The ハト locker

In Japan, knowledge and smartness were the meat and drink of my trade.  But now, back in America, meat is the meat of my trade.  The drink might be animal blood, but it could also be Popov.  I'm not really sure where I'm going with this analogy, but did you know "smartness" is actually a word?

Remember that one time I was whining like a little bitch that I was going to have to step out of my comfort zone and actually teach rather than just do the eikaiwa formula?  Man, those were the days.  Back then, you could actually buy gas for $3 a gallon, or hold an iPhone in your hand without it dropping your call.  Simpler times.

But on the plane ride back to the United States I started thinking to myself: "My bank account is less than my age; I should probably do something about that.  And how am I going to get myself out of this suitcase without arousing suspicion?"

Cirque du Soliel only tell you how to get into the bag, dammit!

Perhaps it was the altitude sickness due to a 14-hour flight in the cargo bay of a 737, perhaps it was the oxygen deprivation from spending it locked in a Samsonite.  Whatever it was, I found myself the next day behind the counter of the meat department at a local supermarket interviewing for a job.  I remember thinking to myself "they do interviews for supermarket jobs?"  Then thinking "awww yeah, making money, taking graduate classes, no more hyperactive kids.  Life is sweet."

That's how I became a meat man.  A butcher.  I butch for a living.

My final weeks in Japan seemed like a formality.  As my departure crept closer, every day disassembled itself into 45-minute increments of perfunctory, dispassionate, semi-exhausting routine not unlike my sex life.  I remember the secret number-crunching of one lunch break where I broke down the exact number of classes that remained until that freedom-flight back to American soil.

Three years is a long time to be away from home.  I missed it.  My friends, the food, the television that didn't grate like a butthole full of gravel.  Admittedly, it came with having to give up the jealous stares of overweight, middle-aged men at the public bath but wait no I guess there is that one place "The Sousing Bear Club" near my apartment I could swing by sometime and check that out so never mind yeah America has everything.

Re-acculturation has been easy if all I ever wanted to do was become a member of society again.  Except for suddenly having nothing to write about.  That sucks.  I'm serious, I'm trying my best for you guys* but it's like "maybe I could do an article on running out of cereal in the morning.  You know, don't you hate it when you've got this big bowl of milk and you're pouring your Kix and then it's like... you know, there's like just crumbs coming out and you're like 'whoa oh no where's the cereal?  What am I going to do with this big bowl of milk?' Doesn't that, like, suck?"

*I understand no one is actually reading my blog

I spent the better part of a year convincing my wife how coming to America would be the best thing we could ever do for our young family.  How 64 ounce fountain drinks and footlong chili cheese coneys would somehow fill up the void of not just our stomachs but also a more metaphorical void I think you get what I mean.

But lately, all I can think about is going back.

I miss the long midnight walks to the convenience stores, flanked by men in business suits buying ready-to-eat bento boxes after a long night at work, yanki kids sitting out front drinking beers and scarfing piping-hot microwave ramen.  I miss being able to buy booze from a vending machine and being interrogated by a police officer on the corner for not having my Alien Registration Card on me.  I miss the smokey arcades that throbbed with electronic life, packed to the rafters long after dark with the best of the best and me.  I miss salesmen on street corners barking into megaphones shoving tiny packages of tissues into my chest in the misguided hope that maybe this time I'll really want to duck into that pachinko parlor and relieve myself of a couple thousand yen.

As per Japanese law, there must be at least 15 of these guys on every corner

I miss riding the train, shoulder-to-shoulder with sleepy, irritable people, each twist and turn of the track giving way to another remorseful, accidental press of my buttocks against a tiny, hard, cylindrical object in the front pocket of yet another pair of business slacks.

Asthma is apparently a serious issue among the male 18-55 demographic in Japan

The fact is, most of my adult life was spent as a fish out of water.  I suppose it was only natural that I would evolve into some sort of fish with lungs.  A "lung-having-fish," if you will.  But now here I am, reintroduced to what should be my natural habitat, living the life I had before; a small fish in a big pond.

So why does feel like I'm drowning?

Home is where the heart pounds

Or: "Really, Mr. Jackson?  Really?"

I'll let you in on a little secret: I love horror movies.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of them suck, or else I wouldn't keep it such a secret.  Had Sturgeon forseen what the horror film genre would do to his precious law, he probably wouldn't have been so optimistic.  In spite of the deficiencies of certain films, we fans soldier forward.  Some of us--perhaps the wiser among our demographic--turn their attention overseas to the bountiful horror offerings of the inscrutable Orient.

Behold the new face of fear

But me?  I make it personal.  Which is why, when I was looking for a movie to watch the night the wife and I moved into our new apartment, I picked up Samuel L. Jackson's magnum opus (if his career started in 2007) Lakeview Terrace.

"Merican," you must by now be thinking.  "That's an uncharacteristically inscrutable way to start a post.  What do you mean 'make it personal?'  And why do you keep leaning on the literary device of narrating the reader?"

To answer your questions in reverse order: shut up and I'll explain.  

Horror movies are fantastic entertainment.  Even when they're not especially scary, or even that good, horror movies are nothing if not an absolute joy to watch.  For me, however, half the fun is the adrenaline-soaked 90-minute roller coaster ride, the contents of my bowels perched in indecision, ready to forcefully evacuate through one end of me or the other.  Sometimes I just need to be wrapped in a shroud of unease, tingling at every extremity with uncertainty, like when I look at the fire department's charity calendar.  Sometimes, the best horror isn't from the horror genre at all.  Sometimes its when things hit a little too close to home.

Pictured: Things hitting a little too close to home

For me, the quintessential movie to prove that point was Arachnophobia.  AND GOD DAMN DID  IT EVER RUIN MY LIFE.  It took a minor phobia and kicked it all the way up to 11.

Also the scale only goes from 1 to 3.

Check the IMDb page.  Comedy?!  Sci-Fi?!  PG-13?!

No.

No no no no no no no.  No fucking way, right?  But if this movie freaked your shit out even half as bad as it did mine, then you see what I'm getting at.  Arachnophobia was just a movie about spiders invading the suburbs. Except that it wasn't.  It was 103 minutes of my two biggest fears condensed to celluloid.  It was a nightmare with a rewind button.  And there I was, six years old, not sure whether I should be puking or shitting.

Fortunately...

Yes, the spiders stole the show in Arachnophobia, but for all the hairy horror, there was something else there, more abstract, more cerebral that just made the experience so, so much more terrifying: the queen spider's nest was squarely in the basement of our protagonists' home.  For me, home represents more than shelter--it is safety.  Security.  A refuge from all the evils and the of the outside world.  I know who has shat in my toilet and slept in my bed and vice-versa.  I totally get gun-owners.  Protecting the home is something worth getting a little crazy over.  

After all, there's no place like it.

It's the reason that, despite having watching the original Star Wars trilogy in its entirety upwards of 50 times, Empire Strikes Back is still stressful for me to watch.  The warp drive on the Millennium Falcon suddenly going kaput is the space equivalent of your septic tank backing up.

Mrs. Merican: Why aren't they going faster?

Merican: Because my nightmare has been given form

It's the reason this...

Is the most stressful, anxiety-ridden, soul-crushing act of self-flagellation Netflix has ever been party to.  And the movie isn't even good.  But God damn if it doesn't sit in the top five of the "Merican's scariest  flicks" list.

It does suck, though.  It's just not a very good movie.

Which is why I was hoping to "duplicate" the Duplex experience with Lakeview Terrace.  DID YOU GET THE JOKE WITH DUPLICATE AND DUPLEX?

Sadly, though, it just wasn't happening.  Oh yeah, wasn't there supposed to be a review in here?

There was.  And this is it.  The review, I mean:

Lakeview Terrace was, well, not very good.  I sense a theme here.

The story pretty much goes like this: an interracial couple move into a new neighborhood, and immediately run  afoul of a screaming, racially-charged Samuel L. Jackson.  Things escalate.  People die (and occasionally burn in hell).

Wonder where he found the inspiration for the role

And now you see how I made it personal.  Stick with me long enough, and I promise to bring everything full circle.  Last night I told a 10-minute long story about how the old Star Wars trilogy was better than the new one, and related that to how one of her recipes was better with pork than chicken.  I am not kidding.  That is a true thing that happened.

Meanwhile in the review, Lakeview Terrace wasn't very good.

Ultimately, the overall mediocrity of Lakeview Terrace isn't rooted in any one particular problem.  The constituent parts of the film aren't especially flawed, so much as they don't especially look like they don't belong in the same movie.  I'll explain.

Ambiguous Characterization:

As the movie starts, we open with a shot of Abel Turner (Samuel Jackson) looking on mournfully at a picture of his deceased wife.  He kneels at the foot of his bed, claps his hands, bows his head, and prays in earnest.  It's a bold choice, framing this character as a humble Christian and devoted widower, especially considering that anyone who has watched a preview or even seen a poster of this movie knows he's a fucking psychopath and the villain.

Absolutely nothing here leads me to believe this police officer would do anything wrong

But okay, okay, movies exist in a vacuum, we'll disregard that prior knowledge and judge the movie strictly as a self-contained piece.

Moreover, Abel is portrayed as a stern but loving father.  He insists upon his two children maintaining decorum at meals, corrects their grammar, and otherwise holds high expectations for his kids.  When he catches them peeping in on his new neighbors, Chris and Lisa Mattson (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington), making love in the pool next door, Abel is understandably upset.  He behaves the way any single father would in pulling his children away from the window and later confronting his neighbors.  Which is why it's so weird that a couple minutes later we see him hold a shotgun up to a fleeing criminal's face and threaten to pull the trigger.

There doesn't seem to be a Falling Down moment here, where all the minutia of Abel's life piles up to a breaking point.  There's no sudden turn of events that turns an otherwise upstanding cop and father into a madman.  There isn't even a Shining-esque buildup of erratic behavior that eventually goes batshit.  All we have is the say-so of Abel's daughter (Regine Nehy) that her father is crazy.  I understand the director wanting to keep that turn of events in his back pocket for the second act, but with scant few indications that there is anything wrong with Abel, it's as sudden as finding out your wife hasn't been taking her birth control.

Why should I like anyone?:

Speaking of which, let's get to our protagonists.  To say Chris and Lisa's marriage is perfect is to say Lakeview Terrace is a good movie--that is to say, fucking wrong.  The issue of race plays a major role in how the two characters interact with each other, and it's often not for the better.  It's hard to tell at times whether the director is trying to tell us that we need to move past the issues of race, or whether it's time to start throwing trashcans through shop windows and overturning cars.

When Chris is put off by Abel's antagonistic behavior, he lets his wife know.  Lisa's immediate response is to play white-knight for her race (God I'm so sorry), insisting that Chris' perceptions of black people are unfair and his treatment of them has always been biased.  Which might make sense, if not for the fact that his wife is black, his father-in-law is black, and they all clearly have a respectful relationship.  If there were serious unresolved racial issues here, why would these two be married and presumably be in love?  I know firsthand that interracial marriages aren't without their cultural pitfalls, but this woman does not believe her own husband is telling the truth about their neighbor threatening him for the first half of the movie.  That is not the behavior of a life-partner.  Hell, that's not even the behavior of an acquaintance.  My co-workers afford me more trust than that, and we don't even like each other.  And when she finds out her husband is telling the truth?  No "I'm sorry," or "you were right."  She just finds a new reason to be the same obnoxious soul-vampire.

And why would they like each other?  Fuck, I sure as shit didn't like either of them.  Chris is a selfish work-first kind of guy who keeps secrets from his wife and thinks what's best for "him" is what's best for "them."  Lisa is a skeptical ice-queen who stops taking birth control and then acts indignant when her husband is shocked and upset (see, I told you everything would come full-circle).

These aren't people.  PEOPLE DO NOT ACT LIKE THIS.

Tonal Dissonance:

There is no tonal consistency from scene to scene whatsoever.  This scene...

and this scene...

happen literally seconds apart from each other.  In the former, Abel is brandishing a chainsaw at Chris, screaming at him to "shut that bitch up," in the latter, Abel and Chris are sharing a drink while Abel tells him the sob-story about how his wife died: she died in a car wreck in the passenger seat of a white man's car, Abel suspected her of having an affair, and so now he hates interracial couples.  Not only does that not make any sense, it also completely invalidates the first scene entirely.  See how this whole thing is coming full circle?  God damn I'm good.

Several times, Abel threatens his neighbors, attacks them, mistreats them, and not once does anyone think to do anything about this because Abel's a cop.  He's not a foreign diplomat.  He isn't fucking Judge Dredd.  Someone please just call the police for the love of God.

Juxtapositions like the aforementioned two scenes happen all the time in Lakeview Terrace.  In one scene, Lisa and Abel's daughter are poolside listening to music, and seconds later Abel storms in, takes off his pants, and slaps the back-sass and a couple molars straight out of his daughter's mouth.  And then Lisa starts vomiting.  At first you're like "huh?" And then you're all "oh, okay, I think I know what's going on here."  And then it turns out you're right and you're like "why can't any of these characters act like people?"

The entirety of the film is a lot of over-the-top racial dialogue recalling shades of Crash with sudden crescendos of total insanity.  It worked in Misery because of the dramatic buildup in each scene.  Here, it feels like two writers bumped into each other in the hallway and dropped their scripts on the floor, and madcap capers ensued because each had an important meeting starting in five minutes!  Hilarity!

There is no hilarity:

Crash got away with a heavy-handed, racially-charged script on the strength of its writing.  At times, it seemed like scriptwriters Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco had just wrapped up a drunken viewing of the Kings of Comedy and decided to made a screenplay out of it, and they accidentally ended up winning Best Original Screenplay.  Despite not being an especially subtle movie, Crash at least proved the old adage that "sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying."  Or, alternately, "any movie with Ludacris in it should win at least one major award."

Ludacris makes every movie better

In Lakeview Terrace, absolutely nothing tempers the conspicuous racial discourse, which, in itself, isn't a problem.  Or rather, it wouldn't be if that were the kind of movie they were trying to make.  What we instead have is a total mess.  The exchanges of verbal vitriol aren't punctuated by chilling suspense or action--they are interrupted by them.  And without the faintest trace of scene cohesion, lucid writing, or character development, nothing makes this movie hit close to home.

The Verdict:

Lakeview Terrace is a movie I actually wanted to like.  I wanted it to be a sleeper-hit thriller that had me at the edge of my seat (or, since we just moved in, edge of my broken milk crate).  Samuel L. Jackson is in rare form in yet another role as an intense, shouting lunatic, but his charisma and screen presence augment a good script--not salvage a bad one.  If you're looking for a case-study in how not to write your characters, I guess this is a good place to start looking.  If not, don't waste your time.  The Burbs was a more intense thrill-ride than this piece of shit.

Tales of the mushroom hunters

So, the first real update in almost four months, sure to be a good one, right?

Well...

This is actually a topic I really wanted to discuss when it was actually front-page news of news sources that don't have anything better to report on, but what can you do?  Maybe you remember a few months ago when the US Supreme Court announced that selling used games is so totally illegal, and if you do remember that announcement, you're likely wearing sweatpants and a wolf-print T-shirt and are currently dusting the Chee-tos powder off your fingers so you can post a response telling me how psychic I am.

What I'm saying is that while this news isn't exactly on par with the current debate regarding the constitutionality of the health care bill or Glorious Leader's righteous war against the Capitalist Pigdogs in the South, it still struck a nerve with me, because I'm a mushroom hunter.

I know what you're thinking: "Merican, I know exactly what mushroom hunting is, but I need a simplified way to explain it to my significant other/life partner.  Can you provide one for me?"

Of course.  By mushroom hunting, I mean that a hobby of mine is buying games--used ones--for long-dead video game consoles.  The thought of that suddenly becoming a thing of the past makes me sad.  Wistful, even.  Being that I'm stockpiling my wistfulness for evenings spent 50 years from now with an old basset hound and a glass of brandy, staring at a picture of my recently deceased wife, I can't afford to waste any of it now.

Gamer culture is more united now than at any point in its short history.  The Internet not only makes shopping for games effortless, it disseminates gaming news faster and more reliably than print, it facilitates finding a myriad of reviews, it allows gamers to play across great distances easily, and other things you already knew but I'm mentioning for the sake of parallel syntax.

And yet, for all the 21st century harmony, we are, now more than ever, a house divided and with distant occupants.  The Internet has given rise to a bunch of two-bit know-it-alls talking out of their asses about gaming, and everyone hates those smug burger-eating, toe-injuring cuntknuckles. With the rush of being the first source to review games, many websites refuse to give poor ratings to deserving games, for fear that studios will stop sending them advance copies.  XBox Live makes people assholes.

Literally seconds away from becoming a racist, sexist, homophobe

Buying used games was one of the last vestiges of a bygone era.  I'm eleven again, leafing through an old issue of Nintendo Power.  A game piques my interest.  Downstairs to the kitchen I go, bottom left-hand drawer, Yellowpages.  Back up to the bedroom.  Throw the thing on my comforter and peel it open.  It had some heft to it, that book.  Character.  Musty, curling pages and thick, smudgy ink.  You could always tell when the mushroom hunt was on--black fingertips.

Turn to the games section.  First entry: Babbage's.  White Sony 800Hz cordless telephone in hand, I dialed the number.  $40 in my teddy bear coin bank, mostly rumpled ones and fives--yardwork money--and I'd trade it all for a copy of Chrono Trigger.  Babbage's comes up snake eyes, onto the next number.

You meet a lot of Zacks and Chads this way.  A couple Gregs.  I think that's how they hire these people.  

"What's your name, son?"

"Leonard."

"Get out of my store.  Next!  You!  With the glasses, what's your name?"

"Le-, um... Chad?"

"You start Monday."

Finally, about halfway down the page, I find a place that has a copy.  Pay dirt.  Now the hard part: begging my dad to give me a ride.  It's a hard sell, but he finally buckles.  My father was a sly time-salesman.  He not only traveled through time selling things to people door-to-door, but was an expert at getting me to trade my time away in exchange for these little rides.  This one in particular costs me two lawn-mowings and a deck treating.  One minute of drive time equates to roughly 10 minutes of odd jobs.  I never get a very good exchange rate.

Worth it.

I stride confidently through the parking lot to the Funco Land, pull the door, and stand in front of the store looking like an idiot.

It was a push door.

One very disappointed father later, there I stood at the counter.

This was the first result on Google Image Search for "disappointed father"

And there it sits on the counter: Chrono Trigger.  It's an impressive package (I'm talking about my 11-year-old penis).  Also the game was in fantastic condition: clean box, intact maps and posters, and the instruction manual was in pretty good shape.  Squaresoft really used to put together a damn good collection of extras in every box.  A collector's dream.  And for $35?  Not bad.

Zach counts out the wad of bills on the counter as Zack sees what I'm buying.

"Chrono Trigger?!" Zack says.  "That game is awesome.  Have you ever played it before?"

"Yeah!" I say.  "I've rented it a couple times."

"Dude, wait until you get to the last boss.  The battle's, like, 30 minutes long."

"Oh, and you have to target the guy on the right?" I say.

"Yeah.  That's so cool, though.  You think you have to aim for the guy in the center but-"

And on and on we go.  Zack turns to Zach and says: "Man, I wish I had known we had that in stock.  I totally would have bought it."

Clutching my prize tight, my father and I head for the car.

But it's true what fat, ugly people say: "it's what's inside that counts."  I guess it would stand to reason that the only thing ever to come out of their mouths would be true.

I rush up the stairs and into my bedroom, pop the game into Supes and flip the power button.  Black screen.  Blow into the cartridge.  Black screen.  Rub contacts with alcohol and Q-tip.  Black screen.

Disappointment.  Long ride back to Funco Land.

Goodbye, Chrono Trigger.

Back to the Yellowpages.  The rest of the stores are a bust.  Next is pawn shops.  Look for the ones that mostly trade in old VHS and LP records.  Best chance of them also carrying games.

Next, start eliminating anything that takes more than 15 minutes to get to.  Any more trips like the last one and I'll be re-shingling the roof next weekend.

More calls.  Fewer Chads.

A hit.

Back on the road.

It's a rougher part of town, that's for sure.  The cast-iron bars on the window tells me that much.  Inside, an impressive array of VHS tapes almost entirely obscures the nicotine-cured wallpaper.  Bad movies, mostly.  A lot of Conan the Barbarian knock-offs.  An older gentleman stands up from a frayed, upholstered rocking chair and greets us and I tell him I'm the one who called earlier about the game.  He reaches into the dusty case, leathery fingers riffling through the plastic cases until he gets to the "C"s.

He pulls out my game.

"Can... you pop it into the machine and make sure it works?"

He nods slowly, wordlessly and settles back in, takes the game and drops it into a yellowed Super Nintendo behind the counter and picks up a controller.  The thing looks tiny in his impressive mitts.  I cross my fingers as I hear the contacts click into place and he flips the power switch.  Black screen.  It might as well have been a boot to the gut.  And then...

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

Except the last two lines weren't in Finnish

Mowing the lawn never felt so satisfying.

Looking back on it now, I try not to think about what that complete package at Funco Land might have been worth today.

My best friend who is currently working for Telltale Games said it best: "games aren't art.  They're something better: they're experiences."  The obvious irony of him saying this to me over the Internet aside, the man has a point.  They're more than that, even.  They're shared experiences.  In a previous installment, I quoted Shigeru Miyamoto who compared games to playgrounds.  The places that we've been shape us, obviously, but I think there is something beautiful in the fact that, in some small way, we shape them, too.

That night, I went home and popped the game into Supes.  That's when I found the magic of mushroom hunting for the first time.

I later found it again a couple more times in college

Three save files from the previous owner.  I still remember the names he or she (but probably he) gave to the characters...

Scott

Jules

Tim

Ribs

Amy

Penis

Magical.  Truly magical.

Even now, some fourteen years after buying that game from that smoky pawn shop with the vaguely homoerotic taste in movies, I still can't bring myself to delete the last of the previous owner's saves.  The party of Scott, Ribs, and Penis stares me proudly in the face every time I fire up Chrono Trigger for a victory lap through memory lane.  That's what mushroom hunting means to me, and why it would hurt so bad to see it become just another relic of a simpler time:  losing the chance to share a game, a playground, that for one enduring moment in time with someone, somewhere, miles and years apart.

No box.  No manual.  No posters.  No maps.  Just a game.

A beautiful, working game that I hold tight all the way home.

I'm back, baby!

Or: There's No Place Like Home (To Distract You From All the Writing You Aren't Doing)

Can you guess what one of my New Year's resolutions was?

That's right, "stop peeing in the shower."  And I thought the best way to make it official would be to post about it on my poor, neglected blog.

Change happens fast.  Suddenly, too.  Looking back on it now, it all seems so faraway and distant, like a half-remembered dream.  Was I really there?  Did all that really happen?  Am I really that much older now?  Did I really pee in my father-in-law's shower?

Yes.

Coming back to the United States, I thought it was going to be a difficult transition: "Why can I read all of this stuff?" "How come there's quality television?" "How come everything has high fructose corn syrup in it?" "Who are all of these people and why are they not Asian?"

But reality happens.  Pretty quickly, you even get used to it, and suddenly it's not weird that your house doesn't have a rice-cooker in it, or that all your transactions are made in dollars, or that you're driving.

"Wait, so you're saying I don't have to buy a ticket?"

It was weird.  And it was easy.  And it was weird that it was so easy.  I'm here, my wife is here, and everything is just... normal.  It's kind of comforting; even after so many years, and so much, to come home and to fit right back into place.

And I guess that's all I have to say.  Kind of a short entry, I guess.  Expect semi-regular updates in my desperate attempt to remain relevant, despite being The Man in the 'Pan no longer, and being Merican really isn't that big of an accomplishment anymore.  

Other than that, more of the same idle banter regarding movies, books, and gaming, now with 95% less culture shock!

Stay tuned.