Month: March 2007

game

Consoles, like newspaper reporters and offensive lineman, tend to merit lousy send-offs as their careers hit twilight: Nintendo gave Gamecubers a watered-down version of Wii A-lister Zelda: Legend of Twilight Princess, while the words “quality software” disappeared from the Xbox lexicon a good six months before its death rattle ceased. 

The PlayStation 2, however, gets the best—and bloodiest—farewell party ever, in the form of a ghost-skinned, flame-tattooed mass of anger and unbridled aggression: Kratos, the unforgettable star of 2005’s God of War and, now, its ass-kicking sequel. Stick a blade in any thoughts of a mythical sophomore slump: God of War II is a masterful balance of storytelling and ignite-the-screen action.

Bloody, brilliant: God of War II combines baffling puzzles and heroic myth with a bit of the ol’ horror show.

Apparently, ol’ baldy was brooding during the World Lit class where they covered the whole “the gods giveth and the gods taketh away” thing: Kratos’ deific status as Ares’ assassin lasts five of the game’s first minutes. Betrayed by Athena, he is killed, resurrected and given a chance to alter his fate by Gaia…but only if he can survive another romp through some of the most exciting spins on Greek mythology gaming has ever seen.

Boss battles, so rare in the original, are now legion: a mano-a-mano throwdown with Perseus (voiced by Harry Hamlin, in a kitschy nod to that ’80s cheesefest, Clash of the Titans);  an in-the-air tug of wings with Icarus; and an unforgettable opener with the Colossus of Rhodes that requires multiple encounters to finally vanquish. Epic? We got your epic right here, baby.

The visceral joy of whipping those flaming dual blades around like a dervish of death never gets old (although it does trump most of the game’s specialized weapons). Frankly, I didn’t think it was possible to up the violence quotient of the original game—but it’s gone beyond even 300 territory. Whether you’re shredding chimerae while soaring on a pegasus or obliterating soldiers with 100-hit combo kills, the carnage flows more freely than cheap beer at Miller’s. And that’s a good, good thing.

art

If landscape means nature through a human lens, “Landscape at the Limit” should be required viewing for anyone with a Sierra Club calendar at his desk. Instead of those pristine, perfectly framed vistas—the environmental equivalent of rose-colored glasses—this six-artist show asks what landscape looks like when it’s invisible, ignored, taken for granted or unrealized.

"Nebulous" by Tara Donovan at Second Street Gallery.

One answer, according to artist Ingrid Calame: It might look like the path a person traces through her surroundings over the course of a day, drawn in colored pencil. (After all, we are animals, and no one can argue we don’t shape our environment.) Another answer, equally attuned to the complexities of the human interaction with nature, from Matthew Picton: Landscape could be the cracks in a parking lot, writ large over a long wall of a gallery in rubber and colored beads. (The pavement is manmade, but from natural resources. And it’s weather that makes it crack.)

Dodi Wexler’s “Worship” answers the question with a list of media that’s almost a poem: “hobby grass, the bark cut out of photographs, string, paper.” Wexler’s collaged images of trees form the shape of a tree trunk (or a totem pole) and are affixed to the hobby-grass background: an agreed-upon symbol for grass that actually resembles grass far less than it does a garment.

As a way of representing landscape, this meticulous construction makes no less sense than an oil painting or an aerial photo; it’s just that we’re less accustomed to it. Tara Donovan’s excellent sculpture “Nebulous” uses the lowly medium of cellophone tape to drive this point home. She’s looped and doubled the tape on itself to form clumps, then piles, then a whole continent spread on the gallery floor, as though we were looking down from a plane on a Caribbean island. It has bays, mountain ranges, peninsulas—at least it seems to, maybe because we are so used to looking at other kinds of symbols (satellite images, topographical maps) and interpreting them as “land.”

The tape’s subtle gradations of color from clear to yellow to white, and the undulations of form, make “Nebulous” oddly alluring. In that sense it’s just like a Sierra Club meadow, but considerably more surprising.

As many irate readers of this column have pointed out, after two months on the job, we’ve had very few kind words for politicians of any stripe, and have been particularly vicious toward pols of the Republican persuasion. And so, to help even the scales, we here at Odd Dominion would like to take this opportunity to reveal a shocking secret: We love Senator John Warner. We love him because he’s spent his entire career as an elected representative pissing off the most reactionary members of both parties, and is one of the few old-school Washington insiders (37 years and counting!) who still appears to possess both a conscience and the occasional will to act on it. And, as if that wasn’t impressive enough, he also survived a trio of events that would have felled any ordinary man: WWII, the Nixon Administration and six years of marriage to Elizabeth Taylor.

Will the nastiness of the George Allen/Jim Webb free-for-all last November deter Senator John Warner from running for a sixth term?

And so it’s with decidedly mixed emotions that we’ve been tracking the recent will-he-or-won’t-he rumors claiming that former Democratic governor (and one-time presidential hopeful) Mark Warner might jump into the 2008 senate fray. The most intriguing account to date ran February 28 in The Washington Post, and quoted multiple anonymous sources as saying that Mark Warner “is being courted by national Democrats to run” and “is seriously considering the 2008 challenge.”

This would, of course, set up a replay of the two Warners’ mega-confusing 1996 senate battle, which ended with political newcomer Mark falling by five percentage points to congressional champion John.

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This time out, however, Mark Warner has a ton of experience under his belt (and a much higher profile), and so the contest would be far more evenly matched. But the real question for the former governor is this: How bad does he want it? He did, after all, bow out of the presidential race (after raising expectations, and tons of cash, with his “Forward Together” Political Action Committee) in a most curious and unsatisfying fashion. And really, will the man’s stated desire “to have a real life” jibe with the rigors of a Senate campaign?

To complicate matters even further, there’s the looming “pick me!” Democratic vice presidential sweepstakes. Declaring for the ’08 Senate race would, perforce, make Warner ineligible for the job that many believe he wants most of all.

But, in the end, the deciding factor might just be whether John Warner decides to run for a record-breaking sixth term. Although the 80-year-old incumbent is quoted defiantly in the Post article (“I welcome any contender that wants to come… I fear no one.”), a January article in the American Spectator hints that Senator Warner was spooked by the nastiness of the George Allen/Jim Webb free-for-all last November. (“It isn’t that Allen lost, it’s how he lost,” a Republican political consultant told the magazine. “Warner has to look at all that and wonder if it’s worth that kind of fight.”)

Of course, if Virginia’s old senatorial warhorse should bow out, it’s Katie bar the door! Potential Republican contenders waiting in the wings include U.S. Representative Tom Davis (who, a source told the Post, “is actively calling people and is saying on the calls that he has been told by [John] Warner to get ready”) and—God help us all—ex-Senator Allen, who (according to the Washington Times) recently hosted a private dinner to discuss whether to seek the Senate seat, should it become vacant.

The return of Senator Macaca? Sorry, John, but that clinches it—you’re a great guy, but our love of political theater trumps all. Bring on the players, we say, and let the best (or least mistake-prone) man win!
 

Dear Ace: What’s an Albemarle anyway? How did the county get its name?—Al B. Marlow

Al: If nothing else, it’s certainly a mouthful for outsiders: Ace has heard every pronunciative variation on our fair county’s name from the common “Al-Burr-Marle” to some unholy, mush-mouthed amalgamation involving albums, Arlo (Guthrie, Ace presumes) and marbles. But lest Ace’s dear readers get jealous of the easily articulated Nelson, Greene or Orange counties (not so much Fluvanna) they should know that the Albemarle name has a pretty interesting, if not terribly distinguished, history.

Government haters, listen up: The eponymous Lord Albemarle was known as ‘The Spendthrift Earl’ because he never met a shilling that he couldn’t waste.

Albemarle County is named for Willem Anne van Keppel, better known as the Second Earl of Albemarle. Laying aside Ace’s concerns about the guy’s grade school experience—getting through fifth grade with the middle name Anne must have been hell—a look at the lineage of Albemarle’s title tells us just what an “Albemarle” is. Evidently, “Albemarle” comes to English from the Latin Alba Marla, or “White Soil,” by way of Old French. It was originally a fiefdom granted in 1081 to William the Conqueror’s brother-in-law. After a few false starts in the intervening centuries, the title was revived in 1697, for Willem Anne van Keppel’s dad. But what was so great about the Second Earl that merited having such a fine county named after him?

Turns out, nothing in particular. Taylor Stoermer, Virginia history expert at UVA’s Corcoran Department of History, explains: “Albemarle gained a reputation for being ‘The Spendthrift Earl’ because he never met a shilling that he couldn’t waste. Horace Walpole wrote of him, ‘With no fortune at all, and with slight parts, he has £17,000 a year from the government, which he squanders away, though he has great debts, and four or five numerous broods of children of one sort or other!’” Stoermer continues, “He also got into trouble with the Court when it was suggested that his mistress was selling government intelligence to the French.” And if living in perpetual debt and schtupping a possible Froggie spy wasn’t enough, the guy never even set foot in Virginia. The county was only named for him because he was royal governor in 1744, when Albemarle County was carved out of Goochland.

All the same, in retrospect, the earl was quite an appropriate county father in at least one respect. French historian Jean-François Marmontel, perhaps being overly charitable here, said of the continental Albemarle, “He united what is best and most estimable in the characters of the English and French.” If that ain’t Jeffersonian to a T, Ace doesn’t know what is.