11 posts tagged “qotd”
Let’s face it: Superhero movies are a dreadfully mixed bag. Most kick all sorts of ass visually, but their plots can vary in quality from superb (Batman Begins, X-Men) to fairly decent (Spider-Man, X-Men 2) to offensively terrible (Fantastic Four, Catwoman). I just took the kids to see Iron Man yesterday – the newest offering from Marvel and Paramount – and as you might expect I have opinions to share.
But first, silly ramblings!
Opening weekend is positively the worst time to see a movie. Every facet of the experience reminds you how contemptible the average Joe really is – from the endless line of people so mottled and moist you wouldn’t touch them with a set of salad tongs to the intermittent, phlegmy rattle of the mouth-breathing TB victim in a nearby seat. The only voluntary events I can think of that are similarly galling are dining out at buffet restaurants and swimming at public water parks.
The line wasn’t that bad, actually, since we showed up a good half-hour before show time, but whatever anguish I avoided by being prompt was duly made up for by my having to surrender the entire contents of my wallet (including my coupon for a free crunchy taco from Taco Bell) and one of my testicles (they let me choose which one; I went with the right).
We didn’t stop by the snack counter because 1) I hate having to visit the restroom halfway through the movie and 2) I really wanted to keep my other nut.
Seating Derangements
There were maybe a dozen or so people in the theater when we sat down and most of them were the odd types who like to sit right smack up against the screen, which is something I have never personally understood; but who am I to judge, especially when it means the best seats in the house – halfway back, dead center – are left available for me and mine?
Now, it's not as if I was expecting to have the whole damn row for just the three of us, this being only the third day of release and all, but I also didn’t think the place would be so crowded as to force me to fight for the armrest. And it really wasn’t that crowded at all; it was just that the pimply guy with the sideways baseball cap and anorexic girlfriend lacked any normal level of social tact and felt it appropriate to drop his bony ass, with a surprising thud, into the seat directly adjacent to mine.
I’d have been alright with the cozy atmosphere Pimples tha Gangsta had just created, except that he smelled like a sweating salami smothered in cigarette butts. What’s more, he had tried to cover over his meaty aroma with a liberal dousing of some musky cologne that I’m guessing was a member of the patchouli family. Had I been blind, I would have figured Death himself had made a quick stop at a delicatessen before coming to the theater to take me to the other side.
I weighed my options: I could let my new movie companion know what I thought of his personal scent by vomiting ramen and iced tea into his lap; I could spend the entire movie covering my nose with one arm and defending my share of the armrest with the other; I could call an usher and ask him to clean up the pile of rancid salami some jerk had left in the seat next to mine; Or I could simply get Zach and Amanda to scooch over a couple seats. Any of the first three options would have been as entertaining as the movie itself, but I decided on the last option because I’m unpredictable like that. Sadly, once we’d scooted over a couple seats, Lanky McLunchmeat and his girl moved over as well. He was able to keep his lap ramen-free, however, by astutely leaving an empty seat between us.
Just before the lights dimmed, a group of Jr. High boys sloughed in and started looking for three seats together in the front section. They were dressed entirely in black, right down to their fingernails, and each had the definitive slab of jet-black hair pasted down over one eye. Bits of metal could be seen glimmering from several points in each of their pale, forlorn faces.
“Look!” said Amanda, “Emos!”
“Wow, how rare to see them in the wild like this,” I replied. Panda burst out laughing. “Shhhh, careful! You’ll spook them!”
The Actual Review
I’m going to go ahead and admit Iron Man has never been one of my favorite superheroes. For me, he’s always had a sort of ho-humness about him. I feel the same way about The Human Torch and Flash. I can’t really quantify it other than to say they just didn’t do enough for my adolescent imagination; didn’t intrigue me the way heroes like Spider-Man and Batman did. Nevertheless, when I heard one of my favorite actors of all time, Robert Downey, Jr., was set to play Tony Stark, I knew I’d be unable to wait for the DVD. Then, when I finally saw a trailer, I actually got excited enough to entertain the idea of seeing the film during opening weekend.
The CGI is, of course, nearly immaculate. The special effects team outdid themselves smoothing the seams between reality and computer-generated imagery. The comic book movements of the characters were, in my view, more realistic than what we’ve seen previously (even if the laws of physics are still more-or-less ignored) and the mechanical functionality of the suit was very believable indeed.
Like any good science fiction story, there are socio-political allegories drawn, but none any more overt than what you’d read in Iron Man comics. The movie has just the right amount of humor delivered at just the right times and, thankfully, neither Stark’s alcoholism nor the romance between Stark and Pepper are played up to any significant degree. It’s mostly just good old punch-em-up, blast-em-down action! I’m trying very hard to avoid giving away any spoilers, so forgive me for the lack of details.
If you dig superhero movies but really felt screwed over by Hulk, I’d encourage you to let that old wound heal and go see Iron Man. It's two full hours of shiny superhero goodness.
Oh, and one last tip: stay in your seat until the lights come back on! You’ll want to know who shows up at Stark’s house after the credits roll.
"What do you do EVERY day to take care of the earth's environment?"
Well, one significant thing I do is listen to scientists with regard to scientific matters. It would be so much easier to stick my fingers in my ears and squeeze my eyes tightly shut and shout “LA LA LA LA LA!” than to actually have a critical look at the plight of the planet. It would take a lot less intellectual effort to embrace a bunch of unsubstantiated and misleading rhetoric than to educate myself on the undeniable facts about Global Warming. There’s absolutely no doubt I’d be a happier person if I shut myself off from images like these:
One step at a time, I guess.
How do you usually react when people start talking politics?
I've recently declared a moratorium on debating politics because it's become painfully clear to me that I am either preaching to the choir or talking to a wall. A very selfish, arrogant, and intolerant wall.
Which breed of dog is your favorite? Post a picture of it.
Submitted by Melissa.
Well, you really can't swing a dead squid around my blog without getting its slimy tentacles all caught up in the many piles of dog pictures scattered about, but for those of you who are either new to these parts or staggeringly unobservant, the best breed of dog ever (in my indefectible opinion) is the German Shepherd Dog, also known as the Alsatian by my friends in Europe.
And the fact of the matter is one picture simply will not do; not for a regal and noble dog like this!
If you could perform alongside any artist (actor, dancer, musician, etc.), who would it be, and what would you perform?
Submitted by Kristin.
That's easy, although I must take the liberty of amending the question to include people living or dead. This is because I can't think of a jamming session I'd enjoy more than busting out some Crazy Train with the inimitable Randy Rhoads:
This man played guitar with more skill 30 years ago than most "virtuosos" do today. Had Randy not taken that fateful plane ride on March 19, 1982, he might very well still be setting the gold standard for heavy metal guitar.
There have been some great metal guitarists over the years. In my opinion, Randy Rhoads was the best.
Tell us a true story that proves it really is a small world after all.
I attended sixth grade at a typical elementary school in Seattle known as Sunset Elementary. It was there that I first built a model rocket and launched it successfully. It was there that I acquired my first memorable crush on a girl. It was also there that one of my first “Small World” lessons would begin.
My family had just moved into the neighborhood and so Sunset was a new school to me. I experienced all the things I expected to experience on the first day at a new school: utter confusion resulting in repeated tardiness, newbie blunders resulting in ridicule, etc. Walking in to my social studies class – the last class before lunch – some girl in the back of the room blurted out something that drew the entire class’s attention to my gangly form:
“Hey, that guy looks like Kevin Rush!”
I just stopped and sheepishly stood there in front of thirty or so strangers, the only thoughts running through my head being a litany of things that must certainly be wrong with this Kevin Rush fellow to serve him the odious injustice of bearing such a striking resemblance to me. Was he short and wiry like me? Did his hair refuse to lay down like mine? Was he constantly as burdened with an overabundance of drawing supplies as I was? More importantly, was he someone people liked or despised?
Kevin Rush never appeared in class and no one seemed overly interested in talking to me, so none of my silent questions were answered in that hour.
In fact, most of my curiosity regarding my doppelganger would have to wait, perhaps indefinitely. As it turned out, Kevin Rush had moved away after the previous school year and no one really knew where he had moved to. It seemed he had also had a personality and sense of humor similar to mine and, lo and behold, also had a penchant for ignoring his teachers in favor of creating elaborate doodles.
My family moved again the following year to a suburb called Woodinville where, come September, I got to once again be the New Guy. More tardiness, more dropped books and trampled homework, etc. My fourth period cartooning class couldn’t have come a moment too soon. I knew that once I took my seat in that particular class, I would finally be in my element and everything else would fall into place, at least for the next hour. No sooner had I set foot into the room than someone exclaimed:
“Hey, that guy looks like Kevin Rush!”
Again, heads turned to regard me. And again, I started worrying what the exact reputation of this Kevin Rush guy was.
I met Kevin Rush a few days later. Woodinville had been the Rush family’s mysterious destination that none of the kids at Sunset had been able to recall. He was indeed a prolific and talented artist who had an imagination and sense of humor similar to, if more bizarre than, my own. We became friends, but never really got very close. We always had the same art classes and crossed paths in a few others, but our circles of friends were a tad too divergent for any lasting relationship at that age.
There is a small twist to the story's ending, for those who share my love of irony. See, the fact is that neither Kevin nor I thought we had any real resemblance to one another. We just couldn’t see it. Oh sure, his hair was similarly colored and had a similar wave to it as mine. We were both below average height. But as far as the two of us could see, we were far from being twins separated at birth.
Which reminds me: Hey Kevin, if you’re reading this, just ignore people if they tell you that you look like a porn star named Doctor Cocktopussy. He looks as much like you as I do. Which is not at all.
The QotD today is “What's a saying or phrase that's never made sense to you?” There are plenty of sayings that at one time made no sense to me, but being as I am a painfully curious person by nature and prone to spending ridiculous amounts of time researching an obsession, I have always come to eventually understand even the most absurd colloquialisms. So what I’d like to do is discuss get snarky about a few of the phrases that have wasted consumed a good deal of my time with painstaking analysis.
Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
Not that I had this undying conviction that the mouth was the most attractive aspect of your typical pack animal, but I couldn’t figure out why anyone would care if my gaze happened to finally settle on that particular area of my new birthday pony (were I the sort of rosy-cheeked Stepford child to be given such harebrained gifts, of course). I mean, it’s my damned horse now, right? I can look at whatever part I want, can’t I? The mouth? Hell, maybe I want to scope out the butt! What do you think of that!?
*ahem*
Turns out that what this expression means is that you shouldn’t be concerned with the horse’s value (i.e. the quality of its teeth) if the horse was bestowed upon you as a gift. In other words, if someone gives present, you shouldn’t go nitpicking its qualities. Be nice if they’d have just said that instead of tossing out some random equine metaphor.
Don’t Throw Out the Baby with the Bath Water
Sure, I knew it was an expression as old as the hills and thus came from a time before man figured out how to put a drain in the bottom of the bathtub. But why would anyone voluntarily throw a baby out? Well, because they stink and they’re loud and they’re selfish and they’ll bite and urinate on you without provocation or remorse, that’s why! But still, no one deliberately throws a baby out. That tends to be frowned upon by the community and qualifies one for a life in prison. So why build an entire expression around an idea so ludicrous?
In short, the answer is that humans are disgusting and illogical creatures.
The longer version is that back in the day, entire families would share a single bath. The water would be drawn and Father, being the hardest-working (yeah, sure) and being the man (the eternal trump card), would take his bath first. Next, Mother would take her bath followed by the children in descending order of age*. By virtue of this remarkably silly method, the baby would be bathed last. Considering that an entire family of dusty-ass pioneers had just deposited all their bodily grime into the tub, the water at this point probably looked like the puddle at the bottom of the neglected swimming pool at the Hourly Rates Motel. The implication, then, is that the water is so dirty that you forget the baby is in there and just toss the entire works out into the yard.
Again, it would have been so much clearer (to non-yokels) if they would have just said, “Don’t dismiss the valid points of the issue just because of irrelevant information.”
You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
See, the confusion lies in the fact that to most of us “having” a piece of cake and “eating” a piece of cake are the same thing. This idiom apparently comes from a time when people forewent consuming frosted desserts in favor of the more popular pastime of keeping them in glass boxes on the mantel.
Have you seen the new cake by Chef Pierre?
Why, yes. I have a piece in my curio next to my slice of vintage Antoinette Angel Food.
*groan* I was foolish and ate mine! I could just kick myself!
Yes, well, that will certainly make it difficult for you to get tickets to Der Fledermaus this weekend.
Put simply: if you eat it, you don't have it anymore. Once again, we see how it is simpler to just say what you mean.
Knock Boots
It means to have sex, evidently without bothering to remove your footwear first. It really only makes literal sense to cowboys and lipstick lesbian porn stars. It’s fun to toss out in casual conversation, though.
*Some accounts specify that all the males got to bathe before the females.
"Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged. It is inevitable that he, who by concentrated application has extended this limit for himself, should arouse the resentment of those who have accepted conventions which, since accepted by all, require no initiative of application. And this resentment generally takes the form of meaningless laughter or of criticism, if not persecution. But this apparent violation is preferable to the monstrous habits condoned by etiquette and estheticism."
—Man Ray, 1934
Well whadda ya know about that? Another VOX QotD I can sink my teeth into without fear that I’ll bite off more than I can chew: “What is your pet peeve, the one thing which really drives you mad?” Oh, I’m so glad you asked! Here’s hoping your pet peeve isn’t “People Who Have More Than One Answer to the QotD”.
Mixed Metaphors
Note how the two metaphors I used in the above paragraph do not seem as if they want to take the gloves off and bare-knuckle box in order to determine which one gets to remain in the sentence. Rather, they get along nicely, the way proper metaphors should. I know it seems innately wrong, but segregation is actually a virtue in the metaphor world. Trust me. You’re not doing your analogy any favors by allowing incongruent metaphors to worry the issue.
This particular peeve is at the top of the list because of its acute importance. You see, I am a great lover of metaphor; I get very excited over a metaphor that is well thought and expertly crafted. Knowing there as a sizeable contingent of literary scholars who decry the use of metaphor as fatuous and irrelevant, I find myself getting rather agitated whenever someone gives this snooty faction more ammunition.
Metaphors are a tool to help clarify an idea; mixing them only serves to do the exact opposite. For example:
“Before we open that can of worms, let’s grind through the meat of the matter.”
This sentence should never be uttered. The attentive listener might get the mixed metaphor’s implication that the main issues should be covered before attention is shifted to the minutia, but what it says to a CEO who’s already thinking about the nine holes he’s going to hit at lunchtime is: “We’re going to grind up the meat before adding nightcrawlers to it.” And this really only makes sense if you happen to be talking to the CEO of a fast-food burger joint.
Counterproductive Clichés
I hate it when people botch clichés. Like metaphors, these trite colloquial expressions serve a specific purpose and are readily dismissed when improperly utilized. Some are, of course, more prone to bastardization than others, but there is one in particular that many people seem to have a tough time making decent use of:
“I couldn’t care less.”
When used correctly, this pithy little remark makes it crystal clear that you’d find a dissertation on the mating rituals of dung beetles more interesting than whatever it is you are being subjected to at the moment. It sends the clear message that you’ve no intention of listening to another word. It’s basically the conversational equivalent of walking someone into a tree.
I find, however, that a good percentage of people completely obliterate the phrase’s meaning by removing the negative form. It comes out: “I could care less,” which is basically saying nothing at all. If you are capable of caring less, then why make the proclamation in the first place? The cliché makes absolutely no sense when modified in this way and leaves your audience with the distinct impression that you are an ignorant schmuck.
Apostrophe Abuse
I’m sure my fellow English majors will all appreciate this one. The apostrophe probably suffers more misapplication than any other piece of English punctuation save the comma. Don’t know the proper way to pluralize a word? Toss in an apostrophe! Not sure if an apostrophe belongs? Throw it in anyway! Better safe than sorry! Wondering if you spelled a word correctly? Screw the dictionary; just go ask an apostrophe because it is the All-Knowing Punctuation Mark of the One True God.
So anyway, I’m going to try to make this as clear as possible:
The apostrophe is never, ever used to pluralize a word!
Never! Got it? I’ve only condoned it on one occasion and, to be honest, it still bugs me.
You might ask, “But Kirk, what about acronyms like CD and HMO and SNAFU? Doesn’t the apostrophe have to be there to separate the ‘s’ from the rest of the letters?” And this is where you would find yourself fortunate to be somewhere out of my arm’s reach, because otherwise I’d be smacking you upside the head before you even finished the question. The fact that the acronym is in all capitals is sufficient to differentiate it from the pluralizing letter ‘s’ at the end. Thus, we can have one CD or six CDs.
The only time an apostrophe is needed in this case is if the CD possesses something. For example, you wouldn’t use an apostrophe in the sentence: “He can stuff those CDs where the sun don't shine,” but it’s perfectly acceptable to use one when you write: “The CD’s emulsion was damaged in the stuffing process.”
Hmm, I guess it also peeves me when I can’t come up with a decent way to close a blog post and end up writing something profoundly lame and unfunny. Needless to say, I’m pretty damn peeved-off right now. I’m just itching for someone to mix a metaphor. Go ahead, make my day!
As I've mentioned before, I'm not often inspired by random writing ideas like those posited by the VOX Hunt and QotD. I've only actively participated in each once since I started my blog a few months ago. But the QotD today — What's on your Top 5 video games list? — is perfect because of the little known fact that I spent six years of my life working for Nintendo as a Game Play Counselor (GPC). So, as might be expected, I happen to have some rather decided opinions on video games. Limiting a list of my favorites to five was a difficult but constructive task.
Game: Pitfall
Platform: Atari 2600
Amazing how much fun it was making giant blocks (which only slightly resembled the entities they represented) move about the screen on a lousy 17" black-and-white television. Even in color, the graphics in Atari 2600 games were nothing short of hideous by comparison to what was to come, but not having the luxury of time-travel or clairvoyance, we thought games like Pole Position looked downright awesome. Wow! It actually feels like you're driving a Formula racer! Um... no. No, it really doesn't, but it sure as hell seemed to back then.
My favorite game for the Atari 2600 was, hands down, a little side-scrolling adventure game by Activision called Pitfall. The graphics were crappy, as usual, but not as crappy as its competition in the adventure game category, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Lord, was that ever a turd of a game. But not Pitfall. Pitfall was cool. Pitfall had scorpions and you could swing from vines. Pitfall had the hero crossing ponds by stepping on crocodile heads. And best of all, win or lose, a game of Pitfall never lasted longer than twenty minutes, which was perfect for the hyperactive imp I was at that age.
Game: Mega Man 2
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo used to put out a magazine (perhaps they still do) called Nintendo Power. One of the features each month would showcase four GPCs and reveal certain things about them, including what their favorite Nintendo game was. Due to the heinous mullet I had back then*, I have had to bind and ball-gag my ego in order to upload a scan from Nintendo Power #18 (Dr. Mario issue) in which I was one of the GPCs featured. You'll note that the game listed as my favorite is Mega Man 2.
Mega Man 2 was my favorite over the original Mega Man because it seemed to have more of a purpose, more focus. The first Mega Man had the annoying little balls you'd put your robot-self in danger to collect even though they did absolutely nothing for you but add to a completely unnecessary point system. Mega Man 2 lost the scoring and added cool transportation devices called, unimaginatively, Items. What they lacked in a snazzy moniker, though, they made up for in usefulness. You'll note that I mention in the GPC profile that I finished Mega Man 2 with a single man; this was only possible with sagacious use of the various Items.
Plenty of Mega Man games followed, but even including the versions released for the better systems, I still remember Mega Man 2 fondly as my favorite of them all.
Game: Street Fighter II
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The first of two fighting games on my list, Street Fighter II was my fighting game of choice during the era of the SNES. You had your Mortal Kombat people and your Street Fighter II people. Mortal Kombat truly sucked on the SNES with its grey blood and castrated fatalities, but that wasn't the only reason I preferred the likes of Chun Li and Blanka over Sonya Blade and Liu Kang. It just seemed to me − and I realize I might be inviting some flames here − that Street Fighter II was more about skillful, one-on-one gameplay and Mortal Kombat was more about seeing how much digitized blood you could extract from your opponent's on-screen avatar.
Even without comparing it to other fighting games of its time, Street Fighter II had top-notch functionality, diversity, and playability. The graphics were just the right blend of defined and undefined; they were crisp, but a tad blurry when they needed to be. It was also a bright and colorful game, which is always appreciated by people like me who spend most of their time scrutinizing color. Oh yeah, and Street Fighter II was the only game with a stretchy, teleporting mystic with baby skulls around his neck who claimed to be a pacifist even though he killed people by breathing fire on them. It really doesn't get much better than that.
Game: Killer Instinct
Platform: Arcade
This game was the fighting game to end all fighting games. I put it that way because I never played another fighting game after Killer Instinct. After Killer Instinct, everything just seemed... limp.
I was still working at Nintendo when Killer Instinct hit the arcades and there was a KI console in the company cafeteria. The building was open 24 hours a day, so my roommate and I used to go play Killer Instinct all night long. What's more, the techs always put the most recently updated sim chip into the console, so we were often playing the game using moves and combos no one outside Nintendo had ever seen.
The cherry on top was going to an arcade and watching the looks on kids' faces as I repeatedly trounced them with 40+ hit combos. I probably would have had ethical issues doing that to the poor little amateurs − KI was fifty cents a play, after all − but their contorted looks of dismay always turned to gazes of wonder once they realized what they were actually seeing. Most kids were truly happy to have had their asses so roundly kicked if only because it allowed them the opportunity to ask, "How... how did you do that!?"
Game: Dungeon Keeper 2
Platform: PC
I've always been big into simulation games. Perhaps psychology majors would see in this some subtle indication that I subconsciously feel my real life is sub-par, but I don't concern myself with that (I played video games for a living, which I think pretty much disqualifies me as a study candidate anyway). What's important is that I have always been able to tell the fantasy life from the real one. Take dungeons, for instance...
Dungeon Keeper 2 had everything I desire in a sim game: a novel concept (build and run a dungeon, complete with monsters and minions), a sense of humor (tells you to go to bed after many hours of continuous play), intuitive gameplay (for the most part), vast variety and, most importantly of all, dominatrixes! You cannot go wrong with strong women in spiked heels and shiny clothes, as far as I'm concerned (cf. Buffy the Vampire Slayer). So, with the dommes and the demons and the battle-axes and the ability to possess minions and go into 3D-shooter mode, Dungeon Keeper 2 stands to this day as my favorite PC-based game of all time.
Okay, I should end this by making it known that the original Legend of Zelda should probably be on this list, but I was limited to five and I couldn't decide which other game to drop. I decided to leave Zelda off because I already had an NES game on the list and nothing was going to bump Mega Man 2. I know, I know... but hard decisions had to be made.
Now, if you'll excuse me, my ego is starting to chew through the gag. I'd better upload this before it escapes and makes me delete that horrendous picture.
*In my own defense, I'll implore you to note that all four of us have mullets because it was the style. All the kids were doing it!
