I finished Chrono Trigger yesterday. I'd pump my fist in triumph had I, say, beaten Contra 4 (again), but like any drawn-out tale too long for its own good is deserving of, I instead smiled wanly and reflected on my life, my hours spent not washing dishes or brushing my teeth. Which is to say, Constant Retard, I lamented the end of my saga as a spikey-haired mute and accepted my role as a hu...
Hu...
(Hold on; I can do this.)
I accepted my role as a hu~
(This is harder than I thought.)
A husband? A human being? A huge asshole?
Your guess is as good as mine, and they're probably all correct.
Outlook not so good, so says my magic 8-ball. The Hornets got BEATen by infinity, Miami lost to the Hawks, and Portland...well, there's still hope for the Failblazers (right?).
If the 2009 NBA playoffs have taught me anything, it's that I enjoy pain. Kick me in the balls! Burn me not in effigy but in person!
Silver lining: Denver or Houston is going to advance to the conference finals. (Because the Mavs won't.) My bet's on Houston. Either way, warm fuzzies. Tracy McGrady is crying himself to sleep at night.
I'm officially excited!
(Dwyane...channel it...Common Sense is the resurrection.)
I'm not good on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. Such is the price I pay to make big money, drive big cars, and have everybody know me like I'm a movie star. So when Vitamin E is on a tight sched, he likes to have him some pfast pfood. It's not indulgence so much as it's the easy -- und tasty! -- option when I'm too lazy to cook for myself (every day) and when Legs is too lazy to cook for me (today; and I don't want to see a trend start!).
Enter: McDelivery, God's gift to cretins. Say what you will about The House That Ray Croc Built, but nothing, and I mean nothing, goes down quite as rewardingly as a McD's hashbrown, a Sausage McMuffin, a vanilla milkshake, and a blowjob after an hour of morning work. Let me sleep for 45 minutes to an hour and a half afterward, and I'm a new man.
But it's a vicious circle, I tell you. There aren't many Popeye's franchisees around these parts (or anywhere) in this, the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century; and when Edgar Ford is on the go, well, you know, he always keeps his Popeye's radar on blast. Because those French fries are tastier than anything not Arby's Curly Fries. Quote me.
So that's what I had to eat today for breakfast and dinner (fuck lunch). And you? Post a comment, would you? I'm genuinely curious.
There's only one more thing I think that really needs to be said, and it's that
(I'm bad, bad, and a-wicked in bed)
a half hour ago this worthy went up to the rooftop to do what he does remarkably well, ie. smoke a square, and he espied a middle school student furtively eating cup ramen in the shadows.
I've been quiet on the basketball front this season (hell, I've been quiet on all fronts lately), but I'm thoroughly excited about these current playoffs -- playoffs during which, fingers crossed, we may well be treated to a plethora of game sevens.
I'll save you -- and me...mostly me -- a lengthy piece on what I'm enjoying so far and what I'm looking forward to, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that, as much as I love the Heat and Dwyane Wade's resurgence, I'm riding the Portland Trailblazers bandwagon (Blandwagon? Is that unfair?) until the wheels fall off. I was disappointed over Game 1, but Brandon Roy's magnificent performance today re-endeared me to the coolest team in the L to watch.
I'm working a lot these days (stop laughing), so I don't have much time to work on
(Maniac Dawn)
PK or my review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly -- which is, like a Carvel cake, a unique experience -- nor play Chrono Trigger, the ketchup to my fries (mayo?).
Just know this: I'll be here when I feel like it. As you will, too.
Word to Idealjetsam, TMH, Denz, Kmart, and Edgar Frog.
Few films bore me; after all, I'm watching a movie! I could be working, but, no, I'm watching cinemagic! In a similar regard, few films anger me. I'm let down by some pictures, yes, but it takes a real doozy to get me spitting mad. Wanted comes to mind, and not many others.
Few films disgust me. Day of the Woman, AKA I Spit on Your Grave is, offhand, the only one I can think of, actually, although I must admit I'm not thinking very hard.
Yet no film has bored, angered, and disgusted me all at once quite like The Reader. It has earned its inaugural standing in my Triumvirate of distaste. And Ralph Fiennes is in it! How can this be?
Let me break it down like compost:
First, it's as boring as high school grammar class. It plods. To be fair, it plods a little less in its second act, but that's like saying a sloth is faster than a snail. To make matters worse, it's vague in its plodding. I don't mind waiting (I waited 20 minutes for you to put on your makeup, didn't I?), but give the drummer some, 'cause the drummer ain't had none in a looong time, hear? Word to Double Dungeons, this movie is doors upon doors of nothing. The film's score, while effective (if by "effective" you mean almost suckering me into sympathizing for a Nazi war criminal), can't support the weight of a film with no supporting characters. Michael Berg's family is laughable in that they scorn their son for coming home late from school one day, and then they ostensibly allow him to not come home at all, his father forgiving him for returning home after weeks away. Seriously? I wish I was German when I grew up.
I should interject here and say that The Reader is, most likely, based on a novel. A shitty novel, probably (any novel that asks me to sympathize with an illiterate Nazi war criminal doesn't exactly pique my Prove Me Wrong meter), but a novel nonetheless, one with character development and backgrounds for those characters. Maybe it's beloved by many; and if that is in fact the case, holy shit, you women have some weird-ass morals.
Hanna Schmitz, played by Kate Winslet and her saggy breasts, doesn't exactly seduce a young man, but neither does she deny him...Hell, you know what, she so does! I'm not saying that's wrong, because I would have loved to have been seduced by Kate Winslet's saggy breasts (anyone's female saggy breasts for that matter), in my own youth, but the old bird basically fucks the kid because a) she's probably a nympho, and b) because [spoilers!] she can't read. That selfish Nazi war criminal!
(The Reader: to cougars what Nabakov's Lolita was/is to pervy old men.)
So she exchanges sex with the young lad for him reading to her. Fair trade, right? Uh, okay. Creepy? Yeah. (But not if she were Jessica Gomes!)
Flash forward some years later. Our protagonist, Michael, is studying law and his professor takes him to a Nazi war criminal trial. What a coinky-dink; who should show up but Hanna! Seems Hanna was a she-wolf of the SS. She's on trial for overseeing the mass murder of Jews, and if you think she's making it out of this movie alive, I have some real estate in Florida I wanna sell you.
What angers me is that the movie goes out of its way to paint Hanna as a sympathetic figure. Because she can't read. That somehow excuses the mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz.
Makes sense to me.
And while I was bored and angered beyond most normal human beings' threshold, mostly I was disgusted. Those sex scenes were gross, as erotic as rattle snake fellatio. Couple that with the fact that Hanna Schmitz is a cold bitch from start to finish, and I'm supposed to feel some sort of emotion other than elation when she hangs herself at the end?
Come on.
What a terrible, terrible movie. I'm sure you love the book, but here's where I disembark.
Nazi war criminals are only sexy when they're starring in makeup adverts. History has at least taught us that.
Give me back myself. Some wounds never heal, and I wouldn't trade what we had for the world; but I still wish you were dead. Stockholm Syndrome. I still wish you were dead, I still wish you were dead. I still wish you are dying.
If I pray hard enough, maybe you'll die for real this time.
What cruel fate, boredom. I played Chrono Trigger this week more than I worked (and I liked it, Mom. Think I'll take up Chrono Trigger for a living, whatcha think about that?), but here I sit on a Saturday night, dissatisfied. Kids are out there drinking, trying to make love to their prudish dates, and old men are paying for prostitutes. Then there's me, and, if I may be so bold, you. We got nothin.
Well, I guess we got each other.
Indulge me. It's 11:20 p.m. on this cool evening, and I'm your host, Ethan Fogarty. Stay tuned to PK 49.311 on your FM dial as we lay down tracks like Chinese immigrants. Ladies get in free, no dress code.
Talk to me. Tell me about your life.
[The Manic Street Preachers won't let me embed. Fuck them. But you can still see-hear "Motorcycle Emptiness" on YouTube and laugh at the ridiculous editing vis a vis the Ferris wheel clock. Tempting, yes?]
Ditto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3DgAJwVeVU (copy, paste, listen, love). Is this reverse psychology? Did I wake up in a world where "Rain" by The Cult is heavily pirated? Know what's heavily pirated? X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The difference here is that "Rain" is actually good. Spead the word, right?
Billy Duffy is spinning in his grave.
I guess that's okay. I guess that works. Does it mean "Edie" sucks? No way. But it sucks a little more than "Rain," which doesn't suck at all.
I would kill a man to see the 21 Jump Street clip where I first I heard this ditty. That reminds me...
...
(disregard amateur video and coda. Especially the coda.)
...as the flames rose to her Roman nose and her iPod started to melt.
Lord and Sunny Jim, is 3rd Bass harder to link to than fuck, I think it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmNsi7PSgAQ
Universal is actually worried about people seeing the "Product of the Environment" video? Is it going to hurt their 3rd Bass: A Retrospective, DVD sales? There's such a thing as word of mouth still, right? Not according to Universal, I guess.
"I left more than a mark, I left a dent."
Write. That. On. My. Epitaph!
The Internet (and gangsterism, I suppose) in a song.
(You know what, if May 18 is Masta Ace Day, June 18 is Sadat X 날, sorta like how Valentine's and White Day roll. Feel?)
To paraphrase and parody myself on probably every PKast (remember them?) I've ever talked on, "as I've mentioned before," my utter infatuation with Chrono Trigger has been documented here already (I love that game like I love Edgar Ford's eight-inch dick size). But what I've never explained to you, Constant Retard, is that I didn't actually finish the game. I know, that's like calling The Godfather the greatest film ever made and not making it past Michael's revenge on McClusky and Sollozzo in the restaurant, but please hear me out.
Again, "AS I'VE MENTIONED BEEF FOUR," role-playing games aren't my strong suit, mostly because of the boring battle systems and tedious grinding, but also because why the hell would I want to play any role other than my current one as an amiable lady killer? Well, sometimes I'm wrong (don't tell my wife I said that), and I was Dead Wrong in the case of Chrono Trigger, a game that, in my opinion, squashes Roger Ebert's claim that video games can't be art.
The storyline manages to stay inventive and intriguing, especially when you consider that it's, you know, an RPG, and its cliches work in its favor, which is a very rare thing for a work of art; the soundtrack is -- I'm completely serious -- one of the most inspired and well-crafted orchestrations I've had the pleasure of hearing, as memorable as anything John Williams or Ennio Morricone have produced; and, like any great game/movie/album/woman, it possesses an inexplicable quality that you just know makes it phenomenal, a quality that makes you deeply love a video game, not for its place in your life, but for your place in its.
So why didn't I finish it? I'm a master of excuses, most of them poor, but hear me out, would you? As terrific as the game is, it half steps near the end, taxing average Joe gamer with side quests that infuriate with their lack of adhering to what was a linear, albeit epic, storyline. It's as though the game's makers had so much they wanted to stuff into the game that when it was apparent they couldn't fit everything in they opted to penultimately tack it on instead of nixing it altogether or reworking it into the game's plot. And me, a nineteen-year-old pothead with a gambling addiction...that slowed my roll like five-o'clock traffic. In layman's terms, the game pulled an about face. It didn't shit on the bed, but it shit on the floor.
I didn't want to clean up the mess, so I did what I always do: I walked away with the intention to come back. Chrono Trigger and I needed some time apart, that was all. I needed to get my head right. It's not you, Chrono Trigger, it's me.
When I revisited the only game I've ever wanted to make love to (besides Ms. Pacman, for she has more holes than 36 rounds of golf), however, I was abruptly shot down. My R4 pulled a fast one. In layman's terms, my game of Frogger done got unplugged.
Fuck. Right?
But, as long as I have a breath in my lungs, a beat in my heart, a pixilated dolphin on my wristwatch that tells me the time...I will never leave you. Darling. You are to gaming what The Brothers Karamazov is to literature, what Mika Tan is to blowjobs. What Marv Albert is to basketball commentary.
