Get outta my brain, music!

Shaq's grinning mug makes me happy. He seems like a friendly guy, and his skin glows with the aura of a latter day saint. What I wouldn't give to be able to use my cheek's natural sheen like a heat-lamp, as Shaq can. Andre 3000's face inspires me to shave better. He has such neat-o facial hair that looks like it was invented by an alien. I have no problem styling my scraggly beard into some emulation of an Andre creation, no matter how wispy and barely-visible, and then telling people that this is my "Andre-stache." And, of course, Jeff Bridges' kindly voice makes the otherwise average Hyundai seem like a vehicle fit for royalty.

I generally have no problem with celebrity endorsements. I like to see my favorite stars during a commercial break. On the one hand, anything is better than another lizard selling car insurance (I will, however, always crave another visit from the Insurance Cavemen). On the other, I get to feel close to these human ideals whenever I use their product. I can imagine that if I were to lease the newest Hyundai Elantra tomorrow and cruise around with my awesome new Andre goatee styled by a new Schick razor, I would feel a little more Dude-like and awesome. 

I can even get behind this oddly invigorating cell phone ad starring the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne:

What I don't like, however, is hearing my favorite song in a commercial. Music is absolute. It is visceral. It hits you in the gut, in the face, in the heart. For me, there is nothing worse than pairing a Stones song, an MJ song, a Rihanna number (yeah, even something by HER), whatever, with some hip product. In me, there occurs this painful mental dissonance, as my pure emotional response to the music clashes with the psychological one prompted by the images of THINGS.  

Shaq should do a PSA about this. Who would would be able to resist that face? 

A Battle Lost Before It Has Begun

Still plugging away at the Guild Wars 2, so if you are on the fence or looking for something fun to play on your PC, pick up the game and play with me! I started playing with a few friends this fall, all of whom now appear to have dropped the game entirely, so for the past couple of months, as I have been logging in to complete my daily quests and get some alt-characters up to level 80, it's just been me running about by myself.

This past week I also tried out the free PvP tournaments for the first time. These are 5v5 matches where you can either form a team in advance or solo queue and be thrown into a PUG (pick-up-group) and then you compete in either 1 or Best-of-3 rounds for big cash and prizes (note: the big cash and prizes are a lie). This mode taught me a few things: First, I am apparently a total scrub at PvP. Like many players, I can often score top of the charts in the hot join, regular PvP matches (talking about SPvP here, in case this was not clear). But the tournament matches are another beast entirely. I am blown up easily, frequently, and often with little clue as to how. I get stunned, rooted, and downed in a brilliant shower of particle effects from who-knows-where.  My PvP level is only 12, and from what I've seen, I am often up against level 50+ players or teams, so I do expect to improve over time, but still. Not so fun to be shouting "WTF!?" at my screen.

Second--and really the point I want to write about--is that I notice that after the match starts, I am restricted from changing out my weapon sets (and maybe my slot skills too, I will have to check this). For those who may not know, in Guild Wars 2, half of your character abilities are tied to the equipped weapons. In regular, non-tournament PvP, these can be changed anytime you are not in combat, so that you can dynamically adjust your skills, either in response to what other players are doing or for any other reason.

Removing this functionality from the high-level PvP play is, I think, a mistake, for very similar reasons as I've written about before. I don't want to rehearse that entire argument again here, but locking players into pre-game decisions or strategies seems like a generally bad approach to competitive game design.  To draw on the basketball analogy again, it would be like forcing a team to stick with a man-to-man defense (which they had practiced all week, say) despite an obvious advantage of switching to zone after the game is underway.

I suspect this functionality is removed to place greater emphasis on the pre-match strategy and coordination. Indeed, this was the bread-and-butter of the original Guild Wars' guild-versus-guild (GvG) system: You had 8 players on your team, none of whose skills could be swapped after the match had begun, so you needed to construct a slick team build that balanced specificity--that is, the ability to execute a particular victory strategy--with adaptability--the ability to respond to a variety of possible opponent strategies. Although I cannot speak to the ultra-competitive, top-tier GvG matches, my experience with this locked-in system was mixed: Some matches you had simply out-built your opponent and so you would steam roll them. Some matches just the reverse. But the most fun and exciting, were, of course, those games where the two teams had appropriately balanced builds and the victory was due to dynamic decisions and execution, rather than pre-game strategic decisions.

In other words, good matches were those when the pre-game strategy became largely irrelevant. And this brings me to the material point: A good game emphasizes the decisions made while playing, not the decisions made before the game begins. As a rule, it is simply less fun to have lost a match before it has really even begun; far better to have teams start on equal footing (or close to it) and structure the game such that victory flows to the team that actually plays the game better.

Egan's a Goon

Just finished reading Jennifer Egan’s rock n’ roll “novel” (term used here loosely) A Visit from the Goon Squad.

As I waded through the first few cut-and-paste vignettes, my mind warped into painful sync with Egan’s polyphonic study. One moment, I was hanging with a burnt-out record exec, the next with a burnt-out family on a disastrous vacation, and the next still on crazy night with some college burn-outs. I was flipped through time, across space, and into the minds of young and old, crazed and half-sane. It was cool and entertaining. 

Yes, this is a book where "Modernist" (I place the word in quotes because Egan seems almost to be using the movement as a grab bag from which to pick and pick and pick) stuff abounds. Yes, we get stream of consciousness, we get flashbacks, fragmentation, entropy, alienation, and so on. Let's just put it this way, Derrida would be proud. (Ooomph, a Derrida reference?!)

If there’s a Modern Lit. thesis written about some technique (by a coed going to Columbia while living in Williamsburg and riding a 1950’s Schwinn bike to-and-fro), Goon Squad uses it.

Halfway in, Goon Squad began to wear on me. These modernist shifts in voice, character, and style began not only to annoy me, but to "take me out of it". I wasn't reading a series of interconnected stories with which I could somehow relate and connect, I was seeing a clever writer hunched over a typewriter (Egan certainly uses one in lieu of a modern day computer) coming up with these shifting angles and tones. I wasn't immersed. I was merely critical, not emotional. And this was, frankly, a little bothersome. 

The neat thing about the great Modernists (Woolf, Joyce, et. al.) is that, despite their attention to (usually) flowery distraction and technique, they manage to connect with you in some way if you're willing to put in a little effort. The jarring shifts distract while simultaneously attracting. You look on as a critic and are sucked in like a fan. You watch in horror, you smile in fascination. Like how Beckett can weirdly bore us to death with stories about nothing while keeping us riveted. 

A Visit from the Good Squad failed to keep me in this state of awesome paradox. I was simply looking at the technique. It was as though I could see Ms. Egan saying "Oh! Now I can do this! Or, how 'bout this!"

...and then she throws in a chapter that's a PowerPoint presentation.

fin.

Reviews, reviewers, and meta-scores

Some friends and I were recently discussing music reviews in general, and how they are all but useless.  I believe Pitchfork was mentioned by name as a place for particularly terrible and useless reviews. But the point I made then, and will make here, is that rather than focusing on the content of the review, I focus on the reviewer. If I am familiar with the reviewer's perspective, and enjoy reading their writing, then I typically enjoy the review. But that's not to say that I necessarily accept their opinion as indicative of what my own will be, but rather that I can use their opinion to help me think about how I am likely to respond.

For example, I no longer read any of the TV reviews over at the AV Club. I just never really found a reviewer whose experiences seemed to align with my own--with one exception: Nathan Rabin. In particular, his series "My World of Flops," which is somewhere between a review and a story about all sorts of different pop-culture entities (not just TV), hits all the right notes for me. If you have not already read it, I highly recommend his latest, on Paula Abdul's short lived reality show. Funny, sad, and glorious all at once.

Victor Lucas of Reviews on the Run is another example of a reviewer whose opinions I do not share, but feel as though I understand him well enough that I can adjust for what is likely to be my own opinion. Victor is a notoriously generous critic, so I do not put much stock behind his 9's or 9.5's. But the flip side is that when he says a game is awful, you can be sure that it is really awful. Or pretty much any time he gives a game less than an 8, I interpret that as a fail.

What's nice about his reviews for Reviews on the Run is that he is balanced by the curmudgeonly Scott C. Jones, who holds games to, if not a higher standard than Victor's, then certainly a stricter standard. Happily, this pairing works, by and large--with Victor's scorn and Scott's praise carrying the most weight--and when they both give high marks to a game, it typically means that we can be confident that the game is good and worth a purchase--adjusting for personal taste in game genres, of course.

An interesting consequence of shifting the focus from review to reviewer (one that hadn't actually occurred to me until just this moment) is that it undermines the supposed value of meta-critic or other kinds of review-aggregating scores. If what matters is the reviewer and whether their opinions usefully intersect with mine, then averaging their score with a bunch of other reviewers'--whose opinions do not intersect with mine or of whose tastes I have no understanding--only diminishes the value of the review.

Morning mixtape

Some time in the future I want to try and write down my "laws" for what makes a good music mix, but for this first entry, I thought I would just share a couple of mixes that I made for my wife. Specifically, I wanted to put together a few 1 hour mixes that she could listen to as she gets ready for work in the morning. I did this for myself in my undergrad and found it a nice way to structure my morning. Get up, press play, and use the music as a rough guide to where I should be in my getting ready. For anyone who has a pretty regular morning routine, I highly recommend this practice.

Below are the playlists for the two mixes. Themes should be pretty clear, so if these genres are ever to your taste, I encourage you to give them a try!

1. "The Kick," Erik Lind and the Orchard
2. "What Would You Say," Dave Matthews Band
3. "Shiver," Coldplay
4. "One Evening," Feist
5. "Interstate Love Song," Stone Temple Pilots
6. "All These Things That I've Done," The Killers
7. "Do You Realize," The Flaming Lips
8. "The Con," Tegan and Sara
9. "Your Beauty Must Be Rubbing Off," Hawksley Workman
10. "Baby Did A Bad Thing," Chris Isaak
11. "Lonely Boy," The Black Keys
12. "Do What You Want," OK Go
13. "Down By The Water," The Decemberists
14. "Someone That I Used to Know," Gotye
15. "Home," Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
16. "Dog Days Are Over," Florence + The Machine

1. "This is How We Roll," Blackstreet
2. "Gold Digger," Kanye West
3. "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)," Beyonce
4. "Party and Bullshit," Notorious BIG (Ratatat Remix)
5. "The Seed (2.0)," The Roots
6. "No Scrubs," TLC
7. "You Make Me Wanna," Usher
8. "Gettin' Jiggy wit It," Will Smith
9. "Only You," 112
10. "B.O.B.," OutKast
11. "Daydreamin'," Lupe Fiasco
12. "Forgot About Dre," Dr. Dre
13. "Pretty Girl Rock," Keri Hilson
14. "Sexyback," Justin Timberlake
15. "Telephone," Lady Gaga
16. "G Funk Intro," Snoop Dogg

Guild Wars 2 Expansion and Story

While I hesitate to send anyone to Forbes, some time ago Erik Kain posted some thoughts on what a Guild Wars 2 expansion should contain, almost all of which I wholeheartedly endorse. In brief, these are: (1) More weapon types; (2) playable Tengu [this one very much please!!]; (3) new ways to gain experience points and level up; (4) more movement boosts; and (5) more storylines.

In general, I would agree with his fifth recommendation--how could more story be bad?--but in this case, it hits on what is by far the worst aspect of Guild Wars 2: The story and writing.  I have now leveled three characters to 80 (the current level cap) and have not yet bothered to play through the main story missions for any of them. The only time I do play these missions is for the huge chunk of experience I get at the end and I always skip the cut-scenes. For a while, I had the vocals in French (since I am trying to learn), but even this was too painful.

The abysmal writing and scripting is particularly surprising given (a) the polish apparent in so much of the game's design, and (b) the number of promotional videos or blog posts that ArenaNet has put out hyping their story and writers. The latter was definitely a case of the lady protesting too much. When your story is actually good, it speaks for itself. But now, because of this sad campaign to try and convince us that their work is good (when it obviously isn't) I know the names "Jeff Grubb" and "Ree Soesbee," and know to avoid any of their work.

Complete Fail.

Happily, the main story is entirely avoidable (except for that nagging green star on my HUD) and the ambient dialogue and dynamic events are all pretty fun and entertaining.  The designers have definitely succeeded (I think) in creating a virtual world that is just fun to play around in.  Particularly once a zone's repetitive "quest hearts" (or whatever they are called) are either completed or eliminated (as in the higher level zones) there is a great feeling of open exploration and the power to make this game be what you want it to be.

It is sort of unclear if ArenaNet is really planning to do expansions, or just micro-transact new stuff on a rolling basis. But however they roll out new content, I definitely want to see more weapons and more skills, some playable Tengu, and also re-work the elite skills. These were the centerpiece of player builds in GW1 but are practically irrelevant in GW2. Be nice to bring these back in a meaningful way.

What's in a name, anyway?

I've been teaching English to Thai students for going on three months now. These students, with barely pronounceable, hitherto-before-unheard-of names like Supaporn, Pirote, Sutamas, and Korranis, do us poor American teachers the favor of inventing nicknames that are less than six syllables and with no more than two consonants in a row. Their choices struck me as unusual, when I first heard them.

Examples, followed by my immediate thoughts when they introduced themselves to me: Supaporn="Milk" (low fat, skim, or whole); Karranis="Doi" (pronounced like a twelve-year-old's response to someone when they say something oh-so-obvious); Sutamas="Toy" (Ninja Turtle); Pirote="Kook" (for the first two weeks, I thought his name was "Goo", which I called him until I read his actual nickname written somewhere). The names are unique, yes, but I was baffled and amused each time I used them. At first.

A couple of months have passed, and a strange phenomenon has set in. Milk is now just a sweet girl whose English is improving. Doi has become a kind-hearted chap who likes to study with his shoes off. Toy is a girl whose dream job is working at an airport. Kook is a cook who I hear makes a mean yellow curry. These odd names have ceased to be odd names. The millions of random and hilarious associations that initially filled my mind have dissipated. The names have transformed now into simple names, words that somehow signify a human being, but also fail to embody the facets of any human person.

At this point, for some reason, I can't help but think of W.G. Sebald's ghostly masterpiece of a novel, Austerlitz. A novel of World War II, in which World War II, the event, is hardly mentioned. A Holocaust novel in which the atrocity is a looming shadow, a cloud that never achieves solidity. What isn't stated seems to mean more than what is.

Jacques Austerlitz, the eponymous main character, fails to mention or recognize the many complicated connotations associated with his name. Austerlitz is filled with haunting silences regarding a name so rife with heavy meaning -- from a major Napoleonic battle to the original surname of Fred Astaire to the eerily close spelling to Auschwitz.

The man's name, and all that's carried with it, just sits there, in your mind. So much, unnamed, allowed to simmer in your head uncomfortably -- the reminders, the history, the ghosts...

...all the while, my students seem not to know the sometimes off-the-wall meanings of their English nicknames, and that's okay. They are happy. And their names make me happy.

Maybe it's best, Austerlitz might argue, to know the meanings of our names, the histories. At the same time, we must simply just be. For our names are meaningless without a soul with thoughts and actions to embody them.

Drink your milk. Read Austerlitz.  They will do your body, and your mind, good.