Shadow of the Colossus: The (Awful) Movie

(The following is an old, old, old man file I had stored away on my laptop -- but the principles still apply.  Read on and let me take you back to the simpler time of 2010...only...remixed, with images and captions and on a blog now.  So...not really all that different.)

Lucky, or unlucky?  That’s the biggest question here.  On the one hand, today I don’t have school thanks to a pleasant snowstorm.  On the other hand, that gives me time to scour the movie channels for something to watch.  As fate would have it, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li happened to be on.  I knew from the instant I saw the sublime SF logo mixed with text so bland even I could generate it (or anyone with Word, for that matter), I wasn’t just about to view garbage.  No, this was a rare opportunity – it IS a rare opportunity, because as I’m writing this, I’m watching the movie in question.

Oh great.  Lana Lang is back.

Despite being a part-time follower of the SF mythos, I had no interest in seeing the movie when it came out a year ago.  I knew it’d be bad – a special kind of bad.  It seemed impossible for so many screw-ups to appear in such a short time span.  For exa-

Oh crap.  Vega just appeared onscreen.  Or at least, someone like Vega.  His mask is all shiny, he’s wearing all black, and memories of Vega’s ASIAN actor popped into my head.  And – oh boy, Chris Klein just made his first onscreen appearance.  “Call me Nash,” he says.  As in Charlie Nash?  Hell no!  You put on the glasses and throw a sonic boom, and then we’ll talk.

“You just inherited a big problem,” he says.  I lol’ed.

Better to inherit a problem than that forehead.

Black to the Future: A Quantification

(The following is not meant to be taken seriously.  If you are offended, please contact your humor service provider immediately.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that my mom doesn’t think that I’m black enough.

Every time I fail to name one of her favorite R&B singers – or “my people”, as she puts it – I can see a part of her soul crumbling to dust. Her attempts to make me into the ultimate black scion have been thwarted by (tentatively) four zaptillion hours of games. That won’t stop her from trying, though; to this day, the floor of my bathroom is lined with African-American-oriented magazines, archiving critical matters like Mo’Nique’s love life and an expose on Laz Alonso, the TRUE star of James Cameron’s Avatar in his award-winning performance as Giant Blue Kitty No. 4. Miraculously, all of these gather dust, since I’m taking care of more important business. Here’s a helpful hint: it involves toilet paper.

But even so, the piercing stare of dust-covered Lionel Richie haunts me every time I have a seat. He’s watching me, glaring in disgust; disappointed that I’m using my writing to make obtuse video game references rather than advance the cause of our “brothers”.  Oh Lionel, can you blame me for preferring a resuscitation of the Konami Code?  You’re not a man if you don’t know the code…and who couldn’t use a few dozen extra lives?

On the other hand, I can see why my crippling overspecialization could prove problematic.  Imagine a scenario where people are having an average conversation, and then I join and say, “Hey guys!  Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start!  Know what I’m sayin’?”  Exaggerated as it may be, it suggests that I’m out of touch with the social expectations and mores of my so-called people – that, although I rarely think of myself as black, certain mannerisms, standards, and knowledge are expected of me.  Questionable as my blackness may be, I’m a human, a social creature that needs to belong and be understood. 

And in order to do so, I must understand in turn.  Therefore, if I’m going to make my mom and the ghost of Lionel Richie haunting my command center happy (wait, he’s dead right?), then I owe it to the both of them to evaluate my blackicity, and make strides toward remedying my unique and vaguely hilarious situation.  In doing so, mayhap I’ll evolve as a man.  As a writer.  And who knows?  Maybe even as a Pokémon; like a helpless Magikarp blooming into a mighty...

Oh, wait.  I’m trying NOT to be a freak.  Sorry about that.  Let’s get started, shall we?   

Count How Many Times…

After playing through and witnessing hundreds of matches in the iterations of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 over the past year, I’ve come to a decision.  Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a game about shenanigans.

You pick characters who’ll give you access to shenanigans, and use their abilities to create shenanigans in a match so you can win.  But in order to win, you have to defend against your opponents’ shenanigans -- and at the same time, you have to pass up their shenanigans to get them to fall for your shenanigans by creating a thin layer of mini-shenanigans.  Some shenanigans are low-risk, low reward.  Some are high-risk, high reward.  And then there are some shenanigans that are high-risk, low reward; the reverse is true for plenty of other shenanigans.  Whatever the case, if you’re smart you’ve already prepared your own special shenanigans -- an ace in the hole in case all your other shenanigans fail.  Your ace shenanigans combine with the in-game shenanigans to create SUPER SHENANIGANS, and all it takes is one quick, Hail Mary application of your shenanigans to overwhelm your opponent’s shenanigans.  And then you win!  Or…maybe you end up losing at the last second because the clock runs out.  In which case you stop calling them shenanigans and use a more suitable synonym, one commonly used as an exclamation of anger.  I just can’t think of the word right now…

So you stew for a while, hating the fact that you lost (or hating the fact that you won even more).  Sometimes you wonder why you play this game.  Other times you wonder why nothing ever goes your way.  And there are times when you think “What have I become?” or “Man, when did fighting games turn into this?” 

But that’s all right.  Because in spite of all that, you’ll keep coming back.  You’ll win by any means necessary, or lose with a smile knowing that you made it onto the stage with your favorite character putting on a show.  Complain and whine and cry all you want, but you know it’s a part of you now.

So eat shenanigans and die.  Or…live.  Yeah, living sounds better, do that.

5 Life Lessons We Can Learn from The Centurions

Swine flu.  Economic recessions.  Global warming.  The impending zombie apocalypse.  That’s not something that anyone wants to wake up to in the morning, but it’s a cruel reality – the world doesn’t like humans (probably because humans are so keen on messing it up in the first place, but oh well).  Nobody likes having to deal with this stuff, either; some people try to work against it, some try to ignore it, some make it worse – the point is, it’s enough to make people edgy, fearful, depressed, you name it.  I suspect that there are still others who retreat to the safety of the days of youth, with nap time, plastic slides, schoolyard crushes…actually, that sounds pretty cool right now.  I’m going to go grab a time machine.

AFTER I make my peace, of course.  See, it’s the past that makes us who we are, and the past, for better or worse, has some ideas that we can take to heart.  And what better exemplar of this fact than my favorite cartoon (and merchandising vehicle) The Centurions?