I spent about four hours yesterday playing DJ Hero, scratching and mixing, just enjoying the hell out of great mash-up songs and fun gameplay. And in playing it, I understood completely why DJ Hero tanked.

On the surface, DJ Hero has everything you'd want in a rhythm game: great songs, an iconic culture (everyone knows to scratch the records, man), entertaining game play backed by absolutely killer reviews. Yet it sold about half of what people thought it would, and it's largely considered a flop.

So what happened? A lot of things.

First off, there's the obvious point: as people dissecting the failure of DJ Hero have repeatedly mentioned, mash-ups of songs sound good on the surface, but you don't know what you're getting. Sure, Daft Punk remixing Queen sounds potentially awesome, but do you want to drop $120 on things that might be good? Whereas Rock Band and Guitar Hero may have less exciting tracks - certainly the repeto-stomp of "We Will Rock You" isn't going to be fun to play more than once or twice - but there's no question as to what song you'll be playing.

It didn't help that the two songs featured in the Best Buy kiosks were the weakest songs in the game. As it turns out, the Queen/Daft Punk is insanely good, and the Jackson Five/Jay-Z is even better. But what did they choose? Some easy, but really boring mid-tempo tracks lacking iconic sounds. If you want to sell it to the mainstream crowd, then when they see it you need to give them Rihanna, give them Queen, give them your biggest names - not the antiquated boredom of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" weakly mixed with Gorillaz.

That isn't the biggest problem, though. The biggest problem is that Activision's habit of catering to the hardcore gamers finally bit them in the ass.

See, for Rock Band, the instrument itself doesn't take too much for a newbie to understand. You know how guitarists play, and the mechanics are the similar: finger these buttons here where you'd play chords, and flick this plastic switch where you'd strum. Sure, there are other things you can do - whammy bars, star power, hammer-ons - but all of those are purely optional elements that merely enhance the game play. You aren't punished if you don't get it.

Furthermore, the two core mechanics are simple: fret and strum. That's instinctive.

DJ Hero, on the other hand? Well, what does the average Joe know about DJing aside from the fact that they wear headphones and scratch and do... something... with tracks? The mechanics of DJing are actually not nearly as well known, so you can't really imitate it.

So when you sit down, you have the three buttons on the turntable. And you have to press those buttons and scratch, sometimes in predetermined directions. And you have a crossfader, which has three positions (which are nearly impossible to see where it's seated upon first glance at the the screen) determines which track you're using, and if you don't then you fail terribly.

So when a novice sits down for DJ hero, they now have three separate and at-odds mechanics, none of which are instinctive. They know as a DJ that they're supposed to scratch, but the buttons? They're strange, and flip positions when you twirl the turntable. The crossfader switch? Sure, DJs use them, but how many of the unwashed masses are really aware of using them?

What you end up with is a huge disconnect between what's happening on-screen and what you're doing on the controller. I watched three people play it in Best Buy, and I still wasn't really sure how to play. It wasn't until I completed the tutorial that I really fathomed everything that was going on.

Guitar Hero has a guitar to be played. DJ Hero has an interface to be learned.

That's great... for die-hard gamers like me. I like mastering new control systems, and get satisfaction from accomplishing things that are moderately hard. But for a casual gamer, who is baffled by the two-control system of a plastic guitar? He's going to look at the buttons and the twirling and the crossfader and this twirly dial here and this flashing button and cry, "WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO?" And who wants to bother?

Activision wasn't thinking, "Wow, Guitar Hero really appeals to people who never play games. How can we do that for DJ Hero?" If they had, they would have found a way to simplify the interface, make it more apparent what control affected which part of the game. They would have watched Gramma and little kids as they scratched on experimental controllers, catalogued their reactions and really concentrated on feedback.

Instead, they said, "How can we make this a game with a lot of depth?" Which, to be fair, they did - but they paid for it in having too much of a learning curve, one that put people off when they saw it in stores. It looked like work because it was, like any hardcore game, and the people rightfully stayed away in droves.

Which is a shame. It's a fine game. I'm enjoying it as I master its control schema. But I can see Gini, bored in her chair, wondering why I'm spending hours finessing my scratching technique - and her casual gamer attitude is not only completely justifiable, but the majority of purchases these days. And so even if they did come up with a sequel to DJ Hero, it'd still use this clunky controller, then that would fail.

Boo. I love these mixes. I love this game. But I can understand why it's just for me.

Last night, I had one of those experiences that transforms your life. I have a lot of those. The difference is that I had it again.

Which is to say that I borrowed a friend's copy of Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man" and read "The Veldt," and found it to be just as creepy, memorable, and shocking as it was when I first read it when I was, what? Ten?

It's rare that I go back to the well of my childhood and dig out something that holds up every bit as well as I remember it. Usually there's a few chunks knocked off the edges; Narnia's still a lovely place to visit, but I forget how sparse C.S. Lewis's text was. Isaac Asimov's characters are too simplistic. The special effects in the old Star Trek are a little hoary now.

But The Veldt? Even now, I can feel a master at work. Every bit as good as an adult as it was when I was a kid.

And so, since I asked about it on Twitter yesterday, I'll ask you all today: what seminal book/music/movie from your childhood is just as good to you today? It's rare that I get that thrill twice, and am ecstastic every damn time it happens.

(And yes, this is why I love Star Wars, why do you ask? Just the first movie, though. Empire's always a little sullied by the fact that I know Jedi is comin'.)

Because I want to know: What's the best thing you got for Christmas this year?

My answer is crazily threefold, because I am so overcome with happiness I cannot decide:

1) My Mom got me a Roomba. So I will now have a silly robot vaccuuming my living room, which is great because I hate vaccuuming and hate messy floors equally.

2) I got the complete Seasons 1 through 5 of Mythbusters. Considering that Adam and Jamie are my comfort watching, this makes me extremely thrilled.

3) This is the one where I can't say how much I like the present yet, but it fills me with warm fuzzies; Gini and I have battled for months over DJ Hero. "It's another stupid plastic toy," she said. "I don't want it cluttering the living room. I don't like the music. And I really hate the gameplay. And I don't want more clutter in our living room!" So though I wanted it, I had resigned myself to not having it.

I felt that box in my lap. I was hoping. And sure enough, even though Gini personally hates it, she got it for me for Christmas because she knew it would make me happy. And that's really filling me with a sense of love right now.

This is a very good Christmas, though. My Dad got me a box full of awesome, too, and Eric and Kat got me a guitar shirt that you can play with your hands. We don't have batteries for that right now, but I'm not going to fret it.

Merry, merry Christmas! So what made you happiest under the tree this holidays?

I ask every year at Christmas: If you'd like to get me an inexpensive gift that will nevertheless make me do little happydances of joy, feel free to post cheesecake pictures of yourself in the comments here. (Alternatively, if they're spicy or you're shy, mail 'em to me at theferrett@theferrett.com.)

(And as always, every year I do this, some guy goes, "Oh ho, here I am! You didn't expect this!" and posts a picture of himself. And it's true that I'm straight, but a) I like seeing pictures of people anyway, b) I'm never shocked by photos of guys, and c) as far as I'm concerned, posting cute pictures of yourself where attractive people - potentially girls - can see them is usually a good idea. So it's like whoah, you sure are alternative, buddy.)

Merry merry!

I started in the same way that most of you did: totally ignorant. Some of you - I suspect most - had this rite of passage foisted upon you before you really had any choice in the matter, dandled over a father's knee while my mortal enemy played upon the tube. You were lost before you knew it.

As the years crept on, it wasn't anything I set out to avoid; had it shown on TV while I was drinking Jaegermeister and Schlitz with my friends, I certainly would have lost my strange virginity. But it didn't, and by the time I was twenty-five I recognized my status as a statistical anomaly.

So, I decided, I will go to my grave pure.

This is why, at the age of forty, I have never seen It's a Wonderful Life.

Nor will I. I walk out of the room when it's on, now, avoid parties where it might be shown. I've gone half my life without seeing this American classic, and since I've covered this distance inadvertently I intend to reach the goal purposely.

Thing is, I don't think I'm missing much. I did get to thirty without seeing Gone with the Wind, which I considered a lesser triumph - but when Gini found that I'd never seen it, she said, "WELL, YOU'RE GONNA!" and sat me down for four hours. And lo! The burning of Atlanta was actually more impressive than people had said. So I don't regret having her pierce that celluloid hymen.

But It's a Wonderful Life? I ask, "Is it worth breaking a four-decade fast?" and they hem and haw and go, "WeeEEEllll.... It's pretty good..." And I walk on. I have no time to waste on an okay movie.

So I stand alone. Others have not seen It's a Wonderful Life, I am sure, but I am the only one I am aware of who has made this a principled stand. You cannot make me see It's a Wonderful Life. You cannot break me. I will tumble into the soft earth of my grave with my eyes clean, to be greeted by a wingless angel.

Of course, I do have nightmares sometimes. I see myself in the old-age home, decrepit, bound to a wheelchair so I do not fall out. I am wheeled in front of the television to placate me, and just as the nurse deposits me before the screen, I hear through enfeebled ears, "THIS CHRISTMAS, TBS PRESENTS THE 'IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE' MARATHON! TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF THIS AMERICAN CLASSIC!"

I rattle in the chair. I have no dentures, and I must scream.

This was posted on October 15th, which makes it a Cro-Magnon video in Internet Time, but I now present to you:

....the drunkest guy ever.



What terrifies me is a) how did he get to the store, and b) what is he actually on? There are those who think this is faked - I don't think so, I've (sadly) been this messed up. But there are those who think you can't be this stupid on alcohol. In any case, you have a mix of "wow, that's kind of comedy" and "wow, that's kind of sad."

I've seen a very cool Christmas idea going around a few places - namely, compliment threads. You leave someone's name in the thread, and the idea is to give them compliments to make their day better.

I haven't linked to any of them because I don't know the people making them - I know, it's completely anti-season, but I'm shy about linking to a friend-frenzy originated by strangers - but shadowwolf13 has started her own. She's got a very nice listing of all the people mentioned thus far (though I dunno how long she'll be able to keep that up), and I figured I'd add mine.

My thread's for my wife zoethe, of course: here it is. If you have nice things to say about Gini, go nuts.

In the beginning, The Simpsons had two store owners: Apu and Comic Book Guy. Apu would sell anything at the Kwik-E-Mart to make a buck, and Comic Book Guy was an overblown tyrant who'd sell any collectible to make a buck.

Thing was, as time went by, people started to feel guilty about Apu. As an immigrant from India, you could tell that they were a little uncomfortable mocking the American dream so much - here was the guy who came from another land to open up his own shop! Isn't that worthy of being more than just a bit gag?

So they started asking a vital question: "Is there anything else about this guy we should know?" And as it turned out, yes. They started writing episodes that opened up his character - he wasn't just a ripoff artist, but a psychotically hard worker! And a devout Hindu! And proud of America! And a vegan! And a Ph.D. in Computer Science! And now Apu has a wife and too many children, and his relationship has been the focus of more than a few episodes.

They kept deepening who Apu was until he had depth. He's always got his roots in that stereotype of the Indian store-owner, but they've kept adding to him until he's a character in his own right. Because, I suspect, it felt unfair just to leave him stranded as nothing but a stereotype.

Comic Book Guy got no such save.

Comic Book Guy's been the focus of a handful of episodes, but the same could be said of almost any Simpsons character - after 400+ episodes, they're desperate for new plots. But his central character hasn't changed: desperate for women, a blowhard, lives in a basement, has no social life. And, I'd argue, it's because the Simpsons writers (and people in general) feel that the guy at the heart of the Comic Book Guy stereotype largely deserves his fate.

And I can't deny that. I've known too many Comic Book Guys, with their shops and lousy business practices and their focus on making themselves the king of their local nerd cabals rather than running a good business, and I'm pretty much in agreement that they're all just worthy of being mocked relentlessly. Apu got a bad break, and should have been fleshed out. Comic Book Guy? Well, he chose that path. He deserves nothing but mockery.

I just find it interesting that one stereotype got explored until he was a fully-realized character on his own, and the other remains a walk-on gag to say, "Worst. X. Ever."

(Full disclosure: my daughters say that I sound like Comic Book Guy, so feel free to read this entire rant in Comic Book Guy's voice. It's funnier that way.)

So I built my first Elder Dragon Highlander deck last night. The general? Sapling of Colfenor. Why? Because I already had a B/G highlander deck (fairly successful in multiplayer) that I could adapt.

I'm not gonna write about it until I have a chance to play it, but I laid it out here because it's kind of like a puzzle - those who know Magic art well can see what cards I chose (barring basic land). Yes, it has a lot of powerful cards. But that's the way I like it!

...this year, we bought a water buffalo for Christmas.

Roger Ebert said that when he watched Avatar, he had the same feeling that he did when he saw Star Wars - that from-the-future sensation of "Oh, this is going to change everything." And in that, he is correct.

Avatar is what movies will look like ten years from now, because it is the first movie in which they have gotten CGI and 3D right.

CGI's always been dicey because despite its tremendous usage, it still has yet to get heft and movement correct. There's something about non-human CGI that looks CGI - it's pretty, but the mind is subliminally aware that the way gravity interacts with things doesn't quite fit together. They've fixed most of that for humans, because you can (and should) motion-capture people - but for the other things like tumbling rocks or CGI animals, subliminally your mind still knows it's all just equations in a box somewhere. It's close, so you're willing to go with it, but somewhere in the back of your head you said, "It's a special effect."

Avatar has a whole CGI forest, and you buy every tree in it. There were points I kept having to remind myself that it was CGI, because that bioluminescent frond jiggled just perfectly when the fake character brushed against it. I don't know what they did to simulate mass correctly, but they did, and I bought the world wholesale.

That is an amazing feat. Let us congratulate James Cameron for that.

And the 3D? There were times I kept forgetting it was 3D, which sounds like a waste but it wasn't. This is the first movie where I've said, "Seeing this in 2D, the movie would lose something I don't want to live without." Sure, you can see shit like Journey to the Center of the Earth on your TV and miss out Brendan Frasier hocking a yo-yo in your eye, but who cares? But Avatar uses 3D to enhance the action scenes without making you aware that dude, you're in a 3D theater, isn't this awesome?

I'll state again: in ten years, this is what cinema will look like. Just like Terminator 2, he's taken umpty-million dollar and put every dollar of that money on-screen. It may, in fact, be one of the prettiest movies ever.

That is an amazing feat. Let us congratulate James Cameron for that.

Now. Let's discuss the plot.

I know I'll catch shit for this, but I'm not instinctively opposed to the "white guy meets noble savage" plot. It's hoary and can be completely insulting when done poorly (and yes, is mildly insulting when done well) - but the fact is that if you have some alien culture in a movie, the simplest and easiest way to introduce a reader to that culture is to have them experience it through the eyes of someone who is also new. It's lazy writing, but it's also effective, because at the moment your lead character is falling in love with this new set of people, so is your viewer.

(And sadly, at this moment in time "white guy" is going to be the stand-in for the viewer when Hollywood's involved - a regrettable choice I've come wearily to accept probably won't change in the next ten years. Although I'll disagree with some folks who've said that the underlying problems would evaporated if this had been Will Smith in the lead instead.)

The trick is, pulling off that plot is all about the subtlety. It can be done well, if white guy helps out the tribe but doesn't turn out to be the greatest warrior, the most intelligent planner, and the most swoony lover by mere nature of the fact that he exists and is white. So I said, "Self, I'm gonna hold off on this until I see how much finesse he applies. It's all about the subplots."

Avatar has no subplots.

Avatar has no finesse.

I'm going to reference Neil Gaiman's party theory here and say that most Hollywood films at least try to answer the question, "Why do I want to hang around this guy for the next two hours of my life? What makes him likeable?" Avatar is amazing because it sidesteps that question in its entirety.

The lead character is introduced as a man who lost the use of his legs and has a dead brother. How did he lose the use of his legs? In "a battle" in Venezuela. We don't know what the nature of the battle was, how he felt about the loss of his legs (aside from "he'd like them back"), what kind of soldier he was before. Nothing. And his relationship with his brother? Was it good? Bad? Is he driven by guilt, a need to supercede his brother, some need to make up for his brother's crimes? We have absolutely no clue why he's here or what he wants to accomplish aside from two facts - and those facts could mean any number of things.

Say what you will about Titanic, but at least at the beginning we knew that Rose wanted to be free of her too-strict societal conventions and Jack wanted freedom. The lead dude in Avatar is so blank that he's running on pure actorly charm - thank God the guy has a nice smile, because that smile is all the characterization you're gonna get.

So the emotional arc? Is completely stunted. Yes, of course lead dude falls in love with the civilization and defects to the other side, but do we know what it means to him personally aside from some sort of mishmash of The Earth is Good and Milspec Is Bad? Not really. We have no idea what he's personally rejecting in order to become a part of this world.

Any feelings you're gonna get from Avatar are coming straight from the SFX - it's like if Star Wars hadn't bothered to put in good dialogue (and yes, the original Star Wars has good dialogue, if not natural dialogue - check the number of quotable lines) and instead put all the weight on you feeling anything for Luke based on how awful that desert looked (so he'd want to leave) and how pretty the princess looked (so he'd want to follow her).

That's what Avatar is: a beautiful world where you're expected to fall in love with it just like the lead. Who doesn't really exist except as a hollow construct of actorly charm.

But the plot is thin, and often makes no fucking sense - rare for a James Cameron film. (I rather enjoyed how he went out of his way to show us why all that grand military equipment didn't work well against the Aliens.) ( In fact, let's ask the following questions... )

So what you get in the end is a very gorgeous movie where the natives, barring some very interesting biological quirks (I want an organic USB cable), don't have have the protective cladding of an interesting plot or fascinating characters to shield us from the knowledge that hey, these are Native Americans in blue garb! Which they are. They have the weapons of Native Americans, the vocal patterns of Native Americans, and the chanting and rituals of - well, Native Americans and some Africans. So suspension of disbelief, at least in that aspect, goes right out the window for anyone at all attuned to such things.

Let us bash James Cameron for that. His heart's probably somewhere in the vicinity of the right place, wanting us to love nature and people who love nature, but in the end what he creates is a fantasy where the native population is too butt-stupid to know how to fight the overwhelming power of the conquering civilization until the lead character comes along and shows them. In other words, the natives don't have the intelligence to build technology, and they don't have the wisdom to see the threat of the technology well enough to make plans to fight it effectively - but boy howdy, they have heart.

A heart that's only valuable because it can sucker a guy from that superior civilization into working for them. Otherwise? Toast. It's a value system that says, "You know, if only white guys had showed those Indians what to do, they'd have won!" Which, you know, is a little historically sketchy on so many levels that I don't even want to deconstruct that one.

It didn't ruin the movie for me, because it was extremely pretty. If I turned the brain off and watched the eye candy and said, "Holy crap, a mechasuit that looks mecha!" I was happy. Yet it was three hours long - and yes, viewers, I checked my watch twice. I'm not sure I'd go again by myself, but I'd happily take someone just to watch them gasp.

Avatar may be Hollywood's last gasp for the theater: You have to see this in the theater, in 3D. Have to. Because if you see it at home, on your crappy HDTV, the pretty's going to fade - and once the pretty fades, the plot is exposed for its underlying wreckage. And that plot? Hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny. It looks pretty, but most of your hungry bites are going to catch nothing but air.

Periodically, I get glurge emails from strangers and regrettable relatives about the War In Iraq. It's generally some heartwarming story of a soldier who saved a kid or was kind to a family or rescued a cat, with a picture of one of Our Boys doing something noble that is uplifting all of Iraq, and it always ends with something like, "THE MEDIA REFUSES TO REPORT WHAT WE'RE REALLY DOING IN IRAQ! SPREAD THE WORD!"

Of course, I also get horrendous emails from strangers and regrettable relatives that show the ruins of bombed houses where a wedding was destroyed by a bomb or an innocent cabbie was shot at a checkpoint or a cat was stomped on, with a picture of some blood-soaked gore that shows how Our Boys have done something horrific that's brought down all of Iraq, and it always ends with something like, "THE MEDIA REFUSES TO REPORT WHAT WE'RE REALLY DOING IN IRAQ! SPREAD THE WORD!"

I think in the future, I'll just forward these emails to each other sender, saying, "Pro-glurge person, meet anti-glurge person. Perhaps by seeing the other side using your dimwit tactics, you will realize that unsourced, anecdotal data does not create a whole picture. Now please. Shut the fuck up."

Senator Ben Nelson has agreed to vote for the new health care bill, giving 60 votes to the Democrats and - barring further complications - assuring that the bill should pass before Christmas. Regardless of whether you think this is a triumph or a tragedy, I think we can all agree this is fairly important news.

However, on the front page of Yahoo, this piece of news is listed after "Singer's Lip-Syncing Gaffe" and "$22,000 Cell Phone Bill."

So. Thus far, I have reviewed two magazines for the Monthly Magazine review: GUD Magazine and Shimmer. Weird Tales is currently in my airline carry-on bag, and when I finish that I'll be caught up-to-date.

My question: Which magazine should I review next? As mentioned, my criteria are that it has to be a semi-pro publication that pays at least one cent a word. It would also help a lot if said magazine was something I could take with me, either via PDF or paper; I often read these things in airports, when I have a lot of attention to spare, and requiring an Internet connection to read means that I can't mow through a couple of zines on a plane.

I'd also prefer not to read Asimov's, Analog, or F&SF - not that they're not grand, but I'd like to highlight places that could really use a few new readers.

Any suggestions?

Thanks to a snowstorm that's threatened to dump twenty inches onto Virginia and a series of unfortunate airline events, I am now stuck in Roanoke through Sunday.

I feel sad because I was going to have a Christmas movie marathon on Saturday with Gini and butterandjelly, and then Avatar in the evening. Now I am all saddened.

If you have anything you think would cheer a stranded weasel up, I'm listenin'!

No One Is Going To Save You Fools.

When the Democratic party called me up to request a donation "to help the Health Care bill," I said, "As it stands, what you have is a boondoggle for the insurance companies. Call me back when you've got a strong public option in it and I'll donate twice as much as you asked." I'm still waiting. As, apparently, are double-digit portions of the population.

(Link courtesy of netmouse.)