Greetings, Choppers!!

The end of summer is upon us!  And with the changing of the seasonal guard, so does my summer series prepare to exit, stage right.

But, I wanted to end “The Don Remembers” with a bang.  Or at least, with a lame crazy stunt no one will notice.  So, as my final offering to you all, I will be going… live!

Well, not really.

What I will be doing is spending this installment on my couch, watching that awesome love letter to those who lived the eighties – Hot Tub Time Machine.  During the course of my film viewing, I will be doing a regular commentary – highlighting each bit of eighties nostalgia I come across and sharing my own, brief thoughts on it.  As I do so, I will also time stamp each comment, so that anyone who wishes to do so can follow along on their own.

Yeah, like that would happen.

So without further ado…  I present to you Hot Tub Time Machine…

Oh, and it’s the unrated version (more nudity for me!)…

Okay… here we go:

00:01:30  The dog’s name is Bono.  Like the lead singer of U2.  Once upon a time, he was just an Irish lead singer in a great band in the eighties.  Now…

00:02:36  John Cusack is in the house!!!  Literally, he just walked into his house.  One of the pioneers of eighties teen comedies.  This man has managed to still have a great career.  One of my all-time favorite actors.

00:04:47  Firebird Trans-Am!!!  One of the finest automobiles of the 1980s.  Introduced in the seventies by Smokey and the Bandit, the Trans-Am became an icon throughout the early to mid-eighties.  Not, my favorite, however.  That distinction would go to K.I.T.T. a year or two later.

00:05:01  Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”!  One of the greatest ballads to come out of the eighties from a hair metal band.  I frikkin’ love this song.

00:10:43  Just realized… John Cusack always seems to play characters that get dumped.

00:12:45  Clark Duke just referenced Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  That movie scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid.

00:13:54  Crispin Glover!!  Marty McFly’s dad as a bellhop!  From one time travel movie to another.  Turns out, he was cast for this film for just that reason.  Well, one of the reasons.  And it appears he’s doing a variation of “Hey you, get your damn hands off her!”

00:17:15  The hot tub looks like it’s filled with Michelob, a popular beer in the eighties.

00:18:37  Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. masks.  Once upon a time in the eighties, that was our President and Vice, respectively.  Reaganomics!!  Remember when Patrick Swayze robbed banks wearing presidents’ masks in Point Break?

00:19:46  Ah, the ski resort.  A common backdrop in eighties comedies.  South Park did a great parody of that trope a couple of seasons ago.

00:20:12  Fluorescent colors!!!  Man, who thought that was acceptable to wear??

00:20:27  Another Crüe song – “Kick-Start My Heart”.  Crüe was king of the hair bands…

00:21:21  Enter the staple of all eighties coming-of-age comedies – the bully.  Two of them, in fact.  Usually in a position of authority, and usually full of douchebaggery.

00:21:31  Speaking of douchbags… “Hey, look – it’s the douchebag from Karate Kid III.”  What an awful film, sullying what were two great predecessors.

00:22:02  OMG – fur boots.  Run for your life.  We have finally captured and killed bigfoot, and made him into footwear.

00:22:08 Eighties overload in 3-2-1 (Contact)…

00:22:10  More bright colors!  And an eighties tune I hear playing in the background that I can’t remember the name of.  I fail.  Commentary over.

00:22:18  Acid-wash jeans.  I owned a couple of these… I’m afraid to admit.

00:22:21  Ah… those weird sunglasses that looked like open blinds…  Never had a pair.  Even I thought they looked stupid, and impractical.

00:22:29  Giant, portable phones.  Only the rich had them because the “plans” were so expensive.  The crappy spin-off That 80s Show tried to do this same gag.  It failed.

00:22:37  “I want my two dollars!”  A direct quote and homage to the aforementioned Better Off Dead, just as Cusack in onscreen.  Love it.  Great movie.  The original line comes from a paperboy who is… a tad overzealous about getting paid for his deliveries…

00:22:40  S-S-S-S, A-A-A-A, F-F-F-F, E-E-E-E, T-T-T-T, Y-Y-Y-Y… “The Safety Dance”!  Love this song.  Great eighties staple.

00:22:45  Jheri curl and smoking in public establishments.  Two tastes that go great together.  No, they don’t.

00:22:50  David Bowie does a promo bumper for MTV… “I want my MTV!”  So, do I, Jareth… So do I…

00:22:53  The Bill Cosby sweater…  The Cosby Show was actually pretty funny.  And a cigarette machine.  No carding required…

00:22:57  Too hot for the hot tub!!

00:22:59  Miami Vice – Popular cop show for its time… and a fashion trendsetter.  That’s partly where all the bright colors came from.  Thanks, Don Johnson.

00:23:03  Poison – another hair metal band from the eighties.  The debate was always which was better – them or Crüe.  I was always for Crüe.

00:23:07  Madonna on the cover of SPIN magazine… back when she was hot and I wanted her badly… In the background, a CHOOSE LIFE T-shirt, popularized by George Michael when he was in the band WHAM!  There are a lot of CAPITALIZED WORDS in this comment.

00:23:10  ALF!!!  (More capitalizations.)  I loved that show.  Was so pissed when NBC cancelled it right after a major cliffhanger.  It would not be the first or last time they did that crap.

00:23:15  Reagan again… trying to talk his way out of something…

00:23:19  Super Mario Bros.!!!!  One of the greatest arcade games of all time!  That was my joint!  Was one of the first hits to come out of the video game fallout of 1983…

00:23:20  The Cuban Missile Crisis… I think.  My history isn’t up to snuff.  I know, shame on me.

00:23:21  Cyndi Lauper.  Strange, fun, and sexy in her own way…  Love her music… and Pete Townshend during his solo days from The Who…

00:23:22  Col. Oliver North… had a shredding party… while Adam Ant sung about “Goody Two-Shoes”.

00:23:23  The old Apple II computers… everyone at school seemed to have one… but me.  I eventually got a Commodore 64.

00:23:24  Sony Walkman!  I had that exact color and model.  I’m actually glad we got out of the cassette era.

00:23:27  Nu Shooz – “I Can’t Wait”.  One of my favorite eighties songs of all time.

00:23:35  Legwarmers.  I actually never got the reason for these.

00:23:37  “Where’s the Beef?”  Classic slogan for Wendy’s.  That old lady was a hoot when she would spout that line.  She’s dead now.  (Ooh!  Too soon?)

00:23:41  Michael Jackson – before the charges, before the color change… he was just about the music.  I love “Thriller”.

00:24:10  Whew!  That was a a lot of stuff…

00:24:55  “Eddie Lives” T-shirt from Iron Maiden, Fishbone T-shirt… one of these bands I actually listened to.  And an old school tape recorder…  Ah, the stuff we would record on those things.

00:25:15  1986… I was eleven and in the sixth grade…

00:25:27  Timecop – not a bad Jean-Claude Van Damme flick.  Creative time travel ideas.

00:25:40  A mullet, a feathered hairstyle, and a hi-top fade walk into a bathroom…I wore two out of three of these.

00:26:27  Cocaine – the drug of the eighties.

00:27:20  The Terminator – James Cameron’s first admitted flick.  One of the best sci-fi/horror films out there.

00:28:03  Enter Chevy Chase.  He had a great career in the eighties… well, at first.  Luckily, this movie and the show Community have finally brought him back from obscurity.  Now, if only we could get Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy back, too.

00:31:06  AIDS.  ‘Nuff said.

00:32:48  “What You Need” by INXS.  I used to think it was pronounced The Ink-sez.

00:33:34  Wine coolers… the alcoholic beverage of the eighties.

00:35:49  “Modern Love” by David Bowie.  I liked some of his stuff, but really didn’t get into his music until much later.

00:36:56  Look at all the eighties cars…

00:37:04  Synthesizer!  I keep saying – we need to bring synthesizers back into music.

00:37:12  Keytar!  This goes double for the Keytar.

00:37:50  Jordans… a shoe that I never owned by a basketball star that I never watched play.

00:38:45  “Push It” by Salt n Pepa… not really my bag.

00:40:00  Denim skirts… those have actually come back.  I kind of like them on the ladies.

00:42:30  So much great music in this flick – “Obsession”, by Animotion.  Another one of my favorite songs from that decade.  I remember roller skating to that song.

00:44:03  “I Wanna Know What Love Is”, by Foreigner.  I love me some Foreigner…

00:48:48  Rocky IV, Rambo III, Red Dawn.  The testosterone in this room is overwhelming.

00:48:49  Yep.  People used to wear their polos with the collars up.  Embarrassing.

00:48:58  “Wolverines!!”

00:49:19  21 Jump Street.  I loved that show.  Aired on the fledgling Fox network and launched the career of Johnny Depp.

00:50:05  Break-up notes SUCKED.

00:51:11  More Crüe – “Keep Your Eye On the Money”.  I think Crüe is the main sponsor of this film.

00:51:23  Manimal.  Eighties show about a guy who could turn into animals.  I never liked it.  I loved Automan, about a guy created from the computer.

00:51:36  Denver vs. Cleveland.  I never watched sports as a kid.  Still don’t.  Sci-Fi/Fantasy all the way.  If it doesn’t have a plot, I’m not interested.

00:51:53  Cutting Crew – “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight”.  I’ve always been a ballad man, and this is one of my favorites.

00:52:26  Break-up poetry.  I was a hopeless romantic in high school.  I wrote a lot if this stuff.  Still have some of it somewhere.  Man, is it awful.

00:54:51  “Let me ask you something McFly.”  From William F-ing Zabka, the guy who made a short-lived career out of playing douchebags in movies like The Karate Kid and Back to School God-bless his douchebaggery ways…

00:55:13  “Bring it on, Spader.”  That would be a reference to James Spader, another actor who played creepy characters in eighties flicks.

00:58:50  “True” by Spandau Ballet plays during a scene that’s a throwback to the final scene in Sixteen Candles with Molly Ringwald – the eighties’ go-to girl for a red head sweetheart.  Man, I hate the song “True”.

01:01:55  Ugh.  Tiger striped pants.  More horrors in eighties fashion.

01:03:29  The punk rock movement and shoulder pads for women’s clothing – two things that do not go together.

01:05:10  The permed, overdone hair the chicks are sporting is outrageous… and I still like it.

01:06:48  Butchering a George Michael song… not cool…

01:06:54  But, doing a Rick Springfield song right…  Too bad the other guy with the word “spring” in his name got the better career.

01:07:22  OOH!  I spy a Back to School poster!  How meta!  And a Last American Virgin poster – the most depressing teen comedy of the eighties.

01:08:06  Another riff on Back to the Future – Nick bringing the future of music to the youth of the past… works out better for him than for Marty.

01:11:06  Crimped hair.  Wow.

01:16:45  Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines in a movie about ballet dancers… and effort to send a message about the Cold War… in a non-manly fashion.

01:30:23  Winding down with The Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”.  Same as it ever was.

01:32:45  And… in what is a complete departure from eighties time travel flicks – the characters don’t actually just face their issues and learn a valuable lesson while coming to grips with their situation, leaving it as it is.  No, these guys ACTUALLY DO THE COOL THING AND CHANGE THE FUTURE FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT.  Oh, and learn a lesson, too.

01:33:21  And now, we end this long commentary with a slightly altered version of the music video from Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”.  Love this song.

And that about wraps it up for this lengthy, final installment of “The Don Remembers”.  I actually managed to stretch an hour and forty-five minute movie to a three hour writing exercise, and I prolly missed a bunch of stuff.  Still, it was a blast.  My apologies for putting you all to sleep, and I’ll meet you all back here next week with a return to form for “The Office of the Don”!  Goodnight!

The Don is on his way… he’s on his wayeee…  Bed, sweet bed…

I was originally going to write about how today was a monumental day because, for once, Faye from Questionable Content WASN’T being a huge rhymes-with-witch. (Well, I guess I did just write about that.) Seriously, I’ve never understood why she’s the most popular character in that comic.

That, however, was overshadowed by far more depressing and important news, as news of Satoshi Kon’s death began burning up the Internet. This 47-year-old master Japanese director was one of my artistic heroes from the moment I first discovered his work in anime, via the “Magnetic Rose” short from Memories. Paranoia Agent later became one of my absolute favourite television series.

If you’re curious to see some of Kon’s work, just hit up a certain popular video site for clips and other videos. I highly recommend “Magnetic Rose” as uploaded by user DimensionAnime. I’d link to the videos here, but, since the whole thing is uploaded by DimensionAnime rather than just clips, that wouldn’t be entirely kosher, and we like to be kosher here, if not in the rabbinical way. So please go find it for yourself. Then buy it!…if you can still find the home release, that is.

I’ll be raising a glass of something fizzy and unidentifiable in his honour tonight, while contemplating Kon-themed sushi (remember that, The Don’s lovely wife?) and hopefully organizing a Satoshi Kon anime marathon for the future. I feel extremely lucky that I got to see Kon himself a few years ago, when the movie Paprika made its U.S. debut at the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. Kon answered questions, he entertained, and after the movie and panel were over, everyone left giddy and excited, touched by the presence of a creative genius. I guess those blurry, dark photos I took away on my crappy camera that night will be greater treasures to me than ever before.

Sleep well, Kon. Hope you’re enjoying the moon.

Meanwhile, M. Night Shyamalan and Uwe Boll continue to live and work in the entertainment industry. Truly, there is no justice in this world.

Greetings, Poopsmiths!!

We’re already over the halfway mark in August, which means this summer series is almost at an end (unless I hear voices erupt from the crickets out there to demand I keep this going in some form).  With that in mind, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t go out without talking about one of my favorite animation companies – Rankin/Bass.  These guys helped get me through my entire childhood.  And they managed to accomplish that feat in more than one style.

The double-surnamed animation company started back in 1964.  Their first attempt was a Christmas special for NBC about the famous red-nosed reindeer Rudolph.  Using an animation style that they would become most noted for over the next twenty years – stop-motion animation – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer became an instant holiday classic, and Christmas specials like this one would become Rankin/Bass’s bread and butter for the next two decades.

Over the course of those two decades, Rankin/Bass produced over thirty seasonal specials, covering other holidays as well as Christmas.  While most were in the stop-motion variety, they would occasionally throw in a traditional cel-animated special as well.  But no matter what the style, Rankin/Bass specials always pulled in some of the grade-A talent of the time for voice-over work, like Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, Burl Ives, and Andy Griffith.

As a young boy growing up, Christmas didn’t fully begin until the networks started showing Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph, or ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.  Sure, Charlie Brown is probably considered the king of Christmas cartoon fare, but surely the R/B stuff was part of the royal court.  And in some ways, they’ve even surpassed the Blockheaded One – A Charlie Brown Christmas airs once, maybe twice on CBS every year.  Rankin/Bass specials?  They get twenty-five days devoted to them every year on ABC Family.  Who’s the blockhead now?

Oh, right.

Now, while most other animation companies would be content to cater to one specific niche where children are concerned, Rankin/Bass did the unthinkable.  In 1985, right around the time they produced their last Christmas special, the cartoon-makers with a forward slash in their name changed tactics and decided to aim towards the “impressionable ten to fifteen year olds who loved action/adventure and would pester their parents to buy them any toy featured in a cartoon” demographic.

And so, Thundercats was born.

I just so happened to be at the very beginning of that demographic at the time.  So guess what?  Yup – first thing I did when I came home from school each day was plaster myself to the living room floor to watch the adventures of a small group of anthropomorphic, feline humanoids try to survive on a futuristic earth after fleeing their doomed home world of Thundera.

Along with He-Man and Transformers, Thundercats completed the trifecta of animated action/adventure in my ten year old life.  Homework?  What homework?  Who had time for solving math equations, writing book reports, or figuring out why gravity pulled you down when the forces of good and evil were in constant struggle three times a day.

Did I say three times?  I meant four.

Because just when I thought my pre-pubescent life already had enough excitement to take the edge off of starting to discover girls, those geniuses running that cartoon company that sounded like a smelly fish had struck gold again.  Taking the exact same formula that made Thundercats such a huge hit, Rankin/Bass modified the ingredients – setting it primarily in space and making the humanoids birdlike instead – and gave it a similarly-structured moniker.

And so, Silverhawks was born.

Let’s be honest – it was a blatent rip-off of Thundercats.  Almost all of the voice cast from the first series was carried over to do voices for the new series.  The characters and situations they found themselves in were very similar to what came before.  And the big bad – Mon-starr, had a transformation sequence – with spell chant! – almost exactly like his Thundercat counterpart Mumm-Ra.

Of course, none of this mattered.  My pre-ADD-discovery brain latched onto this new offering with spirited glee.

It wouldn’t be long after Silverhawks debuted, however, that the house that Arthur and Jules built would start to run aground.  By the late eighties, this powerhouse of animation that had managed to persist like a juggernaut over the course of twenty years was finally starting to lose steam.  So, of course, the only solution was to triplicate the same exact formula that made them a hit twice before, only this time it was – gasp – underwater!  And once again, the name was just a smoosh-up of what animal they were combined with some other random word.  It was like they weren’t even trying anymore at this point.

And so, Tigersharks was crapped out of Satan’s rectum.

The sound that immediately followed was the death knell for Rankin/Bass.  Tigersharks, thanks mostly to the fact that no one ever really heard of the show, much less watched it, met a quick and painless death.  Sadly, Thundercats and Silverhawks followed suit right around the same time, and just like that – a wonderful animation company went the way of your favorite uncle who just happened to drink a little too much sometimes.

Despite their unfortunate demise those many years ago, Rankin/Bass is still around.  Revived at the beginning of the new millennium, they are currently owned by Warner Bros. – who do the company proud by making horrible sequels to their holiday classics.  In the meantime, at least we still get to see the fruits of studio lowercase today – between the aforementioned re-airing of all their Christmas specials on ABC Family to having the entire Thundercats series on DVD (and occasionally on Cartoon Network).  Even the first season of Silverhawks made it to DVD.  Unfortunately, it’s the only season out to date due to poor sales.  But, that can only mean good news:

At least Tigersharks will never see the light of day again.

The Don feels the magic, hears the roar… crap – it’s the other kind of cougar.

Greetings, Soggies!!

Alright.  This is the part of the show where I remember something that almost no one has ever heard of (of course, sometimes folks surprise me).

In the mid-eighties, during the height of Indiana Jones fever, it seemed like every studio in Hollywood had to make some kind of “treasure-hunting adventurer”-style film.  Romancing the Stone.  King Solomon’s Mines.  Firewalker. Even television tried to capitalize on the success of Raiders in the early eighties with shows like Bring ‘Em Back Alive and Tales of the Gold Monkey.

Now, somewhere in the midst of all of those movies and shows that actually formed a blip on the “treasure-hunter” radar, there’s this one little gem of a turd that sneaked in under the door… so much so that to this day I am one of the few people that even knows of its existence:

Jake Speed.

The film came out in 1986.  I have no idea if it even made a theatrical release.  All I do know is that it was on heavy rotation on Showtime around that time.  And I watched the hell out of it.  Written, produced, and starring some guy named Wayne Crawford in the title role, this movie was truly a love letter to himself… that just happened to have a couple of fun sequences and a neat thirties-style roadster with machine guns to fit in with the whole “cool vehicles” theme that was also going on in the eighties.

The movie is about a woman named Margaret whose sister is kidnapped while in Paris by a bunch of white slavers.  Her grandfather, who is a huge fan of the heroes of dime store, pulp novels, suggests she recruit one of them – Jake Speed.  Balking at the idea that her grandfather would even believe that these characters are real, Margaret finds herself face to face with Jake and his partner (I don’t mean that kind) Desmond.  Turns out, these guys really go on adventures, and then write about them to pay for more adventures.  From there, the trio go after the slavers, headed up by an awesome, scenery-chewing John Hurt.

I remember stopping to catch this every time it was on.  Not particularly well done, especially compared to its better, theatrically-run brethren.  But, it had its cheesy charms.  Jake had a special shotgun he called “The Kid”.  This weapon had two special properties that all guns had in the eighties – unlimited ammo and the ability to destroy practically anything with one shot.  Then of course, there was that car.  I would grin with delight every time the side panels opened up and the machine guns came out, blazing down everyone in sight.

Now, the film had two major things going for it as far as I was concerned back then – the aforementioned John Hurt and Karen Kopins.  John Hurt is the main (and maybe the only) reason to watch this movie.  He plays the evil villain so over the top you can tell he’s just having fun cashing a paycheck.  But, he’s so much fun to watch.  Sadly, I wanted to provide a clip of Hurt having a scenery sandwich, but it looks like the movie is so bad that everyone is too embarrassed to even post a clip on You Tube.

Now, the reason why Karen Kopins was such a draw for me in regards to this movie is because I had a huge crush on her.  My long distance love affair with Miss Kopins began with a little film called Once Bitten.  In it, she played the girlfriend of Jim Carrey’s character (yes – that Jim Carrey), who was being turned into a vampire.  The cute, little bob haircut and the girl next door persona had me hooked.  And here she was in Jake Speed, playing a very similar character.

Oh and did I mention that about two-thirds of the way through the film she ends up in her underwear?  For a preteen, that’s a big deal.

Many years later, I still have a guilty-pleasure love for this flick.  The movie hasn’t come out on DVD (nor do I ever expect it to), but I did manage to get it on VHS for about five bucks several years ago in a Wal-Mart bargain bin.  It’s one of the few VHS tapes I still own despite the fact that almost all of my movie and TV collection now resides on DVD or Blu.

And as far as I’m concerned, it’s still worth every penny of that five bucks I spent.

The Don doesn’t chew scenery… he swallows it whole.

Greetings, Warriors!!

There are two things that immediately spring to mind when I think about the Fester’s Quest game that came out for the NES back in the late eighties:

“Man, that was a great game!”

and

“$#*&@%#!!”

Released in 1989 by Sunsoft, Fester’s Quest was this little hidden gem of a game amongst the rest of the NES titles that came out that year.  Featuring an overhead layout (with a few scattered, first-person, dungeon crawl-like areas) and utilizing gameplay mechanics similar to the game Blaster Master, you controlled Uncle Fester as he ran around town trying to save it from and alien invasion.

While the gameplay was fun and the environment was visually stimulating, the game itself was quite – to put it mildly – challenging.

Between clunky movement and shooting mechanics, frequent and sometimes hard to avoid weapon degrade drops mixed in with the upgrade drops, and enemies that would pop up almost everywhere way too often, this game would frequently get very frustrating.  Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t stop playing it.  Thrown controllers aside (pun intended), I still enjoyed every minute of this game.  For me, at that young age, Fester’s Quest was different and inventive.  Plus, the fact that it was based on what was then a twenty-five year old, black and white television show impressed me.

Though I never actually owned Fester’s Quest, this cartridge has the distinction of being one of the few titles I rented repeatedly (well, as long as my parents had no problems paying for the rental and driving me to and from the rental place).  The first time I rented it, I remember picking up this title and the first Ducktales game.  I found myself enjoying both so much that I had a hard time choosing between the two to play.  I think the quirkiness and eccentricities of Fester’s Quest is what made it stand out for me, though, as well as what made it a constant on my video game rental list.

Before finishing this article, I decided to play it again just to see how it holds up.  It’s not as difficult as I remember, but it still can get frustrating as hell.  Part of the problem is the damn gun upgrades.  Until you upgrade to the best gun in the game, your projectiles tend to do some kind of wonky zig-zag or loop-de-loops as they head towards their target.  This can prove to be somewhat anger-inducing when you are in close quarters with some nasty alien varmints and your gun blasts keep getting stopped by the local shrubbery.  But you know what?  I still enjoyed the hell out of the game.  In fact, it took me at least an hour to get back to this article, I was having so much fun.

So, is Fester’s Quest as good as I remember?  Yup.  In fact, I’m going back to play it some more.

“$#*&@%#!!”

There goes another controller.

The Don is creepy and he’s kooky, he’s hairy like a wookiee, he’ll make you wanna pukee…

According to Merriam-Webster and other dictionaries, the definition of “art” is “a: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also: works so produced b (1): fine arts (2): one of the fine arts (3): a graphic art”. Sounds pretty abstract a concept, right? Left up to the individual? So, then, what you consider art is your opinion, and your opinion only. There are absolutely no facts about what art is.

I touched on the unique and beautiful art style of the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in last week’s E3 article. Since then, new information has come out regarding the visuals, like in this article from Kotaku: “Skyward’s unique visual style, which looks like a halfway meeting between Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, was inspired by Miyamoto’s love of impressionism [art], and the skies in the game are a tribute to [French Post-Impressionist artist] Cézanne.” Wow! When I saw the screenshots linked in my previous article, I remarked that the game looked like a painting. I didn’t know at the time that this was because the graphics were inspired by paintings. Now, whenever someone whines about the art style, you can them an “uncultured pleb”!

This reminded me of Roger Ebert’s latest assertion in April that video games “can never be art”, despite his having no qualifications to speak on this topic since he doesn’t actually play video games. (I want to point out this link to Ebert’s blog freezes my browser every time I load it, so click at your own risk. It won’t factor into my article since it’s not relevant to art, but it’s not exactly getting on my good side here, either, Ebert.) In this article, he backtracked a little and said MAYBE games can be art, but never in our lifetime, and they’ll never, ever be “high (read: real) art”.

Other sites have already addressed Ebert’s crap-stirring topic over and over again, and make for entertaining reads, so I don’t need to go into that here. I’m quite fond of Cracked.com’s take on the whole debate, for the record. Oh, and don’t miss a response article from Ebert all the way back in 2007, in which he repeatedly and openly insults novelist Clive Barker for daring to disagree. The comments on these other articles also do a good job of raising up valid instances of video games as art. I know I’ve never cried at a funeral no matter how much I loved the deceased, but I definitely shed tears at the endings of Link’s Awakening, Secret of Mana, and Ocarina of Time, for example. To me, that is art. It does not have to be art to someone else. What art is is left entirely up to each and every individual.

Art begets art. There are professionally-rendered Mario statues and paintings of Princess Zelda. There’s Video Games Live, bringing game music to the orchestra pit…and orchestrated music IN video games is not an unheard-of occurrence. And now, we have The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which has an orchestrated soundtrack and is created to look like an Impressionist painting. Are statues, paintings, and orchestral performances no longer art if their source material is a video game, Ebert? Or are video games themselves art because of the creativity and imagination that goes into them per the dictionary definition, as well as elements normally associated with art, such as orchestrated music and art movement visuals?

When you come down to is that what art is, is left entirely up to personal opinion. I will never consider a good 95% of modern abstract creations to be art. You took a paintbrush, dipped it in black paint, flicked it on a canvas, and named it “Despair”? I could do that in thirty seconds! Your work doesn’t belong in a museum that paid millions of dollars for it; it belongs at the thrift store. Or in the garbage. But the difference between Ebert and I is that he presents his opinion of video games as fact, while I make it very clear right now that my perception of abstract modern art is only one writer’s opinion. And, also unlike Ebert, I won’t tell you that you’re wrong to think otherwise, as he did game designer Kellee Santiago in his blog. (Though I might look at you funny if I find a print of “Despair” hanging in your house. Partly because I made it up. I’ve seen a painting in the Museum of Modern Art in Washington, DC that was virtually identical to my example, but I don’t remember the name.)

Oh, and let’s end on a high (high art?) note. This thread gives me hope for humanity: intrigued by the new Zelda title’s graphics, at least one gamer has taken a (renewed) interest in Cézanne’s work. I doubt this will be the last person to seek out classic art in the face of new art!

And that’s my opinion.

Next week, you’ll probably have to fend for yourselves, as I’ll be buried neck-deep in things outside the Internet. Enjoy a week off from me!

Greetings, Boglins!

I have to admit that I’m a wee bit off this week.  I feel a little disjointed, so to that end my thoughts are kind of a jumble.  I have ideas, but not enough to flesh them out to carry full articles on their own.

But never fear, my fellow Spwugnerians!  I can actually make this work for me.  In fact, it allows me to do the kind of articles I’ve found myself rather enjoying as of late.  So I bring you another installment of random bits that I affectionately refer to this week as “Bleeps, Sweeps, and Creeps”:

Iron Man 2

Got to see this over the weekend with DKM Marlink and a few other friends.  First, we watched the first film at my house, all the while making snide remarks about how Terrence Howard was going to be replaced later that evening when we got to the theater.  First film still holds up remarkably well.  It has to be one of my favorites, despite the weak third act.  As for the sequel?  Wow.  More of the same, and I mean that in a good way.  Downey Jr. proves once again that the talent is actually his and not from the drugs he lived in for years.  Cheadle was a great substitute for Howard in the role of James Rhodes.  Just a fun flick all over.  My only complaints were that the middle started to feel like it was plodding along (same complaint I had for The Dark Knight).  Plus, Mickey Rourke’s character kinda shows up in a blazing show-down, then takes a back seat for most of the film until the end.  Despite both flaws, the movie got back on its feet by the third act, which was a vast improvement over the first film.  Those who haven’t seen it – stay until after the end credits.  Just like Nick Fury’s spoiled surprise cameo at the end of the first Iron Man, there’s a cool little surprise at the end of this one (SPOILER ALERT: It’s Batroc the Leaper!*)

Farscape

I picked up the complete box set to the hit Sci-Fi (not SyFy) series Farscape about a month ago, and I’ve been pouring myself into it furiously.  I’m almost finished with the first season, and I’m impressed with just how well this show still holds up.  There’s definitely a reason why it was my favorite TV show during its run.  I’m falling in love with these characters all over again (I plan to ask them to marry me next week).  One of the things I like so much about the show is how much it captures the essence of what made the original Star Trek so great – a perfect mixture of straight-up action with episodes of weird crap happening to our main cast with a dash of some light sexiness.  Best feature on the DVD set so far?  Commentary by the creators and the two main cast members on an episode where they spend the entire running time explaining just why the episode is so abysmal.

Super Mario Bros. Galaxy 2

It’s almost here!  Are you ready?  Did you play the first one?  Weren’t the frikkin’ purple coin challenges hard?  How long has it been since you last played the first one?  Do you even remember whether or not you own a Wii?

Corkscrewed Over

Busch Gardens in Virginia, also known as Busch Gardens Europe, also known as The Belgians Were Bored With Just Being Known For Waffles So They Bought the Largest Brewery in America and This Park Got Thrown In For Free, also known as The Park That Had a Really Cool 3-D Ride in Ireland When Not Compared to Anything in Florida but Decided to Ditch it For a Non-3-D Borefest That Could Double as an Extended Promo for British Airways.

That’s a Reynolds Wrap!

Burt Reynolds has been cast as an ex-spy in the incredibly awesome TV series Burn Notice.  My greatest hope is that his cover name is Turd Fergeson.  And he wears a big cowboy hat.  ‘Cuz it’s funny.

Speaking of wrapping up…

The Don’s RADAR appears to be jammed.  Halle Berry.

*It’s totally not Batroc the Leaper!

Hallo again, you Spwuggy kids, you!

The three of you who read this column probably noticed the lack of updates last week. The short version is, when the temperature in the computer room is over 85°F, I don’t risk overheating the system by turning it on. Luckily, the responsible central air unit has been fixed, and we’re now back in business!

Let’s get right down to it with a newish feature I’d been wanting to implement since I first started writing for Spwug: MORE PURTY PICKCHURS. If my focus here is supposedly on webcomics, shouldn’t this column be more visual too? I kept putting it off because I had no working tablet or scanner. Finally, I had enough of waiting and started drawing in Photoshop.

After an hour of very painful hand-crabbing from gripping an ancient, unresponsive mouse, I remembered why I had put off drawing on the computer. But it was too late to stop, and you can now reap the dubious rewards of my agonizing labour! Everyone loves MS Paint-style pictures, right? So, let’s get started.

There’s a little television show called Stargate Universe. I doubt anyone here has heard of it. It’s not like geeks ever come to Spwug or anything. But if you have heard of this TV series that I understand is “science fiction”, you probably know that it’s not doing too well compared to its predecessors in the Stargate franchise. Fan and critic complaints range from too much drama, to not enough action, to “Syfy Channel sucks” (a very valid complaint), to excessive shaky-cam, to “Where the heck are all the aliens?!”

I agree with all of the above plus some. If my housemate didn’t keep recording this show on the DVR box, I wouldn’t have watched it past the first few episodes. But instead of just griping, I’ve decided to offer up some suggestions to make the show better. Get your pencils out and take notes, SGU writers. There’ll be a test on this later!

1: More alien action, please! In two seasons so far, we’ve had, what? Labrador Retriever-sized spiders in two episodes. A sandstorm that may or may not have actually been sentient. Neither one showed any sign of anything resembling intelligence compatible with that of the human characters (despite the fact that human intelligence also seems to be a lacking quality in the show, so you’d think they’d understand one another). Though I have this theory that the spiders weren’t REALLY bloodthirsty monsters trying to eat the faces of the stranded humans. They were just lonely and wanted new friends.

Then there was T-Rex’s doughier cousin for about fifteen seconds. I still don’t get why Scott wasted ammo and time shooting at the thing when he could’ve just escaped through the Stargate. Maybe the dino reminded him of his shameful Weight Watchers days.

The only intelligent aliens of note so far have been the anorexic “blues” that keep trying to steal the ship Destiny away from its human crew (who, it could be argued, stole the ship from the ascended Ancients who made it). They really haven’t done anything else of interest so far, unless you count competitive non-eating.

2: The military and civilians aboard Destiny should be allowed to decorate the ship, or at least their respective quarters. Seriously, now. Every single scene aboard the ship takes place in a setting of drab greys and the occasional blue-grey light. No wonder all anyone does is fight and/or cry. I’m surprised half the crew hasn’t committed suicide already. A little colour goes a long way, folks. Maybe some throw rugs and dried flowers. A splash of paint, a few family photos lining the halls, and you go from stranded victims to homeowners of the biggest and most fashionable estate known to mankind!

3: Dr. Nicholas Rush needs to decide which team he supports. I mean, come on, Nicky-baby! This sympathetic-villain-in-one-episode, antihero-in-the-next stuff was old last season. At least he and Colonel Young are no longer at each other’s throats every five minutes. (Kudos for the next pic go out to housemate Thoradin, whose idea of a D&D setting for Young and Rush was far more amusing than my original pic of Rush shouting about how he was going to hijack the ship’s systems to obey only him and then give everyone onboard the puppies he and his dead wife never got to have.) For some reason, this scene works best in my head in stick-figure format.

4: The final suggestion doesn’t need pictorial accompaniment. To save the Stargate franchise, Syfy should go back in time, NOT cancel Stargate SG-1, NOT cut its budget, and watch the money come rolling in. But we all know Syfy can’t do anything sensible, time travel or no. This is why The Lost Room still has never moved beyond a pilot miniseries.

Did you pay attention, Stargate Universe writers? I may have just saved your show there.

That’s it for this week. Tune in next time, when we may or may not have more hand/mouse-drawn pictures. It really depends upon how masochistic I’m feeling. You’ll just have to come see to find out!

Don’t you hate it when something you love just…stops with no resolution? Webcomic fans know this pain all too well. Your favourite webcomic is chugging along, picking up fans right and left, in the middle of an epically epic storyline, when suddenly…a month goes by with no updates. Then two months. Then six. The artist puts up a brief blog post that says, “Being swamped by work/school/family, but we’ll be back soon!”

A year later, the site is inhabited only by crickets. It sits there, unchanging, for many more years, or until the server deletes the page. The webcomic is only ever again mentioned in forum discussions where people ask, “Whatever happened to such-and-such comic?”

In the spring, a young geek’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of loss. Let’s look at a few of the fallen, and sometimes missing, friends that I would have loved to see get a proper ending. We’ll be doing this again later, by the way. I have a pretty long list of comics I used to read that stopped without ending, and they make for great nostalgia columns, eh? Plus, there are other unfortunate webcomics being abandoned all the time….

5ideways by K. Sandra Fuhr – This supernatural apocalyptic thriller started off with a strong story and intriguing characters in 2005, only to taper off with updates as Real Life continued to eat away at the artist’s free time. By 2008, the comic was officially on hiatus, and the site sat largely untouched until November 18, 2008, when a “5ideways will return soon” graphic was tossed up on the front page. “Soon” was a bit of a stretch, sadly, as there have been no updates since then. However, the extremely talented creator didn’t just up and abandon webcomics completely. If her name sounds familiar, that’s because you may already have read/be reading her other works: Boy Meets Boy (completed), Friendly Hostility (completed, and reviewed here), and Other People’s Business (ongoing, and blurbed about at the bottom of this page).

Absurd Notions/Why the Long Face, both by Kevin Pease – The first, running from 1999 to 2007, focused on the work and play misadventures of a group of young-adult friends with varied hobbies (though they all seemed to enjoy tabletop gaming) and the occasional bout of mad science. You know, what has since become a staple of webcomics. The second ran from 2003 to 2007 and focused on the creator’s musings about life in general. Both trickled to a halt around the same time (with Absurd Notions in the middle of a story). Sometime in 2008 or 2009, I asked Pease about further updates. He mentioned that he didn’t intend to drop his comics completely, but it looks like if that’s still true, we’ll be waiting a while longer for updates. A certain Spwug webcomic writer can keep hoping!

Chrono Trigger Rip-Off (at least they’re honest!) by Mark and Tom (and possibly someone else; it’s not too clear) – Sprite comics are reviled by art elitists for not using original art, but I LIKE sprite strips. LOVE them, even. I love sprite art and everything you can do with it. I love sprites being used for tributes and parodies of the games they come from. This webcomic did all that. Sprite comics are all over now, and the whole “Video game sprites cause mayhem while behaving in naughty ways that are totally out of character with how they behave in their canon” thing is done and overdone, and often done wrong. Chrono Trigger Rip-Off isn’t exactly a unique entity now, but back when I found it (likely pre-2001, but the archives only go back to January of that year), sprite comics were a fairly shiny new concept for me. I got a lot of good laughs out of this comic and enjoyed the fact that it even had a plot. And while there’s nothing unique about the strip by today’s standards, I still regret that it died out in 2004 with its story unfinished.

RPG World by Ian Jones-Quartey – You just can’t talk about unfinished business in webcomics without invoking the granddaddy of them all. RPG World went from a superstar of webcomics to a lesson in how NOT to end a story during its final battle. (The lesson is: DON’T STOP UPDATING DURING THE FINAL BATTLE.) Remember that? This webcomic started off strong in 2000. It updated regularly, the story kept getting better and better, Cherry’s butt kept getting bigger and bigger, the audience grew steadily–even friends who otherwise never read webcomics read RPG World. Every breath was bated as the story blazed into its climax. Beloved characters were killed. World-altering secrets were revealed. The final boss was confronted. The heroes geared up for the greatest fight in history. And then…nothing. In 2005, the comic ground to a halt. It tried to defibrillate itself with fillers and side stories on very sporadic occasions until June 2007. Finally, the artist admitted what the audience already knew; he had no intention of completing the story. He was too busy, he’d lost interest, didn’t like seeing his old art, etc., etc….

Recently, he put out the word that he felt bad for leaving the audience in the lurch and wanted to find a new artist to take his scripts and finish the story. I’d dearly love to see that, but since then, there’s been no word on finding a new artist. The site has been dead for so long that I don’t know if anyone who could help even saw his request for a new artist. But if you’re interested, please contact him at his site. I selfishly want to see RPG World finally completed! And if you want to know what eventually helped take Ian’s time away from the comic, watch this show called The Venture Bros. that he’s worked on for a few years. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. I think it’s about siblings who become business entrepreneurs. Also, something about butterflies. Maybe they fund a living butterfly museum together or something. I don’t know. (And if you think I’m being serious here, let’s talk bridges.)

Well, that’s enough out of me for now. I still hope to someday see these old loves of mine completed, before being shoved back in the shoeboxes of the Internet. If there’s a webcomic you enjoyed that ended prematurely, let me know. I’m seeking more stalled comics for future installments!

Greetings and beatings!

I’m afraid this post is coming in the midst of some Technical Issues. As in, this is being composed on the PlayStation 3 because it’s the closest thing to a functioning computer right now. By the way, surfing or posting online through the PlayStation is only slightly less painful than pulling teeth. But only very slightly.

Tune in next week, when we’ll hopefully be looking at webcomic crossovers!

Whoo, doggies!