Stratovania

On Saturday, bethje and I stopped by the Hamilton Mall on our way to Atlantic City, and man, that place was dead. I have to wonder if malls in general aren't the cool hangout spots they were back in my childhood, but this one was hit particularly hard. They DID have plenty of shoe stores and places you could buy fancy dresses for your three-year-old, though. That used to be one of the few malls around that had a pet store, and now it's been replaced with one of those little kid dress shops, which probably means the lingering odor of dog poop remains in those dresses. Seriously, I'm glad the pet store closed down because keeping puppies in cages with wire on the bottom is cruel, yet it was still the most fun store to visit there. One fairly new store that was actually pretty cool was one that sold old video games and comics. I kind of feel I should have bought something since I want them to stay in business, but I already have a bunch of video games I haven't played. While I didn't catch this exchange, Beth says she heard a woman make a patronizing comment to her boyfriend, something like, "I'm happy that you're happy." Way to fulfill gender stereotypes, lady! Fortunately, earlier that same day I saw a little girl reading an Avengers comic in a doctor's office waiting room, so that kind of balances things out. I've never been a comic reader, or at least not much of one, but I'm a comic-readers' ally. Speaking of which, we watched the 2008 Iron Man movie last night, and I agree with Beth that it was a little overly long and slow-paced, but I still liked it. I remember reading that Stan Lee wanted Iron Man, a rich weapons developer with a cocky attitude, to be someone all the hippie comics fans of the time would want to hate but couldn't help but like. I remember a Sunday morning cartoon that was split between Iron Man and the Fantastic Four, and I generally liked the latter's stories better. I feel that this would also be a good time to plug SamuraiFrog's ongoing reviews of Marvel Comics from the 1960s.

In Atlantic City, we didn't do any gambling (we generally don't; it's more about walking on the Boardwalk for Beth, and it's not like we have that much money to spare), but we did check out a few of the arcades. The new thing now seems to be claw machines that only have, like, four things in them, but they're expensive things like iPods and jewelry. Do you think anyone has ever actually won at one of these? We both tried out a Wizard of Oz game that involved firing quarters at other quarters in an attempt to knock them off a ledge, but neither of us got anywhere at it.

We did see some other guy who was racking up the points on it, but who knows how much money he put in? Those games are misleading anyway, because you can't keep any of those quarters you knock down. Instead, you just get tickets you can exchange for crappy prizes. Like, if you get 15,000 of them, you can get this smiling piece of pizza.

I think it's smiling because it knows I don't like olives or peppers, and hence it won't meet its death at my mouth. Other prizes on display included a blender and a Cuisinart. I can just imagine someone saying, "We need some new kitchen appliances. Let's hit the arcade!" And here's a prize at another midway that puzzled me:

Where the heck is Pooh's nose? Did he have to have it amputated after too many bee stings?

Speaking of tacky things, the first of "Weird Al" Yankovic's videos for his new album came out today, and it's a parody of Pharrell's "Happy" (the song that it's apparently illegal for Iranians to dance to) called..."Tacky." LiveJournal apparently won't let me embed videos, so here's the link. Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, and Jack Black all make appearances in it. By the way, looking at the list of stuff that Al is parodying, another parody target and a song in the polka medley both feature Pharrell. He must be cleaning up with the royalties from Weird Al.

bethje had today and yesterday off from work, and I haven't been able to find a job, so we had a four-day weekend together. I don't know that we totally took advantage of it, but we did a few fun things. On Saturday, we went out to eat at Ruby Tuesday, which wasn't that great. I've kind of lost interest in that place, but I guess if I ever go back (and I'm sure I will someday), I'll just get a burger. That night, we watched Planet of the Apes. Believe it or not, this was the first time either one of us had seen it. I'd meant to watch it several years earlier, but it just made it to the top of the Netflix queue. Anyway, I found it rather slow-paced. How long do they have to establish the dangerous conditions in the Forbidden Zone before we actually see an ape? I also have to wonder how, when Heston's character arrives on a planet with the same basic conditions and life forms as Earth, and where the apes speak freaking ENGLISH, it takes the Statue of Liberty before he even considers that he could be back where he started?

I believe I've heard that, in the original novel, the apes spoke a language of their own, so at least that part would make more sense. Oh, and contrary to the They Might Be Giants song, Cornelius doesn't wear a cape, whether toffee, tan, or any other color.




Sunday was, of course, the Fourth of July, but for some reason most of the places in the area had fired off their fireworks the previous day. I don't know what's up with that. I think some municipalities might also have canceled them due to Governor Christie's budget cuts. We ended up not doing too much other than eating some grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, and going out for ice cream. It didn't help that it was incredibly hot that day, and has been since then as well.

Yesterday saw a trip to the Olive Garden and a walk around the mall. Nothing much to tell there, but I do still like the Olive Garden's breadsticks. And since it's summer, their berries and sorbet dish was on the dessert menu. Hooray! Today, I took Beth to consult another oral surgeon, because the last one said he couldn't operate anywhere nearby. She's set up an appointment to get her wisdom teeth removed, along with two other impacted molars. After that, we went bowling. I'm terrible at that, but I am improving, even though it's been a while since the last time. What I didn't do was get much sleep, so I should probably remedy that soon.

One of the most interesting recurring enemy characters in Final Fantasy VI is the purple octopus Ultros, known as Orthros in the Japanese version. Since Orthros is a two-headed dog from Greek mythology, I couldn't really say why the designers would think it an appropriate name for a sea monster. Oh, well. Ultros shows up to fight the heroes four times during the course of FF6, and doesn't appear to have any loyalty to the Empire or anyone else. He's just a hungry, sass-mouthed nuisance. He's generally played as comic relief, and makes a lot of quips both in the battle and out of it.

He first shows up to fight on the River Lethe, and next at the opera house, where he plans to drop a heavy weight on the star of the show.

Interestingly, his dialogue in this scene includes, "You've changed! Did you miss me?", despite the fact that it's entirely possible you're fighting him with entirely different characters. The group fighting Ultros on the first encounter consists of Terra, Banon, Edgar, and Sabin. During the opera scene, Terra is out of commission and Banon no longer playable. Edgar and/or Sabin could be in your party, but neither one is required. The third fight occurs in the Esper Cave, where the octopus tries to steal three golden statues, claiming it will make Siegfried jealous. Siegfried's role in this game is mysterious, so how he knows Ultros and why he'd be jealous of the statues is never explained. I think his story might be best saved for another post, though. This time, he runs off when Relm paints his picture, proving how ugly he is.

The final Ultros battle is on the airship, proving that the sea creature is somehow equally at home in the sky. This time, he brings along his partner Chupon, who in Japanese was known as Typhon, after the wind god. According to his Final Fantasy Wiki page, "Chupón" is Spanish for "sucker," so I guess the English translator wanted to work in an extra joke.

Chupon's specialty is sneezing, which he uses to blow the party off the ship. Both of these villains reappear in the Colosseum in the second part of the game. Ultros is working as a receptionist, and Chupon fights anyone who wagers a common item.


I'm apparently not the only one who found Ultros to be a memorable character. The octopus made cameo appearances in several other games, and I recently came across this Japanese pop song about him. Oddly, it uses both his English and Japanese names, but I guess that's pretty common for Japanese lyrics.

I like Billy Joel's music, but the guy's attitude gets on my nerves. It's that whole tough-guy front that I complained about with Jay Leno. Why are you people so insecure that you need to act like that all the time? Afraid someone might think you're gay? Hey, I'm kind of surprised that Billy is willing to tour with Elton John, for fear of accusations of flamboyance by association.

I've been thinking of doing one of my dissections for a Billy Joel song, but I wasn't sure which one to go with. I considered "Captain Jack," but I couldn't think of that many jokes other than "huh huh, he said 'masturbate.'" So here's my look at the 1977 song "Only the Good Die Young," about a guy trying to convince a Catholic girl to have sex with him. I can agree with him in a sense, because while "no sex before marriage" might be a useful guideline for some, I really fail to see how a marriage license is the key to preventing sin. Isn't God usually portrayed as operating more subtly than that? Still, while I have nothing against premarital sex, I don't think that means you need to do it with the first schmo who expresses interest, which seems to be what this song is suggesting.

Come out, Virginia, don't let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late

That's not entirely true. Some of them just get married young to people they hardly know.

Ah but sooner or later it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one

So the narrator is saying that this girl's fate is to have sex, so she might as well have it with him as anyone? What a crappy pick-up line! It's making "Did you fall from Heaven?" sound sensible. Why not argue that the ban of premarital sex dates back to a time when women were considered property? I'm sure it still wouldn't work, but at least it would sound less smug.

Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray

Yeah, I know Catholic churches are full of statuary, especially when compared to other Christian houses of worship, but I'm still kind of amused by this line. Hey, Billy, are you sure she's a Catholic, and not a worshipper of Ba'al Hadad?

You might have heard I run with a dangerous crowd
We ain't too pretty, we ain't too proud

I've seen pictures of you, so I know you're not too pretty. You DO come across as awfully proud in this song, though.

We might be laughing a bit too loud
Oh, but that never hurt no one

Hurt? Maybe not. Annoyed the crap out of everyone in the vicinity? Most likely. They're probably those obnoxiously noisy teenagers sitting the next table over at a restaurant.

I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
The sinners are much more fun

I'd say that depends on what the sin is, wouldn't you?

Said your mother told you all that I could give you was a reputation

Nah, he could probably also give you an STD.

The way this song comes across, it sounds more and more like she's rejecting this guy because he's a jerk, and just using the Catholic thing as an excuse. But maybe that was intentional. I don't know.

Anyway, here's the source of the title (WARNING: not a real video, just various old Weird Al pictures and clips):

This was one of Weird Al's early songs, before he started getting permission for his parodies. I've heard that Billy didn't like it, but I don't know for sure. While relatively mean as far as Al goes (it's one of his few parodies that directly mocks the original song, like "This Song's Just Six Words Long" and "Smells Like Nirvana"), I don't think it's really that harsh. I guess it's a bit outdated now, though. It would be years before Al released an officially sanctioned Billy Joel parody, "Ode to a Superhero" (to the tune of "Piano Man") in 2003. I've also heard tell of something called "A Matter of Crust" that he would occasionally play in live medleys, but have never heard the song itself.

And while we're on the subject of Al, here's his interview with Billy:

Well, we're pretty much snowed in now, so my mind has turned to video games. Not actually PLAYING them, as that would take some effort, but watching videos of them. This blog post includes some footage of an Atari game called Frostbite, which is also the name of its main character. Apparently his parents didn't have much hope for him. It's sort of like Frogger, but you have to wait until the igloo is built before you can enter it. And that polar bear is a nasty piece of work, as they often are. Who would ever think an animal that looks like this could be so bloodthirsty?


Anyway, that made me want to look up Ice Climber, an early Nintendo game that I've never played, but about which I've heard a fair amount. Here's a video of the early levels:

Again with the eggplants! What was it with Nintendo and those particular vegetables?


Moving on to another game, has anyone else ever played Battle of Olympus? I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it a few times on here before, but since a Google search didn't turn up anything, I'm bringing it up again. My family rented it a few times, but we could never make it that far. It's a cool game, though, based on Greek mythology. And it had a magic ocarina long before Link used one. Speaking of which, the look and gameplay are pretty similar to Zelda II, only less complicated. This is the first part of a complete run-through of the game. And I give them a lot of credit for its level of accuracy to the original sources. Yeah, the garden of the Hesperides is supposed to lie outside the Mediterranean, but we see a good number of gods and monsters from the myths, as well as actual Greek locations. This game was the first place I'd ever heard of the Peleponnesus, so it came to mind when I learned about the Peleoponnesian War in college.

Take a look at the trailer for New Super Mario Bros. Wii!



Looks like a cool game, but I have to wonder why the two playable characters other than the obvious ones are just generic blue and yellow Toads. This got me thinking about how the original Toad was sort of a filler character. There were four characters in Doki Doki Panic, and after changing them into the two heroes and the damsel in distress from the original Super Mario Bros., they were still left having to come up with a Mario universe equivalent of the small but strong Papa. Hence Toad, described as the Royal Mushroom Retainer, making him one of the seven who tell Mario or Luigi that the Princess is in another castle (or at least someone with the same job title). At least for me, I think a large part of what made him a distinctive character was the cartoon part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which made him sort of a sidekick to the Marios with a gung-ho personality and a desire to be a hero. Even though all of the Mushroom People came to be known as Toads, I still think of THE Toad as a specific individual, and it seems that the makers of the games often do as well. So, assuming the two extra Toads in the Wii game make it to the completed version, will they be given their own names and personalities? I suppose only time will tell. I'm not really sure why they didn't just use Toad and Toadette, as that would lend some credence to the character who was just kind of thrown into Mario Kart Double Dash. But apparently Nintendo likes having some characters who only exist to play sports. I don't think Waluigi has ever appeared in an official Wario game, has he?

Anyway, long live Toad!

If there's one thing that all Americans know about the Japanese, it's that they're hard workers, devoted to their companies, and very skilled at what they do. Also, we all know that Japanese entertainment has really made a killing in this country, especially among our younger citizens. You can't throw a stone without hitting some anime or manga (and quite possibly having it bounce off some green-haired teenager's abnormally large breasts). And they don't have the same "silly rabbit, cartoons and video games are for kids" hang-ups that many Americans do. The thing is, if the Japanese are all so busy working, or else taking public baths with their co-workers, when do they find the time to watch Akira or play Doki Doki Panic? If they were just making these entertainment products for export, that would be one thing, but it wouldn't explain why so many of them remain untranslated. (Yeah, I'm looking at YOU, Dragon Quest V and VI!) Could it be that what everyone knows about Japan isn't entirely accurate?

And while I'm on the subject, here are a few videos from the Land of the Rising Sun (not to be confused with the Land of the Midnight Sun, the Valley of the Sun, the City of the Sun, or East of the Sun and West of the Moon). I came across this first one on the LiveJournal of a person I don't know, but who's a fellow member of the dragonquest community. I've never been much into the J-pop, but I found this to be really cute.



And this one is pretty old, but I thought it was worth a mention. I'll bet you never thought anyone would try to work sex appeal into a commercial for a video game featuring an overweight plumber chasing around a smelly ape, but it looks like they did. And the result is...well, pretty bizarre, really.

Okay, first of all, you can check this out:



It's a review by the same guy who does the Angry Video Game Nerd videos. It seems like, even though this movie didn't do well at the theaters, it's quite well-loved by nerds who grew up in the eighties. It IS pretty disturbing in parts, like with that shock treatment storyline that certainly wasn't in any of the books. Even putting the scariness aside, though, why does it copy MGM in taking a lot of time in Kansas before getting to Oz? As far as I can recall, the original books rarely took more than a chapter to get American visitors into a fairyland of some sort. But then, I've seen some adaptations of Alice in Wonderland that did basically the same thing, even though the book has the White Rabbit show up in the second sentence. By the way, getting back to Return, are there any features on the DVD that weren't on the more recent VHS versions?

Second, you've probably heard by now that Bettie Page died. I understand that she became a violent, reclusive fundamentalist in her later years, but how can I help but like a model who bore a striking resemblance to Robin Goldwasser?

( Blow my mind, your royal flyness, I dig your bangs. )

Next, we have a video game survey, which I took from unclemilo:
( Read more... )

I have several DVD's sitting around that I either bought or received as gifts, but still haven't gotten around to watching. Until yesterday, one of these was Belle and Sebastian's Fans Only. B&S are a band that took a little while to grow on me. bethje liked them before I did, and I had an eMusic account back when they still had their Unlimited plan, so I got most of their albums and EP's from there. I always thought their music was pleasant, but it took several listens before I really started getting into it. I still don't know all that much about the band as far as the individual members or history go, although I hear that lead singer Stuart Murdoch got married recently. I think it's interesting that their songs are so lush and intricately arranged, yet the members themselves always come across as so casual and informal. The DVD is roughly in chronological order, at least as far as the songs go. Otherwise, though, it's kind of oddly organized, with interviews, live performances, and videos all mixed in together. Even though it was released after Dear Catastrophe Waitress, it doesn't include any material from that album. There's also no mention of Isobel Campbell leaving the band, but I actually didn't know she was in it as long as she apparently was. I guess DCW was the first album that B&S did without her. Anyway, it's a pretty cool collection. There's a definite home-movie quality to their early videos, many of which are made up of grainy footage of people doing stuff outside. Incidentally, during the credit sequence, there's a picture of Melora Creager without her Rasputina garb, which is interesting to see.

I also watched the first disc of the Captain N and Super Mario World set. I'd remembered that they gave Yoshi an annoying voice, but I'd forgotten just HOW annoying it was. I'd sort of like to do individual reviews of these episodes, but I doubt anyone else has the same interest in these old video-game-based cartoons as I do, so I probably won't bother. Besides, even if I did, I think I'd want to get the first two seasons of Captain N and The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 first, so I could properly demonstrate how much the series went downhill in their final season.

One of the previews on the DVD was for a Sonic the Hedgehog series, which I think is different from the one I used to watch on weekday afternoons, although both have Jaleel White as the voice of Sonic. I was never as much into Sonic as I was into Mario, and not just because I didn't have a Genesis. I remember people acting like Sonic was so much cooler than Mario because he had an attitude, but I think his cockiness was somewhat put on. Maybe he was insecure because of how Mario and Luigi (and I'll admit that I'm more of a Luigi fan) got to use power-ups, throw vegetables, and ride dinosaurs, while he mostly just ran around a lot. Not that I have a problem with the Sonic games, mind you, just Sega's attempt to present the blue hedgehog as the hipper alternative to the Italian plumbers. I'm not a fan of the "let's put down the competition" business strategy anyway. But I guess that's all water under the bridge now.

I've unscreened the comments on my movie quiz, and posted the answers for the ones that have been guessed. I think I'll leave the ones that haven't up for a little while longer, unless you're really curious to know what they are.