Why I'm anti-Mizzou. In one half.

I get funny looks every where I go after telling folks I attended the University of Missouri, but Kansas Jayhawks garb fills my closet and bedclothes cocoon me in the frigid Spokane evenings.

Today's SEC matchup, and specifically the response to the televised championship, have given me further ammunition.

I don't hate Mizzou. I don't hate their fans. In fact, because of my time there, when they're playing an opponent I don't particularly care for (like Auburn), I tend to throw my weight behind them. But it's impossible to continue to support a fan base that can find any possible excuse to say they're disrespected, when the simple fact is they're disrespected because they've never stepped up on the biggest stage.

In the past, it's been the BCS. Or referees. Today, it was the media. In the Tigers' fan mind, they are the greatest, and any possible adversity is evidence of an unjust deity pulling strings in someone else's favor.

Exhibit A: A tweet that gained traction sometime around halftime Saturday:

Drinking game: take a shot every time the commentators say something anti-Mizzou. Die in approximately two minutes.
— Average MU Student (@AverageMizzou) December 7, 2013

I'll be the first to admit that Gary Danielson is a giant douche, and Verne Lundquist is a human dollop of sour cream. I've done it in the past, and I'll continue to do so.

What the "Average Missouri Fan" doesn't want to admit is that Auburn's running game is completely decimating the Missouri defense. Once again, Missouri fans refused to look themselves in the mirror, evaluate themselves and their weaknesses, and admit that maybe they're not the unblemished image of football perfection they think they are.

I don't mean to say every Missouri fan is like this. And I certainly don't mean to imply they're the only fan base that engages in this kind of "wahmbulance" chicanery that afflicts all entitled enthusiasts.

But it's certainly an epidemic I see particularly among those I grew up with and with whom I attended classes in Columbia. You can write me off as a jaded Jayhawker if you must. I'll admit, part of me is dying watching the Tigers on such a big stage the day Kansas basketball lost a heartbreaker in Colorado.

But ask yourselves - if another Missouri meltdown is on the way, whose fault is it?

Page-turning: My thoughts on David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"

After more than a thousand pages of signature prose from one of America's most distinctive literary voices during the past two decades, I'm left with two prevailing emotions setting up permanent shop in my gut: jealousy and despair.

These feelings have nothing to do with the brilliantly constructed dystopic future David Foster Wallace brings to life in "Infinite Jest," his epic novel published to nearly universal acclaim back in 1996. They have everything to do with witnessing a depressingly intimate look at substance addiction, narrative brilliance and synaptic hyperactivity from a writer, in his early 30s, who showed limitless promise and was taken far too early from this world.

To the uninitiated Wallace reader, Infinite Jest will sound in summation like the ramblings of a madman. The plot, so convoluted it prompted drawings of story maps resembling unpopped blackheads (warning: spoilers), centers geographically around a substance-abuse halfway house and academy for precocious and talented tennis-playing preteens in central Boston following the consolidation of North America into one nation-state. People remain glued to their entertainment screens (in a kind of cultural foresight that could only come from a writer so in-tune with social strata he turned an essay about cruise ships into a discussion of the loneliness of human existence) and the accumulation of garbage along the former U.S./Canadian border has turned the area into an exotic wasteland, where plants tower over humans and giant feral hamsters (yes) roam the countryside.

What keeps Wallace from dwelling in the absurd (that is to say, when he doesn't want to dwell in the absurd - as readers of DFW have come to expect, there are moments of comic hilarity where the absurd is precisely the initiating agent, but only when the author has a point to make) is the development of his characters. The Incandenza family is perhaps the most wildly realized nuclear unit in modern literature, but the pathos does not end there. Every character in the Enfield Tennis Academy (one of the novel's settings, where tennis prodigies - like DFW himself - go to hone their skills as they foster dreams of making 'the show') is fully realized. Michael Pemulus, a substance fiend and mathematical wunderkind, could flesh out his own novel in this fully realized world. This is to say nothing of Donald Gately, the square-headed football player who's reached his "rock bottom" on oral narcotics and serves as house manager at Ennet House, the nearby halfway facility for other substance abusers on the mend.

There is a scene in roughly the final 2/3 of the novel that perfectly encapsulates Wallace's brilliant fiction. The tennis youngsters are assembled on one of the academy's courts playing a game with tube socks, tennis rackets and balls that is essentially a play version of the kind of thermonuclear warfare that haunts Wallace's world on the brink, where the U.S. president is a lounge singer and Canadian officials are falling like flies to a band of wheelchair assassins asserting Quebec independence. Pemulus is the star of the show, developing a mathematical program that determines the payload of each nation and where their weapons caches are stored. Each team selects a "lobber" to send cruise missiles (tennis balls) at the other nations.

It's a tradition that marks every Interdependence Day in the novel, the day when American/Canadian unity is observed and the normal frenzied pace of the academy grinds to a halt. Wallace describes the game, "Eschaton," with a level of horrifying detail, that shifts effortlessly into comic relief as we're reminded these are 12-year-olds playing this game signifying mutually assured destruction. The game crescendos into a schoolyard brawl, hastening the drug testing that brings the novel's to its quasi-conclusion.

I say quasi because Wallace pulls a Tarantino on the reader, leading with details in the first few pages that become of utter importance in the novel's final moments. I read the hefty novel over a period of two months (I blame Grand Theft Auto and the arrival of a certain new feline companion) and was puzzled by the novel's seeming lack of resolution. I had to recrack the first few pages after finishing last night, reminding myself of the puzzles solved (or seeming to be solved) in the novel's opening scenes. A word of warning, then: Infinite Jest will command your full attention. Grant it the respect it deserves.

I've been a fan of Wallace's nonfiction ever since I read the opening lines to "Consider the Lobster" many years ago. I've been telling myself I'm making a grand error not cracking his fiction until now. "Infinite Jest" is a monster accomplishment that will leave you questioning what the role of entertainment is in your life and what constitutes an addiction in this new world of constant media dependence. It is darkly hilarious, deeply insightful, and simply a stunning masterwork of American fiction. Read it now.

Verdict: 5/5 stars

An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: Jimmie's Chicken Shack "Trash"

I remember my early encounters with pop-ska-rockers "Jimmie's Chicken Shack" with a fondness that came from two sources.

The first being my excitement that I had another group of counter-culture dudes to look up to with which I could ignore the drivel that dominated Total Request Live. The second, much-earlier bout of happiness came the first time I heard the group announced on the radio and hopes sprung that we had a new restaurant in town that could compete with the dry-heave-inducing Popeye's (Louisiana Fast...all the way to the john).

Those first hopes were sustained through the band's first effort I was aware of, 1999's "Do Right" off the group's second-major release, "Bring Your Own Stereo." It was the perfect blend of angst-y, drunken fantasy mixed with power chords that mixed well with the Blink-182's and Sum 41's of the era.

Then came "Trash," the second single off the album.

It's not that the sophomore effort is worse than "Do Right" in any way, it's simply that, at its core, "Trash" is the exact same song. For a band with "chicken" in its name, Jimmie's Chicken Shack's music is surprisingly more like pancakes - as the great Mitch Hedberg once told us, great at first, but by the end, you're fuckin' sick of 'em.

In "Trash," we're introduced to a dramatic voice that, for all intents and purposes, is likely the same manic-depressive mess of a lead singer who's regaling us in "Do Right." Indeed, lead singer Jimi Haha (I wish I was making that up) has said the entire album is about his ex-girlfriend from New Jersey. In other words, this pony's doing the same trick over and over.

While "Trash" attempts to do a few things its predecessor did not, including a foray into the trilingual ("Auf Wiedersehen, yeah my mon ami"), the basic premise is the same: I'm more than you're making me out to be. And, predictably, the final few lines of the song unravel into a nonsensical rant about "jumping right in," presumably to attacking the "mom" in the song that keeps calling our sweet Jimi trash.

By the end, we've learned that the judgmental matriarch enjoys purchasing drugs from our sweet Jimi and ignores personal hygiene.

Not included in the liner notes: Whether it would be a reasonable expectation for a Baby Boomer to label those pictured above as filthy.

The final line of the song gets in the ultimate dig for a musician clawing his way up the modern rock charts: "Tell your mom, I'm on the radio." Yes, Jimi, yes you were. For about 14 minutes and 59 seconds in an era jam-packed with post-grunge talent, some extremely gifted and others not so much.

Jimmie's Chicken Shack may have cornered the market on angst-ridden young men heaving spite at past lovers. One wonders if this band, which had a unique sound and a hook unlike many of their contemporaries, could have clung to a little more fame had they branched out, song-writing-wise.

But perhaps I'm reading into it a little too much.

A postmodern meltdown: Some thoughts on GTAV and contemporary culture

'Cause I got bats in the belfry
I'm in the kitchen boiling society
I'm in the open catching all the leaves
We all see what we want, yeah

-Dispatch, "Bats in the Belfry" (Bang Bang 1997)

As Franklin Clinton, one of three protagonists in Rockstar Games' latest iteration of their billion-dollar Grand Theft Auto franchise, I'm cruising back to my pad in Vinewood, GTAV's version of Hollywood set in the hills over Los Santos (read: Los Angeles). I notice a patrol car speeding toward me, a not uncommon occurrence in a title that sets fits of unbridled rage as a gameplay mechanic. Except this police officer is chasing another violent offender, who is seconds away from veering in front of my vehicle's path.

Here's where choice sets in. And we're not talking the "will you or won't you" narrative mechanic like something out of Bioshock. This decision in front of me will have no bearing on my character in the long-term or how the game's story unfolds. It's simply a moment, in the countryside of San Andreas, where I as a player have to choose.

I swerve in front of the crook, blocking his path and making the pursuit all that easier for the patrol car. Both pursuer and pursuee (word?) emerge from their vehicles, weapons drawn. I do the same, hunkering for cover behind my sedan's engine (in retrospect, not the likeliest choice for safe-hiding-spot in a shootout). I pull the left trigger on my Xbox 360 game pad to go into targeting mode with my pistol. In another subtle nod to my choice as a player, I default to targeting a police officer, but I don't pull the trigger. Instead, the crook blasts him away before my eyes. Law is restored when his partner, at a different angle, takes one shot to put the murderer down.

GTAV isn't a perfect recreation of modern life. Following this encounter, the involved officer simply strolled back to his patrol car (I half expected to see him whistling) now sans one of its prior occupants and drove off. But these serendipitous moments of choice, and just HOW MANY there are in this massive game world, elevate Rockstar's latest above mere interactive entertainment to something more.

The chorus above is from one of my favorite ditties by 90s jam rockers Dispatch. The song begins with some psychedelic riffs on the electric guitar that fade into more ska/reggae beats at intervals. In the song's final act, the guitar swells to a pulsating fit of hyperactivity, echoing the mind of our speaker as he descends slowly into madness (hence the title) by the frenzied pace of modern life.

The Grand Theft Auto series has always been about choice. It was arguably more about choice before its 3D days, when the first two numbered installments in the series were "beatable" only after you obtained enough cash to proceed through a series of locations. GTA grew up with its first appearance on the PS2 and Xbox (GTA3), and has become a cultural force to be reckoned with.

The genius of GTAV is that it perfectly encapsulates the kind of frenzied mind that is created by the postmodern world. Michael and Trevor, the two other protagonists in the game, are relics of a bygone era, former heist aficionados sinking their teeth back into "the game." Because of ten years of cultural evolution that have left them behind, both have become mentally unstable in their own ways. The player, faced with a map the size of Rockstar's previous open-world games combined and numerous potential tasks throughout that world (in addition to just wreaking mayhem, a staple of the series) faces a similar kind of emotional distress (or, at least, I have multiple times while playing).

I'm not nearly finished with GTAV. I plan to sit down for a good long while with it today, some caffeine and alcohol at the ready for my fits of existential calamity. But, to date, the most impressive thing about the title is its ability to mimic the malaise of living in a world where choice is omnipresent and morals are blurry at best.

Sonic doom: In defense of Fun.

I've gotten a lot of guff over the past few months from friends who fail to see the appeal of Fun. I'll admit, they're kind of the kitschy alternative choice of the moment, and their melodramatic "Tonight (We are Young)," which is STILL burned ineffably into my car stereo speakers hasn't done much for my pro argument. Saturation has a way of destroying a pop song and the artist responsible (see the One Hit Wonder phenomenon).

Why, then, do I find myself consistently defending the New York, Fueled by Ramen rockers? Does it have something to do with the fact that I still (shamefully) dust off "A Mark. A Mission. A Brand. A Scar." some evenings over a bottle of red wine, dabbing at the corners of my eyelids with a handkerchief? (I don't. It's more like once every year...sort of.) Until this morning, on my first true run in about a week in the blazing Spokane summer, listening to the opening chords of "Carry On" that it hit me.

Fun. writes like the dramatic poets of old.

Yes, I seriously consider Nate Ruess' writing prowess up there with John Donne, Ben Jonson and even Goethe. Will bored schoolchildren read Fun.'s liner notes in two hundred years with the same lazy alacrity as they do in today's high school classrooms? Probably not. But they should. Consider the opening lines to the aforementioned "Tonight," often excised or sped through in radio edits:

"Give me a second I,
I need to get my story straight
My friends are in the bathroom getting higher than the Empire State
My lover she’s waiting for me just across the bar
My seat’s been taken by some sunglasses asking 'bout a scar, and
I know I gave it to you months ago
I know you’re trying to forget
But between the drinks and subtle things
The holes in my apologies, you know
I’m trying hard to take it back."

Now, compare with the first few lines of Donne's "The Flea," that lyric poem you had to memorize then immediately forget before fourth-period algebra:

"MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, 
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be."

What combines these two pieces of fiction? Story, symbolism, narrative directness. Both Fun. and Donne (see why I did that now?) are speakers addressing an unknown audience. There's a history here that is explored partially in the words, but also invites those reading/listening to cast their own experiences through the language jotted down.

To be sure, Fun. are not the only pop artists engaging in this kind of lyrical storytelling. Indeed, the dramatic poets often set their verse to song, hence the terms "verse" and "chorus" and the invention of what is commonly referred to as an "earworm." But the prevalence of the technique throughout Fun.'s album, Some Nights (see also: the introductions to "Carry On," "One Foot," and the album's introductory track, for crying out loud), demonstrates a commitment you just don't see these days.

Pop artists usually pay lip service to the need for story, allusion and higher thought in their works. I suspect that's due to the ceaselessly shrinking attention spans of pop music's target audience: teens. It's nice to see incredibly successful artists recognize there is still an audience out there that gives a damn.

That's why I like Fun.

Virtual Dork: Thoughts on Xbox's Games with Gold promotion

Earlier this summer, perhaps anticipating the livid audience response to initial statements the new Xbox would require an online connection and restrict access to used games and other content, Microsoft announced its Games with Gold promotion. Modeled after Sony's Playstation Plus free game giveaway, Microsoft promised two free games would be released each month from June through December, dropping two titles at E3 (Assassin's Creed 2 and Halo 3) that would definitely be on the roster. The rest would be surprises.

Though I'd already played the two announced titles when they released, I was looking for a good reason to renew my Gold subscription earlier this summer in order to watch HBO Go on the pathetic Sanyo that was included with my rental unit here in Spokane. I'm squinting to see players in Call of Duty, so if I've stared at you funny in the last several weeks, know that's the reason and not that I'm losing my mind (probably). In any event, the first announced game, Fable 3, had not graced my console yet so I plopped the money down for a year's subscription and dutifully downloaded the three-quel overnight on my hamster-wheel ran WiFi.

This is a commentary on the game's we've received through the promotion so far. It would be unfair, I think, to compare Microsoft's offering with Playstation Plus. Sony clearly has a superior setup, offering games like Saint's Row the Third and Uncharted 3, both of which released in the last two years. The most recent offering from Microsoft to date has been Fable, which released in October 2010. Only one game is available at a time, whereas Playstation has a suite of options available each month. Finally, Sony has been running their promotion for quite some time, whereas with Microsoft it's a finite deal that feels a little reactionary, to be perfectly blunt.

Still, we're getting free games. During the summertime, that's a great thing, because the dog days are usually also the doldrums for fresh, blockbuster titles. With GTAV still an agonizing month away, Microsoft has been offering some decent diversions. Let's see how they stack up.

Fable 3

I have memories of playing the original Fable, but it must have been at a friend's house because I never owned the original Xbox. I thought it had been ported to the Playstation 2, my console of choice during the last generation. I may be confusing the game with Psychonauts, thought the relative quality of that game (even when compared to Lionhead's latest offering) makes that confusion unlikely.

Fable 3 is a tonally ridiculous game. You're supposed to feel some sort of compassion for the bizarre, cartoony humanoids of Albion who speak with regrettably ridiculous British accents and generally act as though Chaucer's Miller were their moral compass. The combat is fun, the possibilities for amassing wealth seemingly limitless. But when you throw in the moral weight of decisions whether millions of your people will die and one of the achievements requires you making that choice in a chicken suit, there's just not really any storytelling weight here. Add to the fact the nebulous nature of the evil facing your kingdom and an ending that I suppose is designed to make someone, somewhere cry, and this game is perfect for diversionary purposes. But Zelda-killer this is not.

Score: 3/5

Defense Grid: The Awakening and Assassin's Creed 2

I haven't spent enough time with Defense Grid, an Xbox Live Arcade title, to form an opinion. I've already played Assassin's Creed 2 and didn't download it again. I won't judge them for this piece yet.

Crackdown

August's first downloadable title was 2007's Crackdown, a game conceived by David Jones, the mind behind Lemmings and the original Grand Theft Auto. Primarily known for containing a beta key for Halo 3, Crackdown sold well enough to spawn what critics called an uninspired sequel in 2010 just as Jones finished up work on his ill-fated MMORPG answer to GTA, APB (All Points Bulletin).

Jones' prints are all over this game. It's fast, fun and tremendously shallow in the story department. Gunplay is satisfying, though twitchy. Driving is ridiculous and should be avoided in favor of your agent's incredible aerial abilities. As you progress through the (woefully short) story mode, your character earns new abilities through floating orbs that require platform puzzling to solve, not unlike lookout towers in Assassin's Creed. There are more than 500 to collect scattered throughout Pacific City, and if the ambient sound wasn't so terrifically awful I likely would have pursued them all. It's just that addictive.

When you've taken out all the bad guys, the game tosses what seems like an expository curveball at you: the disembodied voice of the "Agency," the group you've been working to help clean up the streets, has designs of municipal autocracy that you've helped him achieve. I'd be blow away if I wasn't yawning. Good time-waster, little more.

Score: 2/5

Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

The original Dead Rising was a massively popular title for the 360 published by Capcom in 2006, just a few months after the console was launched. I've been meaning to pick it up, but never really bothered with it. I purchased my Xbox 360 the summer of 2007 and by then my interest in the launch games had waned considerably.

Dead Rising 2 takes the solid foundation of its predecessor (according to reviews of that title) and builds upon them, making the save feature much more accessible to players and introducing a level of tonal absurdity that could only be inspired by a Japanese game company. You're in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, your daughter has been bitten and requires constant medical attention to avoid "turning," and you can wear assless chaps.

Yes, that's right. Assless chaps.

I haven't finished Dead Rising 2 yet, but so far it has — in my estimation — the cream of the crop of titles released under the Games with Gold promotion. Though the story is absurd, there's a real sense of urgency and progress here as the timer ticks down on certain objectives. Old-school saving IS frustrating, but the game more than makes up for it by designing a combat system that is just so damn fun. Squishing zombie brains never gets old, and thanks to the constantly regenerating undead masses in the over world of Fortune City, Nevada, you have plenty of time to oblige them.

Score: 4/5

Dead Rising 2 is the first game in the Games with Gold promotion I feel like I would have picked up for a price had I played a demo of the game beforehand. I hope the selections continue in this upward trajectory, which brings me to a wish list of games I want to see released over the next several months. Of course, GTAV will consume my free time beginning Sept. 27, but the option of starting a download that you can finish later is an ingenious offering by Microsoft for the busy gamer. And I intend to get my money's worth.

Games with Gold Wish List

Shadow Complex: This 360 exclusive Xbox Live title seems like a no-brainer. I planned on purchasing it back in 2009 but the time got away from me. There was a lot of outcry when Microsoft went with a XBLA title as its second GWG offering with Defense Grid, but I doubt anyone's going to complain if this Metroid-clone makes the list.

Telltale Games Presents: The Walking Dead: This is likely wishful thinking, as no game near The Walking Dead's launch window last year has been released yet. Perhaps as one of the final offerings, just as Season 2 is being released by Telltale, isn't too much to ask for? Microsoft has already given away one episode of the first season at Christmastime last year, which I hungrily gobbled up. If they released the next four for free as well, I'd be doing a happy zombie shuffle.

Bioshock 2: Microsoft has been making a habit of releasing sequels during the GWG promotion, and Bioshock 2 seems like a safe bet, especially with the episodic content of its successor, Bioshock Infinite, set to release sometime later this year/early next year. The original Bioshock is a classic, but I was kind of turned off by the return to Rapture without Ken Levine's involvement. Playing the game for free would alleviate those concerns.

Minecraft: This is extremely unlikely, seeing as how the genre-defying first-person builder is basically printing money on the Arcade. But perhaps, once market penetration reaches its max, Microsoft will decide it's OK to give the 360 port away for free.

L.A. Noire/Max Payne 3: Give me something from Rockstar (not Table Tennis, though). The first is probably more likely, given its age, but either gun-toting title would make for a fun 2 weeks this fall. I could see Red Dead Redemption too, but I hope not. I've already played that wonderful game to death.

Mass Effect: The original 360 exclusive has been on my list for awhile now, but I haven't had the necessary encouragement to run out and buy it. Microsoft would be able to push out one of its exclusives and attract new players to the series, a win-win in my book.

What games would you like to see released free in the coming months? Let me know in the comments!

An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: OK Go "Get Over It"

Before they were messing around with your gym equipment and wasting time in abandoned warehouses, Chicago-based alt rockers OK Go were doing something very pedestrian by their standards: Imploring some wanton audience to put things in perspective.



An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song (or AICLOS, for those of you acronymically inclined) has always been about exegesis of the trivial: Those nonsensical lyrics you just can't get out of your head from a ditty no one cares about. OK Go has rendered that mission difficult, as it is quite impossible to divorce the band from their ingenuity in crafting visual representations of their music that stun and get people talking. Don't believe me? Walk into the next bar you come across and ask the patrons about OK Go's debut album, and they'll sit there, mouths agape. Ask them about those guys that made that music video on a treadmill, and you'll get laughs and pats on the back.

OK Go has taken an era where the music video has been rendered pointless, thanks to MTV's constant marathon of teenagers doing awful things, and embraced the viral nature of today's video content. One could imagine them shooting themselves out of cannon at bullseye comprised of vials of infectious diseases, if only for a couple thousand more hits on YouTube.

"Get Over It" is the band's first official music video, and its nod to the band's future half avant-garde, half bored Americans at work audience is a super slow-motion ping pong game in which the melody halts entirely. Seriously. That's it. The rest of the time they're playing their instruments and having random objects thrown at them.

Like OK Go's other songs, the visual representation has nothing to do with the lyrical content of the song, which is ostensibly a rant to a friend of either gender for complaining about things that are beyond your control and to simply enjoy what pleasures you have in life. Whether one of those pleasures is a ping pong game or a faithless wife is something you'll have to decide for yourself.

Of course, without reading the lyrics and instead simply reading the title of the song, one could surmise that OK Go's been pulling a fast one on us for the last several years. Their nonsensical videos could simply be a commentary on how seriously the music industry was taking itself, though considering these guys shortly postdated things like this, it's hard to take that position seriously.

Maybe I shouldn't be reading too much into the music of a band that named itself after the thing you say while impatiently waiting in line for the waterslide.

An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: "Summer" by Sum41

So I've been doing a bit of warm weather inventory here at the Shallow End, which invariably leads me to that list of oft-repeated tunes — the ditties you just can't escape — iTunes' collection of my "Most Played" tracks. The top 10 is nothing to write home about and encompasses about everything you'd expect. The 57 seconds of brilliance that is "Stu's Song" from "The Hangover." A melange of '90s One Hit Wonders, and the world's most perfect love song and best with the word "Wanna" in the title (eat it, Spice Girls): Hootie's "Only Wanna Be With You."

But #2 is an entry I simply can't get my head around. It's the eighth track off of the unfortunately titled "All Killer No Filler" by Canadian punk band Sum 41, whose only real claim to fame in 2013 is that their lead singer, Deryck (that's not a typo, apparently they enjoy consonants up North) Whibley's fling with Avril Lavigne. I have to give the boys credit, though. A Rockstar (video game company) sticker is  has a conspicuous cameo in the video for "Motivation," one of the few angst-ridden tunes of my teens I still return to from time to time without wanting to travel back in time and punch a hole through my own skull.

As we all remember from early 2001, Sum 41 hit it big with "Fat Lip," that song you sang in your bathroom mirror because clever lyrics like "The doctor said my mom should have had an abortion" seemed incredibly edgy at the time. Sum 41 became the third most popular punk band with an unexplained number in their name that summer, and made the rounds of TRL and whatever subsequent noise VH1 was throwing on the air. All Killer No Filler went platinum, the Warped Tour was cool again and swimming pools everywhere emptied for impromptu skate competitions.

Why, then, did an unreleased track find its way onto my Most Played list?

Unlike Fat Lip, "Summer" is a bit of a conundrum lyrically. Gone are the references to trashing house parties and unsupervised El Camino binges, replaced with what reads like verbal overflow in which our narrator admits he's "awkwardly speaking with nothing to say."

One could argue the entire period of "punk pop" from 2000 through its fiery death in 2005 could be described this way. These were the years when Blink 182 was still writing about prank phone calls and some band that looked like Incubus felt compelled to tell us they weren't perfect. Yellowcard was signing about sunny California while trying to recreate Groundhog Day and the second incarnation of the Cure was trying to confuse teenagers with overwrought allusions and fancy adjectives.

What did it all mean? In the end, a whole lot of nothing. And that's what "Summer" is. It's a nice upbeat song that perfectly encapsulates the "whoa!" of everything speeding around you, and just as quickly you realize the time is up and it's been wasted. We find ourselves, as fans of this music, admitting vicariously to our former favorites: "The worlds not learning from you." 

Or maybe I'm just looking a little too closely and being a little too harsh. Here's to summer, you fans of that late 90s/early 2000s punk sugar. The rush will end someday, but replay "Summer" and live in it for just a while longer.

A Sticky Floors and Salty Popcorn Movie Review: Man of Steel

There's a scene in Zack Snyder, Christopher Nolan and David Goyer's reboot of the Superman film franchise where our hero, Clark (Henry Cavill) visits the Smallville parish. We've received the obligatory backstory at this point, with Kevin Costner and Russel Crowe performing valiantly as Jonathan Kent and Jor-El, respectively. The evil General Zod (Michael Shannon) has arrived on Earth and demands Clark turn himself in, ostensibly to save the human race.

As Clark and the bewildered minister discuss the moral quandary, Cavill's profile is framed by a stained-glass image of Christ in a not so subtle nod to Superman as savior. It's a brief moment in the film, certainly not a narrative thread one would call dominant in the film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an interesting choice given the note Nolan and Goyer left their last superhero project, The Dark Knight Rises. It's as though the heroes of the DC Universe, on the screen, are both grappling in worlds that are extremely gritty but built ideals that existed way back when these characters were created. It's a dynamic that, in the Dark Knight trilogy, worked because of the inherent tragedy at the center of the story: the death of the Waynes, and Batman's righteous quest to carry on their ideal, within limits.

Superman has no limits. We know that early in the film, when Lara worries their son will be killed on Earth and Crowe's Jor-El deadpans, "How?" Therein lies the center problem with any Superman film, and the reason 2006's "Superman Returns" left many moviegoers with a bad taste in their mouths. How do you craft a villain for a hero with so few weaknesses?

Snyder and Co. do well with Shannon's Zod, and his accomplice Faora-Ul (Antje Traue). But Nolan and Goyer's mold just doesn't fit the Superman mold perfectly, and in grasping for a narrative that makes sense in this universe, there are some misfires (the church scene chief among them, because the idea of Superman as a martyr to human beings fails on a few levels).

That's not to say Man of Steel isn't a great film. It is, it just feels disjointed. The performances, particularly of Costner and Crowe, stand out. It's just too bad that the questions of patriarchy and the effect they have on Clark are never fully explored. In one scene, Clark bickers with Jonathan about his future. Within minutes of screen time, Jonathan is taken from Clark forever, and the emotions as a result feel...slightly off. That may be because the origin story is told through flashbacks, a narrative technique that works in this film but lacks the gravitas, say, of a "Batman Begins."

The film looks great, though. Snyder is the perfect choice to direct a film in which hand-to-hand combat becomes pivotally important, as it does in the film's final third. The director's signature camera slowdown works excellently here with the jerky, thrusting movements of Zod's foot soldiers, and the climactic battle between Zod and Clark in the skies above Metropolis will take your breath away, regardless of whether you watch it in two dimensions or three.

Much has been made of Cavill's lack of the humor that makes Superman relatable to the audience. It's a valid complaint, but also one with its origin in the source material and not the story that Nolan and Goyer are trying to tell. This is a story with weight — questions of humanity and how it might react to the larger question presented by Superman's presence: How do our notions of the universe (and even God) change when a man with such abilities appears on Earth? The smartest decision the team made was making Jonathan and Martha (Diane Lane) keenly aware of the effect this knowledge will have and using it as the source of their wish to shelter Clark from the world. It gives this tale a touch of humanity and reality that might have otherwise gone by the wayside with so many things blowing up.

I'm not sure where the Man of Steel franchise will go from here. Given the early box office returns, a sequel is inevitable. And while not perfect, Man of Steel sets the canvas on which to paint a number of very interesting stories (and potentially set up that Justice League movie, eh, Warner Bros.?). Let's just hope the next time out, that story is chosen from the start and remains focused during all of those aerial theatrics.

Verdict: 4/5 stars

The Shallow End Presents: An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song, Louis XIV "Finding Out True Love is Blind"

Pop music exists solely for the purpose of giving you that sugar rush, fizzy feeling only soda bubbles can provide. Of course, on closer inspection, the songs in this genre tend toward the flat, syrupy nonsense that signals it's time to crack open another 2-liter. Luckily, the Shallow End is here to lap up the dregs.

For all their differences, the two Louis XIV's that will go down in my history book (yeah, I'm writing one — professional baseball ends in 1985) actually have a lot in common. Sure, there's the discrepancy between their periods of relevance. The French monarch was in power for 72 years, while the San Diego-based rockers were a blip on the modern rock dial for roughly 72 hours. The king waged a war against Protestants, while the band focused their efforts on good musical taste (zing!). The king rested his head at the luxurious Palace of Versailles, while I can only suspect the band snoozed on a tour bus amid a group of squealing groupies. I mean, that's what Almost Famous taught me.

But perhaps the greatest congruency between the two is their inherent treatment of women as objects. This has become a central theme of the Inexplicably Close Look in our examinations so far, and in fact thinking about Louis XIV's semi-hit from 2005, "Finding Out True Love is Blind," I saw a clear cultural path from pop songs of days past.



The song provided some controversy when, in 2005, mega-school Hoover High in Alabama (that place where MTV filmed their high school football tell-all) banned the quartet from playing a gig under their roof. The reason? Promoting hedonism and rowdiness, with more than a hint of racism in the lyrics. Shallow End reports, you decide:

Ah chocolate girl, well you're looking like something I want
Ah and your little Asian friend well, well she can come if she wants
I want all the self conscious girls who try to hide who they are with makeup
You know it’s the girl with a frown with the tight pants I really want to shake up

OK, OK, ee cummings this is not. Let's also put aside the mildly amusing fact that a man wearing eyeshadow is crooning about picking a woman out of a glorified police lineup (everyone has their moment of "The Cure" weakness, I suppose). Is it racist?

Our dramatic voice in this song is soliciting a "chocolate girl." We can assume he doesn't mean the Hershey variety. And he clearly wants to friend-zone the "little Asian friend," perhaps she's coming along to carry the long train of garments Louis XIV was known to wear. There may be nothing sexual at all about the ditty. The last two lines clearly suggest this guy has something other than skin color on his mind, though. And that's getting with women who are insecure about themselves and perhaps one who will put up a bit of a fight in the process. Racist? Probably not. Morally reprehensible? You decide that one.

Really, we shouldn't fault Louis XIV though. I mean, "Finding Out True Love is Blind" is just an extension of the path we've been on since the Beach Boys' "California Girls" to Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Yes, I did just mention those...shudder...artists in the same sentence (Bega, you owe me a beer for that last remark — that is, if those royalty checks from 1999 are still rolling in. If not, I'll take a rain check). For a band so keen on invoking history, it's only fair we afford them the misogynistic context they so rightfully deserve.

(Let's be fair to the Beach Boys, who were singing in a different time and place in our culture. But if one need see evidence of how far the "California Girls" conceit can be taken to the male-dominated extreme in our current culture of sexual dynamics, look — if you dare — no further than David Lee Roth's update.)

Let's not carry this too far, though. I mean, Louis XIV the band is merely singing to a generation of girls who are being told that their idols objectify the female form, while Louis XIV the man actually seduced mistresses in addition to his wife, who bore him six children. In between all that purging the continent of Protestants stuff and setting in place the contempt of authority that ultimately spurred the French Revolution.

The affront on your eardrums (and your liberal-minded tendencies) will have to make the call about which was more detrimental to mankind. Or maybe you'd rather spend time thinking about something more productive, like I should have been doing.

Virtual Dork: Bioshock Infinite Review

"The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is."
-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Reviewing Bioshock Infinite as a game is more than a little difficult for me. The feeling of not merely playing, but experiencing, the first Bioshock is much stronger in this spiritual sequel. There is a well-polished, brilliantly conceived and balanced shooter at the core of the Bioshock Infinite experience. But to simply dwell upon the game's genius mechanics would be a disservice to the beautiful piece of art (that's right, Roger Ebert, art) that Irrational Games has created.

Infinite begins with a very familiar scene for franchise devotees. You're in a boat, rowing toward a lighthouse. All you know is contained in a box of effects: your name: Booker DeWitt, a pistol, a photograph of a girl, a key and a few handwritten notes. On one of them: Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt. Devilish in its simplicity, the note kicks off a journey into the clouds that mimics the bathysphere spectacle that kicked off the original Bioshock.

Look familiar?

From those few opening moments, Infinite becomes an increasingly unnerving exploration of that city — Columbia — and an early 1900s xenophobic patriotism morphed by Christian values that struck me as much more interesting than Andrew Ryan's Ayn Randian utilitarian Rapture. From the opening moments, as you're baptized among cloaked devotees in a brilliantly lit sequence initiating you into the city, to the final revelation of Zachary Comstock's (the zealot and main antagonist — or so it seems — of this installment in the series) perversion of religion to suit his lofty, utopian aims, Booker's journey through Columbia is one with horrifying and unsettling cruelty toward man under the guise of ideology and zealotry that never really lets go.

Your charge, as Booker, is to find Elizabeth, the girl locked in the tower. You do so early in the game, after inadvertently alerting the entire city —which wants to protect Elizabeth — to your presence. This is where the fighting comes in. Not only will you battle citizens of Columbia, who are not intoxicated by powers like they were in Bioshock but rather sane human beings driven by devotion either for or against Comstock, but also giant machine enemies known as Heavies and Elizabeth's protector, a massive mechanical bird controlled by Comstock himself.

The resulting escape mission will take you through many heart-pumping sequences throughout Columbia. Gameplay is cosmetically similar to Bioshock, though the names of the powers and perks have changed. Instead of plasmids, you have vigors, which range from being able to fire a flock of murderous crows from your hands to traditional electric charges and fireballs. I found Bucking Bronco, a new vigor that allows you to throw your enemies into a daze mid-air, extremely effective with conventional weaponry, particularly the shotgun. Once Elizabeth joins your side, you have access to things called "tears," in which she opens up portals to other dimensions to bring offensive and defensive objects into battle.

It's all very familiar territory, despite the changes. The aerial aspects of combat are improved greatly by the presence of a Skyline, a device that allows you to travel around Columbia on steel pathways that crisscross the city. There are also freight hooks throughout that you can attach to with your Sky Hook, granting you access to higher ground for strategic combat situations and secret areas where money, ammo and other secret goodies await. The Sky Hook also enables gruesome melee kills. This is not a game for youngsters.

The difficulty of Bioshock Infinite is also alleviated by Elizabeth's ability to revive you throughout. Once you've beaten the game, the devilishly difficult "1999" mode becomes available, in which respawns are limited and ammo is harder to come by. I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet, but the game ratchets up in difficulty significantly in the second act even on Medium. It will be an interesting challenge that I'm impatiently looking forward to.

All of this discussion of Infinite as a game is extremely difficult for me, though, as I said at the outset of this review. Because, to be perfectly honest, the gameplay isn't what stuck with me. This is a better-than-average shooter with an extremely high amount of polish, don't get me wrong. But the gun and vigor play wasn't what kept me riveted to the screen, it was the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth, and the little clues that something is amiss in the world you're seeing that kept my fingers from powering down the Xbox.

Without giving too much away, the final 20 minutes or so of the "game" will take you back to Rapture and cause you to question your motives throughout. One reviewer noted Infinite has no "Would you kindly?" moment, as the original Bioshock did. But the reason for that is complicated. The existence of multiple realities, and an unreliable narrator who knows just as much as you do, makes that scenario — groundbreaking in videogames just 5 years ago — seem obsolete. By the time the credits roll on Infinite, you'll have realized you were never playing the game you thought you were. And that makes another playthrough seem cheap, despite how fun the game is to play and the promise of missed achievements.

The game, in other words, is secondary to story. Some people will play Infinite simply because it is one of the prettiest and most functional shooters out there. Indeed, the thrill of landing a perfect headshot on a Skyline, then zooming down to light some fools on fire and stick a Sky Hook in their cranium is one that will continuously take your breath away. But the story crafted by Ken Levine and Irrational is something that transcends simply one kind of media, and quite frankly renders the intricate plot of the original Bioshock, which earned universal praise just a few short years ago, obsolete and trite by comparison.

Which is the only real criticism I can come up with for the game — I honestly have no idea how you can top, in terms of storytelling, the final act of Infinite (of course, I thought the same after Andrew Ryan got the golf club to the skull in the first Bioshock). It will make you question why you've become so complacent with video games as a medium. As mature gamers, we should be demanding experiences that challenge us and the traditional roles they play in our lives — escapism, mindless cathartic release and sensory stimulation. Infinite turns all those tropes on their heads, in a brilliant story distilling great works of fiction in all mediums.

Do not miss this experience. And stay for the gameplay.

Rating: 5/5 stars

An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: Green Day "Minority"

Ah, the year 2000. How much simpler you were. The world was still basking in the post-we-didn't-get-blow-to-smithereens-by-Y2K glow. Grand Theft Auto was still in two dimensions. And Green Day was still making music they didn't beat you upside the head with their political beliefs (and Billie Jo was wearing way less eye makeup).

Sure, other acts would follow Green Day's plunge into political messaging. The Hives. Bright Eyes. Hell, even R.E.M. got in on the George Bush bashing in the mid-2000s. Apparently, pretending you majored in political science became a badge of honor for popular acts of rock and or roll.

It doesn't change the fact that 2000's "Minority," about the much more pure and unadulterated punk message of rebellion, proved Green Day's biggest hit of the decade.



This is classic, zit-popping, unrestrained and misdirected rebellion at its finest. All it's missing from the early Green Days (see what I did there?) is a vaguely worded reference to masturbation. I mean, sure, you could argue there's some reference in there to the actual Moral Majority, but compared to later lyrics from Green Day, I think it's safe to say "Minority" can only be described as benign.

In many ways, "Minority" actually celebrates the idea of self-autonomy and the American experience. After all, would we even be a united democratic republic if our forefathers hadn't chosen to shout, "A free-for-all/F--k 'em all!" to the British? I mean, can't you hear the democratic music in that verse?

In all seriousness, James Madison warned in Federalist 10 "that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." Clearly, the young gentleman and voice of Green Day's campy ode to all things contrarian is taking Madison's call against faction to heart. One can only suppose, from the concerns of Green Day in their early hits and music videos, that such an anthem is meant to be a rallying cry for mental health care parity and universal access to life and health insurance, in spite of partisan-inspired arguments against such policies.

So here's a salute to marching out of time, Green Day. We here at Shallow End hope you're marching to your own beat now ... more in step with Dookie. That album was awesome.