“Make Me A Real, Live Boy”: Artificial Gravity In WOLFENSTEIN: The New Order

When last we — well, I, at any rate — saw William B.J. “Blaz” Blazkovicz, he looked like this:

Blaz was the “P” a player FPSed through Castle Wolfenstein 3D, stabbing/shooting/Gatling down pixelated Nazis and their dogs by the hundreds, before getting to this guy:

"Und I am not ee-fen za vurst you vill faaace!"

Castle Wolfenstein 3D was goofy, violent, and very satisfying fun — a completely addictive time-waster and a godsend to a single guy in his mid-20s who'd finally outgrown the video arcade (although the original cabinet Simpsons game still enticed on occasion). Wolfenstein was the gateway to video games as we now know them. It capitalizes on A) a player's curiosity to see what unpleasant surprises lie beyond the next corner, B) the innate fun of innocently shootin' up bad guys real good, C) the darkly ironic sense of humour that ought to attend both those impulses.

When iD announced a 20-years-later reprise of Blaz and Castle Wolfenstein, I was juiced. Globally victorious Nazis taking over the fizzy pop zeitgeist of the '60s? Blaz to the rescue? Count me in!

I'd missed subsequent additions to Blaz's epic of pixelated blood-letting, so I had no idea what to expect from this latest chapter. Boy oh boy, was I in for a shock: Blaz has an emotional life.

And he looks like this -- all the time.

What does the emotional life of a man who's personally perforated thousands of Nazis, including a cyborged Fuhrer, look like? Why, nothing so much as that of your run-of-the-mill aggrieved heterosexual adolescent male, who thinks the mere fact of his existence entitles him to the sexual affections of the dishiest dame in the room.

This complicates a (seemingly) mature man's enjoyment of the game, to say the least. Taking Blaz seriously is seriously wrong — it requires the player to take Nazis seriously, an even greater story-board miscalculation. The entire exercise is akin to sending Indiana Jones to give Oskar Schindler a little help. And outfitting the camp commandant with some Robocops, just to make things interesting.

Which is not to say I abandoned the game in a state of high moral dudgeon. It's a short game, finally, with some amusing elements. Rocketing Blaz to the moon captured perfectly the deranged goofiness of the original game. For a moment I was surprised and delighted to see the game's physics replaced by the physics one expects on the lunar surface. Of course the physics revert the second Blaz steps through an air-lock — I guess the Nazis invented artificial gravity.

But then this entire game is built on artificial gravity. I can't imagine Blaz's “poor me/what a crazy, mixed-up woyeld” mutterings tugging at anyone's heartstrings, but I could be wrong — when I see the lads attempting to catch the attention of my daughters, I'm continually struck by the distance of perspective I have on my own adolescence.

If nothing else, iD's missteps highlight for me what I generally expect from a game. Diversion, first and foremost. Secondly, emotional bonds that are light and exclusive to the world as rendered in the game — evocative, but not too evocative, of actual reality.

And really, by now the bottom line for game developers couldn't be clearer: aggrieved adolescent hetero males — no matter what their age — don't want to be reminded of their miserable plight. Easy-peasy . . . right?

Elsewhere: AV Club asks, Is it okay for Wolfenstein to turn Nazis into cartoons?

Super Duper Alice Cooper

I finally caught up with Sam Dunn's Super Duper Alice Cooper, a project I was very much looking forward to.

"Me three, pal!"

I had a renewed romance with Coop some years back, enjoying his snarly clowning around in recent offerings like Dirty Diamonds and Brutal Planet.

As for Dunn, I've followed him ever since he glued together Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. Dunn's fresh-out-of-college shuck proved surprisingly effective in disarming his subjects, from drooling fans to long-in-the-tooth rock 'n' roll survivors. “I'm an anthropologist, looking into the anthropology of the Heavy Metal scene.” Sure, kid. Whatever you told the National Film Board to get your funding works for me, too.

Since then, Dunn's movies have traded on his unabashed joy for the genre and its artists, producing jolly, affirmational behind-the-scenes extravaganzas like Iron Maiden: Flight 666 and RUSH: Beyond The Lighted Stage. His enthusiasm is remarkably infectious: even the notoriously reticent Neal Peart chuckles and opens up to Dunn's camera. Super Duper offers Dunn, in conversation with Alice, while the cameras roll. Could this agreeable fanboy filmmaker entice new revelations and insights from the Coop's thin lips?

Short answer: beyond copping to a cocaine addiction in the '80s, no.

I should point out this is something of a departure for Dunn: it's a narrative doc, with no footage of Dunn-yacking-with-the-subject. But the film starts promisingly enough, with Vincent Furnier and the other original members of Alice Cooper narrating the sequence of the band's origins, while home movies and animated photos play out against a pastiche of vintage horror flicks, with particular emphasis on Dr. Jeckyl & Mr Hyde. Stylistically, Dunn is borrowing heavily from Julian Temple's The Filth & The Fury: A Sex Pistols Film — a commendable, if dangerous choice. Commendable because Temple's film is rousing entertainment; dangerous because comparisons quickly reveal the weaknesses in Dunn's movie.

Super Duper isn't the story of a band, it is the story of one man, Vincent Furnier, and how he survived a near half-century in showbiz. Consequently, though Dunn brings in a chorus of other voices to round out the narrative, the predominant voice is Furnier-Cooper's — he determines the framing of the narrative, and the others (including ex-bandmates) pretty much fall in line with it.

"And that's what really happened -- just ask anyone in this room."

Makes sense, really. It's the formula to success that manager Shep Gordon spotted and quckly honed to a razor's edge and weilded in his own self-interest: “Alice Cooper” The Persona is the meal-ticket; fence that off, and everything else becomes negotiable.

Now that would be an interesting angle to explore. But Alice Cooper is also Dunn's meal-ticket, so we get the expected narrative of addiction and recovery — or more accurately, the pernicious All-American Narrative Of Addiction And Recovery, which extolls the virtues of the Nuclear Family closing ranks behind The Rugged Individualist, cleaning him up and sending him back into the fray, to prove himself (and by extension them) Victorious Conqueror Of The Scene At Large. If Coop's version doesn't grab you, go watch Johnny Cash. Same story, different costumes.

I don't want to come down too hard on Dunn: these films take a heap of work, and the film I really want to watch is an almost impossible challenge, if only because Furnier and his handlers are too vigilant to allow it. But I'm hoping Dunn rediscovers some of his anthropology texts soon.

What were the social conditions that made Alice Cooper such a smash hit? Furnier says he owes his success to being the only one doing what he was doing when he was doing it — he saw a gap and filled it, basically. Even if we accept that claim at face value (and I don't) why was America ready to make this guy a superstar? When was America ready to make him a superstar?

Answer: 1973, with the landslide re-election of Richard Nixon coinciding with the release of Billion Dollar Babies, Alice Cooper's first album to go gold, and eventually platinum.

"Oh, I'm just warming up."

At the time, parents (like my own) saw clips of Alice Cooper's outrageous stage antics and thought this was the behaviour of a man in fact possessed by demons — a curious claim at a curious time. If an anthropologist were to do a little trawling through the counter-cultural penny-press of that era, focusing on the publications devoted to the occult and esoterica, he'd quickly discover that the long-haired kids saw clips of the president their parents had re-elected and believed this, too, was the behaviour of a man in fact possessed by demons. Now consider how the Babies show concluded with a roadie in a Nixon mask being beaten to an inch of his life by the band — and an increasingly frenzied audience — and you have a better grasp of the when behind the why.*

That's just one of many other more interesting stories swirling in the wake of this Addiction Recovery Success narrative, but you'll have to read books to find 'em — starting with What You Want Is In The Limo: On The Road With Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper & The Who In 1973, The Year The 60s Died & The Modern Rock Star Was Born by Michael Walker (A). Pair that up with Nixonland by Rick Perlstein (A) and you'll be clutching your blankets and calling for mommy faster than you can say, “Welcome to my nightmare.”

In the meantime you can take or leave Dunn's flick for what it is: a reverent tribute to a showbiz veteran, a nostalgic diversion.

No Muppets were harmed in the making of this production.

 *Another when question worth asking: when did Alice cease to be frightening?

Tears For Toronto's El Mocambo?

I’ve had my fun in Toronto’s El Mocambo club, made some indelible memories, but I’ve gotta say: I just don’t understand people’s nostalgia for the place.

Cool sign, tho.

So you’ve seen some great acts there — the ElMo itself is crap. Its architectural format is completely unremarkable: if you’ve been to any bar/club with a stage, you’re already familiar with it.

"We came here for the singularly unique stage!"

You don’t go for the food or drink or ambience — if nobody is playing at the ElMo, there’s no reason to be there.

And the people who were playing were often unhappy with the conditions. The ElMo has two floors, and over the weekends there were often two acts playing simultaneously. If you weren’t the louder act, you were miserable.

If you were a performer, you deserved better. If you were a paying member of the audience, you deserved better. So spare me the tears, please.

On the other hand, if you want to shed a few on behalf of Toronto’s languishing Masonic Temple, I’ll break down and join you.

Not-so-cool sign, however.

But the stage...

...is to die for.

Now there is a fabulous performance venue. History, ambience, drama and acoustics — let’s get this place back up and running, tout de suite.

Update: Dragon to the rescue. One of us is backing the wrong horse, but one of us has the money to do it.

Leaving Jian Ghomeshi's House Of Mirrors

Yo, Canadians in non-Ontario povinces/territories: are the rest of you as rattled by the Jian Ghomeshi news as we are? Or is it just Ontario? Or just Central Ontario?

Or is it just me?

No, I think I can safely vouch for the Toronto-and-environs portion of Ontario. We're reeling.

Since the bulk of this blog's traffic comes from the United States, it behooves me to give a little background, loath as I am to do it. I imagine most of you read the headlines and think, “Popular radio host. Scandalous — indeed indictable — behavior. Sacked by broadcaster. Legal action. Media shitstorm. Sounds like it's sorting itself out. What's so complicated for Canadians?”

Oh, but it is so very complicated. Perhaps some itemization will clarify.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: our national public broadcasting service. Canadians have, by and large, abandoned the television aspect of it, and joined the rest of the Netflixing lemmings. In contrast, CBC On-line is fairly solid.

In contrast to them both, however, is CBC Radio.

“It's kinda like NPR Radio,” an outside observer might say. Yes, but mostly not-at-all, because just about every Canadian has some reason to tune in at some point in their day to CBC Radio — especially new Canadians. Radio in this country is huge — as in, we'll buy tickets to watch it performed huge.

And Jian Ghomeshi was a huge part of that huge. So huge, in fact, that even Americans would buy tickets to watch his radio performance.

Charismatic guy, but not usually in a look-at-me way; more often in a well-this-is-interesting-tell-me-more way. With the exception of Billy Bob Thornton, he could get good interviews from notoriously difficult subjects — Lou Reed and Donald Fagen, for starters. As an on-air personality he was hip enough that my kids were fine with listening to him, and he was considerate enough to keep my parents listening also.

He was smart

He did good work

He knew his superiors

He disdained his inferiors

He was proud and dignified - T Bone Burnett, "House of Mirrors" 

When CBC announced out of nowhere that it had fired Ghomeshi, I was stunned. I thought, Look at the last four years in Toronto and ask yourself, what sort of behavior gets a public persona fired these days? When Ghomeshi came out in front of the story on Facebook, I thought, Well, IF the matter is as he frames it — weird, but consensual sex — he's probably got an air-tight case. And I posted words to that effect on FB.

Goes to show you what a rube I am, particularly in this BDSM business.

Within seconds of that little opinion of mine, my LGBTQ friends were furiously throwing out BDSM cries of “Foul!” like so many safety words. They smelled a rat, and it didn't take me long to agree with them (and remove my post).

This is likely the only link to Dan Savage you will ever find on this blog, in which he interviews one of Ghomeshi's sexual partners who's gone (anonymously) on record as saying their kinkiness was 100% consensual. If you would rather be spared details, Savage's summary is:

This isn't about some poor persecuted pervert, but about either an abuser hiding behind the BDSM scene's culture of consent (and a celebrity leveraging his fame and power) or a sociopath who believes that initiating violent sex is the same thing as asking for consent.

In a later update, Savage adds:

As I continue to read more about Ghomeshi . . . I now think my interpretation — my attempt to reconcile the experience of the woman I interviewed with the allegations of the eight women who now report being assaulted by the radio host — was entirely too charitable.

Any expression of regret from Savage's pen is notable, to say the least.

So where does this leave us — or me, at any rate?

At this point I don't ever want to hear his voice again. That could change — I've watched Woody Allen, and Roman Polanski. But about the latter, I'm reminded of a Kevin Smith tweet in response to Hollywood Elite calling for Polanski's pardon: “Look, I dig ROSEMARY'S BABY; but rape's rape.” Indeed.

And it leaves CBC Radio in a weakened and very vulnerable state. Every Canadian government I've experienced has been quietly antagonistic toward the CBC, but the Harper government's hostility is exceptional. I would hope, stupidly, but for the sake of our national condition, that the ruling Conservatives might ease up a bit on their dismantling this public service. If our recent history should teach us anything it is to be careful about bringing our sworn enemies to absolute ruination; the enemies that arise from those ashes are inevitably worse.

Holy And Humble Chatter, In The Wake Of Wednesday

One of the churchier e-letters* in my in-box raised my ire, by proclaiming Wednesday’s madness (surely the activity of a “radicalized” Muslim) a clear signature of “The nihilism of contemporary secularism” decades in the making, and its concomitant inability to provide our nation's youth with a sense of mission or purpose.

A moment of pious introspection, before I continue...

Well, were I to address this claim directly, I might decry the lazy, pejorative use of “secular,” then build an alternative case suggesting the failure is just as likely due to our ruling elites’ steady, Burkean dismantling of Canada’s vast liberal state apparatus, to the point where young fellas are faced with a future of under-employment if they don't migrate to the oil-fields of Alberta — a task begun somewhat inadvertently by Jean Chretien but carried out with particular vigour by our current PM, usually to nods of approval by the dudes** (still not too many women contributing to this “think tank”) who send me these e-letters.

And I might throw down the gauntlet and ask, how many churches*** can a young man recently graduated from high-school walk into and say, “I need a job, and a roof over my head,” and expect direct help on both those fronts? Since it’s my religion**** we’re discussing, lemme tell you: the percentages are pretty low. Kids get better help with these baseline concerns when they approach Mormons, Jews and Muslims.

Out here in the Wild West, “Christian community” is, by and large, ersatz community, with little beyond worship committees and Bible studies and the occasional “think tank” to distinguish it from bourgeois “secular” communities and their book clubs — that is what I might say, were I to build up a proper head of steam. Now, you might derive your life’s purpose from studying the Bible, provided you’ve got an adroit buttinsky in the room. But (I might add) if all you have when you wake up in the morning is a part-time job pushing carts across a parking lot, your sacred sense of purpose is going to erode at a dependably steady rate.

And I might also say . . . well, no. I’m done speculating on myself.

...gotta catch my breath...

Wednesday’s attack seems to me as likely the by-product of precarious mental health as it was of “radicalization.” Now, I've no doubt some earnest poindexter has penned a Christian theology of mental illness, but we’re still waiting for it to capture the attention, hearts and minds of the body at large. With or without such a theological construct, here in the West our beloved Bride of Christ foists the manifold challenges of dealing with the mentally ill on — surprise! — The State.

Now, if you’re going to accuse our “secular” state of failing the mentally ill, that is a matter worth discussing and taking action on. But “lack of purpose”? Get your Burkean hooey outta my in-box. 

*I’m not going to point fingers, but the guy who wrote it is DUTCH!

**DUTCH, most of 'em.

***Of DUTCH origin, or otherwise.

****Which, in my case I will admit, does indeed have DUTCH roots, but of the shabby, Friesland variety.

Richard Marshall, The 3:AM Interviews

“Richard Marshall has carved out an almost sui generis role in contemporary culture in doing highly intelligent interviews with a wide range of serious philosophers, and doing so in terms that are intelligible to those outside philosophy, indeed, intelligible in almost all cases to any educated person” — Brian Leiter (from here)

Richard Marshall: "biding his time," apparently.

I was set to call Marshall a super-smart hep-cat who engages with serious thinkers and restless interweb readers alike, but I think Leiter has the sharper take. Here are two recent 3:AM interviews I enjoyed and recommend: “On theism and explanation” with Greg Dawes and “Towards hope” with George Pattison.

The Recalibration Of “Fun”: 'Delicate' by Martha and the Muffins

“The fun is over.”

A more compassionately adroit reader might have phrased the matter differently, or perhaps begun the Tarot session with the question of concern. As it stands, “The fun is over” is a blunt assessment of expectations, or to my mind an improvement on the old addiction canard: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”

There are varieties of fun a person learns to surrender as they mature. Most of us got thrills putting our fingers near daddy’s face, so he could pretend to bite them. And for most of us, that fun was over by the time we turned five. So it goes. Life requires a continual recalibration of expectations and experience.

"We've only just begun..."

Leonard Nevarez is a huge Martha and the Muffins fan, and does some snappy deconstructing of their oeuvre (among other matters) over here. It sounds like the folks at 33 1/3 turned down his proposal for a booklet devoted to either This Is The Ice Age or Danseparc, I’m not sure which. It also sounds like the University of Toronto Press has agreed to a larger MatM-based project. A loss to the hipster press is an academic gain I look forward to reading. Excelsior, dude.

Anyway, I am deeply indebted to Nevarez for framing MatM’s aesthetic as a sort of cartography of longing (my words, not his), because it’s helped me identify what makes Delicate so appealing to my ears. Nevarez seems a tad non-plussed that this latest album appears to no longer chart out their earlier social-displacement within the Global Village — a more intimate location-by-location exploration of the sort of thing David Byrne & Co. gave the Reader’s Digest treatment, in “Cities.”

MatM’s focus may have shifted somewhat, but I think it’s a good thing. Real Life Massive Wallops tend to hone one’s focus on the intimate and immediate — the journey nevertheless continues, albeit on a vastly re-calibrated scale. Take a seemingly throw-away song like “Crosswalk,” an extended stream-of-consciousness riff appended to the chorus-chant, “All she wants to do is cross the street.” The collected words and images are surreal and harrowing — the soundtrack, perhaps, of a midlife mind in its ape’s journey as parental eyes watch a child negotiating with street traffic. Somehow the journey from here to there, across the street, concludes with life in balance.

Delicate touches on other adult concerns, from mortality to chafing against social/religious edict, the age-alteration of desire and expectation. The sound may not have quite the youthful stride of earlier MatM albums, but remains unmistakably Muffin-esque.

After 25 years of no Muffins on the eardrums, the overall effect of listening to Delicate was akin to enjoying a deep conversation with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. She hadn’t changed a bit — except in all the necessary ways.

Heaps of fun material await you here, at the official Martha and the Muffins site.

2019 Update: additional fun to be had here.