Trailer round-up continues

Diane,

Got a couple more trailers for you today.  First the Lost season 5 promo.  It reveals little but does whet the appetite.  I still hold out hope that Jin is alive, but deep down I know the truth. 

Next, the Bioshock 2 teaser.  Bioshock was a great game, all art deco design and Ayn Rand craziness – under the sea, even – so anticipation for its sequel is high.  This teaser offers no details about the new game really, but it’s the most lyrical videogame trailer I’ve ever seen.  I love that these guys seem to care about delivering a unique sensory experience more than just giving a carnage fix to bloodthirsty gamers.  Bioshock – dare I say it? again? – is that rare game treading gingerly into the realm of art.

Videogames – art or artless?

Diane,

Can videogames be art?  Roger Ebert says no.  Actually, he said it a couple of times.  I’d like to take a moment to confront his arguments directly, seeing as A. I am an avid gamer with a lot of experience with, and many strong opinions about, art; and B. Roger Ebert is a stupidhead.

Point B conforms to the general level of counterargument that has been posed to Ebert thus far, arguments which have consumed vast swaths of the internet like a poop-flinging wildfire.*  I’d like to suggest, in a more civil and intellectually rigorous manner, that Ebert has two issues preventing him from appreciating the art of the videogame.  One of these issues is perhaps unresolvable, but the other might not be – and that’s even if we approach things on Ebert’s own terms.

We’ll start with the first.  In one of the columns I linked to above, Ebert said this, which summarizes his position on art quite succinctly: “Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control… I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art.”  That’s it in a nutshell – Ebert subscribes to the auteur theory.  Not too surprising for a guy who was coming into his own as a film lover and critic while the likes of Scorsese, Spielberg, and Coppola were doing their best work.  The authorial stamp of these directors is indelible and clear – they are master manipulators, artists leading their audience through carefully-engineered hills and valleys, toward inevitable conclusions.  This is not to say that they never employed subtlety or ambiguity, but I think we all know what point was being made in the closing scenes of movies like, say, “E.T.” or “The Godfather” or “Raging Bull.”  (Maybe not so much with the ending of “Taxi Driver.”)

Practitioners and theorists of art have had a lot to say about authorial intent in the last century, though.  John Cage’s infamous composition 4’33” was a statement about the variability of art, which is this: no artist (or maybe we should just say “composer”) can be fully in control of the sensory experience of his audience.  Outside noise will always interfere with any performance, or even a playback of a recording, of any piece of music, and affect – perhaps seriously – the way in which it is heard; and even if you manage to dampen all outside sounds completely, you still have to contend with the method of delivery (are the acoustics good? headphones or stereo system? etc.) and even the constant but barely audible sound of the listener’s own body going about its business.**  4’33” was Cage saying “I give up” to complete authorial control of his own work.  The piece is nothing but outside noise – the performer adds no sound to it except the gentle thump of a piano lid opening and closing.

In literature, New Criticism came along and out of the mouths of luminaries as notable as T.S. Eliot, and stated boldly that authorial intent was beside the point.  The text alone provides the meaning.  Deconstructionism went a step further and said that meaning is always and only created by the reader.  The author has been entirely removed from the equation here – he’s just a poor schlub who generated a book, onto which readers can project their own interpretations and conclusions.  (You can see, hopefully, how 4’33” was a similar argument posing as – or maybe I should say “doubling as” – a work of art.)  I think most readers today take a middle road: they want to have their authorial intent but fuck with it too.  I can’t blame them.  That model, though philosophically slippery, makes a lot of sense to me.  Except in purely abstract or even random works of art, authorial intent seems to always peek through, because we speak the same languages and share many of the same experiences.  It’s not as if these works of art have arrived fresh from another galaxy, created by minds entirely alien to ours.  On the other hand, we don’t all know the same words or thoughts or emotions; we are not all versed in the same theories and methods of interpretation; we are, to get down to it, not all the same.  So surely deconstructionism had a valid point to make, even if we aren’t yet ready to kill the author completely.

But Ebert rejects the efforts of Derrida, Cage, Eliot, and others.  So be it.  He is hardly the first.  We could sit down and hash out theories of art for hours or days, and I might never persuade him.  The man has had a lot of years on this planet (a lot more than me, in fact) and has probably read about all this stuff before; let’s assume he’s made an informed decision, and move on.

…Before we move on entirely, though, I want to dawdle briefly and make fun of something Ebert said in what was probably an off-the-cuff, ill-thought-out manner.  This is from his “conversation” with Clive Barker, who came down firmly on the side of videogames being art: “I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.”  This is A. deconstructionism, pure and simple; B. self-contradictory if you believe firmly in authorial intent (which I think we can assume Ebert does, based on what I quoted above, as well as this: “Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices”+).  So Ebert believes art is created by an artist, and if you change it, you’re the  artist – who is therefore creating art – and therefore, videogames… are art?  I’ve seldom seen a person decimate his own argument in so few words. 

But I’d like to move on to the real meat of the point I am making.  (Or about to make.  Whatever.)  If we grant Ebert the right to be a fuddy-duddy and cling like a rat to the sinking ship of “the author is always right,” we also have to talk about what videogames actually DO.  And that thing is not what Ebert thinks it is.  He holds fast to the notion of the player changing the experience, and therefore changing the art (and thereby making it not-art).  The “smorgasbord of choices” does not lead to an “inevitable conclusion.”  And yet, this is not what videogames do; at least not most of the ones I’ve played.  Frankly, it is still considered a Very Big Deal when a game can have different endings depending on the player’s choices in the game.++  GTA4 has been universally acclaimed and the malleability of its plot and characterizations is much-commented-upon in reviews.  Bioshock (an excellent game with a, dareIsayit, ARTISTIC story line) offers several different endings depending on a series of choices you make throughout the game.  But these are exceptions rather than the rule.  Most heavily plotted games have a series of cut scenes and scripted in-game dialogue or character interactions that proceed in order to an, ahem, Inevitable Conclusion.  You may lollygag about between these moments, and you may kill more or less (or none) of the game’s other denizens, and you may sacrifice yourself a few extra times just to see Master Chief bounce off some polygonal, bump-mapped rocks – but ultimately you are heading for the same damn ending as everybody else.  Not just the ending, but all of the plot points – all the highs and lows, the improbable twists, the part where your grizzled mentor betrays you and turns out to be the true bad guy, oh no! – will be the same for every player.  Ebert is hung up on “choices” that generally don’t occur in the world of games.  Games are simply more lackadaisical about getting to their conclusions, but that doesn’t imply a lack of inevitability; it doesn’t prohibit any possibility of authorial intent in the game.  (I’ve beaten Halos 1-3 collectively three times, and the plot didn’t change any of the three.  And don’t get me started on the heavily scripted, almost ridiculously over-plotted Metal Gear Solid series.)

Games since (at least) the dawn of the console (and possibly before) have often given us cinema-similar plotting.  The standards for writing and acting have generally been much lower, of course – none of us are immune to the awkwardly hilarious voice “acting” from the first Resident Evil – but the point stands that the experience is honestly not that different, except that the gun fights, car chases, and big action setpieces that fill up time and sizzle your nerves between the plot bits can last a whole lot longer.  And the best games rise to at least the mid-water mark of cinema, if never attaining “Citizen Kane” status (let alone the perilous heights of a good, dense novel).  But it’s only a matter of time.  GTA4, despite allowing the player to affect the outcome to a certain extent, has a rich and emotional story that shames both its predecessors and its copycats.  Bioshock has an excellent and immersive plot that draws influence from Orson Welles, Ayn Rand, and other sources, and also makes a startling (and Artistic) point about player agency.  If anything, the argument posed by Bioshock is one that would make Ebert smile broadly: “You think you’re in control, but actually you’re doing what we let you do; or what we TELL you to do.” 

If that ain’t some kind of authorial intent, I don’t know what it is.  I know this though: it’s probably art, by most definitions.  Including Ebert’s. 

—

* Creating good mixed metaphors is an art.  Sadly for me- and you- this one is not good.

** Cage made a trip to an anechoic chamber at Harvard that led him to the conclusion that as a listener, you can never experience complete silence.  He heard two sounds at different frequencies – a low pitched one (his blood circulating) and a high pitched one (his nervous system in operation).

+ I imagine Ebert is not a “Choose Your Own Adventure” fan.  He probably also has a serious problem with “The Lady or the Tiger?” – sits around in a drunken stupor on weekends, intermittently screaming “Just fuckin’ tell us which one, ya baloney!”

++ Here we are talking about plot-driven games that really have endings; the Donkey Kong kill screen, for instance, does not qualify.

The Geek Constitution

Preamble

We the Geeks of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, stop Infighting between Trekkies and Star Wars nerds, establish once and for all which Videogame Console is graphically superior, determine where the next 50 years of Gencons will be held, prevent unfair Magic Card trades, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our sensitive posteriors, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of Geekdom.

Article. I. – The Geek Activity Hierarchy

Section 1 – Rules of Behavior Pertaining to the Hierarchy

In the following article shall be described the Structure of the geek Hierarchy, that being the objectively determined Superiority and Inferiority of geek Activities as they relate to one another.  No geek shall henceforth break with this Structure, nor shall he proclaim or support any contrary Structure; nor shall he mock anyone for participating in a Higher Activity than his own.  Mockery of Lower Activities is both allowed and encouraged, however.

Section 2 – The Hierarchy

Geek activities in order: I. General and Constant use of the Internet.  II. Specific and Constant use of the Internet, including but not limited to Posting on web Forums related to Star Wars, Lost, Anime/Manga, any Sci Fi Channel Original Series, Videogames, etc.  III. Copious watching of Anime, or reading of Manga or Comic Books.  IV. Playing Dungeons & Dragons or any similar roleplaying game.  V. Magic Cards.  VI. Massive Multiplayer Online Whatsits.  VII. Cosplay.  VIII. Live Action Role Play – may God have mercy on your Souls.  IX. Furries.  X. This space reserved for whatever horrible trend next emerges from the darkest Bowels of Cyberspace.

Article. II. – General Laws Determining the Outcome of Common Geek Conflicts

Section 1 – Han Shot First

Han shot First.  We all know it; you know it, I know it, Han and Chewie know it, and George Fucking Lucas knows it.  Any Person stating otherwise will herefore and forthwith be Banished from participating in geek Activities, levels I – VII.  Any Person claiming that the Revised Star Wars DVDs are as good as, or Superior to, the original versions will be made to join a Fraternity (retroactively, if he has passed college age) and apply for a position in Marketing.

Section 2 – Star Wars is Better and Cooler than Star Trek

Seriously, this wasn’t even an Argument BEFORE Voyager and all those third-rate Next Generation movies.  Roddenberry Dorks shall Give Up on this subject.

Section 3 – Picard and Kirk Are Equally Good As Far As We Can Tell

Congress shall make no law respecting this really sensitive Area.  Congress is washing its Hands of this crap.

Section 4 – Yes, The Matrix Sequels Did Suck

They did so.

Section 5 – Alyson Hannigan is Cute, But In No Way Hotter Than Seven Of Nine

First, Congress would like to point out Seven Of Nine’s enormous Funbags.  Second, if you’re going to Drool all over a geeky redheaded girl, it should probably be the Curvaceous and quite intelligent Kari Byron of Mythbusters.  You should admit that Alyson Hannigan appeals to you so much because she looks like the hottest girl at an SCA event, and therefore someone you have a realistic chance of sleeping with, if you can tear yourself away from your XBox for five damn Minutes.  (Congress admits it would totally hit on that girl too, but not if Seven Of Nine was there.)

Article. III. – Random Capitalization of Words

We know You love It.  Sometimes we will just Capitalize nouns, and other Times we will not capitalize the Nouns at all.  Very often we Will simply try To make your Brain huRt.

Article. IV. – The Governing of Geekdom

Section 1 – The King of the Geeks

The King, His Imperial Majesty, the Dark Lord of Mordor, shall be an Office appointed yearly according to the following Criteria: 1. Best use of Withering Sarcasm; 2. Quickest Thumbs upon the royal Gamepad, and/or most triumphant acts of Pwnage on XBox Live; 3. Correct Pronunciation of the unpronouncable word “Pwnage”; 4. Largest collection of Neil Gaiman comics, original Japanese language mangas, or Heroclix; 5. Ability to communicate meaningfully using Naught but quotations from The Simpsons, Army of Darkness, Futurama, and the game Zero Wing.

Section 2 – Toadies

The King shall appoint no fewer than two Toadies to serve under him and repeat his every Opinion, while pretending to have independent Thought by saying things like, “I respectfully disagree; the Prequels were only about two-thirds as bad as a shit sandwich, not fully as bad.”  All geeks in Geekdom will Publickly respect the office of the Toady as though he was the King himself, while talking shit behind the Toady’s back.  Think of them as those Weaselly guys in The King Of Kong who were always sucking up to Billy Mitchell.

Section 3 – The Office of Oppressor

All geeks shall live under the Thumb of a financially secure Oppressor, this person typically being one or more Parents, a Wife or Girlfriend, or perhaps a tolerant Grandmother, until such time as the geek can get himself a job in Computers.  While living in the home of the Oppressor, the geek shall basically live in the Manner he sees fit, but will complain with great Vitriol about being prevented from buying a Magic Booster Pack that one time.

Section 4 – Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power to determine for all of geek-kind whether the next Futurama direct-to-DVD movie sucks out loud or is a moderately tolerable Disappointment;

To kill Uwe Boll at any point, should his Videogame movie adaptations cease to amuse us;

To apply the “naked Lara” patch to any and all future Tomb Raider Games;

To judge whether you are a Camper, a Rocket-Whore, or a Little Bitch while playing Halo (Congress shall never compliment you on your Skill);

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To resolve any future geek Disputes not covered previously in Article II.  Currently, Congress is settling whether Kirsten Dunst was Good, Acceptable, or Awful as Mary Jane in the Spiderman movies, as well as whether she is Girl-Next-Door Hot, Not That Great, or a Butterface Snaggletooth.

Article. V. – Geek Ingress Into Non-Geek Activities

A geek shall be allowed to participate in no more than two of these Activities per year: 1. Watching football; 2. Drinking Beer; 3. Marketing; 4. Fixing Cars; 5. Moussing or gelling of Hair; 6. Wearing of Pants that are neither Jeans nor Shorts; 7. Eating salad more than occasionally; 8. Watching Walker, Texas Ranger; 9. Believing in a God who isn’t Thor.  Geeks who violate this Law shall be made to sell their AD&D original rulebooks on eBay with a retardedly low “Buy It Now” option.

Amendments

Amendment 1 – Alyson Hannigan Is Actually As Hot As Seven Of Nine

Outcry from the Community was too great on this one.  We gave up.

Amendment 2 – Lack of Freedom of Speech, Expression, Press

Geeks shall not take up Opinions in the Publick Sphere that violate the Laws set down herein.  We will seriously bomb your E-Mail account with Viral Spam, and have you blacklisted from your area Papa John’s.  Try playing thirty-two straight Hours of Everquest without Pizza, traitor.

Amendment 3 – Right to Bear Arms

If you have a fake Lightsaber, ninja weapons, or medieval sword replicas, your right to carry them to Cons large and small shall not be infringed.

Amendment 4 – Right to Have and Actually Care About a Significant Other

We have given up on this one.  Too many of us are getting Old and Lonely.

Rockstar are a bunch of… rock stars

Diane,

Now, this is funny.  (In case you’re not familiar with the background, Jack Thompson is the lawyer who is making a living off suing Rockstar and other game companies that make violent videogames.  He doesn’t win his suits, but he makes a living anyway.)

In other news of the world that relates to the ideas and interests of this blog:

~ The “Near Dark” remake is moving forward and has a director.  So let’s run down the checklist of items that make this movie EXTREMELY REALLY SUPER-PROMISING!, shall we?  Director with no feature films but plenty of average music videos under his belt?  Check!  No Lance Henrikson?  Check!  No Tangerine Dream soundtrack?  Check!  Well-regarded and surprisingly timeless movie being remade just for an easy cash-in?  Check!  Yes, this one promises to be a winner.  I imagine the scene where Bill Paxton slashed a bartender’s throat with his spur will now be played by the famous naked bassist from Fallout Boy, and instead of a spur it will be a large knife that pops out of a mechanical sheath in the sole of his boot, and instead of a regular old shot it will feature eighteen jump cuts and grainy, desaturated film stock to make it awesome.  Which it will be.  Extra, extra awesome.

~ The NFL has swept the Patriots cheating scandal under the rug.  Not too surprising.  In the aftermath of Cameragate (can we retire that -gate thing yet?) public opinion was split down the middle between a shrug and a moralistic finger-wagging.  Mr. Easterbrook (linked above) takes the latter route, none too surprisingly.  My analysis is that both reactions are appropriate depending on your perspective, and that’s why the league is taking care of it.  The Patriots are not an isolated example of going around league rules, and the NFL knows this and is trying to prevent it from turning into a feeding frenzy – like what has happened to Major League Baseball in the last few years, post-federal inquiry and post-Jose Canseco book.  So if you think this isn’t such a big deal because everyone does it, you’re right.  But if you think it IS a big deal BECAUSE everyone does it, you’re also right.  Figure that one out.  The integrity of the NFL has taken a hit, but they’re hoping if they put a bullet in its head real quick-like that we’ll just skip the funeral and pretend it didn’t happen.  And they’re probably right.  We Americans like to look the other way on scandals that reflect badly on our favorite institutions.  (Myself included.)

~ Halo 3 came out and it’s getting mixed but mostly positive reviews.  It won’t save the world but some features (like the map editor Forge mode) are forward-thinking, almost revolutionary for a console game as popular as Halo is.  My main gripe is, it should have shipped with at least 2-3 more multiplayer maps.  Bad Bungie.  Otherwise the game is moderately-upgraded more-of-same.  Which is pretty standard for any major franchise, unless your title involves the phrase “phantom menace” in any capacity.

~ Rapper Saigon finally gets a release date for his long, long, loooonnnngggg delayed debut album, “The Greatest Story Never Told.”  This is in I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it status for hip hop fans.  It’s just a couple degrees shy of “Chinese Democracy” status at this point.

Waiting to be fed

Diane,

It seems to me that much of my life is occupied with waiting for the next juicy tidbit to be laid in front of me for consumption.  I’m not talking about GT South’s delicious barbecue hovel on the east side.  No, I mean consumption in the sense of me being a consumer, and consuming products.

I’m not your typical consumer; the breadth of things that I consume is very narrow.  My car is an average priced sedan that I’ve driven for over six years, and hope to drive for another six at least.  My clothes are the standard Old Navy uniform of (cheap) cargo shorts and (cheap) mono- or bi-chromatic t-shirts.  I wear my shoes into the ground*, I eat out a lot but rarely at expensive or high profile restaurants, and I hate every shopping mall with the intensity of Jon Gruden when the Bucs are in the middle of another hopeless loss and have just committed their fourth turnover. 

What I do consume is media.  (I know, you’re surprised.)  I buy a lot of CDs and a modest amount of vinyl.  I have a good-sized DVD collection that is still slowly expanding.  I own several video game systems that demand new games to keep their lasers bright and shiny – so I helplessly comply once every month or two.  I keep an eye on new release schedules for music, movies, and books.  I even have a list.

Ah, The List.  This, I guess, is where my consumption turned from a harmless hobby into a seriously problematic addiction.  About a year ago I realized that things were slipping past me.  I have a couple more responsibilities (house, cats, girlfriend, etc.) and a little less free time than I used to, and every once in a while, an artist or director I like would release an album or movie… and I wouldn’t know about it.  I might find out five months later and buy the album, or wait on Netflix to send me the movie on DVD.  That model, clearly, was unacceptable.  And at the same time, I was ramping up my subculture browsing.  I was flitting between web forums for hip hop, dancehall, metal, and rock all day long at work, and finding more and more bands that I liked, forthcoming releases I really wanted.  Eventually it got to be too much to keep up with.  At least until I made up The List.

The List is just a text (.txt) file on my computer.  No funny fonts or spellchecking for The List.  I edit it in Notepad and it’s as ugly as Luke Skywalker making his Gerbil of Rage face when Darth tells him about their secret special relationship in “Empire.”  The List is saved under the file name “New Releases Forthcoming,” which is a little dry and a little pompous at the same time; I probably should change it, but then again, it’s not really worth the effort, is it?  I can tell what it is from the name, and that’s good enough.

I open The List every day and scan its contents.  On good days I get to add new items, or remove old ones when the date of release has finally arrived and I reach my metaphorical consumptive orgasm.  I’m not sure which action I prefer: adding new items (as well as tending to the existing list of Forthcomings) has that sickly charge of anticipation, like the month before Christmas when you’re ten.  It feels good and kind of hurts at the same time.  Removing items that have finally arrived – and usually, I wait to remove them until said item is sitting on my desk, freshly unwrapped – is both satisfying and deflating.  It usually makes me want to add something else to The List, just to keep it hale and healthy.

I realize this admission makes me out to be kind of a freak.  …That’s all I can say about that.  I won’t defend myself.  Yep, I’m kind of a freak.  The End.

—

For your reading enjoyment, here are some soon-to-arrive highlights from The List:

~ “From Beyond” director’s cut DVD (Sept 11).  Stuart Gordon’s best non-“Re-animator” movie finally gets the deluxe DVD treatment, and now with several extra minutes of grue.  I cannot wait.  Rumor has it that one new scene has Jeffrey Combs sucking out a woman’s eyeball in loving close-up.

~ “Graduation” by Kanye West (Sept 11).  I realize Kanye’s massive ego gets on people’s nerves, but the guy is simply doing more with hip hop than almost anybody else, whether mainstream or underground.  His albums are nearly as creative as your average Def Jux release, but they also have a lot more superficial appeal – like hooks, soul samples, funny punchlines, etc.  I liked his previous two a lot and I’m really anticipating this one.

~ “Death is this Communion” by High on Fire (Sept 18).  This is a great sludge/doom metal band, like a modern day Black Sabbath after five joints and three hours of Dungeons & Dragons.  And check out this badass cover art.  All it needs is a pair of boobs and Conan.

~ Untitled new release from Bounty Killer (late 2007, exact date unannounced).  The guy puts out like one album every five years.  That’s not good enough.  And it’s exactly that kind of lax release schedule that makes The List necessary… I can’t keep up with all these artists who disappear off the radar for half a decade and then slip out a new album when I’m least expecting it.  This entry reminds me to check back at his site every so often.

~ Halo 3 (Sept 25).  The main event in videogaming.  I fully expect this game to force me to quit my job so I can max out on hours per day spent sticking aliens with plasma grenades.  Waiting for this is killing me; luckily, I have the awe-inspiring Bioshock to tide me over until then. 

There are others… a startling amount of others… but I don’t want to scare you away completely, Diane.  My only intent was to give you a little window of insight into my soul so that when they show me on the news being carted away from a Best Buy, foaming at the mouth and screaming about the Grand Theft Auto release delay, you’ll be able to knowingly and sadly comment on it to Diane Sawyer.  Be sure to get them to film you from the left – that’s your good side.

—

* It’s the best way to wear them.  I tried wearing them into the sky and into a river and both of these went exceedingly poorly.

Little ideas to be later expanded into fulsome time-wasters

Idea: Posts don’t always have to begin with “Diane,”.

Idea: Memes are approaching an infinity point which is also a singularity (in the astrophysical rather than mathematical sense).  LOLcats are not this point but may be the penultimate one.

Idea: The worst of everything is actually the best of everything.  Primitive and found art is better than Rembrandt.  A slice of American cheese product is better than anything involving a “reduction.”  Jerry Springer (does he still have a show..?) is better than “Twin Peaks.”  Art and culture are moebius strips.

Idea: Top four hundred albums from any genre of music.  Exclude all albums my girlfriend likes in order to start an argument.  Exacerbate this argument by pointing out that iceberg lettuce is awesome and asparagus sucks.  When we break up, insist that she keep our cat “Fiver” as he seems to love her best (read: has a creepy fixation on her that may qualify as pathological and will almost certainly end in both of their deaths).  Enjoy many well-rested nights while Nancee sleeps naught and longs for my company.  Eventually force her to put Fiver out and stop eating asparagus to take me back.  Get myself a t-shirt made that has a picture of me on the front and says “WIN” on the back.

Idea: Grand Theft Auto as the uber-video game.  It encompasses all other games, and those it does not encompass were rejected as bacteria would be from a healthy host body with a kickin’ immune system.

Idea: Review my friends as if they were books I read or movies I watched.  Start with W.

Refinement: Review my friends as if they were some particular kind of art, and explain which one & why.  W. is a long-running syndicated series like “Married: With Children,” and his life is similarly unfunny and depressing.  J. is an avant garde soundtrack to a film that was never released: smart (maybe too smart), loud (maybe too loud), non-sequiturious (that’s not a word), huge pizza aficianado (no idea).

Idea: In-depth analysis of the career of Andre 3000.  Make a case for his (to me, axiomatic) status as the greatest genius in any field of endeavor for the last 50 years.

Idea: The re-creative impulse in art.  Explain why it is best that the movie version of “The Two Towers” featured a borderline-unrecognizable Faramir, why the Supersuckers’ cover of “Hey Ya” is as good as OutKast’s (Andre 3000 genius notwithstanding), why abridgements and translations and non-authorial edits often result in more readable works, and why the Cliffs Notes version of “Les Miserables” is more successful on both an artistic and communicative level than the book is.  Hide from my social circle for two weeks.

Idea: We are frittering away our lives.  Is it possible to acknowledge this without passing judgement on it?  Further, does inherent meaninglessness excuse one from the search for meaning?  Is contentment or growth the higher value?

Idea: Click the Publish button.  We’re done here, Diane.

The delicacies of the cadaver

Diane,

In my line of work, one must look in a lot of grim and disturbing places for information.  When I’m not wrestling with the meaning of dancing dwarves who speak backwardly, I can often be found in the morgue – searching for unusual marks, wounds, and other signs that might appear meaningless to the casual observer.  Sometimes you can find a clue tangled in the victim’s hair, resting in her stomach… or lodged under a fingernail.  Every place is subject to investigation. 

Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, thou art not so.  We men (and women, Diane) make our lives out of death.  We peer at it, we wonder about it; we celebrate it in art and yet denigrate it through the very act of creating that art.  We who obsess over death, who are ultimately made finite and in the end punctuated by death, stand up and reject it nonetheless.  We are Camus’s absurd hero – except for those of us who are too damn cowardly. 

The beauty of this thing lies in its essential contradiction.  To come to the void and embrace it – it’s madness, and yet it’s all we can do.  It is the realization of the potential of our essentially meaningless (and therefore potential-less) lives.

Which is why zombie movies are the fucking shit.

So a big hell yes! to the works of:

GEORGE ROMERO

who gave us the quintessential family of zombie movies: the grim and terrifying template, “Night of the Living Dead”; the comic book-colored, cynical yet strangely optimistic nightmare, “Dawn of the Dead”; the deeply flawed but fascinating “Day of the Dead”; and the mediocre, basically unnecessary “Land of the Dead.”

STUART GORDON

who primarily works in the “Lovecraft plus tits and gore and Jeffrey Combs” genre, but within this narrow field produced the great splatter/zombie classic, “Re-animator.”

PETER JACKSON

who seems to stride manfully into a different type of movie every time out, but was gracious enough along the way to gift us “Dead Alive,” the movie where a living intestinal tract tries to strangle the hero, where the climax involves a lawnmower and a literally record-setting quantity of fake blood, and where, most notably, a zombie priest fucks a zombie nurse while her nearly-severed head flops around from the flap attaching it to her neck (let’s see Harry Potter’s Nearly Headless Nick do something THAT awesome).

SAM RAIMI

whose “Evil Dead” trilogy is not truly about zombies, but certainly warrants his inclusion here – not least because of its influence on Peter Jackson and “Dead Alive.”

LUCIO FULCI

who directed a lot of movies that are extremely gross and make absolutely no sense, but goddammit if that scene with the zombie fighting the shark in “Zombie” (a.k.a. “Zombi 2″*) wasn’t the very greatest thing ever.  And a girl gets her eye impaled on a giant wood splinter, too.  The man was positively obsessed with eye trauma.

EDGAR WRIGHT and SIMON PEGG

who made “Shaun of the Dead,” a movie that blew away my fairly high expectations and was one of the funniest damn films of the last decade, while also bringing the gore in plentiful amounts.

Let us also not forget to celebrate ZOMBIE-BASED VIDEOGAMES, such as “Resident Evil” (in its many iterations) and most especially “Dead Rising.”  “Resident Evil” taught us that zombies could make for a good and fairly frightening videogame experience; “Dead Rising” taught us that slaughtering thousands of well-rendered zombies with garden shears, frying pans, and sledgehammers is completely fucking awesome.  (You wouldn’t think we’d need to be taught that, but maybe we sort of forgot about it until we started playing that game.)

—

Zombies have been stand-ins for our rampant consumerism (“Dawn of the Dead”), for our fear of war (“Night of the Living Dead”) and distrust of our government (“Night,” “Land of the Dead”), for sickness and plague (basically all of them, but especially “28 Days Later”), and for the usual shallow summer entertainment (“Dawn of the Dead” remake – tagline: “You’ll Believe A Zombie Can Run Really Fast!”).  But above all, zombies are what happens when a guy with a knowledge of art but both feet in pop sets pen to paper, and tries to express how he feels about his own mortality.  The answer that comes back is usually “I don’t fucking like it, so let’s stomp in some undead heads.” 

If you want to join me, Diane, I’ll be screening “Night” or “Dawn” or “Day” right around Halloween every year from now until they slide me into a coffin and bid me a fond farewell.  And I swear I won’t mind if you decide you have to dig under my fingernails before I go.

—

* “Zombie” was known as “Zombi 2” in its home country Italy – a transparent ploy to pose it as the sequel to Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” which was called “Zombi” for its Italian release.

He loved too much

Diane,

I’m proud to announce my epitaph.  (See title.)

It may be a bit early, but why the hell not?  I’m youngish and still clear-minded, but old enough to look back with some wisdom; this may be the last, best time for me to come up with a phrase that summarizes my life so far, plus what I guess will be all the rest of it.  If I wait a lot longer I might forget that I need to do this, or I might still try but fail, and then end up with somebody else’s hare-brained bullshittery sprayed all over my tombstone.  Nope, I can’t let that happen.  So it will be: “He loved too much.”

What did I love too much?  Wrong question, Diane.  The better inquiry would be “What did I love too much OF?”  And the answer is, “Stuff.”

I love too much music.  I stopped off at the local CD store today and ended up with both volumes of the Ramones’ “All The Stuff And More,” plus a Misfits album, plus a used Obituary CD (“Frozen In Time,” a deliciously apt title, and I’m pretty sure they knew it).  This is not an especially unusual shopping spree for me when it comes to music.  My girlfriend taunts me about the number of Amazon.com and eBay packages I get in a typical week.*  I consume.  I feel like a goldfish, and someone is sprinkling little CD-shaped flakes in my bowl, and I can’t stop gorging myself.

I love too many movies.  This is a more distant love of late, but like all my loves it waxes and wanes in little cycles.  It will return.  My best guess as to when is autumn, when Halloween nears and I am suddenly struck with the desire to watch as many horror movies as possible in the span of one month.  I’ll set my DVR for constant duty on AMC (Halloween 4 again, anyone?) and I’ll set out a stack of Evil Deads and Exorcists and Re-animators (both the Re-animator himself and the Bride thereof, but not number three, which was kind of crappy).  That will lead into the cold dark heart of winter, where I’ll keep watching movies to fill the endless hours indoors.  I’ll transport myself to Almeria, the Spanish location where so many spaghetti westerns were shot – a warm desert wasteland so completely opposite from the bleak hell of Indiana winter.  I’ll probably spin “Grizzly Man” and “Fitzcarraldo” again, two Werner Herzogs I’ve been meaning to re-watch.  I’ll wet my lips for the coming summer season, only to be let down (inevitably) by Indiana Jones 4 and whatever other shit comes down the chute… please, Diane, let it not be Shrek 4, because I can’t take any more Shrek-based commercials.  I’ll get burned out at some point.  And I’ll move on to the next thing.

I love… not too many; let’s say, about the right amount of… books.  My girlfriend laps me a few times a year in reading.  But I can at least say that I usually finish twice as many books as she does when we go on vacation.  This past week in Mackinac I read a Chuck Klosterman book (he’s leaking into my blog; damned if the guy doesn’t come off like another me from a slightly different time and place), a collection of travel essays by the likes of David Sedaris and Bill Bryson, and a couple of others; plus I gazed meaningfully at “The Power And The Glory,” which I will eventually read, because I loved the hell out of “The Heart Of The Matter.”

I love too few video games, but the ones I love, I love too much.  I own every iteration of Grand Theft Auto and I have achieved the elusive 100% completion award in all but one of them.  I own two Halos and have a beta version of a third, and I spend very many hours a week playing them.  I used to also be a Madden-addict, until I realized the game was slowly driving me crazy – it turns out I’m too much of a stats nerd to shrug it off when the computer, in the waning minutes of a 35-0 blowout, decides to throw for 250 useless yards and ruin my team’s defensive ranking.  When I figured out that every season in franchise mode was going to have my team top five in rushing defense and dead last in passing, I decided the game was too infuriatingly unrealistic to keep buying at $50 a pop every year.

I love the sound of my own voice too much, obviously.  I really can prattle on. 

But let all this serve as a preamble to, and a warning about, the posts of the next few days, which are going to delve deep into some pop culture hoo-ha that most of you (meaning “People In The World”) could care less about.  I may actually turn you against things you previously enjoyed.  If you find yourself fatigued and rubbing your eyes after a few paragraphs on subject X or Y, you might consider skipping ahead to the next post, or clicking a link to transport you to something less obsessive.  Or hell, just hit Back to your search page of choice and look up some more LOLcats.

All of which is to say, I plan to seal that epitaph up there.  I plan to own it.  I plan to PWN it.  You are duly forewarned.

—

* Six.