indefinite articles

There’s nothing quite as chilling as a killer with a cheerful face. Deaths at Disneyland. Jarts. John Wayne Gacy. Naive advertisements for drugs that have serious side effects. And, of course, Galaxy Glue.

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Today, Get Smart premiered in theaters across the nation. My prediction: It will be a financial success. However, the movie’s critical acclaim will largely hinge on the performance of one actor, and one actor alone. Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen: Dwayne Johnson will finally rise like a phoenix from his professional wrestling ashes and emerge as the most electrifying actor in the entertainment industry.

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In the 1980s, an urban legend began propogating about role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Beyond rumors that D&D players performed Satanic rituals during game sessions, word spread that some hardcore players would take their tabletop adventures down into the sewers to heighten the game’s sense of realism and danger.

More recently, news stories have begun popping up one-by-one reporting cases of World of Warcraft addiction: players dying from a lack of sleep and malnutrition, a baby dying after its parents went to an internet cafe to log in, and numerous other tales of gamers who found themselves unwilling or unable to step away.

Two weeks ago, these two gaming juggernauts collided with the release of Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition.

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If you’re not a parent or pre-teen girl, you may not be familiar with the American Girl juggernaut. Now owned by Mattel, American Girl is a dollmaker that goes far beyond the lonely racks of Toys R Us or Target to push their product. In their massive American Girl Place stores in ritzy zipcodes across America, there are showrooms, doll hospitals, doll hair salons, and theaters featuring live, big-budget musicals involving the dolls. Weirdest of all, they feature restaurants complete with custom seats — so that one’s dolls can sit at the table like “real” people, staring at the food with an eerie, glossy-eyed gaze.

So why do parents buy into this palace of plastic commercialism, this Cheesecake Factory of dolls? American Girl tries to wipe away the smell of capitalism with their back stories, elaborate epics of historical fiction. Felicity, for example, is living through the American Revolution. Kirsten is a pioneer in the Minnesota Territory. Kit Kittredge is living through the Great Depression.
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This week: Metal Gear Solid 1, now completed. Time to completion: 12 hours.

There was a time when no special effects could match the carnage my friends and I could create on a sheet of binder paper. The game went like this: draw four or five scribbled horizontal lines from one side of the page to the other - these were to represent hills rolling gently into the distance. Next, populate these lines with all manners of soldiers, tanks, catapults, howitzers, ballistas, helicoptors, motorcycles, spike traps, etc. Use dotted lines for bullet trails and draw the most beautiful explosions you can imagine. Finally, put in some flying body parts to your taste. Voilà, you’ve got a world war raging in your living room.

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Dear Mr. Verbinski,

I recently read online that you’ve been signed on to direct the movie adaptation of last year’s BioShock. That’s awesome! However, as much as I am excited to hear such a great video game is being turned into a live-action feature film (with a worthy director), I am also wary of this movie being the next Bloodrayne or Doom. So with that in mind, would you kindly take a suggestion? Just think of me as $10 on opening day.

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Ladies, gentlemen, Republicans and Democrats, lock up your sandwiches — Robert Downey Jr. is on the prowl, and he’s a hungry man. 1992’s The Last Party is meant to document the political strife and unrest at the tail end of the Bush Sr. administration, but instead provides a portrait of a slightly unhinged Downey on the road from Brat Pack star into addiction and crazed genius.

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This week: A timeless drink fending off the perils of bad, bad, bad, bad bartending; an orgy for the senses commonly misinterpreted as a base for other flavors; visiting the neuroses of childhood before LeapFrog; a ruthless dictator whose foreign policy is focused exclusively on two animals; a Kiwi duo on a quest for new lives armed only with quizzical expressions; and final proof that navigating the civic maze is as terrifying as being shanked in the shower.

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The 20th Century Fox marketing team has made a grave error. They’ve been pushing The Happening as a M. Knight Shyamalan movie. They are trying to excite people with the film’s greatest liability: its director. His last two efforts were flops, and the whole twist-ending shtick is growing tired. No one expects much from Shyamalan or his latest film, so let’s instead focus on the figure on whose Atlas-like shoulders The Happening is supported: Mark Wahlberg.

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This week: Acme Novelty Library #16 - Rusty Brown, part 1

Admittedly, my initial impression was dismissive. Surely this cannot be the same artist/genius/comic-god my reputable friends - and even some disreputable ones - have been raving about, I thought. There’s no way that this art style, which almost looks like children’s book illustration, could convey the lavish and rich tapestry of characters I had been promised. Curse thee, sirens, for you have forsaken this lowly graphic novel newb and led me crashing into the rocks of disillusionment, leaving me alone, shipwrecked, drowning in an esoteric subculture without a - Ooh look, Rusty Brown has a fro! That’s hilarious!

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