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.

As a child of the 80's, it'd been a long held dream of mine to eventually conduct some sort of grand experiment in undercover 'immersion journalism,' the kind seen in some of the classic films of the Reagan Years. When I say classics, of course, I'm referring to Fletch and well, Fletch Lives. Then there's Just One of the Guys, a teen sex comedy tour-de-force that took undercover journalism to a whole new inglorious level by featuring an ambitious reporter who goes to high school disguised as a boy as the basis for her big story in the school newspaper. Indeed, the wacky crossdressing, gender-bendering antics ensued.

That's to preface the fact that I have finally embarked on a grand journalistic experiment of my own, even if it resembles Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed far more than say - Chevy Chase in a funny wig. For those unfamiliar with it, Ehrenreich's much-praised book involved the left leaning social critic spending several months living as one of the members of the desperate underclass to deliver a first hand account of the harsh realities of barely making it in America.

Over the last handful of months I myself have delved deep into the lifestyles of the underprivileged.

There are, however, two distinct differences between my project and Ehrenreich's. First, I don't plan to use my findings to write a bestselling book decrying the abhorrent effects of modern free market capitalism on society. I figure a column is good enough because I have a conspicuous lack of life-changing epiphanies to impart. That and I'm also lazy.


The other unfortunate distinction of this experiment is that my time living hand-to-mouth, unlike Ehrenreich's, has been wholly unintentional. I didn't necessarily expect to be laid off from a business that went belly-up and spend the next three months struggling worse than Corey Feldman to find work. I didn't ask to be a position where I've sold half of my possessions and have been deprived of the internet, electricity, hot-water, and a bed for small stretches of time. If it'd been my choice, I'd ask to go undercover in the languid world of lifeguards on the beaches of Malibu, the secret drug trade of Space Camp or even better - as one of Justin Timberlake's backup dancers.

Then again, maybe my poorness is a more "authentic"experience because I don't have the choice to waltz back to my job at the LA Times, drive away to my house in the Hamptons or as is the case in Just One of The Guys , take off my shirt and expose my breasts when I want everything to end. Maybe I'm paying the price for "keepin' it real."

Regardless, I might as well make the best of it and reveal some astute observations of the hard knock life.




Observation #1: Being poor is different than it is on TV.

I didn't necessarily believe I'd have an Ebenezer Scrooge-like transformation after living humbly, that I'd be kissing infants and passing out flowers to strangers on the streets. I did, however, want to think that being dirt poor would help me gain a profound new perspective on What Really Matters in Life because that's the sort of thing that happens in the movies. Poor people (when they aren't one-dimensional crack dealers, gang members or white trash idiots) are often portrayed in Hollywood as simple, humble people full of down-to-earth homespun wisdom. Believe it or not, I haven't found myself passing out quips like "Life is what you do when you're waiting for things to happen" with a twinkle in my eye to overly cocky advertising executives or too-busy-for-his-family stockbrokers.

Instead, I've found I'm pondering my own plight more than that of humanity in general. For example, I used to politely decline or briefly entertain the efforts of local homeless and panhandlers, but I now find myself angrily responding to their pleas for change.
The last bedraggled bearded man who begged me I replied to with, "Dude, you have no money but at least you're at zero. I'm at negative! You should help me, I've got student loans!"
I'm not saying being dirt poor automatically lowers your moral standards, but I've also done or thought of engaging in shady things I wouldn't have considered before. Like stealing a $8 sandwich at an airport or getting a water cup at McDonald's for free and filling it up with Sprite. I' don't plan to resort to the lures of pimpdom or becoming a low level henchman for a local crime lord, but neither will I achieve sainthood anytime soon.

Observation #2: Being poor is boring.

Sometimes it's easy to take for granted our life of almost infinite entertainment options - movies, television, concerts, and YouTube, but here's a bold revelation - these things cost money. Without cable, internet at home, or even gas money, I feel like I'm stuck in late 70's timewarp - For fun lately I've been engrossed in Three's Company reruns and playing Boggle. I haven't succumbed to having conversations with a Magic 8-Ball yet, but there's still time.
Without the internet especially, I feel strangely disconnected from the rest of the world. I used to be able to speak about current events fluently, but now when in casual conversation people bring up the Ohio mall shooting, the Drew Peterson case, or what that one blonde girl from The Hills wore to the so-and-so awards, I feel ashamed about being in the dark. On the other hand, I'm probably better off without the daily 2008 presidential candidate updates. I'm ready to break something expensive if I hear the name Mitt Romney again.

Observation #3: Being poor is surprisingly expensive.

The amusing thing about the credit game we play in this country, is that companies give all the special perks and privileges to the people that need it the least. While my checking account dwindled lower, I tried to get overdraft protection from the bank in case I had an emergency that took me into the negative. I was denied overdraft protection because of my credit history, yet they heap the same protection for people who's bank accounts never dip into triple figures.
Instead, I finally opened one of the 1 billion credit card junk mailings I get on a daily basis. But when I found out that there'd be a $50 activation fee (really, does it take $50 to hit the OK button on a computer?) and a $500 credit limit, I said no thanks.

But my checking account finally sunk to below zero and I had to plead in an undignified manner with a sympathetic sounding woman over the phone to get my bank take off the $104 in overdraft fees from my account. When she finally returned from talking to her supervisor for 10 minutes while my heart threatened to explode from my chest, I reacted with another undignified moment when she told me the fees were gone - A Tiger Woods-like fist pump in the air. When you're desperate, the small victories feel like the stuff of epic poems.

But alas, there is little poetry in my life and my struggle is not a noble one. I'm just another bobbing head in a sea of doldrums. With apologizes to a great movie, I'm Just One of the Schmucks.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go before my roommate finds her laptop missing.