YouTube Friday: He United the States

On this 4th of July, the 232nd birthday of our country, I offer you these videos of the recent and great HBO mini-series about John Adams which was based on the biography by David McCullough.  God bless America!

 

 

Wednesday Review: The King of Kong

I love documentaries about weird or quirky things.  I loved Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven about pet cemeteries and I loved Up For Grabs about the dispute over Barry Bonds’ 73^rd home run ball.  Who doesn’t love Trekkies I and II?  I even love pretend documentaries like A Mighty Wind and Spinal Tap.  So The King of Kong:  Fistful of Quarters was right up my alley.  The movie shows the battle between two grown men (with, semi-surprisingly, wives and children) for supremacy of score on a video game that’s 25 years old: Donkey Kong.

In this corner, Gamer of the Century, world record holder at one time or another of five internationally recognized high scores on some of the world’s most well known video games, including Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.  His recognized Donkey Kong record has stood for 25 years, Billllllllly Mmmmmmitchell!

And in this corner, a newcomer to the Donkey Kong universe and father of two.  A gifted athlete and musician and a Jr. High science teacher, claiming to have beaten the all time high score on Donkey Kong in his garage, Steeeeeeeve Weeeeeeeeeeibeeee!

Steve Weibe and Billy Mitchell share very little in common save their savant-like talent for Donkey Kong.  Mitchell has the most ridiculous haircut I’ve ever seen, resembling Darth Vader’s helmet, which is oddly appropriate.  He is calculating, manipulative, and successful.  More arrogant than a Donkey Kong champion should ever be, he’s been a legend in the arcade gaming community for over 25 years, and is now a hot sauce tycoon who speaks in overly thought-out riddles and Machiavellian clichés.  At one point he even declares  himself as controversial as the abortion issue.

Weibe is intelligent and gifted, but has struggled to put it all together, starting with a disappointing pitching performance in a high school championship baseball game.  The day he and his wife signed papers on their house, he was laid off from his job at Boeing.  Quiet and unassuming, his failures have stuck with him and he’s looking for a chance at validation.

The battle begins when Weibe’s video tape of his record breaking Donkey Kong score, which he mailed to the recognized arbiter of all things classic arcade, Twin Galaxies, was called into question.  Only a live score could be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was told, a rule that apparently only applies in certain cases.  Weibe travels to Funspot in New Jersey for a big gaming event sponsored by Twin Galaxies in an attempt to square off with Mitchell face to face and beat his score in public.  Funspot is a haven for nerdery; a lot of paunches, bad hair, bad skin, black jeans, and facial hair.

I don’t want to give too much of the story away.  I’ll tell you that Mitchell doesn’t show up at Funspot, but a video tape of his apparent latest record-breaking game comes out and is accepted as legit, even though Weibe’s tape was rejected.  The Twin Galaxies crew and a lot of their sycophantic disciples are a pretty protective bunch and Weibe is the outsider trying to break into this strange world.  He’s treated shabbily by most of these snobby dorks at first (they constantly mispronounce his name as weeb when it should be pronounced wee-bee), but after he doggedly continues to travel to these events to prove his legitimacy, even to Mitchell’s hometown, they come to respect him, and even like him.

Really, this isn’t a movie about Donkey Kong.  It’s about the drive to succeed and be recognized for your accomplishments on their own merits (even if it’s something as inconsequential as a video game) and not because of who you are or who you know.  Don’t get me wrong, the movie is hilarious in its absurdity, but it works on a deeper level as well. 

A good documentary should let its subjects tell the story by showing them just as they are and not manipulate to affect the viewers perspective.  There were some moments that seemed a little contrived, but on the whole I think they played it pretty straight.  Even if you’re not into video games (or nerds) this is definitely worth the hour and twenty and is one of the best movies from 2007.

Here’s a trailer:

My Wife Is Trying To Kill Me

Last week Jen made a purchase that is sure to shorten my lifespan.  Its not the sort of thing that will take you out in an instant, but will slowly and surely nibble away at your longevity, one piece at a time.  She bought a bag of 50 precooked bacon slices.  Now every time I go to the fridge, sometimes not even looking for something to eat, just a cool beverage, I come face to face with temptation.  The main thing keeping me from consuming heart stopping amounts of bacon on a regular basis is the effort it takes to make it.  The raw bacon is slimy and kind of gross to touch, you’ve gotta fire up the stove, there’s grease everywhere that has to be cleaned up; its no coincidence that the effort to prepare it is commensurate with the damage it does to your insides.  Otherwise, we’d all be dead.

But this new developement in bacon presentation is very alarming.  It takes the built in safety feature completely out of the equation.  Most times I don’t even take the time to heat it up in the microwave.  Yes, I eat cold bacon, sue me. 

So, its a constant battle.  On the one hand, there’s the prospect of clogged arteries, love handles, and heart disease.  But on the other hand, there’s delicious, delicisou bacon.  It’s a losing battle really.

My advice to you:  avoid at all costs.  You can’t beat bacon.  You just can’t.  You don’t need to feel bad about it, its just one of those facts of life.  So the only course to take, is to just walk on by you local grocer’s salted pork product aisle.  It’s either that or bacon for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every thing in between.  Man, what a way to go.

First Contact

The story could’ve been penned by Shakespeare himself.  It belongs in the pantheon of the bard’s greatest love stories.  A classic tale, the kind we all know by heart and have seen repeatedly acted out in drama and in real life.  It’s the kind of story that makes women tilt there head to one side, put their hand to their heart, and say, “Ah, how sweet.” The kind that men pretend doesn’t touch them, but inside they long to be a player in such a narrative.  It’s familiar and yet often distant.  It’s a story of transcendence of careers and education, of dirty t-shirts meets pleated skirts, of whistles and brooms.  It’s just your typical teacher meets janitor love story.

I remember the first time I saw her.  It was August, and my crew and I were in the last hectic weeks of getting the campus ready for the upcoming school year.  There were about thirty classrooms and all had to have their walls painted, their rugs shampooed, and linoleum waxed.  The painting and shampooing had been completed earlier in the summer, and the waxing was the last big project.  In these last weeks of summer vacation, it was a constant struggle to keep the early bird teachers out of their rooms so we could finish preparing them, for if we left something undone we would surely hear about it from said worm-catching teachers.  Oh cruel irony.  The room that was to be hers had had its floor waxed earlier that morning and a sign posted on the door alerted any potential enterers to come back tomorrow.  Imagine my chagrin when I witnessed this apparently illiterate woman and her apparently equally illiterate (or just rebellious) boss walking into the classroom.  I let out a sigh of frustration and walked to the classroom with the intention of giving them the boot and a stern notion of my displeasure.

When I got to the door and looked inside, the mutinous two were standing on the carpet and leaning over the five foot wide strip of newly waxed linoleum, doing their level best not to step on it, loading some textbooks into a cabinet.  Their efforts to not foul up the fresh waxing softened my irritability slightly, and the fact that this new teacher I had just laid eyes on was young and cute probably didn’t hurt either.  First impressions you know.  She was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt.  She had short brown hair and brown eyes and I couldn’t tell if her facial expression was betraying annoyance or was just in neutral.  Either way, her chin wrinkled in kind of a funny way.  As I left the classroom after requesting of her boss that Do Not Enter signs be heeded, I remember thinking to myself about this new person. What it is exactly I was thinking about I don’t recall, but I know she was on my mind, even though we hadn’t spoken a word to each other.

I do remember our first exchange, however.  It probably wasn’t more than a week or so since I’d first seen her.  Our paths crossed as we walked through the same hallway, each starting on opposite ends.  When we met somewhere near the middle, she stopped me and asked if I might unlock the restroom for her.  She was, and is still, a diminutive person and her voice matched her small stature, light and mousey.  I remember that particularly sticking with me, the smallness of her voice.  Of course I obliged her request, and as I was turning the key I said to her the words that every girl longs to hear from a guy, “I’ll be your janitor this year.”  I think she chuckled a little, though probably not as much as I was hoping; we exchanged names and went our separate ways.

McCain Nabs Crucial Vietnamese Jailer Endorsement!

Election season is always good for a bizarre news story or two and I particularly enjoy all the celebrity endorsements candidates get.  What, Liza Manelli is backing Obama?  Well, I did love Cabaret so I guess I’ll vote for him too.  Almost always ridiculous.  But this one has gotta be one of the weirdest.  McCain’s old jailer from his Hanoi Hilton days has given his endorsement to the Senator from Arizona.  I don’t know which is more strange, the endorsement, or that the jailer is described thusly:  “a 75-year-old retiree and amateur ballroom dancer.”  Must be American election season.