Chris

Christopher Hitchens has also spoken and written on the topic of having an internalized American identity that isn't immediately apparent to others: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/05/on-becoming-american/3889/

Goddamnit. I really wanted to be able to discuss Cloud Atlas on the book cast before shit about the film started coming out, but I guess we missed that boat.

I don't think you should wait on your friend to catch up to your identity. I think any immigrant is going to have that issue, for obvious reasons, but fuck it. To be honest with you, at this particular moment in history, I imagine it's simply more fashionable for an artist to be seen as having an ethnic identity with perceived flair, rather than to be simply perceived as "American," which is either boring or carries negative connotations depending on your perspective. And like the professor you mention in that blog post did, it's much easier to place someone in a School when you can lump him together with others based on an easy criterion like geographical origin.

I may have missed an explanation of this or something, but how can that be the case? With so many horrific car crashes happening all the time, it's pretty hard for me to swallow that everyone is always fine after them. Also, using that logic, couldn't you just put a disclaimer on any game ever and say "Despite the actions this game's protagonist takes, everybody is fine."? I didn't play the multiplayer so I can't comment on that. The aesthetic and tone weren't really impressive to me (except the soundtrack, which was totally rad)--I agree with Sean that it kind of felt devoid of aesthetic. The parts of the game that were simply driving around in the open world were fun; those are the parts I liked. But to me Burnout Paradise did that stuff better, and felt much more coherent to me as a whole. I did also have some fun with the jumping around mechanic, but it didn't seem like a feature that was making or breaking the game.

I don't really have an answer to this except to ask why you would think that would discount it from resonating with Americans. Stuff like Downton Abbey wouldn't become a phenomenon here if there weren't a fair number of people willing to engage with creative works that are deeply steeped in other cultures. Another angle on this would be that Infinite Jest is a work of such incredible ambition and breadth that it's impossible (at least, for my limited brain) to boil it down to centering on any one theme or conflict or setting. Its scope is overwhelming. I think anyone willing to see a work like that through to its completion isn't going to be put off because they don't have lifelong experience with a particular piece of foreign national culture; I suspect it's more likely to inspire such a reader to learn more about the conflict in question. That was the case for me, anyway.

"My lack of inclusion is total bullshit." -James Ellroy, probably.

Interesting article! Much more interesting than most list-based articles, certainly. I think the former is far more appropriate. Regardless of whether you're explicitly writing about the place you call home, you can't fully escape it. An American writer is an American writer even when he or she is setting a story elsewhere, just as a Brit writing a novel about India should still be placed in the British canon.

A few I have really enjoyed: From Hell by Alan Moore The Push Man (and subsequent collections) by Yoshihiro Tatsumi Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware Louis Riel by Chester Brown Black Hole by Charles Burns Blankets by Craig Thompson Get a Life by Dupuy and Berberian The Golem's Mighty Swing by James Sturm It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken by Seth

We'll see how it goes, but I think that would be tough. It's already going to be keeping us busy to be putting out five podcasts a month on top of full time jobs, especially on my end due as the editor.

Yes, Infinite Jest resists easy reading, both literally and mentally.

This is a big reason I still don't read ebooks. Maybe eventually the experience of reading an ebook will be a more beautiful one, but there are currently still far more things I prefer about physical books, and that's one of them. I'm reading Wolf Hall right now in hardback, and when I had first learned about the book I grabbed the first free chapter for the Kindle app on my Android phone and iPad, only to find that this particular book is introduced with several pages of character descriptions and other interesting context that was treated utterly carelessly in the ebook version (whether due to necessity thanks to reflowable/resizeable text, or simply due to different priorities, I don't know). Of course, in the hardbound version, those pages are typeset very well, with a beautiful ornate border surrounding the text, and the book as an entire object is a pleasure to own.

It's the Idle Thumbs Progresscast THE FIFTEENTH ONE Rewards are finalized, simulation games decay, sports games exist, and Chris is still playing Civilization V: Gods & Kings. Very slowly. Read the full Kickstarter update. Direct episode download. It's your RSS feed.

Punch-Drunk Love is great. If you already want to see it, go ahead. There Will Be Blood is his most different thing to that and is amazing. 12 Angry Men is also great. That was Sidney Lumet's first movie, which is ridiculous. He directed many more great films, such as Serpico, Network, and Dog Day Afternoon, which are probably what he's best known for. I think Fail-Safe is a really underappreciated one of his. One of the interesting things about Lumet (especially compared to someone like PT Anderson) is that he was a consummate working director. He directed films right up until the end of his life and until the last few years generally made at least one film per year. So of course a fair number of his movies aren't particularly remarkable. But unlike most directors who work with similar speed, he has a significant number of genuine masterpieces. Awesome guy.

What's funny to me is that that little blurb immediately makes the Treasure Goblin less memorable in my brain. Suddenly it's just yet another enemy described in generic fantasy-novel prose.

It's because the goofy goblin is actually affecting YOU, whereas the "villain" is only affecting the made-up story which may not actually be convincing or interesting.

Every single thing I've seen about this movie makes me desperately want to see it.

I only made the Puffin icon when I was coding up the blog, so it has only existed for the last few days. I got tired of the weird blood splat icon. We could probably implement elsewhere if the other Thumbs want to! (I don't know if they do)

Check this shit out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtir2GzdPag Ughhhh it makes me feel like a musical asshole.

I'm pretty sure that's actually what the metadata title has been ever since the very first episode. I checked on that because I wanted to make sure we didn't change any of the metadata, so people's audio libraries wouldn't mis-sort anything.

Yeah I agree. I'm really glad it ended up as the grid. It's one of my favorite little things in the game.

Z-fighting is probably not intentional, but the pink is.

Yep. It is (not deliberately) the 100th piece of Idle Thumbs audio content to be released to the RSS feed.

Super fun!

"Faith, the least exclusive club on earth, has the craftiest doorman." David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas That bit of aphoristic prose completely knocked me on my ass when I first read it. For one thing, it's just an incredibly well-written sentence. But it also captures my very contradictory and often frustrated feelings about faith, something I ultimately don't think I possess.

I'm not a fan of this approach (also used by Penny Arcade) where the actual real goal is a stretch goal several tiers beyond the Kickstarter target. Having stretch goals is fine but it seems disingenuous to build your campaign around a thing that won't even happen if your campaign meets its stated goal.