ODST comes with two major multiplayer modes to supplement the campaign. The first, which comes on a bonus disc, is essentially the entire multiplayer portion of Halo 3 with all of the for-pay downloadable maps, which is a stupendous deal if you didn't already pay for Halo 3 and all its downloadable maps (yes, and no, in my case) and you can tolerate the odd cocktail of joy and frustration that is Halo 3 competitive multiplayer. By the latter, I mean that Halo 3 is an amazingly well crafted multiplayer game that's unfortunately suffused with homophobic 14-year olds with godlike deathmatch skills.

The second multiplayer mode, which is new entirely to ODST, is dubbed Firefight, and is essentially Gears of War 2's Horde mode. For those unfamiliar, the conceit is that teams of up to four players attempt to survive increasingly difficult waves of computer-controlled bad guys, with points assigned and tracked for each kill. I haven't actually played Firefight with other people yet, but I have jumped on solo a couple of times "just to see what it's like" and found myself playing for a half-hour plus each time. It's Halo distilled to its pure essence, and is therefore fun. Firefight seems to have more of an emphasis on point scoring than in Gears, with various multipliers being assigned for kill streaks and particular kinds of kills rather than the fixed point values in Horde mode. Satisfyingly, the point total for each kill pops up in the middle of the screen with a plus sign, Call of Duty 4 style. There's also more of a focus on resource management, with a limited pool of lives for players and only four healthpacks and a handful of weapons available (respawning every ten waves or so). I haven't delved too deeply into it yet, but my extensive experience with Gears of War 2 tells me that Firefight alone is probably worth the retail price of ODST, as it combines the fun of single-player Halo and the open-endedness of multiplayer Halo without the annoyances of competing against junior-high idiots. I'm pleased by the recent trend toward cooperative online gameplay this generation; Halo's always been a torch-bearer in this regard, and with Firefight poised to echo the popularity of Gears 2's Horde, I think that this type of gameplay mode is going to quickly become de rigueur in blockbuster shooters going forward. I've been toying with the idea of doing a blog-tribute to Horde mode. I may hold off until I have some more Firefight experience under my belt and expand that out into a general summation of why this type of multiplayer is such a good idea. In the meantime, if you buy ODST, hit me up on Xbox Live for a game!

Man has always loved his buildings. But what happens when the buildings say: no more?

A preview scene from 2012, Roland Emmerich's latest salvo in his Sisyphean career-long effort to digitally destroy every recognizable physical manifestation of human culture at least twice. It features John Cusack, the guy who played Scott Templeton in season 5 of The Wire, and a truly admirable disrespect for the laws of physics and the mechanical capabilities of limousines.



I think this about sums it up:

Zombieland review

Zombieland is the best kind of B-movie: the kind that knows full well that it's a B-movie. Pretty much everything about this flick exudes a big-hearted "slapped together for maximum fun" quality, right down to the casting of Jesse "Michael Cera was busy" Eisenberg and Woody "Matthew McConaughey was too expensive" Harrelson in the lead roles. And damned if Zombieland doesn't pull it off by making all the right choices: keeping the running time down to a drum-tight 80 minutes, keeping the non-zombie members of the cast down to the four leads and one priceless cameo (way too good to spoil here), not overselling the romantic subplot or lingering on the "dramatic" moments. Despite the shot I took at Eisenberg and Harrelson not two sentences ago, they do have a great dynamic here, and Woody in particular is obviously having the time of his life spewing one-liners as the badass killing machine Tallahassee (the characters are all named after their home cities because proper names would invite emotional bonding, a Zombieland no-no).

Probably the most impressive thing about Zombieland is it manages to be clever and fun despite the fact that zombies have basically been done to death cinematically. Zombieland actually doesn't even bother with the traditional horror elements of zombie cinema; it goes straight for action-comedy, milking the lead characters bonding under duress to sustain the narrative. This, of course, puts it in dangerous territory by inviting comparison to Edgar Wright's modern classic Shaun of the Dead, but that's really not what Zombieland is going for tonally and I didn't find myself making that mental comparison while watching it. Instead, Zombieland plays like a loose mash-up of the road-trip genre, Evil Dead 2, and Dead Rising, the great Xbox 360 game from 2006. Most of Zombieland's best moments come directly out of that playful spirit, like the awesome credit sequence (hyper slow-motion scenes from the zombie apocalypse soundtracked to Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls") and the running gag of superimposing Jessie Eisenberg's neurotic character's rules for zombie survival on the screen at relevant moments.

Zombieland isn't going to rewrite the rules of genre movies, and it probably won't become a midnight movie classic (although it very well might), but it's so much fun that it's an easy recommendation. This is the type of movie best seen with a raucous audience in a crowded theater; the type you'll probably watch all the way through without really even intending to if you catch the opening of it when flipping through cable channels in a couple years. It'll put a smile on your face, and that's not an accomplishment to be taken lightly.

Also not an accomplishment to be taken lightly, the trailer for Legion, which played before Zombieland, made me think that I owe the makers of Law Abiding Citizen an apology.

diabetes, diabetes

Via Andrew Sullivan, another reason to be thankful for the Internet and the millions who spend their free time filling it with random goodness. At the very least, watch this through to the chorus.

My hipster report card: 2000-2010 edition

Pitchfork dot com, the independent-music website du jour, just published their list of the 200 best albums of the 2000s (apparently they'll publish an addendum early next year on the off chance that any decent music comes out in the next three months). Since the 2000s neatly coincided with my young adulthood and career in higher education, and correspondingly, the likely pinnacle of my ability to maintain decent taste in contemporary music, I thought it'd be fun to edit their list down to the albums that I own, or owned at one point, so here it is. The numbers reflect Pitchfork's original rankings, which are preserved in order except for the deletion of albums I don't have:

01. Radiohead, Kid A
02. Arcade Fire, Funeral
03. Daft Punk, Discovery
04. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
05. Jay-Z, The Blueprint
06. Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica
07. The Strokes, Is This It
09. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
11. Ghostface Killah, Supreme Clientele
12. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells
13. OutKast, Stankonia
14. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavillion
15. The Knife, Silent Shout
16. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
17. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
18. Kanye West, Late Registration
19. Spoon, Kill the Moonlight
20. Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights
21. Radiohead, In Rainbows
22. M.I.A., Kala
23. Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It in People
24. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell
25. Madvillian, Madvilliany
28. Kanye West, The College Dropout
31. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
34. Radiohead, Amnesiac
35. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
36. The Streets, Original Pirate Material
40. The National, Alligator
41. Burial, Untrue
42. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
46. The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow
48. The Hold Steady, Separation Sunday
49. Antony & the Johnsons, I Am a Bird Now
50. Deerhunter, Microcastle
51. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
52. Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
53. Clinic, Internal Wrangler
54. M.I.A., Arular
56. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca
57. The Rapture, Echoes
58. The Field, From Here We Go Sublime
59. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Hearts of Oak
62. Dizzee Rascal, Boy in Da Corner
63. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
64. The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
65. Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven
67. The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
69. Liars, Drum's Not Dead
74. The White Stripes, Elephant
75. Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
82. Beck, Sea Change
83. Joanna Newsom, Ys
87. Kanye West, Graduation
89. Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary
90. Jay-Z, The Black Album
91. The New Pornographers, Mass Romantic
99. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3
100. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Source Tags & Codes
101. Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand
102. The Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree
104. The Postal Service, Give Up
110. The National, Boxer
111. M83, Saturdays=Youth
112. Feist, The Reminder
113. LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem
114. Cam'ron, Purple Haze
115. The Shins, Oh, Inverted World
119. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP
122. Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker
126. Mastodon, Leviathan
129. The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free
130. Clipse, We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2
134. Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf
140. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
141. Neko Case, Blacklisted
142. Primal Scream, XTRMNTR
143. The Decemberists, Picaresque
144. Andrew W.K., I Get Wet
145. Fiery Furnaces, Blueberry Boat
146. My Morning Jacket, Z
147. T.I., King
150. The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema
152. Cannibal Ox, The Cold Vein
154. Ghostface Killah, The Pretty Toney Album
155. Clipse, Lord Willin'
156. Bloc Party, Silent Alarm
158. Destroyer, Destroyer's Rubies
159. Girl Talk, Night Ripper
162. Wu-Tang Clan, The W
163. DJ /rupture, Uproot
174. Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy
176. The Mountain Goats, Tallahassee
178. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter II
181. Andrew Bird, Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs
190. Elliott Smith, Figure 8
191. Air, Talkie Walkie
192. Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll
194. Pulp, We Love Life

So that's 99 out of 200 albums. I'm a little unsure about whether I ought to be proud or ashamed of that. Is there a word that describes being a little of both? In German, maybe?

In all seriousness, it's not terribly surprising that this list overlaps substantially with my collection; I've been a pretty avid music consumer over the course of the decade, and I've been reading Pitchfork since 2003 or so. Even though the site (justifiably) comes under fire pretty frequently for its pretentious tone, I've kept reading it for the simple fact that more often than not, when I buy a record they recommend, I wind up enjoying it. Despite my cultural tastes, I've never really ran in hipster circles, so the indie-cred wars that Pitchfork so frequently winds up embroiled in don't really register with me on an emotional level. I just like the music.

So, how's this list rate? Let's start with the nitpicking, bullet point style:

• I think that the single biggest improvement to this list that I'd make is swapping the positions of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Fever To Tell (currently #24) with Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP (currently #119). Nothing against Fever To Tell, but The Marshall Mathers LP managed to be a brilliant album, an enormous commercial success, and a culture-war touchstone all in one. It deserves top-25 status, easily.
• Among New Pornographers albums, Twin Cinema is hands-down better than Mass Romantic.
• I'm really surprised that a Pitchfork list of the decade's best albums includes two Shins LPs and only one by the Decemberists. Picaresque is definitely the best Decemberists album, in my opinion, but I was sure that Castaways and Cutouts would be on there as well. Maybe Pitchfork's still upset that The Hazards of Love sucked balls.
• Even though they both have respectable ratings, I'd put both Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? and Liars' Drum's Not Dead at least 20 slots higher. Also, Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy would be in my top 50, not bringing up the rear.
  
• I like Animal Collective well enough, but I honestly don't get why some people flip their shit for them. Are Merriweather Post Pavilion and Person Pitch really both top-20 albums for the entire decade? (Not to mention the other Animal Collective albums further down on the list that I don't own).
• I have the feeling that Is This It got a serious mulligan. On what grounds, I have no idea.

On the whole, however, I think this is a really strong list. In particular, the top 20 includes some of my absolute favorite records of the era. I'm particularly pleased by the inclusion of Ghostface Killah's Supreme Clientele at #11, an absolutely transcendent album that could have easily been slighted (while the likes of Spoon, Interpol, Arcade Fire, and The White Stripes are also definitely deserving, they were lead-pipe cinches for high slots).

And Pitchfork delivers at the number one spot, where it really counts. I won't even make a pretense at objective analysis here; Radiohead's Kid A is an incredibly evocative musical work for me personally. All of my favorite albums bring back memories of where I was in my life when I first connected with them. Of all of them, the first time I listened to Kid A stands as the most perfect confluence of music and moment I've yet to experience. When it came out, I was a shade over a month into my freshman year at college, a time when the experience of being at school and the formation of new friendships hadn't quite solidified yet. Being a massive fan of Radiohead's OK Computer in high school, I pre-ordered Kid A through Amazon (my college town wasn't the type where there was a dedicated music store, much less one you could walk to from the dorms). It came the day after it officially released. I put it in for the first time on my headphones on my way to my introductory psychology class, which started at 7:30 AM. I left earlier than usual so I'd have extra time to listen. It was cold and drizzling and sun hadn't come up yet. Hardly anyone was out. With "Everything In It's Right Place" turned up high in my headphones, right then it felt like I was the only person in the world. I remember how intimate those first few tracks sounded, despite the fact that they were plainly conjuring up Radiohead's now-trademark tone of alienation. I remember thinking how incredible it was that they'd come up with something that stood up to OK Computer.

That was nine years ago, almost to the day. A third of my life, including almost everything truly important that's ever happened to me, has passed since then. That memory stands vividly, alongside countless others that are inextricably bound with music. I'm sure that I'd have plenty of richly experienced memories even if I'd never heard a note of recorded music. But I can't for the life of me imagine what that would be like.