Everything else got better.  Racing games moved up to Burnout Paradise.  RPGs evolved into Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, and Oblivion.  First person shooters became Modern Warfare, Halo, and Bad Company.  But Westerns failed to go anywhere.  Too vast, too lonely, guns that don’t reload quickly, stereotypes that often just stare, putting all their wisdom into nearly un-readable eyes.  Great movies, bad video games.

But now there’s Red Dead Redemption.  Rockstar, who can afford to spend $100 million dollars to make sure all that open space is filled, all those guns feel right, and all those stereotypes have a place and a story, did it.  I love this game, so far.  I love wandering around, forgetting what my mission is, and just exploring.  Hunting feels real. (and I did hunt in the desert as a teen).  Not realistic, there’s just too much game running around, and things attack you.  Cougars and coyotes, even wolves.  In the real desert, these animals mostly hide.  But in this kind of archetypal American fantasy desert, they will jump you, and they should.  That’s real, the way it should be.

I’m still a long way from finishing (or even really starting) the story elements.  But the world is beautiful and, after oh these many years, I’m playing the game I was promised.

The World of Red Dead Redemption

I like Roger Ebert, and I think he does think things through.  And many of the critics of his position on this have been a little too ad hominum, as if finding some deep psychological problem with Ebert’s feeling towards games would dissolve his argument.  But I suspect that his thinking on this reflects the thinking of most video-game outsiders.  He doesn’t think they’re art, and neither does your mom.  But you don’t give her crap about it, do you?

Some of arguments are true.  He doesn’t get video-games.  He can’t readily distinguish between “braid” and a shooter based on David Koresh, at least not enough to see why people suggesting these games as art have entirely different perspectives.  When he tries to describe what’s there, he lists the mechanics.  But I don’t think that invalidates his opinion.  I don’t understand Nascar, but I can make a cogent observation that it is not a sport. (Especially if I can use the “as I understand sport” escape valve.)  Maybe I think sports require the exertion and testing of physical body vs. physical body.

But the one trick that Ebert really pulls off, is to hide his actual argument.  Then, as people attack him, he moves from “as a matter of principle” over to “bad in fact”, then back.  Also, as he never defines his conception of art, it’s easy for him to discount arguments based on various theories.  When people claim they have been moved by video-games, or that they see beauty, or that a video-game is sublime or subtle, he can go to a point of view that doesn’t accept any of these things as a definition of art.

Here’s the thing.  ”matter of principle” means tautological, which requires precise definitions of both high art and videogaming.  It also means that the level and quality does not matter at all.  And, it means that no amount of change over time would change it.  Ebert does not give us the precise definitions, he does argue about the quality of the examples, and he allows that a time may come when this changes.

But once admitting that it is not “matter of principle,” then his other factors come into play.  If it is the quality of the examples, then we can find better ones.  The truth is that video-games are maturing at a far more rapid rate than other media.  A video-game sequel is considered a good thing, because it WILL be a lot better.  (not always, but moreso than with movies).  New experimental directions, such as Heavy Rain, do not have an equivalent in film, because there are no new avenues being opened up in terms of the technology or the potential interfaces.  The newest thing in film? 3-D.

Ultimately, I think Ebert’s claim is really more personal.  It’s like that made by the film professors back when music videos were trying to be art.  ”Nothing new here.”  Yes, from their POV, nothing.  But they had the whole history of film to draw on.  The music video audience was seeing new stuff, sliced and diced and offered up in a format they could understand.  To them, it was an emerging art form.  Similarly, if you try and abstract the story, or the visuals from a current game and offer it up to someone who doesn’t engage, someone who has a library of great movies in his head, there won’t be anything new.   Because the new part doesn’t translate.  But to us, some of this is art.  And someday, the art may be new in ways that nobody now can anticipate.

I guess being a fan is the price of celebrating a victory as my own, and the price includes failure.  Without the possibility of losing, being a fan would mean no more than enjoying a movie, or some other form of entertainment.  So, because I invested myself and was rewarded during the Joe Gibbs era, I’m paying now.  But the Redskins are being destroyed by the man who makes all the money whenever fans engage.  So how can we still be loyal to anything?

Every season, since 1999, watching the Redskins has been an annual deathwatch.  How many games will it take to pull the plug this year?  Once the season is dead, we can turn our attention to other things.  The worst seasons are the ones with promise.  The ones where the latest crop of overpaid free agents make a little impact early on, before the long-term failure to build solid lines or any depth takes its toll.  But critiquing the Redskins is easy.  The real question is, why do I hang on?

I’m also a “fan” of Dollhouse.  Not like I’m a fan of House or Battlestar Galactica, which are fantastic shows that anyone would love if they were properly exposed.  No, my Dollhouse fanhood is like that I have for the Redskins.  Built on irrational hope and the occasional great performance.  But, where the Redskins have Vinny Cerato, Dollhouse has Eliza Dushku.  Sometimes they do episodes that do not feature her.  Those are often very good.  Still, I’ve oftened hoped the show would get bad enough that I could safely ignore it.  I thought it had, after a slow start to the second season.

But after I had sworn I was done, after I completely skipped an episode, I get the word that it had finally turned good.  I went to Hulu, cued it up, and watched the latest offering (Belonging).  Really, really good.  The show featured one of the more intriguing “Dolls,” her origin story, and a serious evolution of the character of the previously un-interesting Topher.  So now I have to watch the next episode.  Probably the one after that.  I don’t actually think it’s going to be good, Echo is still, nominally the center of the show.  But I’m a fan.  So I’ll sit through the deathwatch.

Me and High Blood Pressure

I don’t manage risk well.  If you give me a bunch of facts and stats and ask me to change my behavior, good luck.  For the past couple years of been treating my high blood pressure by inconsistent attempts at diet, sleeping better, and getting some exercise.  Anything but medication.  It’s a bad decision, and I know it pretty well because my job is health information outreach.  I’ve optimized articles on hypertension for the Web.

What did it take to get me back on medication?  I think my cardiologist actually threatened me.  Also, he woudn’t sign off on something else I needed, (ADD medication).  My sister had a similar experience.  She’s taking her high blood pressure meds because, as she says “I think the doctor said he was actually going to give me a stroke if I didn’t.”

Arguably, since I am only managing my own risk, I’m morally superior to the parents who won’t get their kids vaccinated.  But the moral element isn’t what I’m after today, it’s the thought process and how it might be changed.  My daytime job is basically health outreach.  Getting good information about health into the hands of people that need it.  Often I think we’re too timid.  We don’t want to offend anyone.  This keeps us from telling stories in a way that works.

Kids Dying in Swimming Pools

But first, let’s back up.  Swimming pools kill people.  So do guns.  If you let your kids play at a house a swimming pool you increase their risk.  If you let your kids play at a house where there are guns, you  also increase risk for your child.  Stasticaly, the swimming pool is FAR more dangerous.  But we feel more outraged by the guns.  Why?  We’ve accepted drownings as part of life.  Unfortunate accidents.  We think of them as something that happens passively.  An accidental shooting is active.  Someone DID something.  There is more guilt, some of which will always splash back on the parents.

Just imagine two headlines, without any other facts:

Child Dies in Swimming Pool (add sub-head about tragic unfortunate accident)

Child Killed While Playing With Gun (add sub-head about “could have been prevented” or “poor supervision” maybe “charges pending”)

Both could actually be prevented with about the same level of safeguards and attention, but one we process as passive and one as active.

Now to the vaccines.  Injecting a child with something is active.  Infectious diseases are, like swimming pools, a passive threat.  They are an unfortunate reality.  Tragic, but it happens.  Dying from a vaccination is an active event.  No matter how “correct” the decision may have seemed, that death will feel like the fault of the parent.

But passive and active are constructive, like foreground and background.  It all depends on how the story is told.  Instead of timid recitations of facts, here is how I would do a campaign to encourage parents to vaccinate their children:

Parents Letting Kids Die

Two kids, sitting across the table from each other.  Between them, a gun.  Yes, they are playing Russian Roulette, and Yes, we do show them taking turns and putting the gun to their head, while the parents watch.  Finally, the gun goes off and the kid collapses with the symptoms of swine flu.

Final message? “Take the gun away, get your children vaccinated.”  See? We’ve now converted swine flu into an active risk, and responsibility splashes back on the parents.

If anyone steals this idea, I hope they put it to good use.

I met McNamara once, and I’ve seen him on the metro a couple times.  He seems very nice, you might say genial.  If you look at his later life, you’d call him something of a do-gooder.  Maybe he was trying to burn off the guilt with good deeds.  He finally published a book, apologizing for a mis-managed war, one he apparently knew we shouldn’t be fighting.  He offered up lessons about how that happened, how we got so lost in the Fog of War.

But Vietnam vets I knew at the time were not having it.  It was too easy, they said, to ask for forgiveness, years later, when the war is fading into history and things are pretty safe.  There are no negative consequences, only a boost in karma, a round of public acceptance, and a boatload of book royalties.  Sadly, in our culture, redemption and apology is a big money-maker if you’re in the Memoire-writing class.

Does he get points for knowing it was wrong at the time?  You might think the reverse, actually.  If he’d been convinced he was doing the right thing, of even doing something morally wrong that had a good chance of success, that might be more forgivable.

In the long run, it’s not up to me.  Or to the public, or even to the still-angry veterans.  Well, maybe they get some say.  And the 58,000 war dead.  But really, we don’t know what’s in a person’s soul, or whether change is real or just convenient.  But we do have a gift, a lesson from McNamara.  Whether he was sincere, repentent, or ultimately redeemed, he still gives us a look at how very smart men ended up doing something very stupid.  And costly.  It’s something all smart men should probably read.

Maybe someday I’ll grow to like True Blood.  But, two episodes in, I’m struggling.

The premise, which seems to have spread through script-writers like a plague, is the vampires have largely given up their bad, bad ways, and want to live among us.  Like regular people, except sexier and more dangerous.  More like pro athletes, I suppose.

Sookie Stackhouse, played by the somewhat adorable Anna Paquin, can read people’s minds.  Most of this mind-reading seems to be picking up the bad guy-thoughts that float around her trim body.  Guys, in her world, either think about sex in a really creepy way, or are somehow too pure.  Or gay.  Naturally, since guys are too disgusting to date if you know what they’re thinking, she has given up.  Until she meets a guy whose thoughts she cannot read.  Naturally, he’s a vampire.

Now, I know a lot of guys, and I don’t think we fall into the two or three categories allowed for by this movie: creepy predator, hopeless romantic, or gay.  In fact, most of us do think about sex, and we think about affection, and romance, and videogames.  Some of us even think about the world around us.  Also, I know a lot of women.  They KNOW we think about sex.  To a woman, they know a lot more about what men think than the writers of this show.  Or at least the writers of the mind-reading parts.  And they still seem to like us.

Anyway, why do I like Anna Paquin?  I’m not sure about that part, either.  She was chilling in The Piano, but after that, nothing stands out.  Sure, she was the tragic, untouchable mutant in the X-Men, a role that seems to have prepared her for this, but Rogue wasn’t that great a character even in the good X-Men movies.  Now she seems kind of generic as the good-hearted waitress in a sea of not-so-good people.  At one point the vampire asks what kind of thing she is, because she’s not as vain, stupid, greedy as the rest of the cast.  Maybe she’s just normal?

I suppose I’ll watch a couple more episodes.  There are two characters I like, her brother, and her friend, Tara.  But I can’t see how these secondary characters can hold up the show if the leads continue to be self-absorbed in their own “unique” goodness.

Last night, someone mistakenly thought that Eliza Dushku would look convincing as a dominatrix.  She didn’t.  She looked like that mousy girl who shows up at parties and tries to get attention even though she’s actually not that smart.  So she tries dressing in ways completely out of character and is just more awkard.

But she did the right thing for most of the show, stood around a waved.  Dollhouse is going off the rails, after a very brief period of actually being good.  It’s a shame because there were actually a couple good scenes in the episode:

• Helo finding out that his lasagna-bearing neighborly girl-friend is actually a sleeped doll.  That scene was very compelling, even sad.  His character is great, because he sort of has that “beautiful mind” level of obsession, but when he turns around it turns out that even the person he trusts is part of “them.”
• Echo doing the interrogation of the staff.  Usually Eliza Dushku (spelling may vary) seems out of her depth, but she seemed to carry this segment off pretty well.  But, as some sort of compensatory effect, Sierra crossed over from cool to ludicrous.  Only Victor was still engaging.

But there were so many bad parts:

• Dominic was not that convincing as head of security, he was even less convincing as an NSA plant.  It’s not the actor’s fault, the scripts gave him wildly inconsistent motives from show to show, and the explanation for being an agent was too thin for even this kind of show.
• Echo was once again, at the end of the show, lauded as being ’special’.  Why?  Because she gave Tofu an idea?  She is seriously becoming the stupid one that everybody likes so they act like anything she does is just brilliant.  Even though everyone knows better.
• That chip.  In this universe, apparently, anybody who is technically smart can identify a piece of average-looking electronics as “super-secret NSA” stuff.  Not only that, but why do these fall off of agents and get found?  Do they flake off the skin?
• The gun shot.  Really?  He shot her, blood splatter across the window, and it turned out to be a small puncture wound?