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Gamin': Theater: Books: Morsels:
Giant
Talking Book There is a tendency amongst geeks to compare the video game industry to the entertainment behemoth affectionately known as Hollywood. But where, we ask, is the game that truly shows American culture at its worst? Where is the game so crappy that you have to play it? In short, where is the Plan 9 from Outer Space of video games? Well, weep no more, my friends; the train wreck of a game we've been waiting for is here. And we call it Makai Kingdom.
The story is this: You are Lord Zetta — or maybe you're just his first in command; it's hard to say. Anyway, Lord Zetta happily rules over one of many Netherworlds, which may or may not be parts of Hell. One of the other Netherworld rulers, Pram, tells him of a prophecy she heard about in the aptly named Book of Prophecy that seems to indicate that Lord Zetta's Netherworld will be destroyed in short order. So Lord Zetta heads off to read the book, battling a few guardians along the way. (This serves as the tutorial for the game's simplistic combat system.) Anyway, Lord Zetta finally gets to the book, but when he tries to read it, the book destroys his Netherworld and attempts to kill him. Zetta saves himself by combining with the book, and thus, becomes a giant talking book for the rest of the game. Wanting to recreate his Netherworld, the giant talking book that is Lord Zetta convinces Pram to make a wish by writing in him. Thus the path of the game is revealed, as Lord Zetta now must get other Netherworld rulers to wish new land to be created by writing notes in the now-inhabited Book of Prophecy. Of course you must now go out and conquer those lands, using whatever real time strategy and character management you can find. The graphics and sound here really help to bring the game to the depths of badness it wanders through. The music is so boring, and yet so annoying, you may wind up wincing in pain from the sounds that feel like they were lifted straight out of a late '60s Roger Corman movie. The graphics are reminiscent of Final Fantasy — Final Fantasy I, that is — blocky and cartoony all at the same time; so bad, in fact, that you may find yourself squinting from time to time just trying to figure out what that image on your TV is supposed to be. All of the above makes this a bad game, but what pushes it below and into Plan 9 land is the dialogue. How many times will we hear Lord Zetta say that his incarceration sucks? Does it matter that he actually uses the word "sucks" a lot, thus giving you the Teen rating? Do you really want to spend 15 minutes hitting the X button while a three-headed character essentially talks to itself, revealing no useful information whatsoever? Yes, Makai Kingdom is a sight to behold — but never with your own money. If you must rent it, because you are the type of person who gets a kick out of bad movies, borrow the rental money from someone you don't like, then never pay them back. It's the only way to save your own pride. Adam Diamond writes for Weekly Dig (www.weeklydig.com) in Boston.
A
Light in the Dark On the surface, a theater performance that consists entirely of the moment before death seems like a morbid concept. But instead of being a downer, A Light in the Dark, Eugene native Ezra LeBank's one-man show, is a life-affirming statement about what it is that makes life worth living for 29 different characters. In the instant that precedes death, LeBank examines what must happen in a lifetime to allow a person to willingly surrender to the inevitable.
The heavy topic of death, LeBank says, is just a springboard from which to discuss the passions and people that make life a worthy adventure — as well as the politics that affect us. And for LeBank, A Light in the Dark is as much a response to the current political climate as it is a personal journey. Watching President Bush on television telling New Yorkers to put duct tape on their windows made LeBank aware of his need to create something that dealt with human mortality. "I realized not only that I'm going to have to come to terms with [death], but everybody around me was in this frantic place of being really unsettled," he said. So LeBank began writing a piece that progresses from the external political forces that impact billions of people back to the poetic, primal, "human rhythm" of motion. It's a reverse chrysalis, a physical and emotional struggle to achieve peace. "Politics only matter because of how they affect us in a personal way," LeBank said. "It's a very physical play, and at the heart of it is a physical and verbal rhythmic sense." But don't show up expecting answers, because LeBank doesn't have any. Instead, he hopes to bring the audience into his struggle with the age-old question, "Why are we here?" It's an affirmation of the beauty and wonder of life, and LeBank hopes that it will be a positive experience for his audiences. "If by facing our deaths, we could just enjoy this moment together a little bit more, that's a goal I have," LeBank said. "To make this feel like a moment in life that's worth doing."
From
the Heartland ACTS OF FAITH by Philip Caputo. Alfred A, Knopf, 2005. Hardcover, $26.95. The ongoing slaughter in the Sudan is frequently depicted in our media as a civil war, which calls up images of two equal armed forces fighting with conventional weapons. But in Philip Caputo's new novel, the war on the ground in the South (Darfur) is anything but equal. The Muslim government in the North uses tactics disturbingly familiar to those who study genocide. Recently, even Condeleeza Rice got a dose of reality in Sudan. Bodyguards surrounding the official she visited roughed up members of her party and a journalist. Neither Rice's position in the U.S. government nor the color of her skin protected her from thugs long deadened by a policy of murdering their own dark-skinned countrymen and women.
Acts of Faith looks at the situation in the Sudan through African, American and European characters who have come to the desert South, where the Sudanese People's Liberation Army continues to fight against the government in Khartoum, despite the lop-sided nature of the conflict. These transplanted aid workers living in the Kenyan border town have come with the best of intentions, whether they represent international relief organizations, the United Nations or Christian communities in the U.S. Caputo also draws out a more shadowy population that comes to its calling to make great profits while doing good — renegade pilots and small airlines that fly the "no go" zones the U.N. honors and handle contraband cargo others reject, such as weapons. Caputo shows the self-serving hypocrisy behind the book's main characters' avowed good intentions as well as the moral conundrum war money breeds. Additionally, the novel is peppered with colorful African characters from both sides of the Sudan conflict — Muslims, Christians and animists — for whom faith is part of community life. This rich, teeming novel fills in the background of the battle between the remote government and the natives who have always lived in and worked a living from the land. Until war broke out, the southerners had viable relationships with northern Muslim farmers and ranchers. Religious extremists and terrorists fuel the war from Khartoum, while the south is supported clandestinely. Caputo is a Vietnam War vet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of six other works of fiction and two memoirs. A Rumor of War, his Vietnam memoir, is widely acclaimed, as is his first novel, Horn of Africa, which came out of a journey 30 years ago across the deserts of the Sudan and Eritrea on foot and by camel. Caputo's African travels now reveal a region much changed by a long, bloody disaster for its civilian inhabitants. The gift of the novel is to make the conflict in the Sudan somewhat intelligible. But Caputo reaches farther with this cautionary tale. Look what happens, he says, when there is so much cold hard cash to be made by helping those less fortunate. Questions raised resonate for the reader. This compelling 669-page novel casts a spell you cannot ignore.
BOOK NOTES (Aug. 25 through Sept. 8): MacKenzie Bezos (The Testing of Luther Albright) reads at 7:30 pm on 8/25, Powell's on Burnside, Portland. …Edie Meidav (Crawl Space) reads at 7:30 pm 8/25, Powell's on Hawthorne, Portland. …Eugene writer Shirley Tallman (The Russian Hill Murders) reads at 2 pm on 8/27, Barnes & Noble, Eugene. …Syndicated radio host Thom Hartmann (What Would Jefferson Do?) reads at 7:30 pm on 8/29, Powell's on Burnside, Portland. …Biographer Charles L. Cross (Room Full of Mirrors) reads on the 35th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, at 7 pm on 9/6 at Powell's Books on Burnside, Portland. …Literary agent Arielle Eckstut and writer David Henry Sterry (Putting Your Passion Into Print) demystify the publishing process at 7 pm on 9/7 at Powell's Books in Beaverton. …Novelist Bret Easton Ellis (Lunar Park) reads from his new book at 7:30 pm on 9/7 at Powell's on Burnside, Portland. …Novelist Tom Spanbauer (In the City of Shy Hunters) kicks off the Mid-Valley Willamette Writers Speakers Series with "Dangerous Fiction: What Is It?" at 6:30 pm on 9/8 at Baker Building, 975 High, Eugene; $10 non-members. … Biographer Sara Halprin (Seema's Show) speaks about the fascinating life of cultural and political icon Seema Aissen at 7:30 pm on 9/8 at Powell's on Burnside, Portland. …Floyd Skloot (A World of Light) reads from his new memoir at 7:30 pm on 9/8 at Powell's on Hawthorne, Portland.
Taste
of the Tropics Sitting on the balcony at the Blue Luna Club, right at the level of the trees on 13th Avenue, feels a bit like nesting. Forget the street noise, which just gives the deck a more metropolitan feel; it's the trees you notice. The Blue Luna, which opened last month above Big City Gamin', is a Caribbean restaurant serving a host of unusual (at least for Eugene) items, including frog legs, alligator kabobs and curried goat. A carafe of sweetly tangy mango-papaya-passionfruit sangria and a quick-to-the-table appetizer of johnnycakes started our food explorations. The johnnycakes, two corn cakes with a layer of smoked gouda served with a spicy garlic-mango sauce, were cheerily tasty, but a little heavy for one person — definitely order them to share. The curried goat, in the words of a more-frequent meat-eater, was "like pot roast, but chewier." The dark meat arrived in a green, gravy-like curry sauce that had more in common with Indian or Japanese curry than Thai. It was chewy but surprisingly tender; I imagined something tougher coming from such wiry creatures. All the Blue Luna's meat and seafood dishes are served with a choice of black or red beans and brown or jasmine rice; go for the red beans and brown rice for a better flavor match to the meat. The "chef's favorite" seafood casserole didn't impress in quite the same way as the goat. Langostino, conch, crab and shrimp sounded flavorful and exciting, but the meat was shredded and unrecognizable in its heavy and slightly bland cream sauce. A crumb topping and perfectly sized portion made me want to like the dish, but the overall impression was very like the seafood salad you can get at a deli — if a little more exotic. The casserole lightened considerably when loaded onto a fork with jasmine rice and black beans, though, and my curiosity remained piqued — what about the rest of the dishes? Go with a group so you can try everything. I'm still wondering about the Jamaican jumping fish, and it's not even lunchtime yet. Blue Luna Club. 1280 Willamette St., Suite 206. 11 am-2:30 am daily. $-$$$. |
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