BOOKS - Kim Echlin: The Disappeared

Score: 8.3

No time for a lengthy, detailed review (I don't even have the book on hand for quotation purposes), so this review will be a mere outline of one, which, given the book, I don't think will be too big of a problem. This is a novel which outlines many things in a tracing that seems small in comparison to the politics at work. And that sparseness contributes greatly to the book's success.

Shortlisted for the 2009 Giller Prize, the novel tells the story of a young Montreal woman who falls in love with a Cambodian immigrant while his country is mired in the disastrous rule of the Khmer Rouge. Upon the border to Cambodia being lifted, he returns to his home, and the two go through a period of separation. However the narrator remains fixed upon her love, and before long, heads off to follow him. It's there that the story truly begins.

Before it's over, lives are made and lost, and though only one character is ever developed to its fullest (the narrator), a small but strong cast of supporters helps to drive this tale of loss. The less said about the plot itself, the better - the novel is brief enough to risk spoiling almost everything in more than a paragraph of explanation.Yet without going into detail, I'd still like to discuss the qualities of the plot.

Overall, it's crafted well. The focus is always on the central character - her voice dominates the narrative, and it's truly only her story that's ever told in any detail. The other characters' lives, including her lover's, are more on the periphery. Which brings me to my major complaint. Though the writing takes the form of a story being told to the lover years after the events of the novel (it's full of "You did this, you did that, we fell in love" etc.), the narrator comes across as border-line narcissistic. She displays a patent disregard for her friends' lives and wellbeing at one point near the end, and all throughout, she never succeeds in producing (for the reader, mind you) any sort of empathy with her lover. Everything in the book is about her, how these things affect her, drive her to do as she does. Granted, it's her story, but it left me wanting more from these other characters, who are overwhelmingly possessing of more interesting stories. The few glimpses you get are merely those outlines I mentioned - defining moments in their lives, not the type of true depth you're hoping they will ultimately display. The lover comes close in some ways, but even some parts of him fade from perspective as the book moves on.

The end result is a story that feels as though it is but another white perspective into a world of the Other. The narrator's misguided ideas and hopes for an overwhelming human dignity (along the lines of a UN declaration of human rights, which, let's face it, is unenforceable, and much of the world does not actually agree with it any significant way) make her come off as just another white woman full of sorrow for the atrocities of the third world, without any true comprehension of the fundamental human and inhuman forces at work underneath. By the end I was left with but an impression, a border of the true human sacrifice that is at the heart of the political realm discussed. This isn't a bad thing, in fact I think given the book's brevity, dealing with the subject matter as she has (one voice, one rather strict, if sympathetic worldview), Kim Echlin did the subject matter proud. She did not write it to discuss the atrocities of the Cambodian genocides, she is merely taking on one woman's story and her own personal connection to those atrocities. It's not holistic, and it's not what I would call "fair", but it's real in its own way.

The writing itself is stellar. Echlin has a knack for simile and metaphor, pulling them out when least expected, and drawing your mind in places you weren't expecting, but are simply thrilled to go. There's nary a cliche in the book (ok, I might have read one, and I said "aha", only to realize the book was all but finished), and her use of short sentences, poetic measure in some passages, and the occasional use of Khmer keep the pace just right. There's never a bad or awkward moment linguistically, and the short, succinct chapters have the effect of mimicking a murder-mystery: you're always on the hook for something good around the corner. The writing is probably more deserving of something around a nine.

So overall, though I have a few complaints - they're mostly personal, not stylistic, and nothing I can fault her too badly for. The book is deserving of its praise.

BOOKS: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

Score: 8.6
Version: 3.0 (Published 2007 - Douglas & McIntyre here in Canada)

So I didn't really know crap about free trade, globalization, economics, or business entrepreneurship three years ago when I started this blog. I was an Arts grad who had no idea what I'd be doing for a living, and enjoyed giving his opinion on things. I was also fresh out of an education system that was gradually migrating away from a worldview still centered around the cold war. Since that point changes have been made. My wife, who is currently a student teacher, is instructing grade tens from a textbook called Perspectives on Globalization, and what was once (when I was growing up) a hazy and uncertain future for the globe that was no longer based on two competing super-powers but immaterial concepts like free trade and the interwebs, has been given grounding. Globalization is very real now, and ignorance of it is not really acceptable anymore.

Part of the credit for the mainstreaming of this reality is due to this very book. The World is Flat is Thomas Friedman's opus to the causes, shapes, and outcomes of a world that has migrated from cold wars to cola wars and format wars. In it he expands upon the central metaphor of a "flat" world. By this he is referring to the idea that the world of business, and consequently power, is "flattening out", from a vertically-driven world where decisions, supply-chains, and world trade rested in the power of a few at the top of the chain, and was then spoon-fed down and up the chain as those at the top decided. No more. Because of what he describes as the "ten forces that flattened the world" (each described in detail in a mini-chapter), the balance of power and decision making has fundamentally shifted, from patriarchal to collaborative and from vertical to horizontal - hence the "flat" world. While, like all great economic shifts, technology is the central enabler in this shift, much of the flattening process was made possible by free trade agreements and the opening of previously communist economies to capitalistic endeavour. The end result is a world where competition is no longer between nations or companies, but between billions of individuals competing against one another for work that is, with less and less frequency, limited by location to the extent it was in the vertical, closed off world.

I won't go into too much detail concerning Friedman's analysis - that's best left for the book itself. Instead, I will comment more on the quality of that analysis. In a short phrase, it's mostly good. You're not going to get amazingly in-depth, detailed data on any one topic, he keeps it open for a multitude of reasons, foremost that there's simply too many angles to approach with a topic this extensive without devoting a lengthy chapter to each. As it is, the third release I read was already 635 pages with what looks like a relatively meagre 1.2-ish line spacing setup. It's not a quick read.

It is however, an easy one. Friedman's style is well suited to the topic. Anecdote is interwoven with statistics, interviews with high-ups in companies laced between explanations of how their products or processes are changing things for the common worker or consumer. You might find yourself reading fourty pages on the invention, implementation and importance of the Netscape browser (a three-point narrative strategy he employs for all of the "ten flattening forces"), but it's never tedious, never dull. If acronyms like PHP, RAM, SQL and the like drive you to confusion, worry not, because he's not there to lecture you about them, just say that they're there, this is what they do, and this is why they're important. The focus throughout the entire work is held on business - how they utilize the technologies like the internet and technical standards, as well as the processes like offshoring and outsourcing, and how these businesses are thriving because of it. In that sense it takes on the tone expected in a business how-to book, but for those of you not interested in business, there's enough common-sense situations and sociological impact to make the reading process enjoyable. Friedman is a journalist and it shows in all the good ways. The language is simple, the writing clear, and the topics well connected. Ever get lost in a Friedman book? Go back to the first sentence of the paragraph, and you can pick up from there.

If you get lost on a grander scale, the chapters are clearly defined, if inter-related, and follow a very specific course. First there's the exposition, which consists of a description of each of the ten flatteners. These portions are clear, fairly even-handed, and informative. Then Friedman moves into the true analytical portions. The first details what impact the flattening process is having and will have on the United States of America, and given the flatness of the world (and hence the fact that location is no longer a major determinant to success), he is really analyzing globalization from the point of view of all developed countries. Following that, there's a section for developing nations, followed by businesses, and then individuals. Again, in each the focus is on economic activity, entrepreneurship, etc. It's not until the end that he branches out and touches on the cultural, political, and other social aspects of globalization.

Each chapter is well thought out, its limitations are made clear (his stark acceptance that Information Technology related positions account for only 0.4% of Indian jobs, after extolling the great wonders of shifting wealth the IT world has meant for Indian society, is particularly even-handed), and the central concept is unified, consistent, and remarkably well described. It is difficult to argue against the fact that globalization has in large part succeeded in bringing wealth and prosperity to parts of the world that just a few short decades ago, were bereft of it. Friedman is fair in his assessment of the negative aspects of globalization as well: that jobs are lost in developed nations as they move to cheaper developing ones, sometimes permanently; that corporations like Wal-Mart are able to exploit globalization in its drive for lower costs, again resulting in poor labor conditions for North Americans; that security is increasingly difficult to find (in any sense of the word) in a globally cohesive market. He doesn't shy away from these topics, even if he does treat them with a sort of topical wave of the hand, invoking counter-positives that don't really equal the gravity of the issues they are supposed to dispel. This book is an American book, above all else, with all the brash American enthusiasm for capitalism and wealth you expect, but you don't have to be American to understand it, or appreciate it. No matter your background, it is an easy-to-read assessment of the then-current (remember, this was released in 2007, prior to the stock market/financial market collapse of 2008/9) reality of the world marketplace. My wife could give it to her grade tens, and they'd get it. They'd see themselves in this book, as well as the headlines they read every day, and they'd be plugged in to the flat world. This book is their reality, and they've never known anything different. Friedman nailed that part, and it really is the key here.

However, there is one overall point that irks me. It's something small, perhaps, but there. It always surprises me in those who advocate for free markets and capitalism in general: the relative lack of understanding of Marxism and all its derivatives (socialism, state-communism, Leninism). Someone who supports the ingenuity of markets and the spreading of one very specific form of capitalism should not be "startled" (233) to learn that Karl Marx essentially "called it" (my scare quotes, nothing Friedman wrote) way back in 1848. "Called it" referring to the globalization of trade that is essentially the topic of Friedman's book. Indeed, the passage quoted by Friedman from The Communist Manifesto (234-5) describing capitalism's basic historical functions, grows more and more relevant with each passing year, not less. Though it's taken a bit longer than Marx and Engels might have imagined, capitalism is behaving exactly how they figured it would: endlessly searching for new markets, lowering prices, lowering wages, and toppling political and economic regimes in its travels. Given how cluttered, political, and historically laden any modern analysis of capitalism is, anyone who truly wishes to understand the soul of capitalism, the drive that lies behind its basic principles, would be well advised to consult the two documents that are entwined together in its birth: The Wealth of Nations and its oft-maligned sister work, Das Kapital. No two books ever complemented each other better, or relied on one another more to cover ying and yang, positive and negative, declarative and analytical. Friedman can perhaps be faulted for not going this deep, for not taking an unflinching look at the basic structure that is driving the globalization movement. And, perhaps more importantly, for not considering the Communist Manifesto once again in his closing.

This is a bit of an aside, but if Marx and Engels "called it" in their initial analysis by stating that capitalism will inevitably push beyond all other boundaries to cover the globe in its web of trade, then perhaps the entire "revolution of the proletariat" thing can't be entirely ignored either. Indeed, if there is one point in Friedman's analysis that smells faintly of naivety is the insistence that the process he describes will occur all over again in the future, to the joint benefit of all. Developing nations will progress smoothly to developed nations, followed by an out-pour of capital that will go to newly developing nations to repeat the process. An army of middle class individuals will grow in these developing nations, and everywhere around the world, always (assuming it remains flat), standards of living will improve for the great majority of people as the middle-class only continues to grow in wealth, numbers, and power. If there's anything globalization has made the average working stiff more aware of, it's not that new middle class jobs are just waiting to be filled (as Friedman insists), but rather that middle class jobs as a whole are disappearing. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence to point to this: the huge unemployment figures across the United States; that one of the newest "markets" Friedman likely would have pointed to as producing middle-class jobs (namely the financial sector) has turned out to not really be a market at all, but a bubble based purely on finance's abilities to manipulate itself to produce "profit" out of nothing tangible, real, or value-added; that profit margins for corporations continue to grow even as real wages have stalled or fallen in the developed world. The polarization of the classes between worker and owner is just as real a possibility in the flat world as it was in 1848, 1989, 2001 or 2010. Granted, if we're following Marx's timeline, the final, true, polarization will not occur until the entire world is enveloped in capitalism, without a single person living outside its boundary: Middle-East, Africa, South America, Antarctica, everything consumed and consuming in its chaotic interweave. Regardless, right now, it's easy to see a future where the very term "middle class" might be something relegated to the history books - an anachronism of a time period when rising standards of living were possible for all.

It's a uniquely American trait to ignore these kinds of economic fundamentals, to ignore dissenting viewpoints and instead focus one's outlook with a strong dose of, as Friedman puts it, the "American optimism" (616): the pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work hard, and make it rich American dream that so many in America believe should be the standard the world over. This bias is present again and again in the book, from his insistence that entrepreneurship is natural in all human beings, to his topical references to the greatness of America (page 298 of my version contains the most painful incident). It's not wholly unwelcome, and not completely unchecked by the author, but it can be a bit grating at times.

Another uniquely American trait in writing books like these, is to completely lose sense of people as people, in place of people as their occupations. The book is definitely guilty of that. Even Friedman's heart-touching finale featuring twenty children from India's untouchable class is predicated solely on their ability to suddenly become doctors, astronauts, and writers. Not to live happy lives. Its easy to say that more money equals more happiness, but it's simply not true. Given the bare minimums of food, shelter, and safety, people can be happy in all sorts of environments. Five hundred years ago, nobody had any of the things our modern market has made possible, but people lived full lives then, if their cultural artifacts are to believed. Yes, untouchables in India's caste system lead incredibly difficult lives, and their opportunities for happiness will be greatly enhanced by having economic opportunity thrust upon them, but what makes happy people is, first and foremost, good people. That is the one topic that is most notably absent from the book, and what prevents The World is Flat from becoming a true historical landmark, a fault also present in those other two analyses of political economy. You never get a sense from it of what the overall human impact is going to be from all this. I believe Friedman is aware of this, and to spare his poor reader from another 600 pages, he limited himself to analysis of business, economics, and to a small extent, culture. But humans are more than those things, and more even than the sum of all its topics, and as such, this book, while great, falls just a bit short of amazing.

VIDEO GAMES: Assassin's Creed II - Playstation 3

Score: 9.3

First, a short warning. I have not played the original Assassin's Creed, and don't intend to anytime soon. As such, certain comments may not vibe with those who have played the first game. No big issue there, just laying out in the open. Oh, and also, SPOILER ALERT!!!

As the score testifies, I was very happily surprised by the game. To begin with, the story was quite good, enjoyable (obvious sequel ending aside), and interesting in the mechanics of how it was laid out. The overlapping present-day story of Desmond and the modern Assassin fight against the Templars has the effect of a framing narrative, but one that is both tied to and in most ways dependent upon the body narrative of Ezio and the Renaissance Assassins. The interplay between the two is not in-depth, but the ending turns the entire thing on its head. It's unexpected, but incredibly effective. It's something I haven't seen played with since the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, which, while not dealing with similar technology or ideas, used the video game mechanic in a way that was new and invigorating. With a slightly different slant Ubisoft's done the same there here. As I said, quite nice.

The main story of Ezio is quite engaging on its own, as cliche as it might be. The characters are colourful and the high quality voice acting done with just the right level of bad and good Italian accents. The star of the Italian story though, is the Italian backdrop.

When I say Ubisoft went out of their way to make a fantastic world that was at once believable, playable, and historically accurate, I'm doing them a great disservice. Fantastic doesn't cut it. Scope, detail, and layout are all amazing. The polygon count for a city like Venice, is hard to imagine. Some serious work has gone into creating an engine that can craft the entire city as seamlessly as it does, all the while making it feel natural, while keeping the playability factor that's required for an open-world platformer like this. Even that phrase is somewhat astounding. An open-world platformer. Let's face it, most open world games have been knock-offs of Grand Theft Auto, where killing civilians is a major source of fun. This game moves the entire open-world concept into another realm, where the cliches are removed, and civilians are no longer targets, just objects getting in the way. I know I've missed out on a couple years of gaming lately, but except for Fable, I can't think of an RPG that's tried this approach (MMORPGs aside), even though it seems it would be perfectly suited to it. Whatever, I'm just proselytizing, the game structure works great. The buildings are all scalable, which means they often wind up resembling one another, but by the time Venice comes around you are used to it, and the beauty of the dissimilar buildings makes up for the mind-numbingly similar ones.

The rest of the renaissance setting is great too. Merchants hawk clothes and weapons. Doctors promote fresh cut leeches, and the prostitutes are something right out of a Shakespearean play. The attention to detail in the historically accurate buildings is great too. Infiltrating the Vatican is a great feeling, and speaking with Leonardo da Vinci is just plain awesome. Nothing brings out the inner geek like a little historical fiction. That Ubisoft did it so well is a testament to their homework, and attention to detail.

The other thing they did great was the gameplay. The movement mechanics have about an hour learning curve (if you've never played the first game at least), and then they feel second nature. Fighting, while not incredibly in depth, is good. The lack of depth however means that fights eventually degenerate into the exact same thing every time. The supremely patient AI (and its subsequent inability to stop you in the middle of a killing blow of their allies) makes for unrealistic sequences that belie the overwhelming pseudo-historical approach taken to the whole game. It's a weak point, but given the control scheme available, there might not be much room for improvement. Perhaps a trigger could switch combat modes, or perhaps you should be given a greater incentive to run from large numbers of enemies. Just an idea...

The platforming is super fluid, almost to a fault at times, like when a slight tilt of the left stick sends you running up an adjacent wall instead of jumping up on top of the box you were meaning to. Still, in the end, you feel as though you always have control of Ezio, and any errors your avatar makes, you know are yours.

One other small problem is the quick time action sequences. The first one as a child is cute, but the rest are not necessary, at least not in most cases. At least they're kept to a minimum.

Other than that, I believe the score really speaks for itself. This is a great, great game. And Ubisoft can count on me picking up a copy of the inevitable third title (assuming it doesn't get horrible, horrible reviews upon release). If nothing else, I want to see how Desmond's story winds up, and where the next area will be (French Revolution? Japan, 1930's? England 1700's? Or a jump back to China, say during the Three Kingdoms period?). Until then, I may have to go back and beat this one again.

FIGHTS - WEC 43: Cerrone vs. Henderson

Score: 8.8/4.2

The 8.8 is for the quality of the fight, which was exhilarating throughout, and featured a smorgasbord of styles that bled seamlessly from one to another. This fight is why I love watching the WEC. Cerrone is a great showman, and in my opinion, one of the better 155 lb-ers in North America in terms of natural ability and certain techniques. The fight, was a joy to watch.

The result (see 4.2), was unfair. Cerrone won the fight. I know, given the 10-point must system, that fights like these are difficult to score. But let's be honest, Henderson did not beat Cerrone. Ok, yes, in rounds 2 and 3, he took the fight to the ground, in a seemingly commanding way. But was he? What damage did he do with Cerrone on his back? He probably spent six of those ten minutes standing up, occasionally landing solid shots to the head, but more often struggling to get through Cerrone's legs. Yes, for those two rounds (and at various points through the fight), he out-wrestled Cerrone. But this was not George St. Pierre calibre of out-wrestling. Upon taking his opponent to the floor, Henderson was almost in more danger than Cerrone. If not for a freakish level of flexibility in his arms, he should have tapped at least once in the final round. Yes, Cerrone was on his back, for two rounds, but as evidenced by the many times he kicked Henderson off without much trouble, it was Cerrone who had control over where the fight went, and when.

The judges patently blew this one though. I don't know which round (out of the first and fourth), they gave to Henderson over Cerrone, and I suppose it doesn't matter, because in all reality, they just missed it. Not that this wasn't a close fight in many regards, but in looking at each round, and when considering the fight as a whole, Cerrone was the overall better fighter. Not all the time (again, this is not St. Pierre we're talking about, or Machida), but enough to win the judges scorecards. Or at least mine.

I may make another post about how the ten point system could be altered to make for both more engaging, and better-scored fights, but that can likely wait for another time.

MUSIC - Radiohead - Kid A

This is essentially a response to Pitchfork naming Kid A their album of the 2000-09 era.

Score: 8.8

I've had Kid A for a couple of years now - probably after reading about it on countless indie-rock oriented sites. I'd picked up OK Computer a few months previous, and didn't see what the hoopla about that particular album was, so you can imagine when I listened to Kid A once, said "meh", and moved on.

Allow any hipster passerbys to cry foul now and insert interjections full of hyperbole. It's a simple statement: Kid A is not that good.

It's good, don't get me wrong, but it's not that good.

Now I think everybody who'd ever read Pitchfork for any duration longer than a few months would have known that Kid A was a shoe-in for the top pick of the decade, so it's not as though I'm arguing that it shouldn't have been. Their editors, while overly verbose and usually spewing nonsense, are firm, predictable, and seem to believe deeply in the music they like. For the Pitchfork crowd (and, it appears, the Rolling Stone crowd), Kid A simply was the best album of the decade. My argument instead is that, while it has several good points to it, it does not possess the things which people go to music for.

Kid A can roughly be summed up thusly: electronica-infused dissonance. Radiohead obviously did not invent electronica, and were not the first to utilize dissonance as a musical tool (Shostakovich was using it as his overwhelming modus operandi fifty years earlier). So what then, explains the huge outpouring of critical acclaim? Was it the fact that they were one of the first to do the two things in one cohesive package? Perhaps, but I find most arguments for Kid A's importance seem to revolve around two things, one of which is valid (in my opinion), and one which is not: Radiohead itself, and the sociological construct of the western world in the year 2000.

Radiohead as a band started as (more or less, probably less actually) a brit-pop group in the vein of Oasis. At least, that's what their recorded output began as in the mid 90's. By the time of The Bends, they'd more or less perfected that sound and had begun to move on (something Oasis never really wanted to or tried to do). So when OK Computer spun around in 1997, it was radically different - barely rock, definitely not pop, and full of messages that had nothing to do with love or regret or anything like that. I mean, what pop group writes songs about paranoid androids?

Well, there was one pop group that had done something similar thirty years earlier. The 1960's equivalent, of course, was the Beatles, who were ripping the Tibetan Book of the Dead in their post-pop outings of Rubber Soul and Revolver, and doing things that pop musicians were not supposed to be doing, like reversing guitar solos (Rain), writing songs with only classical instruments (Eleanor Rigby), and introducing new, non-western instruments to the pop catalogue (Norweigan Wood). The decades and the topics were different, but the feeling of change was the same. Which is why, after OK Computer, the fans of Radiohead were getting it in their head that Radiohead was their generation's Beatles (and the previous generation's, who had missed out on something similar [Led Zeppelin or The Clash probably came closest]). Kid A was, subsequently, the generation's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a pinnacle of engineering, sound development, and pop songwriting.

The difference between the two however, was that whereas the Beatles retained all their fans through Rubber Soul and Revolver, OK Computer (and shortly thereafter, Kid A), had failed to keep up the radio notoriety that The Bends had managed through poppy singles like "Fake Plastic Trees" and "High and Dry". The Beatles had "Paperback Writer" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" leading up to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Radiohead had "No Surprises" (a song I wasn't even aware of until I'd listened to OK Computer probably the fourth time, after which I promptly fell in love with it). More telling, upon the release of Kid A, not a single was heard on the radio. Pop music, even in the year 2000 was still reliant heavily on the radio to determine was what was "pop" and thereby, what was "cool" in the eyes of the masses. Radiohead effectively buried themselves in the first corners of the internet music ward, apart from pop culture, and away from the prying eyes and demands of popular culture (though they would constantly flirt with it, due to their huge success in that internet ward). Whereas the Beatles had "All You Need is Love" and "Hello Goodbye" as the radio holdovers while Sgt. Pepper went on tour for the band, Radiohead had nothing.

Yet those fans who'd followed them through the haze of OK Computer were suddenly convinced that yes, here was the 2000's Beatles, and they were visionaries, pop music boundary-pushers, who were unquestioned geniuses. I have no idea if that's the impression others have got, and I have no clue whatsoever what Radiohead's impression of this was, but pop music was, I believe (and the lack of singles evidence this) no longer in their sights. To their fans they'd created a great album (again, I'm not arguing against the quality of the album, it's good!), and they had secured their place as the pinnacle of the 2000's, by October of 2000. Pitchfork was and remains, such a fan. Like the girl who fell in love with the bad boy once, and never looked at anyone that didn't have a chip on their shoulder, Radiohead fans have pretty much been enamoured with this album since it's release, and have always used it as a measuring stick against which all other music simply fails to match up.

The timing of the album is usually the other thing fans point to: Radiohead described all the tension of the year 2000 perfectly through their electronica, krautrock, and voice-distortion and through a generally dissonant sound and set of lyrics. The world in 2000 was a scary place full of this new technology (PCs, and the Internet, more generally) that was binding us all together (a la Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat), while pushing us further away from one another, in this endless cycle of digitization and dehumanization. So when Thom Yorke's voice came through in the first track all garbled and disrupted, that was the perfect opening to a decade of personal and cognitive dissonance, where truth wasn't clear and people were no longer measured by their real attributes, but what their digital version would mean.

That's all true. But unfortunately, it doesn't help the music enough to make the album better than it is.

I find the "timing" argument for Kid A to be very interesting, and very accurate in a lot of ways. But unfortunately, that same argument means that the music is exactly what the times were - unengaged and impossible to fathom. Removing the human aspect of music means it isn't music that can reach humans in the ways other music can. It can dissuade, it can disconnect, and it can engage the thought processes, but it can't be felt. Kid A is guilty of, above all else, it's inability to be felt on any emotional level.

"That's the whole point!" Some hipster cries. "And," I would return, "that, is mine." I want music to speak to me, to sing for me, and to do things that I can't do myself, that thought and disaffection and transistors can't do for me - create beauty. Kid A is many things, but it is not beautiful ("Treefingers" being the possible exception).

And I suppose that's the crux of my admittedly rather weak argument. I can't say why I don't like Kid A so much as I can find fault in the arguments of those who do. It's cold, and I want my music to be hot. I want to feel something when I listen to it - not experience the absence of feeling. Kid A will be, for me, a lounge record. The most popular muzak you'll ever hear.

And I love Radiohead. They may be the closest thing to the Beatles we ever have. But the painful thing that made me feel the need to write this in the first place is that Pitchfork's #2 choice, the Arcade Fire's Funeral, is the better album, by almost all leaps and bounds. Pitchfork, which is rarely dogmatic, is fixated upon Radiohead like so many devoted fans. But Funeral signaled the changing landscape of indie music, and it was the antithesis to Kid A in every way - full of emotion, overflowing with it. Funeral was the realization that music, of all things that can be digitized, will remain always attached to human subjects. And it was hot, hotter than anyone was prepared for. For that, it was the decade's best album.

BOOKS: Toni Morrison - Jazz

Score: 8.5

The first reading of a Toni Morrison novel is like eating your favourite meal for the first time. To start all you have is the aroma, the cover, a blurb, maybe an image. It's enough to give a brief outline, teasing your senses, but nothing more. Then you crack it open and with the first bite you're completely overwhelmed. It's all there at the start - the texture, the contours, the flavour, the spice, the moisture, any sauces, any hints of a well-incorporated core. The first thirty or fourty pages can leave you breathless, confused, and unsure of much, beyond that your appetite has been whetted.

Then you continue reading, and each bite is more succulent than the last, each one of those initial qualities takes over one of the mouthfuls, and before you know it, you've devoured the plate. Every character, every temptation, history, human emotion and animal reason has been consumed, and at the end of it all, you love it. You can't imagine not knowing these characters, their flavours, the way they move and the people they love. It's your new favourite book and as good as it was, you can't imagine eating again for some time. It's quite an investment.

Jazz, her 1992 novel about black country folk moving into the big City in the heady 1920's is a Toni Morrison novel through and through. It won't let you forget it, from the overwhelming intro the final statement of purpose, expressed through the simple holding of hands, you can tell it'll be another favourite before you've put it down. All the elements of Morrison's trademark are present - deft weaving of past and present narratives, evocative writing that seems to build metaphor upon metaphor to the point of near-incredulity, and characters you will remember, whether you want to or not. Yet something is lacking. In the preamble, Morrison relates Jazz to her previous masterwork, Beloved, linking them thematically. Yet where Beloved succeeded because of it's seamless connection between style, subject matter and character development, Jazz is lacking.

Though I doubt I would ever review it here, Beloved is likely the only book I could ever give a perfect 10.0 to. It's still the absolute best at nearly all the things I hold dear in writing. It is about slavery, pure and simple. One word describes its whole topic. Somehow, Morrison managed to convey nearly every single problem, ramification and personal experience (I can only imagine this last point) related to slavery in a masterly whirlwind of poetic prose and postmodern narrative structure. It is as close to perfect as one can hope.

Jazz is a bit more convoluted. The title would have you believe one thing, but jazz itself doesn't really play a huge role, it is the narrative voice, and in that sense behaves in a way typical to jazz: it's a bit scattered, graceful, and most certainly oftputting if taken in in small pieces. However, that narrative roleplay, as good as it has the potential to be, never truly becomes effective in any way in Jazz. Similarly, the characters, as interesting as they may be, seem a little bit underdeveloped by the end, perhaps with a tad one too many. The central two are excellently done, but unevenly so, with one being far more interesting than the other, and the third central character not really being explained very well at all.

Similarly, the plot seems at best hard to follow, and at it's worst (I can't believe I'm about to write this) trite. The two lover characters are connected through a convoluted chain of knowledge, and they don't really need to be. Nothing is really achieved in the overall terms of the novel by having the two linked. It could be the scattershot way I read the novel, but it definitely lacked a compelling sense of drive within the plot; almost as though it was a collection of individual stories and characters Morrison tied together through a central incident. Reasonable, but not spellbinding by any measure.

The writing, as always with Morrison, is stupendous, and there were several times I was simply caught in the beauty of the phrasing, or even a simple response a character would make. "I didn't fall in love, I rose in it." Simply stellar. It's enough to lift up a sometimes dreary book into the realm of excellence. Just don't expect it to do much more than that.

[Addendum]
On the whole, Jazz never achieves the singularity of purpose that infused Beloved. It is not a pure depiction of black life in an historic urban reality, and it is not even an effective documentation of the transition from rural to urban that it seems to touch upon.

MOVIES - Kingdom of Heaven

Score: 6.2

After reading up on this movie, I feel a little jilted. Apparently there is a 49-minute longer director’s cut version, wherein Ridley Scott’s more ambitious film-making is given further time to flounder or flourish. However, having seen just the standard theatrical release, I have to state that this movie largely flounders.

Shoddy characterization, cringe-worthy dialogue, poor acting (Bloom is especially guilty, though Liam Neeson seems to be growing more limited the more I see of him), and historical inaccuracies are simply too much to beat back the great action shots, good cinematography and score, good acting (Edward Norton was in that movie? WTF?), and a decent attempt at trying to connect with (and possibly ease?) Islamic-Christian tensions in the present day by looking to the past.

Perhaps that is the easiest and most direct place to discuss the merits and weaknesses of the film. Through some rather blatant dialogue symbolism, Scott sets up Jerusalem as more or less what Western audiences perceive it to be to this day: a place of mystical powers and history, which, it is perceived, many millions are willing to kill to obtain in order to achieve their lofty (and completely misguided) sense of heaven. Scott’s own view of that heaven quickly comes out however, as a mystical place that exists only in our heads and the only purpose of which is to serve as a sounding board for the epitome of whatever ideology we are under the sway of. Balian, Orlando Bloom’s character, gives a speech near the end of the film that advocates a completely secular understanding of God, worship, and the Crusades as a whole. To many people I think this is a big bone of contention, and rightfully so. Could the horrors of war turn even the most devout of medieval believers into some form of atheists? Absolutely. Did it turn men like Balian into such atheists? No. Firmly insulated by nobility, political power, and a fierce investment in the power represented by the Catholic clergy, leaders like that of Orlando Bloom’s character would never have advocated a 21^st century view of equal-but-different faiths, and that is just the biggest of all the historical fuck-ups of the movie. If, as Scott seems to have advocated, the movie was designed as an examination of religious conflict, his examination is both topical and completely unilluminating. The “we can all get along if we just understand we’re all human” approach is true, but none of the people in this movie, historically (or if their characters are imposed on the leaders of today), are secular humanists, and as much as it pulls at my bleeding heart strings, an impassioned plea for us all to abandon religion is not going to solve the problem and bring about the typical Hollywood ending this movie concludes with. It wouldn’t have in the past, and it won’t now. It’s really superficial proselytizing, and as much as I love left-leaning Hollywood for presenting this stuff, there are better ways of doing it. Check out Brokeback Mountain.

Still, for all the historical mistakes, there is a degree that his analysis of the possible peace between faiths (actively at war then, undoubtedly at tension with one another on a number of topics now) is useful, if not tastefully done. The very idea of touching a Crusade movie in our current religious climate is ballsy, if nothing else, and it’s not like Scott placed machine guns or suicide bombers in the movie in some messed up form – he kept it firmly within the limitations of the time period, and he deserves credit for it.

Other criticisms quickly have to come up though. Another one at the forefront is the simple sensation one gets, in watching the movie, that Scott bit off more than he could chew. There are too many characters, too little exposition, and too few major plot events to make up for it. For an example – rather than leaving Saladin as an enemy without back-story or conflict (which might have actually worked better for the movie, leaving only the final meeting between Balian and Saladin to show the Muslim character’s compassion and willingness to compromise – a far stronger showing, and one the actor likely would have been up to), needless scenes depicting an apparent conflict between him and one of his advisors are shown, the totality of which lead to nothing. Perhaps in the extra 49 minutes more is fleshed out, but I don’t see how it would be enough. In reaching for the epic scope, writer and director both missed the fine balance between personable and expansive. You sort of get the one, but the other is just a mish-mash of overly simplistic and mildly conflicted motives.

Besides story and plot however, there are several positives to the film. Much like The Painted Veil most of them revolve around the more technical aspects. For recreating Jerusalem in the Moroccan desert, the crew should be applauded. The special effects are good, and the action scenes are both more believable, better filmed, and just plain cooler than the ones in say, King Arthur. As much as I may deride Orlando Bloom’s acting, he has the swagger to control action flicks like few other. It’s too bad this movie wasn’t trying to be one.

Unlike The Painted Veil though, the acting wasn’t uniformly good or bad, with strong and weak points throughout, and the shots weren’t as uniformly beautiful or intriguing either – never once did I think to myself, “Wow, that was pretty cool how they did that.” It’s pretty prototypical filming, and it works for some things, for most, it well, flounders.

MOVIES - The Painted Veil

Score: 7.3

This is a beautifully shot movie with a quite horrible script. And that about sums it up. From the opening few shots, through to the end, the camera and lighting work is exquisite - all the details are illuminated, the play between shadow and light is immaculate, the scenery is the character that constantly dominates every shot, and the landscapes are simply mesmerizing to a prototypical Western viewer who has never been to the Chinese countryside (myself included). Unfortunately, the landscape is too big a character in this novel-come-movie, which would have sufficed in far easier times as a parable play. As it stands it's merely a set of really great shots, with some decent acting but relatively little characterization.

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but considering Edward Norton's character declares his love for Naomi Watts after dancing a single time with her (which the audience isn't even privy to), you can tell this isn't a story big on back-story or character development. It's merely taking cliches (the simple but beautiful woman and the intelligent but not so good with women scientist) and thrusting them onto a backdrop where they have yet to be fully played out - Colonial China in the 1920's, with Cholera to boot. The tale of love, betrayal and reconciliation is trite and predictable to the last (I predicted the final scene involving flowers after witnessing its counterpart in the beginning fifteen minutes), but serviceable. The dialogue is merely atrocious, without a hint of following the old adage "Show, don't tell." The word "love" comes up so often it makes me wince. Rather than showing the two characters fall in and out of love, the director and writer were satisfied to have the character's talk about falling in and out of love with each other. The few times it even achieves a decent parlance into this manner of story-telling, it is still the camera that is doing the work (Edward Norton's watching Naomi Watts undress was particularly telling). The topical dips into anti-colonialism are pretty weak as well, seemingly thrown in for the purpose of... well actually I can't tell the purpose, other than to provide some background to the time period for western viewers I suppose.

Still, in many respects it is a good film - the soundtrack delivers, the backdrop is adequately epic, and the acting is still heartfelt, even if the stars, or anyone else really, was given rather little to work with. For me though, it's just a little too light on the things that could have catapaulted it into a great film, and when you have all these other pieces in play (like an obviously talented director and cinematography team) it's really inexcusable.

MUSIC - Motown Classics: Gold

Score: 9.8

Holy crap what a collection. Usually when I'm listening to two CD's worth of various artists, there isn't a whole lot of good stuff to say. Quality varies so much from artist to artist, from time to time for each artist, and the huge changes in sound that usually come with anything that spans fifteen years is often too much to take in, even if quality isn't an issue.

But for the 13 years covered here, Motown was at its best, and America knew it. The Temptations, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder (I didn't even know he performed when he was young enough to be labeled "Young Stevie Wonder"), The Jackson 5, Four Tops, etc. These were huge names singing hugely popular songs, and they were all doing so under the guidance of Motown records. These songs have had such an impact on popular culture that I recognized half of them without having ever "heard" them before, on their own, as music. That means they were used in TV, movies, in shopping malls, or were simply relics of my parents' meagre music collection in the 80s which I mostly blocked out. These are great pop songs, without any doubt.

The more critical part of me wants to question the ingenuity of such mass-produced tracks (the HDH songwriting team apparently wrote 25 number one hits, as many as Lennon-McCartney, which is itself simply amazing) and the artistic "integrity" of the artists who performed them, but I simply can't. I don't care that every song was in 4/4 time, or that few of the artists wrote their own material, or that certain tropes were repeated time and time again; all I care about is hearing another tune, because I know it will be good. That this collection just scratches the surface of most of these artists (all of whom brought special touches to the songs, and delivered them with a professionalism and soul rarely heard amongst the pop stars of today) makes me happy, because I know there are more songs (perhaps not of the same quality, but probably not far off) just waiting to be discovered and rediscovered. I'm sold, I love Motown.

U.S. Economy.

Score: 2.8

Headlines like the one for this: "Dow jumps more than 250 points after prior day's big drop" make me even more scared every day that the United States is headed into a huge recession, possibly even a Depression (yes with a capital D). Nobody knows what the economy is doing, quite obviously. The fact that the DOW hasn't fallen much more significantly than it has is evidence of only one thing in my mind: the true effects of the housing bubble, the war in Iraq, job losses, oil and other commodity prices, and any number of other smaller forces, have not yet been felt properly in the market. With Bush's massive tax cuts, America is in the best consumer position in its postwar history (in terms of imagined disposable income) yet the Fed and Whitehouse seem to think "economic stimulus" (ie. quicker tax refunds, lower taxes, etc.) will somehow create income in middle class households. It won't. Wages have simply not matched inflation, good-paying jobs have disappeared due to globalization, and the credit crunch may soon mean a prime rate nearing 0. All this to avoid a recession that was brought on by stupidity all around. The people who didn't predict the housing bubble and the GDP contraction that is on its way, are the same people that are causing huge fluctuations in the day-to-day stock markets. In other words, the people who have no idea what's going on, but are trying to predict it anyways. I have little faith.

BOOKS - War and Peace

Score: 9.1

The title in the least is a cliché to end all clichés, a testament to the ability of a simple phrase to create, and conjure within each person who glimpses it, an indefinable aura of pathos and epic. I mean, just think of a world without War and Peace. It just can’t exist (which is kind of Tolstoy’s point, but we’ll get to that later). Sooner or later someone was going to come up with the two great contrasts of the multitudes in our era of the nation-state, and novelize it with as much force and devotion as Confucius’ philosophized it thousands of years earlier before nation was even a distant science-fiction-esque thought. That Tolstoy did it first, and did it in the manner that has shaped our understanding of that titular phrase, isn’t surprising given his knack for epic, large-scale stories. Like War and Peace’s 1400-page marathon, Anna Karenina is no overly-long novella, and neither will ever be mistaken for the product of an imagination with a short attention span. Indeed, above everything else, the novel is best remembered for its sheer size: spanning two decades, three generations, and the largest war then known to mankind, Tolstoy’s vision was enormous; of course the pathos of the title arises not from millions clashing against millions, but from our seemingly instinctive knowledge that the monstrosity of the title gains it’s gravitas merely in the individual lives that are caught in the midst of the two extremes - it is there that Tolstoy focuses and ultimately falters.

“Falters?” You say. How can War and Peace, a book which I myself have just devoted a rather languid paragraph extolling the virtues and cultural/linguistic impact of, falter in any respect? It is literature qua literature, the end-all and archetype of nearly everything that has come before it. It is faultless, beautiful, eloquent, vast, and timeless. Much of this understanding of the novel is true, and much of it is false.

Take timelessness for example. Sure, the core elements of love, live, death, strife, politics and power, war, and peace, are all present in the book, and all front and centre as they should be. Yet Tolstoy’s understanding of all these things, and even their minuatae, are ultimately very dated. The central love relationship between Pierre Bezuhov and Natasha Rostov, for example, ultimately winds up as merely another Victorian-ideal relationship of subservience and domestication of the female spirit, even though there is no way the character of Natasha (which, up until the last sixth or so of the book, is one of the most vivacious and promising women I’ve read) could in any reality succumb to such domestication. While I’m a big proponent in the idea that socialization plays a huge role in our personalities and the abilities of our personalities to change, there’s a certain level at which a personality simply is: and Natasha’s sudden change to domestic queen is nothing but contemporary wish-fulfillment in the characteristically narrow view of femininity. That Tolstoy himself viewed his own wife’s domestic care as the epitome of love, seems to mean that he translated such love to be universally desired and attainable, by both sexes, throughout war and peace. Such domestication is clearly unsuitable to many people in this day and age, and as such, timeless goes out the window.

Similarly in terms of its effect on literature. While early proto-Modern writers may have borrowed heavily from Tolstoy, his rather limited play in terms of format, style, diction, etc. are nothing compared to say Joyce’s Ulysses (which, admittedly, I am currently reading) which was written a mere fifty years later, and his heavily realist based fiction is light-years distant from the post-modern world of a JPod or a Warrior Woman. Rather than the halberdier of future literature, War and Peace is more the undertaker of its past. In the following years the Dickensian tropes, the beautiful, sentence-long paragraphs that describe the most ornate of details, all the assurance that arose from having a single viewpoint and being absolutely sure that viewpoint was correct (ie. Before God died), largely vanished.

“But,” you exclaim, “this is a contemporary reading of a novel that cannot be read as such. Allowances must be made, the base and superstructure (and the ideology therein) have changed dramatically, human psychology has adapted, the world is not the same!” And such an exclamation is true. But it simply doesn’t matter. It’s not that Tolstoy is a complete failure at touching the deeper cores of the points he is reaching for, it’s that he shies away from them when they naturally arise.

Take, for example, the climax. It is not, as may be thought, the fall of the French army, or Pierre’s marriage to Natasha, or Prince Andrei’s death. Instead it comes at a crossroads between the two extremes of the novel, wherein a wounded Prince Andrei looks upon his rival and foil Anatole Kuragin, who is suffering horrendously in a field hospital alongside Andrei. To understand the moment, you need to know only that the two are foils, and that Kuragin stole Andrei’s fiancé Natasha Rostov (see above), prompting a great amount of subliminal hatred between the two. Yet in that single moment, Andrei views Kuragin screaming in sheer agony, in a quiet, peaceful din in the midst of a field of war, and feels not hatred, or pity, but the indescribable understanding that Anatole Kuragin is human just the same as Andrei himself, and as such his actions were necessitated by nature just as much as were Andrei’s, or Napoleon’s, or anyone else’s. Gone is any sort of trivial emotion in the face of overwhelming understanding, an understanding of human existence that cuts through all sense of culture or socialization, and shoots straight to the essence of being. Within the novel it is expressed in a clearly Christian display of God, but its power is agnostic, and means one thing to all people, regardless of who reads it. This is the climax in that it ties in directly, on both a character and plot level, with Tolstoy’s thesis within the novel – the destruction of free will as a viable metaphysical notion.

To think that versions of the book were made wherein Tolstoy’s rather long-winded philosophical tracts were removed completely from the body of the novel is simply disappointing. Tolstoy’s one gigantic tract throughout War and Peace is to show how the minute and tiny pieces of human and natural interaction combine to form the sweeping forces that, so clearly to Tolstoy, pushed the national forces which formed the central conflict of 1812. This point of view, whether Hegelian or a much firmer determinist point of view, isn’t completely fleshed out at any point, but is merely taken for fact, and all the characters, actions, and events of the book play out with this point of view narrating and controlling each step along the way. That view leaves no room for freedom, and Tolstoy’s long, final essay concerning the appearance of free will is a well argued one that concludes only in the very last paragraph, wherein Tolstoy pleads for human beings everywhere to merely accept that they are not free, and accept their dependence on fate.

Such a thesis is obviously a touchy subject, and one’s acceptance of Tolstoy’s vision will largely be decided on whether they agree on this singular subject. Since I personally agree with Tolstoy, I find it his saving grace, the one point at which he truly does achieve timelessness. So don’t take it wrong, this is not a negative review. Whereas much of his narrative is what I would now consider flawed, I can accept and appreciate the contemporary reading of his novel; I can see how his eloquence could be mistaken for perfection, or how his near exact control and understanding of his characters could be mislabeled as an understanding of sheer reality. Without doubt there are many things Tolstoy does admirably if not perfectly in this work, but he lacks the post-modern understanding of equality of being that shines through so much clearer in a Toni Morrison or Don DeLillo novel. Though it means that this review itself will ultimately be very dated, I cannot help but wonder what someone with Tolstoy’s abilities and vision could accomplish were they born in the current world, wherein they would experience the entire totality of human life, from its smallest most beautiful forms (which Tolstoy all-too-often ignores for his characters of nobility and privilege) to its most horrifying depths (which he actually does a fairly good job of describing). Such a modern novel would be even longer than War and Peace, filled with the internet, nuclear fears, media censure, Kid A, Black History Month, third world sweatshops, Brokeback Mountain and millions of other things on top of the millions Tolstoy himself dealt with in his time. Yet such a book would be much closer to the one thing Tolstoy obviously sought to connect with most radically in his narrative of human life: the truth.

Napoleonic Total War

Score: 8.2

This post is an addendum to the post below about Medieval: Total War. This is a mod (sort of how Counter-Strike is a mod for Half-Life) which re-uses the basic engine of Total War and sets it during the Napoleonic age. Though I only played one game and did not play it through to the end, I caught enough of the changes to pass some sort of judgment.

The biggest change is obviously in the battles: musketry and artillery play a much larger role in this game, since they were the weapons of choice in this era. Thankfully they do much more damage than they did in the original source game, and they also change the dynamics enough to make the battles far more interesting. Battles no longer resort to the infantry rushes which plagued the original, since the infantry is now a ranged unit. The best few battles I fought were a mix of infantry just standing across from one another and firing away, and the occasional cavalry flank or artillery bombardment, just as would have happened on real battlefields of the day. I always felt that the battles in Medieval were slightly too formulaic and based more on morale than on strategy or numbers even; in Napoleonic, there is just greater balance and variety in the battles. As well, my previous concern over the battles winding up being just a war of the first thousand or so soldiers who then just hold the borders doesn't apply here, as the damage seems to be inflicted with far more focus on units that are in poor position. The result is that unless you stage your battle perfectly, you're going to lose some soldiers, and be forced to call in reserves. As well, since the soldiers' morale was increased to such a high degree (probably to overcome the fact that all the weapons in the game were originally designed to decrease morale), the computer does not flee all at once, mitigating a more relaxed retreat which gives them time to bring on reinforcements and hold their line against you with more aplomb. It's a minor change really, but it does wonders to balance the gameplay.

However in the turn-based strategy part of the game, the mod falls apart a little bit. It's started off with a hodge-podge of stock and modified components in the visuals, which lack cohesion and are at times just downright hard to decipher. The amateur nature of these visuals is also readily apparent, though not much more can really be expected short of a professional budget for the creators. On the gameplay side it gets a little more disturbing - the game I played began around 1750, and as the French, I was expecting some sort of change in the experience around 1789. Nothing came. In fact it was 1812 and not a single difference sprouted up at any time; not to mention I'm not really sure how I could possibly have recreated the Napoleonic advances. While it's fairly easy to levy huge numbers of troops, all the countries in the game have this ability to some extent or another, and it would be difficult to mimic Napoleon's march across Europe, let alone reaching Moscow in the seventy or so turns you have available to you. Other little oddities popped up as well: the English navy, for instance, was incredibly weak, and I conquered the island almost instantly, since, for some reason, they felt it urgent to destroy Denmark and try and conquer Germany as opposed to protecting their base of operations. It was really quite strange actually, and has not been a problem with any other Total War game I've played through, the computer usually acts fairly logically if somewhat predictably. Similarly confusing were some of the extra structures that could be built, which didn't seem to really add much of anything to the game, some of which were just downright useless and confusing, such as the infrastructure add-on, which seems like a good idea, but falls short of usefulness in practice.

Other minor facets include not changing the music of the game, which can easily be forgiven since I don't personally want computer-programmers making music very often; the existence of rebel provinces during this period also seems highly unlikely; and the use of castles is really extraneous since castles were non-factors by this point in history, they merely confound what would be a glorious conquest of a new province.

Overall though, this is a very well-done modification for an already pretty good game. Apparently the same creators, The Lordz, have already put together a second version for Rome: Total War. Still waiting on that new video card however...

MUSIC - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Score: 8.4

You have to admire the do it yourself attitude these guys have, if nothing else. They wrote, produced, and printed this album all with their own abilities and (I'm sure) monies. The naivety of thinking that says an internet band can start off in MySpace and wind up on a major label infects this album, and is the one principle reason why they actually did start off on MySpace and wind up on a major label. Enthusiasm, a child-like, viral enthusiasm, is found on every track and every note of this album, and the entire attraction of this CD on a listener is wound up on it.

And let's be glad too, because as far as ingenuity goes, this album doesn't really have it in spades. That's not to say anything bad, but this is the same basic sound as can be found in most indie-synth-pop-rock bands out there. A bit of Bowie, a few indie classics, and a sprinkling of the Cure throughout cures this sound to perfection, and on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the sound is crystal clear and still as infectious as it was the first time some hipsters got together and decided to make music. For more recent reference, this band is eerily similar at times to the Wolf Parade, though at moments it borrows more from the Arcade Fire, and of course name-cousins the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. No real comparison can be made however, because there is one unique thing about this band that will likely keep it fresh for the next few years, and that is the voice of Alec Ounsworth, whose ecstatic, yelping, completely indecipherable voice is the head steering mechanism on this album. When the band is at its best, the music follows closely, gently guiding the wheel and intoning its own direction as well. At its worst... well, there really isn't a worst. That's because this album is maddeningly consistent.

Except from the standouts in the middle, "Details of the War" and "The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth", the album never really pulls you beyond the stratosphere as you feel it could. It rather holds you quite aloft, tossing you gently this way and that. A fun ride, but not one as memorable as others you might go on, a fact which is only highlighted by the two middle tracks undeniable quality, which makes the rest pale (somewhat) in comparison. It also lacks the genuine ballad or even more general pace and sound changes that can keep an album running after its legs have started to burn. On nearly every song, there is a steady, driving, up-tempo rhythm on the drums, a nice, faint synth-loop that fades as soon as the vocals hit, and a simple guitar riff that places well alongside the rest.

It's only the stripped down and eerily sentimental "Details of the War" that provides anything resembling a change of direction. It provides that well however, as the lack of guitar really gives Ounsworth enough space to let his strangely emotion-filled harmony burn its way into your ears. And who knew a harmonica could provide so much sensation? Though sparsely used, it fits perfectly and is probably the highlight of the album, as the song speeds up into nowhere after that, and the CD never really resurrects itself to that sensation of catharsis. "The Skin Of My Yellow Teeth" manages to pick up at that same up-tempo rhythm, but once again its all guitar and jangly drums, although set with a melody that is so catchy you won't help but return to it again and again.

The rest of this album makes this a ridiculously easy review to write, and though I am not as enamored as other critics have been with this album, it's definitely of a high quality. The key question of whether CYHSY capitalizes on the entire indie-guitar sound as well as those other bands mentioned above is kind of uncertain. For me, they don't, mostly because they seem afraid to innovate or go beyond what they knew would work and work well. I can't really punish them for that, and I doubt I will be skipping over too many of this albums' tracks as they come up on my iTunes; but for the moment, I don't think I'll be searching them out too often either.

CARS - Test Drive - 2007 Jeep Patriot

Score: 6.8

I feel like a fish out of water in writing this, because I have driven so few trucks or truck-based vehicles in my day. Like, two. Total. Ever. So test-driving this four-wheel drive, nearly-midsized, body-on-frame vehicle was actually kind of daunting. To the Patriot's credit, I settled in easily after about two minutes. In fact, on the whole the vehicle surprised me with its civility and basic abilities, though it couldn't really help this SUV past the problems that seem to be afflicting all Chrysler products: interior everything, and some driving dynamics.

For a lot of people, those two things aren't all that important though. Buyer's looking at this segment probably want some size, inside (for headroom, legroom and storage) and out (for safety in collisions), and they will find it aplenty in the Patriot. Though my 5'10" frame had to literally get up out of the seat in order to adjust the rear-view mirror and sun-visor, my 6'1" co-test-driver had no such problems, and for most people such a cavernous size is not a detriment in any way. For me, it was nearly the entire problem. I'll get to that later however. First let me finish my rant about the interior: aside from some swatches of some sort of fake aluminum throughout the console, the rest is composed of the same rough, flimsy and cheap-looking plastic that resides in my Saturn Ion, which, let me remind you, had one of the worst interiors ever. Fit and finish seemed fine, though I did not have time to inspect seams and finishes as I would have liked. The seats were composed of simple if usable cloth material, though the shape of the seats themselves left much to be desired - they left me sunken too far away from the wheel, too close to the pedals, and with little lateral or back support to speak of. Granted, something more than a fifteen to twenty minute drive is needed to speak fairly of seats, but the first impression was not flattering. Similar indifference applies to the rest of the interior: ergonomics were not horrible, but also not terribly efficient either, given the amount of space available in a box of the Patriot's size. Surprisingly, the seats fold flat with a fair amount of ease, and, given that amount of space, should easily provide enough storage for big-screen purchases or home-improvement projects. In other words, everything buyer's are looking for.

Similarly, the mass-market appeal was engineered effectively throughout the rest of the car, from the bulky, hyper-masculine styling (and name), to the everyday driving experience which is overwhelmed at every turn (pun intended) by the ponderous mass of this thing. Equipped with a CVT and 2.4 litre four-cylinder as my test SUV was, the vehicle will do nothing unexpected at any turn. Unfortunately, if you ask any more of it you are likely to be disappointed. Though corners are remarkably flat, and body-roll is negligible, the tough springs which provide such motion-control relate to a bumpy, if still acceptable ride. Even in these flat turns though, the artificially heavy, lifeless steering is painful to experience to anyone who enjoys driving. Similarly, the bulk of the vehicle does its best to uninspire at every chance. Acceleration, especially from a standstill, is somewhat atrocious, and the throttle is insanely indecisive, jumpy at points, slow to react at others (though the vehicle I drove had so few kilometres, the throttle might have been computer-controlled and still trying to adapt to driver inputs). Passing power seemed decent, though the truck is simply too heavy to really expect much from a four-cylinder. Worst of all, in terms of acceleration, is the Continuously Variable Transmission, which is the likeliest candidate for the weak off-the-line acceleration and strange rev-matching pattern which left me without much power again and again. Whether this would get better through time as well, is uncertain, but from what I've read, it doesn't. So that definitely gets a thumbs down. The chassis itself felt quite solid, completely devoid of shudders or shakes through some rather rough, badly-cared-for road, though again, those firm shocks meant everything was getting through, as did the buzzy engine and transmission noise, along with a fair degree of wind howl. The brakes were again quite adequate, and in order to brake for one red-light I had to apply a fair degree of pressure - the pedal and mechanics responded with a linear, clear progression, and stopped easily, though again the mass of the vehicle could be felt: fucking inertia.

So I suppose the overall theme of this review could be adequacy and appeal. These two, the Patriot has in spades. For everything else: meh, it won't matter, they'll sell well enough, if the parent company can keep in the black for a little while. In terms of my own slant, I sat in a Honda CR-V two years ago, for a total of five minutes, and that one sitting left a more pleasant impression in my mind than did this entire test drive. That's all I really have to say. For about 5000 dollars more, there is a substantially more efficient, playful, and refined vehicle - now that Honda has made that 5000 dollar gap exist though, who knows if anyone will actually compare those two vehicles. And even if they did, would anyone think the difference is worth 5000 dollars? Chrysler's obviously willing to bet that the masses won't think so. And they produced an adequate vehicle to test their hypothesis.

POLITICS - Obama's Foreign Policy

Score: 8.0

This is a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. Nixon likely got heat for doing the same with China (remember they weren't considered a "real" nation at the time), and that move of detente helped to end the cold war far earlier than it might have ended had Nixon left the communist nations to stand on their own. The fact is there's nothing to be gained out of outright ignoring or ceasing to talk to any group in power. Secluding yourself from other nations is what will lead to a clash of civilizations, and really hasn't helped in the Middle East especially. Half of those listed are simply cold-war remnants or heavily socialist anyways, and haven't taken any true foreign policy stance against the United States as a political or military entity (Iran and North Korea are exceptions), but really, capitalism won, I think it's time the U.S. gave Cuba and the South American nations they've been exploiting for the last hundred years a bit more slack and open up trade, even if they have to start doing it on socialist terms.

Really though, to quote a wise teacher I once had: talking can't possibly hurt. I'm not saying chum up to them all and hope they won't utilize you for their own domestic policies, but opening up an embassy in Venezuela is not going to do any injury; the worst that happens is some delegate gets yelled at as a bourgeois pig for two weeks straight. When that delegate is still there and still hoping to talk, perhaps something meaningful could come of it. It's just a thought really, this could obviously be a thorny issue should it happen, but to me, it means so little and could possibly allow for so much, it only makes sense.

VIDEO GAMES - Medieval: Total War

Score: 8.4
Developer: Creative Assembly

I've been quite busy with a new job, and therefore, had no time for posting, or much of anything. Prior to starting said job though, I played this game for hours upon hours. Though it's now ancient as far as video (especially PC) games go, we are not all lucky enough to own a high-end video card (or even a system that's capable of holding one of these cards). But despite its age, it's still a high-quality turn-based/real-time strategy game, with enough interesting tidbits in both genres that it was engaging throughout the entire experience.

The main appeal is obviously the huge, far-more realistic real-time battles between massive (though not massive enough) medieval armies, which does challenge the gamer to utilize all the tactics the real players of that age had to use in order to vie for power in those rather troubling times. I can't recall the number of times I cried upon seeing an enemy camped out on the highest part of a mountain, with hundreds of archers just waiting to rain down death upon my own troops. Though not impossible, situations such as these make one think twice of engaging an enemy at all, a situation that simply doesn't exist on many RTS games out there, including the motherlode of arcade strategy, Starcraft. In the rock-paper-scissor systems those type of games inevitably end up using (though Starcraft II looks promising), there's always an alternative. There is in this game too (cavalry is good against archers and infantry, spearmen are good against cavalry, and infantry are good against spearmen), but inevitably it's the true-to-life things which a general can't control, like the weather, morale, and terrain, that dictate much of who wins and who loses. That is a great take and it adds so much to the realism and ethos of the game: it literally places you in the positions that a leader of that age would encounter, which is the entire point of the game.

In the other half, the risk-style turn-based system that governs the movement and generation of troops and provincial improvements, the interface and system is simplistic enough to facilitate ease of use, and yet there is just enough lurking underneath the tech tree to give you a chance to aim for domination in a way beyond mere tactical genius.

The debits against the game are the same that were covered in all the other reviews I've read of this game prior to purchasing it. The diplomacy system is a joke, and basically useless, the religion aspect is frustrating as a Catholic, non-existent as an Orthodox, and kind of cool as a Muslim. The lack of naval control is infuriating, especially when playing as a nation dependent on an island. The battles, for all their innovation in terms of realism, are simply too small; battles of thousands of troops (I once had 8000 Englishmen against 6000 Germans in the decisive battle of my war against them) wind up being mere battles of the first sixteen platoons battling against one another, then holding the border of the battle map and scaring the reinforcements into submission (in the aforementioned battle, I lost 300 troops total to the Germans 3000 because I simply managed to take out their first wave rather quickly). Because of this, the system is only half-realized, as it was the massive battles that usually determined wars, not the skirmishes that are more-than-adequately presented in this title. The graphics, though simple sprites, worked well enough for the time and still convey the scope of battle fairly well. From what I've read, Medieval II improved in all these aspects, and as soon as this new job pays off, I may very well have a brand new video card by which to try it out.

MUSIC - Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans

Score: 8.8

Label: New Jerusalem Music

The play Sufjan Stevens makes between genres is one of the central reasons his music is so effective. His voice and core instruments scream of simple folk songs, but just when you can have him pegged down in that regard, he pulls out a six person chorus and huge brass instrumentation to drown you in a distinctly non-folk-like melody. This bending of expectation is what made his two state-themed albums, Greetings from Michigan The Great Lake State, and Come on Feel the Illinoise, so varied and enjoyable to listen to. It comes as no surprise then, that this album, an outright and self-consciously religious collection of songs, does not have nearly the variation or desire to work around the boundaries of folk music - instead it feels quite happy working within them. In fact if St. Francis of Assisi were alive today, he would probably listen to albums just like these - simple, striped down and hymnal to their very core, in praise and admiration of the Christian God - an ascetics' off-pop collection that reaffirms everything everybody thinks about religion anyway.

If there is one praise/perjury that can be leveled against this album, it is that it largely sounds the same throughout. There is a guitar or banjo, there is Stevens singing, and there are lyrics in some way or form about God. It may sound daunting and boring to the secular amongst us, but it really isn't, because the beauty of the songs isn't limited (or really enhanced in most cases) by the lyrical content - you could replace the vocals with humanist lyrics and it wouldn't change the quality of the songs either positively or negatively. Because those guitar and banjo pieces are simple and catchy, and the singing is equally so, and each song is just different enough that fans of Stevens or folk more broadly will pick up the subtleties and enjoy them.

The first three tracks of the album are good examples, in that they highlight the repetition of instrumentation used to full effect, paving way for the vocals to soothe and relax the listener, and not asking too much of them in the process either. In fact that could be said of much of the album, in that it relaxedly goes about its business, and it is approachable in varying degrees, from background music to deeply personal tributes that could bring you to tears.

By the time "To Be Alone With You" comes around though, Stevens turns it up a notch, working off of the calm of the early songs and beginning his play with God as the central subject of all the songs. Though it could be claimed the ambiguity of this track is under-utilized by Stevens, others might say it is overused, and so I'll leave the point mum for the most part. This track is undoubtedly well proportioned though, and whether sweet ode to a young lover or a testament to God, it is a beautiful song nonetheless.

Then comes "Abraham" a song so nauseatingly well-thought-out, perfectly executed and simply brilliant, it is a shame only in that I did not hear it earlier. Similarly "Sister" is a well-needed alteration of the path the album takes and another excellently conceived piece. The electric guitar, overdriven just perfectly, still manages to be reflective and melodic, even during its coarser moments, and the swift change of pace into acoustic ditty is perfectly spaced, and gorgeous in its own right.

After these two highlights though, the album does take a bit of a detour, as the trio of "Size Too Small", "We Won't Need Legs To Stand", and "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" are all oft-putting at certain moments, the vocal and musical tracks seeming to compete with one another a bit more than is common in Stevens' best. Not to say that they aren't good songs, but they simply don't gel in one way or another the way the rest of the album does. Whether its an odd key, strange backing vocals or something else, the songs grate a bit quicker than they probably should.

Immediately following that though is the classic "He Woke Me Up Again", yes, blatantly about God, but again, not detrimental for it in any way. Simply another perfect song, the banjo rings off in time with the praise which Stevens works up to, and again and again the song proves that lyrics are only part of the equation.

After all this we finally arrive at the title track, which begins similarly to everything else on the album, but then in the last third the piano, the organ the cymbals and and "The Lord" all enter and take it to another level entirely. That level could be alternatively read as too much, just enough, or perhaps not enough, and even in the context of this album, it is tough to say. The lead up is ambiguous enough, but then Stevens' voice starts pleading, and it loses a lot of its charm when it does so. Then everything is blown wide open, and the undercurrent of latin hymnal praise is brought to full fruition, to what result is up to your own point of view, really. Personally I think it is a questionable choice that didn't turn out as well as it could have. The choice of notes simply make me afraid of this "Lord" not in awe of him. But that could be just me. In either case it's another noteworthy track.

Then comes "The Transfiguration". Having given up any hint of secularism, the lyrics are as in-your-face as a talking, burning bush would be. The music itself is highly reminiscent of something that may have eventually made its way onto Illinois, with the light horns and the movement of the instrumental melodies constantly upward, in a soft, pleasing manner.

And though I can't rate this album as highly as Illinois, it has its own charm and anyone who likes anything Stevens has done should check it out, if for those few well-placed tracks alone. And for those of you who are religiously inclined, I can't help but think that this album would be Franciscan monk approved. For it is, as other reviewers have said, quietly beautiful; not full of over-the-top noise. But a softly sung hymn that is more personal, if perhaps less personable.