The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

I was really excited about this game. In fact, I was so excited that I went out and bought a used DS on Friday. However, my excitement soon faded as I popped in the cartridge. To my horror, the DS would freeze after powering on. Desperate to acquire a functioning DS, I asked Steve (he's damn generous) if I could borrow his DS while he was at home. Knowing he would be home until Sunday night, I committed to beating the game in two days. Mission accomplished.

All in all, I would say Spirit tracks took around 20 hours to beat. So no, I did not do anything else this weekend... and yes, it was worth it.

In this game, we follow Link as he attempts to banish King Malladus to the Dark Realm once more by restoring the Spirit Tracks (these aren't just train tracks but also act as a lock to the Dark Realm). Interestingly enough, Link no longer has a fairy companion. Instead, he is followed around by the spirit of one of Malladus' victims. She's not a gimmick, however, and is central to the solution of most puzzles. I'm sure the rest of the story was great, but I skipped most cutscenes to expedite my completion of another Zelda adventure.

This game feels very similar to Phantom Hourglass. From the graphics to the gameplay, at points, it is tough to differentiate between the two. However, the dungeons and boss battles are more prevalent, varied, and rewarding. The sand temple was particularly badass. Still, if you have played one Zelda game, you know what to expect from Spirit Tracks. You go to a dungeon in order to find a magical stone. Within that dungeon, you find a special weapon that allows you to traverse it and solve its puzzles. The dungeon culminates in a larger-than-life boss battle. Once that boss battle is over, you navigate the overworld (I wish it was Hyrule) in a train (instead of a sail boat) with the hope of completing various errands for townspeople, who in turn will help you find your way to the next dungeon. As I never figured out how to unlock the warp stations, this got rather tedious. I spent far too much time waiting for Link's goddamn train to reach its destination.

But, the good far outweighed the bad. For me, this is easily the best handheld Zelda I have ever played because it took everything I loved about Phantom Hourglass and got rid of the fucking repetitive as shit Temple of the Ocean King. Okay, time to beat God of War.

Yoshi's Story

Today, I bought BioShock 2. I couldn't wait! Not even two days until it was March, and I went and put my New Years resolution in jeopardy - upon the purchase of that new game, my net February progress on video games was zero. Fortunately, I knew I had a game I could beat in an hour: Yoshi's Story. Yoshi's Story was pretty heavily criticized when it came out, and rightfully so; to beat the game, you must platform your way through a mere six levels. The final boss, Baby Bowser, is a laughable joke. He can easily be vanquished in thirty seconds, and was. To complete each level - sorry, each "page" (in what must be Yoshi's titular story) - you must eat thirty pieces of fruit. There is no final physical goal in a level; levels just loop circularly until you've eaten thirty pieces of fruit. I only reached the "end" of a level once, and often had my thirty piece quota finished before I was halfway "done" with a level. The core concept of the plot, if there was one, is that the Yoshis are a happy bunch and Baby Bowser has become jealous of their contentedness. Because of this, he has decided to steal their Super Happy Tree (yep, its real name), the source of the fruit that makes them so happy. As the Yoshis venture through the pages of their story, they become happier. The whole thing felt like an interesting take on a Prozac commercial. Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when the Super Happy Tree turned out to be little more than a withered vine with three fruits dangling from it. I suppose you get what you pay for, and since I only paid an hours' worth of time to beat this one, I can't be all too disappointed in the payoff - a Super Happy Vine protected by the easiest final boss I've ever seen in a platformer. Now, apparently you can choose from four different levels on each page, making twenty-four levels in all. The gist is that the more things you collect before getting your thirty fruits, the more options there will be on the next page. So is this game worth playing and beating three more times to "complete" the game by playing through each level? No. It would only ask an additional three hours of my time, but really, I see no reason to touch this children's game again. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must get back to reading some young adult chapter books.

The Godfather Part III

I watched history's most infamous threequel earlier tonight with high hopes. My logic was that the first two movies hadn't lived up to their hype for me, so this underhyped one could easily surprise me. In a way, it did. To recap, I enjoyed the first Godfather movie very much, but wouldn't quite consider it the greatest film of all time. The second one is a film I was far less impressed by. Halfway through this movie, I was definitely thinking, wow, this movie has a chance to legitimately rank higher than the second one (in my book, at least) when all is said and done. Ultimately though, it fell a bit short. The ending - one that was certainly supposed to be climactic - was an odd mixture of half "knock-off of the first film's ending" and half "totally expected and foreshadowed tragedy." I didn't find Andy Garcia particularly bad - in fact, I enjoyed him. I also liked Al Pacino far more in this movie than I did in the second one. And that's weird, because his Godfather II Michael Corleone is praised around the world as one of the greatest performances of all time. Perhaps it was just the character itself that I liked more this time around. The second movie's machismo-laden and angry crime boss was now a shell of his former self: aging, ailing, and above all, remorseful for the many sins of his past. The moment it became clear to me that this movie was ranked far below the other two for a reason was when on-screen cousins Garcia and Sofia Coppola built up a ton of sexual tension in a kitchen and broke it by passionately making out. And no one seemed upset with this! In a culture and family where honor seemed to mean everything, nobody - not even the father of the girl, Don Corleone himself - was outraged. First cousins! The Don's beloved daughter and his heir apparent were doing the horizontal mambo and the Don's only concern was that the pairing would make his daughter a marked woman. Jesus! And that wasn't the only way Sofia Coppola contributed to ruining the movie. Her acting was, honest to God, some of the worst I've ever seen on screen. She was cute enough for the most part, but she was just a terrible, terrible actress. Francis Ford (the director and her daddy) takes a lot of shit for casting her in the role, but that was a move that came after Julia Roberts and Winona Ryder both dropped out of the role. Sofia was likely nothing more than a hesitant fill-in and I'm sure neither father nor daughter wanted her in that role. At least I hope that's the case. Because, wow, she was just a horrible actor. So yeah. The movie wasn't the awful pile of shit that some people would want you to believe it is, but it sure did fail to live up to the first two.

Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts is a game that received immense hype, and for good reason. The game's a basic 2-D platform/puzzler, but with a gimmick that seemed like it could impact the future of video games- a dictionary full of objects at your disposal. Nearly any object that you think could help solve a puzzle can be created and used in-game. Needless to say, my friends and I all were pretty pumped to play some Scribblenauts when we first heard of it, but for a number of reasons I wasn't able to purchase it when it came out last fall. I remember my friends talking about the crazy things they had done in the game- strapping babies to rockets, forcing the devil and Cthulu to fight, whatever. It sounded like everyone was pleased, so when Christmas came around I naturally asked for Scribblenauts. Thing is, between the day I asked for the game and actually receiving it on Christmas Day (thanks to my brother Steve), I suddenly started hearing disappointing reviews- poor controls, didn't live up to the hype, hell even Trevor told me he'd give me his copy because he hated the game. The outlook wasn't good. When I first started the game up, I saw that there were 220 levels- not only not fun, but long as well? Well, it's hard to say Scribblenauts wasn't fun. I didn't really tool around and waste time like I thought I would, but pounding through the levels really wasn't hard. For the most part they went by pretty fast and were actually pretty clever as well- a few stinkers spread out here and there, but I can't complain when they make a small fraction of the 220. The controls were indeed pretty poor, and induced a few groans. Accidentally miss the small book icon with your stylus? Instead of creating an item, Maxwell just jumped into a bonfire. Oops. Anyway there's still potential here for a great sequel, as long as the number one priority is to fix the controls. And if more of the puzzles can't be solved with fire, water, wings, Pegasus, God, rope, bomb, gun, scuba, shovel, and sword- cause I can't really think of any others that were used more than a few times. At least the list of objects lived up to the hype- I can't recall Scribblenauts ever not having a common object, and most of the objects worked as expected. So yeah, while Scribblenauts may not have been the most fun I've had on the DS, credit is due to 5th Cell for following through on such an inspired idea.

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Finally, my first video game off the list!

About two years ago, I - for no reason in particular - became obsessed over survival-horror games. After playing through F.E.A.R., Resident Evil 4 (Wii version), and Eternal Darkness, I went out to the store and just stocked up on a bunch of old, cheap games to scare me. I have yet to beat a single game I bought that day (Silent Hill 2 & 3 and Condemned 1 & 2)... until now.

Condemned: Criminal Origins is the first game to the Condemned series in which you play as Ethan Thomas, an FBI agent on the run from the cops. While investigating a known serial killer, Ethan is framed for the murder for two of his comrades. Now it's up to him to track down the true killer. As you progress through the game, tracking down one psychopath-suspect after another, you are constantly bombarded by crazy homeless people that want to do nothing more than bash your head open and steal your pocket change. In most games this wouldn't normally seem like such a big deal, however C:CO has a great way of making the game "realistic" - in other words: your life sucks while playing this game. Ethan can only fight with what's around him (a pipe, wooden 2x4, perhaps a bent piece of rebar - it's all fair game), using any tools in melee fashion to cream the shit out of his enemies. There are a few chances where an occasional gun will come into the mix, but because of the realistic qualities, you may only have three shots before the weapon is useless. So you lay it down nicely - cause Ethan's throwing arm must be out - and go back to swinging that butcher's knife like a lunatic. The real challenge in the game comes down to your melee skills. You have to time your blocks with your opponent's attacks, then strike when you have the chance. Some may fine this exciting and fun - honestly, it's just bullshit.

I will say this about the game: it scared me. Usually I find myself immune to most scare tactics (creatures jumping out at you, scary sound effects, ect.), but because of this games shitty fighting style, I was scared for my life constantly. It's typical for survival-horror games to have real sluggish controls in a claustrophobic environment that's meant to induce a state of panic. Then the game tosses relatively easy challenges at you in hopes you'll just freak out and fuck up. But once you've got your nerves under control, you find the game has a pattern to beating it after all. This game doesn't have that quality. First off, guys will jump out at you from everywhere - or possibly chase up behind you - without any warning and slug you, forcing you to be on the defense. Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't block for shit. Needless to say, I became aware that without the ability to defend myself, I would be at the mercy of the game. After numerous deaths, I cranked the thing down to easy - I'm so ashamed. At least in child-mode I was able to rampage my way to end, leaving a wake of corpses in my path.

As for the story... well, I couldn't really gather much. While Ethan's on the run, he's aided by his partner Rosa who helps him solve this murder mystery. Eventually, as you find each new suspect dead at the end of the chapter, you learn that your culprit, Serial Killer X, is killing other serial killers using the same method that they originally killed their victims by. You finally track him down, and that's where the story gets kind of foggy. According to Wikipedia, after you finally capture Serial Killer X you battle this strange albino dude (Ethan would have frequent visions during the game hinting to this character's existence, but never explained him) who's apparently called the Hate and is responsible for all the homeless people going mad. I don't know. I didn't get any of that from the game. What's worse is that one of side characters eventually mentions to Ethan something about a cult, and Ethan later learns from Rosa that the FBI has all these files on him alluding to that fact that he has abnormalities in his brain and immense calcium deposits in his bones making him tuff as shit.

I don't know what this all means. Guess that means questions we'll have to wait for an answer in game two, Condemned 2: Bloodshot.

Belle Prater's Boy

Every time I head home from school for a long weekend, I try to bang out a children's book or two. I figure the faster I get them finished, the faster I can eliminate such immature embarrassments from my backlog. In this very "might as well just get it over with" spirit, last night I began reading what was easily the kids' book I had the least interest with. I mean, can you blame me? Break tradition and judge this book by its cover for a minute. Doesn't it reek of "cheesy low-budget kids' movie from 1993?" Imagine my great surprise then when I realized that the book I was reading really wasn't all that bad. Belle Prater's Boy is set in 1950s Appalachia. The characters - two cousins, one of which is the narrator and the other being the titular character - speak in nice regional dialects that don't feel overdone. Shades of Tom Sawyer pop in here and there as the kids not only speak like the country bumpkin hicks they are but also get into a bit of mischief here and there. One thing that kept the book bearable was a steady flow of simple jokes and riddles. As far as plot goes, I'll try to summarize in a sentence or two. Belle Prater has one night decided to leave her entire life behind (including her son) to try to "find herself" (she has done this before). Her son moves in with his cousin "Gypsy" (wow) and the two become fast friends. Gypsy comes of age and eventually learns to cope with her father's sudden suicide many years before (something that is alluded to but never mentioned directly - nice work, author Ruth White). There's symbolism aplenty, as Gypsy decides to cut off all of her ass-length hair one night because she feels like, beautiful as it is, it's "hiding" the "real" her like a "veil." And Belle Prater never does come back, but it's cool, because her son has found a new home and family with his loving cousin. It may have been typical and standard, by all accounts, but Belle Prater's Boy was at the very least mildly enjoyable. I don't want to give it too much credit, but it might have been one of the best children's books I've logged yet. Of course, that just means it wasn't brutally awful. Ready for the irony? This book wasn't even a Newbery winner. See that medal on its cover? Turns out that's just the medal for being a Newbery "honor" book. In other words, it was only nominated for the "prestigious" award. My mistake. Oh well. Too late to unread it, and far too late to pretend it hasn't been sitting on my bookshelf for months now. Whatever. I've got 25 books left, and depending on how the weekend turns out, I could easily envision finishing another "coming of age" tale. I've got five of those (Newbery winners) left. That's right; I can count them on one hand. It's the final countdown.

TNA iMPACT!

The story of this game begins with you as the masked wrestler "Suicide." With confetti dropping from the ceiling and fans chanting your name, you are on top of the world as you hold the TNA World Championship above your head in celebration. This celebration would not last long however, as the tag team of Homicide (yup they have wrestlers named both Homicide and Suicide) and Hernandez, known collectively as the Latin American Exchange (LAX), beats you down in the parking lot as you are leaving the arena after what is arguably the greatest day of your life. When you finally come to, you find yourself in a hospital bed. Your red and blue mask has been replaced with a mask of bandages and a body cast to match. The doctor explains to you that you have been beaten so badly that he must perform plastic surgery to restore your looks. However, knowing that you have always been self conscious about your big nose and love handles, he gives you the option of a whole new look (I can't help but think that the story developers got their inspiration from Face/Off). From here, you as the player are forced to create your own wrestler to compete. This premise sounds somewhat interesting (albeit ridiculous), but really loses a lot of steam when you realize that the create-a-wrestler is less in depth than the create-a-wrestlers of games from a decade ago like Wrestlemania 2000. Upon completion, I was left with a tattooed black man in purple tights, Ugg boots with tassels, and a white mask. He was an uninspired creation, but then again, so was this entire game.

From there, you fight your way back to the ranks of TNA in hopes of one day discovering who hired LAX to beat you down. To accomplish this, you wrestle all over the world (and by all over I mean Japan and Mexico and a random armory) in an attempt to be noticed by the TNA brass. After about 50 or so unbearable matches, this story culminates with you facing off with the true mastermind of your beat down in one of the most unfair boss battles I have ever come across.

Let's get the positive out of the way. This game has serviceable graphics. Okay I'm glad that's over. Let's get to the negative.

This game has a broken control scheme. The B button is responsible for climbing the turnbuckle, leaving the ring, picking up weapons, pinning your opponent, and pretty much every other non-strike action of which you could possibly think. That, in itself, would not be a huge issue if the direction you pushed while pressing B had any effect. For instance, if I pressed B, but was aiming the joystick towards the turnbuckle, I would expect to climb it. However, because the direction I press is not a factor, the game might just randomly decide that I would rather pin my opponent (despite being much closer to the turnbuckle than my downed opponent). This led to a lot of screaming and swearing on my part. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get my wrestler to do what I wanted him to do. This may not seem like a big deal, but in a lot of instances this game felt almost unplayable.

Also, instead of creating AI that would result in interesting and challenging matches as you progress through the Mexican jobbers to the TNA superstars, the developers decided that they would just make the TNA superstars do about five times as much damage as your wrestler (that's an average - Jeff Jarrett could beat me in about 6 moves). This would be okay if there was any way to improve the stats of your wrestler to be on par with Kurt Angle or AJ Styles. Instead, you are stuck with developing cheap strategies of spamming one or two moves so the AI opponent can never touch you. Because, let me assure you, if your opponent ever gets a move off, you are going to lose. As a result, when I wasn't restarting the match due to a loss (I lost more than I won while playing on easy), I was spending the entirety of my career doing cross body blocks and diving elbow drops.

Speaking of problems with the AI, if you run around the ring, your opponent will always follow. Because of that, if you run close enough to the steel ring steps, the AI is too stupid to avoid them and will trip every time. This represents the most satisfying aspect of the entire game.

Oh and this game has such a thin roster (about 20 wrestlers) that the majority of my career was spent fighting randomly generated wrestlers. I shouldn't complain too much about this because it did result in my fighting some jean-clad gems like "Beardy McGee" and "The Bulgarian."

However, when all is said and done, Beardy just wasn't enough to make up for this lazy attempt at a wrestling game. I want the 8 hours of my life back I spent on this garbage. Fuck you Midway. Fuck you TNA, fuck you.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

This was a quick one. Just over 100 pages long (and double-spaced, and thick-margined, and plenty-illustrated), this Harry Potter spin-off took half an hour to complete at most. It's a collection of five short fairy tales from the wizarding world of J. K. Rowling and ensuing commentary on each tale by the grand wizard Dumbledore. I was impressed by Rowling's ability to create five brief little stories that very much felt like traditional fairy tales. The majority of them were enjoyable and none were a drag by any means. Simple as they were, each conveyed some kind of moral or lesson just like any real fairy tale or fable. One negative I need to address is Dumbledore's commentary. It took up half of the book and really didn't add anything. I suppose the Harry Potter franchise is aimed at kids just as much as adults, but I really didn't need a fictional character to hold my hand throughout the book and explain to me what the morals of the stories were. But that's really the only thing that detracts from this brief little spin-off. Best of all, while I was quick to initially dismiss the book as a cash cow ploy by an already rich-as-fuck Rowling, I found out later that all profits made by The Tales of Beedle the Bard went to children's charities. Good. If that's the case, J. K. Rowling can keep the spin-offs coming. I won't buy them (I did not buy this one), but I'll support their presence and sales all the same.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

As this represents my first backlog, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Keith Sheffer and although I feel quite honored to be invited to this secret society with no less prestige than the Stone Cutters, the main theme of my life is apathy and as such, it tends to take me weeks to watch the movies I buy, months to beat the video games I buy, and years to read the books I buy. However, I hope this post represents a change in my life for the better. Despite not being anywhere near Catholic, for Lent, I have decided to give up my apathetic ways. Gone are the days in which I dick around on the computer instead of watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Gone are the days in which I blast Air Supply while I lay on my bed and stare blankly at the ceiling instead of reading Pirate Latitudes.

To prove my change in commitment, I would like to take a look at the timeline of events that led to me decreasing my backlog by one. When I found out about this game around July or so, I was incredibly excited as its predecessor was easily my favorite game on PS3. I decided then that I would buy it to reassure myself that my PS3 was not just a glorified Blu-ray player. I bought the game in November with all the Gamestop credit I had accumulated from ditching a bunch of crap games like Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I popped it into my PS3 and played the first 3 chapters (out of 26) with some excitement. That represented the last day I played it until around finals week in early December. I played 5 more chapters in one sitting with the intent on beating it in California on winter break. Well, winter break came and went with me never plugging in my PS3. The beginning of the new semester came and went and was just as unproductive. Finally, on Sunday, February 20^th, 2010 with the encouragement of my friends and family and the mean-spirited goading of a heartless bastard who will remain nameless (Webber), I sat down and beat the game in two sittings. I consider that day to be the first day of the rest of my life. With that being said, let’s take a look at the first game I have beaten in 2010: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

Uncharted 2 begins right where the first Uncharted left off. Again, we follow our hero Nathan Drake on a crazy adventure through Nepal, Borneo, the Himalayas, Shambala and like twenty other previous Survivor locations in search of some treasure left behind by a famous explorer. This time around, instead of Sir Francis Drake (exploring is in Nathan’s blood!), we have Marco Polo to thank. Drake, along with his trusty sidekick/father figure Sully, soon sets off on an adventure to recover the Cintamani Stone (grants wishes!) from Shambala (Marco Polo and his crew, on an expedition to China in 1292, were believed to have found this powerful stone only to lose it days later in the Shambala). Although this task sounds easy enough, especially for someone with the skill set of Nathan Drake, there are two complicating factors. For one, Shambala is a lost city. No one can be sure that it actually exists (no one except for Drake of course). On top of that, Lazarevic, an evil man who wants nothing more than world domination, is also in hot pursuit of the stone. With money and henchmen at his disposal, Lazarevic seems destined to beat Drake to the stone. I won’t give anything else away (Drake finds Shambala and eventually wins) as I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone.

Although the story was engaging enough, this game kept my attention (eventually) through its amazing game play and action sequences. It felt more like an action movie than a video game in many respects. In fact, I spent about 1/9 of the game negotiating the top of a high-speed moving train and another 1/9 of the game jumping from speeding jeep to speeding jeep while mowing down henchman driver after henchman driver in the process (easily the two best action sequences I have ever played in a video game). Action sequences aside, the game play is a not-so-delicate balance between cover-system shooting (ala Gears of War) and jumping/climbing buildings and structures (ala Prince of Persia? Assassin’s Creed?). Still, I can’t imagine that any game does climbing quite like Uncharted 2. To make some of the jumps he makes, Drake undoubtedly has the strongest forearms in the history of mankind. He also has unparalleled precision with his firearms. Long story short, he is the biggest badass you will ever encounter.

Overall, though this game seems to be a two-trick pony (climbing and shooting), it does those two things better than pretty much any game I have encountered. In fact, despite seemingly borrowing game play elements from other titles, it feels undeniably unique. Furthermore, this game is so goddamned fun. It’s nine hours of constant fun. With that being said, I can’t recommend it enough.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)

Eh, it's been a while. I've got to say, I'm not too great at getting through my list - most of these items were left unfinished for a reason. Perhaps I should seek professional help, but the only thing I got around to recently was watching "Eyes Without a Face" on Netflix. I guess I can say this takes me one step closer at watching every movie that's apart of the Criterion Collection; however, I foolishly said that before I realized there were already over 500 films inducted into that collection - "Audios Mios!" - and it's still growing. Whatever. Here comes another review flying at your eyeballs.

Hollywood, in its infinite talent and wisdom, does do one thing very, very well: remakes. Over the past few years we've all seen dozens of remakes whether it comes to a syndicated television series (A-Team) or to beloved classics (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), Hollywood loves to regenerate old material in the belief that it will sell again. But perhaps the genre best known for its regurgitated content are horror films. Just recently there has been "Friday the 13th" and now well look forward to "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "The Birds" - seriously Michael Bay, you would remake Hitchcock? Anyways, what this rant comes down to is that I am constantly condemning Hollywood for their poor, unimaginative decisions when it comes to developing a new film. But I must say, if they must remake a movie they would be smart to choose "Eyes Without a Face."

Georges Franju made this French flick center around a renown physician, Doctor Génessier, who is in pain because we believe that he's just verified his daughter is dead after getting called into the city morgue to identify an unknown body. A little backstory: Génessier was involved in a car accident some time ago in which others believed his wife to have died in and his daughter's face was horrible disfigure. We quickly find out that both Génessier's wife and daughter are still alive. He gave his wife a face transplant to make her normal again and now she walks around with him as his personal secretary. Génessier's daughter on the other hand suffered far worse from the accident and has been a more difficult subject to heal. Luring young, attractive women from the city, then kidnapping them, Génessier has been trying to find a donor who's face he can transplant to his daughter and have the transplant keep without it decaying and falling apart. And yes, the girl Génessier was identifying at the beginning of the film was not his daughter, but his most recent patient who died on the operating table and was then thrown into the river by his wife. I won't spoil this ending for you - not because it's anything stunning or original - because I highly encourage anyone to watch this film and I want to leave you with something fresh to look forward to.

Even though this move carries its own charm in acting and directing style, this is a film that did not live up to its true potential. The film's energy resides within the family itself. Watching them try to live their lavish, aristocratic lives amidst all this blood and murder. Then we see the daughter herself - absolutely terrifying always wearing this plain mask - conflicted by what her family is doing and how she just wants to escape and be with her fiancé who believes her to be dead. Although a great story, I thought that stakes could have been raise so much higher. The love story between the daughter and her lover was never really built upon, the detectives involved in finding these missing girls weren't involved as much as they could have been, and on and on. Basically, the stakes could have been raised higher and the theme, desire of vanity, could have been exemplified much better.

I'm not demanding that Hollywood remake this film. On the contrary, I would love it if they stopped remaking films altogether (I mean, how many fucking "Alvin and the Chipmunks" movies to we need?)... but that doesn't look as though it will ever happen. So let me proposed this instead: remake the films who's message ended up being stifled the first time. Let us actually contribute something towards the cinema world instead of rehashing some shitty old TV show or something.

And please God, give Michael Bay a really nasty hemorrhoid for even thinking that Hitchcock needed to be retold. Arrogant jackass.

Good as Gold

I just finished my third Joseph Heller book. Hoping it would be more like Catch-22 than Something Happened, I'm left torn and uncertain on how to judge it. I suppose it'd be easiest if I broke it down into two main components: tone and content. Tone-wise, the book was a real treat. Heller didn't match his Catch-22 levels when it came to delivering laughs and head shakes, but the same type of writing was there. All throughout the book, there were subtle oxymora ("I've been working on being more humble, and I'm very proud of how humble I've become."), there was ironic wordplay ("I can't believe you consider her an 'exception' when she's such an exceptional student!"), and there were logical impossibilities and worthless all-encompassing statements ("I'm absolutely certain that the job is yours, unless of course it isn't"). There were also idiotic conversations aplenty. For example, at one point, several pseudo-intellectuals discuss what the world would be like if there was no water; without seeing the bigger picture (simply, that life would not exist without water) they come to a consensus that people would have to drink beer and wine to quench their thirst (since alcohol is different than water). All of this is utterly irrelevant to the story at hand, but it is classic Heller. And for that, I was thankful. On the other hand, the content of the novel wasn't especially memorable in any way. Part of the problem was a plethora of characters and plot lines and an apparent lack of focus. Sure, that sounds a lot like real life, but this is a book. I wanted more plot and fewer sidetracks, even though the sidetracks were typically the greatest source of Heller's humor. Here's the plot (no spoilers) in a nutshell. Bruce Gold is a Jewish middle-aged English professor who has written a favorable review of a recent book by the President. As such, he has won over the President and suddenly been offered the chance to become an important governmental figure in Washington. In order to do so, he will need to make a number of distinctive changes to his lifestyle (namely, his innate Jewishness) including leaving his wife for a young, wealthy, WASPy woman. At the same time, he's been tasked with writing a book about the "Jewish experience" in America, but he has no idea how to do write about such an experience because he's unsure about whether or not he's lived it. As he struggles through both of these new assignments, his father and siblings give him all kinds of shit and his daughter begins to rebel against him. On the surface, then, the book contains many different plot points, but ultimately it's about a man in the middle of his life with everything falling apart around him. Of course, Heller also takes the opportunity to insert plenty of "Jewish" into the novel. Furthermore, the federal government is lampooned much in the same manner that Heller attacked war in Catch-22 and corporate America in Something Happened. There was just a whole lot going on and not all of it seemed pointed in much of a direction. Still, the book was often funny and sometimes touching, always relatable and even sad here and there. A few characters were memorably outrageous (Gold's father and brother, one of Gold's government confidants, and most notably Gold's anti-Semitic father-in-law-to-be). Everything was there, and I should have loved this book. But it just wasn't Catch-22, and that alone was enough for me to dismiss it as less than perfect. I still give it a seven or an eight out of ten, but by no means is this something I would expect any of my friends to give an honest read. In ranking the three Heller books I've had the pleasure of reading so far, it should come as no surprise that Catch-22 is head and shoulders above the two I've read in these past six months. But how do those two compare? Good as Gold was bittersweet and fun. It seemed a lot like "Catch-22 Lite," whereas Something Happened was dark, bitter, and sarcastic throughout - nothing like Catch-22 at all. Do I give props to the book that more closely resembled my favorite of all time, or do I respect the one that went in an entirely different direction? The jury is still out, I suppose. Sadly, none of Heller's other four books are as critically acclaimed as Good as Gold, which is allegedly the closest he ever got to recapturing the mastery he exhibited in Catch-22. This brings me to another point - of those four remaining books, I already own one. Why not buy the other three, give them all a shot, and judge Heller's lifetime of works from cover to cover? I may just do this, counter-intuitive to my backlog issue as it may be. So where will I go from here? God Knows.

Seinfeld: Season 4

Season 4 of Seinfeld is often considered the show's peak. It's the year it finally caught on in the ratings and also the year it won an Emmy for being the best comedy series. I can certainly agree that it was the greatest season I've seen so far. It contained a number of memorable episodes, including the classic, "The Contest." Part of the reason this season was so great was its use of continuity and story arcs. It's still the same old lovable "show about nothing," sure, but now the "nothing" spans several episodes. The season-long plot was another thing of beauty. Jerry is approached by NBC executives to create a TV pilot. This worked on a number of levels, most notably the level that, of course, the real life Jerry Seinfeld had been asked to do the same thing years before - hence the show's very existence. Since real Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David incorporated so much of their real lives into Seinfeld, it only makes sense that character Jerry and George (really, the "character" version of Larry David) would be asked to write a pilot the same way real Jerry and Larry were. The show really seemed to come into its own this season. Season 2 ended much better than it began, and Season 3 was good too, but this season definitely outdid the previous two DVD volumes I watched. A couple of minor complaints I have include the first six episodes being two-parters. Three straight "to be continued" endings or hour long episodes? What is this, Season 4 of The Office? I didn't care for that decision. Also, the other thing that irked me a bit was the studio audience's applause every episode when Kramer first appeared. That just felt very tacky and 1960s to me. Yeah, Kramer is a lovable and goofy character, but rounds of applause every time he energetically slid through Jerry's door seemed like overkill to me. Season 4 also marks the first time Elaine's ridiculous hair stopped bothering me. Anyway, I've now seen four seasons of the show, and while it still isn't quite the barrel of laughs I was hoping for after watching seven seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I'm definitely capable now of accepting it for what it is and enjoying it plenty. As far as I know, Season 5 doesn't regress at all from Season 4's peak, and hopefully I'm in for a several-season plateau of greatness.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Much like every other series of video games I've played through, I went through The Ace Attorney games completely out of order- 4, 3, 1, 2. Why do I do this? Who knows. Anyway for those not in the know, the Ace Attorney series (also sometimes just called Phoenix Wright) is a lawyer simulation where you solve cases with the power... of evidence! It's really addicting and fun and Capcom keep surprisingly me with a bevy of elegant yet hilarious cases in each installment. The first three games of the series detail the rise of protagonist Phoenix Wright, an up-and-coming lawyer with a penchant for pointing and outbursts of "OBJECTION!" The three games all form one long story arc, which to me peaked with the final case of game #3- Trials and Tribulations. The fourth game of the series jumps ahead seven years as Phoenix mentors newcomer Apollo Justice on his lawyerly ways. While certainly a good game, it just didn't have the same feel of the first three- probably because Phoenix is the only character to return. That's what makes the cases in the first three games unique- they feature a number of recurring characters, all of whom have their own quirks and humor that kept me coming back for more. Luckily, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth brings the series back to its roots, taking place somewhere around the same time as the second game, Justice For All. This allows for several fan favorite characters to not only have cameos, but play important roles in the cases as well. You play as Miles Edgeworth, expert prosecutor and Phoenix's former rival. The action in Ace Attorney Investigations doesn't take place in the courtroom- Edgeworth spends all of his time out in the crime scenes piecing together clues and questioning suspects. This change had me worried at first, but if anything it feels like an improvement in gameplay. A common criticism of the first games was that half of the game was spent on awesome courtroom drama, but the other half was boring investigations. In Ace Attorney Investigation, Miles moves rapid-fire between investigating and questioning, giving the game a much faster pace. There were a few other improvements here- investigations involved a lot less brute-forcing of solutions (pressing every statement, showing every piece of evidence to everyone), and rather than one sidekick, Edgeworth gets three- the lovable oaf of a detective, Gumshoe; the fierce rival prosecutor Franziska von Karma; and the borderline-creepy newcomer Kay Faraday- seriously, in every one of these games a man of the court in his mid-twenties spends a good portion of his time with a teenage girl. A bit weird, but that's Japan I guess. Anyway, while Miles' dynamic with these sidekicks isn't as good as Phoenix/Maya in the first three, they were all serviceable in their own ways, and it was good to see von Karma get a chance to be a good guy for once. The cases Miles faces in this game were par for the course- no better than any we've seen, but no worse. It should be noted that Ace Attorney Investigations contains no side-cases- all of them have some impact on the overall storyline. The storyline here was also good but not great- it kept me interested, but I'll probably forget most of it later. Overall I'd call this a solid addition to the Ace Attorney series- you certainly don't have to play it if you've played the first three, but it's definitely a better sequel than Apollo Justice.

True Blood Season 1

So where do I start with True Blood. This show built on all the vampire craze, and also tries to input as much nudity as possible because it is on HBO and all. Let me give you some "background" on the setting of the show. The show is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries but I'm not sure how accurately it follows the books. It is set in Louisiana, and vampires have just "come out of the closet". Following the creation of synthetic blood by Japan, people are fighting for vampire's rights, but some people do not like them at all (which is justified because some of the vampires don't "mainstream" and just kill people). Anywho, a vampire is created by sucking the blood out of a human, putting your own blood into them, and then sleeping with them in the ground to "transfer your essence". Honestly, this show is cooky! This vampire lore is more "realistic" so to speak compared to Twilight. Vampires cannot go out during the day or they burn up. They have fangs (but they are all hidden until they shoot out). Vampire's blood heals humans. They die if you stick a stake in them. They are very hurt by silver. (They are cool with garlic and crosses though.) They cannot enter a private residence unless invited in. They are susceptible to Hepatitis D. They sleep in coffins. The like virgin's blood best. They can "glamor" or hypnotize humans. They are super strong and fast. And most importantly, they are dead and animated by their blood. This brings me to another part of TrueBloood....V. V is vampire blood and it is a hot drug on the street.

Lemme get on to the story though. The story focuses on Sookie Stackhouse, a normal person.... who can read minds. No biggy. She can hear what other people are thinking, but not vampire Bill. Bill is a "mainstreaming" vampire who is sustained off synthetic blood, TruBlood, and lives in the small town in Louisiana. A lot of people don't like him or any vampires and judge anyone who hangs around with them. Sookie works at Sam Merlotte's bar, who turns out is not completely normal. Sookie has a sex crazed brother Jason. She lives with her grandmother (who is a fan of vampires). She's best friends with Tara a fiery black girl who thinks everyone is being racist. There is a whole host of other characters as well, Arlene works at the bar and is engaged to Renee who works with Jason. Lafayette is a Tara's flamboyantly gay cousin who deals drugs. Then there are of course other vampires.

I don't want to give away the season for anyone, but I really enjoyed it. Once it got past trying to shock me by showing "fang bangers" aka women having sex with vampires and decided not to be a porno, the murder mystery plot shown through. I am a fan of murder mysteries and was pleasantly surprised by the resolution. The next season leaves us with a cliff hanger featuring a prominent death, a mysterious woman, and a crazy blood crazed new vampire. I'm looking forward to watching season 2. True Blood is not quite fangtastic (ha!) but I'm enjoying it.

Fast & Furious

You know that phrase, "it was so bad that it was good?" I never liked that phrase. Yet, I can't think of a better one to describe Fast & Furious, the fourth film (but third chronological story) in the Vin Diesel and Paul Walker franchise. There are so many plot holes, poorly thought out "plans" by the heroes, and fast car chases just for the sake of fast car chases, that the final product almost comes out as its own kind of masterpiece. In short, I didn't want this movie to be realistic or well-acted. Nobody did. So the fact that it wasn't either of these things - at all - only made me enjoy it more. Hence, it was "bad enough" to be good. Part of me wants to go off on a comedic rant about the plot, characters, and acting. About how Paul Walker spent the entire movie forcing his voice to be lower like a kid impersonating an adult on the telephone. About how the main villain looked exactly like Vinny from Jersey Shore. About how utterly useless it was to bring back Jordana Brewster's character just to guilt trip Paul Walker's. About how the movie credited Michelle Rodriguez with third billing and a starring role when she was on screen for less than ten minutes. But nothing I could concoct would be half as good as the review Adam Carolla and Bill Simmons gave it ten months ago on a podcast. (Fast forward to the 21:35 mark for their priceless recap.) So instead of saying anything more, I'll just thank the movie for being exactly what I wanted it to be - no less, and more importantly, no more. If there's a Fast & Furious 5, you better believe I'll be seeing it on opening weekend.

The Wild, Wild Women

What a big time for the Backblog- as I write this, I can see that Stan and Trevor are writing up entries of their own. Today I read the third of five plays in Plautus and Terence's Five Comedies: The Wild, Wild Women (Bacchides). Sadly, this one did not live up to the standards set by Major Blowhard and The Brothers. It really feels like two separate plays- the two halves are more than just tangentially related, but the plot of The Wild, Wild Women takes such a downturn halfway through that it became hard to care about any of the characters. The first half is more of a traditional comedy about two friends who get wrapped up in a plot with two whores who share the name Bacchis. This half was light-hearted and fun, essentially what I was looking for in a Plautus comedy. Sadly, once the main problem is solved, the story takes a dramatic shift to focus on the boy's fathers and their slave, Nugget. The fathers are understandably disappointed that their sons are dealing with "ladies of the night" but instead of actually dealing with the problem like normal people, they hatch some overwrought plan that never really came to make much sense. All of this happens under the watchful eye of Nugget, the scheming slave that appears to be something of a cliche in ancient comedies. Nugget and the two fathers are all prone to lengthy monologues, during which the comedy suffered and I grew bored. It seemed like it just kept going far longer than necessary, a criticism agreed with by translator Douglass Parker. It's a shame as Major Blowhard had me excited to read more Plautus, but it looks like his plays were kind of hit-or-miss. Nevertheless, only two more remain in the book, one of which I may have actually read in college- I'll keep the Backblog posted.

BioShock

I started this game last weekend. Two nights ago, I made a very weak (and flawed) decision. Remembering my New Years resolution to beat a game every month, I began to worry that I wouldn't be able to commit to BioShock and beat it by the end of February. I bought Braid instead, and as regular readers will recall, I beat that game just yesterday morning. Resolution upheld - or so I thought. I soon remembered that my resolution was not just to beat a game every month, but to end each month with a net reduction in my backlog tally. By purchasing Braid only to beat it, I had made no net progress. Furthermore, another part of my New Years resolution was to stop abandoning games after starting them. Clearly, I needed to beat BioShock after all. And I did so today. And I did it the right way - without harvesting any "Little Sisters" along the way. (Little Sisters? I'll get to those.) BioShock is a game set in an alternate 1960 in a city on the ocean floor called "Rapture." You play the role of Jack, a plane crash survivor who happens upon a sea surface entry to the city. Rapture is one of the most interesting and immersive video game environments I've ever "been" in. Rapture's story is that it was created by a man named Anrdew Ryan who was sick of the governments of the world and their tendencies to tax, censor, and regulate. The whole thing reeks of Ayn Rand, allegedly, and her principles of objectivism. Of course, in an entirely unregulated city, things are bound to go awry. And when Jack arrives there in 1960, the whole place is post-apocalyptic; a civil war between Ryan and another powerful man named "Fontaine" has left most of the inhabitants as deranged mutants and much of the city itself lying in disarray. For the first few levels, I couldn't stop myself from stopping and looking around at all the impeccable details. The Art Deco styles and total abandonment of everything made for an initially eerie mix. In fact, I spent the first third or so of the game cowering in fear as shadows lingered on walls and death threats were made in the darkness. I didn't much care for the game at this point, likening it to a mundane horror game using scare tactics to get a rise out of the player. Most of all, I feared the Big Daddies. Allow me to back up for a minute. In Rapture, science, and especially bioengineering and genetics, progressed much more rapidly due to the lack of regulation and legal issues with things like human testing. As a result, scientists were able to splice new genes into people, giving them superhuman properties like the abilities to conjure up fire and lightning. In order to do all of this research and splicing, a vast supply of stem cells was needed. These stem cells are called ADAM (using the superhuman abilities requires you to spend "EVE"). As more and more people tinkered with their own bodies, more and more ADAM was needed. Because of this, Little Sisters were created and dispatched to collect ADAM from corpses. Little Sisters are just innocent little girls embedded with some chemicals. When you catch one, you're given two choices: harvest them - in other words, drain them of all of their ADAM (and life, in the process) - or rescue them. It is this great moral dilemma that had a lot of critics raving about BioShock, but frankly, I didn't see anything special about it. Sure, it made a first-person shooter more like a role-playing game, but as a longtime RPG fan I've seen and endured "choose wisely" shit like that all of the time. At any rate, in order to save or kill a Little Sister, you first have to deal with a Big Daddy. The Big Daddy is the face of the BioShock series. It's purpose is to protect Little Sisters as they go around collecting ADAM. It's essentially a giant, lumbering deep sea diver. Some, like the one on the game's cover, have giant drills for hands. And like I said, these things were just wicked to deal with at first. But I knew I had to beat them in order to save the Little Sisters. (Yeah, that's right, I chose the hero's path. No big deal.) For the first few levels of the game, nothing made me sink dejectedly and think "oh... shit" more than hearing the recognizable groan of a Big Daddy in the distance. But here's the weird thing about BioShock: it gets easier with time. Most games get increasingly difficult, and a number of them stay the same, but this one actually got much simpler the further in I got. You collect more and more weapons and plasmids (abilities like "gain extra health from items" or "increase defense") over the course of the game and upgrade them too. Slowly, I began to run around levels with more confidence. As I did so, I began to enjoy the game more and more. I began to relish the Big Daddy hunt, seeking them out wherever I went, eager to blow them away with grenade launchers and electrified shotgun shells. Sometimes I even took them out even when they were escorting no Little Sisters - in other words, for no reason at all. Beating the final boss - and no spoilers about who or what it is - was a task I found extremely easy. Like, if anything, I was a bit disappointed, and I'm never disappointed by easy final bosses. I'm sure if I had played the game on a harder difficulty setting I wouldn't be gloating about how easy the second half of the game was, but "normal" is good enough for me, seeing as how I've got sixty games to beat. I'll end this lengthy, half-summary of a recap with two recommendations. Firstly, play this game. Once I quit being a pussy, it only took about eight to ten hours to beat, and it also got a lot more fun and interesting. Admittedly, by the time I stopped being "scared" of Rapture, Rapture also stopped being interesting and seemingly endless in scope. Oh well. Secondly, when you do play this game - and I can't stress this enough - do the "right thing" and save all the Little Sisters. If you don't get to all of them, at least don't harvest any of them. The game's ending depends on your actions. Were you a savior or a monster? I had to check out the "so, you killed some innocent little girls" ending on YouTube and can promise that the more rewarding one comes from being a hero. Furthermore, it's not an Xbox achievement or PS3 trophy to harvest any Little Sisters. There's seriously no reason - the extra ADAM means nothing, ultimately - to harvest the Little Sisters. I look forward now to buying and playing Bioshock 2. But not this month.

Braid

I bought this game last night and beat it this morning. It was highly and persistently recommended to me, and last night I finally caved and dropped fifteen on the Xbox Arcade game. It was fifteen bucks well spent. At first glance, Braid is very little more than a simplistic 2D platformer. There are five worlds and each is broken into only six levels or so. Each level has a certain amount of puzzle pieces you must collect; only once you've collected all the puzzle pieces in a world have you truly beaten it. Pretty basic, no? No. What makes Braid so special is a unique aspect of gameplay: the ability to control time. It may not sound like much, but it was more or less everything that was great about this game. It really forces you to solve puzzles four-dimensionally. (Well, three-dimensionally - my point is, the temporal dimension comes into play.) Most of the puzzles were relatively simple, but several really made me need to stop and think for a while. Some were just downright perplexing. Somehow, though, the game never got frustrating. There were no sloppy controls or ridiculous boss fights to speak of. I do have one minor gripe though, and it has to do with the storyline. The only story to speak of is told in vague poetic paragraphs at the start of each world. That's fine by me, but the Internet at large is abuzz with how "deep" and "mature" the plot was. Come on! Ambiguous does not always mean praiseworthy. It was more of a head-scratcher than a chin-stroker. And while I admit the possibility that I'm just missing something big here, I can't imagine many fans of the story really "got" the point of the story, so to speak. All in all though, Braid was a great game. They could certainly make a sequel, or even a spin-off. Either way, I'd buy it.

Seinfeld: Season 3

Not long ago I completed Seinfeld's first DVD set and made a few statements about it. I just finished Season 3 and really don't have much else to say. For one thing, I finally saw an episode or two that I'd already seen in syndication. For another, I was impressed with the variety of plots employed in Season 3. One episode featured Jerry and Elaine visiting Jerry's parents in Florida; the episode had no George and no Kramer, but still managed to be one of my favorites of the season. Another episode took place entirely in a parking garage. Impressive, right? One thing I've started to grow a bit tired of is Jerry's stand-up routine. While it's nowhere nearly as prominent as it was in Season 1, it's still there more often than I'd like it to be. Every episode still begins and ends with Jerry making jokes about some of the material seen in the episode. I'm not sure if I'm growing tired of Jerry's act due to overexposure or just because the show itself is funnier than his act. I'll give the show the benefit of the doubt and guess the latter. At any rate, Season 3 was enjoyable and easily the best of the three I've seen so far. I look forward to Season 4, which is allegedly when the series hits its Golden Age.

Halo 3: ODST

As I mentioned in a previous post, I planned on purchasing Miles Edgeworth: Perfect Prosecutor for the DS on the day it came out, which happens to be today. Unfortunately, a snow storm kept me from taking a Gamestop detour on my way home from work, so I decided to take out my aggression for this injustice on the Halo series. I popped Halo 3 into my 360, and after the opening cinematic the game was suddenly "unable to read the disc." After a few retries, I finally gave up and figured I'd take care of the game at some later point- after all, I've nullified games for less (Fallout 3, Rainbow 6). Also, as I've said before I'm not really trying to beat the series in order, so starting with the second and moving on to the fourth in the series should be no big deal. And truth be told, it wasn't. I didn't like Halo 2 based on how generic it was- it seemed like a dozen levels that consisted of nothing but "get from point A to point B and shoot anything that tries to stop you." ODST didn't feel like this at all- a majority of the game is played as "The Rookie," an ODST member trying to put together the pieces of a mission gone wrong. The Rookie wanders around a wasteland of a city, finding relics of his fellow troops which let the player play through some varied sub-missions. The game fell into a pattern, sure, but at least it wasn't a boring one. By the time the memory-retrieval gimmick started to grow stale, it was ended, leading up to some epic final levels. The problem here is how short the whole thing was. I've criticized plenty of other games for not having enough content to justify the price, but ODST takes the cake, as Stan went into in his post. I can't really complain as my brother bought the game, so I didn't actually lose any money. Oh well. Halo 3: ODST, while it might have worked better as some sort of downloadable content, is certainly a fun way to waste a night, and all Halo fans should check it out.

And Then There Were None

I'm not a huge murder mystery buff like my girlfriend, but like everyone else I appreciate a good one now and again. And Then There Were None is a great one. Published in 1939 (originally as Ten Little Niggers), it's full of all kinds of cliches: a dark and stormy night or two, ten strangers with guilt-ridden pasts, and murder accusations flying all over the place. At first, the book was a bit hard to get into. The first twenty or thirty pages deal almost exclusively with character introduction. In a nutshell, they were pretty boring. Fortunately, the book really picked up once all the guests arrived at "Indian Island" ("Nigger Island" in the original British version, "Soldier Island" in what must be some new and politically correct version). One by one, the ten house guests meet their demises. I won't spoil anything major - the victim order, the whodunit, or just how many people make it out alive. Suffice it to say, as the body count adds up and the house guests dwindle in number, the mood darkens quickly. The first two deaths, for example, are seen as unhappy accidents. By the third kill, the people begin to suspect that a murderer is loose on the island. Further examinations and killings, however, lead them all to believe that one of them is, in fact, the murderer. Again, thunderstorms and noises in the darkness are such tried and tested plot devices in murder mysteries, but Agatha Christie used them with purpose and skill in telling the story of a mass murder. Now, much of the reader's final judgment of any mystery is based upon how well the mystery was sustained and solved from start to finish. No one wants to be insulted by a book, figuring out an obvious answer long before any of the dumbed down characters. On the contrary, nobody wants an ending to come out of nowhere; the answer to any good mystery should be one the reader was fully capable of entertaining, at the very least. For me, And Then There Were None met these requirements. I had several ideas throughout my reading of the book, and the ultimate answer was kind of a combination of a few of them while at the same time being nothing I was expecting. If you haven't read And Then There Were None, I highly recommend it. It's barely two-hundred pages long and it holds your interest very well. I finished it in just two sittings, one of which was only spent on the first (boring) thirty pages. There's a reason it's the sixth-most sold book originally published in the English language. Side note: the five ahead of it include A Tale of Two Cities and The Lord of the Rings - fair enough - in addition to the Boy Scout handbook and two religious texts: the Book of Mormon and The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life (Jehovah's Witnesses). Very interesting array, those top five English language books. Anyway, Agatha Christie impressed me enough with this murder mystery to consider checking out more of her work. But not yet. Not yet.

Rule By Secrecy

I must say, I am quite the hypocrite when it comes to conspiracy theories. I usually laugh them off as the ideas of paranoid lunatics who can't understand facts, and yet I do just as little research and claim to be "above it all." I don't think George Bush had anything to do with the attacks on September 11, but all I have to back me up is some Loose Change debunking and popular opinion on my side- how can I claim that I have any more knowledge of the attacks than a 9/11 truther? One might wonder, then, what I'm doing with a conspiracy theory book on my backlog- Rule By Secrecy by Jim Marrs. The truth is, while I don't put much stock into them, I'm still at least interested in these ideas from an entertainment standpoint. I've seen plenty of made-for-TV documentaries ranging from aliens to JFK's assassination, and while they haven't really made me a believer, they're damn good at giving me the heebie-jeebies. So when on a trip to Barnes and Noble years ago I happened upon a "fringe science" shelf I had never known existed, I figured "what the heck" and bought the first book that interested me. Attempting to read Rule By Secrecy from an entertainment standpoint, I don't think I got more than 50 pages in, and put it down to remain untouched until roughly a week ago, when I picked it up with the intent of finishing it. I tried to keep an open mind this time as well- like Loose Change, the statements in Rule By Secrecy might not be entirely factual, but I shouldn't let a few miscalculations make me entirely discredit Mr. Marrs. Unfortunately, I also noticed that Marrs was the author of a book called Alien Agenda, leading me to believe that he's just an across-the-board conspiracy theorist and not someone completely devoted to this one subject. The subject tackled in Rule By Secrecy is, obviously, secret societies and their influence on history. The first 200 pages or so dealt with exposing some recent secret societies- Skull and Bones, the CFR, the Bilderbergers, etc., and how they impacted the last 300 years of world history. I admit that this was the portion of the book I was most ready to receive, as it doesn't seem to me like a huge jump in logic that our world leaders might have some ulterior motives, which Marrs used to explain plenty-presidential assassinations, quagmires like Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, the French Revolution, even the rise of Hitler. While I tried to keep my skepticism in check, Marrs didn't really have me convinced- perhaps a few of these were orchestrated by some sort of secret society, but nearly every major historic event? Really? Maybe if Marrs had just tackled some of the ones he had more evidence for I'd be willing to listen. Anyway, the next 150 pages or so covered stuff I won't bore you with- Knights Templar, Illuminati, Jesus had kids, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing you haven't heard before with all the Da Vinci Code hype from in the past 5 years (although I should note that Rule By Secrecy came out first, so Marrs wasn't just cashing in on the trend). This information, while I had heard most of it before, was still pretty interesting, but it seemed like there was a disconnect here- the recent secret societies of the first half of the book seemed mainly concerned with political power and establishing a New World Order, while the older ones were much more focused on the secrets of religion. I kind of hoped that Marrs would explain this change in the last 50 pages, but instead he went off on a wild tangent that I did not see coming in the slightest. If you thought the whole "Jesus' bloodline is still alive today" theory was out there, then good luck swallowing this one. I won't spoiler his idea, as I don't believe it's some common conspiracy theory that everyone's heard of before, but also due to the fact that without reading the rest of the book it is much easier to discredit Marrs and not give him the benefit of the doubt. The craziest thing about this is, he backs it up. I have to hand it to Marrs on this one- while the idea is on the same level as creationism, he provides a litany of examples that support his idea that as far as I know haven't been disproved. It's still hard to take him too seriously, even when he admits that it's just a theory and might eventually be explained away, mostly because he's not really using the scientific method- the hypothesis is something that can't be tested with current technology. And so I come away from Marrs' book with mixed results. There may be a few historic events that I now view in a different light, but I'm just not ready to buy the entire history of man being the product of secret societies. Sorry, dude. On a lighter note, I was surprised to see that on page 307, while discussing a possible trans-Atlantic trip by the Knights Templar in the early 1300s, Marrs cites our very own Westford Knight as "compelling evidence" of their landing in New England. It's pretty cool to see your own small town referenced in such a way. Well, that completes one more book, and it might be time to get a few video games out of the way.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."

I must say, this novel - in its own boring, poetic form - is quite chilling and exciting to digest. From what I gathered in Oscar Wilde's brief biography at the beginning of the book, this was suppose to the man's most personal work; written at a very controversial and depressing point in his life. After the succession of his popularity in the late 1880's, Wilde was involved in a homosexual scandal (while having a wife and two children) that ended in a withdrawal of all his plays from their respected theaters and for him to declare bankruptcy. After becoming somewhat of a recluse, Wilde wrote this book as what seems to be a method for battle with his moral demons.

Hey, I'm about to ruining to the story for anyone who hasn't read it... but then again, I think most people have at least heard of the plot before. Well, fuck it. Just read on.

Wilde constructed this novel about a young aristocrat, Dorian Gray, in England who - by mere chance - imparts his soul into a portrait of himself so that he may never age, physically. Instead of his body growing old, he sees that the portrait ages for him. At first, Dorian is horrified by this strange turn of events, but eventually sees it as some sort of blessing allowing him to become this huge hedonistic jackass that hurts everyone around him for his own gain. Even with his new found life to relish in, Dorian becomes very protective of his portrait - that grows even more hideous by the day - and locks it up for no one to see. However, by the end of the story Dorian, mad with guilt for the crimes and murders he's committed though has never felt the repercussions for, takes a knife to his infamous painting to destroy it. The last scene is Dorian's servants entering his chambers only to see Dorian dead on the floor sporting a giant knife wound while portrait hangs up on the wall with a knife sticking out of it.

Although I found this tale chilling, it was really Wilde's dialogue that entertains you the most. Dorian has two friends throughout the novel that, more-or-less, represent his moral barometer. There is Basil, the man that unknowing paints the cursed picture, who speaks of all things good and morally sound in the book. Then there is Lord Henry; a douche-bag through and through. What Henry truly represents is Wilde's affinity for the aesthetic philosophy. Henry is a guy that lives for the moment, to soak in every experience for that is truly how to live. He'll marry a girl just to dump her if only for the "experience" of marriage. As Dorian progresses through the novel, he eventually is convinced by Henry that the aesthetic way of life is truly the right path to take - this is clear when he murders Basil for pestering for him to see his portrait that Dorian has hidden away. It is a story of a tragic anti-hero who learns the ultimate lesson: It is the moral that are beautiful, and the immoral who are ugly.