The Book of Drugs by Mike Doughty
I approached this book with only a vague sense of what Doughty’s personal life and his relationship to his former band was like, so I’m not judging it as a recovery narrative or 90s rock scene tell all. I bought it because I like the music he’s put out there, and I was hoping to learn a little more about it—the liner notes of an ongoing career.
And I did. There were plenty of moments of that without Doughty having to resort to a level of directness reserved for VH1 Storytellers. The Grey Ghost is there. The girl with the Unsingable Name. We learn more about what Circles was all about. But this stuff is present (along with the musicians name-dropped on the publisher’s blurb) without detracting from a narrative that is far more compelling than the title lead me to believe.
His relationship to the other members of Soul Coughing is so caustic that it’s difficult to read at times, but I think it has to be when these dudes he played with for years are simply referred to as “bass player,” “sampler player,” and “drummer.” He’s also so hard on himself that I felt compelled to drop the book, track him down on the Internet, and give him the digital equivalent of a hug on several occasions. But it never felt heavy-handed: it felt earnest and self-aware, punctuated with laughs lest it slip too far into self-deprecation without charm.
The stuff about addiction is harrowing and frank, and while I can’t directly relate to his personal circumstances it left me feeling more like sections of Infinite Jest than something that uncritically evangelizes a life with or without drugs.
I will recommend this book to a lot of friends for different reasons, and I would say that for fans of his music, this should be required reading. It’s important to know his side of the story because by not you risk hurting his feelings at or after a show. I felt myself wince at the nineteen year old version of myself, ten years ago, shouting out for “True Dreams of Wichita” at shows, not knowing any better.
It makes sense when you juxtapose my experience with the set who apparently told him “You were better in Soul Coughing.” If you view requests at solo shows that way, I can see why it’s easy to feel like you’ll soon be playing the State-Fair-and-Casino circuit, peppering hits among a set of material that nobody wants to hear.
But that is not the case for me, nor is it for any of my friends who fell into Doughty/Soul Coughing at the same time. I wanted to see Doughty reinterpret and reimagine songs that we loved because they were good songs, not because we wished we were seeing a different band. We yelled for “Rising Sign” and everything else on Skittish too. We loved Skittish.
There’s a part of the book I’m not going to bother to look up, but Doughty is talking about how he thought Jeff Buckley’s greatest talent was as an interpreter, not a songwriter. I don’t find these talents mutually exclusive, and clearly Doughty doesn’t either (His post-Soul Coughing covers are fantastic)—and it kills me that he ever doubted he was anything but a good songwriter. But after reading, I would never hold against him his decision to abandon the SC back catalog. I just hope he realizes that there are tons of us out there who are not either/or fans but both/and. Maybe I’m an anomaly, but I always was under the impression that it was Doughty’s band.
Can’t wait to see him do his thing again in March. Go buy this book.
The Legend of Zelda: It’s Dangerous to go Alone!
The Legend of Zelda is supposed to be about exploration, and I’ve always taken this as a given. Now I’m not so sure.
I’m almost thirty years old. I have only faint—and possibly manufactured—memories of a time before the NES, and I know we got Zelda early on because we were still in our first house. I wouldn’t have the kind of experience that Miyamoto aimed to recreate with this game for another year, when I first wandered into a ravine without my parents’ permission. To say that Zelda offered me an escape isn’t accurate. Not then.
Instead, I followed the maps folded into the first issue of Nintendo Power. My brother and I would try to memorize areas of the map when Mom thought we had played enough for the day. Isn’t that the polar opposite of exploration?
Still got it.
Five Minutes with Abobo’s Big Adventure
Currently blowing up the Internet is Abobo’s Big Adventure, the self-styled “Ultimate Tribute to the NES.” As I sipped my morning coffee, I wondered if it would be the spiritual successor to Super Mario Bros. Crossover, which finally answered my boyhood question of how awesome would it be if I could use a spread gun outside the confines of Contra. (The answer, of course, is really awesome.)
But SMBC lingers in my memory only for its novel technical accomplishment. It was fun to play through a game world I had spent hundreds of hours in with different characters, but I didn’t feel compelled to actually beat the game with Link, and then with Mega Man, and so on. Five minutes was enough for each, just to see what it was like.
After spending the same amount of time with Abobo’s Big Adventure, I’m left feeling like it’s more than just another Flash-based NES mashup. Rather, like the Great Gatsby Game, Abobo has a great backstory worth returning to occasionally, just to pick up on surprises that you’ve surely missed. Although I know virtually nothing about coding or game design, it’s clear how hard those responsible worked to deliver an incredible retro experience to people like me. I plan to donate soon.
First, though, I feel like I ought to understand just what it’s worth. Playing it on a 13” MacBook Pro keyboard is just a terrible experience, and I really appreciate when developers go out of their way to try to steer me toward something better. Like Super Meat Boy, this game is a rich, beautifully crafted platformer that is truly awful on a keyboard.
According to the developers
First off, you need a gamepad, and for obvious reasons, we recommend a genuine NES controller. Normally, you wouldn’t be able to simply plug these into your USB port, but there are plenty of places online that sell NES retrolink USB adapters for cheap. They plug right into your NES controller and convert the cable to USB. Nifty, huh?
You can also buy a controller with a built in USB connector, but we strongly recommend getting the adapter and using a genuine NES controller instead. When we made the game, this is how we intended it to be played.
From a gameplay standpoint, this makes total sense if you’re trying to craft something that truly feels like a lost game from a bygone era. But then why add achievements? Having them pop up to reward me for clearing hurdles or discovering little easter eggs is, in my mind, a huge mistake.
Of course I miss the simplicity of the NES I/O, the 8-bit graphics, and the square wave sounds. A lot of people like me who are hovering around 30 have fond memories of the NES aesthetic. But I also miss exploring and taking notice for myself about what a game can and can’t do. I miss the little surprises, and while I love my next-gen consoles too, I don’t always want to approach a game with a built-in todo list.
I don’t mean to be overly harsh here. I am grateful for Abobo and can’t wait to dig in deeper. I look forward to all of the little buried treasures in there.
And I think those who look carefully at things generally find a way to be rewarded.
