Kid Chameleon

Surprising as it may be, in all my years as an amateur journo, I’ve never reviewed a computer game. I lost interest in them when I was about 18 which roughly coincided with the last time I actually had a computer good enough to play recent releases. Ironic then, that despite the fact that I finally received my new, high-spec computer this week (and yes, it’s great, thank you for asking), I’ve chosen to review an old game.

Kid Chameleon was released on the Sega Mega Drive at some point back in the early 90s (probably about 1992, if memory serves), and I had the cartridge back in the day when such things weren’t charmingly retro. I’ve always had fond memories of the game, but nostalgia can do funny things to the brain and I was curious to see if it had held up after all these years. It also provided a decent challenge in that I never completed it when I was younger. I remedied that this afternoon, and this is clearly the first thing to recommend the game. I sat down for about two hours and played the game right through, with only short breaks for food and the toilet.

The basic concept of the game is simple enough. You’re a gamer playing a ‘total immersion’ video game, not dissimilar to Star Trek’s holodeck, but the game’s been hijacked by a bad, bad man and the safety protocols have been removed. It’s up to you to get through the game and free the other players. To help you along the way, there are various masks which change Kid into characters with different skills that will help you through the 100+ levels.

The game is admittedly huge. There are over 100 levels, and while it’s not necessary to go through all of them, as there are plenty of short cuts along the way, a completist-type player could certainly spend happy hours getting through the entire game. The cartridge version of the game didn’t have a save function (something of a rarity back in those days, let’s face it), which made the game a test of concentration span more than skill, but most people today would probably play this on an emulator, complete with snazzy save function, and so this criticism of the game is negated.

I find it baffling that Sega decided to push the horribly overrated and tedious Sonic the Hedgehog as their signature game/character back in the 90s when this game would have made a far better counterpart to Nintendo’s Mario series. Not that Kid Chameleon is on the same level as the superlative Super Mario World, but it’s certainly a lot closer than Sonic ever came (despite his apparent super speed), and Kid’s many personae would have definitely made for some interesting marketing ideas. But seeing where Sega are in the games market today, is anyone surprised that they made some crappy business decisions?

Anyway, Kid Chameleon has certainly held up over the years, and provided me not only with some erstwhile and dizzying nostalgia, but a great deal of gaming fun, too.

AJ Schnack: Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns

No, not gay porn, despite what the title may suggest, but we’ll get to that sooner or later. Gigantic is a documentary about They Might Be Giants, the ultimate indy group. For the uninitiated in the great unwashed masses, TMBG (as they’re known to their nerdy fans) are an American band based in Brooklyn, New York who have been writing music together for over 20 years. Outside of the phenomenal Birdhouse in Your Soul charting in the early 90s, and Boss of Me, the grating theme to the awesome Malcolm in the Middle, charting ten years after, they haven’t had a great deal of success in the UK, and this film, following suit, was never released in cinemas in Great Britain, though is now available on DVD.

Quite simply, it tells the story of the two Johns (Linnell and Flansburgh), from their early years in Brooklyn, through the huge success of anti-love song Ana Ng, the MTV-supported sensation that was their third album Flood, and their drop from the spotlight, as MTV’s support ceased and the band had problems with their record label who were clueless as to how to promote them. In the absence of footage from the band’s career, moments are recalled by fans, friends, and peers who share their experiences of the band. In the present, the camera follows the Johns as they promote the 2001 album Mink Car. The most interesting part of the film, however, is when the two Johns talk about each other and it’s a defining moment of a film which, while entertaining, is certainly lightweight, with the focus assuredly on light-heartedness rather than any sort of perspicacious insight into the bands relationship or creative process.

A key problem is that AJ Schnack’s occasional attempts to play up the wackier side of TMBG (celebrities reading their lyrics as poems, the selection of facts about James K Polk, school children discussing the true meaning of Particle Man) do feel like filler. If the documentary was more in-depth, these vignettes would certainly make good breather material to give the audience a break, but as it stands, it’s lightweight on top of lightweight, and results in an aroma of trying-too-hard.

But while the film has some definite weaknesses, it does one thing very well: it dispels the myth that TMBG, and the two Johns by extension, are some kind of lofty, impenetrable ‘in’-joke-laden wankfest. On the contrary, it shows them both as very normal guys, and what’s more modest, self-effacing and earnest, too. While, from their often perplexing lyrics, you would be forgiven for thinking they were beard-stroking intellectual types, this shows them as two hard-working, down-to-earth guys whose integrity, vision, and musical originality gave birth to the little band that could, did, and has been doing for over 20 years.

The film isn’t a penetrating portrayal of the personal lives and creative processes that I, as a long-time fan of the band, would’ve liked to see, but it goes a long way to make the group approachable, and with such an affectionate tone, the film makes very entertaining viewing.

Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist and The Valkyries

Paulo Coelho is something of a strange entity. He is without a doubt a publishing phenomenon: a multimillion-selling writer whose books have been translated for consumption the world over. However, the first thing that strikes me as strange is that he, as a Brazilian who writes in Portuguese, is arguably the most read writer in translation. Yet it’s unclear how many people reading his books realise this. The other odd thing about Coelho, and the one I want to focus on, is his personal philosophy, a philosophy which permeates his works. He makes no secret of the fact that he believes in magic, though he doesn’t seem to practice any of the trendy neo-pagan religions which have cropped up over recent years. Coelho is certainly a Christian and yet perhaps not a monotheist; it remains unclear how he marries these two seemingly incompatible belief systems. As a staunch atheist, this is all a little far-fetched for me. Even as someone with an interest in religion and belief systems, I find it a baffling combination. Coelho has seemingly chosen the best bits of various religions and put them together in some sort of middle-aged Me-ism (http://www.scn.org/~jonny/genx.html). This is not, however, just indiscriminate musings. All this does have quite a profound effect on his writing.

Let’s begin with The Alchemist, undoubtedly his best-known novel. I’m going to leave aside the notions that this is a fictionalised self-help book because while those elements are certainly present and many readers probably view it as such, I’m not so insecure that I need to take life advice from some book. When I read the book, it wasn’t as some life-changing text, but rather as an adventure story. In fact, it would have made an excellent installment of one of the various Indiana Jones incarnations.

The book is about Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who has a dream about some buried treasure near the Pyramids and after a meeting with a mysterious old man decides to go look for it. This takes him to the north of Africa, where he heads east toward Egypt as part of a caravan, but gets held up at an oasis while there’s a war between local barbarians. At the oasis he meets an alchemist who trains him as his apprentice and, despite the war, they head out to the Pyramids. They runs into some barbarians who say they will let them go free if both men can turn themselves into the wind. Santiago has his doubts but he manages it. He gets to the Pyramids, and gets beaten up by a thief who inadvertently tells him that the treasure is actually back in Spain. He goes back home and claims his reward.

Now, all this is notably far-fetched. But within the confines of an adventure story, it works. After all, there’s nothing here that’s any more out of place than some of the weirder moments of Indy films (the obstacle course to get to the Holy Grail, the guy who tries to pull out his heart). Within the confines of a genre whose very conventions already ask you to suspend your disbelief to an often ridiculous degree, the mystical elements that Coelho readily and clearly believes in as real-life forces are simply another element in a ludicrous-yet-entertaining yarn. In brief, his beliefs become fictionalised and we the readers therefore don’t have to except them as anything other than plot devices or general background clutter to the exotic setting of the book.

The Valkyries, though, is another kettle of fish. This is Coelho’s second attempt at autobiographical writing (his first being The Pilgrimage). It’s the story of him realising his marriage is doomed unless he does something soon and heading off to the Mojave dessert on a 40-day (yes, I know…) quest to sort it all out. He’s told by some other magus that he needs to listen to his guardian angel and becomes obsessed with not only listening to it, but seeing it. So this leads to him meeting up with a group of evangelist biker women (the Valkyries of the title) and he follows them around as they go from town to town performing bizarre rituals to a baffled crowd of onlookers who clearly regard them as ranting derelicts. Coelho, it turns out, is cursed owing to some devil worship back in the 60s, and he needs to forgive himself. Cue another bizarre ritual to cure him. And Coelho also falls in love with their leader, and her with him, which means Chris, his wife, and the leader have to take part in yet another ritual. Paulo and Chris go home. The end.

Where to start… Firstly, remember that this is apparently the story of how Coelho saves his marriage, though it’s never clear how his poncing around in the dessert achieves this. There is no resolution to the story, just another ritual and a return home. He never sees his angel either. It’s never sufficiently clear what’s been achieved in the book’s 240 pages. There’s little to no plot here, and the characters – despite what Coelho seems to think – aren’t strong enough to distract from it.

But aside from structural problems, there’s a more fundamental difficulty here: we have to buy into Coelho’s pick-and-mix faith. While in The Alchemist, it was subsumed by the genre, here it stands in stark contrast to the real-world setting, and within that setting I find it incredibly difficult to suspend my disbelief and go with the flow of the book. This is, for a major part, because I’m an atheist, but also because I don’t understand Coelho’s belief system. Perhaps if I had some sort of framework to put his faith into, the story would resonate with me more – I’d understand what was at stake and perhaps even what was achieved. But instead the characters just come across as deluded fools who spend time in the dessert as part of some nebulously defined faith.

Moreover, the rituals which crop up several times over the course of the novel wouldn’t seem like the actions of a band of converted acid victims, but some kind of meaningful (to the characters in the book, at least) ceremony. Instead, I have no idea what the ceremonies symbolise, nor what its affects on the participants will be. Coelho has a wonderful talent for nonsensical philosophising – writing whole paragraphs about how ‘the gates of heaven are open’ which, rather than clearing up gaps in the narrative, just leave more questions to be answered. Ultimately, writing 400 words and saying absolutely nothing. The key problem seems to be that Coelho isn’t allowed to talk about his life as a magus, which is perfectly honourable, but sadly doesn’t make for interesting reading.

Simply, this is the writing equivalent of a damn good wank – I’m sure Coelho enjoyed the hell out of it, but I don’t want to see him pleasuring himself, and I certainly don’t want to pay for the privilege. The book is often turgid and meandering. As he has shown in The Alchemist, Coelho is a good adventure writer, but he is undoubtedly a dull, perplexing, rambling and self-absorbed autobiographer.

Banana Yoshimoto: Night and Night’s Travellers

Banana Yoshimoto is one of the better-known Japanese writers in the west. She’s often been described as the female counterpart of Haruki Murakami, though the comparison doesn’t quite ring true – primarily because Murkami is far more successful, but also because their works differ significantly in style and content. I’ll probably get to Murakami at some point on the blog, as he is one of my favourite writers, but for now let’s look at this Yoshimoto short story.

This is the first story in a collection called Asleep, published in 2000 and translated by Michael Emmerich. It’s about the death of Yoshihiro, a vibrant young man whose life is sadly cut short by a car accident, and his family’s reaction to his death. The story is narrated by his sister, Shibami, but it is really the story of Mari, their cousin and Yoshihiro’s lover, and the depression that she suffers after his death. It’s a Yoshimoto trademark to have the story narrated by someone other than what would conventionally be considered the main character, and it’s for this reason that her stories are often difficult to pin down: people are looking centre stage, when they should be looking at the wings. The story also includes Yoshihiro’s earlier affair with an American student, a part of the story which gives it a marvellous, poignant pay-off and validates Yoshimoto’s choice of Shibami as the narrator.

Death is evidently the main theme here, but more specifically, those who have to go on living after someone has died. It’s by no means an original subject, but Yoshimoto has a knack for mingling these potentially life-changing traumas with dull, day-to-day activities, basing them in a very real, often mundane world and making the events more touching as a result. While her prose style has often been described as ephemeral because her stories often take the form of vaguely recalled memories, its beauty is in its simplicity, which reflects a much more grounded aspect of the stories; while these are certainly cloudy memories, they nonetheless took place as real-life events and are presented as such. It’s an interesting dichotomy which works incredibly well for her here and elsewhere.

Yoshimoto’s a good writer, and those dubious of Japanese literature because you fear it’ll be indecipherable don’t need to worry. While Yoshimoto’s novels are set in Japan, her themes of love, death, memory and longing are universal, and even the most sceptical reader should find something to enjoy in her work. Night and Night’s Travellers is a strong example of exactly what she does well, and an excellent introduction to it if you haven’t been inducted yet.

The inaugural post...

Ah good, you found it. Well done.

Welcome to Ryan’s Head. It’s a blog which exclusively posts reviews and essays. Clever, eh? And it means that you don’t actually have to read about my life in excruciatingly dull detail. It just keeps getting better…

Now, the craze of using blogs for reviews and stuff is by no means a new trick. Many people have been doing it for quite some time, and doing it damn well, too, I should add. Just check out some of the links on this blog if you don’t believe me. So rather than being a huge innovator, I’m really just jumping on the bandwagon, and why not? After all, it’s been a few years since I’ve actually had a regular stomping ground to put out my various ramblings. The Event once served that purpose quite well, but most of the people reading this will know what happened there. Backlash (see the links over there again) occasionally does the same, but my one-time lover and current pimp Mischa, in all his sexy lankiness, hasn’t managed to get it on a regular schedule, for perfectly understandable reasons. So this is my way of getting back into the whole reviewing lark, something I’ve actually missed more than I thought I would when I stormed out of the newspaper office a little over a year ago. And more importantly I’m doing it on my own terms: no editors, contributors, no deadlines, and no spending entire weekends pissing about with Quark Express. It feels quite liberating.

So I suppose I should give some kind of mission statement, some hint of what to expect. Well, a mixture of opinion pieces and reviews covering anything I fancy, init. And I mean anything. Books, comics, DVDs, CDs, gigs, museums, towns, every bite of a goats cheese and tomato sandwich. And very occasionally I might put some creative stuff on here, too. I’m going to aim to get at least one new article on here per week, on Sunday night, and perhaps some more before that if you’re lucky. So add me to your favourites and check back in a few days.

Finally, I’d like to dedicate this first post to Constantine for being a truly awful film and making me want to write a review more than anything I’d seen/heard/read in a long time. I think that’s where Ryan’s Head truly started (and not, as biologists continue to insist, in my mother’s womb).