My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

No, I am not blegging for a tablet. I am looking for advice re: e-readers and tablets. I know I want to get one, but I’m trying to figure out what I want to get.

I’ve considered e-readers because of the battery life and e-ink: I need something that will read PDFs but will give me access to ebooks (not for fiction – nonfiction ebooks are a major step forward in policy analysis and I want to read them easily – SHUT UP NOT A NERD). But every time I play with an e-reader in the store it just seems so damn clunky and the touchscreens seem very non-responsive. Are the store ones just crappy?

As for tablets, well, I know the pros and cons of the iPad well enough at this point and if I go that route I’ll wait for the iPad 3/”new iPad” to come out. But does anybody here have good advice re: Android tablets? I want to at least consider them, because I do so love my Galaxy Nexus (even if the dialer isn’t as good as my HTC was).

EDIT TO ADD: Also: I’ve been considering picking up a digital camera for the purpose of vlogging (because I want to be the next Zefrank, maybe – DON’T STOMP ON MY DREAMS, INTERNET). Does anybody have any good recommendations for a camera that does decent high-definition video (because if I’m going to get a camera that records video, it might as well be pretty)?

Some time ago – I can’t find it now, it may be gone – some enterprising person designed a website that would auto-mail a letter for you via snailmail to your Member of Parliament. You would write the letter as if it were an email, choose your MP, and it would do the rest. It survived off a surprisingly small amount of donations. The theory (which is mostly correct) is that politicians pay disproportionate attention to physical letters and ignore emails.

Now: when someone is smart enough to automate the process so that it provides a pre-written letter for one’s issue of choice (which you can edit, if you like) and auto-detects your MP (or representative in Congress, or whatever), then Facebook activism will actually just become activism. Because imagine if those 100 million Kony video views translated into 1/10th the number of letters. Washington would be flooded with paper. If nothing else, it would force politicians to stop paying disproportionate attention to physical letters, which are the domain of old conservatives.

(Now imagine it if it was an issue of real and lasting importance, rather than a story about an admittedly bad person which has been driven wildly out of proportion for what is likely profit motive.)

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

It’s not going to make any end-of-year best-of lists (certainly not mine), but despite a plot that is achingly predictable this is still an entertaining enough way to pass two hours because, despite its predictability, the best word to describe every single aspect of this movie’s craft is “competent,” and there are worse things, and also the Martian dog is hilarious.

A few people lately have been saying that I am all about the hate. But I am not! I like things! So, today, here is some discussion of something I like.

On Twitter yesterday I briefly mentioned how Order of the Stick was getting lots of appreciation for making a million dollars on Kickstarter, but the fact that it got a lot of money isn’t really indicative of how good it is. I mean, Vanilla Ice made a lot of money once upon a time as well.

So let me just say, then, that Order of the Stick is good. It is very good. It is one of those rare webcomics that has actually only gotten better over a long period of time (as opposed to disappearing up its own ass in metanarrative, which is what happens to most webcomics and we all know it); it started as an amusing riff on Dungeons and Dragons tropes and has, over time, become an incredibly deep and complex fantasy epic that never sacrifices its metahumour origins, but doesn’t get stuck in them, either. How rare is it for a comic to be good at both comedy and dramatic beats? Most webcomickers aim for it; they almost all fail miserably, because they are either good jokesmiths who are shit at drama or good melodramatists who are shit at gags.

And Rich Burlew’s plotting has only gotten denser and denser. It’s rare that a plot twist in any comic really surprises me any more, but Burlew managed it in the last week with a Chekov’s gun that I didn’t even identify as a Chekov’s gun until it went BANG. And it was not the first time he has managed this, mostly because his climax points serve as story fodder for his broader arc. It’s amazingly impressive. I’m hardpressed to think of many comics that have done this as successfully as Burlew has in OOTS, and the first two that came to mind were Bone and the first half of Cerebus, and that is extremely good company to be in.

So there you go! Positivity!

Ta-Nehisi Coates is, as usual, completely right. So was Chris Rock when he made Good Hair (which you should make an effort to see, if you have not seen it):

That’s crazy, and white cultural norms should not necessarily be aspired to. I mean, come on. We invented coonskin caps. That is fucked up.

And, speaking as an admittedly white dude: I think black women look vastly more attractive with natural hair. Although I never really saw why “kinky” and “nappy” became the adjectives of choice. When I was little and saw black women with natural hair, I just thought of it as “curly,” and even today whenever I see a black woman with natural hair I just think “she has curly hair.”

FLAPJACKS: So, are you gonna get Mass Effect 3 when it comes out?
MGK: No.
FLAPJACKS: Why not?
MGK: Because I didn’t play the first two? Because I’m not gonna play every game that comes out? I don’t have time to play them all. I never played Gears of War or any of the later Grand Theft Autos or anything like that. I’ve been spending the last five months working my way through the Assassin’s Creed franchise and I’m nowhere near close to finished. I got Saints Row The Third on Steam because it was on sale and everybody was saying it was wacky and awesome, and it looks wacky and awesome, but I know I won’t get to it until, like, June or something. If I wanted to get into Mass Effect I would be looking at a time sink of god knows how long. There are only so many hours in the day, and so forth.
FLAPJACKS: But everybody says that Mass Effect is brilliant and visionary and –
MGK: Space zombies.
FLAPJACKS: What?
MGK: Spaze zombies. The third Mass Effect is about space zombies. Oh, sure, call them Reapers or whatever. But it’s space zombies.
FLAPJACKS: Look, your anti-zombie sentiment seems a little hypocritical given that in your comic you’re doing, you recently revealed that some of the bad guys were zombies.
MGK: They’re not zombies. It’s a little bit more complicated than that. But so what if I’m hypocritical? The comic is free. Mass Effect 3 is fifty dollars. I’m sure it’s really entertaining and all, but if “space zombies” is your hook then I think I’m going to wait until it’s on sale on Steam for, like, ten bucks. Should take about six months or so. Maybe Christmas. That’s about what I spent on Dead Space 1 and 2 total, and in those games I could at least stomp the space zombies to death. Because I don’t play these games for the plot most of the time.
FLAPJACKS: But I was under the impression that Mass Effect had an amazing plot. Like, a glorious space opera arc that makes Star Wars look like dogshit. And old Star Wars, not new Star Wars.
MGK: I actually think plotting has gone downhill since Bioware introduced its “you can be good or evil or whatever” system of roleplaying games. I mean, the old stuff they did like Planescape, those were basically stories with which you can interact and twiddle a bit, but you were always locked onto the plot and you were going to be the good guy whether you liked it or not. But now it’s all about choice, which means the games always feel a bit limp to me. It’s entirely possible that Mass Effect is the Tolstoy of video gaming, but I tend to doubt it. Besides, this avoids the more important question, which is if I am going to be able to stomp the space zombies to death in Mass Effect 3? Also, will I get extra points for shooting them in the dick like I did in Bulletstorm?
FLAPJACKS: That was a great game. I have to admit, I was really impressed with the lengths they took to justify why the game would reward you for shooting bad guys in the dick. “Because the military likes it when you shoot people in the dick” would not have been how I would have explained it, but there you go.
MGK: No, I suspect Mass Effect 3 will be extremely serious about the space zombies, because everything I’ve seen from that series bunches into either “we are taking this very seriously” or “here is a brief segue so we can be wacky for a second and then we’re going right back to it being all serious.” God knows that Twitter feed they set up so that they could hype the game by having a Twitter RP session was about as fun as something that is the opposite of fun.
FLAPJACKS: Look, you didn’t know Emily Wong like Mass Effect fans did. I bet she was really important and having her die in a text message was very meaningful.
MGK: I admit I’m stating this from relative ignorance. Maybe if you play as Female Shepherd – and god if I hear one more nerd jizz his pants over “FemShep” I will cut them, because barely having seen any of her I am already sick of her – instead of having laser fights the aliens fight each other by, I dunno, can-can dancing. Or silly walk jousting. Maybe one of the sidekicks you get in every Bioware game fights with a giant caber that is made out of lightsabers. All of this could be true! But I doubt it. It just doesn’t feel like that sort of game.
FLAPJACKS: How would you even carry a giant caber made of lightsabers?
MGK: That’s for the details people to work out. I’m an idea man. But if Mass Effect games play anything like everything else Bioware makes, then I’m already less inclined to play them, because I am so sick of Bioware “go here, get a thing, now go here and get another thing” RPGs. You know what I miss? Baldur’s Gate. Screw this two-sidekicks crap. I want a party of fucking adventurers and the computer rolling dice for me and not even trying to hide the fact, that’s what I want.
FLAPJACKS: They’re apparently redoing that game or something. There was a big hubbub on the net last week.
MGK: I am curious to see if they screw with it or just intelligently decide to reproduce it in HD or something.
FLAPJACKS: What if they turn it into a modern Bioware game?
MGK: Then we will go blow shit up.

The other day, I was reading a book called “A Galaxy Not So Far Away”, a book of essays about ‘Star Wars’. The essays varied wildly in quality from “kind of mediocre” to “crimes against the English language”, but one of the things that stuck out about them was the way that they all talked about the meanings that the author projected onto what they ‘knew’ to be ‘escapist fiction’. Normally, I’d chalk this up to a failing of the author, much in the same way I’d ding them for not realizing that a Boba Fett vs. Predator website might not be entirely serious, but this view isn’t unique to this book. Critics as diverse as Roger Ebert, Nathan Rabin, Tom Shone and Peter Biskind have all called ‘Star Wars’ a piece of pure escapism, with varying degrees of respect and appreciation. It has come to be the fundamental received wisdom about the original film. No allegory, no message, just a classic Boy Becomes Man story set so far away from anything we know that everyone can enjoy it.

Which is totally wrong. ‘Star Wars’ is actually an intensely political story, with a scathing and vicious statement to make about modern American politics cloaked in an allegorical “space opera”. The reasons that nobody appreciates this are twofold: One, the political landscape changed so much during the film’s lengthy journey from script to screen that much of its impact was neutered, and two, Americans have an amazing ability to assume that they’re the “good guys” in any allegorical story. This, combined with Reagan’s later appropriation of the imagery and terminology of the film, made it seem like an all-purpose battle of good and evil, but it wasn’t always intended this way.

It’s important, when looking at the political elements of ‘Star Wars’, to look at the era in which it was written. When Lucas first envisioned his follow-up to ‘American Graffiti’, Nixon had just been re-elected in an astonishing landslide. The Vietnam War had outlasted both the President who started it and the President who championed it, and was now continuing into the second term of a President who had promised to end it…and had instead escalated both its intensity and its scope. Watergate, the scandal that would eventually grow to consume the Nixon presidency, was at this point merely seen as a couple of muck-rakers trying to stir up trouble for a man as unpopular with liberals as he was popular with conservatives. And George Lucas? He was hanging out with radical, political film-makers like Francis Ford Coppola and his then-wife, Marcia Lou Griffin. He was potentially tapped as the director of ‘Apocalypse Now’, before ‘Star Wars’ came along to occupy his attention at the time. He was consumed with the idea of a political film about what he saw as the end of American democracy as we knew it.

This is actually worth repeating, because we’re at this point so far removed from the era that many people have forgotten the most troubling aspect of Watergate. It wasn’t that the President had bugged, burglarized, and “ratfucked” his opponents on the way to his victory. It wasn’t even that he’d paid hush money to his co-conspirators to make it all go away. It wasn’t even that he’d discouraged the FBI from pursuing the case. It was what people saw as the very real possibility that Nixon might simply tell the United States Congress to shove their investigation up their collective ass sideways, and to tell the Supreme Court exactly what they could do with their 8-0 ruling that he turn over the tapes. It was the idea that we had a President who genuinely saw himself as not subject to the rule of law. “Imperialist Presidency” gets bandied around a lot by both sides of the political spectrum, but everyone was worried that Nixon was setting one up.

And what did Lucas write against this backdrop? He wrote a story about a democracy that had become an Empire, with a ruler who (all together now) “dissolved the council permanently”. The Empire is now constantly on a war footing, using technology they perfected in the wars against its enemies on its own citizens to stifle dissent. Only a group of anti-establishment rebels who remember The Way Things Used To Be can possibly restore the Republic. In case the symbolism isn’t blatant enough, should I mention that the ending of ‘Jedi’ (in which a bunch of foreigners/aliens with primitive weapons overwhelm a technologically and numerically superior force through use of cunning, ambushes and a superior knowledge of the local area) was originally planned to be the ending of ‘Star Wars’ before budgetary constraints forced him to move it? Even the costume design for the Rebel pilots evokes early Russian cosmonauts. (If you don’t believe me, just drop by the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum sometime.)

In ‘Star Wars’, the Empire is America. The Emperor is Nixon. The oppressor is us, and the call in the air everywhere is “Revolution!” George Lucas, the supposedly escapist film-maker who wanted nothing more than to entertain, was advocating for the armed overthrow of the United States government. By the time his film hit theaters, of course, it was already dated; nobody could look at “the sanctimonious impotence of Carter” (to borrow a phrase from James Lileks) and see a menace that had to be toppled from his iron throne. But by couching his work in the language of allegory, Lucas created a story that survived its political origins in a way that many other political films could not. Which is a good thing for us, but I suspect the idealist that Lucas used to be is a little bit sad about it.

(Post-script: I hate to have to mention this, because it seems like it should be self-evident, but…yes. I am serious. This is actually sourced in J.W. Rinzler’s “The Making of Star Wars”, which took contemporary interviews with Lucas and his friends and co-workers, along with drafts of the script, to show how the atmosphere of political idealism and frustrated radicalism that Lucas lived in during the 70s informed the work. Lucas has explained all this, but he’s offered so many contradictory explanations of the genesis of his work that most people ignore it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.)

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

So Kotaku unveiled what is likely the setting/hero/etc. for Assassin’s Creed III, and online reaction seems divided into two camps:

1.) The idea of an Assassin operating during the American Revolution is awesome;
2.) But what about Desmond?

Afterall, the overarcing plot of the Assassin’s Creed story demands an awesome epic conclusion with Desmond in 2012. But this is an example of how video game writing can be constrained by the gameplay, which is relatively unique to video games.

The problem with a Desmond-centred storyline isn’t a problem with Desmond himself. Some people don’t like his character, and I agree he comes across as whiny in the original Assassin’s Creed, but the following games flesh him out and make him more appealing (and his white hoodie is a nice modern equivalent of the Assassin robes). It’s not Desmond’s character that makes him unsuitable as the primary character in the next game in the series.

No, the issue with Desmond is that at this point in the series, Assassin’s Creed, as a family of games, does certain things. And one of the things that makes it mostly impossible to do what it does are automatic weapons, because while sneaking around and stabbing people and getting into awesome swordfights is terrific, it’s all more or less rendered obsolete by firearms. Indeed, the end sequence in Assassin’s Creed II, where Desmond has to fight his way through a bunch of Templars with the wrist blade, makes absolutely no sense. Why do none of the Templars have guns? Heck, why don’t any of them have so much as a frigging taser?

This is not to say that eventually we might see an AC game where the protagonist exists in an era where there are reliable guns. But it would demand being a wildly different game from the existing franchise in many ways. Arguably, Assassin’s Creed III‘s American Revolution setting is about as far forward as you can go in time and still use most of the existing gameplay of the franchise: multiple-shot rifles and pistols start showing up a few generations later, and realistically that’s the ball game for stabbing people as a raison d’etre. “All men are created equal – Sam Colt made them that way” isn’t just a cute saying: for Assassin’s Creed it’s the obelisk standing before the cavemen.

If you put Ezio Auditore in the Wild West, he would be one dead Italian pretty damn fast. And Ubisoft isn’t going to fuck with how the franchise plays in the final game of their flagship trilogy which, in best Douglas Adams fashion, is now five games long.