Gotta Catch His Ball!

Though the above photograph is about as blurry and confused as a Psyduck, the viewer should be able to discern the unmistakable image of a tiny boy dressed in what could only be interpreted as an Ash Ketchum costume, with a canary yellow balloon trailing behind him as a fanciful representation of Pikachu. Look carefully. See the red and white hat peeking out from behind the bus door. See the blue backpack and blue shoes, the overall air of shrimpy insolence. Revolting, isn’t it? This may not be a perfectly accoutered Ash (see below), but the imagination involved makes it stand out from mere verisimilitude.

I stalked this mother and child parade for about the length of a street block, trying to capture the money shot while eluding their notice. Astonishingly, the sight of a grown man bounding after a little runt and snapping pictures has the tendency to cause ignorant passersby to mistake said man for a child snatcher. My aversion to being featured on yet another episode of To Catch a Predator forced me to take a timidly defensive posture, like, I don’t know, a Metapod? (He only knows how to “harden,” hahahaha! Disgusting.) Shackled as I was by our suspicious American culture, this photo, shot with my ancient Nokia cell phone’s 2-megapixel camera from a great distance, obscured and fuzzy as it is, was the best and only one I could get.

As the old adage goes, the best camera is the one you have with you. I would have liked to have been wielding my Pentax DSLR with a super-telephoto lens attached at the moment that I stumbled on the lad. But, like a Pokémon trainer who comes upon a rare Pokémon but has no master ball . . . uh . . . and then he has to use his other ball . . . um . . . and his type is weak against some other type . . . er . . . I’m not good with these Poké-nalogies.

What other franchise could I try . . .

Like Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios bro-ing it up in Army of Two, you use the tools you have. If you don’t have a guitar to celebrate surviving a hairy back-to-front tandem parachuting gauntlet, you muscle out some air guitar and make funny noises with your mouth. Don’t have a girl to hug after dishing out a nasty decap? Just walk up slowly behind your partner, grip him tenderly but snugly around the waist (back to front, natch), and lift him gently off the ground until you can feel his manly weight upon you. Then lower him like a child cradled in your loins, his warmth commingling with yours. And hush, no words now, lest you disturb the sanctity of this moment.

Ugh, what depravity. I guess pedophilia is still worse, right? Right???

Another two bite the dust. What now?

Here they are, the ten songs that I wish I could have played on either Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I’m not saying that the inclusion of some or all of these would have saved either franchise from the ax (that’s a pun, see?), but they would have added some legitimacy, zest, variety, and vigor to decent song lists that consistently fell short of greatness, hewed too close to a noise rock comfort zone, and included far too much that was disposable (I’m looking at you, Slipknot, and “Chop Suey” by System of a Down).

I searched the official websites of both series to see if any of these songs were available either as downloads or innate to any of the boxed games, and as far as I could tell, they were not. If I made a mistake, let me know, and more importantly, buy me that song.

1. Crowded House – Don’t Dream It’s Over (1987)

A bit of a “soft” choice, but all instruments are represented, including keyboards, plus there’s a backing vocal. And it's a great song for singers of either sex.

2. Erasure – A Little Respect (1988)

Synth-pop gets little respect in the rock world, but with the arrival of the keyboard in Rock Band 3, this song would have easily led the vanguard of keyboard tracks (though, as it turns out, this vanguard is now more of a funeral procession).

3. Foreigner – I Want to Know What Love Is (1984)

A real singer’s song, the kind of thing both series are short on. That made some sense in the pre-Rock Band days, but with the coming of the microphone and the acknowledgement that these games weren’t just for would-be power shredders, it would have been nice to have this song, the king of the power ballads.

4. Golden Earring – Twilight Zone (1982)

You can play “Radar Love” on Rock Band, and while that’s a fun song, “Twilight Zone” is the one I want. It’s like riding on the knife edge of insanity.

5. Guns ‘n’ Roses – You Could Be Mine (1991)

A classic, especially memorable from the Terminator 2 soundtrack, and the kind of song that these games were designed for. So what was the hold-up?

6. Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven (1971)

I’m no Zeppelin aficionado, and I would understand a little backlash in selecting this, a too obvious choice, and too lengthy a song. But I listened to it again the other day, and it is a truly marvelous piece of music. And I can’t think of any other Zeppelin song I’d choose over this. Let’s say it falls into the category of “missing definitives.”

7. Smashing Pumpkins – Ava Adore (1998)

Both series feature decent selections of Smashing Pumpkins songs, but neither features this, which I consider their best song. You can keep “Today,” which shows off the band at its most saccharine and user-friendly. “Ava Adore” is a song for the Gothic Nosferatu within.

8. The Sounds – Midnight Sun (2009)

A relative obscurity, and recent, but this list needs a representative of where music is going now. This is perhaps my favorite song from my favorite good-time band of the last several years.

9. U2 – Pride (In the Name of Love) (1984)

If you could have only one U2 track, which one would it be? As much as I love “One,” I wanted more of an earnest rocker than a ballad of yearning. So it was a toss-up between “Pride” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” While I think the latter is a more pleasing song, I’m going with the former because it’s more of a vocal challenge.

10. Veruca Salt – Seether (1994)

“Volcano Girls” is available as a download in Guitar Hero, and while that may be a more rocking song overall, “Seether” is their iconic hit, one of the defining songs of the 90s, and it should be here. Plus, it's nice to have the harmony vocal.

I suppose it’s no accident that this list is heavily populated by the songs of my childhood and adolescence. Take them for what they’re worth; they’re just one man’s opinion. All in all, I think Rock Band and Guitar Hero did a good job; it wasn’t exactly easy to make this list, and though I can think of many other songs I would have like to have played (Phil Collins and Rod Stewart, anyone?), the above are the closest to being essential.

So long, music games. You made a good show of it. I guess we still have karaoke night.

Booth and the Double Button

My former teacher at the University of Chicago, Wayne Booth, wrote an essay entitled, “Is There Any Knowledge that a Man Must Have?” In it, he discussed the aims of liberal education, and while I suspect he didn’t have in mind such a mundane task as sewing a button, Mr. Booth possessed a breadth of interests that surprised most.

On a recent winter trip to Seattle, in the midst of uncommonly cold weather (as confirmed/alleged by various longtime locals I happened to come across), I recalled Mr. Booth’s question when the buttons of my overcoat (the only coat I had brought for this weeks-long trip) started popping off.

The coat was barely adequate to fend off the chill in the first place, and it would certainly be useless to me if it couldn’t close. At the same time, I had never in my life sewn a button. I think my only sewing experience of any kind was a crafts project in elementary school. I didn’t plan to spend the rest of my trip indoors or furiously hugging myself to keep my coat closed. (Nor did my budget or temperament allow for the purchase of a new garment.) So I had a choice: take the coat to someone to fix the buttons, or sew them myself.

How hard could it be? I thought. So I bought a rudimentary sewing kit at Walgreen’s and, with the internet as my guide, I got to work. Here are the malefactors (shown with size references):

You can see that there is not only the main, larger button for the front of the coat, but also a smaller (let’s call it an anchor) button that attaches to the interior side. I didn’t fancy the idea of cutting my teeth on this pernicious “double button,” but I figured that one doesn’t choose the crisis, only the response.

Once I got going, I realized that it was indeed a simple operation, though none of the videos and guides I initially consulted made clear how to accomplish the final knot that the button required. So I improvised a little, and though my technique wasn’t entirely orthodox, the button held well enough. I tackled a second button with more assurance, but left too narrow a shank this time, meaning that the gap between button and fabric was barely wide enough to accommodate easy buttoning. But it worked. And voila! The coat, she is done:

I returned to the question: is there any knowledge that a man must have? (Or as Mr. Booth revised at a later, more politically correct time: what knowledge, if any, should everybody pursue?) Specifically, is sewing a button a skill that everyone should learn? Once I had done it, I had to say no, I didn’t need to have this particular knowledge, and if I had a personal handmaiden to sew my buttons and darn my socks till the end of days, I wouldn’t feel like I had lost some crucial piece of my humanity.

But the question is not about specific fragments of knowledge. Rather, it asks of each of us what it is that we need to know in order to be truly free as human beings. I wouldn’t say that learning to sew a button was an Olympian achievement, but I did enjoy the small freedom I felt in doing it myself, and knowing that when the time comes, I could do it again.

As soon as I join the ranks of professional seamstresses (we really need a masculine form of that word), I will announce the pricing for my services.

* * *

Wayne Booth was a great man, a great humanist. I was proud to know him, and only regret that I never got to know him well. Though the academy has a reputation for snootiness, I never knew a professor so at ease with bringing together the prosaic and the divine. I trust he would not begrudge me the use of his good name and good words in pursuit of matters sartorial.

“A man can be ignorant even of Shakespeare, Aristotle, Beethoven, and Einstein, and be a man for a’ that – if he has learned how to think his own thoughts, experience beauty for himself, and choose his own actions.” – Wayne Booth

It's a-you? It's a-me!

Mario has achieved the top of the flagpole! Hooray! 5,000 points!

(Totem pole at Victor Steinbreuck Park, Seattle)

“My name is Ozymandias . . .”

On April 15, 2006, the Hotel San Diego was demolished to make way for an empty hole. The official story is that the feds wanted the downtown site at 339 W. Broadway for an expansion of some courthouse. Thanks to typical gubment alacrity, the site remains a dirt lot almost five years after the wrecking crew turned one of downtown’s few distinctive buildings into a heap of rubble. (To be fair, I recently noted some stirrings on the site, so construction may be visible soon.)

Though it wasn’t a bad looking piece of architecture, I had no special affection for the Hotel San Diego, and I wasn’t in the audience the morning it collapsed upon its own ghosts. In the ensuing years, whenever I drove past the site, I would casually notice the vacant space where the hotel once stood, and wonder at the wisdom of destroying a city’s heritage only to make way for a bigger jail. San Diego doesn’t have nearly the quantity of grand old buildings of a city like Detroit, nor does it have the same level of urban blight. You would think a city like San Diego would have the luxury of taking more care with its historical buildings.

Fast forward to 2010. A few months ago, I was driving through Liberty Station in Point Loma. In 2006, this was home to the nicely cleaned-up remnants of the Naval Training Center. Acres of old buildings stood empty, and what once housed navy personnel was being prepared for a second life as home to freshly painted offices, art studios, galleries, and retail stores. Today, Liberty Station is starting to fulfill its original promise as a tidy village of pedestrian traffic, bland commercialism, and artistic endeavor.

So imagine my surprise as I drove up a random street within the complex and slowed to examine a hulking mass of metal on the side of the road, sitting on a lawn, shaded by trees. Upside-down and laid low as it was, I recognized the name and shape as soon as I saw the front - it was the original sign from atop the Hotel San Diego:

I had thought the sign would be scrap metal somewhere by now, and yet here it was, intact, a little rusty, but functional, a sign without a building. Why was it kept, and why here, out in the open, vulnerable to any vandal with a mind to befoul it? It’s a little ironic that a remnant of a dead era should be casually dumped in a place intended for revitalization and nostalgic restoration.

Just about a week ago, I was at Liberty Station again, and the sign remains on the same patch of grass. If I had more of the journalist in me, I might dig for a story of what’s to become of it. If I do learn of anything, I’ll revisit this in a future post. Until then, I am thankful for this little curiosity on the side of a road, and a few lines of verse it called to mind:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Wait, Tron is a dude???

No, not The Dude. That’s Kevin Flynn, aka Jeff Bridges, aka this guy:

No, I’m talking about Tron, aka Bruce Boxleitner, aka this guy:

[SPOILERS ahead – be warned!]

I saw the original Tron only very recently for the first time, even though it was a name and property that I’ve known for as long as I can remember. That futuristic name, Tron, conjured images of light-cycles, of course, trailed by glowing colored lines. But I had never had even an abridged viewing of the movie, and when I finally watched it, I remember being shocked at finding out that Tron was a character. I had always thought it signified a place (Tron World) or an idea (computer consciousness?). But what a character he turned out to be!

Despite the title, Tron is not really the story of Tron the character. Tron is told through the perspective of the bumbling sidekick, Kevin Flynn, rather than that of the archetypal hero, Tron. I guess they named the movie Tron because it was the cooler name. I mean, they couldn’t very well have called the movie, Kevin.

Most of the movie had me wondering, “What the hell is this?” Not with an ironic smile, but with an uncomfortable grimace. The electric palette, the unfocused narrative, the way the Recognizer ships looked like pieces of paper floating through a stage from Zaxxon – it honestly made me wonder why this movie gained such a cult following and even mainstream name recognition over the past three decades, when other similarly bad, youth-friendly, video-game-oriented movies from the era, say, Cloak and Dagger or Wargames (both starring Dabney Coleman, by the way, though I only watched the first one . . . many times), languish in obscurity. Was it the signature look? Was it the light cycles? Or was it the fact that Bruce Boxleitner could kick Dabney Coleman’s hindquarters any day of the week, and twice on Sundays, mustache be damned?

To me, the best thing about Tron the property is Tron the character. He’s a brave warrior, a straight shooter with a soft spot for his lady, and a true believer in his cause and the Users. The gravity that Boxleitner brings to the role stands in stark contrast to the corny performances by the rest of the actors and the slapdash feel of the entire production. Tron, who “fights for the Users,” also seems to fight for the dignity of the movie, and very nearly has you believing that the movie walks a fine line between awful and awesome (it doesn’t, falling sadly on the side of the former).

The irony is that this landmark property’s namesake is a relatively uncelebrated actor. Think of any iconic title character, and you’ll usually find a legendary star in the role.

Judah Ben-Hur. Well that’s Charlton Heston, of course.

Citizen Kane. That’s the majestic Orson “Unicron” Welles.

Rocky. Sly Stallone.

Rambo. Ditto.

Tron. . . . Bruce Boxleitner? Who’s Bruce Boxleitner?

If you don’t know Tron, perhaps you know Bruce Boxleitner as the star of Scarecrow and Mrs. King, a mid-80s television series that I never watched, but had at least heard of. To my grade-school, daycare mind, it seemed to inhabit the same grandmotherly china cabinet as Murder, She Wrote and St. Elsewhere (no, I never took those china plates out of the cabinet either). He was a celebrity at just about eye level with Hollywood Squares or, more recently, Dancing with the Stars. Like Morgan Fairchild or Suzanne Pleshette, you’ve probably heard the name, but you wouldn’t know the career.

Having starred in Tron, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Babylon 5 (never saw that either), I don’t think anyone could say he hasn’t had a respectable career. But I’m sure it’s been a long time since Mr. Boxleitner’s phone rang with any plum roles. For God’s sake, he starred in 2009’s direct-to-video Transmorphers: Fall of Man. Mercifully, I’ve never seen this “film,” but not only is it of the breed of notoriously cheesy and exploitative mockbusters (of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, itself a disgrace of a movie), but it is also the second Transmorphers movie, following a first movie that had zero recognizable names! For Bruce Boxleitner to fall this far, even considering the modest heights of his career, is disheartening, and there should have been no indication that he would have any future in Hollywood’s limelight ever again.

And so it amuses me to imagine how he would have reacted to the call telling him that they were going to revive Tron, and they wanted him back. “Me? Play Tron again? But I don’t know if I’ll still fit in that suit.” Much hay has been made in the media of the CG used to create the younger Jeff Bridges (clearly the much bigger star and centerpiece of both this and the first movie), but I suspect the same tech was used to portray Tron in flashbacks, making Boxleitner look like a young man again. Whatever the technique, I found it much more convincing, and certainly much more touching to see Tron back again, still young, still heroic, but without the hockey helmet, and sporting a stylish haircut.

I’m glad that Tron creator Stephen Lisberger’s unprecedented vision has finally met the technological muscle to make it look as beautiful as it did in his mind. I don’t know how people, both critics and audience members, thought the movie looked good even in 1982, just as I’m not sure why some people today think that the CG “young Kevin Flynn” looks realistic, rather than what it really is, which is a creepy monstrosity.

I’m exceedingly glad that I saw the original Tron before seeing Tron: Legacy, because I don’t think I could have appreciated the sequel nearly as much without being at least somewhat attached to the first film.

And finally, in token of my admiration for Bruce Boxleitner, despite his dozens upon dozens of roles I’ve never seen and never will see, let’s hear it for Tron himself, perhaps the noblest hero in movie-dom.

Boy Stuff

A female friend of mine was asking for movie recommendations recently, and I suggested Star Trek, director J.J. Abrams’s 2009 reboot of the legendary but flagging franchise. She promptly scoffed, “That’s boy stuff.”

Boy stuff? Now hold the mascara there, sugarlips, and don’t get your panties all in a bunch. I mean, I didn’t know we still lived in a society where science fiction was treated as strictly the domain of the penis-bearing half of our species. Why, then, did women watch Avatar or Back to the Future or Lost? Perhaps, then, it’s the “spaceships and lasers” subgenre of sci-fi that must toil under the perception of offering nothing to the female mind or heart.

Now, I am aware that boys and girls are different and have different sensibilities. I am aware that you give pink blankets to newborn girls and blue blankets to newborn boys. I am aware that said newborn boys are heralded by the sharing of cigars, whereas you greet the birth of a girl by distributing Virginia Slims. And I am aware that if you give your son Barbies to play with when he’s a toddler, then you should be locked up in Gitmo, and he will most assuredly grow up to become a headline to be ripped for a “very special episode” of Law and Order: SVU (preferably guest starring Henry Ian Cusick as the pedo). But even acknowledging all this, shouldn’t a good movie be accessible to both (all?) sexes, regardless of genre or content?

Granted, this “boy stuff” statement was uttered by one person, but I’ve known many women in my day (“known” in the normal sense of the word*), and by and large, they share a similarly dim view of space operas. You love Captain Jack Sparrow, but you don’t love Ferengi scoundrels or organ harvesters in space. What gives?

Frankly, my dears, you make me sad. Put me on the flip side of this scenario, and I would be more just. In fact, as much as space-blazing is calculated to appeal to young men, there is a genre that just as narrowly caters to young (and old?) women: the romantic comedy. And I can honestly say that I’ve seen good rom-coms and I’ve seen dreadful ones. But I don’t dismiss the genre outright, and, unless the example in question stars Jennifer Aniston, I’ve never said, “Oh, it’s a romantic comedy? I don’t want to watch that. That’s GIRL STUFF.” (Cue armpit farting and, I don’t know, real farting?)

Maybe the problem with much space sci-fi is that it’s too testosteronerous (and the romantic subplots that often get shoehorned into those movies seem too much like a pandering, calculated attempt to draw in a desirable but hardly necessary female audience). But by this reasoning, would women not enjoy Moby-Dick either, a book almost devoid of the fairer sex, and obscenely preoccupied by an epically, nay, Biblically(!) phallic whale?

But perhaps the problem with lesser romantic comedies is that they’re too lady-centric. They view the world through a heroine’s eyes, to pull exclusively on distaff heartstrings. I think any work of art that eschews general humanism in favor of baiting one sex or another with lazy bromides will find itself disagreeable to those of us, men and women, who are looking for something genuinely moving.

As for me, I prefer both science fiction and romantic comedies that represent the human face of hope, struggle, longing, joy. Maybe a dash of angst.

Oh, who am I kidding? Let’s get back to the grand old tradition of male charm, female coquetry, and romance from a man’s point of view.
______

*Drum roll, cymbal crash, and joke credit go to Professor Peter Dembowski of the University of Chicago.