Home alone

I am a uniquely blessed individual.  Gifted with exceptional wit, charm, strength, sex appeal, and the ability to lie convincingly about my attributes, I came to Japan.  I came to be a teacher.  I was young and had a desire to travel the world.  I wanted to join my friends from Japan who had spent a year as exchange students at my university in their home country, to experience firsthand the food and culture and excitement they described in vivid detail, language barrier be damned.  But mostly I was following a girl.

You know how it is: you find someone and you connect with them.  Where moments ago you saw a person but now all you see is warmth and beauty and the one.  There's a magical spark and like a soldering iron that creates magical sparks you find your souls fused together.  Also the soldering iron only works on souls, I forgot to mention that.

Maybe it was reckless, chasing a person I had known less than a year across two oceans and two continental landmasses, but at the time it felt so rational and right.  And I'm pretty sure the pilot was flying the wrong direction.  Here we were on the same island, her in Tokyo and I in Osaka.  So close and yet so far.

And then things happened, mistakes were made, and it was all gone.

Oscar Wilde said something once.  I didn't read it but I heard someone talking about it at the library or maybe at a Foot Locker.  It probably would have been pretty good to use here.  Hold on let me check Google:

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

-Oscar Wilde

That didn't help at all.  Thanks a lot Oscar, you fucking hack.

It's a horrible thing, the outright rejection and purgation that comes with a really good breakup.  And what follows the inevitable digging of a cavern of sorrow with a shovel of loneliness and a pickax of really cheap vodka or I don't know maybe whippits.  And then there's a light at the end of the tunnel and you ran out of money for whippits like two days ago so it can't be a hallucination and it's a metaphorical light anyway.  Because one day, coaxed out of your cave by your friends or the realization that worms and bats tend to live down there, you follow that light back out to the surface.  And there she is.

Perfection personified.  The empty half of your life distilled into a perfect specimen that fits comfortably in all the right places and some places are a little tight but that's good too.  Someone whose very countenance warms and sustains your very life essence, and this time it's not a soldering iron but something stronger.  I don't know what that would be since I'm not really into metallurgy but I'm talking about love.  

The impermanence of sadness is all that permits man to survive amidst the harshness of reality.  The existence of love is all that allows him to thrive.

Just, you know, not all the time.

Mrs. Merican and I have been married for over four months now.  Prior to that, we'd been dating for about 18 months.  We've done this country up and down as much as two people in our own particular financial situation (poor as fuck) possibly could.  Shrines, monuments, nature, bars, restaurants, parks--both amusement and municipal, operating rooms of hospitals, embassies, police stations, a Red Cross trailer, the list goes on and on.  Fact of the matter is, you name it, we've probably been there or somewhere similar.  We've done about as much with and to each other as two people such as ourselves could hope to in the two years we've been together.

It's awesome.  A+++++++++++++++ would marry again.

We've logged countless hours together, and I look forward to adding inestimably to that figure.  It's the stuff life is made of: moments spent with the people you love doing things you enjoy.  Anyone who says otherwise is selling something, probably whippits.

Hey man, lookin' to buy some refuge from the existential void of a lifetime of loneliness?

I have since learned, however, that sometimes it's really okay to have a break.  I'm not talking about a divorce or trial separation or anything like that.  Fuck no, that's for the birds.  I like juxtaposing profanity with 1930s slang.  People say it's annoying, but I think that's bullshit and I won't have any more of their guff.

What I'm talking about is time apart.  You know, time with the guys, a night at the bar, or a day where you jerk off eight times in a row watching topless Brazilian chicks punch each other in the stomach.  Everyone needs that.  Husbands need it, wives need it, and the Brazilian economy especially needs it.  How else are they going to keep paying for those waxes of theirs?   

This is that time for me.  This.  Right now.

Early on, the missus and I had a bit of a rough time managing our personal time and our together time.  After that, we had a really rough time managing our personal time and our together time.  Then we screamed a lot and I think someone threw a plate.  We were at one of those themed Greek restaurants at the time though, so I don't think there was as much emotional content behind that as perhaps you might have originally thought.

This gyro is amazing and you're a selfish bastard!

The point is, love starts as infatuation.  Love is a drug, and we get our fix from being around one another.  It's like that time you went to go buy a dime bag from your dealer and she was holding opium at the time so you thought "sure, what the hell, you're only in college once."  You smoke it and that wobbly feeling ripples out from your kneecaps, tickling your thighs and calves and blissful white noise washes away all of life's problems.  But what happens on the comedown?  You feel itchy.  You need more just to drive that itch away, and riding a constant wave of bliss and harsh reality, you burn through your whole stash in no time flat.  Love is the same way.  

That constant affection for another human being slams dopamine through your brain's synapses, nourishing your body with God's own analgesic.  It makes us feel good.  And once we get a taste, we crave more and more--we need it.  Still don't think addicted to love like a drug?  Consider this: people hooked on love will literally suck dick to get their fix.  Think about it.

Eventually, though, comes the balancing act.  Two people, being two people, are two people.  While it kicks ass to lay in bed trading smooches and titty twisters on a lazy Sunday until finally rolling out of bed at the crack of 2:00PM for some pancakes, eventually Monday morning arrives.  In spite of all the romance and good intentions, we can't stop the sun.  We go our separate ways, deal with our separate comedowns, and take in the remains of the day separately.

Infatuation allows us to waste a day together in perfect bliss in each other's arms.  Love is what allows us to leave, take care of ourselves, and expect to return to that embrace that night.

And as I sit in front of the computer by myself on my day off of work, grinding out my thoughts on these keys, logging that increasingly scant "me" time, I can relax and refresh.  My arms were tired from all that embracing--I need them to be ready for when she gets home.

If you know what I mean.

Another another one you may have missed

Time to review a good movie.

If you're good Internet people, you've probably at least heard of Derrick Comedy, probably through their Youtube channel.  In late 2007, they announced a hiatus that ultimately spanned almost two years to begin shooting the movie Mystery Team, which saw a limited release on September 11th and 18th of 2009, and continued to be shown in limited engagements throughout the fall.

Mystery Team is a straight-up Hardy Boys parody.  Our heroes, Jason, (Donald Glover) the master of disguise, Duncan (D. C. Pierson), the boy genius, and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes), the strongest kid in town, were the adorable kid detectives you could call to solve any missing-cat or finger-in-pie-based mystery.  That was ten years ago.

The Mystery Team, now seniors in high school, still spend their weekends solving mysteries at the going rate of a dime a piece, but it has become very clear that the world has grown up without them, as is evidenced by their latest case: to find out who brutally murdered a little girl's (Daphne Ciccarelle) parents and bring him to justice.  The premise certainly isn't anything we haven't seen before, the only real twist on the old yarn being that Jason is dead-set on solving the case to prove to the little girl's sister, Kelly (Aubrey Plaza), that they are real detectives--and hopefully win her affection.  The "dopey detective in way over his head" cliche is just about as old as cinema itself, dating back to the Keystone Cops, and it has since produced other genre mainstays like The Man Who Knew Too Little and the Pink Panther and Police Academy films, and it has been seen even more recently in films like Get Smart and, in a bit of a stretch, Kick Ass.

Virtually all of the humor stems from the investigation leading our naive, child-at-heart, grown-up-in-years heroes through all sorts of adult situations, from a strip club to a drug-dealer's basement to a murder scene.  It's a fairly predictable decision for the script (and pretty much sums up the film's trailer), but the comedy beats are creative enough and the actors believe in their roles so firmly (espcially Donald Glover, who has the charisma to carry any scene by himself and really deserves a shot at a role in a bigger motion picture), that the audience can't help but be entertained.  It's a well-trodden path Mystery Team walks, but it does so with such charm and grace, it's hard not to get swept up in the action.

Obviously, Mystery Team marks Derrick Comedy's first foray into feature-length film, and its easy to see there are some growing pains.  As a Youtube comedy troupe, Derrick Comedy's sketches are generally no longer than four minutes, and often follow a fairly simple formula: quirky, absurd characters following a quirky, absurd premise escalating into a single awkward punchline--hold an uncomfortable pose for three to five seconds and done.  It's a testament to the strength of the writing and the cast's ability as comedic actors that their material is still very funny and every bit as fresh four years after their first video hit Youtube.

That style, however, really can't fill a feature film, and the movie is definitely at its weakest when trying to drive forward the narrative rather than focus on characterization.  The best example of this is in the scene where the Mystery Team follows a suspect into the "Gentlemen's Club."  Being the eternal virgins of the movie, the Mystery Team tries to sneak in undercover as "gentlemen," dressing up in three-piece tuxedos and top hats.  Their exchange with the bouncer has some of the best lines in the movie as our heroes bribe and harumph their way through security.  Once inside, they have no idea how to react, with one of the boys finding himself on the receiving end of a lapdance.  Desperate to get away, they hold out a fistful of cash trying to buy their freedom, which of course, only makes the situation worse.  

Scenes like this give us a sense of who the characters are and make their actions more meaningful.  These moments are when the writing is the strongest and it's clear the actors are having the most fun on-screen.

Which is the problem.  A four-minute sketch gives us very little time to get to know the characters, meaning that the situation and characters have to be established rapidly in order to give the scene any real comedic impact.  Derrick Comedy's Youtube offerings have this down to a science, and this aptitude translates very well to the big screen.  But to flesh out the other 91 minutes, Mystery Team ventures outside Derrick Comedy's comfort zone with varying levels of success.  Mystery Team seems to straddle making a movie packed with comedy beats and advancing a cohesive narrative.  

This is particularly evident in the second act, when the comedic element of the film seems to be almost entirely shelved in order to advance the mystery plot.  It's still an entertaining and compelling watch, but it definitely struggles as the weakest part of the film by far.

The biggest question-mark arising from the computer-monitor-to-silver-screen leap is the gross-out humor, of which there are a surprising number of examples.  

At the strip club, the boys run afoul of the bouncer and have to make a getaway.  Jason runs into the basement and ducks into a room where a man is getting a breastmilk enema, the awkwardness punctuated by the dude launching a rocket of lukewarm mammary juice from his clenched man-flower as a stunned Jason looks on.  Moments later, Jason finds a new hiding spot in a disgusting bathroom that makes the one from Trainspotting look like the executive suite at the Ritz and listens as a stripper pees the ring they're looking forward out into a porcelain mud-butt wasteland.  The boys meet up and before long, they seemingly pay homage to either Trainspotting or Saw as Duncan finds himself elbow-deep in a shitbowl fishing it out.  But don't worry, he sterilizes himself by drinking dog urine.  Then he throws up on his friends.

Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome scene, but moments like these seemingly jump out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, leaving the viewer bewildered as to where that came from.  For fans, it's sudden and jarring because the humor is so far removed from anything else they've ever done.  For first-time viewers, it's just gross.

On the bright side, there are far more "hits," like Duncan suddenly pulling a "harsh and uncompromising" reference guide to the hobo lifestyle he keeps in his backpack...

...than misses...

But the misses are still pretty funny

The other real issue I have is with the character of Charlie.  He doesn't really do anything and seems just to be there most of the time because they felt like a mystery team should have three members.  He doesn't have many lines, and worse, he doesn't have many funny lines.  Everything that comes out of his mouth seems to be designed to over-explain the joke.  Shortly after Duncan throws up all over himself, Jason, and Kelly, the scene cuts to the three boys sitting in their underwear while their clothes go through the wash.  Kelly's father, Robert (Glenn Kalison), looks confused and asks if Charlie got vomited on also.  Without missing a beat, he responds "no."  Perfect timing, great delivery, and then he continues "...are we not just taking off clothes?"

Why?  You hit it out of the park, why fetch it from the bleachers to take another swing?  I wish I could count how many jokes could have been saved by trimming the already silent Charlie's speaking part down just a bit more.

Still, these are all nitpicks in an overwhelmingly good movie.

Should you see it?  Absolutely.

Mystery Team is a funny, sleek 95-minute romp with likable characters and plenty of gags to go around.  It's clear that this film was a labor of love for the Derrick Comedy troupe.  If you like their Youtube work, I implore you: buy this movie.  

Do not rent it.  Do not borrow it.  Do not pirate it.  Buy this movie.  Derrick Comedy has been doing what they do best--for free--for four years now on the Internet.  If you're the kind of person--like me--who bitches and moans about how the MPAA is a greedy, soulless organization that extorts movie theaters for outrageous percentages of ticket sales, how Hollywood actors are all overpaid, spoiled children, and how talentless hacks keep getting movie deals, this is your chance to put your money where your mouth is.  Mystery Team raked less than $90,000 at the box office.  This is a call from an Internet person to my Internet people to help out some good Internet people.  If you like Derrick Comedy, buy Mystery Team.  These guys richly deserve a big break.  We did it for the Lonely Island people, we did it for The Whitest Kids U Know, let's make it happen for Derrick Comedy.

It's not the funniest movie of 2008, but you could do a lot worse.

Strange bedfellows

Is it a bad time for a quickie?

Sigh, first a review of The Little Mermaid for the NES and now this: Sex and the City 2.  In fairness, I feel like at least this is doing a service to any men out there dating or married to a 20-something woman who dragged them to the theater on the pretense of a little togetherness time.  Ah, the sacrifices we make for those we love.

I understand that I'm getting to this review rather late in the film's life-cycle.  Sex only came out Japan a couple weeks ago and if the theater my wife and I went to was any indication, plenty of women are still interested in it.  I refer, of course, to the movie Sex and not the act of sex.  The latter, of course, came out here a couple decades ago and has long since gone out of style.

I also acknowledge that I'm not Sex and the City 2's target audience, but I also know that, being a chick-flicky date movie, there are still going to be enough men in the audience to still make an impact on box office receipts.  But my verdict: definitely not worth the price of admission.

As I just mentioned, I'm not the target audience.  I've seen maybe five episodes of the TV series and the first movie with my wife.  Generally speaking though, I enjoyed them.  Although the show was definitively for women and about women, I pride myself on at least being able to recognize good writing, and, despite my extremely limited exposure to the show, it's fairly clear that "good writing" is one thing it definitely had in spades.  And that's one thing I've always been able to get into about Sex, even if the characters and situations are as inaccessible to me as my abusive, alcoholic step-father.  Every episode I watched kept me entertained throughout. The writing was always clever and punchy and I often found myself genuinely enjoying and engaged with the plot, even if I had little to no idea who these people actually were.

Walking into the theater yesterday, I can honestly say I knew the names of about three characters and a tenuous-at-best grasp on the relationships between the lot of them.  The good news is, that doesn't really matter.  Sex and the City 2 does a good job of trying to bridge the knowledge gap of an audience seeing all these people for the first time, and this is something I was actually wondering if they would bother trying to re-introduce characters that have populated the mainstream media for 12 years now.  So dudes, chicks, dudes who like stuff made for chicks, you won't be at a loss for understanding who these people are and the relevant backgrounds between them if you aren't familiar with the TV series.

Bad news is, that's about all the good news I have.

First off: the plot.  There isn't one.

If you've seen a trailer or even a poster promoting Sex 2, you know that the main vehicle for the plot is that the four main characters are going to the Middle East.  From what I've seen of the show, it seems like it's a character-driven series.  The action of the show isn't nearly as central to the development of the story as the characters themselves.  Their relationships, struggles, and changes ultimately lead to the resolution of the plot de jour, for better or worse.  So the decision to make the driving force of the action based around a set and a situation rather than the characters they expect the audience to be attached to struck me as a very questionable one.

The inciting incident occurs when Samantha's (Kim Cattrall) old flame calls her up from the Middle East, having just finished shooting a movie there.  He's on his way back to the States for the red carpet ceremony and invites Samantha--his former publicist to whom he owes his career and success--to join him.  There, Samantha meets the film's producer, a rich Arab sheik, who wants to use Samantha's talents to promote the United Arab Emirates... for some reason.  I didn't really get why he suddenly became the PR guy for the UAE, but whatever, she and her friends get a one-week, all expenses paid vacation to Abu Dabi out of the deal.

Prior to this, the story had been framed against the backdrop of change.  There seemed to have been an overarching theme of time, of age, and of settling into maturity.  Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is struggling with separation anxiety from her old life.  She misses the excitement of nights out on the town and hanging out with her friends.  Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is at odds with a difficult colleague at her law firm, making her working life a nightmare.  Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is at her wits' end with the stresses of motherhood, all the while plagued by the insecurity that her full-time nanny (Alice Eve) is way, way too hot for the job and that she might be losing her husband's (Harry Goldenblatt) attention in favor of the younger, bustier woman.  And Samantha is struggling to come to terms with the fact that she's getting older, and maybe her wildest days are behind her.

But who cares?  The Simpsons are going to Abu Dabi!  I mean women.  Women are going to Abu Dhabi.  Seriously?  Isn't that, along with cameos by B-list stars, pretty much the cliche of a TV show jumping the shark?  Wait a minute... isn't Liza Minelli in this movie?

And as we settled into the theater and the film started rolling, my suspicions about the decision to make this movie more of a location piece ultimately proved correct.  Rather than an endearing story about the struggles of an ensemble of female protagonists struggling to find love and happiness, it instead becomes a montage of four rich women bopping around rich scenery and doing rich things.  It's not so much a romantic comedy as it is pornography for housewives who are usually too polite for that sort of stuff.  The whole thing reads like a fan-fiction rather than a script written by someone who actually has any sort of understanding of the characters.  I'll explain:

The characters are too powerful (or: the dissolution of tension):  Remember in Superman Returns when Superman couldn't be stopped?  Like when he lifted an entire mountain of Kryptonite and flung it into space without too much trouble, and there was never really any doubt as to whether everything would be okay at any moment in the film?  Same thing here, and it's the primary reason I couldn't help but feel like I was watching a Sex and the City fanfic rather than a major motion-picture.  The suddenness of the protagonists being handed an all-expense-paid trip to Abu Dhabi is a fairly apt metaphor for the entire movie.  None of the characters ever have to earn anything.

SPOILERS:
There are too many examples to list.  First off, Carrie meets an old flame in an Abu Dhabi market.  You'd expect this to be the main conflict of the movie.  She's having a tough time with her husband, she's insecure and vulnerable.  She misses her old exciting lifestyle and isn't sure if she's cut out for the domestic life.  In a moment of weakness, she kisses the guy, and oh shit her marriage is in crisis!  But not really, she calls her husband, he's upset, and then she comes home and he's just like "don't do that again."

Okay, next: so in the excitement of seeing her old flame again, Carrie accidentally leaves her passport with a vendor at the marketplace.  Oh shit, she's stuck in the UAE with no way to get home!  Oh, no... no, never mind.  She remembers where she lost it and just goes back and asks for it.  She gets it back and... that's all.

Well damn, that could have been exciting.  Oh!  Samantha gets in trouble with the local authorities for making out with some dude on the beach.  They arrest her and take her into custody.  The women marshal themselves to her aid, with Miranda stepping up to represent Samantha as her lawyer.  It's kind of a stretch, but I suppose it could make for a good central conflict.  I'm sure they can get some funny scenes of life in a Middle Eastern prison and- oh, no, never mind.  They just call Samantha's Middle Eastern business partner and he bails her out.  Damn, I was hoping for some hot Middle Eastern women's prison action.

Ah!  Got it!  In light of Samantha's transgressions against the local authorities, her partner cancels the business deal and has them kicked out of the hotel.  Oh no!  They'll have to spend four days penniless and alone, trying to scrape by the in the real Abu Dhabi.  No more luxury and penthouses, they'll have to step onto the streets and try to make their way in the Middle East.  Maybe they'll suffer extreme hardship, or gain valuable insight into their own lives.  No, no, no, sorry.  Miranda calls the airport and has their tickets re-booked so they can leave immediately.  But what if they don't make it to the airport in time?????  They'll have to fly coach.  I'm not kidding.  That was literally the central conflict of the last half-hour of the movie.

END SPOILERS

It's everything the fans should want: The first sign of a movie franchise starting to wear thin is when the director starts throwing the fans everything they think fans are supposed to enjoy.  It's like serving a bowl full of sprinkles and a half-ounce of ice cream or wearing seventeen condoms to conceal that tiny, withered pea-pod you call a penis.  In either case, there's rarely any feeling or sensation to speak of and everyone leaves unsatisfied (on account of the diabetic coma).  In the TV series, the four women all have their own lives.  In the episodes that I've seen, most of the time the women are out dealing with their own problems and relationships.  It's when the pressures of the outside world become too great for one of them alone that they get together and discuss what's on their minds and hash out a solution.  They joke, they laugh, they vent, and part ways to ultimately come to a resolution.

The problem with Sex 2 is that the situation dictates the protagonists always be together.  Should be great, right?  The women getting together and screwing around is the best part of the show, right?  But without any context or conflict leading up to that point, it's totally meaningless.  Every scene seems designed for the sole purpose of getting all four women on-screen at the same time.  In one scene, Carrie went out to dinner with an old flame she met an old flame in the Abu Dhabi marketplace.  Like I said before, they end up kissing (for seemingly no reason other than to manufacture drama), and Carrie, in crisis, rallies the troops in her hotel room to get some advice.  She rushes to Samantha's room and finds her in the tub, Samantha says she'll be right there, and, true to her word, shows up in a towel, soaking wet, ready to come to her Carrie's aid.  What a great friend.

She says "don't tell him," and leaves.  She's on-screen for literally 30 seconds before losing interest and wandering off.  It took her longer to get out of the tub than she spent counseling her best friend.  So why bother putting her in the scene?  It's decisions like that that scream "cop-out."

The gang's all here... but why?:
Sex 2 is chock-full of secondary and ancillary characters from the show.  I didn't recognize a lot of them, but my wife seemed to appreciate them being there.  But none of them meant anything.  They pretty much showed up for a curtain-call and a wink to the audience.  It's just pandering for the sake of pandering, and insults the audience's intelligence.  It seems to me the show was built on a fairly robust ensemble cast, and yet the entirety of the movie seems to be focused entirely on the four main characters.  It's like they thought the audience would lose interest if the camera weren't constantly focused on them.

But focusing on our main characters all the time isn't without cost.  Sarah Jessica Parker looked so, so bored the entire movie.  I don't think I have ever seen someone who so clearly didn't want to be there make it into the final cut of the movie, except maybe the ghost haunting the set of Three Men and a Baby.

Pictured: The chilling vacant stare of the walking dead.

Also pictured: a cardboard cutout in the background of Three Men and a Baby

Allegory for Obama's presidency?:
Maintain the status quo at all costs.  That was pretty much the theme for the movie.  It's like they were so happy with the resolution of the first movie that they didn't want to mess anything up with any sort of drama or tension whatsoever in the sequel.  In the first movie, a lot happened.  People got married, people broke up, people came and went.  Things happened to move the story forward and affect a permanent change on the characters' lives.  Characters developed through ongoing struggles and an overarching plot-line spanned the entire narrative.  In the sequel, two ancillary characters get married in a union that isn't even recognized in 45 of the 50 states.  Oh, and Carrie wears a wedding ring.  That's all.

This reluctance to move the story forward, in spite of the numerous dramatic threads presented at the outset of the film, screams cash-in.  Tape together a few scripts for a couple of unfilmed episodes of the show, shoot it, and call it a sequel.  It's a boring, worthless, obnoxious waste of celluloid and I want my money back.

Verdict:
If you really, really, really want to see four beloved characters you remember from better times getting into fun, exciting adventures that will keep you on the edge of your seat, see The A-Team.  If you want two hours and fifteen minutes of schlock trying to turn a quick buck on a franchise past its prime, wait for Sex and the City 2 on DVD.

The Internet Cafe Survival Guide for Foreigners

Or: Masters of Space and Time

Japan: the city that never sleeps.  Unfortunately, you do.  Your brain reels at the whirlwind of sights, colors, and sounds in the electronic kaleidescope of life in Tokyo.  But those three straight days staying up freebasing wasabi are starting to take their toll, and you're fading faster than a J-Pop idol's career after her 18th birthday.    Your mind turns to thoughts of sleep, perhaps at a ryokan--a Japanese traditional-style inn.  There you will revitalize your spirit, drawing strength from the cloistered mountain hideaway and resting your weary eyes on a pillow of the softest bundled straw.  There, the worries of your earthly form shall be washed away: the rush of the commuter trains, the uncomfortable stare of the four-fingered tattooed man, your lack of money...

Money!  Of course!  How foolish it would be to forget that!  Stumbling into the local convenience store (or konbini, as they are more locally known--you sly cultural wordsmith, you), you push through the doors and squint painfully under the newfound iridescence (irashaimase to you, good sir!).  Through heavy, bloodshot eyes you scan the aisles for an ATM and, finding one, you lumber toward the back of the store.

You reach for your wallet and stuff your card into the machine.  You raise a finger and stab the "English" button on the touchscreen.  You wait a moment and... "Service not available" appears in big letters on the screen as the machine emits an angry wail alerting everyone to the presence of some broke asshole trying to get his money.  Whatever!  You'll just stab at some buttons and eventually you'll get some cash.  Wrong again, asshole!  The machine politely reminds you that service hours are between 8AM and 9PM, and fuck you for thinking a machine could just magically serve you any old time you please.  Don't you know it's 4AM?  Harumph!  Good day, sir!

Standing outside the konbini, dejected, sipping a beer and taking a drag of the cigarette in front of the twin vending machines you just bought them from, it dawns on you: perhaps those straw pillows will have to wait until another night, unless they sell them in some kind of vending machine.  No, it would seem traditional lodging is out of the question.  The spirit of adventure stirs in your belly.  It'll be just like the time the family went for a five-month camping trip after Herbert J. McCracken foreclosed on Pa's old sawmill.  Except this time Pa won't have to worry about building a rope swing in the forest and getting it all tangled around his neck and getting him down with a broom handle the next morning.

You reach into your wallet and rue your decision to only take out 40,000 yen ($400 or so) this morning.  But that deal on anime figurines was once-in-a-lifetime.

It's how Grandpa would have wanted you to spend the inheritance

Less than $20 left after your splurge (and you'll be splurging again as soon as you rehydrate, if you know what I mean) leaves few options.  You've already decided against capsule hotels after that nasty incident during Sigma Kappa's hazing at the funeral parlor.

Fatigue rapidly setting in and running out of options at roughly the same pace, you walk.  The sounds of Tokyo's one-of-a-kind nightlife echo throughout the dark streets, a concert of people and places and promises of unforgettable things.

It will still be there tomorrow night.

As it is every night.

But for now, you trudge forward on your sleepless pilgrimage, searching for a place to rest your head.  At the moment all seems lost, at the imminence of your quiet defeat, when that dirty, drunk old man's beard looks its fluffiest, salvation comes in the form of a neon sign:

I've never been so happy to see the word Manboo

Overtaken by emotion, you nearly trip over your own feet and the fluffiest beard you've ever seen as you make for the door, charging up the steps to your reward and you think to yourself: "why didn't I take the elevator?"  

You pry the doors open and again the fluorescent lighting does a number on your weary eyes, but this time you bask in the radiance of your newfound refuge, the synthesized electronic warmth a welcome change from chaotic streets below.  Your choices, once seemingly so limited now unfold before you as you move to the counter.  Booth or open seating? Floor seating, or massage chair?  Single or double, or--do you dare?--business?  Sayonara to the days of "you cannot" and "no choice" and "look at this asshole trying to get at his money."  Konnichiwa, free drink bar.

I promised myself I wouldn't cry

The bespectacled twenty-something behind the register hands you a small clipboard with a receipt and your booth number.  Winding your way through the cubicle farm and racks upon racks of softcore cartoon pornography, you hear the hiss of a shower-head behind a locked door as you journey deeper into the heart of the grid.  Your voyage is almost at an end.

It's always nighttime in the Internet cafe.  All is quiet and calm, save for a few curious mouse-clicks and the comings and goings of men in suits and exhausted ladies in sharp business-wear.  It is home away from home for the road-worn traveler and simply home the working poor scraping by in the city.

At the end of an unassuming hallway, you see a closed door behind which the pale light of a monitor bravely pierces the darkness.

You push back the door, the slick surface cold to the touch as it rolls open, the squealing of the wheels rolling along the track creating a lone mote of sound in the pitch-silent miasma.  You lock eyes with the most beautiful thing you've ever seen:

I mean second-most beautiful

Yeah, that's it

Shuffling inside the cramped booth, you wriggle into the plush leather cushioned seat, never feeling happier or more at home on this side of the Pacific.  You drop your backpack at your feet.  This paradise all yours for the next five hours.  Five hours of blissful, uninterrupted peace and quiet--and the shuteye you so desperately crave.  Five long hours to retreat from your worldly woes and meditate on everything that has happened since the airport.  Five uninterrupted hours of respite, of solitude, of renewal for your addled mind and fatigued soul.  It may as well be an eternity; the luxury of space and time, all yours for a nominal fee.

And then you unzip your pants.

Well, four-and-a-half hours of sleep is still pretty good

Rockin' the kanj

At some point, it happens to everyone who decides to study Japanese: learning how to read.

Daunting.  Monolithic.  Impossible.  All words used to describe my penis which also can be applied to the kanji problem.  2,000 characters separating the men from the boys and the women who also often look like boys.  Studying written Japanese is a lot like dating a someone you met at a Brewers game: you know it's going to be ugly, but you have to do it to win that $20 bet with your roommate.  And so you crack open "Baby's First Kanji" and a sick chill washes over you as you suddenly realize what your tattoo actually means.  But, like working with my daunting, monolithic, impossible penis, it gets less painful the more you do it.

The first thing to remember is that pictographic language is actually really efficient.  Japan actually boasts a 99% literacy rate.  Clearly, it can--and has--been done millions and millions of times.  And once you get on top of it and start working in a rhythm, it's actually kind of fun (like my penis).

The best part is, you don't really have to know everything.  Even if you can't read the word or know how to say it, it's often won't undermine your comprehension.  Let's use a simple example.

入学金

入 is used for "enter."
学 means school.
金 means money

Even without having any idea of how to say this word in Japanese, you can probably figure out that it means "enrollment fee."

It sometimes feels like cheating. 

Let's take another example that I ran across yesterday:

Do they make back deodorant because that guy could seriously use some

The first character, 左, means "left."  The third character, 通, means street.  The final character, 行, means "go."  Add those kanji clues together along with the fact that the people angrily bumping and shoving me while I was lining up this picture all walking on the left side of the walkway, and one can quickly extrapolate three things: the quick-and-dirty translation is "keep to the left," it is not necessary to know everything to be able to understand enough written Japanese to survive, and Japanese people do not fuck around in the train station.

Just like in English when you see prefixes and suffixes like "mal" or "dict" or "auto" and use them to derive a definition from an unfamiliar word, so too can the beast of reading Japanese at a basic level be tamed by a broad understanding of character meanings.

Now, if you're trying to translate legal documents or instructions on how to assemble a transmission on a 2011 Honda Civic, please, please do not follow this advice--for that, there's no substitute for rote.  But if you're wondering how far you can get on a grade-school understanding of kanji--well, you can do okay.

Reading Japanese characters, like explaining why you're naked and dangling by your neck from a doorknob in the closet of a Motel 6, relies heavily on context.  One of the most frustrating parts of learning to read Japanese is that the pronunciation, like the face of a horrified Puerto Rican cleaning lady, can shift dramatically very quickly.

大, for example, sounds like "dai," "tai," "o," or "ookii," depending on usage and the characters that precede and follow it.  Jesus Christ, who were the assholes who made this language?  Except wait, hold on:

Let's take P.  One of 26 (52, counting capitalization) simple, easy-to-read letters that make up English--God's language.  After all, it's the language He wrote the Bible in.  But let's take another look at our p in action:

prophylactic

pheromones

penis

pneumonia

What do these words have in common?  Aside from the fact that they can all appeared in the police report following my bachelor party (along with pdead pstripper), not a lot.  The P acts differently in each instance.  You can't read each constituent letter--it acts as part of a whole.  Why does that sound so familiar?


Wait a minute... O Lord, why hast thou forsaken us?

When I first started studying Japanese, I thought to myself "what a load of horseshit.  A little internal consistency would be nice."  But for the last three years, I've been teaching English to children.  They have the exact same problem I mentioned above.  Kids always come up to me after doing the homework I assigned them and they all have the same question: "what's a prophylactic?"

I witness these struggles on a daily basis--of trying to find some concrete answer that will suddenly make the problem of pronouncing a Romanized alphabet go away.  But you know what?  In spite of the difficulty and probably threats of physical abuse from their parents, they get closer to the answer every day.  A bunch of kids make me look like a world-class asshole for complaining about something as basic as reading.

It's a hard thing eating humble pie with chopsticks.  

There are no absolutes in language, and it is the epitome of folly to believe that one's own language is inherently better.  Chances are, you just forgot how tough it was when you had to learn it the first time.  That's just something you've got to understand before rockin' the kanj.  In the end, taming a language is just a matter of endurance, grit, determination, and flexibility (like my... students).

We are not the masks we wear

But if we don them, do we not become them?

In a previous entry, I cited Shigeru Miyamoto's famous quote from an interview that first appeared in the Mario Mania player's guide for Super Mario World that "games are like favorite playgrounds, places you become attached to and go back to again and again."  To my seven-year old mind, it was more than a placating value statement to his loyal customers.  It was the rich, fanciful dream of a gentle toy-maker.  So as I grew up, Miyamoto's maxim was more than my belief as a gamer in the goodness and beauty my hobby could offer.  It was a law of nature: Sky is blue.  Water is wet.  The Chiefs choke in the playoffs.  Video games are playgrounds.

Goodness and beauty

So how do you play with the equipment?

Custer's trail of tears to squaw-sodomy is an apt allegory for much of the formative years of video gaming.  There was really only one way to play Pong, and if you wanted to finish Pitfall, there was a fairly simple progression of steps to follow to complete the game.

1. Identify pit 2. Don't fall

As games have become more complex, players have been given increasingly intricate ways to insert themselves into a digital medium.  If you really want to know what someone is like, look at a few of their gaming habits.  What kind of characters do they pick?  What kind of weapons?  How do they sit?  Do they lean into those long jumps in some desperate attempt to make Mario's jump just far enough?  How much time do they spend in Create-A-Wrestler mode making one that looks just like L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology?  (This one's real)

So, like the first time I got to play the doctor instead of the patient, its time to do a little digital insertion of my own.  Here are five of my own gaming idiosyncrasies.

1. The Love-Tap
It is a matter of public record that I play Street Fighter.  Hopefully one day Washington will change its antiquated sex offender registry laws to no longer come between what a man and Street Fighter cabinet choose to do in the privacy of a crowded arcade, but until then, public record.

You tease

Second only to launching a furious load of hot plasma with your stick tucked firmly between your fingers, there's nothing quite like throwing a hadouken.  Street Fighter legendarily revitalized the US arcade scene in the '90s and made dropping your two-dollar-a-week allowance into the machines and beating the stuffing out of every last member of Jeffrey Timmons' eighth birthday party back in that glorious summer of '99.

Fighting games are a much more personal context for skill-based gaming than most.  Without weapon pickups or item drops, each player has only their wits, character, muscle-memory, and finite set of resources to be the last one standing.  As the Highlander series so famously put it: "there can be only a lone victor."

As fighting games became increasingly intricate, shuffling a low weak kick into your opponent's ankle and sending them hurtling full-tilt across the stage didn't do anymore.  So fighters losing their last pixel of health to a meager jab or short kick soon received their own falling animation.  The great thing about this animation is, despite the fact you've already won, you can hit dat bitch again.  I call this, as you may have guessed, "the love-tap."  This was, for whatever reason, removed from Super Street Fighter 4, and suddenly those billions of gallons of wads I mentioned in my previous Street Fighter post became slightly less soggy.

What this says about me:
I don't win very often, but when I do, fuck you I earned it and I'm going to push as many free buttons as I can.  Also, beating up lifeless bodies is a secret fetish of mine.

2.  Mobility

Like most people, my first experience with getting to choose my own gender was at the doctor's office on my third birthday.  A couple years later, Super Mario Bros. 2 was released and I had the chance to see what I missed out on.

The power of flight, apparently

You know you all did it.  You either picked Princess so you could glide effortlessly over half the level or Luigi so you could skip it entirely.  It was a really novel approach for a game to take, especially the part about making its titular character far and away the worst of the four.  Similarly, when the Grand Theft Auto series introduced the ability to ride dirt bikes, bicycles, and motorcycles at blistering speeds, and weave seamlessly through gaps in traffic barely wide enough to floss between I was stoked.  With only the small trade-off of accidentally hitting a rock meant being jettisoned into oncoming traffic so hard your scalp exited your body through your sphincter.  Decisions, decisions.

Of course, I jacked the first one I saw faster than you can say "higher mortality rate than handguns."

In gaming, just as in life, the skinny ones are the best (but can't take a punch)

What this says about me:

I strive for perfection on a razor-thin margin of error, and when I fail, I want to wipe out in the most spectacular way possible.

3.  Attack, reload

I love light-gun shooters.  I think I speak for most of my generation when I presume that Lethal Enforcers was the game that got most of us interested.  Wandering through the Southglen 12's arcade with your friend before the movie started, when there, flickering off in the distance you saw the cabinet flickering with each muzzle flash and blood spatter, bathing the noisy surroundings in an aura of manliness and law.  Lethal Enforcers towered above the rest, the undisputed god-king of arcade machines, its steely eye ever-watchful over the chaotic twin plains of the air hockey and foosball tables, its Colt .44 magnums holstered, defying anyone to try and be tougher shit.

You turned to your friend, nodding solemnly.  Justice was a dish best served with piping hot lead and a wheelchair-bound eternity for dessert.  You reached down and grabbed the neon blue peacekeeper, twirling it on your finger and immediately hitting yourself in the face with the barrel.  The cords that kept it connected to the machine were really short.

Your mind races for some cool catchphrase as you reach into your pocket for a spare quarter--something  Dirty Harry might say--to inspire you buddy in the bloodcaked quest for law and order to come.  Something like-

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"What?"

"You can't have the blue gun.  Use the pink one."

"Fuck you I got it first."

"Yeah but you don't look right holding it.  Let me have it."

"Back off asshole, you use the pink one!"

"I swear to God I will break each one of your prissy little princess fingers and take it myself."

"Go ahead and try, asshole."

If you're reading this Michael, I used my prissy princess fingers 

on your mom's pink trigger if you know what I mean

Lethal Enforcers was great, but Area 51 was the light-gun shooter that made me like light-gun shooters.  Sure, Virtua Cop came out a year earlier and was probably a more sophisticated shooter, what with its polygonal enemies registering body damage in the location they were shot (and allowed you to follow up a subduing shot to the leg to be followed up with about four more very satisfying love-taps to the head and chest), but Area 51's use of full-motion video and pre-rendered backgrounds made the whole experience so richly satisfying.

I spent my childhood wishing I could be as cool as that guy in the S.T.A.A.R. jacket

But more satisfying than watching the same two palate-swapped alien types explode in the same animation hundreds of times was the fact that shooting off-screen to reload produced the most satisfying sound ever.  It is a habit that has carried over into every shooting game I played since:

1. Kill everything on-screen

2. Jerk your wrist to aim off-screen and pretend you don't look like a spaz doing this

3. RELOAD THAT MOTHERFUCKER AS MANY TIMES AS YOU CAN BEFORE ANOTHER ENEMY SHOWS UP

I like to imagine what this would look like if it were a real army situation.

What this says about me:
I don't know let's say autism?

4. Be a black guy and, if possible, a wizard

The first point--being a black guy--is in response to another game commentator stating that there aren't enough solid, interesting black protagonists in gaming.  And honestly, he's right.  Game developers have totally dropped the ball by relegating all of their black characters to being comic relief, gangbangers, or football players.

Or in some cases, all three

Sure, CJ from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a good start, as a thief with a heart of gold.  But depending on how you played the character, he was also a fucking psychopath.  Somehow the warmth of CJ attempting to weed out the corruption and violence plaguing his neighborhood after skydiving out of a 747, allowing to to crash unmanned into said neighborhood because it was faster than taking a cab.

CJ later made up for it by cradling a baby in the ruins of a church (that he ruined)

As for being a wizard, I believe it was the great Gandalf said it best: "be a wizard man it's awesome."  Thank you to all of my armor-clad, sword-and-shield-bearing homies out for whom I am pouring this 40.  You guys do an excellent job of throwing yourselves in the way of swords, teeth, boulders, arrows, ballistas, dragons, lions, wolves, orcs, orks, axes, cubes both gelatinous and otherwise, slimes, puddings, oozes, skeletons, whips, pit traps, spike traps, pit traps with spikes in them, spike traps with fake floors that fall into pits (which possibly contain a skeleton wearing armor made of spikes, or perhaps his bones have been sharpened into spikes), and other wizards so we can do our thing.  And for that, we are eternally grateful for the working relationship you afford us.

We are all very happy for you bravely donning a metal shell and lumbering into the fray clanking like a '79 Olds after hitting a speed bump too fast, placing your life in jeopardy just so long as you don't fall on your back and need a boostie getting back up.  Not all of us can re-arrange the fabric of time and space with a gesture, and I'm glad that in spite of your handicap, you have still decided to try and be a productive member of society.  If it doesn't work out for you, there's always Wal-Mart.

And awesome it is.  Swords are for pussies.  Men use sticks.

Also, I know he used a sword.  Gandalf went surface.

What this says about me:

When I look in the mirror, I see a black man.  A wizardly black man.  Blandalf the Black.  Also that stuff I said about minorities being underrepresented in video gaming.

5.  Drink, pussy!  Drink!
Ah, the Megalixir.  Long has is its existence encumbered the hearts and minds of Final Fantasy fans.  


First introduced in Final Fantasy 3/6, the Megalixir has since become a series mainstay.  The Megalixir is the healing item in the Final Fantasy franchise.  When used in battle, it fully heals every member of party to maximum health and magical capacity.  Its use virtually guarantees a fierce pitched battle turning in the player's favor, with victory soon to follow.  It is the "I WIN!" button of Final Fantasy games.

But actually finding one the party supplies for one of these regenerative keggers is no small feat.  Most Final Fantasy games stash away one or two of these in anything resembling a conspicuous location.  Procuring a larger supply of Megalixir runs the gamut from impossible to outright insane, depending on the game you're playing.  It's up to the player to decide when to pop the cork on one of these bad boys, and therein lies the delimma:

Afraid of not having the Megalixir when they need it, many players never use it.

Me?  I'm the opposite.  X-Potions?  Elixirs?  Megalixirs?  They all taste like victory to me.  I used to dread being given equipment that required upkeep.  The thought of using all my special ammunition, or overpowered healing items, or condoms used to scare me.  But now I understand: that's what they're there for!  They look great stacked up in an inventory screen, but if you never use your resources, it's the same as not having them at all.  I'd rather use my Megalixir when I kind of need it than struggle thinking I can manage without it.

Except condoms because they feel weird.

What this says about me:
My entire life has been spent playing conservative.  Gaming is where I can cut loose and do anything I want without repercussions, from using every last gold piece in I have in Final Fantasy, to blowing all my mini-nukes
taking care of woodland critters in Fallout 3, to making fun of that kid with a stuttering problem in online Street Fighter.  "My mo- mo- mom says I t-t-talkkkk like thi-i-is because m-m-my guardian angel has the hi-hi-hiccups!"  Oh man that xXx-SePh33rOtH-xXx cracks me up every time.

6.  Game naked

Every day.

What this says about me:
Feels good man.

How about you?  What are your weird gaming habits and rituals?  Post them in the comments and I'll take a guess what they say about you. I've got a blog I'm pretty good at this sort of thing.