30 June

Let Us Pause for a Moment to Appreciate the Genius that is “Cerebus the Aardvark”

 

 

The longest single work of literature in the history of the world is not ‘Moby Dick,’ not the Bible, not even the Mahabharata of Indian lore (a mere 6,200 pages long).  No, the longest single work in the history of the world is a comic book, starring an aardvark, written by a guy living in Ontario, Canada.  Ontario – famed for its oil wells and hockey teams.

“Cerebus the Aardvark” is 6,600 pages long, and took twenty-five years to write.  One guy – his name is Dave Sim; we’ll be hearing more about him later – wrote and drew the whole thing (okay, he started cheating, around issue 75, by hiring another guy to draw the backgrounds).

 

So what’s it all about?  What’s the STORY, man?  Oh no.  You don’t even wanna know, man.  Putting aside for a moment the fact that the whole comic is over six thousand pages long, and so trying to summarize things would, in fact, be like trying to summarize the Bible:  “…So, there was this dude?  Named Abraham?  And his God offered to make of him a great nation?  So, Abraham, he goes and cuts a sheep in half, and then starts walking his family towards the land of Canaan…”

Putting aside all of that, summarizing things (books, movies, etc.), invariably makes them sound retarded.  For example, Citizen Kane:  (Guy gets rich, becomes a dick, yearns for the innocence of his childhood.)  Or, Star Wars:  (Robots and a couple of dudes rescue a princess, fight with laser swords, blow up a space station.)

So…  putting aside all of that, here’s the short-version summary of “Cerebus”: He’s a talking Aardvark.  For no particular reason.  There are no other talking animals in the comic book, and you should probably do your best to ignore the fact that he’s an aardvark – if that’s possible – as it has very little, if anything, to do with the plot of the book.

The comic seems to take place in a vaguely medieval, vaguely ‘Lord of the Rings-ish’ world.  There are, for example, a few monsters and elves, and sometimes people use magic.  Whatever time period it’s supposed to be, gunpowder and cannons have only recently been invented.  So.  If that helps you.  Again, you should probably just ignore all of this.

Cerebus starts off as a barbarian, but then he wanders out of the woods into the big city, and through a series of machinations, gets elected prime minister in a fixed election.  But his government collapses within a week due to gross internal mismanagement.  Cerebus quits politics, tries to seduce a rich girl, and starts writing his memoirs.  (In a great running in-joke, he only ever gets as far as page three in his memoirs.  His advice as given in his memoirs:  If you’re prime minister, you’re going to need to drink a lot – in fact, you should just keep continually drinking so that you never get a hangover.  And if you get so drunk that you feel the need to beat your butler to death, be sure to lay down towels or a tarp first, otherwise it’s going to be a mess to clean up the next morning.)

Then, that same week, while still trying to write his memoirs, Cerebus gets summoned to be prime minister again as part of a Unity government.  (A running theme; people keep choosing Cerebus for positions of high power, because they think that he’s a barbarian idiot who can be manipulated.  They’re right about the “barbarian idiot” part, but not so much about the “can be manipulated” part.)

So now he’s prime minister again.  Meanwhile, in another part of the country, the pope is assassinated. 

A couple of dudes nominate Cerebus as pope, thinking that he’ll screw up things so badly that they’ll be called in to save the country.  (As before, they’re halfway right).

So now Cerebus is pope.  It takes about fifteen seconds for power to go to his head.  He announces that unless all the gold in the world is brought to him, God will destroy the world…  in three weeks.

Cerebus starts making speeches from the top of the hotel where he’s living.  He’s a big hit.  The crowd loves him.  He invites an old woman whose life-long dream is to meet the pope up to the roof of his hotel…  then he kicks her off, to her death.  (“The moral of the story is that you can get what you want, and still not be very happy.”)  Next, he throws a baby off the roof.  (“One less mouth to feed is one less mouth to feed.”)  The crowd loves it. 

Things start to unravel.  False popes and anti-popes abound.  Cerebus is cast down into the lower city.  An underground feminist movement starts plotting to take over the government.  To make things even worse, Cerebus has a cold.  He follows a magical glowing sphere thing, is taken away into a dream and talks to God.  He asks God, what will Heaven be like?  God responds:  “I’m not really sure.  Maybe it’ll be like being drunk except that you’ll never get hungover.  But don’t quote me on that.  I’m not an expert on these things.”
Cerebus wakes up.  His forces have captured one of the feminist leaders.  He visits her in prison, annuls his own marriage, declares the two of them married, rapes her, and then declares them divorced.  The mountain on which the city is built starts to grow.  Enemy forces start marching toward the city.  Cerebus finds a second gold sphere, jumps through a window, as, as prophesied, begins the Final Ascension into Heaven.
Which is where things start getting a little weird…

 

God, Oliver, that summary was boring.  Why should I even care?  Well, to be honest, you probably shouldn’t.  Nothing is worth reading unless it’s good, and “Cerebus” is good.  But I can’t really convince you of that, though I’ll try.  But it’s a sucker’s game, really…

As Robert Crumb once said, “Comics are words and pictures.  You can do anything with words and pictures!”  True that, y’all.  Take a look at the panels above, or even the cover, or – here – here’s some more panels—

Dave Sim gets a maximum of expression out of everything.  Look at the page above where Cerebus is arguing with Jaka:  tiredness, resignation, exasperation, female solecism, rage, quiet wisdom, angry resignation, all shown with maximum effectiveness, using – …What were those two things again?  Ah yes…  words and pictures – and all done within seven panels.  A single page out of 6,600 pages. 

A friend of mine once pointed out that Dave Sim’s true genius was in his word balloons, and that’s a pretty good point.  Look again at that single page:

Cerebus:  She NEVER cared about Cerebus.

[pause]

Cerebus could live or DIE and it wouldn’t matter to that SLUT.

Jaka:  Oh, I’m sure she must have cared in some…

Cerebus:THE ONLY REASON SHE MARRIED CEREBUS WAS FREE FOOD, FREE LODGINGS, FREE LAUNDRY, FREE EVERYTHING.

[short pause]

Jaka:  But…

[short pause]

If that was true, why would she LEAVE?

Cerebus:  [LONG pause]

Note that I had to fudge some shit even to transcribe that single page.  Sim’s use of words and pictures – and words as pictures – goes beyond what we’re capable of reproducing here in essay form.  (There is, for example, no font type that I can select in Microsoft Word that will reproduce “half-faded shaky all-caps italics text.”)  And for that matter, some of the nuances of Sim’s text escape me.  Should Cerebus’s angry rant be written in “all-caps,” considering that everything in the comic book is in small caps?  Should I have just italicized his shouting instead…?

Anyway.  …You can see the genius of that above passage, right?  Or, at least, you can see how this is all headed in the direction of genius, am I right?

…Right?

Um.

(…Coming next:  Part Two!  Yes…  there’s a ‘part two’.  Though not a ‘part three,’ and thank god.)

 

 

 

25 June

Three Weird Stories from my Childhood

1)  My parents sent me to art camp once in Philadelphia, and I went for one day, then realized that I hated it, because everyone there was a cool skateboarding city kid, and I could not have been less cool.  So I decided that I wouldn't go.  Since I had no money and no car and was twelve, and all my other friends were away for the summer, this involved staying at home.  Unfortunately, my mother worked at home, because she was a psychologist.  So every morning, I would wake up at six, make lots of noise downstairs like I was leaving, steal food from the refrigerator, and go back up to my room and hide in my closet, where all my books and comic books were.  And I would stay there all day.  (I would also take a, um, bottle with me, in order to take care of certain business...  you know what I mean.)

If I got tired of reading books in my closet, I would do stuff in my room, quietly.  Every now and then, I would hear my mom stay stuff to herself or to her clients, like, "Jesus, did you hear that?" or, "What's that?"  Several times, she actually came into my room to see if anyone was there.  I had prepared for this contingency by pulling my bedspread down very low on one side, so that I could lie down on the opposite side of my bed (away from the door) and no one could look underneath the bed and see me.

I did this for the entire summer.  When I told my mom about this, years later, she said:

"Instead of hiding in your room, you could have told me that you hated art camp."
I said, "That honestly never occurred to me."

2)  My dad used to be an alcoholic (he hasn't had a drink for twenty years, way to go, dad!) and after he and my mom got divorced, when I was five, I would occasionally stay over at his grubby bachelor’s apartment in our same town.  I was always a very good kid and never made any trouble, but one night for some reason I was being noisy and wouldn't go to sleep, and my dad was being very tired and weird-seeming for 8 o'clock in the evening, and in fact passed out on the couch while I was still awake.

I had no idea that my dad was an alcoholic and had never seen him drink (though, being five, I tended not to notice things like what people were drinking). After he was asleep, I prowled around the apartment for a while, looking through his stuff.  And then...  I noticed a door in his apartment, a small blue door that I had never noticed before during the fifty other times that I had been there.  It was as if I was in "Alice in Wonderland," and a strange, but obvious door suddenly had appeared before me.  I opened the door.  It led to a long dim hallway that opened out onto a fire escape.  And in the hallway were...  approximately one hundred liquor boxes.  I opened some of the boxes.  Each box had twelve empty bottles in it...  twelve empty, perfectly clean bottles of whiskey.  I held one of the bottles up to the light.  It was shiny because it was perfectly clean.  I put the bottle back, closed the box, left the hallway, closed the door.

The next time I was at the apartment, I waited until my dad was in the bathroom, and then went into the hallway.  It was empty.  All the boxes were gone.

...When I asked my dad about this, years later, first I said, "Were you drunk that night?"

He said, "I don't remember, but it's possible."

Then I asked him about the hallway that led to the fire escape.

He said, "There was no hallway in that apartment, and there was no fire escape."

I said, "Did I just make up the whole thing, then?"

He thought for a while and said:  "...I don't know."

3)  When I was nine, I was talking with my friend Damien on the school bus and not paying attention, and eventually he said, "...Hey, Oliver, didn't you miss your stop?"  And I said, "Oh no."  He told me that I could come home with him, but I said, "Oh, I know how to get home from here," and then I panicked and got off at the very next stop.

Of course, I was instantly lost, but I walked very confidently away from the bus, and away from the strange kids who had gotten off at that stop, so that everyone would think that I was not lost and that I knew where I was going.  I was in a suburban town near my own that I had been to before, but I didn't know how to get home from there.  Everything around me looked ersatz and fake:  almost my home town but not quite, the stores, the library, the playground, all similar but subtlety different, like an episode of "The Twilight Zone."

After I had wandered around for, say, an hour, a man pulled up next to me in a Mercedes.  "Hey," he said.  "Do you need a ride?"

Like every suburban pre-teen, I knew not to take rides with strangers, but my parents both worked and I didn't know their office numbers, so I couldn't call them to pick me up, and I was too embarrassed to call Damien's parents and ask for a ride home.  So I said, "Okay."

He was a normal-looking businessman, wearing a dress shirt and dress pants but no jacket.  He told me I could ride up front with him, but I said that I would ride in the back seat, thanks.

He started driving.  It seemed to me that we were heading in the general direction of my house, but I couldn't be sure.  The man asked me questions about school and what I was studying.  Being polite, I answered him as best I could.

After we had been driving for a while, he pulled into the parking lot of a strange, modern, governmental building with strange modern sculptures in front.  He started talking, nervously it seemed, about how he had always admired the architecture of the building.  I mentioned how my dad was an architect but that I didn't really like modern architecture.

We sat there in the parking lot for a while.  It began to occur to me that I could get killed, but the idea didn't seem real to me.  Getting killed was what happened in movies or TV, not to me.  I did not get of the car, because it seemed to me that that was what would get me killed; i.e., if I got out of the car, he would run after me and chase me down and kill me.

Finally I said, "Can you take me home now?"

To my surprise, he started the car, and we drove towards what I finally recognized as being my town.  Before we got to my house, though, the man stopped the car again and said that he would take me home, but before he did so, he wanted me to do something for him.  He had a video-recorder in the truck of his car, and before he took me home, he wanted to video-tape me.  I asked if we could not do that, but instead just take me home.  The man got out of the car and got the video-recorder out of the trunk.  I did not get out of the car.

He pointed the video-recorder at me and turned it on.  This was 1985 and recorders were huge and expensive and I don't think I had ever seen one before.  The man was recording me and I was shifting in my seat and didn't know what to do, so I asked him what he wanted me to do.

He said, frighteningly, "What would you like to do?"

I couldn't think of anything to do, and then it came to me.  In another unrelated weird incident from my childhood, I had memorized the entire poem, "An Irish Airman foresees his Death," by William Butler Yeats, which I had found in a book in our house.  So I recited it for the man, while he recorded me.

It is a very short poem:

 
When I was finished, the man didn't seem happy, exactly, but he drove me to my address, and opened the back door and let me out.  I said "Thank you" to him, even though I knew he was insane and probably a killer.  And I waved good-bye, politely, when he drove away.

I never told my parents about this, because I was sure that if I did, they would never let me out of the house again.

 

 

23 June

A Third-Person Account of What I Did During the Presidential Elections of the Past Twenty Years

 

'84:  After convincing his entire elementary school class to vote in the 'mock primaries' for...  Gary Hart, Oliver quickly loses all political credibility--thus beginning, at the age of nine, a downward spiral that he will never recover from.  Later that same year, he casts one of only three votes for Walter Mondale in the 'mock election,' and witnesses a Reagan landslide.  Amusingly enough, "three" = exact number of electoral votes that Mondale actually receives.*

'88:  Has long hair, wears ripped clothes, does not answer questions when directly spoken to, scribbles Haiku in notebooks, does not care about politics.  When asked his thoughts on the upcoming Bush/Dukakis election, Oliver thinks and finally replies, "That's so bourgeois."

'92:  Wears a 'Perot in '92' button to high school.  Amazingly, there are no girlfriends in sight for Mr. Miller at this time.

'96:  In the second most embarrassing incident of Oliver's entire life, he votes for Bob Dole.  The first most embarrassing incident of Oliver's entire life involves: (1) his grandfather; (2) masturbation.

'00:  Gets drunk in bar while watching election returns, tries and fails to write a short story about the election/bar-room conversions going on around him, cannot believe the evidence of Bush's victory unfolding before his own eyes.  Plus, in what seems to him to be the final insult, the bar is out of Yuengling.

'04:  Makes overconfident phone calls to friends based on "inside information" from the DNC.  House-sits, studies for "Future Possesory Estates" law exam.  While watching the election on TV, Oliver also plays the "President Forever"  video-game/ election simulator.  While playing the video-game, he marshals all his Democratic party resources correctly, uncovers and informs the press as to shocking scandals involving video-game President Bush, defeats video-game Bush in all debates, and yet loses to video-game Bush at 2am (video-game time) because he fails to carry the great state of...  Hawaii.  Final electoral score:  Video-game Kerry:  268, Video-game Bush:  269.

After this disheartening simulated loss, Oliver gets badly freaked out.  He makes phone calls to friends at Kerry Headquarters.  Gets more freaked out.  Turns off the TV in an attempt to "reverse jinx" the entire election.  Turns TV back on.  Makes overconfident phone calls to friends based on inaccurate predictions about certain counties in Ohio.  Curses at TV.  Drinks.  Sleeps.

'08 (prediction):  Moves to Quebec in protest, but fails to master irregular French verbs.


(*unfunny editorial correction:  Mondale actually got 13 electoral votes.)




Oliver Miller is 0-for-lifetime in predicting presidential elections.  He urges you to vote Obama/Whoever in 2008.

 

 

 

18 June

REVIEW OF — Toys and Games (part one)

 
Silly-Putty:  Silly-Putty rules!  At no point in this review will I make fun of Silly-Putty, I promise!  Yeah, sure, it's stretchy and it's bendy and it's putty...  but that's just the beginning.  For one thing, it will copy images from newsprint.  That's right, you can Xerox the Sunday Comics page, in putty form, and then stretch it.  Make "Garfield" thinner!  Or fatter!  Scrunch him out of existence!  Whichever!  Also, and okay, maybe you knew the thing about the comics page, but did you know that Silly-Putty also "cleaves"?  That's right...  Take a hunk o' putty in your fists, and snap your fists away from each other real fast.  The putty will have sheered off at perfect 90-degree angles!  Fucking amazing!  What else "cleaves"?  Nothing that I can think of!  And that's why Silly-Putty is the most powerful substance in the universe.*  And to top things off, it comes in a red plastic egg.  Put it all together, and Silly-Putty gets a Grade of A-plus, a full grade higher than I gave to, say, the missionary position in sex in one of my other blogs, which is either a very fine commentary on Silly-Putty, or a very sad commentary on me.

 
    Play-Doh:  The intentional misspelling of the word dough, like the word "Kreme" in certain disgusting doughnut food products, is to indicate that this is a product that should not be eaten.  Like that was going to stop us!  Show me a package of Play-Doh, and I'll show you a soon to be satiated child.  I myself had a "McDonaldland Play-Doh" set and, man, that was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.  Care for a delicious 'McPlay-Doh French Fry,' Mr. Miller?  So good!  Can't eat just one!  A 'McDoh Flurry,' perhaps?  Well, gosh.  ...Don't mind if I do.  Basically, for me as a child, the words "non-toxic" equaled "It's go time."  And it even smelled like food.  Grade:  A

 

 

 Slinky:  Do you remember the song?  Of course you remember:

 

 

 

 

"What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs
And makes a slinkity sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing!
Everyone knows it's Slinky.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky,

It's fun, it's a wonderful toy.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky,
It's fun, it's a wonderful toy.
It's fun for a girl or a boy."

Nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, Nah-NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH-NAAAAA  Oh!  

...Anyway, putting aside the fact that the phrase "and makes a slinkity sound" just smacks of recursiveness, and putting aside the fact that I was apparently just dying to use the word recursive in a sentence...  Behold, the Slinky!  It's...  a spring.  Yes, welcome to life in the days before the "internet."  Playing with springs is apparently what we did with our time.  I myself am mightily looking forward to boring the crap out of my children with stories of how we used to play with blocks and springs and bouncy balls and things.  "Gather 'round, my children.  Stop 'IMing' now.  So.  You know what my favorite toy was when I was five?  A rock...  a lousy rock.  That's right; I scotch-taped four wheels onto a rock, and named it 'rockcar.' **  Plus we played with springs, apparently.  Are you listening, Kaitlin, Dakota, Brooklyn, Zoë?  No internet.  No cable TV.  No Xbox 360.  No nothing.  ...And did you know that when I was a kid, we only had three pathetic TV channels, and they would turn off at 10 o'clock at night and show a picture of the American flag?  Amazing stuff, no?  Hey!  Where are you all going on your jetpacks?  Hey!"  Grade:  D

Anyway, wait.  I'm not done with reviewing you yet, Monsieur Slinky!  It's also reassuring to know, according to the song, that the Slinky is 'fun for a girl or a boy'.  I myself consider a spring to be a fairly advanced piece of machinery, like say the shovel or the stick-shift, but no, it's right there in the song, so it must be true.  So go ahead, ladies!  Slinky your hearts out!  Just make sure your precious beautiful long hair doesn't get caught in the Slinky and drag you bouncing down the flight of stairs.  Boo-yah!  And hey, are you sure you wouldn't rather play with...

 

 
My Lil' Pony:  And so we return to the neverending debate of whether it's better to be born a guy or a girl.  On the plus side for guys, we get paid more.  On the plus side for girls, you can pretty much have sex whenever you want.  But on the way huge plus side for guys, as kids we got to play with exploding, missile-shooting "G.I. Joe" and the "Transformers," whereas back in the day you miniature women were stuck with playing with... tiny plastic horses.  But they had hair!  Which you could comb!  See, there's nothing even to make fun about with "My Lil' Ponies," that's how sucky they were.  Grade:  C-minus

 

 

The Game of Life:  "You could be a winner at the game of life."  Not necessarily true, my friends.  Because I am an aspiring future hipster and because I admire all things retro, I bought "The Game of Life" board game a few years back, and would play it with my hipster dates in New York City.  And let me tell you...  "Life" is like life.  It's all over within the first ten moves.  Yay pessimism!  Basically, you move your little car thing ten squares, and then you hit the Career Square, where you can choose whether you want to enroll in college or can skip college completely.  (I, um, highly recommend going; mostly for the Life University freshmen honeys, know what I'm saying?)  And then, after that, you get your Career Card, which determines what fake job you will have for the rest of your fake "Life."  If you're, say, "a lawyer," you make $120,000 every payday, whereas if you're an "artist" -- for example, if you have a Master's Degree in Creative Writing and write a dumb web-based 'zine -- then you make $30,000.

 
And that's it.  The game is over right there.  No amount of landing on "Win the lottery" squares or "Go to the hospital and pay the doctor" squares can overcome this gigantic disparity in salaries.  Lawyer wins, Artist loses.  Good stuff!  Hey, I wish someone had handed me The Game of Life when I was busy choosing my undergrad major of "English Literature with a minor in Classical Literature and Languages."***  Heh.

Sooooo...  Anyway, during this phase when I was reexamining The Game of Life, or TGOF, I would occasionally play "Strip Life" with my dates in order to liven things up.  ...During my adulthood, I have actually played Strip Poker, Strip Life, Strip Uno, Strip Trivial Pursuit, Strip Risk:  The Game of Global Conflict (very boring), Strip Connect Four, but for some reason, not Strip Yatzhee (a shocking oversight).  "Strip Trivial Pursuit" was my favorite.  Oh, no.  I'm sorry, "Manifest Destiny" is NOT an album by The Cure, but rather is a term for the Western expansion of the United States during the 19th century.  Yeah!  Fucking take it off, baby!  Grade:  B-plus
 

 
Simon:  I didn't like "Simon."  I didn't know any kids in my neighborhood named Simon, but whenever I played this game—which involved pressing brightly colored buttons in the same order that a rude and bossy computer ordered you to—I always imagined a kid, a kid with thick glasses and a bowl cut and a blue-and-red striped shirt and an English accent and a calculator in his acid-washed jeans pocket, and this kid was always really really good at the game "Simon," which I sucked at.  And oh how I hated this imaginary kid.

 
There were certain childhood activities that I just never mastered, and never will master.  For example:  I could never get further than pressing three buttons on Simon without it emitting a nasty electronic "Wah-Wah" losing noise, and in the same way, I could never get further than three rungs on the "Monkey Bars" on the playground without collapsing into a heap of humiliated rumble in the dirt below.  I'll be honest with you; failing at the Monkey Bars always bothered me, no matter how often I attempted to strike a cool pose by the "Jungle Gym" and act like I didn't care.  But failing at "Simon," on the other hand, well, I could deal with that.  I mean...  if you were good at "Simon," what would that signify, anyway?  That you were a cyborg?  That you would make a good lab rat?  That you were ready for an exciting new career in pressin' things and makin' sounds?  Grade:  F

 
Perfection:  Perfection!  Do you aspire to reach a state of perfectness?  Then play this game and jam a bunch of plastic things in the thing correctly before the thing explodes!  Did you know that Stephen Hawking plays Perfection twenty times a day and wins each and every time and is in a fucking wheelchair?  Or are Stephen Hawking jokes a little too 1995, perhaps?  And did you know that when I write these reviews, I just basically drink a couple of beers and write whatever occurs to me from second to second?  Anyway...  this game always gave me a goddamn heart attack as a kid.  It's really less like a toy and more like trying to dismantle a nuclear bomb in the last remaining seconds before Los Angeles is destroyed.  4...  3...  2...  Aggh, no!  An extra triangle piece!  I'm sorry, Mr. President.  I...  failed.  Grade:  C

______________

 

Scholarly footnotes
 
*But that's not all!  Hit Silly-Putty hard with a hammer, or drop it off the side of a building, and it will shatter!  Leave it alone for a month and it will flow into goop.  And according to MIT University, "Silly-Putty picks up dirt, lint and pet hair, and can stabilize wobbly furniture; but it has also been used in stress-reduction and physical therapy, and in medical and scientific simulations. The crew of Apollo 8 even used it to secure tools in zero-gravity."  And according to my dad, "you can use it to clean dirty typewriter keys."  And me with a dirty typewriter!

**Totally true.  A lousy goddamned rock with wheels taped onto it.

***Sad but also totally true.

 

17 June

THE TOP TEN “GOOD BAD” MOVIES

(i.e., Movies that looked like they were going to be awful, but then inexplicably turned out to be great.  Enjoy!)

 

1)  KICKING AND SCREAMING

No, not the shitty one starring Will Ferrell...  the other one.  Yes, they have the same title; yes, it's confusing.  I know, I know.

So this is the first movie by Noah Baumbaugh, who eventually become famous for directing "The Squid and the Whale."  Anyway:  so here's the plot of the movie.  Grover goes out with Jane; Jane dumps him to go to Prague for a year; Grover gets depressed and hangs out with his friends for the summer.  Sounds like the worst movie ever, right?  Sounds like every horrible short story written in English 101 by some slacker, right?  No.  It's the best movie of all time. It's so good, in fact, that I couldn't even limit myself to one clip, so we have two, above.  I still remember seeing this movie, in Georgetown, in 1996, and walking out of the theater with my date, and being dazzled by how funny, honest, and true it all was...  as the two of us walked back to college, in the crispy fall air.

Anyway.  It's also worth noting that after seeing this film, I eventually did move to Prague, like in this movie, and I got a degree in creative writing, just like in this movie, and I went out with a series of hot writer girls who dumped me, just like in the movie.  Perhaps I took this film too much to heart?  Nah.  That's not possible.

 

 

 

2)  JUST ONE OF THE GUYS

Here's another terrible premise for a movie:  A girl decides to pose undercover as a boy in high school so that she can write an newspaper article about sexism.  Gosh, what a wacky idea!  And it's a movie from 1984!  Uggh...  it's another awful 80s teen movie!

Nope.  This movie is great.  It's surprisingly touching and sweet.  And it gets bonus points for featuring That Evil Blond Guy from "Karate Kid" as the bad guy, a role in which he always excels.  The girl who plays the lead -- Joyce Hyser is her name -- should have become famous forever afterwards as a result of this movie.  Instead, no one has ever heard of this thing.  Oh well.

...By the way, the best line in the movie?  "It's okay.  He has tits."  ...Just trust me.

 

3)  THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN

I know...  I know.  Everyone knows that this is a good movie already.  But man, my old girlfriend had to drag me to see this thing on a Friday night.  I was like, "We get to do whatever I want next Friday, right?"  It just sounded like an awful idea for a movie.  An old guy, trying to have sex!  And he's a virgin!  And it's got a terrible title!  Oh, yay.

The key here, as in the movies above -- and this seems to be kind of a running theme -- is that though this movie is funny, it's also surprisingly gentle, and it's humor comes from unexpected places.  I thought it would be two hours of people making fun of an old virgin guy.  But on the contrary, everyone in the movie likes the virgin guy, and just wants to help him.  That's way more surprising, and makes everything oh so much better.  And just I love the above clip, from the end of the movie:  "Mystic crystal revelations!"   Oh my god.  That kills me.

 

 

4)  ENTRAPMENT

I tried for a while to think of how to explain that this movie is good; then I gave up.  You'll just have to trust me.  It's a heist movie, it stars Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and it somehow manages to overcome the fact that they have sex in the movie, even though Sean Connery is 38 years older than her.  Ugh!  But it works.  And I almost cried at the end of this movie the first time around -- at the scene where Sean is sitting alone in a train, and he suddenly looks so lonesome and old and bereft...

Um.  I highly regret telling you that I almost cried at this movie.  Anyway, since I can't explain why this movie is good, the clip above just features slo-mo shots of Catherine Zeta-Jones's ass.  Hopefully that'll be enough to entice you.

 

 

5)  CASINO ROYALE

I've seen every James Bond movie.  I don't know why.  There are about thirty of them, and only two of the movies are good.  This one is good, and "Goldfinger" is good.  And "Goldfinger" isn't even very good.  So only this one is good.  That's a one in thirty shot of this being a good movie, which is...  what?  I can't do math.  Five percent odds?  Also, I really really really want to sleep with Eva Green from this movie.  It's a stupid dream of mine, 'cause it's not going to happen, but still, I persist.

 

 

6)  ALIEN 3

Now we enter the realm of really weird movies that I like that no one else likes.  For example:  "Alien 3."  This movie is great in parts, and unimaginably terrible in others.  As a example of this, you need look no further than the above (overly long) clip, which features a beautiful speech that I've thought of ever since, and which then completely ruins the scene by killing the character for no earthly reason.  Bizarre.

 

 

7) K-9

The odds of Jim Belushi being in an actual good movie -- and that movie being a cop buddy picture featuring a dog as his partner -- the odds of that actually happening must be mathematically insignificant; close to the probability of there being, say, a third term of George W. Bush's presidency. 

And yet, here we are.  It's a movie.  Jim Belushi is funny in it.  The dog is great.  And it's good.  I was actually so embarrassed to put this movie on my list that I had to call my friend Jeremy about it.  And he was like:  "I love that movie too!"  So.  You see?  I'm not the only crazy one here.  ...Although, now that I'm watching this trailer again, it looks awful.  So maybe my friend and I are just idiots.  That's also always possible.

 

 

8)  MULHOLLAND DRIVE

I hate David Lynch, I hate fucking pretentious artsy movies, and yet I like this film.  Go fucking figure.  By the way, this is the only movie I've ever seen where I got in a fight after leaving the theater.  There was a big crowd waiting, and someone shouted to us as we came out, "So how was it?"

"Great!" my girlfriend and I said.

"Terrible!" said the guy right next to me.

And then that guy and I got in a -- uh -- spirited debate about the movie, and eventually started to physically -- um -- tussle.  I feel like that's a good sign.

 

 

9)  AUSTIN POWERS, INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY

"Hey, so, um, do you wanna go see that new Mike Myers movie?"

"Remind me again...  what was the last movie that he was in?"

"Ummmm...  <i>'So I Married an Axe Murderer.'</i>"

"I think I'd rather fucking die."

"...Yeah.  ...I think that you're right."

(Note:  I know that the scene above is from the third, not the first movie.  But the scene is way too funny to not post here.)

 

 

10)  SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

"Hey, so do you, uh, want to go see the first movie that Will Smith's ever appeared in?"

"Remind me again...  what's the only thing that he's ever been in, up until now?"

"Um.  'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.' "

"I think that I'd rather fucking die."

"Right."

 

 

16 June

A quick guide to the novel ‘Ulysses’ for the benefit of you retarded illiterate monkeys.

 

Hey! So today marks the 92nd anniversary of Bloomsday, the day on which the novel "Ulysses" (the greatest book ever written, if you're into lists like that) takes place.

Around the world, Bloomsday is marked by public readings of the book and by public drunkness. Here at Walrus Comix, Bloomsday is marked by a long-winded discussion of the novel "Ulysses." Yes, it's all part of a larger effort to reduce our "hit count" of blog readers to "zero."

____

"Ulysses" was written by James Joyce in 1916, and takes place in Dublin, covering the single day of June 16th, 1904. What's it about, you say? Um... Well. Basically. Um. What happens is, Stephen Dedalus, this over-educated, pretentious guy, gets kicked out of his house, and spends the day wandering around Dublin. Meanwhile, Leopold Bloom, an average-joe sort of guy, spends the whole day wandering around Dublin because his wife is fucking some other guy that day, and he's trying to avoid going home.

But that's not really what it's about. Try this:
Stephen Dedalus, this guy whose mother has just died, is wearing all black and living in a tower. He thinks he's Hamlet. (Because Hamlet wore all black and lived in a tower.) Leopold Bloom, this guy who's been wounded in love, thinks that he's Don Juan. But he's not. And Stephen isn't Hamlet either. Most of us spend our whole lives thinking that we're someone that we're not. Stephen and Bloom are trapped in their wrong roles, but then, after wandering all over Dublin for a day, they meet, and for a second they really realize who they really are. Bloom is Ulysses; a wise, crafty, heroic adventurer. Stephen is Telemachus, his noble son. Together, they are father and son. They meet, realize this for a second, and then they part and never see each other again.

But that's not really what it's about. Try this:
Books are bullshit. Did you ever read a book and think, "this is nothing like my life"? Movies too. Who ever runs down an alleyway, chased by thieves? Who, for that matter, ever has a perfect meaningful conversation with their wife or husband or kid or girlfriend that suddenly resolves all these issues that they've been having? Books are a load of crap. And here's a book that isn't like that. Nothing gets resolved. It's hard to figure out what's going on. Things only change very slightly. That's what "Ulysses" is like -- and, let's face it -- that's what all of our lives are like too.

Or this:
It's the first book ever written where people masturbate, pee on walls, curse, take dumps, think about pussies and penises, and have normal human conversations. And it was written in 1916 and it's still more modern that most of what is written today.

_____

Here's the book itself, talking about what it's about:

Chapter 1:

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea,
And all dishevelled wandering stars.

Chapter 2:

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.

"History," Stephen said, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

"The ways of the Creator are not our ways," Mr. Deasy said. "All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God."

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

"That is God."

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

"What?" Mr. Deasy asked.

"A shout in the street," Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.


Chapter 9:

Hold onto the here, the now, through which all future plunges into the past.


Chapter 9:

If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas goes forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, giants, ghosts, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.


Chapter 16:

"...Why did you leave your father's house?"

"To seek misfortune," Stephen said.


Chapter 17:

What did each do at the door of egress?

Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his head.


For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?

For a cat.


What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rear of the house into the penumbra of the garden?

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.


With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations?

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.


Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.

_____

Confused? Don't worry about it! In order to get booze money, James Joyce taught Berlitz language classes. These are classes where you teach English to foreigners, only speaking in English. You're not allowed to speak to your students in their own language. It's the "total immersion" theory of teaching, and it's supposed to work better than other methods. ...So when he was working, James Joyce spent eight hours a day having conversations like this:
--My name is Mr. Joyce. It is raining outside today. You are holding an umbrella.

?

--Today it is raining. You are holding an umbrella.

??

--In your hand. An umbrella.

???

--Um-brell-a.


So if you're confused reading the book, fuck it! Don't worry about it! Just skip to a part where you're not confused. Hell, I skipped all of chapter 14 myself. Joyce is writing in a new language; he starts off kind of easy, but then he gets harder and harder. And like a good foreign-language teacher, he's trusting us to figure out things on our own. So don't fret! The book is confusing, but so is fucking life, and we do that every day, not expecting to understand every single fucking thing that's going on. So go forth, my winged monkey people, and read:

The book.

The book in hypertext.

A quick guide to the book.

A really really really quick guide to the book.

The book being read out loud. (Only thirty-two hours long!)

 

…So check out all of that shit and then get back to me.

 

 

13 June

The Fun Friday Five

1. Hedgehog vs. Carrot. Baby hedgehog = motherfucking cute. I had no idea

 

2. Guy builds a robot out of Legos that can solve Rubik's Cube. I was so disproportionally impressed by this one, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I could never solve Rubik's Cube. Maybe it's because I could never build anything with my Legos besides the fairly unimpressive "Wall of Bricks." Maybe it's because my attempts to create a robot have been limited to me making beeping noises and saying things like, "Eye-am-a-robot." Maybe it's some combination of the three.

3. Japanese McDonald's commerical. Don't watch this the whole way through; you'll go crazy. Or have an insane mind/body nervous breakdown like that guy at the end of "2001".

 

4. The Polaroid "Swinger" - 1965: In honor of the end of the instant camera, here's a vintage camera commerical. Featuring Ali McGraw! And the music of Barry Manilow! And you've got to love anything featuring white people dancing awkwardly on the beach. Question: did real white people actually ever dance on the beach, or is that just a myth created by bad 60s movies?

 

5. "Pie Face" -- fun for the whole family! And here's yet another vintage commercial. Really, this seems less like a game, and more like an early development of CIA interrogation techniques. ...So ...you turn the lever... until the thing hits you in the face? God, human beings are strange creatures sometimes. And I like how "Mom" gets in on the action at the end. Yeah. I bet that happened once, and only once, in the entire history of the world.

 

 

 

12 June

Review of TV shows that I used to watch as a kid (part one)

Scooby-Doo:  Let's put aside the ha-ha Scooby and Shaggy are getting stoned and Fred wants to have sex with Daphne jokes and concentrate instead on the simple fact that this show sucked.  The same thing happened every week!  Lost spooky mansion/clearly bad guy farmer/split up/trap goes hilariously wrong/unmask bad guy who's not really a ghost after all.  Come on!  How about mixing it up a little?  A second plot, maybe?  Seriously, even "The Smurfs" didn't pull this kind of bullshit!

 
However, I do like the theme song of this show.  As an added bonus, the musical keynote, "Scooby Doo:  where are you?" neatly establishes an existential crisis at the heart of the show -- or, at the very least, a cris du coeur -- which the resounding refrain of  "'Rover Rhere!" neatly solves.  Or, um, whatever.

Also, I do like the episodes where Scoob and the gang are hanging out not with Batman and Robin or the Harlem Globetrotters, but with some completely obscure mid-70s television star:  "Hey, check this out, gang!  ...Holy cow, it's...  Phyllis Diller!/ Conway Twitty!/ Rip Torn!"  Grade:  C-plus

 

Three's Company:  I like two things about this show:  One, that it was my favorite show when I was five.  Two, that I clearly understood not a single thing that was happening on this show.  I watch it now, and I'm like:  Holy shit!   Everyone's having threesomes!  The Ropers are swingers!  Larry is having anal sex!  But at the time, I was like, "It's funny when Jack makes a pie and then Chrissy accidentally eats the pie."  Grade:  A

 

 What's Happening?  Not to be confused with "What's Happening Now?", which was a clearly inferior spin-off.  As with "Three's Company," I must have watched approximately 5,000 episodes of this show, with the key difference that with this show, I can't recall a single goddamn thing that happened.  This was the one with "Rerun," right?  He... wore a red beanie, am I right?  And they were, like...  black people who...  did stuff?  Clearly, what's happening is that I'm suffering from early long-term memory loss as a result of oncoming middle-age.  That's what's happening, my friends.  Heh.  Grade:  D

 

    Hogan's Heroes:  Nazis!  So funny!  Did I mention that I'm Jewish?  Considering that this show not only spoofed the Third Reich, World War II, and National Socialism, but also featured a star (Bob Crane), who later on committed murder after it was revealed that he was a compulsive voyeuristic bi-sexual sex-addict, what's really puzzling to me is how you could come up with a sitcom that's any more offensive than this one.  Maybe if you added some cannibals?  Or some gang rape?  Or how about O.J. Simpson, I hear he's available...*  Grade:  F

 
*An O.J. joke!  I know; lame.

 

  The Jeffersons:  I feel like I can remember an episode of this where George punches Weezey in the head, but considering that I can barely recall a single character on "What's Happening?", perhaps I am not to be trusted...  Still, spousal abuse.  That's just not funny, even with a laugh track, and even if it didn't really happen...  But hey!  Remember the neighbor?  The one with the mustache and a pipe?  He was a riot, am I right?  Grade:  Blank.

 

The Smurfs*:  Still better than Scooby-Doo!  As you may recall, the reason that Gargamel wanted to capture the Smurfs was because they represented the secret ingredient that would magically transform lead into gold.  Question:  wouldn't this make "the Smurfs" equally as valuable as gold, or at least, in an open market, proportionally valuable?  Why even bother transforming them at all?  In fact, hold on a second.  I have to make a call to my broker.  "Jimmy?  Jimmy, it's Oliver.  I need you to do something for me right now.  Take all my money--listen to me now, Jimmy--I want you to take all my money out of Steel and put into Smurfs.  Yah, you heard me.  Good...  Good.. .  Okay.  Smurfy.  Done."  There now.  All finished.  Now...  where was I?  Grade:  B-plus

  

Duck Tales:  This is a show that I refuse to make fun of.  Scrooge McDuck, the richest duck in the word!  Huey, Dewey, and Louie!  Webby!  Duckworth!  The Beagle Boys!  I watched this show well past any reasonable period of teenagerhood, and I refuse to feel lame about it for a second.  "Duck Tales" rocks!  Who wouldn't want to search for buried treasure every week with your rich uncle who owns three cubic acres of money?  Plus I can quote the entire theme song from memory:

Life is like a hurri-cane
Here in Duck-burg!
Racecars, lasers, aero-planes!
It's a Duck-Blur!

...D-d-d-danger lurks behind you!
There's a stranger out to find you!
What you do is grab onto some Ducktales!
Whoo-hoo!

Whoo-hoo indeed, my friends.  ...Whoo-hoo indeed.  Grade:  A-plus, natch. 

 

  Sesame Street:  Of course I'm going to give an A-plus to Sesame Street...  because I'm not some kind of insane soulless monster.  (Note:  "The Electric Company" would also get an A-plus, if I could remember anything funny to say about it.  I'm not so sure about "Zoom!")  So much of what I know about life comes from Sesame Street.  For example; rubber ducky, he's the one.  So true!  And "C is for Cookie; and that's good enough for me."  And it really is.  I pretty much begin and end right there.

Plus I don't even have some insane-Elmo hating problem the way most people seem to.  Seriously, "what up" with all the Elmo-hatin', people?  Okay, so he giggles a lot.  Is that really a bad thing?  I'll let you in on a little secret:  Sesame Street wasn't exactly a dark 'no-holds- barred'  look at the seedy underbelly of the world before Elmo came around.  ...So maybe just learn to deal.  It is, however, a crime that the Snuffalupagus is now visible to everyone, and I don't really want to talk about it.

However, this show often gave me a weird sense of depression.  Maybe because it was too good.  I would start to get the blues just by thinking about the fact that the "Letter and Number of the Day" were about to come on, and that the show would be over soon.  Also, the theme song depressed me too.  "Sunny day, chasin' the clouds away"  ...I hear these words being sung, and suddenly, as a kid, I feel sad.  Why is that?  ...Wellll, to look at things in a Baudelarian sense -- ("I write the word 'flower,' and instantly one comes to me that is absent from all the world's gardens.") -- the fact that the "Sesame Street" kids are enjoying a perfectly sunny, cloudless day  ...and the fact that I'm now imagining them doing this, means that now, by definition, the day I'm having can be neither as sunny or as cloudless as it once was, or as the "sunny day" of my imagination can ever be.  So, um, there's that.  Whoa.  "Hey, Oliver, do you, like, do lots of drugs when you write these reviews or what?"  Oh, I wish...  Grade:  A-plus!!!

 

 Monty Python's Flying Circus:  Which came on PBS at midnight, which was -- at least hypothetically -- far past my actual bedtime when I was kid.  I imagine I'll get actual hate mail for saying this, but I just have a hard time grooving on "Monty Python."  Just never could get into it.  In fact, I kind of hate it.  Oh, look!  They're speaking in English accents!  They're using the word "Bloody"!  They're dressing up in women's clothing!  Weird stuff is happening!  Ah ha ha ha ha!  Whoo!  ...Could somebody shoot me in the stomach, please?  There.  That's better.*

And as for people who have actually memorized entire Monty Python sketches...  I have an actual restraining order that says you're not allowed anywhere fucking near me.  So get away!  Get!  Go on...  shoo!  Grade:  D  

(*...No seriously, am I missing something here?  It's me, right?  Is it me?)

 

 

11 June

Credo, or "So Oliver, what is this blog about anyway?"  Well, I'm glad you asked.  I'll tell you.

  We are very excited to get to write this mission statement for the blog.  Frankly, we have always believed that the entire point of having a blog is to get to write a mission statement for it; that, and getting famous and getting interviewed by people about your blog.  And what do all these things have in common — getting interviewed, being famous, and writing a mission statement?  Well, they're all actually easier than writing, organizing, and publishing a blog.

So what is this blog about, anyway?

This blog is about liking stuff, and about liking other people who like stuff.  (We wish that we could make that less vague, but we can't.)  This blog is about occasionally overusing the 1st person plural.  This blog is about not being snobby, about occasionally even being reverse snobby.  This blog tries not to be too sarcastic or ironic, but sometimes, it fails.  This blog likes going to thrift stores and occasionally watching televised sporting events.  This blog likes eating McDonalds food, especially the Fillet o' Fish--but not too often.  This blog likes porn.

This blog is not joking about any of this.  This blog believes in what J. D. Salinger said--that if you read a book, and you like it, you should be able to call the author up on the phone.  Therefore, this blog is giving you its telephone number:  (484) 883-8963.

This blog realizes that someday we will all die and someday return to the stars that we were born from, not in a creepy, cult-ish or Scientologist sense, but because, as the Moby song said, we are all made out of the subatomic particles of decaying stars.  Because we will all one day die and return to those stars, in the interim, we should all be as nice to one another as we possibly reasonably can.

This blog believes in run-on sentences and the excessive use of semi-colons.  And because we're all going to die and go back to those afore-above-mentioned stars, this blog does not believe in wasting time in writing about the following things:  philosophy, awful poetry, things where the only point is to be mean or make fun of someone else (with the exception of George W. Bush), current events (with the exception of George W. Bush), music reviews, movie reviews, book reviews.  This blog realizes that it is on the so-called “internet,” but it does not believe in providing links to lots of things or in doing other internet stuff like that.

Instead of doing stuff like that, this blog will concentrate on writing funny, quasi-funny, and sad and interesting stuff, because really — when you pause to think about it — after all, what else is there in this world that is of meaning and importance besides sad, funny, and happy shit? 

This blog would like to be your friend.  It would like to hang out with you--why else would it give you its phone number?  This blog would like to hang out all night, and possibly get drunk, maybe even in the same bed, with parts of us awkwardly touching but not quite hugging or making out, sort of like in that movie, "Lost in Translation," with Bill Murray and the skinny girl.

This blog would like to say more, though this blog realizes that it has a tendency to ramble on.  Instead of saying more, the blog would like to quote, approvingly, the following quote from Dave Eggers, who has always been a source of inspiration for this blog, even though his second book was bad and even though he, like us, is occasionally too sarcastic.

Here is the quote.  It is from a book where he talks about the death of both of his parents:

"Are you sure you want to be telling me all this?

All what?

About your parents, the paranoia... 

What am I giving you?  I am giving you nothing.  I am giving you things that God knows, everyone knows.  They are famous in their deaths.  This will be my memorial to them.  I give you all these things, I tell you about his legs and her wigs—I do so later in this section—and relate my wondering if I should be having sex with my girlfriend in front of their closet the night of my father's service, but after all that, what, in the end, have I given you?  It seems like you know something, but you still know nothing.  I tell you and it evaporates.  I don't care—how could I care?  I tell you how many people I have slept with (thirty-two), or how my parents left this world, and what have I really given you?  Nothing.  I can tell you the names of my friends, their phone numbers—

Marny Requa: 415-431-2435

K.C. Fuller: 415-922-7893  

Kirsten Steward: 415-614-1976

But what do you have? You have nothing. They all granted permission. Why is that? Because you have nothing, you have some phone numbers.  It seems precious for one, two seconds.  You have what I can afford to give.  You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup.  I can afford to give you this.  This does not break me.  I give you virtually everything I have.  I give you all of the best things I have, and while these things are things that I like, memories that I treasure, good or bad, like the pictures of my family on my walls I can show them to you without diminishing them.  I can afford to give you everything.  We gasp at the wretches on afternoon shows who reveal their hideous secrets in front of millions of similarly wretched viewers, and yet... what have we taken from them, what have they given us?  Nothing.  We know that Janine had sex with her daughter's boyfriend, but...  then what?  We will die and will have protected...  what?  Protected from all the world that, what, we do this or that, that our arms have made these movements and our mouths these sounds?  Please.  We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, like, say, masturbatory habits (for me, about once a day, usually in the shower), we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself.  But it's just the opposite, more is more is more—more bleeding, more giving.  These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see.  What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin?  He leaves it where he molts.  Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else.  Do we know where the snake is now?  What the snake is thinking now?  No.  By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi.  The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it."

This blog agrees wholeheartedly.  More is more is more.  Sharing is good.  Communication is good.  This blog wishes that it was as good at expressing that as Dave Eggers is, but unfortunately, it is not.

Because more is more is more, this blog pledges to tell you everything about itself, to not prevaricate or hide details in the interests of "being cool."  This blog will do its best to tell you every last embarrassing funny awkward unpleasant detail of its life, even at the risk of saying too much or being boring.  This blog will do its best to tell you all of these things — except if telling you these things would cause the blog's parents to cry or cause the blog's friends to stop hanging out with the blog.

This blog is about done now.  In fact, it really can't think of anything else to say, at the moment.  But the blog thanks you for listening and hopes that, wherever you are at the moment, you are having fun.

Thanks and ave atque vale,
-The Blog

 

 

10 June

Review of Sodas 

  Coke:  For me, the weird thing about Coca-Cola is the fact that it doesn't taste like anything else in the known universe.  What does it taste like...?  it tastes like...  Coke*.  But Coke is a good soda.  Every religion needs its leader, its main god, if you will, and so if sodas were Ancient Greek gods, Coke would probably be Zeus, while Pepsi would be one of those gods that you forget about occasionally, like Poseidon.  My favorite story about Coke:  when my best friend Tiffany and her sister were traveling across Europe when they were eighteen, they ran into some sneering yet good-looking French guys who hated Americans, as sneering French people will, and they said to Tiffany...  "You Americans...  so foolish...  so stupid...  you think everything is like...  like John Wayne movie.  And with your McDonalds with their Big McBurgers...  and highways everywhere...  and guns shooting...  and fat...  and drinking Coca-Cola for breakfast.  Pah!"  And Tiffany got mad at them, and started yelling at the Frenchmen, until her sister made the unwise tactical decision of pointing out that they had, in fact, drunk Coke for breakfast that day.  And so, fairly quickly, the two of them got the hell out of there.  Final Grade:  A.

 

  Dr. Pepper:  You know, Dr. Pepper used to be my favorite soda--I believe I drank approximately 22,000 cans of it during college---until some nameless person thoughtfully pointed out to me that the main ingredient in Dr. Pepper was, in fact, prune juice.  And so now...  when I drink Dr. Pepper...  it tastes like prunes to me, which must have been what it always tasted like but I could have gone my whole life without realizing that.  Thanks, nameless person!  And I'd like to thank the other people who pointed out that things taste like other things, thereby engrossening those things for me.  For example: 1) Root beer = toothpaste 2) Going down on a girl = feta cheese 3) Going down on a guy = mushrooms...  not that I'd know about that or anything.  What?  Get away from me!*

Grade:  C

 

    Sierra Mist:  I don't really care that much about Sierra Mist.  I've only, uh, drunken it about ten times in my life.  ...It's okay.  It sort of tastes like a watered-down Sprite, which is fine by me, because anything that takes some of that searing lemon-lime sweetness away is undoubtedly a good thing.  But my old roommate Jeremy was once in the running to be the new "Sierra Mist" spokesmodel, and part of this involved coming up with a new catch-phrase for the soda.  I don't remember what his was, and he didn't win, but mine was, "Go Fuck Yourself, Sprite."  Now...  isn't that a good slogan?  Wouldn't we have sold a million bottles of "Sierra Mist" with that or am I crazy?  It's easy to remember too!  "Go Fuck Yourself, Sprite!"  "Go Fuck Yourself, Sprite!"  "Go Fuck Yourself, Sprite!"  "Go Fuck Yourself, Sprite!"  "Go Fuck Yourself, Sprite!"  Now maybe it'll be in your head for the rest of the day.  Grade:  B – 

 

 

 Mountain Dew:  Actually, apart from my "Dr. Pepper" phase in college, and these reviews aside, I don't really drink that much soda these days, and when I do, I drink diet soda, pretty much out of the compelling desire not to weigh two hundred and fifty pounds.  But the few times that I've had Mountain Dew in my life...  Whoa.  Jesus.  Sugary!  Caffeine!  I just imagine some guy in the factory standing next to a single can of Mountain Dew, with a fifty-pound bag of sugar poised over it, and he says to the boss, "Okay now...  say when."  And then the boss never says when and the whole bag of sugar just magically disappears into the can.

Anyway, if I have one, or god forbid, two cans of Mountain Dew, you can pretty much count on me walking around for the next couple of hours saying things like, "I feel great!  Yet crazy!  Yet also great!"  Jesus.  So sweet!  There's a reason that they have all those commercials for it with people screaming insanely at the camera and things like that.  ...If real mountain dew was like this stuff, we'd have a lot more mountain goats careening wildly off of cliffs while on sugar highs, and more bald eagles finishing twenty page term-papers in 5 minutes at four o'clock in the morning, and a lot more bears saying stuff like, "Did you ever really look at your hands?!  ...I mean, just look at them," and anyway okay I'm done with this now.  Grade:  C plus

 

  Tab:  Impossible to find now, for the simple reason that it tasted like Alkaline battery fluid mixed with chewing gum.  But back in the day, it was the only soda with no sugar in it whatsoever, and since my sister is diabetic, we used to have six-packs of the stuff lying around my house, because it was the only soda she could drink without an ambulance instantly pulling up next to our front door...  with the result that when I was in the midst of my fourteen-year old torpor phase, and unable or unwilling to walk the half block to the store, I would often come home from school, drink an entire six-pack of "Tab"--which was pointless, since it had no sugar and no caffeine--eat a bag of "Doritos" and collapse on the couch and watch episodes of "Saved by the Bell" back to back to back.  And then my parents would come home, see this, and yell, "Why'd you drink all the Tab?!  Do you want your sister to die?  Go to the store and get more Tab...  now!!"  To make up for this, I would occasionally get out of work or school by pretending that my sister was in the hospital with a diabetic heart attack or something--which I am probably, and rightfully, going to hell for.  Grade:  D

***

1)  *I once read a Chinese newspaper article, right after "Coke" was introduced to Communist mainland China, which described the taste of "Coke" as "being like sucking on the warm leg of a recently massaged athlete."  Gross!  But if you've ever drunk an entire liter bottle of warm flat Coke, as I have, you can see how this review is kind of...  one percent right.

2)  *I'm not gay!

 

 

 

9 June

REVIEW OF — OLIVER'S EX-GIRLFRIENDS* **

(*several names have been changed in situations where I was a huge jerk.)
(**April's and Yola's photographs are not their real photographs, out of politeness.   Rather, the photos are of other girls that I went out with.  Okay, veracity-hounds?)

 

Elise - Nothing outrageously memorable about this relationship, except that she was a model (note the professional glamour shot), which meant that I got to practice saying things like-- "Yah...  so she's a model...  pretty boring really...  that whole scene is getting pretty played out...  Oh, is that my beeper?  Well, gotta jet...  late to meet E at Skybar...  Ciao..." --while my bored friends stared at me and shook their heads with a mixture of bemusement and despair.  Grade: B

 

***

Alex(andra) - Another glamour shot, though not another model. I actually met her online; lame, I know. And though I generally find cheating on girls so exhausting as to cancel out the minor excitement of getting to have sex with someone else for two weeks, Alex didn't trust me, and so posted a second (fake) ad online with the picture of some minor actress, and wrote to me, and I wrote back. As a result, for several weeks Alex enjoyed the fun experience of reading my attempts to seduce another girl, who was of course her. Not surprisingly, she broke up with me. What is surprising is that I drove straight over to her apartment and convinced her to mess around/get back together with me. How I did this, I'll never know, but I had had a lot of coffee to drink that day. Even more intriguingly, as soon as I convinced her to get back together with me, I felt this crushing sense of boredom and being-trapped-ness, and though I promised her I would call her the next day, I didn't. The rationale behind my behavior is:

1) I am a jerk
and
2) and that's it.

Also, once when Alex and I were having sex on New Year's Eve, we broke my futon, sending it crashing to the ground beneath us in five different pieces. You might be imagining this as a scene of high passion, full of the sort of violent sexy hot thrusting action that would cause a piece of furniture to break. But then, you'd also probably be imagining a more high-quality, sturdier, and better-constructed futon. Grade: C 

 

***

 April - The only girl that I ever had to check into a mental institution (AND the police had to break down her door), and also the winner of the coveted 2001 Cute Girl from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" Look-alike contest. Since, in my head, I have spent many happy fantasy hours riding over the hilltops of Mongolia with the girl from "Crouching Tiger" (we eat roasted wild boar, and have long conversations where I try to convince her to settle down and to stop getting in so many swordfights and to start treating me right for a change, oh please for the love of Buddha start treating me right, baby) ...anyway, as I say, taking that in combination with the whole mental hospital thing, this one is kind of a wash for me.  Grade: B

 

***

Carrie - Hmm.  Nothing memorable here, as far as I can recall...  But she was cute, though, for sure.  And she could sure ride a moped.  And, hey!, I think I left a old T-shirt at her apartment on the day that she bro... ke... up... with...  Um, hey, what's that strange sensation? An odd, fluttering sensation in my--what is it again? how do you say?--heart.  And, oh god...  Sadness, jealousy, and pain! Sadness, jealousy, and pain!  Ummm, let's move on.  Can't I just review more movies or video games or something?  Grade: A /F- 

 

***

Sarah - Not much going on here, except that she had the words S-I-N-N F-E-I-N tattooed across her toes.  Cool.  An extremist Irish Republican.  I can groove on that.  See?  I don't feel the need to overanalyze every relationship.  Grade: B 

 

***

Maggie - Usually, I try to have a reason when I break up with someone.  Just helps me sleep better at night.  In Maggie's case, though, she was pretty, smart, funny, nice, dressed well, had a beautiful apartment in Park Slope, a sexy, gravelly voice, and had sold the screenplay for "Starsky and Hutch" to Warner Brothers for several hundred thousand dollars. Nevertheless, I broke up with her, because... what was my reasoning again?  According to my friend Dan, it was because, quote, "Dude, you complained that her breasts were too big and she could have an orgasm way too easily."  Good one!  Way to think things through, self!  In my defense, there are breasts that are so large that they sort of flop disturbingly to the side, and Maggie could have an orgasm much much too easily, just a thirty-second strumming of the fingers and she was done.  For her, having an orgasm had all of the sexual difficulty level of, say, playing with one of those cup-with-a-ball-on-a-string toys that you used to have as a kid.  Oh, whoops, I got the ball in the cup! Oh, look, I did it again!  In fact, this one time, we were having sex, and I was caught in one of those awkward sexual positions where your legs fall numb, and you can barely move, and every muscle in your body is sort of straining to collapse, and she was doing the strumming thing with her fingers and was all like, "Do it! Do it harder!" and I started laughing, saying, "Do what?  Stay motionless and try not to collapse on top of you?" and she was really mad at me.  

So no, definitely a great decision to break up with her.  And I'm sure all my rationales were of great consolation to me as I wandered the streets of New York in mid-winter, lonely and bereft, watching gigantic city buses cruise past with full-length "Starsky and Hutch" posters on their sides, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson staring down at me with their dead, vacant eyes... Wasn't it Dostoyevsky who said that if people lived in a beautiful crystal palace, they would have to smash it just for kicks?  Whatever.  I'm sure he'd be with me on this one and give me a grade of:  D-minus. 

 

***

 

Christine  - Not technically a girlfriend, since she already had a boyfriend and I already had a girlfriend, but we did have sex while inebriated, while I was driving a minivan, on the freeway, which was just one of the most dangerous things I've ever done and I still feel really really bad about it.

As we were doing it, having sex I mean, I had plenty of time to drunkenly look out the windows at the people driving on the highway that night along with us, and I saw plenty of happy families in station wagons and lovers in convertibles going on moonlit drives to upstate New York, and I thought of what we were doing, and I thought of our significant others, and then I sort of suffered through this Bret Easton Ellis kind of moment where I felt like I would never feel good or pure or innocent ever again, and I was sure that I was going to crash the minivan into a concrete divider and be played in the movie version by Robert Downey Jr.  But I didn't crash and Christine just recently had a baby and her first book of short stories is coming out soon so I'm cautiously going to give myself a grade of:  A-minus.  I might also mention here that Christine grew up in Hawaii and that her family was ridiculously wealthy, and that she lived in a mansion and had small Hawaiian monkeys that would perch on her shoulders as pets. As a kid, I wanted all of that:  the mansion, the monkeys, and the money.  I would have fed pieces of fruit to the monkeys. 

 

***

Yola - Apparently, she was a famous international photographer who was shot by an Israeli paratrooper while on assignment in Palestine, thereby causing a major international incident in which both the U.S. and Israeli governments became involved...  and I wouldn't have known any of this, if it weren't for the fact that I do obsessive-compulsive Google searches on everyone I meet, so that when she told me about it, three weeks into the relationship, I had to act real surprised and shocked-ish.  "You were shot while you were Israel?  Um, get out.  You don't say.  Um, huh.  Where was it?  Like, were you shot in the butt or something?  It was in the butt?  Weird.  Say, this isn't the kind of situation where like the U.S. government becomes involved or anything like that, is it?"  Grade: C 

 

6 June

My Top 10 list of the worst movies of all time

 

10) "Contact" starring Jodie Foster, unfortunately. Let me put it this way. There's a scene in this movie where Jodie Foster is in a spaceship. And they give her a cyanide death-pill to take, in case something goes really wrong. As soon as she got the pill, my friend Tiffany and I started screaming -- "Just take the pill!" -- and we didn't stop screaming it for the next fifteen minutes, until the movie was over. No one else in the theater minded, because this movie is terrible. Oh, and the alien at the end? It's her dad.

 

 

***

 

9) "Batman and Robin," starring the artist formerly known as George Clooney. Man, I bet George would like to erase this movie from his C.V., huh? ...Anyway, this movie features the line, "It's the hockey team from hell!" within the first three minutes. Also in the first three minutes: Batman and Robin (the Boy Wonder) fly into outer space for no particular reason, then float miles back to earth just using their capes, and land as if nothing had ever happened at all. Plausible-ish! And the movie doesn't get any better from there.

And also in the movie, the bad guy, Mr. Freeze, needs to raise a bunch of money in order to save his wife's life, and he has invented this amazing freeze ray. ...So, instead of -- I don't know, selling the freeze ray for a bunch of money and saving his wife, he decides to become a supervillain, and freezes the entire city. Oh. That makes sense. I mean, I know this isn't Shakespeare or nothin', but come on! That's just dumb.

 

 

 

***

 

8) "The Matrix: Revolutions," starring, "Whoa. Dude. Spoon." I'm going to spoil this movie on purpose too, so that you'll never see it, although you've probably already seen it. Keanu Reeves dies at the end. And Trinity dies in the lamest, most pointless way possible. (Whoops! I fell on something! And it's sharp!) Keanu Reeves's character acquires magical powers for no reason halfway through the movie, and the directors never bother to explain why. This movie was so awful that it managed to make me sort of dislike the first "Matrix" movie, which up until that point, I had loved.

 

 

*** 

7) "The Thin Red Line," directed by "Captain Pretentious" -- Mr. Terrence Malick -- and starring Sean Penn and a lot of people doing pretentious voice-overs. This trailer features the one good line in the movie, said by the evil Sean Penn character: "...In this world, a man alone ain't nothin'. ...And there ain't no other world but this one." That's a good line, and Sean Penn does a good job of acting here. Everyone else does a bad job of acting.

I also hate this movie because it came out at the same time as "Saving Private Ryan," an actual really good movie about World War II (if you ignore the 'present day' scenes at the beginning and the end.) All my friends liked "The Thin Red Line," and hated "Saving Private Ryan," which drove me crazy. No, guys, no. This movie is terrible... It features five minute-long pointless shots of fish and trees, to show that it's deep. And it features voice-over narration like, "...Maybe there's just one big soul, and we're all a part of it." And the central message of this movie is, "War is bad, because people die." Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. Terrence Malick! Are you kidding me? Were my friends all stoned when they saw this? Anyway, I'm sorry to go on for so long, but I really hated this movie.

 

 

 

***

 

6) "White Noise," starring Michael Keaton. ...And seeing this movie was my friend Tiffany's fault. It was one of those, "Hey, it's Friday night, we've got nothing to do, should we go and see a terrible movie or stay home and commit mass suicide?" kind of evenings. And so we saw this movie. It's a horror movie, it stars Michael Keaton, it makes no sense at all, and Michael Keaton dies at the end. I just intentionally spoiled the ending for you, so that you will never ever want to see it; which, trust me, you don't.

 

***

 

5) "The Real Cancun," starring a bunch of jerks. This was the equivalent of watching a two hour-long version of "The Real World," except that you had to pay money for the privilege. 'Nuff said. By the way, my going to see this movie was my friend Jeremy's fault.

 

 

 

***

 

4) "Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones," starring whiny Hayden Christiansen. Thank god, I've already beaten the badness of this movie to death in several other blogs. For example: here.

 

***

 

3) "Paycheck," starring Ben Affleck. This is an extremely new addition to the list, because I accidentally saw a half hour of it last weekend on "TBS." Wow. Okay, so, there's like this scene in the movie where Ben Affleck is being held captive in FBI headquarters, right? Are you with me so far? And he's surrounded by ten guys. So, the lead FBI guy, for no reason, lights a cigarette -- and this is the genius part -- he lights it directly beneath one of those fire-alarm sprinkler things. Even though this movie was made, like, two years ago, and no one has smoked a cigarette inside a federal building for the last twenty years. So, duh, the sprinkler goes off, and in the ensuing confusion, Ben Affleck escapes from his shackles, beats up ten FBI guys -- because they're all so startled by the water -- and escapes from the center of FBI headquarters.

This is the same level of thought that went into the entire movie. The movie, by the way, seems to involve time travel, and having your memory erased for three years, and it's one of those movies where even though Ben Affleck is just a "average joe" guy at the beginning, within five minutes he's completely adapted to the whole time travel, having his memory erased, being chased by FBI agents thing, and is making jokes and getting in car chases and beating people up. I can't even adapt to ordering something in a restaurant that quickly. Anyway, I'm sorry to talk about this movie for so long, but it was really bad.

 

*** 

 

 

2) "Hello Again!" starring Shelley Long. I'll never know how I got roped into seeing this movie. I was pretty young at the time, and I think I didn't have total control over things like "What movies my family went to see." Anyway, if you've ever said to yourself: "Hey, remember Shelley Long's screechy, neurotic, unfunny character from 'Cheers'? Man, if only there was a two-hour movie version of that!" -- then this is the movie for you.

 

***

 

1) "Freddie Got Fingered" starring Tom Green. Trust me when I say that I did not have to agonize over picking the worst movie ever made. Please allow me to quote my old dating blog:

'"Freddie Got Fingered" holds the Oliver and his old roommate memorial record for "movie that we were fairly excited to rent that we turned off in the shortest period of time." The amount of time that it remained in our DVD player: 10 minutes, thirty-two seconds. I know this because we checked the clock on the DVD player. I believe we turned it off at the point where Tom Green was throwing deer intestines on his head and shouting something witty like "I'm throwing deer intestines on my head!" Ahhh, Tom Green... you master of satire, you.

And not only that, but after we turned it off, we felt weird and creeped out for about three hours. Just from watching the first ten minutes. The only other time I remember feeling that creeped out is after reading "American Psycho." Bleh.'

So there you go.

 

 

4 June

Review of video games

Pac-Man – Many times, I have expressed relief at the fact that my life isn’t like Pac-Man.  Or indeed like any video-game.  But especially Pac-Man.  BECAUSE PAC-MAN NEVER STOPS.  You flee, you eat dots, you eat dots, you eat dots, you eat power-pellets that temporarily make you strong, you eat ghosts, the ghosts come back, you flee some more.  Basically the big highlight of your life is occasionally getting to have a pretzel for dinner instead of some bouncing fruit.  If this isn’t a metaphor for life under capitalism or something, it should be.  Luckily, I don’t have a job, so I wouldn’t know.  And I am pleased to be able to finally answer the age-old question:  where do you go when you enter the magic tunnels?  ...Where do you go?  You go straight to hell.  Grade:  B

 

Donkey Kong:  I am pleased to actually be able to answer an actual mysterious question about this game.  Why the fuck is it called “Donkey Kong”?  Well, it was supposed to be called “Monkey Kong,” but they screwed up the translation from the Japanese.  That’s the actual straight dope, my friend.  As for the rest of the game…  meh.  Bouncing flaming barrels.  A hammer that you can’t actually carry up a ladder.  Whatever.  The real message of this game, like every other video game and like most movies, is that chicks suck.  You save the girl, she stands there stupidly for a couple of seconds, allowing Donkey Kong to grab her again, and then you move on to the next level.  Repeat ad infinitum.  What’s the Japanese for “I’m having some problems with this relationship”?  Grade:  C

 

Breakout:  I actually liked Breakout, or, as it is occasionally called, “Arkanoid,” until someone pointed out to me that it was basically “Pong” for people with no friends.  Then I got depressed for a while.  Grade:  D

 

Missile Command:  This was never a fun game for me, because -- it being 1982 and the height of the Cold War and everything -- this is what I actually thought the future was going to be like:  nukes falling on New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, Denver, Los Angeles….  with the difference that we wouldn’t actually have zappy laser beams to shoot the missiles down with.  Not that it mattered.  You couldn’t actually win this game; the missiles just fell faster and faster until Philadelphia and everyplace else was toast and the words ‘GAME OVER’ came onto the screen in massive block letters.  It was always fun to stare at these words for a while and wonder to yourself, “But what if we had gone the diplomatic route instead?  How about a little détente?”  Actually, I just like the word “détente.”  It’s a fun word!  Grade:  C – minus

 

Dig-Dug:  This is one of those “What the fuck?” games.  I’ve always held out a dim hope that these things make more sense if you’re Japanese or stoned or both or something.  Basically, you’re a little guy with a helmet and a tire-inflater thingy whose mission is to go deep underneath the earth in order to inflate monsters with air.  If you don’t inflate them, they’ll escape and do god knows what.  Other things to be aware of:  Rocks can fall on you, but not if you’re directly below them.  If monsters want to escape, they turn into a pair of eyes.  Even though you can dig through solid earth, you can’t dig through flowers.  Music speeds up as things become harder.  Is any of this weird at all, or am I the one with the problem?  Oh, and watch out for the dragon!  He shoots flames.  Grade:  B 

 

Double Dragon:  At a certain point, video games and I began to part ways.  I think “Double Dragon” was the trigger for all of this.  For some reason, I could imagine myself as a yellow guy eating ghosts, a brick smashing other bricks, even a frog running across a highway.  But somehow, I couldn’t imagine myself as a street-trained martial arts ninja capable of going into “the Hood” with my brother and annihilating an army of gangsters using only my fists and a couple of garbage cans.  Maybe it was the graphics.  Look at these guys…  they’re tough!  Their arms are like….  nine pixels wide.  I’m not buff like that!  As a sidenote, “Double Dragon” was the first video-game where you could put more quarters into the machine in order to “Continue.”  This was a shocking development, often leading to the annihilation of my entire weekly allowance within a period of 25 minutes.  For some reason, it took video-game developers a while to catch on to the fact that us kids were all crack-addicted zombie-ish quarter monkeys capable of standing in one place for hours so that we could jam pieces of silver into a machine which was then programmed to tell us that we weren’t good enough.  But we were…  oh baby, we were.  Grade:  B - minus.

 

Star Wars:  Video games, like movie sequels, often had to be tougher than the original.  For example, if the game “Star Wars” had been like the movie “Star Wars,” you would have blown up one “Death Star,” then gone home and slept with your sister.  Clearly, this wasn’t going to work.  Instead, the game “Star Wars” posited miraculous infinite universes filled with Death Star after Death Star that you would then have to blow up.  This always tickled me, because within the game, blowing up each Death Star was supposed to have the exact same excitement level as destroying the original.  "Luke...  use the force."    "Yeah...   yeah...  'Use the force,' old man, I've got it.  I'VE BLOWN UP 59 DEATH STARS ALREADY TODAY.  I need a glass of bourbon now."

Also, I just plain like the idea of infinite universes, and the attendant infinite possibilities that come with infinite universes.  Did this mean that there was a universe where Luke was Darth’s father?  A universe where Jedi brothers and sisters could legally get married?  A universe where Yoda talked with perfect diction?  A universe where the new “Star Wars” movies didn’t totally suck?  See… this is why you don’t actually want me reviewing more video games, as I will start to delve into horrifyingly nerdy questions such as these.  Grade:  Um.  C…  plus?

   

Combat:  This was actually for the Atari 2600, which I had.  There is only one thing to say about this game:  INVISIBLE TANK PONG!  INVISIBLE TANK PONG!  INVISIBLE TANK PONG!  Sweet.  "Combat" wasn’t really much of a game, but it made up for not being very fun by having approximately 1,354 variations of the original not very fun game.  And one of those variations was…  you guessed it.  I’d like to be an army drill instructor, training my soldiers on the eve of a massive Invisible Tank Pong war.  “THE FIRST THING YEW MUST REMEMBER…  IS THAT YEW WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SEE YOUR OWN TANK WHEN IT IS INVISIBLE.  DO YEW GET ME, SOLDIERS?!  SIR YES SIR!  THE SECOND THING…  YEW MUST REMEMBER…  IS THAT TANK PONG BULLETS ARE CAPABLE OF RICOCHETING SO AS TO DESTROY YOUR OWN TANK.  SIR YES SIR!”  Grade:  A!

 

Paperboy:  See, there are some things that I just don’t want to recreate in video-game form.  Having a boring, menial, low-paying job is one of these.  The other things that I don’t want to recreate include…  STDs (“Gonorrhoids:  2038”), girls breaking up with me (“Super Dump-Man”), my father’s alcoholism (“WhatthehellreYEWlookinat:  II”), the presidency of George W. Bush (“Bush v. Kerry:  Street Edition”), and oh god I’m getting tired of thinking of jokes about video-games…  Grade:  F

  

E.T.:  The Extra-Terrestrial:  Hey, remember the part in the movie where “E.T.” fell into a pit for five hours and couldn’t get out no matter what you tried until you screamed and threw the controller at the screen in frustration?  Um, me neither.  Okay, seriously…  Did anyone play this video game but me?  …Anyone?  Grade:  F - minus

 

 

 

 

3 June

[T]ime is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again...
— Heinrich Heine


The world! The world is alive!
— Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet