The Last Candle

Film critic Roger Ebert is infamously well-known — within the video game community, at least — for commenting that video games, as a medium, will move beyond craft into art. If the great critic had played Passage he might reconsider his all-encompassing position.

Or not. In any case, Passage is worth playing for anyone who thinks that video games can’t be a medium for describing life in the abstract. People on the fence about games, folks curious to the idea of games as art, and of course gamers themselves should definitely give this brilliant work a try. And for anyone else I haven’t covered: how does the resolution 600×96, Passage’s native dimensions, sound as a canvas? Strange, aye? Why you don’t you give it a test and see how well that works, Mr. Incredulity Pants?

I don’t want to spend any time talking about Passage personally, because I think the game’s extremely tight composition will do plenty of its own talkin’. I have truly never seen a game so compact but offer up such a compelling experience for its comparatively miniscule breadth. Recent huge favorite Portal comes to mind, that being another relatively short, four-hour game that was magnitudes more enjoyable than almost every 10+ hour endeavor I’ve undertaken in my gaming history.

The game’s narrative is moving, surely, but the facets and details that expand or constrict the plot’s path — and plot in this sense is fairly loose and open, partially due to the game’s length of exactly five minutes — are wholly crucial to Passage’s overall tone and experience.

Passage is not a game of fun, really. It’s more like a user-controlled story, but it has some typical and familiar video game-trappings like characters met along the path of the journey, increasing your point total by opening up chests and finding goodies inside, and traversing different locales and levels. But if Passage was left to those mechanics, it wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar of notable time-wasters. Instead, everything in Passage means a little something, and after the player experiences many of the cohesive little somethings, this collective of things actually feels like it means something outside of the borders of the game world.

Not bad for a video game that lasts exactly five minutes, aye?

Okay, I’m done being vague and gushing. Go play it, and see what you think. After you’re done, the author has several thoughts regarding his creation, but see what you get out of Passage yourself before reading his take. (As for my take, I was glad to play it. That’s all. Although I aspire to someday make a taught, tightly-knit game like Passage.)

Remember: pay attention to the details. See the forest, the trees, the all. Just about everything in Passage was created in its own way for a purpose that ties into the full concept, including the unusual, vertically-challenged resolution.

I thought today was going to be the day when I’d cut across the finish tape for this grueling marathon of a busy season, but disappointment sticks to my heels these days like a shadow.

By mid-morning, my work load was looking to be clear of any urgent deadlines for the first time in four months. All of my products had been closed off on my side and just needed to be checked by the co-workers in charge of the respective products, after which one of my managers would OK the final result and fire the software into the great digital beyond for our customers. After the software is available online, any subsequent updates are made only at the behest of our user base. That means that a busy seasons quickly turns into a slow season, since I might be only spending a couple hours out of the full work week fixing any bugs that arrive.

Today was penciled-in as the beginning of the slow season. Like I said, the last of my products were sent out of my control by mid-morning, and the only business left was for the analyst and the manager to tick the boxes and push the last button to free me from my months of 70+ hour workweeks. As morning turned into afternoon and the software was out of my hands, I found myself massaging my wrists, as if shackles that had constrained and bound me to servitude for years had been broken away and cast off.

The imminent release was a lovely feeling in itself. New software is usually uploaded to the Web site at about 3 PM, so I just needed to sit back (figuratively speaking) for the happy news to roll in.

At 2 PM, as a grand, antagonistic gesture of divine teasing, a squirrel in the vicinity must have let a large nut slip out of his buttery paws, bonking the top of and fatally disturbing an electrical transformer in the area, because our building’s power abruptly cut out.

And that was all Friday typed, er, wrote — us programmers and analysts were all kicked off the premises, not being able to ship a single product.

The products will be shipped out on Monday instead, but the delay bugs me for another reason besides that the bloody things are still in-house and unreleased, like the presence of relatives or baked goods that have outlived their welcome and expiration date, collectively.

During this busy season I’ve learned that my analysts, kindly folks all, have a habit of spending the spare days or hours between fixing an initial bug and release by looking for more bugs. This bug-hunt is akin to squeezing a tomato for ripeness, except that the tomato has been heartily squeezed and squashed so many times already that the juicy guts of the luscious fruit is bursting out of its skin. What’s worse is that, after this busy season’s example, I have suspicions that the analysts conspire to coordinate their attack, sending the respective bug lists over my way neat, successive intervals just to make my life a living hell. (I don’t really believe that, of course, but I had wondered about it during the most hectic bits of the season.) In any case, I fully expect to have more little things to remedy come Monday morning.

But I also really enjoyed leaving work today three hours early today instead of, y’know, staying late four hours. Always a slice.

Somewhere in the middle of the last few paragraphs was a vague excuse — you may have to squint a little bit to make out the excuse, or, if that doesn’t work, throw back a couple of stiff drinks and quietly mutter aimlessly to stir up the right mood — about why the second part of the 2007 music line-up is so durned late. It’s late because I worked nearly 80 hours in the past bloody week, that’s why.

But hey, here’s part two now!

Pop-up player.

Now, if you’ll excuse me — and you WILL excuse me — I’m going to go pass out. See, I’ve got a little bit of catching up to do at the office tomorrow, and an elongated siesta will be necessary to muster the energy for the trip into work for just one more goddamn Saturday.

Argh!

Saturday update! I didn’t go to work today after all. Nyah ha!

The year 2007 was not a very good year for Lost Horizon, one of my favorite bands. This greatest of power metal groups only fogged the doctor’s mirror once for the entire year via a single update to the web site; the update appeared in February; and it was a notice to use an HTML form instead of email when prodding them for signs of life.

If only that sole, lonely update had been a notice announcing to the sleeping world that they’d finally, finally landed a new vocalist and that recording for the next powerful, fate-smashing and will-fortified record was firing ahead like a maglev train, 2007 might have even been a good year for Lost Horizon. Instead the band’s progress was stagnant, and for us fans, now hanging on for a new production by the mere fibers of the last thread of hope, the horizon was looking to truly be lost (or truly found, maybe, depending on if the horizon being lost is a good thing or not).

The past year for my personal musical awareness and catalogue, however, could not have been more different than Lost Horizon’s impotence. 2007 was definitely the best year in music for me since I broke out of mainstream pop music and into power metal in late 2001, a seemingly ridiculous shift in taste but one that ultimately brought the realization of other, non Top-40 genres and styles.

2001 was the year of epiphany — 2007 was the year of acceleration, growth and quantity. Not only did nearly every band I consider myself a major fan of release an album last year, but becoming a major fan of a new artist was a near-weekly occurrence, stretching both my boundaries of appreciation and my CD and digital music collection. The continuation of guitar lessons with the great Al Davenport and my frequent stops at the Ann Arbor Library to pick, at random, albums from the blues and jazz CD sections further expanded my own (lost or found) horizon.

In addition to the bounty of studio albums released, 2007 was an excellent year for concerts. I didn’t see catch every show that I would’ve liked to see, but the first six months brought a live Metheny and Mehldau show, three Porcupine Tree shows in the same month, a burner of a Reverend Horton Heat gig, and the marvelous duo Chick Corea and Béla Fleck at a performance just a couple miles from my home.

So here’re a few songs from 2007 that I really enjoyed. Some of these tunes were from artists new to me, and some are from favorite artists putting out new stuff. I have little stories to go with each of these — where I heard it first, why I’m attached to it, and so on — but I’ll let the music speak for itself and refrain from dirtying the score with my own anecdotes. Suffice it to say, I really like all of this music.

This is part one of the Y2K7 jams. If this part goes over well — with me, that is — and with my web host too, I suppose — then parts two and three will follow in the pipeline within the next couple weeks.

Steaming music removed on 1/25, woo hoo! Playlist: b1ef511840b617d34e5fbe61b8e0a737

I’ll remove the above songs when the next playlist of 2007 music is ready, or within a week or so, or when I remember after that first week, whichever comes first.

Oh, and about Lost Horizon: these Manglers of Prophecy updated their web site on the first day of 2008 to say that they’ve decided to forge ahead without a vocalist and begin recording and mixing the third album. Moreover, the band has cast off the shackles of a label, proclaiming that all new songs will instead be distributed through the web site with the help of Valgorth, “The Apocalyptic Blaster Of Rats In Cosmic Fury,” who is always a good chum to have on your side during the war of art.

I hope my year of music in 2008 turns out as well as Lost Horizon’s has begun.

The whole go-into-work routine didn’t jive well with my wetware today. So I happily didn’t go, making this the first liberated Saturday since…late September. (Sundays were slightly less rigid — I had a couple o’ those off since September. Yay.) If I had been in a union, someone would have stopped by my home by now and tried to break one of my arms because of my lack of relaxation days. During some of the past Saturdays for these past months, bone fractures would have felt like an improvement.

But today I managed, through either cosmic coincidence, quantum mechanics or the benevolent hand of God, to roll out of bed before 10 AM on a weekend day, work or no-work, a occurrence in my life akin to a sighting of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker — in Arizona. If my life was a city, they’d be holding parties in the streets today.

Strange how just an extra couple of hours early in the morning can make such an effect on later parts of the day, parts that previously were spent awake and busy but were far less productive. For example, by noon today — noon being the usual wake-up time, sadly — had tolled its bells, I had accomplished several tasks in the extra two and a half hours morning hours that would have taken me through dinnertime on my regular schedule. On any other Saturday just gaining the volition to butter a cracker would be an accomplishment similar in scale to the inaugural launch of the Apollo space program. As for today’s progress I have no reason for this strange pre-noon discrepancy other than metaphysical time dilation, which is the most obvious choice.

Hopefully I can make this routine habit. My circadian rhythm has been changing time signatures and tempo since the college days — years ago, which is also a little surprising — and the challenge to steady the beat has become sisyphean. Unlike that poor Underworld sap, however, my stone of captivity is more like a marshmallow. A big one. Big marshmallow.

Analogies, like the one I just pushed out of the moving vehicle, are just best half-baked.

I’ll have to pay a visit to the office tomorrow to make up for my freedom today (“I’ll gladly have leisure today if I could toil on Tuesday instead”), but if I can manage another early — “early,” really — awakening, then I might be able to get a nice funky rhythm going for this new year.

That sounded a bit like a New Year’s Resolution. I had better cut this off.

Stuff on the sublime greatness of Portal and socks within a couple days, assuming the giant iron gears of salaried servitude don’t unexpectedly grind me into dust.

Does anyone remember if I made any New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of 2007? I sure as the sun risin’ do not. If I did make any resolutions chances are they were languishing by the beginning of February, gasping for air by the middle of March, and starting a worm church by Easter.

Like most resolutions.

If I did conjure up any ideas for the year, my guess were that they were banal, limp-wristed oaths in the vein of , “play at least an hour of guitar a day,” or “bake a loaf of bread every other day that includes a different kind of nut each time.” Boring stuff, stuff that might as well be Happy New May resolutions, or Happy June Blue Moon resolutions, or Glorious Wasn’t-Watching-Where-I-Was-Walking-and-Just-Stomped-an-Overripe-Banana resolutions. Just start ‘em up any ole’ time time and go. Besides, I bake enough bread products to feed a Third World country for a day, or a new-age mega-church for the Communion rite.

Nonetheless, in spite of these likely past transgressions of fortitude and self-betterment I must forge a new path as we six-billion-plus primates enter the next spin around Sol. In the face of past waylaid and forgotten attempts, I am newly resolute and courageously prepared to make yet again another attempt at progressive greatness, a test of steely will, steel wool, and wooly steel. Patents pending.

So here it is, the great Owen Resolution of the Year 2008 (And Beyond):

Get rid of all white socks in my wardrobe. Exchange whites with non-white socks. Do not buy any more white socks, ever.

I shot for the moon, but let the magnitude of the blast kept me within the limits of the troposphere. It’s easier to breath down here.

See, I have a sock drawer of mostly ugly, hole-pocked socks in dull varieties of off-white. If the drawer’s contents didn’t also include the trusty hip flask and handsome pocket-watch that Anthony gave me for my Best Man duties at his wedding, I’d be tempted to just drag the entire drawer, socks, lint and paisley bottom-cover and all, outside to set the whole thing a-flame. That would be lovely, and satisfying, and warm in this sub-ten degree temperature. In fact, I could probably get away with burning down the whole dresser, in terms of losing a bunch of ugly undergarments. The dresser itself is nice enough though, so no underlaunder-flambe tonight.

But, socks. By the end of 2008, it’ll be out with the white crew and in with the argyle, Gold Toe, striped wool and checkered cotton. That’s the plan. That’s the goal. But go ahead and call me a sockist, if you like. Proud and sock-predjudiced in 2008, that’ll be me. My future is knee-high, elastic, calf-fitting and comfortable.

Besides the whole white-sock culling, I do have another little project for this year: the Photographie Three-Six-Five project, which is more than just a cool name — it’s a whole buncha pictures.

For each day for the next calendar year, I’m going to snap, trim, color, crop and then finally upload a photo I took during that day. That photo will likely be deleted in digust and subsequently replaced by another. After several iterations of this degenerative process — I take a lot of photos, fortunately — a composition will finally be chosen that causes the bile to rise in my throat to only pharynx-level, a photo finally worthy for display next to all of the other vomit-resistant captures.

All of the photos will be located in this gallery, the official Photographie 365 gallery. For the truly plugged-in WWW user, a feed of the gallery is also available. Shortly I’ll have a link to the p365 gallery in the Navi. bar to the right of this post, but with my schedule that link’s due to arrive just before the Summer Soltice.

As a disclaimer, I don’t expect this project to end up as something like a testament to the human soul through a camera lens. For starters, I don’t own an SLR, even though I adore the little point-and-shot that will accompany me on this year-long journal. As for the pictures themselves, the gallery will undoubtably include photos of bacon, wrinkled pants, ivy- and crack-covered brick walls, half-empty (or half-full?) beer glasses on Thursday nights, misshapen shrubs, and so on. Heck, the two pictures thus far are of a fairly typical snowy Michigan morning and of a crown of shaped meat and trimmings that could’ve been molded by the jello-headed geniuses at John Carpenter’s alien props department — far cries from the Rule of the Thirds and any pretense of a choreographed humanist narrative. (Note: the shaped meat-crown was absolutely delicious.)

These are snapshots of daily life, not supercilious, rapid-fire attempts for a Pulitzer, natch. I say this mostly to the fools who are expecting some grand temporal mosaic of human living and loving, to whom I’d also like to say welcome, you must be new ‘round these parts.

But the project’s results accumulated by year end should at least be interesting to gauge, including how my eye for photography developed over the course of the gallery’s augmentation. And, of course, as a journal of memories the final product will be worth all 365 days of torture and mind-bending strife it took to create.

Should be fun. And I promise: no pictures of socks. Or not many pictures of socks, at least. Tee hee.

The next question: when I visit San Francisco this February, should my trusty point-and-shoot and I take a swing at The Six Minute Project? I think we will.