"You do realize that don't you? There aren't evil guys and innocent guys. It's just... It's just... It's just a bunch of guys." -- Ben Stiller as Steve Arlo in 'Zero Effect'

The second that police arrested central Missouri radio-talk-show host James Keown, a former colleague of mine, for the murder of his wife, he seemed to cease to exist as an ordinary human being. He became something else -- something sinister and otherworldly: an appalling curiosity.

The judge that ruled in the case this summer in Massachusetts voiced this transformation when she pronounced him an "evil human being." The victim's mother went further, saying Keown was "no longer a person" in her mind. "He's just a mass of flesh and bone. A real person never would have done so evil a thing."

Similarly, the mixture of horror and fascination I receive after I reveal to people that I knew this person is weirdly predictable. The questions that come aren't at all focused on the circumstances behind the event but instead about the nature of the man involved. What was he like? Did he seem like, you know, normal?

James Keown never seemed to be anything but a “normal” person to me in the year that I knew him. He had a regular job, was polite, well-mannered, and articulate in conversations about politics or sports. When I tell people this now, it seems to shock them. It's as if they expect that a man who killed his wife would drink blood for breakfast or carry headless dolls around all day.

The year I was acquainted with Keown was 2006, when I was in charge of the crime and county government beat for the News-Tribune in Jefferson City, Missouri -- a small, sleepy state capital where little happened beyond politics and most folks liked it that way. Keown hosted a daily two-hour weekday talk show on KLIK, a local news talk-radio station that aired conservative blowhards like Bill O’Reilly in the afternoon. Keown himself was a bit of that same pompous, know-it-all sort, but that may be ingrained in the code of the broadcast radio and TV personality’s DNA.

Nonetheless, when I chatted with Keown at events we were both covering, I felt he was sort of a kindred spirit. We had both experienced bigger cities outside of Jefferson City, and we both understood the provincialism of the politics of the town and could see through its leaders -- especially the media-whoring prosecuting attorney who was frequently a guest on Keown’s show.

Keown was a smart guy, possibly too smart and charismatic to be stuck in a small market like Jefferson City. Rumors swirled around him though. One of my news-hawk coworkers, the type that could sniff out every rumor about town, whispered to me once that Keown had lived in Boston but moved back to his Jefferson City hometown after the tragic death of his wife Julie the year before. My coworker rumbled that authorities had been sniffing around Keown as "a person of interest." I categorically dismissed the idea of Keown having anything to do with the death of his wife, however. He was too much of a straight arrow, too intelligent and successful. He was neither a sleazy womanizer like Scott Peterson nor an alcoholic or a troubled loner -- the typical profile of the murderer we read about or see on TV.

But after he was arrested while on the air by the Boston police and the details of the investigation came out, Keown was transformed in my mind. In writing accounts for the local paper about the murder, I discovered the truth -- that it wasn't a run-of-the-mill, in-the-heat-of-passion gunshot or stabbing. Keown slowly poisoned his wife by continually putting small amounts of antifreeze in her Gatorade and demanding she drink it often. It took several months for her to condition to worsen from stomach sickness to hospitalization for a kidney condition to lapsing into a coma from kidney failure and eventually death.

The end was particularly horrible because Keown had called an ER after his wife was having some sort of bad kidney reaction. The doctors told him to giver her treatment immediately but he waited 10 whole hours to take her to the hospital. That's when she succumbed into the coma.

And the reason? James Keown was charismatic and ambitious but also apparently a pathological liar. They moved to Boston after Keown told his Kansas City employer -- an educational consulting company -- that he had been accepted at the Harvard Business School and asked if he could work remotely from the Boston area. Six months later, Keown was fired when his boss discovered he had lied about being accepted to Harvard and had stolen a Web site design he was asked to develop for the company.

Keown didn't reveal to his wife -- or anyone else -- that he got fired and didn't actually get into Harvard. His debts mounted into the tens of thousands, and it got to the point where he was going to have his utilities shut off. So he then attempted to kill his wife to collect on her $250,000 life insurance policy.

Keown's computer revealed that he did a Google search using the words "ethylene glycol death human" and "Can you buy arsenic?"

In writing about this in lurid detail, I cloaked myself in impersonal distance and treated Keown's murder like I would the weather or skyrocketing property taxes. Like the mother of the victim and the judge ruling on the case, I could not adapt to the idea that James Keown the with-it radio guy and James Keown the calculating murderer were the same person. It’s a much easier to believe a man is a monster than to accept that a person you know and respect could be capable of murder.



Perhaps we need to rationalize horrific acts by undermining the apparent normality of killers. In centuries past, many irrational acts committed by people were blamed on superstitious causes -- ghosts and spirits, the anger of the Gods, demon possession -- all things most of us today see as ridiculous.

But as sophisticated and educated as modern Western Civilization allegedly is, is our sense of good and evil any less primitive? The pop cultural treatment of serial killers seems to work as a coping mechanism. The physiology of killers' brains is perceived as categorically different than ours. Villains like Hannibal in The Silence of the Lambs are classified as psychopaths, and we're told that their brains do not impede their violent impulses like a normal person.

The Joker in this summer's The Dark Knight and the title character in Showtime's serial-killer-who-kills-other-serial-killers drama Dexter are examples of attempts to humanize killers and make them appear more psychologically complex than the usual cold-blooded sociopath. But their back stories have them witnessing or enduring a superhuman amount of pain and suffering, which only serves to set them apart from the rest of us again.


Typically, serial killer entertainment, going back to Sherlock Holmes stories, revolves around detecting the killer but revealing the abnormal way his mind works, a mind that masquerades as normal but must be extracted from society. This serves to reassure our nagging doubts about the nature of evil. We need this type of narrative to help us back into the philosophically safe grounds that are good guys and there are bad guys. Passion and selfishness, which motivate most acts of violence, are quintessentially human emotions. These crimes fascinate us because they remind us just what the motives we can recognize in ourselves could lead to.

For that reason, our culture works at the same time to associate these all too human deeds with a loss of humanity, so we can reassure ourselves that we are not like these murderers, that we have nothing to be afraid of for ourselves.

It’s a welcome illusion considering the alternative -- that we are constantly surrounded by men like James Keown who are capable of anything under the wrong circumstances. It’s an idea more frightening than Hannibal could ever be.

*Note, I wrote about this subject previously in my blog, but I decided to expand upon it in a column.

Kevin Grevioux has a lot to fit on his business card. The deep-voiced South Side native is a comic-book writer, screenwriter and actor – all of which comes in handy for his work on the “Underworld” franchise. Grevioux penned the screenplays for the vampire versus werewolf sci-fi epics and wrote himself a role as Raze, the right hand man for the Lycan leader Lucien.

For the prequel, “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans”, Grevioux again dons the fur as Raze in a movie he describes as “Spartacus with werewolves.”

Q. So we've had a black vampire in Blade, America just got its first black president with Obama do you think America is ready for a black werewolf?

A. Well, I've been around for like what, six years? So I guess so!

Q. Of all the things you're doing right now, what are you most passionate about?

A. “I'd have to say comic books because that was the genesis of it all really. You know, I loved comic books growing up, just like most kids but I had more. And I was actually a collector, at home I had like 12,000 issues so I wasn't just a casual comic book fan. I'd spend all my money towards comic books and I'd get an entire run of a comic like the Fantastic Four or The Hulk or Thor or the Avengers, those were my favorites.

Q. You haven't had a typical career in Hollywood. Do you think this has worked to your advantage or do you still feel like an outsider?

A. Yeah, but a lot of people can say that though. It's not like everyone who is in film has always been on that track since they were kids. I wasn't and a great many people weren't. Its just a certain point where it's like, you know what, this would be cool to do or this would be fun to do or, I don't like what I'm doing now, let me try this. But I don't get caught up in Hollywood or Hollyweird as they call it. Um, it's kind of funny too because I like writing comic books more than I do writing screenplays. And its much more fun and less constricting...you don't have to worry about budgets, things of that nature. But there's a lot of comic book guys who say you're a Hollywood guy.

Like I had an argument with one of my friends about how these days it seems like you have to be a Hollywood guy to get into comic books. I said this, and he goes you realize that you are a Hollywood guy. And I was like, and do you realize, I was into comic books first and I had my first several ideas rejected back in the day before I even got into Hollywood so I tried to get in before, but its just when I had some success in Hollywood that it came back around.

Q. You have a background in microbiology, has this influenced your comic book or screenwriting at all?

A. I got my undergraduate degree in microbiology and studying genetic engineering in grad school. Of course science was my best subject in school. Worked for NIH after college. In terms of science fiction, how do really make a career out of that? You can't. You go into real science. So it's a little ironic that I've come back full circle back into science fiction which spawned all of it in the first place.

Q. Isn't there some sort of science involved in the Underworld movies?

A. Yeah, I don't like mysticism. It's too hard to explains and the rules are very amorphous. So I found that using science, with genetic engineering, mutation and combinant DNA what have you, that would make a nice backdrop for Underworld in terms of really getting into the production of the story and it worked. That was cool, I based everything on a virus for both races.

Q. Vampires in a war with werewolves. Where did this story come from?

A. The whole project from the beginning with Len Wiseman and he was trying to get his first project going but he wasnt getting any scripts that he really liked. So he went to Dimension films and Dimension wanted to do a werewolf movie.

Because Blade at the time was doing so well for vampires, they wanted to do werewolves. So Len had the meeting and he called me since we'd done something together and he said, well look...here's what they want to do, what do you think? I was like, not much. Because there has really only been two decent werewolf films – An American Werewolf in London, and the Howling...and its sort of amazing in the 50 or 60 years since The Wolfman, nobody has been able to get it right except those two.

So I came up with an idea...and we got together and hashed out the story. We said, look, if they don't like the idea, we can't just come in with one idea...should come in with two. I said, what if we do like a Romeo and Juliet type love story but instead of Montigues and Capulets, we have werewolves on one side and vampires on the other and make it a surrealistic interracial love story against the backdrop of a centuries old race war between the two. And he didn't even look at me, he was just sort of silent and crossed his arms and was like 'Dude, is this going to work?” And I said 'Just hear me out' so I basically beat out a story and the rest is history and I wrote the original screenplay. Then we brought on another writer and then got it sold.

Q. It's interesting that you mention this Shakespearean drama because it seems after the first couple movies that there's this complicated relationships and elaborate backdrop.

A.Yeah, and it works well. This isn't really a horror story even though you're looking at creatures from that particular genre. You know David Cronenberg said that the best horror films are ones not about horror. It's about something else. So making this more of a sci-fi action piece is what it actually was and I like that aspect.

Q. Why a prequel for these movies? Is a prequel harder to write than an original movie or a sequel?

A. We always had prequels in mind when I wrote the screenplay for the first one, I had showed a lot of flashbacks...one was a flashback to the original hybrid. Which was different than the hybrid that came later, but the hybrid before was something to be feared. It's not that they only feared each other or they werent allowed to comingle because they didn't like each other, the hybrid just like the biracial child, people are afraid of a biracial child because that means the end of our race... So they said our races should not mix, so they had this secret pact....I always had this backstory at the back of my mind to revist at some point.

Q.Do racial issues inform the work of Underworld?

A. Oh yeah, if you read the comic book...Viktor makes the comment to Lucien 'you are a credit to your race' things like that. That's evident. But the way you tell an interracial story is not by telling an interracial story, you find another way to get it in. Star Trek did it brilliantly, using science fiction to make social commentary and they were quite effective.

Q. Who do you think would win in a fair fight between vampires and werewolves?

A. A Lycan. When I originally wrote “Underworld,” it would have taken two vampires to take down one Lycan. It's just that there might have been more vampires, so it kind of evened out.”

Q. You play a werewolf, but where do your sympathies actually lie? The vampire or the werewolf cause?

A. To tell you the truth, I don't like vampires and I haven't since I've been a kid. To me they almost seem unkillable. And I never understood that love aspect, I've always been like 'Dude, you're pining over a girl you knew 200 years ago, get over it, she's dead. That's actually what turned me away from mysticism too, you know you can see a vampire but he doesn't cast a reflection in a mirror, how does that work? Get rid of it.

Q.So you think vampires are overromanticized with Twilight and these types of movies?

A. I understand on a certain level people like the concept of immortality, but the whole blood thing. I had as little blood sucking in the original movie as I could. But I think they like the hyper sexual nature of vampires, and the fact that they are alluring or erotic, but to me, that's not interesting. Some people may like that aspect, but not me.

Q. You wrote a role for yourself as a werewolf for Underworld. How did that work out? Usually only Woody Allen gets to write himself into movies.

A. “The whole acting business and the politics within the industry, it can be kind of rough. It's a race, not a marathon, so you have to keep at it. It's fortunate that I have the talent to write so I can put myself into my own films. And its worked out great. People know me more for my role as Raze than they do me having created the franchise, but I think that's good.”

Q. How do you prepare for a role as a werewolf? Watch a lot of old horror movies? Grow out a beard?

A. You know, (“Underworld” actor) Michael Sheen actually read books on wolves. With me, I didn't go that far. I just basically created my own mythos for the character Raze. It's not like I'm doing a lot of growling or anything.

Q. What's next for you? What kind of projects do you want to do now?

A. I have a comic book coming out called ZMD – Zombies of Mass Destruction and that just got picked up as a film. So I'm throwing my hat into the ring as far as zombie movies go. Slated to direct my first film “The Pale Horseman” which we will probably release this summer. Doing a lot of comic book work...got a book out now called Atom, about a black superhero from the 60's who wore a costume over his whole body but when it was found out that he was black, President Kennedy asked him to stand down for the good of the country. He was trying to push forward civil rights and felt that if whites knew he existed that that would scare them to death and civil rights would get pushed back that much further. So for the good of the country he stands down, but this is about how

Finishing my run on New Warriors. Have a book called I, Frankenstein as well. I have a few things happening.

Q. Dream project for comic books or movies?

A. That's a hard one because there is so many ideas you have as a writer in your head that it's crazy. I have one comic book right now called Alias Rex and to get that done would be great. It's about the first alien invasion and it takes place during the Middle Ages...esentially what it is 'Lord of the Rings meets Independence Day' so you have aliens coming in the 12^th century and fighting knights on firebreathing dragons and a story how we'd repell the alien invasion. That would be very cool and a dream project for me.

I'd love to write for the Fantastic 4, the Hulk, Thor, Luke Cage, Black Panther, the Avengers, a lot of them, even Iron Man to an extent. So my goal is, lord willing, is to do a miniseries with all of Marvel's top characters.

Q: What neighborhood in Chicago are you from?

A: “Well, I was born here and lived on the Southside for the first couple of years in my life before my father got shipped off to the army. Then we moved to Minnesota, but I pretty much came here every summer because my grandparents, aunts, uncles, pretty much my whole family were here. I especially like the musuems here, my grandfather used to take me to the Science and Industry and Natural History. And of course, the zoo.”

Q: What superpowers would you have if you could have any?

A: “Super strength, no question. And invulnerability, it makes no sense to have super strength without invulnerability to tell you the truth.”

Imagine the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and you were there. But also imagine that the Cubs had never won the World Series in 220 plus years, that a lot of the rest of the league had been biased against the Cubs in the past and had set the league up to make it harder for the Cubs to win. Also imagine that half the people in the world were also Cubs fans and they were all celebrating with you.

That's a little what it felt like Tuesday night in Chicago when Barack Obama won the Presidency. Like you were part of something huge, like you could almost literally hear the wheels of history turning and you'd always remember exactly where you were when it happened.

I spent a little time in Grant Park on Tuesday, and it was an amazing sight. It wasn't just the size of the crowd that was overwhelming, but also the nature of it. Usually at big political rallies, you see the hardcore political junkies, lobbyists, campaign volunteers, etc. But Tuesday, I never would have believed that so many regular people, people that usually don't care about politics - non-activists type people under the age of 35, non-white people, and the working class so jazzed about seeing Obama win. (But yeah, there were a crapload of middle class white people too.)


Everytime a state was announced for Obama there, or the Logan Square bar where I spent much of the rest of the evening, there was pure unadulterated joy expressed in the form of yells and screams and high-fives, just as if Derrek Lee hit a home run to win a World Series game or Kerry Wood struck a batter out in the 9th inning.

I think I've now lived long enough, even though I obviously didn't go through the Civil Rights era, that I can see that the country has come a long way. And myself personally, I've also come a long way from the insular, reflexive person that voted for George W. Bush in 2000 (I didn't vote in 2004 because I was disastisfied with both candidates).

Now, that said...let me play a little devil's advocate. I think it could be safely argued that it's not necessarily a good thing that the city of Chicago is so wildly partisan. I'm not sure if I have met a single McCain voter amongst all the people I've talked to in the past 6 months - at least ones who weren't in the closet.

Part of the polarization is because of the choices we make about where we live. IN general, likeminded liberals/Democrats choose to move to cities and Republicans tend to live in the suburbs or small towns. And even in towns where there are both, we tend to even live in different neighborhoods. The problem with this is that since we're not engaging with people with different viewpoints from ourselves, it breeds extremism.

There's a great book about this by Bill Bishop called "The Big Sort" and I highly recommend it. (He also write a blog on Slate.com).

I've talked to plenty of people in Chicago that said they wouldn't be friends with or even want to converse with a Republican. That's not only closeminded (the very thing liberals claim that conversatives are!) but it's borderline dangerous. We talk a lot about the value of diversity when it comes to different skin colors, sexes and genders and sexual orientations, but we undervalue the importance of interactions with people that think differently or have a different political affliliation. Balance and temperance are good things and that's what true diversity can do.

Then there was my Dad, who called me on Tuesday night lamenting "Obamanation" as he likes to call it, joked that he wanted to move out of the country, and said that the United States was now going to join the EU, and that Obama might be the anti-Christ and that the only good thing about the election was that it would hasten the Second Coming.

My Dad watches Fox News all the time, listens to conservative talk shows and fellowships at churches with the same dearth of different opinions.


We need to think more about how to solve this Blue State-Red State divide, and as much as I like Obama (though I don't agree with him on everything), I don't think he is suddenly going to unite us. That is up to us and the way we choose to live, but I don't think there is an easy solution.

Obama is neither the Messiah nor the Antichrist. Just a good politician with some good ideas.

The Anatomy of a Hipster Party and Redneck Wedding.
Redneck? or Hipster?

This summer I was a fly on the wall at two gatherings of two groups of people in Chicago that are arguably on the opposite ends of the white people cultural spectrum - hipsters and rednecks. Yet these groups have strange, inexplicable ties.... the interesting thing here is that both groups drink cheap beer (the rednecks drank Schlitz and the hipsters drank PBR and Miller High Life) and some of the men in both groups had long hair and tattooes, but I suspect that the motivations for these similar looks were much different.

Many hipsters try to co-opt the look of working class people (well, working class people from the late 70's, early 80's especially) but it's an entirely self-conscious decision. For the rednecks, it's not really supposed to be ironic. It's also interesting too because (and these of course are all broad generalizations) but hipsters often condescend towards rednecks and the lower working classes but rednecks are ambivalent or unaware of hipsters. And finally I observed that both groups tend to be pretty ridiculous when intoxicated, demonstrating once again that alcohol can be an equal opportunity idiot maker.

Anyway, since these events were a couple months ago, and I'm feeling lazy, I'll break down the two parties bullet point style.

The Redneck Wedding I Videotaped:

Symptoms:

-I had a feeling that the bride's side of the family was more regular middle class and the groom's side was more solidly redneck. Most of the groomsmen had shaved heads or crewcuts, goatees, and token stainless steel stud earrings in one ear. I remember one member of the family in particular (likely the crazy uncle) had shoulder length greying hair, a patchy beard, missing teeth and had an ugly flannel suit that looked like he had it in mothballs since 1978, the last time he wore a tie. I also spotted at least four mullets, half of which were on women who looked like WPBA professional bowlers.


-Schlitz beer was everywhere. Before the ceremony where the wedding party were taking sips in between pictures, after the ceremony where a big cooler full of 12-packs was in the back of the limosine, and yes....at the reception where toasts were made with Schlitz in a can. Yep, you read that right.

-Since the groom was wheelchair-bound (from a car accident if I remember right) he wheeled the bride in his seat out for the introductions. It would have been a touching moment if not for the fact that the very-unromantic sounds of AC-DC's "Back in Black" were blaring from the loudspeakers as they crossed the hall, a song that in my mind is supposed to be reserved for introducing professional wrestlers or rural high school basketball teams.

-During the toasts, one of the groomsmen (probably the most inebriated) grabbed the microphone for an unscheduled toast. "OK, people, you best cover the kids ears because this toast will probably be PG-13," he said as a mix of laughs and groans simultaneously was heard from the nearby tables. The speech continued something like this...
"I met Jason in a bar a few years ago, and I think we've been to that same bar about every one of the last 782 days since then. At the time Jason didn't have a girlfriend so he said, 'Hey maybe I should fake a handicap so I can get some sympathy points with the ladies. Well, Jason, now that's you're married, why don't you come clean and get out of that damn chair?" (The laughs and groans increased at this point). But anyway, he ended up meeting Kelli, who I think is way too good for him. In fact, I predict that this marriage will last about a year. So, let's toast to them, and I'll see you guys next year for the divorce party!"

-During the dancing, they played Cotton Eyed Joe, which is tied with the Chicken Dance and the Electric Slide for the Most Regrettable Wedding Reception Dance Staple. At one point during the song, I watched as a man wearing a felt cowboy hat tried to shotgun three beers at once on the dance floor. And no, it didn't quite work out.

-Livin' on a Prayer brought the house down. Even I was getting into it, singing 'Take my hand, we'll make it I swear" with fervor as I was videotaping the whole endevour.

--The Hipster Party:

Up until recently, I lived with Amy, better known as an America's Top Model Contestant from last season. (On a side note, it cracks me up that when people find out about this....they think I'm either the luckiest man alive or a horrible pervert considering I LIVE WITH HER BOYFRIEND TOO. KTHXBYE). Anyway, Amy had her 21st birthday party at our apartment in August and chaos eventually ensued. So here's the thing, Amy used to go to Columbia College and Alex attends school there currently and most of their friends also go or did go to school there. Now considering Columbia College is an expensive downtown based art/film school, it goes without saying that it attracts more tight-pants wearing, middle class hipsters kids from the suburbs than a Wicker Park dive bar offering free PBR.

The guy on the left proves that somehow it's cool to look like Jeffrey Dahmer from 1982.

-Our party was dead until after 11:30 p.m. It was just myself, my roommates, a few random people, and a Cuban drug dealer guy (that's a long side story) sitting around the back patio and smoking. Cuban Miami Drug Dealer Guy tells me I look like a "major stoner." OK, I guess I should go ahead and tell his story...

I talked to him for awhile and he was very open about his life. CMDDG was a 22-year old guy that was on his way to Cleveland from small town Oklahoma from the way of Miami. See, here he was this regular Miami kind of guy, he sold cars, dealt pot, and taught cute tourist girls how to kiteboard in the ocean. He even looked the part, he had a white collared canvas shirt, a tank top underneath and khaki shorts and sandals. His hair was slicked back (all guys with their hair slicked back has to be a bit shady, that's what we've learned in the movies) and wore an eyebrow piercing in his left brow.

CMDDG had the good life for awhile, going to the hottest clubs in South Beach and staying out until the break of dawn (he kept telling me how 'off the hook' this one club is where it was designed to look like a car wash. Yep, a car wash), gettin' high and making phat cash. But things came crashing down when his dad got out of jail. His dad had been in the state pen for 15 years for being caught with like 150 kilos or so of cocaine back in the 90's. In prison, the dad reformed, turned his back on his old ways and was then shocked when he got out and saw that his son turned out to be a young version of him. (Can't you see a real life version of the old dramatic "I learned it from you, Dad!" commercial?)

So the dad strips everything away from CMDDG and makes him move to a small town in Oklahoma as a sort of penance. There he lives an unsatisfying life as a construction worker/fish out of water. After a month or two, he meets up with Amy's friend - a naive blonde recent high school graduate who was about to move to New York state for college. Thus, CMDDG hitched a ride from her to make his way to Cleveland to begin the next chapter of his life. A stirring tale to say the least.

-Myself and CMDDG quickly began to feel out of place because around midnight the party began to blow up. 15 people blossomed into over 100 and what's worse...they were almost all 20 year old art students and the evidence was everywhere.... Our fence looked like a bike rack, with dozens of fixed gear road bikes hanging haphazardly over it. There were countless tattooes, especially of stars and music notes and foreign language phrases...The men wore beards and earrings, the women wore straight bangs, side ponytails...and they both wore the token black framed glasses. Hardly anyone talked to me at this point...they probably noticed someone over the age of 25 that didn't dress to be conspicuous and stayed far away.


-Our party was trendy enough to have it's own party photographer...who sort of acts as a kind of hipster paparrazzi. She follows this certain group around and photographs them being young, drunk, and artsy...usually at house parties or industrial looking warehouses or abandoned buildings. I asked her why she was doing this...and she said she didn't get paid or anything but "I get to go to a lot of awesome parties!" Apparently, she just lets people use the photos for their Facebook pages...and that's reward enough. The most amusing thing was watching people playing up to the camera like they were subjects of a Spin Magazine photo shoot. At one point, a heavily tattooed and scantily clad boy and a girl kept taking their shirts off and trading them while the photographer was snapping away like crazy.

-By the end of the night, our apartment looked like hell...hundreds of beer bottles and cans scattered around and someone apparently thought I'd be funny if actual soil was thrown around the kitchen. Someone had also shot off New Years Eve style party poppers in various places (including my bedroom). Also, my roommate's $300 glasses got stolen and all of our hidden beer had been stolen. Someone had ripped my RedEye article off the fridge and drew funny faces on it.


-Hipsters are supposed to be these knowing, liberal, openminded people while rednecks are supposed to be the ignorant, brutal ones, but the end of the hipster party (not the redneck one) turned out to be quite violent. I had gone to bed around 3:30 a.m. while my roommate tried to kick out the scragglers...but they refused to leave, instead throwing bottles in a neighbors yard and attempting to rip the umbrella out of the patio table and yelling at my roommate. Of course, my roommate acted by decking one of them...probably not the smartest move since he was backed into a corner at the fence and the garage. Plus there were five of them. So they proceeded to kick his ass.
Now, luckily these were sissy boy art kids, otherwise he could have gone to the hospital. Instead he got some bruises, scrapes, bumps and light contusions.

Just another night in Chi-town.

I made my debut as Dr. Fantasy, a fantasy sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune RedEye today. (And yes, I know the name makes me sound like a porn producer from the late 80's) You can view it by going to www.redeye.chicagotribune.com and clicking on the "Look at RedEye Print Edition in PDF form." It's the Oct. 15 edition (the one with the giant high heel). Also, if you click on the 5-on-5 link, I appear also at the Oct. 15 edition.

In addition, I have started writing a radio show called the Ironic News Report a Daily Show/SNL Weekend Update-like take on current event. The INR is both a comedy segment that runs on Chicago Public Radio's Vocalo Programming and an extended topical/political satire show that can be heard Tues and Thurs from 11-1 on Fearless Radio or can be downloaded to podcast.

Here are some of the jokes I've written for them over the past couple weeks:

Notes from the seats of the Cubs’ thrilling 5-4 win against the Brewers in Wrigley Tuesday - which was hands down the best baseball game I’ve ever seen in person. You had it all, a perfect night temperature-wise, a game in mid-September that helps decide a pennant race against a local rival, two All-Star pitchers on the mound, two good offenses, you had the big hitters getting big hits, clutch pitching, a spectacular catch in the outfield, 9^th inning drama where the count goes to 3-2 with two outs, two men on in the bottom of the ninth and the team’s closer has a showdown with (arguably) the team’s best power hitter. And best of all, you had a Cubs win.

Other observations and anecdotes:

-During the pre-game ceremony honoring Carlos Zambrano for his no-hitter two nights ago, the presenter noted that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich had declared that night “Carlos Zambrano Day.” The millisecond that the governor’s name was announced, people started booing like crazy, threatening to drown out the rest of the words. Quick, name a popular Illinois politician whose first name doesn’t begin with the letter “O”. Ol’ Rod might be less popular than Hurricane Ike at this point.

-And Zambrano proceeds to throw out the first pitch, which begs the question, is he the best ceremonial first pitcher ever? Too bad he didn’t throw a 98 MPH heater over the plate, but we’ll take the high Eephus pitch.

-Prince Fielder is one of my favorite players because I have a real weakness for fat guys who play professional sports – John Kruk, Oliver Miller, Khalid El-Amin, Charles Barkley and late period alcoholic Shawn Kemp – I loved them all. And God Bless Prince Fielder because even if he gave up meat during the offseason and lost 20 pounds, he still looks like a fun fat guy wearing Brewers pajamas. God, he’s so cute I want a plush version so I can hug him all day.

Wait a sec, I forgot how fat C.C. is too. Somehow I bet C.C. and Prince do not sit on the same row during the team’s chartered flights.

Hey, it's still not meat, right Prince?

-Alfonso Soriano is much maligned in Chicago because he gets paid too much, is a poor fielder and a streaky hitter, but I can’t think of many athletes I’d rather watch. His swing is a thing of beauty when he hits like the first pitch double he smacks off C.C. “Pitching Factory” Sabathia.

-I don’t get why 16-year old girls go to the baseball games. The giggly duo sitting next to me are spending 60 percent of the time text messaging and another 30 percent taking random pictures of themselves to send via texts to their friends. The dark haired, pouty lipped tart sitting to my left is so fast at flinging open her phone and texting, it’s like she’s the Doc Holliday of Verizon. I happen to sneak and peek at a couple of her messages and they’re hilarious…She sends a picture of herself to a guy and the guy responds..

“I luv UR new hair, it makes u look dark and mysterious, but not in a goth way! So cute!”

She responds simply “Yaright.” Apparently “Yeah, right” has been somehow combined into one word for 16-year old girls. I want to weep.

-New Brewers manager Dale Sveum comes out to argue a close double play call that costs the Brewers a run either that or to explain again to the umpires how exactly they spell his name. It’s pretty amazing to me that the Brewers’ brass fired the old manager Ned Yost during a pennant race with two weeks left in the season. It’d be like firing a movie director right before the closing credits of his newest film. How pissed would you be?

-Right before Prince Fielder comes out to bat in the sixth inning against Ryan Dempster, I told my friend Rachael “I have a bad feeling about this…he might do something here.” Three pitches later, Fielder nearly tears the cover off the ball and it flies somewhere on the street over Wrigley Field. Since I have Fielder on my fantasy team, I have mixed feelings about this… “Fantasy Dong!” I yell with half-conviction. Hey, the Cubs are still winning, right?

-Soriano answers with a juicy dong of his own. An inning later, Prince hits another! Needless to say, I love big dongs.

-I don’t get why Kerry Wood’s entrance music to come out and close a game is “Welcome to the Jungle.” It’s a park, not a jungle, and wasn’t Axel writing that song about Los Angeles? Kerry Wood is about as L.A. as Joe Biden.

-This is the kind of situations that makes baseball so awesome. A man on first and third, a one run game, and Kerry Wood versus Prince Fielder to decide it. The crowd is going crazy while pitch after pitch is fouled back. Even the 16-years old have momentarily stopped texting. Finally Wood strikes Fielder out looking on a crazy 80-MPH “slurve” pitch. CUBS WIN!

I performed some of this material Wednesday night at an open mic comedy night...But i rewrote it to work better for a print audience. Keep in mind, I'm aiming this at a certain audience...I'm in a land of about 2 percent conservatives. Gotta give the people want they want!

"We're happy to report that the world did not end this week. Scientists in Switzerland turned on a device Tuesday called the Large Hadron Collider - an atom smasher that's supposed to shoot giant lasers at the speed of light or something...we don't know exactly, we're not scientists....leading some experts to speculate that the device's usage would spawn a black hole that would kill us all. It didn't happen, of course...but a black hole was actually spotted this week anyway. But as it turns out - it was only Dick Cheney's soul.

In related news, President Bush heard about the Hadron Collider project and now he's reportedly trying to fund a top secret project to develop a black hole as a superweapon. Apparently he wants to build a "smart" black hole that causes a force of gravity so specific, it only sucks up terrorists, gay people, the national debt, drugs, illegal immigrants, porn stars, Barack Obama and our collective memory of the last 8 years.

Speaking of potential disasters…Critics everywhere are saying Hurricane Gustav was a pretty weak sequel to the 2005 blockbuster summer release Hurricane Katrina. One critic said in the New York Times today: "Gustav did not blow me away. It got all this pre-release hype, so when I flipped on CNN the day it hit New Orleans - I was expecting a lot - I wanted 100 foot high waves, I wanted heavily armed looters in canoes being shot down by Tommy Lee Jones, I wanted the Scorpians playing "Rock Me Like a Hurricane" live on top of the roof of the Superdome. But what'd we get instead? I'm sitting there watching a hard rainstorm on TV. Two thumbs down."

Critics weren't the only ones upset with the relative weakness of Gustav. Observers say CNN anchor Anderson Cooper paced around the French Quarter in his little orange slicker waiting for a dramatic shot of heavy rain and wind battering him around that never came. He allegedly told his camera crew: "Ok, screw this boring shit...Bring me my fatigues, I'm going back to Iraq! Or snowsuit so I can go to Alaska and stalk Sarah Palin's family. C'mon people, ratings!"

Gustav however did win a recent AP poll as the "Scariest Sounding Hurricane Name of the Year." According to the numbers, 14 percent of respondants said "Gustav" sounded like the mean old neighbor guy down the street that called the police everytime a kid hit a ball into his yard, 29 percent thought Gustav could be the annoying homeless man on 4th and Monroe that won't stop bugging them for change, and 44 percent claimed Gustav was the name of their Nazi prison guard in World War II.

Hurricane Ike is now gathering speed and is predicted to hit southeast Texas this week. Houston officials say they plan to round up a posse, ride to the beach and 'shoot the sonofabitch dead' with pistols."

A couple months ago I applied to be a writer at The Onion, the famed fake news satire publication. I haven't heard from them, so I'm guessing I didn't get the gig, but it's a shame because I had plenty of ideas for stories. For the application I had to write several proposals for stories. Here's a list of the ones I wrote:

Running Out of Licensed Characters to Market, Marvel OK's "Armadillo"

I could probably write a lot about my experience last weekend at Lollapalooza. I mean, 75,000 people, over 100 bands, 25+ hours all in Grant Park in Chicago? I could do 3,000 words, easily. But alas, it's been almost a week already and I'm running out of time, so I'll just make a few random observations....

-The 90's still looms large. With MTV still locked into showing vapid blonde teens talking about nothing and idiots doing stunts all day, and with rock radio hardly relevant at all these days, the newish bands still don't hold a place in people's hearts like the bands that headlined Lollapalooza - Nine Inch Nails, Wilco, Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, - all bands from the 90's. The only headliner from the current decade (Kanye West) isn't exactly rockin. Rap is a different game.
I think personally I'm a little stuck in the 90's myself, but perhaps that's because I'm getting older myself. That's part of the reason I was excited about going to Lollapalooza (I also got the ticket for only $60) to perhaps discover some new stuff.

My favorite shows of the weekend:

-Radiohead. Radioheads fans can basically be broken up into three different camps and I'm firmly in the "Love 'The Bends' and 'OK Computer' but not wild about the last four albums" camp. That said, there was something powerful and hypnotic about last Friday's show...especially when fireworks started shooting into the air right after the title track from 'The Bends'. Radiohead doesn't immediately strike me as a huge festival type band but they certainly seemed up to it, even if Thom Yorke rarely said anything the whole night.

-Chromeo. As much as I shy away from bands that feel too "retro", Chromeo's disco-meets-Hall and Oates 80's synth rock was freaking irresistable. It was a rad Sunday afternoon dance party in the baseball fields.

-The Racentours. It's hard to blame Jack White for new rock's inability to be adored like their aging predecessors. The White Stripes rocks and so does his new band in a rootsy, bluesy way that recalls a almost a combination of Led Zeppelin and Lynard Skynard.

Other random observations:

-It's strange how people will turn their backs to a band playing nearby to watch an empty stage in anticipation of another band coming soon. I can't tell you how many people were staring straight ahead at the barren Bud Light stage for NIN when The National was playing a great set right there.

-Hipsters often annoy me and there were plenty of them on display. Why exactly did they adopt the style of wearing huge, cheap ass plastic pastel sunglasses circa 1988? Or hipster girls wearing circlet headbands with feathers in them like they're all little Pocohantas? I'm lost on that. I saw a guy during the "Battles" show wearing purple framed glasses, he had a long mullet with the side of his head shaved, he had a working man's utility vest, Doc Martins, and skinny black jeans. If I was a blue collar guy and I saw this skinny idiot, I'd hit him with a tire iron.

-The Iron and Wine show put me (and many others) to sleep. Count me amongst those mystified by all this new boring indie jam band folk that's been popular lately. Long beards and 8 minute songs are not cool.

A Dream, Fulfilled

I've always wanted to have something I've written to be part of a blurb promoting a movie or video game. I wanted to scale the heights of a Roger Ebert or Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, or even the Ain't It Cool News guy.

Now sure, my name isn't attached but still it's THE TOP QUOTE! I have truly arrived as a corporate shill and a human being.

Oh yeah, the link is:
http://www.chimplove.com/

And don't be afraid to click on it at work, it's um...not what you might think.

I can sympathize with car drivers, really.

As a frequent cyclist in Chicago, I think much of the blame for the often adversarial relationship between urban bicyclists and drivers in Chicago lies with a small demographic of cyclists who ride recklessly and with a sense of entitlement - that they are somehow above the rules of the road because they're on two wheels. It's not just bike messengers, it's these tight jeans wearing twentysomething hipsters on speedy road bikes that are obsessed with biking as this cultish subculture. It's been amazing to me since I've been riding to work down Milwaukee everyday how many of them blow through red lights at dangerous intersections and expect cars to stop
for them even though the cars clearly have the right-of-way.

On the other hand, many drivers still don't understand that bicyclists have just as much right to the road as they do. I encountered the worst of this attitude yesterday.

I was biking to work in the morning as usual yesterday when I encountered the type of guy you love to hate. A middle-aged professional white guy, impeccably dressed, driving a midlife crisis induced sports car convertible, probably divorced and dating his 25-year old secretary - the type of guy who puts his Blackberry as close to his skin as possible to feel a small thrill everytime it vibrates because it's a digital reminder of his importance in the world.

Anyway, when I hit a red light at the intersection of Chicago and Milwaukee, the right side of the right lane was filled with other cyclists, so I cut between two lanes of idled cars and moved over so I was just ahead of Mr. Mercedes guy. Perhaps feeling that he had earned the right to fly at 40 MPH immediately when the light turned green because of his high powered professional whiteness, he honked at me. I turned around and half heartedly shrugged and looked at him puzzledly.

He then yelled back at me something about how I had just done something illegally. "I have the right to the road, too!" I argued back. He was continuing to rant back, but the light turned and I started to go on the bike lane down Milwaukee. 10 seconds later, however, something caught my eye. Mercedes Man was driving at my speed and was still yelling at me.
"YOU HAVE TO BE GOING THE SPEED OF TRAFFIC!" while I countered with "It's illegal for me to bike on the sidewalk, where the hell am I supposed to go?" I don't know if he had taken too much Viagra the night before, but his face turned even redder. "I WORK FOR THE STATE'S ATTORNEY'S OFFICE! I COULD HAVE YOU ARRESTED!" I couldn't help but laugh. "Really?! For cutting in front of you on my bike at a red light? That's pretty funny!" He pointed right in my face "I COULD! I COULD DO IT RIGHT NOW, I COULD FUCKING TAKE YOU IN!" Suddenly, the road rage hit me..."Try to do anything to me and I'll rock your ass!" I said.

I wish I had said something way less gay, I know, but this wasn't an action movie, and I didn't have a script. But at any rate, cars behind him were honking, ironically enough, so he sped on and flipped me off. Meanwhile, I started laughing with the other bikers that were around. It just gave them more fuel for their anti-car fires. Maybe we'll need to bring in Jimmy Carter soon to make some sort of peace accord.

Have you ever actually met a hardcore Aerosmith fan? I haven’t, which is sort of strange considering how many hits they’ve had over the last three decades. Most bands of their superstar caliber—Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, U2, Black Sabbath, hell, even Rush—maintain rabid followings amongst certain fans. But for whatever reason, Aerosmith doesn’t usually inspire more than a “Yeah, I guess I like some of their songs,” from most music listeners.

Perhaps it’s because over the last two decades they’ve become almost a theme park band - settling for videos starring a teenage Alicia Silverstone, cheesy movie soundtracks, Super Bowl appearances, and a comfortable crowd-pleasing blues rock sound that isn’t all that distinctive or interesting.

For better or for worse, Aerosmith cleaned up its act in the ‘80s and committed a sin worse than drug and alcohol abuse—they went corporate.

It seems appropriate then, considering the band they got to star in the game, that the new addition to the Guitar Hero series is decidedly mediocre and uninspiring. Despite a few interesting new things, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith really isn’t much more than a Guitar Hero III expansion pack with a thin coat of Aerosmith paint splashed on.

The familiar “hit the colored buttons and strum in time” gameplay is the same, the career, multiplayer and online modes and menu remain unchanged, and you’ll even find that the guitars and some of the characters from Guitar Hero III are there. The new stuff comes in the form of Aerosmith character models, guitars modeled after Joe Perry’s collection, and video interviews with the band between setlists (that for some reason weren’t recorded in widescreen so there are black bars on the side).

The usual Guitar Hero song tiers highlight Aerosmith’s career chronologically in a quasi-VH1: Behind the Music way (minus the rehab of course). You start out humbly at Nipmuc Regional High School and go all the way to the Super Bowl halftime show and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Each of these locations is used as the backdrop for the set and introduced by a short video of band members reminiscing fondly about the old days. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith does actually break up the Aerosmith-centric song list in a clever way: it starts out sets with “opening bands” that Aerosmith actually toured with at some point, like Stone Temple Pilots (whose “Sex Type Thing” feels slightly out of place here), Cheap Trick, and (arguably the best addition) Run-DMC. Unfortunately, however, the non-Aerosmith songs tend to be cover versions of the originals, and they’re of varying quality.

The Aerosmith songs are also a mixed bag. The band’s early rockers “Sweet Emotion” and “Dream On” are no-brainers and they’re the best songs on the game. Other pre-1984 classics like “Toys in the Attic”, “Uncle Salty” and “Draw the Line” also make the cut. Late 80’s hits like “Love in an Elevator,” “Rag Doll,” and “Walk This Way” are also welcome additions. The most recent songs are “Pink” and “Beyond Beautiful” from the band’s 2001 album Just Push Play.

No doubt that many people will complain that Neversoft left off most of Aerosmith’s hit ballads like “Cryin’” and the weepy “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from the Armageddon soundtrack, but to me it seems like the right call. I don’t think power ballads are meant to be played on Guitar Hero. I also can’t say I’m sorry to see the annoying “Dude Likes a Lady” omitted.

In all, the career mode consists of 31 songs, with each set of five made up of three tracks by the title group and two by the other bands. You can also unlock a few bonus songs Aerosmith or Joe Perry Project tunes, but that’s still only about 40 total songs. That’s not many considering it’s a full priced $60 game and Activision says that no downloadable tracks will be made available.

There would have been two ways to make Guitar Hero: Aerosmith worth buying and Neversoft took neither route unfortunately. The first idea is an obvious one, and it would be to release Guitar Hero: Aerosmith as either a budget priced expansion pack to Guitar Hero III or as downloadable content on Xbox Live or the Playstation Network. The other approach could have been to take the “Play Aerosmith’s career” idea much further and turned it into a Guitar Hero role-playing game where you could set up practice spaces, hire a manager, stave off crazy groupies, deal with the temptations of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and build up your instrument playing skills.

Instead, what Neversoft has built is another Guitar Hero game that will appeal almost exclusively to either devoted Aerosmith fans or fans of the Guitar Hero franchise itself. I think, sadly, that there might be many more of the latter.

Score: 6

by Ryan Smith

Some critics have pointed out the surprisingly complex and nuanced narratives of many top recent video games as signs that the medium is progressing as an art form and may soon be seen on par with movies and TV shows as far as storytelling goes. Grand Theft Auto IV, for instance, frequently asks tough questions about our ideas of morality, Mass Effect broaches racism like no game before it, and Metal Gear Solid 4 might as well be part of a philosophy course on the ethics of war. But alas, if you’re worried that video games are becoming a little too “arthouse” or highbrow, there are always titles like Ninja Gaiden II.

In this quasi-sequel to the 2003 Xbox title, (if you don’t count Ninja Gaiden Black or Ninja Gaiden Sigma, that is) the main female character’s heaving breasts are more developed than the story. The plot revolves around the Spider Clan Ninja’s theft of the so-called “Demon Stone” from the safekeeping of protagonist/super-ninja Ryu Hayabusa. The Spider Clan awakens the “The Archfiend” (they might as well call it ‘The Final Boss’), demons take over New York City and use the Statue of Liberty as some sort of evil base and create general mayhem. The only person that can stop them is Ryu and his badass ninja skills with, of course, assistance from Sonia, the aforementioned busty CIA agent who looks like she might have stepped off the cutting room floor of a Soulcalibur sequel.

This isn’t exactly serious thought-provoking fare, true. But it could be reasonably argued that with Ninja Gaiden II being an action game, and more specifically a ninja action game, the story is deservedly perfunctory. It’d be like judging a hot-dog eating contest based on table manners.

That said, if intense and bloody martial arts action is art to you, Ninja Gaiden II could be your Mona Lisa. As Ryu you seem part assassin, part frenzied ballerina, furiously hacking, slashing, slicing and dicing hordes of baddies in style with a dizzying array of slashes, flips, kicks and flying attacks. Human enemies actually lose limbs often (sometimes it made me wonder if I was actually fighting piñatas) at the deadly blades of Ryu, but rather than silently accepting their fate and laying down in a pool of blood, they just become crazed kamikaze attackers. For instance, sometimes if a one-armed attacker is able to grab you, he will set off a suicide bomb killing him (and maybe you) in the process. On the other hand, if you get close to a de-limbed ninja enemy and hit the Y button, the camera will dart to a close up shot and feature a gruesome final decapitation blow, complete with splattering blood and the not-so-sweet sounds of ripping tissue. It’s the kind of violence-porn cinematography that would make Quentin Tarantino weep with joy.

Luckily, not only does the action look good, it controls well too. Using a weak and strong attack button, a trigger to block and a jump button, you can pull off an insane amount of acrobatic attacks in a short period of time and the faster you use your right thumb, the more explosive Ryu can be. Wall jumping and other platforming skills are also done in a way that it feels intuitive and not impossible to pull off.

But just because the controls are smooth and easy doesn’t mean Ninja Gaiden II isn’t challenging. It’s quite the opposite actually. After the first couple levels, the game drifts into sometimes maddingly frustrating territory. In some ways, it’s nice that the designers make you earn your keep because in most hack ‘n’ slash games, mindless button mashing is enough to get you through the game. In Ninja Gaiden II, repeatedly hitting the X button into oblivion will make you nothing more than demon fodder. On the other hand, cheap unblockable combos from enemies and bosses with massive super attacks that take 60 percent of your life bar do get old.

Then there is the worst enemy of all, the camera. From a visual perspective, it’s cool that the designers want you to see Ryu in all his black spandexed glory, but the camera often fails to show a useful view of the action and where the other enemies are on the screen. You can be hit by a shuriken or a fire arrow and have no idea where the damn thing came from. Sure, you can adjust the camera to a default angle with a flick of a button but in a game when a split second can be a matter of life or death, having to constantly change the camera can lead to many frustrating moments.

The bosses can also be a source of frustration. No doubt they look impressive and are designed well, but some of them are hard enough that they make you want you to throw your controller out a window. I had to fight the giant wormlike boss over 15 times before I beat him, and every time he crushed me against the wall, I barely stopped myself from shouting curse words at my TV.

If you like action games, however, and you can get over the wonky camera, the gratuitously ridiculous story and the soul-crushing difficulty, Ninja Gaiden II is one of the best out there.

Sasquatch Journal Interview: Alex Seropian, Founder of Wideload Games

Alex Seropian

In a gaming industry increasingly dominated by a handful of sprawling media giants, Alex Seropian is a bit of an iconoclast. Bungie, the development company he co-founded in college, became extremely successful after Microsoft acquired them and the rights to the studio’s Halo game in 2000. But instead of sticking around to reap the benefits of the “Halo” cash cow, Seropian left Bungie in 2003 while the sequel was still in development to move back to Chicago with his family.

He and several of his associates soon started a new independent game development company in the Windy City called Wideload with the intention to do things differently than Bungie and most of the industry by hiring a small staff that outsources much of its work to other companies around the world.

And,of course, there are the games themselves. Wideload’s first major release was the underrated Stubbs the Zombie for the Xbox, a black-humored game in which the title character attacks enemies by farting and spends a level urinating in a major water source in a 1950s-era suburban utopia.

This month, Wideload released “Hail to the Chimp,” a slightly subversive, family-friendly party game. On the surface, the game resembles some of the cute, colorful fare aimed at kids for the Nintendo Wii but “Chimp” features a lot of sly parodies of politics, news media and pop culture.

In a recent interview, Seropian talked about his company, the challenge of making a game, and releasing a presidential election parody game in the midst of the country’s fascination with real-life presidential politics.

Q: How is the way Wideload makes games much different from Bungie?

Alex Seropian: We grew up Bungie to be a typical game developer where we ended up with about a hundred people working on a game over three years, and that’s a fairly common model. But when we started this studio, we didn’t want to do that, because in that model you fail. It’s expensive and there’s lots of other factors. So we took a page out of the filmmaking model and we decided, OK, we’ll start our team with this small core group of people and we’ll just keep the team this way and we’ll run the production of the game and we’ll staff up with contractors and external developers and people we know in the industry for production, and when we’re done with production we’re still that small team. Also, everybody here contributes to the creative process on a regular basis. Over the last five years, we’ve actually come up with a couple hundred game ideas that we’ve developed in one way or another. It’s not like there’s just one guy inventing everything. It’s a very collaborative environment that way.

In this creative process, do you have specific meetings?

Oh yeah, regularly. Probably six times a year. The simplest thing we do is..we say, “OK, we’re having a game day, so bring your ideas.” And we bounce ideas back and forth. Sometimes we’ll take an idea that somebody had and rework it and bring it up again and sometimes and we’ll take some of the ideas and say “lets take three of these, and take a day trying to exploring those.”

Where did the idea for Hail to the Chimp come from?

This game, like other ideas, started out as a one-page idea and it was actually really simple: We wanted a multiplayer social game where you have four people on one couch playing. The only really specific thing we had in that one page was this idea of teaming up. We also decided we wanted all the characters to be animals because back in that one pager we decided that your mom has to like it, so, you know...you hand your controller to your mom and she plays and she’s not offended.

Sounds like a far cry from Halo.

Look, the game industry says, “Yeah, we’ve surpassed the box office, we’re bigger than Hollywood,” but honestly it’s a load of shit because games cost 60 bucks—that’s 10 times the amount of a movie ticket. There’s huge potential for the market to grow, and the only way we’re going to get there is if there are games available that address an audience beyond the core gamer. So we said “OK, we can take everything we’ve learned making games and we can apply it and have high production values and make a game that’s family friendly, but something that core gamers will also like because we’re core gamers ourselves.”

Was this game inspired at all by the current presidential election?

No, [lead writer] Matt Soell actually came up with the idea a couple years ago. He said, “Hey, maybe they’re having an election and it can be covered by this 24 hour cable news network,” and we started looking at it like that. Think CNN, and then we started seeing all the things we could do. If you go on YouTube and type in political attack ad, you get all these hits and you watch this stuff...if you see them on TV, they’re not supposed to make you laugh, but…

Did you do that type of research then?

Oh yeah. I’d go down to my basement, get on my Stairmaster, and I’d go watch CNN, just to see the language, the visual language they use and how the anchors talk to each other, and the kind of commercials they have. I took all the fake ads and I put them in QuickTime and gave them to my kids to watch, and you’d think kids wouldn’t like it, but they were, like, rolling on the floor.

Were there lots of challenges you faced when making this game?

Every time you make a game, you’re using new technology. Imagine you’re a director of movies and every time you go to make a new movie, you have to use a new movie camera and your cinematographer doesn’t know how to use this thing. That’s what we’re faced with. We got triple-whammied: We’re using a new piece of software and using the Xbox 360 which is a new piece of hardware and the PS3, which is a completely different piece of hardware. A lot of things we’re figuring out...this technology, we’re doing things with [the Unreal Engine] that no one, including Epic, has done with it before and so we’ve found some problems, so we’ve had to work with Epic to try and solve some of those problems. Some are easy to solve, some completely impossible.

How do you feel about the end result of the game?

This project has been really gratifying to work on because the gameplay is way different from Halo and Stubbs, because you know, they are linear games, and you visit each place once. Each level is one path. In this game, it’s like all of these concentric circles...We put a lot of money on the screen, put a lot into the characters, the environments, all this stuff, there’s just a huge amount of production value in the game. I have to think it’s the most in any party game ever and it’s very gratifiying to, you know, raise the bar for a game like this.

Are there certain perceptions people have about working for a video game company?

Yeah, I get asked “uh...do you play games all day?” Which...I don’t. (laughs)