Doug Bonham :: dougbonham.com

11-30 Snapshots from my new camera

2011-11-30T00:12:00.000-08:00

Made a nice little upgrade last weekend. As part of my Christmas present from my wonderful parents, I received money to put toward a new camera. Some may remember me complaining about the shortcomings with my prior warhorse of a camera body, but the biggest problem is it was starting to quickly die. I'll spare the technical details, but a new body was needed.

These may be boring or not the most fantastic photos of all time, but they're some of the first shots I've taken with my new 60D. Looking forward to posting more sooner than later.

For my photographer friends - peep the Exif data on that last photo. ISO 2000!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me and my running - a year in

2011-11-21T03:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve dropped reference to it a few times on Facebook and Twitter, but I’ve got to expound on my running routine and what it means to me. It’s become pretty important and has definitely yielded results, which has proven both good for my health and good for my attitude.

From an early age through most of high school, I hated running. Hated it. I liked playing sports but I hated the effort needed to run; I barely did more than was necessary because pushing my fat-kid physique past where it hurts was…well, painful. It took a real “ah-ha!” moment in high school to get past that first mental hurdle. Playing rugby senior year I got in the best shape of my life — not just from running but all-around physical conditioning. I felt fantastic.

That shape came and went during college, but my senior year I was again doing well since I was playing soccer pretty often. I still hated running for the sake of running, but I could go out and play soccer for at least two hours and not keel over dead. I weighed about 250 pounds, felt great…and within a few months had let that slip.

Over the following years I tried to go running and stay in shape at various points but with little success. I hit my nadir in the spring term of 2010 during MIM. After losing weight walking around Asia in March, I shot back up – and got as heavy as I’ve ever known. I would be kind and say 290 pounds, but that was through one eye on the scale. I can safely say it got higher than that and I probably cracked 300 pounds. I’m a big guy, but that’s far from healthy.

Big me soaring for a catch in the 2010 Portland Footy season. Image from Portlandfooty.com

It was around that time I got involved with the Australian Football club in Portland, now known as the Portland Steelheads. Aussie rules is a very different sport from any I’d played before but I took to it quickly, enjoyed playing the game, and made friends with others on the team. I have to thank Will and James for getting me into the club, and also all the others on the team for inspiring me to keep with it and get better. I even helped put together an off-season exercise and running game to encourage club members to go running (or to go play other sports), and to do it with others on the club. Despite not being in incredible shape there was never anything but encouragement from the club, and I really miss getting the chance to play having left for Japan.

It was from that running game I started to get the bug to go running in general. I started with really short intervals around the track at the Portland State gym, but after graduating, continued on the trails in the park near my parent’s house. To say I’ve changed my opinion on running is an understatement. I’m now running on a fairly regular schedule, and I’m also running farther and faster than ever. This time last year I never thought I could run 5K without stopping; now, that’s a short run.

This past weekend was my first ever road race. I have to thank my friend, Kim, who’s a veteran JET teacher and works in the next town over. She has been a great help in many regards since I moved to Japan, but she also pushed me to set a goal with my running. As soon as she found out I ran to stay in shape, her next words were, “you should do a race with us.” Kim and other teachers in the area have done running races in Kyushu before, and I was getting drafted into the group with (what was to me) a daunting challenge looming.

But reaching for the challenge proved to be well worth the effort. In August I would never have said I could do a 10K; now, I’m crazy enough to consider doing a half marathon in April. I’ll probably just do a 10K again but the thought exists and doesn’t seem unreasonable. I have the confidence to try and reach that goal, too.

I’m now under 250 pounds and continuing to lose weight and gain fitness as a runner. I’ve found something I really enjoy, an activity that's really easy to do all around the world and that is great for my health. I finished the 10K this past weekend under my goal time, and averaged 10-minute miles. Not exactly Olympic level of running, but for me, it’s an achievement. Sometimes you just need to get the ball rolling.

Quick Snapshot: I do this so you don't have to

2011-11-21T03:44:00.000-08:00

Japan has plenty of crazy things to drink. Not as crazy as China (snake wine!) but plenty of different flavors and tastes when compared to America. Some are just a little twist on something we know and love back in the States – beyond having the best name ever, Pocari Sweat isn’t really that different from Gatorade.

Avoid.

However, this nonsense is something else entirely. One of my friends in a nearby town spotted it at the grocery store, posted a picture on Facebook, and I knew I had to take the fall. So when I spotted it at my nearby convenience store this weekend, it was fated.

So it’s Pepsi Pink, “Strawberry Milk” flavored, and disgusting. It’s like a diet version of a strawberry Italian soda, but awful. And the milk aftertaste ranges between undetectable and undesirable. As if you couldn’t tell just from looking at it, it should be avoided at all costs. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, whatever. Just know that if you decide to take the plunge and buy one yourself, I warned you.

Quick snapshot: What are YOU doing here?

2011-11-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

Just something quick I spotted on the way home from school Monday. Why yes, that is a very nice and clean late-'50s Chevy Bel Air - and it's been tuned a little bit too, from the "resto-mod" style wheels to the rumbling V8 that you cannot hear (place your trust in me for that factor!).

This would turn my head back in Portland...but at the Shell station near my base middle school? In my small town in Nagasaki prefecture? I stopped in my tracks and instinctively grabbed my phone to take a picture. I had to.

I've seen many cool cars so far in my time here, and even a couple American cars (there's an old Suburban being worked on in my town, too) but NOTHING like this. Unreal!

Doug in Japan, Month 2

2011-10-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

It’s been a month since my last update, which was focused on my trip one month ago to volunteer in Ishinomaki. I really can’t believe how long that time feels, and that I’ve been in Japan for now two full months; it feels like six months have passed since I stepped on the plane in Portland. But I must keep my duties up and report on how life is here in Japan!

Hanami Walk, October 1, 2011.

While the volunteering experience was one gigantic chunk of travel and time away from (what’s now) home, since then I’ve tried to stay busy in much smaller ways. I try to get out of the house to meet friends a couple times every week, even during the working week; fortunately the train makes it pretty easy to get out of Dodge. Examples of this include meeting other teachers in Omura (the major suburb south of here) to go bowling on the cheap, going up to Sasebo to see another teacher perform her music live, meeting up to watch movies or just make dinner, and (yes) hanging out playing video games. It’s the little things sometimes that keep you from going crazy; for me in the small town it’s especially true.

Hasami Walk was a pretty fun and simple festival. Since it's a fall festival, scarecrows and rice paddies ready for harvest were all over the place.

Little things are nice but there have also been some bigger festivals and things the past few weeks, too. The weekend of my birthday was a walking festival through one of the nearby towns — little shops, stalls and things are set up as a path through a neighboring countryside town, and it simply provides a good reason to walk around and enjoy the countryside. Other ALTs who live in the cities or suburbs were definitely impressed.

Hasami Walk

Three weeks ago, we had a three-day weekend and it coincided with one of the big festivals in Nagasaki city, called Kunchi. I honestly can’t say I saw much of the festival — I went down to the big city on Saturday but I got out of the house far later than I’d anticipated, partially because I ran into a different event in my town…when they had the elementary and middle-school boys sumo wrestling. Yeah, you read that correctly. That same weekend was Oktoberfest up in Sasebo…where I finally had good beer in Japan. Bliss.

"Wait...what?!?" Huis Ten Bosch, a Dutch theme park in Japan, because that makes sense.

Another funny thing about this area is the local huge amusement park. It’s not just any kind of park, either — I don’t think it has much in terms of rides and roller coasters, trading instead on culture. How? Because it’s Dutch themed. It’s called Huis Ten Bosch and is…interesting. It’s like somebody watched a bunch of Steves in Europe episodes from Holland and mashed them into an amusement park. I’ve been a couple times – once to see fireworks on a weekend when admission was super cheap, and once for the yearly wine festival. Huis Ten Bosch is also where I’m going to be running a 10K next month that I’ve been training for pretty regularly…I can now run 3 miles, and I’m trying for 4 this week. Still a little ways to go to make 10K, unfortunately. Another reason why HTB stands out for the local foreign community: Imported foods, especially beer, wine and cheeses. It’s the little things sometimes.

Sasebo Yosakoi Matsuri, October 22, 2011

I’ve been somewhat regularly to both large cities in the area, Nagasaki city and Sasebo. I go to Sasebo much more often because it’s a lot closer to where I live – 30 minutes or so instead of 45 minutes to an hour – and because it’s a lot smaller and compact. I can get to the main shopping district in Sasebo within a 10-minute walk from the train station, so it’s much more accessible. I need to explore Nagasaki some more – especially the major sites related to the atomic bombing – but it definitely feels more urban than Sasebo. After living in the countryside for a few months, the cities are starting to feel a bit overwhelming, which is a thought I never imagined I’d have. I love cities and I love Portland, but it’s amazing how quickly I’ve adapted to city life.

It’s hard to think of much more to write because everything seems to still be such a simple, natural transition for me. I’m learning more and more with every day in the classroom, and adjusting to other aspects of life — food, transport, etc. — as well. I guess it’s good in a way that things are so boring.

The one part where I’m both extremely happy and surprised, though, is how quickly I’ve fallen in with the other teachers in the area. I guess the best example was for my birthday — which I hate to publicize too much, it makes me feel far more important than my station in life deserves. I had “Happy Birthday!” songs in every class that day (thanks to my wonderful teachers), a wonderful dinner with close friends that night (yet more “Happy Birthday” and a cake!), and a party with two others who have close birthdays on Saturday night (drinking, “Happy Birthday,” AND a cake!). It was all a bit overwhelming in such a positive way; I can’t ask for that sort of appreciation, but I’ll sheepishly accept it.

Overall I just continually feel lucky to have this experience and this opportunity. Between applying in 2007, applying last year and going through the process twice, I had many chances to think, “Is this what I really want?” I will still probably hold off being definitive with my answer but it’s pushing towards “Yes.”

Volunteering in Tohoku - The Major Write-Up

2011-09-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

Two things before we start. First, this is long — 1400+ words. I make no apologies for that. Second, let me paraphrase myself from the end: We do a good job in the first world of responding to crises, but the news spotlight moves on quickly. Six months may seem like a long time, but the healing in northern Japan is far from done. Support disaster relief efforts, wherever your heart may take you.

“I’m going up to Ishinomaki city in Tohoku to volunteer for a week.” I kept saying that the last few weeks leading up to my volunteer trip but, like with many things, I had no clue what it actually meant at the time. Not only was this my first time doing disaster relief volunteering, it was my first time doing so for an entire week, never mind being in Japan. Fortunately, despite some minor speed bumps along the way, the result has been fantastic: a true life-changing experience in many ways.

How did I get here? Six other JETs in Nagasaki prefecture organized the trip in accord with AJET, the national organization. We volunteered with Peace Boat, a Japanese NGO that spreads the message of international cooperation by traveling throughout the world on their cruise ship. They also have specialized in disaster relief, and have been helping coordinate efforts in Ishinomaki city in Miyagi prefecture since shortly after the March 11 disaster struck. Our group needed one more person, I pulled everything together last minute, and got prepared for the trip.

I took off from Nagasaki prefecture bright early on September 16th. Peace Boat trips meet in Tokyo, so the group of us caught various flights to the capital city and eventually met up at orientation in the late afternoon. After orientation and dinner, we met again in Shinjuku, near the Center Park, to embark on the night buses that would then take us up to Ishinomaki. Three bus loads of volunteers journeyed into the night - more than 90 volunteers going up for a week together.

I would apologize for the bizarre coloration of the picture, but it's my camera's fault, not mine!

It was about this time that I, frankly, got crabby. Tokyo was still hot, luggage is heavy, and buses are not ideal sleeping quarters. Rest was hard to come by. However, we eventually arrived at Ishinomaki Senshu University, where Peace Boat had a small tent village set up to house week-long volunteers. This was a little frustrating - we’re staying in tents?! That didn’t improve things much. After arriving and changing, we organized in groups and headed out for the first day of volunteer work.

My team was one of those slated to do beach cleanup. Since we got a late start to proceedings it was a short day, but good work - the beach we were cleaning was a major tourist spot and, importantly, we could tell conditions were improving at the end of the day. We collected trash on the beach, including larger logs, driftwood, etc. that had been sent everywhere during the tsunami. The mountain of garbage near the beach was a reminder of just how much work had been done already; the driftwood floating in showed how much was left. Other groups at our camp were involved in other ways - some helped move a boat that was still inland from the tsunami, others untangled nets and worked with salvaged fishing equipment. Peace Boat is there to help, but they coordinate every day with groups in the city to see what work is needed. It can be a bit exciting and “giri-giri” - last minute. After returning to camp I walked with other Nagasaki JETs out to the nearest convenience store; this would be a recurring theme. I don’t remember when I went to bed that night, but it was well-deserved rest.

On that first day, I didn’t bring a long-sleeve shirt or a hat to the beach; of course, I got sunburned. I packed accordingly for day two, Sunday, but halfway through the day I was out of gas. Since we work outdoors in the summer sun, Peace Boat leaders and our group leaders are worried about heat stroke and hydration. I think that was a part of it, but I was also drained emotionally - I’d been on the move since 5 am Friday, I was doing hard work in one of the cities hit hardest by the tsunami, and it was all a bit much. It was definitely a “what have I gotten myself into” moment. After taking time to rest and drink a ton of water, I worked more in the afternoon, and things got a bit better from there.

Our camp ground was out in the sports fields at the university, and as such we didn’t exactly have normal bathrooms. We had restrooms (which were like posh port-a-potties) but no showers. However! Volunteers there had the chance to go to a large local hot springs facility three times during the week. Success! Cleanliness! Nothing like a hot shower and hot springs bath to raise morale. The complex had the baths plus a restaurant, gift shop, open rooms, and a small market and convenience store attached - all the trappings of civilization. Perfect. After the trying afternoon, this was a welcome change.

Monday was fantastic, another day of working on the beach but with cooler temperatures and overcast skies. For this Portland boy, the weather felt just like home. It was also on the third day that communication and relationships started smoothing out a bit. My group had another JET from Nagasaki, two others from different prefectures in Japan, and a bi-lingual Japanese team leader - I was the only guy. We got along well quickly but communication and building relationships with other groups took time. Card games and chats during break time broke the ice; by the end of the week, we were one much larger group instead of disparate teams.

The plan began to shift on Tuesday. The weather began to worsen as a typhoon approached. Some groups only worked a partial day Monday thanks to wind or rain, while mine was held back Tuesday morning and given a break. Work shifted inside for the afternoon, as we made jewelry out of slate tiles normally used for roofs that were recovered after the tsunami. And then the decision was made to abandon the camp site and move to another facility used by Peace Boat - a former clothing factory cleaned up by Peace Boat after the tsunami whose owners let the group use it as housing. Having a roof overhead and more communal space helped bring everyone together; riding out a typhoon together didn’t hurt things, either.

Wednesday we worked for a short time indoors, helping a fishery to clean cans recovered after the tsunami; the other group continued with jewelry. That only lasted half the day before we returned to our base thanks to worsening weather. The weather only got worse throughout the evening as the storm grew stronger; we never lost power, but there was cleaning done in the evening for water leaks and preparations to clean in shifts during the night. Fortunately that was canceled, as it would’ve meant waking at midnight and 3 am to help with the efforts.

After the storm, on Thursday we set out to downtown Ishinomaki to help clean up after the typhoon. We broke up into our teams and tackled different areas of the city, cleaning up trash and other stuff that had floated loose during the typhoon. This part of town was still in a really bad way from the March 11 tsunami, and the heavier-than-expected typhoon weather was not helping anything at all. The river was still swollen badly from the tsunami and now rose even higher; streets flooded a good bit as well. We had to stop and pull back in the afternoon, as rains made some areas impassable or dangerous for volunteer clean-up.

The JET Groups - the Nagasaki seven, two girls from JETs of African Descent, and our two Japanese team leaders.

On Friday, we packed up from the clothing factory, spent one last day cleaning at the beach, and made a final return back to the university for our last night. Only half (or even one third?) of the group had worked at the beach, so it was great to introduce the others to “our” working spot. It’s a beautiful stretch of coast, kind of reminiscent of the southern Oregon coast to me; our Japanese advisers kept saying that we could help raise spirits in town by cleaning the beach for use, and it’s hard to disagree.

By that last night I was glad to be done with work, but not terribly ready to leave. It was nice to not have to do more work, but I had finally started to break down barriers with the volunteers and get to know them. Many were Japanese college students, and others were also quite young; it was great to meet many peers and make connections. For many of the Japanese students, it was probably the most time they’d spent with Americans or other westerners at all; some had studied abroad, but all were receptive to talking and suffering through my Japanese. Importantly, I’m of course now closer with the group who came from Nagasaki, which is important.

By the time we returned back to Tokyo, the goodbyes were tearful. We’d bonded as a group doing necessary work to lend a hand to people who still desperately need assistance. Ishinomaki still needs help, and Tohoku as a whole still needs help, too. I’m glad to have gone and helped out; I might have to go again next year. To my JET friends: if you’re thinking about it, go. It will be amazing and rewarding in ways you can’t imagine. To my friends back home in the U.S.: it doesn’t matter whether it’s Japan, Haiti, New Orleans or anywhere else, disaster relief and aid is important, and though we’re good at reacting, we tend to forget things quickly. Try not to forget after the initial news has slid out of the spotlight, because recovery takes time.

Doug in Japan - More from the first month

2011-08-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

As promised, more details and pictures - PICTURES! - from the first month of life in Japan.

First, a little about my town. It’s located in Nagasaki prefecture and is right on Omura Bay. Nagasaki is in the north-west of the island of Kyushu, which is one of four main islands of the country - Hokkaido is the farthest north, Honshu is the long main island that stretches a ways, and Shikoku is the little island just saddled under Honshu. Honshu is also where the mega-cities of Tokyo and Osaka are located.

Kyushu is an interesting microcosm of Japan. While it’s almost subtropical, there are also really big mountains - like the rest of Japan, it’s very hilly. Roughly 10 percent of the population is here, and roughly 10 percent of the GDP comes from here too. To make comparisons even starker, there’s one big metropolitan area (Fukuoka), a couple smaller ones (Kitakyushu, Kumamoto and Kagoshima), then a lot of countryside...just like much of the rest of Japan.

Obligatory rice paddy picture

Sorry for the geography lesson but it’s important to understand how that’s shaped where I am now. I’m not in the big, bright lights of Tokyo or Osaka; I’m out in the countryside, with rice paddies and tea fields galore. Nagasaki city feels like a really large town when in actuality it’s “only” 400,000+ people, which Portland trumps pretty handily. The city of Portland alone is a little bit larger but the metro area is over 2 million people, which is more than Nagasaki prefecture in total. Moreover, though the name Nagasaki has immediate impact to American ears, it’s not a major city within Japan; however, living a bit on the outskirts is pretty normal to me as an Oregonian. It’s home but hardly New York City or L.A.

This is Nagasaki city (not quite sure why it's so red-tinted, might've been all the firecrackers).

And let me say it again: My town is small. Tiny. Roughly 9,000 or so people live here. I joke with other Nagasaki prefecture JETs that it’s the low ebb of civilization on the train line between Nagasaki and Sasebo, and I’m not far off - the next town either direction is bigger, and they get bigger as one continues into either city. I haven’t lived in Sonogi long enough to really pass judgment, but it’s an interesting trade-off.

While Japanese geography has its charm I’m sure more people are interested in what every day life is like. First: it’s hot. Summertime is really hot (after a brief respite of days in the upper 70s it’s rocketed right back up over 90 degrees) and its pretty humid, too. Walking anywhere you feel okay but as soon as you stop moving you get what one British JET described as the catch-up sweats. You stop and it’s like somebody turned on the tap. Hell, I get them just walking to and from work; no wonder I’ve got the A/C on so much.

My apartment was super furnished when I arrived but it’s still taken time to adapt to living in it and making some improvements. Step 1: putting up the posters, pictures and stuff I brought with me. Step 2: getting my wireless adapter working after receiving my Internet modem last week. Let me know if there are aspects of daily life you’d like to hear about; I’ve adapted to so much so quickly already that things seem pretty normal already.

Importantly, most all of the Japanese people I’ve met have also been incredibly nice and accommodating so far. I still feel like I’m struggling a little with the language sometimes, but people help either to translate or simplify something so I understand. I’m coming out of my shell in terms of feeling afraid to make mistakes in Japanese or speak perfectly every time, which is good, because I botch what I’m saying all the time in English and it’s rarely such a problem. Importantly, people go the extra mile and help out even if I’ve just met them - already I’ve been driven home a few times after events. Maybe it’s just me cashing in all the times I drove people home over the years, who knows, but it’s a reminder of the nature of humanity and generosity.

Same goes for my fellow JETs, too, who have been welcoming straight away - both the other newcomers like me or the returning veterans. Apologies if I’ve said it before but it’s fantastic to already feel like a member of a community. I’ve been able to go out and be active every weekend, and even get together with others on weeknights from time to time too. It really helps that summertime is festival time, allowing ample opportunity to get together and share the whole "holy crap we're in Japan now" experience.

And that’s life in Japan at the moment. Beautiful spot of the world (weather aside), fantastic people, the opportunity to do something wonderful and to have ample time to explore and grow as a person...I’m incredibly fortunate.

Doug in Japan: Arrival and Beginning

2011-08-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

What feels like it began a long time ago - last November when the application was mailed in, three and a half years ago when I applied the first time, almost ten years ago when I first started studying Japanese - has finally come to fruition. I'm now on the JET Programme, living and working full time in Nagasaki prefecture, Japan.

This was originally started as a blog for a journalism class at the University of Oregon a long time ago, and older posts reflect my usual interests (cars, video games, music), but from here on out I'm invisioning this as a "hey guys Doug is living in Japan and here's what he's up to!" site. Which is fine; there are many like this, but this one is mine. My friend Julia from the Portland State MIM program has been running her own site in the same vein on living in Shanghai. It kind of is The Thing To Do in this situation, but screw it, I need some place to write.

Plus many friends said I should do this, so here we go.

On July 30, I took off from Portland and through the magic of the international date line, touched down the following day at Narita Airport outside of Tokyo, Japan. Let the JET Programme begin in earnest! After collecting baggage, we piled onto buses - I say "we" because groups from Toronto, San Francisco, and a couple other cities landed around the same time as the Portland group - and headed into the city. I was a little taken aback at how dark Tokyo looked this year; last March it was lit up like a Christmas tree, but with "sendetsu" (electric savings) being a necessity in the wake of the earthquake and nuclear issues in March, so goes the neon. I roomed in Tokyo with two others from Portland, Jim and Ken, who are now in Tottori and Niigata prefectures respectively. Dinner and early to bed was the result of the first night.

The JET Orientation began in earnest on the first full day, Monday. Keynote speakers! Presentations! Lots of jet-lagged people stuck in suits or formal wear! Rooms without windows! The orientation itself was alright, but god, after flying over the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a suit in rooms without windows. We could have been in Japan; we could have been in Spokane for all I was concerned. On the first night we also had a huge reception where we got the chance to talk with more people from our prefecture. We'd all met earlier in the day but that was so formal and official. Even better, after the reception, word spread around - "8:30, lobby, karaoke." That was all I needed to hear.

The second day, Tuesday, included even more presentations and lectures about teaching and adjusting to life in Japan. In the afternoon, we were instructed how our travel down to Nagasaki prefecture would go on Wednesday; we also had to drop bags off Tuesday evening so the buses could be packed and ready to go. Tuesday night I wandered around Shinjuku (the district of Tokyo we stayed in) with my roommate Jim, finding dinner and wandering through the huge electronics shops. We also went to Uniqlo, a huge Japanese clothing chain; I think their largest size of shirts might just fit me, which is great news.

Wednesday was when things really got going. Up and out to the airport in the morning, a nice quick flight from Tokyo Haneda down to Nagasaki, and...here you are. This is where you live now. I was picked up from the airport by my supervisor, Okaki-san, and my predecessor, Sho. From there it was a whirlwind tour of my new little town - the Board of Education building, the town hall, photos taken for my Alien Registration Card (aka "gaijin card"), even more. It was a touch overwhelming, to be honest; getting to rest in what was now my apartment was a welcome respite. That night I also had my first "enkai," or party, which was hosted by the Board of Education and had other top figures in the town there.

Thursday and Friday featured tours of the schools where I'll be working in a couple weeks. One of the best moments was at Sonogi Middle School, where I'll be spending the most time. Though it's the summer break, school clubs and groups still meet; the baseball club and a brass band were both practicing when we visited. After meeting the teachers (including the English teacher), we (Okaki-san, Sho and I) came back outside and the kids gave Sho an impromptu performance and show of their appreciation. I think he almost cried; I wouldn't have blamed him.

Since then I've been working at the BoE on weekdays and hanging out with other JETs in the area on the weekends. The first weekend included a trip up to Sasebo to see the Seaside Festival and fireworks; last weekend included an all-you-can-eat and drink party in Omura, followed by traveling south to Nagasaki city proper for the Obon festivities on Monday. Tomorrow I'm going up to a beach party north of Sasebo. Gotta keep busy! All the other JETs I've met, whether in my group arriving this year or returning ones, have been great, interesting, wonderful people.

Apologies that this is so long and there aren't any pictures; once I get an Internet connection at home, that will definitely stop being a problem.

Doug's favorite albums of 2010

2010-12-14T18:34:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago, my buddy Nick — another one of the co-editors at Silicon Sasquatch — threw down a blog-post gauntlet. He wanted each of us to write about our albums of the year now gone, as a way to reminisce on music and try to produce more content for our respective sites. One can't survive writing about video games alone, can they?

Of course, I instantly ran into a dilemma. Unlike others, I actually can't put together a top 10 albums of 2010 list solely with music from this year. I just checked my iTunes collection again, and I don't even know if I have 10 albums from 2010 on my computer. But since this is my damn opinion on things, I'm going to change the rules — here are 10 albums, both from 2010 and years previous, that I have listened to, been inspired by, discovered or just in general loved in this past year. Six are from 2010, three are from the 1980s or before, and one is from 2009, but they're all representative of my taste in music and what I've had on throughout the year.

So now, in no particular order BUT broken down into "2010" and "before 2010" groupings...

Six Favorites from 2010

The Roots - How I Got Over and Wake Up! - Okay, so I'm bending the rules again, but it's because The Roots released two great albums this past year. How I Got Over is the most recent studio disc that continues the band's descent into darkness, introspection, and philosophy, and it sounds great. Wake Up! is something different — a cover album recorded along with John Legend with a bunch of soul and R&B songs rotating around the theme of protest and social enlightenment. Regardless, this is the best band in hip-hop and one of my absolute favorite artists.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs - If pushed to decide, I think this is my choice for Album of the Year. Such a wonderful advancement of the Arcade Fire's sound, The Suburbs has great song-writing and fantastic sonic themes. As a child who spent teenage years in the suburbs, it's sad to relate to the album so much, but it makes it all the more resonant.

The Black Keys - Brothers - I feel bad it's taken this long for me to discover and appreciate The Black Keys. They're like the White Stripes but without the gimmick and, arguably, a better sound. At least, it's a sound that I like better. I love some down-home, dirty, old-fashioned blues rock, and the Black Keys provide that in spades.

Broken Bells - My favorite debut of the year. Okay, it's hard to say it's a true "debut" when one half of the group is the lead singer of The Shins and the other half is DJ/producer Dangermouse, but combined together and it's a slightly airier, poppier sound than Dangermouse has found in the past. I have something of a love/hate relationship with Dangermouse, loving his sound while loathing that it's so recognizable; I think James Mercer and his talents really stand out on the disc, though.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach - I was down on this album for a long time. I've loved Gorillaz, Damion Albarn's private psychedelic reel, ever since I first heard "Clint Eastwood" almost ten years ago; however, it took me a while to wrap my head around what this disc was all about. It wasn't as dark as the previous album, Demon Days, but instead reminds me of the first self-titled debut album in that it's a mish-mash of pop styles. However, this time it's executed much, much better. It's hard to find standout singles on the disc, but let it flow through your ears as an entire album, and it's wonderful.

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Ah, yes, Kanye West. This album is....an album. It's certainly something. The beats and the topics are at once way out there (see "Monster") and on the other hand ridiculously personal and introspective ("All of the Lights," "Runaway"). The guest spots are great and, yes, Kanye's not the greatest rapper ever. Who cares; there's conviction and something captivating in Kanye. It's the rare piece of mainstream pop that delivers on the critical level.

Four Favorites of 2010

John Lennon - The John Lennon Collection - Just a week ago was the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's murder. Between continuing to listen to the remastered versions of The Beatles' albums and taking a trip to the John Lennon Museum while in Japan, I got a hold of his older greatest hits collection and listened to it quite a bit this year. This is quite possibly the great eye-opener for me this year; listening to some of Lennon's back catalogue and putting his solo career into context has been a great inspiration. That I went to the Lennon Museum is due to a friend from grad school who wanted me to visit and get him a T-shirt; what I left with, instead, was great respect for an artist and man.

Al Green - I'm Still In Love With You - My dad loves this stuff - old soul, R&B and funk. There's a timeless quality to a Reverend Al, and this is great music to listen to while driving or working on homework or doing anything else, really. I need to get the turntable out again if only to play this on vinyl.

The Beatles — Abbey Road - I have a favorite Beatles album, and it is this — their final album together. Some may point to the new territory broken by the earlier Beatles singles and albums, but man that stuff has not aged well to my ears. However, songs on Abbey Road and Let It Be clearly defined the next thirty-plus years of rock and alternative rock, and for that I am grateful. Sure, I bought this in 2009 and listened to it a bunch a year ago, but there's a good reason my copy of the remaster has a worn-out case — it's lived in my car because I never know when I need to listen to that B-side medley.

Mastodon — Crack the Skye - Sometimes you need a little blood and thunder in your life. I hate to say I've come around on metal, but a couple bands — Mastodon, Iron Maiden, and others — are in my regular rotation of music to listen to. Mastodon does a good job toeing the line between heavy and listenable (take your cookie monster sound-alike vocals and get the fuck out of here) while also being interesting sonically and, daresay, lyrically. It's heavy and drags and plods and shakes the earth with every step, then the solo starts up and the guitar lines soar. It's such a base and simple thing, but that doesn't make it less awesome.

A long-overdue update

2010-10-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

Last I logged in on this site, it was to provide updates on my Masters of International Management program's three-week trip of Asia in March. Being away from home for four weeks was a trip in and of itself; traveling outside of the United States for the first time was just as daunting. Doing all that, with 70 of my closest friends for the first three weeks, was a rolling ball of chaos and insanity that made for an amazing time. Following that with a week on my own in Tokyo was a whole other sort of situation, one where I seemed to learn quite a bit about myself and my personal goals in life.

Tokyo — Ginza, I think. Just because I didn't post any of these photos on here.

Since then, through the spring and summer terms, I've been incredibly busy with school, friends, and trying to figure out what's next. I've been to Crater Lake with international students, about a half-dozen Portland Timbers games, and far too many Portland Australian Football Club practices. I've seen friends get married, friends get drunk, myself gain and lose and regain facial hair, and gone through a number of potential career choice possibilities.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, Portland Timbers!

With that all done and gone, I've got an idea where I want to go. My one-sentence resumé aim for myself is that I am interested in working for a multi-national corporation, making use of my communication background, graduate business education, East Asian studies, and multi-cultural experience. I would love to either stay close to my Northwest roots, or be able to travel abroad widely and experience the world; hell, even doing both would be great!

The other thing I've been working on quite a bit recently is Silicon Sasquatch, the video game-centric web site myself and two colleagues from the illustrious University of Oregon School of Journalism — Nick Cummings and Aaron Thayer — have run for nearly two years. We've had our ups and downs and taken some lumps over that time, but we've been able to re-dedicate ourselves and get the site running better than ever. We have some high goals to reach in the next year or so, and hopefully we can make this into a profitable venture — even if its just barely profitable! I am putting my writing skills to use, and learning a great deal of organizational skills and gaining great experience...even if it is managing two others doing something we love.

MIM Trip - China, in two parts

2010-03-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

One of the photos China really didn't want you to see — outside the Forbidden City at night

Beijing

Apologies for the delay, but Blogger was one of the many things locked behind the Great Firewall, and I was too busy discovering Tokyo to write this up then. Thank god for boredom on airplanes, then. Plenty more photos from China available here.

Finally arriving in China was something of a wake-up call. Compared to the more western-oriented nature of Japan and South Korea, at first the Olympic city appeared to be much the same — driving into town from the nicely-appointed airport, you can see a variety of new skyscrapers with impressive Chinese national and international brands. Here, Sinopec tower; there, one for China’s offshore oil company; just down the road, one of a couple of banks.

Beijing looks very nice, modern and new if you are looking up — at the skyscrapers or streetlights or even the city traffic. Watch your feet, though, and you can see the weariness of winter and the truth that, while not third-world, China is still a developing nation in many senses. Broken, dusty sidewalks happen in the United States too, but there’s a certain sense of dilapidation in parts of Beijing. Walking along the wall of the Forbidden City toward Tiananmen Square, you see all sorts of small stores, shacks, and side-streets that run toward Beijing’s poor (middle-class?) areas away from the upper-middle-class boom.

China is also culturally very, very different from anything else I had ever experienced before. Chinese traffic is indicative of many things (ranging from waiting in line at McDonalds to doing business and planning) — it’s busy, noisy, and conducted with elbows as you force your way up toward the front. One of my grad school friends joked that something “wasn’t impolite, we’re in China” was very true — politeness certainly is relative to the context, yes, but for somebody who’s only ever been in the west (and the west coast of the United States at that), it’s a strong shock.

[This is without even going into too much detail on cab rides in Beijing and Shanghai, which were harrowing to say the least. Cheap, fast, and efficient seems to be the order of the day, though you might be a bit frightened].

Being an American tourist of even modest means in China makes you feel like a black-card-strapped rock star back in the United States. Want to share a multi-course meal at a very nice Chinese restaurant, complete with a couple rounds of Tsingtao and dessert afterwards? $15. Subway fare almost everywhere in Beijing was 2 yuan (which had to be state subsidized to drive people onto the trains and away from driving); the exchange rate is roughly 7 yuan to $1. Hit the ATM, pull out $200 and walk away feeling like a rap star with a much, much fatter wallet.

On one of the last nights in Beijing, a group of students went out to a party hosted at a bar on the other side of the city from where our hotel was located. All-you-can-drink until midnight at a bar that was a converted houseboat? 100 yuan, or (roughly) $15; taxis weren’t even close to that. A good time was had by all for sure.

This also translates to shopping in China, especially in the markets where haggling is the name of the game. Beijing has a few famous markets, the Pearl and Silk markets, where the legitimacy of the goods is questionable and the first price you’re quoted for anything is nearly 400 percent too high. The merchants are very aggressive and know enough English to catch onto some things — a few students were walking through one of the markets and one of them accidentally said the other’s name, which led to the poor sap being called out by name throughout the rest of the market. The slightest eye contact toward something while browsing will lead to merchants falling over themselves trying to offer you twelve of whatever that is, whether it’s leather goods (wallets, bags, etc.), clothes, or electronics.

The dance that ensues when you do want to buy something is complicated. Step one is to ask the price for something else, then immediately cut that price in half. The haggling then starts, once you figure out where the price floor is; then, you ask about what you really want, stay firm on the price, and even walk away to prove your point. They’ll come asking for you to come back, and accept your price.

This is how you get fake decent-quality fake North Face jackets for $20, or string upon string of pearls for $20 total. I’m really not good at this sort of haggling, and even had a moment of conscience when I realized my price was incredibly good within the context of American prices, if not the “market goods game” that developed within the cohort. Sure, you can be an ass and get your “I Climbed The Great Wall” T-shirt for 25 cents, but what’s the point? Just pay $2 and be on your way.

I don’t know if I could live in China — more on this when I talk about Shanghai — but being a tourist there is a certain kind of fun. Your dollar goes a long ways if you’re smart, sights like the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, the Olympic stadiums, and the Great Wall were amazing — the Great Wall was one of the best experiences of my life — and the sights were definitely eye-opening.

Shanghai

It might be a very obvious observation, but Shanghai just feels like a much more developed, more westernized and older city. It and Tokyo feel similar; I’m led to believe Hong Kong is about the same, and my personal theory is because all three were developed earlier than cities like Seoul —they had outside influences from the late 19th century on, instead of post-WWII like the South Korean metropolis. That said, there’s just a purpose and genuineness to the skyline in Shanghai that just didn’t feel there in Beijing. It’s like comparing Spokane and Seattle — they both might have downtowns, but you can tell which one walks the walk.

That said, I liked the neon and hustle of Shanghai. I went out a couple nights with students from China on our program — notably Michael, who’s from Shanghai and seems like a boss in his hometown — and got to enjoy an entirely different experience than I would have had otherwise. Nothing like an elaborate, multi-dish Chinese dinner full of things I can’t remember and that they certainly don’t serve at any restaurant I’ve seen in Portland (or the United States, really). Didn’t try the bullfrog; probably should have, in retrospect, because when will I again? Our night out at a hot pot dinner was also a lot more fun and, yes, kicked the crap out of doing hot pot in Portland. Most of the food followed such a pattern on this trip, honestly.

I felt like just being out in the neon of Shanghai — and washing it in from the backseat of a car, feeling the skyscrapers bear down — was a different enough experience that things like trying bullfrog didn’t seem as necessary as they probably will when I look back on this trip. However, making a fool of myself at a karaoke box surrounded by my friends and the Chinese students in our program? Definitely an experience I got behind, even if the Chinese girls put a bunch of Backstreet Boys and N’Sync into the karaoke mix for the three Americans out that night.

Ah, Shanghai. I could probably ignore China’s myriad problems (like censorship, reason no. 1 why I couldn’t update this site at all during my Chinese trip) if you threw me into doing business in Shanghai, but man, learning to drive in China might be a bridge too far. I don’t know if I’d honestly want to make the personal sacrifices necessary to work and live overseas in order to live in Beijing, however; despite the PRC’s best efforts, I still don’t think I could believe in Beijing. Shanghai for the money, Beijing to be a tourist for four or five days.

MIM Trip - A little bit of Seoul

2010-03-08T03:35:00.000-08:00

At Hyundai's Asan manufacturing plant, where they make roughly 1,200 cars a day. Yikes

I will readily admit that, of our four cities and three countries on the MIM Asia Trip, Seoul was at the bottom in terms of preference; I've studied Japanese so long that finally making it to Tokyo was great, Shanghai is a massive modern metropolis, and Beijing is host to a wide variety of fascinating Chinese history. Seoul? Eh.

(I don't think it helps that I was not terribly happy with the travel getting to Seoul. From hotel to hotel in about 10 hours? Arriving after midnight? Whacking my head in the airport tram at Incheon? Big baby right here).

The parking lot at Hyundai Asan is also a fair representation of Korean roads: Good luck finding something that isn't Hyundai or Kia.

However, because I had such little knowledge of the city and country, it's been a big surprise. Tokyo felt very tight — even the major roads were very, very narrow, the raised highways frighteningly so — but Seoul feels a lot wider, bigger, much more like Seattle or Portland than Tokyo. Also, the drivers are a bit crazier here (on my unofficial driving scale, going from little old lady going to church at one end to Los Angeles on the other, Tokyo is close to Portland, whereas Seoul tips toward L.A. China is apparently batshit crazy too). Also, EVERY car here is a Hyundai. Dead serious. Gotta love strict importation laws preventing competition...

This is also definitely my "stranger in a strange land" experience as well. Sure, Tokyo's on a different continent, but it's fairly westernized, I've studied Japanese forever, and I've been reading my travel guide for Tokyo religiously. You can get around Tokyo with zero Japanese very easily. Seoul, however....not counting brand names for western companies, I've seen more signs and markings in Japanese around here than I've seen signs in English. Gaijin charades abound, especially since only one of my graduate cohort is intimately familiar with the Korean language. That said, the place seems nice enough — right near our hotel is a big downtown shopping district, kind of halfway between the excesses of Shibuya in Tokyo and what I'm anticipating the Silk Market in Beijing will be — that is, while there are real stores with legit goods down these alleys, it seems like a good chance to find fakes.

While we had a lot of time to hop around Tokyo on our own, we've been really limited in Seoul. The first full day here was basically dedicated to a DMZ trip, which was fascinating in ways I couldn't comprehend without being here. What you might not be able to wrap your head around is that this is a country still at war. Of course it's not an active, hot war, but when you hear from your tour guide about when Korean men generally get their required army service out of the way, and you see barb wire fences and guard posts lining the highway in the last few kilometers leading up to the DMZ...you start to get the idea a bit.

The above is just about all they'll let you take photos of at the DMZ — actually, what they'll let you keep photos of, I should say. There's a large yellow line about twelve or fifteen feet behind the rail and, while they'll let you go up and look through binoculars to peep at North Korea, you really can't get any kind of photos.

Our tour also went down to Tunnel 3, which is the third of four found tunnels dug by North Korea trying to...well, I don't know. Prepare for an invasion? I guess. Our guide said he believes the South Korean army knows that 13 or 14 tunnels exist, including the four that have been found; chances are there are more and, considering the short 30-mile distance between DMZ and Seoul (which has about 40 percent of South Korea's population in the vicinity), it's not too shocking. The North denied Tunnel 3's existence and, apparently, North Korean soldiers painted the walls black to say it was a coal mine; the South turned it into a tourist trap and profited, upsetting the North to no end. They wanted a cut of the profits!

It's indicative of a very complicated relationship between South and North. I get the feeling that many in the South feel pity for those stuck in the North, and save their hatred for a pig-headed and dogmatic regime that's fractured what was previously a country united for centuries. The hope for re-unification is strong and romantic; there's very real issues that will need to be addressed if and when that happens — the north/south gap is far, faaaaaaar worse than West and East Germany were — but the most cynical of South Koreans just want to delay the cost instead of saying they don't want to address it at all.

The example that really drove this into my mind is Dorasan Station. It's the northernmost train station from the South before going into the North, and it was used for a few years early in the century by the tourists who were allowed from the South to the North to one of a very, very few tourist locations. It's standing still, and as nice a station as any I saw in Japan — it's now a symbol of hope, an extended handshake just hanging in the air until such a time as it's needed. There's still a departure gate for Pyeongyang, and...it's hard to explain. It's just a very palpable, romantic thing to actually see in person.

Hyundai Asan was fascinating for other reasons. Remember what I said about every car in South Korea seemingly being a Hyundai? Here's part of the reason why. Nearly 350,000 cars a year roll out of Asan for the world market, namely the Sonata and Azera (which are both available in the U.S.). Seeing a huge production plant — one that can roll out a completed car once a minute — was absolutely stunning. I've seen plenty of documentary shows on Discovery Channel and the like about auto manufacturing plants (thanks dad!) but seeing one, walking through one, seeing the robots spot weld, check each body with a laser...seeing cars born right in front of my eyes was spectacular. It's on an enormous, unfathomable scale, made even more impressive because Asan is a highly vertically integrated facility — from raw sheet metal waiting at one end of the factory, to finished Hyundais at the other end, everything can be done at Asan.

So I leave South Korea with a much greater respect and understanding for the country, an amazing sense of sympathy for a country that desperately wants to be one again, and a strong suggestion to give Seoul a chance if you have the opportunity. It's not quite as cosmopolitan as Tokyo, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

MIM Trip — Shashin de hansshiteiru

2010-03-08T03:20:00.000-08:00

Remember that old cliche about photos and thousands of words? So much has happened between the first post on my Asian excursion and now that I feel the need to drop some photography in here. All of my photos from the trip so far are available from my Flickr account page.

A variety of photos from Tokyo:

Enjoying (ahem) lunch at a plant tour

Photos from a day trip out to Hakone, approximately 2 hours outside of Tokyo by train

Fuji-san! (aka Mt. Fuji)

More shortly about South Korea.

MIM Trip - Hajime Tokyo

2010-03-02T04:05:00.000-08:00

I believe the sign as you walk down the stairs to customs at Narita Airport says "おかえりなさい," which means "welcome home" or just plain "welcome." After spending the last two months of class with the spectre of the Asia trip over our program, getting lined up at PDX to begin the journey felt like a huge relief and a reason to be excited.

Good grief, though, 11 hours on a flight was one of the more mind-numbing experiences I've ever had. At least with a similar day spent on the road, the scenery changes, you (usually) have more leg room, and at least you can roll the windows down. Airplanes feel like air-conditioned death after about six hours; 11 feels like a marathon.

It wasn't until well after I arrived in Japan that I felt like I really arrived in Japan. Riding to the hotel from Narita, checking in, everything else felt incredibly similar to the United States; walking down the street, past vending machines offering packages of cigarettes for a few hundred yen, to a ramen-ya right across from Shinagawa Station (one of the big rail hub stations in Tokyo) that I felt like I was in another place.

After a couple of meetings this morning (you know, business stuff - the reason we're on this trip) we had the afternoon to run amuck in Tokyo. A decently sized group of us set off to Akihabara and scattered from there; me and my group spent the afternoon wandering up and down the main road, staring up at glittering neon, poking our heads in back alleys and dodging the dressed up girls looking like cosplayers passing out flyers to get you to go to the maid cafe they represent (I pray those links are safe, they're both to Wikipedia so you should be fine). I really want to go back at another time and look through a couple of stores.

Exhausting the possibilities in Akiba, we hit the Yamanote line again and shot over to Shibuya.

Take note of that crosswalk - it's absolutely unreal to really fathom the mass of humanity in there. If you've been to Times Square in NYC it's like that...times a lot. It's amazing. So is the selection of shops there, too — from huge department stores like Tokyu, Shibuya 109, Bic Camera, and more, to tiny holes in the wall like one we got roped into, which had the tightest freaking spiral staircase of all time.

The train system has been amazing to get to learn, Japanese toilets are awesome, I've had two great ramen meals and bought a hot drink out of a vending machine (they're even labeled as "warm") and am starting to see the sense of equivalents to $1-$6 coins and a more cash-based society (good god a Post Office ATM was kind of a pain to find, but I do know where it is in Shibuya now). I can't wait to explore more of the city and get into the subway proper, even. Shame none of the cool clothing I've seen will fit ever...

The full Flickr set (which will be updated) is available here. Mata ashita.

The Itinerary

2010-02-27T16:43:00.000-08:00

One of the big calling cards of the Portland State Masters of International Management program is the Asia field study trip.

It starts tomorrow!

February 28 — March 5: Tokyo, Japan
March 5 — 8: Seoul, South Korea
March 8 — 13: Beijing, China
March 13 — 20: Shanghai, China
March 20 — 26: Back to Tokyo for spring break.
March 27: Return back to Portland.

I want to do at least one write-up per city (hopefully more) along with photos to document what's bound to be an amazing journey of discovery.

Time to finish up packing.

The Road Not Taken (...and where my road has led)

2009-11-23T20:33:00.000-08:00

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Where I've been spending quite a bit of time since June. Photo by Doug Bonham

Life throws a lot of curveballs. If I've learned anything in the last year, it's a confirmation that sometimes things don't go to plan, but still work out in the end.

The last post on this site is from April, right after I moved home from an attempt to start something in Boulder, Colorado. In the time since then, I've weighed graduate school options, been accepted into a program to try a whole different direction, made some wonderful friends, re-connected with friends and family in Portland, and generally lived the life.

Since the summer, I've been working on starting up as a member of the new cohort for Portland State's Masters of International Management program. It's a graduate business program, like an MBA, but also focused on Pacific Rim economies — China, Japan, South Korea. It's also a program with a lot of international students; along with a lot of students from the United States, there are Chinese, Taiwanese, and Thai students.

Working first through pre-requisite classes, and since September the first term proper, has been an interesting, eye-opening experience. I never thought I would take to business as easily; I never thought aspects of things like accounting would prove as interesting.

As well, since the spring I've been working along with friends from the University of Oregon journalism school on a video game-themed web site. Myself, Nick Cummings, Aaron Thayer, Tyler Martin and others have joined to work on SiliconSasquatch.com. We've been writing, recording podcasts, and trying to create good, relevant content on a regular basis. Since finding a career in journalism is hard enough work right now, we've decided to strike out on our own and, hey, even if it doesn't lead anywhere, at least we're having fun.

That is really what life has been about these last few months. Studying, learning, making new connections, strengthening older ones, and taking the road less traveled by.

The Return

2009-04-02T22:43:00.000-07:00

Colorado

Utah

Idaho

...Oregon

The warm hug of nostalgia

2009-03-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

Hanging out with a friend (or group of friends), gathered on couches around the TV, playing video games. I'm sure I'm not the only kid in my generation for whom this is a classic scenario. It still happens from time to time in my life, too - I got to sit down and play Street Fighter IV with my man Nick last time I was in Portland.

What you see when playing Retro Game Challenge: Not just the game, but the two kids playing the game...(okay back in 1980s Japan, but still). Image from gamersinfo.net

I just picked up and have spent a little bit of time with Retro Game Challenge for the DS, which has a convoluted history and in-game story, but plays on the imagery of sitting around and playing games with your friend. I caught the buzz for the game after hearing about it on every single gaming podcast I listen to, and that word of mouth convinced me to track the game down.

The game is actually based off a Japanese TV show, Game Center CX, in which the host is challenged to complete a variety of classic video games. Retro Game Challenge is a game based off that - you still have to face challenges put down by Game Master Arino, but the translation is done so that it's a way for you to escape imprisonment in 1980s Japan.

Okay. So you play lovingly crafted games based off 8-bit video game tropes (space shooter, 2D racer, ninja platformer, basic RPG). Big deal? Well, as the screenshot above shows, the game goes on on the top screen; on the bottom, it's you and your friend (apparently Arino c. the time period) and get to hang out as kids playing games. Arino chips in - "AWESOME!", "INCOMING!" - and when you even select to go play a game, it shows your character scooting on the floor over to the bookshelf.

Sure, you're lounging on tatami mats in a very Japanese apartment playing a Japanese Famicom lookalike...but man, the sentiment is there. The Internet is great and all, but sometimes you miss -itting down with a friend and playing pass-the-controller to play a single player game. Sometimes it's the childhood nostalgia that gets you the most.

Who watches "Watchmen"? I just did

2009-03-08T00:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's accurate; but is it good?

Just returned home after seeing Watchmen on the big screen - didn't make a midnight showing Thursday night because of going to the Nuggets-Blazers basketball game, and didn't go last night because I would have slept through it! But I made the trip tonight and have some thoughts.

Primarily I'm just really, really glad that Zack Snyder made the Watchmen movie that he did because, in his own words, if he didn't somebody else would have - and if somebody else would have, it most likely would have been changed (more) from the original source and sucked.

This movie categorically does not suck. It is as good a transition to film as there will ever be - I don't even mind the alterations to the ending (deciding to cut out a side story entirely necessitated the movie to end the way it did). Costumes, setting, tone, everything was truly faithful to the book. I love the beginning montage during the credits as an introduction, even if they did take a couple liberties with things insinuated in the book.

And while I swore up and down I wasn't going to be influenced by the voices and writers who said "it's *too* faithful and a touch limited as a movie," I am forced to agree - simply because this isn't the right medium for it.

With a regular novel - like, say, The Lord of the Rings - before the movies, the books did not live as a visual medium. Like all novels, it was up to interpretation and your mind's eye to paint between the lines that (in that case) Tolkein set out for characters, settings, everything. We know Frodo is a hobbit and that he most likely has certain traits, but the way he looks and talks is up to the reader's interpretation.

Same with how scenes are acted out. While there might be occasional blocking in a novel, it's not as specific - or, indeed, graphic - as within a comic book or graphic novel. While Snyder may have had a handy, dandy storyboard in the form of the original Watchmen, that in my mind is a bit of a set of golden handcuffs - you have to get it absolutely right. Any deviation and the fans go wild.

The other major gripe I have is going to sound banal and snobbish, but so be it. Watchmen the book works absolutely perfectly and is a masterpiece of late-20th century literature in part because it uses its medium so well in telling the story. While the movie is still good, some scenes drag on film where they'd make much, much more sense on paper in ink. Flashbacks - especially for characterization of both Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan - worked much, much better in the graphic novel than they did in the movie, and that's more down to the medium actively helping the storytelling more than anything else.

One minor gripe with the movie (besides the necessary evil of cutting out "The Black Freighter" sections, which led to altering the ending) is that it paints some details in much bolder strokes than in the book. Without giving away too much, background details related to The Comedian and (in the book) old-time heroine Silhouette - which are done very subtlety in the graphic novel - are given much broader strokes in the movie, which is as much a function of the movie format as anything else.

While Watchmen the movie is indeed rather awesome - I think those who haven't read the books will enjoy it, even if it does drag a bit in the middle - for no fault of its own, it falls short of living up to the source. In most book-to-novel cases this has to do with cutting content, but for these, it's more because it's not set on the right stage. And that is through no fault of the movie.

Heart vs. Head

2009-02-23T23:10:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Seattle, Junior.

One of the underlying storylines in sports in recent years has been the building movement of statistical analysis. Ever since Moneyball was released in 2003, the argument has come to the forefront and divided some lines - especially in baseball, where traditional thinkers like to judge with their eyes only. It's been gaining steam in basketball, too, in recent years, but the stronghold of "sabrmatricians" (the term for such stat-heads) is on the diamond.

Statistics say that Ken Griffey, Jr. is going to be a very, very average player for the Mariners this year, and that he should avoid seeing the field as much as possible. If you were being even more cynical, you'd say he should only ever face right-handed pitchers, too. That's what parsing through the numbers and statistics available to fans and analysts say, at least.

The romantic, the fan, the one seeking out a story, that person thinks Junior returning - quite possibly for his final season - is going to be awesome, regardless how he does this year. "He's coming home!" It's like being transported back to 1998 again, to see Griffey in teal and blue smashing home runs out of shiny, new Safeco Field and patrolling center field, pulling a Spiderman impression and leaping up against the wall to steal a home run.

That bat twitch. The effortless swing. The casual trot out of the batter's box as another home run is crushed. Sure, the memories are just that - memories, sugar-coated, and so very sweet - but if we don't have those sweet dreams as fans of sports, all we have are box scores.

I fully admit to wanting Griffey to come home to Seattle for purely selfish reasons. It's like wanting to go back and re-live the best childhood memories. I want that Ken Griffey, Jr. who was on the poster in my bedroom to walk back out on to the field when Opening Day comes, but that's a fantasy. You can't go back home in the same way again, but the nostalgia trip will be great for all involved.

Sure, statistical analysis is great - incredibly useful. But without nostalgia - great play-by-play calls, amazing images, wonderful memories - sports are almost meaningless. There's room for romanticism alongside the science.

The power of stupid memories and cheesy jingles

2009-02-13T21:56:00.000-08:00

I hope to god this embeds properly, because it's been making the rounds of sports sites and is awesome.

There's a music store across the street from my office that says, "Without music, life would be a mistake." Even though I would sound like a strumming monkey were I to pick up a real guitar, or act like a three-year-old given a couple of wooden spoons and pots and pans if I sat behind a real drum kit, I love music. Love it, love it, love it. Specifically listening to it (playing Rock Band gives me the ersatz creation feelings I crave, in lieu of above-mentioned lack of real talent).

And while it's said that scent often triggers the strongest emotional connections, music has those, too. What's funnier is how songs like the above-embedded YouTube clip - of John Tesh's "Roundball Rock," much better known as the iconic NBA on NBC theme song - work into a sports fan's heart and well up memories on its own.

It's silly, it's stupid, and performed live or found on MP3, it's a long-ass jingle. But just that spark of "Roundball Rock" brings up so many images of the NBA because the period that song was used to introduce NBC's coverage was a watershed for the sport: Jordan. The tail end of Bird and Magic. Hakeem and my Blazers. By the end of NBC's coverage, Shaq and Kobe were forming a terrifying combination as the Forum was about to come to a close for hoops in Los Angeles.

Quite possibly the greatest era in one of my favorite spectator sports is encapsulated in that wonderfully early-90s-tastic song.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way about "Roundball Rock," and I know the NBA isn't the only sport to have a signature tune. Across the pond, Formula 1 coverage on the BBC in the United Kingdom had one opening song for an entire generation - the ending bass-riff from Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain." From the late '70s through to 1996, the visuals might have changed, but the rising shriek of guitars accompanied the intro. So when the BBC won back Formula 1 broadcast rights starting this upcoming season, there was little doubt there'd be speculation about The Chain returning:

Sure, that's fan-made, but lovingly so and if the real thing is close then I wouldn't be surprised. Having seen older intros as well on YouTube, I get it.

Just like how - as cheesy as it is - the ever-altered Monday Night Football theme still ties in emotions. Or how Canadian fans consider the Hockey Night in Canada theme to be as part and parcel to the coverage as legendary commentator Don Cherry's flagrant suits.

I would say it's as important as hearing other theme songs for popular TV shows or movie series, but though I may be biased as a sports fan, the connection with the intro theme song is greater - for the same reason why sports make for some of the best human drama. Nothing is planned or staged out ahead of time, and it all unfolds, real-time, right in front of your eyes. The connection with sports teams runs deep, and, just like how a college fight song can be universal to school alumni, the theme song for certain sports stand out.

It doesn't always work - most of the ones in major American sports right now are forgettable at best, though Baseball Tonight's jingle is pretty good - but the transcendent ones stick with you. Which is why I'm going to try to make "Roundball Rock" into a ringtone-sized MP3 file, again, and set that on my phone, just to see if I run into another sports geek who wells up with stupid emotion at the sound of John Tesh's master work as much as I do.

Is print dying?

2009-01-31T22:21:00.000-08:00

Why yes, I'm a big enough journalism nerd that I took a photo of the building occupied by both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News while wandering around downtown in November.

"____ is Dead." Whether that's rock and roll, or CDs, or the American auto industry, or anything else...there's a lot of proclamations of death out there.

That print media - from newspapers to magazines, back again - is included on this hypothetical Grim Reaper's list is, frankly, saddening to me. Of course this is because I'm the type of person who does pick up magazines, enjoys the feel of glossy paper, loves flipping through a big Sunday newspaper, and has studied both newspaper and magazine design. So, yes, I have a vested interest.

And, scarier still, the death knell has been ringing out in the newspaper business. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer could close down very soon (in fact, one of the ways it might stay open is by becoming online-only), and the downtown Denver-based Rocky Mountain News is for sale, just short of the paper's 150th anniversary. Newspapers in California and Detroit are also not quite doing so well. It's very likely a major metropolitan area newspaper could close this year, and if debtors come calling on the ownership group of the Denver Post, then a major city could be without newspapers.

Why? Well, it boils down to simply, why buy something that's free? In an effort to diversify online and meet the demands of 21st century media consumers, newspapers and journalists are often putting more on their sites than in the paper. Print advertising is shrinking; therefore, smaller papers, lower circulations, etc. in a downward-circling spiral. Online is the new way to go.

But this doesn't mean the printed word will die out. Arguably man's greatest invention (the printing press) will still be required. Why not? Well, look at the coexistence of radio, television, movies, the Internet, and all other forms of multimedia. When television broke big in the 1950s, it was supposed to herald the end of radio; sure, it's not as popular as before, but the radio business hasn't died. Same with television and the Internet - just because the latter exists (and can, ahem, become the other one some places online).

The future is now - digitally-delivered newspapers and magazines, like Sporting News Today, are the evolution of journalism

As well, a likely next step will be magazines and newspapers delivered digitally to your inbox. It makes sense - most newspapers and magazines use publishing software that can publish a .pdf file simply and easily, and in that case, why not deliver the same goods without the hassle of printing up a few thousand issues? I receive a sports newspaper in my inbox each morning, Sporting News' "Today" (pictured above) which weighs in at 30-plus broadsheet pages an issue. You follow the link and go through their reader, which allows you to click and zoom in on articles.

GP Week, a weekly magazine launched last year that follows Formula 1, World Rally and MotoGP racing, works the same way. So does Winding Road, and I'm sure many others. Other sites - like gaming site The Escapist and 1up.com's "Cover Stories" - also act more like print pieces, but without being .pdf files or using online readers.

But that's significant - all of those pieces of media are nodding back to the tenets of print layout and design.

Things look grim - but, this is also why I say that print will never die. At least, not fully. Just as parents live on in their children and individuals and events live on in recorded history, the lineage and heritage of print media will live on - whether or not it uses ink and paper.

What I'm Playing - 1-26-09 edition

2009-01-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

I want to get some regular sort of things going here. This seems as good as any. In the tradition of many, many gaming podcasts, including especially 1up Yours, it's "What'cha Been Playing?" - Quick thoughts on what's been in the system(s) the last week...

This is a good week to start this because I've actually played quite a few different games. Here's just a few...

-NCAA Football 09 - playing in now three different Online Dynasties has ensured that this is always near my 360, and is sometimes all I play. I've done okay the last week or so, beating up on the computer a couple times but losing to my man Fletcher in the Big 12 league we're in tonight. Everything surrounding playing the games in the league is fascinating - how people are "game-ing" the game, pulling recruits, everything. Seems like EA Sports got that right, even, too.

-Rock Band 2 - I've been drumming a lot on the game recently, both online and off. Trying to get my groove back and get up to drumming on expert again...the increased difficulty of RB2 songs isn't helping much of anything right now.

-Diablo II - Trying to get into the swing of playing this somewhat regularly with Dan, Nick, etc. It's amazing how something as simple as pointing and clicking can be so damned addictive, though. And it runs brilliantly on my MacBook, too!

-Gears of War 2 - Played through all of Horde mode with Nick, Tyler, and couple others in support. Level 50 can be an absolute monster, too. Super, super, super fun way to play the game, though.

-FIFA 09 - And specifically "Be a Pro" mode. I'm hooked; absolutely addicted. There's no feeling like the rush you get when the camera tucks up behind you and you're one-on-one; it's agonizing to take a shot and have it hit the post, it's brilliant when you get one past the keeper. The curve on this mode is perfect for me right now, too.

-Fable II - Ah, yes. I took my leisurely stroll through this to its end last night, and was affected by and slightly disappointed with the ending in equal measure. I am going to do more of a write-up on my thoughts on this soon, but even though I'm a little frustrated by it...I still fired up a brand-new character and played two and a half more hours after I finished the game with my first dude.

From the "Fastball in the wheelhouse" department...

2009-01-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

Somehow I can't see it marching down the red carpet. Photo from flickr.

So apparently there's a new documentary about the 24 Hours of Le Mans that is set to debut the weekend of Sebring.

That's not the exciting part. I'd be happy to see something like that regardless. But - BUT - it's called "Truth in 24," it's made by NFL Films (!) and is narrated by Jason Statham, aka my friend's official mancrush.

I don't quite remember asking for something so awesome (NFL Films has amazing cinematography and is a superb company, it focuses on Audi's march of dominance, pretty sure it's shot in HD, etc.) but I'll take it. Oh, and it's debuting on ESPN.

That's my jaw dropping to the floor, and me wondering if I can save enough to buy an HDTV by then. Should be absolutely awesome to see in full glory.

Because there hasn't been a photo post in a while

2009-01-19T21:35:00.000-08:00

Might as well throw some photos from November up...just because. All photos from my flickr account, and ©2008.

---------

A statue in front of the Colorado state Capitol Building in downtown Denver.

A view of the mountains that sit just outside of Boulder - I get to look up and see these most days.

Part of the Museum of Art in downtown Denver - the rest of it looks just as wild.

Downtown Denver has areas with a unique mix of very old and new architecture, including some spots where modern glass high-rises nestle up against churches.

I need an excuse to go wander around and take more photos. Might have to make some time this weekend to go explore with my camera, including maybe downtown Boulder.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me - Sports succumbing to the bottom line, v. 4,146,900

2009-01-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

AC Milan midfielder Kaka, a former World Player of the Year and Ballon d'Or (European Fotballer of the Year), is the target of the most recent example of money being thrown around in sports like it's Monopoly. Photo from goalvideoz.com

"Cash rules everything around me/C.R.E.A.M. get the money/Dolla dolla bill ya'll." Arguably the best-known song from the Wu-Tang Clan's breakout debut album, "C.R.E.A.M." is also applicable as a refrain when absolutely silly amounts of money are thrown around in the world of sports.

It's applicable often nowadays, considering the amount of money teams make, what the salary caps are in American sports, the budgets of big-money NASCAR and Formula 1 racing teams, and the amount of money bidded on players in European soccer. I don't know if it's wrong or right, but there's certainly a lot of money being thrown around.

Take our boy Kaka there as seen above. He's a star playmaking midfielder for Italian giants AC Milan, lifted the Champion's League trophy in 2007, and won a World Cup as a young substitute for Brazil in 2002. He's a silky-smooth passer and dribbler without the flair of a Cristiano Ronaldo or Robinho, but the capability to drive a team from the heart of midfield. He won both the FIFA World Player of the Year and the European Footballer of the Year, the Golden Ball (Ballon d'Or), after the 2006-07 Champion's League-winning season, and is clearly a player most any team in the world would love to have in its side.

Which still doesn't quite excuse nouveau-riche Manchester City's ~$155 million bid for him (link to BBC Sports). Of course it's not the player's fault, and one would hardly blame him if he decided to accept City's offer. However, this move would more than double the record transfer fee and certainly challenge the deal New York Yankees 3B Alex Rodriguez has as the richest for a team-sports athlete in the world.

Current world transfer-record player, former France playmaker Zinedine Zidane, being introduced after Real Madrid paid Juventus 46 million pounds ($67 million) for his services

The names at the top of the record transfer list are not entirely shocking when one thinks about it. Real Madrid are the New York Yankees of international soccer; 9 European cups, nearly 30 Spanish Liga titles, and a grand history of expensive stars. Juventus are the "old lady" of Italian football, Inter are the rich little brother in Italy (well supported but falling short in title chases numerous times), Barcelona are the old enemy to Madrid in Spain and have a history of splashing cash, and Manchester United are quite possibly the best-known soccer team in the United States, thanks to star players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, and of course, at one time, David Beckham.

But two other names stand out. Manchester City, the squad looking to more than double the transfer record to sign Kaka, have already added a big-name Brazilian star in the form of Robinho, signing him from Real Madrid in August for 30 million pounds. Lazio, though - who were injected with cash in the late 1990s in order to push the Roman side into the Italian title chase - mirror Manchester City rather well, down to the traditional home colors of sky blue.

Former Lazio owner Sergio Cragnotti poses with one of the players his largesse brought to the Roman side, Czech winger Pavel Nedved.

Lazio were powered forward by the largesse of Italian food magnate Sergio Cragnotti, who spent early and often in a search for the Italian scudetto. While Lazio had always been one of Italy's "Big Six" (along with Juventus, Inter, AC Milan, AS Roma, and at times Fiorentina), Cragnotti wanted to rocket the team into the stratosphere.

The well ran dry and it left Lazio stumbling; they seem to have recovered and made the Champion's League in 2007-08, but have done so without spending huge.

Sound familiar? Manchester City were purchased in late August by a group that consists of the royal family of the city of Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates. Oil-rich and expanding into tourism and finance to diversify its economy, Abu Dhabi's royal family has a multi-billion dollar bankroll behind them thanks to oil production. Now, they're trying to play a virtual video game with the Premier League and see if, like on the PC games, attracting all the best players in the world with lots of money will lead to success.

Of course you can't help but think of the impact this has on sports in general. If it works, and Manchester City - traditionally well-supported in England but without a great history of winning titles - qualifies for the Champion's League and challenges for titles, then the "money cheat code" method of ownership could be proven correct.

Regardless of the opulence it's representative of the sports world at large. TV money has poured into a variety of sports since the late 1960s, and with it has come an era of previously-unheard of success. The NFL practically has a license to print money in the United States - and yet ticket prices are only ever going up. Major League Baseball had 10 teams with payrolls higher than $100 million in a year, and that includes the Yankees, who broke $200 million.

The New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez is currently the highest-paid team sport athlete in the world; will Kaka's salary match his?

What can be done about it, though? Short of salary caps staying at an equal level and nobody deciding to break the salary caps with tons of money, that is; in leagues without salary caps, like Major League Baseball and European soccer, there's nothing to it. If it works as a business decision and you can afford it, who's to stop you spending that much money? Welcome to the free economy.

It's a tough situation. Stop supporting sports because of the money being thrown around? Stop supporting the highest levels of athletics and focus on semi-pro, or more minor leagues? Or go along, wary, hoping that when the bubble bursts, your team will be in decent financial shape?

It's a tough decision. Especially as, during all great booms, it looks like the money will never dry up.

End of a dream

2009-01-10T20:26:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a week, and, yes, Electronic Gaming Monthly is still dead.

This won't be showing up in my mailbox anymore. I still can't believe it

On the surface of it, one of (if not the) longest-running magazines in a nascent industry has succumbed to a combination of the terrible economy and "the death of print media." It's a problem that's only exasperated by the fact that, by and large, the tech industries - including video games - have news that happens so fast, printed media is falling behind simply because the tech-happy userbase is getting information online.

That's just the surface, and what anybody outside the industry would see. To the diehard fans of the medium and enthusiasts who follow news online, possibly subscribed to EGM, and are crazy and invested enough to know and care about the people writing about the industry, though, this is a huge blow.

(Okay, that's me. But I'm not the only one)

EGM attracted a huge following for very good reason: It was regularly the best-written piece of media, online or off, about video games. Period, the end. Between EGM proper and its (surviving) online outlet, 1up.com, I had all the steady video game news, views, and discussion I could really handle.

Beyond even that, the death of EGM represents, to me, the death of a dream. That magazine wasn't the first I ever read or read regularly; that honor belongs to the three different car magazines (Car and Driver, Road & Track, and Automobile) my dad used to get. And EGM didn't get me into writing - I'm sure my parents can confirm I wrote, a lot, before I'd even picked up a single copy of the magazine. But it was subscribing to EGM that coincided with becoming "hardcore" about gaming, and - a few years later - realizing that journalism might be what I wanted to do.

My subscription began in 1999 (after picking up a few copies here and there in the summer of 1998), right at the beginning of the year. That was a great time for the magazine - issues that winter swelled to over 300 pages (astonishing for a magazine!), and former editor John Davison has called that a great time for the mag.

And as it looked more and more like writing would become a passion and possibly a career, EGM became a quietly-whispered target. I don't want to hole myself in for fear of ignoring any future possibilities, but it sounded like so much fun - writing about something I love? What a wonderful combination.

That dream is now dead. Oh, sure, there's still gaming journalism, but 1up.com as it was before this past Tuesday was a very special place. I've met many of the writers and editors (including both those who were laid off and who stayed on) and, after reading their work and listening to their podcasts for years, you got the sense of passion, that there was no bullshit, and that they loved doing what they did.

So it's not just the shuttering of a magazine, leaving the January 2009 issue that now heads my magazine stack as the final issue printed; it's the end of a dream. I know those writers, editors, and designers who lost their jobs will find work again; that's not in doubt. I know I might end up joining that industry at some point too. But the mighty magazine that played a part in inspiring me is now gone, and it still hurts.

An update appears!

2009-01-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

This is one of many "sorry I'll post more" posts. I've made this promise in the past, and I'll probably make it again. But right now I do need to post more, and will try to, so we dance this dance.

So. The last update was...early November? Right. Since then I've been settling in to a new personal and professional life in Boulder, Colorado. More details to come later, of course, but I'm gaining more and more every day and will hopefully soon be adding more to what I do and what my role is at the paper.

The personal part can be trickier. But, just like my personal experience moving before, I'm taking my time, easing into life, and hopefully me being bored in my apartment will be just a phase.

More details on the interesting, crazy things in life here, as well as the many thoughts I have on the worlds of sports, games, etc.

2008-11-02T20:59:00.000-08:00

Oh, dear. Dear me. I have let this gather quite a bit of dust, haven't I? I've been a bit busy...

I have a job now. And I was able to move 1,400 miles away from my former Portland, Ore. home out to Boulder, Colorado, to take a job with the Colorado Daily. I'm still getting settled in, but my basic directive is to cover University of Colorado varsity and club sports, as well as Boulder-area outdoor recreation activities and stories. It is going to be fun.

Time to keep this thing more updated from here on out now that things have calmed down a little bit.

Happy Dreamcast Day

2008-09-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

This is like the most ghetto and old picture of all time but yeah, my Dreamcast stuff.

The Sega Dreamcast turns nine years old today. Nine years? Good grief, I was in middle school nine years ago; now, I've graduated college. Two generations of gaming have gone by, and Internet console gaming - the pie-in-the-sky dream of the Dreamcast and it's built-in 56k (LOL) modem - is now the norm.

So are arcade-perfect ports, analog control sticks and triggers built into the controllers, voice chat in online games, and Microsoft's presence in the console gaming spectrum.

However, its downfall signaled the final death throes of gaming as a niche industry. The Dreamcast, nine years ago, launched with a bang. A huge (if a tad bit esoteric) marketing campaign heralded its arrival, and, so many people thought, the revival of Sega. 9/9/99 became the largest single-day media event in United States history, topping the Star Wars: Episode 1 opening which ruled at the time. That didn't last long, though, as the promise of Sony's PS2 was the shadow that loomed long over the Dreamcast's short life.

You can't discuss the Dreamcast's death without bringing up Sony. That Sony even had game franchises like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, and - crucially in the U.S. - EA Sports products was enough to sell some people. It didn't matter that the first out of any of those series - Gran Turismo 3 - dropped nearly a year after the system's launch. DVD playback (a much, much bigger selling point then than Blu-Ray is now for PS3) was enough to tide many people over.

Never mind that you could walk in to a game store in the late fall of 2000 and buy a Dreamcast and three games for the price of a new PS2 - which was at that time as hard to find as a Wii is now. Never mind that the Dreamcast had a much deeper library than Sony's system would only get two years later.

This was the point I made, rabidly, both to friends offline and online at that point in time. The Dreamcast came around just as I was becoming aware of video games as a lifestyle and more than a hobby. I started out reading game news online and posting on forums around that time, and along with how important that has been to the last eight or so years of my life, the Dreamcast was there in the beginning.

As I finish writing this, the seventh stage of arcade mode in Soul Calibur sits, paused, my Mitsurugi down 1-0 against the evil CPU Taki. This game looks just as pretty as it did nine years ago; upgrading to S-Video cables certainly helps. Not a lot has stuck with me for nine years; my Sega Dreamcast, hopefully, will for a long, long time. A window of Amazon.com also has a used copy of Sonic Adventure in the cart; I need to pull the trigger on that purchase and re-live one of my absolute favorite gaming experiences.

The soul still burns, and the legend will never die.

Why PAX 2008 Didn't Suck

2008-09-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

One of PAX's gracious hosts, Jerry Holkins aka Tycho of Penny Arcade fame, throws the horns before the final Omegathon round. Photo by Doug Bonham

Despite the fact that 58,000 of my closest and stinkiest friends also made their way to the 2008 Penny Arcade Expo, and though it was more crowded, had more lines, and was generally more packed than ever before, PAX 2008 did not suck. I can quantify this with science!

The lines were still a pain in years past. Maybe not quite as big a pain, but they were most assuredly there. Last year it was for the first Rock Band booth; three years ago, when I first went, it was for the Zelda demo at the Nintendo booth. Compared with last year, the lines at the local eateries (especially the ones inside the convention center) were just as bad, the parking situation sucked as much; plus, it's smack-dab in downtown Seattle, which will bring necessary problems regardless.

It doesn't mean it's good, but it's certainly not much worse than in years past.

Mirror's Edge was a hot property at Electronic Arts' booth at PAX. Photo by Doug Bonham

The lines to play games were sooooooooo bad. Okay, some of them sucked, but the ones I can think of were for marquee, AAA-quality game titles: StarCraft II, Rock Band 2, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, etc. Sure, there are claims that some of the developers were catering too much to the yellow-badged media members - I can't say I saw any of the general public in the Fallout 3 trailer all weekend, for sure - but I would trust in PA dropping the banhammer on that practice next year.

Also, focusing on the lines for maybe 10% of the games is ignoring the reasonable lines everywhere else. Yes, that includes Guitar Hero: World Tour, which is at least trying to be a AAA title. One of the best games I saw all show was Valkyria Chronicles, and we waited a minimal amount of time to see that. Crowding wasn't too bad at Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony's booths, either - at least, certainly not to the extent of the worst lines.

The panels were all too packed. I may be venturing more to devil's advocate range here, but, umm, that's bad? It's certainly better than having 25% of the panels at the show completely empty, right? Isn't this a sign that PA knows their demo and is scheduling the right people to be there to speak? Nobody wants to stand for an hour or so (I ate my dinner Friday night standing at the back of the 1up Yours taping), but at least it's a good sign that they know their market.

Also, some people (myself included) went to PAX with a hope and a dream wishing to meet people in the industry, and while it was harder than last year, it was still possible. Okay, there was a huge "Cult of (insert 1up Editor Here)" at their Saturday night party at GameWorks, but that's bound to happen. People were available after most of the panels I went to during the show. Just like with breaking into the industry, it's a matter of effort.

I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. While there was more crowding than ever, were there ever any real problems - even in PC freeplay, BYOC, or console freeplay? It seems like everybody kept their head and lived by the PAX creed: Have fun and don't be a dick to anybody or keep anyone else from having fun.

Rock Band 2sday - an interview with Harmonix

2008-09-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

Let there be rock - RB2 fires up for the first time at Ground Kontrol. Photo by Doug Bonham

Rock Band 2 is almost upon us. The game’s developers, Harmonix, had a large presence on the show floor of the Penny Arcade Expo – the line to play the game was usually at least a half hour. While fans got their hands on the game for the first time at PAX, a lucky group of gamers in Portland, Ore., got a special treat when the sequel was demoed Tuesday, September 2. Ground Kontrol (511 NW Couch St., Portland, Ore) played host during the regular Rock Band Tuesdays to Harmonix’s Dan Teasdale, lead designer of Rock Band 2, and Heather Wilson, audio producer for the company.

Harmonix audio producer Heather Wilson and Rock Band 2 lead designer Dan Teasdale up on stage receiving applause from the crowd before rocking out to Squeeze's "Cool for Cats." Photo by Doug Bonham

Teasdale and Wilson were kind enough to agree to an interview with myself, Nick Cummings, and one of the lead volunteers in running Rock Band Tuesday, John Leslie.

How many places have you found that do a Rock Band night on a regular basis?

DT – I think we’ve lost count at how many places have done it. Originally in the earlier days with some of the earlier games, River Gods down the street was the place that did it, and was the place we knew of, and in the three or four years since then it’s just exploded. No Fail is coming out of our experience of going to River Gods every week and seeing people fail out. Even though it doesn’t really fit with a campaign mode where you want people to fail out and progress better, in a live situation, nobody wants to fail out.

HW – It also came out of people at work bringing the game home to their families and their families totally failing out but still wanting to play.

With regards to announcements and information containment, how hard is it to prevent a leak or two?

DT – It’s tough, it’s not like we’re releasing one game a year. We’re releasing 52 content packs a year, plus a game, plus however many SKUs of it. It’s much harder than any other sort of game or company I’ve worked on. Considering how much stuff we’ve done it’s been pretty good.

HW – That leak (about the PAX Pack) came directly out of the fact that we had technical difficulties the week before. Just getting the information out to everyone who needed to have it, it just didn’t make it down the chain like it was supposed to, is hard. It was a leak but at the same time, people were doing what they were supposed to.

Compared to the earlier days at Harmonix, how is the song licensing process?

HW – It’s a lot easier to license stuff now. Because people have heard of us, they want to give us content, which is awesome. With bigger bands it’s the same as it always was, there’s convincing there, you want them to want to be in your game, and sometimes there’s a barrier of entry because they may not have heard of it, may not have played it, but it’s generally a lot easier.

Nick – Back after Rock Band 1, Dan, you said your most-wanted band was AC/DC. Was that your own personal push?

DT – I think it’s everybody at Harmonix’s personal push (laughs). Everyone is fans of AC/DC. One of our first prototype songs was a cover test of AC/DC, and I think they’re such an iconic rock band.

Are bands more willing to work with you when they have new material to promote?

DT – A lot of bands are more open to giving us their stuff when they’re releasing new content.

HW – A lot of people, like Weezer for example, want to give us new content but they also want to give us old stuff too. With some bands, we’ll say “hey, we’ll put out your new stuff, can we also have this old stuff too?” and it works out really well.

How was demo-ing RB2 to bands like AC/DC?

DT – We personally weren’t close to that, it was a much higher level, but from what we understood AC/DC really loved the game and that’s one of the reasons why they wanted to be in the game.

Nick - At the panel at PAX, you said Nine Inch Nails was one of the first major acts to contribute a song voluntarily. When was that in the process?

DT – It was earlier on, before we had any songs in Rock Band. He kind of knew what we were doing because he’s on the ball with this sort of stuff, and he wanted to contribute, which was amazing because it wasn’t even like us chasing him.

HW – And Izzy, one of our audio guys, loves Nine Inch Nails and was super excited to be able to work on those tracks.

John – Speaking of NIN, it shows the song choice present in the game – not just singles like “The Hand That Feeds” but deeper cuts get into the game…

HW – We really like to go after stuff that’s we think is going to be tactful. We want stuff that’s going to play well, but is also going to be meaningful.

Will we see longer albums, more instrumentals, or even double albums released as DLC?

HW – You know, it really depends. I wouldn’t rule that out as a possibility, and with the instrumental stuff, it’s going to make it easier to release certain albums. We probably won’t go too instrumental-heavy because it is a game for four players and we want to make sure that everybody can play everything, but at the same time it’s going to make it easier to put some stuff out.

But with the amount of content in the game already and due out this year and next, it’s different than if the first DLC album released was instrumental, right?

The mic ran out of batteries at this point - CRAP! - but Dan talked about the content and confirmed they would consider things like that. Dan then was asked about the accessories to the game, and while things like the wooden instruments, the Ion drum kit, Mad Katz’s stuff, and others are outside of Harmonix, they are coming and go through the company. Unfortunately they don’t control the release dates, etc. I do remember Heather saying she wished the 3rd-party microphone with the D-pad and buttons built in was at their office!

On the accessory note…what led to the stage kit?

DT - I remember when we first got pitched the stage kit, it was like “Okay, we’ve got this hardware (that they were also pitching), and also we’d like to maybe make a stage kit,” and it was like “Wow, that is awesome.” The kit is actually labeled a controller, so on the Rock Band 1 disc songs and all the DLC so far we’ve actually authored a fog track and a lights track. So all it does is send fog and lights out to the kit. It’s an Xbox controller essentially, because that’s the only way we can get the data out, so I’m sure you can hack it to get multiple machines.

Will there ever be add-on DLC costumes, instruments or venues for the game?

DT – I think if we do stages and new guitars and stuff it’s far in the future, right now we’re focusing on the content every week and it takes a lot of our time. Never say never when it comes to Rock Band stuff.

John – When playing through BWT, I thought about how cool it would be to work through, say, all of the venues in Seattle, playing Seattle band songs, until you get up to, say, Key Arena. Have you ever thought of doing, using real venues?

DT – (Not using real venues) gives us more range to craft that sort of story. It’s the same reason we don’t have real rock stars in our game, it’s because this whole thing is about you traveling on this journey. A lot of our venues are crafted to that as well.

HW – One thing we did when we were making up the venues was we tried to craft the location we were putting it in, in terms of art style and in naming and location. We tried to place them as realistically as possible while still giving you the fantasy.

DT – I don't think (licensed venues) really fits the direction we’re going. We’re trying to go more authentic then a carbon copy.

Nick had a question about the writing in the game; Heather did most of it, including for the loading screens, rock shop, etc. Dan confirms that the text during loading screens will return for RB2…but adding more to the game along with DLC songs?

DT – That was something we talked about. There’s a couple of technical things we’d have to get around.

How is working with MTV versus working independently?

HW – We kind of have a lot more freedom artistically, now we’re working on our own IP and can do what we want with it, which is awesome. I was there before MTV purchased us, and there’s been a real effort to keep the company culturally the same. There’s stuff now where we have to fit into their corporate mold, but it’s still really low key and doesn’t affect a lot of people.

DT – I think the big thing that helps us is it gives us this huge power to be both publisher and developer at the same time. Heather, as our audio producer, she is in-house handling all our DLC submissions and all the stuff that would be handled by a third-party publisher. Like this week, we had a technical issue, but because all our stuff was in-house, we can get content out this week. If we had somebody over in LA we had to talk to, it would be impossible for us to get it out.

John – How do you feel about MTV using Rock Band as a promotional tool?

HW – There’s room. We’ve got all kinds of content, and it’s good, because it reaches the mass market and it reaches more people than we could reach, which is kind of awesome.

DT – At the same time, it’s not a one-way street, we have control over what songs go in the game. If we don’t like the song they’re proposing, we say “no,” and if we do, then we say “yeah.”

John – What did MTV think about Boston? I’d think they’d be pushing bands like the Jonas Brothers or something.

HW – They do want to put a lot of new stuff out but they also have the same vision of what we do, and have a clear idea of what Rock Band is as a brand. I work directly with a lot of people at MTV and they’re incredibly awesome to work with and they really want the same thing we want, which is great.

How would you submit music if you wanted to get your independent band into the game?

DT – If you go to Jobs (on the Harmonix website), it pops up with a little Google maps box, if you click on the pin it has our address.

HW – Just send it to my attention, to the attention of Heather.

John – Is there any chance that music previously rumored to be released can still come out? (A couple examples are named, including “Received Your Letter.”)

HW – Well, with “Received Your Letter,” there were licensing hurdles we couldn’t get over, and we really like that song and really wanted to put it in Rock Band. Occasionally we may want to revisit stuff, especially if it’s stuff we already have authored. It’s like, it’s there, why not.

As far as the PAX Pack goes, those were my personal choices, actually. I love MC Frontalot, I love Jonathan Coulton, and I love Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. So, the fact that all three of them were playing at once and we could put the pack together was awesome. The Penny Arcade guys made those suggestions, and it was a total match. The Darkest track, “Shhh…,” was unreleased and they recorded it at the same time they recorded the rest of the album, “The Shadow Out of Tim,” and they gave us that track, and I was super-excited about it.

There was an announcement about the Japanese version…any updated news?

DT – Not really, no, that’s just the announcement – that we’re working with Q (Entertainment) on Rock Band Japan, those guys are incredibly awesome, incredibly talented, a great match. They know music. I can’t wait to see what comes out of there.

The big question you must get all the time, Dan, about Australia: What problems have there been?

DT – Anything you can imagine, actually (laughs). We’ve been working really hard for a very long time to get it out in Australia, we’re going to have some announcements soon about dates, pricing. Again, it’s getting licenses for all their songs, making sure artists get paid, we want to make sure we do it properly. We’ll announce it soon – very soon.

Any word on the future for the platform, and how the support for it will evolve or continue?

DT – (No comment on specifics, but…) At the same time, RB is a platform, we’re going to be supporting it for the foreseeable future. As long as we can see, yeah.

HW – Our schedule, we’re scheduled out to mid-spring. We schedule really far in advance. It shifts, certain weeks might not stay what we have them on the schedule now, but at the same time we have content lined up.

John – Any plans to go into different genres of music with the DLC in the future?

DT – I think we definitely want to go broader and wider on the platform. More regional content, more deep content for specific artists, more regional inside the U.S. content as well. I know we’ve hinted at indie stuff a bit, and we’ll have more announcements soon. I’ve been pushing for an Aus music pack for a long time (laughs).

HW – I don’t think it’s straining too far, we want to make it a platform. There are a lot of country fans in-house. I tested CMT Presents Karaoke Revolution: Country, and honestly, it’s a super-fun game. Singing country songs is fun. I’d like to do some of that content.

Will that content stay region free?

DT – I can’t promise it, but we’re going to do our best to make sure that everyone can play the songs.

What is the feeling at Harmonix developing what you can now as opposed to pop music games like some of the Karaoke Revoution ones?

DT – I think bands of all walks, but a lot of us play rock in our bands.

HW – There are people at Harmonix who love all genres of music. We’ve got opera fans. It’s a really broad base.

So the long and short of it, Rock Band isn’t going away?

HW – Nope (laughs). DT – It’s here to stay.

Big thanks again to Dan and Heather for demoing Rock Band 2 at Ground Kontrol, agreeing to an interview, and special thanks to Anthony and the crew at GK for throwing such a good event week-in, week-out. For more details on Rock Band Tuesday and GK, see groundkontrol.com. For more on Rock Band 2, see rockband.com and harmonixmusic.com.

PAX 08: The quick write-up

2008-09-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

The One Ups rock the stage on Friday night at PAX 2008. Photo by Doug Bonham

I'm tired, my body is sore and tired, and I drove back from Seattle to Portland today, but PAX 2008 was a great experience, as it was the other two times I have made the trek to pay homage to Gabe and Tycho. Well, it's never really been about kissing the ring and bowing at their feet, more like enjoying their hospitality and having them host the greatest gaming festival that can be thrown.

And it's morphing into that - 58,000 people can't be wrong, and the quality and content on display from exhibitors shows that as well.

Quick-hitting thoughts: Nerds smell; you can tell what somebody's doing at PAX by how well they dress; lines suck, but they're also great places to make impromptu friends for five (or 45) minutes; as my friend Tyler noted, a surprising amount of attractive females were at the show and not just dragged along by significant others.

Holy fucking shit, Starcraft II playable? NO WAI! Photo by Doug Bonham

There were a few games on display that I was not expecting to be at the show in anything other than video form. Mirrors Edge, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, Starcraft II, and Rock Band 2 were all playable - and all had fucking epic lines to play them. I suppose it's good that you, at least, could.

Be glad you can't see the guy in the Destructoid helmet's shorts. Photo by Doug Bonham

I went to a bunch of panels, especially ones about the video game industry and writing for it/with it/around it, and easily the best was the one hosted by Destructoid. Hilarious, mad-cap, and very informative, I've come away from it floored - and instilled with energy to go out there and get into the industry starting from scratch. I know I can do it, and I have some plans in mind that will all be revealed as soon as they're truly formulated. Until then, I'll keep off my feet and fantasize about living the dream.

Braid: Praise and damnation

2008-08-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of IGN. As if you couldn't tell from the watermark.

The praise online for Braid – the Xbox Live Arcade game that is part platformer, part puzzler, and part short story – has spread like wildfire. The game’s $15 price point clearly has not been a detractor, and the critical acclaim – a 93 rating on MetaCritic, the eighth best Xbox 360 to date – has rolled in.

I have it. I like it. I want to love it – but there’s something holding me back: the game itself.

There’s difficulty, and then there’s difficulty. Braid is not a controller-throwing, how-much-is-the-game-cheating game in the mold of a Ninja Gaiden or a Bionic Commando, games that require pin-point precision and have brutal standards that gamers struggle to meet.

Braid, though, is almost too cerebral, too spacey for its own good. It doesn’t preclude that its player is dumb – which, while better than hand-holding and too low a level of difficulty, steers in my opinion too far the other way. The game doesn’t hint nearly enough at the way to complete too many of its puzzles. My good friend and gaming colleague, Nick, insists I can complete this; apparently, the game’s creator, Jonathan Blow, has a taunt to players on a game guide that says, in short, “you don’t need a guide to finish this game.” And an integral part of the game’s control structure, the rewind button, takes the last-gen Prince of Persia’s “rewind button as small eraser” concept to its inevitable conclusion, even integrating it into a few different puzzles.

But I still get incredibly frustrated most every time I turn the game on. I’ve gone through every level by now – well, barring World 1 – and I’m still stuck on far too many puzzles. World 4, 5 and 6 all still are baffling.

Maybe I’m focusing too much on the negative, feeling too cynical about my gaming abilities. I just wish Braid left a few more hints about how to untie its knots, instead of standing there with arms crossed looking down at me.

It's a masterpiece - I just wish it wasn't so condescending.

Put me in, coach

2008-08-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

If I learned one thing from the coverage I did last week for the Trentonian of the Little League Softball World Series, it is that I am not a cynical sports writer quite yet.

I’ve been guilty of thinking that the TV production values brought to the World Series of both baseball and softball isn’t very healthy for the kids involved, but from what I saw out at Alpenrose Dairy (which sits right at the border between Portland and Beaverton) I’m fortunately a bit wrong about that. I was a bit peeved after the championship game because I needed to talk with the coach of the Robbinsville, N.J., team I had been covering, and I couldn’t get to him; however, it wasn’t because he was avoiding the press, but because the teams – including coaches and players – were all busy doing post-championship awards ceremonies.

I actually got a hold of Robbinsville coach Jim Freeman on the field right after the ceremony ended, as the LLSBWS staff was trying to rodeo all the fans, families, players and coaches on the field to engage in the world’s largest chicken dance. No, I’m not kidding. No, I did not stay, because I was on deadline. Whether that’s fortunate or unfortunate is not for me to say.

The above photo was from the semi-final game that the East representatives from Robbinsville, N.J. won; the photo below, after losing the championship game almost exactly a day later. Definitely a range of emotions.

Note that I said I interviewed the coach, not the players. I talked with some of the players after the game the night before – when they won to reach the championship – but out of respect I didn’t even think about talking to any of the girls after the game. It’s not because they’re girls – I would have done the same if I were out in Williamsport, Pennsylvania this week for the Little League baseball World Series – but because they’re 12 freaking years old. They’re not even college students, let alone high school students. After a pool play game, I saw a girl get pulled off the mound because she was starting to get tired as pitcher, get substituted out to shortstop, and missed a following play because she was crying about it. Sometimes you have to have a little sympathy about your subject matter.

I wasn’t just writing, I was also flexing my photographic muscles and shooting a sport I hadn’t shot before. It was fun; working around the limitations of my camera was an interesting challenge. Compared with the professional (or nearly professional) camera bodies some reporters and professionals were walking around with, I felt as if I was walking into a war zone with a squirt gun. Nothing like getting outgunned by gear that is easily $4000 more than my more entry-level setup.

As a photographer, I’m starting to understand the limitations to my gear and how it effects me and my work. There’s the obvious – I don’t have long enough telephoto lenses – but the other really big hurdle was my camera’s meager 2.5 frames per-second burst limit. Pro bodies push 6 FPS at least. That means you get that action shot instead of being just ahead or just behind the real moment that you need frozen in time.

At the least, though, covering softball reminded me that, yes, sports can still be fun and played “for the love of the game” – and that these top levels of youth sports have not sold out to crass commercialism. That a family and team of volunteers can still run the World Series is a wonderful thing in this era of sports-as-business.

All photos ©2008 Doug Bonham, with the full set available on Flickr available here.

This is what the Olympics needed

2008-08-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

Usually I'm the first to really groan about media over-exposure, but sports fans have definitely benefited from the expanded coverage available the last few years. Now out-of-town fans can watch their team, albeit for a premium, and people of looser morals and greater computer technical abilities have a good crack at watching most anything they want on the plethora of international streams on the Internet.

And this has only helped out the Olympics this summer. Between coverage on all of their affiliates (CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, Universal on HD, etc.), Americans have a great deal of Olympic coverage available on TV. However, the real ace in the hole is the online coverage that streams almost every sporting event that they can through their main online hub, nbcolympics.com.

Most of the fun of the Olympics is seeing sports that you don't generally see - not even on ESPN 2 at 3 in the morning. Not even sports that gain marquee attention most every Olympics - swimming, track and field, and gymnastics standing out - but stuff like women's weight lifting, or fencing, or handball. Or badminton! I watched some of that with my dad yesterday morning and it was awesome in HD.

Doug Bonham's Selected Clips

2008-08-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

Select clips from the Oregon Daily Emerald

Main index on dailyemerald.com

"Down for the count?", investigative sports enterprise feature, originally published February 27, 2008.

"The Ol' College Try", player feature, originally published February 21, 2008.

"Making the grade?", investigative sports feature, originally published February 19, 2008.

"How would you spend $100 million?", sports opinion column, originally published January 25, 2008.

"Alexander the Great,", player feature, originally published January 17, 2008.

"As Ducks seek national spotlight, history repeats itself,", sports opinion column, originally published November 1, 2007.

"'Bioshock' an all-around great gaming experience," video game review, originally published September 17, 2007.

"Sounds of fall ring out as Ducks open camp", sports news article, originally published August 8, 2007.

"After 26 years, baseball is back, sports news feature, originally published July 16, 2007.

---------------

Freelance work

"'Wasn't in the cards'", sports news story, originally published in The Trentonian, August 14, 2008. Freelance photographs also published with story.

"Robbinsville one win away from world title", sports news story, originally published in The Trentonian, August 13, 2008. Freelance photographs also published with story.

"Robbinsville rallies for thrilling win," sports news story, originally published in The Trentonian, August 10, 2008. Freelance photo also published with the story.

Not everything needs to be news

2008-07-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

I'm so utterly tired of one of the best football players of all time right now.

Brett Favre has created a hurricane of interest in the past few months, and the eye is now settled directly on Wisconsin. I think ESPN is running a news update every time Favre sneezes or goes to the bathroom (I think John Clayton is on that beat for the World-Wide Leader). He has single-handedly stolen all of the attention away from every other team in the NFL, which is almost unfathomable.

I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of the hyper-analysis of every move in this chess game, I don't care about every single detail, and I hate that it can hijack sports news coverage so easily. I hate that there's an almost-constant "FAVRE" ticker on ESPN. I hate that I'm writing this column.

With all due respect to all the incredibly talented athletes out there, please, please, please take your contract squabbles out of the media's eye. I just don't care anymore, and I'm sure even the most hardened NFL junkies are starting to get soured. If the people around Favre hadn't started squawking to the press, if Favre himself had come out and said "I'm going to go negotiate with the team and we'll talk when I'm done," if the agents hadn't whipped everyone into a frenzy, I'd have much more sympathy of the plight of the ancient quarterback.

As it stands, this is a black mark on his legacy and a sad way to keep a fanbase chasing its tail.

It isn't just the NFL that is falling prey to this. European soccer is rife with players going to the press and trying to work their way out of deals and hogging the sports pages. Manny Ramirez just earned about two weeks worth of press coverage leading up to his deadline-day trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's ridiculous.

I'm all for the freedom of player movement and in now way would I ever advocate to a return of the pre-free agency days, but come on, have some respect for your teams. I'd have more sympathy for Favre if he had kept the talk in the board rooms and between himself, his agent and the Green Bay Packers. As it is, it just stinks of attention grabbing, with the dogs baying for blood up in Bristol, CT.

I can't wait for real, meaningful football news to get started.

Why we play video games

2008-07-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

I love sports. This is not a secret. I love to try and play sports, but - shock of shocks - like 99% of the world, I'll never be good enough of an athlete to play at the top level. Kicking around a soccer ball in the backyard pretending to win the World Cup, or taking a free throw and imagining it's to seal Game 7 of the NBA Finals for my hometown Blazers; these sort of moments are dreams, and will be nothing more.

Or, hell, the dream of being able to play like this:

On my to-buy-and-read list: the biography of Pistol Pete, called "MARAVICH."

I can't do those moves. Certainly not in a game, and I'd probably pull muscles I never knew I had stumbling over myself trying even one of them on a playground.

Video games can help you live the fantasy, live the dream. I'm not going to pretend that spending time learning a sports game is even equatable to the hard work athletes have, but damn if it isn't satisfying to pick up a game, improve, and win virtual championships, titles, score goals, dunk a basketball, throw a long-bomb touchdown pass. It's armchair virtuosity at its finest. Make-believe to the nth degree.

Pile of Shame: The shameful update

2008-07-21T22:38:00.000-07:00

Woo boy, this whole "play through the games I need to finish" thing isn't quite going to plan.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is done and dusted, but that's the most I can lay claim to. I have put a TON of time in on both Forza 2 and Rock Band, but as for the rest...nothing. I thought about FFVII for a little while, but ended up putting Winning Eleven 9 back into my PS2 instead.

Forza 2 brings up such a problem I see a lot with games like this: there's a stretch really early in the game where you struggle and it's not much fun, then you eventually get a ton of money and have no motivation to continue. I can build a car for pretty much any class or race I want right now in Forza 2, but it's all a grind. Build best car for the class, smash through class, take winnings; rinse, wash, repeat.

Yawn.

Rock Band, well, is still Me vs. "Green Grass and High Tides Forever" on Expert. 'Still' being the keyword. I am undeniably better at guitar by now, and drums, too - I am, on Nick's recommendation, going through earlier songs and working on technique and trying to get 5 stars. Which is working...but I still can't get over the hill.

As for the rest of the games...well, to get into a bigger discussion about my lazy gaming habits, I tend to play the shit out of a few sports games and end it there. Winning Eleven is the prime suspect here; I must have 200 hours on WE9 on the PS2, easily. Somehow I can justify turning the system on for "just one game," which turns into a couple hours, guaranteed. I need to diversify!

As for the DS/GBA games I have, well, at least I have my Japanese denshi jisho 'game' out of my DS Lite, which is a start. Just need to find chances to take my DS along with me and break it out.

Sports game mentality and a review of NCAA 09

2008-07-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

I can’t help but get a feeling of déjà vu when I’m playing NCAA 09. No, not just because I’ve played the demo that was released on Xbox Live ahead of the game’s launch; it’s because there’s so much the same as last year’s version, and the year before that’s version, and on and on.

NCAA 09: different covers for each version. Xbox 360 gamers get former Arkansas running back and Heisman Trophy finalist Darren McFadden.

Sports gamers are really good at buying and playing the same game over and over. However, this becomes problematic when applied too liberally to the process of creating a sports video game. Tweak a few things, add some new features that can be slapped on the back box (or, gratingly, add back features that were taken away a year or two ago), update the rosters and uniforms and boom! Quicker than John Madden on a turducken, you’ve got yourself a yearly sports update.

Take, for instance, the home-field advantage system being advertised in NCAA 09. This was originally introduced in NCAA 06, and in the Xbox version of the game you could cause some serious havoc in multiplayer by jamming on the white button (I think it was L1 for the PS2). Controllers vibrate, stadiums shake, all well and good. After a two-year hiatus it’s back for 09 – and causes just as many problems. However, it’s being advertised as another new addition to the series for 09, when in reality it’s adding in a feature that was cut for the first two next-gen versions.

Further proof that more and more insidious people are working in PR, I suppose.

A sort of perfectionist streak regarding gameplay makes sense – sports are all about perfecting technique of a set game. Unlike going from the ice level to the forest level to the cave level in a platformer or RPG, the game stays the same in sports. It’s just the nature of the beast; therefore, an inherent part of sports gaming is the pursuit of perfection, of getting better, upping the difficulty, adapting, and growing.

But, unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily sell units on a yearly basis.

If the sports game market were to go the way some consumers and fans suggest – offer yearly roster updates for a small cost (as that’s really about 50% of the reason to buy a new yearly sports game) and patch in some extra features – companies like EA Sports would go bankrupt in a heartbeat. You’d buy a product once and it’d last the life-cycle of a system; that doesn’t pay the bills.

Who is #30 for Oregon? It can change from year to year, and that is a high priority to sports gamers.

However, the current system of roster updates, graphic spit-shine, a few new features and a new package for $60 is really a horrible thing for consumers. Yet, if you look at your Xbox Live friends list or on a thread on a forum where a bunch of your sports-fan friends are buying the latest and greatest, what are you gong to do? Stick to the older copy that nobody plays? Buy last year’s version for all of $15 from EB or GameStop as opposed to the new one for four times the price?

And this isn’t just limited to NCAA Football, either; since EA Sports bought the NFL license exclusively a few years ago, Madden NFL has fallen under harsh criticism, and despite competition, many sports games – including soccer, basketball, hockey, baseball, and golf – make minor updates to the existing game in their yearly iterations. Besides obligatory graphics updates and new rosters, there isn’t too much happening in many of these games – sometimes there’s a meaningful update, but it’s rare. Maybe two games last year – NHL 08 and FIFA 08 – made real strides to advance, improve upon and make revolutionary steps in their gameplay.

Why is it that sports gamers accept this? I have my theories on this. One, sports gamers are very often sports fans first, hardcore gamers second. I’ve got a whole other post’s worth of thoughts on why this separation exists, but that’s for another time. Two, because of this difference, the value systems of what is looked for in a new version of a game are completely different. Fans of all genres of games love “more of the same, but improved,” and that runs the gamut from Metal Gear to Halo to everything else. However, what falls under that “improved” tag for sports games is usually led by rosters.

Rosters are a huge matter to sports fans, because it affects so much of the game – balance, accuracy, etc. If your team in NCAA Football is missing it’s stud recruit, then you’re missing out on a player who’ll make an impact for four years. When I fire up my old copy of Winning Eleven 9 and see the default rosters for Arsenal, now four seasons out-of-date, I see very few players who are on the current team – and none of the ones who are still there are at an “accurate” place in their careers right now.

Without going into too much of a tangent, that’s why having roster updates mid-season is such a big deal for sports games – take Madden for instance. Last year, the Cleveland Browns and their starting quarterback, Derek Anderson, became one of the hottest teams in the league. Based on pre-season ratings, in Madden they sucked, especially Anderson, a journeyman backup quarterback who played college ball at Oregon State. Anderson got a huge bump in ratings, as did other Browns, and it reflected real life.

If NCAA had roster updates last year, the Ducks would have gone from average in the pre-season to an absolutely monstrous team – Dennis Dixon had one hand on the Heisman Trophy until he blew out his knee against Arizona State and was gone for good in the Arizona game. But, in the ‘basic’ roster, he’s rated only an 85 or 88 – far from the best player in the Pacific-10 Conference, let alone the country.

Maybe I’m thinking too hard about this whole issue, but from one point of view I see “horses for courses” – different types of gamers expect different things from their games – whereas, on the other hand, I see a line of sports-crazy sheep buying the product for minimal improvement and simply feeding the machine. But one thing’s for certain: until there’s a major change in the sports games business, companies like EA Sports and 2K Sports are going to keep riding the cash cow until the money runs out.

Ow

2008-07-08T23:01:00.000-07:00

Sweet christ my fingers hurt. It kinda hurts to type. I started trying to work on playing "Green Grass and High Tides Forever" in Rock Band on my Expert Guitar tour again tonight, the last song between myself and some sweet, sweet gamer points - not to mention being able to hold my arms high in victory over this goddamned game.

This is why I can never get through that damned Pile of Shame.

I am getting better, I am finding it easier to get through the first 70% of the song, but clearly I need to go back to practice the trills at the 72% mark some more again. That's Solo 2F for those keeping score at home. And when I've gotten through there, I get held up at Solo 2H's scaling zig-zags. I can't do it with my left hand on the regular buttons, and I keep fucking up every time I switch to the solo buttons down the neck.

I will conquer this damned thing, and soon. It will happen. But I'll have to put another two or three hours into it, easily. Easily.

For now, though, I'll sleep on it and wake up in the morning. If the fingers still burn, then that'll be a good reminder of what I have left to do.

Justifying losing money; or, how GameStop is printing its own profits

2008-07-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

Very rarely can you feel good about giving things up and getting much less for your money value than you should, but I honestly feel like that right now after a trip to GameStop to return some games for store credit. I traded in three games I'm not playing much right now - NBA 2K8, NCAA Football 08, and FIFA 08 - in exchange for $43 worth of in-store credit, which I turned into a brand new copy of Major League Baseball 2k8 and a scant $3 worth of a card.

In theory, selling games back to retailers makes sense. I had three sports games I didn't play much (and, in the case of NCAA 08, a game that was about to see its trade-in value nose-dive - its replacement NCAA 09 is due in a week, two max), the store gets to buy them back and re-sell them at a lower price then new, and it's a profit margin for the store. Makes sense, right?

The problem is the profit margins GameStop makes. They're obviously a very big company with many stores, but they're keeping themselves out of the recession, according to Forbes, by being in the second-hand market and making so much. In fact, from an article on Kotaku.com, GameStop is making 50 cents of pure profit on the dollar on their used sales. GameStop is raking in $650 million per year on used games.

I added to the 2008 totals tonight, even though my friend Nick and I got there just before the store was supposed to be closed - and even though the manager and the other goober clearly wanted to leave, badly.

So how is this $650 million made? Simple: mark up the price on hot used games, and quite seriously low-ball gamers on their sales. Like, "here's some lube, you'll need it" low-ball on the amount of money you get back (oh, and if you want it in cash, that's a certain percentage less that you get. It's a fucking racket).

Let's take my turn-ins for the night as an example. I received $43 for my efforts. I don't know the specific breakdown of how much money each was worth, but I do know that FIFA 08 was probably the most out of the three I got. I also got an extra $10 for turning in three "next-gen" (re: PS3, 360 or Wii) games, which is clearly another indication that three is the magic number. So, without bringing the De La Soul-style bonus, I got $33.

How much do these games retail for used from EB? According to EBGames.com (same parent company as GameStop), the PS3 version of NCAA 08 is $19.99 (no 360 version and the prices are usually the same), the 360 version of NBA 2k8 is $26.99, and the 360 version of FIFA 08 is $44.99.

GameStop paid me $43, including a $10 bonus, for games they will turn around and sell for a grand total of $91.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how $650 million of profit is made. Somehow, I can still justify it - I mean, those games were just lying around, right? Might as well get something new - but I still feel horrible knowing that I am nothing but $.50 profit on the dollar to GameStop.

sports are cruel

2008-07-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

Money makes the world go 'round.

Despite making no legitimate effort to find a solution in Seattle, Clay Bennett has weaseled a way out of the Key Arena lease for his ownership group and the Seattle SuperSonics will be no more starting next season.

Even though I'm a diehard Trail Blazers fan, I just can't be happy about this at all. Seattle has won a championship, the Sonics are the city's oldest sports franchise, and, oh yeah, there's stacks of evidence that Bennett's ownership group never attempted to reconcile their arena "problem." Never mind that Key Arena is less than 15 years old in its current incarnation (which is just older than Portland's Rose Garden, for what it's worth), and that it wouldn't take much to improve the arena to "current NBA standards," whatever those are.

I care, but it's frustrating. Sports are a business, and a rather expensive one at that. People want to make money from this. I get it. But after seeing the way Portland has turned around its franchise - namely, rebuilding ties to the community and not letting burned bridges stand in disrepair - and seeing Bennett and his set of flyover state carpetbaggers gleefully holding torches while they exit stage east, I can't help but get a bit frustrated by it all.

Oh well. I can rest assured knowing that, at the NBA owner's meeting vote back a couple months ago to let Bennett take the franchise to Oklahoma City, Portland owner Paul Allen was one of just two dissenting voices. The other? Mark Cuban. I guess my respect for the Mavericks' owner has gone up as well.

Goodbye, Sonics; I hope to see you again some day. And fuck you to whatever this franchise will be called from here on out. I hope they get a shitty nickname, it'll make them easier to hate.

Sony quoting Henry V? wtf?

2008-06-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

Sony just took something really cool and bastardized it. The current PS3 ad (featuring Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, MGS4, and Little Big Planet, and placed above via YouTube) has a voiceover of the famous speech from Shakespeare's Henry V in the background.

I...I don't quite know what to make of it. It's an awesome speech - I loved it when I was in a performance of that play in high school - and I don't quite know whether to appreciate the reference, or feel ashamed that Sony's taken something I know well and bastardized it.

More tomorrow on the Pile of Shame. There's some headway, but not a lot, sadly.

The Finals are here

2008-06-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Finals are here.

The Celtics have had NBA Finals expectations on their shoulders all year, and are now a game away from the title.

The NBA got its wish - not just the two best teams in the regular season, the No. 1 seeds in the Eastern and Western Conferences meeting in the finals, but the league's two most storied franchises - the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics - meeting for the first time since 1987. Not since Bird, McHale and Parrish faced Magic, Worthy and the rest of the Showtime Lakers in the Boston Garden and the Forum in L.A. have these two met, and you always knew if they met up this season it would be wash of white-noise and hype leading to the games.

Two things are keeping this series from being great right now: One, the Lakers self-detonating when it counts the most (aside from their Game Three win back home in L.A., which they even almost choked away in the fourth quarter) and two, disgraced former referee Tim Donaghy has raised his ugly head and the NBA is now fighting a PR nightmare.

It's almost only fitting that as the NBA gets its dream finals, accusations are coming in that there might be somebody behind the scenes pulling strings. Donaghy has apparently accused the NBA of influencing the referees, who in turn are supposed to influence the outcomes of playoff series - to try and improve ratings, it would seem. The crux of some of this is around the Kings-Lakers Western Conference Finals in 2002, in which the Lakers won game six to take it to a seventh game, which they won en route to the title.

NBA fans have been cynical about referees in the past, and many have conspiracy theories regarding the NBA front office that should earn them honorary tinfoil hats. Frozen envelopes, make-up calls after non-calls in games, doctored playoff series, refs in on it...all of it sounds too familiar, and where there's smoke there's eventually fire.

I just hope this doesn't completely cripple the league. That would be a shame.

-------

The world's best player, Man United's Cristiano Ronaldo, tries to lead his Portuguese national side to glory

The Finals are here. After a year and a half of qualifying matches, the European Championships - aka Euro 2008 - are upon us. A week gone, three teams have qualified after winning their first two matches, the first few uninspiring matches have given way to some scintillating soccer, and pre-tournament conceptions on the favorites have already been changed.

The Dutch are flying high and Portugal is strong, whereas the Germans have slipped up and Italy - current defending world champions - are in danger of going out at the first hurdle.

I've been watching the matches every morning, and I'm actually enjoying ESPN's coverage - shocking, I know. They're putting a real effort into improving their coverage, going as far as to hire Scottish commentator Andy Gray onto their team, as well as showing three games a day (one is repeated) and doing a studio show every night. They didn't even put this much effort into their World Cup coverage two years ago.

So far, for me, the Dutch have been the story of the tournament. With no in-camp squabbles, it looks like the Oranje are finally united. Their defense isn't outstanding, but with one of the best keepers in the world - Edwin van der Sar - marshaling the back line, they're organized, and they're incredibly dangerous on the break. They've scored 7 goals in two games - against the World Cup winners (3-0 over Italy) and runners up (4-1 over France).

Watching both these finals is an exercise in drama. I wish the NBA Finals didn't have two days between games, and I wish the Germans can get through their group to the knockout rounds of the Euros. I wish I was there, too - maybe I could pretend I'm Dutch for a few days.

Of frustration and fake plastic instruments

2008-06-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to accept your failures and move on with life.

For as much as I've played, become good at, had fun with and all-around enjoyed the "Instrument Protagonist" genre of video games - Guitar Hero 1 and 2 and Rock Band - I've never actually finished one of them on Expert. And, despite having just one song left right now in Rock Band on expert guitar, I'm no closer than I have been before.

Let's see. In Guitar Hero 1, I couldn't get past "Cowboys from Hell" or "Bark at the Moon." Guitar Hero 2, hit the brick wall at "Psychobilly Freakout" and just got stuck. And in Rock Band? The 9-minute-plus Southern rock epic "Green Grass and High Tides Forever."

Dammit.

I threw myself, fitfully, against "Bark at the Moon" for at least two hours before giving up - in one stint, mind you, I've tried it other times as well of course - and I'm doing much the same with GGaHT. The painfully frustrating thing with BatM was that I got to as far as 97% or 98% before failing. Nothing but frustration there.

I'm stuck at 72% or so on GGaHT, which is acknowledged as a sticking point in the song. There's another one at 84% and one in the 90s, I believe. Great. I have that to look forward to.

That's why it's on the Pile of Shame. I'm still working on upping my drumming skill, too - I just bought rubber silencing pads for my drums today, they work great. I'm working on high-level hard songs and starting up expert, but it's the expert guitar play-through that has me frustrated as hell.

At least Rock Band is insanely fun. At least it isn't unfairly frustrating, or the victim of bad game design - that's not the problem. I must stare into the abyss and see if it blinks back.

Sights through sounds

2008-06-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Death Cab For Cutie, The Roots, Atmosphere, Blue Scholars, the Rolling Stones, Nine Inch Nails, Daft Punk, Justice...what do all these bands have in common? New additions to my library recently. My taste in music is nothing if not eclectic, though it usually falls squarely along an indie rock/hip-hop binary, with a skew toward my native Pacific Northwest. I like to think that what all this stuff has in common is being good music; trying to understand any more behind it would be stupid.

Death Cab's new disc is rather good. I certainly like it, at least, making it a worthwhile purchase. My reaction, after listening through it five or six times, is that it starts out really well (so long as you're not overly creeped out by "I will possess your heart," the lead single off the disc that weighs in with a four-minute plus intro on the album), hits a real high note with "Cath..", falls off a bit, but recovers by the end of the disc. For some reason I like "Grapevine Fires." On the way to the Death Cab/Decemberists show in Bend last weekend, Nick thought it was an interesting song about wildfires (it sounds so happy, contrasting with the content), but that just immediately made me think of Bad Religion's "Los Angeles is Burning," a good song about SoCal in flames. It'd be good in Rock Band.

I don't think you could get more diametrically opposed to Death Cab as you could with The Roots. Their new disc is really good, and brings an immediate, brutal sound, but I think I'll get used to it. I'd forgotten how in-your-face Game Theory was until listening to it again with my dad on a road trip a few weeks ago; the first few listens to Rising Down are just like that. Then again, I would love it, because I'm a backpacking fanboy in the biggest way.

I'm swinging back into hip-hop, though. Right now Blue Scholars' new album is halfway through its first play, and I really, really like it; good soulful loops, much, MUCH improved rhyming by Geologic. I loved their disc from a couple years ago (fanboy moment: got my copy at Sasquatch two years ago, and they signed it for me, eep!) and this is spectacular on first listen. I have to love hip-hop like this from the Northwest, it's just a shame Seattle has a much bigger scene than Portland.

Atmosphere and the Rhymesayers artists are also in the queue to listen to more. I've listened to "Simply Leakage" far too much recently; time to find the proper albums. I'm working on that right now, actually.

Trent Reznor deserves some fucking love right now, but I'll save that for another post at another time. Needless to say, I need to listen to The Slip more because it's a free album from Trent that isn't five years after his previous recording. All of those things together are astounding to NIN fans like me, that much is certain.

Gaming thoughts tomorrow, and as a prelude, I think I'm going to work on that post while grinding through an RPG. I'm thinking of playing two right now that are on my Pile or should-play-again pile, but I'm just trying to decide which it should be...

A brilliant way to have your plans jump straight off the tracks

2008-05-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

I started out the Pile of Shame project with such good intentions. I wanted to play through games I already had, make good with my back-log, enjoy some good karma, discover some gems I haven't spent nearly enough time on...

Then something happened: I bought Grand Theft Auto IV.

Game, as we say, over.

I haven't finished Grand Theft Auto IV yet, but I've put more than 50 hours into this absolutely amazing game. As much as I hate to let a game off the hook so easily, I think it would be asinine to break apart GTA IV or complain about it's faults; sure, it has horrible pop-in in places, but few games allow you to drive for so far in such different areas without loading. The shooting is tricky, but with some learning and some p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e you can avoid death. Some of the minigames, including the dating and friendships, are kind of shallow, but what game has even ever tried this before?

Let's not forget the story, the scripting, the writing and acting. The story included in this game could easily be made into a couple season's worth of 30-minute TV dramas; the story arcs are incredibly well thought-out. The writing is amazing, the characters are all believable - okay, one flamboyantly gay character might be a bit over-the-top, but everyone else is very real. The player's anti-hero Niko Bellic is no saint, but he's trying; Niko's cousin Roman is a good man with bad gambling issues; other characters later in the game have such human writing that even picking them up to hang out is as enjoyable as the minigame of billiards or the quick comedy show.

Fuck. Yes.

I don't think you can blame me for losing track of the Pile of Shame given GTA IV. It's been quite the bombshell over the whole industry, taking over free time from everyone in sight (at least, everyone bar the Wii Fit demographic...).

That said, the Pile grows – just like a Katamari, it keeps rolling on and gaining steam. The two newest additions are courtesy of Nick: Burnout Paradise for the 360 and Psychonauts for the original Xbox (backwards compatible on the 360, luckily, unlike Beyond Good and Evil...) Burnout is just going to be played for fun, but I need to get through Psychonauts in order to keep hold of my Hardcore Gamer card, in all honesty.

On a small sports note: the Blazers are up to something tonight, apparently. I'm guessing it's the official announcement that Rudy Fernandez will join the team, but it could also be a trade or something just completely left-field and inconsequential. Also, I can't help but feel a touch smug about the Oregon State Beavers baseball team not making the NCAA Tournament this year. They're the first winner to not get invited back since 1991 - so there's a precedent! - plus they dropped the games they shouldn't have. Oregon's gotten screwed in years past (snubbed by the BCS and for the National Championship game in a couple of different one-loss seasons, the women's soccer team not getting an NCAA Tournament invite in 2006 after finishing second in the conference) so the Beavers getting screwed just seems so sweet.

The schadenfreude runs deep and smooth, yes it does.

the hard drive blues

2008-05-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

iTunes can be a weird program.

Those little exclamation marks means it can't find the file. This is because of one of two things: 1. it tried to play the file earlier this morning/last night while I was asleep and my old external hard drive, though it was plugged in AND turned on, somehow ejected itself; or 2. it was sweeping to see if it could read files while I was listening to the new Death Cab album (which is a purchase that went straight to my MacBook's *internal* hard drive and music folder) without my hard drive plugged in.

Hrm. All I really know what this means is, besides figuring out how to mass-re-import music into iTunes without clicking every single file in my library (10,000+, fyi), I'm going to be watching the Fry's ads a little closer this week. Time to invest in a new hard drive, I think.

Later that night.... What did I learn today?

-iTunes is a finicky program that loads its library on start-up, so that means if you've got the majority of your library disconnected...it won't find them. D'oh.

-MacBook superdrives that burn DVDs don't like DVD+Rs very much. At least that spindle was only $8 wasted.

Pile of Shame: Metal Gear Solid 3

2008-04-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

First, to get it out of the way: "Snake? SNAKE! SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!!" It's obligatory and would be impolite to not say, honestly.

I guess that's the power of Metal Gear Solid. It's truly a gaming enthusiast's series made with the cinematic enthusiasm of a Tarrantino, somebody who really wants to make art for art's sake. Ok, that last sentence might have been about as pretentious as the average MGS game, but where else does that happen regularly in gaming? Nintendo has its child-like innocence, and a other gaming series have their own trademarks, but nobody else does art like Hideo Kojima.

That said, I would call Metal Gear Solid 3 the best in the series. The first PlayStation MGS is groundbreaking, both in storytelling and in terms of its gameplay; the sneaking, the gadgets, the cardboard boxes were all unthought of before the game dropped. As well, the game's storytelling - the twists, the tricks (see the Psycho Mantis boss battle), the psychological drama - is unheard of compared to other games. Metal Gear Solid 2 was bizarre, with even more (and weirder) twists and turns in the story; MGS3 was a much-needed simplification.

Plus, MGS3 brought in some meaningful gameplay changes. Sure, the food and healing mechanics were kinda gimmicky, but certainly more interactive than just picking up a white box with a red cross on it and magically gaining health back. More importantly, though, the Subsistence version of the game implemented a much-needed overhead 3D camera, a necessity brought up by games like the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series. Also, the boss fights - specifically the dramatic sniper hide-and-go-seek with The End and the emotional finish against The Boss - were amazing. The story even made sense!

I was stuck at The Boss - my save was from last summer. It took five freaking tries to finally get her down and escape into the land of cut scenes to end the game. Well worth the time to finish off this amazing action game.

Especially as Grand Theft Auto IV is dropping tomorrow and could take my life away shortly...

the Pile of Shame: an introduction

2008-04-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

So I play video games - a lot. Unfortunately, a lot of the time I pour time into one game, all the while buying more and shuffling them to the back (for me, the 800-pound gorilla that always seems to take over is Winning Eleven, but that's another post for another time).

This is a problem.

Anybody who has listened to the 1up Yours podcast should be familiar with a specific term: the Pile of Shame. If 1up's Garnett Lee and company didn't coin the term, they certainly have brought it to the fore.

What's the Pile of Shame? All those good games you've bought but haven't finished.

I plan to rid myself of some serious shame here soon, and that's where this site comes into play.

I plan on writing about my experience of sifting and plowing through my Pile of Shame. I want to discuss why and how they're worth finishing, and talk about the process of playing through them. In some cases, it's going to be pertinent to discuss how they've aged - I do have a couple games on the Pile that are a bit older, so seeing them through a different lens is going to be interesting.

On to the pile itself.

From top to bottom, left to right: Rock Band, Forza Motorsport 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Beyond Good and Evil, Sonic Mega Collection, Ninja Gaiden Black, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Pokemon Diamond. These are all games I currently have that I haven't completed from one degree to another, whether that's stuck on a final boss or stuck just a few hours in. Fuller posts on each game will come later, but here's a quick breakdown on each game and where I am in them:

Rock Band: I want to finish Hard Drums and Expert Guitar soon; both are almost done, with only the infamous "Green Grass and High Tides" standing in the way on guitar. Should be done soon.

Forza 2: I've got PLENTY of single-player gaming left for this one as I'm only at Level 33 in my career. Long term project.

MGS3: I'm stuck on The Boss. I plan on tackling this tonight and writing either later tonight or tomorrow.

Shadow of the Colossus: Four colossi in to this brilliant game, I need to dedicate an afternoon and slug through it. Long or short depending on how long I want to play it for at a go.

Beyond Good and Evil: This critical darling is at least 1/3 done, but I need to dedicate ~8-10 hours to finish. Need to pull the ol' Xbox out for it too, dammit. Medium term.

Sonic Mega Collection: Specifically Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3 and Sonic and Knuckles. I want to tackle these all because I grew up chewing through Sega games and I honestly should have these done. Should be a longer-term one, playing through one at a time.

Ninja Gaiden Black: My controller is already afraid. Might have to be a 'start from the beginning' situation unless I already have a save for it on my 360. Will update status soon.

Panzer Dragoon Orta: As my friend Nick says, "It's a fun 90 minutes." I'll tackle it in an afternoon soon. Short term.

Final Fantasy VII: Put down the pitchforks, I know, I know. I'm stuck very early in this game. Very long-term project.

Zelda: Arguably the best in the series goes handheld. I've had it for a while, and been stuck in the first dungeon for a while. Longer term.

Pokemon Diamond: I have four or five gym badges already, but since I'm going to have my DS with me for a while (even if I go overseas) this is longer term and farther down the priority list.

Honorary list members: Guitar Hero and GHII (which my friend has borrowed and GH1 has all of two songs left to finish on Expert), and Half-Life 2 from the Orange Box (which I don't currently own but will when it drops in price...eventually). But since this is all about killing the existing list instead of piling on, these won't count for now.

Time to rid myself of some shame. Expect to hear about Snake in the '60s very soon. On to some serious gaming.

I turn my camera on

2008-04-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

*snap*

Managed to get a picture of my dog in what is known as "god light" coming in from a window. Photo by Doug Bonham

One of the greatest joys I've found the last few months is photography. What a brilliant idea it was to take Photojournalism in my last term of college; though it precipitated the purchase of a digital SLR camera (in my case, a Canon Rebel XT along with a 50 mm f/1.8 lens) and the class was a lot of hard work, it was terribly, terribly fun. I really love framing shots, capturing action, and doing things artfully.

Photo by Doug Bonham

I can't wield a brush to save my life, or create any sort of traditional art on canvas. I can't draw, I'm not great at using stuff like Photoshop to create images either...though I can edit them pretty well now, especially photos. But a camera is something I can operate, control, manipulate, and understand. I can make that thing dance; I know what I'm doing, at least at a basic level.

Oregon wrestler Zack Frazier. Photo by Doug Bonham

I've already got plans how to continue on with the hobby, and even possibly as a career. I'm firmly on the Canon side of the photo world, and would like to upgrade through it, but for right now I just need to keep shooting photos. Shouldn't be a problem.

Dust it off, shine it up

2007-12-11T00:33:00.000-08:00

Well, hello there. It's been quite a while - two full months. Sorry, I've been busy — between Duck football season, Rock Band and learning kanji I've had no time to write, which is a shame, because it's something I enjoy doing.

Now, though, I've found something that needs to be shared: I hate videos like this.

There was a whole thread at the GTX back in late 2004 and early 2005 that basically made me buy a PlayStation 2 and pre-order Gran Turismo 4. What was that thread? Photo mode screenshots uploaded. And not just any old photo mode shots, these were made by guys who knew what the F-stops and other settings mean on a real camera.

So, basically, they were the hottest looking thing evar.

Now you're giving me this? A speeding Japanese bullet train with a one-way ticket to the uncanny valley, down to the driver pulling on his helmet? (which looked accurate as, invariably, the guy's probably just 5'3", as all good racers are insanely short or are Boris Said.) How is my mind supposed to take seeing something like that?

The problem's not that the game is pretty. Oh no. It's just that I know where this all leads. Overspending on new hardware; a three-month fling with the game that ends up being not nearly as engaging as hoped; a distasteful breakup that brings up the same old complaints from the previous four games. Lack of good AI, questionable steering and handling feel, lack of customization, ABS on everything, broken single-player treadmill...etc., etc. I know all the problems, but when faced with a teaser trailer like that I get weak.

At least I can take solace in the fact that, knowing Polyphony Digital, if it comes out in 2008 it'll be in time for me to buy the Japanese PS3 version *in* Japan. That'd be kinda cool.

the more things change

2007-10-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

It's rather appropriate to talk about things coming full circle when I've got a head full of simple astronomy (thanks, UO for making me take basic science classes to fulfill graduation requirements!) and about half of what's been talked about the last two days involves mass and how things go around in orbits.

This time last fall, I was living with the decision to follow my Portland Trail Blazers and the Association - especially through the scope of places like Deadspin and that ever-wonderful hall of justice, Free Darko. This time last year I was living off Oklahoma win hangovers while reading FD previews of The Lig, and figuring out how to pronounce LaMarcus Aldridge. I was still grasping for hold in something new.

Now? Now, I'm trying to get out of learning mode and into the role of a sensei. I know my team inside and out; nothing is new and fresh, it's sorta played out. The rush of finding out about FD and reading a back-log of Shoals is replaced with the dull throb of a drip of material. There's no novelty factor.

But I've dealt with that before - it's just a different manifestation of a need to grasp onto a storyline in order to pay attention. I lost track of the Mariners when their season went down in flames; there was no story. Last season for me, the story was finding out about everything; this year, it's seeing how the Blazers improve, if any superstars will move (MARION WATCH WEEK THREE: ALL CLEAR ON THE WESTERN FRONT), how the Nuggets will do with a full season together, THE CELTICS, how Gil does, etc. This is, as the Masters of the Klondike always say, a league of stars and stars have stories to tell.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to avoid going out and buying needless, overpriced but infinitely cool basketball-style ware. Seriously - look at that jacket. I think one of my roommates has the original thing circa Goodwill. Meanwhile, just to fully finish off my FD love, I think I might have to go get a 'SWAG' t-shirt from the FD Outlet. Swag at a hundred and climbin', baby.

Meanwhile, the Ducks moved up five spots without even playing. WTF. Keep on keepin' on, guys. Don't stop to smell the Roses just yet.

joy and sadness

2007-09-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

Joy

Saturday reminded me of all that was good about college football and, by extension, sports in general. A scorching late-summer day, tens of thousands of fans wearing their school's colors (including those brave souls who dare tread on OUR HALLOWED GROUND in enemy hues), beers and burgers at the tailgate, the student section always standing and leading the noise factor, and - best of all - the home team, your team, blowing out their opponent.

The Ducks made a big push to earn even more recognition with their 52-21 blowout of Fresno State last Saturday. The same Fresno State team that took Texas A&M to the wall in three overtimes the previous week folded over like a house of cards in a hurricane against the Ducks. Even more impressive was the defense - not necessarily for the stats, but for their swarming, attacking style to pressure the line of scrimmage, harass the Bulldogs' quarterback, and shut down the run game. This was an almost-perfect game, and hopefully the team won't sit back on their laurels and pat themselves on the back too hard.

Sadness

A true rallying and auto racing legend died Sunday. Scottish-born rally racer Colin McRae passed away in a helicopter accident near his home in Scotland.

McRae - and his young son - both passed away too young (McRae himself was just 39 and still racing on occasion - his long World Rally Championship career had afforded him such a luxury as choosing what he wanted to do with his time). He was a licensed helicopter pilot and behind the sticks for the crash.

This was not the first crash in McRae's life - in fact, his nickname while still competing in rally racing was "McCrash." While this had a negative connotation, it also was given with reverence - YouTube clips abound showing McRae rolling his rally racer, kicking it back into gear and continuing to drive its nuts off. A few clips even include when he continued on a stage with just three wheels through the stage, where he could get the car fixed at the end.

Rally racing in general is hardcore - you have to be very talented and very brave to hurtle a four-wheel-drive car down narrow forest roads, sideways - and McRae was legendary for taking that stance even further. While some fans derided him for breaking machinery, those same people (and plenty of others) are heralding him for the dedication he showed in his driving style to press that hard, that close to the edge of adhesion.

Part of my auto racing viewing diet during middle and high school was WRC coverage on Speedvision (now Speed Channel), when Finland's Tommi Makkinen and Colin McRae were two juggernauts fighting for rallying supremacy. Makkinen in the Mitsubishi usually had the upper hand, but McRae was spectacular - seemingly in the lead or out of the rally. All, or nothing.

Racers like that seem to be fewer and fewer. Ayrton Senna was a god in that sense - he seemed to have super-sensory ability at judging that line. McRae may not have had as much ability as Senna, but by hell did he have more talent than most. Though he was moving more and more into the periphery of rallying and auto racing, he didn't deserve to pass on so early in life. He will be truly missed by racing fans and his family and friends.

Man, Greg Oden, why you gotta do a thing?

2007-09-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

Nooooooooooooooooooo. No, no, no, dear god why. Between the Mariners imploding, and Oden’s knee, man, I’m one bad Ducks loss from needing 24-hour suicide watch.

Promise. The excitement of the new “big three,” Aldridge, Roy, and Oden, lasted just three months before it hit its first bump. Well, maybe the opposite of a bump, as it involves the lack of cartilage more than anything else, and I don’t know if that’d categorize as a “bump” or a “dip.” I’ll check up on that.

But still. Sam Bowie. Arvydas Sabonis. BILL WALTON. Greg Oden? Dear god, don’t tell me he’s the next Cursed Blazers Big Man. Don’t tell me there’s a curse, period, because I’m going crazy enough trying to remain calm.

I’m trying to invoke Jason Kidd, Amare Stoudemire, and Oden’s current teammate – Darius freaking Miles – trying to realize and say yes, you can come back from this with time and the right work ethic. Oden has the work ethic – now he just needs time. He just needs time. It was just a small part of the knee, and hey, there’s nothing else wrong! Nothing else. Nothing else. Nothing…

Nooooooooooooooooo whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. I think I’m officially wailing over this right now, like some goddamned widow. My first reaction was a jaw drop; the next was just sheer sadness. Writers, like The Oregonian’s John Canzano and the ever-famous Bethlehem Shoals, are musing on the ‘why’ behind reactions like my own, and I think the answer is two-fold.

One, I’m sad as HELL I won’t have the chance to see him play. If he returns for next season, there’s a very good chance I’m in Japan for his rookie year, and that sucks. But the other facet is this humanizes the kid even more. Going through such adversity (especially with the way I’d imagine he’ll go through it) makes him a more sympathetic character, especially because he is apologizing for the injury! Remarkable.

So I’ll go dry out the tear-soaked Oden jersey I picked up earlier in the summer and relax. If Amare Stoudemire can come back strong, and Jason Kidd can put up ridiculous numbers (averaging a triple-double in the first round of last year’s playoffs? Nuts!) then I think a kid who can’t even drink, with a minor version of this injury and a great work ethic, will come out fine.

With some luck, we might all just get through this together.

new ish: kanye west "graduation"

2007-09-12T23:16:00.000-07:00

gotta love the art style for this disc

I wrote a while back about the mind-blowingly cool video for Kanye West's single from Graduation, "Stronger," which aesthetically ~~rips off~~ pays homage to the anime classic Akira and features a sample (and appearance from) French techno gods/robots Daft Punk. here's a link to the video.

Well, the whole disc dropped yesterday, and it is very, very good. Kanye's sound has changed up a bit on this disc - not only in the beats, where synths join into West's repertoire along with his patented sped-up soul loops, but also in the rhyming, with songs that blur the traditional verse-chorus-verse hip-hop structure and the usual number of lines (and quickness of their delivery) in the verses. This may not be new or even all that novel, but it makes the disc sound more interesting, and allows the listener to focus on the music as a whole, happily masking West's pitfalls on the mic.

Don't get me wrong - the man can turn a line or two. However, despite rapping about how he's in the top-5 MCs right now, five off the top of my head (Jay-z, NaS, Common, Talib Kweli, and Lil' Wayne - who appears on "Barry Bonds" on Graduation) rhyme circles around him. He's a great musician, but the next in the line from Rakim to Biggy to Jay-Z? Nope.

Don't let that get in the way of the fun, though. The lyrics go a bit more worldly and are a bit less personal than before, but West still works his way in plenty of times - not only on "Homecoming," his take on what Common did first many years ago with "I still love H.E.R." but also on "Big Brother," "Flashing Lights" and "Champion." The other fun new toy is the use of synthesizers to add to the layers of music and lend it a touch that must be making Daft Punk smile inside their robot helmets. It sounds like Kanye finally heard Discovery and went "that shit be ill," because on "Stronger" and especially "Flashing Lights" the disco/techno influence is heavy. Hand claps and synth bleeps punctuate the chorus, with faux-strings in the background of the beat coming to the forefront in the outro - AWESOME.

If Late Registration is his answer to a traditional Jay-Z album sonically, then this one sounds just like the album cover looks - bright, fun, explosive and full of color.

Give it a shot. While there may be fewer tracks that reach the heights of the last two albums, the whole album is high quality and sounds more mature and like it could have a longer lifespan than the previous two.

a weekend of highlights

2007-09-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

stop! hammer time!

reason my weekend ruled #1: the Ducks showed up for some serious work last Saturday. I don't think I can say much more that the big sports outlets can say, but I'll add a few brief comments on the two most important areas of Oregon's game.

1. Dennis Dixon came back from playing baseball much of the summer ready to play some football. Maybe his zen-like dedication to a shitty batting average taught him that failure is acceptable? Maybe Chip Kelly's offense suits him better? Maybe he's off (or on) some medication? Maybe everything just clicked? Who knows. I'm watching for aligned stars or seventh signs. I don't care how it happened, but he looks like he's captured his form.

Now, if you can come back to me in November and I'm saying the same things, then we'll be in business. Week by week, he has to prove he can still do it - the problem last year was meltdowns mid-season.

2. The defensive line looked like it could stop somebody for once. "We eat today, coach!" tackle Jeremy Gibbs yelled during a pre-game taped part about defensive coordinator Aliotti, and boy, did they. We all knew the secondary was going to be good, and I felt the linebackers would mature well enough this year. The question is the line, and they looked, err, questionable during the Houston game.

Now, they look like they can put up a serviceable fight. And that's all we need to lock down a lot of teams. If they can keep teams to ~150 rushing yards total in a game, I'm happy.

Highlight #2: Dreamcast Day!

I don't know whether this counts as a highlight or a holiday (or both?), but yesterday was 9/9/07, which marks the eighth anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast's launch.

Why is this so important to me, you might ask? The Dreamcast was the turning point for me. This was where I matured as a gamer - before, I knew what a fighter was, now I was learning move sets for Soul Calibur and Street Fighter Alpha 3. I also started to take racing games a bit more seriously...though honestly, I look back at Sega Rally 2 and Sega GT and shake my head. Test Drive: Le Mans has held up well, though, and still warrants a good play-through, even though somehow I lost my main data save but still have an almost-complete Le Mans race...whatever.

I also matured in my knowledge of games, gaming culture, and the industry. It's no coincidence I started reading EGM in 1998; it's no coincidence that was around the point I stopped paying attention to what the EB geeks were saying at the mall. This was also the rise of the Internet; I remember IGN Dreamcast being a daily stop (back when IGN was still worth it) and lamenting EGM's lack of online presence. Oh, how little I knew about the future. Anyways. Messageboards and news sites on 56K were how I learned what gaming really was, in 2001 I signed up on a forum that I'm still a part of the community for, and I haven't turned back since.

I have the Dreamcast to thank for me being a true, hardcore gamer. Beyond the great games, beyond the innovation, it's left an indelible mark on my life - it made me hardcore. For that I will always remember Sega's little white console that could and it's rather nine-ful release date.

BioShock: Post-finishing thoughts and splitting hairs

2007-09-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that BioShock has, in many minds, lived up to expectations and is considered a game of the year candidate in all circles. You know that a game is good when fans gripe about it getting a lowly 90% score from a website (Gamespot being the criminal in that one, if I remember properly). It's good enough to get almost the whole audience to say "YES!" when a fan asked if it was deserving the hype during the 1up Yours live podcast taping at PAX.

Here, Big Daddy, Big Daddy...I still hear your footsteps in my nightmares.

Yes, we all know it is a brilliant game. But as much as I absolutely love it, it does have flaws. First off, there's not enough of it. Okay, I know that makes me the typical greedy gaming fan, but it's true - it seems like the ending came very quickly. I went from the GREAT BIG TWIST (involving meeting Rapture's maker) to the ending in about four hours, and I was hardly rushing; maybe I feel like there should be slightly more conflict before the ending comes? I don't know. I have no problem with how everything wrapped up, it just seems like it comes too quickly.

the other real problem I found on my play-through is, at least on normal difficulty, once you get close to being fully plasmid'd-up, normal enemies become almost too easy, and the brilliant combat slips to being something of a routine. So you're still whirling around, doing about fifteen different things at once between plasmids, and turrets, and security cameras, and then all the damn splicers...but the chaos and scariness has sapped away. Part of this was due to being focused on a few specific enemies in the storyline (fuck the main bad guy, HARD), but it also was because I felt my no-name avatar had gotten too powerful. Especially once combat and other boosting plasmid slots open up and you have about three bonuses to health in the physical side and a few for the wrench in the combat side, life becomes a lot easier. In one particular section in Fort Frolic, I was one-shotting a series of spider splicers and though it was fun, it wasn't as straight-out frightening as combat is near the beginning when ammo is scarcer and plasmids are weak.

let me address the next point, as already discussed by The Escapist's "Yahtzee" in his online video column: Yes, you never really hurt for ammo, and those Frito Bandito-looking ammo stations are nearly fucking useless. Most every kind of bullet can be found lying around in the world, and any others you need can be made at U-INVENT machines with the other plentiful invention pieces you pick up. The only real limit to ammo is that sometimes one weapon - in my case it always seemed to be the damn shotgun - is out for you, so that means locking and loading with others (often the machine gun - I was almost always full-up on that ammo).

This just means that you can and will put the money toward buying Eve hypos and first-aid kits and trying to stay full on those.

Ok, so the game has some gameplay balance flaws, the enemies aren't always terrifying, the Big Daddies begin to go down easily...and in some cases some of the grand, earth-shattering ideas about new combat aren't quite as earth-shattering as possible. I mean, the trap bolts are only an inconvenience and are neon "FUN STUFF HERE ONCE YOU GET THROUGH" signs in the game, and I never set out traps for my enemies (others might, your mileage may vary). So it isn't 100% completely and utterly raw, unrefined awesome; somebody added baking soda to the mix so you're not getting the pure shit.

Is that such a crime? Maybe I'm sounding like an apologist fanboy, but this is still easily the best game I've played this year, the best single-player action game I've played since Gears of War (at the least), and easily the best story-driven game to come out since Zelda last year. It does 9 things brilliantly but falters on the tenth, so to speak, and though I try to not get caught up in the hype bearing on the other side and being too much a negative Nancy does the game a disservice. It is sheerly, utterly brilliant, an amazing experience worthy of the cinema, but provided better as a video game. I'm so glad I went out and bought it and supported what turned out to be an incredibly worthy piece of entertainment and, daresay, art.

PAX 07: Gamers set-up shop and launch a raid on downtown Seattle

2007-09-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

At least the worst traffic jam I saw all weekend in Seattle was on Interstate 5 heading into the city Thursday evening. That was due mostly to construction choking the city’s main artery down to just two lanes for traffic; however, after my experiences with the previous Penny Arcade Expo location in Bellevue, traffic concerns were legitimate.

Welcome to nerd nirvana - home for more than 37,000 gamers over the weekend of PAX

Thankfully, the wide-open corridors at the Washington State Convention Center on Pike street in downtown Seattle reflected the rest of the weekend: Great fun with tons of video gamers, and just enough space to be comfortable, enough choice to rarely be bored, and a great community of gamers, volunteers, artists and panelists to help continue lifting the expo toward becoming the top gaming destination in the United States.

Yes, this was the line to get in Friday afternoon

PAX has quickly become Mecca for those who love video games and live in the United States. It’s everything E3 was – access to new games on a huge show floor, a great sense of community – without the unnecessary booth babes, the booming exhibits, and the glam excess that plagued the show up until its euthanasia last year. What the show is packed full of is enthusiasm and a love of games – from the gamers all the way to the exhibitors, the press covering the event, and, of course, Jerry and Mike, the creators of Penny Arcade.

Freezepop rocked the fucking house on Friday night

This is my second time attending PAX; I went two years ago in 2005 (unfortunately not the Year of the Ball, but instead the year of mc chris. Sigh). The move to the downtown convention center was needed, in my estimation; even before the influx of fans for PAX 06, the Maydenbauer Center in Bellevue felt a bit cramped due to its design. Plus, the move symbolizes a move into the true big-time, from a suburb of Seattle right into the heart of downtown. Moving on up, as it were.

Rock Band, my precious and favorite game at the show

The wide-open exhibit hall was home to many wonderful things – personal favorites included Virtua Fighter 5 at the Sega booth, drooling at the rarities inside the locked glass case at the Pink Godzilla booth, the free t-shirts after the gameplay demos of Mass Effect, and of course Rock Band. Oh, Rock Band. Myself and three of my friends (including Nick and Dan) went around the line four times on Friday afternoon like it was some sort of carnival ride and we were 10 all over again. Having actually played it (and seen how badass the song list is, including new additions), I can say: believe the hype. It will drop, and we will all be blessed by the sheer power of rock.

Nick loves Rock Band and Parappa, can't you tell?

Highlights from the weekend not involving playing games include: the 1up Yours live taping (and meeting a few of the 1up staffers afterward); buying a DS Lite when I already had a ‘regular’ DS in my bag (worth it); sitting in a console freeplay room as Gabe from Penny Arcade was preparing to play a couple fourteen year-olds at Pokemon and they had no clue who he was; Freezepop and The OneUps playing live on Friday night and, specifically, hearing Freezepop end their set with “The Final Countdown”; the Phoenix Wright cosplayers:

Phoenix Wright cosplayers: SERIOUS BUSINESS

If I’m still in the country next August, I’m going to PAX – period. It has become a must-attend event, especially because I’m a scant day’s drive away. Thanks again to Nick for putting up with me on the drive up and back and Tyler for hosting us – the weekend was far too much fun.

Chilling out in one of the hallways of the Center

1up Yours live taping

college football season's ruthless return

2007-08-30T00:33:00.000-07:00

I think ESPN has finally jumped the shark and landed in the deep end: they are doing 25 straight hours of on-the-air live coverage to celebrate the start to college football season.

yeah, I barely believe it either. on the one hand, it's absurd; but on the other? AWESOME.

college football has returned; it only seems right for what is sometimes an absurd sport that ESPN would go to absurd lengths. Then again, what else inspires as much passion, spirit, pride and vitriol as college football? In the United States, absolutely nothing, on a regular, nationwide basis; sure, Yankees-Red Sox, Dodgers-Giants, Spurs-Anyone in the NBA, etc., etc....but college football rivalries and passion aren't limited to certain areas; it's nationwide.

as a full-bore West Coast homer, I can say with certainty that, yes, we care just as much as the South does about college football; maybe we just don't go to the same extremes as they do, but the passion exists. Nothing else quite gets the Northwest in the same sort of lather, short of a Seahawks Super Bowl run.

And now it has returned. I still have a day of putting finishing touches on The Emerald's "GameDay" football supplementals, and I have a wedding to take care of this weekend...but dammit, college football is back, and if our satellite TV isn't upgraded in time, I'm going to get pissed....and possibly unhook the satellite, re-hook some bunny ears, and hope I get reception.

by the way, I'd be a bad Oregon fan if I didn't post this:

Best. Clip. EVAR.

day late and a dollar short, vol. 3: shadow of the colossus

2007-07-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

I know this has most likely been said before, on numerous websites, and in a much more timely manner, but here goes: Shadow of the Colossus is a flat-out moving experience that is, for the first time, bringing a moral quandary into my video gaming life.

meet our hero, colossus killer extraordinare

I know this game came out forever ago, I know everybody raved about it, but I do have a hard time pulling anything that isn't Guitar Hero or Winning Eleven out of my PS2, so grant me that. And I didn't want to do the game a disservice - I wanted to play this like one would pray at an altar, so it needed to be a special environment and a quiet, focused time.

for those that don't know, the game is an adventure-platformer that, in the strictest gaming terms, doesn't have levels, just massive, incredibly interesting and intricate boss fights. Cut scene, find the boss (including some adventuring on horseback across country and some light platforming to get to some of the bosses), figure out how to stab the boss' weak points, rinse, wash, repeat.

except the developers (who also made another art-house gamer favorite, Ico) do SO much more with the formula than that sounds. You play a warrior who is trying to revive his deceased princess and is listening to the voices at a holy shrine, who tell him to go slay colossus after colossus...presumably in order to revive her.

to kill, or not to kill, that is the question

herein lies the problem. This isn't going out to collect all seven tokens in order to revive her; you must actively slay these gigantic, screen-filling, peaceful colossi in order to make that Phoenix Down work on your girl. I'm three colossi in, and each has ended with my character climbing to the top of the colossus (who is rather eerily trying to shake you off the entire time; your character's grip meter is what makes this whole thing interesting, because you can't hold on forever) and stabbing it in a weak point atop its head.

I would do anything for love, but would I do that? Would you go toe-to-toe with a bear and stab it in its head? The bear is much smaller than the game's colossi, but you get the point I'm trying to make...

...especially when that sort of thought process is backed up by what happens to your character after each colossus dies: a guilt trip. Not only does the thing breathe its last in a wonderfully epic manner, a sort of series of black tentacles of the thing's soul reach out and take your body over, you see tunnel vision, get the option to save, and your character black-out returns to the main shrine, where a few shadows stand over his passed-out ass. Last time after I saved, it was three - the number of colossi I'd slain.

I was told after this game came out that my friend Peter went on a binge, played all the way through it in a day, and saved right at the last boss, trying to decide whether he wanted to go on or not. I don't remember if he finished off his save or not, but he had one of those moments where his conscience took over.

I absolutely love that a few games are doing this now. More need to. Shadow of the Colossus is so simple in terms of gameplay (though the colossi are all fun to figure out the "trick" to, and just as fun to actually battle); fighting the most recent one, I could feel my mind switch from itchy-finger gamer mode to "oh my god what am I doing" story mode. It hurt, and it was very engaging.

I like that sort of engaging.

Underrated albums No. 2: Daft Punk, Discovery

2007-07-19T01:39:00.000-07:00

I promised, and now I deliver: not only another “forgotten album” post, but one on something that covers more than one aspect of my personality. This would happen to be….Daft Punk’s Discovery.

seriously, the more I think about it, the more I like the robot-style headwear that Daft Punk sports

This is about as perfect as a techno album can get; Discovery and the Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole are absolute transcendent classics. It’s a great dancing album, it’s a great party album (throw on the opener, “One More Time,” and you’ll get the girls back alive in no time…though it does drag in the middle a bit), it kinda lacks when driving around because some of the songs rely on softer tones, but on headphones walking around, working out or doing homework this disc is brilliant. (Heh, Homework. Sorry, I amuse myself).

The pacing is almost perfect, and though only a few songs really stand out as singles, the others flow perfectly together and seem to speed up time in a way. Sure, the two noteworthy singles that are well known in the US – “One More Time” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” – both really pop out of the album and make their presence known, but four of the deep cuts stand out well and the rest of the album is incredibly well done.

These four songs – “Digital Love,” “Superheroes,” “Something About Us,” and “Face to Face” – are just as key as the two singles. “Superheroes” is a wonderfully rising song, and “Face to Face” has a solid backbeat behind an interesting stuttering harmony and singing. But it’s “Digital Love” and “Something About Us” that stand out – as, fittingly enough, beautiful love songs. “Digital Love” is a lament that a love affair was only in the singer’s mind, rising to a roboticized guitar solo, and “Something About Us” is a beautiful little love poem.

Interstella 5555: epic, and full of blue people

Even better, this album isn’t just an album – some may know about the singles from the album being turned into anime music videos, but little do they know, the whole disc was turned into an anime movie called “Interstella 5555.” I haven’t seen it all the way through yet, but, yes, it weaves the music through the plot (ala The Wall, but not, err….fucked up) but with no dialogue and minimal sound effects. “I5555” features art design by Leiji Matsumoto, best known for his work on the seminal late ‘70s anime series “Space Battleship Yamato.”

I just recently found a "Sample Wednesday" by a website that provides a lot of the tracks sampled to make Daft Punk songs, and all the songs from Discovery are accounted for. I honestly can't believe Barry Manilow got sampled by Daft Punk, but there you go. (tip of the hat to palmsout.com)

now, excuse me while I go listen to "digital love" one more time (...that was unintentional, by the way).

goodbye, sweet prince

2007-07-10T23:33:00.000-07:00

so, as I've documented elsewhere...my Xbox 360, it is dead, from the dangerous cirque du rouge virus. This happened almost two weeks ago, and after calling Microsoft support last Monday, swallowing a $140 charge, joyously celebrating last Thursday when it was announced that the warranty was extended by two years for problems like this, then waiting all weekend for an empty box...I finally got it today.

it's just a box...

for your princely $140, Microsoft sends out an empty box with instructions (basically, "take out games, take off hard drive and faceplate, unplug and put it in here like *so*" and how not to be a fucktard about applying a UPS label) and shipping supplies to get it back to the repair center in Texas.

I think I got it, but thanks for the instructional help, guys.

so. into the plastic baggie it went, on went the foam blocks, and once that got put in the box, out comes the supplied packing tape. Sharpie on the UPS label, add on the new label right on top, and my 360 will soon be going, going back back to Texas, Texas. As soon as I find a UPS store here.

Over-under: will I get my sweet, sweet, broken console back before the Penny Arcade Expo in late August? I don't know. I don't know, but I'm not completely keen on the under.

goodbye, sweet prince.

A letter to the video game industry

2007-07-10T01:43:00.000-07:00

Dear video game industry,

As they say on radio shows, "long-time listener, first-time caller." I've been a fan of yours from the sidelines for many years - since childhood, indeed - but haven't thought it necessary to write in to you like this until now.

The king is dead; long live the king

We all know that you think you did the right thing when E3 was killed off last year...and I think many of us on the outside looking in will agree, on paper at least, that it was the right move. However, in its wake (literally - that's a party this week held by a company - and figuratively), there's an enormous chasm.

You see, E3 had a certain....oh, pomp and circumstance? Yeah, pomp, circumstance, and a flash-flood of light, color, sound and fury that would overrun poor Los Angeles for a glorious week in early May every year. It was like christmas for my friends and I growing up; through high school, we'd check in multiple times daily to see what news had broken. Hell, last year, I watched the Nintendo keynote speech online! What progress, and what importance at the same time!

But now, this year, it lacks the bombast that comes along with booths stocked with game demos and bored 'models' or 'actresses' hired to cosplay for a day or two and take photos with mouthbreathers. Sure, the journalists probably will be able to do their jobs better without all the lights, glitz, and distractions (including the flocks of extra people who somehow ended up with credentials), and the parties will still be held, but it's not the same. Now you're just a conference being held in a hotel in L.A., and that's no fun if there's no yiffing around (check out the pictures. Yowza.)

Why is this important? Because only *now* is technology catching up to what was the most overbloated, slightly unnecessary show in entertainment. What once could only fill out a two-page spread exotically in EGM in a couple of months can now be broadcast 24/7 by somebody like G4, so that gamers truly get the idea they're there. Why kill off the greatest show on earth under those circumstances? It doesn't make complete sense.

Ah well. At least we've got our PAX. Plus, you guys never let us in to E3 (well, not legitimately, anyways).

P.S. the 'new' format is even scaring 1up staffers. Come on, that's gotta be worth some change. Think of the precious 1up staffers here!

-Sincerely,
One gaming fan

I think I'm ready for this 'Graduation'...

2007-07-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

everybody has their own likes and dislikes. This is just the nature of the world. Let me break down a couple of my likes, aesthetically, here right now:

-Daft Punk's "Discovery" album (I think a post on that in the near future is due);
-Good, smart hip-hop;
-Japanese stuff, including (but not limited to) anime and 'cyberpunk' movies and TV shows.

well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kanye West's new single "Stronger"...which samples the French techno artists' "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," is pretty well written, and....has a music video that is basically an homage to Akira.

yes, that's really Daft Punk. Yeah, they're kinda weird.

Yeah, that's a fastball right in my wheelhouse. I think I'll keep that Firefox tab open so I can watch it again tomorrow morning. That's the stuff.

I know my friend and Daily Emerald cohort Matt Sevits will hate me for it, but...I like Kanye West. Yeah, some of the shtick is played-out, and it definitely can be shtick-y...but when it's new, and hasn't gotten really stale, it's good. And fresh Kanye is always good.

even the single cover art is cool and Japanese

The question is: will this be a hit or a miss long-term? I'll probably want to buy it now; will I regret that decision once the song is off radio and MTV, and I stumble upon it in my iTunes library in two years?

It sounds like it could be worthwhile. The beat is, as always, very good, but the rhyming is a bit more mature. He's never going to be Jay-Z or Biggie; nobody will. And, granted, there are a couple songs on each album (more on Late Registration than College Dropout) that stand the test of time; Kanye seems to still be developing and maturing, which means he gets better with each album. Hopefully this album reflects that, and the single certainly sounds like it could be.

TETS....urr....KANYEEEEEEEE!!!

At the least, though, it's the first Hype Williams video I've enjoyed in a long while. Something about the video subconsciously "clicked" the first watch-through, then when I went to it again I had the "OH SHIT" light-bulb moment. Lights streaking off the cylces? The nurse coming into ~~Tetsuo's~~ Kanye's room, and him stumbling out with shrouds of bedsheet hanging off his head? YES. So very good. Too bad the katakana scrolling across the screen at times makes NO SENSE (except the soldiers' "GYAAA" when they get attacked near the end).

(and now I want to watch Akira...)

around the horn, sports edition

2007-07-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

so a sports-specific update: lots has been going on (and I've been writing about a good deal of it), so let's cover some bases and update some stories...

Mariners defying all odds, now just 3.5 games out

Or, "maybe I should ride the Mariners hard in columns some more." I wrote one hell of a worried column about the Mariners last week, and what happened after that? 8-game win streak (!), one of my two season wishes comes true and Hargrove resigns (!!)...and then they regress to form, get kicked in the balls twice in KC but JARED FREAKING WASHBURN shut out the Royals to get the last game of the series today.

This is where I raise my hands in futility, say "fuck it" and put my Mariners hat back on. You know, I'll take winning 9 out of 11 - including eight straight against two of the top teams in the AL, the BoSox and the Blue Jays - no matter how it happens. All I want for it is to keep happening.

Oregon explodes, Rip City is back

I believe I called this one. Okay, that's not exactly a call, as much as it is a written orgasm, but stick with me here.

The point is that not only do I as a person who's a Trail Blazers fan (not to mention a fan of my hometown - PDX 4 LYFE... or something like that) feel excitement from this, but I can sense it welling up and coming to a head in Portland. The city's opinion about the team has completely turned around in a two year span, and I simply can't believe it. Now I want to buy a Blazers jersey; now I'm proud to be a fan of the only pro sports franchise in the state.

I just can't wait for the ride to start in early November. Gotta get to a few games next year for sure.

Hello, goodbye

Just as I've welcomed one massively talented star onto one of my teams, another takes off searching for pastures new. Yep, Thierry Henry - one of my all-time favorite athletes and one-time captain of my soccer team, Arsenal - has taken off for Barcelona.

I harbor little ill will. He's done so much for the team, the team has done so much for him...it's just saddening is all. Maybe I'm the nostalgic type who wanted to see him finish his career as a Gunner, but hell, what else does he have to prove here? I don't know. I don't know.

It's like dealing with a bad break-up...you're never quite sure how to feel afterwards. I doubt, however, that if he were to return to ~~Highbury~~ Emirates Stadium next year in a Champions League match, he'd get the same reception as Ken Griffey, Jr. got in Seattle a few weeks ago.

How the hipster communes with nature: The Sasquatch! Music Festival

2007-06-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

The view at Sasquatch - both on to the stage and of the surrounding Columbia River gorge - is best when it's shared. Photo by Doug Bonham

The one thing you must remember before going to any concert is your ticket. This is a rather simple rule to follow, and a vital part of the experience. As the night of Friday, May 25 inched toward the witching hour and my car hurtled down Interstate 90, cutting down the highway through the Cascade Mountains, it didn’t matter that I put myself and my friends an hour and a half behind schedule. I left my tickets for the sixth-annual Sasquatch! Music Festival back in my traveling companion Tyler’s Seattle apartment. The extra gas my car used stung my wallet, and the ignominy of the mistake stung my pride, but there was something greater to focus on: the two-day concert festival and a lineup of great bands under the wonderful, springtime Northwest weather.

After driving into the campgrounds of the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Wash., approximately 150 miles east of Seattle, Tyler and I set up a tent, drank a beer in celebration of arriving and fell asleep, prepared for the festival’s arrival. It certainly is something to prepare for, between the epic scale of the amphitheater and the task of getting to it in the first place. After that long drive from Seattle into the campgrounds, one must walk a half hour down a dusty trail through rolling farmland, past the campgrounds of fellow concert-goers, and up into line to enter the amphitheater. Tread farther down an asphalt path that snakes past vendor booths and the “Wookie” side-stage, and one finally crests the hill of the deepest edge of the venue’s great grassy bowl and can take in a view that is as breathtaking as any of the performances held on its main stage.

Welcome to the Sasquatch Festival: The running of the concert-goers after the gates open Saturday morning. Photo by Doug Bonham

This is fitting because the ample crowd – making the 20,000-spectator capacity amphitheater seem rather cozy all weekend long – isn’t just at the Sasqutach Festival to enjoy live music, they’ve come from all around to enjoy a spectacle: surviving a weekend without showering, imbibing in the campground, seeing a plethora of tattoos under the Northwest sun, and overpaying for amphitheater food is included along with the music.

The first Sasquatch Festival was in 2002, and since then it has grown into a large, multiple-day and multiple-stage concert festival. In 2006, the festival added a six-band set on the main stage Friday evening onto the full three stages worth of bands on Saturday and Sunday. The festival always features an eclectic lineup slant toward indie and alternative rock, singer-songwriter groups and alternative or underground hip-hop acts; the 2006 lineup reflected this, including such diverse headliners as Nine Inch Nails, the Flaming Lips, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and Beck, to name but a few who graced the main stage. Though the scope drew back in for the 2007 festival, held over the Memorial Day weekend of May 26 and 27, the headlining acts – Bjork, the Arcade Fire, Interpol and the Beastie Boys – had just as much star power, and the side stage lineups held many quality smaller artists and local favorites.

Representative of the local music scene in the Northwest, many of the best local artists from Portland and Seattle traditionally earn side stage slots, and this year was no different. Seattle artists Minus The Bear, The Long Winters, Common Market, Tacoma’s Neko Case, and Portland groups the Dandy Warhols, Stars of Track and Field, the Helio Sequence and Viva Voce all performed at Sasquatch. For Anita Robinson, the lead singer and guitarist of Viva Voce, just being at the festival this year was a goal; performing was even better. “I’ve been wanting to go to Sasquatch, but it seems like we’ve always been on tour,” Robinson explains. “Plus, getting to play is really exciting.”

Viva Voce: Portland-based duo played a powerful set in the Saturday afternoon sun. Photo from vivavoce.com

Though Viva Voce – which includes Anita and her drummer, co-vocalist and husband Kevin Robinson – have recorded four albums since forming in 1998 and toured extensively, including to Europe, Robinson still represents her adopted hometown, which sparked interest in the festival. “I just know I wanted to be a part of it because it’s a northwest festival and we’re a northwest band, this is our home and we want to be a part of what’s happening,” Robinson says. “I think it’s cool the way it worked out, whoever put the lineup together has a real sense of what Portland bands and Seattle bands and national and international bands would work together.”

Work together they certainly do. Fans gather at the gate to enter the amphitheater early Saturday morning, with many people leaving the campgrounds by 10:30 a.m. to make the trek to the entrance, where security guards search bags for contraband, including full and opened water bottles or soda can or my friend Tyler’s cigarette pack. Though side diversions exist on the outskirts of the stages, including booths presented by Major League Baseball, local Seattle radio stations 107.7 The End and 90.3 KEXP, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console, concert-goer focus aims solely on the stages and the main stage in particular.

Blackalicious rocked the house early on Sunday afternoon with their live set. Photo by Doug Bonham

With the most well known artists taking the stage throughout the day, a Sasquatch-goer could hypothetically get a great show solely by parking themselves on a blanket on the grassy bowl of the main stage, breaking only for brave trips to the portable toilets. Saturday main stage highlights include the party atmosphere of Ozomatli and Manu Chao, the folky indie rock of Citizen Cope and Neko Case, the rampant energy of The Arcade Fire, and the eclecticism of singer Bjork, whose trademark piercing voice struck like lighting around the amphitheatre. On Sunday, hip-hop group Blackalicious wowed the main stage crowd, early ‘80s hardcore pioneers Bad Brains followed them and alternated between lead singer H.R.’s solo-recording reggae tunes and the band’s trademark whirlwind punk rock. After Bad Brains, the Polyphonic Spree had their set cut short due to high winds.

The Sasquatch Festival is no stranger to bizarre weather – in 2006, Neko Case ended her set when a hailstorm of significant magnitude poured down for half an hour. That also delayed the day’s show for nearly two hours, and left many a concertgoer soaked to the bone; some returned to the campground to change, some bought merchandise to add a dry layer, while others reveled, including a group who sledded down the grassy bowl. The 2007 festival’s high winds did not leave anyone soaked to the bone, though it did cause Sabzi, the DJ for hip-hop duo Common Market who performed on the Yeti side stage at that time, to use abort using his turntables.

The Beastie Boys' Sunday night set divided opinions. Photo by Doug Bonham

Common Market was not the only good act to see on the side stages this year. The Beastie Boys, who closed the show from the main stage Sunday night, played an instrumental-heavy set on Saturday at the Wookie side stage to a packed audience. Dressed in sharp three-piece suits, sunglasses, and the wisdom that comes from their years of performing, they did not disappoint in either show – though some fans, including Tyler, grumbled about the song selection on the main-stage show. He ever-so eloquently stated walking to the campground that night, “People there were expecting old-school Beastie Boys, not instrumental masturbation.”

The Slip performing on Saturday at Sasquatch. Photo by Doug Bonham

Boston’s The Slip performed early Saturday at the Wookie side stage as well. The three-piece band, formed by Andrew Barr on drums, his brother Brad on guitar, piano and vocals, and Mark Friedman on bass and guitar, ripped enthusiastically through their set, which featured many extended solos and trips into the realm of jamming. Andrew Barr always looks forward to the festival performance experience, and explains, “I think the biggest opportunity is to get out of that tunnel vision of touring (on your own).” Barr also looks forward to the social side of the festival for bands; finding out around a campfire or over a bottle of wine that musical peers have the same inspirations, Barr says, is a liberating experience. “That’s why we went on the road with My Morning Jacket,” he says. Robinson agrees, adding, “Usually there’s a lot of guys wearing shorts trying to bark at you and telling you to hurry up…It’s the kind of thing where you think and feel like you’ve survived something together. We’ve got some really good friends from shows like that.”

Shows like the Sasquatch Festival offer an experience for everyone – musicians and fans alike, through the good, bad and the ugly. Despite the high winds (as host and comedian Aziz Ansari implied the crowd to yell, “Fuck the wind!”), high food prices ($10 for a 24-ounce beer!), strange campground neighbors (Tyler remembers the drug-dealing ones next to us shouting one morning, “DO YOU REALIZE THERE ARE PEOPLE IN ALL THOSE TENTS?”), it all seems to be worthwhile on the long drive back from central Washington. Even if the heat burns you to a crisp, the bands kind of let you down, and you have work Tuesday morning, at least driving back home on Memorial Day, it is impossible to forget your tickets.

HELL YES

2007-05-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

He looks like a 40-year-old...he's dominated the college game WITH HIS OFF HAND...and he's younger than me...

(image from trailblazers.com/nba.com)

THE BLAZERS WIN THE DRAFT! THE BLAZERS WIN THE DRAFT!

MOTHERFUCKING GREG ODEN WILL BE A BLAZER!!!!!

NOTHING can take this away from me right now. NOTHING.

can't we all get along?

2007-05-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

Two logos, same school, very different meanings

There is a metaphorical and literal divide here at the University of Oregon between the academic and athletic sides. Divided by close to a mile's walk and a river, the main campus and the athletic department housed near Autzen Stadium epitomize an argument being made all across the United States in large colleges and universities: Are athletics more important than academics to a university? Should they take a precedent?

Yes and no. Yes, as athletic department budgets have skyrocketed (Oregon's budget has increased from $15 million in 1994 to more than $41 million this year), obviously the importance of top athletic departments (and, let's face it, that means the profit sports - football and men's basketball) are very important as marketing tools and ways to keep alumni involved. No, athletics are not more important than the studying being done on campus, but it is in my honest opinion as a college student that professors have FAR more important things to worry about distracting students than a football game during dead week.

It is indeed over games during "Dead Week" (specifically the weekend right before finals hosting the annual Civil War game against Oregon State, moved there due to a game being moved to Thursday night for television schedules) that the argument has returned to the spotlight on campus. And my view echoes that of many other students: this isn't the end of the world, as many professors have thought, and won't mean the end of academic credibility; let's face it, college students will find ways to distract themselves from studying for finals. Hell, it was my opinion freshman year that if I didn't have a Monday final or paper due, that was just one more day for partying - bonus!

And let's throw any argument of "retaining academic purity" (or anything along those lines) for
the student-athletes right out of the window; not only do they have much more academic help than the average student, for many of them they are athletes first and students second. This isn't to say that all of the players on the profit sports aren't here to get an education, just that the reality of college sports has shifted some priorities; not bad, not good, just different.

However, it is a worrying sign, especially here in Eugene. While there are signs that show that alumni who donate to athletics also donate to academics, the fact that it seems influence is being wielded by a select few is worrying. It's always worrying in any other facet of life, but in such a vulnerable time and place things could turn ugly soon.

I understand that it doesn't make professors look quite as good to their colleagues when the priorities seem to shift like this; however, the focus needs to be more on students - the ones who come here to get an education, and a very good education it is still - and the reality is that major athletic programs only add to college experience and can never take away. If a student can't get their act together around the Civil War game for finals week, they wouldn't be able to get their act together when left to their own devices to find a means of procrastination; the problem isn't the game, it's on the individual's priorities.

the frailty of youth

2007-05-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

I just killed something in the prime of its youth earlier this afternoon: my sweet, sweet facial hair.

it's something I take for granted, my ability to grow facial hair. Give me a week and I've got a beard pretty well settled in; in five minutes or less, though, it can all be gone. I'm not going to lie, I've grown use to the ability to go through spurts of liking having facial hair and disliking it, letting it grow and shaving it on equally random whims.

the sad thing is, as if to counteract the awesomeness of this power, I am sadly going very bald at the ripe old age of 21. Remember Zinedine Zidane, the French soccer player who headbutted the Italian guy at the World Cup last summer? He famously has the same sort of hairstyle (big bald patch in the back, widow's peak up front) that I do. the only way it looks good is cut short, because otherwise it's a big shining "look at me, I'm bald!" beacon, glowing in self-consciousness.

right now, it's gone because I've gone very close for my hair on top of my head, and I disliked the "big goatee with almost bald = biker" look. so it's clean-shaven and almost bald for now. I'm sure my fun with facial hair will rarely end - I do quite like having a goatee, but not when it's this warm and my hair is this short. but knowing I have the power to construct awesome facial hair the likes of which many men could only dream to have is definitely a feather in my cap.

Remembrance

2007-05-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

Ayrton Senna da Silva, the great F1 driver who's death 13 years ago is still a major event in Formula 1 and European sports history. Photo from ayrton-senna.com

I remember it like it was yesterday. May 1, 1994, a sunny Sunday morning on the west coast of the United States, and my eight-year-old self preparing to watch the Formula 1 grand prix to be shown. I remember Ayrton Senna's on-board camera, a few laps in, showing the last fateful images from his car on the track. Such an innocuous-looking accident, though the speeds at which he lost control in the corner do lend themselves to the end result: the death of one of auto racing's greatest talents, greatest champions, and greatest sportsmen.

the other image after the race that sticks in my mind is the ABC World News that night showing the scene back in Senna's homeland of Brazil, where auto racing is second only to soccer and Senna is still regarded as one of their greatest sporting heroes.

The last image from Ayrton Senna's car before his accident and death. Photo from ayrton-senna.com

His car, after impact. It is believed Senna died at impact.

I only fully realized what his life and death meant as I grew into my teens and became a more knowledgeable fan of Formula 1 racing. This came around when his death hit it's 10th-year anniversary in 2004 and Speed Channel showed a special episode of their historic highlights series on the race weekend. This was a black weekend for racing: Not only did Senna pass away in the race, but fellow Brazilian Rubens Barrichello was lucky to only suffer a concussion in an accident in practice Friday, Austrian rookie Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying, and a couple more horrible accidents in the race (including one at the start) made this an ultimate low point for Formula 1 and the world of racing.

To draw an American analogy, it's as if Michael Jordan had passed away from a heart attack on the court at Madison Square Garden during a game. That's how important and influential he was to the world of auto racing, and how important his death was to a large part of the world.

here's a tribute video (complete with slightly cheesy/slightly corny rendition of System of a Down's "Lonely Day" as the background music) to that weekend, showing the horrific accidents that mark the weekend. I still wonder how different the racing world would be if he hadn't passed away.

Vastly Underrated Albums, vol. 1: Dangerdoom, "The Mouse and the Mask"

2007-04-30T01:25:00.000-07:00

I've got a lot of music. Not as much as my sister, but still plenty - I believe iTunes can play for almost a month straight without repeating.

In a situation like that, stuff can fall through the cracks, get forgotten in the sands of time, and find its way out of the rotation. This is why I'm starting up this occasional series: to categorize, remember and promote albums that I find in my music library where I've completely forgotten about their greatness. We're not talking all-time greats, but underrated or forgotten.

The first of these is Dangerdoom's "The Mouse and the Mask," one interesting-as-hell situation and album. Producer Dangermouse (The Gray Album, Gorillaz - Demon Days, Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere) is on the boards, MF Doom (he of a thousand names and side projects, including MM FOOD - a rap box set all about food) is spitting in the mic, and such acts as Talib Kweli, Ghostface Killah and Cee-Lo Green (the other half of Gnarls Barkley) provide guest appearances, and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim shows provide the aesthetic idea.

While some of the songs are themed around shows ("A.T.H.F." should be the new theme song for that show, "Space Ho's" is probably my favorite on the whole disc), the definition of 'theme' is rather loose. Sometimes it's close to the show's theme, sometimes it's incredibly loose. Soundbites and guest appearances by cartoon character voices (namely Master Shake from ATHF) add character, but never irritate. Okay, after more than a few listens Shake's end-of-song skits get old, but it's never overbearing.

Plus, importantly, it never takes away from MF Doom - who has *far* too many skills - and doesn't limit Dangermouse's superb production skills. Doom is something of a nerdy rapper anyways (he and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien are too cool and diverse to be called "nerdcore" and lumped in with mc chris or MC Frontalot) so the topics aren't a stretch, and Dangermouse cooks up a ton of funky beats with what he's given. Mouse is one of a few people I can actually point to and say "I love this guy's production, and no matter who's singing or rapping I'll listen."

so, if you have this album too, dust it off and give it a spin; otherwise, acquire it in whatever way you usually acquire music and you won't be disappointed. Somewhat irreverent and offbeat rapping with some funky, solid beats is never a bad combination; cartoon aural aesthetic is always welcomed too. Combine that all and it's a good time.

get your motor runnin'

2007-04-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

One day, my car will get onto the inside of Portland Int'l Raceway and see some action. Until then, it will wait with baited breath. Photo by Doug Bonham.

It's no secret at all that I love sports. And another fact for sports fans is that, oftentimes, what inspires a young man or woman to follow sports is a link from a parent - I'm partially a baseball fan because it came from my dad, just as my dad was a baseball fan because his dad was. For many Americans this comes for basketball, football, or baseball...not as often does it come up for auto racing.

There are two hobbies I've had for longer than I can literally remember: cars and auto racing, and video games. When I go to races now and see fathers with their little sons, who have great big earphones to protect their ears, I get both nostalgic and a little jealous - nostalgic, because I remember when that was me, and jealous because I wish I had that sweet ear protection back in the day; I just had ear plugs, which rarely worked (now, though, I go au natural. Ear plugs are for wusses).

It was over 100 degrees, and a Saturday after a week of 100-degree days, but I still loved seeing the ALMS last year. Shame I was one of about 20 people there. Photo by Doug Bonham

As with many other aspects of my life, my relationship with auto racing rotates around an axis of love and hate. I love the American Le Mans Series and Champ Cars; I hate that they draw about as well as a Vanilla Ice cover band. I love following Formula 1 racing from around the world, but hate how much it costs: not only in even dreaming of traveling to a race, but in how much digital cable costs to receive the network that carries F1 in the US, SPEED Channel (strangely, it's on basic cable both on the Oregon coast and in the Columbia River Gorge; yes, both my grandparents have SPEED, while I don't. SHIT).

This means I turn into something of a junkie when it comes to watching actual racing on TV. I knew the Champ Car race was going to be on ESPN Sunday afternoon, but it started earlier than I thought it would; when my roommates (flipping between baseball, playoff basketball, and bad movies on TNT and Comedy Central) hit ESPN and the race, I went berserk. "LEAVE IT HERE" I almost screamed, foam spewing out and hitting the screen and my roommates.

of course they didn't understand. To them, and many of the uninitiated masses, auto racing is simple: how hard is it to drive a car around a track? Well, it's pretty damned difficult to do that for nearly two hours and do it quickly, but that's another argument. The aesthetics to watching racing are a bit more subtle; it's not as immediately rewarding, but watching a really good battle for position is as rewarding as anything else in sports. Much like with soccer, it's not the frequency of actual scoring (or passes) that matters, it's the build up: watching two drivers (or more sometimes) dicing for position before a decisive pass is attempted.

this is one of two legs upon which I stand and loathe NASCAR: passing is cheapened to the point where it is unrewarding and almost counter-productive to watch a full NASCAR race. The other leg is its horrible spread of commercialization; F1 handles their commercial side much better, while involving as many (if not more) blue-chip companies in the process. NASCAR is the carnival-caller mentality blown up ad naseum, which the NFL suffers from as well to a certain degree.

I still harbor dreams of doing some amateur SCCA autocrossing and light-caliber racing with my own car at a later date, but that's almost going to be another lifetime from now. Until then, though, I will follow auto racing with the eye of somebody mature enough to understand politics and savvy enough to understand the subtleties of the sport, while maintaining the wide-eyed youthful enthusiasm I've had ever since I first stepped foot at Portland International Raceway with my dad to see the Indy Cars.

design flaws from the factory

2007-04-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

I like technology. It brings me good things, makes my life better. I'm more than comfortable with computers, I like having advanced TVs and video games and computers, and I don't mind the rapid pace with which each of these things advance.

with improvements comes obsolescence; that's just the natural order of technology at this point in time. However, what annoys me like none other is a seemingly built-in obsolescence - or, at the least, a lack of build quality - in some technology products. Let's use the iPod as a case study, partially because it is a very important piece of technology, partially because there *are* many cases of failed iPods, partially because this brings up an interesting argument and dichotomy, and partially because I currently have a broken iPod.

"...with dimes laid on your eyes." Nothing like a good Decemberists quote, especially because A) that's what my iPod is now - dead with dimes upon its eyes - and B) I USED TO BE ABLE TO LISTEN TO THAT SONG ON THERE.

This is the second iPod of that generation that I have broken, seemingly by dropping it and hitting it just right to kill the hard drive. the first one died after 21 months of use this past January, and was replaced under extended warranty; this second one (an older model, identical to the first) lasted but scarcely four months but, crucially, past the warranty. BOO! Boo I say to thee.

I'm not the only one to have this problem: besides my friend Laura being on her fourth iPod of the same generation (most of them dying from hard drive problems) and my sister having her 3rd gen iPod have battery problems (my mom now has that one's replacement), I've heard of many other anecdotal cases from my friends regarding iPods dying.

"hey guess what? that music you bought on iTunes? Only works with apple stuff. CONGRATULATIONS! This is the downside to drinking the kool-aid, kids.

This isn't a problem if you're a garden-variety pirate like my sister is, as replacing MP3s is cheap and easy; it's simply a matter of annoyance. However, for somebody who has played by the rules and bought music on iTunes (why? I can simply drop it onto my iPod and that works most everywhere, including my car, which has an iPod adapter for the CD head unit...), unless I want to lose my music - or, bar the annoying and time consuming burn-and-re-rip-as-MP3 routine (which, frankly, I don't have the time for) - I'm stuck with Apple. I drank their iLife iKoolAid, and now I'm iMarried to their products and if I don't like it, I'm iFucked.

now, we can go into DRMs and all the fun there, but here's a simpler matter: my dad's stereo equipment from the '70s still works beautifully; my iPod from freshman year is long gone. I know advances are advances, but can't something be built to last anymore?

Of course, for every horror story, there's an original-generation one still kicking - like my aunt's iPod from the first gen. But, still...it seems to me there's more than a little planned obsolescence built into these little things, and it's all to bleed more money from consumers from a product that's popular and already probably packing a high profit margin.

I'm considering getting an iPod Nano this week, for a two-fold reason: one, I don't need that much space; two, I think it should survive a bit better because it works off of flash memory. However, if this thing breaks within a few years, I may have to begin rethinking my belief and faith in Apple and their products. Buying new $300 iPods every other year is not a sustainable practice, no matter how much the tech hound in me would love to do it. There is a breaking point in every consumer; I haven't hit mine yet, but what will I do when I finally do reach that?

there's always this year

2007-04-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

Oh, Ichiro. I wish the front office cared as much about winning as you do.

Ah, baseball season. Double ah, Opening Day...plus the night before that featured the World Champion Cardinals start on a sour note. But that, really, was just an introduction to one of those few, glorious days where ESPN gives wall-to-wall coverage time to baseball (others include: memorial day, the 4th of July, labor day, and the final days into the stretch run).

for me - and many other people enjoying life in the beautifully rainy oasis that is the Northwest - ESPN's bevy of early day games from the East coast is a warm-up for switching over to FSN, hearing that usual intro music and waiting for Dave Niehaus to step up to the mic for the first time in the new season.

And, promptly, to be ready for another underwhelming season of Seattle Mariner baseball.

Aside from the Glorious Halcyon Days of 1995-2001, the Mariners have never really mattered. They were one of the worst franchises, had one of the worst owners, and played in the Kingdome - that should be self explanatory. Hell, much like the editor of With Leather, I could watch the clip of the Kingdome imploding all day long:

Ahem. I just watched that three and a half times. Good stuff.

I'm usually optimistic; I'm usually optimistic about my Mariners, too, but this season I just can't find any reason to be. We're in Year Three of the Reign of Hargrove, the man who fucked up with the mid-90s Cleveland Indians, one of the most stacked teams of all time, and we still have Bill Bavasi - aka Public Enemy Number One within Mariner fandom - as our General Manager. This man traded a great young middle reliever for a spent starter with injury problems this offseason. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

You can smell the pessimism from here. Winning the first two games barely enforces this - okay, King Felix played up to his potential, Sexson hit a couple bombs and Beltre is finally earning his pay...these are things that should be automatic. You pay a lot for a player, you expect him to pay to that level. am I wrong?

nope. just a pessimistic Mariner fan who has been unimpressed.

------

Blazers notes: Randolph out for the rest of the season with hand surgery; he's going to have to be careful when he makes it rain while on bereavement, I guess. This also is the equivalent of the Magic 8-Ball showing "Signs point to 'yes'" when you ask it "Will Z-bo be traded?": It's not a guarantee, but it's a nice sign. Thankfully LMA is a beast, though now out with something weird with his heart. He should talk to my mom about that, she just had a mild surgery last week.