When I saw them in Philly on South Street two weeks ago, I knew they were what I was after. The seersucker sidewalls feel as though they were designed by Kanye West cuz the shoes feel hip hop and preppy at the same time. They didn’t have my size in Philly so I had to wait til I found them on Thayer Street in Providence this afternoon. This time they only had one pair left. In my size.

Stop cheaping out on the young ambitious people of the world by offering only “unpaid internships.” It’s class warfare anyway you cut it, and unless you are quite literally a mom and pop establishment, I think you can afford to shell out $3,000 for a summer of exploitative work.

Don’t even try to defend yourselves. You are the Museum of Modern Art. The cost of an intern doesn’t even equal the cost of mounting a single painting. What do you expect me to do? Live in New York City for a summer without even my housing costs covered? Perhaps in your cushy life as a curator you’ve forgotten how expensive your fair island is. Imagine trying to live here, eat here, all in o

rder to simply work here. I will be that reminder: its f***ing expensive.

And we’re just talking about costs. We’re not talking about students who need to make enough money to cover tuition, or school housing, or books. No, we’re just talking about being able to make an internship in New York City, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Chicago a reality.

The unpaid internship is everywhere. It’s become a common facet of the student workplace. And I can see the attraction to employers. A whole summer/fall/winter/spring or even a year of work provided at no cost? All you need to offer is a place for someone to work? Perhaps a letter of recommendation somewhere after the fact?

What a deal indeed. From an employer perspective it’s a steal.

Yes, truly it is theft. It steals opportunities from all students or workers and gives it only to the students who can afford it. Students or workers from secure financial backgrounds. Students or workers with private wealth. Which means that the unpaid internship always acts a social filter, reinforcing the idea that jobs in the arts, in print, in museums, in broadcasting are continually reserved for those in the middle class who can afford them. And students from other backgrounds are kept from even considering these positions.

Employers of the world, stop being socially thrifty. Stop confusing saving money with preserving the class-orientation of higher employment.

It may be true that merit is considered among an applicant pool for unpaid internships. No doubt, the most qualified applicant is selected for the job. But what can be said for the applicants who are not present because they cannot afford to even consider such a position? Their merits have not even been considered. Their perspectives, talents, and qualifications have been erased by a financial bottom line. Your financial bottom line.

So what can you do? It’s quite simple: fund your internships. Here’s the minimum equation: find the average cost of housing in your immediate (10 mile) vicinity for a summer. Add $100 for food a week for the duration of the internship. Then add the cost of a monthly pass for local public transportation. You know have a working idea of how much an internship should promise in terms of funding. It’s probably around $3,000.

If you are charitable soul, consider adding money for tuition/books. It may be a small thing for you, but it will mean the world to your intern. S/he will work harder, and think higher of you.

As will we all.

Such a moment in the history of the video game offers a wonderful opportunity: why not begin an initiative to get people to think critically about games. By critical, I mean think about games as society expects us to think about films or books: to ask questions about how they are made, why they are successful (or fail), and what the reflect about us as players and society as a whole.

This “critical gaming” is hardly new, or even novel. Fantastic scholars exist in the United States (such as Ian Bogost at Georgia Tech, or Nick Montfort at MIT) and from around the world (McKenzie Wark and Jesper Juul) who have pushed the academic world to accept the vitality of games as spaces for study. But I am really trying to advocate for a more broad consideration of criticality in games. I am hopeful that gamers around the world could consider becoming “critical gamers” by committing themselves to thinking about games as exciting social texts.

What should a critical gamer do? Well, s/he should enjoy video games, and enjoy thinking about what they have to say and how they say it. The critical gamer should not be afraid to “think” about games, they should not fear “academizing” the activity of game play for fear of losing some sense of innocence, escapism and distraction. To the contrary, the “critical gamer” will love the conversation of games and the analysis of game texts. Which does not mean they have to write papers or read theory or have degrees in video games (though that might be nice) but rather that they communicate in language comfortable for him/her.

The Critical Gamer wants to play and think about play.

This midnight idea wants to change how people think about games, and how gamers think about themselves. I’ve chosen to call this a “critical gamer initiative” because it is about people not institutions, its founded on gamers not colleges or consoles or even countries. It is an international idea for individuals to be united under a common commitment to play games critically. So if you fancy yourself a critical gamer, link to this article, and/or send me an email, and let’s see what we can build together.

Anyone finished Mass Effect 2 yet? Thoughts?

particularly enchanting for me was the image of beethoven, as a knight in shining armor, being hailed into a certain creative-genius-as-hero archetype, and staring a hostile cast of problems and woes facing humanitiy.

recently, i began a study of the frieze by re-intrepreting it for the digital age. drawing over the frieze, i have re-imagined the symbols and characters of the narrative, even interpolating the digital artist/designer as a new creative hero. take a look at this early draft. i have a lot of work still to go, but i think this should turn out as something interesting to print out at massive scale. if not, it will still look good as a small printed fold-out like the one i bought at the secession building gift shop.

my dream of assassin’s creed

when my a good friend of mine first got assassin’s creed, i was enchanted by its premise. as a serious lover of medieval history, particularly the crusades, the concept of gaming a 12th century jerusalem was immediately attractive to me. when i finally saw the game, i realized that the power of its art matched the ambition of its premise: here was a vividly cinematic rendering of the historical levant. i found out more: the game featured something called a “open map”- essentially, one could take the player anywhere in the game’s world. there were no fixed paths or specific platforms with ‘painted backgrounds’ suggesting the infinitude of the space, but rather a ‘true’ sense of space, and an allowment for movement. i also discovered that the introduction to the game suggested that the “player” was actually a relative of the game’s eponymous assassin. with the help of a dangerous technology (called something like the “animagus” machine) this descendant was allowed to “play” the life of his genetic origins. gaming your DNA so to speak. how cool! finally, i could not escape the thought that assassin’s creed had a fascinating reflection on contemporary society. at a time in which the west was again at war in the middle east, how provocative was it for a major game publisher (ubisoft) to make a game about the crusades? except of course, that this was not a game that glorified crusaders, but rather a game that lauded their most elite and elusive foes- foes that had more to do with suicide bombers than marines. in short, i found the choice of making a million or so western kids play assassins strikingly bizarre, but highly suggestive.

this is not the game i played

the game that i played was not nearly as profound and inspiring as the console version had been. in place of vivid graphics i found myself in a medieval flea circus, moving a tiny postage stamp character over goofy obstacle courses. instead of a “open map,” i moved along tedious “levels” journeying from left to right, and never straying far to the top or bottom of the screen. i was in an ant farm version of assassins creed.

produced by “gameloft” for ubisoft, this port of Assassin’s Creed could be considered an original game. it’s full title is “assassin’s creed: altair’s chronicles” and according to the game’s box, it is a “prequel” to the console version. whatever that means.

in fact, “altair’s chronicles” is really like assassin’s creed: the mini game. sure it is ostensibly in the same game world, and it aspires to the same premise (templars are evil, assassins are good) as the original, but in point of fact the game is really something like “the complete works of william shakespeare (abridged)” or the “1-minute titanic,” a satire of reduction.

hoping that this game would allow me to dig into the glory of assassin’s creed on my new ds was completely idiotic. a friend correctly responded to my complaints: “zack, what did you expect? it was designed for xbox and ps3!” i should have thought about that more thoroughly, as it forces me to confront the meaning of the medium. though “game content” may be translated to any platform, playing a game like assassin’s creed on the ds would be like watching ben hur on an iPod, it simply misses the point. and so, while i must tip my hat to the game designers who enabled my assassin’s creed habit, i must berate them for not knowing better than i did. why would someone reduce titles that require immersion and graphic power and serious computation to sketches that fit in a smaller platform. playing this game makes me realize why professor layton & the curious village works so well. the ds is a platform of intimacy- it is for games that seek individuals, and challenge them. ds games must be designed to capitalize on this intimacy- to tell stories through simple, vivid animations, and keep gameplay visible not microscopic. ds games must be the short stories of game literature, which is not to say that they will be weaker, but instead more potent in their simplicity.

Now that the internet has become an ambience, we have become enveloped by it. Just ten years ago, society traveled to the internet. It was something somewhat site-specific, a cafe, a library, a corporate office. At that point, the internet still had a certain physicality- one could move into its reach, and, more importantly, out. In the early days of wi-fi, this locality was something of a game. One might roam around the house, around the office, or around the neighborhood divining the presence of the internet. This was the age of the “hot spot,” spaces that were special for something you could not see, but could access. A pregnant, invisible ether. A magical site.

For many of us, the experience of the internet was connected to those spaces. A corner where a neighbor’s unlocked wireless came in strongest was something of a special place, even if it was on top of a dryer. One particular hot spot in my father’s house was next to a window which framed a long view of the Jackson Street T-Stop and the hills of Jamaica Plain. It would be impossible for me to divorce the experience of the boundless and infinite (for that is generally what I connect with the experience of the internet) from that imperial vista. Not to say that only such views can compliment a “hot spot.” To the contrary, “hot spots” in dark, windowless corners are all the better for the experience of the networked sublime. In a place where one feels trapped, the exploding second space of a strong internet connection feels like an escape by floo powder.

Which of course reminds us of the sheer disembodying effect of internet use. Like the cliched image of the out-of-body-experience, the internet always takes us out of ourselves, above our physicality, to a plane that plato might have endorsed for its purity in abstraction. But unlike the out of body experience, the internet rarely points us back to our bodies, save in the mediated re-representations of ourselves (like facebook photos, digital profiles, usernames, and avatars) that supplement our desire for the physical with a new physicality. A body that is not one. A body that is the sign of a body (it has the photographic trace of the body, it answers to the body, it mimics the names of the body, but it is not a body). A body that has taken on a second life, or perhaps a primary life of its own.

We are becoming victims of an invasive ether. Between 3G networking and the growing ubiquity of Wi-Fi, we are very rarely outside of an enveloping ambience- the internet made massive and inescapable. The network made into the mundane, the essential, the indispensable. Once a luxury, internet access is growingly a utility. Forgoing its status as commodity, the internet has become something woven into the fabric of life.

Is the internet itself Orwell’s “Big Brother”?  It is becoming a surveillance we volunteer ourselves to. But why do we so require its ubiquity? Why did we leave the corners were we knew we could find it and require it to be everywhere, and thus nowhere?

The internet is utopia. This was the core belief of the California Ideology critiqued by Marxist media theorists and expounded by the entrepreneurs who would become moguls of silicon valley. But all these years later, re-examining the claim with an eye towards Thomas More and Fredric Jameson we might see its veracity anew. The internet is “no place” indeed. When the network forks such that its intersections cease to be visible (or important) then we might truly admit that we are perpetually ascending from somewhere to nowhere. We have lost our hot spots. The internet is public parks, and on trains, and on the beach. If it is an invasive ether, than its invasiveness has already subsided. We have walked it down our streets, and let it map our doorsteps. We have made it a cloud, hanging above us, more intimate than satellites, more familiar than the stars. We have conquered our own spaces, giving it over to blanket coverage and overlapping access. We map the territory we have not conquered (via cell phone reception charts and studies) marking out lands beyond culture. We aspire towards an assimilation. We just don’t want a moment of disconnection.

We desire to become space itself. We realized long ago that the “hot spot” would never be practical, unless we ourselves were the “hot spot.”

So we became the ether.

i’ve been missing my gaming fix lately. this time last year, i was rock band-ing daily a la berkman center, and even exercising my gamer theory with monthly mit-harvard game design meetings hosted by the ever brilliant gene koo.

anyway, between a brother who is no longer all that interested in video games (or staying up late for that matter) and an antiquated game system (wait, you mean they aren’t still developing titles for my beloved game cube?) i’ve decided its time for a change. something new. a next step.

i was tempted initally to buy an xbox 360. i love playing fifa 09 with my boys, and project natal will surely make that system all the better. PLUS, the xbox 360 has netflix interaction, and will soon have even more media possibilities- what’s not too love? the games basically. tho i love me some first person shooters, there’s really no reason to invest in a system that only does that with its time. ok, there’s also rock band and sports games, but they are really only fun with other people. ONE OF MY BIGGEST PROBLEMS IS LACKING A STEADY GAMING CREW (again, tears for the rock band core of yore).

as for the other considerations, the playstation 3, for all its awesomeness (like Little Big Planet) is too expensive. and the wii is too gimmicky. its like an arcade for your home, and i don’t want to buy an arcade. moreover, between my roomates next year, their should be one of each console in our apartment. SO WHY COMPLICATE THINGS.

plus, i love puzzle games. i loved myst back in the day, i loved games like journeyman project legacy of time, and adventure games. these genres have been forced into the ds market having been rudely rejected by adrenaline-addled Xboxers and PSers. no worries, i’m more than happy to find things like Professor Layton and the Curious Village or the much hyped scribblenauts in a single man machine. my prayers seem answered.

i struggled for a while about whether or not i should actually buy a ds. i researched into them extensively. i played a few, i read the reviews. at every turn i found myself more sold. the new dsi features suave (albeit slow) internet browsing, an online store with downloadable games (the next generation in video game delivery) and cameras promising both inventive game play and possible skyping/webcamage. one game called ghostwire will actually employ augmented-reality gaming, which uses the cameras to superimpose the game reality into your “physical reality.” i cannot wait to play/theorize on that.

finally, i am going to ars electronica this fall, and i’m worried about bringing along a full computer. i was thinking initially of getting a netbook for the trip, but i really only want one for the trip, not the long term. with the dsi, i may (note “may”) have a solution, as the dsi might be just the lightweight multipurpose ticket to bring to the festival. now lets just hope nintendo has a blogging platform working by then (plz wordpress?)

an animated summary of my arguements

i’ve been playing with a fun web 2.0 presentation tool called prezi this week. take a look at the slick little animation of my arguments that i composed on the beast in about a half hour. this thing is a very slick tool for showing your audience that slideshows are for cartesian minds, while prezi is for deleuzians. sort of.

http://prezi.com/128668/

Canada is like a popular American movie remade by amateurs with French subtitles.

You recognize certain scenes, and the plot feels familiar, but somehow the whole thing is off.

Not that this is bad thing.

Indeed, I rather like it.

Valentine’s Day Trip

A recent jaunt up to Montreal for a weekend both confirmed everything I had ever remembered liking about the place, and introduced wholly new things to enjoy.
Back in the day, I had remember being kinda turned on by the whole speaking-French thing. It was like there was this truly foreign country right above Vermont that I’d never been to. It was like another dimension. And I really mean a dimension distinctly different than the rest of Canada where English is the primary language. For all intensive purposes, Toronto is an American city. Montreal on the other hand is the second largest French-speaking city in the world. After Paris.

Just above New England, it seems, there is the ancient, forgotten kingdom of Noveau France.

The Quebecoise (or Quebecers, as I saw them identified in some Anglophile magazine) love two things: hockey and beer. They also have a penchant for friend foods, winter sports, and sparsely-clad women, which seems all the more erotic to the Quebecoise men given the temperature. Sacrifice, as always, is the root of sexiness.

Hockey

In order to get the real Quebec experience, my girlfriend and I snuck out of the downtown hotel-bar-nightclub area of the city to attend a Junior League Hockey match. Junior League Hockey is something of a cross between Minor League Baseball and Division I sports. The athletes are young, and in development, but they are also professional athletes, aspiring to the great NHL. Even though the NHL has only 6 of 36 teams located in Canada, Canadian players outnumber Americans in the league. Which can probably tell you something about the quality of Junior League Hockey on a Friday night just outside of Montreal proper.

We sat in the bleachers, high above the main action, because it was cheaper. But that didn’t mean that suggestively-dressed “beer bimbos” (my sexist term) weren’t cycling around with cups of beer for $4.50. I had two, one for each of the first two periods, and then tracked down some nachos. The scored was tied at 0-0 through the end of two periods, because the goaltending was outstanding. Only late (5:30 left) in the third period, did the visiting Quebec (City) Remparts get on the board with a top shelf flick in goal.
When the Montreal Juniors pulled the keeper a few minutes later, Quebec put the game out of reach when a bad pass was converted to a long-range empty-netter.

And that was how it ended.

Hockey Culture

Perhaps more interesting than the game itself was observing the Canadian culture surrounding the game. Alongside the “beer bimbos” a host of other erotically charged young girls did everything from monitor the VIP Section (Salon de VIP) to shoveling the snow off of the ice during media timeouts. These girls, the much-beloved “Cintron Girls” wore the most interesting outfits of any of the women, and were met with standing ovations every time they got on the ice. The man in front of me, at the game with his wife, was reprimanded silently by his spouse after whistling enthusiastically when the “Cintron Girls” arrived on the ice.

Next door to the main rink was a second, smaller rink for local play. Though it was 11:00 on a Friday night, some local game was in full force, with teenage boys eagerly passing across the ice and taking crack shots on goal.

When we finally got back to the hotel, we were greeted by further hockey. The Canadiens (the single most beloved thing in Montreal) were tied with the Colorado Avalanche until a breakaway goal gave Montreal the win.

Brutalism

Brutalism is the dominant mise-en-scene of Montreal. Which compliments the icebound feeling of the city quite well. Because of the way the city expanded, with its major construction projects happening in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, there was really no way for the Quebecoise to dodge the architectural cast-concrete bullet that is brutalism. Everywhere you go, from the metro system, to the Olympic Stadium, to the highways and national theater is brutalist beyond belief. No windows. Lots of rough, corrugated cement. Stiff corners and rigid angles.

The only redeeming thing about this widespread use of brutalism is that it manages to give the city an amazingly aesthetic cohesion. The kind of cohesion that most American cities can only have in their historic sections, which are harmonized by colonial and federal stylings. That this cohesion happens through brutalism however, does give some cause for fear and dystopian aesthetic nightmares. The whole time I wandered through the underground city (tunnels connecting corporate buildings and metro stations) I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in the setting for some awesome cyberpunk movie I’d yet to write. It was also a little bit like being in the contemporary mines of Moria, as vaulted ceremonial halls opened 100 feet underground from thin, cold tunnels. What a strange, advanced Northern civilization Montreal manifests. It is like visiting a city of great industrial strength that is constantly at war with the natural climate it is entirely dependent upon.

Ice

After a stunning breakfast, made virtually free by travel vouchers for a Chef’s Special at La Belle Province (later described by locals as the McDonald’s of Montreal) the girlfriend and I wandered over to the Vieux Port, which was said to be picturesque and historic. What that meant, was that it was the only section of the city that wasn’t explicitly postmodern or brutalist. In the place of those revered local styles, everything from traditional French limestone housing to Belle Epoque apartments could be found jumbled together.

This was disappointing.

The Quays of the Old Port, on the other hand, were not disappointing. Most unfortunately, we managed to find ourselves between two winter festivals, and as such the Quays were largely empty. I say largely because there was of course, a ton of ice. Also to be found were large coal ships and container vessels which appear to have been intentionally left icebound for the winter.

All around them, as endless as the horizon, was ice.

Between two wharves, a large section of ice had been marked off as a skating area. After getting a good look at it during the day, Colleen and I returned after dinner for a wonderful late evening skate. Rentals were $7. Tickets to Skate were $5. It was a wonderful way to spend evening, particularly as we had busted out our snowpants, just in case it got a little cold.

Which of course, it did, but we didn’t care. We were wearing fucking snow pants.

Real ice, frozen as this was from the surface of the Saint Laurence River, is much rougher than rink ice. Not that we cared. In fact, we were more than disappointed that the staff wouldn’t let us skate around the large track outside of the designated skating area, that had benches and other fun things to explore, and certainly stretched about a half mile in total.

Still, skating seemed a perfect compliment to the hockey of the night before, and though we didn’t actually take advantage of it, there was a “winter bar” that was accessible from the skating area, just in case.

Beer

Beer was the only more ubiquitous in Quebec than Brutalism. Everywhere you turn, every restaurant you go into, every pharmacy or bodega you shop at, is selling beer, and not just the Canadian standards of “Molson’s” “LaBatt’s” and “Moosehead.”

No, the Quebecoise have discriminating tastes, and as such have developed a rich microbrewery tradition. All around the city, “Trois Brasseurs” can be found selling the microbrewery experience as a eatery/bar. This was the first place we ate in Montreal, and the food was excellent, as was the beer (Which was apparently made right next to the bath room, which seems gross, but only encouraged me to drink more everytime I had to go to the bathroom).

The “Trois Brasseur” people make a deadly compliment to their beer. It is called “Flamm” and it is a bizarrely wonderful thin-crust pizza that is built on salt cream and goat cheese, and includes options for pesto, chicken, tomatoes, and bacon. It is absolutely delicious, but is entirely too little to sastify any appetite. Which is why we had two.

The next night, we hit the other Quebecoise chain, “St. Hubert.” Though they didn’t offer any in house beers, they did make a great sandwich, and complimented it with a local microbrew called “Keith Alexander.”

Which was middling.

By far, the best microbrew had to be “Blanche de Chambly,” a Hefeweizen-like wheat beer with a floral tang. And despite being good, it was also damn cheap, especially when purchased at the incomparably-budget “Peel Pub.” Though we didn’t spend nearly enough time at that particular bar, it was certainly a wonderful place to drink.

Blanche de Chambly proved so good, we bought a bottle to take home. We also brought back some Boreale, which my brother (having himself visited Montreal recently) told me was top stuff.

I would have to disagree, but his point was good. Beer in Montreal was damn good, and don’t those frozen Canadians deserve it.

Bottom Line

I can’t wait to get back up to Montreal. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, and being a college student, that means something. Just cause it’s cold up there now (and is definitely COLD) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go up. In fact, it’s all the more reason to go, because this is when you see how Canadiens really live (hockey+beer+ice+brutalism) and why they haven’t moved to Miami.

yet.

doubt is an actor’s vehicle, a film of great performances, but without any real drive to its narrative. where philip seymour hoffman, meryl streep, and amy adams put in exceptional performances, they seem to be almost freestyling through a listless and contrived story-line. perhaps this artificiality has something to do with the fact the doubt was originally a play. all too often in fact, we are reminded of this fact by certain theatrical qualities in the film. things like details that are too over the head, or dialog that feels unnaturally narrativic. the worse of these offenses however, comes in the film’s conclusion, when the otherwise solid meryl streep breaks down and confesses “i have doubts…” in this overplayed moment, theatricality is on full display. unfortunately streep seems to forget that the camera is more intimate that the theatre, and we don’t need the overblown sell.

amy adams is the best thing in this movie. playin sister james, an 8th grade history teacher at the parochial school run by her convent, adams manages to mine the space of confusion, hybridity, and complexity between the two extremes played by hoffman and streep. on one side, hoffman’s father flynn speaks constantly of love and the need for compassion. his nemesis is streep’s oppressive-nun character, who runs the school “like a jail” from her position of power as the school’s principal. it is sister james, torn between the guilt of streep and the innocence of flynn that represents the moral focus of the film, the same focus experienced by the viewer and born out visually by adams. her struggle is ours, and she masterfully trips over her desire to exonerate father flynn even as she fears his guiltiness. her big blue eyes must be the most compelling thing in doubt, and like elijah wood’s portrayal of frodo baggins in the lord of the rings, it seems that all of her acting happens there.

doubt is a fair movie. what it lacks in an engaging story-line, it recuperates with its acting. for streep (the most academy-award nominated woman in history), adams, and hoffman, it will surely represent another opportunity to be lauded, nominated, and perhaps awarded for stand-out work. i must confess however, that given the real mediocrity of this movie, it seems slightly unfair that compelling roles in bad movies should or could be privileged over lesser acting in better movies. from where i stand, it seems to be like giving the mvp award to a team that went .500 when there were surely other players from winning and championship programs who really stepped up. then again, perhaps it is the actors who bring their films up that are more valuable than the one’s who simply fit into a complex machine of excellence.