Driving a Train through your Media Brain

Almost immediately snagged by the otherwise asinine Escapist Magazine after posting but two of his signature reviews on youtube (Bioshock and Psychonauts), Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is alone in a room of Half-Literate Rodents when it comes to reviewing video games with any kind of insight or lasting accuracy. Most of nerd-dom has no doubt been inundated with Yahtzee’s repertoire of titty/weener metaphor and modern game generation ennui, but if you’re one of few who hasn’t absorbed the breadth of the man’s work, consider yourself consumed for an afternoon. The back catalog of reviews is pretty goddamn impressive (155 at the time of this posting), with new reviews coming every Wednesday, thereby fulfilling the weekly qualification of noted category.

Both are outstanding, and exhibit one of those rare instances where a given piece of media is not superior over the other (book > film); instead, each piece is imbued with the meanings and the underlying notions of the work, while exemplifying the strengths of the form it inhabits (Abe wrote both novel and screenplay, with longtime collaborator Hiroshi Teshigahara at the helm of the picture).

Both novel and film are an exercise in modern existentialism, to be sure, but not the contrived “triumphs” of a Sartre protagonist (smug motherfuckers they be – “The tree – C’est Existence!”). This smacks of the kind of abject terror of Camus, the railing against the fates amidst a kind of unceasing helplessness. The good shit.

At times, both can drag on the senses (the book more than the film, understandably – you’ll start to think in sand, rolling down the sides of your temples), but definitely worth a gander. Particularly if you enjoy the silent shrieks that strike the chord of night, hollow against the meaningless construct of the self.

BONUS: The Myth of Sisyphus essay by Albert Camus, for all my nyerds. One has to work a Sisyphean reference when discussing Woman in the Dunes, one way or another!

Huzzah! A new category, that I’ll most probably forget to regard after two or three! Computrain? Old Star I Would Bang? Huh? What are those? Oh, I see – you meant to say

Gimme a Bitty!

Now I’m set at ease, for approximately four days.

I post these here largely because I have an unwieldy binary boner when it comes to Team Fortress 2 (the Sniper and Pyro are kind of lame, admittedly), but you can’t tell me the jacket sway on the Spy and the initial spin out on the Heavy/Medic doesn’t warm the cockles of your cold inter-heart.

No, only largely joking: this is Louis Theroux’s Law and Disorder in Philidelphia, but it feels so goddamn close to The Wire that I caught myself looking for the severe face angles of Daniels once or twice. Oh, that and Method Man. Super, duper sad. I was writing a little treatise, but deleted it, because some asinine postulations about narrative and empathy just detract from the real violence and hopelessness on display here, and I would be remiss to try and confuse that in some post-graduate dissertation on Herc’s character arc.

I have to assume every city is like this. Whelp, on to Louis’ Adventures in Johannesburg!