Venus in Furs

When I finished reading Carmilla, a book from 1872 that was supposed to be filled with lesbian vampire sex, I was extremely disappointed. In my post, I wrote that I was swearing off 1870s "erotica" forever. I lied. If Carmilla was a journey beyond my comfort zone, Venus in Furs was a trip to the moon. It is not only a book about a dominatrix/submissive relationship; it is the defining book about a dominatrix/submissive relationship. How defining? The author's name is the root for the English word "masochism." That defining. (Like I said, this was very much unlike anything I've ever read or dared to read.) As I'm sure you can imagine, the book defined by one word would be "kinky." But it was so much more. In this little novella, there was actually tons of character exposure and development, a great deal of gender role philosophy, and even a definite story which progressed at a pleasant pace. Since I'm pretty sure - nay, positive - that no one else out there is dying to read this, I'll summarize the plot with few fears of spoilers. A man named Severin meets a woman named Wanda and becomes immediately infatuated with her. She returns his affections and the two are happy together. Then one day, Severin proposes marriage. Wanda, a firm believer in the ancient Greek lifestyle of free love, insists that she cannot marry Severin. In turn, Severin - and here's where things start getting "alternate-themed" - insists that he must be with Wanda forever, and if he cannot be her husband, he has no choice but to be her slave. Wanda is plenty willing to go along with Severin's request, figuring he's just being romantic and over-the-top. She tries to play along, buying a whip and giving Severin a servant's uniform and allowing him to grovel and humiliate himself before her. But the issue here is that Severin's not playing. And while Wanda feels awkward whipping him (at first she apologizes after doing so, feeling immediately awkward and uncomfortable), Severin is very clearly enjoying himself and literally worshipping Wanda. All the while, Wanda begs him to reconsider the path they're headed down and warns Severin that she doesn't know what she's capable of doing to him. But he's on board and then some. As time wears on, Wanda begins to tire of Severin and begins to actually see him the way she treats him: as a lesser being. She begins to court other men. This, more than any physical act of cruelty she has put Severin through, tortures and eats away at him. The slippery slope continues and by the story's climax, we've come full circle; Wanda, tired of being idolized and worshiped, finds a man who she herself longs to serve and please. Severin is devastated and in a very perverse twist he ends up tied up and beaten half to death by Wanda's new man as Wanda simply looks on and laughs. Cold. The story's epilogue explains that some four or five years later, Severin is in control of himself and is living with a young female who he treats harshly in a domineering manner. Then there's some half-assed vague feminist message along the lines of, "Man is either master or slave to women - until the two are equal under law." Now for some reflection and analysis. First, I was impressed by how effectively Sacher-Masoch conveyed his characters and their emotions to me, quirks and all. Although they had a very complex and polarized relationship, I could actually identify with and relate to both Severin and Wanda. It's easy to look at Severin and think, "that pervert had it coming." It's easy to size up Wanda as nothing more than a twisted bitch. But each acted only in accordance with the agreement they had made with one another; finding fault with one but not the other is unfair and ignorant of the big picture. In spite of its unique spin, Venus in Furs was a love story. Ironically, Wanda ultimately confesses to Severin that she loved him enough to have actually made him her husband. But after months of treating him like a dog, she no longer saw him fit to be a real man in her life. Tragic, but understandable. Wanda could easily be seen as a femme fatale who toyed with Severin and drove him mad, but in her defense, he had explicitly requested, time and time again, to be mistreated. The fact that she did so on an emotional level and not just a physical one was something Severin was unprepared for in spite of all of Wanda's warnings earlier on in the story. Still, I really felt terrible for Severin during the book's climactic whipping scene. To debase himself in front of Wanda was one thing, but to be tortured and humiliated by the man that takes away the love of his life is quite another entirely. I wasn't quite clear on the ultimate moral of the story, so to speak. Was Sacher-Masoch a feminist calling for women's suffrage, or was he warning people about the dangers of reversing gender roles? Perhaps it was a mixture of both sentiments. Sacher-Masoch, after all, was a bit of a fetishist himself; it is not unreasonable to assume that he shared many of Severin's quirks but it is also clear that he could at least foresee the ruin and despair that a lifestyle like Severin's could ultimately lead to. I couldn't blame the guy for being at least a little bit confused. Regardless, I found Venus in Furs to be well-written and fascinating. It was a quick and easy read but it was also something that forced me to think about plenty of concepts (such as entire lifestyle choices) that I'd otherwise have ignored. I will now pat myself on the back for this courageous pick. May the month of May bring many more unexpected gems.

The Drawing of the Three

So, I would first like to take a moment of you time to apologize to my fellow back-loggers for my lack of urgency. I have had this book waiting in the wings to write about. I admit it. I pulled a Webber. Anywho, I'm sorry, but I promised I would write about this before the month was over and I only have a little over an hour left so onward!

As Sweeney said, this book was great and much much better than the Gunslinger. As the title promises, the gunslinger "draws the three". See I'm not sure exactly what to write because I know that when I plan on reading a book I don't even like to know the plot. I know Steve wants to read this so I won't write about the plot.

I guess I will just say a few simple things. The first of the "three" I like a lot. The second of the "three" I was not a big fan of, but I am now liking a lot in the third book. The third of the "three" is still confusing to me, but leaves a lot of promise. Also, there's these awesome lobsters in this book.

It was really good though! On to The Waste Lands (which I am halfway through....oops)!

Dubliners

One of the books I'm least looking forward to on my list is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's 700+ pages and very difficult to read; I've tried it more than once and though I didn't hate it I'd often catch myself drifting away every few pages. This won't do! So in the interest of making it easier on myself, I added a collection of Joyce's short stories to my list- Dubliners. The book seems like a much better introduction to Joyce's writings, and required far less effort to get through. Plus it's his first book, and a number of the characters he introduced here show up in Ulysses. Most of the stories were pretty simple and easy to read- some of the more memorable ones being An Encounter in which some kids deal with a creepy old man; Two Gallants, a day in the life of some con-men; and Grace, where an alcoholic gets his religious groove back. But for every memorable one, there seemed to be a stinker, which left me with a very "meh" attitude to the collection as a whole. But then, this isn't supposed to be Joyce's great work, but Ulysses is. We shall see if it's worthy of the praise in due time, but probably not for a while.

Naked Lunch

Sorry Trev, I waited a while to make the dual entry, but as far I know you haven't finished Naked Lunch. What a shame. I once heard that you should read William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch without caring about the plot or characters, but pay more attention to the way it makes you feel and the emotions it invokes. If that's the case, I consider it my duty to let you know that I came away from the novel feeling confused and slightly disgusted. This isn't a bad thing, in fact I think it was Burroughs' intention the whole time. Remember on South Park when everyone reads Catcher in the Rye and gets disappointed by how tame it seemed? Well Naked Lunch is more on the Scrotie McBoogerBalls side of the spectrum. It's loaded with rape between all sorts of people (and non-people) and drug use, and it's written in pretty graphic detail. It's no surprise then that the book was banned all over the place at the time of it's publication. It kind of also reminded me of watching A Clockwork Orange- I didn't think something made decades ago would have enough shock value to make me uncomfortable, but it held up after all these years. The difference here is that A Clockwork Orange had a coherent plot and some easily identifiable lessons. Naked Lunch has plenty of plot, but very little of it connects. Bits of hilarity and top-notch satire are lost in a sea of rape. Man, so much rape. Well, Naked Lunch was another one of those "out of my comfort zone" reads, and I can't say I'll be going back to Burroughs any time soon, but at least that's one more book off of my list.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2010

I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the best sports video games are based on soccer. For a long time, PES has been considered superior to FIFA. However, after playing both FIFA 2010 and PES 2010, I can honestly say that those days are over. I am guessing that those days ended a few years ago, but this is the first year in which I was able to play both FIFA and PES. Compared to FIFA, PES feels broken. For starters, PES calls offsides way too often (say 10 times a half). Although I will not claim to be an offsides expert, I will contend that there is no way that offsides will be called after a goalie makes the save (but fails to catch the ball) and an opposing player heads in the rebound. Also, I'm pretty sure the offside player must be part of the play (a fact that PES continually ignores). Besides offsides, I also have issue with the way PES controls. Whereas I feel like I have complete control over my players in FIFA, I feel like my players in PES just do whatever the fuck they want. The player I am controlling will often just run towards to the ball despite me holding the exact opposite direction on the joystick. Sometimes I don't want to rush the ball. Sometimes I want to position myself for a nice pass from Tim to score a goal. The only positive thing I can say about this game compared to FIFA is that scoring is much more fun and varied. With all that being said, I still thoroughly enjoyed playing it. I played a 34 "fixture" season and will never play it again. The next time I have the urge to play a soccer video, I won't hesitate to pop in FIFA. Now I can move on to playing FIFA South Africa 2010.

Seinfeld: Season 6

Damn, that was fast. Senior thesis be damned; Seinfeld's sixth season needed watching, and I don't regret spending the last two days watching it. (Yet.) Alright, so in reality I watched a lot of the season in the background while doing my thesis. And I got an extension on my thesis anyway. And now I'm dealing with a massive recurring "blue screen of death" problem on my laptop. Lovely. But the logging must go on! Seinfeld picked up right where it left off for me and I once again found myself enjoying the majority of the episodes. It's easy to see why this show was such a classic. One thing I need to mention at this point, having completed two thirds of the Seinfeld seasons, is that I have still only run into like four or five episodes that I've already seen in syndication. Though I can recall two distinct ones I haven't run into on DVD yet, I'm sure there aren't any more than five remaining that I've already seen. This means that before getting the DVD sets for Christmas, I had only seen five to ten Seinfeld episodes in my lifetime. Ridiculous! Well, I'm going to wrap this up before this piece of shit blue screens again. Can't do my thesis, too pissed off to sleep - it's time for more loggin', baby.

The Road

While my first attempt at reading McCarthy was sort of disappointing, I have to say that The Road delivered. The Road is Cormac McCarthy's most recent book, published in 2006, and follows an unnamed father and son duo as they struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Don't let that "post-apocalyptic" part fool you, the book is not sci-fi at all. It's really a gripping tale of survival in the face of hopelessness. Whatever the apocalypse was goes unexplained, but there are a few clues scattered throughout- charred corpses are found at random, and a thin layer of ash seems to have caked the Earth. The man and the boy are venturing south, the only reason given being "we won't survive another winter up here." They meet few characters, and the ones who do pop up only stick around for a few pages. It makes me wonder how they got so many people in the recent movie adaptation- Viggo Mortensen as the man, some child actor as the boy, Charlize Theron as the mother (who appears only in flashbacks), but Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce must have taken some bit parts because there's really not much else. The story is focused on the man and his son- travelling and foraging. Their conversations are what really made the book so great- they're so simple and realistic, but perfectly drove home the characters- the innocence but sporadic pessimism of the boy, and the way the father is really only pushing forward to find some sort of decent life for his son. The story here is simple, and wasn't loaded with symbolism like Blood Meridian, making it a much more accessible read. It won't take you too long to get through either, so definitely give The Road a shot.

Arrested Development Season 1

Have you ever sat in a room where everyone else is speaking a different language? You sit there and have no idea what these people are talking about. You think, are they talking about me? This is often how I felt when people would start quoting random Arrested Development quotes. I mean, I had seen many an episode but everyone assured me I would have to sit down and watch them all in a row to fully understand the genius behind the writing of the show. I now feel like I have taken an introductory course in the language of Arrested Development.

The style the show is presented in is most definitely a modernist one and definitely an irritating one. The time line jumps around a bunch and there are a ton of flashbacks that are used to explain current happenings in the show. This bothered me until one of the final episodes when a recurring joke made me appreciate it. Instead of flashing back to the explanation the screen simply said "footage not found." The first time this happened in the episode it made me grin, the second and third times i outright laughed out loud.

Another set of running jokes that took me some time to appreciate were the jokes regarding the strange man "hermano" that Gob's girlfriend Marta was supposedly cheating on him with. We all knew it to be Michael that she was cheating with but they pussyfooted around the joke by having Gob call Michael mon frere which is obviously brother in french and he follows that up by saying, "that is brother in french I don't know why I know that because I took six years of Spanish."

My favorite of all the running jokes however was the name of the adopted Asian child is Annyong. After everyone says his name he responds by repeating it back to them because it is the word for hello. At first this was simply annoying and as it developed over several episodes it started to become funnier every time as the other characters started to get more annoyed with it. My favorite was the time that Lucile Bluth said it and he responded with it and she just simply stared him down for ten seconds.

It is this style of using the same joke over and over that I believe everyone has fallen in love with. That combined with the fact that all these characters seem to be fucked in the head.

I have in my possession the other two seasons and I will be sure to watch them as soon as possible for several reasons. First because a girl told me that not having seen all the episodes is a "personality flaw." Second because I have been lost at sea so to say with no idea what I should be logging and this is the perfect opportunity to redeem myself in the eyes of my fellow back loggers who should be ashamed of me for my recent lack of posting and finally I will continue to log this show because it is good and because Sweeney wont lend me any books until I give him his seasons back.

Nuff said!

Carmilla

Blech. So much for trying to expand my horizons. After enjoying Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, I figured I could do no wrong with old novellas. It turns out, I could. Boldly reaching as far as I could into the depths of obscurity, I came up with Carmilla, a vampire story from 1872. I figured I could joke around that I had finally gotten into the whole vampire literature craze. Well, I gave this book the old college try and it just didn't deliver. Basically, a young woman and her father live together alone (with servants) somewhere in Eastern Europe. The girl is dying for companionship, and one day another girl the same age, Carmilla, shows up to live with them. The two hit it off. Something about Carmilla fascinates Laura (the narrator) and before long it's clear that Carmilla is seducing her, luring her in and captivating her interest. (Sadly, no lesbian action occurred. I say sadly not because I was jonesing for any, but because, come on, how awesome would 1870s erotica have been to read?) Anyway, Laura keeps waking up at night, terrified, with severe pain in her neck. Laura is growing sicker - and more infatuated with Carmilla - every day. It can't be more obvious at this point that Carmilla is a vampire and that she's coming in to bite Laura every night. But that revelation ends up being the book's climax - and the revealing moment comes from a secondary character who relates a separate incident to Laura and her daddy. The group recruits some vampire hunter and he goes off and destroys Carmilla's tomb. Laura recovers. The book ends. I mean, I get that this tale is 138 years old and that storytelling conventions were different back in Victorian England. Still, this book, and the second half of it especially, just rubbed me the wrong way. Nothing about it was surprising or original in the least, and I struggle to believe it was surprising or original even back in 1872. Oh well. After being somewhat disappointed by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and really disliking this book, perhaps I just need to stay away from nineteenth century literature for a while. I've still got plenty of kids' and science books; as those are at the heart of my backlog, maybe I should just concentrate on depleting those. Whatever. Don't read Carmilla.

X-Files: Season 1

Well it’s finally time to cross this series off the list. As a big fan of the show when I was a kid, it was a must that I obtain the complete series box set that includes all nine seasons as well as their two feature length films: Fight the Future and I Want to Believe. I just wish Netflix didn’t kick me in the ass by posting the complete series online only a few months later - I feel like a failure. Whatever. Lets begin.

The search begins...

As with the premiere of most television shows, the first season is often the poorest (with the exception to perhaps Lost - I don’t watch much else). It usually seems as though the show is a bit stage fright, still looking for their niche. To some extent, X-Files does have this problem - especially with the action sequences. Stock footage, blatant cut-aways, cheesy acting. If there’s ever a moment something exciting’s happening (like a car chase, for instance) chances are you’ll be grimacing at how terrible a job those scenes are put together. In one specific scene, a fighter pilot spots a U.F.O. in the sky that flies away out of sight. To make it zoom off screen, I swear it looks as though they just super imposed a picture, then failed to map it outside the aircraft so when it’s flying around it looks as though it’s within the plane’s cockpit. It’s just that awkward phase in the early 90’s where computers were just beginning to be utilized regularly in films, but were still ineffective at their work.

That aside, I must say the show is still quite good. For those unaware of the X-Files, it’s a television drama about two FBI agents (Fox Mulder and Dana Scully) who are assigned to the X-Files - the seemingly bizarre cases the FBI couldn’t solve that usually have to do with aliens and whatnot. The creator of the series, Chris Carter, has pointed in the extras as saying that when they first started filming the show, they had no idea at the time if there was going to be multiple seasons, so Carter refrained from embellishing upon too many long-term story arcs (something that will be established in great amount within the coming seasons). However, some important information is introduced like Mulder’s obsession about finding the truth behind his daughter’s disappearance as a child (Mulder swears he witnessed her being abducted by aliens - hence his strong belief in extra-terrestrials). The Lone Gunmen, three conspiracy nerds Mulder likes to turn to for help, are brought on for one episode. (I think these guys eventually got their own spin-off series that Fox quickly canned.) There’s also one episode that shows the Cigarette-Smoking Man - a character that will be utilized much more as the series progresses - in the background listening to Mulder and Scully being debriefed . The only strange part of the series is this guy named Deep Throat. Supposedly a figurehead apart of the “government within the government,” he quietly begins tipping Mulder off to information regarding alien lifeforms on Earth. I might not be remembering this right, but I think his character inexplicably vanishes after the first season - much like Chuck Cunningham in Happy Days.

I was surprise how many episodes I remember first watching after all these years since first airing in 1993. My favorites have to be the two-parter: Squeeze and Tooms. Focused on a man named Eugene Tooms who’s some sort of monster that can stretch himself out like Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, he slithers around his victims air ducts so he can jump out and eat their livers. Supposedly hundreds of years old, this creature - masquerading as a man - is on the path to eat his last few livers before going into hibernation for another 30 years before he kills again. This episode scared the crap out of me as a kid. For months I was afraid to sit on the toilette in fear of some elongated hand jumping out and snatching my bum. Then it slowly drifted to being afraid of spiders on the toilet (Arachnophobia) then a C-4 bomb under the lid (Lethal Weapon II)... yeah, I’ve got a thing with toilets.

Anyways, this first season sets the bar pretty high for what the show must accomplish. With Mulder’s belief and Scully’s “by-the-book” methods, the two take flight solve the mysteries behind the government’s cover-ups. The season ends with one important discovery: The government is in possession of an extra-terrestrial virus that they’ve attempted to clone human-alien hybrids from. SPOILER ALERT!

Oh, did I say that too late... My bad.

House: Season 5

This might be the season where House started to lose me. I watched every episode when it aired and just finished the DVD set. I even paid far more attention to this one than I paid to Prison Break and Heroes earlier this month. What can I say? I liked this season. House is a good show. But five years into any medical drama, things are inevitably going to start getting a bit stale. Actually, I thought some of the episodes made for the most interesting one-episode stories I've seen on the show yet. For instance, in one episode, a gunman takes several patients hostage and demands that House diagnose him. The idea was totally unrealistic, and perhaps a bit of a shark jump for sure, but the result was a thrilling and intriguing episode. At times however, I felt the writing was a bit lackluster and uncreative. Workplace romances abounded this season, often between two people who had no business hooking up at all. And the way they decided to write off one main character when the actor decided to leave the show was downright stupid. That moment, more than any other in the show's history, earned a furrowed brow and shaking head from me. Still, the season ended with a pair of fantastic episodes and included a fair share of mindfuck. Unfortunately, the great finale only made it necessary for Season 6 to start off terribly (no spoilers, but trust me), one of several factors that led me to stop watching House midway through this year. I do look forward to buying the DVD set of Season 6 and giving it a watch, but that's another Back-Blogged post for another time (probably about five months from now). Just ten TV seasons remain backlogged and all of them will be new for me. First up? My return to Seinfeld. I'll check in soon enough with another recap for that show.

Twisted Metal: Black

When I received my PlayStation for Christmas some many many years ago, it came with two games: NFL GameDay 98 and Twisted Metal. I immediately fell in love with Twisted Metal. The concept of the game (and series), for those of you not in the know, is that a demented but omnipotent man holds a tournament every Christmas Eve in which several entrants engage in a demolition derby of sorts featuring ammunition and artillery. Basically, the last contestant left standing gets any wish he requests, and usually these wishes are perverse and vengeful. Twisted, no? Anyway, I liked the first game and absolutely loved Twisted Metal 2. But then the third installment just didn't deliver and the fourth was downright terrible. So it was with low expectations that I bought Twisted Metal: Black (the fifth game in the series and the first for PS2) some many years ago. Fortunately, the game served as sort of a rebirth for the franchise. The games were always dark and demented, but typically there were plenty of comedic undertones that served as the foundation. Think of them as the movie Cabin Fever - a horror, strictly speaking, but hilarious and incapable of taking itself seriously. Now, think of Twisted Metal: Black as a Saw movie. Terror without comedy. (Actually the over-the-top aspect of the game could rightfully be called comedy of another kind, but you know what I mean.) There was nothing cartoonish or lovable about any of the contestants in this game. And I liked that. It showed that the Twisted Metal franchise was maturing, or at least changing, after two pretty shitty installments had left a fan base deteriorated. The game itself was much like the Twisted Metal games I enjoyed in my youth, but faster-paced and thus more challenging. I prefer the slower, easier, more realistic gameplay of the first few games. But graphically, there's nothing to complain about - and that's impressive, as this game came out way back in 2001. The game was no masterpiece and certainly lacked the charm of the first two in the Twisted Metal series. Still, it was nice to see the franchise change its direction and go for something different; change needed to happen, and lo and behold, it did. This definitely isn't a game you need to check out for yourself, but if you've never played any Twisted Metal games I do highly recommend the series. It's unique and entertaining. What more could you want?

The Golden Compass

Before I even finished the Narnia books, I was looking forward to this series. Philip Pullman was allegedly the anti-Lewis and his books were supposedly the anti-Narnia trilogy. I was already a fan of His Dark Materials (the name of the series of which this book is the first one). But having just completed Book 1 of 3, I'm already a bit disappointed. I can pinpoint the problem, too: the book took way too long to get interesting. It's 400 pages long (thick for a fantasy piece without Harry Potter in its title) and 200 pages in I was bored to that point where you start neglecting character names and plot details. I needed some help from the Internet to remind me what had transpired to this point, and then last night I killed off the remaining 200 pages. Bad news - they were only slightly less boring. That is, until the final chapter or two, when shit hit the fan and twists and betrayals abounded. In fact, the book ended on a very exciting note that actually leaves me pretty interested to read the second one sooner rather than later. Now, if you plot "excitement" on the y-axis against "page number" on the x-axis, you're typically going to get a graph that looks like a normal distribution with negative skew. The Golden Compass, however, offers a much different graph - one that resembles an exponential growth curve. Flat at the beginning, still flat in the middle, and then rapidly increasing at the end with no slowdown whatsoever. That's just not how a book is supposed to be. In the days before readily available plot summaries, I'd have given up on The Golden Compass halfway through instead of giving myself a refresher course and moving on. So that's my big complaint with the book. Fortunately, there weren't many little ones. The story was solid and compelling, albeit not very interesting, and it certainly managed to hook me even though I had to get to the end before it did so. Now, the question on everyone's mind (or at least, on my own): how does the trilogy stack up to Narnia so far? To be honest, it's a tough comparison to make. Narnia had seven books that were like 220 pages long each but that each contained a separate story. It seems as though His Dark Materials is one gigantic tale, much like The Lord of the Rings, simply broken into three parts. Narnia had some duds, for sure, but there were two or three books that I remember fondly, and that's more than I can say so far for this series. Oh well - much like how you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't judge a series by its first title. I'll hold off until the next two books are done.

Street Fighter III

Well, that was fast. In Street Fighter II I went 12-30. In Street Fighter III, I just went 10-3. Once again, I took on (and took down) all opponents as none other than Thunder-Thighs herself, Chun-Li. Seriously, Chun-Li's hips and thighs are three times as wide as her waist. She takes "hourglass figure" to comical levels. That's her, above, in the dead center of the arcade game's cover art. Now, I knew Street Fighter III would be quick, but fifteen minutes might be a Back-Blogged record. I just let Chun-Li's lightning kicks fly and she took care of the rest. Once again, the epilogue was specific to her character, and once again I found myself wondering what other characters' endings were like. (But once again, the wonder really isn't enough of a driving force to go through with anything.) Truth be told, I almost just made one post for both Street Fighter games in the Anniversary Collection, but balked at the last moment. I'm glad I did so. The games might have only taken an hour to beat, combined, but they were still separate games and deserved separate reviews. Speaking of reviews, Street Fighter III was shorter and easier than Street Fighter II while maintaining a larger cast and bigger move sets. Oh, and better graphics. It was honestly and simply just a better game all around than its predecessor and compilation-mate. So if you have to choose between the two, I'd say go with Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future (as the particular version I played is actually called) in a heartbeat. But both are pretty simple and stupid. Regardless, this marks the third game I've beaten tonight after a week-long homework-induced hiatus. My prosperity is fully welcomed, especially since I will be spending this upcoming week doing lots of homework as well. Whatever. Classes end in something like ten days and my two-month summer vacation starts just a few days later. Progress will be made, dammit. Big progress. But for now, I'll call it a night; I just don't see myself beating something else before dawn.

Street Fighter II

The last new game I bought for the PS2 was a compilation called Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. Actually, that's not even true. A friend of mine bought the game and brought it to my house one day, left it there for about two years (I had never asked to borrow it), and then refused to acknowledge ownership when I tried to return it to him just before leaving for college. Oh well. His loss was my gain. The disc contained two games: Street Fighter II and Street Fighter III. I beat the first one earlier tonight. Technically, the game I beat was called Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition. Of course, this being the Street Fighter series, there are six iterations of Street Fighter II and the only differences between them all are enhanced move sets and new characters; the games aren't separate so much as blocks that build upon one another. This Hyper version was simply the latest and greatest of the Street Fighter II games. Theoretically, one could say I beat all six of them tonight. But that'd be a stretch, no? Anyway, let's go back to the past for a moment. I never owned Street Fighter II for Super Nintendo, but I sure did play it a lot. I borrowed and rented it numerous times in addition to playing it at friends' houses. So I was certainly familiar with the game and the characters when I dared to attempt to beat the game earlier tonight. I beat all twelve stages in the single player mode as my girl Chun-Li, and it took me 42 fights to do so. The bad news is that this means I went 12-30 overall. The good news is that since each match took roughly twenty-five (and no more than forty-five) seconds, I had finished the game in a mere half hour. And, yes, this was on the easiest (of eight) difficulty settings. At the end of the game, apparently Chun-Li had avenged her father. This made me wonder what the ending would have been like had I played through the game as each of the other fifteen characters. Someday, if I want to "complete" this game, I'll do just that. (That day will never come.) Anyway, there's not much to say about Street Fighter II. It had more frustration and less charm than I recalled. One great positive was the ridiculous poltical incorrectness the game dared to display. This was a 1991 release. Old, yes, but certainly not from an era we tend to think of as tolerant of stereotypes and ethnic caricatures. Yet Street Fighter II teems with such taboos. There's a Japanese lard-ass sumo wrestler. The Russian guy has body hair that approaches animal levels. Blanka, a Brazilian, was raised in the Amazon and is literally beastlike in his posture and appearance. When you fight in Mexico, you do so in front of a bunch of Aztecs and Mayans. And, in my personal favorite "oh no they didn't!" moment of the game, I was beaten by a Jamaican opponent who proceeded to celebrate by whipping out some maracas and dancing around with a huge "watermelon grin" on his face. Wow. Aside from the unintentional comedy, there just weren't many positives that I took away from my first bout with Street Fighter II in some ten or fifteen years. Oh well. At least it was quick and painless.

Half-Life

I bought the PS2 port of this game sometime in early '04. The game itself was released in 1998 and was certainly already considered a classic even back then. Not only did I never beat it, but I never even got past the second of eighteen levels before putting it down for what turned out to be six years. I think the root of the problem was the maturity level I needed to appreciate the game. I'm not talking about content, but the scope of the story itself was something I just don't think 15-year-old me appreciated. Flash forward. I finally beat this game over the course of the past two weeks (the second half coming today after a hellish year-long engineering project finally ended on Friday). It comes in at eighteen levels long and, in my case, twelve to fifteen hours. And sadly, it could not hide its age at all. Blocky graphics rendered this one as jagged as any Nintendo 64 game and some too-responsive controls made the movement jerky and dizzying. Two separate people watching me play even complained of slight motion sickness as I turned corners, jumped, and whirled around. Four or five levels into the game, I just wasn't feeling it, and was ready to call the game overrated. Then, things kind of settled into a groove. By the second "quarter" of the game I was actually enjoying traversing the environments and dealing with the hazards. Levels ten through thirteen were enjoyable as well. Then, for the final five levels, the game changes dramatically in terms of atmosphere (I'll rehash the whole plot soon) and ends on a somewhat bizarre note. All in all, I'd call the game enjoyable and worth playing, but I won't tell anyone they need to play it. Fellow blogger Sweeney calls Half-Life 2 one of his favorite games of all time, yet he's never even played the first one; clearly, doing so is not a prerequisite for the series. With a small graphical update (say, a remake that is true to the original but with all-new models and graphics), I'm sure this would have been one of my favorite FPS games ever. Sadly, the clunky late '90s graphics did dampen my spirits and though I have no faults with the game's story or the way it unfolded, the overall presentation - and granted, it's twelve years later as I'm bitching about it - was just not up to par. So, about this great story: I'm just going to briefly summarize it because it's something simple and classic. Spoilers? Sure, but even I knew the gist of the story going into the game. It's a classic. The story is worth knowing even if you've never played it and never will. Skip what follows if you'd like. Anyway, you play as Gordon Freeman, a scientist at a top secret research complex in the middle of the New Mexico desert. One day, a teleportation experiment goes completely wrong and the facility is suddenly overrun by hostile alien lifeforms. The game's immediate purpose becomes "escape to the surface." Once you do so, you realize that the military has shown up to kill all the aliens. Good news, right? Wrong. Because they're also there to take out all the survivors (just you and a handful of security guards and scientists) in order to cover up the story. You're eventually captured and thrown in a garbage compacter to die. But then, channeling your inner Millennium Falcon crew, you escape before the closing walls can compress you into nothingness. The game's ultimate purpose now becomes to seek out the "Lambda Complex" where some of the top scientists in the facility may be able to help you. Now, you spend time trying to get back underground; the surface has turned into a full war zone between the military and the aliens, and the military is losing. When you finally reach the heart of the Lambda Complex, the scientists there decide to send you through a giant portal to "Xen," the world from which the aliens are coming from. This is where the game takes the aforementioned gigantic turn. To this point, you've been running around in a gigantic science facility on Earth filled with humans both hostile and helpful. Suddenly, you're on a floating rock in outer space with low gravity. The game gets a lot less 007 and a lot more Metroid. The shift isn't necessarily a negative one, but it really does make the final few levels contrast with the rest of the game. It's here that the only two true boss battles occur, too. Once both are dispatched, you've beaten the game. But wait! There's more. Suddenly, a man with a briefcase appears (yeah, in the middle of outer space and all) and congratulates you on all the shit you've accomplished. He then says that his employer is very impressed with you and decides to offer you a job. Wait, what? All along, Half-Life was certainly a story rooted in science-fiction, but only as far as the alien lifeforms and teleportation were concerned, Now, at the very end, some omnipresent power is introduced and you start to wonder if the events of the game were nothing more than a test staged by this... being. Absurd. I wasn't upset by the game's abrupt and anti-climactic ending, but I do suppose I was confused. I'm sure all of this will be cleared up in Half-Life 2. Sweeney? Am I right? At any rate, Half-Life was a memorable game with a dated look but a timeless feel. Oh, and one more thing. Since I own the PS2 version of Half-Life, I also own the expansion pack known as Half-Life: Decay. Technically, it is a separate game entirely different from Half-Life. Since I need to beat every game on my compilation discs, I asked myself if I needed to beat Decay. My answer? No. And here's why not. Decay never came out as a stand-alone title. The other two Half-Life expansions, Opposing Force and Blue Shift, received their own releases and were games you could own independent of others. But that's not the case for Decay. Hell, it hasn't ever even come out as an online download or Xbox Live Arcade game. There's no cover or box art to speak of, either - how could I make a respectable Back-Blogged post out of it? So, no - Decay is not a game I must beat because it is not a "game" at all, strictly speaking. This sets a precedent for me that similarly eliminates Blue Sphere and three "Knuckles in..." games from the Sonic Mega Collection from my backlog. (These were all games you could only play by plugging other games into the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge.) I never even considered these games part of my backlog anyway; my new rule just gives an official precedent for their omission. Now, should Valve ever go ahead and release Decay as a stand-alone game, even if only for download on the Xbox Live Arcade or something, it will immediately backlogify itself and be counted as one of the many games I still need to beat. Until that happens though, I've got real games to deal with. Vamanos!

Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party

A Christmas gift from 2008, Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party was a game I knew would be short, but that didn't mean I was looking forward to it. I've managed to play relatively few party/mini games in my life, and I really didn't have much fun with any of them (don't get me started on the Mario Party series). But I was wrong: TV Party was decently fun and an enjoyable way to spend my last two nights. The campaign was never frustrating and was varied enough that things stayed interesting throughout. The plot is simple: Rayman, being chased by the insufferable rabbids, takes shelter in an abandoned cabin in the woods. When the rabbids are struck by lightning, they somehow end up on Rayman's television, and for some reason Rayman decides to stick around for a week getting constantly annoyed by their charades. The mini-games were all based on stuff you'd find on tv- snowboarding, music, b-movies, dancing, gardening, gameshows, even a Jackass parody. To move onto the next level you usually needed 10,000 points, and around 80% of the mini-games could be beaten on the first try. A few games took some learning, but once the basics were figured out I could usually move on quickly. I was interested in submitting your score for some global rankings after some of the games, and was surprised to find out that most of mine ranked me in the 50th-100th range! Granted, the only people ranked are the ones who have their Wii connected to the internet and clicked the "submit score" box, but it's still pretty cool. One game, a Star Wars parody, took me a few tries to pass, but when I finally got the hang of it and passed, I ended up with the 19th best score in the world. Awesome! While I may be done with the game, a part of me wants to go back and spend an hour or two to see if I can get a number one score. It's not that much of an accomplishment, but it would be something to hang my hat on. So how about that- a game I originally didn't want to play is likely to be one of the first I return to once all are beaten. Not bad, TV Party, not bad at all.

Halo 3

I've played the Halo series in the following order: 2, ODST, 1, 3, and I feel like I went from the worst to the best. The first three I played didn't do much for me, but steadily improved in quality, but I can definitely say Halo 3 blew the rest out of the water. It's not even close. Gone are the lengthy generic levels of same-ness that vaguely resemble fun missions. Halo 3 had fantastic levels and most of the time there was something else to do besides shoot everything. The environments were dynamic and provided plenty of "holy shit!" moments. I honestly can't remember a single complaint I had about this game. I guess the plot was still slightly confusing, but it was much less vague this time around. In the first games I had played, a level would start up in some new place and I'd have no idea why, but in Halo 3 I knew what the objective of each level was before it started- that's good! Basically, I'm glad I saved this one for last, because now I can look back on the Halo franchise as a whole and remember its single-player fondly, instead of being bored to tears.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This was minorly disappointing. I looked forward to reading Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novella featuring the most famous split personality in Western literature, but two things made this book far less enjoyable than I wanted it to be. One was the simple and unfortunately inevitable fact that, like every other person from the present day, I went into the book knowing full well that Hyde and Jekyll were one and the same. There was no mystery for me, and even though I tried to suspend disbelief and read the book as if I had no idea that Hyde was really Jekyll all along, it made no difference. The other aspect of the story that ruined it a bit for me was the Jekyll character being presented as a "good" counter to the evil and twisted Hyde. Jekyll was an asshole! There was nothing good or righteous about the man. He may have been a tragic hero of sorts, succumbing to his own desires, but his original transformation into Hyde was something he both intended to make and relished in. Even when "Hyde" maimed a child and killed a man, Jekyll made no efforts to make amends or turn himself in. A truly good character would have done exactly that. So, no - Hyde was definitely a monster, but even if you consider Jekyll a separate entity, he was morally corrupt and misguided at best. There's no dichotomy. At any rate, the story was well-written, at least, and Stevenson seems just as good as any other verbose Victorian era British author. I'm sure I'll buy (or find) and read Treasure Island someday, but for now, Robert Louis is out of the backlog. What author will follow him out? Stay tuned.

52 Pickup

Here's a random choice: 52 Pickup by Elmore Leonard. The reason for me getting this book was basically because I really liked the plot to Tarantino's Jackie Brown and when I heard it was based on a book by Leonard, I figured I'd give him a shot. This was all years ago, and I never got more than 50 pages in- not because I didn't like it, but I suppose I was just busy. You may not have heard of Elmore Leonard, but he seems to be a guy who Hollywood turns to all the time- his Wikipedia page has a list of his novels, as well as a note on which ones were turned into movies- it looks like half of them made the transition. I also figured now would be a good time to finally read one of his books, as I've recently gotten hooked on a tv series one of Leonard's short stories inspired- Justified. So what does 52 Pickup have to offer? It's a pretty simple story- a trio of criminals blackmail a wealthy business owner, claiming they have footage of the affair he just broke off. Needless to say, they picked the wrong guy to fuck with and the protagonist proceeds to make them all look stupid over and over again. It kind of reminded me of Jackie Brown- everyone underestimates the main character who's somehow able to concoct a genius plan right under everyone's noses. While it's not exactly high literature, Elmore Leonard certainly knows his audience. The action starts immediately on page one and the book ends with a single paragraph after the climax- kudos to Leonard for cutting the bullshit and giving people what they wanted. 52 Pickup was picked completely at random but was definitely a fun read, and I'm sure I'll read some more of Leonard's novels in the future.

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

I saw the first Harold & Kumar movie years ago. It was good (not great), and I expected more of the same this time around. And Escape From Guantanamo Bay was more or less just that: more of the same. There were more crude sex jokes, there was more drug culture, and there was another cameo by Neil Patrick Harris. My one complaint is a common one - the film ran a bit long. Clocking in at an hour and forty-seven minutes, it just felt about twenty minutes longer than it needed to be. But no matter; the movie was, for better or worse, exactly what I was expecting. I wouldn't rate it quite as highly as White Castle, mostly because the novelty factor was gone and the plot felt a lot worse (yeah, believe it or not, the pursuit of White Castle hamburgers made for a more endearing comedy than an escape from a prison full of detained terrorists). Oh well. Call it a five out of ten and let's move along to whatever post comes next.

Mad Men: Season 3

I've just completed the third of five planned seasons of Mad Men, AMC's hit summertime show. It shares the same network and timeslot (Sundays at ten) as AMC's other smash hit drama, Breaking Bad. Naturally, the two are commonly compared to each other, and everyone who has seen both of them has some kind of opinion to give. Including me. And mine is that Breaking Bad is the better show. But that's no knock on Mad Men. In fact, I think Mad Men is the easier show to get into, to watch, and to enjoy. Beautiful people working in a 1960s office building - what's not to love? Breaking Bad places more demand on the viewer's attentiveness and patience. It really isn't a show you can watch out of the corner of your eye while perusing the Internet. Mad Men is much more forgiving of brief spells of inattentiveness, and I think ultimately it appeals to a wider audience because of that. Anyway, Season 3 of Mad Men was a whole lot like Seasons 1 and 2. I still can't say I'm sure just what the show is truly about. Is it the changing American social landscape of the 1960s? The struggle for powerful men from the '50s to adapt to these changes? I really couldn't tell you. Fortunately, the "main purpose" of a TV series doesn't matter when individual episodes never fail to entertain. Whatever the show is, I enjoy it. Season 3 takes place in 1963; a few notable things occurring in the background were King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the Kennedy and Oswald assassinations. Main character Don Draper continued to struggle with his marriage and things finally took a big tumble when his wife discovered some secrets he'd been hiding from her (much like in Breaking Bad, coincidentally enough). The finale was very typical of most drama series' third season finales in that it totally shook, broke, and began to restructure several components of the show. I look forward to Season 4 this summer and know that it will be different from the first three. Once again, I heartily recommend Mad Men to basically everyone. It's just such a cool and inviting show. Check it out.

Halo: Combat Evolved

Again, I must assure you that I love playing games out of order, it makes me feel big. Having played Halo 2 and Halo 3: ODST, I was now finally able to beat the original, Halo: Combat Evolved. Stan has assured me that the original Halo beats out the two I've played by a lot, and I suppose I agree with him, but we'll get to my complaints later. Halo: Combat Evolved is a pretty basic sci-fi FPS, but not the point of being generic- a flaw Halo 2 suffered from. Even though the levels are similarly linear, they were wide open and creative enough to not feel like a jaunt from point A to point B while shooting whatever tries to stop you. While the missions aren't varied as much as a Call of Duty, they at least remained fresh for the entirety of my playthrough. The plot was also much better than Halo 2 or ODST- it was engaging enough without getting either too cluttered or too vague. I liked it. I suppose my real gripe with Halo was its poor implementation of checkpoints. It seemed like there were far too many times when I had to redo a few minutes of a level over and over again because a checkpoint was needlessly held off. This was especially noticeable in the final drive away from the exploding Halo ring (yeah I'm going crazy with these spoilers)- I completed a 5 minute driving segment, but then had to do another 90 second segment that was much tougher, causing me to die several times. And guess what, there's no checkpoint, so I had to keep on playing a boring driving part that I had already proven I could beat. Lame. Oh well, Halo: Combat Evolved was still better than the other two in the series that I have played, unfortunately it didn't give me a great impression of the franchise either. The good news remains- no more original X-Box games are left on my backlog. Wahoo!

Disturbia

This is one of those recent movies that it seems like nobody loves but everyone's seen. Naturally, when I found it for $5 at T.J. Maxx earlier today, I forked over the Lincoln (plus sales tax) and watched it just a few hours ago. My suspicions were correct - it wasn't a great movie. Of course, that doesn't mean it was a bad one. It was entertaining and suspenseful. Shia LaBeouf was at his Shia-LaBeouf-est, playing an angst-ridden teenager who was equal parts cool and dorky. The plot was far from original, and while I'm unsure of what the name of the original movie or TV episode that had this plot is, I know The Simpsons already did it and I'm pretty sure their version was a homage to another one. So this is at least the third time it's been done, and it's probably even more common than I'm thinking. For those not in the know, the plot I speak of consists of the following: Shia LaBeouf is placed under house arrest (in some versions, someone is house-ridden due to a sickness or injury) and passes the time spying on his neighbors. And one turns out to be a murderer! Shia knows whats up, but every time he calls the police, they end up pissed at him. Eventually, Shia and his friends must stop the murderer themselves - before it's too late! And so forth and so on. The result is a very average movie that never impressed me but never bored me either. I recommend giving it a shot if you catch it on cable some day, but there's really no need to seek this one out.

Of Mice and Men

Here's a classic novella. Two things made me interested in reading it. One was the numerous references to it made by Sawyer, a character in ABC's Lost. Another was the fact that according to Facebook, this was the book that most frequently appears on "favorite books" lists for people who are part of the "Lowell, MA" network. Call me intrigued. Anyway, I just finished the book (it's another short one that barely cracks 100 pages) and can now judge it accordingly. Let me start with the beginning. It was wonderful. The first ten pages or so introduced the two main characters of Lennie and George with a vivid clarity of who both men are and where both men have been. Kudos to Steinbeck for an excellent display of character introduction. Lennie is a giant, simple man with dangerous physical strength but the desires and feelings of a dimwitted five-year-old girl. He reminded me of Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, which was especially weird, because I made this connection before Lennie started displaying an affinity for holding and stroking dead mice. George is Lennie's brother-and-caretaker figure. Both are poor migrant workers in California either during or just before the Great Depression. George looks after Lennie, but it gives him great anguish to do so; Lennie is always getting himself into trouble and it's always on George to stand by him and find new work for the pair. To keep Lennie happy, George is always reminding him about their goal: to one day live on a farm together, off the fat of the land, and look after a garden and some rabbits. It's enough to appease Lennie and keep him well-behaved, but George knows full well that as long as Lennie's in his life, wealth and happiness won't be. I pictured George as an interesting cross between Jimmy Stewart and Nathan Lane. Now, the next seventy pages or so - the entire bulk of the book - was really pretty boring. And that was too bad, because I had become so invested in the beginning. Fortunately, the final twenty pages were great, setting up a real climax that was definitely one for the ages. Here's something I need to complain about though - Lost ruined the ending for me! Just a few episodes ago, which granted was well before I started reading the book at all, Sawyer explains the ending of Of Mice and Men in detail to the "Man in Black," just to make a point about something. Gyah! I suppose I can't fault Lost for referencing a seventy-three year old story, but that doesn't mean I wasn't disappointed when it happened. It makes me wonder if I'd have read the book any differently had I not known from the first few pages what the conclusion was going to be like. I guess I'll never know. Oh well. Anyway, this makes for five books read in the month of April. Unfortunately, none of those five books exceeded 160 pages in length, so the number is a bit deceiving. Furthermore, four of those five books were recent purchases. It seems I've sort of lost my way when it comes to the main purpose of the Back-Blogged project. I'm not supposed to be buying and reading new books, but instead, finishing up old ones. I need to finish two more this month, as it is, in order to maintain my goal of having net progress every month. So allow me to declare it now - it is time for a return (at least temporarily) to my kids' books and science books. These classic works of literature are great, and I'll never regret reading the Alice books or Of Mice and Men instead of some Newbery winner where talking animals team up to get some small task accomplished. But for now, it's time to kick it back to an "old school" gear and knock some acquisitions from the 1990s off of my list.

Friends - The Complete Series

Because I'm a horrible back-blogger, I would prefer watching a movie on TV that is half over, and I would prefer watching my favorite TV shows over and over again rather than watch an unwatched movie. But this is the first time I have watched friends since being a member of back-blogged, therefore I will blog about it! Whether you all like it or not!

So over the past few months, probably dating back to last semester, I have been making my way through all ten seasons of Friends. Let me tell you, this is honestly the greatest show. It always will be. I don't care about you Seinfeld fans. Best. Sitcom. Ever.

Basically Friends is awesome. I'm sure all of you have seen bits and pieces of it, but who has seen every episode multiple times? Me! They only get funnier. Let me give you a brief synopsis about each of the "main" storylines in my opinion per season. You can all have a heated debate about which ones are awesome and which ones suck.

Season 1: This one is an introduction to the characters but is basically centers around the whole Rachel Ross saga. She chases him to the airport to tell him she loves him at the end, but she is too afraid to say it.
Season 2: This season focuses on both Rachel pining over Ross and the relationship between Monica and Richard (the eye doctor). Monica and Richard have a great relationship but break it off when Richard doesn't want kids (because he's super old).
Season 3: Ross and Rachel date this season, and the infamous "WE WERE ON A BREAK" line comes into play. It's a season of dinosaurs, dates, jealousy, and breaking up.
Season 4: Season 4 is loaded with awesomeness and it's where all of the good stuff beings to happen. Phoebe is a surrogate mother for her brother's twins. Ross meets and gets engaged to Emily. And in one of my favorite series of episodes, Rachel and Monica lose their apartment to Joey and Chandler in a bet.
Season 5: Man friends got good here. So Ross says the wrong name at his wedding and tries to win Emily back. Chandler and Monica hook up, hide their relationship, unveil their relationship, and then almost get married in Vegas. Phoebe has triplets and wants to keep one. And Ross and Rachel get married in Vegas when they are super drunk.
Season 6: This season focuses on all of the characters a bit. There is no main story line. Ross becomes a teacher and dates a student. Rachel moves in with Joey (and is dating Ross' girlfriends dad). Joey gets a job on Mac and CHEESE. The best part though is that Chandler proposes to Monica.
Season 7: Monica and Chandler plan a wedding! Love them! Rachel is revealed to be pregnant in the last episode.
Season 8: Who's the father? Rachel's baby daddy is Ross. (Surprise!) Joey likes Rachel though. It all becomes quite awkward and culminates in Joey sort of proposing to Rachel after she has a baby.
Season 9: This season is a great one and focuses on everyone as well. Rachel has a baby now, moves in with Joey, and starts to like him. Monica and Chandler can't conceive. Phoebe starts to date Mike. (Love him!) Joey starts to date a hot paleontologist Charlie who Ross likes.
Season 10: Man am I sad this show is over. So Rachel and Joey try it out but it doesn't work. Monica and Chandler adopt a baby (but it turns out to be two). Phoebe marries Mike in a great episode. And the season ends with Ross and Rachel finally getting together.

Seriously, I love this show. What's your favorite episode? Least favorite? Season? Moment? Discuss! I want some comments!

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

I'm glad I don't have Stan's goal, which is to have a net gain of 1 game, book, and movie each month on the backlog. My goal is simple: at least one exceptionally lengthy thing must be completed per month. And here's the one for April: The Wind Waker. I bought it last summer, then got a GameCube memory card in the fall, and finally snagged a controller a month or so ago- the time finally came to play another Zelda game. Wind Waker switches up the typical Zelda formula in two ways- instead of going for realism, it has cartoony cel-shaded graphics; and rather than taking place in Hyrule, the entire game is spent sailing the seas. I've heard that both of these changes were controversial at the time, but rest easy- I can tell you (seven years later) that both of these changes were extremely well-implemented. The change in scenery led to a greater sense of adventure, and the art was gorgeous. I thought sailing from place to place would get old fast, but at the right time you're given the ability to warp across the map. Sailing was still quite fun, though- there was something kind of calming about watching Link sail the high seas while listening to some great music. The game rarely fell into a pattern too, which is nice seeing as a majority of Zelda games feel like a routine of "do a temple, then go find an item to get into the next temple." In Wind Waker you can do them out of order, or just forget them entirely and go exploring. Unfortunately for me, I'm trying to clear out my gaming backlog so I didn't take much time to explore- I turned to a walkthrough everytime the game would tell me "go exploring for the next thing to do!" Thus a majority of my time playing was spent in the temples. While they were a mixed bag, Wind Waker gave me my definite favorite temple of all- the randomly named Earth Temple, which really seemed more like the Spirit Temple from Ocarina of Time. Link and a bird-girl (like Maximum Ride!) run around directing light with mirrors. It was just great. Wind Waker also delivered another favorite- the final blow to Ganon! I'm going to go ahead and give a spoiler, as most of the Back-Blog crew has played this already- the master sword planted straight down into Ganon's goddamn face! Man that felt good. Perhaps I'll get back to this game someday and have fun with all the sidequests. As Sheridan watched me play yesterday, he couldn't believe how little of a map I had- I think I had mapped 6 of 49 squares. I guess that's what a walk-through will do to you. Either way, I highly recommend a playthrough of Wind Waker if you haven't already. But it's done for me for now. Time for some other video games.

Katamari Damacy

Have you ever found yourself rolling up a snowball in the winter with no real purpose other than seeing how big you can make it? If so, you've played real life Katamari Damacy. In this game, you start with a very small ball and roll around collecting objects and items. They stick to you, expanding the size of your ball ("katamari"), and the bigger you get, the bigger the items that you can collect. Such a simple and novel concept, and yet, so much fun. I was worried that playing through the whole story would get old. I mean, come on, it's the same thing over and over again. Fortunately, the game was short enough to leave me very amused for the entirety of the game - a length of time, by the way, which is really only 3 or 4 hours. And you know me - I'll never complain about a game being "too short" when my backlog is this long. The game was amusing and fun enough for me to consider picking up its sequel, We Love Katamari. The Xbox 360 installment, Beautiful Katamari, is pretty damn hard to find. (Sorry, Marissa.) But yeah - play any of the aforementioned games if you get a chance. They're ridiculously simple and yet so very fun to play.

Coal Black Horse

This one I received as a gift from my uncle over Easter. Written by Robert Olmstead, this is a Civil War novel that tells the story of a young boy, Robey, on the quest to find his father in battle and bring him home. Before he leaves for his journey, a family friend loans him this stallion to help guide and protect him. Filled with carnage and graphic descriptions of violence and warfare, it was a pretty compelling read - at least if you got into the gore of it. However, the end of the novel left this ambiguous taste in my mouth as if the story abruptly finished without actually concluding itself.

Olmstead can easily be compare to Cormac McCarthy in his writing style (only with a bit more punctuation). The novel’s theme dwells on how bleak and awful human nature is. Just about everyone you encounter dies. And anyone who shows the slightest bit of trust in their fellow man is eventually taken advantage of and killed. After a few mistakes, Robey learns this message and becomes a cold-blooded killer at age 14.

It was a interesting read, but I can’t say that the book doesn’t leave you depressed. It makes you want to either hate or fear humanity.

Now I have to put on the Princess Bride to help dull my sorrows. Later.

Sled Storm

This is a game I bought three and a half years ago for $2 used. I had never heard of it, but figured it looked immensely corny and would make for a great one-or-two-night gimmick game back in the dorm rooms. It proved to be a hit. Several people came over that night and tried their hand at this Hydro Thunder meets SSX snowmobile racing game. I think we even unlocked a few sleds and tracks. Now, in some cases, "beating" a game is in the eye of the gamer. I figured I could safely call this one beaten once I had won a race on every track. But I just did not have the time or the patience to do so; we've all seen "rubber band" AI in racing games, but this one takes it to a whole new level. Fall a hundred times, and you'll still have a shot to win the race with a flawless final twenty seconds or so. On the flip side, race perfectly, and you could easily find yourself in second when all is said and done. Absurd and stupid - why do the ten minute race if everything just comes down to the final thirty seconds anyway? I beat two of the six tracks (that's one third beaten!) in thirty minutes and then started getting impatient. So I'll make a confession; I found a cheat online that would unlock all racers and sleds. Surely, with the top sled in the game (a "hover-sled") I'd be unstoppable, right? Wrong. It turns out that when using the ultimate sled - the one that's maxed out in every statistical category - I was crashing and falling off the courses more than ever. I blame it on the ridiculous speed of the sled. I went airborne off of moguls constantly and this often resulted in me flying into a wall or off of a cliff. Again, stupid - why have a "best sled in the game" if it's too good to be effective? Aggravated and annoyed, I was about to quit, but then I realized that the code I had used to unlock all sleds and characters had also unlocked every level. Now, here's where we enter a gray area. Technically, the cheat code itself had allowed me not only to beat the game but to complete it. What, then, was to prevent me from considering it done? (Aside from the fact that, you know, I hadn't really done much to earn it, that is.) Since there were only three more tracks I had not seen, I decided just to race each one once. At least by going through them, win or lose, I'd have seen everything Sled Storm had to offer me. And it wasn't much. So, yeah, whatever - I'm done with this two-dollar no-name game. And before you cast stones at my pathetic attempt to beat it the "right" way, ask yourself if you have never used a guide, walkthrough, or code to make a game just a little bit less of a hassle on you. I thought so. We all have our vices, people, and cheat-coding my way through the final 67% of Sled Storm just isn't ever going to be something I regret doing.

Through the Looking-Glass

This follow-up to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was another simple 150-page book originally intended for children. Lewis Carroll was once again fantastic at nonsensical story-telling and wordplay. This book was very different, however, from Wonderland. In Looking-Glass, Alice isn't simply wandering around; she's on a mission to reach the eighth row of a gigantic chessboard so that she may become a queen. Chess references abound, and chess really becomes the centralizing theme of the book. The Red Queen can sprint at breaking speeds while the Red King remains stationary for the entire story; characters try to "capture" each another; knights put on horse-head helmets before doing battle with one another. The book is also full of plenty of memorable poems and quotes. There's "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter," for example, both making their debuts right here in Carroll's Wonderland follow-up. I think Alice's Adventures was ultimately more memorable than Looking-Glass, but there's definitely plenty of timelessness in both novels. I heartily recommend both, and to anyone. They're like 300 pages combined (still on the short side, if anything, compared to most contemporary best-selling books). Someday I'll see the new Tim Burton movie, which is apparently loyal to neither Wonderland or Looking-Glass but is some sort of mixture of both.

South Park The Complete Thirteenth Season

I loved this season. From it's spot on satire of Avatar (despite the fact that neither Trey nor Matt had seen the film at the time) to it's attempt at taking the word FAG back once and for all from those selfish homosexuals, Season 13 delivered. I consider South Park to be the best show on television when it comes to integrating music that is both clever and funny into its plot and this season is no exception. In fact, it boasts some of my favorite South Park musical numbers of all time. I will never forget Cartman's rendition of Poker Face or his song about minorities in his water park. I cannot get Kanye's auto-tuned Gay Fish out of my head. "Queef Free" takes the somewhat bothersome episode that is "Eat, Pray, Queef" and makes it one of my favorites of the season. South Park is by far my favorite show on TV and represents my favorite 7 hours of the year. I hope it's around for another 13.

Whatever Works

Here's an obscure one I found and purchased just recently. The combination of Larry David and Woody Allen seemed like a match made in heaven. Sure enough, the main character, Boris (played by David), is extremely pessimistic, neurotic, and self-deprecating. He's a genius, but a tortured one who cannot stand that the nation and world at large are full of people less intelligent than he is. One day, a runaway from Mississippi (Evan Rachel Wood) shows up at his apartment begging for some food and a place to stay. Her Southern, Christian, naive outlook on life presents a polar opposite to the "woe is me, woe is the universe" attitude embodied by crotchety old Boris. Sure enough, opposites attract and the two are married shortly afterward. Throughout the movie, Boris frequently breaks the fourth wall and has monologues for the audience, staring right into the camera and even going as far as tot tell the other characters, "hang on, I need to talk to 'them' about something." The main thing Boris does to find happiness amid the meaninglessness of life and existence is, well, "whatever works" - that is to say, he does his best to get by on whatever small comforts he can find and encourages everyone else to do the same. Eventually, Evan Rachel Wood's parents show up looking for her and they too drop their Christianity-governed lifestyles in New York City with a little bit of help from Boris and their already "converted" daughter. The movie turns cyclical toward the end, as Evan Rachel Wood, who was initially so drawn to Boris, has become someone Boris is so proud and fond of, so that it is ultimately he who is left heartbroken and hurt when she breaks it off with him rather than the other way around. Of course, he's back in the saddle before too long, very much insisting - to the audience, as well as to himself - that life moves on and you've just got to keep doing whatever you can do that makes anything worth living through. It was a ninety minute movie and was pretty simple and straightforward. The laughs were there, and they weren't of a snobbishly high level or anything - just a nice fusion of Woody Allen's humor and Larry David's comedy. One negative I've got to point out is the production value. This thing felt very "straight to DVD" even though it wasn't; some of the acting was really, really bad. There was also a time or two when an actor noticeably flubbed a line, corrected himself, and moved right along like nothing happened. I mean, have some pride in your movie, Woody Allen - reshoot a simple scene if you need to! This movie was more or less what I expected it to be: nothing special, but a decent piece from a very specific niche (the Allen/David combo I spoke so fondly of). Fans of that sort of self-deprecating Jewish humor would do well to give this one a go, but I can't call it something everyone should see.