→ July 21, 2011
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Man on Wire.

New post over on ESPN on Leonys Martin and a few other prospects, plus today’s Klawchat transcript and today’s Baseball Today podcast.

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The documentary Man on Wire
 won the Oscar for the best long-form documentary in 2008 and has the honor of being just one of two films with at least 100 reviews to hold a perfect critics’ rating on rottentomatoes.com, the other being Toy Story 2. The film uses the narrative style of one of my favorite genres in fiction, the heist or con story, to describe the event that captured national headlines and launched its protagonist into global stardom.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, in 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit and a few of his friends brought about a ton of equipment up to the unfinished roofs of the Twin Towers and strung a wire between them, after which Petit spent about 45 minutes walking, sitting, and lying down on that tightrope, about 450 meters above the ground, attracting a crowd of gawkers and, eventually, the authorities. (The film’s title comes from the police report on the incident, where the first three words under the heading “Complaint” are those of the title, written in capital letters.) It was an audacious, foolish, and incredibly wonderful achievement, and a beautiful memory of a time when those towers stood for something other than 9/11.

Petit’s history with the towers actually predates their construction; he relates first learning of the plans to build the towers and immediately realizing that conquering them was his life’s dream. Fortunately for us, he had a trove of archival footage, both still and video, which is incorporated into this documentary, which gives us a window into his preparations for the stunt, the relationships between members of the team, and the fact that fashion in the 1970s was awful even in France. (Men + overalls = regret.) The narrative jumps back to Petit’s first efforts as a tightrope walker, including his walks between the towers of Notre Dame and between two arches on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, before plunging into the long-planned caper in Manhattan, including how they got all that gear past security and how team members were nearly caught in both towers the evening before the walk.

The most impressive part of the movie for me wasn’t Petit’s exploits or the explanation of how his ragtag team managed to sneak all that equipment to the tops of the towers, but of the reactions of two of the NYPD officers on the scene. Both men, shown in interview clips from 1974, make it clear that they recognized right away that they weren’t just watching some criminal or mischief-maker, but were witnessing history, watching one man do something so amazing that people would still talk about it thirty-plus years later. To be able to remove oneself from the moment, and to subdue the natural indignation of the officer of the law towards one who would so flagrantly mock it, is a testament to both of these men and to the wonder that Petit’s endeavor inspired.

Although the effort ends in victory, as Petit completes his walk and ends up serving no jail time, the film ends with bittersweet notes due to Petit’s loss (or perhaps repudiation) of his devoted lover, Annie, and the apparent (and not well-explained) decline of his friendship with the one team member who stuck it out to the end. That friend, Jean-Louis Blondeau, breaks down in tears twice in the film’s final segments, but has had harsher words elsewhere for his former colleague, accusing Petit of fabricating various too-good-to-be-true anecdotes in the film. (Blondeau is professional photographer, and I imagine much of the archival footage was his.) The lover, the still-pretty Annie Allix, is gracious in accepting that Petit’s walk in the clouds altered his life forever, and perhaps realized through his betrayal of her that he would never be as committed to her as she was to him – or as he was to himself. Petit is charming, but beneath that charm lies a self-assured nature that might be megalomaniacal in other contexts, such as the sentiment that perhaps the towers were built specifically for him to climb and walk.

Man on Wire is exquisitely made and paced, never dragging, rarely wasting words or time (aside from the pointless “reenactment” of Petit’s post-walk “celebration” with a female admirer that looks more like an outtake from Benny Hill), giving everyone his or her say even while Petit is the star of the show. Most importantly, the directors allowed the event to speak for itself, rather than larding the film with opinions from people uninvolved in the preparation or execution of the walk. The images and Petit’s words will transport you to that foggy morning in August, 1974, but with the benefit of the backstory behind this amazing achievement.

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→ July 18, 2011
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The Big Knockover.

Dashiell Hammett is best known today for his signature detective Sam Spade (from The Maltese Falcon) and for the crime-solving duo Nick and Nora (from The Thin Man), but was also a prolific writer of short stories, many of which haven’t been published since their original appearances in pulp magazines like Black Mask. The Big Knockover is one of three major collections of Hammett’s stories currently in print, including nine short stories (two of which together form a sort of two-part novella) and the beginning of an unfinished novel.

That unfinished novel, Tulip, is the star piece in the collection is the least Hammett-like and the least readable. In its fifty-ish pages, making it roughly the length of most of the stories in this book, Hammett speaks to the reader through a character who writes for a living but is caught in a post-midlife introspection that has him questioning his choices in his career, including what I take as a fear of historical obsolescence after the wave of post-modern/realist works that were all the critical rage during Hammett’s own heyday:

“But couldn’t you just write things down the way they happen and let your reader get what he wants out of ’em?”
“Sure, thats’ one way of writing, and if you’re careful enough in not committing yourself you can persuade different readers to see all sorts of different meanings in what you’ve written, since in the end almost anything can be symbolic of anything else, and I’ve read a lot of stuff of that sort and liked it, but it’s not my way of writing and there’s no use pretending it is.”
“You whittle everything down to too sharp a point,” Tulip said.” I didn’t say you ought to let your reader run hog-wild on you like that, though I can’t see any objections to letting them do your work for you if they want to, bu –”
“Not enough want to make it profitable,” I said, “though you’re likely to get nice reviews.”

I’m not sure if Hammett ever could have finished Tulip, although he wrote the last few paragraphs; the story has no plot at all, instead just relying on an extended, meandering dialogue between the writer, Pop, and the character Tulip, who wants more than anything to give Pop the material for some new story or book, even though Tulip’s stories themselves may be mostly fiction. Dialogue tends to read quickly, of course, but the lack of any narrative greed made Tulip slow going overall, and would be of interest only to Hammett completists or those who, like me, wished for more of a window into the writer’s soul.

The remaining stories in The Big Knockover are pulp detective stories, and in general lacked the austerity and tension of his best novels or even of the stories starring the same detective found in the collection The Continental Op, which I recommend very highly if you’re into detective fiction at all. In The Big Knockover, the plotting is mostly Hammett with familiar patterns and the usual double-crossing, but the language is gussied up for what I presume was the mass market. The long series of nicknames for crooks appearing in the title story was the last straw for me, names like “The Shivering Kid” and “Paddy the Mex” … that much egg salad just distracted me from what was going on underneath the silly language. And one story, “Dead Yellow Women,” is so full of racist language and stereotypes aimed at Asians that I nearly gave up in disgust. The strongest one in the collection is the opener, “The Gutting of Couffignal,” about a major heist on a wealthy island enclave reminiscent of Fitzgerald’s West and East Egg, where Hammett uses weather and a wide cast of characters to build and sustain tension until the end of the story.

Next up: Jasper Fforde’s One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, book six in the Thursday Next series, which is living up to expectations through the first third.

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→ July 17, 2011
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In Bruges.

You’ve probably seen my midseason prospect rankings update by now, but if not … there it is.

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I’m a few weeks behind on this, but I watched the dark comedy In Bruges (currently just $4.69 on DVD at amazon) a few weeks ago on my last work flight. I’d seen positive reviews of the film when it was in theaters and kept it in my queue for years, but finally got back into watching movies regularly when I got an iPad last month and have a hell of a list to work through. As for In Bruges, it absolutely had its moments, driven mostly by a really strong performance by Colin Farrell, but by the end of the movie I was kind of wondering what the point of all the violence was – unless the point was that there is no point at all.

Farrell plays Ray, a young hit man who bungled his most recent job by accidentally killing a child who was hidden behind the man he was paid to assassinate. His boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), has sent him to Bruges along with the more experienced Ken to await instructions on their next job … which turns out to be for Ken to kill Ray over the death of the child. Ken wrestles with his conscience over the assignment now that he’s gotten to know Ray. Ray, meanwhile, is completely despondent over his mistake (but not over the death of the target) and contemplates suicide in between attempts to seduce the drug-dealing Chloe, an incompetent effort that leads to a confrontation with an American couple in a restaurant that, of course, ends up interfering with everyone’s plans. It is a screwball comedy at heart, except that in this one half the characters end up maimed or dead.

The strength of In Bruges is subtle, living in the layer beneath the obvious plot about contract killings and before the carnage at the end of the film. Ray isn’t cut out emotionally for his line of work, between his remorse and his short temper – and he absolutely hates Bruges, or as he calls it, “fookin’ Broozh.” Ken, meanwhile, wants to play the tourist, turning the trip (which was sold to them as an escape from the authorities) into a relaxing sojourn. Harry is a little bit of a stock character – the ruthless gangster/loving family man character has been around long enough that he’s totally expected – although his interactions with Ken when the latter refuses the assignment provide some of the film’s best dialogue.

When the shooting starts in earnest at the film’s end, though, we’re given a ten-minute stretch of action film where the plot is resolved through violence and a few funny coincidences, as well as a concluding meditation on the point of the violence that felt a little tacked-on. Within the span of those ten minutes, we go from that dark comedy to a chase-and-shoot (although, again, they do mix in a hilarious scene where Harry and Ray are standing off with a very angry and even more pregnant hotelier in between that) to light philosophy. Would the film have been better with a less violent climax? Or simply a more comic one? Shouldn’t the philosophizing have permeated more of the film (or did it, and I just missed it)? Most importantly, does it make any sense to say you enjoyed the first 90% of a film but not the ending when the ending was, in terms of plot, properly executed?

As for what’s next … I’ve got a long list of films to catch up on, but I’m open to suggestions. I’m particularly light on anything in the last five years – that is, since my daughter was born.

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→ July 7, 2011
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Top 100 old-school hip-hop songs.

I’m a huge fan of old-school hip-hop music and have wanted for some time to put down some kind of ranking of my favorite songs from that era. I’ve been working on this post since late February, but it’s finally done now that the draft crush and our summer east coast swing are over. It started out as a top 40, then a top 50, then 75, after which I figured I’d just push it to 100.

This is list is entirely my opinion, and maybe 90% of it is just about how much I personally like the songs, with the other 10% reserved for the song’s influence or importance in hip-hop history. And it’s about how the songs have held up over time, not which songs I liked when they first came out or how they fared on the charts.

I’ve limited the list to songs released, either as singles or on albums, prior to 1996. That cutoff means no Jay-Z or Eminem and virtually no Nas or Outkast, to pick a few examples, but with one exception (a song recorded before the deadline but released afterwards) I stuck to the deadline for all tracks. Enjoy.

100. “Check Yo Self” – Ice Cube

Samples an early hip-hop classic, “The Message,” that was already dated before the 1980s ended, with guest vocals by Das Efx on the chorus. Ice Cube’s lyrics often led to controversy – something I doubt he minded since even bad publicity sells records – but I don’t think the anti-gay lines in this song would fly today like they did in the early ’90s. (Corrected on 7/7 – added this song to remove an ineligible song from higher on the list.)

99. “Gotta Get Mine” – MC Breed featuring 2Pac

No disrespect to MC Breed, who died of kidney failure when he was 38, but 2Pac is the main attraction here, one of five appearances for him on this list. Snoop Dogg references this song at the beginning of the second verse of “Gin and Juice.”

98. “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” – Public Enemy

Perhaps the greatest opening lines in the history of hip hop: “I got a letter from the government/The other day/I opened, and read it/It said they were suckers/They wanted me for the army or whatever/Picture me givin’ a damn, I said never.”

97. “Fuck tha Police” – NWA

I always wondered if this was mostly a publicity stunt (that worked). I’m not doubting the anti-police sentiment behind it, but the title is so clownishly incendiary that it was a lock to get negative attention in the mainstream media, which would sell more records. In that sense, it’s brilliant. The song was surpassed by its own marketing.

96. “Walk This Way” – Run-DMC

More here for its importance than the quality of the rhymes. It’s hard to express their mainstream influence unless you lived through it; they had street credibility but were inoffensive enough to be marketed to white, suburban audiences. Unfortunately most of their catalog sounded dated within a decade of its release.

95. “The Humpty Dance” – Digital Underground

It was written as a novelty, it became a hit as a novelty, and like most novelty hits it wrecked the artist’s career when they couldn’t produce another song just like it. That’s too bad, because they were one of the most interesting acts of the late ’80s/early ’90s, but between this and the forgettable “Kiss You Back” their run was good for about an album and a half.

94. “Holy Intellect” – Poor Righteous Teachers

No shot of crossover success for a group that rapped almost entirely about their Islamic faith, but the speed and quality of the rhyming here is remarkable.

93. “Ain’t Sayin Nothin” – Divine Styler

Remember House of Pain’s line in “On Point” about how “I used to rap with the Divine Styler?” He was actually a hell of an MC, and just about anything from that first album is worth listening to. His second disc was a wildly experimental jazz/rap/ambient fusion that was way ahead of its time, and he took a long break before coming back with a late-90s disc after his conversion to Islam that had one standout track, “Make It Plain.”

92. “Chief Rocka” – Lords of the Underground

These guys came along a little too late, when the west coast scene was paramount and east coast groups had a harder time breaking through even if their sound was more overtly commercial.

91. “Express Yourself” – NWA

I love hearing Dr. Dre rap about how marijuana causes “brain damage/and brain damage on the mike can’t manage” about five years before creating his magnum opus and naming it after the drug.

90. “True Fu-Schnick” – Fu-Schnickens

Total novelty act, but I admit, I love hearing how quickly Chip-Fu can drop rhymes. For a one-trick act, it’s a good trick.

89. “Rock Box” – Run-DMC

Jam Master Jay really held this group together, as neither Run nor DMC were especially gifted rappers.

88. “Rock the Bells” – LL Cool J

The low production values on a lot of early hip-hop classics, including Audio Two’s “Top Billin” and BDP’s “Criminal Minded,” makes them relatively hard to listen to today. This one survives because of the strength and ferocity of LL’s rhymes, which soon gave way to the Smoove B-like persona that dominated his later work (and set him up well for a career in Hollywood).

87. “Hot Sex” – A Tribe Called Quest

“I heard she likes a two-on-one like my man John Ritter.” Never a big fan of Phife’s – Q-Tip carried all of the weight for the Tribe – but that’s among his best lines.

86. “Eric B. is President” – Eric B. & Rakim

“I came in the door/I said it before/I never let the mike magnetize me no more.” There’s something about a debut single that makes an announcement that the artist has arrived, and the entire genre is about to get a swift kick in the ass. Rap’s greatest MC with one of its greatest DJs combine for a track that remains memorable even though it sounds like it was recorded on a handheld cassette recorder.

85. “Ain’t No Half Steppin” – Big Daddy Kane

A poor cousin to his two real standout tracks, which are much further up the list.

84. “A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturday” – De La Soul

Speaking of self-immolation, why did De La Soul fight to shed the alternative-rap label that brought them so much success? I never understand artists trying to be less commercial. If you want to make less commercial music for artistic reasons, but deliberately flipping off your audience by creating less interesting content is insane.

83. “Funkin’ Lesson” – X-Clan

The Afro-centric rap movement died a quick and probably justified death, but these guys were pioneers in their heavy use of P-Funk shortly before that became the foundation for most west coast rap and the “G-Funk” movement.

82. “Vapors” – Biz Markie

Biz Markie was a legitimate rapper before the novelty hit I won’t even deign to name here, and a pretty good beat-boxer as well.

81. “The Formula” – The D.O.C.

The DOC appears on this list three times from his incredible and somewhat overlooked debut album, after which a bad car accident wrecked his voice and ended his hip hop career. The whole disc stands up well against The Chronic and Doggystyle even though it came out three years earlier, with similarly funky beats, clever wordplay, and plenty of weapon-filled boasting.

80. “Rump Shaker” – Wreckx-n-Effect

Not Teddy Riley’s best track – that would be Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” – but a worthwhile novelty hit with the raunchiest use of state names in rap history.

79. “Nuttin But Love” – Heavy D

The Overweight Lover’s stuff hasn’t aged all that well either, although I admit a certain guilty pleasure in “We Got Our Own Thang;” this track has his best rhyming by far and one of the most memorable lines in any video from the 1990s – “Yo, that’s that Noxzema girl!” Heavy D was born in Jamaica but reggae was always a background note in his music before this album, where you could hear its influence more strongly.

78. “Quik is the Name” – DJ Quik

I remember seeing DJ Quik appear on the Billboard top 200 albums chart and being completely confused. How the hell did someone I’d never heard of end up with a top 20 album out of nowhere? I hadn’t heard of him because west coast rap got very little airplay or even word-of-mouth on the east coast at that point; his success was regional at a time when rap was never heard on pop radio.

77. “On Fire” – Stetsasonic

“And rock and roll could never hip hop like this.” The line that spawned an alternative classic from the 1990s by Handsome Boy Modeling School, one-half of which was Stetsasonic mastermind Prince Paul.

76. “Welcome to the Terrordome” – Public Enemy

This song seemed like a major disappointment when it came out, because it had all of the urgency of It Takes a Nation of Millions… without the same caliber of lyrics or music; it felt like PE had rushed the track (and album) out to capitalize on the late-blooming success of their previous album. But today the urgency of the track stands out, and it marked one of Chuck D’s last great lyrical achievements before the group faded into the hip-hop background.

75. “Nappy Heads” – Fugees

Did any rap act every do less with more than the Fugees? The talent involved was enormous, and yet their biggest hit was a straight-up soul remake of an adult contemporary classic. Lauryn Hill had her one amazing solo album before releasing Lauryn Hill: Unhinged, and Wyclef has had a strong solo career, but as the Fugees one plus one plus one (Pras) equaled something less than three.

74. “My Philosophy” – Boogie Down Productions

A six-minute rant by the literate if rather preachy KRS-ONE. I’ve wondered how BDP’s legacy would differ if DJ Scott La Rock had lived; would it be greater because their music would have been better, or would it have suffered because so much of their fame came from that tragedy?

73. “Hip Hop Hooray” – Naughty by Nature

Naughty by Nature pretended to be hardcore, but most of their singles were straight-up pop songs, designed to sell lots of records. I have no problem with that, but just be what you are, right?

72. “Check the Rhime” – A Tribe Called Quest

I’m going to run out of things to say about the Tribe soon enough.

71. “Droppin’ Rhymes On Drums” – Def Jef

Def Jef was better known as a producer and as the rapper behind the disgustingly misogynistic song “Give It Here,” but this track is stronger all around – better rhymes, faster pinpoint delivery, and intense backing music that makes the whole thing sound like a sprint.

70. “Do the Right Thing” – Redhead Kingpin & the FBI

Recognizable within a second for that opening sample, and led by Redhead Kingpin’s laconic delivery that eventually became the hallmark of Snoop Dogg, but one thing bothered me about this song: He never actually says what the right thing is.

69. “Flavor for the Non-Believes” – Mobb Deep

I didn’t realize how successful this duo had been until I researched them for this list – their best track for me came from their original demo, although I think most people would argue for “Peer Pressure” or the crude “Hit It From the Back.”

68. “Don’t Sweat the Technique” – Eric B. & Rakim

There’s something slightly off about this track; Eric B. dropped some of the fattest beats of his career, only to have Rakim deliver what was for him a subpar performance, with slower, less inspired rhymes, which in hindsight was a bad sign for his post-breakup future. “I made my debut in ’86” rapped at half-speed is just cringeworthy.

67. “O.P.P.” – Naughty by Nature

Ignore, for a moment, that this too was aimed squarely at mainstream pop audiences. The song is full of clever wordplay, from the disguising of the two p-words to “throw that skeleton bone right in the closet door” to “you’re now down with a discount” to the inscrutable “look you to the stair and to the stair window.” And it’s backed up by a sample from the Jackson 5. You can’t like old-school hip hop and dislike this song.

66. “What’s My Name” – Snoop Doggy Dogg

Yeah, Snoop, we got it. You only say your name twelve times in every song you record.

65. “U Don’t Hear Me Tho’” – Rodney-O and Joe Cooley

Released four or five years too soon, this was G-Funk before the term existed, layered on heavy samples of P-Funk music with the same gangster ethos that Dr. Dre would later mine for great profits. The lines “Time for me to kick another fly funky verse/and if I die, put a soundsystem in my hearse” is one of my favorite from the entire era.

64. “Let the Words Flow (a.k.a. The Power)” – Chill Rob G

This is the song that Snap! ripped off for their own version of “The Power,” featuring slightly better production and markedly inferior rapping by something called Turbo B. (Their original version contained Chill Rob G’s vocals, but he threatened to sue and they had to re-record them.) Hip hop has seen plenty of tracks saying “everyone else’s rhymes suck,” but this is one of the few that seems to actually argue that everyone else should get better, rather than just boosting the ego of the rapper making the statements.

63. “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” – Outkast

One of the few hip-hop acts to hold my attention after the end of the Golden Era, Outkast just sneaked under the wire here with their first album, which came completely out of left field into a genre dominated by G-Funk at the time and that had never produced anything like the inventive music on their debut, a funky, sludgy sound that seemed to take the humidity of Atlanta summers and put it on wax.

62. “Shake Your Rump” – Beastie Boys

The second-best track on one of the greatest albums in the histories of hip-hop and of alternative music (Corrected 7/7).

61. “Passin’ Me By” – The Pharcyde

The record-buying public largely passed these guys by, a true alternative-rap act who didn’t have the commercial sound for major record sales but showed strong rhyming skills and a pervasive sense that they were having a great time laying down tracks.

60. “Changes” – 2Pac

Possibly cheating – this song was recorded in 1992, but wasn’t released as a single until 1998. But it belongs here, as it’s clearly of this era and genre and features some of 2Pac’s most intelligent and thoughtful lyrics. Discussing the plight of the black American underclass in rap lyrics without sounding trite is a major achievement when you consider how few other artists managed to pull it off. And consider these lines, written nearly twenty years ago: “There’s war on the streets/And there’s war in the Middle East/Instead of wary on poverty/They got a War on Drugs so the police can bother me.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

59. “It’s Funky Enough” – The D.O.C.

The fact that the samples all seem to be written in minor keys gives this song a sinister air that set it apart from most mainstream and alternative rap of the time. In the lyrics, the D.O.C. spends more time boasting about Dr. Dre’s prowess as producer than he does about his own rhyming skills.

58. “Keep It Underground” – Lords of the Underground

Not quite as campy as Onyx, but not quite as polished as Naughty by Nature, so they fell through the cracks as I mentioned above. But both of their songs on this list would have fit in well with the rap scene of the late 1980s before everything shifted with the rise of the west coast.

57. “Straight Outta Compton” – NWA

NWA’s press completely outstripped the quality of their output; they had two tremendous rappers in the fold, but their limited catalog was never as good as the hype or the controversy would indicate. They chose controversial subjects, which sold records and frankly was an important addition to a scene that had grown somewhat stale due to the lack of regional diversity. But that doesn’t make me more likely to reach for one of their records today.

56. “Same Song” – Digital Underground

The last gasp for these guys and the wax debut for 2Pac. I always loved that they named this EP release This is an EP Release.

55. “Lucas with the Lid Off” – Lucas

I believe I have two white rap artists on the list, and Lucas is one of them, although he used a sepia-toned video to obscure his race. The jazz-rap thing never really took off; there were scattered successes, a few of which are on this ranking, but as a movement it couldn’t sell enough records, instead producing more one-hit wonders like this one. Weird fact: Lucas’ father, Paul Secon, was a co-founder of Pottery Barn.

54. “I Got a Man” – Positive K

“Are you a chef? Cause you keep feeding me soup.” “I’m not waiting, because I’m no waiter/So when I blow up, don’t try to kick it to me later.” “All confusion, you know I solve ’em/You got a what? How long you had that problem.” So many great lines, and yet never forced.

53. “Wild Wild West” – Kool Moe Dee

One of the first rap songs to cross over in New York and get some time on MTV. It’s not Kool Moe Dee’s best rapping work, but the beat and (for the time) production values elevated it, and it inspired a remake and a film that we’d best pretend never happened.

52. “They Want Efx” – Das EFX

The list of allusions in this song would make the Beastie Boys proud, and of course their “iggedy” style of rapping spawned a brief craze that died quickly, probably because few rappers could actually pull it off.

51. “Bop Gun” – Ice Cube

The best of all of the George Clinton-inspired rap songs, in part because he appears on the track. Always liked Ice Cube holding up four fingers in the video when saying “Nineteen-ninety-THREE” (since the video came out in ’94). Cube’s a better technical rapper than he gets credit for, but he was best known at the time for violent, hate-filled lyrics that once caused Billboard to question whether one of his albums went beyond the boundaries of free speech.

50. “The Mighty Hard Rocker” – Cash Money & Marvelous

Just a vintage mid/late-80s east coast hip hop track, overlooked perhaps because they were only the second most-popular MC/DJ combo in Philly (and unlike the other pair, in this case the DJ was the central figure rather than the MC). It also didn’t help that the record label decided to market the Fresh Prince-like “Find An Ugly Woman,” which didn’t showcase the skills of either member – and, worse, wasn’t funny, either.

49. “It Takes Two” – Rob Base & DJ EZ-Rock

Hearing this song triggers a Pavlovian response in me where everything smells like Drakkar Noir.

48. “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” – ATCQ

The best example I know of a rap song that tells a single story from start to finish, with Tribe’s trademark humor and weirdness. I actually own a limited edition 12-inch of this track on clear green vinyl.

47. “I Get Around” – 2Pac

“And I don’t know why/Your girl keeps pagin’ me.” Shock G and Money B of Digital Underground appear, but 2Pac makes it clear he was the best MC in the DU posse. The way his death was paired with Notorious B.I.G.’s as equivalent musical losses always bothered me – there’s no comparison, with 2Pac a top-5 all-time MC … when he wanted to be. Maybe in another universe he lived to see his mid-30s, stopped the “Thug Life” front, and became hip-hop’s most literate MC. Or maybe not.

46. “Steppin’ to the A.M.” – 3rd Bass

These guys always felt like they were trying too hard to establish their street credibility, as if they couldn’t wreck a mic without thinking, “We’re white.” I mean, I heard P.W. Botha never recovered from getting the gas face from MC Serch.

45. “Let Me Ride” – Dr. Dre

“Bodies being found on Greenleaf/With their fuckin’ heads cut off/Motherfucker, I’m Dre.” Talk about making your impression felt. Love the Ice Cube cameo in the video.

44. “Can I Kick It?” – ATCQ

Answer: Yes, you can.

43. “I Got It Made” – Special Ed

A lot of early hip-hop tunes came in for criticism because most of their songs were about nothing more than how talented the MCs in question were, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t better boasts and worse ones. The best rappers could drop clever rhymes to make the point for them, even if the music and production weren’t anything special. The sequence of lines in “I Got It Made” that includes “When I got too hot, I found a spot in the shade/And when my dishes were dirty, I got Cascade” seemed like a challenge of how far Special Ed could take the same basic rhyme and structure before he ran out of things to rhyme about.

42. “Protect Ya Neck” – Wu-Tang Clan

Wu-Tang are one of a handful of acts that ushered me out of hip-hop fandom; their style is very loose and unmetered, unlike the tighter rap style of 1980s east coast rap. You could argue that it’s almost improvisational, like a lot of jazz, but I never got into jazz either. This one track from their debut album is transitional, resembling the more structured rap hits that probably influenced these guys but with hints at the explosion that their next album would cause in the genre. My favorite Wu-Tang solo track came from my favorite Wu-Tang member on Twitter – Ghostface Killah’s “Daytona 500.”

41. “Potholes in My Lawn” – De La Soul

Absolutely hated this song when it first came out because it was so different from what I knew and liked of hip-hop up to that point. The problem wasn’t with the song, which boasted bluesy music and the great imagery that showed up all over 3 Feet High and Rising, but with the closed mind of a 15-year-old.

40. “I Go to Work” – Kool Moe Dee

If I worked in an MLB marketing department and wanted to put together a four-and-a-half minute highlight clip for a star player, this would be the backing track. The music is very James Bond, and Kool Moe Dee’s rhymes are faster and better than on his better-known “Wild Wild West.”

39. “Dre Day” – Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg

The consummate diss track, with a lowbrow comic video to match. But even better now is the shot at around the 3:52 mark of the video of the guy on his cell phone the size of a brick and the shape of a satellite phone. I guess that was cutting edge in 1993.

38. “I Ain’t No Joke” – Eric B. & Rakim

Pretty sure this is the origin of the phrase “as serious as cancer,” as well as the song to which Shaq was referring with his “slam it … and make sure it’s broke” line at the end of the regrettable “What’s Up Doc (Can We Rock?).” Vintage Rakim across the board.

37. “The World is Yours” – Nas

Recently tweeted “Whose world is this?” and got a slew of responses involving lines from this song, more reasons why I love my readers. Illmatic was another rulebreaking record that didn’t do it for me when it first came out, and even now I don’t reach for any Nas tracks when I’m in the mood for hip hop – I have to be in the mood for Nas.

36. “Strictly Business” – EPMD

A solid track in its own right, elevated for me by the twin samples (“Let a sucker slide once, then I break his neck” and “I control your body”) used in Styles of Beyond’s 1999 track “Killer Instinct.” And Ryu of Styles of Beyond is the rapper on Crystal Method’s “Name of the Game,” which has nothing to do with EPMD but doesn’t fit in any other comment here.

35. “Mama Said Knock You Out” – LL Cool J

I feel like LL’s stature as a rap icon has dimmed as he’s become a mainstream Hollywood star, but he was relevant for almost a solid decade in the rap scene. Not only was this a tremendous track in its own right (although it’s ironic that the guy who said “I think I’m gonna bomb a town!” is now part of a secret spy team in LA fighting bad guys … trying to bomb that town), but with this song he was the biggest rap artist to perform his tracks live, including on live TV, with a backing band rather than just a DJ.

34. “Strobelite Honey” – Black Sheep

“Thank you for your time honey but ho I gotta go.” These guys were considered part of the Native Tongues group, but didn’t have the alternative vibe of De La Soul or the Tribe. They were, however, two-hit wonders, with this the funnier but less enduring of the two.

33. “I Get the Job Done” – Big Daddy Kane

That whole New Jack Swing movement didn’t last long and barely made a dent in the hip-hop scene, but this one collaboration between Kane and producer Teddy Riley, the top dog in the New Jack Swing arena (and the brains behind Wreckx-n-Effect and Blackstreet), was its finest moment. And Kane gave us lines like “So when your main course ain’t doing nothin’ for ya/Just think of me as a tasty side order.”

32. “Runnin’” – The Pharcyde

I’ve wondered if there’s a timing effect in our favorite songs by certain artists – the track you hear first becomes a standard against which you compare all future tracks from that artist, so it becomes your favorite or among your favorites by default. Or is it that you’re more likely to hear a top track first, because that’s how our music industry is (or, at least, has been) structured? Anyway, this was the first Pharcyde track I heard, and I’m pretty sure it’s their best. I think.

31. “Fight the Power” – Public Enemy

Although this appeared on Fear of a Black Planet, it was much more along the lines of the best tracks on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, angry, loaded with powerful allusions and strong rhetoric, backed by a funky sample-filled music track that was among their best. I wonder if Chuck D still supports Tawana Brawley, whose claims of a violent assault by white public officials and police officers were discredited before the grand jury, and who appeared in the “Fight the Power” video.

30. “Paid in Full” – Eric B. & Rakim

I use the opening drum loop as the alarm tone on my cell phone. Stick with the original rather than the Coldcut remix.

29. “Mind Playin’ Tricks On Me” – Geto Boys

Aside from some confusion over the meaning of “bastard,” it’s a surprisingly thoughtful effort from a group better known for rapping about violence against women.

28. “Dirty South” – Goodie Mob
Before Cee-Lo was dressing up as Big Bird and performing with Muppets, he was part of a pioneering Atlanta hip-hop act that gave the Dirty South subgenre its name. (And his departure spurred the greatest diss album title ever: One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show.) This song and album just sneaked in under the wire, coming out in November of 1995, but the extent of social commentary and criticism under all the drug references harkened back to PE’s or Native Tongues’ best work from the late ’80s.

27. “93 ‘Til Infinity” – Souls of Mischief

The failure of the Hieroglyphics collective, which included Souls of Mischief and the next artist on this list, to find a mainstream audiences is one of the great commercial tragedies of hip-hop. Souls’ MCs, who were barely out of their teens when the album came out, had an easy, natural flow, and the production by Main Source and Gang Starr gave the album a jazzy feel without making it as inaccessible or distinctly noncommercial as a lot of jazz-rap tracks. Allmusic.com compared the album favorably to A Tribe Called Quest, but I think it’s more like a West Coast version of Tribe, harder lyrically and musically but with the same laid-back vibe.

26. “Mistadobalina” – Del the Funkee Homosapien

Ice Cube’s cousin. And the rapper on Gorillaz’ “Clint Eastwood.” I’m still not entirely sure what “Mistadobalina” is about but it’s been stuck in my head on and off for about twenty years.

25. “Doowutchyalike” – Digital Underground

The album version, which runs about seven minutes, is like a playground for Shock G and his Humpty Hump alter ego, way too long for mainstream radio, but unlike most songs of that length, it varies enough to hold your interest right up to the end. This is the track for which they should be remembered, not “The Humpty Dance,” although it hasn’t worked out that way.

24. “Jump Around” – House of Pain

“I got more rhymes than the Bible’s got Psalms/And just like the Prodigal Son, I’ve returned.” Best use of a Biblical reference to boast about one’s rhyming prowess, bar none. Their follow-up single, “On Point,” couldn’t match this song’s pop appeal, but did have a great line from Danny Boy: “Well, it’s the D to the A, double-N Y B-O/Why? Cause I rock shit like Ronnie Dio.”

23. “Microphone Fiend” – Eric B. & Rakim

“I was a fiend/Before I became a teen/I melted microphones instead of cones or ice cream.” “E-f-f-e-c-t/A smooth operator, operatin’ correctly.” “Cool, cause I don’t get upset/I kick a hole in the speaker, pull the plug, then I eject.” And that’s all from the first verse. There was no one like Rakim before he came along, and there has been no one like him since.

22. “Night of the Living Baseheads” – Public Enemy

Chuck D knew how to grab the listener’s attention with his first line, didn’t he? “Here is/Bam/And you say God damn/This is a dope jam.” I had always thought the sample played during the chorus breaks was something about a knife, but courtesy of Wikipedia and The-Breaks.com finally figured out last year that it’s “Twas the Night” from Curtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’.”

21. “California Love” – Dr. Dre and 2Pac

The best combo – can’t really call it a “duet” – of otherwise unconnected two rap artists in history, released on December 28th, 1995, just days before the cutoff for this list. The song’s chorus was sung by Roger Troutman of the group Zapp (“More Bounce to the Ounce”) in his last major appearance before he was killed by his brother in a murder-suicide.

20. “Gin and Juice” – Snoop Doggy Dogg

We know what #whitewhines are, so what do we call “With so much drama in the LBC/It’s kinda hard being Snoop D-O double-G?”

19. “So Wat Cha Sayin’” – EPMD

These guys boasted about their rhyming skills well above their actual abilities, but this was both their best-performed track and their strongest musically, in part because the samples didn’t overwhelm the rhymes like they did on “You Gots to Chill.” I’d prefer not to hear Erick Sermon try to sing Luther Vandross again.

18. “The Choice is Yours” – Black Sheep

“Engine, engine, number 9/On the New York Transit Line/If my train goes off the track/Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!” It’s amazing that Black Sheep could put out two unbelievable tracks, and then never put out another song of value after that debut album.

17. “Ghetto Bastard” – Naughty by Nature

Of course, the one time NBN puts out a song of social commentary it doesn’t sell as well as the party tracks, so they went back to rapping about drinking and sleeping around. I can’t blame them, but there’s this barely contained rage in this song and a pretty strong argument in favor of nurture over nature.

16. “Going Back to Cali” – LL Cool J

The first alternative rap song to break through as a mainstream hit at a time when LL was veering dangerously into rap-balladeer territory. The structure is so unconventional at a time when nearly every hip-hop single followed the same pattern and subject matter that it probably only found airplay because of LL’s existing fan base, but that same break from the norm is what made it an instant classic.

15. “Streets of New York” – Kool G Rap & DJ Polo

One of two of my favorite tracks built off a sample of the Fatback Band’s “Gotta Learn How to Dance” along with Groove Armada’s “My Friend.” Kool G Rap’s mouthful-of-gold-teeth style can be a little offputting, like talking to someone with a giant plug of tobacco in his cheek, but like “Ghetto Bastard” this song has a serious point, and there’s a certain raw simplicity to it – he’s setting the scene, but offering no prescriptions – that gives it power even when the New York he’s describing has changed for the better.

14. “Award Tour “ – A Tribe Called Quest

Do dat, do dat, do do dat dat dat.

13. “Me, Myself And I” – De La Soul

So was the success of this song the worst thing to happen to De La Soul? They shied away from anything commercial on future albums, and what looked like a potential Hall of Fame career (because of their willingness to ignore the norms of hip-hop lyrics) ran off the rails after one album. Why didn’t they embrace their alternative-rap status and use it to move the genre forward? Or to at least just make themselves more money? Maybe they didn’t want to recreate 3 Feet High again, but they made it clear they wanted no part of mainstream success, and twenty years on I still don’t understand it.

12. “Player’s Ball” – Outkast

Apparently the Player’s Ball is a real thing, at least according to Wikipedia, which we know is never wrong. Fortunately, the song isn’t about that but about growing up in what was about to be called the Dirty South, with this staccato, off-beat delivery that sounds like you’re about to tumble down a flight of stairs.

11. “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” – Digable Planets

The best song to come out of the jazz-rap movement – not that that’s a high standard – built on a slowed-down riff from jazz pianist James Williams’ 1977 track “Stretchin’” and a drum loop from the Honeydrippers’ “Impeach the President.” The rhymes are surprisingly mundane, focusing again on the rappers’ skills, but the dark, descending bass line is the star of the show here.

10. “Raw” – Big Daddy Kane

See, if you’re going to dedicate the entire track to telling me about what a great MC you are, you need to back it up like this. Kane found commercial success with the Smooth Operator persona, but his legacy should start with this track, one of the best straight-up bragging songs in hip-hop history. “Cause I’m at my apex and others are below. Nothing but a milliliter, I’m a kilo.”

9. “T.R.O.Y.” – Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth

Dedicated to Trouble T-Roy, a member of Heavy D and the Boyz who died after falling from a balcony, the song is MC C.L. Smooth’s tribute to people who mattered in his life, including his single mother, an uncle who filled the role of father figure, and T-Roy. It’s smooth (he at least lives up to that part of his name) and soulful but never maudlin, and the sax sample from Tom Scott will be stuck in your head for weeks.

8. “No One Can Do It Better” – The D.O.C.

G-Funk before the term existed, and early evidence that Dr. Dre (who produced the album) was a force to be reckoned with beyond N.W.A. Twelve years after the accident that turned his powerful voice into a hoarse whisper, the D.O.C. is apparently headed for an experimental operation to restore much of what he lost, and in between his replies to friends you can see updates from him on his Twitter feed.

7. “Follow the Leader” – Eric B. & Rakim

I don’t think any single song got me into hip-hop more than this one; it is certainly the reason I’m a huge Rakim fan, and while it doesn’t have the same funky vibe as most of their other standout tracks, it has some absolutely vintage Rakim lines, including my favorite from him: “In this journey, you’re the journal, I’m the journalist/Am I eternal? Or an eternalist?” It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.

6. “Talkin All That Jazz” – Stetsasonic

A strong defense of rap from early criticism by (white) media members, most of whom probably didn’t realize their kids were listening to the same music they were attacking. Hip-hop has done more to elevate the status o the bass line than any other movement in music history, and this one, borrowed from Lonnie Smith’s “Expansions” (and slowed down), might be the best.

5. “Bring the Noise” – Public Enemy

Gil-Scott Heron’s influence on Chuck D was all over their early work but never more apparent than on this track, a not-that-subtle call to black power where D was at his height in both lyrical content and the quality of the rhymes themselves, putting him with Rakim in his ability to craft the inside rhyme. But we’re just going to pretend that Anthrax cover never happened, OK?

4. “Hey Ladies” – Beastie Boys

The best track off the sample-laden album Paul’s Boutique, which itself was a major landmark in hip-hop that will likely never be repeated because of restrictive laws on sampling passed in its wake. (Of course, with the rise of downloadable music, the law seems strangely out of date now, as sampling could bring more attention to older tracks and spur sales that weren’t possible when those old records were out of print.) This album, and this track in particular, didn’t meet commercial expectations but established the Beastie Boys’ critical bona fides, particularly for their ability to craft clever lyrical allusions, setting them up for their second career as alternative artists that used hip-hop as opposed to garden-variety rappers. (Corrected on 7/7. The album wasn’t produced by Prince Paul, but the title pays homage to him.)

3. “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” – Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg

It’s funny that Snoop Dogg managed to upstage Dr. Dre, a strong MC in his own right, but that’s exactly what happened, with Dre shining more as a producer than a rapper. This song single-handedly elevated west coast rap over east coast and ushered in the G-Funk era, which was later hoisted on its own petard by Warren G’s regrettable “Regulate,” for better (stronger production values and a heavier emphasis on 1970s funk) and worse (a subsequent drop in lyrical quality from those who imitated the subject matter but couldn’t rhyme like Dre or Snoop).

2. “Scenario” – A Tribe Called Quest featuring Leaders of the New School

Busta Rhymes’ breakout track – unless you count “Case of the PTA,” which I don’t – was also Phife Dawg’s best work, with some of the best call-and-response lines (“Who’s that?” “Brown!”) in rap history. If there’s a flaw here, it’s that there’s not enough Q-Tip, but every other MC stepped up his game to fill the gap in a signature moment for east coast rap.

1. “I Know You Got Soul” – Eric B. & Rakim

The best MC in history has to be at the top of the list, right? Especially when his DJ paired him with one of its most memorable beats (based on Bobby Byrd’s song of the same name), and the MC in question brought his A-game in a track that has been referenced regularly for 20 years, including its opening lines: “It’s been a long time/I shouldn’t’ve left you/Without a strong rhyme to step to/Think of how many weak shows you slept through/Time’s up, I’m sorry I kept you.” Rakim’s line “pump up the volume” spawned a M/A/R/R/S song and a teen-angst movie (that I admit, I loved, and have seen at least three times), and Eric B.’s heavy use of James Brown is credited with spurring a revival of interest in Brown’s music through increased sampling in hip-hop tracks. Both guys were at the tops of their games – I like to think that the music pushed Rakim to deliver one of his two best performances – and it has proven both enduring and influential even as the artists themselves have faded from the scene. There’s no better track in old-school hip-hop than this one.

So what songs did I miss? What artists? I’ll admit up front I’m not a big B.I.G. fan, and many of the poppier acts of the 1980s (Kid ‘n Play, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince) never did much for me when they were current. But I look forward to your suggestions and comments.

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→ July 2, 2011
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The Loved One, Winesburg, Ohio, and The Wapshot Chronicle.

Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One was at least the most fun to read of the three books, even if it doesn’t quite have the others’ literary standing. This was Waugh’s first novel published after what is today considered his masterwork, Brideshead Revisited, but is more of a return to the satirical comic novels that fill most of his bibliography.

In The Loved One, Dennis Barlow, a young English “poet” who seems incapable of writing two lines of quality verse is working at a pet crematorium in Los Angeles when his benefactor, the screenwriter Sir Francis Hinley, is sacked by the studio that employs him and promptly hangs himself. While arranging for Sir Francis’ interment, Dennis meets Aimée Thanatogenos, the cosmetologist who applies makeup to the corpses before their viewings. He pursues her as she is also pursued by Mr. Joyboy, the prissy embalmer who still lives with his imperious (and somewhat batty) old mother.

The Loved One clocks in at a scant 164 pages, but within that length Waugh packs in enough mockery for a book of twice its length. Waugh had spent time in Southern California working on the adaptation of Brideshead and the bulk of the satire in the earlier part of this book is aimed at Hollywood, both its industry and the area’s way of life. Once Hinley is summarily dispatched, which leads to a hilariously morbid conversation on the proper procedure for fixing up and displaying the corpse of such a suicide, Waugh turns his firepower toward the American death industry, with a tour of the “Whispering Glades” cemetery that is so fatuous it would seem absurd if it didn’t tie so closely to reality.

If there’s a flaw in The Loved One it’s a question of what Dennis sees in Aimée, who is rather a dim bulb and doesn’t bring anything to the table other than looks. En route to blasting the American film and mortuary industries and the superficiality he saw in American culture at the time, he stinted a little on character development, and when one-third of the love triangle dies, there’s no emotion involved – although, of course, it does generate a few more twisted laughs. It’s not as funny as Scoop or Decline and Fall, but if you enjoy a vicious satire it’s still one of the funnier books I’ve read this year.

–

Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio appears incongruously at #24 on the Modern Library list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, since it’s not actually a novel but a short story cycle revolving around the residents of the rural town of the book’s title. (That’s not the list’s only error; the book at #8, Darkness at Noon, was originally published in German. And it doesn’t include Beloved. But I digress.) Anderson’s work was a landmark in American realism with frank treatment of sex, religion, drink, and depression, but like many books that break barriers it reads as dated today because the stories underneath this realistic treatment are so often thin.

Anderson begins the book by explaining that each story that follows is about a character he calls a “grotesque,” someone feeling the loneliness and isolation of life in a small town, each for his own unusual reasons. These are merely slices of life, a glimpse at a character and a back story, but often very little in the present; the only story that moves beyond that is the four-part mini-cycle called “Godliness” that traces one family through several generations and the disappointment of the patriarch in the lack of a male heir to his nonexistent throne. One character, the young reporter George Willard, who gravitates toward an escape to wider horizons as the book goes on, perhaps because he alone sees the whole town for its limits and the unavoidable ennui of a place with such narrow horizons. He never gives the reader insight into the town’s social structure, and while the town itself is the one aspect tying all the stories together, even its physical layout is only evident from the map provided before the first page. I didn’t love Winesburg, Ohio, and I didn’t hate it, but I think I’ll have a hard time remembering it because of how little actually occurs, and how the loneliness of the characters never fully came through for me.

–

John Cheever’s The Wapshot Chronicle (#63 on that Modern Library list) is a tragicomic novel about the family of that name struggling with life in their Massachusetts fishing village as their circumstances change, the world changes, and their two sons strike off to make their way outside of the confines of the small town where they grew up. The book’s most central character is Leander, the family’s father, who decides at this late stage of his life to try his hand at writing and begins keeping a journal filled with sentence fragments and a mildly comic mix of the mundane and the sad, particularly where his own emasculation (a comment on the rise of feminism in our society?) becomes evident, foreshadowing the book’s final passages.

One chapter stood out for the wrong reasons, in which one of the Wapshot sons, Coverly, struggles with feelings of bisexuality. Itt felt completely tacked on – the subject is never broached before or after that one chapter, and it begins with a warning that readers might wish to skip to the next one. It felt to me like some editor told Cheever he couldn’t include gay content unless it was cordoned off with flares and pylons for the conservative reader of the 1960s, and that organization makes the subject easy to dismiss. He was much more successful in dealing with the same themes in Falconer.

Waugh and Cheever both mined humor from despair in their books, but where Waugh is biting and acerbic, Cheever is simply sad, watching the decline of Leander as he sees his own potency dissolved by his independent wife and his wealthy and slightly deranged sister while his sons are both held back by the crazy women they chase and marry. Wapshot is undeniably funny and poignant if you can work through the slow passages, but he clearly had better work ahead of him after this debut novel.

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→ June 28, 2011
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7 Wonders.

New post for Insiders on interesting guys in this year’s Futures Game.

—

The Spiel des Jahres award, the most prestigious (and commercially important) prize in the boardgame industry, has now been split into two separate awards; one retains the old award’s name, but focuses on simpler, more mainstream games, while the other, the Kennerspiel des Jahres (roughly the “Connoisseur’s Game of the Year”), goes to more complex strategy games. The inaugural Kennerspiel des Jahres award was handed out yesterday, and the winner, 7 Wonders, is more than worthy of the honor.

7 Wonders hits the sweet spot of German-style boardgaming: The structure is complex, but game play is simple, with a three-player game taking about 25 minutes after our first abortive run through it. (The rules could be written more clearly. A lot more clearly.) That combination means that gameplay is pretty rich, with many different strategies and no clear path to victory. And one quirky mechanic manages to go a long way to balance out the randomness that is inherent in almost any game that revolves around a deck (in this case, three decks) of cards.

In 7 Wonders, each player has a home city representing one of the seven cities to house one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. During the three stages of the game, called Ages, the players build buildings that allow production or trading of resources, add military power, or just give the player victory points. These buildings come on cards, some of which may be played for free while others require expenditure of money or resources (although some of those become free if you’ve played another card in an earlier Age). Each Age has six turns, so a player can build up to six buildings; resource-producing buildings produce on every turn, and there’s no accumulation or depletion of resources. The ultimate goal is to finish the game with the most victory points, but with seven different ways to earn points there are many, many ways to win the game.

The one great mechanic of the game is the distribution of the cards. At the start of each Age, each player receives seven cards, and gets to play one of them, usually to construct the building on the card’s face. After that, the player passes the remaining six cards to a neighboring player, so the decision of what card to play depends on what suits the player now, what his/her neighbor might need, and, depending on the number of players, what cards might still be there when the hand comes back around. During each Age, six cards from each hand are played or discarded, and the last remaining card is removed from the game. So in each round of a game, you can be assured of seeing the majority of the cards at least once; in a 3-player game, you’ll see 18 of 21 cards, and with 4 players it’s 22 of 28. (The game is for 3 to 7 players, with rules for a 2-player variant included.)

There’s also a strong trading component in the game, as it’s very hard to produce all the resources you’ll need yourself. You can buy any resource you need from a neighboring player who produces it for 2 coins, which can be reduced to 1 by certain commercial buildings; those purchases can’t be refused, but don’t affect the selling player’s production, either. Therefore, you could choose not to produce a certain good, or to produce less of it, because you know your neighbors will have some available for you even if the price is steep.

In our handful of 3-player test games, we found gameplay to be far more straightforward than the rules, which are written more like a reference work than like a straight explanation of how to play a game from start to end. The mechanic that allows you to build one card free because you built another related card earlier is very powerful, while the mechanic that gives you points for building the three levels of your Wonder using any card from your hand (without considering what’s on its face) is the least powerful aspect, as none of our winners ever completed his/her Wonder. One facet that I thought was insufficiently explained in the rules was that you can only build production buildings for the seven resources in Ages I and II; by Age III, you’re just going for points. We didn’t find huge differences between the Wonders except for the Colossus of Rhodes, which has a military power that was worth 18 points if its holder made a few relatively simple moves to maintain that advantage, and in a game where winning scores were in the 45-55 range that’s a significant bump.

I can imagine that with six or seven players this game would get messy, and the luck factor in what cards you get to see starts to increase once you get past five players. For three players, however, gameplay is smooth with a hint of randomness but nowhere near enough to make the game frustrating, as great decision-making won’t be undone by rotten luck. I can see why it won the Kennerspiel and is ranked #12 overall on BoardGameGeek’s global game rankings, but if you do buy it, be prepared for a little confusion the first time you read the rules. The game isn’t as complicated as they make it sound.

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→ June 23, 2011
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Brick.

When I wrote about Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom a year and a half ago, I asked if any of you had seen his previous movie, Brick, a hard-boiled detective story set in a modern high school. Nine of you said in the comments I needed to see it, and several more of you have suggested it since then. I’m usually pretty safe with reader recommendations … and this was no exception. I was blown away by Brick – very smart, occasionally funny, great narrative greed, and all kinds of homages to one of my favorite genres in literature. (Worth mentioning: it’s just $3.94 on DVD right now at amazon.)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan, an intelligent but slightly aloof high school student whose ex-girlfriend has gone missing for several weeks. He receives a panicked phone call from her, sees her one more time, and within 48 hours she ends up dead, leaving him to try to unravel the mystery, which leads him into his school’s subculture of dope-dealing and hilarious posing along with the full allotment of tough guys, fake tough guys, violence, and apple juice.

The film is characterized as “neo-noir,” although I’d stick with “hard-boiled” given Brendan’s character and the terse, quick dialogue through nearly all of the film. Brendan is quick with the ripostes, and a few other characters manage to match him quip for quip, like the character Laura, of the high class and uncertain motives, responding to him on the phone.

Laura: Who is this?
Brendan: I won’t waste your time. You don’t know me.
Laura: (slowly) I know everyone, and I have all the time in the world.
Brendan: Ah, the folly of youth.

The characters nearly all speak quickly – occasionally unintelligibly – and the pacing is brisk, while the dialogue has just enough slang to give it an altered-reality feel without overselling the noir feel. Johnson layered the plot with a red herring or two and even gave Brendan a brilliant sidekick, just called The Brain, complete with thick-lensed glasses (with hipster frames, as it turns out) and a machine-gun delivery.

The script is brilliant, but the performances elevated the movie to plus. One of the hardest things for a teenaged actor or actress to do is to play a teenaged character who’s supposed to act like an adult – it usually comes off as forced, often with unintentionally comic results. But Levitt sells his character quickly and easily; by the one-quarter mark, you’re no longer distracted by that age/speech discrepancy and are buying Brendan as a viable young adult, rather than a kid playing dress-up. Without that performance, the center of the movie wouldn’t hold.

Most of the other cast members filled their roles admirably with Brendan at the center; Meagan Wood, who seems to be better known for appearing in African-American sitcoms and bad horror films, stands out as one of two femmes fatales (and the much more convincing of the two) as a cold, manipulative actress tied up on the fringes of the central crime but who enjoys toying with Brendan when he comes for information. The other femme fatale is played by the adorable Nora Zehetner, who simply doesn’t fit her part, not in looks (it would be fair to say that a doe was Nora Zehetner-eyed) or in articulation (the precise, upper-class speech of her character doesn’t fit her actions or motivations). That’s not on Zehetner, but on whoever made the casting decision. You wouldn’t cast me as Tug for similar reasons – I could be the greatest actor since Olivier but I couldn’t sell you on a character I’m not physically built to play.

For someone like me, infatuated with the style and tension of hard-boiled literature, Brick is sublime – a brilliant adaptation of a great story Dashiell Hammett forgot to write. It’s the rare movie I’d actually want to watch again.

Next up: In Bruges.

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→ June 23, 2011
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The Ginger Man.

J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man was originally published by a small publisher of pornographic novels, Olympia Press, which shortly thereafter published the decidedly literary work Lolita. But Donleavy and Olympia ended up in court twenty years later, and the lawsuit and Olympia’s subsequent bankruptcy filingended with Donleavy owning the company. The book, which ranked #99 on the Modern Library 100, is a bawdy, undisciplined novel about an American wastrel trying desperately to avoid growing up while pretending to study at Dublin’s Trinity college. Its subject matter and meandering narrative form a cross between James Joyce’s Ulysses and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Unfortunately, I didn’t really care for either of those books, and you’ll be shocked to hear I also didn’t care for The Ginger Man.

The titular antihero of Donleavy’s book is Sebastian Dangerfield, who begins the novel as a married man with a young baby girl, a drinking problem, an income problem (he has none), a responsibility problem, and a maturity problem. He wants to drink and chase women; his wife wants him to be a provider and a loving husband. He has no interest in studying – I’m not actually sure if the subject of his studies is even mentioned in the book – and even less in anything resembling work. He takes “loans” from friends, steals his landlords’ things and pawns them, and concocts various schemes to defraud his various creditors.

The Ginger Man is intended to be a comic novel, a modern picaresque set around a rascal whose exploits are fodder for laughs but also for our inner youths to admire. But Sebastian is no rascal – he’s an ass. He hits his wife, repeatedly, and abuses her verbally as well. He tries to suffocate his child when she makes too much noise. He destroys property – never his own, since he has none – and even tries to take revenge on his wife by hammering nails into the pipe leading out of their second-floor toilet. Debauchery can be funny, but this isn’t standard-issue drinking and whoring – this is sociopathy, a man who feels absolutely no guilt or remorse when he causes physical, emotional, or financial harm to anyone else. Once Sebastian tried to kill his daughter, there was no redemption for him or for the book in my eyes. Perhaps domestic abuse was funny in the 1960s. It’s not funny today.

The signature “humor” scene is lowbrow, but also rather unfunny, as Sebastian gets on the subway and, while mentally seething at an old man he thinks has lecherous intentions toward the girl sitting next to him, is himself taking the whole “rock out with your cock out” thing a little too literally. I suppose going out in public with the mouse of the house could be funny in some contexts, but this scene plays more along the lines of the prepubescent child giggling nervously over public nudity.

The book is, however, widely praised by critics and its placement on the Modern Library list is far from an unusual opinion, with the New York Times and the New Yorker running glowing reviews (the latter by Dorothy Parker) when it was first published here. Its prose is very much of the Joyce school of the internal monologue, with the narration shifting constantly between third- and first-person, usually with no demarcation between the two – a distracting technique, and one that gets no points from me for cleverness because it was used so many times before. The subject matter was groundbreaking at the time, with the book originally banned for obscenity (almost a badge of honor for postmodern novels of the early to mid-twentieth century), but today is ho-hum, and its sexual content is simply graphic but not erotic; it is what Mrs. Shinn would rightfully call “a smutty book.” And that would be fine, if it was funny, or if the prose was brilliant, or if the lead character was a charming lothario rather than a wife-beating, child-snuffing lunatic.

Next up: I just finished John Cheever’s The Wapshot Chronicle. That was better.

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→ June 20, 2011
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Small World app.

I have updated this post to reflect the 2013 upgrade to 2.0.

Days of Wonder’s game Small World is one of our favorite casual strategy games, one that presents players with a small number of complex decisions, relies much more on strategy and skill than on chance, that replays well, and that looks great. They’ve now released Small World 2 for iPad (not for the iPod or iPhone, though); it looks great and has the best live two-player experience we’ve found so far, although I’d still say Carcassonne is the best overall boardgame app.

The concept in Small World is one of constrained resources. The map is small and its territories will be rapidly filled up by the two players. The players each select a race & skill combination from the table (one is free, others cost from one to five coins) with which to conquer territories, but those races don’t come with many tokens, and since you must have at least two to take over an empty territory and have to use one token to hold a territory you’ve taken, you run out quickly and must put your civilization into “decline” so you can select a new one. You earn a point for every territory you hold at the end of your turn, plus various bonuses. And the decision on when to decline your current race skill/combination will also be based on when your opponent declines or is about to do so, on what options are available on the board, and on how many points you’re still getting from the last civilization you declined, which will most likely disappear when you decline a second one. (For more on the boardgame itself, you might want to read my review of it from last July. The issue I raised about the Diplomatic skill has been solved in the iPad version by eliminating that skill altogether.)

The game’s best feature, by far, is the mimicking of the tabletop by allowing for two players to face each other on opposite sides of the iPad; the player control bars appear on the top and bottom (viewed lengthwise) and the board doesn’t rotate. Pass-and-play isn’t really a hassle, but this is much easier, and given how much the iPad cost I feel a little better about just letting the thing sit on the table while we play. The game also allows you to choose a start player or have it determined randomly, and even lets you choose background music from your iTunes library.

Play is mostly intuitive, with simple drag-and-drop moves and clearly marked buttons for things like redeploying tokens or declining (click on your main race card and it gives you Info and Decline options). Instructions and key details on races and skills are easily available in-game. It offers no undo option if you should drag-and-misdrop, however, and the game doesn’t allow you to save certain skills (like the Sorceror’s ability) till the end of your turn, automatically moving you to redeployment if you’ve used all of your tokens. The graphics in Small World are outstanding, crystal-clear replicas of the physical game pieces, with even smaller tokens easy to discern.

The AI player is adequate, but no great shakes. It avoids stupid errors and usually chooses its race/skill combination well, but would probably be better served with a more aggressive attacking mode and faster recognition of impending doom (I’ve found that the right race/skill combo can wipe the AI off the map, depending on who the AI chose in the first place.) Like that of most AI players in other games, its short-term thinking is better than its long-term thinking. But if you’re just learning the game or enjoy a quick game even though you’re about 80-90% likely to win, it does the job.

In 2013, Days of Wonder upgraded this app significantly to add maps for three to five players, online multiplayer, and several in-app upgrades (new skills and races). They also raised the price to $9.99, but it’s well worth the cost given how much you’re now getting for your money.

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→ June 18, 2011
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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Amazon’s deal of the day (for June 18th) is pretty good – the Toy Story trilogy in a combo Blu-Ray/DVD plus a digital copy for $45 total. My daughter saw the third one at preschool, swore she didn’t like it, and still talks about it all the time.

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Continuing my run of catching up on movies I should have seen years ago, I watched the half-parody detective film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on the flight back from Charlotte, in which Robert Downey Jr. plays a thief turned wannabe actor dragged into a detective story via a coincidence and a sleazy Hollywood agent. It’s funny on its own, and the parody elements are clever (and clearly done in homage to the tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction), although the reliance on parody made the story a little wobbly in parts. (Amazon currently has the Blu-Ray edition of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on sale for $6.99.)

Downey Jr.’s thief character, Harry Lockhart, inadvertently crashes a screen test while running from the cops and a gun-toting old lady who might have taken the whole “neighborhood watch” thing a little too seriously, after which he finds himself in LA where he’s assigned to tail a private detective played by Val Kilmer, who a little too obviously says that nothing ever happens on stakeouts. Of course, something happens, and the film is loaded with deadpan statements or seemingly minor events that merely foreshadow bigger happenings, one of many aspects of the film that dance on the the line between homage and parody.

The film is based loosely on an out-of-print Brett Halliday novel called Bodies are Where You Find Them, but the movie’s chapter titles all come from Raymond Chandler novels or stories, and the homage is more to the hard-boiled genre rather than to any one writer in particular. But the hard-boiled detective isn’t the central character – and he’s gay – while the femme fatale is less fatale and more flaky. The story mocks the routine elements to classic detective novels – you have the scene where the central character is told by some thugs to get out of town; the scene where he’s captured and has to fight and/or shoot his way out of trouble (in this case, both guys are captured together); the sexual tension between the protagonist and the lead female character (here played largely for laughs); and so on.

Downey Jr. and Kilmer are both outstanding – this might be Kilmer’s best work since Top Secret – in their roles as Harry and Gay Perry, respectively, and their interactions are far more entertaining than those between Harry and Harmony. The character of Harmony isn’t so much the problem as the actress, Michelle Monaghan, is; she seems directionless, darting in and out of flighty, obsessive, distant, and femme fatale roles but mostly just taking her shirt off a few times. Her character was the least believable of the three, though; acting not just unpredictably but irrationally, and adding little to the film. The chemistry is between Downey and Kilmer in a bromance before the term became popular and then hackneyed to the point where I just fined myself for using it. Viewed as a buddy-movie that’s also a parody of classic detective novels, it’s clever and often very funny, but that’s such a niche audience that the studio seems to have marketed it as more of a modern crime/humor film, which it isn’t.

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