So for the last couple of months, I’ve had to share my room with another human being. Now, you may be wondering how that was. I’ll give you a hint: if it were great it would not be funny.
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Okay, right off the bat, there’s one thing I don’t get. So, there’s Dr. Manhattan, right? Big giant blue guy. Can’t miss ‘im. The dude can grow to be 80 million feet tall, and make a bajillion copies of himself, and crush a tank by waving his hand around a little bit. But he can’t do something as simple as putting on a pair of friggin’ PANTS. 1. Robert Plant is gonna leave you, he said baby, you know he’s gonna leave you, he’ll leave you when the summer comes a-rollin’, leave you when the summer comes along. (Led Zeppelin – “Baby I’m Gonna Leave You”) 2. Someone named Jamie is crying. (Van Halen – “Jamie’s Cryin’”) 3. Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone. (The Rolling Stones – “Ruby Tuesday”) 4. Roger Daltrey, whose heart is like a broken cup, really wants to know who you are. (The Who – “Who Are You”) 5. A kazoo solo makes for an amusing song. (Pink Floyd – “Corporal Clegg”) (This is the third installation of Old Games That Amuse Burpen.)
It’s amazing how many pieces of crap were made based on (and in worship of) Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park. These pieces of crap included a Spielberg movie. That said, perhaps the majority of the crap was actually based on the movie… Anyhow, a Sega Genesis game was one piece of crap to result from this. And man, was it amusing crap. No, I am not reviewing the Playstation RPG that people have been fawning over for years. Instead, I have obtained through my good friend J-tin a copy of the movie that takes place two years after the events in the game. I should preface this saying I knew about as much about Final Fantasy VII going into this as a blind man knows about the difference between red and blue. I’ve heard much about it, but have no real experience playing it. For that matter, the only Final Fantasy games I have played are a FFXII sequel and FFIII for the Nintendo DS. But I decided to see how this movie would hold against the standards of someone not enthralled by FFVII’s mystical aura. And quite frankly, it could have done better.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the Scandinavia of America: cold, out-of-the-way, and pointless. It’s like the Finnish translation of Appalachia. Somewhere along the line, someone in the U.P. thought it would be a good idea to refer to themselves as a “Yooper” (U.P.-er), and ever since, anyone with any sense has avoided it. In Part I, I discussed how writers of television shows, books, and films often write with diametrically-opposing agendas. Today, I’m gonna use the exact same formula, because unlike Leonard Nimoy, I’m not a flip-flopper.
Having lived with my girlfriend-at-the-time for two and a half years, I came to take some of her possessions for granted. Then, one inappropriately bright and shining summer day, all of that stuff left my home and traveled to her new one, far away. Most of those possessions I was actually happier without, because most of it was stuff for which I had no use and for which we had no space to actually store. One among those things, though, was sorely missed after it was gone: The vacuum cleaner.
Just now I was checking my email and listening to my iPod on shuffle, when a song I had not heard in several years came up: “The Village of Dwarves” by Italian metal band Rhapsody of Fire. A nostalgic smile spread over my face as the band’s lyrics about, well, a village of dwarves enfolded me with their mighty power, and I was reminded once again that Rhapsody is far and away the nerdiest band to ever walk the Earth. The inclusion of “Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce on Guitar Hero 3 was the first exposure many Americans had to European power metal. I remember watching friends laughing at that song’s silly lyrics about the “flames of death’s eternal reign” and “fighting hard, fighting on for the steel, through the wastelands evermore.” Well, Rhapsody manages to be orders of magnitude lamer than that. The key is that Rhapsody’s albums all tell a continuing narrative called the “Emerald Sword Saga,” the most laughably, idiotically juvenile fantasy saga ever told.
Few television shows directly cause domestic abuse. It is rare to find one that actually forces anyone to clock the nearest person in a fit of pure rage. But there is some evidence that television does cause violence. In the course of researching this article, my roommate was hospitalized for more wounds than I can count. He was suffering from a fractured collarbone, a split pelvis, a dislocated bladder, and an extra spinal cord. (For the life of me I can’t remember where I got that extra spinal cord.) And then he made the mistake to have Dougie Howser on when I came to visit his ward. God rest his soul… but I believe my point was, Dougie Howser makes you want to kill. In the past month I have rediscovered the local library, and boy, it has changed. Okay, not really. It still has books, it still has the same computers, the same people… I guess really the only difference is that they’re now in a joint venture with other surrounding libraries making more books available. This required me to get a new library card, as mine was literally over ten years old, but the benefits were worth it. One of the new features is the ability to ‘check-out’ audiobooks online for free. Granted, it isn’t the best selection in the world, but there are quite a few books that I had been meaning to read but hadn’t the time. With audiobooks, I can zone out at work (as usual) and immerse myself in the world literally streaming into my head. The first book I checked out and finished (the I, Robot one had a bad sector that won’t transfer properly, so I’m stuck halfway through) is Eragon. Tanzmetall (the obvious emperor of Clunkline), Grabass Champion, and myself have written and often times still write music. I’m not really sure about the other two, but my composition writing has evolved out of clicking in a bunch of notes in Sibelius 2.0 and simply saving them as midis. Yes, I now have two really nice keyboards, which I use to play out most of the tracks in my songs, a friend who is quite eloquent on the guitar, and the means to get live recordings of just about any wind instrument I can think of within reason. Recently, I’ve written a new strain of songs for a would-be soundtrack to a graphic novel I am writing and hope to publish someday, and the thought occurred to me that one of Tanzmetall’s original compositions from back in the day would make a splendid theme for one of the villains (a continent-sized magma serpent that dwells under the Earth’s mantle). That song is called FLIGHT FROM EMSARIA, and though everything we write today is vastly superior in almost every way to what we used to write while we were in high school, nothing has ever struck a satisfying chord quite like this song has. At least that’s what I think. But what is it about FLIGHT FROM EMSARIA that is so… so… terrifying (in a good way)? Jesus’s death in last month’s issue of The Bible was applauded by some as a gutsy move on the part of publisher INRI Comics, but one which offended many longtime fans of the series. However, Jesus’s return from the dead this month, while popular with many fans, was criticized by some as being a cheap save. “Jesus is the son of God, but he’s not Superman,” said Jonah Arcott, long-time con-goer. “You can’t expect him to rise from the dead every other issue.” |
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