And People Say Advertising Doesn't Work

I had some time to kill at The Fishbowl today so I decided to see what people on the web thought of one of the worlds worst beers: Corona. The following two reviews come from epinion.com:

1) Wake up--Corona sucks
Feb 01 '00

Author's Product Rating
1/5 stars

Pros
none

Cons
watery, skunky taste

Full Review
Corona's been a fad among college students and yuppies for a while. Don't buy the hype! It's a flavorless, watery lager that probably only tastes good to Bud drinkers because it comes in a bottle instead of a can. The lime is only masking the bad smell, folks. And in case it didn't already taste terrible, that clear bottle will make it taste "skunky" in no time! (since exposure to light destroys beer's flavors.)

Try a real pale ale or a wheat if you want a summery thirst-quencher. Try a Negro Modela if you want a Mexican beer. But don't drink Corona.

2)Corona Extra is muy bueno!
Aug 19 '00

Author's Product Rating
5/5 stars

Weight:
Flavor:

Pros
great tasting, goes down smooth

Cons
expensive

Full Review
Nothing caps off a good 18 holes of golf quite like the cold, refreshing taste of a corona extra, with a lime of course. My favorite cerveza, corona extra goes down a lot smoother than some of its competitors such as Dos Equis and Tecate. There is nothing quite like the refreshment I get when I sip down a cold corona with lime, as it cools down your body and makes you remember why you like drinking beer in the first place. The perfect food to go with a corona extra is a plate of chicken quesadillas with guacamole. If you are not into Mexican food, pizza will do just fine with a cold corona. The price is a little lofty for a young man like myself at $12-$15 for a 12 pack, but for the quality it is just a small price to pay. You can find corona at just about any supermarket or local liquor store, and once you find it you will be saying "una mas cerveza para mi, por pavor"

Notice how reviewer number one brings up some interesting points about how Corona only seems to taste good to some people because it comes in a bottle. He also brilliantly notes how a clear bottle is a poor choice and how the lime only masks the shit flavor (afterall, what self-respecting beer company agressively promotes putting an extrememly strong flavoring agent, like a lime, into their "fine" product). The second reviewer is simply touting his yuppiness and regurgitating Corona's stupid advertising ploys.

I Despise My Enemies

At a recent Goldeneye Summit, local intellectuals met to play Goldeneye on Nintendo 64. I attended the summit with an enthusiastic interest in playing the game.

As I played and tried to kill the other three competitors in the chaotic melee, I noticed something: I despised my enemies. I wanted them to be dead. And I don't just mean the characters in the game. When someone's character attacked me, I wanted to reach over and tear that person's head off.

I lost many games in a row. Thoughts of throwing my controller at the TV raced through my addled brain, but I thought better of it. After all, the summit was held at my abode, on my widescreen TV.

Afterwards we went out for sandwiches, and at the restaurant my animosities ran deeply. I thought of poisoning my enemies by replacing the lettuce on their BLTs with hemlock, rendering the sandwiches BLHs. I looked at the other summit attendees and all I saw was Bond, Siberian Special Forces, and Civilian. The video game began to consume me.

Goldeneye released its stranglehold on me before I was able to injure real people. But be careful the next time you play a multiplayer game, because this tragic story could be about YOU.

True Love Won't Desert You

A friend and I found this yesterday on YouTube. I understand that the music video was a new format back then, but who thought that any part of this video could possibly look cool?

Things to watch for:
1. The keyboard player on the left when Journey first appears and before they are reset and given instruments as he is "air-keyboarding" ... priceless.
2. Look closely at the woman's haircut - good ... god that is bad.
3. Steve Perry bought womens high-rise jeans and the greatest tank-top ever for this video.
4. The drummer has a cut-off red sweatshirt that says "Foosball" on it. No joke.
5. The lead guitarist has what I would like to label a "jew-mullet."
6. At one point, later in the video, the band is shot in slow motion lip-synching and pretending to play their instruments on and around a forklift and pallets. Just like every little kid dreams of.
7. Half of the band is sporting a molestache.

Notes on Double Team

I watched Double Team yesterday. For any ignoranuses out there, Double Team stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as a secret agent, and rebounding legend Dennis Rodman as an international arms dealer based in Antwerp. "Who does your hair? Siegfried or Roy?" Jack Quinn (Van Damme) cleverly jokes upon meeting the flamboyant Yaz (Rodman), whose hair is dyed in rainbow stripes.

This is from Canadian IMDB user joes_poop's review of the film: "A brilliant story line and Damme good action are what really bring this movie together, the action scenes are like watching Michelangelo's David take shape and all you can do is stand in awe at it's beauty. Van-Damme is a man on a mission, and won't stop for anything on this roller coaster ride of excitement, laughter, and adventure." Although this critic's sense of grammar isn't well-formed, his sense of irony is as rich as anything you'll find in the Entenmann's display case at the end of the aisle.

The narrative is too convoluted to discuss. I'll mention one beef I have with the dialog. Yaz makes basketball references constantly. For example, when Yaz tosses a man through a car window, he remarks, "that's gotta be at least a five-pointer!" This makes no sense because Yaz is an arms dealer, not a basketball player. It's as if the writer(s) forgot what character they were writing for: Dennis Rodman or Yaz.

Quibbles aside, Double Team boasts a terrific montage during which Quinn trains himself to hold his breath underwater, using a bathtub and a burning cigarette. By the end of the montage, he is able to hold his breath for the time it takes an entire cigarette to burn in an ashtray. This skill comes in handy immediately when Quinn has to make an underwater escape from "The Colony." The Colony is a place where super-intelligent secret agents and other international men of mystery are held as prisoners and forced to solve the world's problems. Sounds like pure Hollywood fantasy, right? Why don't you go to Antwerp and then talk to me about fantasy, Mr. Smart Guy?

For all the fighting in the movie, the stars hardly kill anyone. In fact, I can only think of one person Jack kills in the entire film. To contrast, in Commando, John Matrix (Schwarzenegger) kills 200+ people.

The Myth of the "World Beer Cup"

Maybe you've seen the Miller Lite commercials, or the World Beer Cup label on the side of a Miller Lite case. I write of the commercials that boast Miller Lite's repeated victories in the category of "Best American-Style Light Lager" at the World Beer Cup, and show Miller brewers raising banners commemorating these awards in the brewery. This raised some eyebrows in my circle, because from repeated taste tests, we've determined that Miller Lite sucks.

Another beer that has apparently won awards at the World Beer Cup is J.W. Dundee's Honey Brown. This is a cheap beer that doesn't taste like honey. It's really not too good at all, in fact. I would go as far as to say that it sucks. And yet, it won "Best Honey-Flavored Beer" or something like that at the WBC.

Why do these sucky beers win awards? There is at least one better light lager than Miller Lite I can think of: Sam Adams Light. In fact, the only light beer worse than ML that comes to mind is Beck's Premier Light, which tastes a little something like club soda, except the flavor is less robust than that clean, smooth sodium-like flavor of club soda. A better honey beer than Honey Brown is Leinkugel's Honey Weiss.

Conclusion: the World Beer Cup gives phony awards for marketing/propagandizing purposes, and is likely staged by friends of the colossal Miller Brewing Company.

Homelessness and Other Issues in Hard Target

Chance Boudreaux, Jean-Claude Van Damme's character in John Woo's seminal work Hard Target, is homeless. He also has a perm. And, even though his diet consists of bad gumbo and mediocre coffee, he is fit as a fiddle. He falls under the category of "implausibly homeless action hero", and he's not alone. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper plays a homeless man in They Live, and yet his character has the build of a professional wrestler who works out all the time and eats lots of boneless skinless boiled chicken breast and broccoli. Anyone who has walked down a city street has run across at least one homeless man or woman, and truly they are not the buff seducers of beautiful women that "tough guy" movies make them out to be. Although, maybe I'd have a different perspective if I lived in a port city, where the homeless sometimes find temporary work as longshoremen, as Chance does.

The homeless issue aside, Hard Target has long been one of my favorite movies. In fact, years ago, I named my cat Chance, after the film's hero. And so, it's a pleasure to address a few of the film's issues in this forum.

One thing that strikes me about the film is the protagonist's seemingly childish, repeated use of the classic "you are gay" insult. First, Chance tells a gang member wielding a club to "take [his] pig stick, and [his] boyfriend, and find a bus to catch." Chance had no reason to think that the club-wielding gang member was sexually involved with his partner-in-crime, and yet Chance refers to the latter as the former's boyfriend. Later in the film, Chance is intimidating a fat man with a beating. The fat man is in cahoots with a cartoonish supervillain named Van Cleef, who hunts homeless people for sport. Chance wants the fat man to deliver some message to Van Cleef, so Chance says, "Tell your boyfriend, Van Cleef," etc. Again, Chance has no reason to believe that the fat man and Van Cleef are in a homosexual relationship. A question you might ask: is it significant that Chance did not simply call the men "fags", but instead pointed to real people and invented gay romances? Chance's insults are more concrete and personal than the less refined "you are gay." He builds on that old schoolyard zinger: i.e., "you are in a homosexual relationship with this man!" Chance tries to assert his Alpha Male (see any psych textbook for further reading) status, keeping practically the only woman in the film (and certainly the prettiest) by his side at all times, and calling his enemies gay.

Moving on, Hard Target has a terrific Dossier Scene. In a Dossier Scene, the hero's enemies (and, incidentally, the film's audience) find out just how much of a badass the hero is, typically by reading some information about him from a manila folder. Sometimes the hero turns out to have won a Silver Star, or other military-issued medals, as in Casey Ryback's Dossier Scene in Under Siege. I recommend watching all action flicks with an eye peeled for these Dossier Scenes, as most seem to have them. Notable exceptions include any action movie with an "Everyman" hero, who hasn't built up a dossier, such as Die Hard.

Two Modern Masterpieces and What They Teach Us

Mega Man recently expressed interest in comparing Commando with another Schwarzenegger film, The Running Man. That's his project, though, and my goal with this entry is different. Mega Man and I watched The Running Man today, and I couldn't help but relate it to a book that a special person recently loaned me: Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I'm currently reading this book and have only reached the half-way point, but it has me thinking about Stalin's regime (the book satirizes that regime). Some features of Soviet life under Stalin are strikingly similar to features of The Running Man's vision of American life in 2017. America is a police state, as the scrolling text at the film's opening tells us. What does all this mean? I contend that The Running Man is subtly but distinctly ant-Soviet, Cold War propaganda, with a timely 1987 release.

I offer the following as evidence for my thesis:

1) At the beginning of The Running Man, the sexy Schwarzenegger sidekick, Amber Mendez, has a stash of stuff hidden in her apartment. The stuff includes illegal clothing, music from the "banned list" that Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) makes brief mention of, a travel pass, and cash. Bulgakov's novel (along with a lot of other artwork) was suppressed in Russia, much like the music that Amber hides is suppressed in America. The travel pass? The government wants to keep track of where citizens go within their own country. Sounds a little bit like a certain dictatorship which purported to be a communist government that I've mentioned. As for the banned clothes, I would guess that this police state wants its citizens to dress conservatively. In The Master and Margarita, the police arrest anyone who's outside in long underwear. And the currency? Why would Amber need to hide money? Probably because the police state government regulates who gets the money, much like a communist government, and will not stand for private hoarding.

2) The stalkers on The Running Man game show are offered real estate as part of their contracts, much like Russian artists were often offered resort houses under communism.

3) Among trumped-up charges listed against against Amber are what follows: dating two or three men in the same year (can you even imagine?), cheating on college exams, and sleeping with Ben Richards. Apparently this is enough for the government and government-sponsored network ICS to issue Amber a death sentence. Amber's promiscuity, real or fictionalized, is made into an offense against the state, which likely promotes nuclear families. Cheating on exams doesn't seem like much of a crime, but in a highly regulated communist society the best jobs would likely go to the people with the best exam scores.

I've made my point, and I'd finally like to salute the makers of two great masterpieces, Mikhail Bulgakov and whoever it was who directed The Running Man. I can't remember. The guy who played Starsky on the "Starsky and Hutch" TV show.

Cinematic Perfectionism

Last night's viewing of Commando was so enjoyable Godfrey Jones and I decided that this fantastic movie deserved two separate reviews. In 1985, while other directors were wasting their time with movies like Out of Africa and The Color Purple, a young director named Mark L. Lester (Firestarter, Extreme Justic) created the perfect action movie. Twenty two years later, Lester's masterpiece still tugs at the heartstrings of action fans and film critics alike. I'd like to highlight some themes and aspects of Commando which set it apart from other great films of the era.

John Matrix as an infallable protagonist: A lot of writers tend to busy movie plots with complex development of the main heroe's flaws. Not Joseph Loeb and Matthew Weisman. John Matrix is absolutely infallable in his morals and his actions. Despite the fact that Matrix kills essentially and entire nation's army he suffers only one wound: a small cut from a knife. Matrix is the ultimate warrior, and kidnapping his daughter only enraged Matrix and sealed the evil doers' fates. Matrix is also absolutely uncompromising in the film. He has an extreme amount of confidence, and where many action heroes may waste time, Matrix makes a decision and executes (like when he jumps from the plane and sets a countdown timer on his watch to keep track of how much time he has to kill the bad guys and rescue his daughter). Some action heroes, Snake Plissken for example, have dark pasts and questionable motives. John Matrix, however, is an America-loving retired special forces leader who helped establish democracy in a South American country. He doesn't smoke (Sully, one of the main henchmen, is a smoker, which means he's evil). Matrix is also a relentless humanitarian (illustrated in the opening credits when Matrix and his daughter are smiling and feeding a baby deer). Some may question Matrix morals, seeing how he killed hundreds of people in the film. But the goons kidnapped his daughter and threatened to mail her back to Matrix in peaces. If Matrix has any flaw, it's having too much love for his daughter.

Feats of Strength: In today's action movies you don't see a lot of incredible feats of strength. Commando has 9. Matrix performs such incredible feats as: carrying a giant log over one arm, picking up a phone booth with a man in it, flipping over a car, and ripping a chain from a locked fence with his bare hands. These frequent feats of strength help reinforce how much of an incredible bad ass Matrix is and how nothing will stand in the way of him and his beloved daughter.

Musical Score: The music in Commando is just as suspenseful and action-packed as the film itself. The score is a genius combination of steel drums, the electric drum machine, and 80s synth that's down right John Carpenter-esque. The credits feature a really cheesy 80s song that communicates triumph and transcendence while not being too pretentious. This cheesy 80s music outro set a precedent for later movies including Kickboxer and The Running Man (In fact, The Running Man and Commando have many parallels. I would be VERY interested in comparing the two on closer, more analytical viewings).

Commando is exciting, suspenseful, action-packed, and heart warming. Most importantly, however, Commando is honest. It's not trying to say too much or pretending to be something it's not. It's simply a perfect action movie. In, this watershed film has been getting the credit it deserved in 1985. I think as the years pass, Commando will become a staple of any movie collection. If you haven't seen Commando I suggest buying it immediately. Don't rent it, because you'll want to watch it over and over again.

My Rating: 10/10 stars.

Commando Revisited

Last night, Mega Man and I, along with a friend of the blog who often identifies himself as "Toast", watched the film Commando, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as John Matrix. Mega Man and I had seen it several times, but last night's viewing was Toast's very first. I was so jealous of Toast...it's a privilege to watch Commando for the first time. There are parts of it you might appreciate more with repeated viewings, such as when Matrix kills two soldiers by tossing circular saw blades at their heads, or when Matrix tempts the evil, leather-and-chain-mail-clad Bennett to a knife fight and Bennett boils with erotic desire at the thought of killing his ex-comrade-in-arms.

It is precisely Bennett on whom I want to focus this review. Bennett is played by an overweight, mustached actor who I've seen in no other movie. He is supposed to be Matrix's major foe in the film--the ultra-intimidating right-hand-man of a South American dictator, who kills Matrix's former team (some super-specialized elite military unit) and kidnaps his daughter (a very young Alyssa Milano) in an effort to get Matrix to do something. I don't remember what the terrorists want Matrix to do. Frankly, it's not important. But what is important is that although Bennett is represented as a good physical match for Matrix, he looks like a flabby middle-aged man in tight S & M clothes. It's obvious that he is in love with Matrix, and derives erotic satisfaction from cutting him during their final confrontation. Ironically, Matrix impales Bennett with a giant phallus (a long, thick section of pipe, which apparently carries steam through the dictator's basement) in the end. Bennett final gets to have sexual contact of sorts with Matrix, but pays the ultimate price.

Commando vilifies the effeminate enemy, Bennett, but chooses not to depict him as physically weak. The message: sexual deviants are our enemies (if we identify with Matrix, and, by God, we do), but they can be very powerful, so bring a friend who's well built and looks great in a Speedo (as Matrix does approaching the dictator's island by sea on a raft, and then jogging down the beach). You know Bennett would have loved to see Matrix arrive like that! But that display was strictly for Matrix's sidekick-and-presumably-future-girlfriend's eyes only.

In conclusion, see Commando. See it again. And do your friends a favor: show it to them.

No Title Needed

More on Fat People

I have always been fascinated with people who are so fat that they can't even support their own body weight. I've often wondered about the exact moment in time when they realized that they couldn't stand under their own power anymore. What is the tipping point like? Is it that they can't get out of bed one day? Do they just collapse on the ground? Do the legs or the heart give out first?

I've always imagined that a really fat guy is eating at McDonald's. As he is waddling back to his car, his pulls out one of the 3 double quarter pounders with cheese that he has bought for lunch. He takes a monstrous bite, when suddenly he knees start to buckle. He tries to maintain his balance, but his knees fail him and he drops to a kneeling position. He looks skyward for some sort of divine guidance, but then his fragile knees fail him again and he flops to the ground. His last thoughts before his passes out in exhaustion are, "Perhaps I should have ordered a Diet Coke."

Video Game Idea

Premise: A mad scientist named Dr. Light has invented a machine that brings dinosaurs back from the dead using fossils and lasers. Dr. Light and his team of scientists create an army of dinosaurs to go after militant Christian fundamentalists. You can play as a scientist, a dinosaur, a soldier, a cannibal, or a fundamentalist. The player gets to develop his character, plan strategies to take on the fundamentalists, plan military formations, destroy religious icons (or build stadium-sized evangelical churches in the fundamentalist version of the game), and eat anyone or thing who stands in the way in this exciting RPG/first person beat-'em-up-eat-'em-up shooter game/strategy game. The ultimate goal: destroy/eat all of your political enemies, establishing your group as the rulers of the Earth. If you play as a scientist, you will ultimately have to kill the dinosaurs, but you work with them as allies at first. God is the ultimate boss, and he uses ninja stars to thwart scientist, dinosaur, and cannibal enemies alike.

Title:
Dinofascism: Dinosaurs Versus God

Alternate Title:
The Final Crusade: The Search for Jerusalosaurus

Intricacies:

*The dinosaur player will find the T-Rex most useful for killing enemies, but the brontosauruses and other herbivores are useful for the experienced player, who needs plenty of food for his T-Rexes to make them robust killing machines.

*Hyper-realistic graphics bring the Mesozoic Period straight to your HDTV and exploding into your living room with the force of God's word.

*Multiplayer mode is downright Halo-esque.

Accented English

Recently I overheard an American woman complaining that when you call a certain DSL provider's customer service line, "they're all Indians!" Apparently, the customer service people at this company are unintelligible to some middle-class white Americans because the customer service representatives speak with Indian accents (or, as a certain relative of mine called them without a hint of irony, "Hindu accents").

Grammatically, the English spoken by these customer service representatives is likely superior to this particular woman's English. But as she speaks with a mid-western twang, she thinks she is easy to understand and the fault is with them. The problems, as I see it, with understanding Indian or British (very similar accents due to aggressive imperialism) people when they speak English, are as follows:

1. They talk all proper-like.
   
2. They're too dang polite. What the heck does "pardon me" mean?
3. It just ain't right.

A Vacuum Put to Good Use

Good Morning Burgers

A few weeks ago my friend Nassim and I made "Good Morning Burgers." A Good Morning Burger is an idea from the Simpsons where Homer is watching an ad for a new burger:

We take eighteen ounces of sizzling ground beef, and soak it in rich, creamery butter, then we top it off with bacon, ham, and a fried egg. We call it the Good Morning Burger.

Well, we weren't able to duplicate the recipe exactly, but we came close.

John and Nas's Good Morning Burgers:
18 ounces ground beef
1 stick of butter
1/8 pound slice of ham
3 strips of bacon
1 egg
One extra-large hamburger bun

Put 2 tablespoons of butter inside the beef patty. Fry the bacon and ham in butter. Fry the egg. Grill burger. Butter the bun. Stack burger, ham, bacon, and egg. Sandwich between bun. Enjoy.

This burger gave me a rush like no other. Possibly because my arteries were consticting after eating it. But it was truly delicious. Mmmmmm...fattening.

Hungry Man XXL

Take a look at this.

Before I saw this (see above) in my grocer's freezer, I'd been eating crap--unbalanced meals consisting of stuff like pita bread, hummus, corn, peas, and fresh fruit. I even ate sushi sometimes. Such is the diet of the lazy college student.

Then I noticed that for just a few dollars more per meal, I could have wholesome, all-American cooking, conveniently precooked and flash-frozen for maximum freshness. The Hungry Man XXL Angus Meatloaf is an all-American meal, as I just noted--it sure beats that terrorist falafel and downright secular sushi I'd been eating in small quantities. Let's not forget the Hungry Man XXL Backyard Barbeque: chicken, ribs, and just about as much mashed potatoes and brown gravy as I could stuff into my face.

The Hungry Man XXL processed food-like dinner has several other advantages over fresh but dangerous foods. Not only are Hungry Man XXL dinners decidedly not ethnic, they are also

1. More efficient (denser) than fresh food.
2. Bigger (1.5 pounds of food). If you made dinner for yourself from fresh ingredients, it's unlikely that you'd eat that much.
3. Only slightly more expensive than fresh food. You get what you pay for...am I right, or am I right? C'mon!
4. Mild-tasting. While other foods try to overwhelm you with flavor, each bite of the Hungry Man XXL dinner--from the chicken to the potatoes--tastes exactly the same. High marks for consistency!
   

Spillover Effects

Alternate Title: The Economics of Being Fat

I was sitting on the metro yesterday, resting my head against the window while dreaming of eating French Silk pie, when I suddenly felt myself crushed up against the wall of the car. A tremoundously fat, sweaty 30-something year old man has decided to sit next to me, and his girth was infringing on my space.

In economics, this is called a spillover effect. A spillover effect occurs when a company, in producing a product, creates some effect on society as a whole that it not included in the company's cost. For example, a factory spills waste into the river, thus decreasing the quality of the water. The true cost of the factory's output is greater than the cost the factory pays if they don't clean up the water. This is also called an "externality."

Anyways, this man had spilled over into my space, space that I had paid for. His ticket and my ticket cost the same, but he was infringing on my comfort and my ride. The true cost of his metro ride is higher than mine, yet we pay the same price.

The metro should take the same stance that airplanes take, wherein if you are too fat to sit in one seat, you need to pay for two. Some may call this cruel, but really it is simple economics. We force companies who pollute to clean up after themselves. Why shouldn't we force fat people to pay more money for taking up more space? This would also probably encourage people to lose weight and society would gain as a whole. This, gentle (soft "g") reader, is how to turn a negative externality into a positve externality.

Review of J. Sheeky From May in Clerkenwell

I was perusing the fish section london-eating.co.uk, a site which features customer reviews of London restaurants, when I stumbled upon a review that really caught my eye.

It was a review of the posh pub J. Sheeky, in Covent Garden. May of Clerkenwell wrote,

I don't quite agree with previous critics who have said that the service was good as I found this patchy - they were quite fussy about not letting me have an extra chair to put an expensive bag which I didn't want to leave on the floor and the table was clearly too small for it to be left on the table. Other tables had TWO empty chairs but they would not let me have one!

Small tables and no place to put an expensive bag? I wonder what sort of bag it was; perhaps it was a baggie full of cocaine, which certainly fits the bill for an expensive bag (pun intended). To think that other tables had TWO vacant chairs! It must have been terribly difficult to look at the unoccupied chairs, any one of which could have accommodated an expensive bag. How dare the servers refuse an extra chair? Were they human beings? Did they have any compassion in them at all? The answer comes in the next part of May's review.

One waiter could not speak English well and referred to us as "lady" (what am I, a mafia gangster?) rather than "madam" or "miss"! Another seemed to be overworked and plonked plates down as though dishing out canteen food.

Aha! The servers were so brusque and unfriendly because they were foreigners. It's all falling into place, now. Why on Earth would anyone ever call a woman "lady"? Unless, of course, she was a mafia gangster. Other sorts of gangsters, who are not affiliated with the ethnically-Italian "mafia", do not refer to a woman as "lady". They often substitute "dame" or "broad": hence May's specification of "mafia" gangster. The servers were apparently unclear what sort of restaurant they were in, plonking plates all over the place. Damn their overworked hides!

I'd say the atmosphere was of a canteen or department store cafe rather than a destination restaurant like The Ivy or Le Caprice. Perhaps things have gone downhill since Corbin and King no longer own it. Their famed fish pie and iced berries were so-so, with the pie being too salty and berries being very hard just out of the freezer.

Ah yes: the famous sale of J. Sheeky by Wes Corbin and Burger King, to none other than the notorious pornographer Dicky Fester. No wonder the restaurant is so rude...there's a new sheriff in town! Despite Fester's vulgar ownership, though, it's strange that a dish called "iced berries" would be frozen.

May's ratings for J. Sheeky broke down as follows (on a scale of 1-10, 10 being best): Food - 6; Service - 5; Atmosphere - 8; Value for money - 5. Atmosphere was an 8? The place had the air of a canteen! Once again, the reviewer was too generous.

On the basis of this review, I recommend J. Sheeky, though not as a dining experience so much as to satisfy anthropological curiosities such as: (1) What are foreigners like? (2) How does J. Sheeky differ from The Ivy and Le Caprice? and (3) Are chairs better off with asses in them, bags, or nothing at all?

"Christ holds the Moon to the Earth, not Gravity"

Well, Doug Wilson is at it again.

The latest issue of the fundamentalist evangelical publication Credenda/Agenda, a magazine edited by Wilson, is titled "Against Gravity" and provides a few critical Biblical exegeses disproving physics and the laws of Nature. Credenda/Agenda has credibility stamped all over it (so much credibility in fact that if this metaphor were real one could not read the text because all the red ink reading "credibility" would obscure the letters...thank God it's just a metaphor). Anyway, as a man who respects science, I am thankful that the authors of Credenda/Agenda have gone to such lengths in researching and disproving physics. The authors numerously cite Biblical passages that contradict our modern, wacky scientists' "Laws of Nature." Have these scientists even read the Bible? Wilson and others have, which, to me, speaks volumes about their authority to comment on physics and science in general.

Let's take Douglas Jones' article, "In Defense of Wind Grasping," as an example. Jones provides us with a stunning (and, in retrospect, completely logical) revelation:

"Grace rules everything. We see that in one of the most radical, provoca-
tive statements in all of Scripture: “All things were created
through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in
Him all things consist” (Col. 1:16,17). In Him all things
consist. A person holds the universe together—no laws, no
impersonality. Christ holds the moon to the earth, not gravity.
Christ touches mountains and they smoke (Ps. 104:32), not
magmatic pressure. Christ grips each human body, not short
bands of collagen fibers. Christ “has measured the waters in
the hollow of His hand, measured the heaven with a span” (Is.
40:12).
There are no laws of nature.
There are no impersonal forces.
There are no necessary connections.
There’s Christ, the logos, the logos who ate fish and bled
and turned over tables. A person holds all things together by
grace, by love."

I am unsatisfied with the modern explanation that gravity holds the Moon to the Earth (after all, gravity is JUST A THEORY...like that wicked theory of evolution proposed by that Devil-worshipping, fudge-packing, sodomizing asshole Charles Darwin). It makes more sense that Christ is simply holding on to the Moon and He has for all of the Earth's history (6,000 years). Jones also confirmed my suspicion about those secularist scientists:

"The fact that just about everyone so adamantly wants to
impose rules and laws on chaos suggests she (Chaos) got something
right. When pagans and Christians, Europeans and Asians,
scientists and poets, North and South Dakotans, all insist on
gagging her with formulas and algorithms, you know some
conspiracy is at work."

I find Jones' theory more satisfying and credible for three primary reasons:

1) It's simple (and therefore the best explanation according to those manipulative scientists and their crazy "Occam's Razor" law. Ha! What fools!).

2) It uses the Word. God created the Earth and the Heavens (including the Moon) and man and everything else in 6 days--THIS IS A FACT! Any theory contradicting the Scriptures is false, end of discussion.

3) I'm an ignorant, foolish, self-centered retard. Therefore this explanation comforts my inability to comprehend modern science and my insecurities about life and death.

"Against Gravity" also explains how Christ flew without the use of modern "aerodynamics" and, as Nancy Wilson points out, how girls who touch often (i.e. hug, play games, curl each others hair, etc.) are insecure in God's word and might have homosexual leanings--oh my!

Unfortunately I think I might need to get a new sarcasm meter. As I was typing this entry it went from the "Critical" reading to "Broke as Fuck!" reading. I think I'll have a beer and play some videogames.

Hyperirony

Last week, my supervisor, my supervisor's supervisor, and I were going over some spreadsheets when it became apparent that we needed to double-check some data via the internet. Since we were at my computer, I opened a huge PDF file that had hundreds of pages of data on it. Since the search function wasn't picking up the text on the PDF I had to manually scroll through the file in order to find the data we were looking for.

While I was doing this, my supervisor said that this process is like something out of the television show "The Office." My supervisor's supervisor, referencing a recent episode of the show, then said, "At least the PDF file doesn't have an obscene watermark on it." His delivery was awful.

They both laughed. I stayed silent. It turns out that my supervisor and my supervisor's supervisor had misunderstood the task given to them, and that we had no need to find this data in the first place.

Why do I tell this story? Because it is an example of Hyper-irony or hyperirony (High-per-reh-knee). Hyperspace is defined in mathematics as space containing more than 3 dimensions. Hyperirony is irony that contains more than three levels.

How is this an example of hyperirony?

First, I have always said that if you put a camera in my office you could get a show like "The Office," only it much sadder in its tone but just as funny. (For more on my office, please see my blog) The fact that my supervisor and my supervisor's supervisor brought up that this one moment could be in The Office, when really their whole day could be in The Office is ironic.

Second, a scene where a person is making a reference to The Office in a very unfunny way is ironic because the show is hilarious and making an unfunny reference is extremely difficult.

Third, the fact that we didn't need to be doing this unfortunate task in the first place is ironic in the Alanis Morrisette sense of the word.

Fourth, right after they left my desk, I sighed in frustration and waved my arms around a bit, knocking my Dwight Schrute bobblehead doll off my desk and decapitating him. A very bitter irony indeed.

So four levels, at least, of irony classifies this event as hyperironic. I hope that you *gentle* readers out there begin to incorporate this term into your lexicon.

Ethnography in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

I played Punch-Out!! today for the first time in years. For any ignoranuses out there, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! is probably the best boxing video game of all time, and it first occurred on the Nintendo 15-20 years ago. You play as a scrapping young-and-undersized boxer named Mac, and you fight against characters who individually represent each of America's major national enemies. The pathetic Glass Joe, for example, represents France, as the game tells you. The fiendish Von Kaiser emerges as your next opponent, to a couple of midi-fied bars from "Ride of the Valkyries." Guess which nation the mustached Von Kaiser represents? That's exactly right; it's Poland.

One of the games worst and largest (physically) aggressors is the oafish Turk, Bald Bull. "MAC! WATCH OUT FOR HIS BULL CHARGE!" the coach warns you between rounds. The Bull Charge is relatively easy to stop with a carefully timed gut-punch, but the second time around...fuggedabodit. So devastating. Oh, the brutality of the Bull Charge! The human price! Will Turkey ever learn?

One of the most dead-on of all the stereotypes in the game is found in the Indian, Great Tiger. Great Tiger uses Hindu magic to vanish right before your eyes! He re-appears to punch you. He has a rapid circling move that becomes very trying on Mac's second meeting with this Indian warrior (by the way, Great Tiger appears to be a regular Indian [read: person from India], not an American Indian [read: Native American].).

Soda Popinsky, an obviously drunk, off-balance Russian fighter who constantly hoists a bottle of "soda" [read: 100-proof Russian vodka] to his lips, is another example of Punch-Out!!'s careful ethnography.

The cleverest and handsomest of all Mac's opponents is Piston Honda, who hails from Tokyo, Japan. His graceful swings and agile movements are hard not to appreciate, even when you're alternately punching him in the gut and jaw. Why the Japanese game designers working in Japan would make the Japanese character the handsomest, best-built, hottest, most graceful character in the game is a mystery that could be solved only by a Buddhist monk (or possibly an extremely clever fortune cookie fortune).

Let's not forget King Hippo, the lovable-but-loutish Pacific Islander (possibly Samoan) who is so fat that he can't get up once you've knocked him down.

Why aren't today's games so open about their ethnic stereotyping? As Punch-Out!! teaches us, cartoonish stereotypes and ethnically-inspired midi music are hilarious.

The ultimate message of the game: Look out, good old US of A--the nations of the world are trying to punch you out using predictable, rhythmic swings, each of which can be avoided with a simple dodge or block. Our only options, ultimately, are to counter-punch or be punched-out. Good thing we have a reset button and an infinite number of tries. And precious pass-codes to save our progress.

Great NFL Prospects You've Never Heard of

During the 2007 NFL Draft, ESPN analyst Mel Kiper kept us informed about the best players available, and all the unsung players at Division II and III schools. Kiper told us about anonymous players from colleges we'd never heard of, and sure enough, they were drafted.

Unfortunately, Kiper and the NFL scouts missed a few guys that might be superstars in the next couple of years.

1. O.J. Simpson. Occupation: Retired entrepreneur. Age: 60ish. Specs: 6'3", 250 lbs. Whatever happened to this guy? He was a Heisman-Trophy-winner at USC, and now all he does is play golf and search for his wife's killer(s). He doesn't have the running-back-physique any more, but, with conditioning, O.J. could be perfect as a big, bruising tight-end, stabbing into and penetrating various coverage packages. How this guy didn't end up in the NFL straight after college is a mystery to me.
   
2. Bowser. Occupation: Castle master/Princess Peach's repeated kidnapper. Age: 19. Specs: Turtle with spikes. Bowser is a huge, deadly turtle. He's surprisingly agile, which compliments his physical prowess nicely. This guy is a bulldozer...with a wrecking ball attached! (That description copyright 1980something by Rocky III) If the Los Angeles Rams are in the market for a fullback, Bowser is "the guy."
   
3. Vladimir Putin. Occupation: President of USSR. Age: 104. Specs: As tall as a pole and twice as wide. Putin knows how to win: make your opponents "an offer they can't refuse!" LOL. If the Packers picked up a guy like this, you could be sure that Brian Urlacher's endorsement deal with Vitamin Water would be dead almost as quickly as Urlacher himself. Putin also runs a 4.2 second 40-yard-dash, which would make him handy as a kick returner.
   
4. Brad Johnson. Occupation: Unemployed. Go get this guy! He's not doing anything! He's an absolute professional! Unlike most quarterbacks, who throw to receivers on pass plays, Brad Johnson threw to areas on the field when he was quarterback of the Vikings. He is also a really "hot" guy.
   

Have I missed anyone?

Devil's Playground and, to a Lesser Extent, Jesus Camp

Last night, some of my *closest* friends and I watched Devil's Playground, a documentary about some Amish kids during their so-called "Rumspringa" period. I also caught the tail end of Jesus Camp, a documentary about evangelicals and the so-called "Army of God" that they raise (it's a unique army because its soldiers are creepy ten-year-olds).

Devil's Playground was kinda boring. I should probably explain "Rumspringa": apparently, when Amish kids turn sixteen, their parents set them loose in the "english" (no, they do not capitalize it) world, and when and if the kids want to, they can voluntarily join the Amish church. Inevitably, the kids pick up smoking, binge drinking, methamphetamine, and Nintendo. They also start having sex with each other (though it's probably pretty amateurish because the Amish are not allowed to watch pornography while they grow up).

The particular Amish kids in the movie, like Faron, live (in their trailers or barns) in a self-perpetuating miserable cycle of drunkenness and hangover. This is one reason why the film is boring; the kids don't really do anything. Nobody parties like the Amish! one of them declares. LOL.

Another reason why Devil's Playground is boring: the Amish kids are stupid and inexperienced. They have nothing to say, except stuff like "I could be dead at any minute. Gotta live each moment like it's my last." Wow. Such a profound realization/credo. I've never heard any sixteen-year-old say anything like that. The kids are about as philosophically insightful as professional athletes. Word of advice to directors: don't make documentaries centering around the thoughts of teenagers, because they're stupid and boring.

Jesus Camp was a better film, from what I could tell from the last twenty minutes. The filmmakers apparently asked the evangelical kids and their parents questions that would yield the scariest, creepiest answers. Apparently, the secular scientists want us to believe that we came from GOO! Interesting. Secular kids are also taught (wrongly so) that humans are animals, like the common cat or wild mushroom. One of the film's stars was a grossly overweight middle-aged woman who criticized all the fat and lazy Christians out there (***Hypocrite Warning***).

I'll be in my office, thumping my favorite Bible, if anyone needs me.

Random Notes on Mega Man 2

Although I hold Mega Man 3 to be the absolute perfection of the series, I have been spending much time recently studying Mega Man 2. The second in the series is perhaps the most complex of all the Mega Mans. I used to play this game often in my childhood but never noticed the following complexities/inconsistencies:

1. Boss Sequence and Weaknesses: Unlike the previous and all the proceeding Mega Man games, there is no defined and convenient robot boss sequence to follow. For example, Metal Blade kills Wood Man (obviously), but also Flash Man, Bubble Man, and even Metal Man himself! In fact, Metal Blade is the most effective against metal man, implying the complete inferiority of Metal Man or the complete superiority of Metal Blade (this month's Game Informer ranked Metal Blade as the 3rd best video game weapon of all time. I disagree. Quick Boomerang is superior in that it is most effective in Dr. Wiley's castle and has an essentially unlimited supply). If one were to take care of Metal Man first, they could floss on most of the other evil robots, but if one beat another boss first, let's say Air Man, the sequence would be much more linear and more difficult. I'm still unsure how I feel about this inconsistency and what exactly the game designers meant by it.

2. The Dr. Light-Dr. Wiley Dynamic: I think it's blatantly obvious that Dr. Light is a God character: His name is Dr. Light, He created (Mega) Man, who is definately a messiah character, and he means to restore order and combat Dr. Wiley. Are we to believe that Wiley is a Satan character? If so what role to the evil robot bosses play? Fallen angels? Satan's demons? But at the end Dr. Wiley bows to Mega Man, implying that he is begging for forgiveness from his sins.

3. The In-Game Portrayal of Mega Man vs. the Box Cover Portrayal of Mega Man: In Mega Man 2 it is clear that Mega Man's gun is a sort of cannon built into or maybe even entirely composing his left arm. Mega Man is also clearly part robot, part human. However the Mega Man 2 box cover portrays Mega Man, Quick Man, and Flash Man battling in Bomb Man's level (Bomb Man is from Mega Man 1!). Mega Man and Quick Man appear as if they are entirely human (just wearing tight spandex and silly headgear). Most perplexing and disturbing is the fact that Mega Man is HOLDING A GUN instead of having a blaster attachment on his left arm.

Discuss.


P.S. special thanks to Albatross for introducing me to the band NESkimos. They do some awesome Mega Man 2 metal covers. This is scrolling cuz I just remembered some wicked HTML code.

Mozart, Beethoven, Kondo?

Mozart's Requiem and Beethoven's Fifth are mainstays of both classical afficianados and pretentious assholes. Often lost in the sea of praise for the composers of old is a musical genius who, although his name is not well known, has created music that has touched the hearts of millions: Koji Kondo. Kondo was born in Japan in August of 1960. After showing an interest in music at a young age, Kondo began years of training in classical music in Japan's conservatories. However, unlike his predecessors, Kondo would not use pianos or chamber orchestras to create his musical triumphs.

Right now you're asking, "what did Kondo compose and why does he belong in the discourse of musical geniuses the like of Mozart and Beethoven?" Look at the picture below, then think of its accompanying music that you so vividly remember.

"do do do do do DO do." I would say that probably 90 percent of people 40 and under know this epic tune, even if they have never played Super Mario Bros. In 1985, shortly after Nintendo hired Kondo to produce music for their new Nintendo Entertainment System (NES or Famicon in Japan), Kondo composed the most perfect musical accompaniment to the most perfect video game ever created. Every note of the Super Mario Bros. score combined in perfect harmony to effectively communicate the emotions, dangers, and frustration of Mario's adventure in the perilous Mushroom Kingdom.

Still unconvinced of Kondo's musical genius. Well chew on this. Kondo created this masterpiece not using a full chamber orchestra nor opera singers but an extremely constricting MIDI music compostition sytem. Wikipedia scholars had this to say about Kondo's restricted options composing music for the NES:

"Kondo found himself in a totally different environment at Nintendo. Suddenly, he was limited to only four "instruments" (two monophonic pulse channels, a monophonic triangle wave channel which could be used as a bass, and a noise channel used for percussion) due to limitations of the system's sound chip. Though he and Nintendo's technicians eventually discovered a way to add a fifth channel (normally reserved for sound effects), his music was still severely limited on the system."

Despite this seemingly monstrous impediment to musical greatness, Kondo created perhaps the most well-known and emotional video game score of all time. And he continued to create more music as his musical options flourished on more sophisticated home consoles. Kondo's other notable video game compositions include Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda, LoZ: Link to the Past, LoZ: Ocarina of Time, Super Smash Bros., and Starfox 64. Incredible...absolutely incredible.

In May of 2006, Kondo was celebrated at the premier of "PLAY! A Video Game Symphony" at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, Illinois. Kondo attended this concert, which featured a full symphony orchestra performing his video game classics. The performance cemented his place among the world's most revered classical composers. Here is a video of the Rosemont premier.

The Discourse of Robotocism in the Classical Period

Scholars have debated (and still debate) when the Classical Period of Video Games begins and ends--some insist it begins with Pong; others claim wildly and implausibly that the C.P. only ended with the advent of Grand Theft Auto III. By "Classical," I mean the period beginning with Super Mario Brothers and ending with the introduction of the SNES (Sweet New Excellence Success).

Robotocism during the C.P. is (from here on, we shall insist upon the present tense when discussing these games, which are still today fixtures in the hearts and minds of children, immature college students, and basement nerds) preeminent in games such as those of the Mega Man series and Base Wars. Why robots? Why hybrid men-robots? Is Mega Man a post-apocalyptic vision? Where is it set--some robot world? Albequerque, NM (which I believe stands for "No Men"--so, is it some sort of robot-haven? Someone (or thing) must be governing NM, but I suppose not a man [read: person].)? We just don't know. One obvious possible reason for the pre-eminance of robotocism during the CP: robots are easier to draw and animate than people. They never have hands, for example, which have a lot of moving parts (fingers).

To answer these questions and others (which the game play does not answer), we should probably consult a text. Since the dawn of time, nothing has been a more reliable source of information than the printed word. Some would insist upon the senses and empiricism as THE major source of information about the world. Wrong. The senses deceive us constantly. Proof: I had a dream the other night in which I was captian of the high-school football team. But the fact is, I'm not captain of any high school football team, and I never was. And yet, I believed the dream was reality: I experienced real-ish sensations. So we just can't rely on the senses. We need some sort of text.

But what text? The instruction manual for Mega Man 2? Well, that would tell us a lot about gameplay and such, but (in all likelihood) wouldn't answer our penetrating Robotocist inquiries. We're stuck, then, right? Wrong! We have this.

-Chris