pages tagged LitEx

David Sedaris comes to the Satow room

Mon, 16 May 2011 15:16:00 -0700

Metaphorically, that is. Frank Redner presented the following sometime in March or early April. None of us was sure whether to laugh or cry, although a combination of the two was probably fitting. Directly the meeting ended I approached him and demanded he send it to me so I could publish it in the spring issue of Surgam, where indeed we have the story prominently featured (p.22). Without further adieu...

Smashed

Franklin Hepi Redner

The problem with the world is that people do not think things through. More often than not, they fail to assess even the most important dilemmas, such as “Should I turn now?”, “We don’t have any condoms; should we use a candy wrapper?”, or “Shall I dump the body here?” A wise person would consider these important decisions further, but people are hasty and stupid—qualities that, in these instances, would result respectively in a messy highway, a not-so-mysterious pregnancy, and the most awkward lap dance in the world.

But try as we may to steer our lives, sometimes we just mess up, and sometimes we crash. My brother made that abundantly clear last summer on Father’s Day. In the living room with screwdrivers and wrenches scattered about, my mom and I were assembling a wheelbarrow purchased at Wal-Mart earlier that day.

“Fucking shit,” my mother muttered as we were standing up, realizing that she and I had attached the barrow part on backwards. “Balls,” I replied. The result was actually sort of funny: at the slightest nudge, our mishap would have vomited its contents onto the ground, rendering the damn thing useless. As we gamely prepared to reassemble the wheelbarrow, the phone rang.

An unfamiliar, timid voice was on the line. “Hello,” she started. “Is this Kaske’s house?” Hearing that she mispronounced my brother’s name, I guessed she was no relation of ours. “Yes….?” I stalled, waiting for her to go on and for my mother to stop cursing our little project. “Well, I’m just calling to tell you guys that Kaske’s in jail,” she said offhandedly. I looked over at mom, who was excitedly grimacing at the scattered pieces of the wheelbarrow. “Is that Caske?”[1]

…

After hanging up the phone, she sat down with me again, resigned but not surprised. We put the wheelbarrow back together, this time with less profanity. It was pathetically modest and had a slight wobble, but it was nothing that my Dad would complain about—or really notice, given the news that would accompany it. Mom wheeled it through the dining room and into the office.

She told my dad. Just as I predicted, he put on his flak jacket from his Vietnam tour, came into the living room and barked, “Get your boots on: we’re going up there.” He acted as if a battle had broken out up north and only we could rescue my brother, awash in the sea of chaos and looting. Though not easily provoked emotionally, my dad frequently dusted off his Vietnam gear. Whatever the occasion—a tornado warning, a funeral (he brought his helmet to both of his parents’ funerals), or just shovelling snow in November—he was always eager to break out his musty fatigues. But I guess I can’t blame him for being so excitable: there are bullet holes in his vest.

But standing in the living room, with his 80’s sunglasses and his ragged daisy-dukes topped off with his bulletproof jacket, I knew he wasn’t serious. Caske lived four hours up north and Dad wasn’t properly suited up. No, we stayed there for the remainder of Father’s Day, eating dinner with few words. The wheelbarrow in the office adjacent, with a red bow haphazardly duck taped to the handle, waiting to be brought back into the dining room, went neglected that evening. The surprise was ruined and unwanted; my dad had already got enough of one in any case.

…

My brother was arrested that weekend for a DUI that happened in the early hours before Father’s Day. He was driving on the bridge from the nearby town of Superior, Wisconsin (the liquor stores close earlier in Duluth). Realizing that he was about to get off on the wrong exit—one that might have added a whole ten minutes to his drunken commute home—he swerved back to his left and hit the dividing rail head-on. The Police found his car about fifteen minutes later, totalled, smashed in. They were surprised to find a perky, if woozy and trashed, twenty-something in the front seat where they had expected a bloodied body.

The next day my parents drove up and left me and my sister at home. As my mom handed me the keys she said (almost) jokingly, “If that weirdo from next door comes knocking, just give him a quick jab in the eyes with these and lock the door.” She smiled and added, “Just make sure you don’t stab Johnny, he stops by occasionally. I wonder if you guys would even recognize each other now.” Two summers ago, Johnny was charged with possession and intent to sell marijuana grown in his mother’s greenhouse; needless to say, his mother didn’t react very well. She was the kind of woman, after all, who more than once recommended prayer over Novocain during root canals. My mom said that our neighbor couldn’t bear to look at her son when they were removing the plants from her greenhouse. I wondered if my mom felt the same way about my brother, or if all mothers felt that way about their sons eventually. They do have a strong relationship now, but I like to think that she and my brother got off on the wrong foot. While she was giving birth, my brother decided it would be hilarious if he went the opposite direction. Instead of leaping forward into the light, he moved backwards up into her ribcage, almost killing them both. That story always cracks me up.

After the levity passed, I took the keys and they were off.

I got a call later that night. It was my brother, and he sounded hung-over—still—despite the fact that it was 10:00 p.m. He said hello, and I responded as quietly as possible, making sure not to cause him any more pain: though I was tempted to, my sister was asleep on the recliner. I clamped onto the phone.

He said he was back in his apartment now, and that our mom was feeling marginally better. My parents had arrived at the dingy police station in about five hours. They had rushed over to the holding cell, where my brother was still practically passed out.

“It was so awkward,” he said. “Almost as awkward as last night when the cops strip searched me. If that would’ve happened at my apartment instead of at a police station, I’d be great now. Good thing I was so smashed, or else it would’ve been actually embarrassing.” He chuckled into the phone, and I responded in kind, although we weren’t laughing for the same reason.

“Well, all you have to do is total another car and you can get that cop’s number.” My sister stirred.

A few days later my parents returned with my brother in tow. I was hoping that they would’ve put him in the backseat, demean him a bit—but of course he got out of the front passenger seat. After an uneventful and oddly still take-out dinner, my mom and I sat in the living room, looking at the TV but not really watching it. “Well,” she sighed, “he’s learned fucking his lesson, that’s for sure.”

After she went to bed, my brother came down with some slasher-movies. We were mostly silent as we watched some desperate teen try to hide the bloody corpse he had on his hands, having “accidentally” stabbed his father to death with a screwdriver. On a normal evening we would’ve been making fun of the fake looking blood, but we were mostly quiet. Then we talked for a while about nothing in particular. After a long silence, he asked, “Is there anything to drink around here?”

[1] Pronounced, “CHASS-kay.” – Ed.

Surgam is funded in part by the Arts Initiative of Columbia University. This funding is made possible through a generous gift from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Tiger Handheld: actually entertaining—in the nineties?

Sun, 15 May 2011 19:17:00 -0700

Then again, maybe not. Here follows Andy Wallace's LitEx of sometime earlier in the semester. I assume that the Scriba's notebook is locked up at this point, so you're all going to have to be content with my assurance that Mr. Wallace delivered this deadpan gem sometime around early February. Stay tuned for more tonight and over the coming days!

Tiger Handheld’s NBA Jam: A Critical Review

NBA Jam is one of the classic Tiger Handheld games that populated my youth. I say classic not because I specifically remember this one: I don't. I say classic because I have played it before, as has anybody who has ever played any Tiger Handheld. Each of these bizarre little boxes promised a world of fun and offered only confusion. Each lured you in with images of a movie you liked, or worse, a legitimately good game, as was the case with NBA Jam.

Midway’s actual classic arcade game managed to appeal to everybody. Jocks could finally find themselves playing an arcade game, since by 1993 graphics were good enough to display actual players, and it could feel vaguely like watching a real sports event, except that this one was infinitely better because sometimes you would catch on fire and make the backboard explode. And nerds found themselves with an extremely playable sports game that also let them catch on fire and make things explode.

Given the game's success, it’s no surprise that it was one of the many games sent through Tiger’s torture maze only to emerge from the other side a shattered, LED-lit version of its former self.

When I turned the game on, I was invited to select my team. I have no idea what effect this has on the game, although I would wager a strong guess that the answer is “nothing.” This process itself seemed like an afterthought, evidenced by the fact that the only way of identifying which team I picked was a sticker slapped haphazardly on the back on the device listing the teams. For all intents and purposes, though, you play as team Left facing off against their rivals, team Right.

Up until this point, the game was about cycling through numbers. This is the last point at which anything made sense. I didn’t know it, but I was about to get into the jam. The game started with 4 men lit up against the back of the screen. They all began moving and after a little while I was able to determine that team Right had the ball. I knew I needed to thwart them, but I first needed to determine where or who my character was. Given that there were only two people on my team this seemed like an easy task; I cannot stress just how wrong this assumption was. After pressing up and down for at least ten seconds I finally determined which of my two men was under my control. The problem, though, was that they were identical, and occasionally shared one of the very few spots on the board, requiring another round of mashing the up and down keys to determine which one is flailing in sync with my button presses as opposed to the automated seizure-mind that seems to control the remaining three players.

This movement style should be familiar with anybody who has ever attempted to squeeze entertainment from a Tiger Handheld device. The graphics are comprised of pre- set LEDs, so there is a very limited amount of states that any character can appear in. In this game, my available spaces seem to be left-up, left-middle, left-down, and right-middle. I have no idea why I couldn't run toward my opponent's net on the top or bottom of the screen, but as far as I could tell, it was impossible. Running toward either net presented it's own special brand of confusion. The back of the screen is overlaid with an image of center court, except I wasn't always at center court. Sometimes I was very far from it, but this would only become apparent when either my or my opponent’s net would appear on the side of the screen. The first time this happened, I was still in the throws of determining who I was. This existential dilemma was interrupted by my net suddenly jutting into view. I knew I had to do something, so I took a quick look at the buttons available to me.

My options were "SHOOT/BLOCK," "PASS/STEAL," "TURBO," and "REBOUND." I first tried moving myself in front of the opponent and pressing BLOCK. This made my player raise his hands. I liked this because it seemed like a reasonable reaction, unlike the spasms I had grown used to. However, disappointment soon set in when I realized that I had not once seen my opponent pass. (At least, I don't think I had. I realized later that passing acts something like a teleporter, instantly making the ball appear somewhere else. This would be more obvious if there were more than maybe 10 positions that ball could be in on the screen, most of which are fairly close and could viably be arrived at with a dribble).

Getting tired of raising my arms like a yeti at my opponent I started pressing STEAL. I did this over and over as I tried to move around and stay with him. I suppose it worked because after a while I realized that I had the ball. I did not pick up on this immediately because the ball hadn't actually moved much. It had stayed in almost exactly the same space between me and my opponent, only now my hand was raised slightly instead of his. At any rate, I started running and eventually made it to their net, where I pressed the SHOOT button. I watched with anticipation as the ball went directly into the basket. This is where I encountered perhaps the largest break with reality. I am not a sports fan, and I will admit that I probably did not understand exactly how to control this game, but when the ball goes in my opponent's net, I should get a point. I am confident about this. However, the little number at the bottom of the screen remained at zero. Maybe it's not the score. Who knows?

I managed to sink two more shots, and while I may have been pleased with myself, the game was not and refused to budge from zero before barraging me with some bleeps and bloops before turning itself off when the timer ran out, presumably deciding that I had not earned the right to face the next team.

When I started, the game ominously declared my rank to be 27, which I assume is pretty bad. But I cannot imagine mustering up the courage and resolve to play this game 27 times in order to reach first place. I will stay content with my rank of 27. I can't be the best at everything I try, and this is a battle I am happy to forfeit. I have no doubt that there are kids who have attained that first place rank—kids who could tell me how passing works or what REBOUND, a button I was never able to use, actually does—but it will never be me. And I'm strangely content with that.