We need a what now?
There’s apparently been a lot of hullaballoo about how video games need a “Lester Bangs” to give them legitimacy. Who the fuck is Lester Bangs? When I first read this, I thought it was a call for more Leeroy Jenkins, which was even more confusing.
OK, fine, for the sake of sounding like something approaching a well-researched video game blog, I’ll go find out who Lester Bangs is. Oh boy, he’s yet another opinionated, rambling, “new journalist”, who used his “reviews” to spout off about what a cockmaster he was with only a cursory mention of whatever he was supposed to be reviewing. Yeah, we already have one of those. His name is Tim Rogers.
Tim, please hurry up and overdose on Darvon while playing Killer7 sometime soon so we can all get rich writing self-congratulating books and articles about your “legacy” and what an unappreciated visionary genius you were. Then we can say “We did have a Lester Bangs! It was Tim motherfucking Rogers, but you bastards, you crucified him!” Then we can put your face on t-shirts and get rich off those too.
KTHXBYE.
Update: Actually, come to think of it, Tim isn’t nearly mainstream enough; I doubt Lester Bangs got to wherever it was that he got to by reviewing obscure Japanese albums that were never released in the U.S. So… uh, replace “Tim Rogers” in the above post with “Penny Arcade”, and replace “Killer7″ with “World of Warcraft”. There, that fixes everything. Tim! Do NOT overdose on Darvon!
Update: Holy crap, Stephen Swift of Polybius has written an incredible rebuttal to this article. Thanks Stephen!!
July 11th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
what am i doing here?
July 11th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
You are making history, and NOT overdosing on Darvon, in that order!
July 11th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
I wish I was internet famous too.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
what’s darvon?
July 12th, 2006 at 6:37 am
Persona, you are on the right track!
(We do not like onrine games!!)
July 13th, 2006 at 8:57 am
It’s either a prescription pain killer, or a WoW server. Maybe both.
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:19 pm
sir! your messiah is here: Clive Thompson.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/kotaku/nyt-on-agenda-gaming-189229.php
when i saw this i thought the internet was playing tricks on me. i did not know that Lester Bangs was quite the touchstone of literary reference that he is. anyway, thought you should know.
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Ha! Thanks for the link!
X
July 28th, 2006 at 10:28 am
the folks over at pitchfork media wrote some interesting stuff on this subject too.
http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/37553/Column_Column_Get_That_Out_of_Your_Mouth_27
i think anyone still into this debate should give that a look as it really digs into the differences between our era and Mr. Bangs and how that impacts the whole discussion. of course pitchfork.com is a music review site, but their ideas extend pretty easily to video games as well. worth the read i think.
July 28th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
that’s a great article. Thanks!
August 5th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
You’ve linked some good indy games here in the past, but you are one conformist bitch.
August 21st, 2006 at 1:01 am
Well, color me flattered; I figured the most response that article would get would be a pile of grumpy animosity about my arch counterpoint. (Also: What’s really ironic about all this is that I did have a conversation about the PS3 price point at a house party this weekend.)