The Sasquatch Journal

Do you know who the people in the above picture are? If you don't, you must not be a sentient being or you should get the hell off MySpace for 5 seconds. Even though the 2008 elections were far, far away...we were treated to nonstop coverage of the potential candidates, what demographics they were trying to attract, what their downsides were, what voters wouldn't vote for them and lots of bullcrap of covering a horserace that hasn't really begun yet. Not only did this distract from the things going on with our current president (Oh hey! There's a war still going on? Seriously?) but the important issues are being trampled underfoot by concerns about who Oprah is campaigning for or if America would vote for a Mormon. But be afraid, America....it will only get worse this year.

Runner Up: The Drew Peterson Case...

It's hard when the mainstream media forcefeeds specific stuff...like for instance, all the obsession with the Drew Peterson case. I mean, wow. Is it an interesting case? For sure. It feels like the plot of a CSI-type show and it's got murders, cuckolds, quasi-pedophilia, and good cop/bad cop all there.

But it's being way, way overcovered. In the grand scheme of things, a missing 23-year old woman from the suburbs is small news considering there's still a crazy war in Iraq, there's a home foreclosure crisis, the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, etc. etc.... But it seems like we obsess over these types of stories.




The Best of Television 2007: Flight of the Conchords

Yeah, the awkward humor at times feels a lot like Ricky Gervais’s in Extras and the BBC Office, and some of the songs are better than others, but I laughed at HBO’s Flight of the Conchords more than any other show this year.
I don’t know if they will be able to keep it up for season 2 (they used most of their songs for season 1) but the combination of amusing characters and catchy and hilarious tunes was what put FotC high on my list. Warning though, songs like “Part Time Model” and “It’s Business Time” will stay in your head for a long time.

Honorable Mention: The Wire, The Shield, Battlestar Galactica


This was my favorite movie this year, but then again I missed out on No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and The Bourne Ultimatum so maybe my opinion isn’t the most informed. Still...King of Kong is excellent. Here’s part of what I wrote about it for PopMatters:

The antagonist of King of Kong is Billy Mitchell, the vain, comically cocky video jockey who set a yet-to-be-broken record of 874,300 points on Donkey Kong way back in 1982, when those games were at the peak of their popularity. “My (cell) phone says ‘Never Surrender’,” Mitchell intones seriously. On the other side is ‘aw-shucks’ family man Steve Wiebe, who was laid off from a job at Boeing in recent years and spends much of his unemployment practicing Donkey Kong until he is finally able to beat Mitchell’s record.

For Mitchell, his Donkey Kong high score isn’t just a nice accomplishment – it’s part of his identity; his very DNA. He and his sycophantic crew of classic gamers are so utterly un-self consciously consumed by their singular passion for holding world records in video games that they’ve carved out an insular niche that looks ridiculous and petty to outsiders like us. Really, there’s a guy who enjoys watching countless hours of videotaped game sessions? Wow, how many hours did Steve Wiebe spend practicing a game in which a large monkey holds a woman captive and tosses flaming barrels at Italian men?

We can laugh at the nerd savants in King of Kong not only because they’re mostly social misfits who have unfashionable tastes in hair and clothing, but because they’re so earnest about these seemingly pointless pursuits. We, the audience, on the other hand, maintain the requisite cynical ironic distance mandatory in our culture, and so we laugh at the people in documentaries that are way into Star Trek (Trekkies), spelling bees (Spellbound), air guitars (Air Guitar Nation) or pointless arcade games.

But the question I have to ask is: Are we really better than them?

Worst Movie: Alvin and Chipmunks. I have only seen the trailer, but that’s enough for me to want to break the necks of the wacky hip-hop lovin’ CGI chipmunks like Lenny in Of Mice and Men.


It’s not often that first person shooters combine elements of pulpy 1950’s science fiction, 1920’s art deco design, and the fiction of Ayn Rand, but Bioshock is an Xbox 360 game like no other.

The “shoot everything in sight” style action may be standard stuff, but what sets 2K Games’ masterpiece apart from the rest of the crowded genre is the stunning graphics, fascinating setting and a plot that resembles an Aldous Huxley cautionary tale about a utopian society gone wild.

Bioshock is set in an underwater city called Rapture. There a scheming industrialist named Andrew Ryan has created a libertarian paradise that goes horribly wrong when gene technology that allowed people to change their genetic code begins to driver people mad.

The substance called ADAM may have been bad for the now murderous people of Rapture, but on the other hand, it grants you superpowers like the ability to shoot fire or lightning out of your fingertips.

Bioshock may not quite deserve the breathless hype it’s received by the media, but if you can look past the fact that it’s probably not the best game ever made, it’s an epic sci-fi/horror/FPS you don’t want to miss.

The Orange Box

In a time when many companies are content to slap a new coat of paint or throw in a couple new maps or unimpressive features on games, call them sequels and ask consumers to pay full sticker price for them, Valve’s The Orange Box is a bargain of incredible proportions.

For a mere $60, The Orange Box includes first person shooter classic Half Life 2, their quasi-sequels Episode 1 and 2, (the second which hadn’t been previously released), the wildly inventive puzzle game Portal, and last but not least, Team Fortress 2, the best team-based multiplayer shooter on the Xbox360 not named Halo 3.

Half Life 2’s reputation is well known, and Team Fortress 2 is a sequel to a cult favorite a long time coming, but the biggest surprise is Portal. Combining first person shooter mechanics with simple-to-learn, difficult-to-master puzzles, Portal is arguably the best of the entire batch.

But even if puzzles aren’t your bag, just about everyone will find something to love in The Orange Box. Other video game companies be warned, Valve may have just raised the bar on giving gamers their money’s worth.

Roleplaying games have come a long way from the slow paced, menu driven "Boy and ragtag band of warriors grow up/fight evil wizard" days.
And a lot of the credit for that goes to BioWare, whose previous titles Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire combined old school role playing with action-packed lightsaber battles and kung-fu fighting respectively.

BioWare's next step in innovation is Mass Effect, which fuses a third person squad shooter with roleplaying elements in a completely original outer space science fiction setting.
Mass Effect's problems (mediocre combat, hiccuping framerates) can be annoying, but the games breathtaking graphics and absorbing story more than make up for it.
In Mass Effect you play Commander Shepard, a mid-level military officer who must pursue a rogue Spectre - the intergalactic equivalent of a CIA operative. Unlike most sci-fi plots where humanity is still the center of the universe, they are relatively weak in Mass Effect, tolerated by some alien races, hated by others.

Combat with guns and "biotic" powers is a big part of the game, but conversation via BioWare's signature complex dialogue trees is where you make the important and sometimes ethically challenging decisions.
Those expecting HALO should stay away, but all roleplaying fans should check out Mass Effect.