A quick update of what's what: I'm typing in a hotel room in San Luis Obispo. The soundtrack of a wedding mix is playing — the best of hard rock love ballads from the 80s, 90s and today — and by six o'clock this evening I will have a sister-in-law. Technically, I'm on vacation, which of course means that I've been somehow busier in the last twenty-four hours than I was in the preceding week. The wedding party has been hampered by the sad fact that this weekend marks Cal Poly's first back in session. That should prove to be no problem tonight: I'm told the bar is open, and vast in its selection. What may yet prove problematic: the tux I've been asked to wear, which is chocolate brown and makes me look a little like a zoot suiter. And no, it's not a swing-themed wedding.
Oh, and Maya Rudolph decided at last that she will, in fact, be returning to SNL, despite some reports to the contrary. I'll have better plans tonight, but please watch and give me reports.
I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Famous Super Mario Bros. 2 Tomato
A random thought:
Has anyone else ever noticed that while the pluckable vegetables in Super Mario Bros. 2 vary from level to level, tomatoes only appear in the game’s final level? In the big bad’s room? With Wart and the so-called Bad Dream Machine?
Am I the only one who’s ever noticed this?
Why would Nintendo bother to design a tomato and use it only in one room in the entire game?
And better yet: Why would Wart leave a machine in his hideout that produces the one thing that kills him?
And why is the one thing that kills him fresh produce?
Has anyone else ever noticed that while the pluckable vegetables in Super Mario Bros. 2 vary from level to level, tomatoes only appear in the game’s final level? In the big bad’s room? With Wart and the so-called Bad Dream Machine?
Am I the only one who’s ever noticed this?
Why would Nintendo bother to design a tomato and use it only in one room in the entire game?
And better yet: Why would Wart leave a machine in his hideout that produces the one thing that kills him?
And why is the one thing that kills him fresh produce?
Monday, September 24, 2007
Old Hickory (Or, "Orudo Hikori")
I'm doing a long version and a short version — the former for anyone who'd actually like to hear me reminisce about arcade games and the latter for those who could give a shit and would rather I just spill the weird bit of pop culture what-the-fuck. For you short attention-spanners, here you go:
There's a video game. It has fighting samurais. It's called Samurai Shodown. (I know, I know, no "w.") I liked it when I was a kid. It takes place in the late 1700s. Apparently, it's now in its sixth incarnation. This newest version features an American character named Andrew, who is based off Mr. Twenty Dollar Bill himself, noted dead American president Andrew Jackson. He fights with a bayonet. I find this hilarious.
Andrew (the Samurai Shodown fighter, not the presidential corpse) looks like this:
You may be more familiar with him looking like this.
That is all.
And now, the version in which I take forever to get to my point.
A good chunk of my elementary school pizza parlor birthday days experienced a renaissance a few months back with the arrival of Metal Slug Anthology for the Wii. Metal Slug is a hand-drawn shoot-'em-up that came from Japan but more than likely appeared in any given American pizzeria in the mid- to late-90s. It's also an absolutely brutal game that will probably wipe out all three of your little army men before you have time to blink. (In that sense, it's an ideal arcade moneymaker.) When it came to my home console, however, the seven Metal Slug games became a much more affordable proposition, and I beat them without having to spend my lifesavings in quarters. (Another plus: non-greasy joysticks.) Total surprise ending, too. When you kill the aliens, the earth is saved and you see the credits!
Today, I read that SNK — the company that made Metal Slug and the Neo Geo arcade system, the ones where you could scroll through three or four different titles in a single cabinet — has announced at the Tokyo Game Show that it will also be bringing another beloved childhood series to the Wii: Samurai Shodown. As I mentioned just a few days ago, this game — which even today makes me instinctually spell "showdown" without the "w" — rocked my prepubescent brain back in the day. Whereas Metal Slug was one of those run, jump and shoot numbers, Samurai Shodown was a two-dimensional one-on-one fighter in the style of Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat. What set Samurai Shodown apart, however, was its style: hand-painted backgrounds that look gorgeous even today, music that played like the soundtrack to some lost Akira Kurosawa epic, and combatants who spoke — spoke! — full sentences. Sure, this speech was in Japanese, even for characters who didn't come from Japan, but the overall effect was nonetheless stunning on an eleven-year-old who had been weaned in then-cutting edge 16-bit home systems.
Research into the series later in life taught me an additional virtue: I found that a good handful of the characters in the game were based on actual, historical personages. Hanzo Hattori — whose name might seem familiar from Kill Bill — also appears in Samurai Shodown, as does a valiant samurai named Jubei Yagyu. The game's villain — an effeminate, demonic priest named Amakusa Shiro Tokisada — is based on a historical Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, who was once touted by leaders of the Shimbara Uprising as being destined to Christianize Japan. (He failed, of course. You know what they say about who gets to write history books? Well, those same people apparently hold grudges and make video games.) Sure a lot of historical timelines were fudged to get these various sword-wielders to duel — blue-eyed, blond-haired ninja Galford, for example, hails from a portside metropolis San Francisco long before the city actually existed in that state — but the sense of history always appealed to me.
Now in its sixth incarnation, the game now boasts an additional American: Andrew, a bayonet-toting solider modeled after Andrew Jackson. How a bunch of Japanese game designers ever chose Jackson, of all dead presidents, to take on sword-wielding samurai is beyond me, but it amuses the hell out of me that I will soon be able to play as a reasonable facsimile of Andrew Jackson the next time I return to the some video games re-imagining of late 18th-century Japan.
I can only hope that the below political cartoon — which features Jackson battling a dragon representing the banking industry and which acually looks like it could have been printed on some old piece of currency — played some role in inspiring Andrew's inclusion.
It's a close call, but this has to be a weirder convergence between pop culture, American history and Japanese video games than when I found out that the "Zelda" in Legend of Zelda is a reference to Zelda Fitzgerald.
There's a video game. It has fighting samurais. It's called Samurai Shodown. (I know, I know, no "w.") I liked it when I was a kid. It takes place in the late 1700s. Apparently, it's now in its sixth incarnation. This newest version features an American character named Andrew, who is based off Mr. Twenty Dollar Bill himself, noted dead American president Andrew Jackson. He fights with a bayonet. I find this hilarious.
Andrew (the Samurai Shodown fighter, not the presidential corpse) looks like this:
You may be more familiar with him looking like this.
That is all.
And now, the version in which I take forever to get to my point.
A good chunk of my elementary school pizza parlor birthday days experienced a renaissance a few months back with the arrival of Metal Slug Anthology for the Wii. Metal Slug is a hand-drawn shoot-'em-up that came from Japan but more than likely appeared in any given American pizzeria in the mid- to late-90s. It's also an absolutely brutal game that will probably wipe out all three of your little army men before you have time to blink. (In that sense, it's an ideal arcade moneymaker.) When it came to my home console, however, the seven Metal Slug games became a much more affordable proposition, and I beat them without having to spend my lifesavings in quarters. (Another plus: non-greasy joysticks.) Total surprise ending, too. When you kill the aliens, the earth is saved and you see the credits!
Today, I read that SNK — the company that made Metal Slug and the Neo Geo arcade system, the ones where you could scroll through three or four different titles in a single cabinet — has announced at the Tokyo Game Show that it will also be bringing another beloved childhood series to the Wii: Samurai Shodown. As I mentioned just a few days ago, this game — which even today makes me instinctually spell "showdown" without the "w" — rocked my prepubescent brain back in the day. Whereas Metal Slug was one of those run, jump and shoot numbers, Samurai Shodown was a two-dimensional one-on-one fighter in the style of Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat. What set Samurai Shodown apart, however, was its style: hand-painted backgrounds that look gorgeous even today, music that played like the soundtrack to some lost Akira Kurosawa epic, and combatants who spoke — spoke! — full sentences. Sure, this speech was in Japanese, even for characters who didn't come from Japan, but the overall effect was nonetheless stunning on an eleven-year-old who had been weaned in then-cutting edge 16-bit home systems.
Research into the series later in life taught me an additional virtue: I found that a good handful of the characters in the game were based on actual, historical personages. Hanzo Hattori — whose name might seem familiar from Kill Bill — also appears in Samurai Shodown, as does a valiant samurai named Jubei Yagyu. The game's villain — an effeminate, demonic priest named Amakusa Shiro Tokisada — is based on a historical Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, who was once touted by leaders of the Shimbara Uprising as being destined to Christianize Japan. (He failed, of course. You know what they say about who gets to write history books? Well, those same people apparently hold grudges and make video games.) Sure a lot of historical timelines were fudged to get these various sword-wielders to duel — blue-eyed, blond-haired ninja Galford, for example, hails from a portside metropolis San Francisco long before the city actually existed in that state — but the sense of history always appealed to me.
Now in its sixth incarnation, the game now boasts an additional American: Andrew, a bayonet-toting solider modeled after Andrew Jackson. How a bunch of Japanese game designers ever chose Jackson, of all dead presidents, to take on sword-wielding samurai is beyond me, but it amuses the hell out of me that I will soon be able to play as a reasonable facsimile of Andrew Jackson the next time I return to the some video games re-imagining of late 18th-century Japan.
I can only hope that the below political cartoon — which features Jackson battling a dragon representing the banking industry and which acually looks like it could have been printed on some old piece of currency — played some role in inspiring Andrew's inclusion.
It's a close call, but this has to be a weirder convergence between pop culture, American history and Japanese video games than when I found out that the "Zelda" in Legend of Zelda is a reference to Zelda Fitzgerald.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Asshole Mario
Known variously as Kaizo Mario or Asshole Mario in the English-speaking world, this complication of Super Mario World makes me cringe just watching it, perhaps even more so than that insane Super Mario Bros. hack that made the rounds a few weeks back. Here's level 1-1.
And here's the Yellow Switch Palace, which has never been quite so frustrating.
And the third stage.
And just when you think you've had enough, this diabolical hacker adds auto-scrolling.
The game continues all the way to a castle level, which sadly concludes with a battle against a Bowser statue and not Bowser himself. However, there is Super Mario Bros.-style bridge key at the end.
But don't fret that only one mind-bendingly difficult version of Super Mario World exists — there's always the sequel, Asshole Mario 2.
The lastest stage posted by YouTube user sibladeko is the ninth stage of Asshole Mario 2, though I don't think it's the concluding stage.
Seriously, deviousness is a form of creativity. Tempted? You can actually download Asshole Mario and give it a try yourself. But beware: You may well be rendered loony by the end.
[ Source: Nintendo Gal ]
And here's the Yellow Switch Palace, which has never been quite so frustrating.
And just when you think you've had enough, this diabolical hacker adds auto-scrolling.
The game continues all the way to a castle level, which sadly concludes with a battle against a Bowser statue and not Bowser himself. However, there is Super Mario Bros.-style bridge key at the end.
But don't fret that only one mind-bendingly difficult version of Super Mario World exists — there's always the sequel, Asshole Mario 2.
[ Source: Nintendo Gal ]
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Princess Hat for Monkey
Last week, I found an old email that I believe I sent to Kristen as advice on what she should wear to a tennis date. The email reads as follows:
you may have heard us restraining laughter outside your window last night. this happened because spencer and i thought it would be funny to tell you that since you will be playing tennis at a resort, you should dress in formal tennis attire. you know: white sweater, white skirt and such. this quickly escalated into the following list:It made me laugh then, it makes me laugh now.keep in mind, this was funny to us at 2 a.m.
- old fashioned hoop skirt
- bonnet
- hobnail boots
- bloomers
- thong outside of bloomers
- gloves
- jangly bracelets
- Puritan punishment stocks
- ski mask
- goggles
- funny mustache disguise glasses
- princess hat
- Carmen Miranda hat with fruit
- monkey to play inside hat
- princess hat for monkey
- kneepads
- buckles, buckles, buckles!
- pilgrim hat for formal occasions
- lady in waiting
- lots of tule
hope the weekend goes at least this well.
Less at "Malice," More at "Marshmallow"
From Wordsmith.org, another headscratcher of a word-of-the-day: malacia.
malacia (mu-LA-shuh, -shee-uh)Stop. You're both right. Great that I can't tell which definition is being used. "What's that doctor? You say I love Indian cuisine? Oh, I see. You're telling me my internal organs are liquefying. That's much worse."
noun 1. An abnormal craving for spiced food. 2. Softening of the organ or tissue.
[From Greek malakia (softness), ultimately from the Indo-European root mel- (soft) which also gave us "malacology" (study of mollusks), "malt," "melt," and "mulch."]
Alright Already
From J. Erskine's Written English, as quoted in Robert Palfrey Utter's Every-day Words and Their Uses: A Guide to Correct Diction: "Remember, however, that alright is one of illiteracy's most legible autographs." And please note appropriateness of a man with the surname "Utter" writing a guide to diction.
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