Americaffe

In Rockstar Games' hugely anticipated release Grand Theft Auto IV, which comes out tomorrow, the Statue of Liberty has been rechristened the Statue of Happiness, and she holds aloft not a torch, but a cup of coffee. "Give me your tired," indeed.

I think this is a brilliant little detail. I've spent my fair share of time working in coffee shops, and I'm of the opinion that while many people come in because they genuinely appreciate coffee as coffee, plenty of others have made Starbucks and other coffee shops part of their daily routine not because of any particular appreciation of espresso, but because the act of drinking a grande vanilla soy latte or a caramel Frappuccino each morning is a way of saying to others and to themselves, "Yes, I am someone in our consumer society! Behold, I can afford to spend four dollars each day on a cup of coffee! And with every precious sip, I keep the voices of doubt at bay, and restore meaning and value to my life! Doesn't this branded coffee cup in my hand go great with my iPod and my RAZR?" Meanwhile, despite the tremendous success and proliferation of such shops, the people who work them can often barely afford to shop them. From Naomi Klein's blistering 2000 book No Logo:

"They expect us to look like a Gap ad, professional, clean and neat all the time, and I can't even pay to do laundry," says Laurie Bonang of Starbucks. "You can buy two grande mocha cappuccinos with my hourly salary." Like millions of her demographic coevals on the payrolls of all-star brands like the Gap, Nike and Barnes & Noble, Bonang is living inside a stunning corporate success story -- though you'd never know it from the resignation and anger in her voice. All the brand-name retail workers I spoke with expressed their frustration at helping their stores rake in, to them, unimaginable profits, and then having to watch that profit get funneled into compulsive expansion. Employee wages, meanwhile, stagnate or even decline. At Starbucks in British Columbia new workers faced an actual wage decrease -- from Can$7.50 to $7 an hour -- during a period when the chain was doubling its profits and opening 350 new stores a year. "I do the banking. I know how much the store pulls in a week," Laurie Bonang says. "They just take all that revenue and open up new stores."

Anyway, enough quoting of left-wing text on my part. I just want to say that to me, in addition to everything else that they were, the earlier GTA games were also truly incisive satire of American culture, and that I'm really looking forward, not only to wreaking havoc in Liberty City and getting into plenty of shootouts and high-speed car chases (though I am most definitely looking forward to that stuff -- A LOT!), but also to discovering the game's humor, to cruising around and listening to Fox...er, sorry, Weazel News, and to seeing what GTA IV has to say about the America we're living in now.

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!

"Watch this"

I was walking to work the other day. It was a truly glorious spring morning. Obama signs abound on the lawns and in the windows of many a house along my way, but one in particular caught my eye, homemade, with rays of sunlight emanating from the O. It seemed a genuine sign of hope. And right around that moment, "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits got shuffled up on my iPod. That's not a song I ever thought was especially great, until I saw the finale of season two of The West Wing. And now, every time I hear it, I see that scene again in my mind. A storm is raging against the president in both a literal and figurative sense. A question is asked. Jed Bartlet, great showman that he is, lets it hang in the air for a moment. The flashbulbs crackle, the air is electric, and Leo says "Watch this," and the president's hands go into his pockets, and he fixes his gaze, and I get chills. It's almost enough to make me proud to be an American.

Barack Obama, like Jed Bartlet, understands that a large part of politics is theater, and that's just fine with me.

World War II, now in convenient beverage form!

Sure, World War II may be played out as a setting for video games, but what about as a setting for...that's right...energy drinks! I was perusing the aisles at my local Grocery Outlet here in Berkeley when I found all three varieties of ACE Energy Drink available for just $.50 a can, so naturally I grabbed one of each.

The cans have a pin-up girl/bullet-riddled airplane motif that's actually kinda cool. They also helpfully remind us, "It's a dog fight out there! To win, you need to stay sharp. Crack open an ACE Energy for an immediate physical and mental lift. Ace will get you flying high and keep you in control. THROW DOWN AN ACE!"

The drink's official website says, "The can design strongly communicates the brand’s core values. ACE Energy’s bullet riddled cockpit with alluring imagery directly connects with the danger, excitement and honor of military fascination." Why yes, it is a tremendous honor to be fascinated by the military. It's also extremely dangerous.

If ACE Energy is any indication, WWII tasted like somewhat flat orange soda cut with cough syrup, and noticeably hit you with its jolt of caffeine and taurine and stuff within just a few moments of your first sip.

Yeah, I think five sips of ACE is about enough for me. I'm gonna switch to the Thomas Kemper Vanilla Cream Soda which I also scored at the Grocery Outlet. That's delicious, and it doesn't carry with it any of the dangers of military fascination.

Outside

She started her lunch break by reading the end of a short story by Raymond Carver. She wasn't a big fan of short stories, but she liked finishing things, and she could finish a few of these a day, even during her broken up workday.

After she finished the story, there was nothing to take up the space in her head, so it went where it often went during lunch breaks, to that point in the very near future when the break would be over. She could see it in her mind. It was like a photograph of herself back behind the counter, and it started out so small it was almost invisible, like a fixed point of light in the center of a tremendous movie screen, but it was flying towards her, getting bigger and bigger until it would swallow her up. She shook her head and decided to do something instead of sitting there thinking about this. Acting was usually better than thinking, she believed. Maybe she should eat something. She considered for a moment buying a sandwich. Then her mind calculated roughly what percentage of one hour of work that sandwich would represent, and the number was like a little weight inside her. She sighed. Then she wondered what percentage of people who came into her shop ever thought about what percentage of an hour they were eating and drinking up on the things they bought. Then she thought that this thought was a clear sign that she was at least a little bit crazy. She knew that some people said that if you think you're crazy, you're not crazy, because crazy people never think they're crazy. She thought that was a bunch of crap.

It was only a few hours until her shift was over. She decided she could wait to eat, and that she would go over to the drugstore across the street and maybe buy some things to use for making a sandwich when she got home.

It was hot outside. She saw a young woman with pigtails walking down the street strumming a guitar. The woman wasn't doing it for money. She didn't look angry or lost. She looked well-loved. She was, it seemed, just walking down the street and strumming the guitar because she wanted to. Seeing this woman made her glad. Of course, she knew she could be wrong about the woman. But she felt she had a good sense about these things. It was strange to her that even though people mystified her in the easy way they spoke to each other, she still felt she had a good sense of the inherent goodness of some people. But that was the way it was. And she figured that maybe someday, if she felt more like herself, she might understand how people spoke to each other, too, that everything there might fall into place and it would all be easy. Then she thought that might be too much to hope for, that maybe it was a little hard for everyone from time to time, but maybe it would be a bit easier, anyway.

In the drugstore, she walked to where they kept things you might use with sandwiches. There were two young men standing nearby. They looked to her like they might be students at the university.

"Well," one of them said, "I mean, she feels pretty strongly about her feelings, you know?"

"That's the point, though," said the other. "I sort of attacked her to upset her," he said. "That was kind of the point."

"But you don't really know her very well," said the other. "You haven't really earned the right to attack her like that yet, you know?"

There was nothing here that she had any desire to put on a sandwich. She sighed and walked out.

As she walked back up the street to her shop, she glanced at the image in her mind to see that it was now almost at the size where it was going to swallow her up. She came to the door of her shop. She knew she really should go in.

She grabbed her ponytail and pulled it over her eyes, but she couldn't block out the sun.

My Aunt Ikaruga Is In Town

According to the Wikipedia, "Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity." It's an elusive feeling for me. I'd say that, in some of my better theatrical performances in college, the ones where everything just sort of fell into place, I experienced it. And there are times when I experience it playing certain video games. Sometimes it can happen when I'm writing, and almost invariably the things I write the most effortlessly are also the things I think are the best. Also, if I get into a good rhythm at work, whether it's firing off email after email or producing latte after latte, I can hit it for a while, though it's extremely challenging to maintain your singular focus when you must look into the visages of customers and see the existential despair that people only seem to experience during those three minutes before their triple soy mocha is delivered into their hands, restoring a sense of meaning to their lives.

As I was doing just that today at work, I was thinking about Ikaruga. If you don't know what Ikaruga is, it's a vertically scrolling shooter that was first released in 2001, and was made available this past Wednesday on Xbox Live Arcade. It's a very special example of the genre. (If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend Don Pachi's lovely appreciation of the game.) What sets it apart in gameplay terms is a simple but very effective polarity mechanic. You can switch your ship's polarity at any time between black and white. While black, black bullets cannot hurt you, and while white, white bullets cannot hurt you. However, while black, you do twice as much damage to white ships, and vice-versa.

I'd never played the game before Wednesday. I have to admit, before playing it, there was this part of me that thought that maybe I'd have what it takes to be an outstanding Ikaruga player. I knew that the game had a reputation for intense difficulty, but I also knew that there are those players who excel at it. As it turns out, I am not one of them.

One of my favorite features of the XBLA release of Ikaruga is the ability to download and watch replays of high scoring performances. I always enjoy it when games include a feature like this. It was a neat addition to Gameloft's excellent XBLA remake of the 1989 classic Prince of Persia, and in that game, watching replays of great performances helped me to improve my own performance. I don't think that's going to happen with Ikaruga. But what I like so much about the replay feature is that Ikaruga is the sort of game that seems downright impossible if you're not very good at it. You'll find yourself in a situation where it might appear to you that there's no way to emerge unscathed from the hail of black and white bullets headed your way. The game might seem unfair. Well, it isn't. All you gotta do is download a replay from the leaderboards of someone totally acing that section, and you'll know it's not impossible. It's just that you suck at it. And what makes these stellar performances all the more impressive is that these players manage to rack up chain after chain of enemy kills (by destroying three white or three black enemies in a row) to earn the really big points. As if just surviving wasn't difficult enough.



Ikaruga is a beautiful game, and it's especially beautiful when it's being played well, because those performances make it look easy and graceful and natural. I could be wrong, of course, but I suspect that, for the players who can perform on that level, it actually is kind of easy. I suspect that they've gotten to the point where, when playing Ikaruga, they enter that place we call flow. And that is a beautiful thing.

Obama Commits Political Faux Pas, Says Something True

I don't blame Hillary Clinton for trying to take advantage of this opportunity to win over voters by jumping on Obama's recent remarks, but really, is there anyone out there who honestly doesn't think that some Americans are bitter in exactly the way Obama said some Americans are bitter? You're Goddamn right some Americans are bitter, and with good reason, too.

Clinton supporters are handing out "I'm Not Bitter" bumper stickers. Clinton herself is telling people what they want to hear by saying things like, "The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich." Actually, Hillary, there are a certain number of people out there who latch on to religion because they're poor or bitter or empty inside, and you damn well know it. But it's a smart thing to say strategically, because it makes it sound as if Obama characterized all religious people as being religious for negative reasons, which of course he didn't.

Yes, this is sound political strategy. It just makes me sad that a statement reflecting an unfortunate truth of today's political climate is apparently too much for some people to handle, that Hillary Clinton, who must know in her heart of hearts that Obama was right, has more to gain by denying this truth than by acknowledging it. As David Cross once said about our current president's tendency to put things in idiotically simplistic and downright false terms, "Are we a nation of six-year-olds? Answer: yes."

(The opinions expressed here are mine alone, certainly not those of Barack Obama or any other Obama supporter, all of whom believe that all Americans are totally optimistic people who harbor no feelings of disappointment or bitterness whatsoever.)