Our first visit was foiled when we showed up at the downtown location on Saturday only to learn that the festival was a Capitol Hill exclusive.  So we tried again on Sunday, and our persistence paid off.  Although a few of the beers were sold out, there was plenty of sunshine on tap, and that made everything ten times more fun.  (In fact, when the sun finally dipped behind the neighboring condos, our high spirits started to go with it.  We high-tailed it out of there within 10-15 minutes.)

Detailed tasting notes follow for nine or ten beers. (Since we were having such a good time just chatting and drinking, we forgot to write anything down for a few of ‘em!)

8472

A very lightly hopped sour ale called “Mr. Yuck” was on offer, but the name didn’t tempt us to try it. The 8472 is Mr. Yuck’s swarthier, older brother. The Elysian blurb describes it as “a dark sour pumpkin ale, brewed with pale, Munich, wheat, oats, rye, corn, and pumpkin in the mash and kettle. Bittered with aged Hallerhauer hops.”

We say:: “Wow, that’s an intense sour! Definitely a beer to sip, not gulp. As far as pumpkin goes, well… the rye probably comes through more than the gourd on this one.”

Bête N Owl

This is one of our big favorites from the festival! Apparently the first year for brewing, it’s adapted from Elysian’s Bête Noel winter seasonal. According to Elysian: “Brewed with pale, 120° Crystal and a tiny bit of chocolate malt. Bittered with Magnum and finished with German Northern Brewer hops. Pumpkin in the mash, kettle, and fermenter. Spiced with [...] cinnamon, clove, ginger, black pepper, and grains of paradise.”

We say:: Jenny loved this because of the subtle spicing and bready, Belgian flavors. I dig it for the same reasons, and the fact that the pumpkin really complements the chocolate notes and rounds out a nice, full flavor. It’s not a novelty beer; it’s a nice Belgian (and besides Chimay, there really aren’t a lot of Belgians that I go for).

Biere de Gourde

This is a simple, saison-style brew with a little spice and, obviously, pumpkin. The scoop from Cambridge Brewing: “French pale and caramel malts plus fresh organic sugar pumpkins in the mash, aided and abetted by Styrian Goldings hops and a touch of some earthy spice — star anise, mace, allspice, clove, and cinnamon.”

We say:: “Don’t be scared of the spice; it’s not very prominent. Just a light Saison with a bit of conservative, pumpkin flair.”

Cerveza Calabaza

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Instead, we’ll just hand the mic over to Rock Bottom brewery: “Brewed with 2-row, Munich, and C-20 malts. Hopped with Bravo and Mt. Hood and fermented with Chimay Belgian yeast strain. Six pounds per bbl canned pumpkin added to mash, boil, and fermenter. Spiced with cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, and fresh-grated ginger root, all steeped in the whirlpool post-boil.”

We say:: “Wow, all that work to produce a pale, weak glass of macrobrew? And oh yeah, it smells like socks.”

The Great Pumpkin

There were two different brews by this name at the festival. One was from Cambridge Brewing, but this one is from Elysian: “Silver Medalist at the 2007 Great American Beer Festival in the Fruit and Vegetable category, the world’s first Imperial Pumpkin Ale. Brewed with pale, Munich, Cara-Hell, Cara-Vienne, Cara-Munich, and Crisp 45° L Crystal Malts. Roasted Pumpkin seeds in the mash, and extra pumpkin added to the mash, kettle, and fermenter. Spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice.”

We say:: The spice flavors are really apparent here. The pumpkin, not so much — not a bad thing, just subtle, which is a little surprising given the name. Maybe we’re just too literal…

The Great Pumpkin

The other brew bearing this sobriquet comes off as kind of a Linus to the Elysian’s Charlie Brown. From Cambridge Brewing: “Brewed with over 150 pounds of fresh, locally grown, organic sugar pumpkins, hand-carved and added to each batch. Our Great Pumpkin Ale has an appropriately orange hue, and the subtle pumpkin flavor is enhanced by a touch of traditional autumn spices.”

We say:: Subtle like a kick to the head! There’s so much pumpkin flavor here, it’s like pumpkin syrup that’s been pumped into a glass of beer. (And Jenny thinks the beer was a Fat Tire.)

Hansel and Gretel

A light, refreshing pilsner with a strong ginger kick! This was another big favorite of ours, and apparently we weren’t alone — the Hansel was on track to be one of the first Elysian brews tapped out for the day. Of course, the Patriots were also “on track” to be the first NFL team to give the Broncos a butt-kickin’ this season, and that didn’t end as planned. Still, there was a lot of crowd interest in this one, so maybe it will work its way into Elysian’s seasonal tap lineup someday.

We say:: The ginger really comes through… not fizzy like a “ginger beer,” but as a welcome note of spice that saves this beer from being boring.

Ich Bin Ein Pumpkiner

A Berlin sour wheat beer from Nodding Head Brewery. Where’s the pumpkin, you ask? In the pumpkin syrup that’s squirted into the glass just before you drink it.

Jenny sez:: “Look at all the little fragments of stuff in my glass!” (There were a lot of floating odds-and-ends… peels, perhaps? Not sure if it was from the syrup or the beer.)
Adrian sez:: “Despite the pumpkin syrup, this tastes more like a spiked lemonade than anything else. Sour and citrusy… very pale, cloudy yellow color reinforces the lemonade feeling. Would rather have this than a Heineken on a hot summer’s day.”

Night Owl Pumpkin Ale

Of all the Elysian brews on tap, this is the only one that’s currently available for take-home purchase. You can get individual 22 oz bombers or buy it by the case from the bar. Elysian describes it as “brewed with over 7 lbs of pumpkin per barrel. Made with Pale, Munich, and Crystal malts, green and roasted pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin in the mash, boil, and fermenter. Bittered with Magnum hops. Spiced in conditioning with nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger, and allspice.”

We say:: “Very light and crisp at first, despite the deep, coppery color. As the beer warms up, more and more of both the pumpkin and spice flavors start to emerge. This is probably at its best about 15 minutes or so after the pour, because the chill right off the tap clips off many of the more subtle flavors.”

Fast forward into Y2K, and I could fit all those CD’s and more on my Nomad.  I was in love with that thing, and took it everywhere… until it got stolen on a roadtrip in Vancouver.  I almost pitied the thieves trying to figure out how to get the damn CD out.  Almost.  

Still, once you’ve gone digital like that, you’ll never go back.

And now it’s 2009. Everyone and his little sister has a 40 gB iPod and can download 99¢ tracks a la carte.  We can rip a hundred DVD’s to our hard drives, or stream feature films down to our XBox 360’s.  What could possibly make a dent in my blase shell of digital complacency?  Am I jumping on the Kindle bandwagon?

Well, not yet, but close.  Guess what came under the XMas tree this year? How about every single Amazing Spider-Man comic published from the title’s debut in 1963 up through 2006, in one DVD of PDF files!?  Excelsior!!  I was a Spider-Man nut as a kid.  Not a serious collector – I never had a single one bagged, and didn’t think twice about rolling them up to fit with the sheet music inside my trumpet case.  But my stacks of Spidey comics overflowed out of my room onto a shelf that I had to commandeer in the linen closet.  Now: one DVD.  I love it.

I’ve already ordered the X-Men anthology from Amazon, and even though I wasn’t as big a fan, I’m eyeing the Avengers collection too.  If PPTSS and Marvel Team Up were available, I’d snatch them up in a heartbeat. Marvel has also launched a Digital Comics subscription initiative, but that’s a lot less interesting to me.  The coverage is spotty (15 available issues of The New Mutants, out of a 100+ series run?), and besides, one of the best things about reading these old titles is flipping through the period ads and reading the letters to the Editor.  (For example: Did you know there was some serious consideration given to partnering Spidey up with a sidekick!?  Me neither!)

So, yeah, it’s great to be living in the digital world.  And as long as DRM doesn’t screw everything for us, there’s a bright, happy future ahead.  ’Nuff said.

Speaking of Keanu Reeves, here’s a fun and slightly annoying game to play the next time you run out of gossip on a long car ride.  It’s called the “Johnny Mnemonic Game,” and it goes like this:

Person A:  ”Hey, what’s that movie, it stars Keanu Reeves I think, about a guy who gets computer chip planted in his head?  But it gives him some deadly disease that makes his lymph nodes puff out like grapefruits?”

Person B:  ”Oh, you mean Johnny Bubonic?”

Person A:  ”Yeah, that’s it.”

Person B:  ”I saw that one.  But what’s the other movie with Keanu Reeves, where he gets a computer chip planted in his head that short-circuits or something, and his muscles all lock up and he goes into a stupor?”

Person A:  ”Uh… you mean… Johnny Catatonic?”

Person B:  ”Right, right.”

Person A:  ”Sure, that was OK.  But I really like the movie with Keanu Reeves where he gets the computer chip planted in his head that helps him read by sounding out words!  What was that called?”

Person B:  ”I dunno… wait, I got it: Johnny Hooked-on-Phonics!”

…and so it goes.  

98109.  It’s no 90210, but it’s home.  And until recently, that’s meant Seattle, WA.  But check out Google maps today:

Suddenly, it’s just a short walk from my front door to Caesar’s Palace.  It’s like that Weekend Update sketch with Fred Armisen:

Wouldn’t it be a drag if we pulled [New Hampshire] over to Mexico?  ¿Qué pasó?  ¡Está allí!    

Looks like it’s just a little Google dyslexia (the Vegas ZIP is 89109).  But I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that my Amazon packages don’t end up routed to the Bellagio.

The biggest surprise of the festival was Snipes Mountain Brewery.  Neither of us had heard of it before the festival, which isn’t surprising since they’re located East of the Cascades in Sunnyside, and don’t have great distribution out here in Western Washington. But we voted their Cask Pumpkin Death as Best of Show.  (Despite the name, there’s not much “pumpkin” about it; it’s just a fantastic, chewy Imperial Stout.)

All together we  put away 17 different tasters, and passed favorable judgement on most of them.   Individual notes are listed below the jump…

 Gilligan’s Brewing Company,  Imperial Chamomile Ale

We really wanted to taste Santa’s Secret Stash, but I guess the Friday night crowd drank it all down. (You bastards!!)  Anyway, the nose of the chamomile ale is very breezy, lots of citrus and vanilla notes.  It pours a pale gold with very little head and almost no lacing.  It’s incredibly sweet… remember those generic 25¢ gumballs you got as a kid from the square red vending machines in supermarket lobbies?  Pretty much like that, with some faint herbal notes added in.  Certainly unique.  

Two Beers Brewing Company, Jive Espresso Stout

This stout packs a huge coffee flavor!  The chocolate is a little subtle, but definitely there.  Nice malt profile, smooth and warm.  We really liked this beer; I’d have to do a head-to-head to say whether or not it’s exceptional as a coffee stout (e.g. compared to the ones from Rogue, Lagunitas, etc.),  but it definitely stood out at the festival.

Elliott Bay Brewing Company,  Smoked Porter 

Tastes like a bar of baker’s chocolate slowly melted over a pile of mesquite chips.  (That’s a good thing!)  The hops are subdued beneath the smokey, roasted notes.   It’s not as acidic or peaty as a single-malt scotch, more like a comfortable campfire.  Loved it.

Elliott Bay Brewing Company,  Noale Holiday Ale 

The mouth feel on this one is a little thin.  The description promises “smooth malt flavors with slight hint of roastiness,” but I don’t really get that.  It tastes thin & bitter to me, with a hint of what my brain desparately tries to categorize as dark cherry.  Not as strong or complex as I’d like from a holiday brew.  Jenny agrees, saying “There’s no holiday cheer in this!  It’s deceptively thin.” 

Scuttlebutt Brewing Company,  10° Below 

Promoted as “rich & smooth, like drinking a chocolate brownie.”  Now who can resist that pitch?  Our pour is chilled, and I taste the sweetness, but not the chocolate.  As the taster warms up, more of the malty/chocolatey flavors start to come out, but not enough to really sell me on this one.  Jenny doesn’t like the carbonation, which is a little aggressive and fizzy.

Ram Restaurant and Brewery,  Hibernator 

Another bait-and-switch; we wanted the Bourbon Vanilla Nitro Porter, but… all gone!  The Hibernator is not as malty as advertised, and I can’t taste the ginger that is supposedly spicing this brew.  It pours a deep, smokey brown with a tall head that rapidly shrinks, leaving little lacing behind.  Overall it’s not a bad beer, but I wouldn’t have pegged it as a Winter/Holiday brew either.

Port Townsend Brewing Company,  Bogachiel Brown 

Pours thick and creamy with a full head.  Very woody, nutty taste, not much bitterness on the finish.  It’s a fine brown ale, but not one of our favorites.

Schooner Exact Brewing Company,  Cherry Hoppin’ Holidays 

This strong ale has almost no nose, and pours with very little head.  It’s deep brown, almost black in color.  I can taste the sweet side of the cherries, but not the bitter side that I’d expect to follow it up.  We didn’t dislike this taster, but we didn’t finish our pour either.

Pike Brewing Company,  Auld Acquaintance 

The Auld Acquaintance was at the top of my list to try going in to the festival, and it pretty much lives up to its billing.  The first few sips explode with cinnamon and nutmeg together with a little brown sugar sweetness.  Terrific spiced ale!  After three or four sips, my palate adjusted, and I tasted more of the citrus and hoppy notes.  The dry hop finish kept building up, and by the end of the 5 oz taster, it went down almost like a regular IPA.   I really liked the inital flavor profile of this (as a holiday/novelty beer).  I’d probably nurse this very slowly or with some salty food so I could keep enjoying the spice notes.

Snipes Mountain Brewery,  Winter Coyote 

The Coyote is a brown ale that’s sweet, tart, and hoppy.  Although there’s a good malt balance, we didn’t taste the nutty or chocolate flavors that are usually so apparent in a brown ale.  The high notes really dominated our palates on this one.

Snipes Mountain Brewery,  Cask Pumpkin Death 

An Imperial Stout that doesn’t really taste of pumpkin at all in our humble opinions.  It’s smooth and malty, with very subtle carbonation (mouth feel is a tiny bit syrupy).  Some noticeable spicey notes, but they definitely play 2nd fiddle to the malts.  Overall a fantastic, solid imperial stout.  I could have been swayed to vote for the Elliott Bay Smoked Porter, but in the end we both cast our ballots for this as our festival favorite.  I’d like to try more from these guys. 

Diamond Knot Brewing Company,  Bourbon Industrial Ho!Ho! 2007 

Finally, we get to a bourbon-aged beer that’s not tapped out!  This seasonal pours a deep, rusty copper-brown.  The bourbon taste is incredibly strong, but smooth and silky, no burning.  The oak and malts mellow out the flavor profile.  I love this beer, but I also feel a little dishonest about it, like maybe I should just go drink bourbon instead since it’s so prominent here.

Lazy Boy Brewing Company,  Mistletoe Bliss 

A deep, coppery-brown ale that’s promoted as being “kissed with hints of cinnamon, spice, and oranges.”  To our palates, the spice and citrus notes are pretty faint.  It’s OK, but this is another taster we end up dumping.

Laughing Buddha Brewing Company,  Purple Yam Porter 

I was reluctant to give this a spin.  I’ve always been let down in the past when I gambled on a Laughing Buddha bomber that sounded interesting and experimental, including the Ginger Pale Ale that’s also on tap at the festival.  But Jenny couldn’t resist the exotic Asian influence, so we gave it a go.  It turned out to be the best thing I’ve had from Laughing Buddha — malty, with a big thick head, almost a stout.  The bready, starchy taste dominates a few hints of spice.  Less earthy/low notes than you’d expect from a beer this dark.  Still, it was a surprisingly solid offering, and I think it was Jenny’s second-favorite beer of the festival.

Silver City Brewing Company,  Winter’s Noche 

An imperial stout that pours inky black with a moderate head.  The flavor strikes a nice balance between the chocolatey, roasted malts and a few hoppy high notes.  The finish is very smooth, almost no bitterness, making this a great session beer.   

Wait a sec… are all the D&D geeks who are playing World of Warcraft, LOTR, Guild Wars, and Neverwinter Nights really flocking to pre-order a game about pampering their pets?  (Excuse me, their virtual pets?)   Somehow I doubt it.

I’m used to Amazon sending me product recommendations that are a little off-kilter, including suggestions for items I’ve already bought from them.  But this is like Netflix suggesting “Beethoven” based on my interest in “28 Days” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”  

Epic fail. 

Easily the most impressive thing about Fallout 3 is the art direction.  The blasted landscape of the DC metro area is gorgeously rendered (if you can call charred, stunted trees and twisted steel girders “gorgeous”), the raygun gothic aesthetic of the original Fallout titles is executed beautifully for the few structures that remain standing, and the HDR lighting makes for some incredible dawn/dusk transition moments out in the wastelands.

Which is good, because you’ll spend plenty of time hoofing it around out there.  Fallout’s world isn’t quite as large as the massively expansive Oblivion, but it’s still sizeable – probably a 20 minute jog from one end of the map to the other.  If you could jog it without stopping, that is.   You probably can’t thanks to all the mutants, irradiated insects, and Thunderdome refugees just waiting to pounce on your newly exhumed ass.

The interior locations are generally memorable as well.  The ruins around the National Mall are especially nice – how cool is it to prowl through the collapsed exhibit halls of the Smithsonian!? – but many of the abandoned warehouses, condos, and factories that litter the suburbs carry their own unique charms.  (Case in point: an abandoned computer terminal in the old Hubris Comics plant runs a playable beta test for the text adventure, “Reign of Grelok.”)

The gameplay is pretty solid, and a small step up from Oblivion.  Combat animations are fluid, and the VATS targeting system kills two birds with one stone in both blending the traditional stats-focused combat of RPG’s (”I roll a die, tell me if I hit?”) with FPS style games, and lending every combat encounter a wonderful cinematic feel that wouldn’t be possible with a completely real-time system.  There are a lot of technical glitches (model clipping, crazy physics bugs, and here’s something new: the combat system isn’t even functional if you’re playing on a PC with your mouse buttons transposed), but they’re easily overlooked in the shock and awe inspired by the sprawling post-apocalyptic canvas.

After a few dozen hours of scrounging through lockers and metal boxes, though, even the wonderfully eerie, jingoistic diatribes of “President Eden” (expertly voiced by Malcolm McDowell) crackling across the airwaves can’t cover up a basic problem that starts to suck more and more fun out of the Fallout experience.  As the game stretches on towards the promised 100 hour mark, it becomes clear that although there’s a lot of “what” in the game, Fallout 3 is running dangerously low on “why.”

I could spend the next hour crawling through whatever catacombs are hiding behind rusty grate number 224, but why should I?  Is it really going to offer me anything so different from the last set of tunnels I cleared, or the ten before that?  Too often in Fallout 3, the answer is no.   And since you’ll hit level cap long before you’ve covered even half of the content in the game, suddenly the lack of a story-based incentive becomes painfully relevant.

Look, there’s nothing wrong, a priori, with incredibly repetitive gameplay.  If the game itself is an absolute blast, then maybe we’re just talking about more of a good thing; nobody complains that Tetris is just about dropping the same damn shapes over and over and over again.  But shooting super mutants in the head, while undeniably fun, is no Tetris. 

And it’s not meant to be.  Fallout 3 is a CRPG, a genre which generally delivers its primary reward along a couple of axes: story/plot advancement, and character development.   ”Character development” can sometimes be interpreted in a strictly numerical sense (leveling up & boosting stats), but if the game aspires to be anything more than set decoration for a set of statistics and a paper doll inventory management system (Diablo and Dungeon Siege, I’m looking at you), then it tries to reflect and celebrate the player’s unique contributions.  A good CRPG will present you with opportunities that elicit interesting & revealing choices, and then respond to your choices in a way that feels both satisfying and authentic.

For example, let’s say that you’re playing a badass, evil mofo who tortures puppies and steals candy from babies.  Fine.  Then you’d like the game to provide some metaphorical candy to steal, for starters.  Maybe there’s a Secret League of Badasses that’s plotting to assassinate the King of Goodstuff- you’d be perfect for that group!  So you spend some time (and levels) perfecting your throat-slitting and guard-bashing techniques, and it all pays off on the big day when you finally whack the King and slaughter his personal honor guard in the process.  Once he’s dead, you decide to wear his crown and strut around bitchslapping all the sad commoners who take offense.  Mission accomplished – you’ve left your mark, and the game has validated you as the evil bastard that you always wanted to be (at least for a few hours).

Different CRPG’s embody this design philosophy in different ways.  In Fable, you get a constant yay/boo chorus from the population of every town you enter, and your character’s physical appearance is altered to match the demonic (or angelic) polarity of your actions.  All Bioware games implement pretty much the same forked network of roads with a saintly “good” path and crassly sociopathic “evil” path for each and every quest.  The Witcher tried to riff on this in a less black-and-white way, with ripple effects spreading out from your actions that attract or antagonize different factions in the game, sometimes before you’ve even met them.

However it happens, a good CRPG should feel like my gameplay experience is significantly different – or at least potentially significantly different – than yours.  Or mine the next time I play, which is why it’s not uncommon for a gamer to play something like Knights of the Old Republic two or three times, exploring most of the roads not taken before considering it “finished.”

But although Fallout 3 tracks your accumulated “karma points,” the vast majority of the game content plays exactly the same no matter how enlightened or not you happen to be.  And while the scale of your impact on the world may sound pretty large – hey, you can blow up a whole TOWN if you want to! – all of your achievements actually play out pretty much in isolation.  Most quests like this have a single point of “karmic feedback” built into them, after which it’s back to business as usual in the wastelands.

This is one area where Oblivion, ironically, does a much better job than Fallout 3, despite working with significantly more content.  Not only does Oblivion benefit from the increased replay value afforded by the different professions (being a mage summoner makes pretty much every combat encounter dramatically different than it is for a heavily armored warrior), it also provides more quests that link the geographically scattered interest points together.  The net effect is that the each hidden dungeon and shrine in Oblivion feels more like part of an organic whole.  In Fallout, it’s just another hole… a beautiful, well-designed hole bathed in a gloriously high-res nimbus of light.  Feel free to climb in if you need the ammo… 

When I first tasted the Yeti on tap at Brouwer’s, it immediately vaulted into a cozy spot near the top of my all-time favorite beer list.  It was still remarkable even when compared to all the competition at the Seattle Beer Festival this past summer.  At $10 for a 22-oz bottle, it’s a bit expensive, but worth the occasional indulgence.The most memorable thing about this beer for me is the mouth feel… it’s very smooth and creamy, heavy and thick — almost (but not quite!) syrupy.  Very pleasant.

The taste is strong, a mix of dark chocolate and whiskey notes from a very noticeabley roasted set of malts. It’s a pretty complex flavor, and almost overpowering in its sheer presence.  This beer pretty much screams “craft brew,” as the flavor profile is not even close to anything else you’ve tasted in the last week, but it doesn’t feel like a novelty act at all.

The intensity of the roasted, smokey flavor together with the warm whiskey notes makes this a beer to nurse slowly.  If you’ve got some lightly salted (not roasted!) nuts nearby, they’ll help cut the flavor between sips and keep it from drowning you.  Jenny and I didn’t have any nuts, so we made do with a bag of popcorn.  No complaints!

As The Sixteen Pleasures opens, Margot Harrington is sharing a train compartment with a pair of American divorcees.  She’s headed for Italy to assist in a massive restoration effort; they’ve embarked on a European vacation to gather “material” in support of their literary aspirations.  We’re treated to a glimpse of their creative process in action:

“Did you get the man with the pipe?”
“Got him.”
“The sheep?”
“What sheep?  I didn’t see any sheep.”
“Hah!  How about the announcement on the PA system?  Did you get that?”
“Pardonnay something-or-other, that’s all I got.  How about you?” 

The conversation then shifts to reflect on their workshop instructor’s sexual appetite (they’ve both appeared on the menu), and eventually they share the prosaic yet deeply personal childhood memories around which they hope to craft meaningful stories.   We’re invited to smile condescendingly at the bourgeois naïveté that leads them to mistake accuracy for truth, knowing that their earnest attention to detail will not by itself imbue the mundane with a sense of artistic profundity.

Unfortunately, the author doesn’t seem to have taken his own object lesson to heart.  The Sixteen Pleasures is a light coming-of-age of story in which the 29-year old narrator rediscovers and redefines herself through her adventures abroad.  It’s Fear of Flying, but filtered through the soft-focus lens of Eat, Pray, Love.  Interesting and detailed nuggets of information pop up almost every other page:  methods of manual book-binding, the chemistry of 15th century frescoes, and foibles of marital politics in modern Italy are all stitched together to provide a lovely backdrop for the narrator’s journey of self-discovery.

As pleasant as this backdrop is, there’s very little to care about in the foreground. Margot falls in love, suffers heartbreak, heals, achieves a professional success and makes peace with her past…  none of which is particularly dramatic.  Margot is borne through these events by a gentle, twisting current of narrative.  We bob along with her, observing everything that happens with an idle curiosity, but never any sense of tension or concern.   In the end, the ride is unremarkable.

If Margot were real, it’s easy to see how this story would be a compelling one, for her – it’s her life, after all.  But the author’s challenge is to craft a story that feels both true and immediately meaningful for us.  Like the ladies on the train, Hellenga succeeds in faithfully imparting what happens without convincing us that we should really concern ourselves with why it happens at all.

So ever since I heard that Bethesda acquired the license for Fallout, I’ve been looking forward to playing Fallout 3.  Fallout has its own distinguished history, and infusing some fresh creative blood (as well as a lot of cash) into the franchise sounded like a great idea.  (Though certainly not one without its detractors; handing off the torch for a cult favorite is a tricky business.  For every Battlestar: Galactica success story there’s at least one clunker like The Wiz out there.)

I’ve been so psyched for this game that I even ponied up the extra $20 for the Collector’s Edition.  Those who know what a frugal shopper I am will now go back and re-read that sentence… yes, that’s $20 above than the regular $50 retail price, for a single video game.  Was it worth it?  Well since the game just arrived a couple of hours ago, I haven’t actually played it yet.  But here are some shots of the very cool packaging to look at while you breathlessly await my expert critique.  (I think the lunchbox is worth at least $15 on its own, don’t you?)

The Fallout 3 Lunchbox. I hope my Twinkies survived the war OK! 

My, Vault Boy, what a big head you have!

I wish I could draw. Or paint.