A History of Bad Neighbors

The latest crappy neighbor incident set me thinking about all the weirdos I've lived next to in the past. I'm wondering--is this what every apartment-dweller goes through or do I just have uncommonly bad luck?

For all the people who made my life that much more like a Hitchcock movie - this one's for you.

First apartment--Albuquerque, New Mexico
The first place I ever lived in was a complete shithole near the University of New Mexico. My mom, who hated my boyfriend at the time, had thrown me out the summer I turned 17. Being young and stupid, I thought our love was worth trading my comfortable suburban home for a flea-bag in the war zone. I was afraid the entire time I lived there. It was a cramped, dirty little studio apartment on the top floor of a building most slum lords would be embarrassed to admit owning. It was populated by scary types and was miles from my high school which meant I had to ride three buses every morning and afternoon just to finish out my senior year. I hated it.

My boyfriend must've hated it too because he almost never came home. He was working so he'd find excuses to stay at work or say he was working and go out with friends. Anyway, I spent a lot of time there alone. One night I was lying on the ratty carpet listening to music when I heard someone come up the stairs and bang violently on the neighbor's door, shouting for him to open up. I peeked outside and saw a big, meaty biker looming within a few feet of my window. From what I gathered, he was there to get some money the weasel in the apartment next door owed to him. There was a shouted exchange through the door, followed by more banging and then I heard the biker guy say, "You don't open this door, I'll shoot it open!"

I threw myself on the floor, hoping the guy would just open the damn door and praying the walls were thick enough to at least slow bullets down. Eventually the door did open and I lay there on my stomach, barely breathing, waiting for the sound of shots. I guess the two old friends resolved things amenably because the shots never came. From then on I slept on the floor.


Grad School apartment, Evanston, Illinois
Moving from my mom's house in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Chicago was definitely a change. After the widespread flatness of an all-suburban town, the high rises of the city excited me, and living on the top floor of one made me feel like Holly Golightly. What I didn't get though is that the key to being Holly Golightly is to pre-empt the annoying neighbor issues by being the annoying neighbor. Being pretty normal, I failed to be sufficiently irritating to those around me and so I should've realized someone else would have to take up the slack. And it was a dedicated group of tenants at that building, boy howdy.

Across the hall from me lived the building supers, although that's really a strong word for what they were. Ed and Marsha were a strung out, skinny biker couple who I'm convinced shared one set of dentures because I never simultaneously saw both of them with teeth. They "maintained" the building for a break in the rent. What they did mostly was hang out in the lobby chatting up the tenants. What I remember about them most is that they said they belonged to the most powerful church in Evanston. What does that mean, "most powerful church"? The pews are upholstered in cashmere? The priests all look like Schwarzennegger? All your sinners are belong to us?

To me Ed and Marsha were mild on the annoyance Richter scale but then again, I didn't live under them. One night I was jolted out of a sound sleep by the sound of banging. I jumped up and looked through the peephole just in time to see Ed open the door to a very angry, muscular black man. From what I gathered from their heated exchange, Ed and Marsha were up late drinking and were tossing the empty bottles right on the floor. The sound was keeping this hard-working man awake and by the time he came up to the 16th floor, he was pissed. It was pretty scary to listen to. I was convinced the guy would just snap Ed in half like a breadstick but after Ed agreed to keep it down, he left. The two of them had this kind of repartee several times while I lived there, so Ed and Marsha either had serious short term memory loss or a death wish.

If only Ed and Marsha had been the sum total of the colorful Evanston neighbors. Next to me lived an aspiring folk singer who had two bothersome late night habits: washing dishes and practicing her act. I could never figure out how one girl could dirty enough dishes in a day to be washing them for an entire hour. Maybe she was obsessive-compulsive. Maybe all her best song writing ideas came to her when she was soaping a skillet, I don't know. All I know is that every night I'd get settled in around midnight and then the clattering would begin. If it had only been the dishes, I might've stood it but several times a week after washing the dishes, she'd get out her amplifier and microphone (I think she was afraid they might not hear her on the first floor) and start plinking away at her guitar.

I might not have minded if she was any good but...she wasn't. Actually I think she must've just started taking guitar lessons because she'd strum a chord and try to sing a couple lines, stop, then pause a long while before playing the next chord. I can't tell you how painful "Proud Mary" is played in slow-motion at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Again I'll say, if only Ed, Marsha and Joan Baez junior were all I had to contend with, but they paled in comparison to the firebug on the 4th floor. I've noticed inconsiderate jerks are a nocturnal breed. They're fairly inactive during the day but once the sun goes down, watch out. I awoke on another night to the blaring of the fire alarm. Losing everything in a fire has always been my biggest fear so that sound put my heart right up in my throat. I went out into the hallway where my sleepy neighbors were milling around and heading downstairs. We stood outside shivering in our robes for a good hour while the fire department checked the situation out and finally told us that some Einstein on the 4th floor had set his bed on fire by falling asleep smoking a cigarette.

The damage wasn't great, but the building smelled like smoke and from then on, I was never comfortable living there. My fears proved totally legitimate because a few months later, the same scenario played itself out again. The alarm went off late at night and we all went outside to enjoy the cold. This time however, the fire department informed us that the crazy sleep-smoking bastard from the first incident had piled cardboard boxes in the hallway in front of his apartment door and purposely set them alight. I moved the minute I got out of grad school.

City loft--Chicago, Illinois
I left the Evanston apartment to do what I'd always meant to do; live in the heart of the city. I found a loft above a cafe in Lakeview, a very cool up-and-coming neighborhood being slowly gentrified by the gay population. At first I loved my new place but as anyone who's lived in a loft knows, the walls are so thin you can practially hear the people next door breathing. I rarely saw my neighbors but I noticed the unit across the hall was shared by a couple of frat-boy types.

From the first weekend on, they held loud parties with people talking, music playing and people slamming the door until the wee hours. I'm the type to suffer in silence anyway and in this case I admit I was intimidated by these guys. I mean, if someone will be that rude in the first place, I figure they're not gonna be particularly glad to have their rudeness pointed out to them. For the most part I figured these guys were harmless until one night I was coming up the stairs and saw that they'd locked themselves out. Not so unusual--until one of them pulled a credit card out of his pocket and jimmied the lock in like, two seconds. I didn't sleep too well after that.

Not that I could have anyway. The neighbors next door to me made sure of that. They might've looked like a nice young professional couple but I came to know them as dangerously deranged. It started with the fights. I was watching TV one afternoon when I heard raised voices. They got louder and louder until it was like they were arguing in my livingroom. They were arguing about the husband's drug habit, which later on explained a lot. These fights of theirs were infrequent but nasty and whenever they happened I left or turned the TV up.

Not too long after I'd moved in, I was coming home from work and as I reached the top of the stairs I smelled something burning. The hallway was hazy and having lived with the pyro in Evanston, I was more than alarmed. I ran into my apartment to see if the fire was in there and didn't see anything so I knocked on the neighbors' door. It took a long time for them to answer and when the door finally opened, it was the guy looking sleepy and disoriented. "Do you smell smoke?" I asked, unnecessarily. "Oh yeah, sorry," he said. "We were baking cookies and we fell asleep."

"Fell asleep." Yeah.

This kind of thing happened repeatedly in the months before they finally moved out. It got to be kind of a game I'd play in my head as I was walking home. "I wonder if the neighbors will have set the place on fire today?"

What finally prompted me to revenge was when they had one of their loudest parties, one that went on until six in the morning. I hadn't had a wink of sleep and wondered how I'd sleepwalk through the slew of errands I had to run that day. As I was leaving, I got an awful idea. A wonderful, awful, evil idea. Knowing their party guests had just left and they'd probably be settling in to sleep it off, I turned on my stereo and turned the volume way up. It took me a minute to determine what song would be punishingly suitable and then settled on Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song". You know, the one where Robert Plant keeps going "Ah-ah-ah-AH!" at the top of his lungs? I popped the CD in the player, put it on repeat and left for the day, cackling as I went down the stairs.

I came back eight hours later and seconds later heard a knock at my door. I opened it and there stood my neighbor, shaky and baggy-eyed. "Hey, did you know you left your stereo on? We haven't been able to sleep all day, " he whimpered. "Oh really?" I said, feigning surprise. "I'm so sorry. I'm make sure it doesn't happen again."

Richmond District Apartment--San Francisco, CA
I moved to San Francisco in 2002 and confirmed that the species "Tenantus Dementus" is not confined to Chicago. My first apartment was the bottom flat in a beautiful house built in the 1940's. The place was immaculate, the landlady was great and I couldn't believe my good fortune. As they say though, there's no such thing as a free lunch. My two years there inspired my now non-negotiable resolution to never again live under someone else. Ever.

The two bedroom flat upstairs was inhabited by a five-member Russian family. They were hard-working and pleasant and at first we got along. That was before I realized how all five of them working round the clock would affect my ability to get a good night's sleep. With five adults and only two bedrooms, they must have been sleeping in shifts because someone was always up and making noise. No matter what time of the day or night, there were pots clattering, microwaves beeping, doors slamming and footsteps. Gah, the footsteps!

If they had a shortage of beds, they must have lacked seating altogether because someone was perpetually marching back and forth across the wood floor. I'm not exaggerating at all here. I'd go to bed and instead of sleeping I'd count the number of times someone (apparently wearing wooden shoes) would clomp across the entire length of the ceiling. My highest count was 89 times in a 90 minute period. I'd lie there, trying to imagine what the hell they could be doing that would warrant doing this. The only thing I ever came up with was that they must have had a Costco-sized jar of jellybeans in the corner and they liked to get them and eat them one at a time.

The family eventually realized the place was too small for them and they moved out. The new tenants were a young couple who occasionally had a small boy with them. It seems they moved in just so they could act out a gripping domestic drama for me. In three Acts.

Act 1, "The Honeymoon". Things weren't bad except for the occasional late night music. The guy owned a restaurant and so he'd get home at 12:30 or so and putter around listening to music. I didn't mind that too much and so their habits didn't infringe upon me much--unless they had sex. These two had to either have been trying to impress one another or were filming their own porno because out of the blue I'd hear repeated thudding noises which would be followed by increasingly loud and theatrical moans. This would go on, getting louder and more ridiculous, for twenty minutes on average until I wanted to slam a tennis ball against the ceiling and yell, "Gimme a break! It can't be that good!"

Act 2, "The Honeymoon is Over". I didn't know how lucky I was during the early moan-filled days of my tenancy. They were soon to be replaced by sounds of a different sort. I'd seen the guy go off to work and had noticed a different guy showing up soon after and wondered who he was. Apparently, the woman was gettin' a little on the side because one day when she was coming home and had the little boy with her, I heard her say outside my door, "We won't tell daddy my friend was here." Hrm... It didn't take long before someone let the cat out of the bag because the fights those two had after that were epic, complete with the sounds of stuff breaking. They'd usually end with the guy running out and slamming the door hard enough to shake the whole building, leaving the girl to sob in the apartment.

Act 3, "Le Divorce". One afternoon I was lying on the couch reading when I heard the beginnings of yet another knock-down-drag-out. This one was mercifully short though and ended when I heard the guy say "I've called you a cab!" Out the front window I saw him throw the woman out of the apartment and slam the door. The woman stood disheveled and tearful in the driveway until the cab showed up, then she left never to return. -Fin-

Marin County apartment--San Rafael, CA
I moved up to San Rafael to be closer to work, this time to a tri-plex inside another cool 1940's building. The neighbors this time were an artsy gypsy-looking woman of the sort found all over Marin and a young couple with a white Akita. They were a mystery from the beginning. I rarely saw the woman leave the apartment. Her husband was a fireman and I'd run into him on the back porch where he liked to stand drinking beer looking out at the weedy backyard. He gave me the creeps from the first and I'm not even sure why. He was thirtyish, handsome, but there was something about him that was menacing. The day I moved in, he was standing there on the porch. He looked at me somewhat bleary-eyed and offered to help, even to drive his truck to the city to transport my stuff. Maybe it's me but I found that odd. I'd been begging my friends to help me--why would this stranger want to do it?

I declined and as time went on, he made a few more friendly overtures that were just as vaguely creepy. I found myself looking outside before leaving to make sure he wasn't there and hoping he wouldn't be when I came home. I guess that was a mild inconvenience but then I noticed they used the screened in foyer as their own personal garbage storage. They kept their dog there and the floor was carpeted with big white tufts of dog hair. The guy must have gone through a case of Budweiser a week and to get to my door I had to step over bags of his empty bottles and multiple pairs of his dirty, smelly shoes. If this was the worst of it, I might've counted myself lucky but he was just getting started.

He'd get up every day at 5:30 am and flip the porch light on, making it look like the sun had gone supernova in my tiny apartment. I'd put a pillow over my face and listen to him go in and out of his place for half an hour, repeatedly slamming both his door and the porch screen on every trip. Being convinced the guy might actually be a serial murder, I was too chicken to ask him to stop this foolishness so when my lease was up, I moved. Secretly, when he wasn't home.

Sunset District apartment--San Francisco, CA
From San Rafael I moved to a four-unit apartment building across from Golden Gate park. I figured this time I had it made. The four units are divided, two on each side of a central secure entry so I have no walls in common with anyone and having the upper unit, there's no danger of overhead clomping. My neighbors originally were a professional woman about my age who lived below me, and a young couple and elderly woman in the units across the way.

The elderly woman while not annoying, is definitely mysterious. I'd say she's in her 60's, but she drives a series of fancy muscle cars. I'll see her backing out of her garage in them and it seems she never keeps the same one for longer than a few months. She comes and goes at odd hours and seems to be away from home intermittently. She receives a lot of packages and I notice the mailman leaves copies of publications from the Church of Scientology and a Rush Limbaugh magazine outside her door. She often has visitors of the most varied kind; a white woman about her age, a young mexican woman, a pair of middle aged asian men. I'm still dying to know what's going on there.

Enigmatic as she is, she never causes any problems, unlike her next door neighbors, the young couple. They're gone now but like my Richmond neighbors before them, they seemed happy enough at first but almost immediately that veneer wore off. Several times I'd wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of shouting and thumping. One particularly bad night, I heard them slam the front door and then they were screaming at each other on the stoop loud enough for people downtown to hear. The guy was moving out and the girl was hanging onto him and screeching. The fight escalated to a surreal climax when the girl pulled a knife on the guy, motivating him to throw her into the apartment. By the sound of her ensuing cries and whimpers I'm pretty sure he wasn't blowing her kisses.

The police finally showed up and took the guy away but that didn't permanently discourage them. They repeated this routine a number of times before finally breaking up, moving out and gifting me with the drunken crowd of emo kids I have today.

No question, I'm a magnet for assholes. I guess if I wasn't though, I'd have nothing to write about.

Insane Emo Neighbors

Very tired today because the apartment full of youngsters across the way kept me awake until 3 am. I rose foggily out of sleep around 1:50 to the sound of our door buzzer going off. I laid there for a second, thinking it was just some passing joker until I heard frantic, drunken screaming coming from the street. Right away I knew it had to be the group of idiot kids who moved in a few months ago. I'm not even sure who lives there, but for months there's been a parade of different college-age personages trooping in and out of that place.

Last night, a young "lady", apparently chosen for her considerable lung capacity, was standing outside the security gate in the rain, shrieking obscenities like she was having every hair on her body plucked simultaneously. I just sat there, never even made a move for the door because frankly, the hysterical tenor of that voice scared me. I heard glass breaking so I crept down the stairs and looked out the peephole. I couldn't see anything but I heard the pesky sot slurring at top volume that she'd been out there for half an hour. There was a regular deluge going on outside and I admit to feeling some satisfaction that through her own stupidity, she'd been forced to withstand it. I considered going out and opening the gate but when next I heard glass breaking, the bitch in me thought, "Fuck it," and went back to bed.

I'd just settled down again thinking someone would eventually open the gate (or call the police) but when the dumbass leaned on my door buzzer, that was it for me and my husband. We stomped out there and he opened the gate for this genius and her friends while I harangued them. The neighbors next to us must have been hiding right behind the door too because they popped out the minute we did, and also gave the midnight screamer a piece of their minds.

You'd think once they were sufficiently humiliated by being shown to be tremendous assholes, these wayward tenants would've slunk into their apartment and not made another peep. You'd be wrong though. Determined to demonstrate the power of alcohol to turn normal people into complete morons, they spent the next half hour talking loudly outside the door, slamming the front gate and doing something that sounded like rolling a bowling ball down the stairs. Finally the next door neighbor's big, burly husband went out there and threatened to shut them up permanently, whereupon one of the overgrown adolescents tried to smack talk in an embarrassing voice that cracked every third word. In the end, the kid illustrated his machismo by banging loudly on the neighbor's closed door and then running up the street shouting insults from a safe distance.

Guh...it seems I'm an asshole magnet. Not only do the douchebags always sit by me at the movies, they consistently rent apartments next to me.

I should examine my history of bad neighbors.

Beer and Loafing in Albuquerque

It's been a week since I landed in ABQ. The city's somnambulance settled over me by the second day, in spite of my attempt to keep up with my exercise regimen by running around and around the track at my old middle school. As usual, I came intending to use the time to work on my drawing and as usual, the lack of ambition I feel every time I set foot in this state prevented me from doing anything but sitting on the couch with a bottle of Red Stripe, watching hours of Maury Povich.

Feeling the creative urge slipping away, I went downtown to 516 Arts to see a show called "Las Hociconas" which translates roughly to "Bad Girls" or "loudmouth girls". I have to admit to a certain bias against feminist art. The one feminist show my work was in was full of melodramatic, cliche, and frankly, poorly-executed art that I was a little sheepish to hang alongside. There were a few good pieces in Las Hociconas but there was also the usual tedious polemic, the overwrought dogma, the boring-as-hell video pieces where the artist thinks sitting naked on stage for an hour automatically = Art.

Diane Gamboa out of L.A., Rosa Zamora and Maya Gonzalez prevented the show from being a total wash, with their interesting, beautiful and intensely personal work. These three artists are able to transcend the feminist rhetoric and give us a glimpse inside their minds.

Speaking of a glimpse inside the mind...after seeing the bad girls of mexican art, I went to the Hispanic Cultural Center on the recommendation of a friend, to see the bad boys of mexican art, the de la Torre brothers. http://www.delatorrebros.com/

This is the kind of show that inspires me not only to think but to make work of my own. Sculptures of all sizes, from small wall-hangings to a free-standing ferris wheel filled the rooms with noise, movement and color. The brothers' work refers to their dual identities as both mexicans and as americans, and is made up of hand blown glass and all manner of junk and souvenier shop tchotchkes.

Olmec heads with pock-marked faces made of out of resin and pinto beans (is it wrong to think of Edward James Olmos?), totemic towers festooned with fake fur, broken bottles, glitter and rhinestones, an entire mini-trailer turned into a creepy doll house--all speak eloquently of race, belief, and the uneasy relationship between Mexico and the 'States.

The de la Torre brothers are not shy guys. For them, the worst thing that ever happened to art is the propagation of the myth of "good taste" and their work fearlessly embraces folk art, corporate logos, and popular aesthetics. They're not interested in subtlety--for them, more is always more. As they themselves say, they're very comfortable with the baroque and aren't interested in minimalism. I'm with ya, hermanos.

A Woman's Place...is at PR Events

I know this and YOU know this, but it seems the event organizers and even most of the attendees at these things still need a while to catch on. I frequently go to events promoting new game titles and my experience is always the same.

I show up, I'm greeted at the door by the PR reps who nine times out of ten are women--and that's the last time I see anyone of the female persuasion. Ok maybe I'm exaggerating but only a little. The recent Resident Evil 5 event was pretty cool but there were probably only two female game journalists aside from yours truly. Like me, they stuck to themselves, quietly checking the game out while the boys clumped together like Kraft mac 'n cheese.

I sidled up to one or two fellow journalists, commenting on or asking questions about their experience of the game but got mostly monosyllabic answers. Finally I spent the evening talking to a --you guessed it -- female Capcom rep.

Now I'm not saying my male counterparts in game journalism are intending to be jerks, but boys I gotta tell you, you're just not all that welcoming.

At an event at EA a few months ago I once again attempted to crash the male bonding by sitting at a table half full of male reviewers to eat lunch. The ensuing silence was comical. I tried to chat up a couple of my lunch companions without much success and the minute they finished their lukewarm mexican food, they were up and off.

Ah well...even though the gender gap in games is narrowing, it's still at a glacial pace. I have two different events to attend this month--I think before I go I'll invest in a fake moustache.

Long time, no post

Well, this is embarrassing. It looks like the Baron hasn't had anything to say since April 2007 but looks can be deceiving. 'Fact is, the Baron's been up to his eyeballs in oh let's say..."life" since then, not to mention jumping into finally getting paid to put words together. There hasn't been much time to ruminate, proselytize, advocate or defend.

But those non-verbal days are over! The Baron is back.

Video Games - What Are They Good For?

Video games are for nerds. Or kids. Or guys. Or pathetic 1,000 pound shut-ins. At least that’s what most folks seems to believe. In spite of the expansion of the game industry and the marketing muscle of companies like Microsoft, games are still the least-understood and most misrepresented entertainment medium in our culture aside from clog-dancing. And unfortunately, as with anything having to do with the media, it’s often the vacuous, sensational, do-nothing offerings that get the most press. How else do you explain the perennial popularity of Paris Hilton?

Games are rarely seen in a positive light; the average person doesn’t have much notion of what games are outside of the headlines and those tend to represent them as mindless and vaguely unhealthy at best and at worst, the catalyst for social degeneration. It’s not easy in that context to explain how gaming could be a worthy entertainment outlet for anyone.

Sadly, the negative press ends up burying the good that can be gained by playing games. Like any creative medium, there’s good and bad, fluff and substance, ham-fistedness and sensitivity. My favorite games have not only tested my reflexes—they’ve touched my emotions, exercised my problem-solving abilities and piqued my intellectual curiosity.

Don’t’ believe me? Here’s a laundry list: the Gabriel Knight series inspired me to visit New Orleans and to read up on Bavarian history, Wagner and the Knights Templar. The Longest Journey, Ico and World of Warcraft allowed me to visit strange and beautiful places I could never see outside my dreams. Other titles let me try my hand at different professions—I’ve been a lawyer in Phoenix Wright, a journalist in Hotel Dusk, a pirate in Monkey Island and the savior of France in Jean d’Arc.

Games can be so much more than blasting zombies. In fact, I would argue that great games provide as much edification and entertainment value as the best movies, books and art, and just like those better-established media, shouldn’t be judged solely by the titles that get the most press. The market is saturated by unimaginative movie tie-ins and Bruckheimer-esque shooters but thankfully some developers continue to make really smart and interesting games.

As a people, the Japanese can be counted on to churn out some wacky stuff. Witness the Katamari series, Loco Roco, Lost in Blue, Eternal Sonata or Cooking Mama. Leave it to them to figure out how to make addictive gameplay out of rolling up bigger and bigger balls of crap, being cast away on a desert island, righting political wrongs as the 19^th century Polish composer Frederic Chopin or chopping carrots.

Many European developers like the Adventure Company also continue to contribute titles that buck the heavy artillery/bouncing boobies trend. Their games are generally heavy on story and problem solving, light on T&A. It’s the difference between watching a Cohen Brothers movie or Die Hard.

You know, it does me good to know there are game developers who are crazy enough to think people are interested in things other than blowing shit up. I’m hoping those wild-eyed visionaries one day create a real life Holodeck—you know, like Star Trek? I for one won’t rest until someone else puts in the hard work necessary to makes my escapist dreams a reality.

While I’m waiting, I’ll focus my efforts on ferreting out those rare titles that contribute something to my consciousness while proclaiming their value to anyone who’ll listen. It’s not an easy job but somebody has to be unnaturally obsessed with it.

Unlikely Heroes: Offbeat Game Heroes Prove You Don't Need Muscle to Have Moxie

What would video games be without heroes? They’d be Pong, that’s what they’d be. Each and every video game would be Pong – and we’d all be playing it with our butts sweatily stuck to our naugahyde couches in corduroy bell-bottom pants while listening to Hotel California, swilling RC Cola and watching Sanford and Son! It’d be an ugly world, I assure you.

Luckily, we don’t have to face such a reality; video games have evolved a lot since the advent of Pong and video game heroes have evolved right along with them. Good thing too, because heroes allow escapist shut-ins like me to become someone else, someone more capable, more courageous, more attractive than ourselves. Perhaps it’s obvious what defines a hero but it wouldn’t hurt to refresh our memories:

The first definition of the word “hero” might be:

1) a large sandwich, usually consisting of a small loaf of bread or long roll cut in half lengthwise and containing a variety of ingredients, as meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes.

Another definition of the word “hero” might be:

2) a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal.

As appetizing as the former might be, the latter works best for our purposes.

Who comes to mind first when thinking of video game heroes? For most of us, it’d be guys like Sam Fisher, Solid Snake or Master Chief. They epitomize every man’s (and some women’s) desire to achieve mysterious, musclebound macho-hood. But come on – is there room in this puissant paradigm for the loveable schmoe, the empathetic Everyman, the hero who (like Festivus) is designed for the “rest of us”?

Some might think not. Fortunately for us all, throughout gaming history, along with the unstoppable commandoes, bulletproof cops and ruthless demigods, there have been more than a few 90-lb weaklings who decided they’d had sand kicked in their faces one too many times. Perhaps you know some of them…

Manny Calavera--Spooky Hero:

How often has Death been made into a game hero? Not often I’ll wager. Let’s face it–death in general isn’t something we much want to identify with. In 1998 though, a game came along with a hero whose distinct personality, investigative prowess and clever quips did a lot to rehab Death’s image. LucasArts’ Grim Fandango gave many of us our first taste of Film Noir, Art Deco and the Mexican Day of the Dead and Manny Calavera, its travel agent-slash-gumshoe protagonist, won that year’s competition phalanges-down for Most Charismatic, Best Dressed, and Most Likely to Talk Like Edward James Olmos.

At the start Manny’s not a hero type by any stretch. Turns out, this be-suited Reaper’s an unsuccessful salesman whose unglamorous daily grind consists of selling afterlife travel packages to the dearly departed. It’s a rube’s job with few surprises until Manny lands a client–a hot tomato named Meche--and uncovers through her a conspiracy to cheat the virtuous dead out of their Great Reward. Bringing down Hector LeMans, the crime head – er…skull behind the conspiracy means Manny’s gotta morph overnight from smalltime salesman to the afterlife’s equivalent of Sam Spade.

Fortunately for the recently dead, he’s up to the task and does it without even wrinkling his suit. Set on righting the wrongs, he and his hotroddin’ demonic aide-de-camp, Glottis zoom around dishing out the comeuppance like no one this side of Oblivion. It just goes to show – you don’t have to have muscles to be a hero. Heck, it goes to show you don’t even have to have skin.

Sora--Girly-boy Hero:

You could argue that Sora, the main character in both Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 is not all that unusual a hero - at least not in the 'metro' world of Anime games. In that context, he's a fairly typical teenager with all the common attributes: the spiky hair, the pointy chin, the watery, effeminate eyes, the nearly-nonexistent nose... While these might make him seem at first blush like many another of those dime-a-dozen Japanese protagonists, Sora's different from those pretty boys. After all, how many of them have big, yellow Mickey Mouse feet and can claim Goofy and Donald Duck as sidekicks?

Sora, like most unlikely heroes, is made such by circumstances beyond his control. He's just a regular kid living it up Three's Company style with his friends Kairi and Riku in the lush Destiny Islands (a Logan's Run sort of a place where apparently no one older than 18 is allowed to live) until Evil invades the islands. When that happens, Sora is unexpectedly swept away from his idyll and into a maelstrom of apocalyptic drama and intrigue cooked up by the game's villain--the unfortunately named Xehanort.

Xehanort's more or less an overgrown emo-kid who whenever he's not maintaining his mega-mullet, is trying to destroy the universe with the darkness found in human hearts. His project nearly succeeds and for a while there it's touch and go considering the only thing standing between the universe and total annihilation is a 14 year old kid and a couple of Disney characters with speech impediments.

Sora's got a secret weapon though - not only does he have a bigger than usual heart, he's spunky and sincere, and I'm pretty sure it's an unwritten rule that no matter what they're up against, all big-hearted kids who are spunky and sincere come out on top. (Or is it big-footed characters who are stinky and insured who always win the day? I can never keep that straight. Hrm. Anyway…) Sora does his Anime origins proud by saving one Disney-themed world after another, defeating Xehanort and once again making the world safe for Disnocracy.

Old schoolers might like their heroes more strapping than sincere but in Square Enix and Disney's world, heart counts for more than height and that's pretty cool. Isn't it comforting to know a skinny, pre-adolescent kid can kick even more ass than those guys whose voices have already changed? Take THAT, muscleheads -- Yosh!

Abe--Frog/Monkeyman Hero:

Abe shuffled onto the scene in 1997 in Oddworld Inhabitant's Abe’s Oddysee, adding a decidedly amphibious element to the corpus of hero-dom. Before ascending to the level of hero, Abe’s your average Mudokon working stiff; just one of the thousands of troglodytic slaves at Rupture Farms meat processing plant.

Abe’s meteoric rise from custodial engineer to Oddworld Messiah is brought on by the revelation that his employers plan to keep the factory going by turning employees like him into entrees. Unwilling to march smilingly into the meat grinder, he makes the fateful choice to defy the Man (or...whatever those Glukkon creatures are) and affect his own -- and consequently, everyone else's -- liberation. He succeeds in winning his freedom and in the subsequent Munch’s Oddysee, Abe once again takes on the role of Great Emancipator for a race of aquatic kleenex-box-shaped creatures called Gabbits, bringing down the evil Vykker's Labs in much the same fashion he took out Rupture Farms.

Whether in 2D or in 3D, Abe’s a singular figure. Poor posture, a big head, bulging eyes and a sewn-shut mouth usually preclude a guy from achieving the protagonist’s ideal. The upside of that awkwardness is that while Abe’s physical flaws might prevent him from becoming the cover model for Superheroes Quarterly, they also make him exponentially more sympathetic. He's like Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid. I mean, who watches the Karate Kid and roots for that jerkoff Johnny? We all want Daniel to treat that creep to a dirt nap, don't we?

Hey, in honor of Abe and Ralph Macchio, let's make up a whole new title for the scrawny, sympathetic hero. How about..."Spirited Slouch"? No good. "Ballsy Mama's Boy"? No poetry to that. "Plucky Pantywaist?" This is harder than I thought. I better sleep on it.

Honorary title or no, Abe sets an example and levels the playing field, giving hope to green, skinny, googly-eyed guys everywhere.

Raz--Carnie Hero:

No list of heroes is complete without a circus-born, ten year old, goggle-wearing psychic and Razputin or "Raz" from DoubleFine's 2005 Psychonauts helps wrap up this one. Raz is a psychically-attuned kid who runs away from his acrobatic circus family and crashes the party at Whispering Rock summer camp in hopes of becoming a psychic agent or "psychonaut". He quickly realizes something at the camp smells and it's not the latrines. Someone has woven a bizarre plot to kidnap campers' brains so Raz and his girlfriend Lili Zanotto, ("she's NOT my girlfriend!") cleverly combine their formidable psychic abilities to unravel it.

Raz tracks the perpetrator by jumping in and out of various characters' psyches. It's no joke following the villain's topsy-turvy trail through the delusions of paranoid milkmen, the myriad regrets of has-been actresses and the jealousies of lovelorn artists. These mental gymnastics are no hindrance to a determined psychonaut however, and Raz has training, raw talent, acrobatic skill and a cute girlfriend (she's NOT my girlrfriend!") on his side. Using nothing but mindpower, Raz defeats the corrupt Coach Oleander and the Evil (domo arigato?) Dr. Loboto, rescues the kidnapped camp instructors and restores all the stolen brains to their rightful owners. At the final count, it's Raz - one, Bad Guys - zero. Who says being cerebral isn't cool?

...to be continued.