Niko and Caro, American Dreamers

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the plot of Grand Theft Auto IV.

It's been ten years now since I graduated from college, and that fact put me in a bit of a reflective mood for much of the past few weeks. Thinking of what I've done with the past ten years, and where I hope to be when another ten years have gone by.

When I graduated, in May of 1998, the future was anything but certain. I mean, a degree in theater from a small liberal arts college is not exactly a license to print money, and at that point, I still didn't really know what I wanted to do professionally. But I had a dream for my life. Not a big dream at all, really. It's quite simple, but it's mine. Maybe it's yours, too.

It's a dream that was expressed pretty well in this exchange on Showtime's entertaining Dexter:

Dexter: Do you have a dream for your life? Your future? Yes?
Rita: Of course. Do you?
Dexter: It might sound weird. I want to someday be content. Just feel comfortable, like everyone else. I want...
Rita: ...a normal life?
Dexter: Yeah, a normal life.
Rita: That's all I want. Just that.

Dexter, in case you don't know, is a sympathetic character who kills people, and he has the same dream for his life that I have for mine. That seems appropriate here, as I've been spending a lot of time lately with another sympathetic character who kills people: Niko Bellic, the protagonist of Rockstar's truly superb Grand Theft Auto IV.

Yes, as I was playing GTA IV, I was also thinking a good deal about my life, and my dreams for my life. My life since college has had its ups and downs. After graduating, I fell into teaching. That was a job that I think I knew immediately, as a transgendered person, I wasn't going to stay in, because it was neither safe nor, some might argue, appropriate, for me to attempt to transition while teaching high school students. Some people may have been brave enough to attempt that path. I am not one of them. And I suspect that, even were it not for my gender issues, I would have wanted to seek out other professional experiences. Teaching is simply not my calling. Since then, I've worked in coffee shops and customer service call centers, trying to inch my way closer to my dream, and also to work towards getting a job doing something that I'll find truly satisfying.

Niko Bellic comes to Liberty City with dreams of his own, dreams that have been fueled by letters from his cousin Roman, who wrote of living a life filled with cars, women and money in the land of opportunity. When Niko arrives, he finds that Roman has overstated his success just a tad, and that in fact Roman is deeply in debt, and in trouble with just the sort of unsavory characters Niko came to Liberty City hoping to get away from. What's Niko gonna do when he arrives in LC and needs to make some money, get a job at the local Bean Machine? No, that's what suckers like me do. Niko is not the latte-slingin' type. He's been through a little too much. He's a little too broken. Early on, a character named Dimitri Rascalov (Niko should have known better than to ever trust someone with that name) says to Niko, "We can choose the game, Niko Bellic, but we cannot choose the rules of the game." Niko has, for better or worse, chosen his game.

It's not unusual for a good film or book or television show to make me think about my own life in some way, or about the world around me, but a video game? That's pretty much unheard of. GTA IV, though, did just that. I'm not saying that the characters could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those on The Wire, but I am saying that while The Wire is, in my opinion, the best television show in recent years about the America we're living in today, GTA IV is the best videogame ever about the America we're living in today, and that, like all truly good crime fiction, it is not the immoral or amoral product so many right-wing crusaders would have you believe it is, but it is, in fact, deeply moral, a story of choices and consequences.

There's a moment near the end of GTA IV where I really believed that Niko might end up with a simple, honest life, that he might fly off into the sunset, heading for the American Midwest with a nice woman at his side, leaving the crime network of Liberty City that he's fallen into behind. Of course, I realize that I was naive to think this, but it's just that I'd come to feel really attached to Niko as a character, and that I really wanted it for him, wanted him to have his own little American dream, and when it was all taken away from him in an instant, it was genuinely upsetting. Money is the closest thing you have in Grand Theft Auto to a score, and by the end I'd racked up well over a half million dollars, but as another character declared, "You won!", it all felt so hollow to me, and, I suspect, to Niko as well. Yes, Niko wound up with tons of money, and had established for himself a seemingly pretty safe and secure place in Liberty City's underworld, but at what cost?

It would take forever for me to list all the reasons I love this game so much. I love the razor-sharp satire of things like the Republican Space Rangers cartoon, Weazel News and the Bastion's Buddies right-wing radio talk show. I love the huge, diverse, vibrant soundtrack, filled as it is with wonderful details like jazz great Roy Haynes DJing the jazz station and sharing poignant, heartfelt anecdotes about the musicians he's featuring, but, in a nice touch, referring to events as taking place "here in Liberty City" instead of New York. I love the exhilarating beauty of unplannable moments like finding yourself flying over the city by helicopter on a rainy night as Pruit Igoe by Philip Glass swells up on the radio. I love the living, breathing city, where people walk down the street talking on their cellphones, or wash shop windows, or do tai chi in the park. But most of all, I love the characters who populate it, and the story it tells. When Niko finally comes face-to-face with the man who betrayed him so many years ago, a moment he has built up in his mind, been obsessed with, for years, he finds that the man is an utterly pathetic figure. This is one of the moments where the game gives the player a crucial choice. You can kill him, as Niko has intended to do for so long, or you can walk away. GTA IV certainly isn't the first game to offer choices of this kind, but it sure does it better than any game before in my opinion. Your choices in games are frequently between the most saintly of goodness and the most diabolical of evil, and so they never feel quite real to me. I'll do one to see what happens, then play again to make the other choice, but I never feel any real investment in it. It's just a game, after all. But so well-drawn are the characters in GTA IV, and Niko in particular, that I really felt personally invested in these choices. In this case, I chose to walk away. In the moments that followed, on a quiet car drive back home, Roman said some things to Niko about forgiveness, about letting go of the past. Things that were simple and true. That was beautiful. And while Niko's victory against the predatory forces of the underworld may seem hollow, there are other victories, smaller but more meaningful. Niko meets a young woman who had, like so many, come to Liberty City from the Midwest with big dreams of making it as a star, but had fallen into drug addiction and prostitution. Niko helped her get on a train back home to her parents, and she sent a nice email to thank him and let him know she was doing all right. That meant something.

Of course, like so many, I'm already wondering what's next for Grand Theft Auto. How do you follow this game? Will Rockstar continue along this more serious, contemplative path for the next few games in the series, or will we see things veer back towards the more cartoonish violence of earlier games? Will we return to the neon-drenched streets of Vice City, or visit someplace entirely new? And, I can't help but wonder, when the next game rolls around, will I be any closer to my own little dream? In any case, I won't stop trying, and that's what matters. I'll just keep on cranking up the LCD Soundsystem and walking through this world like the badass superstar I am.

Berkeley Coffee Voodoo Magick!

I currently work at a coffee shop in historic downtown Berkeley, California. Our clientele always features a significant number of crazy people, homeless people, and crazy homeless people. We had a few remarkably hot days last week. This heat only made things much, much crazier.

At one point, after a particularly lengthy, stressful, exhausting rush, a customer, who was clearly gifted with some sort of cosmic ability to peer deep into my soul because somehow she could tell that I was a bit stressed and a bit exhausted, looked deep into my eyes and said, "There is so much trouble there." She then took a few ice cubes from out of the iced tea I had just handed her, grabbed my hand, and squeezed tightly. Her face contorted in a look of powerful concentration as she bent her will on purging this trouble from my soul. She began to shake as she fought an epic battle with the demons of stress and exhaustion that were inhabiting me, as I stood there wondering if I was supposed to be shaking too, or if she was doing all the work and I was supposed to appear increasingly serene. Finally I settled for focusing my effort on just trying not to look like I thought she was crazy.

When it was over, I made a half-hearted attempt to appear grateful for her efforts and to indicate that I was feeling better. A few minutes later, I realized that I actually was feeling better. The sheer unusualness of the experience, and her desire to help, oddly expressed as it was, had helped me relax and laugh a bit and forget the stress brought on by the mobs of irritable high school kids demanding free cups of ice water.

I love Berkeley.

Get a haircut and get a real job.

Yesterday, I had my hair cut for the first time in years. I liked having it long, and I was scared to trust it to anyone new, but I was also starting to feel like maybe my hair was a factor in me not getting the jobs I was interviewing for--maybe potential employers were inferring that I was one of those pot-smoking ne'er-do-wells or something.

Naturally, after deciding to get it cut, rather than doing research and making an informed decision about where to go, I decided to just go any old place, so long as it didn't look too expensive. I walked to a shop that obviously caters to the Spanish-speaking population in my area.

At one point the woman who was about to cut my hair asked me, "Do you want letters?" "What?!" I said. "Small letters in your hair?" I was just about to run screaming, but then I decided she was actually saying "lattice." This, I understood perfectly. "Uhm." I said. "A little?"

I didn't really know exactly what I wanted, except for it to be shorter, and I probably wouldn't have been able to communicate what I wanted to her that well regardless, so I sort of just let her do her thing. I thought about telling her not to do anything too "boyish" with it, but I was, as usual, too much of a wuss to try to communicate this sentiment.

It's a pretty drastic change and is shorter than I went in wanting. My first horrifying thought was that it looks sort of like a Sawyer-on-Lost haircut (!!!) but it's not that bad, nor quite so boyish. Now that I've had a bit of time to adjust, I kind of like it, and anyway, it'll grow out again.

Today, I had a job interview. It's hard for me to say how it went. I felt a bit iffy when I walked out, like I stumbled over a few of my answers, and didn't give the best responses to those kinds of dumb, generic job interview questions like "What's the one quality that's most important to you in a co-worker?" ("Ummm...hardworking? Hardworking is good, right? Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with hardworking on this one. Next question!") But I've learned that how I feel about something isn't necessarily the best gauge of how it went. This dates back to college, when frequently the papers I felt the least confident about would be the ones on which I got the highest marks. In this case, who knows? Things I make a big deal of in my head may not have been a big deal to them. On the whole, I think it went fine. Now it's just a matter of waiting to hear back from them. I'm also sending a thank-you letter in the mail tomorrow, since that seems to be customary these days if you want a job.

Wish me luck!

Slam Dunk, Strindberg Style...

(...or "It's Okay, the French Dude Said")

I had a job interview one afternoon last week. The story of that job interview is probably interesting only to me, but what the hell, I'm gonna tell it anyway.

My interview was at 4:00, in San Francisco. I was working at the coffee shop until 2:00. This left me plenty of time to BART across the Bay. No problem.

At a few minutes after 2:00, literally just as I'm about to head down the stairs into the depths of the Downtown Berkeley BART station, my phone starts to vibrate. It's this dude from a staffing agency, the same dude who got me the seasonal position I had from October through January, which paid pretty well by customer service standards and which I'd hoped might become permanent, but didn't. He says he's got a perfect opportunity for me. He thinks there's basically no chance that I won't get this position. He calls it a "slam dunk." He tells me what it pays. It pays a bit more even than the last job.

Great. I'm definitely interested.

I just need you to email me your most recent resume, he says.

Sure thing, I'll do that as soon as I get home this evening.

Yeah, see, that's probably gonna be too late. I really need it immediately. They want this position filled, like, now.

I couldn't believe this was happening. Weeks go by without any significant developments in my job search and now, here I am, with two important things colliding in the same moment. What do I do? Do I go home and send off the resume for this sure thing, this slam dunk, realizing that if I do this I probably won't make the interview in San Francisco in less than two hours? Or do I pass up the slam dunk and stick to this scheduled interview, which came after a few phone interviews and some bizarre online psychological profile survey which somehow did not detect that I'm a total weirdo?

In keeping with my longtime commitment to indecisiveness, I figured I would try to do both. I hopped on the next bus home, ran the four blocks from the bus stop to my home faster than I've probably ran any distance in years, fired up my computer and emailed the resume off, darted back out the door, hustled the four blocks back to the bus stop, hopped on the next bus to the BART station, and jumped on the next train that would get me headed towards San Francisco.

Just as the train came up on the undersea tunnel, I got a call from the staffing agency dude. Bad news, he says. We were too late in getting your resume over there. They'd just filled the position.
So much for the slam dunk. And I was pretty sure I was going to be late for my interview, as well. Terrific, I'd blown this job interview for nothing.

Actually, miraculously, I walked through the door of the office at 3:58 PM. Definitely not ideal for a job interview to show up two minutes before the scheduled time, but I figured it was better than not showing up at all. I probably also looked a bit disheveled from all the running I'd been doing. Nothing I could do about that at this point.

During the interview, I felt pretty good about things. I somehow forgot about the stress and disappointment I'd been experiencing only moments before, and focused on the interview itself. I think I answered their questions well. I felt warm and sincere and genuine, and I think I did the best that I can expect myself to do in an interview, which is pretty good. I liked the people I interviewed with, and came away from the interview really feeling like I might be a good fit for the company.

On the BART ride home, suddenly all the stress and disappointment I'd somehow managed to put aside during the interview came flooding back to me. I suddenly felt caught up in the grip of tremendous despair. Everything seemed so bleak and hopeless. There was no way I was going to get this job, or any other decent job, ever again. I felt like August Strindberg. I must have been wringing my hands and sighing theatrically or something, because my despair was apparent to a guy standing next to me.

It's okay, it's okay, he said to me. I'm pretty sure he was French.

Yesterday, as I was searching for jobs online, I saw that the company I interviewed with has reposted the position. I guess I didn't get the job. They didn't even contact me to tell me I didn't get the job. That was disappointing.

But it's okay.

I have a job for the moment, one that should, at least, prevent me from starving and becoming homeless, if only barely. And I walk to and from work down gorgeous Berkeley streets on beautiful Berkeley days and it's just not possible for me to despair all the time. And I've made a bit of money selling stuff I wasn't using and don't really need on amazon, and selling one thing I didn't want to part with on craigslist, but I can do without for the moment. It's only for now.

Of course, I'll never know if it was the fact that I showed up a bit dishevelled, only two minutes before 4:00, that cost me my shot at that position. I'm sure it didn't help. But then, the fact that I was fired from a job last year probably didn't help either. It's definitely extra-challenging finding a job in the wake of being fired, trying to convince potential employers that that one failure is not the sum total of who you are, that in fact, if anything, you've learned and grown from that experience. Still, despite this challenge, most of the time I remain hopeful that, in the long run, I might end up with a permanent position that's better than the one I lost. It wasn't a job I especially liked, or that paid much at all. I was just complacent in it, is all.

I'm trying to do more networking these days. So many people I know got their jobs at least in part because they knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone. It's amazing to me how big of a thing networking is, how hugely important it can be. Networking has always been a bit difficult for me, because I'm not the most socially comfortable person in the world and because I have a hard time promoting myself and using people I genuinely like and respect to try to get a leg up. But there are opportunities out there, and I want to give myself the best chance I can of taking advantage of them.

It's all in the game.

So here I am, working at a coffee shop again for the time being. I don't mind the work. The people are cool. And this shop is in the heart of Downtown Berkeley, a colorful and fascinating neighborhood, which helps keep things interesting. Stuff is always happening. The other day, a few hundred people marched by the shop, protesting China's occupation of Tibet. That was pretty cool.

But I do mind the low rate of pay, and the low number of hours. To be honest, I'm still a little surprised that I've had as much trouble as I've had finding a job that pays at least a bit better. I've got another interview lined up this Thursday, which I really hope I get. (Agonizing pre-interview decision: Do I spend the money on getting my hair trimmed, for fear that my long hair isn't making the best impression on prospective employers?) I'd feel like a bit of a jerk, jumping ship so soon after taking this job at the coffee shop, accepting another job, but I suppose it's not as if people don't leave these jobs after a brief period all the time, and I suppose it's not as if they deserve my loyalty, considering what they're paying me. As my man Omar on The Wire is fond of saying, "It's all in the game."

"Help my union? For 25 years, we been dying slow down there. Dry docks rustin', piers standin' empty. My friends and their kids like we got the cancer. No lifeline got throwed all that time, nothin' from nobody. And now you want to help us? Help me?" -Frank Sobotka

So, yeah, The Wire. Watched the first, I dunno, six episodes way back when, thought it was boring. Then recently I decided to give it another chance. Somewhere around episode nine, something clicked. I finally acquired the taste for The Wire, I guess. And I just finished the second season, which for me was even more powerful than the first. Frank Sobotka, the union leader who gets caught up in criminal dealings and becomes the focus of the task force's investigation, is one of the more compelling criminals I've ever come across. I really feel for him. The things he does are wrong, and he makes some bad choices, but his personal reasons for doing those things are all basically good. There's been a kind of betrayal of the way of life that he and his fellow dockworkers have essentially been born into. The work dries up. The men no longer have enough money to provide for themselves and their families. And Sobotka does what he does in an attempt to help them, to provide.

It is, as many critics have said, a literary show. In terms of its pacing, its characters, the way it grapples with themes and social issues, the way it holds up a mirror to our society, it feels like a really good book, only one you watch instead of read.

I think Omar's expression resonates with me because I have a tendency to think of things, even extremely important real-life situations, as if they are games. Right now, the big game for me is the money game. Scrounging by on coffee shop pay at 20 hours a week or whatever is going to be extremely challenging, if not impossible. I've made some significant adjustments. I've cancelled my few small monthly charitable donations, to the ACLU and the HRC. I've put my Netflix account on hold, desperate as I am to see The Wire Season Three. My on-again, off-again subscription to World of Warcraft has gone off again, despite the fact that, as getrichslowly.org shows us, we can learn a lot about money from the game. (getrichslowly continues to be a source of encouragement, knowledge and inspiration. J.D. has been through some tough times, and his frankness about his mistakes and struggles, and his subsequent success feels like a source of comfort and support as I struggle with the situation I find myself in.) I'm selling off some stuff on amazon.com. I've even cancelled GameFly for the time being, which, for me, was the hardest decision, because of course I love playing, thinking about and writing about games, and still entertain thoughts of doing it professionally at some point. I'll be taking a break from new games for a little while, but hopefully not for too long. I don't want to miss out on Grand Theft Auto IV.




I'm really excited about this game, not just because the previous games have been astounding from a gameplay perspective, but also because I think this game has tremendous potential in terms of its story. I really think the Grand Theft Auto games have been scathing works of social satire, that they've had something meaningful to say. If The Wire holds up a mirror to our society, the Grand Theft Auto games filter our society through video games and action movies and still wind up with a significant amount of truth, and IV seems poised to follow in that tradition. The fact that the central character is an immigrant from Eastern Europe opens up all kinds of terrific possibilities. Heck, just reading this blurb from the game's information page is enough to get me excited:

What does the American dream mean today?

For Niko Bellic, fresh off the boat from Europe, it is the hope he can escape his past.

For his cousin, Roman, it is the vision that together they canfind fortune in Liberty City, gateway to the land of opportunity.

As they slip into debt and are dragged into a criminal underworld by a series of shysters, thieves and sociopaths, they discover that the reality is very different from the dream in a city that worships money and status, and is heaven for those who have them and a living nightmare for those who don't.

Mercifully, I haven't been dragged into a criminal underworld myself. Yeah, times are a bit tough. And I see myself being a bit more callous about some things. Walking to work the other day, a young woman, somewhat younger than me, asked me for money, and I'm certainly in no position to be giving anyone anything. Not that I would have given her anything anyway. But in the past, Iwould have really felt something, this sense of, I don't know, guilt or fear, this "There but for the grace of God go I" punch to the stomach. But now I just felt kind of removed about it. "Sorry," I said, and walked on without a second thought. I've hit a rough patch, and you're on the street. That's how it goes. It's all in the game.

Most of the time, I know things are gonna be okay. Some of the time I'm terrified. Most of the time, I remember that many people have found themselves in tough situations at one point or another. Some of the time, I feel like the biggest failure, the most colossal fuck-up in the whole history of the world.

But I feel alright.



Yeah, I feel alright tonight.

The Wire Season Two: 10/10 stevedore-replacing robots

Let's Call This the Flashback

With all the Lost I've been watching, I've taken to imagining my life frequently being interrupted by dramatic flashbacks that reveal previously unknown aspects of my past that are somehow relevant given whatever challenging situation I currently find myself in. For instance, while faced with a really difficult choice between two products at the grocery store, I might suddenly remember that time my dad conned me into giving him one of my kidneys. Oh, wait, that wasn't me. That was a character on Lost.

Anyway, it's no joke that I am in a challenging situation at the moment. Still job-hunting, and putting lots of effort into it, but it's taking a lot longer than I would have liked. I've even found myself in the humbling position of asking friends for a little money to help until I'm on my feet again. How did I get into this position? It's not a particularly interesting story, but I'll tell it anyway.

Woooooooooooooooooooosh! (That's the Lost flashback sound effect.)

By last summer, I'd been working for the same company for nearly three years. Things at work were pretty okay, I guess. I basically liked the company and the people I worked with, and I was good at my job.

Then, sometime in July, I got hit by a pretty nasty case of depression. To be frank, being depressed isn't something particularly new or unusual for me. I think that I've struggled with depression in greater or lesser degrees for a large part of my life as a result of my gender issues. I mean, there's just no getting around the fact that not being able to be the person you feel you really are every single day kinda sucks, and some days the weight in my chest when I wake up in the mornings is heavier than it is on other days. My least favorite thing about being depressed is the way it makes me feel kind of self-absorbed. It's harder to focus out on other things when you're depressed, much like, if you have a knife in your chest, it's probably hard to think about much other than the fact that you've got a knife in your chest. And I know I'd be better at everything if I didn't feel this way. I'd be a better writer, a better employee, a better friend. But still, at least I've always managed to pull through, to do what needed to be done, to force myself to get out of bed no matter how tough it was.

But this was an unusually rough period, where getting out of bed was suddenly more difficult than it had ever been before. And I found myself running a few minutes late to work on a few occasions. I was promptly pulled aside and warned about this, and I apologized, sincerely feeling bad about what had happened, and communicated to my managers that I was struggling with depression and was seeking help for it, which I was.

Then it happened one more time, and they let me go. That was that.

That sucked, no doubt about it. But I immediately tried to see it as something that could end up being for the best. The reality was that, while I liked the company and my coworkers, I'd started to find the job a bit dull. It was rare for anything at work to really challenge or stimulate me anymore. What's more, I wasn't seeing opportunities for growth in the workplace, and I really didn't feel that the company was paying me what I should have been making considering the amount of time I'd been with them. There was certainly no doubt that my next job could be a considerable improvement.

And it was. I found a job that was more stimulating and challenging, and that paid considerably more. The job was a seasonal position with a company that's significantly busier around the holidays than it is throughout the rest of the year, but I was told from the beginning that there was a chance I would be hired on full-time after the holidays were over. I knew this wasn't something I could count on, but I busted my ass at this job, and I know I impressed the managers, because many of them started talking to me in ways that made it clear they felt I'd be sticking around.

But alas, things didn't go as expected, and when news came down that I wasn't being kept on permanently, many of those managers seemed as surprised and upset about it as I felt. Every last one of them offered to give me a glowing reference and wished me the best of luck in my job search.

My search got off to a promising start. Almost immediately, I had the interview for a technical writing position that I mentioned in an earlier blog post. Of course, that didn't end as well as I would have liked, but still, it was encouraging. However, since then, I've had a lot of phone interviews and face-to-face interviews and I really feel like I'm putting my best foot forward, but landing a job just hasn't happened yet. On Thursday I have another phone interview for a job that sounds pretty cool, but tomorrow I'll also be dropping off applications at a nearby Starbucks and other retail stores, as I'm at the point now where I absolutely positively need to start pulling in some money.

Admittedly I feel pretty desperate--I wouldn't be applying at places like Starbucks otherwise--but I still feel like in the long run all of this might end up being for the best. I'd gotten complacent in my job, but I wasn't really happy, nor was I earning what I should have been, so at this point, even if I have to earn even less for a while, I think I have the motivation to keep looking until I find a job I'm a bit more satisfied with. This is certainly the biggest failure of my adult life, and I admit I've felt some shame and embarrassment about it all, but I know that it's not really a reflection of who I am, but rather of something I was struggling with. I think I've learned a lot from this experience, and that when I do get back on my feet, I'll be better than ever.

And as bad as things get, I can always be thankful that at least my dad has never conned me into giving him one of my kidneys.

--------------------------------

As an aside, a friend recently recommended getrichslowly.org, and I wanted to take a moment to recommend it myself, as it's quickly become a favorite of mine. Interestingly, not long before I lost my job, I'd really started to try getting a hold on my finances, and I think I was applying a lot of the common-sense stuff that J.D. talks about on Get Rich Slowly, but it's really nice to have it reinforced and expanded on by someone who's done a lot more reading about finances than I have. The website is really readable because J.D. doesn't talk down to the reader about this stuff. He comes across as just a regular guy who, like many of us, had struggled with money, and he talks about how he got things under control. There's also just enough of his own personality in the pieces to make things interesting. It's obvious that he's struggled with social anxiety and other challenges, for instance, and that in some ways tackling his money issues and tackling his personal issues have been related endeavors, and I really like that idea, that personal growth can come out of, or is necessary for, better money management.

I've made a lot of progress in terms of how I handle money, I think. I've cut out lots of unnecessary expenses, cut way down on expenses that aren't unnecessary, and I had started saving and tackling debt, as well as starting to think realistically about how I'm going to pay for this whole ridiculously expensive gender thing that I really need to deal with sooner rather than later. Of course, now that I'm not really making any money at all, things are kind of on hold, but I'm confident that I'm more ready and better equipped to deal with these issues now than I was before.

The Queen of Kong: For a Few Brawlers More

Amidst laying in bed coughing, watching hella Lost and dragging myself off to a few job interviews, I also watched The King of Kong this past week. What a neat little movie. Of course, my interest in video games probably made it more enjoyable, but in fact, I'd recommend it to just about anyone, as it's not just about going for the all-time high score in Donkey Kong. It's about the personalities of two distinctly different people. Steve Wiebe is a likable hero and underdog anyone can root for, and Billy Mitchell, with his hilarious tendency to spout self-aggrandizing statements with the affect of a zen monk, is, to me, a compelling and amusing villain of sorts. "I'm the most seasoned person in the hot sauce chicken wing business."

The movie did make me want to play some arcade-perfect Donkey Kong. DK was always one of my favorite arcade games, and I still think it's one of the very best games of all time. It's so rare for games these days to test one's skill on anything resembling that level. For instance, I got 100% completion in Burnout Paradise this past week as well, but as much as I love that game, I don't feel there's any sort of accomplishment involved there. Just about anyone, if they put enough (read: way too much) time into it, can get 100% completion in Paradise. But you and I could play Donkey Kong for hundreds of hours and never get to the level of play at which people like Wiebe and Mitchell compete. Still, I'd love to have a go and see what my own personal best high score could be.

Unfortunately, inexplicably, there's pretty much no legal way to play arcade-perfect Donkey Kong short of dropping upwards of a thousand bucks on buying a DK machine. You'd think, especially with the film, that there'd be some level of interest in the game that Nintendo could capitalize on to make a few bucks, but the only version readily available right now, via the Wii's Virtual Console, is the NES version, which sucks. It doesn't have the How High Can You Get? screen or the "pie factory" level, so it ain't really Donkey Kong. Of course, plenty of people have bought Donkey Kong on the Virtual Console, because they don't know any better or don't care. It's the same reason so many people go to Starbucks. (The arcade version of Donkey Kong was included in Rare's 1999 Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64, but even that version alters the flow of the game's levels a bit.)



Ah well. I have at least spent some time today playing a Nintendo game, the insanely hyped Super Smash Bros. Brawl. If you're not familiar with this series, the SSB games involve a roster of characters from Nintendo's storied history...Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, and so on...smacking and kicking each other in environments that are also taken from Nintendo's storied history. They're basically Nintendo's big love letter to itself, and as fan service, they're outstanding. As a Nintendo fan myself, I admit I got caught up in the hype and excitement leading up to the game's release. The thing is, as games, despite a multitude of rabid fanboys across the internets declaring Brawl the best game ever, they're just so-so. Playing SSB has reminded me of David Cross' story about having a good time at a Harlow concert until he had a realization. "Wait a second. I hate Harlow."

I don't hate Smash Bros., but it's just really basic. There isn't enough depth to the gameplay to make it rewarding or interesting for me. The only fun I really had with the previous game in the series was when I had a few friends over who were up for some mindless button-mashing fun, because the games are definitely good for some laughs. Especially if a few drinks have been had. Brawl does bring online play to the series so perhaps I'll wrassle up a few friends online and get some mindless enjoyment out of the game that way. And the game is full of awesome unlockables, like the ability to play the lame NES version of Donkey Kong for THIRTY SECONDS! Rad!

Anyway, Lost. Yeah, I finally decided to see what all the fuss is about with that show, seeing as how ABC has put all the episodes up for viewing on their website. The only drawback of watching them on the website is that I have to keep sitting through an ad that makes the mind-boggling claim that, with the inclusion of "stars" like Adam Carolla and Steve Guttenberg, this season of Dancing With the Stars is going to be HOTTER! STEAMIER! SEXIER! than ever before. Yeah, that Adam Carolla is a sexy, sexy man.

What I like most about Lost, not surprisingly, are the elements that feel like something out of an adventure game: the Dharma Initiative stations on the island, the button that may or may not need to be pushed every 108 minutes to save the world, stuff like that. (Also not surprisingly, Lost has just been turned into an adventure game. By all accounts it's a middling game, but I'll probably give it the ol' GameFly whirl anyway once I'm all caught up with the show.) What I don't like about it is how maddeningly little information it doles out in any given episode, but I guess that's how you keep people tuning in.

In other news, I'm stoked about giantbomb.com, the new site from former GameSpot dudes Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis. Not much there yet, but I think when it explodes onto the scene this summer, it's gonna be pretty awesome.

Finally, the job hunt continues. I've had two interviews recently. One of the two jobs is considerably better than the other but beggars can't be choosers. Thank-you cards have been sent, follow-up phone calls placed, and the scouring of craigslist goes on.

Gender Select:

My sense of myself as female is, as you may know, extremely important to me, and, like many women I know who play games, when given the choice between playing as a male character or a female character, all other things being equal, I'll pretty much always go with the female character. Particularly in role-playing games like Oblivion, I just feel a deeper sense of connection to my character that way, and I also really appreciate those rare instances when games with pre-set characters have female characters who are interesting and don't have proportions that would look grotesque on an actual human being. (Alex Roivas in Eternal Darkness is perhaps my favorite female character in a game, but such characters are still all too rare.) However, that's not to say that I feel a particular barrier between myself and my character in those situations when I have to play as a male, which is, let's face it, almost all the time. It's sort of like playing Burnout Paradise, in which you're just a car. I, myself, am not a car, but I still feel every crash in the game pretty intensely. Still, it bugs me when I come away from a game feeling like it would have been pretty easy for the developers to provide the option to play as a female, but they just didn't bother.

I think that, as a very broad generalization that has millions of exceptions, men are a bit more put off by the idea of playing as a woman than women are by the idea of playing as a man, though whether this is because women are inherently more easygoing about this sort of thing, or because of misogyny on the part of those men who have issues playing as a woman, or just because women have been forced to accept that, more often than not, playing a game means playing as a male character, I'm not really sure. And as I said, that's an exceptionally broad generalization. There are plenty of men who regularly play as female characters for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes there's nothing more to it than a sense that if you're going to spend hundreds of hours looking at a character, it might as well be one that you find visually appealing. But there are plenty of more complex reasons behind why some men do this as well. And certainly women will occasionally create male characters, though if I had to guess I'd say this probably happens less frequently than the opposite.

What got me thinking about this was a comment I read from a female gamer in response to this article, an appreciation piece about Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of Valve's exceptional Half-Life games. The piece asserts:

Gordon Freeman’s neutrality of dialogue and lack of overt personality within the game do not make him a non-character, but are in fact his strength. His lack of preconcieved identity provides not a single barrier with which to distance him from the player’s own personality, making him a blank canvas on which they can imprint their own values and outlook. Valve have even made it impossible for the player to ever see Gordon from a third-person perspective, either through cut-scene or reflection, meaning that in no instance does the effect of seeing a character who does not look like themselves pull the player out of the experience of ‘being’ him.

The comment I read about this assertion, which I'm deliberately taking totally out of context because I admit I'm more interested at this point in what it made me think about than what she actually meant, essentially stated that the flaw in this argument was that it was impossible for her to project herself onto Gordon Freeman because Freeman is male. While I would probably have felt a deeper connection to the protagonist of the Half-Life games if that protagonist were female, this argument seemed odd to me, as playing as Gordon Freeman never really impacted my ability to feel engrossed in the story and world of the Half-Life games. But then I realized that it's fully possible that I'm the odd one. People sometimes think that transgendered people have some sort of insightful perspective into gender dynamics, but I usually feel just the opposite, that my own perspective, anyway, is probably pretty limited and distorted, existing, as I do, outside of any gender dynamic I've ever felt at home in.

I guess I just don't feel like gender, while an aspect of our sense of personal identity whose impact cannot be overstated, is the be-all, end-all of our ability to relate to each other as human beings. While I feel deeply that I'm female, there are certainly some men I feel I can relate to pretty well, and plenty of women I can't relate to at all, and my sense is that this is true of most people. And I sometimes think that people give this stuff too much weight, or see barriers between the sexes that don't exist. It's not unusal to hear someone say, of a book written by a man in which the narrator is a woman, that the author didn't convincingly capture the female voice, or to say the opposite about a book written by a woman in which the narrator is a man. (A woman I know recently said she didn't feel that Donna Tartt was entirely convincing in writing from the male perspective in her novel The Secret History, for example.) And sometimes that may be true, but I also think that at times people scrutinize these books more, and latch on to anything that might ring false to them, things that perhaps wouldn't make them bat an eye if the author was actually the same gender as the narrator. Would the narrator of The Secret History have seemed odd to my acquaintance, I wonder, if the book had been written by a man? Or is she right in saying that there's something quintessentially female about the way the book is written, and no man in the history of the world would ever have written a male narrator that way? That's definitely possible.

This higher level of scrutiny is similar, it seems to me, to what many transgendered people experience, when they're held to a different standard of masculinity or femininity than, for lack of a better term, "cissexual" men and women. One might attempt to deny a transsexual woman her femaleness, for instance, by saying, "He's not really female, he likes video games too much," but wouldn't dream of applying this same logic to those cissexual women who love video games.

Anyway, I don't have any pat conclusion with which to tie a bow on this ramble. These are just some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head lately, and if you have any thoughts on playing games as a character of your gender vs. playing as a character of the opposite gender, or about anything else I've touched on here, do share.

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In other news, the job hunt continues! I had an interview today that I think went well, at a place just off Market St. in the hustle and bustle of Downtown San Francisco. If I get this position, I think I'll enjoy having a reason to head into SF every day.

And just to further demonstrate how screwy my perspective on things is, here's the funniest thing I've seen recently: Garfield Minus Garfield. It is exactly what the title says it is, and the header on the main page is spot-on:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

Well, spot-on aside from the fact that they spelled loneliness wrong. Anyway, I think the strip is brilliant, and it made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes. And, yes, I even find it oddly poignant. What's wrong with me?

The Waiting is the Hardest Part...

The week before last, I had a job interview for a technical writing position. The interview went swimmingly, and they called me in a few days later for a second interview, which also went quite well. I felt really comfortable with the people I met at the company, and although I've never had a burning passion to do technical writing or anything, it sure sounded like a nice change of pace after all the customer service work I've done for the past few years.

Over the course of last week, the job was just about all I could think about. (Well, that and how tired I am of being a boy, but that's such a constant that it hardly even seems worth mentioning.) I tried not to obsess about it, but in my mind I kept envisioning being offered the job, and not being offered the job. I think my brain deliberately tries to imagine possible disappointing outcomes for all sorts of situations as a defense mechanism, so that I'm more prepared for those outcomes if they come to pass, but I don't think this actually works, and I try not to do it. It's hard to stop, though. My brain has a mind of its own.

At the second interview, they'd told me that I'd find out on the following Friday if I got the job or not. This made for a very long week. I distracted myself some with reading, and watching a bit of The Wire, and playing some Burnout Paradise, but still, long week.

True to their word, on Friday, I got the call. "This was a really hard decision, you were a really strong candidate, but..." Indeed, despite my brain's attempts to prepare me for this possibility, I was pretty crushed.

But at the same time, at least the wait was over. And since then, I've found myself pouring my energy back into the job search with gusto. Many a resume and cover letter have been emailed. Of course, this is good, as I really need a job now. Things are starting to get a bit scary. I'm still hoping to find something that seems like an exciting opportunity, a nice change of pace, and some of the jobs I've applied for this weekend have fit that bill, but certainly not all of them. If need be, I can always take something along the lines of what I've been doing for the past few years and keep looking. Right now, I'm mostly just hoping to get something fast.

In other news, I wrote up a review of the NES game Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom, which hit the Wii's Virtual Console service last week. (Yes, my Virtual Console games are working again. Turns out the problem with my Wii was that I am an idiot.) I actually posted the review as a reader review at GameSpot. You can find it here. Here's the short version: Only five continues?! Are you fucking kidding me?! I plan to still write reviews of games from time to time, but I don't really know what to do with them. I may post them at GS and link to them in a blog post, as I'm doing here, but if you have any thoughts on what I should do with them, lemme know!

Finally, some good friends took me out on Saturday to see U23D. I'm a pretty big U2 fan, and although I don't think it's one of their best filmed performances--not like the ZOO TV concert from Sydney or the Elevation DVD from Boston--and although the novelty of having Bono get all up in my grill through the magic of 3D didn't really add much to the overall experience--I still really enjoyed seeing a U2 concert on the big screen. I sort of needed the soaring anthemic reassurance and passionate sense of determination only U2 can provide after Friday's disappointment.

I, I will begin again.

If It's Not One Thing...

Microsoft reports that my 360--or a 360, anyway--is en route back to me and scheduled for delivery on Friday. I'm looking forward to finally getting in some time with Burnout Paradise. A bunch of people I know are still playing online pretty regularly so it seems I haven't totally missed the boat on that one.

But that's still a few days off, and I was hoping to spend some of that time with Lords of Thunder, truly one of the rockin'est shooters of all time. This TurboGrafx 16 classic, with some of the most smoldering guitar licks ever heard in a video game, hit the Wii's Virtual Console on Monday, and the game is a blast. The whole thing is like the notebook doodles of a big-haired 14-year-old ACDC fan circa 1988 brought to life, with an awesomely cheesy soundtrack to match.

Unfortunately, my Wii has started doing something very unusual. All of my Virtual Console games, including Lords of Thunder, have suddenly started behaving as if I am constantly holding down the 1 button on my Wii remote. At first I thought the problem was with the remote itself, but it's not. I've tested it with a number of Wii disc games--No More Heroes, Super Paper Mario, and so on--and they all respond perfectly each time I hit the 1 button. Yet every last Virtual Console game on my system seems to think the 1 button is in a permanent state of pressnitude, and this makes playing the games pretty much impossible.

I emailed Nintendo about this using the link on their tech support web page. After submitting my email, I got this statement:

"Due to the unprecedented popularity of the Wii, we're currently experiencing extremely high email volumes and it may take several days before we are able to respond."

Just a thought--maybe y'all could take some of the truckloads of money that are coming in every day due to the unprecedented popularity of the Wii and use it to hire a few new reps so that your customers who are contributing to said unprecedented popularity don't have to wait several days for a response.

Oh well. I guess for the time being I'll have to continue spending my free time the same way I have been for the past few weeks: watching way too much Law & Order: Criminal Intent on my computer via Netflix. The funny thing is that I don't even think it's a particularly outstanding show, not like The Shield or Six Feet Under, and I wouldn't even bother putting it on my Netflix queue and watching the DVDs. (I certainly wouldn't bother watching it as it airs. Watching TV on TV is for suckers.) But there's just something compulsively watchable about Vincent D'Onofrio as Det. Robert Goren, and Netflix has just made it so damn easy with this Watch Instantly feature, that I find myself sometimes watching two or three 43-minute episodes a day.

By the way, I have an interview tomorrow morning for a technical writer position. I'm hoping it goes well, as I'd really like to get out of the whole customer service racket, and I'm confident about my ability to do this job and do it well. But I hate job interviews, and thinking about it is already giving me the jitters. Wish me luck.

UPDATE: Contrary to what they said, Nintendo responded to my email in a matter of hours, not days. However, the response is basically a non-response, saying that they can't help me by email and that I should call them. So I'll call them tomorrow.

Also, I've determined that the issue isn't with the remote at all. I disconnected the remote altogether in the middle of a Virtual Console game and the game continued to behave as if the 1 button was being held down. Something's gone screwy in the part of my Wii's brain that handled VC games, it seems.

UPDATE TWO: I just called Nintendo. The rep I spoke to obviously had never heard of this issue before and had no idea what might be causing it. She quickly scheduled a callback, presumably with someone who might actually be able to help me, and I should be hearing from them in 24-72 hours. Terrific.

Just Like Starting Over

I think one of the most fundamentally appealing aspects of games is the fact that if you royally fuck things up, you can always give it another shot. You can hit the reset button, or load a saved game, or make your way back to your corpse. You may need to play through a little or a lot to get back to the point of your colossal screw-up, but you can do it. In this sense, games improve upon real life.

My most recent job was a seasonal tech support gig that I was led to believe might very well have turned into a permanent position. It didn't, despite an outstanding performance by yours truly, and so I find myself, at 31, once again needing to do the whole job hunt thing. In a sense it's a new beginning, a fresh press of the start button, but I'm stuck with my current hand of cards, my age and experience, my successes and failures. In a game, if you're good enough, you can always rewrite the whole story. Not so here.

Now of course it's entirely possible that the fact that I didn't get a permanent position at this last place will end up being a blessing. Doing tech support doesn't exactly set my heart on fire, and my next job may well be better. But any way you slice it, searching for a job is kind of a drag. And it seems like every time I find myself in this position, I start noticing these articles all over places like Yahoo! about the importance of finding a job that really makes you happy. And hey, that's all well and good, and I would love to do just that, but really, what is that, exactly? Writing about games? Sure, but that's a tough field to get into, and while I think I'm decent at it on occasion, I'll be frank and say that reading the writers I have admired for so long has made me feel a bit like a Salieri aspiring to join a field of Mozarts. Which isn't to say that I won't keep trying. Who knows, maybe even at my age, if I try hard, maybe someday I'll be good enough.

Or maybe I'll just stumble into something that I never even gave any thought to before, but that winds up being a perfect fit. Or maybe, like the majority of people out there, I'll find another job that is simply that, a job, tolerable for the most part, occasionally frustrating, occasionally enjoyable.

I saw Michael Clayton yesterday. I recommend it. It's a lot like Jerry Maguire, except where that's a heartwarming romantic comedy, this is a slick, engaging thriller with deep-seated ethical concerns. (Go, George Clooney, Go!) There's a point in the film at which Tilda Swinton's character is asked about work-life balance. This, by the way, is a character who has no work-life balance whatsoever. Her life is work. And so she sort of laughs politely and says something like, "When you love what you do, there's your balance!" But the thing is, she's miserable! She hates what she does. She may not even realize it, but she does. Everybody in this movie makes tons of money and every one of them hates their jobs. And despite the fact that they make tons of money, they still worry about money constantly. So I'm pretty sure if I made more money, I'd still worry about money sometimes too, only in larger sums.

Really, I'm not sure what the point of all this is, except to say that I'm daunted by the prospect of finding a job again, and that I don't care that much about making lots of money. I'd rather make less money and enjoy my work more than make more money and hate my job. (Though I'm not about to take a job for nine bucks an hour or anything.) And while I'd like to have a better "life-work balance" than Tilda Swinton's character in Michael Clayton, I'd also rather have a job that I'm driven to work hard at because I love it and believe in it than a job that I'm just thankful to be done with after eight hours every day.

Well, at least by now I've had a bit of practice at this game. Here's hoping I do all right on this press of the start button.