The ハト locker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*I understand no one is actually reading my blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why does feel like I'm drowning?

Home is where the heart pounds

Or: "Really, Mr. Jackson?  Really?"

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

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

Behold the new face of fear

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

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

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

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

Pictured: Things hitting a little too close to home

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

Also the scale only goes from 1 to 3.

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

No.

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

Fortunately...

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

After all, there's no place like it.

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

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

Merican: Because my nightmare has been given form

It's the reason this...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wonder where he found the inspiration for the role

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

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

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

Ambiguous Characterization:

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

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

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

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

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

Why should I like anyone?:

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

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

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

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

Tonal Dissonance:

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

and this scene...

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

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

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

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

There is no hilarity:

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

Ludacris makes every movie better

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

The Verdict:

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

Tales of the mushroom hunters

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

Well...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Literally seconds away from becoming a racist, sexist, homophobe

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

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

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

"What's your name, son?"

"Leonard."

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

"Le-, um... Chad?"

"You start Monday."

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

Worth it.

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

It was a push door.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disappointment.  Long ride back to Funco Land.

Goodbye, Chrono Trigger.

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

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

More calls.  Fewer Chads.

A hit.

Back on the road.

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

He pulls out my game.

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

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

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

Except the last two lines weren't in Finnish

Mowing the lawn never felt so satisfying.

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

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

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

I later found it again a couple more times in college

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

Scott

Jules

Tim

Ribs

Amy

Penis

Magical.  Truly magical.

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

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

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

I'm back, baby!

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

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned.

One you shouldn't miss

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

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

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.