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zwolanerd

“I guess I just like liking things”

November 21, 2012 Favorite Things: Karate Champ

Arcade cabinet for Karate Champ

A block away from where I would wait for my mom to pick me up after school was a gas station that usually had 3-4 arcade games in the dimly-lit back. I wasn’t allowed to go to full-on arcades when I was a kid, it was at this gas station that I discovered greats like Tutankham, Gyruss, and one of my all-time favorite games: Karate Champ. While there were plenty of games from that era that I enjoyed, Karate Champ was one I was actually good at.

As you can see from the picture, each player had two joysticks, one for movement and one for moves. The combination of a direction on each would result in different moves, some of which I still remember, and I haven’t seen an arcade stand-up of this game in twenty years.  Up on the left stick combined with forward on the right stick was a jumping front kick, a devastating move if it landed. Back on the left stick was block, down was crouch.

The goal was to win two points before your opponent, whether he was computer- or player-controlled. A grouchy-looking sort-of-Asian judge would award points based on landed hits, either a half or a full point.  The game had a couple of words of digitized speech, and the judge always sounded a little disappointed in you if you only scored a half point.  His “half point” might as well have been “Maybe if you were better, I could give you a full point,” and if it were a text from him today, it would be followed by a :(.

Each match took place in a different setting, and in-between matches there were tests of skill – breaking boards, evading objects, and hitting a bull. I never ever, ever once hit that bull. I could never figure out the timing on it. Stupid goofy-looking bull. I hate you to this day.

Once I got my Commodore 64 and Data East released a home version of this game, I bought it as soon as I was able. Sure, it was an okay port, but it just wasn’t the same without those two joysticks.  One stick and a button was no replacement.  To this day I wonder why no other arcade game utilized the two-stick control method, because I’m sure it could’ve been expanded upon greatly with the ideas of half-circles and whatnot that Street Fighter gave us. My guess is that the setup was too expensive.

I have this game to thank for my love of fighting games over the years, even though I was never again as good at any of them as I was at this one.  I am also sure that this game played a part in my interest in the martial arts from a young age, though it probably wasn’t the first thing that piqued my interest – I have dim recollections of badly-dubbed kung fu flicks from way back that are probably more to blame.

I leave you with a few minutes of gameplay from Karate Champ, a game I would love to own some day.  It’s getting harder and harder (and more expensive) to find working copies of it, but I’m still holding on to the dream.

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November 20, 2012 Tuesday 10: Stallone Movies

The Expendables 2

I don’t care how old any of them are, they could all wipe the floor with me.

In honor of The Expendables 2 hitting home video today, here’s a list of my favorite Sylvester Stallone movies. Please note: I did not say “best” Sylvester Stallone movies. “Best” you can argue with. “Favorite” is unassailable. And, as is becoming my usual, series/sequels only get one entry.

10. Cobra – Listen, I know this one isn’t very good, but for a few weeks after I first saw it, I was chewing on matchsticks.

9. Antz – This came out around the same time as A Bug’s Life, and for a while I liked this one better. It’s essentially an animated Woody Allen movie, and Sly’s ginormous soldier ant is a fun character.

8. Cop Land – Sly packed on the pounds to play a half-deaf policeman across from the likes of Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel, and he held his own.

7. Oscar – Goofy as all get out, Sly’s first crack at an all-out comedy is funnier than it gets credit for.

6. Cliffhanger – Watch the first 10 minutes of this, then watch the first five minutes of Ace Ventura 2. John Lithgow was a great villain in this movie, and I’m pretty sure Sly beats up a mountain at one point.

5. Daylight – I don’t normally like disaster flicks, but this one struck a chord with me. Don’t get attached to too many of the characters, and that’s all I’m gonna say.

4. The Expendables I/II – Perhaps I enjoy these because it gives me hope as I grow older, but I seem to easily forget that I never kicked as much butt when I was younger as these guys did.

3. Demolition Man – Rat meat. Taco Bell. The three seashells. An all-out crazy Wesley Snipes. Sandra Bullock. The most enjoyable movie Rob Schneider’s ever been in.

2. Rambo (First Blood / First Blood Part II / III / Rambo) – I often feel like I get these movies in a way no one else does. Rambo gets held up as the stereotypical blow-everything-up action movie character, but he’s way more than that.  He was made into a soldier/warrior/killer and then shoved back into a world that didn’t need him and didn’t know what to do with him. The first movie is him trying to find a place, trying to help himself. The second is him trying to help his country and his fellow soldiers. The third was him trying to help his surrogate father, his family. The fourth was him trying to find some measure of redemption, using his skills and knowledge to help the helpless. Sure, there’s lots of bullets and explosions, but I’ve always appreciated the character.

1. Rocky (I/II/III/IV/V/Rocky Balboa) – Rocky is such an iconic figure that it’s difficult to remember the underdog story hadn’t really been told on film before him.  Sylvester Stallone set a standard with the first movie that has affected pretty much every sports movie story since then. Sure, the series has had some missteps (V, and the robot in IV), but watch that last movie after seeing the first one again and you’ll be surprised by how touching it is.

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November 19, 2012 Friends 07E14: The One Where They All Turn Thirty

It seems silly to announce a new recurring feature for the site because everything’s a new feature on the site. Regardless, this new feature is where I talk about an episode of something I just watched. Easy enough, right?

Friends was very good about telling you what the episode was about right there in the title.  Sure, every so often the title was misleading on purpose, but the episode titles come in particularly handy after you’ve seen it once. “Hey, remember that episode where Rachel turned thirty?” is exactly the sort of reason Friends episodes were named the way they were.

As I think it might help you understand where I’m coming from when I talk about Friends, and because I like lists a lot (have you noticed?), here is a list of the order in which I like the Friends: Chandler, Monica, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross. In certain episodes that order changes (for instance: some times I find Phoebe more irritating than Ross), but that’s the overall order. If I ever do a list of Favorite TV Characters Ever (ooh, idea!), I’m pretty sure Chandler will be on that list.

Anyway, in this episode, Rachel turns thirty, and she’s really bummed about it. Throughout  the course of the episode, everyone else remembers how they handled turning thirty (thereby marking Rachel as the youngest of the group), in an effort to cheer her up about it.  Frankly, waking her up with a 30th Birthday breakfast is maybe not the best way to get someone started on having a good 30th birthday, but choices were made and it’s best to move on from there.

How did everyone else handle their 30th? Joey was upset that God broke their deal that “everyone else would get older, but he wouldn’t.” Phoebe spent the day finishing up her list of things she wanted to do before turning thirty, a list that ended with “doing a mile on a hippity hop.” Chandler… well, Chandler didn’t get much play, as we only see Joey crying about how Chandler’s older now, too. Ross bought a sports car.  Monica got really drunk for hers.

Rachel, though, spends her 30th lamenting how she’s “so old” now, and what’s she doing with her life?  For the last few episodes she’s been dating tag, her 6-years-younger-than-her assistant at work. Tag is kind of a well-meaning goof, not terribly offensive, just another in the long line of terrible relationship storyline partners that Rachel got stuck with.  Everyone else got a Richard or a Janice (who, sure, was obnoxious, but she played a huge part in most everyone’s lives), or a lot of other interesting things, but Rachel seemed to only ever get “well, we need to give Rachel some sort of love interest here, so how about… this guy?” kinds of relationships (other than Ross, of course).

Jennifer Aniston was 32 when this episode aired, and I wonder how much of her own feelings she put into the character.  Rachel talks about her life plan, of how many kids she wants, when she needs to be married, and how soon she’d have to meet the guy, and it turns out she needs to meet him when she’s… thirty. Well, so long, Tag, it’s been fun!  Maybe you should have stuck to her gift list and not gotten her the scooter? I’m not so sure it made a difference, really, so it’s probably okay.

I was 29 when this episode originally aired and I’m 40 now. I don’t remember what I though about this episode when it was first on, but my thoughts this time around were “Thirty is no big deal, you whiners” and “I don’t really remember turning thirty.”

Additional thoughts:

  • My wife and I are making our way through Friends because we’ve already been through Scrubs and Seinfeld. I have nothing against Friends, I just like Scrubs and Seinfeld a whole lot more.
  • Chandler and Monica are getting ready to be married at the end of this season, so that’s in full swing. Since I love those two characters, their whole relationship is one of my favorite things about the series.
  • Furthermore, Matthew Perry is starting to look healthy again by this point in the season, so that’s good.  He looked scarily skeletal in the first few episodes of season seven.
  • Ross’s birthday storyline actually ended up being my favorite of the bunch, as the sight of him seeing a fellow deluded owner of a red convertible cracks me up. Sure, it’s the easy joke, but it still worked.
  • Phoebe finds out from her twin Ursula that she’s actually a year older than she thought. While I can see that being something a person wouldn’t like finding out, I don’t think there’s a single Phoebe/Ursula storyline I ever really liked.  The most interesting thing about Ursula to me is that she was a character on Mad About You, which ties the Friends and Mad About You universes together. Furthermore, Kramer lives in Paul’s old apartment (as revealed on Mad About You), so Seinfeld, Friends, and Mad About You all exist in the same universe.  The More You Know!

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November 16, 2012 Dream Casting

Even though we are teachers and policemen and Walmart greeters and human resource directors and parents and students and whatever else, underneath we are screenwriters. We have an idea of that movie we want to see, a “wouldn’t it be great if…” rattling around in our brains that we are sure other people would also love to watch. Some of us eventually write them, but for most of us, they stay in our heads.

So recently I’ve been going at this in reverse, thinking about who I would cast and then let the story write itself based on the characters (with maybe some help from an actual screenwriter). It’s funny, the main job of an actor is to be someone they aren’t, but most actors have a type.  Sure, there’ve been some actors who have had success in a wide range of roles, but when you see Samuel L. Jackson show up on screen, you have an expectation that he is about to do something alarmingly intense. You probably wouldn’t cast him as an elementary school teacher, unless you were trying for a Kindergarten Cop-like twist on the genre (hey, Hollywood – free idea there!).

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Steve Martin plays Winona Ryder‘s dad, and they’ve always gotten along very well. They’re moving him from California to the MidWest, so they’ve got a 3-day drive ahead of them. Along the way they meet Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a diner cook in Missouri.  They also meet Bruce Willis, a gas station attendant in Arizona, who somehow introduces them to Christopher Walken, the mayor of the small town they’re traveling through.  “Weird Al” Yankovic is the host of the music/talk Sirius channel they listen to on the drive, and they end up calling him several times along the way, and he becomes involved in their increasingly bizarre trip.

That’s what I’ve got so far, and it incorporates a few suggestions I’ve gotten from friends who know me well enough to know what I like. It kind of sounds like a Muppet movie without The Muppets, now that I think about it.  I have no problem with it turning into a Muppet movie.

Who’s in your movie?

November 15, 2012 I Love Star Trek

I don’t remember the first episode of Star Trek I ever saw, but I do remember that an episode of Star Trek was one of the first things on TV to scare me. I was at a friend’s house with my family, and I couldn’t have been any older than 6 or 7. Someone was flipping through the channels and landed on the episode “The Man Trap” right as the salt monster (warning: link contains salt monster) made an appearance. Yowza!  Freaked me out for days!

I’ve since heard many times over that “the sets were terrible” and “the costumes were cheap and ridiculous” in The Original Series.  I’ve heard many people say they “can’t get past that.” That’s their loss, because Star Trek is awesome.  TV fans should love it because it changed the face of television forever. Sci-fi fans should love it because, come on, it’s Star Trek! History fans should love it because it contains many snapshots of the world in a way no other show was doing at the time – covering major issues of the day with a thin veneer of sci-fi let them get away with a lot.

I went to my first (and only, so far) Star Trek convention when I was a sophomore in high school. Mark Lenard and Grace Lee Whitney were the guest speakers, and I couldn’t believe I was even in the same room with them. I bought a T-shirt that has long ago disappeared, I saw people in costumes in public, and I saw bootlegged videos of bloopers from the show – it blew me away.

Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted a few months after I went to that convention. I saw the first couple of episodes, but then didn’t catch up with the rest of it until years later. It wasn’t the Star Trek I knew, but I came to love it.  I missed Deep Space 9 when it was on, but watched the first couple seasons of Voyager and Enterprise. I’ve seen all the movies (and I’m sure I’ll rank them for you here some day), and I just really love Star Trek.

Part of why I love Star Trek is that there’s so much of it to love.  For every bad episode, there are a ton of good ones. I’ve just recently finished a start-to-finish run-through of ST:TNG, and have started on ST:DS9. After that, I’m planning to hit all of Voyager (sass me if you want – I’ll sic B’Elanna on you!) and Enterprise. Star Trek is like pie: even when it’s not the best, it’s still pretty good.

Another reason I love Star Trek is that there are so many great characters. Spock and Data are two of my favorites, but I could list twenty or so without even trying too hard.  Looking for leadership training? Kirk and Picard offer you two different paths to draw from. Looking for someone like you, except in the future? For me that was Barclay. Looking for hope that racism can die out? Uhura, Chekov, Worf, Chakotay… even if the characters weren’t always handled correctly, the hope was always there.

I think that’s the best part about Star Trek, that hope. Is it realistic?  Ehhhhh…. depends who you talk to. But I think most everyone would agree the ideas it presents are worthwhile. Putting aside your differences to accomplish the amazing sounds like a pretty good way to spend a future.  Hey, I love Firefly as much as the next guy, but sometimes it’s nice to dream about things working out.

As to the whole “Star Wars vs. Star Trek” debate? Meh. Non-issue, I say. I’ve always liked Star Trek more, but I like Star Wars just fine. As time has gone on, the percentages have gone from 49/51 Trek to more of a 40/60 Trek, but I still like them both.

Besides, since Star Trek is what supposedly happens to us in the future, they probably get together to watch Star Wars on the holodeck anyway.

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