The Man in the 'Pan

Homewrecker

2011-01-31T16:27:00.000-08:00

I moved again. 10th time in eight years. I envy the kind of stability army brats take for granted.

Pictured: stability

But this one was for reals.

I'm sure for the more responsible among my readership (dad), the idea of moving "for reals" is a thing of either the distant past or the far (enough)-flung future. You've made a career, established yourself in your community, perhaps started a family, and can now partake of the fruits of your labor from your fruit tree in your big, successful, overbearing back yard!

I'll bet you would've come to my ballet recital if oranges were growing from me!

In college, moving was as simple as peeling the sheets off the bunk mattress, throwing the computer in the backseat of the car, and remembering all the places I stashed the pot before final inspection. Moving to Japan, it was just a matter of making sure everything fit into a suitcase. Moving back from Japan, all I had to do was make sure everything I brought in my suitcase made it back into the suitcase.

Plus whatever the fuck these things are

But moving out of the temporary living arrangement my wife and I had with the folks took a little extra doing. In college, finding a new place was easy enough. My roommate and I picked our apartment based on three criteria:

1. Is this domicile conducive to bringing home mad sluts?
2. Exactly how many sluts can we fit into said domicile?
3. Are utilities included?

And ultimately we just moved into the first apartment we looked at anyway.

But now? Well, there's a woman looking at the place. And not just the ceiling while I'm getting my swerve on if you know what I'm saying.

I'm playing Gran Turismo just off-camera in case you couldn't tell

Fortunately, the miracle of the Internet has made finding an apartment as simple as sifting through millions of pages of information to find the one place that contains a perfect mix of price, proximity to upscale restaurants and shopping you cannot afford, and absence of any poisonous species of vermin.

Ever tried looking for an apartment on the Internet? Jesus God it will scare the shit out of you.

But are utilities included?

And so the apartment search goes. We'd find a place, then get a bad feeling. Something in our price range, but no utilities. This apartment looks nice, but it's a 20-mile commute from work. A never-ending rubik's cube of must-haves and features that never seemed to come together in a way that formed anything solid. It was like trying to find a needle in a heroin addict's garbage can. Sure, there are plenty, but do you really want any of them?

Compromises were made, standards were lowered, and finally she said yes and married me.

I mean, we found a place to live, and we all lived happily ever after. Until moving day.

Up at 6AM, Mrs. Merican and I trundled down the stairs, tattered cardboard boxes nearly overflowing with books, movies, computer peripherals, and all of life's other necessities we dug out from the darkest corner of our old bedroom closet to be transferred to the darkest corner of maybe the utility closet in some kind of closet-junk exchange program. And out in the garage sat my little Toyota Camry, frosty to the touch in the January dawn and the interior totally obscured beneath a heap of clothes, textbooks, and a collection of magazines so woefully out of date that it looked like the aftermath of a dentist's office explosion. And so began the first trip of many, scarcely three miles from my parents' house.

But sometimes three miles is all we need. Just far enough to unabashedly wake up in the early afternoon, or share a movie on the couch at 2AM, or fuck as loudly and as often as we want.

Moving into a medium-term, tentative-but-not, semi-permanent living solution like this one gave me a newfound respect for moving as a profession. Moving day is an inhospitable time for amateurs and hobbyists. It also shows who your friends are, and who really loves you. My father and I rented a van to haul a kitchen table and desk from the folks and a sleeper sofa my best friend's parents gave us. It was a day of an unexpectedly generous outpouring of support, with only the expectation of a "thank you" and that we wouldn't sue over the inevitable hernia.

It was also the day I swore this would be the last time I ever lived anywhere not the bottom floor.

Money travels fast in the first couple weeks. Men, you might not be aware of this, but it's apparently a turn-off to spend the night in a sleeping bag. So that means we need to buy a bed. And apparently I not only throw punches at my wife not in my sleep, but in my sleep as well. So that means a king-size bed. And did you know "flatware" is actually a thing? Like, it's a real thing that people apparently have to buy when they have a place of their own. I always filed it alongside "unicorns" and "women's suffrage" as things that we have words for but don't actually exist. But apparently you need it and it has to match your carpet or some shit. Beats me, man. I'm just here for the loud, frequent sex.

Grocery shopping seems to happen a lot. Working at an eikaiwa in Japan, it was easy to forget that grocery shopping is a regular behavior that normal people have. When you get home at 9:30PM or even later every night after spending the day being beaten by dozens of tiny fists while trying to explain the past tense, it's hard to get excited about making whipping up a batch of beef stroganoff. You just dip into the convenience store, grab a sacrifice for the microwave and something to get you nice and loaded enough to accept the inevitability of another day as a well-dressed children's abuse sponge.

And yet, today, I bought celery. Celery.

What the fuck, life?! This was not part of any deal I signed on for. What happened to getting piteously drunk on the floor of my one-room apartment and falling asleep to the sound of my own regrets? At what point did I become responsible enough to purchase celery and why wasn't I notified sooner?

Behold the scowling face of adulthood

Moving does crazy things to people. Moving day dashes every last one of your expectations, shreds your self esteem ("no babe, I swear it's not heavy at all"), and somehow makes you feel like it's all worthwhile in the end. But after a half-dozen trips back and forth from our old home to the new we shed the trappings of a life past its expiration date. Treading breathlessly up the stairs, two-hundred pounds of upholstery in tow, we marched into a life of independence and long-term back problems. At the end of the night, we stood there in our one-bedroom apartment, flanked by boxes and compromise and lowered expectations and a half-assembled bed. Muscles aching, I put my arm around her slender waist and pulled her close. We made it.

Transitioned one box at a time from quiet, shameful sex to loud, frequent, shameful sex.

Tired, cluttered, poor, and independent and free.

No wolf spiders yet.

The ハト locker

2011-01-26T18:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

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 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 the elements and the evils of the outside world. I know who has shat in that toilet and slept in that bed and vice-versa. I totally get gun-owners. Protecting the home is something worth getting a little crazy over.

There's no place like it.

It's the reason that, despite having watching the original Star Wars trilogy in its entirety, 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

2011-01-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-01-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

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.

One you shouldn't miss

2010-08-13T00:11:00.000-07:00

It pays to be a geek in high school.

While my classmates scampered about carving their bodies into statuesque chiseled granite, or becoming young virtuosos, or getting their proverbial ~~dicks~~ feet wet in non-proverbial poon, we, the few, huddled around the dim glow of a monitor, flanked by the SS, a swarm of Zerg, and an intimidating platoon of empty Mountain Dew cans, waged war on our waistlines, carpals (both meta and otherwise), and blood-sugar levels.

Tortoise and the hare, my friends.

Case in point, I was lucky enough to have a friend who got some premier tickets for Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. Rest assured, it was the first "some" that either of us "got" in a very long time.

So, is it any good?

Well, let me preface this review by mentioning I never read the comic series off of which the movie was based, and I liked it. My buddy did read the comic and he also liked it.

Thank you for reading.

For those of you ~~non-virgins~~ not in the know about Scott Pilgrim, here's the story so far: Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is at the end of a year-long mourning period following a devastating breakup. To tap off the rust (and potentially tap something else), he starts dating a 17-year-old Chinese Catholic high school student named Knives (Ellen Wong). If you don't already see how this movie is pretty much tailor-made for the geek psyche, go ahead and re-read that last sentence.

So dreamy...

Amidst his lukewarm courtship of Knives, Scott Pilgrim meets the girl of his dreams: Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Literally. As in, this exact girl was the focal point of one of his dreams. Scott Pilgrim manages to muster the monumental balls necessary to take a shot at Ramona and ends up finding her favor, and dumps Knives. In exactly that chronological order.

Things get even more complicated when all this coincides with the battle of the bands competition in which Scott Pilgrim's and his friends Kim Pine's (Alison Pill) and Mark Webber's (Stephen Stills) band, Sex Bob-omb, are scheduled to play. And it gets even more complicated still when Ramona Flowers' evil exes emerge from the shadows of her past to do battle with the new guy. Also, their world is kind of like a video game/comic book.

As you can see, there's a lot going on. Not that that's a bad thing.

But in this case, it kind of is.

The Scott Pilgrim comic series unfolds over six self-contained, full-length graphic novels. It's a monolithic breadth of content director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) decided to tackle in making Scott Pilgrim a 112-minute, stand-alone feature. And that's exactly where the problems start.

The whole movie is spread entirely too thin. The beginning of the movie, especially, skips from scene to scene like a sugar-junkie playing hopscotch on a pogo stick (check out that analogy, huh? Yep, I've still got it). Not only is it disjointing for the audience as Scott Pilgrim seemingly phases in and out of the first 20 minutes like flipping through pages of a comic book, it seems to even throw Scott. I was seriously concerned for our protagonist as he flashed from one scene to the next wondering how the hell he got there like he was the main character from Memento or something.

Things settle down a bit as Scott Pilgrim wades through the seven-mannnnn? (you'll see) gauntlet and the movie starts to find a comfortable groove. Too comfortable, in fact. Unfortunately, the script, cinematography, and direction never really manage to strike a suitable balance between fast-paced, Ritalin-fueled, smash-mouth movie-making and managing a cohesive narrative. At its best, Scott Pilgrim manages to be the awesomest parts of Moulin Rouge and the Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer. At its worst, it manages to be like the other 180 combined minutes of Moulin Rouge and Speed Racer.

At it's heart, Scott Pilgrim is a rom-com. A rom-com targeted at a much different demographic from the usual rom-com, but a rom-com all the same. Rom-com. As a comedy, I've got no complaints; plenty of belly-laughs to be had by even the non-Nintendo generation. But as a romance, I don't buy it. Like I said before, it seems like writers Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall were trying to pack so much content into every scene, and stay so true to the comics (for the most part), that it seemed like by the time they got around to actually writing a convincing love story, there was no ink left in the Bic.

Watching Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers interact, I just don't buy that they're in love--or even in like--with each other. With the exception of a single scene, there never seems to be any chemistry between these two at all, and by the start of the third act, I had to wonder--like the titular (and title) character--why he's even bothering with the romantic royal rumble at all.

Scott Pilgrim certainly peaks early--in fact, of the five (ehhhhhhhhhhh... six?) major fight scenes, the first was by far my favorite, because it seemed to best capture what I had hoped the movie would settle into: a musical, fighting-game inspired, thrill-ride. And it was a thrill-ride, to be sure. But, like a rollercoaster, the biggest and best plunge was at the beginning.

I shouldn't be harsh, though. Like I said, I liked it. Like a NASCAR race, for all the crashes, there's still a lot going right. Wait let me check Wikipedia and make sure that's correct shit they actually turn left God dammit okay hold on wait okay: like a NASCAR, it's only tolerable if you're drunk and can hit your wife no wait. Okay, like the NFL, it's more fun to watch than NASCAR.

Scott Pilgrim sports a very, very unique visual style. It actually feels like you're watching a video game or reading a comic, and that's something that absolutely no other movie with this sort of source material has ever really accurately pulled off.

With one exception...

Every scene engages the viewer, because there's always something new. Every frame of this movie is fun to look at. Every single God damn fr-

In a day and age where most movies--and especially games--are all the same puke-brown and gun-metal gray, it's nice to actually see a little (a lot of) color splashed up on the screen. After some initial hiccups with the scene direction and editing, the film settles down into a very flashy style with a lot of punch. Scriptwriters Bacall and Wright clearly had a lot of fun cramming jokes (and fighting game references) into every nook and cranny of this script, and there's great pains taken to make sure the sight gags hit perfectly (see if you can spot the hidden Street Fighter 4 reference; it's my favorite). I'm sure a lot of critics will contend that Scott Pilgrim is a lot of flash with little in the way of content, but this is a movie that gains a lot of its substance from its style; the director is almost as much of a character as Scott and friends.

And while I didn't really buy the romance angle between Scott and Ramona--I know, I know, it's the entire plot of the movie--believe me when I say that there's real chemistry between the characters. A movie shot like Scott Pilgrim insists a lot upon its actors: believe in these silly people, this silly script, and this silly world every second you're on-screen. That's a lot to ask, especially when each scene is so radically different from the last. If any of the cast phoned it in, this entire movie would collapse on itself. With something this wild, there's no room for anyone to play tame, and no one ever does. Even when our characters blow each other off, or act selfish, or do something stupid, like two people hugging in marshmallow fluff, there's a lot of sweetness between them.

For as much fun as Scott and friends seem to have keeping pace with the film, it's really the evil exes who steal the show. They're all unbelievably funny and have a ton of great lines, in spite of the relatively short screen-time afforded to them. Each showdown crackles with its own unique brand of energy, like coal, steam, nuclear, or two-headed dragon sprouting from a synthesizer and doing battle with a gorilla monster controlled by a bass guitar. That's not a metaphor, that's actually a fight scene. That really actually happens, and by the time it does, you've seen so much wacky shit that you can just go with it. The fight scenes are all very well done and completely distinct, keeping things from getting too repetitive, which I think is the mark of a really good action movie. There are a couple cheap cop-out endings to a few of the fights, but even then, they all manage to end on such a high-note that it's not even worth complaining about.

What I will say is that the final fight scene was actually a bit of a disappointment, and was characteristic of the movie's main fault: 90 minutes in, you've already seen everything. By the time the climax rolls around, it feels a bit like a "best of" rather than another creative addition to the robust catalog of styles and settings. That said, the action still finds harmony between cartoony and visceral without ever wearing out its welcome.

The soundtrack does a lot to make every scene--particularly the fight scenes--memorable and entertaining. Scott Pilgrim is as much about the visual style and video game references as it is about the music, and this film got the soundtrack it deserved. Each battle is set to its own pulsing rock score that gives every crushing blow the appropriate intensity. Scott Pilgrim is proud of its soundtrack, perhaps to a fault, as there are more than a couple occasions I can think of where it actually drowns out the dialog. Oops.

In conclusion: go see Scott Pilgrim. It's opening today, and you will not be disappointed. Or you will be disappointed, but you'll still have financially supported a part of what I hope is a new wave of fun, creative, imaginative films hitting theaters this year (Kick-Ass, Inception, Repo Men). And hell, it even inspired me to pick up the comics and give 'em a read. Even if you don't like it (you will), it's still a great moviegoing experience, and you're sure to have never seen anything else like it.

Until my Moulin Rouge Vs. Speed Racer mash-up is finished, anyway.

Things I'll miss: The Kids

2010-08-11T23:50:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how much can change in three years.

Hell, in four months.

Going to Japan, there were three things I despised more than anything else in the entire world: bigotry, the Yankees, and children, and not always in that order.

Two out of three...

Prior to going to Japan, there was of course the interview. Eikaiwa, after all, are well-known for their rigorous hiring standards. At that interview, they asked about, and presumably promptly disregarded, my ideal school environment.

"Would you like to be placed at a school that teaches children?"

No. Hell no. Absolutely not. I'd rather be crucified by my dick than spend a day locked in a class with those four-foot-tall germ-infested soul-vampires. Not even for all the money you aren't paying me.
"Well, as I'd like to one day teach at the high school and eventually university level, I'd certainly prefer to be placed in an adult-only school."

Very politic. Five months later, I found myself at the door of the school with the highest enrollment of children students in all of west Japan. Beaten.

But not entirely. At the worst, I had five kids classes a week. A paltry five. Five? That's easy. That's the number of fingers on each hand, or hairs on my ballsack. Ha. For a second, I thought they were going to challenge me.

Most of the load was carried by a bionic super-teacher who held down a strict regimen of six kids classes a day, five days a week, plus organizing the seasonal kids parties and events. This chick was pulling the equivalent of the six-minute mile: it simply couldn't be done.

At least not by me.

She knew it, too. The one thing I never, ever liked about this Kids Head Teacher was that she had a real fucking attitude problem and a face to match. The kind that sized you up immediately, and sized you small. The look of a person who did their job better than anyone else in the room, but had no interest in sharing, because it would be harder to judge you if you were emulating her. Someday when I get drunk and do an entry, I'll be sure to bring that piece of work up again.

At the end of my first month at that school, I remember being called upon for a very special lesson. Seriously, it was called a "special lesson." What was special about it, I didn't know at the time, but presumably it was the opportunity to take an extra forty minutes out of your busy schedule to allow your child to terrorize an already terrified man wearing a tie. I'll never forget that day.

Like I said, it was the first month in a new career in a new country in a new life. The lesson was pretty simple, or so I thought. The theme was "Going on a Picnic," and although we had no food, we were indoors, and the only "going" took place in the tiny bathroom adjacent to the shoe-shelf outside the kids area, there we were. Ready to go.

In my dainty princess fingers, I held a pretty little plush picnic basket, filled to burst with flannel fruits and cloth cold-cuts, truly a meal fit for a Muppet. I also had my lesson plan, my flash cards, and a set of thoroughly shot nerves, if only to prove that the little bastards can smell fear and the poop rapidly filling my official eikaiwa-authorized boxer-briefs. Yep, ready to go.

The clock rolled to 2:00 PM and in the lobbies two mothers and two six-year-old boys said their goodbyes. I nodded to the parenting pair, the kind of assuring nod you give to your dentist when he lectures you on the importance of flossing while in the back of you're mind you're trying to think if dental floss would be an adequate substitute for your weekend fishing trip--it is minty-fresh, after all. Totally ready to go.
We walked into the room, they put their bags and plush picnic baskets off in the corner, and turned to face me, their trusted, devoted, beloved teacher. Okay everyone, ready to go?

And then I closed the door.

Like a sorority girl in a "don't get raped" contest at the Sigma Tau house, exactly the first minute proceeded according to plan. Actually, for a moment there I even counted my blessings--I had well behaved kids. That was the first mistake of a rookie teacher. You never, ever assume your kids are well behaved until at least the fifth lesson.

Hello song, ABC song, what's your name, can you say sandwich? Three times! Sandwich, sandwich, sandwich... GO! Sandwich, sandwich, sandwich... very goooood, now let's look here, what's this? It's a............. tomato! Very good, Kohei! Let's say tomato thee times! Tomato toma-Yu, look at me please. Tomato, tomato, tomato... GO! Tomato, to- Yu, stop, put that down! Yu! What's this? It's a.......? It's a tomato! Can y- no, Kohei, we're not getting our picnic baskets yet! ...why isn't anybody helping me?
Panic. With the agility of a runaway Toyota, and the composure to match, I knew things were falling apart. And where did I put that lesson plan? I know I had it a sec- KOHEI PUT THAT DOWN! NO! ABUNAI!! Forget it, we're playing a game. I know, what about run-and-touch?

It's a simple game--one in every amateur teacher's playbook. Something simple enough to explain to a class you've never taught before, active enough to get students involved, and one that requires relatively little proficiency of the language on the part of the students.

Perfect, I thought.

Second mistake of a rookie teacher. You never, ever start a game with an unruly class. Establish control first, then play a game.

I had the students get their picnic baskets and arrange their materials along the wall in a line that would make Hansel and Gretel proud. This, I thought, was the opportunity to prove myself, to seize victory from the chopsticks of defeat. To show my Kids Head Teacher that I was every bit the kids teacher she was, and younger, more energetic and had a better set of jugs, too.

Okay, ready? Let's run and touch apple! 1... 2... GO!! Where is it? Which one? Which one's the appl-

BANG

Oh God. Oh Jesus. Yu! Yu, are you okay?

In the throes of apple-pursuing euphoria, the intricacies of placing one foot in front of the other suddenly eluded the boy. About three feet from the wall. The kid left a face-shaped divot in the drywall where he had just buried his noggin. Or, at least he would have, had it been drywall and not concrete.
The roar of grief-stricken sobs of the boy with the busted face trickled through the closed door like a hurricane crashing on the Louisiana coastline. There was no way I could fail privately now. Not with mom #1 and mom #2 bursting into the classroom to see what I had done to their adorable nosferatus feasting on my will to live (nosferatii?).

The aforementioned mothers, seen here leaving their apartment

It was easy to explain to mom what had happened and she was very understanding. Japanese parents, for all their faults, seem to understand that kids are dipshits. The difficult part was that I still had 30 minutes left in class.

Finally, Yu settled down enough to come back to class. As long as mom was outside, and the door could be open. Well, okay. If my nerves were shot before, they were a smoldering crater now with the sudden parental supervision and class in total disarray. But as long as Yu's not cryi-

BUAAAHHHH!!!

He shut the door. Kohei shut the fucking door. And he figured out that anytime he did, it made Yu cry. So guess what suddenly became the funniest thing in the world? Suddenly I found myself locked inside the world's least jolly Jack-in-the box. Close the lid, and bask in the childish wail of an awkward white man and two naughty Japanese boys locked in a room together.

No pedo.

I looked at the clock.

29 more minutes.

Somebody please help me.

Especially since--and I know anyone else who has taught Japanese boys will corroborate this--when they really, really get going crying, they'll try to really, really step it up on the Drama Queen-o-Meter by doing this deep, throaty hacking cough where they'll start drooling and spitting, presumably because that's what they saw when they snuck into their dad's "secret videos."

So wow, yeah. Pretty horrible. In fact, the most horrible experience in my entire professional career. Even more horrible than when one of my students confided in me that he lost his job and he didn't have enough money to pay to keep coming to class. Right before we started the class.

Alright everyone, let's start with a pronunciation exercise! Repeat after me: awkward.

So after all that, how can it possibly be that I miss the kids so much? Well, because that wasn't the last kids class I ever taught. Not even close. After that, I probably logged about 1500 hours teaching kids, not to mention about 2000 teaching adults. Funny thing about standing up in front of a class, eventually, the pressure stops getting to you. You stop realizing you're in front of a crowd. You stop noticing that you're the center of attention because of course you're the center of attention. You stop worrying about the class derails, the struggles with class clowns, the picky parents.

And you start to enjoy it.

I've affected what I like to call "teacher mode." It first manifested with the realization that there'd be another class after this one, and another after that, and another, and another, until they one day they put you in a pine box in the ground. I'm pretty sure at first it only happened in class, but these days it strikes without warning. My wife catches me in these moments all the time. We'll be sitting on a rock in the middle of Hirakata park and enjoying a sandwich. Mrs. Merican will ask what's in it, or how I got the meat so tender (plenty of practice, babe. Plenty of practice), and the didactic reflex kicks in.

The first thing that happens is my posture changes; my shoulders roll back and my spine straightens. My eyes widen with excitement and my volume goes up about 20 decibels as I launch into a detailed explanation of the nuance of the marinade, or just exactly how sautéed these mofuckin' onions are. She stops me.
Like a 'Nam flashback, the Pavlovian trigger hits and it's like being back in the jungle.

"You can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the 'kaiwa."

My final four months in Japan--those following my arrival at my new school--I count as the most dear of any point in my life, because happiness is all in the company you keep.

I'll tell you the story of a girl that I'll name "Kumi."

Kumi was 11 years old. I had her in a higher-level elementary English class with another girl, Sumiko. They came to school every Saturday and put in their time. 45 minutes of English with a tall, gangly, goofy-looking white dude with a high-pitched voice and a terrible haircut. Not a lot of traditionally "cool" dudes in my line of work, and I certainly wasn't breaking any molds in that department. Unfortunately, that's the kind of teacher they wanted. And, I'm told, the kind that they had before he moved on and my doughy ass showed up.

Kumi and Sumiko are, and were, at that tender young age where everything sucks and is gay (I had one of those phases ;) luv ya matt xoxoxo). Parents, school, and most of all, English class. And I'll admit, I'm kind of a hardass in my classes. I play lots of games, but I don't play games, if you catch my meaning. I want my kids to learn and have fun learning, but I have a very low tolerance for bullshit. I push my kids, because I know they can handle it. I want them to like me, but I need to see them succeed.

That put the three of us in a bit of a predicament, and created a very love-hate relationship in the classroom. Some days I'd have them, others they'd joke around and deliberately try to mess up as much as possible. I'd have them for one activity and the next game they shit the bed. Consistently inconsistent, these girls. And while I could usually get them to laugh and have fun with English at least once a class, it was a struggle to keep that feeling for long.

Then the last week came: special lessons.

You can imagine how thrilled I was. A week's worth of lessons with loose structure, little in the way of guidelines and available materials, and a lot of kids of wildly varying ages and ability levels all in the same class. And fortunately, nary a picnic basket in sight.

Kumi, for whatever reason, was there all day. Eight straight hours, three straight days, and almost all of that time was to be spent in my classes.

Honestly, I was glad. She'd be the oldest, and despite struggling in her current class, she still had a fairly good grasp of the language. If nothing else, she could be a role-model.

Bored before the start of school, I grabbed a ball and tossed it to her.

Catch?

She stood up and chucked it back. Back and fourth we lobbed, kicked, volleyed, and smacked the soft, green-and-blue miniature soccer ball before class. And after class. And after the next, and the next. She kept coming back. I even thought I caught a smile.

The second day, she was in my magic class (I'm a hobbyist magician--although definitely not a good one--just barely good enough to impress kids). Minutes in, I knew something was different as her eyes traced my movements around the room, her hands intently patterning after mine, fingers lacing through her blue deck of Hoyles as she followed along with each step of a card-guessing trick.

And the next day, as she joined me for sports class and a fifth-grade enrichment class, I was the teacher she exchanged high-fives with, asked for help, and wanted to partner with, that she passed the soccer ball to and entrusted with the open shot at the goal, even when other teachers were there. The cold, quizzical expressions and occasional derisive laughter seemingly gone and forgotten from her repertoire, now replaced with the warmth of a smile. I wasn't just the stringy American spaz in front of the class. I was her stringy American friend.

And so the third day ended.

We played catch again as the day drew to a close. The lukewarm tolerance abiding yet another day of my bullshit that mired the activity in an uncomfortable weight felt lifted, and we were free to have fun as we laughed and tossed the soccer ball in the hallway.

As the game finished, she walked to the door and slipped on her pre-tied pink-and-white sneakers and looked up at me. Happy.

Are you coming tomorrow?

Tomorrow? Tomorrow, no.

Oh. Practice your soccer, okay?

Okay!

See you!

See you!

And then she left.

Sadness. I'll never see her again. And likely, not any of my students.

But every minute of that four-month Saturdaily uphill battle suddenly became worth it for the exchange of one smile, beaming so much brighter, more brilliant, the most genuine thing I've ever seen, as she looked over her shoulder at me before she walked out the door into the mall and parking lot and into the rest of her life. A moment, locked in time, where, across a language barrier 2600 miles wide, we spoke without words:

"You're not that goofy."

"You're a good kid."

The joy of being a teacher is that the students we teach, teach us.

Kids, Kumi, thank you for the lesson.

Things I won't: TV

2010-08-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose it's only fair to mention: this is pretty much the article I've been putting off writing since I started my blog. No lie.

And things are about to get ugly.

Where to even begin with Japanese TV? I guess it would be prudent to dispel a few of the myths surrounding Japanese TV for the those of you whose experience and knowledge of the product is exclusively from YouTube. Because that stuff generally isn't what I'm talking about. 99% of the stuff that makes you go "lol those crazy japanese lol" you see on YouTube is about 1% of the actual content of Japanese TV. Many Westerners who have never lived there seem to operate under the delusion that Japan is a mecca for quality TV dramas like "Liar game" or "Rookies," or awesome game shows that uncreative Western TV producers shamelessly rip off (see: "I Survived a Japanese Game Show").

What I'm about to tell you is the truth of the matter.

Japanese TV is where the same 35 talentless hacks go to circle-jerk each other raw every day in front of a live studio audience.

These two shows are completely exempt from any of the bad shit I'm about to say

When I say this to most people, they immediately retort "sounds like American TV." Well, no, idiots. Because as shitterible as shows like Maury and Access Hollywood and everything on MTV is, you can still avoid it. That option simply does not exist on Japanese airwaves. If you turn on the TV, there's a 99% chance you're watching garbage. And every time you change the channel, you roll the dice again. Because virtually every single Japanese TV show is "The View," except with an offensively technicolor set and about three to six times the number of obnoxious, saccharine, soulless jackasses doing the same obnoxious, saccharine, soulless routines that earned them their 15 minutes of fame 15 months ago. Japanese TV is almost entirely populated by arbitrarily famous people bullshitting in front of a live studio audience and calling itself programming. It's what you would watch if you were a lonely, depressed person to pretend you actually have friends.

It's seriously, 24/7, celebrities sitting around eating, with close-up camera zooms of some dipshit with Parkinson's holding food up for the camera and the same worthless picture-in-picture reaction shots of the same worthless people shouting "OISHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII" at the top of their lungs as if this time it will somehow grant them the attention and acceptance from the audience they never received growing up, to fill the black, empty void left by their childhoods. I'm not just talking about talk-shows either. What I just described happens on the God damn news.

The most confounding part of Japanese TV is that their TV "personalities" are referred to as "comedians," despite having no routine, no prepared material, and not doing anything remotely funny or entertaining. I suppose the reasoning behind this nomenclature is that "attention whore" doesn't translate well.

Perhaps, by this point, you feel that I'm being entirely too harsh. Culture, and especially humor, are entirely subjective. I'm just one man spitting in a typhoon.

I thought so, too, until I watched some of these famous TV personalities venture out in public and saw that no one else can really tolerate them, either. Occasionally, you'll see a couple of attention whoremedians go out and do their act on the street, or in front of some famous restaurant, and just get absolutely killed. No one laughs or even cracks a smile. The live audience just exchanges uncomfortable glances until the ordeal is over and these hacks go and peddle their shlock in front of someone else.

One TV moment that stands out as a shining example of this is when one particular boil on the collective ass of Japanese TV decided to take on the Guinness Record for longest stand-up performance: 30 hours. Less than 20 minutes in, he had clearly run completely out of any sort of prepared material and was reduced to making faces and screaming strange sounds at the ocean of empty seats. It was like watching a somehow-less-funny Robin Williams.

Occasionally, a curious passerby would sit in for a few minutes, a vacant, emotionless stare fixed on the zoo-animal in front of the cameras, and moving on, wishing him a "ganbare" (remember what I said about what that actually means?) as they left. It's only when his shit-shoveling act was joined by other "comedians" and celebrities that his "act" ever got any laughs at all. And that was the moment, for me, that exposed the sham of Japanese TV for the poorly lubricated circle-jerk it truly is.

The TV studio is a closed system where people with the same career all gather to contratulate each other on a mediocre-job-well-done in front of the only 200 people in the country who give a shit. It's like watching an awards show, all day, every day, 365 days a year. The idea of "game shows" featuring random people off the street, or someone breaking into Japanese show-business without being heavily connected, paying their dues, or having belonged to an idol group being heavily pushed by a record label is absolutely unheard-of. It's just the same self-congratulatory bullshit all the time.

From time to time on Japanese TV There are talent shows where "comedians" will come up and do their "routine," which is typically either speaking really fast and screaming the same punchline over and over for a few minutes, or making faces and falling down while screaming. Again, if this sounds funny, believe me it loses its charm after a couple months when this is seriously every other person's act. After they do their routine, there's a panel of judges who rates them. The most famous of these shows is "Red Carpet," where comedians stand on a red conveyor belt and do their thing, and then are whisked away and the judges rate them as either 大笑 (very funny), 中笑(pretty funny), or 小笑 (not very funny).

In two years, I only ever saw two people not get the highest possible ranking--they got the second-highest. Occasionally you see people up there and you can tell they worked really hard on making a good routine, and it's gut-bustingly funny. And it's completely devalued by the fact that Japanese TV, by design, is a circle-jerk that lavishes praise upon itself and its members for trivial accomplishments.

It's why every shot has a picture-in-picture of a celebrity's reaction shot, because God forbid we go one second without seeing a celebrity! We might forget they even exist. It's like watching a party through a window, except everyone inside has Asperger's Syndrome, and the place was designed by a colorblind meth addict.

The one major thing that makes it all so infuriating is an appalling lack of effort.

You can literally go an entire day channel-surfing--24 hours--without hearing a single line of scripted dialogue outside of the narrator's voice-over describing whatever ramen or daifuku place the flavor-of-the-week celebrities are screaming at the top of their lungs at.

And what's so infuriating about all this is that when honest-to-God effort is actually made, the product is almost always fantastic. I'm not even saying "fantastic by comparison," either. I mean flat-out great, world-class entertainment.

I can't remember the name of the show exactly, but in my last few months of in Japan, there was a TV show about a giant game of tag set in an old-style Japanese village. The contestants, all Japanese celebrities (of course, who would want to see anyone new?), dressed in Naruto-style ninja outfits as they tried to run and hide from "hunters," who were basically guys dressed as Matrix-style agents--and these guys seriously must have been former Olympic sprinters because no one ever outran these guys for long.

The basic premise was that the contestants had to survive for three hours, and as each second rolled off the clock, the value of the cash prize went up. If any of the contestants could complete a set of objectives, they were free to go to a certain spot and leave the game with whatever amount the pot was at. Anyone who survived the full three hours would get the full amount. By itself, it's a great premise, but the beauty, as they say, is in the details.

Rather than being a ghost town, the old village was populated by actors playing the part of characters from various Japanese fables, or merchants, guides, or monks there to offer advice or just bring the setting to life. Occasionally, the contestants would run into a character and have a chance to do something to help out one of these characters, who, in turn, would help the contestants out later on. For example, one of the characters roaming the ancient Japanese setting was Kintaro.

Kintaro lost his axe, and asked a contestant to help him find it. Upon the contestant finding it and returning it to him, Kintaro thanked him and went on his way. Later on in the game, monsters attacked the village and started a 10-minute journey to a shed containing 20 hunters. If they made it to the shed before the contestants could find someone to stop the monsters, they'd release the hunters, effectively doubling the chance of the contestants getting tagged out. But if the contestants could find someone to stop them...

This guy looks like a competent monster-slayer

...then the hunters would stay locked up in the shed for the rest of the game, making it easier to survive.

Unfortunately, 10 minutes isn't a lot of time. So, when things looked dire and the time limit drew closer, out came an axe-wielding Kintaro to stay the monster's rampage, buying the contestants valuable time to complete the objectives necessary to put a stop to the monsters once and for all.

The game was full of great moments like this, where every action influenced the outcome, and every scene was shot in a dramatic, cinematic style. It was funny, it was smart, it was interesting and exciting and better than any game or contest I've ever seen in the States by a factor of a thousand.

But unfortunately, it requires effort, so the odds of ever seeing anything like it again are insignificant.

Japanese commercials, similarly, have way, way higher production value than the TV they interrupt. Why? Effort. As anyone in advertising will tell you, the amount of effort put into an advertising campaign is directly related to the dividends it pays. Commercials have stiff competition to earn your hard-earned yen, so they can't afford not to impress.

Japanese TV is locked in a status-quo spiral that I fear it will never, ever pull out of. No one has to try to impress anyone, because people will watch TV, even if it's all shit, because there's nothing else to watch. And trust me, it's all shit.

For anyone still in Japan, I want you to try a little experiment. Next time you're over at your Japanese friend's place and they're watching some celebrity circle-jerk, wait for a commercial and turn to them and just ask "what is the name of the show we're watching right now?" In three years, I have never, ever seen anyone give the correct answer.

And so, Japanese TV, for sucking so consistently, for being so routinely obnoxious, and for extolling the absolute worst of Japanese culture, fuck you. Just... fuck you.

And try. Please, please just try.

Things I won't: Doctors

2010-08-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

This is the part in the farewell entries where the bile starts to build a little bid. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that there's not a single competent doctor in a thousand miles to take care of that. I mentioned in one of my first entries that everything in Japan is a cold. And boy, I was not lying.

Seriously.

Everything--and I mean everything--in Japan is a cold. EVERYTHING. In the case of my wife, she had mono and pneumonia misdiagnosed as colds. By comparison, I got lucky. Just a mis-diagnosis of food poisoning (twice) and the flu as colds. It's like the concept of science hasn't advanced past the point of illness originating from demons quarreling within your four humors. Just grope the patient a bit, stick a thermometer under their tongue, and then go into the office and toss a dart at the board and that's what the illness is. Except this is what the board looks like:

The blame, in large part, I think can be laid on the "you have three weeks of vacation from work every year, except you can never take them and also you have to work holidays and weekends for free" attitude that permeates corporate Japanese society, and therefore, society as a whole. Calling everything a cold basically acknowledges that, yes, there's something wrong inside your body, but not enough to prevent you from putting in 14 hours of overtime, so back to work, bitch.

Because Japanese people have been essentially programmed that "illness = cold," they don't even bother with getting a medical opinion even when they really need it. I actually saw one woman on the train moaning and wailing, clutching her stomach in agony and I suggested she go to the hospital. "No big deal," she said. "It's just a cold."

I was like "bitch, there's a head sticking out of your cooter!"

Japanese doctors are seriously something else entirely. There's a doctor shortage in Japan (because anyone remotely competent to practice medicine leaves the country for greener pastures), and a lack of competition has devolved into a clusterfuck of ineptitude and apathy. My wife has been suffering with pain in her neck and right arm for about a month and has been going to a rehab clinic to try and re-align her spine (apparently, even Japanese doctors think a cold localized in the neck and arm for five weeks is a bit suspicious). After attending rehab nearly every day for a month, a doctor approached her after her rehab session and said--and I quote--"we have no idea what's wrong with you. You can pay at the counter."

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a first-world country with a medical system that actually makes America's look like it has its shit together.

The worst part is, a few Japanese people I've talked to actually defend this Hippocratic Hiroshima by saying that it's not that Japanese doctors are inept, it's that they don't immediately swing for the fences and prescribe something to fix the problem. This is not true. In fact, prescribing medication is the one part of the job Japanese doctors do well. I received an average of about four medicines per prescription when I visited the doctor. The problem is that the medicine is worthless. Seriously. The only way Japanese medicine could possibly be more worthless is if they didn't bother removing it from the Tic-Tac box it came in so you couldn't even get the placebo effect.

But honestly, I think the problem is even more deeply rooted than the horrendous corporate culture, the fact that Japanese doctors all suck at their jobs, and that the medicine makes Children's Tylenol look like the bacta tank Luke hung out in at the start of Empire Strikes Back.

10 out of 10 Japanese doctors thought Luke was in here because he caught a really bad cold from the wampa

The fact of the matter is that if you you look hard enough, you can find the occasional doctor who didn't spend the entirety of med school snorting crushed-up suppositories off a tongue depresser. True story: I had suffered with that toe injury for six months before the doctor (and I use that term loosely) whom I had been seeing every day of that duration finally suggested I get surgery. I think he thought curing me would kill the goose that laid the golden pus-bubbles.

What followed the surgery was a long and painful four-week road to recovery.

A couple months ago, when my toe started acting up again and got about as bad as it had ever been in the space of a week, I went to the doctor, he looked at it, and gave me a look like "let's fucking do this" and cut into me that day. I was up and around less than a week later.

No, the problem lies deeper than the incompetence of the vast majority of Japanese medical professionals (and to prove that I've been around the block enough to cast judgement, I'm sporting in my wallet no less than 16 doctors office membership cards), or the regimen of sugar pills the prescribe. No, the problem stems from the language itself: from one single word, a word my first doctor said to me at the end of every single visit while I was struggling with that toe injury, and that nearly every other doctor had said to me before or since: "ganbare."

For those of you lucky enough not to know what this word means, it has no direct English translation, but "push yourself" or "do your best" are fairly close approximations. I know what you're thinking: "nothing wrong with a little word of encouragement," right? No, nothing at all. Except that's not what this word is used for. Because while the literal translation is "do your best," when it comes from someone in a position of authority or power, what it actually means is "you're on your own, chump."

Doctors in particularly love this one as a quick and easy substitute for actual medical advice. I've actually heard it so much I'm inoculated to it to it and it just sounds like a cough or an "um, uh..." to me now. So I suppose I should give credit where it's due: it's the only thing a Japanese doctor has ever successfully inoculated anyone against.

Bosses love this one, too. With just a word, it absolves them of all responsibility to provide assistance, explanation, advice, supervision, or even a physical presence outside of their corner office. "We have a lot of work to do this week and I really want to play Tetris, so you all have to work overtime. Ganbare."

You can even use it like my head teacher in a class this past week when the task is impossible! We were doing special fun lessons last week for the start of summer instead of the usual curriculum--just something for the kids to do before the start of summer vacation. One of the classes was for building Legos, and for the older kids, the task was to assemble a fairly complex Lego Technic set. If you've never seen one of these before, it's a pretty involved process.

The instruction manual outlines over 50 steps to turn your plastic pile into a mechanical marvel and they do not fuck around. If it's not perfect, your shit don't work. Cool stuff, though.

But halfway through, one of the students got stuck. The instructions called for a piece he couldn't find. He didn't lose it--I had been watching him and we turned the classroom upside-down. I went through the instructions with him and he had followed them perfectly. It was just missing from the original package. By this point, he was pretty upset and I got the head teacher to come into class to explain the problem. She tore his half-built Lego-kart apart piece-by-piece and told him to just rebuild it without the piece. And as he sat there looking about as shattered as his former go-kart, out came that God damn word: ganbare.

No.

No. Fuck you, no. That's a fucking cop-out. That's the biggest fucking cop-out in the entire culture. In the entire world. In the history of cop-outs. Ask someone to do the impossible, but it's okay just push yourself. Here's a thing that literally can't be done... do your best.

Okay, here's two sandwich bags, a handful of oak leaves, and a measuring cup. Build me a refrigerator. Ganbare.

Oh well. At least health insurance is cheap. If there's one good thing that can be said about Japan's healthcare system (which is coincidentally the exact number of good things that there are about it), it's that it proves the old adage correct: you get what you pay for.

Before I continue, I'd like to say that the following paragraph does not apply to the surgeon who took care of my second toe surgery (he also has never said ganbare). You, sir, actually rolled up your sleeves and did something.

So, Japanese doctors, for your terrible care, utter disregard for an entire century o fmedical science, and your worthless, one-word medical advice, I'd like to send you all a big, hearty "fuck you." Take those scalpels to your own throats and see how far you can launch a blood-rocket.

Ganbare.

Things I'll miss: Soda

2010-08-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

Without a doubt, the 'Pan is a land of unparalleled culinary acumen. Japan, despite its diminutive size and ethnic homogeneity, boasts as broad a palate of flavors far too sprawling to even begin to discuss here. Each region, each prefecture, each town sports a unique specialty to offer the hungry traveler.

The only thing deeper than the pool of culinary talent and delicacies they offer, is the pockets necessary to experience it all. Enjoying all the Japanese dining scene has to offer is as enriching as it is costly. If it's not the price tag of menu that's killing you, it's the cost of the trip itself.

Sadly, I leave the 'Pan hardly the gastric Perry I had originally set out to be--time and money both being the most treasured and scarce commodities in the life of an Eikaiwa teacher.

But.

Japanese flavors aren't only found in 2-star Michelin marvels or tucked away in small-town back-alleys. For the rest of us, a taste of Japan is only as far as the convenience store. Indeed, Japan's ample supply of soft drinks is the stuff of legend, at least for the worldly--or at least Internet-wise--fan of the 'Pan.

The journey of the soft-drink enthusiast in Japan is not unlike that of the restaurant-hunter: a voyage twisting through the sweetest, dizzying highs and the deepest, murkiest bile pits. And honestly, an experienced effervescent explorer such as myself prefers the latter category. Because when Japanese soda is good, it's great. But when it's bad, it's a brand-new kind of terrible that somehow defies all logic. It's a core-shaking, liver-clenchingly revolting experience unlike anything the West has to offer, out side of it's fascination with Justin Bieber (seriously, who is this guy? Do you have any idea how weird it is hearing about your own country's national phenomena third-hand is?)

So join me. Join me in my world of sugar-water.

Pepsi Ice Cucumber
This first one is very close to my heart, because it was the first Japanese novelty soda I ever tried. Released in the summer of 2007, Pepsi Ice Cucumber was the first soda to finally hit that elusive demographic of those who like vegetables, but don't find them carbonated or liquid enough. The result is about what you might expect: a mind-bending ride as your taste buds struggle to reconcile what they're experiencing with what millions of years of evolution dictates should not be possible in the natural world. The result? Not too sweet, not too strong, and not too good.

Rating: 3/5

Shortly before the genetically engineered super-clones manufactured by the seemingly legit but entirely corrupt SpliceCorp systematically slaughter and replace humanity en masse, one rogue scientist, possibly looking suspiciously like Jeff Goldblum, will bust in on a board meeting and pull out a bottle of Pepsi Ice Cucumber as proof that science can go too far.

Pepsi Baobab

No, that's not a typo. Pepsi Baobab is a newer addition to the Pepsi novelty line and is really only remarkable in the sense that in spite of the confusing name and the depiction of the Serenghetti at dusk on the bottle, there's really nothing remarkable whatsoever about this one. It's just a disappointingly plain and cola-like taste.

Rating: 2/5

Tastes like one part original Pepsi, one part ginger ale, and one part baobab (which I think is the stuff Rafiki smeared on Simba's face at the start of the Lion King).

Pepsi Azuki

Getting closer, here. Again, Pepsi went to the vault to figure out the most meaningless and obscure flavors to blend with carbonated water and high-fructose corn syrup and churned out this stuff. It has a strong, musky odor, like the scent of a man or perhaps a woman on one of those not-so-fresh-feeling days, and the pleasing color of what leaks out of a kidney badly in need of dialysis.

Rating: 3/5

This one isn't exactly good. It's a round, dull, throbbing, sweet flavor all the way down and lingers long after the fact. Drinking it, you can't help but feel like they accidentally skipped a step in the recipe, leaving you with a similarly round, dull, throbbing set of beverage-induced blue-balls (a term that coincidentally was introduced by PepsiCo when the decided to take Pepsi Blue off the shelves).

Pepsi Shiso

This is the first truly bad soda on this list. While Azuki felt like it was missing something and Ice Cucumber tasted way, way too much like it was supposed to, Pepsi Shiso set the bar really high for what a bad beverage could truly wreak upon the human soul. For the uninitiated, Shiso is a leaf not unlike peppermint, typically used as a garnish in Japanese cuisine. It tastes a bit like peppermint, even, but way stronger without tasting any mintier, if that makes any sense. Shiso was was never meant to be the star of the show, as this chemical monstrosity points out, like a toddler proudly showing off his latest masterpiece in the medium of porcelain.

Rating: -10/5

If I rip on other sodas later on in this entry and then give them a seemingly arbitrarily high score, here's the reason. This liquid tragedy hits your senses like a potable Sonny Chiba, pounding your tongue relentlessly, destroying every other trace of flavor, smell, or memory of a beautiful and pure world, and making you pay a buck for the privilege. And also an increased risk of diabetes. This stuff is pure existential dread in a bottle, filtered through Satan's ass-pubes. Pepsi Shiso is one of the few beverages on this list I simply lacked the fortitude to finish.

Pepsi Strong Shot

Seemingly Pepsi's attempt to make a a fashionably late arrival to the energy drink party, and with a price tag to match: over two bucks for a puny can. Energy drinks are more or less in a class all of their own and outside the scope of this article, but I felt it worthy of a mention, seeing as how Pepsi is the most prolific contributer to this list.

Rating: 2/5

Weak. At best. It tastes like flat Pepsi original, and I didn't feel any more alert after drinking it. Interesting side-note: it says on the can you have to be 15 to drink it. The only reason I could possibly think of for this is to make younger kids want to try it.

Skal Melon Cream Soda

After a fairly mediocre start by Pepsi, we're getting into Skal's line of products. When I first saw bottles of Skal on store shelves I was like, "what, the chewing tobacco guys?" But actually, these dudes have a solid, if unorthodox, beverage line. Melon Cream Soda was my most recent purchase of theirs, and it exceeded every expectation.

Rating: 5/5

Melon Cream Soda is everything a soft drink strives to be: sweet, refreshing, fizzy, flavorful, and loaded with sugar. You'd expect the melon flavor would be too subtle and would be overpowered by all the high-fructose corn syrup and sugar, but actually it's very pronounced, leaving a satisfying summer beverage, as refreshing to sip as it is to gulp.

Skal Ramune

This is the first Skal beverage I ever tried, and one of the rarer flavors. My first apartment had a vending machine that kept me supplied with these, right next to a beer machine. The two machines fought bitterly for my hard-earned change--and to say that a soft-drink regularly beat out a supply of cheap, readily-available beer from a machine that couldn't judge me is saying a lot.

I couldn't find my picture of Skal Ramune, so this a rough visual representation of what it tastes like

Rating: 4/5

A year ago, I'd have given this a 5, easily. After I moved out of that apartment, it was almost a year-and-a-half before I had another chance to try it, and it's not quite as good as I remembered it. Maybe it's because I've since gone on to try different and better sodas, but it's not the same head-over-heels love I once felt for the sugary-sweet, powder-blue, Japanese candy-flavored beverage. Like all Skal products, it loses its carbonation fast, and Skal Ramune seems to faster than any other. It's not nearly as good when it's flat. But, if you have a crack at this stuff, take it and don't hold back. Great drink.

Skal Grape Cream Soda

Another solid entry in the Skal line, but my least favorite of the bunch. I have to admit, with the exception of Skal Melon Cream Soda, I'm not entirely sold on Japan's (and Skal's, in particular) fascination with cream soda, partially because in Japan, "cream soda" actually means "milky."

A visual approximation of how you feel when drinking Skal Grape Cream Soda

Rating: 3/5

Not bad. It's a strong, refreshing grape flavor that has a nice, clean aftertase. I feel like it'd be better if it didn't look and taste like Children's Maalox, though. This is definitely one case where being a cream soda really holds the drink back.

Sweet Kiss

Along with Skal Ramune, this was the other drink that vied for my attention at my old apartment. These two were best buds, and at 100-yen a half-liter, they often went home together.

Seriously, this is what it was

Rating: 4/5

This one probably ranks unfairly high due to nostalgia, but this stuff really is designed to be enjoyed on a hot summer day in Nara. It's Japan's answer to Mountain dew, but is unfortunately much less common and honestly not as good. Again, it oges flat fast and the second that fizz is gone, Sweet Kiss basically defines the expression sugar-water, one shuddering, sphincter-clenching swig at a time.

The Final Fantasy Collection

There is no more ample metaphor for the modern Final Fantasy series than their soft drink line: saccharine, shockingly unsatisfying, and absolutely nothing you haven't already had before a million times. Also it's really expensive ($2 a can).

Dissidia Potion

Potion hit the shelves during the hype leading up to Dissidia's release and was almost criminally collectible. If you've never played it, Dissidia is Square's PSP Final Fantasy fighting game featuring the chief protagonist and antagonist of many of the first ten "numbered" FF games. And with 16 characters came 16 can designs, of which I got three. Two for Terra and Kefka from Final Fantasy 3/6, and one of Squall as a gift from a co-worker who apparently thought I was either retarded or gay.

Rating: 2/5

Potion tastes purple. There's no other way to describe it. It's carbonated purple stuff from the Sunny D commercials.

Final Fantasy XIII Elixir

This one was released in the hype leading up to Square's third motion picture, "Final Fantasy XIII," which was released exclusively for the PS3 and XBOX360. I bought one of afro guy because afro guy.

Rating: 2/5

Quick Japanese vocabulary lesson: In America, "cider" is pulpy apple juice that it's okay to get drunk on in front of your kids. In Japan, "cider" is kind of their equivalent to Sprite or 7UP, minus the lemon-lime flavor. There are many, many, many different brands of the stuff and it all tastes the same, which is to say it all tastes like Elixir. Totally unremarkable, and honestly a step down in effort from its predecessors, so I'm going to subtract one point for laziness, bringing the score down to a 1/5. But I'll add a point, since it's such an apt metaphor for FF13, bringing it back up to 2/5. Fun fact: despite having been released more than a year ago, Elixir is still collecting dust on store shelves. They seriously can't get rid of the stuff.

Dragon Quest Slime

I honestly bought this stuff just for the bottle. and then I found out that the sweet design was just a cheap plastic sleeve and felt totally ripped off, paying a whopping three bucks for a paltry amount of beverage, making this the most expensive drink on the list by a fair margin ($3 a bottle).

Rating: 2/5

Let it not be said that there is no truth in advertising. DQ Slime is exactly what the name implies: a thick, syrupy goop that tastes like you ran through the set of Ghostbusters with your mouth open. If you work in food service and the boss tells you to despise of an expired bag of Sprite syrup, and you cant bring yourself to waste it, you too can taste Dragon Quest Slime by mixing equal parts syrup and tap water. Just make sure you have someone on hand with an insulin shot ready.

Green Cola

Score another one for truth in advertising. An amber cola with a greenish tint, supposedly due to the addition of ginseng, but more likely due to an abundance of food coloring and nothing better to do with it.

Rating: 3/5

About as average as they come. It's just your run-of-the mill cola with a dash of ginseng.

CC Lemon

YES. Being a foreigner in the summertime in Japan can be difficult. For one thing, your scrotum leaks salt water like James Cameron's "Titanic" on rewind, and worse still, lemonade, as Americans understand it, never really caught on. CC Lemon is a radiant lighthouse of hope in a sea of ballsweat.

Rating: 4/5

CC Lemon boasts 70 lemons worth of vitamin C in a 500 mL bottle, but who gives a shit unless you're in the British Navy circa 1600. What really matters is that this stuff is good. It's just like carbonated lemonade. Sweet and sour, CC Lemon somehow strikes the balance that no Chinese restaurant ever could, and contains a lot fewer rat droppings.

Fanta

There's no way to even begin to do justice to the Fanta catalog in this one single update, so just believe me when I say that Fanta's soft drink line has many, many, many entries--and they're all good. Except...

Fanta FunMix

I imagine this ill-conceived amalgamation had an origin story similar to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but with much less pleasing results. Everything about this is an eyesore, from the clearly amphetamine-bender inspired bottle art to the broken-toilet-in-the-busiest-station-in-Tokyo color of the beverage itself.

Rating: 2/5

This stuff's a mess, and it's nothing you haven't already tasted a thous times filling your Big Gulp in a moment of 8-year-old eclecticism. What a disappointment.

Mets

"Beisbol been bery bery good to me." If you get that, by the way, leave a comment. Mets is the little drink that could. Whereas other drinks on this list, like Skal Ramune and Sweet Kiss, were better in hindsight because of my change in personal taste, Mets used to be better because of a change in volume. During the summer of 2008, Mets could no longer be bought in the standard 355 mL can, but instead could only be found in a stubby 250 mL bottle-can, possibly due to the global saddening efforts of the evil Dr. Mopey.

Rating: ~~5/5~~ 4/5

Dr. Mopey: Get in here, Moodswing, I need you!

Moodswing: Yes, Your Depressedness?

Dr. Mopey: Operation: Melted Ice Cream Cone is going perfectly, but there's still far too much joy in the world. At this rate I'll never darken all eight Pearls of Hope.

Moodswing: B-b-but, Dr. Mopey, picnic rainouts are up 23%, and there's bean a steady increase in lonely-puppy dogs in pet store windows! Our Grief-goons are out picking daisy petals to "he loves me not" status 'round-the-clock!

Dr. Mopey: It's not enough, Moodswing. We need something more. Something truly upsetting, like the time the scrappy hometown heroes lost the big game to the rich, well-organized team from up-town.

Moodswing: But sir, Sunnygrove High doesn't play Winthrop Manner Prep ever since the school system re-districted.

Dr. Mopey: I know that, you numbskull, it was an example! But I have a plan. Look through the crystal ball.

Moodswing: The Sore-Eye Scry? But why?

Dr. Mopey: Look at him, Moodswing. Look at that blissful smile as he sips that grapefruity nectar from the green-and-yellow can, partaking of that refreshing crispness, perfectly balanced to be not-too-sweet, but with a hint of citrusy tang. Look at him. Like he doesn't even live in a world of kittens with bandaged paws, or where Ms. Smiley's Fudge Shoppe isn't three weeks away from foreclosure.

Moodswing: Turn it off, Vile Prince of Prozac! Turn it off! Haunt me with these blissful visions no longer!

Dr. Mopey: Rob him of that joy, Moodswing. Shrink his distraction from this world of scraped knees and spilled milk. If you need me, I'll be meditating in the Gloom Room.

Moodswing: One question, Your Glowership, how much should the smaller size cost? Should there be a discount?

Dr. Mopey: No, Moodswing. Charge him the same.

Mets Wild Charge:

Here it is, and I saved the worst for last. As though Mets couldn't get any more patently offensive or any more clearly in cahoots with the League of Extraordinary Grumpymen, they heaped on the last final straw and then seventeen more bales upon the back of some poor farmer boy's lovable old camel, probably with some cute name like "Humperdink," crushing it pitifully and forcing Ma to sell the family farm to make room for a new parking lot for Winthrop Manner's Seal Clubbery.

Rating: -50/5

This stuff is so bad, I could barely finish a third of it. Following the mets de-bottle of '08, we though the worst was over. For two grueling years, we endured the outrageous prices, and it finally looked like all that hardship would mean something when a reasonably priced 500mL Mets product bearing the subtitle "Wild Charge" hit store shelves a couple months ago. Little did we realize the subtitle was referring to the haste with which you make for the bathroom after your first swig. It's like bobbing for grapefruits in a citrus farm's outhouse. As if the revolting, powdered grapefruit compound mixed with sugar-water flavor wasn't bad enough, it's artificial sugar-water, thanks to the 0-calorie guarantee on the label. This stuff hits your tongue like a freight train full of lemon-scent Pine-Sol and despair. Truly, truly a convincing argument against both the existence of a loving god and justice. An abomination of everything pure and good and decent in the world, Mets Wild Charge is the Anakin Skywalker of the soft drink universe. The Attack of the Clones Anakin. It is a horrible, horrible, horrible product.

Definitely pick some up if you're ever in the 'Pan.

Things I won't: Insulation

2010-07-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

Cold in the winter, hot in the summer. It's the story of life in the 'Pan, indoors and out. Japanese are peculiar in that they are quick to brag that Japan is a country with four seasons, often going so far as to doubt anyone else claims their own country can boast the same. At first I was puzzled as to why any culture would brag about something so trivial; akin to Foot Locker hanging a sign out front announcing "OUR SHOES HAVE LACES!"

But, like Squanto, many summers have I seen, and am wiser for it. I also have smallpox.

And after all this time, I've finally discovered the rea reason Japanese brag on their country offering four seasons: because indoors in Japan, there are only two. I call them "Frigid" and "Ballsy."

Frigid is, as the name might suggest, a rush of arctic hospitality greeting you at the door after a long day at work. A nutsack-shriveling walk from bed to the bathroom at 3AM. A bleak, hollow presence that hangs like a nightmare, or perhaps that girl in The Sixth Sense who threw up a mouthful of Jif, stealing away any trace of warmth your space heater bravely putters into the room.

Ballsy, is, again as the name might suggest, akin to spending six months in the jock strap of the world's least hygienic Yokozuna. Hot, humid, vinegary, miserable.

The existence of both can be attributed to a common source which can be found in the title of this entry and cannot be found anywhere else in this two-by-four seasoned country: insulation.

It wouldn't be so bad if the heating and air conditioning units weren't so God damn puny, while simultaneously being outrageously expensive. Or if people in Japan thought "central air" was something other than an airline.

But alas, no.

You know those rice-paper sliding walls in The Last Samurai or actually good movies set in Japan? That's apparently how far wall technology ever got here, because it might look like drywall, but it's about as good at blocking out sound or the elements as a mosquito net or similarly bad object at those things.

Every rise and fall in temperature, every flip of your neighbor's channel from a show where talentless celebrities scream and flail uselessly in front of a couple hundred slack-jawed idiots to a show that isn't the Yakult Swallows game, you can hear through those flimsy walls in crystal clarity. They should figure out how to make headphones out of the stuff; the audiophiles would eat it up. Because a food source is yet another thing walls in Japan are better at than being walls.

I'll be candid. I've been through some extreme temperatures before. Back in college, I was on the infamous "heat or eat" budget. And while stealing food from my minimum-wage part-time job certainly put pounds on my waist, it didn't keep food on the table, so "heat" was definitely out as an option. As was "air conditioning" and "not waking up wearing a quarter-inch-thick sheet of sweat." In the summers, the air was off. In the winters, the heat was set to a balmy 55F, just enough to keep the pipes from bursting. So I've been through the shit. None of it even comes close to the two-season tag-team that comprise a year in the 'Pan. Allow me to introduce our champions:

The Two Seasons:
Frigid
Weighing in at six months even and hailing from October to April, the Cold-and-Flu from Tohoku... FRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGID!

This one's a son-of-a-bitch. It's bad enough that it gets dark around 5PM and freezing drizzle is about as common as takoyaki stands in Kansai (writers note: takoyaki stands are very common in Kansai), but that's actually the good part! It's once you go home and settle in for the long night ahead that the shit really starts.

The lack of insulation in the walls means that the cold outside devours any semblance of ambient heat down to the last degree. Every night I'd come home, throw on some sweats, then throw on another set. Then, time for dinner: heating up some convenience store bento and frantically stuffing the piping noodles down my throat, chugging down watter to prevent any serious burns, in a display that would put former hot-dog champ Kobayashi to shame, racing thermodynamics to see who could ruin my meal worse.

After that, a long night of typing out E-mails or surfing the Internet, interrupted by plunging my hands down my pants.

To warm them up.

(Because friction produces heat)

Ballsy
From May to September, also weighting in at six months, the Sauna from Okinawa, BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL-SYYYYYY!

I saved the worst for last. And boy, is it ever.

As bad as spending the night in an ice box is, at least you can save a bit of coin by leaving the refrigerator unplugged (seriously). And if you don't mind the bulk, you can always throw on another layer. But when the weather gets hot enough to discover the adhesive properties of scrota (that's the plural of scrotum), there's only so many layers you can take off.

Nowhere was this problem more evident than in my first apartment in Osaka which, seemingly in accordance with the laws of douchebaggery, came with a small air-conditioning unit. With an automatic three-hour kill-switch.

See the problem here?

Again, the problem boiled (see what I did there?) down to a lack of insulation. During the day, I could kick the thing on when I got tired of sitting naked in a tepid pool of my own sweat in the dark, and once the thing had an opportunity to rev up, it could be fairly comfortable--dare I say even pleasant--in my room. Once the kill switch hit, if my reflexes were good enough that day, I could just turn it right back on before all the cool air could rush out through the useless, useless walls (I'm seriously talking seconds here).

The ladies don't call me "Quick Draw" for nothing.

I remember one summer I got up to take a particularly influential aristocrat (a mighty duke, if you will). Couldn't have been gone more than five minutes, but in the time I was gone, the automatic shutoff kicked in and my room's coolness disappeared faster than acid-wash jeans.

Perhaps I wouldn't have been as frustrated if I had been better rested. But alas, the three-hour limit ensured only three hours and one minute of uninterrupted shut-eye every night.

My fellow 'Mericans, you don't know how good you've got it.

And so Japan, sucks to your (lack of) insulation. And your two seasons, too!

Things I'll miss: the arcades

2010-07-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

There you sit, surrounded on all sides by sweaty, smoking, middle-aged Japanese businessmen, furiously flapping away at their joysticks, paying 100 yen a pop for the privilege. Kinda makes you wish you were at the arcade.

Japan's arcade (or "game center," for the culturally initiated) scene is unlike anything else in the word--particularly the American arcade scene. Crowds pack the smoky corridors after working hours to let off steam (you can tell it's steam because of how heavy the air gets in there). Fighting games, particularly, are the altar of choice in this geek mecca. The city of Akihabara, near my old apartment in Tokyo, plays host to the upper one percentile of the upper one percentile of fighting gamers in the world. Tekken, Virtua Fighter, any flavor of Street Fighter. Pick your poison, drop in your coins, and marvel at how quickly the money goes.

A number of theories have been tossed around these humble Internets of ours, of varying validity, as to why the Japanese arcade scene is so lively--and why its members seem to crush ours in virtually any competitive fighting game in international competition. That "they are robots" is, in particular, a strong contender, given the absence of seemingly any capacity for love or, indeed, emotion of any kind--as well as anything resembling a soul. However, I find that there may yet be a better theory: a combination of influencing factors to explain Japan's dominance on the sticks.

1. It costs a buck to play
Quick: when was the last time you got really, really pissed off the last time you burnt toast? Or mac and cheese? Or am I the only asshole that fucks up noodles and yellow powder?

Now how pissed would you be if you fucked up the turkey on Thanksgiving? Or accidentally smashed all your Easter Eggs? Or dropped the dinner you just made for your hot date on the floor, and knew she was only coming as a favor for a friend, and you really liked this girl and this was your one big chance to impress her and now you look like a clumsy idiot and she says she's okay with pizza but you know she's just counting down the minutes until she can say she has to leave and you're stuck sitting in the dark alone at 2 in the morning jerking off to the models on the Home Shopping Network because you forgot to pay your cable bill?

Why the difference in attitudes? In both cases, it's just food, right? But in the latter situation, there's more: the investment of effort and money.

If you've ever been in a Japanese arcade, you know how quickly you can burn through a crisp 1000 yen note (or more). Japanese gamers invest anywhere from two to four times as much cash into a single play at the machine. Meaning half to a quarter of the margin of error. With each game holding considerably higher value than the American equivalent, the incentive to make that value last rises accordingly.

2. Gamer ID cards
While a fairly recent introduction in the American gaming lexicon, the idea of BP (or "battle points") tracking a player's progress is still, in America, restricted to XBox Live or Playstation Network. In Japan, however, players can buy a card for 500 yen that carries their alias and can be inserted into any machine for its respective game. This gives each game an additional intangible value--in addition to a monetary one. With each win, a player's BP climbs--or falls with a loss.

This plays not only on the competitive psyche of the average fighting gamer, but the hoarding and collecting instinct of the nation that gave us "Gotta Catch 'Em All."

3. A ~~gaming~~ commuter culture
In the US, it's really not that cool to be a gamer. In spite of the strides made by gaming companies and consoles this generation--largely thanks to the Wii--there's still a stigma attached to adult gamers that falls somewhere between "30-year-old bed-wetter" and "registered sex offender." In Japan, the stigma... doesn't exist.

For some reason, it's just not that big a deal

Not that there's a wholesale embracing of obsessive gamers or gaming, but rather a tacit acknowledgement of gaming as an acceptable pastime. And in a country where an hour-long train commute to work is on the lower end of the spectrum, pastimes are at a premium. On any given train ride, you're bound to see a junior high-schooler plugging away at Monster Hunter, flanked by a housewife studying English on her DS and a businessman grinding a few levels in Dragon Quest IX on his.

4. The abundance of novelty

Japan is a nation founded on novelty, or so said the placard at the feet of the 59-foot-tall robot statue in Odaiba.

Suddenly, fessing up to spending last weekend playing Fallout 3 doesn't seem so geeky

The concept of "flavor of the month" is a concept taken to dizzying new heights in the 'Pan (more on that in a later installment), and the arcade is no exception. When you think of the American arcade scene, what do you picture? A couple light-gun shooters, a couple shmups, maybe a racing game. And a whole lot of cobwebs.

In Japan?

A pirate ship shooter--complete with an actual pirate ship you sit in that rocks with the tide and cannon-fire.

A Harley-Davidson racer with a life-size hog rumbling beneath you as you twist the accelerator.

A pogo-stick racer.

A Japanese traditional drum game encircled by a candy-colored halo of guitar, DJ, dance, and rhythm puzzle games.

A game where you climb into a pod and pilot a giant robot.

A game where the sole purpose is to angrily flip a table over and cause as much damage as possible.

A shooter with a built-in elevator door used not only to escape bad guys, but as a framing device for the dialog scenes. And also the greatest name for a video game ever.

And enough claw games to shrivel Inspector Gadget's robo-ween.

All of these things have nothing to do with Japan's dominance in fighting games. So why mention them? Because they're fucking awesome.

And.

They serve one very distinct, valuable purpose that no arcade in the US (that I'm aware of) fills: they get people to come inside.

And that's the thing. As we in America are seeing with the new wave of Wii-grannies (gran-wiis?), a lot of people aren't initially interested in sitting down and playing a heavily ~~obnoxious button masher~~ technical fighter like ~~Tekken~~ Street Fighter or Blazblue. They need a hook. They need to be sold on games as a source of entertainment, and not just entertainment but lasting entertainment, before being enticed into committing the necessary time and money into becoming a competitive player.

Sure, the guys in Japan who consistently win tournaments probably didn't need any encouragement to decide to grind out thousands of hours on Street Fighter, but of the tens of thousands of good-to-great players they had to practice on to become the best, yeah, I'm willing to bet more than a few were just guys looking for a cheap alternative to pachinko that wouldn't cost them their hearing years down the road.

I have to be honest: for everywhere else where novelty falls flat, disappoints, or flat-out pisses me off in Japan--whether it be from the corn and mayonnaise pizza, the mayonnaise-themed cocktail bars, or other, non-mayonnaise themed bullshit

You know what I mean

but the arcade is one place where it really works. Corn and mayonnaise pizza is still food; it has to at least be palatable to be a success (it isn't). But games are entertainment. A distraction from the ordinary.

A novelty.

That's all they ever have to be.

And so, Japanese arcades: good job. You made my three years in Japan a better experience.

The last month

2010-07-07T01:36:00.000-07:00

I'm on the way out now.

It's an introspective time, knowing that in just a shade under four weeks I'll be back in 'Merica, detached from everything that defined the last three years of my life. So, in celebration of the remaining four weeks, I'm adding two new articles each week: one regarding something I'll miss about Japan, the other something I'll be glad to leave behind. By the end of the month, I hope to compile a lasting tribute and anthology to my time here and everything I've learned about this mysterious Eastern land and its culture. Think of it as the Yin and Yang of my time in Japan. Actually, bad example; think of it as the sweet and sour of my time in Japan.

I submit to you you part one of my eight-part series: "Bad and Good Stuff: The North and South Koreas of Japan"

Home alone

2010-06-30T00:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

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 talen tless 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

2010-06-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

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 carnal act. The former, 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 definitively about women for women, I pride myself on at least being able to recognize good writing. 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. From my limited experience with the show, 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, with 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

2010-06-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

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.

Money money money money money money (money!)

2010-05-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

I'll let you all in on a little secret: I wasn't always poor.

Oh yes, I remember it fondly. There was a time where my cup runneth over with skrilla. A time when, with the flair of my debit card, the world opened before me, my tacit oyster. With each paycheck came the promise of weeks and months of childhood ambitions not unfulfilled--but simply waiting, hungry for that Pavlovian jingle of a pocketful of newly-minted 500 yen coins. That moment when the opportunity would finally arise when I could proudly retort "actually Mom, you can spend the entire weekend at the arcade playing Time Crisis," or, "actually, spending $150 on a hot sauce collection is the opposite of that thing you said," or "I'm trying but the coins keep slipping out of the G-string!"

Not scrapping and surviving. Good times.

Being a manchild in his 20s, I thought that the world insisted discipline and restraint only from those who, you know, actually had some to give. But, like nice ladies at soapland, life often conspires to milk you dry, even if you've got nothing left to give.

I've mentioned before that Mrs. Merican and I are currently in the process of filling out the necessary paperwork, jumping through the necessary hoops, and reaching the necessary arounds to receive her United States permanent resident visa. What I may not have mentioned is that this exercise in bureaucracy comes at the convergence of the most expensive anythings either of us have ever done in our lives.

In the past six months, one or both of us have: bought engagement rings, moved across the country, shipped a new computer to the United States (and promptly had it lost, and are now currently waging war against our countries' respective postal services to get the insurance money), bought wedding rings, been unemployed (one of us, twice!), had surgery (one of us, twice!), purchased a ticket to the United States, paid for an initial visa interview, paid for a background check from a foreign country, paid for an extensive medical checkup and vaccination regimen required for the visa application, and in another three weeks, we'll be heading up to Tokyo to pay another few hundred dollars for a second visa interview. Oh, and we'll also be paying our annual income tax.

It's almost like they don't want foreigners moving to the US.

Twice this year, I have gone to the bank to withdraw funds down to the last dollar. It's dangerous and exciting, like pooping with the lights off.

It also stinks.

I'm a financial Rocky to the world's Ivan Drago. Each time beating the count just to find myself flat on my back again.

There's a metaphor for Capitalism to be found in there somewhere, but for the life of me I can't reach it.

Crunching a few quick numbers, it looks like we're going to be able to make it through all this and back to the States just in time for the wedding, so long as we don't have to pay an overweight baggage fee. This should be no problem, however, since our pockets will be completely empty.

I'd be lying if I said this wasn't causing some amount of tension in the relationship. After all, it's a lot easier to appreciate each others' company when spending twice as much on train fare isn't a significant blow to your budget.But, in spite of all the bran damaeg I've no doubt incurred at the receiving end of the Perestroikan pugilist's meaty mitt, I honestly rate this time as some of the best we've ever spent together and indeed, some of the best time I've ever spent in Japan.

Really.

Japan is a weekender's paradise, and it honestly demands very little of a sightseer's budget. Sure, you could do one of those fancy bus tours, getting ferried to and fro as the chirpy lady at the front of the bus says "arigatou gozaimashita" for the four-hundred-thirty-fifth time in between telling you all about the history of the particular type of asphalt the bus is driving on. Or, you could pack a lunch in a dainty basket, toss a dart at a map of the rail system, and roll.

Dainty.

There is so much to see and do in Japan. So much going on that if you spend all your time and money trying to buy yourself a good time in this country, you'll miss all the best parts. Hardly seems sincere coming from a guy who met his wife at Universal Studios Japan, but for every weekend spent forming a heart with our hands for the picture at the end of the Indiana Jones Adventure ride at Tokyo DisneySea, dozens more are spent perched atop a boulder in Hirakata's city park enjoying a picnic, or strolling, fingers intertwined, through the bustling side-streets of Shinsaibashi, or some other romantic shit that I'm good at.

You can't see it but she's actually crying in this picture

Opportunities to find the best of Japan for the price of a train ticket are never more than an accident away. And unlike how it was your for parents, it one won't haunt them for eighteen years. One of my first memories of a truly good time in Japan was spent with my old co-worker in Kyoto at the mercy of a bus schedule and his better-than-mine-I-guess-I'll-trust-it Japanese. On a pocketful of change, we drank in the sights and sounds of a city locked in time. Monuments of a bygone era standing out like pushpins on a map. But for all of Kyoto's raw, uncompromising historic beauty, there was one place, one moment not on any tourist map that I remember more vividly than anything else that day.

There, between the muddled scamper from bus stop to bus stop, lost in a web of quiet, meandering paths, we shuffled past an old man sweeping leaves with an old, traditional straw broom and into a humble cemetery. And along the cobblestone and gravel among the headstones and memorial planks, puzzled by the shooters of cheap convenience store liquor dotting the burial plots, we walked. A place so ordinary and unassuming to everyone except the two very white guys having a very white-guy-in-a-foreign-country moment. Without a brochure or tour bus in sight, we found the real Japan.

It didn't cost a cent.

Just FYI, I don't lose man-points for this

2010-05-26T00:06:00.000-07:00

What's your guilty pleasure?

Seriously. What is it? Go ahead and share in the comments and don't be shy. I live in Japan; this entire country is a guilty pleasure. Sign in anonymously, use a fake E-mail address. Go ahead and share, because today I'm going to share my guilty pleasure, and it's only fair that you share back. Although I'll say right now that if your guilty pleasure includes any combination of the words "furry" and "ball-washing," you can get the fuck out.

In this blog, I've written a couple dozen pages about gaming. Yeah. Wow, right? A couple dozen. Suck it, Cronkite. I've mentioned a couple of the all-time greats of gaming--monuments of creativity in the medium, giants upon whose shoulders the modern hits stand. Final Fantasy 3/6, Fallout 3, the Street Fighter series, Kirby's Adventure, and so forth. These games aren't just important to the medium, they're personal passions of mine. Each of the games I just mentioned were more than just diversions, they captured my imagination, inspired me to think more analytically about a medium that has, for the most part, seen its greatest moments next to a dying fir tree on December 25th than in any sort of meaningful critical reception.

But there is another that dominated my childhood. Sure, it never defined a genre the way Street Fighter II did, nor the hype of Mass Effect 2, nor did it have the mark of an instant classic like Mega Man II. Just a modest game with a modest goal.

And a princess who wanted to be where the people are.

At least you understand me, Ariel

I know what you're thinking: "ha ha, okay, no what is it really?" Boys and girls, this is really it. Well, that and furry ball-washing. Yep. Outside of Megas Man (Mega Men?) 2 through 4, I daresay The Little Mermaid was, far and away, my most rented NES game. And with good reason.

It was good.

Not great, but good.

You, and by you of course I mean I, played as Ariel, youngest daughter to King Triton (and honestly, watching that movie again, you've got to feel at least a little bit sorry for the guy--he's the king of the entire God damn ocean and no one cuts the guy any slack), and aspiring arm-candy for Prince Eric. Make it to the end of the game in one piece and you're rewarded by getting to spend the rest of your days giggling and twisting your hair by his side. Being that I was like seven years old when this game hit store shelves, I think I can be forgiven for spending my recreational hours pretending to be a 16-year-old fishlady with dreams of inter-species matrimony.

Although that would go a long way to explaining the five gigabyte "fishmonger hussies" folder on my hard drive.

I'd like to gut and clean her if you know what I'm saying

So what makes The Little Mermaid for NES so good?

Probably the graphics, right?

Honestly, it's a hard thing to nail down. The Little Mermaid is basically a side-scroller. Ariel follows a linear, winding path from point A to point B. The undersea environments give her an effortless free range of motion. Unlike most games with underwater elements (Sonic, Mario, Kirby, TMNT, etc.), Ariel doesn't have to struggle against the current to stay afloat.

The novelty of being unrestricted by gravity cannot be overstated. Back in 1991 when The Little Mermaid came out, most games allowed little movement along the Y-axis, save for shmup genre, and even then the forced screen-scrolling and constant assault of enemies and bullets prevented you from truly enjoying that freedom. The controls do feel a bit "floaty" in trying to build forward momentum, but are generally responsive and allow you to feel completely at home inside a slender, nubile teen girl's body.

Just like I would have if my parents had let me go to Thailand that summer before college.

Attacking in Little Mermaid is reminiscent of Bubble Bobble. By hitting the A button, Ariel swishes her tail, launching bubbles at her enemy, encasing them in a bubble that can be carried around and thrown at other enemies. Yes, Mario has fireballs, Kratos has his chain-blades, Mega Man had... Christ, what didn't he have? And Ariel? Ariel has bubbles. And swishing.

It's almost like Capcom forgot all about how violent the source movie for this game actually was.

Not pictured: the bow of a ship (it's lodged in her belly)

Starting out, the swish-bubbles are (rightfully) a pathetic weapon. It takes two swishes (oh God my dick is wilting) to encase even the paltriest of enemies in a bubble, and larger enemies aren't even affected. However, scattered around the stages are power-ups for the range and strength of your, sigh, swish-bubbles, allowing you to trap increasingly larger enemies with less effort. Most, if not all, of these power-ups are locked away in chests that can only be opened with conch shells, making the transportation and strategic use of these shells into a fairly challenging puzzle element toward the later stages of the game. At least it was challenging when I was seven.

Oh Jesus what do I do now

The game itself is very short: only five levels and six bosses. Hell, at seven years old I was burning through the entire game in a half-hour. In a way, though, that's part of the charm of The Little Mermaid. There's no bullshit. The side-scrolling and puzzle elements are strong enough on their own to compel you through everything the game has to offer and have fun while you're doing it. The game is designed well enough not to overstay its welcome and at the same time not be so short you feel ripped off like when that "doctor" sold me estrogen.

In my defense, it clearly says "Mother's First Choice" right there on the bottle

In the end, it's not a great game, but it's really good. Much of the charm and novelty has, unfortunately, been lost in the ocean of time. The controls are a bit dated and a lot of the novelty and innovation has been somewhat eroded by the fact that it came out almost two decades ago. Even so, it's still a hell of a lot better than most of the "girl games" you'll find available on shelves today (and honestly a lot less sexist and vaguely offensive, and considering this game and its source material are about a girl only being able to find happiness and self-worth only through marriage, that's saying a lot). But, if you find it at a used game store or can find the time to fire it up on your favorite emulator and look at it through the right set of eyes, you might be able to see it for the treasure it really is:

...a banded, bulbous snarfblatt.

Ass warfare

2010-05-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

There exists in Japan a brand of class-warfare unknown in the West.

No, I'm not referring to the wholesale subjugation of Koreans and the "Barakumin" caste--holdovers of a time long past that continue to be wielded like a club against the "less-than-desireables" in modern-day Japan.

Nay, I speak of a struggle that affects all of us here in Japan. Young and old, rich and poor, Gentile and whatever the hell it is they worship around here. I think it's supposed to be a deer or something? Shit, I dunno.

This guy looks legit

Our struggle stems from the loftiest seat of power. Whether we choose to acknowledge the fact that our behinds are besieged by an ass-aristocracy that rob us of commodal comfort where we Jesus this is tiring I'm talking about toilets.

If you want to know all there is to know about crapping in comfort in the 'Pan, take a seat and I'll provide the reading material. Settle in, this is looking to be a two-flusher.

As I'm sure anyone with an Internet connection is well-aware, Japan is among the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Prior to the iPhone turning the mobile market upside-down, Japan was the global leader in the mobile market, and still is on the bleeding edge of feature-phone technology and pioneered the use of 3G services on a massive scale. This is the country that gave us the Walkman, the Nintendo, was at the forefront of solar panel technology before finally being usurped by Germany in 2008, and rendered love obsolete.

And yet, the same country, opts to shit in this:

Behold your personal hell

It's a God damn porcelain hole in the ground, colloquially referred-to as a "squatter." It barely flushes when it works and I don't know why this always happens but the guys who use the squatter before me never flush their poop. And it's never like an ordinary duke, either. I swear I will never understand the shape of the Japanese sphincter because the dootie always looks like really cheap rope or something. You know, all thin and spindly? What are you eating guys, spider webs?

Not to mention the kind of workout you get while, as the name implies, squatting over these things. Like a mad scientist who specializes in baby robotic barnyard animals, you must have calves of steel. Sure, you get a little bit of support if you need it--you can wrap a hand around the stainless steel railing on the wall that every other person who has shat in that toilet all day has used like some kind of stripper-pole for E. coli.

And that brings me to my next point: as anyone who has been to Japan for any meaningful duration can attest, Japanese are crazy about hygiene. We're talking about a country where, at the hospital, you must first remove your shoes and switch into slippers to go into the operating room, walk 5 meters, and switch slippers again before finally being allowed to enter for realsies. You know, just in case it didn't take the first time.

We're talking about a country that, during the height of the swine flu pandemic, bought out every last box from pharmacies across the country, and when the stores sold out, scalpers sold cases online for over $1,000.

And yet, many bathrooms in Japan (particularly those in the most crowded areas, such as train stations), do not offer toilet paper. Sure, a lot of those places have a dispenser at the front of the bathroom from which you can buy toilet paper--but not all of them. If it's an emergency, you'd better have an eagle eye heading into the stall, lest you leave with a brown one.

Even more do not offer hand soap. This is basic hygiene, fellas. This is the sort of stuff they figured out in the 1800s.

And yet.

And yet, Japan offers scatological amenities befitting the incandescent ass of Hirohito, for those with the coin to afford it--or who are fortunate enough to work in a building or visit a restaurant that furnishes it.

This thing...

...controls this thing

Read 'em and weep. Boasting automatic lid, automatic flush, self-heating seat, self-illuminating bowl, bidet, ambient water-trickling-sound-to-cover-your-shameful-deed (not joking), and a remote sporting more features than the holiday season Sharper Image catalog, this is the '67 Corvette of the fecal freeway (skid marks not included).

Self-heating. Self. Motherfucking. Heating. Do you know how long that has been a dream of mine?

Neither do I, but if I had to guess it was probably the first winter after I discovered jerking off or possibly when I discovered that if you hide it in your pocket going in, no one can judge you for playing Game Boy while making doo-doo.

Words cannot describe the schoolboy-on-Christmas squealing that followed when we moved in to my wife's dad's place and I found out his shitter was rocking one of those self-heating seats. Seriously. Like an terrified sea otter on helium.

Some guys sneak out of bed in the middle of night to have affairs. Me? My first month here, my "other woman" was named Lady Toto Toastybottom.

And if you're really lucky, after you're done, you have this to look forward to:

Christ, my bathtub isn't this nice

This thing is a dream machine--man's greatest substantive contribution to sanitation since penicillin. A sink with automated faucet and soap dispenser, and combination UV sanitizer and blow-dryer all-in-one. I mean, like, what? You take the subway and you're basically one step up from using a garden hose, but you work in an office with your own personal shitter where at least you know who all the filth belongs to and you get this thing? How is that a possible thing that can happen?

Truly, there is no justice in this world.

Those decadent, feculant, poo-tocrats in their towers of glass and steel have these things to retire to when nature calls, while we working-class peons have little better than troughs to pee-in. It's not right.

Anyway, I'll spare you any more of my proctological posturing about the plight of the powder-room proletariat. I heard a flush, and I just got Mega Man X3 for my PSP.

Meat slurry

2010-05-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

There are moments etched into the collective consciousness of men of honor rising to a challenge. Moments that test courage, define careers, and that live forever. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Michael Jordan's flu game, JFK's handling of the Cuban Missile crisis, Babe Ruth calling his shot, MLK's I Have A Dream.

Unforgettable moments of time, flawless and crystalline, glimmering in the cosmos of human history, everlasting and immutable.

Last October, I had mine.

I mean, yeah, the Cuban Missile crisis was pretty important, too

Such opportunities often only deign to test a man's quality once. Pass or fail, that is the moment that changes the course of a life. And yet, on Monday, May 17th in the year of our Lord 2010, the gentle hand of fate pointed its finger my way a second time. There was still work to be done.

Huh... that doesn't look too bad. In fact it looks prett-

No burger too big, no indulgence too great.

Look on my works ye mighty and despair!

Playing for the wrong team: Life outside the big four

2010-05-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

For anyone who hadn't heard the news regarding Geos--one of the original "Big Four" eikaiwa--declared bankruptcy a few weeks ago. Good news in the short term for anyone at the top of the food chain in the "Cautiously Optimistic Three," bad news for, well, everyone else. With the original top banana, Nova, going bust in 2007, the reputation of eikaiwa and their teachers has fallen considerably. Imagine the collective sigh of relief in the fast-food industry if McDonald's suddenly tanked overnight upon health inspectors discovering the supposed two all-beef patties in your Big Mac were actually fetal mice.

You know, hypothetically

And then the butt-clenching anxiety of the sudden realization that now, all that scrutiny is on you, Burger King. Or you, Subway. And especially you, KFC.

Aww... you know I can't stay mad at you

At a time like this, it's nice to work outside the constraints of the "Big Four." As Bob Dylan or perhaps a Snapple label once said, "threedom is freedom." If that's true, you wouldn't believe how liberating it is to be this far down on the totem pole. It's not that my school is small, necessarily. We're doing okay for ourselves just shy of 200 students. It's just that we're not, you know, making money.

Is it because we're bad at what we do? Is it because we don't charge enough? Or maybe because we accept aluminum foil instead of currency?

I'm going to throw a figure out there:

92%.

Thank you for reading.

Yes, 92%. Without any scientific backing, research, or justification of any kind, this is my thesis: 92% of people either suck at their jobs or aren't paid enough to care.

During my time at a fast-food chain, there were perhaps one or two employees that actually tried. Who actually cared enough to make the customers happy. The rest of us stole bacon when the manager was away.

Because all of us, regardless of how justified we were(n't), didn't really care how well the dishes were washed or if the food was even being stored at the proper temperature. Because fuck it, if they really cared, they'd be paying us more than $6.50 an hour. And now realize that this is probably true of virtually every fast-food restaurant you visit.

It would be awesome if this were just the fast-food industry because hey, free bacon, but everyone from expensive restaurants in Japan to the SEC to NASA phones it in. It's the reason Japanese TV is a cesspool. Just the same 30 or so "famous" people sitting around and bullshitting and eating on camera every single day, because that's easy to produce. Writing scripts, editing video, and building sets is hard. On many channels in Japan, you can watch for an entire day without seeing a single line of scripted dialogue.

Japanese "comedians" do entire sets--make entire careers--around screaming, making "funny" noises, and making faces for five minutes. Because writing a routine and practicing to perfection is difficult, but standing up and acting like a drunk homeless person is easy, especially when the everyone in the 30-man circle-jerk shares the same unspoken agreement to laugh and pretend to be entertained for everyone else, no matter how untalented.

So where I'm going with this? Take a good, hard look at the eikaiwa industry. Or hell, go to Google and look up any random eikaiwa. Go to the first page and what do you see?

Probably kids. Fresh out of college, fleeing their respective countries for the Far East looking for a year of paid vacation. In most cases, this is the majority of every school's teaching staff. Most of these companies are marketing good-looking white people as much or more than English education. Most sites won't tell you a thing about their curriculum, their teaching methods, their qualifications, or any proof that they can even teach. Because it's so, so much easier to take a few well-lit, generously angled pictures of white people holding up a textbook and playing monkey-at-the-zoo than it is to hire people with any sort of qualifications or even a basic interest in teaching.

Hiring trained monkeys is easy, hiring qualified teachers is difficult. Just ask McDonald's.

Not too many qualified teachers there, are there? Check and mate, reader. Check and mate.

Even at my own school now outside the "Big Four" clusterfuck, I constantly hear the Japanese staff speaking in Japanese to the kids, spending half the class just shooting the shit and talking about boys and pretending to be fifteen years younger. Or when I ask the manager how I should teach a class I've never taught before and was only informed of it an hour before the class was scheduled and the basic answer is "just fill time." I've taught here long enough and at enough different schools and met enough teachers to corroborate this that I know these aren't isolated incidents.

There are no standards in this business. It's making me lazy. It's making us all lazy.

When I left the security of the "Big Four" and took this new job, I was worried I was playing for the wrong team. I'm starting to wonder if I'm playing the wrong sport.

I'd say the odds are about 92%.

Torture porn: the worst genre or the worst genre?

2010-05-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Far be it from me to break with the tradition that video game blogs have of accompanying the mention of Roger Ebert with the wringing of fists and the swearing of Klingon blood oaths, but this article actually has nothing to do with his controversial position that video games aren't art. Instead, Ebert garnered an eyebrow raise from me with his review of no-and-no-half stars to Human Centipede.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what the makers and proprietors of this shlock want. The second the most widely known and respected critic in the entire world gave Human Centipede the review of unmitigated shock and disgust they were angling for, he gave it legitimacy. Which is one thing I have over Ebert: no one respects my opinion, much less knows or even cares who the fuck I am.

And honestly, I still can't believe I'm even doing this genre critique/review for two reasons: first, I don't want this movie to earn a cent because my review caused someone to go to the theater to see what I'm all butthurt about, astronomical though those odds must be. And second, I seriously can't believe it. I just can't. After being exposed to this movie last night, I woke up this morning with a strange sense of denial about the whole thing. Like, I can't actually believe this movie even really exists. I mean, I know it does. I'm looking at it right now. It's clear as day. I see the title, I see the screen, and yet it just feels like it can't really actually be a thing. A thing that millions upon millions of dollars were spent to make. This must be how people feel when they realize they've won the lottery. The rape lottery.

So step aside, Ebes; let an amateur handle this.

I didn't always hate the torture porn genre. In fact, there was a point where I defended it. There was a point where I thought labeling it "torture porn" missed the point. After all, if you want to make an omelet, you've got to brutally rend a few eggs. Of course, at the time I was also defending better movies.

To wit, I will defend Saw--the movie, not the franchise--to the death, even if it means being eaten alive by a horde of angry scarabs unless I can bite my own fingers off in 60 seconds, that I may never again type another harsh word about Kevin Greutert.

Saw, and its spiritual predecessor Se7en, actually had something to say. Saw's three principal characters were deeply flawed but fundamentally likable people in horrendous circumstances. Adam and Lawrence find themselves trapped in Jigsaw's human experiment, while detective Tapp can generously be called "obsessed" with bringing Jigsaw to justice. Adam and Lawrence both harbor a dark past of secrets and lies, condemned to play the game for "not valuing life." It's a punishment and an offer of a cure--a second chance at life--all they have to do is survive Jigsaw's game.

That's it. That's all there is. No secret pasts, no outlandish justifications or sob stories, no flashbacks to "the time before I became a villain." Just two guys chained in a room and only one key to salvation. And a ticking clock.

From the moment we are introduced to these characters, we become judges, arbiters of a twisted morality. We can cheer for one or both of these men to overcome their foibles and co-operate and win the game and their freedom, or we can cheer for them to be crushed. It's Jigsaw's warped sense of objectivist morality and survival instinct or redemption.

And as for the blood--there's plenty, to be sure. But honestly, go back and watch Saw or even Saw II again. There's actually not that much. A lot of scenes are gut-wrenchingly difficult to watch because of the anticipation of something being done, not in the act itself. Adam and Lawrence are given the opportunity to free themselves of their shackles by cutting through their own feet. It's a gruesome decision that stirs in the background of every decision and escape plan, and the tension ramps to a head at the critical moment of the live-or-die decision. Horror is a guillotine poised to strike; torture porn is watching the execution and then the severed head being bashed with croquet mallets for 90 minutes.

More than the threat of inevitability is the aftermath. The murderers of horror movie legend all had more than one masterpiece, each of them linking the story to an inevitable climax. I can think of few better examples than Leland Orser, who was in Se7en for all of a minute-and-a-half, and I still rate his screen-time as more shocking and memorable than virtually any other scene in the movie.

If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about

A strong script and good actors convey way more than all the red dye and corn syrup the effects department could whip up. When viewing gore on the silver screen, it's easy to create a barrier between what you're watching and what really exists. We know special effects when we see them. But good actors conjure emotions, impulses, twitches, memories, mannerisms--the stuff of humanity--and bring that composite to life. The above scene from the police station interview room comes from a dark place in the mind of someone who has been forced to do a thing too rotten to comprehend. Had we seen it ourselves, we'd be grossed out and maybe avoid red meat at the dinner table for a couple weeks, but this brief scene shows us more than we wanted to know. It's something that will never, ever go away.

Oh, wait, isn't that exactly what John Doe wanted? Wow, it's almost like there's a compelling story here.

Compare Saw and Saw II to Hostel and you see why it's so necessary for a decent torture porn movie to have an ethos. Saw was an intriguing premise because the characters were likable enough to want to see them succeed, but flawed enough that you don't want them to weasel out of it too easy. Hostel, by contrast, is a story of a couple of stereotypical douchebags going to Europe, getting tricked, and then becoming unwilling victims of a snuff fantasy camp.

It's a display of agony and human suffering for its own sake. It is objectively bad to pay $25,000 to torture and kill a person, so I understand the conflict. But since the poor saps on the receiving end of it are just kind of dicks, I don't really want them to succeed so much as I don't think they should be tortured to death. The entire "entertainment" value of the movie is just supposed to be watching some dudes getting tortured while sitting in the audience and pretending that these are the bullies that shoved your head in the toilet during passing period in middle school.

But even still, a good movie can be made around that premise. Untraceable is a perfect example of a movie that, in spite of the soul-shattering brutality, actually has the presence of mind to keep it relevant. The basic premise of Untraceable is that a hacker has been kidnapping people and making them the unwilling stars of his online snuff show. The more hits his website gets, the quicker the star's messy demise, making the viewers accessories to the murder he's broadcasting live. It's a stunning display of self-awareness for a supposedly "base" genre. Untraceable turns the mirror to both itself and the audience. We demand to be shocked in spite of ourselves. We eat this shit up, sick as it makes us.

And speaking of eating shit, that brings me perfectly back to Human Centipede. I earned that segue. YOU HEAR THAT INTERNET I EARNED IT

So if you've made it this far you must be wondering what all the fuss is about. Well, it's your standard "car breaks down in the middle of the European countryside oh gosh it's rainy dearest me shouldn't we find some cover why yes I think that creepy looking isolated mansion in the middle of the woods will do just nicely oh who is this nice gentleman my word is he a German mad scientist who is going to surgically attach us all ass to mouth and and experiment on us why yes I think he mffff hmmmfff fmmm mrrrrrff mmmmph" story.

Yeah, I think that pretty much nails down the gist of it. It's the kind of movie that, after watching, you can't really chuckle at how savage the Roman empire was compared to the 21st century, what with their Colosseum and all.

It's the kind of movie that leaves you shaking your head and wondering why and how. Why anyone would make this and how we, as a species, could have ever evolved so far as to call this entertainment.

Although it certainly does make a powerful metaphor for the Saw series. See?

Incidentally, more work went into this image than any of the last four Saw movies

There aren't any protagonists in the movie. There are victims and a mad scientist. The characters are paper-thin, not so much people as they are screams and tears with bodies attached. By the time they've been been captured and surgically mutilated in the movie, what more is there? Nothing remains except to watch this abomination writhe and suffer. In Saw, no one survived the game without paying a cost, but the cost was never so great as to outweigh survival.

In Untraceable, there is no hope of salvation for any of the victims. We aren't there to root for anyone. We're spectators and the movie wants to make damn well sure we know that. But Human Centipede? We have no reason to root for the victims because we don't care who they are. They're so mutilated that there's nothing left but to die. It's like watching a coma patient on life support while your asshole kid neighbor kicks at the plug in the wall socket.

To put it another way, at some point you've just got to total the car.

It's human misery as spectacle with absolutely no redeeming value. The only answer to this this movie provides us with is to the question "when is it okay to go ass-to-mouth?"

"Well?"

That's not to say more terrible movies haven't been made (after all, Korean filmmaker Jin Won Kim made The Butcher, a 75-minute torture and death-rape extravaganza, which I think edges this one out in terms of hateful, exploitative films with absolutely no redeeming value--but I'm just a big softie for death-rape). I'm saying that this brand of torture porn is a waste. A waste of time, a waste of money, a waste of effort. It has nothing to offer, especially in a 21st century world where you can have your daily dose of human misery for free on the Internet, without having to rely on the finicky schedules of cunning hacker-kidnappers.

I understand if people can't get through the day without watching total strangers breathe their last in a strange place thousands of miles away from home. That's what Wikileaks is for. What I'm saying is that there's no reason, purpose, or value in paying studios to manufacture it and market it as entertainment.

If after all of that, you still feel like you must see this movie--whether it be for the hype, the gross-out factor, or being able to beat off with your own tears while imagining the faces of the three girls who shot you down for the prom being surgically grafted to each others asses--please don't pay money for it.

This is the 21st century after all.

All aboard the hype train! (toot toot)

2010-04-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

The phrase "too big to fail" has embedded itself in our cultural lexicon lately.

And perhaps, for some things that's true. Whether it can be applied to the financial sector or automotive industry remains to be seen. In case this is your first time tuning in, this isn't the kind of blog to get into that kind of discussion. In fact, it's a phrase I'd never have even typed if it weren't for one little fact: as I type this, Super Street Fighter IV is coming tomorrow. And normally I'd be overjoyed. I enjoyed Street Fighter IV about as much as anyone could realistically expect to enjoy a fighting game. The gameplay was balanced, the cast was diverse and generally interesting, but...

Well, it felt... off. Like if you spent your entire adult life dating supermodels, and suddenly this new girl clearly had a lot of plastic surgery and implants. At first it might seem like everything's okay, but you can only overlook the scars and stretch marks for so long.

What can be said, with little fear of contradiction, is that it if there is one thing to which the maxim of "too big to fail" cannot ever be applied, it's mass entertainment. Because if it's one thing that can be said of Hollywood and movie buffs, gamer geeks and developers alike, it's that we know how to ruin a good thing.

Man, do we ever

Maybe we just can't help ourselves. Fingers can be pointed in any direction, from producers to directors, scriptwriters to editors, fans to fanservice. A case can be made for any and all of the usual suspects, but for me, the blame can squarely be placed upon two things: hype and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Alternately, these two things

I'll address the less obvious one first:

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
In 1947, Jimmy Stewart starred in a little movie called Magic Town. Jimmy Stewart stars as Rip Smith, an opinion pollster who stumbles upon the perfect town for his profession: a place that somehow perfectly reflects the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of the entire United States, but things go awry when the town suddenly becomes aware of their position in Smith's polling business. But when the town's citizens suddenly become aware of their status as guinea pigs, they lose their magic touch and the whole plan comes crashing down.

Have you ever done something awesome entirely on accident? The kind of thing you spend hours trying to repeat in vain and the only thing you have to show for it is a severely sprained wrist and a lot of hard-to-explain stains on your Mouse Trap board?

Or have you ever been out with your friends and someone shouts "oh, that's a picture!" and everyone frantically tries to re-create the pose that they were just in for the camera but they just can't get it right?

It's just harder to do things that come naturally to us when we know we have to do them--and it gets even harder when we know a lot of people are watching. It doesn't take a scientist to figure that out. But it does help. Fact of the matter is, no one knew just how big Star Wars was going to be when it first came out. No one was putting George Lucas or the guys who actually knew what they were doing that the studio paid to follow him around under any real pressure besides "make the studio some money."

A rare photo of Irvin Kershner (left) and a young George Lucas (right) on the set between takes

But success hit, and suddenly there's all this pressure to make the next one bigger and better. Doing so often results in those responsible at the production level to suddenly forget everything that made the original so amazing and beloved. This is doubly true if they're suddenly working with a budget that puts the GDP of half the world's countries to shame.

This is also known as Final Fantasy VII syndrome

The same can be said of my beloved Street Fighter series. The original Street Fighter II was nothing less than a bonefide smash hit. It single-handedly revived the flagging arcade scene in the US and spawned countless imitators throughout the 90s. Maybe it's just that times were simpler then or maybe it's that expectations were just lower, but the subsequent releases of Street Fighter II Champion Edition, Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter II Dash, Super Street Fighter II, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting were all generally well-received. Despite being derivative, they still managed to gobble a fresh pocketful of quarters with each new release.

Then came the Street Fighter Alpha series, and again, we were pleasantly surprised to find our favorite characters back in action. Sure, the shock value wasn't as high as the original Street Fighter II release, but the knuckle-draggers had just discovered Mortal Kombat II, so we'll gloss over that. Street Fighter EX came out and damaged us all irreparably with its shittiness, but then came the diamond in the rough: Street Fighter III. This one was different.

So different, in fact, many people hated it. It was originally slated to have an entirely fresh cast of characters. Not a one from any previous game would return. And then came the outrage. Fans demanded Ryu and Ken at least appear in Street Fighter III and they got their wish. Street Fighter III: Third Strike came in '99 and--despite being considered a commercial failure--set the gold standard for fighting games for any serious fan of the genre. It was so good that it was still the headline event of Evolution--the major fighting game tournament--eight years later.

When Street Fighter IV was announced back in 2008, wads were shot. Millions, perhaps billions, of gallons of wads saturated underpants across the world because no one ever expected another Street Fighter game. But there was still money to be made, so maybe we should have.

The man was Yoshinori Ono. The legend goes that Capcom didn't want to make another Street Fighter game after the Street Fighter III series did so poorly, but Ono begged enough that he eventually got his way. Dude was a fan all the way back from the Alpha days. And Ono could have made the next great game in the series. Instead, he made Street Fighter II.

But isn't that a good thing? Well, arguably yes. But Ono approached the game from the perspective of a man who had no intention of making a great game. He wanted to re-capture lightning in a bottle. All the elements were there. Every character from Street Fighter II reprised their roles in Street Fighter IV, with four new additions. And the additions are where the real design problems began to show.

Ono wanted to create a female character that Americans would love and want to use. He bragged about the extensive market research he had done in creating C. Viper.

Before you say "oh, that's not so bad," I will remind you that she's wearing rocket boots

Market research? The fuck? Did they do any market research in making Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Mega Man, Viewtiful Joe, Jill Valentine, or any of the other myriad of iconic characters from Capcom's golden age? No. They exercised good design, approached each character with a blank slate and a head full of fresh ideas. They were having fun: that's something that just can't be quantified.

Rufus and Hakan are two more examples of this sort of approach to character design. They're joke characters, but instead of being endearing, the attitude in the design seems to be from the Will Ferrell school of comedy. That is, "bigger and louder is always funnier." Creating lasting, memorable characters gets pushed aside in favor of a cheap, perfunctory joke.

This is also sometimes referred to as a game "having a case of the Tingles."

These characters were supposed to have an immediate, visceral payoff for the player. Rufus (left) is a big fat guy who's actually really, really fast! Man that's so wacky! Never seen that before!

Nope. Never.

Hakan, on the other hand, is pure ridiculousness distilled into a character. Admittedly, it's pretty funny. And if it were any other genre, it'd be okay. It's funny the first time. Hell, it's funny the dozenth time. But Street Fighter 4 is a fighting game--a game that, by its very definition--implicitly states that it will replayed hundreds, if not thousands, of times, and once the novelty wears off, what's left?

They're just too fucking ridiculous to exist, and yet, here they are. Hakan and Rufus just insist too much upon audience's suspension of disbelief. And I know what you're saying: "but you can suspend your disbelief for Blanka, a green half-man, half-monster who shoots electricity! Or a yogi who stretches his arms like a rubber band and breathes fire! Why are Rufus and Hakan so hard to believe?" The people who say shit like that are the same ones who defend the new Indiana Jones movie by saying aliens aren't fucking outlandish because the original trilogy featured a 700-year-old knight templar and a Box o' God, or "you believe the force could be caused by some sort of spiritual energy created by all living things, but midichloriens are too 'out there' for you?"

Well, yes.

Games and movies exist in a vacuum. They are self-contained worlds. But in order to have any sort of credibility, they have to have internal consistency. That's why you can believe in Harry Potter's world, but if suddenly J. K. Rowling revealed in the final book that everyone was actually robots fighting against alien warlords in a parallel dimension, everyone would call bullshit. It's not about suspending all disbelief. It's about believing in another world.

And then there's the other new character, Juri. She's a character purely designed around sex appeal. Like, that's it. That's her gimmick. She's "the sexy one." The female cast of Street Fighter has always been good-looking, but it's always been secondary to the fact that they're fighters. But with Juri, that's it. And far be it from me to sound like a prudish old man about this but was it really necessary? There are so many other games based around sex appeal. The old, jaded bastard in me has finally seen enough. There comes a point where digital boobers just don't do it anymore. If I want tits, I have the Internet. I play games because I want to have fun.

Seriously, what else could be going on here?

It smacks of insincerity: "we're creating these new characters because these are the types of characters that fighting games are supposed to include/this is what our target demographic has been polled to like." Don't give us what you think we want! We're fucking idiots. We have no idea what we want.

And that brings me to my next point.

Hype
This one's gonna hurt.

Because this one is our fault. As fans, I mean.

There is no force greater in the entire world, than the whining of fans. We are a loud, whirling black cloud of ravenous feasting and destruction. Allow me, for a moment, to stop talking about Street Fighter and stuff George Lucas fucked up and take you back to the summer of 2004 when Spider-Man 2 hit the box office. The first movie was good, but holy shit, Spider-Man 2. It was bigger, flashier, darker, funnier, more interesting--better in every single way. It expanded the world and dove headfirst into the lives of the characters. It was everything you could have asked for in a sequel and then some.

So when Spider-Man 3 was announced, you can bet your bottom ball that fans were pumped at the possibility of another great movie. The greatest movie.

So much so that no one was willing to accept what we got instead: a good movie.

Not great, just good. Onward came the swarm, because by the time the movie came out, there was so much hype, expectations were so high, that there was simply no way Spider-Man 3 could ever be the movie it was built up to be.

And suddenly, we all became a little more like this guy

Getting back to Street Fighter, maybe the same thing happened there. Capcom had shown willingness to compromise with Street Fighter III. Remember how the outcry of fans was so loud and obnoxious that it was enough to get them to put Ryu and Ken (and later Chun-Li) in as well? Well, with the announcement of Super Street Fighter 4, again came the shouting.

About which characters should be added, who should be buffed, who should be nerfed. Fans were given unprecedented access to the development of Super Street Fighter 4, all fueled by Capcom and Ono continuously proclaiming: "we hear you, we're listening."

For the love of God, don't do that! Don't encourage us! If we were all bursting with great ideas, we'd all be working in the game design industry. But we're not. We're a bunch of smelly man-children who can barely hold down our part-time jobs at Kinkos. Jesus. I understand taking suggestions from a small, hand-picked group of elite tournament players, but having access to the Internet and your own blog doesn't mean your opinion should mean shit to anyone.

Your own blog, not mine. Everyone should listen to me.

And there was another cost to that kind of access. I and anyone else with even a passing interest in Street Fighter knew everything about this game two months ago. We knew who the new characters were going to be, we knew the new moves and Ultra combos, we knew the new stages, the new music, the nerfs and buffs--everything. So now, on the day before the launch, it's kind of hard to, you know...

...care.

Ever since the announcement of Super Street Fighter 4 last year, I'd been following the hype. Every weekly update on the Capcom developer blog, every character trailer and discussion, the pre-launch tournaments, I was there, feasting my eyes on everything the next installment had to offer. And now, I'm stuffed.

It's like coming downstairs on Christmas morning to find all your presents covered in saran wrap.

Last stop for the hype train. Toot toot.

So I married a cine-sleeper

2010-04-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

My wife is an amazing woman.

She's funny, sweet, intelligent, beautiful, an amazing cook, a source of inspiration and emotional support, a pillar of strength and joy, and somehow she can put up with my shit seven days a week. When you meet that person in your life that you know is destined to forever be at your side, you feel that natural force of attraction drawing you to them. Hopefully it's not gravity, because while love is patient, kind, not envious or boastful, it also has a very strict no fatties rule.

No, the attraction I'm describing is that one perfect trait that endears them to you more than you ever thought possible in another person: one outstanding quality, characteristic, habit, or feature that, above all else, defines that person as your destiny. For me, it's her tears. Her delicious, life-sustaining tears.

Seriously.

This chick can cry at a movie like you would not believe. It's like one minute the protagonist is sad because his cat Scruffy ran away or something and then the next minute you look over and there she is, eyes all red and wet and you're like "huh?" You'd think it was a bad thing or that at least it would cut deep into the tissue budget but they hand packs of them out near the train stations anyway so it's not even like that's a big deal. Still, we are never, ever watching Old Yeller. Despite there being plenty of evidence to the contrary, there actually is, in some circumstances, too much of a good thing.

I'm a movie lover, and while I won't boast that I have the best taste in movies in the whole world (just better than all of my friends and people I know personally), the wife is a solid runner-up. While she may not be up on all her lingo or be able to describe what "Chekov's Gun" is or the beats that comprise a three-act movie, Mrs. Merican is nothing if not exceptional at being able to carry on a conversation for days, weeks about a movie after watching it together.

A couple months ago we sat down together for The Princess and the Frog, and afterward pinned and dissected the thing for hours, finally impaling the head on a #2 pencil and flicking the testes at each other until the lunch bell. A few days passed in their usual routine, dinners, breakfasts, work hours, and commutes stole away our focus until out of the blue: "you know what else pissed me off? The fact that there was no actual tension or conflict or even interaction between the protagonists and the villain. Dude's seriously in the movie for all of like 5 minutes. It's like they were locked in separate rooms. It worked in Lion King because that was a good movie with growing, developing characters, but this... this is five good songs bundled in the world's worst music video." New life poured into the room and again we bounced ideas at each other, commenting and critiquing.

Over a Disney animated feature remarkable only for being the least profoundly disappointing theatrical release since "Hercules." I'd never met anyone who could get so emotionally involved in a movie--any movie--before. Even shitty movies. Even movies she doesn't even like.

Even movies where that kind of emotional involvement is not only unwarranted but profoundly silly. She cried when the protagonist's girlfriend was kidnapped in Orgazmo.

This is the kind of woman a guy could spend the rest of his life with.

Even go see a Valentine's Day celeb-circle-jerk with.

But then the courtship phase ends. Let's be honest: aren't we all on our best behavior in the courtship phase? Those giggling, whispering first months where two people are just happy that in a world where, in accordance with Sturgeon's Law, romance so often feels like roshambo. All the while, wrapped in that sugar-coating is a festering tumor of insecurity and second-guessing, not wanting to show who we are because we first have to make them fall in love with the person we want them to see.

I'll be honest, too. I poop when she's around now. Not like, all the time; just when I need to. But I do. Before, though, those first couple months, anytime she visited I'd always suppress it like an Mel Gibson suppressing an angry tirade against the liberal Jew-run media during a field sobriety test. I may have even done more permanent damage to my colon than ol' Mel did to his career when I finally let fly, too. But back then I knew that every intestinal ache and smothered squeak between sweaty buttocks was worth it, because this woman... she was once in a lifetime.

Real love sticks around for the subsequent proctologist visits.

And the door swings the other way. Once rapt with attention even while watching Shaun of the Dead on our fourth or fifth date (the wife hates horror... any horror at all), I now find this same woman dozing off during Wall-E, passing out during Iron Man, catching a quick nap during Clerks. Even when she picked the movie. I've heard all the lines. "I'm tired," "it's getting late," "I'm just so busy at work," "please stop cupping my breasts when you think I'm asleep." At some point you just tune it all out.

That point, for me, was when I pulled out 1977 Best Picture winner "Rocky" for the night's entertainment. We took the computer, popped it on, and boom. Out. To say she didn't go the distance is a gross understatement. She barely lasted through the opening bell.

"Down!" her grizzled Irish brain stem cried to her eyelids from the corner of her skull. "Stay down!"

No. No no no no no. Not to this. Not to the Italian Stallion. He deserved better. He deserved better. I sat there on the bed bewildered. Her sleepy head down on my lap as I tried to piece together what had happened. What had gone wrong. What I had done to make her do this to Sly and me. I don't know, I just make her so crazy sometimes. I know she's just doing it because she loves me and she doesn't want me sharing my lap with anyone else. Sometimes that happens, you know? Sometimes like cats or babies lay down there and she just has to teach me a lesson that it belongs to her. I'm just so clumsy.

I feel like there should be a shelter I can stay at, or at the very least a support group.

Someone please help me, before she does it again! Who would punish another person's sensibilities the way she's doing to mine? Anyway, I'm going to have to cut this entry off here. This bean burrito is not agreeing with me at all.

On this very special episode of Blossom

2010-04-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sakura sakura...

And so goes another cherry blossom season. Yesterday, the wife and I ventured forth for the third and final cherry blossom viewing of the season. We looked forward to spending an afternoon together beneath the frail canopy of pink and white.

There really is nothing quite like an afternoon spent with friends or family, adrift in a sea of petals, like the world's fruitiest snow globe. Surrounded on all sides by a patchwork of pink and green and loved ones in the crisp morning air, a bottle of sake nestled between a couple six-packs of Asahi and a picnic lunch, it seems like nothing in the world could possibly be wrong. Not even the fact that you're drunk off your ass at 10:30 in the morning.

So with the past two cherry blossom viewings being such a huge success, why not go for the three-peat?

That was a rhetorical question.

As I discovered from hiding my mother's birthday present in my closet for a month, flowers die. Scientists still aren't sure why this happens, but there's one thing for certain: it makes a mess and stems are terrible gifts.

Yes, cherry blossom viewing is a temporal recreation, with a viable viewing period of only three or four weeks. So 'round about week four, things start getting a little... crazy.

Just a bit.

In cherry blossom viewing, as in so many other tourist activities, it's all about location. The famous places get swamped. Such was the case with Tenmabashi, our destination for yesterday's excursion.

The majesty of Mother Nature's sublime palette splayed across a delicate canvas is somehow lost when that God damn 170-year-old four-foot tall bitch shoves her elbow into your kidney for the tenth time. I'm bigger than you, I'm stronger than you, and I'm not shaped like a Tetris piece you old hag!

Seriously, listen to this while you look at this picture and tell me it doesn't fit.

But beyond the bruised ribs, stomped toes, and occasional once-in-a-season photo opportunities marred by a middle-aged dude's balding dome in the frame, lies the jewel at the center of the sakura festival's crown: the festival part of the festival.

The festival combines all the best aspects of city life into one long strip. Stall after stall bursts at the seams with promises of new and exotic flavors, edible artwork, and game specifically designed to make you look like a sucker. It's a lot like the carnival in America, except with less reason to be embarrassed of your species.

"How the fuck do magnets work?"

No amount of money is safe in a tourist's wallet at a Japanese festival. From the haunted houses to the "American Potatoes" (French fries) to the goldfish-catching games, around every corner lies a new experience beckoning just one more 500 yen coin from your pocket. Because if you try really, really hard and aim that cork-gun just a little bit more to the right, you're sure you can knock that Nintendo Wii box off the platform, because you're just know you saw it move a little last time. Sucker.

Just one more thing, if you're ever at a Japanese festival and you see a bottle of this:

It says "ramune" on the bottle, but I'm pretty sure that's just the Japanese word for "heroin"

BUY IT.

200 or 300 yen might seem a bit expensive for an 8.5 ounce bottle but sir or madam, you would be mistaken. This stuff is a golden shower from the Skittles rainbow.

There's nothing else like cherry blossom season in Japan. It's something I'm really, really going to miss upon my return to the States this summer. Maybe one spring break I'll make it back out to the 'Pan for another dose of it, but for right now I think I've built up a tolerance. Or maybe my liver's failing.

Another one you may have missed

2010-04-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

John Dies at the End.

It's a title that defies the reviewer not to spoil anything. I've been putting off this review for a full week simply due to the sheer daunting task of trying to do this book justice without detracting anything from going into the book fresh. In order to put off the most difficult task until the end, I'll start by giving a little background on the book itself.

John Dies at the End is a creature unto itself, pock-marked by the acne scars of the Internet's adolescent phase. True to form, author David Wong wrote John Dies at the End in installments on his website of the same name, giving his product away for free to those curious enough to check in with the site regularly to see the story progress. One would be hard-pressed to brand Wong's rogue authoring a failure, with John Dies at the End now available in paperback (and unfortunately no longer available free on his site), with a possible movie release coming in 2010 and a sequel already in the works.

So... is it worth a read? Absolutely.

But.

Understand that I give this recommendation as a mid-twenties white American male. I am the target demographic here. I'm not trying to pass judgment, but rather give some perspective on where I'm coming from in writing this review.

The story of John Dies can basically be summed up thusly: if you took the premises of Ghostbusters and Clerks and asked Terry Pratchett to toss in an homage to Slaughterhouse 5 and get 350 pages out of the thing, you'd have a pretty close approximation of what you see here. The focal characters of John Dies are the narrator and possible Mary Sue wankfest David Wong and his friend John Cheese, the Dante and Randall of our story--a couple of loser burnouts that play their roles to a T, right down to one of the characters holding down a job at a video store.

When they take a street-drug going by the name "soy sauce," suddenly, they find themselves hurtled into terrifying lucidity. Suddenly they gain the ability to trace the very strands of the fabric of the universe, flipping the bird to Heisenberg and his gay little uncertainty principal. They find themselves unstuck in time, existing across the myriad of timelines spanning the multiverse. The trip and the subsequent side-effects are short-lived, but our heroes are forever changed by the journey. They see horrors existing in a reality parallel to our own--ghosts, trans-dimensional travelers, monsters--and soon discover that these malignant forces can see them back. One part Ghostbuster and two parts unwilling and unwitting heroes to a plot that threatens the very universe.

But to describe John Dies only by discussing the plot is to do a great disservice to what makes it such a great book. For one thing, it's funny. Not always "laugh-out-loud" funny, but at several points during the read I found myself snickering, going back and re-reading the straight-man/funnyman exchanges between David and John or scenes of depravity illustrated in comedic hues by Wong's fantastic sense of delivery and timing. The character of David has a powerful narrative voice. The character perfectly captures the voice of a disaffected, male, twenty-something loser barely able to cope with the real world. David is not the typecast protagonist this genre typically calls for. When he finds himself a major player at the center of a trans-dimensional plot, it is his anger and desire to just get out of the thing that sees him through.

Much of the action of the book takes place within the framing device of an interview with a magazine columnist, with David trying to get his story out to the public once and for all. It's a strong choice for the narrative--as I mentioned already, David may not be a relateable hero, but he has a powerful, uncompromising narrative style that makes his account of the action very fun to read and easy to follow.
Wong is a vivid, visceral writer with a talent for appealing to the senses. David's cynical and ugly perspective on the world is palpable to the reader. Everything has a layer of grit to it, like every chapter desperately needs a good scrubbing. I'm reminded of one passage in particular where David is force-fed a giant spider and describes, sparing no putridity, the act of chewing and swallowing his writhing, salty meal. I want to compare it to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but understand that I am not comparing the work of Thompson and Wong on any other merit than this particular stylistic choice. Nothing is beautiful in John Dies--the world it contains seems sick, each page oozing humor both witty and bodily.

For the first 200 pages, this made for a fast read. Every creature David describes is a portrait of something truly deranged. Rather than trying to describe things familiar to the reader: mummies, vampires, wolfmen, etc., Wong cobbles together grotesque amalgamations from the spare parts of nightmares, stuff that pushes the boundaries of the reader's imagination. There is no comfort in familiarity. Though David and John's enemies are legion, it never seems like a disposable swarm--each new encounter is a feast for the mind's eye.

Unfortunately, Wong's powerful style isn't entirely to the story's benefit. For instance, whereas David and John both have distinctive voices as characters, the rest of the cast seems to be a reflection of John, right down to the distinctive cadence of his dialogue. While this can, in part, be forgiven due to the aforementioned framing device and much of the story being told in David's own words, it does make the novelty of a stylish narrative wear off that much quicker. And once the story returns again to the present, the transgression becomes inexcusable: the people need to talk different from each other or else they're swallowed whole.

Moreover, Wong plays to his strength a bit too much. David's critical view of the world never really changes. Other characters change around John and David, but the protagonists never do. And when the story peters out in the unmarked epilogue and denouement, it seems like Gandalf the White returning in blinding glory just to do the "how'd-that-quarter-get-behind-your-ear?" trick.

Past the 200-page mark, things definitely take a turn for the weirder. The comedy-horror seems to get shelved for a trans-dimensional fantasy that, while still satisfying, signifies a gear-shift with an almost audible ka-chunk. The tight horror narrative opens up into a sprawling world that, to his credit, Wong feels no need to explain. My best friend wrote in his blog (citation to follow, assuming his permission) of a Miyazaki film that there is no need to explain everything. That leaving some things a mystery expands the boundaries of the story's world, and while the world of John Dies may not be entirely enriched by the sudden tidal wave of accumulated minutia of a whole new world introduced at the start of a third act, it certainly does not allow itself to lose steam by getting bogged down in the details.

For the same reason, I thought Silent Hill 3 was a distinct step down in quality from Silent Hill 2 because it tried to give some background on the town and why it was suddenly such a malignant force. Silent Hill 2 understood that it didn't matter why. Things are terrifying when you don't know why they are. The parallel world of John Dies is fantastic because we don't know anything about it--and adding an extra 50 pages telling us more wouldn't do any more than a paragraph of the bizarre happenings of a bizarre world.

John Dies asks the reader to come into its world and not ask too many questions. As horror/sci-fi/fantasy goes, the suspension of disbelief it requires is admittedly pretty high up there. If you watched The Matrix and thought "why don't the robots just use cattle as an energy source?" you're probably not going to enjoy this one nearly as much as a willing observer along for the ride. This is one where a passive reader is probably going to get more out of the experience than a stickler for detail.

In all, it's a satisfying read and a legitimate Internet-age breakout hit. You can't get it for free anymore, but as trade paperbacks go, you could do a lot worse.

No thanks, I'll take the stairs

2010-04-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

At times, I feel like my blood is too thick for life in the 'Pan.

Well, that's not true, but I do sometimes feel a bit anemic.

Life in Big City, the 'Pan is riddled with eccentricities, depending on which Big City you happen to call home. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki differs from Osaka-style okonomiyaki in that it contains soba noodles. Osakans ride the escalator standing on the right side, allowing for faster-moving traffic to pass on the left. Tokyoites ride the escalator standing on the left, allowing passing on the right. And Kyotoans don't give a shit which side you want to pass on--those fuckers wouldn't let you by if the building were on fire. Yet, despite all the idiosyncrasies of each of the major cities in the 'Pan, there remains one major overarching constant: they're all fucking crowded.

The streets are crowded, the stations are crowded, the department stores are crowded, but nowhere is the crowdedness more noticeable or of a more severe degree than the escalator.

Perhaps some of you have seen this classic photo and have thought this was a uniquely American foible. It is not.

How often have I heard it lamented by Westerners that Asians seem to possess the preternatural ability to maintain a petite figure despite having an enormous appetite. Despite the best answers medical science can offer us at this time, I do know this: it is decidedly not the result of taking the stairs.

I think we're going to have to give bulimia the assist on this one

Life in the nucleus of a crowd is exhausting. It wearies the mind and soul to constantly be beleaguered by the pulsing glut of humanity. Midwestern life is boring, depressing, irritating, and embarrassing, but it's most certainly not crowded. Unless you happen to be one of those losers from Chicago, and if you are, fuck you for ruining my point. Even people who have spent their entire lives in the 'Pan concede that spending life shoulder-to-shoulder all day every day wears a bit thin.

Perhaps some of my readers are familiar with love hotels. Perhaps even a couple are intimately familiar with them. For those who aren't, I'll give you a quick rundown: it's the Japanese version of a Motel 6. It's where two people go to fuck in privacy in Japan, but unlike in America, you usually don't kill her afterward.

The "Rest" package typically isn't as restful as you might expect

I have heard, on more than one occasion, of friends going to these fine establishments and never once removing an article of clothing. They go to chill out, sing karaoke, play Playstation 2 (some people smoke after they bone; in Japan, I guess they play God of War), drink, and when the time is up, they pay the nice person behind the fogged glass window or slip the necessary amount in the automated money deposit, and leave.

A long way to go just to get away from it all.

My own place of refuge from the hustle and bustle of Big City life isn't nearly as expensive, and likely wouldn't horrify me if viewed under a black light. As much.

I take the stairs.

For a few precious moments, it's a breath of fresh air. A moment apart from the thickness that clings like chewing gum with every footstep.

I ride four trains through four different stations to arrive at work every day. An irreplaceable hour of life spent in a humanity compactor in a land that is not my own. But for the thirty huffing seconds between walking from one platform to the next, I'm home again.

Young man, old dog

2010-04-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

Today was a day almost a month in the making: a triumphant return to the land of the gainfully employed.

For the past month, I was Ahab. But instead of "hast thou seen the white whale?" my quarry was far more elusive: "hast thou seen the white-people employer?" And for like three-quarters of it, the reply was always the same: "nay." My wife, ever my humble Queequeg, lugging around the coffin of I don't know let's say companionship. But after a back-breaking, oar-cracking month, it appeared on the horizon.

Excuse me as I break with my shitty Moby Dick metaphor to metaphorically shit my pantaloons in pure terror.

For two-and-a-half years, I had been employed with the same eikaiwa, teaching the same lessons, from the same books, grinding the same structure that had been drilled into the lot of us since day one. An interchangeable part in the English factory--and lest you think this description is the bitter rambling of a jaded ex-employee, my trainers reiterated to me and the rest of my training class, word-for-word, to "follow the structure... so students can transfer schools and not notice the difference."

Meanwhile, in the present, I managed to get on with a cram school in Kyoto prefecture. Pretty good gig. Pulling down two Gs a month and some sweet bennies and I can't even pretend this is a good job but at least it keeps me employed and honoring the terms of my visa and not get deported so just pretend I added a third positive characteristic to the list. Still, money's money and the living situation the wife and I are currently in doesn't really insist much of our finances. At the very least, I get to do my part to rob Japanese children of irreplaceable moments of fleeting youth.

Seriously. I'm officially one of the bad guys.

All of the horror stories you've ever heard about Japanese cram schools are absolutely true. This one's a bit more "edu-tainment"-oriented than most, but it's hard to stay edu-tained when mean old Mr. Merican's dropping 10 pages of homework and a monthly book report on a class of nine-year-olds. Unfortunately, the manager clearly stated that if we don't assign homework after every class, the parents edu-plain.

Since embarking on this month-long journey of trying to find a job at a place where they don't abuse children, the chill of a spectre long buried in the depths of my consciousness has wrapped its bony fingers around my throbbing, irritable bowel, nesting sick and squalid in my stagnant guts.

It's the crushing grip of a realization made long ago and suppressed for an equal duration: I have absolutely no skills. I don't mean that in an "aw, don't be so hard on yourself, Merican" way. I mean it in a Napolean Dynamite way.

Don't get me wrong; during my time with my old company I learned the encumbrance limit of my own sanity. I learned how to be unphased by corporate and intra-office political bullshit. I learned how to continually lower my expectations of the fundamentally good and redeemable nature of mankind--not that I'm bitter. If you recall, I already said that I wasn't, and I certainly wouldn't have repeated myself unless I really meant it.

The problem is that an eikaiwa career teaches none of the most basic, rudimentary skills necessary to actually teach a class of children. What it did teach was structure. Rote, mechanical, useless structure. Like teaching a dog to shake--the dog doesn't understand the meaning of the gesture, simply that it is his task to perform on command. The week-long period of training at the start of a contract was little more than a glorified obedience school.

The enormity of it just makes me want to roll over and play dead.

And now, poised at the brink of this latest undertaking, I can't help but feel like the sheep in wolf's clothing, ready to be torn to shreds should my cover drop.

Today, I visited my new school for the first time, met my co-workers, got a feel for the school, did the usual first-day stuff. It was a fantastic experience, but a decided departure from the fanfare that accompanied my arrival (and that of the foreign teachers who followed) at my old job. I mentioned to my wife how I drew little more than a casual "hey" when I walked through the doors for the first time as a member of the staff. A former eikaiwa employee herself, she pointed out that foreign teachers at eikaiwa are typically spoiled, put on a pedestal, essentially calves being fattened for when the time comes to repay the outpouring of generosity. And suddenly it all clicked.

Yeah, this place is different. We're not monkeys in the zoo. We're actually supposed to be teachers.

Hopefully reality won't deign to blunt my enthusiasm as it did with my previous job, although admittedly that's what reality tends to do best. But as the terror and anticipation of the beginnings of a new life play tug-of-war with my innards, the din of their quarrel is almost mute beneath the thundering joy at the opportunity to return to the classroom next week as a teacher--for the first time. Seriously, I've been bored as shit.

And really, really poor.

Born in the USA

2010-03-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

Truly, nothing tests the strength of a marriage more than filling out forms together. In fact, five out of every three divorces are the result of filling out tax forms, mostly stemming from arguments about calculation errors.

Alas, one cannot make a living on eikaiwa work. And the faint buzz of life's obligations from behind the horizon has become a furious, stinging miasma of hornets. It's time to go home.

And I'm taking the best part of Japan with me: her.

Not that that's easy, or anything. Over the past weekend we spend dozens of hours pouring over a fat stack of forms, assuring the US government that yes, we are actually married and, no, Mrs. Merican has no intention of overthrowing the capitalist dogs in Washington in a bloody coup and, yes, Aloysius is my real middle name.

And as I sat there across the table, gazing at her through the column of haze ebbing free from her Hello Kitty coffee mug, every bit as beautiful and enchanting as the day I first laid eyes on her, I looked into her eyes. Weary with sleep deprivation and yet a perfect, placid hazel, sparkling with youth and beauty and hope. I longed for the next step in our lifelong adventure together, hopping across the ocean and starting anew--a golden treasure of new experiences glistening on the horizon if only she'd just put the papers in the right order and no, no honey, sign and date it right there. No, today's date, no toda- look, I'll do it.

And the next night, we were whisked away aboard the night bus to the US Embassy in Tokyo.

I've heard it said that Asian people's sweat doesn't smell. The reason for this being some biological thing and evolution or something and they believe in fairies and so now their sweat glands do or don't secrete some chemical. I have since discovered that, in spite of the compelling scientific evidence I just presented, this isn't true. Or if it is true, I have no idea which Asian country's people they're referring to, because that bus smelled like a locker room full of hundreds of sentient elephant scrotums.

The US Embassy itself was... actually not that bad. On our previous trip to obtain some papers necessary for an international marriage, we ran into a fat, blond Nick Burns. But this time, the people working the desk at the visa department weren't just civil--they were actually nice. So for all of you Americans who are wondering why government employees in the US are such assholes, it's because the good ones are all get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

So now, we play the waiting game. In two weeks, we'll know if we've been approved for the next step in the visa process, which includes proving you have $60,000 cash in assets available in the US (I don't), proving you're healthy (we'll see), and proving you have a clean criminal record of in Japan (depends on your definition, I suppose).

Either way, I'm glad it's over. Just one last hurdle between now and an August return to the land of 89 cent Big Gulps. The tension of the past weekend is only more potential energy for the imminent summer blast.

And in accordance with the forms we just filed with the embassy, I am obligated to clarify that the "blast" in question was used only as a figure of speech and is not, nor has it ever been, indicative of the actions of a violent political agenda.

One for the ages

2010-03-18T07:10:00.000-07:00

Robots. Playing. Baseball.

There is not one part of that mental image that does not rule.

At the risk of being self-indulgent (perhaps even mindlessly so), I beg the forgiveness of anyone who doesn't like my video game articles to bear with me for this last one for the month of March. My last article left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Base Wars is a humble game with a simple promise and a fantastic premise: in the future, baseball will kick impossible amounts of ass. Not only will we have, as a fanbase, evolved past the point where impossibly proportioned athletes using steroids typically reserved for the agricultural sector phases us, they will no longer even interest us. Instead, machine has replaced man on the baseball diamond, bringing with it an impressive arsenal of guns, swords, and rocket-fists.

Featured: a macabre parody of humanity warped by science. Also featured: a picture of an NES game

Base Wars' gameplay is fairly simple, which is why it works so well. It's just regular baseball, except better in every measurable way. The rules for strike-outs, force-outs, and pop-outs remain unchanged--but everything in between is where the brilliance lies. Once the ball is in play, the hitting team's robot(s) run the bases. If they beat the throw to a base, they're safe, and the game continues. But if the runners get greedy, then things start getting interesting.

If a runner is tagged, the action leaves the overhead view of the stadium and enters a side-view of the runner and tagging player doing battle. From here, the game quits being a baseball sim and more accurately resembles Street Fighter; it's nothing more complex than a no-holds-barred brawl to the finish. If the runner wins, he gets to keep advancing the bases and the ball is knocked free from the tagging player's hands. If the tagging player wins, the runner is out.

To keep things fair and the scores under three digits, Konami implemented a clever gameplay mechanic: the more narrowly a runner beats a throw, the more health it has available in the battle. A photo-finish at the base means the runner has 100% of its health meter filled at the start, while a brazen attempt at base-stealing where the throw has the runner beat by a mile results in a fight where the runner has a paltry amount of energy supply, whereas the tagging player always has a robust 100% of their health. Basically, the defender always has the advantage.

Left: a close play at third base. Right: the blue team signaled steal with a megaphone

Even more brilliant is that when a robot's total HP has been depleted, they are destroyed utterly in a fiery maelstrom. Lose three robots this way, lose the game. So let's say your team is up to bat, down by 12 in the top of the 9th. You know the opposing team's second baseman has only 120 or so HP left and you've already destroyed two of their robots. Do you try to win the game with sound fundamental baseball and solid base-running and hope to hold onto the lead through the bottom of the ninth? Or do you try to fuck that last robot up and win by default?

Of course you try to blow that fucker up! This ain't Tony LaRussa nickel-and-dime baseball, kids!

"Blow that fucker up" is definitely more the Ozzie Guillen school of management

All of that would make a solid game, but it actually gets even better with pennant mode, where you can earn money to customize your robots with better pitching arms for more ball control and faster throw speed, more powerful weapons, shoulder upgrades for more powerful batting, better legs for faster base running, and regenerating body armor to get your health back in battle.

You'd think RPG elements in a sporting game would be two great tastes that don't taste great together, like mustard and crab-apples. In fact, they're more like Oreo cookies and Bigfoot pepperoni pizza. Independently, they're amazing, but when one is nestled delicately just under the cheesy surface of the other, it's pure magic.

I know some other sports games have tried including RPG elements to varied degrees of success--NBA Hang Time's create-a-character feature allowed players to create a shitterrible rookie and watch his ass get walked over for the entire season before finally accumulating enough stat points to be marginally better than Tyues Edney.

Finally a chance to make my white-boy dream of three assists in the same game to Patrick Ewing a reality!

Depending on whether you consider WWE games to be fighting or sports games, the create-a-wrestler mode for those games is disappointing in the same way. What 16-year-old wrestling fan wouldn't love the chance to watch his virtual alter-ego job a dozen times to Essa Rios before finally getting the stats to maybe one day contend against D-Lo Brown for the European Title?

Behold: your mid-card hell. And If you got that joke, will you be my friend?

Base Wars actually handles this pretty well by putting you in charge of the entire roster and actually allowing even an ill-equipped team the ability to compete by simply having a good eye and fast reflexes at the plate. Rack up a couple victories and you're well on your way to having the funds to be a competitive team.

Of course, I'm not going to say this game is perfect. For example, the higher-end weapons are straight-up broken. If you hit someone with the first shot of an automatic weapon you can just hold the button down until they drop and they won't have a chance to retaliate or even move out of the way. Also, you do damage to players by hitting them with a pitch, so you can hit the entire roster over and over with fastballs and win without ever having to take the field.

But for a game made in '91, it's better than any other baseball sim I've ever played. Some people think about baseball to lose an uncomfortable erection, but thinking about Base Wars actually makes mine worse.