西洋오랑캐

Welcome to the Gospels friend! How are you doing this week? That’s good. Well anyhow I had week 1 of school, which went pretty well. Anyway what have I been up too? Pete and I have been hard at work on the new Tanglevines album. It is turning out extremely well. Today we were checking levels for a song where during the soundcheck we jamed out on some sort of deal that ended up being a new song that was really good. It’s called “Mayonaise & Snowpants,” which was originally something we wrote a year ago or so…
Speaking of rocking out is it just me or does M.C. Hammer cause everyone to want to start a rock band and play a cover of one of his songs at a show.

Ah for tonite’s editorial we’ll take a look back at one of my favorite decades again. Last week it was 80’s video games this time it’s 80’s cartoons. So buckle up.

Obviously if one is talking 80’s cartoons, The Big Three, namely GI Joe, Transformers, and He-man. While these are all supreme programs, in this editorial I plan on talking about some of the lesser known cartoons of the decade.

Gobots - While Transformers was actually a decent show, The Poor Man’s Transformers, I mean Gobots, was rediculously lame. Basically the thing that made it lame was its humans. As we speak I am perusing two books I owned when I was 4. They are both about Gobots. Now what do we got for humans in this awesome show? There’s some bocce looking white kid with blonde hair and a really funny nose (named Nick no less). There’s some man with a big mustache (a dude named Matt Hunter). And then there’s token minority and token female in one character (token black girl named A.J.). Anyway the other reason I don’t like the Gobots is Scooter. Or maybe I like it because of that. Anyway Scooter is the most retarded looking transforming robot imaginable. I actually feel sorry for it.

Nice enemy you got there Gobots.

Captain N: The Gamemaster - When it came to commercials desguised as children’s television, Capt. N couldn’t be beat (although He-man and TMNT both came close). Basically Capt. N told the story of some dude named Kevin who got sucked into his Nintendo Entertainment System click here if you are confused as to what NES is all about. Anyhow once inside his Nintendo he does all sorts of antics about versing enemies and macking it to a princess. Speaking of Nintendo, do you remember the first time Shawn beat Mario 3 where Princess goes “Sorry Mario, but our princess is in another castle….” where he threw the controler and spit on the tv. And then it goes, “Just kidding!” I beat he felt like an ass.

Kevin The Gamemaster gettin’ his grope on…

Thundercats - Ok here’s the story of Thundercats. Basically I’m like 5 or so. I think Thundercats is the grandest show on television. I owned all the original hit of toys (let’s not get into that period of any toys based on a TV show where they create mad action figures that had nothing to do with the show) except Lion-oh which my younger sister owned for some reason (at least about superhero action figures I got superman and batman, she had green lantern….) Anyhow Thundercats was the shit when I was young. I had a thundercats pencil case for christ’s sake. Anyway fast forward to whatever year I was in 10th or 11th grade. The channel known only as Cartoon Network shows some commerical about having Voltron and Thundercats coming on. HO SHIT! Two excellant shows from my past. I watch Thundercats and for some reason they…talk…like…a…bunch…of…retards. At least Panthro was black in real life.

Lion-oh really does blow…

Voltron - see entry for Thundercats only insert “Fact the the show was boring” for the part about sounding like retards. Also take out the bit about “At least Panthro was black in real life.” Actually leave it in.

Classic giant robot team…don’t believe me even power rangers followed this pattern.

Hammerman - Good god…the M.C. Hammer Cartoon. While this technically is early 90’s and not really 80’s it follows the same rediculous formula. This theme song tells the story so I don’t have to. Anyway…if you like M.C. Hammer and really crappy looking cartoons that play like an afterschool special, then check out Hammerman.

Please hammer don’t hurt me…

Anyway I think that about does it for me. I’m off to take a shower and practice writing kanji. We’ll see you next time.

Ah after week one of school, I posted an editorial. Good thing I woke up at 7:00 am today. Seriously WTF?! Anyway I’m getting ready to post some sort of big update about things. Yup.

Konichi-wa! Wyatt here, checking in once again with my report from the home front. Anyway my winter holiday is coming to a close and I therefore feel as if I should post some sort of an editorial about something. First off in something that has nothing to do with anything, today I visited my friend. She is from Japan and today she showed me how to build sushi. That is a good skill to posses, however mine kept falling apart, since they were not well constructed. Anyway where was I…ah yes! This Friday was a night of quotes to end all quotes. For those of you that missed it here is a brief recap….
First off we were drinking at Pete’s home. We drank some Sam Adams Winter Lager which for some unknown reason messed us up badly (including shane). To sober up we walked to 76 Diner, ah the realm of the gods! Anyway at this diner numberous lines were uttered. First off in the booth next to us some man was argueing with some womens. The man uttered the line to one of the “It’s a long walk back to Troy!” Basically Pete and Cory were both destroyed.
Next we got our check. Cory brought up the money and paid and Pete was to recieve a couple dollars change and announced, “Where are my dollars?” Cory handed him one dollar to which pete responded, “I didn’t say dollar. I said dollars with a z.” The men in the both next to us shot us a look and we knew it was time to go.
As we returned to pete’s domain we walked past a real crappy bar, anyway some girl that baby sat me when i was like 10 was coming out of the bar so I shout “YO KAREN!” and she jumps and says “Who is that?” I respond “Wyatt.” (ah the joy of being the only Wyatt in upstate new york), she responds “OH MY GOD I CANT SEE A KID I USE TO BABY SIT AT THESE BARS….” we walked away discussing how in the morning she would probably be looking in the mirror comptemplating her life.

Well now that that is out of the way let’s do an old school style editorial. You know where I pick some random topic and rant about it for several paragraphs. Tonight’s topic is going to be “Why the original Nintendo was the best system ever.”

Basically if you are between the ages of 16 and 28 you have played the original Nintendo. Unlike today where you have your Gameboxes, and X-Cubes, and Playstations (1 & 2), back when Nintendo hit the scene it was the only game in town (Sega Master System does not count). There fore probably my number one reason for why Nintendo was so great would be since there was only Nintendo there was none of this BS like “I really like but I own an X-Box and therefore would have to buy a Gamecube to play it.” With Nintendo if you went to your buddy’s house and played some sort of game, chances are if you bugged your mother enough you could have it at your home too.

The second reason NES was grand would be the shear number of games for it. This too stems from the lack of competition. But it was great for the kids. Jimmy loves sports games, his brother likes side scroller games. Whelp both would be happy with a NES.

Reason number three as to why it’s the best ever…the numbers of accessories that came with it. First off in the old school you had the best idea (worst actual unit), R.O.B. aka Robotic Opperating Buddy. Basically this little plastic robot was suppose to play NES with you by some sort of spinning of gyroscopes. I knew a kid who owned this and I never saw it come close to working. However robots rule so I gotta give Nintendo points for trying. The NES zapper. Hands down the coolest video game controler firearm (and probably the only one more than 3 people owned). It came in two colors. First the standard NES grey and then an absurd hunter orange color (I had that one). Anyway NES actually made games you needed the gun for so it was pretty chill when you got it. The Power Pad. Basically lets get this kids moving again. The power pad was a pad on the floor that you would run on in order to make a man run in a game. Super Team games was ultimate. Later on all sorts of bizarre accessories appeared such as the Power Glove and U-Force, two control type deals that controlled nothing.

Ah but the true reason as to why the NES was the best ever…the games! Here in no particular order are my top ten games:

1. Dragon Warrior Series - First RPG I played was Dragon Warrior. These games were great nothing like beating on slimes with a club so you can buy a sword.

2. Final Fantasy - The original. Not 7 or 9 or 23 or whatever they are up to now. This game was a game that I woke up early on Saturday to play. I recall getting up at like 6:20 one Saturday and going into the living room to play this game

3. Super Mario Bros. - First game I had. It got much play. This game is basically the video game. I bet your parents even know of Mario Bros.

4. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out - After he did rape, he was dropped from the game and replaced with some white guy. MT’s PO is way better than this other version.

5. The Legend of Zelda - Man this game is still fun to play. Such randomness in it. A candle that creates flames the size of trees, weird piles of shit that eat shields, and Dodongo hates smoke.

6. River City Ransom - I didn’t get this game until I was in high school and they didn’t make NES games anymore. Anyhow my friend and I basically play this game one day for the entire day and beat the game. It was awesome.

7. Mega Man Series - Woodman, Cutman, Gutman, Native Americanman…great enemies from a seemingly endless NES series. I know I had Mega Man 6. (I guess these games are still being made today for other systems. What enemies they got now? College Studentman, Markerman, Re-writable CDman?)

8. Gyromite - If you ever played this game you obviously crushed the old man “accidently.”

9. Metroid - This game was epic except for the fact that it asked for really long ass passwords in order to continue.

10. Castlevania Series - These games were crazy fun. I know no one who has beaten the first Castlevania, however Castlevania 2 everyone and their cousin has beaten. I’m not sure about three. Anyway in Castlevania 2 some man utters the line, “After Castlevania I warned you never to return.”

An honorable mention goes to Bad Dudes for yelling “AHM BATD!” when you clear a level.

Anyhow that does it for me, but I’ll be back at you again baby so hold on cuz its all about releasing some pressure and gettin’ that glove…we outta here baby!

Getting ready to return to school. I uploaded a new editorial. That’s about it. I gotta go meet my friend, so I’m outta here.

A new year, a new editorial, and it’s one of my most thought out…I think. Check it! I’m all over the place.

Happy belated New Year. Basically I had to format my computer on the second of Jan. so hence the delay, anyhow on with the show.

Ah…2002! A new year a new begining…lemme see how did it start ah yes…we visted my friend Shane’s domain and drank some beers (good ones this time mind you) and played X-cube or gamebox or whatever one it is. Anyway his brother and my brother are in same grade so my brother came along and he versed Shane in some sort of Madden game during which for some reason known only to the Taoist immortals i stood up with a mouth full of chips and bellowed “Your quarterback just got sack…” as you can imagine it is now a joke and is performed in a voice not unlike that of a retard. As for actual midnight I think there is a picture were I do that “V” thing with my fingers like Japanese school girls or Eric Roberts.

yup i did the same move…

Anyway as I’ve already told you my computer crapped out on me earlier but I was playing Dragon Warrior 7 on playstation so I wasn’t too concern, anyway I made efforts, namely reformating my computer to make the save.

Several days later, the Fifth of January I believe, I attended what would have to be THE WORST FILM EVER!!! This film would be Vanilla Sky, basically a 30 minute movie compressed into a 2 and a half hour film. The film didn’t start too badly…some preview for a new Mel Gibson movie…(ME to PETE: Is this a Mel Gibson Vietnam War movie?) Lo and behold it’s about the Vietnam war. I bet it is longer than 2 hours also. Why does M.G. only make historical epics now. Me and Pete had a joke about this fact a couple months back after watching Patriot and Braveheart. Anyhow, Pete built a flash animation of a film called “North vs. South” in which Mel Gibson is Abe Lincoln, anyway its a matter of months before our joke becomes a reality…I can see it now “HOUSE DIVIDED starring Mel Gibson and Sean Connory comming to theaters Christmas 2003.” Oh where was i? Ah yes on to the feature presentation.

Vanilla Sky can be summed up in two words but I think Tripod or Geocities or whatever site this is on will get me in trouble if I write them so I’m going to try and be civil. Tom Cruise plays some rich fucking ass hole who had the world handed to him when his parents died. You know the kind of guy he is, think back to any 1980’s film about business (Wallstreet comes to mind). Basically I hated him within the first 10 minutes. Well anyway I guess he’s telling the entire story to a shrink while in prison for a murder i guess. Anyway he’s some magazine editor who gets to nail Cameron Diaz but he is unhappy about that and wants to do Sophia who is some Hispanic woman. Anyway, Cameron Diaz drives off a bridge and crashes into a wall at a humours angle. I laughed about it. Then tom cruise has deformed and goes into depression. Anyway he goes out of depression and goes to a bar club where in the bathroom where some awesome heros tell him to and I quote, “Dude…fix your fuckin’ face!” the other dudes, with this character do some knee slap move with “Heh heh.” laugh…fucking brillant scene there. Anyhow some crazy shit happens, I don’t really know about it where Cameron Diaz comes alive and is Sophia or something or maybe that happened in the past, but was shown to us later in the film, because it keeps switching about in time and things of that nature. Anyway Tom Cruise gives to Cruise-missle to Cameron Diaz (claiming to be Sophia) but she pisses him off so he smothers her until she is a corpse…uht oh Tommy…that was real Sophia. So he’s in prison with Kurt Russel as a shrink. And then in the last fifteen minutes they go to some building where I guess Tom Cruise got cryogenically frozen where he got Chopper Deluxe package about living a dream…aka the entire movie was a sci-fi movie about Tom Cruise having a dream. Anyhow we didnt learn this until the last fifteen minutes. Whatever cugbackers.

Ok here are my beefs with this film. Basically it was attempting to be a rock-star, superstar, kung fu allstar art film. Art films don’t have Cameron Diaz in them…American Pie 3 has Cameron Diaz in it….if they wanted to make an art film Cameron Diaz should have been played by Gwenneth Paltrow aka refined Cameron Diaz. Ok here’s beef number two…they tried way to hard to be “poetic” everything was a metaphor even Cameron Diaz who was suppose to be a moron (think of a clean Courtney Love and thats what she was suppose to be) spoke like she was a fucking guru or something. The dialogue was either so drenched in faux-metaphors that it sounded like someone just strung together a bunch of fortunes out of fortune cookies or it was suppose to be a conversation you might have your buddy, but it seemed forced and akward. Lines like “don’t worry i’ll clean it up…” made me cringe at the way they were delivered. YO Shane, this film was basically cinema’s answer to Amanda Ronner poetry. What else is there?
Ah it did start with “Everything in it’s Right Place” off Radiohead’s Kid A, which is kind of nice, but alas, it was not enough. Anyway I do appreciate having seen it as i haven’t seen a truly horrid film in some time and seeing this helped for me to put into perspective what is good what is ok and what is (ok i don’t think Tripod gods are looking anymore) fucking shit.

Until next time keep the fist.