"This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games." -William S. Burroughs
As I am about to set upon “Academic Voyage 2: King Bong,” I have been casually searching for some art-work to set the mood for my new apartment- or at least subdue the sensation one might feel when seeing the abundance of chalk outlines and lack of natural light or dealing with the obtrusiveness of random shit sprawled across the floor. Seeing as I am going to be a grad student, a Dali print is a little out of my price range, and while I love Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, comic interpretations of the vast quantities of alcohol one can consume[1], and Brooke Burke just as much now as I did at nineteen, it is time for a change in direction.[2] The first one that came to mind pretty much sums up everything good in this world, but unfortunately I do not think exists as a real poster:
If your reaction right now is an odd combination of reverence, genuine terror, and beard envy, you can surely understand how the lack of this poster’s existence has sucked all the air right out of my sails.
The next idea I had was actually stolen from a classmate while at undergrad- the tongue-so-in-cheek-that-blood-is-erupting-out-of-your-face fantastically awful poster. His was of Lil’ Bow Wow, well before he made his Simba-esque rise to “Bow Wow.” The most obvious current equivalent would be to get a shrine to one of the Disnebrities (clever: that is a combination of the word ‘Disney’ and ‘celebrity’[3] ), but I think the humor of having friends put white-out on the seat of a picture of the Jonas Brothers’ jeans sounds pretty tired, not to mention most of the really good bodily fluid humor is already taken:
I then debated getting this bad-boy:
,but came to acknowledge that the poster itself is somewhat cheaply made; for instance, where is the shoulder-brace for the machine gun? No spell check? Excessive use of exclamation points? Also, you can’t even tuck your shirt-tail in?
It finally came down between two posters that combine both genuine interests with humor. The first one I like to call “video game poster”:
Strengths:
- Supposedly one of those Grateful Dead/ Phish-esque posters where there are a hundred (songs) games or something all around if you can spot them all. Aka: a nerd conversation starter on HGH (CGH?).
-The floating Japanese head on the right hand of the poster.
- The fact that there is a finish-line, a rock concert, and a huge android about to meet in what will surely be Michael Bay’s next inspiration for a film.
-The monster from Doom, a creature recognized for both its viciousness and warped appearance, is merely floating down the main street while soldiers kill one another- a dense statement of humanism?
-The Tetris pieces really do look like they could be art in a park.
-Questioning Mario’s sexual preferences, as the Mushroom Kingdom is without question the most flamboyant thing on the poster.
Weaknesses:
- I don’t recognize a lot of the games, and don’t really find it clever that someone put a “Pong Café” in the middle. It seems like somebody was just trying to fill space by throwing in a bunch of unnecessary details….[4]
-It’s about video games- not sure how many conversations about video games I currently enjoy having, much less will enjoy having in the future.
-The floating Asian-looking head on the right.
The second poster shall be called “Beat Session to John McClane”:
Strengths:
- Die Hard is the best action film of my lifetime. The Matrix is great because of the mind-expanding chronology, and Terminator 2 might beat it in sheer awesomeness , but Die Hard keeps it simple and is perfectly executed.
-This movie (and some conflicts referred to as “World Wars”) might be the largest direct cause of mistrust of Germans in our country. Who could possibly trust Tony, Fritz, or (obviously) Hans- they look like fucking Aryan zombies! This zombie nature is magnified by the absolute brutality in how they were killed (shot, C4 explosions, broken neck, shot again).
-Notice that Tony is the one guy who pussed out (aka, didn’t die). One obvious reason might be that he was not German; the other more logical reason was that God was saving him for a much larger cause: being the sheriff in the avant-garde masterpiece Walker Texas Ranger.
Weaknesses:
-It will bedazzle my friends so much that it will be like having the new expensive toy in the neighborhood before the other (destitute, I imagine) kids. I can imagine people calling to come over and making my carpet wet with tears of sheer joy or with malt liquor spilled out of respect for one nationalistic hero, Hans Gruber.
- It will probably lead to me watching Die Hard another thirty times, bringing my grand total to around 70- this in of itself isn’t a “weakness” but more of a depressing fact of life. Then again, I would probably spend my time numbing my noggin with the new feces volcano on VH1, so this might be a scratch.
- Debating taking my life after constant reminders that I will never be the man John McClane is (sigh).
Winner: Die Hard poster wins this one. While the video-game poster is certainly a conversation starter, I’m trying to detract from the amount of friends I have with acne, not add to them. Also, I’m sure I’ll be able to sell my Die Hard poster to The Louvre in a few years, so it is more of an investment than anything else.
If there is one word that accurately captures my personality around all those things small and loud it is “curmudgeon.” With that said, one can quickly imagine I am not a big fan of either kids or dogs.
[Out of breath screaming about how a weird, heartless bastard I am? Alright, than we can continue]
Its not that I think I am somehow “above” all things young or canine. Although the abundance of chest-hair and cig in my mouth made it an awkward journey, I too was delivered from my mother’s womb. While most of them sit hazily in my dome due to years of recent substance abuse, I have memories of a pleasant childhood filled with hi-jinx, riff-raff, and up-to-no-goodness of all sorts. So why do I hate kids?
Before we pick that lock, I might as well talk about my relationship with dogs, “companions” that have been with me for an overwhelming majority of my twenty-five years. Of my eighteen years that I lived at home, we always had at least two dogs. Remember some of the shittier episodes of the shows on T.G.I.F. where the one adorable child’s dream was to get a puppy for Christmas? I could never relate to those because I was the exact opposite of that1. While there were certainly exceptions to the rule2, dogs too annoy the crap out of me- but why?
FAQs Concerning My Stance
1. So, do you just not like pets? I don’t think the problem is that I don’t like pets, it was just that I was overwhelmed while growing up with them. I’d say for at least seven years of my life we had on average seven pets. SEVEN. We didn’t live in rural fucking South Dakota or in a budget inner-city Zoo where German Shepherds are considered “Species of the world.” We lived in a modestly sized neighborhood whose typical resident was somewhere in between the age of Matlock and the Magna Carta. So, not only was our house literally getting ripped to shreds by these beasts, but when we’d take them on walks around the neighborhood, we’d get looks through thick monocles as though we were the type of clueless assholes that were running this country’s sense of modesty into the ground. And we had several dogs I did like, but I always appreciated cats more because they were just considerably lower-maintenance.
2. As a man who is a fan of cats surely you can tell me what a penis takes like? Fag. Good gay joke. Although I hate referencing this film when trying to explain my stance on anything, Meet the Parents addresses a lot of the things I consider when comparing the two most common domesticated animals. First, and I don’t give a shit if you claim otherwise by using a scientific survey or something as evidence, but cats are smarter. Cats don’t chase their own tails, dogs do. Dogs don’t have their own toiletry systems and etiquette, cats do. Given, there is something to be said about being able to be far more active with a dog than a cat3, but I loathe exercise as is- I can’t handle another exercise-related responsibility. Sure, cats do scratch, but a dog’s bite is substantially worse. I think my favorite thing about a cat is that it can keep itself occupied- all said, I guess it is a preference of low maintenance versus slobber.
3. How big of an asshole hates kids? A pretty thoughtless one. I fully understand that the youth is our future, that kids need to make plenty of mistakes to grow, blah blah blah blah. The fathers of Biblical times (even the “Father” Father) had it right- have your kid, and have the woman raise it until it is at an age where you can do somewhat enjoyable things with it. Not to mention, I don’t think I, or pretty much any male in between the ages of twenty and forty, have anything valuable to teach an infant. I watched and was involved in the raising of three cousins, and the only things they learned from me is playing video games is cool, doing bad shit behind your parents backs is cooler, and solving problems with violence is the coolest. Sure, kids with spaghetti on their face or a strong embrace around a Mickey Mouse stuffed animal are as adorable as a Panda Bear swimming in a cloud, but the other 99.9% of the time, most children acknowledge themselves as parasites and act accordingly.
4. Which do you like less dogs or babies? Well, I dislike them for pretty much the exact same reasons. Both are painfully loud- dogs with their barks and babies with their cries. How many times have you had an experience ruined by one of these sounds? Last year I was flying back from San Francisco and I was sitting in front of a Middle Eastern woman with her two children- neither of which could be silent for more than a second, thus demolishing any reverence one might have had for the quaintness and modesty of such a polarizing culture. Add this to the fact that the mother was yelling at these children the entire time in a foreign language, and I was quickly becoming the number one terrorist threat on the plane. In terms of barking, the amount of sleepless nights I have had due to a dog just yelping at car lights is staggering- with no exaggeration, I’d say at least two hundred.
Both need constant attention, but for dogs this seems like something they want and for kids its just something that is necessary. While at times rough-housing with a dog is a safe channel to getting aggression out, the shit stops being cute when you have a suit on about to go work, are in the middle of a film, or trying to be intimate. While they too crave attention, kids for the most part can pretty much hang out by themselves- it is just the chaos that ensues when one is left to his or her own devices. There is an anecdote that involves me as a child crashing my mother’s Corvette into a Little Caesar’s merely by playing around with the emergency break, but that is for another time. Dogs just come across as needy; while children obviously had needs as well, most aren’t quite as blatant when begging for it.
And then the filth- Oh God, the filth. I have seen a dog take a shit, take a big bite out of the shit, than proceed to rub its head into the foulest deeps of said shit. Obviously, dogs don’t know better- but as a human I do, and that shit is disgusting. But kids are just as heinous in this regard- when I was a toddler I used to crap myself like there was some sort of alchemist set in my Spider-Man drawers. On the plus side, however, most grow out of this phase, although some seem intrigued enough as to make it a career (see: Two Girls, One Cup). But that doesn’t justify anything- it just proves a point.
Probably the biggest gripe I have with the two, however, is life altering effect they have on their respective owner/ parent. I have gone to “dog parties” before and seen roughly ten people treat their dogs like they were fucking pharaohs. There are dogs, dogs, who have considerably higher annual grooming and nutritional costs than I do. If your life doesn’t considerably change when you have a child, you are doing something wrong- but it is still annoying to your friends when you brag about how your kid won a spelling bee or got a double in tee-ball. Guess what? Nobody gives a crapping crustacean if your kid can spell “paradigm,”4 and if he can’t hit the ball in tee-ball the only excuse is muscular dystrophy or mental impairment. And God forbid you ever criticize either a friend’s kid or dog, because in their mind you are indirectly criticizing them. People should not treat dogs like children or children like Gods.
So who wins this one? A pant-loaded, obnoxious Jonas Brothers-quoting tike in fifteen years can be a contributing, valuable part of society. In fifteen years, that precious puppy you have will most likely be dead. At least with kids you have something to look forward to.
1 That seems a little harsh- It’s not like I wanted to wake up to one of our pets vanished.
2 Notably my family’s Scottish Terrier named Rhett Butler (after Gone With the Wind) who was a complete bastard but in his twilight years would literally do nothing except nudge you for a slight tap and sit on our house’s central air-vent. For like weeks at a time. It’s like he finally became aware that if you are the pet of a loving household you practically have to do nothing except not violently attack or defecate on things.
3 Although, I shit you not, my mom did have a cat leash. This didn’t help my family’s reputation as “Crazy fucking rednecks who live on Oxford Circle.”
4 Although if the kid in question is ten or younger, that is pretty impressive.
Retro-80s is as dead as the American president that defined the original era- make way for the waves of slickly packaged 90s rehash. This isn’t inherently a bad thing- a zeitgeist shift in our current cultural climate can shine light on some of the lesser celebrated1 entities, whether it be the detached synth-rock of Devo that has led to a bevy of bands with a nerdiness=cool aesthetic or the tight female-worn spandex that proves to be the only motivator for one to go to the gym2. I for one never really found the reappreciation of the 80s to be tiresome, although there was clearly a cynical undertone to the late nights of listening to The Very Best of Daryl Hall & John Oates and lazy Sunday Police Academy viewings; a sort of condescending “I can’t believe anybody took this shit seriously” feel towards some of the 80s less-ambitious offerings.
But one of the charms of the reevaluation of 80s culture was that a lot of this stuff was new to me. Sure, I had heard of Rambo and RUN DMC, but as I was just starting grade school as the decade was wrapping up, I found myself part of the generation that back-lashed against the narcissistic, cigarette-boat-driving, coked to the pores excess of the 80s3. Even things that bleed artistic merit, such as the B-52s and The Breakfast Club, were deemed hollow by the decade that would idolize Kurt Cobain and Quentin Tarantino4. But, without getting too deep into the hypocrisies of the decadal divide, let me focus on the “versus” article between the comebacks of two of the 90s most lauded entities: Street Fighter and Guns N’ Roses.
History:
Street Fighter IV: While there are certainly more recognizable franchises in the video game canon, few had the epochal shock that Street Fighter II had when it hit arcades. With few exceptions, video-games up that point had relied on simple controls, minimalist graphics and sounds5, and the consumer’s desire to rack-up the highest amount of points. Street Fighter II changed that with technologies that allowed graphics to look comic-book quality, sound effects that helped shape characters’ personalities, an easy-to-learn-impossible-to-master fighting system that continues to complex and enthrall diehards, and a sense of character and story that made older games’ narrative (shooting other aliens from your alien ship) seem antiquated. The game would have massive success both metabolizing quarters in arcades and countless home console versions. Several variations of the game would be released that rarely did more besides give a new character here and there or a subtle visual difference, a formula they used to print money for roughly six years. While other Street Fighter franchises would be birthed out of II’s success, it became obvious that the gaming public, a nerdy-by-nature demographic, was growing jaded by Capcom’s obvious “going-to-the-well” financial philosophy. The game’s staggering popularity lead to many competitors, such as Mortal Kombat, which was essentially Street Fighter but with digitized graphics, uber-violent “Fatalities,” and an American sensibility that the Japanese-made Street Fighter was missing.
Plus, around this time was when the first generation of 3-d fighters, lead by the almost-flawless Virtua Fighter series started to stake their claim as the next franchise to beat in the video-game realm. It was obvious that Street Fighter needed to respond in a definitive way- instead, they gave Street Fighter III, a game that essentially was a rehash of II, except with a different cast of characters and a more fluid (but still 2-d) animation system. While hard-core fans to this day claim that III and its subsequent variations have the purest mechanics of any Street Fighter, it had become obvious that Street Fighter had gone from T-Rex to fossil within the course of a decade. The face of video-games had changed dramatically in the time from the last true Street Fighter and 2009- the fighting-game industry was still alive but not exactly prosperous. Why fight just one stereotypical Indian guy who blows fire when you can kill Liberty City’s police force and army reserves while taking breaks to get hummers in your stolen tank? Why take the hours to learn combos and the creases of a fighting engine when I can play Dinosaur Jr.’s “Feel The Pain” with a group of people? Is there even a place for a game like Street Fighter IV with peoples’ wallets and attention spans dropping at a correlating rate that makes the rate crack and crime rise seem coincidental?
Chinese Democracy- I refuse to try to sum up Guns n’ Roses rise to fame, power etc. in this piece because I don’t think I could do it justice. I recently just finished Slash, a 400ish page book mostly about Guns n’ Roses and while quite an impressive chronology of drug use and STDs, I never felt like the book was comprehensive enough to be considered a definitive history. And while a lot of these postings may give you the impression that they are door-stop size in length, they really aren’t. After Appetite for Destruction, an album which has a very sound argument for best Hard Rock album of all time, G n’ R went into a sort of creative stagnancy. This was mostly due to touring, Slash being a heroin addict and doing bizarre shit like taking care of his plethora of snakes, constant shuffling of the bands line up, and Axl Rose being Axl Rose. Axl Rose, for all of his apparent faults6 does have a very obvious quality- ambition. So, when Geffen were willing to open up the sack of gold for Guns to make their Who’s Next or Physical Graffiti, little did they know that Axl was fully aware of the leverage one gets with success, and his golden ticket (Appetite) was going to get him the materials and cash needed to record his double-album7 “masterpiece,” Use Your Illusion. While the album featured little of what made Guns so damn bad-ass in the first place, it did succeed at enough levels to be considered a great album. Take a white hot band, have them produce a very listenable if bloated album, completely take advantage of music videos as a way to sell records and shake- success was obvious. The stadium tour that followed was renown for some great shows, some no shows, and many, many late shows. Due to reasons whose scope range far wider than even this web-site addresses, the band would break up with Axl retaining the legal rights to the name Guns n’ Roses. Use Your Illusion was released in 1991. Though never completely leaving the social conscience, Guns failed to produce any original music (besides a better than people think album of covers) for the next 17 years until the mythical Chinese Democracy came out. It is argued that no other album this side of SMiLE by the Beach Boys had had periods where anticipation was at this level. Axl, with the help of a militia of musicians finally put the finishing touches of Democracy for release in 2008- it couldn’t have possibly have lived up to expectations, could it?
Test #1: Is it sentimental back-wash or a reverent look-back?
Street Fighter IV’s almost entire existence is based on one thing- the player has played the older Street Fighter games. The control schemes, characters, backgrounds, sounds, everything has been slightly tweaked while giving a well-due complete respect to the King of Fighters, Street Fighter II. While the game’s mythology itself has failed to grow with the modern philosophy that all is a shade of gray, there are tiny slices of a new social conscience present in the game.8 But really, in a game where I can fight one huge green demon looking mother-fucker against a professional wrestler who merely fights so that people will think professional wrestling is a legitimate fighting style9, the last thing I need is some Ivy League-lite take on human nature.
Chinese Democracy feels a little more like the former (because Axl Rose’s voice is instantly recognizable) at first, but ultimately redeems itself by not trying to be Appetite for Destruction II. Twenty-two years have passed since Guns came out with that album, and simply put, kids in their twenties are considerably better at fuming rage and generating chaos than a multi-millionaire who last time I saw was doing a song for an Arnie Schwarzenegger film. While the album bleeds passion, it is a more self-contained sort- an odd assessment for a record who supposedly has tracks where there are upwards of twenty guitar tracks playing simultaneously.
In the end, however, Chinese Democracy kind of just sounds like a new Guns n’ Roses album, whereas Street Fighter IV seems to appreciate the adage to go forward one must start from their past. In that regard, Street Fighter IV wins round one.
Test #2: Stepping Forward
In one of the few (maybe only) scathing review I read of IV, avclub.com’s reviewer essentially said it’s the same game you have been playing for the last two decades. When everything has settled, and one gets over the pristine graphics10, well designed, if still distastefully stereotyped new characters11, and few significant changes to the gameplay itself, the reviewer is completely right- if you didn’t like the series of games before, seeing Chun Li’s undies during a high kick in HD isn’t going to make you reevaluate your stance on the series. Nor is this movie:
Chinese Democracy has had quite the polarizing effect on people, and it is because of Axl’s ostensible desire to try something new with Guns’ music. While there are still a few ironic Axl-I-hate-faggots-Rose-yet-still-try-to-imitate-Elton-John-and-Freddy-Mercury-often piano based howls, Rose definitely tries new genres of music from electronic to Industrial to Jah-Ya-ish Hip-Hop to at least give the listener the knowledge that this collection of songs wasn’t merely left over from Illusion sessions or pieces that just needed a vocal from Slash’s Snakepit. While I have considerable gripes with the album (see below), I do view Axl Rose with a similar regard as I do Billy Corgan12- neither works well with others but both are willing to swing for the fences by taking potentially suicidal and obviously costly risks with their music. While I think everybody on the planet would probably like Appetite for the 21st century, Rose simply isn’t at that point in his musical career right now- he tried something new, with all the world watching no less, and should be applauded for the effort.
Winner: Chinese Democracy
Test #3: Quality of work
Modern video games demand much time and effort from the user. Consider Grand Theft Auto IV, arguably the greatest piece of entertainment software ever created- I played and beat the game while mostly avoiding the optional side-missions and I think it still took me near the fifty hour mark to complete it. Street Fighter is structurally different in this regard- the game is built for a quick duel, usually of the 100 second variety. That being said, I don’t remember the last time I spent as much time playing a game as I did Street Fighter IV. The game has now become what you have to imagine the developers wanted in their first try- a battle between quick-wits and reflexes with strategy that could only really be compared to a chess match (cliché, I know). Everything, from the graphics, to a fighting engine that fluently flirts between intuitive and labyrinthine, to the screw-ball Japanese aesthetic is phenomenal. While I’m not sure this type of game will appeal to the new generation of gamers who expect immediate satisfaction, for a 18 year veteran13, it is perfection. I’m not saying Street Fighter IV is the best game I have ever played; it isn’t. I am saying that there are no other games in existence that make grab onto you with a glee that can only be compared to getting stung by a sentimentality-spreading mosquito14.
One can not talk about Chinese Democracy without at least mentioning the old-dog-lifetime it took to release it and the anticipation that gained and waned as a result of the wait. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the choices Axl made. While some of the songs come across as forced and sound like they are Guns songs only because they are played by a band called Guns n’ Roses, Rose clearly has a swagger that can electrify when he is in his element. The reason David Bowie is often regarded as one of the best pop musicians of all time is because his ability to somehow weld thresholds- take a listen to “Station to Station” sometime- it will take two hands to count the number of genres. Axl, however, lacks this ability. While some tracks, such as “Street of Dreams,” remind one of a time where Axl was on the cover of every music magazine in the Western Hemisphere, forays into uncharted territory spawn very “meh” results. It certainly isn’t bad- the album as a whole is listenable and there are times when you are almost take comfort with the fact that if he makes an album in the next three years it will be ground-breaking. Maybe Chinese Democracy should be viewed as a cathartic exercise in that regard. But there is no question that the only sales this album will accrue are Guns fans- the music is too dated and arrogant to be considered top 40 Rock, not clever enough to be beheld by the indie rock crowd. What has become obvious over the last five or so years is that Slash and Axl have a semiotic relationship- Slash, with his mastering of blues rock and Axl with his sense of ambition mashed together helped work the kinks that both respective genres typically have.
Conclusion: Initially I wanted to simply write ‘Street Fighter IV’ here because it is simply better than Mr. Rose’s latest attempt at modern relevance. But, the way music ages and the way games age are naturally very different- games, due to their dependence on newer technologies have a newest “greatest of all time” nearly annually. While views on music may change as the medium itself does, the basic premise of rock music- guitar, drums, vocals, et al, probably won’t change as much as the video game medium will in the next twenty years (see: Nintendo Wii), and is why The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the aforementioned Thin White Duke have a longevity that no game- besides maybe Tetris- ever will. Chinese Democracy does get points for making a huge, sprawling, ambitious Rock album- it just happens to suck in comparison to the basic, beautiful, sentimental Street Fighter IV. Winner: Street Fighter IV.
1 Or in the case of the 80s, the more mocked.
2 And to any girl that I have been checking out while doing the bench-press, I have to thank you for making my max about twenty pounds heavier.
3 This proves to be hilariously ironic to me for the simple reason that it wasn’t like that the 90’s and 00’s have been such modest times in our history either.
4 Again, ironic, due to the amount of excess these two are identified with.
5 Complete tangent, but if you do dig the sounds of the these games as much as I did/do, I suggest checking out the musical stylings of Crystal Castles and The Advantage- the former is more a synth-based pop group where the other uses old themes from games and jams them like they were they were their own- sounds like a shaky premise, but both deliver.
6 Can’t tell you that for sure- never met the guy- though I would suggest for him to get those hideous fucking dred-locks off of his head. Also, it is literally impossible to look cool if you are fighting Tommy fucking Hilfiger- get with it man.
7 Although they sold them as two different albums. No matter the production costs, one must imagine that after G n’ R held the number one and two albums on the Billboard charts (the only group to ever do that), they got their cash back. As a fan, I’m appalled, as a businessman, I applaud.
8 Take Seth, the final boss, and his uncanny similarity in appearance, power, and attitude to Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen.
9 Nope, no fucking sense, whatsoever
10 Just watching Ryu throw his fireball still impresses me
11 These include but are not limited to “El Fuego” the Mexican luche-libre wrestler and Rufus, the obese American with a taste for motorcycles, fast-food, and big breasted fighter-groupies.
12 I have officially lost half of my friends
13 God knows what constructive things I can have been doing with my time if not playing.
After a very refreshing and informative two weeks of vacation, I am currently trying to assemble some top ten lists for my favorite things of 2008, a year that went by far too quickly. While I try to focus long enough on doing that and avoiding the numerous pitfalls inherent in trying to catch up with what happened on the internet for the last half month, here's Terry.
Was amidst a pretty terrible Thanksgiving drive home yesterday, when I found myself digging through crusty Case Logic cases to find forgotten gems. After a thoroughly enjoyable 2 hours of listening to the soundtracks of Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction, a peculiar fact dawned on me- these two films have two of the coolest openings in cinematic history. Also consider that they were made in the mid-90s, when somewhat of a mini film noir-Renaissance sent shock-waves down the linearity of film making and demonstrated to budding auteurs that you can make films with grit on a relatively shoe-string budget and still be successful. Anyway, will spare you an over-blown tirade on the merits of Boyle and Tarantino's masterpieces- just thought it would be cool to share these two clips.
Conclusion: Both are fantastic beginnings and fitting microcosms of what made this genre/ era of film so invigorating: obscure yet unforgettable music, dialogue that was as literate as it was quick, a sense of humor as dark as Vincent Vega's tie, and an unflinching eye for the most horrific of acts. Still, I pick Trainspotting's intro just because "Lust of Life" is a personal favorite song, and the narration discussing the pro's and con's of domestication is a tad more poignant of a topic of conversation than common annoyances of liquor store robberies (even if not as humorous).
This article is not what you think- it is not some bizarre diatribe about the connection between vampires and British secret service agents; the intricacies of British versus American film; a comparison of two of the Holiday season's biggest properties.
Nope, not about that at all. I did see Quantum of Solace, which made me reevaluate everything in my life because I finally found out what the word "mediocre" means. I have seen the ravenous crowds of females waiting to see a vampire bone a lonely chick. But this isn't even about the movie's themselves.
This is simply about me sitting in my little shitty cubicle, listening to two women, one a heavy 35 year old woman who makes an effort with me by bringing up football and another, heavier, more 40ish woman who screams at her kids daily, discussing these two films. No, that is misleading. They are discussing certain aspects of the two films. In terms of the new Bond, I have heard these two women speak of Daniel Craig's abs as though they are two heavier pot-head MidWesterners about to go into a all you can eat Baked Potato Bar. If that simile sounds a little peculiar, it might have something to do with the fact that both are eating baked potatoes that resemble saturated fat volcanoes, barely being able to get words in between bacon bits in teeth and diet cokes swilled.
In regards to Twilight, both agree that the movie is fantastic. That the books too were fantastic. I haven't read any of the vampi-philiac works, and while I am sure I would find endless depth in their Pychon-esque passages, I will not read those books because I already have enough enemies- I don't need to hate myself as well. The heavier lady gives a certain gasp at the mention of the main actor's name- it resembles the sound that is emitted over the speakers when Martin calls Pam a dog in Martin. I contemplate two things- (1) how bad I feel for having such a strong reaction to this awful conversation and (2) why do fatter people wear tight fitting clothing. I think I just saw the heavier one's tattoo- it is a Chinese letter (guess where it is located)- the only appropriate definition of the character would be "nausea."
The younger one offers to take the two plates up and get some cookies from the break room. I expect for her to get chocolate chips because of the nutritional value of raisins in the oatmeal cookies, but she vouches to get both. I suppose the FUPA area on her pants needs a more spherical quality- do vampires like heavier girls?
After the alerting thump of my forehead popping off my desk, both look over at me with looks of "isn't that cute, a boy not wanting to hear about popular female culture." I smile half-heartedly, thinking how accurately I can throw my stapler. The decision- probably very poorly, as I had the strength to play baseball, just not the circular throwing motion that secretes the ideal amount of torque out of one's arm. After a quick recap of why Twilight was the better film but Quantum of Solace had more drippy-pants parts (admittedly my term, not theirs), I smile. The speaking stops. It might annoy me endlessly, but those two people, no matter what I may think of their physical appearance, just had an enjoyable conversation, a twenty minute little session where both felt connected by common interests even if the topic something I would call "mind shit." Both of these women cried when Obama won. Idealism is alive and well in America, ideas not so much.
But, like many, I can't have some full sense of happiness for these two women. I must stay at arm's lengths- the tips of my fingernails just barely grazing the cat-hair on their seasonal sweaters. For that, I have to say that Twilight wins, because I haven't seen that, and thus it makes me feel a little better to have less in common with these two women. Also, I find it hilarious that people find it interesting to have sex with vampires. Don't they know they are habitual P.E.s, and oh yeah, THEY FUCKING DRINK PEOPLE'S BLOOD.
