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Cooking with John, Week of 8/10/03
This is Unbelievable!
God works in mysterious ways.
Ok, so no more than five minutes after I finish the previous entry ripping Rolling Stone and Mary Kate & Ashley to shreds, I thought I'd better open the stack of mail sitting on my desk. I get to a rather large envelope and open it up to find this picture:
I am not making this up!
So, do you think this means I have a chance with them?
John
On the Cover of the Rolling Stone
I have my fair share of problems with Rolling Stone. Over the decades, they've gone from having their finger on the pulse of the music industry to just being another cheap, corporate rag, ridden with eighty pages of advertisements for perfume, designer jeans, and the heroin chic. The contents within consist of 75% advertisements, 23% useless minutia, and 2% readable material.
Their tendency over the years to display boy bands, teeny-bopper bubble gum acts, and flash-in-the-pan no talents has made them a complete joke. This month they've outdone themselves.
I admit, quite shamefully, to having a bit of an interest in the Olson Twins. In admitting that, I feel the sudden urge to go take a shower, cleansing myself of all impurity. After all, I was in Junior High when they and the cast of Full House infected the television world with their cheap brand of corny family friendly "humor". They were barely toddlers at the time, for god's sake! Now, I find myself reading quotes like these in Rolling Stone:
The perfect California girl, she looks even better after a day at the beach: gold-flecked skin, shiny blond hair, as fresh and organic as the strawberries she nibbles on.
Male curiosity or not, that's just wrong. Sick and f**king wrong.
Incidentally, they'll be Playboy legal in just 302 days.
John
Spank the Birthday Boy
I'm following this breaking story on the power outage on the east coast. As of this reading, they're assuring people that it has nothing to do with terrorism, which is good. But if it does turn out to have something to do with terrorists, I swear I'm going to lose it.
I've been a bit bitchy and cranky this week, haven't I? I need to calm down.
Well, today is Sonny's birthday. Whoopie Woo! Due to this fact, expect him to do his job even less than usual; if that is even humanly possible. I suspect to accomplish that feat he'll have to go into some sort of catatonic state involving a lot of staring and drooling, but not much else. But then again, that wouldn't even be much of a change.
I really suck at fighting games. In fact, most action-based competitive games are real sore spots for me. Even my beloved MechAssault is a perfect example of just how badly I stink at these sorts of games. If you want a turkey shoot, just invite me into a Live deathmatch someday. I'll be more than happy to let you smack me around a bit.
That being said, I really enjoy fighters. In fact, the first Soul Calibur still ranks in my Top 5 Games of All Time list. Of course, I am pretty bad ass at that particular game. Either way, I'm playing the crap out of VF4:EVO and my copy of SC2 is on its way...or should I say my copies of SC2 are on their way. Despite my shortcomings in the skill department, I'm never one to shy away from a bout of Samurai Shodown or King of Fighters.
Expect a bit of fighting game hysteria around GWX in the next couple of weeks. Next week's Editor's Roundtable will be centered around that topic as will next week's Classic Game of the Week feature. And if you're lucky, we might just kick the crap out of Sonny to round things out.
John
Sassy and Happy
After endless digging and investigative work, we tracked down a spokesperson for NEC Interchannel today and found out what the hell they're working on. Check out the full story here.
This Culdcept game sounds heavily Japanese and fairly ambitious. I personally don't really care for the whole "collecting cards" schtick, but hey, it's NEC. That fact alone will make me happy.
I received a great package in the mail today. It was from Marlboro. Somehow, they seemed to think it was my birthday and wanted to congratulate me by sending me a coupon for two free packs of Marlboro cigarettes.
Fantastic.
Congratulations! Here's some cancer!
I have to tell you that I'm tired of seeing this movie plot:
A well-to-do, straight-laced, tight-assed white person and a ghetto-slang-talkin', jive turkey, street-wise black person are paired up and placed in unlikely and ridiculous situations, but eventually see that they aren't so different. Sometimes, they even fall in love.
Is this Hollywood's only method of improving race relations? By sticking two stereotypes together, going through an hour and a half of sappy, cheesy-humored bullshit, and wrapping it up with a After School Special, Ebony and Ivory ending?
This Marci X is the latest of the bunch, following Bringing Down the House and Bulworth. I'm just sick of the whole thing. It seems that Hollywood can't get it into its head that not all white people are square, suit and tie wearing pricks, and not all black people are jive talking ex-convicts.
I'm too pissed to continue.
John
Big Guy, Big Eye
I feel like the well of minutia has been a bit dry lately. In that, I mean that my life is completely boring, gaming news is next to non-existant, and I just don't have shit to say. Of course, it's not like I delude myself into thinking that any of my self-indulgant ramblings have any entertainment value whatsoever. Perhaps it's that my life has been utterly consumed by the wedding and I don't feel like constantly boring the readers of this site with marital nonsense. I would imagine that would be about as entertaining as watching Sonny dance the hokey-pokey in a diaper.
Wait, that would be pretty cool.
It's funny how the death of someone you've never met can have such a profound effect on your life. I'm not speaking from personal experience here, but the recent death of a Minnesota/Hockey legend is pretty much all anybody can talk about in my home state today. Herb Brooks died in an automobile accident just north of Minneapolis yesterday, and while I don't follow hockey, and had only heard his name once or twice in my life, it was really touching to hear the stories about the man and how many lives he touched. I sat and listened to our local sports station most of the day, listening to caller after caller talk about how great this man was and how much he did for hockey, the people of Minnesota, and for America.
In case you didn't know, Mr. Brooks was the coach of the legendary "Miracle on Ice" team at the 1980 Winter Olympics, in which the U.S. team scored a massive upset over the Russian team, and eventually went on to win the gold medal.
I encourage you to read that story I linked above if you're into hockey, or even if you're into human interest pieces.
So when I'm not mourning the deaths of people I never heard of, I'm getting punished at the school of Virtua Fighter 4. In preparation for Evo's release, I've busted out the original and remembered what it's like to be disciplined by a video game. The principle that I came to realize is that VF4 is a great game not only to help you become better at fighters, but better at video games as a whole. It teaches you patience, technique, strategy, and even more patience. The game is really like your own vid-guru, and the more you take your time with it, the more satisfaction you'll reap.
I'm wrapping up the latest CWJ contest, so be sure to get your kooky letters in. I've received quite a few submissions so far, and I have to say, you're all a bunch of freaks.
But don't worry, I like it.
Stories like these nearly make me shit myself with fear. Ok, not fear, but a sense of "what in the f**k is going on"? This really isn't the world I want to live in, man. The problem is, I don't know how in the hell it can be dealt with.
Hilden and I had a conversation the other day which I'd like to relay to you, but want to first ask you not to get all high and mighty on me. Let's put BS politically correctness to the side for a minute and see if we can agree on one principle:
It's time we let the stupid kill eachother off so the rest of society can get on with their lives.
As a society - as a civilization - we exert so much time and effort trying to help the stupid catch up to the rest of society that the rest of the world gets screwed in the process. Animals do it; it's called "survival of the fittest".
I know, this sounds completely inhumane and unsympathetic. I can accept that. But if I have to put up with one more government-assisted, teenage-father-of-six moving in next door to my house, breaking into my shit, and forcing the rest of my neighbors to put up fences and have police patrol my neighborhood, I'm going to freak the hell out.
Maybe I should stop there as I can feel the vein in my forehead beginning to burst.
Well, at least Justin and Christina have been forced to postpone nearly half of their tour. Maybe by the time they're ready to start it up again, some crazy religious extremist will have blown humanity off the planet. We could only be so lucky.
John
I Blame Hilden
For what? Well, just about everything. But in this case, I blame him for my renewed love for comic books. I try to fool myself and pretend I'm all adult and somewhat sophisticated. You know, watching foreign films, discussing the avante garde, getting married. Of course, this notion is completely destroyed any time I pontificate aloud about where the Mushroom Kingdom ends and Hyrule begins.
The question I ask myself is: When do you finally cross that line of geekdom? Now, this may inspire you comic fanboys out there to write in with piercing words, calling for my head. But you must admit, walking into your local comic book shop can surely give you a slight feeling of shame. The smell of B.O. and pulp. Forty year-old scruffy men behind the counter who, although they are already 100 lbs. overweight, still feel the need to finish off that Snickers bar. And then there's the gaming section in the back of any self-respecting comic shop. What goes on there, I don't even want to know. I try to avert my eyes before they suck me into their fantasy world.
When I was a kid, I was into Batman huge. After discovering women and music, being a wannabe rock star took up most of my time, and the Dark Knight took a backseat. But I tagged along with Hilden on a trip to our local comic shop a few months ago and it's all been downhill since then.
I've alluded to it in past columns, and looking at the stack of books sitting on my desk, I can no longer deny it. I've even taken drastic measures to suppress my geekness. I've made subscriptions to avoid excessive trips to the comic shop, and when I do have to go there, I make sure it's during the day when it's a bit less populated.
Sad, I know. I should just revel in it, right? Shit, I'm an adult and can do whatever the hell I want to! It's a stigma quite similar to the fading stereotype of gamers; that they're either children or sweaty, basement-dwelling social misfits. But the challenge that comic book fanatics have to get past is that the bulk of their subject matter is thought to revolve mainly around muscle bound men in tights or big breasted women, again, in tights. Video games, on the other hand, seem to be a more easily acceptable and understood medium, as the subject matter, characters, and settings are perceived as much more widely varied than those of comic books.
And for some reason, it's perfectly acceptable for an adult to go see Ben Affleck all dressed up in tights at the movie theater, but to go into a rat trap comic book store and buy a Daredevil book seems a bit...off.
So anyway, to wrap things up and bring them full circle, when Christine says, "What the hell is with all these freaking comic books lying around?" I simply reply, "It's Hilden's fault."
John
Don Quixote
Let me preface this by saying that I love my fiancee deeply and thoroughly enjoy spending time with her; especially on weekends. But dammit, my weekends are for relaxing. Not waking up at the crack of dawn, taking a ten mile bike ride, coming home and weeding the garden/yard, shopping at the mall for five hours, and going to a florist to pick out flowers for the wedding. I was almost glad to get back to work this morning.
I did have a bit of time to myself and finally got to check out The Seven Samurai on Saturday night. The movie is long as hell, but I finally found out what people have been raving about all these years. It's obvious how this movie went on to inspire some of the great American Westerns like Good, Bad, and the Ugly and other Clint Eastwood classics. If you're into that sort of thing, or just enjoy watching Samurai kick the crap out of bad guys, be sure to check it out. In fact, because I care, here's a link for you.
Let me remind you one last time of the Cooking with John Contest #5. I'm giving away an advance copy of Sakura Wars: The Movie and all you have to do is write in and say whatever the hell you want to say. I know, my creativity is wearing thin. But hey, this makes it easier for you to win, eh?
John
Last Week
Feature by John Luedtke
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