The 12 Games of Christmas

One of my favorite board game video reviewers, The Dice Tower, publishes a series of videos every holiday season on the 12 Games of Christmas in various categories (strategy games, gateway games, party games, and so on).  Since I recently published a list of my favorite games in my collection, I thought I would create a list of my favorite games I don’t yet own.  Calling it “the 12 games of Christmas” is a not-so subtle hint to any not-so-secret-Santas in my life.

My full wish list is available on bgg – these, and many more, are games I’d love to have in my collection.  Best places to buy are Miniature Market, Game Surplus, CoolStuffGames, Amazon, and Target.

1.  Architects of the West Kingdom

MSRP:  $50

Good buy at:  $40-50

This game has just been released, so I don’t know too much about it other than it is by Garphill Games, a company with a great reputation who has produced the popular Raiders of the North Sea.  It’s a worker placement game with multiple paths to victory.  Unlike most worker placement games, where you have only a few workers and sometimes earn more as the game goes on, in Architects you start with a ton of workers and the trick is getting them back once you use them.  This, along with the way resources scale with the number of workers you place on an action (a little like Stone Age) and the “black market”, cathedral, and card buying mechanism, all look very different and fun.  Probably #1 on my wish list.

2.  The Artemis Project

MSRP:  $55

Good buy at:  $55

This one is currently only available via Kickstarter, but I am assuming it will eventually come to retail.  Great theme (colonizing the moon of Europa) with an interesting mechanism for going on missions.  Plus, it’s a dice placement game, which is always a fun game style.

3.  Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig

MSRP:  $45

Good buy at:  $25-35

A game by my favorite game publisher, Stonemaier Games.  One thing that is very attractive about this one is that it not only goes up to 7 players, but turns are simultaneous so that 7 players should play as fast as 3 players.  My game group occasionally has 6 or 7 players, and we don’t have a lot of games that will play that many people.  The game shares some mechanisms with Castles of Mad King Ludwig, one of the better games in my collection.

4.  Concordia

MSRP:  $65

Good buy at:  $40-50

Played this game once and really enjoyed it.  The game uses cards for action selection in a way that Risk Europe does.  I like that mechanism.  Actions include moving around the map, producing goods in provinces, buying and selling goods, and purchasing additional action cards which also serve as the only source of victory points.  It’s a really smooth game and one that requires a lot of planning, which I enjoy.  The board is large, which unfortunately makes the box large (nonstandard in size) which is really the only detriment to having the game in my collection.

5.  Yedo

MSRP:  $60

Good buy at:  $45-55

This one may be out of print at the moment, but looks to be a good worker placement game with an interesting mechanism for punishing aggressive play.  The main task is to fulfill mission cards by collecting the right components, similar to Lords of Waterdeep.

6.  Euphoria:  Build a Better Dystopia

MSRP:  $55

Good buy at:  $45-55

Another one from Stonemaier games, this is a dice placement game set in a dystopian future, with the ironic mechanic that your dice roll represents your worker’s intelligence – and if it is too high, they won’t work for you.  Very busy and beautiful board.  Looks like a lot of fun, and will play up to 6 players, which would be good for our game group.

7.  Champions of Midgard

MSRP:  $60

Good buy at:  $35-45

I had wanted Raiders of the North Sea for a long time, and then I discovered this game exists.  Both games are well-illustrated worker placement games with a Viking theme.  Midgard looks a little more combative and has a well-received expansion called Valhalla.  I can’t decide if I want both Midgard and Raiders, or one or the other.  Probably can’t go wrong either way.

8.  Raiders of the North Sea

MSRP:  $40

Good buy at: $25-35

I have had my eye on this one for a long time.  I love the art style (which also is used in Architects of the West Kingdom) and I love the theme.  Raiders is a pretty straightforward worker placement game, with the interesting wrinkle that rather than have a supply of your own workers, there is a supply for everyone.  On your turn, you place a worker on the board and you remove a different worker from the board, triggering an action in each case.  There are also different colored workers which modify the power of the action.  It looks like a very smoothly playing system, simple in execution but layered in strategy – the kind of game I like best.  In writing this I think I might enjoy this one ever so slightly more than Champions of Midgard.

9.  Jaipur

MSRP:  $25

Good buy at:  $14-18

Two things my collection needs more of:  games that play in under a half an hour, and games that are specifically for 2 players.  I just bought Hanamikoji, which should fit the bill, but the other game I’ve had my eye on is Jaipur.  A nice tactical card game of gathering sets of cards that you sell in market, and an interesting race to sell first as early sales get you more points.  The app for this game is excellent and provides some cool variations that, if not in the game rules, could easily be added.  I can’t bring myself to spend $25 for a small deck of cards though, so I’m hoping to see this on discount somewhere.

10.  Tzolk’in

MSRP:  $60

Good buy at:  $35-45

Tzolk’in is a game that wows you by having a unique component: 6 interlocking wheels that dominate the game board which serve a function of tracking time.  You place a worker on the board, but you don’t get anything for it until you pick it back up.  The trick is, the longer it stays on the board, the more wheel-turns the worker will experience, and each one makes its benefit greater.  So there’s a neat decision of deciding how long you can afford to tie up your worker “aging” to a better result.  The MSRP is expensive but worth it given the components.  Still, I’ve seen it going for 2/3 the MSRP, which is a pretty great deal.

11.  Orleans

MSRP:  $60

Good buy at:  $45-50

Orleans is a big sprawling strategy game with multiple paths to victory, like almost everything else here.  The wrinkle in this one is it is a “bag builder” – you collect tiles that go into a bag, and then you will be drawing them during the game and use them to take certain actions.  This one gets great reviews, though I’ve never had the chance to try it personally.

12.  The Princes of Florence

MSRP:  $40

Good buy at:  $20-25

It was hard to pick a 12th game for this list (and leave off Alien Frontiers, Among The Stars, and Rajas of the Ganges), but I’ve seen this classic for almost half off the list price, so it might be a great game for a good price (see also: Imhotep).  The Princes of Florence has a tile-laying element where you are laying out a palace for the leading families of Florence.  I like the tetris-like spatial element involved in planning how your tiles will fit on your board.

8 best modern board games in my collection (2018)

In the past 2 years, I have become a board game fiend.  For many people, “board games” brings to mind Monopoly, Trouble, Life, and Risk, and, depending on your experiences with those games, might translate to “bored games”.

Hence I’ve put the word “modern” in the title of this blog post, even though I will feel perfectly comfortable putting a 2,000 year old game like chess on this list.  Modern is a code word in the board gaming community for “Games that are better than Monopoly, Trouble, Life, and Risk.”  Chess qualifies.

I’ve also put the word 2018 in my title because I’m hoping my collection will continue to grow, and that I will have a new list of favorites in a few months’ time.

1. Scythe (2016)
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Designer: Jamey Stegmaier

Scythe is one of the first games to enter my growing modern collection, and has remained my favorite game ever since.  It has a number of qualities that I enjoy in my board games:

• I love maps, but I much prefer fantastical maps than real-world maps.  Scythe’s map is loosely based on Europe, but you’d be hard pressed to see any landforms that resemble real Europe.  I especially love maps that use a hexagonal positioning system.
• I love variety.  Scythe gives you 5 different factions to play (7 with the Invaders from Afar expansion), each with a different starting position and each with its own special powers.  There are encounter cards, objective cards, bonus cards, and factory cards (powerful action options) that change every game.  There are 5 different action mats (7 with the expansion) that combine your powers in different ways.  And there are multiple paths to winning.
• I love evocative art.  The board itself is stunning, but the art on the encounter cards really shines.
• I love physical pieces with tactile weight.  The game offers characters with animal companions (note the bear and monkey in the pictured character pieces), mechs (unique to each faction), wooden resource tokens and wooden worker meeples, and, with The Wind Gambit expansion, airships.  The game pops 3 dimensionally.
• I love “engine building” games.  These are games in which you start out with potential, and then you build on that throughout the game, becoming stronger as you go.  Scythe does this very engagingly with “recruits” that allow you to benefit from what your opponents do, “upgrades” which makes your actions cheaper and more powerful, and in the increase in your movement options and combat powers that come with each mech you deploy during the game.

2. Terraforming Mars (2016)
Publisher: Fryx Games
Designer: Jacob Fryxelius

Terraforming Mars is a close second to Scythe and has several familiar features.  It’s got a map with a hexagonal positioning system, and although this time we have a realistic map of a real place (the designers even went so far as to specify where “oceans” can be placed on the map – places where the elevation of Mars is lower than the surrounding surface), it is not exactly a familiar place.  Like Scythe, Terraforming Mars is also an engine-building game, and one of the best I have played.

Terraforming Mars is much more card-driven than is Scythe, and thus makes it a bit more luck-influenced, and also a bit less resistant to wear and tear.  (My Terraforming Mars deck is becoming pretty grungy over the time of our dozens of plays.)

I really love the theme of the game:  players are working together to terraform the planet by placing oceans (9 ocean tiles), raising the temperature, and increasing the atmospheric oxygen (mostly through greenery tiles placed on the map).  The designer chose an amount of water, oxygen, and temperature that might legitimately lead to habitability as the end game trigger (for example, the 14% oxygen required is consistent with oxygen levels in habitable Earth cities at high elevation).

The game is highly replayable, with players choosing a corporation at the beginning that gives them different strategies to play out, and with 2 good expansions in my collection.  The spatial element of this game really adds to the game – whenever you place an ocean or greenery tile (or city or special tile) on the map, you set the course for future expansion and may pick up resources or block your opponents from gaining them.  For me, this elevates the game from what is essentially a tableau-building engine builder (you are playing cards in your own area) to something more interactive with more things to think about as you play.

3. The Castles of Burgundy (2011)
Publisher: Ravensburger
Designer: Stefan Feld

(Image source:  Play Listen)

The Castles of Burgundy is 7 years old now, which is about the age for modern board games when you can start considering them “classics”.  This is a classic and much beloved.  It famously has less table presence than many modern strategy games, with ambivalent art work and graphic design that doesn’t distinguish the playing area or the tiles particularly well.

For all its flaws, though, it is a very interesting tactical puzzle.  Players roll 2 dice on each turn.  Players then take 2 actions, each of which is constrained by the numbers on those dice.  For example, a player may take a tile from a central game board (the top board in the picture) from those in areas that match their die number.  Or they may place a tile previously claimed onto a personal board (the bottom one of the picture) if the space they wish to place on 1) matches the color of the tile, 2) the number of the die roll, and 3) is connected to a previously placed tile.  The puzzle of trying to match all of these requirements while scoring the most points possible is a lot of fun.

With 2 actions over 5 turns in each of 5 game rounds, the game can sometimes go on pretty long (our first game was over 3 hours, though we’ve played in closer to an hour since then).  But each turn goes pretty fast, and with all of the options and requirements you need to consider (in addition to taking or placing tiles, one can also “ship” goods and can use some limited abilities to alter dice rolls), there is plenty of thinking to do before your turn comes up again.  The game is not particularly strategic (you need a little long term planning to efficiently use your personal player board), but it is very tactical – there’s a lot that goes in to maximizing your 2 dice each turn.  I love that about Castles.

4. Istanbul (2014)
Publisher: AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group)
Designer: Rudiger Dorn

Istanbul has something I really enjoy in board games:  the board is modular – it can be set up in a huge number of different ways.  I first encountered this in modern board gaming with Forbidden Island, though I can remember a game I had as a kid, Survive!, also had a board with at least some variation during set up.

In Istanbul, there are 16 (20 with an expansion, or 25 with both expansions) locations that are laid out in a grid.  The locations represent different places in a market in Istanbul.  Players are seeking rubies, and the winner is the first to 5 rubies (6 with the expansions or when playing with only 2 players).  Thus, this is a “race” type game – you aren’t trying to have the most points, you are trying to be the first to claim 6 rubies.

Rubies are obtained in a variety of ways – buying them at the gem dealer with money (lira), trading for them at the Sultan’s Palace for fabrics, spices, fruit, and jewelry, earning them by making donations at one of two mosques, or as a reward for expanding your wheelbarrow from 2 to 5 capacity.  It is the wheelbarrow that lets you drag around the fabrics, spices, fruit, and jewelry, and so Istanbul is also a “pick up and deliver” game.

Since there are many ways to earn rubies, the trick of the game is to figure out the most efficient way to do so given the modular set up of the board and the goals of your opponents.  There are interesting rules about movement that make planning important: you may only move up to 2 spaces orthogonally, and to activate a location you must leave behind an assistant (or alternatively, pick up one you have left behind).  You must also avoid spaces activated by your opponents unless you are willing to pay them 2 lira.

The game is a really nice mix of strategy (overall, what is the plan for getting rubies) and tactics (what do I do on this turn given the current state of the board).  The game is mid-weight for both tactics and strategy and can play in less than an hour.

5. Terra Mystica (2012)
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Designer: Jens Drögemüller, Helge Ostertag

Terra Mystica is maybe the biggest brain-cruncher I have.  Similar in scope to Scythe, Terra Mystica lacks some of Scythe’s thematic elements that help to make sense of rules and strategy, so whenever I play Terra Mystica I always feel like I’m either forgetting something or missing something.

Played over six rounds, players take the role of a fantastical race (Chaos Magicians, Swarmlings, and Witches are pictured above) who can only place their structures on 1 of the 7 different terrain types (note that the colors of the pieces more or less match the colors of the map hexes).  An often-used action is to tranform a terrain from one type to another (for example, from a gray mountain to a green forest).  Some conversions cost a small number of resources (e.g., mountain to forest), whereas others are more expensive (e.g., desert to forest), and so the player must carefully consider the map when deciding how to expand.

Resources are very hard to come by in this game, and are mostly dependent on the structures you build.  For example, each dwelling (the house) you put on the map increases your income of “workers” on the next turn.  Likewise, each trading post you put on the map increases your income of money and magical power.  However, you can’t build a trading post without first destroying a dwelling.  The game is constantly forcing you to think through trade offs as you expand and gain more abilities.

One of the downsides of this game is that your very first move is extremely important: where you put your first two buildings.  It is hard to do this intelligently until you’ve played the game a few times.  So, like chess, experienced players have a big advantage (more so even than in other strategic games I like such as Scythe and Terraforming Mars).  This, coupled with the density of the rules and the idiosyncratic ways of scoring points makes this one tough to teach.  But also for these reasons, it’s a deep game which will keep you coming back.

6. Ex Libris (2017)
Publisher: Renegade Studios
Designer: Adam P. McIver

Ex Libris is the newest game in my collection which has made my top 10, so it will be interesting to see if this has staying power or if it is here because it is new.  It is also the highest entry on my list of a style of game called “worker placement” in which you compete with other players for the right to take certain actions by placing a “worker” (in this case, a librarian’s assistant) onto a shared game area.

The theme of the game is that you are building a library, and thus your actions pretty much revolve around obtaining books and then putting books in your library (“shelving”).  Your library is cards laid out in front of you.  To score the most points you want to make sure your books are alphabetized, you want to avoid certain kinds of books (“banned books”) and you want to obtain other kinds of books.  In the picture above, my library’s focus was “Historic Volumes” which are the yellow books in my tableau.

There is a similarity in this game and Castles of Burgundy.  In Castles, you select tiles that you later place on your estate following certain placement rules.  In Ex Libris, you select cards full of books that you shelve in your library following certain rules.  Ex Libris is less complex and its theme makes a lot of sense with the placement of the books making the game easy to teach and mostly very fluid to play.  Some of the action spaces are complicated, as are some of the powers of your “special assistants”, and the luck of the draw element is higher here than in Castles.  Like Istanbul, there is a good mix of strategy and tactics and it plays smoothly in around an hour.

7. San Juan – Second Edition (2014)
Publisher: Ravensburger
Designer: Andreas Seyfarth

(Image credit:  Amazon)

San Juan is a great little card game that has some engine building to it.  The gimmick of this one is that it is a “role selection” game, where a player indicates whether all players will “build” (buy a card from their hand and play it into their city tableau), “produce” (add goods to their production buildings like sugar mill or coffee roaster), “trade” (trade their goods for drawing cards), or make use of the “councillor” (look at cards from the draw deck and select some to keep).  A fifth role is the “prospector” in which only the player declaring the phase gets to draw and keep a card.  The other gimmick in the game is that cards are the only currency – they are “money” to build buildings and “goods” to sell.

The engine-building occurs with the powers of the buildings you put in your city.  Some, like the sugar mill, allow you to produce and sell goods; others enhance your actions depending on the phase chosen (the aqueduct increases your production abilities, the harbor increases your trading ability), and others simply give you bonus points at the end of the game.

For a shorter card-based game, San Juan feels strategic and gives you multiple legitimate paths to victory.  It is easy to teach, is easily portable, and gives a good experience for a short playing time.  I prefer it to its big brother Puerto Rico (a “classic”).

8. Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2014)
Publisher: Bezier Games
Designer: Ted Alspach

The Castles of Mad King Ludwig is an excellent tile-laying game in which you bid for the right to place certain rooms in your castle.  The castles that you end up with can be pretty satisfying even when they don’t earn you enough points to win.

Rooms score points, and then can score additional points if they are next to rooms of the right category (living rooms, activity rooms, utility rooms, and so on).  Completing rooms (that is, making sure all of the doorways lead to other rooms in your castles) will earn you one-time bonuses, such as money or points or the right to draw bonus cards (which are objectives such as placing as many circular rooms in your castle as you can).  The game is very tactical (as opposed to strategic), as the rooms that are available to buy on each turn are changing, and as a result the most efficient play is going to change turn by turn.

This constantly evolving puzzle is what makes the game fun, along with the feeling that you really are building a castle crazy enough to meet the approval of a mad king.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
These are just a few of my current favorites.  No co-ops made the list, but these get a lot of play in my house (Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, Pandemic, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug).  To my surprise, Ex Libris was the only worker placement game to make my list, though it’s one of my favorite genres (and Viticulture and Simurgh are played a lot).  Some highly rated games like 7 Wonders, Carcassonne, and Dominion get their share of play, as does the lesser-known Feld game La Isla.  The nearest miss, though, is probably Roll For The Galaxy.

Commentary on 538’s most rewatchable movie survey

Lists are great, which is why I started this blog.  The point, of course, was to share a bit about myself and my opinion through various lists that I create.  It occurs to me, though, that the same goal can be accomplished by commenting on lists made by others.

The first installment of posts of this type is today.  I recently learned of a list making the rounds – The 25 Most Rewatchable Movies from fivethirtyeight.com.  This list was compiled from a survey of 4,362 respondents who were asked to list 5 films they consider the most rewatchable.

That’s an interesting question.  The things that make a great movie might not be the same things that make a rewatchable movie.  In fact, some highly rewatchable movies might be terrible – sometimes it’s a hoot to watch a really bad movie just to make fun of it.  Personally, I find comedies more rewatchable than dramas, but other people might find comedies tiresome once they already know the joke.

It’s also an interesting question for me, because I tend to like rewatching (and rereading).  I don’t watch a lot of movies (or read a lot of books or listen to a lot of music groups), but when I find something I like, I get a lot of use out of it.  So I’m better at answering the rewatchability question than the greatest of all time question.

Anyway, here’s their list, and my commentary.

1. Star Wars

Clearly correct.  Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw, and I could imagine it being the last movie I ever see, on my death bed, looking for a little familiar comfort.  I own a VHS copy of this movie and still pop it in to the aging VCR on occasion, and when it finally fails I’ll have to pick up the DVD.  Definitely worth a once-a-year viewing.

2.  The Wizard Of Oz

Like many people, this was a family tradition for us at Thanksgiving.  I’m sad they don’t play it any more on network TV.  I do not own a copy, but I would love to see it again.

3.  The Sound Of Music

Sure.  I can’t say it’s a personal favorite of mine, but there’s nothing wrong with it, and I don’t mind watching it when it’s on TV.  Unlike some of the others on the list, I’d put this in the category of I’ll watch 20 minutes of it happily, but wouldn’t feel compelled to watch the whole thing.

4.  The Lord Of The Rings (Series)

Recently rewatched the first installment of this – we own the series on DVD.  Because these movies are 3 hours long, you need to work up a bit more motivation to rewatch these than the sub-2 hour movies on the list.  But there’s no doubt these are great movies and definitely worth owning copies of.

5.  Gone With The Wind

I think I’ve seen this movie in it’s entirety, but I’m not 100% certain.  Not really my genre, or my favorite era of historical fiction.  I get why it made the list, though.

6.  The Godfather

Pretty sure I haven’t seen this movie in its entirety, though I’ve seen long stretches of it.  I remember thinking that it was derivative, but then I realized it was actually the archetype that led to a ton of copycat movies.  Regardless, I don’t get the fascination with mob movies.  I have difficulty empathizing with criminals, and I don’t like to see organized crime glorified in film.

6 (tie).  The Princess Bride

This is another one I own on a fading VHS, and need to get in DVD format at some point.  For me, this is the perfect rewatchable type movie: light, funny, fast-paced, eminently quotable, with great performances.  To the pain.  You keep using that word.  Rodents of unusual size.  As you wish.

8.  The Shawshank Redemption

Never seen it, and feel a little bad about that.

9.  Harry Potter Series

Saw a few minutes of one of the movies on network TV one night and thought it was positively dreadful.  Corny.  Geeky in a bad way.  Trivial.  Ridiculous.

10.  It’s A Wonderful Life

And it’s a wonderful movie.  I don’t watch it every year, but I watch it many years.

11.  Forrest Gump

I don’t think I’ve ever rewatched this movie, and I’m not sure I’m itching to see it again.  I remember it being a very good movie – funny, thought-provoking, surprising.  Of the movies I’ve liked that I’ve only seen once, there are others I would rewatch first, but it’s certainly a good movie.

11 (tie).  Grease

I’m noticing a few musicals on this list – Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music, Grease.  I understand why musical performances can enhance rewatchability for some people, but it generally does nothing for me.  I was always the kid who couldn’t wait for the dumb musical performance to be over so we could get back to the plot.  As with mobsters and the civil war (see The Godfather and Gone With The Wind), I was never particularly attracted to greaser culture – or  disco – and so while this is a pretty harmless movie, I wouldn’t go out of my way to rewatch it.

13.  Dirty Dancing

Saw it, thought it was okay, wouldn’t rewatch.

14.  Pulp Fiction

This is the movie I was thinking of when writing of Forrest Gump that there were other pictures I’d seen only once that I’d sooner rewatch.  I remember not really wanting to see it, seeing it, and thinking it was great.  This goes against my usual organized crime movie antipathy, but Pulp Fiction was so surprising and the dialogue so engrossing that it made up for those other sins.

14 (tie).  Titanic

Never saw it.  I was really surprised how popular this movie was.  Usually a movie where you know the ending – the boat sinks, spoiler alert – doesn’t get so much interest.  In any event, I was never interested.

16.  The Lion King

No, just… no.  I’m not a big fan of musicals in the first place, but in the second place, it’s a kid’s movie.  Adults who watch kid’s movies… I just don’t get that.

16 (tie).  Pretty Woman

Another movie I never saw that never appealed to me.  I think the whole poor woman rescued out of poverty by dashing rich prince is the tiredest trope ever.  I’m assuming that’s what the theme was.  What makes that rewatchable?  It’s been done a thousand times.

18.  Casablanca

Yes, yes, yes.  Great performances and just fascinating characters.

19.  The Matrix

Another movie I saw once, liked, but wouldn’t feel compelled to watch again.  I would think watching it again would ruin the movie, because it would give you more time to analyze it and realize it really doesn’t make any sense.

19 (tie).  The Notebook

Finally a movie for which I can’t even comment.  My only response here is “There was a movie called The Notebook?”

21.  Star Trek

We own a few of the Star Trek movies on VHS or DVD and occasionally rewatch them.  I prefer the TV show (the original and all the spinoffs) to any of the movies.  However I absolutely detested this movie, Star Trek (2009), and can’t believe it’s on this list.  It was so bad that I never watched the two sequels, which makes those 2 movies the only thing in the history of Star Trek that I haven’t watched, to say nothing of rewatching multiple times.  The plot was shit, the whole idea of an alternate timeline is shit, the perversion of the characters was sacrilege, and the movie was just about completely unwatchable.

21 (tie).  Finding Nemo

See The Lion King.

23.  Goodfellas

See The Godfather, though I haven’t even see a few minutes of Goodfellas.

24.  Pride & Prejudice

I think I saw this?  I’m afraid all of that Victorian era British romance stuff blends together for me.  Unlike my comments about greasers and the Civil War, I do kind of find the Victorian era an interesting era of history, and so I can enjoy a period piece set in that time.  That would also make this rewatchable.

25.  Caddyshack

Of course!  Like with The Princess Bride, this fits the bill of being light, funny, fast-paced, eminently quotable, and full of great performances.  Be the ball.

25 (tie).  The Avengers

My thought was “this is either an animated movie or a British spy movie.”  Just looked it up.  It’s a superhero movie.  I feel about superhero movies the same way I feel about Harry Potter and animated movies.  Not rewatchable – unwatchable.

Coda

This was fun!  Perhaps I’ll put together a list of my own most rewatchable movies, maybe based on moview I actually do rewatch.  Coming soon, to a blog near you.

The Force Awakens Part Two: 5 Things That Went Wrong

In the first post of this series, I outlined 5 things that went right with The Force Awakens, the seventh movie in the Star Wars series.  Overall, I am a fan of the film, and although I don’t like it quite as much as the original trilogy, it is a worthy addition to the series and a good deal closer to the original trilogy than to the disappointing prequels.

When I first saw the film, I wondered if I might even rank it in the top 3 Star Wars movies.  In the end, I think it is not quite up to that level, and here I present 5 reasons why.

1.  A Sequel… And A Non Sequitur

Sequel and non sequitur have the same Latin root.  A sequel is something that follows, and a non sequitur is something that does not follow.

In my previous post on the 5 things that went right with The Force Awakens, I highlighted the Han Solo/General Leia/Kylo Ren storyline as following smoothly from the original trilogy – a rich story that unfolds naturally from the personality traits of Han and Leia that were established in the original movies.  As strongly as that storyline followed from the original trilogy, the rest of the back drop – does not.

Thirty years before The Force Awakens, the rebellion has utterly defeated the Empire.  Darth Vader is dead and redeemed and he has destroyed Emperor Palpatine.  As far as we know, these are the only Sith Lords in the galaxy – and they’re dead.  Furthermore, the Empire’s ultimate weapon – the second Death Star – was destroyed, and the Imperial Fleet routed in an unsuccessful defense.

There seem to be two likely outcomes here over the next 30 years.  Possibly the leaders of the rebellion – likely led by Leia – locate the remnants of the Senate of the Old Republic and stitch together a new coalition, probably guided by a reemergence of the Jedi Order under Luke’s guidance.  Or more likely – because this is our own history of most successful rebellions (think Mao in China or Robespierre in France or Lenin in Russia) – the galaxy plunges into a chaos of warring factions, petty dictators, and dysfunctional fledgling federations.  In this scenario Leia might be fighting against a new tide of disunity, and Luke might indeed find his pupils swayed by promises of power from the outside.

What seems unlikely – in 30 years! – is the emergence of The First Order.  What also seems unlikely is a new, powerful, strong leader should emerge in this mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke (more on him later).

File this under a missed opportunity.  What could have been – a galaxy plunged into chaos, with no certainty who is friend and who is enemy – with gangsters like the Hutts vying with the Kylo Rens of the world – unable to control their nascent powers – with remnants of the Old Empire allying with the restless of the Old Rebellion – within this backdrop is an opportunity to tell the kind of stories that Star Wars hasn’t yet had the chance to tell.  A backdrop in which right and wrong (light and dark) aren’t so obvious.

Instead, the writers of The Force Awakens played it safe, “resetting” the Star Wars universe right where we first joined it – with a powerful, evil leader (the Emperor/Supreme Leader Snoke), a militaristic martinet (Grand Moff Tarkin/General Hux), a dangerous protege (Darth Vader/Kylo Ren), and a dominant fleet of powerful vessels.  These setting out to ruthlessly destroy beneficent politicians (The Imperial Senate/Galactic Senate Of The New Republic) protected by a ragtag underdog fleet (the rebellion/the resistance) and supported by untrained wielders of the Force (Luke Skywalker/Rey).  Obviously the similarity of The Force Awakens and Star Wars is one of the chief complaints about the former; my complaint here is not that recent movie is derivative so much as it missed an opportunity to really follow from the galactic situation following Return of the Jedi.  An interesting untold story.

2.  Supreme Leader/Supreme Disappointment

Kylo Ren is a fascinating bad guy.  I like that he serves the Darth Vader role here, without being Darth Vader.  He’s dangerous, like Vader, but Vader was dangerous because he was powerful and calculating.  Ren is dangerous because he’s powerful and unpredictable.  Vader was dangerous because he was completely aware of and confident in his own capability – “When I left you, I was but the learner: now I am the master.”  Ren is dangerous because he is not completely aware of his power and he struggles with fear that his power or his resolve will fail him.

With Supreme Leader Snoke, there is no depth at all.  True, we had no depth of understanding of Emperor Palpatine until Return of the Jedi, despite glimpses in The Empire Strikes Back.  So maybe this is a premature complaint.  But there’s more to be bothered about: why does he look like that?  Is he human?  Just decrepit, like The Picture Of Dorian Gray (and for the same reason)?  And where did he come from?  We had no knowledge that any other Sith existed, yet this one, by the end of The Force Awakens, promises to finish Ren’s training, and we are led to believe he is as powerful as Palpatine was.

And the worst part of Snoke?  He’s CG.  Perhaps he might have been better not seen (the giant hologram looked a bit ridiculous).  He could have been heard and not seen, and I think these scenes would have been more effective.

Now, there may be a good explanation for his rise to power – perhaps the writers are building up a mystery to a nice, satisfying reveal in future films.  If so, it better be damn good!  I’d hate to see us have to wait for Episode 6A, 6B, and 6C – another prequel trilogy, wedged in what looks to be a very eventful 30 year period between Jedi and Force Awakens.

Image not to scale: parsecs are missing.

3.  Starkiller Base

I’ll bet if you took a poll, The Empire Strikes Back would be rated as the best of the Star Wars movies (this guy | this guy| this guy | not this guy | this guy).  I go back and forth myself – I like all 3 of the original films nearly equally, and believe each has unique strengths – but certainly I can’t disagree with anyone who puts Episode V at the top of the list.  What’s interesting about that selection is that, kind of uniquely among Star Wars films – there’s no climactic battle at the end.  It certainly stands out in those first 3 films – no Death Star.  Empire didn’t need that to be a great movie, and neither did The Force Awakens.

The problems with Starkiller Base are legion.  First, it’s a completely implausible weapon.  Yes, I realize the Death Stars are virtually implausible too, but maybe, with the Emperor driving them, a massive space station could be built around a cannon harnessing enough energy to batter a planet.  Maybe.  But Starkiller Base?  Sucking the entirety of a sun (in a few hours), not overheating (thanks to the thermal oscillator?), and then delivering the force of its power across hyperspace to bullseye a target across parsecs?  (That’s got to be a lot harder than hitting a womp rat from a T-16!)  What the what?  Is there no recoil?

Since Starkiller fired twice, was there 2 suns to use up?  Or did they fly the planet to another star to use the second one up?  How does the snow stay on the planet while it’s extracting solar energy?  What happens to all the people on the planet as the sun slowly blinks out?  If the planet is somehow not getting absurdly hot from this weapon charging, shouldn’t it be getting absurdly cold from the destroying of its sun?

All of this was made necessary – in the minds of the writers – by presuming the audience would not be satisfied without a climactic end battle.  In addition, the audience would need that battle to be against a weapon more powerful than the Death Star.  (Of course, it turned out to be much easier to lower Starkiller Base’s defenses than it was to lower the defenses of either Death Star – just threaten Captain Phasma with a blaster before throwing her in the garbage chute?)  This was the same kind of “it’s got to be bigger and badder” nonsense that Abrams used to ruin Star Trek for me.

In spite of its really bad ending, The Force Awakens still managed to have – a really good ending.  Starkiller Base was a throwaway distraction to: 1) the death of Han Solo, 2) Chewbacca’s crossbow strike on Kylo Ren, 3) Finn’s losing lightsaber battle with Ren, 4) Rey’s triumphant besting of Ren for force control of Luke’s lightsaber, and 5) Rey’s ass-kicking of Ren using said lightsaber.  Abrams’ instincts were right in exactly half of the film’s final scenes.

4.  And Now For Something Completely Different: Rathtars Loose!

Another of the great sins of the prequels was the action scene that seemed designed with future console video games in mind (rather than, you know, the ongoing plot of the movie).  A for-the-hell-of-it action scene.  The first example was the pod race.  Now, supposedly that was tied to the plot – because Jedi can’t figure any better way off of a planet than to sponsor a 9 year old in a potentially lethal pod race that the kid has never even completed, much less won.  And it’s tenuously connected to character development, because in Star Wars Kenobi told Luke that his father was “a fine pilot” (pod racing being what no one in the universe had in mind when Kenobi said this).  Attack of the Clones was even worse, giving us both the droid factory scene and the gladiator scene in succession.  Particularly the droid factory was implausible, cartoony, and pointless with regard to the plot of the movie or its character development.  I can’t remember a single action scene like that in the original trilogy, though of course the temptation of cashing in on a video game was much less then.  Still, the original trilogy managed fantastic action scenes (destroying the Death Star, fleeing Hoth, rescuing Han from Jabba’s Palace) that emerged naturally out of the needs of the plot.

For the most part, The Force Awakens gives us integral action scenes.  The whole flight of Finn from the First Order – first with Poe and later with Rey – was a great example of how to open a movie with action and that advances character and plot.  I’m less enthused about the destruction of Starkiller Base (see above), but certainly the death of Han Solo and the duel of Rey and Kylo Ren simply had to happen to tell this story – exciting and integral action.  Ditto Rey’s capture on Takodana followed by the reunion of Han and Leia.

The misstep was in the middle of the movie.  Obviously, Han and Chewbacca and Rey and Finn (and BB8 and the Millennium Falcon) must come together at some point.  And it couldn’t hurt if they bond through some kind of danger – Han has to learn to trust and respect Rey if the plot is to move forward.  But as cool as the rathtars looked, the whole thing struck me as a bit hokey (and video gamey).  Two rival gangs that Han Solo owes money to (one from Dublin, apparently, or maybe Belfast) arrive – at the same time (?) and sneak onto his ship (?) and demand their money (?).  Then some giant squid monsters escaped because Rey trips the wrong fuse (?) and only the bad guys get swallowed (?) and all the good guys make it out alive.  (Including the 70-year old Han and Finn, who is dragged through the ship in the beast’s clutches.)  Since Han is dead, you can be sure these rival gangs will now completely disappear from the Star Wars universe, having served virtually no purpose.  Maybe the rathtars will show up with their own booth at a renewed Imperial Senate?

Hey Hux: say it, don’t spray it!

5.  That Hux Guy: He Really Likes Order!

While I loved Kylo Ren, you can see from this list (point #1, #2, #3, #5) that I wasn’t really sold by the enemy of The Force Awakens.  This could all change with future revelations in the forthcoming films, but it’s just a bit hard to believe so much galactic fury could be built from the ruins of the Empire and the death of the Sith in just three decades.

In the original trilogy, Grand Moff Tarkin was always a mystery.  By all rights, Darth Vader should surely have been the leader of the military, but Tarkin was his superior (“Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash.”) and the engineer of the Death Star felt perfectly free to needle Vader (“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader.”)  In The Force Awakens, General Hux seems to have a similar status to Tarkin.  Indeed, we never saw Tarkin having a confab with the Emperor, but Hux is seen beside Kylo Ren in conference with Supreme Leader Snoke.

Hux’s older brother?

So who is this guy?  How, lacking any mastery of the force (we presume) did he rise to such power?  And why is he so darn angry?  Is he OCD on a universal scale, so that any disorder makes him angry enough to blow up several planets with each tantrum?

There actually is a place for a character like this.  In a post-Empire galaxy (see point #1 above), the ensuing chaos might indeed create a vacuum for a megalomaniac promising order.  Again, it’s happened many times in history.  But this isn’t quite the backdrop Hux finds himself in, and so his motivations are somewhat obscure.  It doesn’t help that the portrayal was not exactly subtle.  It will be interesting to see if this character has a role in future films, or if he will be another Darth Maul – a one-shot forgettable villain.

 

The Force Awakens Part One: 5 Things It Got Right

I don’t get to see many movies in the theater any more, but I wouldn’t miss a new Star Wars movie.  As a typical representative of my age group, I adore the first three movies and I was dreadfully disappointed by the prequels.

I met the announcement of the renewal of the series, post-George Lucas, with cautious optimism.  The prequels are still mystifying to me, so I was happy to see that Lucas would not be responsible for any more Star Wars movies.  But the choice of the new director – J.J Abrams – had me concerned.  He had already destroyed Star Trek for me, so much so that I refused to make the Lucas prequel mistake.  Despite my disappointment with The Phantom Menace, I dutifully saw the next two movies soon after release and even bought the DVDs.  But after the first Star Trek reboot I refused to watch its sequel, and have no interest in any future continuation of that timeline.

But the trailers and the buzz about The Force Awakens was positive.  I saw it and enjoyed it so much that I saw it a second time in the theaters, truly a rare phenomenon for me.  For Father’s Day, I got the DVD, and we recently watched it again.  My initial enthusiasm has waned just a bit.  At one point I thought it might crack my top 3 favorite Star Wars movies, but I think its permanent place will be outside of the top 3.  Still, its closer to the vintage films than to the prequels, and I’ll be there when Star Wars VIII comes out with hopes high and optimism no longer cautious.

Here, in my opinion, are 5 things that went right.  In the next post, I’ll list 5 things that went wrong.

1.  The Grime Returns

I recently re-watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, and noticed some similarities between it and the original Star Wars that I’d never noticed before.  But one visual distinction of Star Wars is that it defied the idea that, in the future, all will be clean, sleek, and sterile.  Lucas’s ships were almost all cumbersome – think of those Star Destroyers and the fascinating topography of the Death Star with its caverns and turrets and arches.  And why not?  Aerodynamic design is hardly a necessity in the vacuum of space.  His ships were delightfully clunky, and his droids were dirty, and rusted, and blew fuses.

One of the disappointments of the prequels was that Lucas jettisoned this visual style for a sleek and clean motif.  Perhaps that was intentional – to signal the distinction between the glory days of the Old Republic and the decadent days of the Empire – but for me it was just too big a change.  It didn’t seem like the same universe.  From the very beginning, The Force Awakens visually placed us back in the galaxy of the original trilogy, and clearly signaled which trilogy was being continued.

2.  Live Action, Not Cartoon

The prequels seemed to me to be cartoons or video games.  The excessive use of CG, even as main characters, was visually jarring and made it difficult for me to connect with the films.  One of the reasons for my cautious optimism was hearing rumors that Abrams was relying on human actors, physical models, costumes, make up and puppets rather than CG.  While there are certainly CG moments that detract from the visuals (particularly during the battle on Takodana when Rey is captured by Kylo Ren), overall, the use of CG is far less distracting and distancing than in the prequels.

3.  The Han Solo/General Leia/Kylo Ren Storyline

I was not prepared for how central a character Han Solo would be in this film.  I knew the three principals from the original trilogy were making appearances, but I did not realize that Han would be as central to the movie as Rey or Finn.

Originally I was a bit bummed out that Han and Leia were no longer together, and that they had a lousy punk for a son, and that Han eventually would suffer the most gruesome of all Star Wars deaths.  (No fade to invisibility for Han, like old Obi-Wan.)  But in retrospect I think this whole arc is one of the most real and interesting character stories in the entire series.  Han and Leia marry, they have a child, the child creates an enormous amount of pain, Han and Leia fall back on old patterns, Han taking care of himself (“I guess that’s what your best at, isn’t it?”) and Leia diving back into the galactic fight (“We have no time for sorrows, commander”).  The whole thing has a certain tragic plausibility to it, and grows naturally out of what we know about the two of them.

We don’t know Kylo Ren, but we can imagine.  He was certainly born into a complicated family!  At this point there’s just hints – hints that maybe the sequels will give us the kind of plausible and tragic fall into darkness that we thought we would see from Hayden Christensen in the prequels, but we couldn’t get past “I’d rather dream of Padme.  Just being around her again is intoxicating.”  (On second thought we did get a tragic fall in the prequels, just not the one we wanted.)

4.  Friendship

The first time I watched The Force Awakens, I immediately recognized something that I hadn’t before noticed missing from the prequels: friendship.  I want to see people not only fighting for a cause, but fighting for each other.  The heart of a good war movie is the brotherhood of the soldier – the loyal friends who would not leave their brothers behind, who always have one another’s back.  Early in The Force Awakens we have a blooming bromance between Finn and Poe, perhaps an intentional homage to the friendship Han and Luke built evading TIE fighters in Star Wars (“Great kid! Don’t get cocky”) and continuing through to The Empire Strikes Back (when Han defied the odds to search for Luke in the nighttime freeze of Hoth) and Return of the Jedi (when Luke rescued Han from the carbon freeze in Jabba’s Palace).

Where was this in the prequels?  In the original trilogy, Obi-Wan tells Luke what a great friend his father was, but in the prequels we learn the two can barely stand one another and constantly bicker like a dysfunctional married couple.  No one likes Jar-Jar Binks: not the people of Naboo, or his own Gungans, or the Jedi, or the audience.  The love story at the heart of the prequels lacks any chemistry at all, and the ultimate buddy duo of the entire franchise – R2D2 and C3PO – don’t really become friends in time during the prequels to make a difference.

Meanwhile there’s plenty to go around in The Force Awakens.  Poe loves his droid, BB8.  Finn and Rey become good friends, so much that even as he is leaving for the outer rim, Finn not only comes back to find her on Takodana when she is in danger, but volunteers to find her in the heart of the enemy’s stronghold against impossible odds.  (There is no romance, though, at least not overtly – as if the producers are unsure they may want to make them long-lost brother and sister at some point.  That mistake has been made before.)  Of course, the other core friendship from the original trilogy is back with a vengeance – even if Leia leaves Han, Chewbacca never will.  Before Han’s death, he gains respect and admiration for Rey, and after his death, Chewie adopts her too.  All of this unfolds without ever being sickly sweet.  It’s simply a natural consequence – when competent people work towards the same goal and help one another out of jams, they’re going to like one another.  How Lucas forgot that in The Phantom Menace I’m not quite sure.  One of the many mysteries.

5.  Wit

Another of the unwanted stylistic changes between the original trilogy and the prequels was in the approach to humor.  In the original, the comedy wasn’t forced – it was comedy that emerges from real life, from the established personalities of the main characters.  It was an annoyed Leia demanding “Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” in reference to Chewbacca.  It was Han Solo responding to Leia’s “I love you” with “I know.”  It was C3PO’s insensitivity in announcing the odds against some choice of Han or Luke, and it was R2D2’s whistling rebukes.

In the prequels, the comedic impulse was slapstick.  The two-headed live announcer at the pod race sounding like Vin Scully.  Jar Jar Binks accidentally electrocuting himself, or accidentally blowing up enemies.  Droids communicating with 1940s war lingo: “Roger, roger.”  Or it was sarcasm: the bickering of Kenobi and Skywalker.  This style of humor can be funny.  The problem is that it breaks one’s immersion in this other universe.

In The Force Awakens, the comedic impulse returned within-universe.  Laughs were a result of lines the characters might actually say, given their personalities.  Finn bargaining with BB8 so as not to break his cover as a member of the resistance.  Chewbacca bellowing at Star Killer Base, to which Han replies “You’re cold?”  To be sure, there were some dicey moments – BB8 giving the “thumbs up” with a lighter, and Finn’s “cute boyfriend?” were probably pushing it.  But still, headed back in the right direction.

And More

Overall, the key is that The Force Awakens gave us believable characters with interesting motivations that we cared about – Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo Ren most notably, along with Han, Chewie, Leia, C3PO, R2D2, and a forlorn Luke.  The look of the Star Wars universe was there, even if a bit too close at times (Jakku and Tatooine, Star Killer Base and Hoth, Maz Kanata’s castle and Jabba’s Palace).  There were plenty of homages to the first 6 movies (“I’ve got a bad feeling about this”, lightsaber duels, Luke turning into Obi-Wan, the Falcon and the Falcon’s chess set, Rey eating lunch leaning against the legs of an AT-AT, and many more.)  And that sense of mystery and wonder – how did Maz Kanata end up with Luke’s lightsaber?  What happened with Luke and Kylo?  Who are Rey’s parents and why did they abandon her?  And most of all, a focus on the story and not the action figures.

 

The 2015-16 Bowl Season

With the college football bowl season about to get underway, I decided to use my Biography By List blog to record my predictions.

Utah 33, BYU 23

Temple 38, Toledo 24

Boise State 28, Northern Illinois 23

Cincinnati 45, San Diego State 20

Miami 42, Washington State 16

Southern Miss 21, Washington 16

Indiana 22, Duke 21

Virginia Tech 27, Tulsa 21

UCLA 48, Nebraska 20

Navy 24, Pittsburgh 23

Minnesota 31, Central Michigan 14

Air Force 28, California 21

North Carolina 38, Baylor 31

LSU 35, Texas Tech 14

Memphis 20, Auburn 14

Mississippi State 26, NC State 23

Texas A&M 45, Louisville 18

Southern Cal 38, Wisconsin 10

Florida State 30, Houston 20

Tennessee 51, Northwestern 14

Michigan 26, Florida 10

Ohio State 28, Notre Dame 26

Iowa 13, Stanford 10

Oklahoma State 33, Ole Miss 30

Georgia 16, Penn State 10

Arkansas 27, Kansas State 23

TCU 30, Oregon 21

West Virginia 24, Arizona State 21

Clemson 31, Oklahoma 22

Alabama 41, Michigan State 13

Clemson 30, Alabama 23

11 Reasons Why I Hate Soccer

A few weeks ago, I got back to my car and found that a magnetic Orlando City bumper sticker had been attached to my car.  Orlando City is one of the newest MLS soccer teams, and I have to admit it’s been pretty impressive how quickly the Lions have garnered an enthusiastic fan base.  These bumper stickers are everywhere – partly because they are giving thousands and thousands away for free, but mostly because there’s genuine soccer enthusiasm here in Orlando and the city lacks any pro sports competition (except the occasionally good but usually miserable NBA franchise, the Orlando Magic).

Needless to say, I’m not a fan.  I got rid of the freebie immediately.  I admire what the Lions have done from a business perspective, and I can happily watch World Cup or Olympic soccer (in small doses), but I am, by and large, the typical American sports snob who doesn’t get what all the fuss is about.  In fact, I so much fit the stereotype, that you may not need to read any further.  If you care to, here’s my reasons.

1.  Friendlies

When I was a wee lad, we would sometimes go to Friendly’s to celebrate a birthday.  It’s been years, so I barely remember, but I seem to recall a wild scene of ice cream and sparklers and candles and balloons.  In soccer, “friendlies” are apparently matches arranged between two teams that have no implications in terms of standings or seedings or tournament placement.  When American soccer teams do this, they also call these matches friendlies, despite the fact that we have a perfectly good American English word for the concept called scrimmages.  Scrimmage has the following alternate definition:  “a confused struggle or fight” with the following synonyms offered:  “fight, tussle, brawl, struggle, fracas, free-for-all”.  Now, what sane sports fan favors the word “friendlies” over the word “scrimmage”?  Friendlies calls to mind every stereotype of soccer as a non-competitive European sport made for children to play.  (I don’t question either the athleticism or the danger of soccer played at a high level; I’m complaining about a word.)  Scrimmage says:  “This may not count in the standings, but prepare to get your ass kicked anyway.”  If you really want to use a unique word to emphasize soccer’s uniqueness, try “Fracases” or “Tussles”.  Please.

2.  Loaning Players

What’s the deal with this loaning of players?  Orlando City currently has some of their players on loan to national teams, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their players – or people I assumed were their players – are on loan from somewhere else.  In American sports we have unions, damn it, and we have free agency.  Hell, we even once had a greatest-baseketball-player-of-all-time decide he was going to play baseball for a while, on a lark.  In soccer, apparently, they dabble in the flesh trade, where players get passed around like so many baskets at a dim sum restaurant.  Someone from the UN should really look into this whole thing.  Even if there’s nothing sinister going on here, the fact that an American team can loan its players out just underscores how low on the totem pole the American league ranks in the first place.  We’re like the pathetic kids at the play ground who can get the big kids to play with us until all of his friends show up.

3.  Real This And City That

Speaking of pathetic, do we really have to adopt European-style team names for our American soccer teams?  Let’s see how many times I have to throw up while scanning the MLS standings in my local paper:  DC United (hurl), New England Revolution, Orlando City Lions (hurl), Toronto FC (hurl, though I had to verify FC stands for Football Club first to be certain), Montreal Impact (no hurl because there’s no soccerism here, but Impact is about as lame as they come), Columbus Crew (no hurl but same comment), New York Red Bulls (gonna have to call “hurl” here for using a lame energy drink product in the name of their team), New York City FC (hurl), Philadelphia Union (no hurl, but any league worth its salt would not permit a Union and a United in the same conference), Chicago Fire.  That’s a pretty high hurl to no hurl ratio, and that’s just the Eastern Conference.  The Pandering Factor is even higher in the Western Conference, with several FCs, something called the Sporting KC (no idea, but definitely sounds soccerish), and the abysmally named Real Salt Lake.

4.  Juuuust A Bit Outside!

There’s an iconic scene in the baseball movie Major League in which Bob Uecker’s character – an announcer for the Cleveland Indians – is calling the first pitch offered by Charlie Sheen’s “Wild Thing” rookie pitcher.  Sheen misses the plate by about 4 feet, and Uecker sarcastically deadpans, “Just a bit outside”.  The scene is recreated every 12 minutes or so in world-class soccer matches.  After several minutes where nothing interesting happens, the ball will inexplicably find its way to the center of the field and onto the foot of a player who scored a goal as recently as last year.  The announcer’s voice raises in pitch and he begins shouting excitedly.  The player launches into the ball full force, sending it oh so close – just 30 or 35 feet above the crossbar.  (Soccer near misses are a lot like airplane near misses – it’s truly noteworthy if two planes come within 100 feet of one another; if a soccer ball comes within 30 feet of the crossbar or the post, the announcer nearly has a heart attack.)  Understand, these are world-class athletes aiming at a net that is 24 feet wide and 8 feet high!  That’s 192 square feet, larger than my office.  You could fit an entire NHL team in the goal opening.  And most of these misses wouldn’t be goals if you had 2 regulation nets side by side.

5.  Estrela Passes It To Kaka, Back To Estrela, Back To Kaka, Back To Estrela

There’s a hilarious scene in an episode of The Simpsons when Springfield becomes a World Cup host city.  World Cup fever has truly gripped the town and the stadium is full of passionate screaming fans.  One team takes possession, and over the next 60 seconds or so, proceeds to pass it back and forth between three players with no attempt to advance it down the field.  Over the course of this display (which the American announcer finds dreadfully dull and the South American announcer finds rapturously enthralling), the Springfield crowd descends from excitement to silence.  Although Ned Flanders announces “There’s plenty of exits for everybody!” a riot ensues.  Funny is funny because there’s at least a kernel of truth in the satire.  Soccer is played on a huge field with 11 people on a side, and the ability of one team to position the ball in the center of the pitch deep in the opponent’s territory is just about nil.  (<–note the proper use of the word “nil” here; more on this later.)  In fact, about 85% of a soccer match can be summed up thusly:  “Hey… I know!… Let’s try the other side of the field!… Oh well, they’ve got guys over there too… Hey… I know!… Let’s try the other side of the field!”  Lather, rinse, repeat.

6.  Offsides

Soccer has an offsides rule:  if a player advances past the ball and the opposing team’s defense, he is offside, play is stopped, and the opposing team is awarded the ball.  In the image, the player labeled B is offsides because he has gotten farther than the player labeled 1, who is on the defending team, and player B isn’t in possession of the ball.  Put more cynically, we might say that player B has committed the crime of running faster than his opponents.  Why are there 3 offensive players in this image and only 2 defenders?  Perhaps the defending team gambled and got caught upfield, perhaps the offense executed some precise downfield passing, perhaps the coach of the offensive team designed a clever play that resulted in player B running free.  In soccer, these strategic or athletic achievements are punished by your team losing possession.  It’s almost as though the soccer rulers decided, yes, the defensive team has 11 players, one of which is a goalie with the power to pick up the ball with his hands, and yes, many games go 90 minutes without a single goal, but we can’t very well let somebody on a soccer field have a decent chance of scoring, can we?  Soccer offsides is just about the lamest rule in sports – it protects the defensive team from bad play, bad decisions, and bad strategy.

7.  One-Nil

Low-scoring games can be exciting, so long as you are watching excellent play.  Low-scoring basketball games, and often football games, are due to bad execution, but I’ve seen some amazing 1-0 hockey games and there’s nothing like a pitcher’s duel during the major league baseball playoffs.  Soccer matches, on the other hand, are rarely exciting, even if they may be well-played to end with a low score.  When a “chance” is a shot that’s “just a bit outside”, that’s not my idea of excitement.  But that’s not what my complaint is here.  My complaint here is just one of terminology – the same as my complaint with friendlies.  If a Brit or an Aussie tells me a match finished one-nil, that’s fine by me, but American sportscasters – the same ones who’ve just reported on the “seven to nothing” baseball shutout – go out of their way to use the word “nil” when there’s a soccer match under discussion.  We’ve got a perfectly good word for a sports contest in which one team has 0 – I bet you just used that word in your head when you read the digit 0 on the screen.  Yep.  Zero.  Or if you like, nothing.  Good god, please use goose-egg before nil for heaven’s sake.  You don’t have to sound like a Euro wanna-be every second, with your friendlies and your Reals and your FCs and your nils.

8.  And Now For Something Completely Different

It didn’t take too much googling to find an article pontificating about why more than 40% of Premier League goals have come off of set plays – dead ball plays like free kicks and corner kicks.  In other words, most of a soccer match is during running time with the ball constantly in motion, but occasionally a foul is called leading to a free kick, or the defense sends the ball out of bounds over the back line leading to a corner kick.  Then of course there are the rare penalties called deep inside the offensive zone resulting in a penalty kick.  These can also occur during shootouts at the end of tied games (though this occurs only, I believe, during knockout rounds of tournaments, not regular season matches or during tournament group play).  So why are a great many goals scored in these situations?  I’ll tell you why – because it’s nearly impossible to score otherwise.  This means that most games are decided on the basis of skills that aren’t used during the normal course of play.  Worse, games decided on the basis of penalty kicks or free kicks may be controversial since they require the judgment call of the referee.  When a significant portion of the scoring occurs outside the normal flow of the game, it’s a problem.

9.  Kissing Your Sister

The Navy football coach (no, not futbal coach) Eddie Erdelatz is credited with coining the phrase, “A tie is like kissing your sister.”  One of the reasons soccer is weird is that soccer fans find ties unnaturally satisfying.  I mean, would you hang out with someone who gained unnatural satisfaction from kissing his sister?  Of course not.  But in soccer, a tie is often a great badge of pride.  When an underdog ties a major power in some World Cup group play match, or when our own Orlando City earns a tie with a late goal, well, we’re supposed to be pretty excited about that.  Ties are soccer’s bread and butter, the great ambition of too many teams in too many contests.

10.  Would It Kill You To Have A Clock?!

I actually don’t hate soccer.  It has some interesting rules and some unique characteristics.  Unlike basketball or football, you can step out of bounds and still play the ball so long as the ball isn’t over the line.  That’s kind of cool.  It’s also the only major team sport that uses running time – that’s kind of cool too, though it does allow for an awful lot of stalling when one team has an insurmountable lead (like you know, 1-0).  But soccer manages to mess this up with some peculiarities.  Why on earth does the time count up rather than count down?  Why, when someone scores, is it reported in vague fashion?  (“Kaka scored in the 38th minute.”)  And why, why do the referees mysteriously add minutes to the clock when someone is injured?  Would it kill you to have a clock?  Would it kill you to have a clock that counts down to zero?  One that the referees can stop during injuries?  So everyone knows, like, when the game is going to end?  We put a man on the moon 46 years ago.  We have time pieces accurate to billionths of a second.  And still, in 2015, we have people scoring goals in the 92nd minute of a 90 minute game.  (Hurl.)

11.  Games That Don’t Matter

I’ll watch the World Cup.  But I won’t watch Group Play, which is just utter nonsense.  Wake me when we get to the knockout rounds.  To clarify, the World Cup is currently contested by 32 countries.  These teams are selected by results in qualification tournaments, but are then slotted into 8 Groups of 4 teams each.  Every Cup I’ve paid attention to, the revelation of the Group is then followed by unending bitching an moaning about the unevenness of quality across the groups, with hyperbolic names such as the “group of death”.  Understand, all you have to do to advance is be in the top 2 of a 4 team Group!  The unevenness of quality is a consequence of the groupings being only partially determined by strength; geographical diversity within the groups is another desideratum.  The Group Play round has one laudable consequence: it ensures that every team plays at least 3 games before going home.  But this advantage is offset by all of the disadvantages.  Teams can easily advance without winning a game, because you get points for ties.  Ties in the standings are broken by goal differential, so two teams with the same record can have different fates due to the number of goals scored and allowed.  This unfairness is exacerbated by the fact that the third of 3 games might be meaningless for one member of the Group.  A team can be numerically eliminated after 2 games, or can be already assured of advancing.  It often happens in one or more Groups that the two teams fighting for the second slot in a Group are playing opponents with no interest in the outcome!  Or worse, one team is playing another team deeply invested in the result, while their competition is playing a team resting their stars or phoning in the match.  This problem is further compounded by the lack of overtime or shootouts during Group Play, meaning that the ties pile up and goal differential will rule the day.  It’s just not very sporting – which is not something you want said of what is supposedly the biggest sporting event in the world.

Coda

All that without mentioning the graft.  My god, the graft.

Or the vuvuzela.  Or the non-stop singing from the crowd.  Or the riots.

I could do another 11 pretty easily but I’ll stop now.  Injury time has expired and there’s no overtime.

11 Reasons Why I Love Hockey

I grew up playing hockey in Minnesota but we moved to Florida when I was 12.  In retrospect that was probably fortunate; at 13, they start letting you check, and I tended to weigh about 50% what other boys my age weighed.  Not sure how many broken ribs and teeth I was spared by the timely move, but the over/under would be about 4.

Anyway, another thrilling Stanley Cup playoffs has come and gone, reminding me again of all the reasons why hockey remains my favorite sport.

1.  Changing On The Fly

Hockey’s greatest innovation is changing on the fly.  No other major sport has anything like it.  In most sports, substituting players is either very rare (e.g., soccer) or must await a whistle (and in the case of basketball, is accompanied by a noisy, jarring horn).  Most sports have a clear distinction between starters, subs, and bench warmers.  In hockey, every guy on the bench (or nearly every one) might see ice time every two minutes or so.  If a basketball player needs a breather, he can call time out or commit a foul, dragging the game to a temporary stop.  If a soccer player needs a breather, he can stand there because, you know, it’s soccer, and there’s like a thousand people on the pitch at once.  Hockey players don’t need breathers – they can go all out for 40 seconds, then hop over the boards to be replaced by teammate who can go all out for 40 seconds.  Hockey is like tag team wrestling (in more ways than one) writ large.

2.  Six Minutes Can Be Six Minutes

The wife and I have a little joke we repeat when I’m watching sports and she’s getting restless to do something else.  She’ll say, “How much time is left?”  And I’ll say something like “Six minutes.”  And she’ll ask, “So what is that, like half and hour?”  And if it’s football or basketball, that’s a pretty good guess.  She asked me that during Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, and I said, “No, it might actually mean 6 minutes.”  Because of changing on the fly, hockey sometimes goes 4, 6, 8 minutes of game time without pause – and often the action during that time is fast and furious.  Imagine an NBA game going that long without a whistle or a time out?  Heck, I think the NBA has authorized the television people to run down and stop the game if we go more than 5 minutes without 6 or 8 commercials.  Soccer is the only game with a similar run of action – with running time, six minutes really is six minutes – but I’ll take 6 minutes of hockey over the best six minutes of a soccer match condensed into a highlight reel any day.

3.  No One Sucks

Hockey is remarkable in that there are so few bad players, especially in today’s game.  Look at a baseball team – there’s a few superstars, a handful of everyday players with glaring weaknesses, a bunch of guys who only play against lefties, and scrubs you never see.  Look at basketball – you can have your one or two stars exhausted and dizzy after playing 90% of the game rather than risk getting the 7th or 8th best player on your team in the game for more than a minute.  In hockey, there are a handful of stars, but everyone can skate, everyone can shoot, everyone can stickhandle, everyone can move the puck around.  It’s something of a badge of honor to be on your team’s checking line or hustle line – hockey oxymorons that simultaneously mean “weakest players” and “most reliable players”.

4.  Powerplays

The penalty in basketball for doing something wrong (a foul) is the other team gets one or two free throws.  This is such a lousy penalty that many teams foul on purpose at certain points of the game because it is to their advantage to do so (it stops the clock and may not result in any points by the opposition).  Football penalties can often be devastating, but it is also not unusual for the most-penalized teams to be the best teams in their college conference or NFL division.  In hockey, a penalty results in being without one player for two minutes in duration.  This creates a 5 skater on 4 skater situation, which is exciting, deprives the penalized team much prospect of scoring for the duration, and results in an opposition goal about 1 in 5 times.  Hockey is exciting enough 5-on-5, but the action really can step up during man-down situations.

5.  Pulling The Goalie

Another situation in hockey where the action amps up is when a team decides to pull the goalie.  Normally a team skates with 5 skaters and 1 goal-tender, but a team can choose to replace its goal-tender with a 6th skater.  This creates something of a “powerplay” type situation, but with much greater risk – the net is undefended.  The tactic is successful enough that you see it routinely in one-goal games, particularly when the stakes are high (playoffs).  There are similar tactics in other sports – going to a full-court press in basketball, running a “two minute offense” in football, or pressing your defenders into the offensive end in soccer.  But the parameters of hockey make pulling the goalie by far the most exciting of these – the 6 to 5 ratio, the 200 foot rink, the size of the empty net – the odds of a goal by the gambling team, or an empty net goal by the defending team, or a stand off are perfectly balanced (not equally likely, but nicely balanced to make the situation riveting).

6.  The Waffle Board

Speaking of goalies, how cool are they?  They look like giant crabs – with one huge mitt on one hand, and one truly unique piece of sporting equipment on the other – a hockey glove attached to a large, rectangular blocking pad that used to be called a “waffle board” because of its original pock-marked appearance.  Then there’s the oversize stick, held backhand rather than forehand.  Then there’s the goalie mask, which evolved from paragon-of-horror-movie Jason plain white to elaborately painted homages to the team logo or the home city.  Finally, there’s the unusual athletic prowess of NHL goaltenders – often tall and physically large men who can do splits and other contortions that would be the envy of trained gymnasts.  That and impressive courage – the mental fortitude to stand in front of, rather than avoid – 100 mile an hour slapshots that you are hoping will hit your body somewhere, anywhere.

7.  Speed

Here’s the thing about ice: there’s very little friction.  Skates work because your entire body weight is focused on the thin, sharp edge of the skate blade, which applies pressure to the ice beneath.  Ice melts not only under heat, but also under pressure, so this energy transfer creates a thin layer of water which the skater then glides on with very little friction.  Imagine flooding an NBA court with soapy water and sliding around on it.  Of course, you couldn’t maintain your speed or control your direction and you’d quickly fall on your ass, but a hockey player can control that motion finely.  The result is that a hockey breakaway is faster than any drive in basketball or deep route in football.  And since momentum is mass times velocity, the hits in hockey can be harder than anything in those other sports as well.  Even more than that, though, the skate blade allows even more control of changing direction than the human foot – a talented skater can quickly move in any compass direction at will.

8.  The International Flavor

Most American sports leagues have become at least somewhat international over time – probably baseball most notably.  Other than a handful of players from Japan, though, MLB is largely a North American league.  The NBA has seen star players come from all over the globe – China, Germany, Argentina, the Congo – and is about two-thirds U.S. born players.  The NHL is about 1/4 U.S.-born, about 1/2 Canadian, and the remainder hail from many northern European countries and Russia.  To be sure, the reach of the NHL is limited by climate, but the mix of North American vs. European hockey styles makes for interesting hockey.

9.  The Handshake Line

Doc Emrick, U.S. hockey’s #1 announcer, comments every year during the Stanley Cup Final “I never get tired of the handshake.”  We see good sportsmanship in the other major sports too, so the handshake line is not unique to hockey (though it may have been the first sport to make it a ritual).  It only occurs during the playoffs, and it only occurs after a deciding game of a series, but the two teams line up at opposite ends of the ice and skate through a handshake line.  It’s particularly poignant during the last game of the Stanley Cup Final, when one team is devastated and must wait 4 or 5 minutes while the winning team celebrates their victory before the handshaking begins.  It’s also remarkable because, over the course of a 4 to 7 game series, the teams seem to grow to genuinely hate one another – they have body checked, elbowed, held, kneed, slashed, and fought with one another for several hard fought games.  It is particularly cool to see the respect that opposing forwards show the opponent’s goal tender and lead defensemen.

10.  The Hockey Interview

I don’t know how it is possible, but every hockey player has exactly the same voice.  At least all the North American ones do.  Close your eyes and listen, and you know it’s a hockey player.  Hockey interviews are a little less cliche-riddled than football or basketball interviews.  It’s usually conducted by a short, bald guy in street shoes with a tall, bearded guy looking even taller because he’s in skates.  He’s leaning over, his hand on the shoulder of the little interviewer, speaking softly and pleasantly as if he hasn’t just been blocking 100 mile an hour slapshots and getting slashed and plowed into for the past two and a half hours.  The interviewer looks like he’s ready to get back to his hotel room for a shower and a nap, the hockey player looks like he’s just finished a warm up skate and could play six or seven more periods if necessary (maybe after wiping the blood off his chin first).

11.  The Stanley Cup

Probably the only sport where the trophy is a superstar in its own right.  It enters the stadium all polished up to the strains of Also Sprach Zarathustra, carried on a red carpet by white gloved handlers.  Those who haven’t won it won’t touch it, some will barely look at it.  Once it is won, there’s a new sort of reverence – it’s one of the guys now, one of your guys.  It gets taken back to your home town, passed around among family and friends.  It’s drunk out of.  It’s filled with oats to feed your horse.  It’s been used to baptize babies.  People have served ice cream out of it.  Right after the deciding game ends, an engraver busily inscribes the names of all of the members on the winning team onto the Cup before the presentation.  It’s the oldest continuously awarded trophy in North American team sports, and at 35 pounds, it must be the heaviest.  It’s definitely the coolest.

Rush Albums Ranked

Rush is my favorite band.  They’ve released 19 studio albums since 1974, plus an EP of covers, and several live albums and anthologies.  Although I think I could identify a Rush song from any 2 second sample, their style has nonetheless changed over the course of those 40 years – how could it not?

Chronologically, they’ve progressed through a Led Zepplin bluesy rock phase, to the ambitious prog rock conceptual phase, to the breezy AOR phase, to the synth-infused 80s pop rock phase, to the stripped down songwriter’s phase, to the grunge-inspired crunchy phase, and finally to the wall of sound layered rock phase.

I’m an unusual Rush fan in that I don’t have a particular favorite among these epochs.  Possibly that’s because I became a fan in one fell swoop after their 12th album, listening to a mix tape a friend put together of his favorite songs from those first 12 albums.  In other words, by the time I was a fan, I was immediately used to the diversity of styles.  I never really experienced the disappointment some of the old school fans felt when the next album seemed like too big a departure from the previous album.  (Though that old school break could be Rush to Fly By Night, or 2112 to Farewell to Kings, or Hemispheres to Permanent Waves, or Moving Pictures to Signals, depending on who you talk to.)

So as I rank the studio albums here, from favorite to least favorite, my list will look fairly eclectic.  I think that will be a strength of this list – it doesn’t pay favorites with particular eras.  The weakness of the list though, is that I barely dislike any Rush music – there might be 10 songs from their entire output that I dislike, and another 20 or so that just don’t move me, but by and large, I like to love everything they’ve done for 40 years.  This means the difference between the album ranked third and the album ranked fifteenth is practically a coin flip.  The only ones I’m really sure of, in fact, are 1, 2, 18, and 19.

Here we go.

19.  Roll The Bones (1991)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Dreamline | Heresy

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  3 | 3 (out of 10)

Here’s what’s right about Roll The Bones: the album contains 3 of my all-time favorite Rush songs – and I mean, the very best of the best.  Dreamline was a bit of a radio hit, as Rush songs go anyway, but it was seeing them play this song in Tampa in 2007 that solidified for me its favorite status.  They ended the first set with it, and the crowd just went nuts.  The second song on the album, Bravado, is also a favorite, though I vastly prefer the version on the live album Different Stages, which transformed Bravado from a pleasant song into a killer.  The title track, Roll The Bones, has a love/hate status among Rush fans, with much of the hate directed toward the rap in the middle section of the song.  (This feeling is compounded because Rush used the video of a skeleton doing the rapping in concert, which many fans found too juvenile even for Rush, who are pretty playful during their shows.)  I could take or leave the rap section, but lyrically this song knocks it out of the park: “We go out in the world and take our chances / Fate is just the weight of circumstances / That’s the way that lady luck dances / Roll the bones.”  The song has the same sentiment as Freewill, but the authorial voice here is even less compromising.  As an atheist who believes that much of what occurs to us is random, but who is not nihilistic, I love the sentiment in the lyric “roll the bones”.  Bones are gamblers’ slang for dice, and gamblers have at least one admirable quality: they always have hope that they’ll win the game of chance.  Neil Peart is saying yes, life is random, but you can only win if you play, if you take your chances and get out there.  And so “bones” has a second meaning – people – people, get out there and take your chances.

So it hurts a bit to have to rank this album last, because it contains 3 brilliant songs that match my own philosophy of life.  Two others, Heresy and Ghost of a Chance, also resonate to my philosophy of world events (Heresy) and love (Ghost of a Chance), but the guitar sound (as on much of the album) is just too thin for my taste, and the vocal melodies not particularly compelling.  They do give us the first instrumental (chronologically speaking) since YYZ, and Rush instrumentals are never bad, but Where’s My Thing? is probably my least favorite.  Some songs have their moments (Neurotica and You Bet Your Life), but also are slightly cringe-worthy thanks to some nonsensical wordplay and (in the case of the latter) too much vocal layering.  The album has a feeling of “almost” hanging over it.  Most Rush albums do – as in “almost perfect” rather than “almost good.”

On the other hand, this would probably rank first in my list of best Rush album covers.  Visually stunning, and the imagery perfectly captures the running theme of the album, especially the title track.

18.  Presto (1989)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Presto | War Paint (maybe)

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  0 | 0 (out of 11)

Presto has a lot in common with Roll The Bones – they came out back to back, featured a new producer (Rupert Hine), represented a conscious effort by the band to reduce the use of keyboards in their sound, and had a lighter guitar sound than in the albums preceding or following.  But the albums are in one sense complete opposites, at least to me.  Whereas Roll The Bones was jarringly uneven, with 3 songs that were all-time favorites and several songs I hardly ever listen to, Presto is just the opposite – it’s uniformly solid.  There’s no dreck on it whatsoever.  But there’s also no song that would land on my desert island disk, no song I couldn’t live without.  I can tell you why I like every song – Show Don’t Tell has a wonderful bass line, Anagram for Mongo has clever wordplay, Scars features distinctive drumming, Available Light is evocative of my college European travel, and The Pass has Alex Lifeson’s trademark chord work coupled with a heavy lyrical theme.  But after all that, my summation of the album is this: “It makes great background music.”  There’s a tagline that would be hard to put to any other Rush album.  Limelight is a great song, but background music it is not.  War Paint, on the other hand – that fits.

17.  Fly By Night (1975)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Beneath, Between & Behind | Rivendell

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  0 | 1 (out of 8)

Although I don’t quite put any song from Fly By Night in the brilliant category, the contenders are much stronger than on Presto.  On any given day my favorites on the first album chronologically after Peart joined the band would be Beneath, Between & Behind, By-Tor and the Snow Dog, and In The End.  Those three songs are also wonderfully diverse – the first, a breezy hard rocker, the second, the first hint of Rush’s coming prog rock phase and a hoot to hear live, and the third, a rare Rush foray into rock ballad territory.  Then there’s the title track, which I sometimes think of as dated (it’s being used now in a stupid car commercial^TM) and sometimes think of as a classic.  The opening rocker Anthem is the first expression of Peart’s youthful fascination with Ayn Rand’s philosophy (see also:  2112 and The Trees), and it kicks some serious ass to boot.  I generally detest “road songs”, but Making Memories is about as good as it gets, and unlike the archetype of the genre (Seger’s Turn the Page), Rush makes being on the road sound pretty satisfying.

My nomination for most painful song – and it would be in the top 3 in Rush’s catalog – is Rivendell, a Lord of the Rings inspired tune.  They can be forgiven on account of youth, but overall the lyrics are saccharine and superficial (as far as I can tell), and the song is just… slow.  My guess is that they were still figuring out how to be a rock band and that the album needed a slow number.  Rush albums are quite fine without a slow number – the band is unusually aptly named.  The rocker Best I Can doesn’t quite make painful category, but it’s forgettable high school garage band stuff.

16.  Caress of Steel (1975)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Bacchus Plateau | Panacea

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  0 | 0 (out of 5)

Sales of Caress of Steel and of concert tickets during that tour were so disappointing that Rush appeared to be on its last legs.  Fortunately it was an era where record companies believed in their bands, and they gave Rush one more chance (it would be the classic 2112).  In retrospect, it’s kind of easy to see why Caress of Steel didn’t quite work, but it’s still a juicy album that will never leave my rotation.  It also happens to be a difficult one to review.  The album only has 5 songs – 3 short and 2 prog rock suites.  Of the short songs, only Bastille Day is strong – a hard-driving rocker in which all three players shine.  The other two shorter songs, I Think I’m Going Bald and Lakeside Park, feel a bit like album filler.  Solid efforts, listenable, but not approaching the heights Rush would later reach with regularity.

The concept pieces are uneven.  The Necromancer suffers a bit from the theme (another Lord of the Rings inspired story) and plodding bits of spoken word filler that strike me as a bit overwrought.  Still, it has some really fine moments.  The Fountain of Lamneth, which is one second shy of 20 minutes long and takes up the entirety of side B of the album, is a bit more accessible and seemingly more artfully constructed.  Similar to 2112, the suite alternates louder and calmer sections, but unlike 2112, doesn’t build to as satisfying a finale.  Ostensibly it tells the story of a man’s life in metaphor, and should end with the well crafted lyric “Many journeys end here, but, the secret’s told the same / Life is just a candle and a dream must give it flame” – but there’s two minutes to go.  The opus contains the album’s best moment – Bacchus Plateau – coming on the heels of its weakest moment – Panacea (a song that Lifeson cited as one of the band’s worst).  Since my CD doesn’t recognize the individual sections of The Fountain of Lamneth as separate tracks, the unevenness of the sections hurts my rating of the gestalt.

15.  Rush (1974)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Finding My Way | Take A Friend

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  2 | 0 (out of 8)

Rush and the much-later album Presto have one thing in common at least: no dreck whatsover, coupled with a kind of pleasing sameness that permeates the album that simultaneously renders it a little less than spectacular.  On the other hand, there are a couple of tracks that manage to stand out above the rest – the furious opening track, Finding My Way, and Rush’s first radio hit, Working Man.  The band that would soon get a reputation for being a cerebral, nerdy, and science-fictiony actually burst onto the scene with these lyrics that spoke right to blue collar Cleveland: “I get up at seven, yeah and I go to work at nine / I got no time for livin’, yes, I’m workin’ all the time / It seems to me I could live my life a lot better than I think I am / I guess that’s why they call me – they call me the working man.”  And, the band that would get a reputation as having the best drummer and the best bassist in rock and roll (if you believe readers’ polls from musician’s magazines year after year) opened and closed their debut album with amazing performances from Lifeson.  The solos in Working Man and the driving riff of Finding My Way are superb.

I’m also rather partial to the bluesy rock ballad Here Again.  Geddy Lee’s vocals are praised in some quarters and vilified in others, but one adjective even his fans rarely use about his voice is “soulful”.  But its a little soulful on Here Again.  On this pre-Peart album the lyrics are pretty weak, and as young as they were some of the music is a bit derivative, but otherwise there’s not much to complain about in the debut.

14.  Test for Echo (1996)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Totem | Virtuality

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  1 | 1 (out of 11)

Probably my #2 album cover right there.  Test For Echo is an end of an era type album – shortly after that, Peart’s daughter was killed in an automobile accident and his wife died of cancer a few months later.  The band then took a 6 year hiatus and seemed for awhile to be done for good.  So it’s very easy to pick a dividing line between Rush as a young band and Rush as an old band.  The division also happens to coincide with milestones in my own life.  When Test For Echo came out I was in graduate school and single; by the time Vapor Trails came out, I had a Real Job and was married with a baby daughter.  So Test For Echo was also the last Rush album that came out when I was a young man.

It is, frankly, a pretty uneven effort – sort of like Roll The Bones, but overall, not quite as uneven as that record.  There are 3 standout songs – Totem, Test For Echo, and Time and Motion.  Although one wouldn’t call Totem a hard rocker, Lifeson in particular shines on it – some really upbeat rhythm guitar work plus one of my favorite Lifeson solos.  Both Totem and Time and Motion have fine lyrical work from Peart; in the latter he employs extended metaphors, one of his best lyrical tricks (see also: Entre Nous).  A sample:  “Time and motion, wind and sun and rain / Days connect like boxcars in a train / Fill them up with precious cargo – squeeze in all that you can find.”  The title track was undoubtedly inspired by the O.J. Simpson trial, the first example of our burgeoning voyeuristic culture – “Now crime’s in syndication on TV.”  Good social commentary, and good guitar work by the boys.

There are other strong moments on the record – a nifty instrumental (Limbo) and a “relationship song” in The Color of Right (done well, ala Open Secrets or Cold Fire).  There’s also the much-detested (among Rush fans) Dog Years, which I rather like.  But there’s also the much-detested Virtuality, which is probably my least-favorite Rush song in the catalog.  The lyrics are so painful (“Net boy, net girl, send your impulse around the world”) that even some hyper playing from Geddy and Alex can’t save it.  Peart usually doesn’t miss, but for as good social commentary as Test For Echo was, Virtuality – wasn’t.  Driven, Half The World, and Carve Away The Stone are not painful but never really moved the needle much for me.  Sometimes I think Resist is a gem, and sometimes I think it just lays there – I can’t decide.  (Though it definitely has some lyrical brilliance from Peart.  “You can surrender without a prayer / But never really pray without surrender.”  That’s deep – and probably intentionally ambiguous.  Is he agreeing with the religious that one must surrender to God?  Or is he saying that praying is akin to giving up?)

The Test For Echo tour was my second-favorite concert experience of all time.  It was at that show that I fell in love with Red Barchetta, and it was also on that tour my occasion of seeing the entirety of 2112 for the first and only time of my life.  (My favorite concert was the aforementioned Tampa 2007 show.)

13.  2112 (1976)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Presentation | The Twilight Zone

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  1 | 2 (out of 11)

Let’s get this out of the way: it’s only 13th on the list, but there’s no denying that 2112 is an all-time classic without which nothing else would have been possible.  I’ve got it ranked as having 2 painful songs compared with only 1 brilliant song – but it should be acknowledged that the brilliant song is 20 minutes long with 7 sections many of which are brilliant on their own.

In some respects 2112 is a lot like Caress of Steel, but the difference is that the side-spanner on 2112 is strong throughout.  One doesn’t need a special occasion to listen to 2112 (the song) in its entirety, whereas you kind of do to listen to The Fountain of Lamneth.  The only weak moment is the suicide of the main character in Part VI: Soliloquy, but that’s more of a literary complaint than a complaint about the song itself.  The high points are of course the rocking sections – Part I: Overture, Part II: The Temples of Syrinx, Part IV: Presentation, and Part VII: Grand Finale, but the good bits are 1A to the weaker bits’ 1B.  It’s all good, from the story to the arrangement to the musicianship.

Side B has some painful moments – The Twilight Zone and Tears most notably.  It is astonishing to me that the former was released as a single, though Rush had a pretty rocky history of picking weaker songs as singles and leaving strong songs buried to obscurity.  For me, the singles here are Lessons and Something For Nothing, though the other single, A Passage To Bangkok, is a fan favorite (personally I could take it or leave it).

12.  Snakes & Arrows (2007)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Good News First | Bravest Face

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  4 | 1 (out of 13)

I was pleased when I first heard Snakes & Arrows, because it continued the thick sound of Vapor Trails which I found to be a welcome change from the stripped down guitar sound of the Presto/Roll The Bones era.  Snakes & Arrows has far fewer personal favorites for me than Vapor Trails, plus a couple of songs I really don’t like all that much – but overall there’s a lot to like in its 13 (!) tracks.

I think my pick of Good News First will probably be a rare one – my sense is that many fans dislike this track.  I like the lyrics and love the music.  I’d also put Malignant Narcissism in the brilliant category – a short, driving, and fun instrumental that has some YYZ-esque moments where each member of the trio takes turns stepping to the forefront.  Rush gives us two more instrumentals on Snakes & Arrows – Hope, a pretty Lifeson solo piece on a 12-string, and the intense The Main Monkey Business.

Armor and Sword is probably the album’s lyrical showpiece.  It reads like a poem: “Confused alarms of struggle and flight, blood is drained of color / By the flashes of artillery light / No one gets to their heaven without a fight / The battle flags are flown at the feet of a god unknown.”  The band matches the music to the lyrics really well on this one, with heavy, driving chords pacing the song with building tension, released by a screaming but understated solo from Lifeson.

Peart’s pen also shines on The Way The Wind Blows, which includes unusually straightforward political commentary: “We can only go the way the wind blows / We can only bow to the here and now or be broken down blow by blow /Now it’s come to this: Hollow speeches of mass deception / From the Middle East to the Middle West / Like crusaders in a holy alliance.”  Another wicked bit of commentary appears in Faithless, a song I don’t care much for except as poetry – “And all the preaching voices – empty vessels ring so loud / As they move among the crowd.”

There’s a lot of creativity on this record.  Lifeson plays a bouzouki solo in Workin’ Them Angels, and Peart uses an unusual lyrical constraint (a pantoum) on The Larger Bowl.  I’m not a big fan of the latter song, and Faithless and especially Bravest Face just don’t work as far as I’m concerned.  Overall, though, a pretty strong album.

11.  A Farewell To Kings (1977)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Xanadu | Madrigal

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  2 | 0 (out of 6)

Another difficult album to rank because it only has 6 tracks.  Unlike some of the other little albums (Caress of Steel has 5 songs, 2112 has 6, Hemispheres only 4), the longer songs on A Farewell To Kings are not subdivided into individual sections.  Xanadu is one 11-minute song, and Cygnus X-1 Book One: The Voyage, while it has prog rock trappings of different “movements”, isn’t officially subdivided.  Of the two longer tracks, Xanadu is a near-perfect song.  The musicianship is first-rate, creative, intricate.  The lyrics were inspired by Samuel Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, a favorite of mine before I’d heard any Rush.

The other favorite on the album is – of course – Closer To The Heart.  As with Roll The Bones’ Bravado, I much prefer the Different Stages live version of that song, but it deserves the nod either way.  Cygnus X-1 and the title track also nearly made my “brilliant” list.  In particular, I love the instrumental break of A Farewell To Kings in which Geddy Lee first takes the forefront with the bass, clearing the deck for Lifeson’s solo (see also: The Trees and Freewill).

Though nothing on A Farewell To Kings is bad, Cinderella Man (another curious choice for a single) and Madrigal are weaker Side B lead-ins to Cygnus X-1.

10.  Clockwork Angels (2012)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  The Anarchist | BU2B2

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  5 | 1 (out of 12)

Like all of the post-Test For Echo records, Clockwork Angels has a thick, guitar-heavy sound that I like.  Moreso than previous records, Clockwork Angels was also very riff-heavy.  Lifeson has been an underrated guitarist – I think – because he has often played as a rhythm guitarist to fill out the sound of a three piece band, but his skills as a riff-writer and as a soloist shouldn’t be forgotten.  Clockwork Angels is also a return to the concept album format, though the concept here is played out through distinct songs without the progesque repeating musical motifs.  I’m not completely sure what the story is, though, beyond the sense that it’s a loose blending of The Fountain of Lamneth and 2112.   Echoes of the former in that it tells the life of a single individual from setting out on his own (in Caravan) to looking back on his life all but done (in Headlong Flight and The Garden); echoes of the latter in that we are dealing in a somewhat dystopian science fictional society (here, steampunk) – the Clockwork Angels sound like more distant, less controlling priests of The Temples of Syrinx.

Musically, the album works well.  I’ve honored 5 songs in the brilliant category – Caravan, Clockwork Angels, The Anarchist, Headlong Flight, and The Garden – and I have warm feelings about BU2B and Carnies as well.  Only the minor BU2B2 and Halo Effect are songs that I don’t really enjoy; I can grow tired of The Wreckers and Seven Cities Of Gold but those songs have their moments as well.  The Anarchist works because of Geddy – the bass line is that song really grabs you, and his vocal melody is quirky but effective.  Caravan works because of all 3 of them – the song features an unusually long and intricate instrumental break, and the theme of a young person leaving home, full of excitement and fear, is one that Peart writes particularly well (see:  The Analog Kid and Middletown Dreams).

9.  Counterparts (1993)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Cut To The Chase | The Speed Of Love

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  3 | 0 (out of 11)

Counterparts was an important album in the Rush chronology.  While the previous album, Roll The Bones had 3 amazing tracks, and the one before (Presto) was solid if unspectacular, the trajectory of Rush’s sound was toward the lighter, the less-complex, the more poppy and accessible.  I don’t have anything against poppy and accessible, but it’s just not what Rush does best.  There are the figure skaters who win gold by turning in “artistic” routines, and there are the figure skaters who win silver or fall on their ass trying for the quadruple this and the triple that.  Rush is the latter.

Whether it was the switch from Rupert Hine’s production to Peter Collins’, or the zeitgeist of the Seattle grunge scene, Rush’s sound returned to heavier guitar and more complicated musical interplay with Counterparts.  My guess is that the boys were just ready to move on from the stripped down phase to try something new (Cut To The Chase lyrics sum up Rush’s restlessness well – “Can’t stop moving / Can’t stop”).  Rush announced the return to a heavier sound with the release of Stick It Out, a song I didn’t love initially but which has grown on me considerably.  My favorites from the album include the rock anthem Cut To The Chase (a track the band inexplicably ignored as a potential single and, even more unforgivably, has never played in concert), Between Sun & Moon (a song I first heard on Rockline pre-album release and fell in love with right away), and the gut-wrenching Everyday Glory.  The latter is a song I may not have resonated to when I first heard it, but now that I have daughters, the theme speaks powerfully (“A little girl hides shaking with her hands on her ears / Pushing back the tears ’til the pain disappears / Mama said some ugly words / Daddy pounds the wall / They can fight about their little girl later: right now they don’t care at all.”)  Both Everyday Glory (“No matter what they say”) and Cut To The Chase (“I’m old enough not to care too much about what you think of me / But I’m young enough to remember the future – the way things ought to be”) capture that rebellious feeling of youth determined to overcome obstacles and do better than previous generations.

Other highlights of the album are Animate, Cold Fire, and the instrumental Leave That Thing Alone.  Weaker tracks like Nobody’s Hero and The Speed Of Love aren’t that bad, though the latter harkens back to the lighter sound of previous records.

8.  Hold Your Fire (1987)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Prime Mover | Second Nature

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  6 | 0 (out of 10)

Hold Your Fire contains one of Rush’s most-maligned songs – Tai Shan.  I get why people don’t love the song – it’s a bit mellow for a Rush song – but I don’t get the Virtuality-level disdain many fans have for the song.  (Lifeson also cited it as one of his least-favorites.)  I’m fascinated by the landscape of China, and so is Peart – it was the inspiration for the song.  Slightly worse is Second Nature.  The lyrics aren’t bad, but Peart commits the sin of using the cringeworthy word “folks” (“Folks are basically descent”); I’m waiting for President Obama to cameo on this track.  The keyboard bugs me.  Then there’s Lock and Key – yet another mystifying single choice – which isn’t all bad, but not a song I’d put into a playlist.

No complaints about any of the other 7 tracks – in fact, 6 make my “brilliant” list.  The only one that misses out is the opener, Force Ten, and does so barely.  Open Secrets is a well-written relationship song exploring the common situation of two descent people fighting because they have different ways of looking at the world, and features some masterful guitar playing from Lifeson (the solo!) and bass playing from Lee.  Time Stand Still is a poignant song about nostalgia – “Summer’s going fast, nights growing colder / Children growing up old friends growing older / Freeze this moment a little bit longer / Make each sensation a little bit stronger.”  That one gets to me sometimes.  And the drum work!  Mission is a song about the artistic impulse driving us to connect but sometimes falling short.  It also features a delicious instrumental break.  Turn The Page is the kind of song that makes you wonder if Geddy Lee is man or robot – how can he sing at the same time as playing that bass line?  High Water, another sometimes-maligned song, is a poem about water and the role it’s played in the history of the world and the history of civilization.  I made that sound like a turgid term paper, but the writing is visceral – “Waves that crash on the shoreline / Torrents of tropical rain / Streaming down beyond our memory / Streaming down inside our veins.”  And again, Lifeson really shines on this one, putting his guitar through many moods from the atmospheric to the pulse-driving.

And then there’s Prime Mover.  If it’s not my favorite Rush song – my favorite song – it’s very near the top of the list.  Every musical move they make in that song is just right – dropping out of one verse into power chords from Lifeson, out of another into a graceful bass line from Lee, to the break with Peart’s quirky drum beat.  And the lyrics kill me every time – “The point of the journey is not to arrive.”  Again, Peart is being deliciously ambiguous.  Is he saying – no, it isn’t the arriving which is the point, it’s the journey itself.  Or is he saying something more direct and oxymoronic – that the point of the journey is to not arrive?  I love it.

7.  Signals (1982)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  The Analog Kid | Losing It

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  6 | 0 (out of 8)

Now we’re heading down the home stretch.  With one exception, we’ve been through all of the late-phase Rush albums, and we’ve been through all of the early-phase Rush albums.  There’s still a lot of diversity in the middle – their more mature prog rock work, their breakthrough album-oriented rock phase, and the 80s dalliance with the new wave.  Geddy’s voice hadn’t deepened completely yet, but they’d matured as players and songwriters.  The middle era isn’t without its flaws: the music at times became too complex.  With Hemispheres they wrote songs they almost couldn’t pull off because of the skill involved, and with Power Windows they were having to use too many instruments and trigger too many samples to recreate as a 3 piece live what they laid down on the albums.  But probably most Rush fans would find their favorite songs in the Hemispheres to Power Windows run of albums.

Signals followed Moving Pictures, a breakthrough album for the band.  Expectations were very high, which may account for the mixed reaction to Signals.  Some fans felt that it was continuing an unwelcome trend begun with Moving Pictures – less proggy, more radio rock – and was starting a new trend with the infusion of keyboards and even an electric violin.

The highlight of the album has to be the furious rocker The Analog Kid, which combines brilliant musicianship with Peart’s best coming of age song (see also: Caravan, Everyday Glory, The Fountain of Lamneth).  Lifeson shreds.  “When I leave I don’t know what I’m hoping to find / And when I leave I don’t know what I’m leaving behind.”  Fan-favorite Subdivisions features some amazing drum work from Peart; Digital Man and The Weapon are two other fan favorites that I rate highly.  Less-beloved, but two of my favorites, are New World Man and Countdown.  In the former, Peart writes political commentary evenhandedly and thought-provokingly (“He’s got a problem with his power / With weapons on patrol / He’s got to walk a fine line / And keep his self-control”), and in the latter, Peart recounts the launch of the first Space Shuttle mission which gives me chills.  Only Chemistry (too abstract) and Losing It (too maudlin) miss the mark for me.

6.  Power Windows (1985)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Marathon | Mystic Rhythms

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  7 | 1 (out of 8)

Very hard to pick a favorite from Power Windows, as I adore almost equally well:  Marathon, Grand Designs, Territories. and Emotion Detector.  I chose Marathon by a hair thanks to Lee’s driving bass line.  Grand Designs features crisp chord work from Lifeson, and some interesting wordplay from Peart (“Some world views are spacious, and some are merely spaced”) plus the interesting phrase “kinetic dreams”.  Territories, like New World Man and The Way The Wind Blows, features some well-done political commentary (“Better the pride that resides / In a citizen of the world / Than the pride that divides / When a colorful rag is unfurled”).  Emotion Detector is an artfully crafted song exploring the theme of lowering one’s ego defenses to get a truer understanding of oneself (“Illusions are painfully shattered, right where discovery starts / In the secret wells of emotion buried deep in our hearts / Feelings run high”).

Power Windows isn’t done.  The album opener is The Big Money, full of vintage Peart wordplay, and more notes (between bass, drum, guitar, and occasional synths) than would be enough for two or three songs.  Like Mission or Caravan, the instrumental break hits nirvana-like heights.  The side B closer is The Manhattan Project, another Rush history lesson (see also: Bastille Day) which builds slowly and rises to a chills-inducing climax (“The pilot of Enola Gay flying out of the shock wave on that August day / All the powers that be and the course of history / Would be changed for evermore”).  I used to dislike, but have learned to love, Middletown Dreams.  The synths are strong with this one, and that used to bother me, along with some less-than stellar lyrics (“And life’s not unpleasant in their little neighborhoods”).  But Lifeson’s solo and Lee’s bass are at times fantastic here, and some of the lyrical scenes Peart paints in this song have universal appeal (“The boy walks with his best friend through the fields of early May / They walk awhile in silence, one close, one far away / But he’d be climbing on that bus, just him and his guitar…”).

Never did learn to like Mystic Rhythms, however (cool video though).  The theme just doesn’t appeal, and it’s an unusual one for Peart anyway.  The song speaks of mysteries and the supernatural and so forth.  “Nature seems to spin a supernatural way” – but I’ve never felt that to be so.  I much prefer the sentiment in Roll The Bones – nothing in principle is inexplicable, and there are no mysterious forces directing our lives.  A great musical backdrop can save lyrics that don’t resonate, but here we just have – dare I say it? – elevator music.

5.  Grace Under Pressure (1984)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Kid Gloves | Red Lenses

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  6 | 0 (out of 8)

Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows are pretty similar from a quality perspective, but although I rate it as having one fewer brilliant song, I think the overall quality of Grace Under Pressure is just a little bit better.  That probably reflects my preference for the more subtle use of keyboards on Grace Under Pressure relative to Power Windows.  The gem on Grace Under Pressure is Kid Gloves, which features my all-time favorite Lifeson guitar solo.  Lifeson uses occasional chords in his solos which gives him a distinctive style.

Red Lenses and The Body Electric are a little silly, lyrically, but otherwise the album is solid.  Afterimage is a deeply personal song about the suicide of a friend of Peart’s; probably for this reason, they’ve never played that track live.  Distant Early Warning, besides being a ripping good track, was the subject of Rush’s best rock video, in which a cute little kid rides on the back of a nuclear missile Slim Pickens style (see: Dr. Strangelove – literally – see it if you haven’t).  Red Sector A is a brutal song about world war II concentration camps.  Fortunately the music for both that song and Afterimage are not matched to the gravity of the subject matter, or we’d have a pretty Goth-esque album.  The album ends with another history lesson from Peart – Between The Wheels – chronicling the era between the two world wars.  The well-read Peart throws in a couple of nice literary illusions from the same time period (“Another wasteland / Another lost generation”).  Grace Under Pressure also gives us the chronologically last installment of the Fear trilogy (until it became a tetralogy 18 years later) with The Enemy Within.  (“To you: is it movement or is it action? / Is it contact or just reaction? / And you: revolution or just resistance? / Is it living or just existence?”)

4.  Permanent Waves (1980)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  The Spirit Of Radio | Jacob’s Ladder

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  6 | 0 (out of 6)

When your least-favorite song is Jacob’s Ladder, you know you are dealing with a ridiculously good album.  I’m splitting hairs to critique Jacob’s Ladder and Different Strings, just because I don’t like them quite as much as the album’s other 4 songs.  Jacob’s Ladder is just the slightest bit indulgent, and Different Strings is short and soft.  But Different Strings is also, far and away, the best of Rush’s attempts at a slow rocker.

The next tier up features Natural Science and Entre Nous.  Natural Science is a mysterious piece, with three sections (Tide Pools, Hyperspace, and Permanent Waves) that seem to relate to one another in the most abstract fashion.  Tide Pools seems to be about the beginnings of life on earth, Hyperspace the development of technology, and Permanent Waves about the role of art in our lives.  The latter section takes a whack at the commercialization of art (see also: The Spirit Of Radio) – “Art as expression / Not as market campaigns / Will still capture our imaginations.”  Entre Nous is another relationship song done well (see also:  Cold Fire, Open Secrets, The Color Of Right), and I was always impressed with the use of extended metaphor throughout the lyric (“We are planets to each other, drifting in our orbits to a brief eclipse / Each of us a world apart”).

Top tier is of course The Spirit Of Radio and Freewill.  Freewill is another tune (ala A Farewell To Kings and The Trees) where the guitar solo is preceded by a bass solo.  In Tampa 2007 Lifeson was absolutely on fire during his solo (or was it 2010?).  This one is also a lyrical favorite for many fans – how can you not love “a host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance”?  And Lee nailing the high notes with “a cell of awareness, imperfect, and incomplete!”  Then there’s The Spirit Of Radio, the perfect rock song, from that classic opening riff to the audience participation (“Concert hall”) to the triumphant final chord.

Permanent Waves: three levels of increasing brilliance.

3.  Hemispheres (1978)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  La Villa Strangiato | Circumstances

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  4 | 0 (out of 4)

Hemispheres was Rush’s prog-phase masterpiece.  If you like that Rush, this is the album for you.  Unlike A Farewell To Kings or Caress Of Steel, both of which served up two epics, the two epics on Hemispheres are the two best tracks on the album.  La Villa Strangiato is quite possibly my favorite Rush song (the completely-different Prime Mover being the other contender).  At just under 9 minutes, it’s Rush’s longest instrumental, is subdivided into 12 movements (numbered with Roman numerals, of course), manages to be at times playful (one subsection is entitled “Monsters!”), at times melodic, at times chaotic, and, for nine and a half minutes, completely enthralling.  On display too are three virtuoso performances.  Rush were self-aware enough by this time in their career to subtitle the song “An exercise in self-indulgence”, but that’s too modest.  They may humbly have described this as a song for themselves, but I think it really was a gift to their fans.  By now they were brilliant enough to imagine this song in their heads, and by now they were gifted enough – maybe just barely – to play it.  It takes some impressive chops.

The other opus is the 18-minute long side spanner Cygnus X-1 Book Two: Hemispheres.  In Cygnus X-1 Book One: The Voyage, from A Farewell To Kings, our hero has fallen into a black hole in space.  It turns out that this event took place in the middle of events in Book Two, so that the sequel also contains a prequel.  (I have always wanted to see them play both in concert, placing Book One where it belongs in between the Book Two subsections “Armageddon (The Battle Of Heart And Mind)” and “Cygnus (The Bringer Of Balance)”.  Note how deep we are into prog territory in which each subsection of the sequel epic has its own subtitles.  We’re deep down the black hole indeed.

Cygnus X-1 Book Two may well be the song that broke Rush a little bit – Lee admitted in an interview afterwards that their music had almost become too complex for them to play.  Fortunately they would find an even bigger audience with Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures, but there’s definitely an old school fandom that sees Hemispheres as the last great Rush album.  It may be that 2112 is ever-so-slightly a better epic song, but if so, Cygnus X-1 Book Two is a very close second, and the second side of Hemispheres is vastly superior to the second side of 2112.

Besides La Villa Strangiato, the second side contains two other Rush gems – The Trees and Circumstances.  The Trees has a bit of an epic feel to it although it’s just under 5 minutes long; a witty Aesop’s fable type morality play about jealousy (and maybe some Randian economic philosophy too).  In addition to the fascinating lyrics, there’s some proggy orchestration and a delicious instrumental section in 5/4 time.  Where The Trees would have fit fine on A Farewell To Kings, Circumstances feels a bit more like a more modern Rush song, with the lyrical theme of a young man striking out on his own (Caravan or Analog Kid like) and a more straightforward song structure (at least by Rush standards).  All four songs are vintage Rush.

2.  Moving Pictures (1981)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  The Camera Eye | Limelight

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  7 | 0 (out of 7)

Possibly Rush’s most consistent album.  The difference between my love for The Camera Eye (listed as my favorite) and my love for Limelight (listed as my least favorite) is razor thin.  I’ll crank all 7 songs up on my mp3 player, and all get regular rotation on my playlists.  Truth is, there may have been a time when each of the seven songs took their place as my current favorite, which is the mark of a perfect album.  I was not the only one extremely appreciative when Rush played the entire album during the second set of the Time Machine Tour, which I got to see in Tampa in 2010.  I was especially happy, because I had never seen either The Camera Eye or Vital Signs live, and I was assuming it would never happen (my first Rush show was in 1990).

The album kicks off with Tom Sawyer, probably the band’s most recognizable song, and a concert staple.  It’s such a fun song to air drum to.  Next up is Red Barchetta, a very dangerous song to play while on the interstate.  That one is a true “story song” (see also: By-Tor And The Snow Dog and The Necromancer).  The lyrics are fascinating and well-crafted, and the music suits perfectly.  Next up is YYZ, Rush’s most-played instrumental, and every bit as self-indulgent as La Villa Strangiato.  Probably the best sequence in that song is a little chops competition between Lee and Peart, introduced by Lifeson’s rhythm guitar and followed by a melodic solo.  It’s pure joy, as evidenced by the legendary Rio performance.  Then the first side closes with a killer, the radio hit Limelight, with more classic riffing from Lifeson, more high notes from Lee (“All the world’s indeed a stage!”) and lyrics by Peart (and Shakespeare).

The second side is less a hit parade, but contains three deep cut favorites among fans.  My favorite, The Camera Eye, is a mini-epic featuring some really beautiful playing by Lifeson.  I remember taping the lyrics to that song up on my wall during a semester abroad in London; the second section of the song always brings back fond memories of that time.  (“Wide angle watcher on life’s ancient tales / Steeped in the history of London / Green and grey washes in a wispy white veil / Mist in the streets of Westminster / Wistful and weathered the pride still prevails / Alive in the streets of the city.”)  Follow that song with Witch Hunt, a creepy, eerie tune with poignant lyrics about intolerance: “They say there are strangers who threaten us / In our immigrants and infidels / They say there is strangeness too dangerous / In our theaters and bookstore shelves / That those who know what’s best for us / Must rise and save us from ourselves.”  And then the album finishes with the lyrically and musically quirky Vital Signs, with those quick rhythmic chords of Lifeson’s that I love.  Is it the only rock song with the phrase “reverse polarity” in it?  I kind of hope so.

Even by Rush’s consistently outstanding standards, this one elevated above the norm.

1.  Vapor Trails (2002)

Favorite | Least-Favorite Song:  Out Of The Cradle | The Stars Look Down

# Brilliant | # Painful Songs:  11 | 0 (out of 13)

Let’s get something out of the way right off the bat: when Vapor Trails came out, it was a sonic mess.  There were clearly audible production errors on every track, including pops and clicks which were an artifact (presumably) of recording levels being too high.  I nonetheless loved the songs, but when Rush corrected the production problems with 2013’s Vapor Trails Remixed, all was suddenly right with the world.

Vapor Trails #1 over Moving Pictures, Hemispheres, and Permanent Waves?  That’s arguable.  In my countdown, albums 2-4 on the list all had 100% brilliant songs by my tabulation, whereas Vapor Trails only scores 85%.  But Vapor Trails has two things in its favor.  First, the running time of Vapor Trails is 67 minutes, whereas it’s 39 minutes for Moving Pictures (and less for the other two).  Second, Vapor Trails is considerably more recent and more obscure.  I love Tom Sawyer and The Trees and The Spirit Of Radio, but I’ve had 25 years to play those songs to death (my fandom dates back to about 1988), to hear them on radio, and to hear them in concert.  That’s long enough to know I’ll never tire of those albums, but repetition does sap just a little bit of the luster.

Vapor Trails was neither a critical or commercial success, and the majority of Rush fans seem to dislike the album.  I’m not alone in my love for it, but I’m in the minority.  The first few listens, in fact, I hated it – I thought the band had finally released a truly terrible album.  I couldn’t find the musical hooks, I couldn’t appreciate the complexity of the playing (maybe because of the album’s production problems), and I thought the lyrics were dull and thin.  Other than How It Is and Vapor Trail, which I liked immediately, there was very little else I enjoyed.

That changed after 6 or 7 listens, and now we’re well into a decade plus of passionate love of this album.  In fact it is all those things I missed the first time around – lyrically rich, musically complex, and full of musical hooks that have kept the songs interesting over the long haul.  My favorite track is probably Out Of The Cradle, a rocker out of the mold of Cut To The Chase.  The latter’s repeated phrase “Can’t stop moving” is mirrored by the former’s “Endlessly rocking” (or by Grand Designs’ “kinetic dreams”).  Peart is saying – you got born.  Now get going!  The furious heavy guitar and pounding bass underscore the point.

A close second is probably Secret Touch, another heavy rocker full of groove and musical hooks, featuring a great vocal performance by Lee and typically introspective lyrics from Peart.  As someone who had two loves of his life brutally taken away (a daughter and a wife), but who found solace in new love, he lays the facts of the matter plain: “You can never break the chain / There is never love without pain / A gentle hand, a secret touch on the heart”.

As a lyric writer, Peart doesn’t get any more poetic than in Earthshine.  Earthshine is an astronomical phenomenon in which the dark side of the moon is faintly illuminated buy reflected glow off of the earth.  Peart takes this cosmic example and applies it to the personal – how we as human beings sometimes bask in the glow of others and shine as a result.  “My borrowed face / And my third hand grace / Only reflect your glory.”  Third-hand, because the sun illuminates the earth which illuminates the moon.  The song is also a typical example of the three of them mutually enhancing one another – the music here is rich, complex, and invigorating.

The album is full of highlights.  Freeze is a fitting sequel to the Fear trilogy (The Enemy Within, The Weapon, Witch Hunt), both lyrically and musically.  Peaceable Kingdom shows off Lee at his bass-playing best.  Ghost Rider is a heart-breaking recounting of a solo road trip Peart took in the wake of his personal tragedies, but one that, rather than being indulgent, touches universal themes and focuses more on the healing process than the grieving one – “Just an escape artist racing against the night / A wandering hermit racing toward the light.”  Vapor Trail is musically the most patient on an album full of rockers, and explores a favorite theme – the temporariness of moments (see also: Time Stand Still).

I suspect many fans will disagree vehemently with my choice of favorite album, but I do think the band hit the sweet spot here with a loud, complex, cathartic mix of music and mature lyrics over 67 solid minutes.

I could continue to gush about it, but this essay has already reached 2112-length proportions.

My favorite classic arcade games

I grew up in the golden age of the arcade.  Even when the first home game consoles began to appear – Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision – the arcade ports were never quite as great as the ones at the local pizza shop that required you to deposit 25 cents.  I don’t think any one is investing in developing these games any more; in fact, the few arcades that you might find (attached to a bowling alley or a miniature golf course) are dominated by boring gambling-style games in which strands of tickets can be turned in for lousy candy or plastic crap.

Indeed, now that you can play all you want on your phone or iPad or 3DS, the days of the arcade game are truly in the past.  And yet, in this disposable age, those old games are gaining new life of sorts in the form of in-browser emulations.  Just about any game you remember can be played, for free, at the Internet Arcade or similar sites.  Those ports are pretty good indeed (especially for games with uncomplicated controls), although nothing quite beats being able to stand up and pound a button with one hand while furiously jerking a joystick with the other.

By mentally estimating the number of quarters I inserted into various machines, I present to you my list of favorite classic arcade games.

10.  Gauntlet

Gauntlet was a bizarre dungeon crawl game which had the merit of being one of the very few video games (then or ever) in which players could team up on the same side.  What made the game such a riot is that the enemies in the dungeon vastly outnumbered the good guys, but they were relatively easy to kill as you never really ran out of axes to throw or fire balls to hurl.  Thus it was nonstop weapon firing and plunging your way, voluntarily, into ridiculously dangerous situations.  Along the way you would pick up food and potions that could “bomb” the enemy, and you were constantly seeking an exit to higher levels.  A unique feature of the game was that it was not a scrolling game – you and your friends were set in a Pac Man style maze of rooms, but only a small portion of the maze was visible on the screen at any one time (including, though, other rooms that your characters wouldn’t be able to see into, but that you could see into).  As you moved in any direction your characters stayed centered on the screen, but the maze moved underneath you.  That style of graphics became popular later, but at the time, Gauntlet was one of the few arcade games featuring such a style.  It was also a game you could keep plugging in quarters to continue your adventure, though there weren’t really a lot of mysteries to unlock so it never mattered to me whether I was beginning at the beginning or beginning in the middle.

9.  Scramble

Scramble, and related games like Super Cobra, was an early side-scrolling game in which one had to pilot a ship through a series of caverns.  Without careful piloting, it was easy to crash the ship into hills or stalactites.  One of the interesting innovations in this game was that your enemies could come at you either from the side (flying enemies) or from below (launching rockets).  Correspondingly, using different buttons, you could fire lasers straight ahead or drop bombs to hit targets below.  The bombs had somewhat realistic physics: they would launch straight ahead, turn, and fall to the ground, so it became a learning experience to determine just when to release a bomb to hit a target somewhat in front of you.  Somewhat unrealistically, but setting an example that other games would follow, you could also bomb a fuel tank below in order to refuel your own space craft.  Thus, although the game was straightforward, one had to pay attention to the changing landscape, your fuel level, enemies from below, and enemies from the side.  Typically I would die by crashing into the walls of the cavern; there were always a couple of very tricky spots in the maze that were hard for me to navigate.

8.  Crystal Castles

If Crystal Castles were an easier game, it would surely rank higher on my list.  Like Zaxxon, Crystal Castles featured a quasi-three dimensional game board.  Pac Man-like, the object was to clear levels by picking up gems which were laid out in a maze-like fashion.  Uniquely, your hero was controlled not with a joystick but with a track ball.  It was thus possible to move at enormous speeds by spinning the track ball violently.  The enemies were a crazy collection of bad guys with no apparent theme.  A swarm of bees.  Evil trees.  Ghosts.  Bizarre aliens who ate gems through the bottom of their vertical, worm-like bodies.  A nefarious skeleton.  Bowling balls with eyes.  The track ball also made the game pretty difficult, as the need to stop and turn and find narrow passages forced precise movements that might have been easy with a joystick but difficult with the ball.  A magic hat also appeared on occasion to allow you to be invulnerable.  More often than not I’d get killed trying to reach it.  I don’t think I ever got past level 2.

7.  Tetris

Tetris was another game I was reasonably good at, though it was introduced toward the end of my video game playing days.  A simple concept:  falling blocks of various shapes had to be rotated in order to fit, jigsaw-like, amongst the other shapes that had previously fallen.  Each time a horizontal row was created which had no gaps would cause the row to disappear, lowering the pile of shapes towards the bottom of the screen.  It was possible to complete up to 4 lines with one maneuver; clearing multiple lines at once was a way of earning more points.  The game ended when the pile was so high that it reached the ceiling.  As the game progressed, the shapes fell faster and faster, requiring more and more rapid decision-making.  There wasn’t much more to it than that.  Levels got somewhat more complicated as play went on, but the basic gameplay was always the same.

6.  Zaxxon

Zaxxon was too hard.  On the other hand, it had the distinct advantage of being different visually from anything else.  I’m not sure I ever got past the second boss, despite one glorious day at a bowling alley when the Zaxxon machine was giving non-stop free plays.  Indeed, part of my love for this game might have been due to that one evening.  I think I actually got tired of playing by the end.  In any event, the quasi-three dimensionality of Zaxxon was a revelation, and definitely added to the game playing experience.  One never felt like they were quite “flying” the Galaga or Xevious spacecraft, but Zaxxon made the illusion stick.  The image to the right, by the way, is the flyer that introduced the Zaxxon game to arcade owners, which I found at the Arcade Flyer Archive.  (Is the web cool or what?)  Click on the flyer to go to their page.

5.  Donkey Kong, Jr.

I’m not sure why I loved this game, but I did.  There was a console at a favorite pizza place in St. Paul, Minnesota where my dad’s softball team would gather.  They cut their pizza into little squares.  It was great.  My brother and I usually got to play a little DKJ while we were waiting for the pizza to cook.  I liked the parent game too, but I was frustrated, never really able to progress beyond the 4th level.  There was also something repetitive about Donkey Kong, but with DKJ, there was a lot more variety.  The levels required quick timing and uncovering little tricks to help you navigate through.  I was usually good enough to get to the third distinct level, but only very occasionally could I time those bouncing pogo sticks just right to make it beyond.  Always a satisfying 25 cents.

4.  Kung-Fu Master

I tended to prefer space-style games or strategy-style games to fighter games, but Kung-Fu Master was an exception.  Kung-Fu Master was a side-scrolling game in which, Donkey Kong-like, the object was to rescue a captured princess.  The background was unusually intricately decorated, and the music was catchy.  The controls were fairly brilliant: with just a Kick button, a Punch button, and a joystick, you could rapidly switch between 6 martial arts moves.  Enemies would approach you from either the front or the back, and occasionally a knifethrower would attack as well.  Knives emerged at two heights which could be avoided with a well-timed jump or by ducking.  Kung-Fu Master was maybe the only game that I routinely played in the arcades that had what would become a video game trope: the health bar.  You could survive several punches and kicks, and even a knife or two, but each insult lowered your health progressively until the level was cleared.  The amount of health remaining was added to your score, so the goal became not only to clear the level, but to clear the level with full health.  Another trope, more common but for which Kung-Fu Master was still the best example, was the boss battle to end the level.  As you approached each boss, the minions would run away, leaving you alone with the boss (ala the Darth Vader-Obi Wan duel in Star Wars).  I became good at defeating the first 2 bosses and could occasionally beat the third, but the fourth always got me.  Each level introduced some new obstacles, like falling ceramics and flying enemies which kept the game interesting and challenging.

3.  Arkanoid

I never knew for sure if this game was called Arkanoid or Arkanow, thanks to the unreadable font used on the console.  Arkanoid was the pinnacle of Breakout-style games, offering a number of different bonus bricks which you would have to catch with your paddle in order to benefit from them.  Bonuses (they’d be called power-ups these days) included extra lives, an enlarged paddle, a slowing of the ball, a splitting of the ball into 3 parts (tripling the damage you could do and delaying the loss of a life), a portal appearing to bypass the level, and a transformation of your paddle into one that could fire bullets at the bricks.  Everyone likes bonuses, of course, but the fact that you had to catch them also meant you were constantly making decisions about whether you could afford to catch the bonus brick given the simultaneous need to keep your ball in play.  Like any good Breakout-style game, Arkanoid also offered a diversity of levels, some requiring tricks to complete.  The gameplay was straightforward enough that you felt with every quarter this could be the game – though I rarely got through the first 3 levels.  Arkanoid was also one of those games you could spend a fortune on, as the game could be continued from the current level with the insertion of another coin.

2.  Qix

I once played Qix at a hotel where the arcade was in a room near the pool.  When my hands were wet, the game control area would deliver a noticeable shock to my fingers.  It is a measure of my enjoyment of this game that I would happily continue playing anyway.  (I was in my 20s at the time!)  Qix was an original, as far as I know, with truly abstract enemies (sparks and some weird chaotic cloud, I think called the Qix) and a unique goal: to paint areas of the board by surrounding those areas with your pen tool.  You could choose to move your pen rapidly or, for more points, slowly.  You could also try and trap the Qix in a corner, which forced large areas of the board to be painted at once, though turning such a trick was a rare feat.  The longer it took to clear a level the more your enemies multiplied,  The multiplying sparks clung to the edges, forcing you to leave the safety of an edge more and more frequently.  Under such pressure you occasionally twisted your pen line into a loop, which caused it to become electrified with a new spark.  I doubt I ever cleared more than 3 levels in that game.

1.  Galaga

An easy choice for number 1.  The line of games that began with the venerable Space Invaders reached its peak with Galaga.  The controls were fluid, the objective straightforward, the challenge balanced, and the replayability high.  At its core, Galaga was just a straightforward shoot-em-up, but two things kept your interest: one, every few levels was a “challenging stage” in which there was no danger of death, but the amount of bonus you received was partly a function of skill and partly a function of memorizing the flight patterns of the enemy ships.  Two, every few levels introduced some new enemy ships in the form of a craft that could split into three parts.  Galaga also enabled the risky but generally sound strategy of allowing one of your fighters to be captured and then recaptured, arming you with a double-shooter.  When I first started playing it, I avoided that strategy, but eventually I learned that was the key to success.  Galaga’s ranking is also due to the fact that this was one of the few games where I could achieve a high score.  I could get through 3 or 4 levels of Ms. Pac Man and Donkey Kong Jr., but in Galaga I could routinely clear 15 levels.  It was the only game in which I achieved any kind of mastery.  It was also a game that benefited from experience – each level had various flight patterns for the incoming bad guys, and the more experience you had at each level the more you could learn to predict those patterns.  After all these years, I still know them.

Honorable Mentions

I also spent a considerable time playing Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Tempest, Star Wars, Omega Race, Joust, Tapper, Pac Man, Ms. Pan Man, Pac Man Jr., Xevious, Track and Field, Marble Madness, Q*Bert, Moon Patrol, and Defender.