And now the excerpts from my new book which is actually 20 months old continue. In this installment, I'll tell you how I learned at a very young age that hard work will never benefit anyone.
When I was 14 I landed a job with my hometown newspaper, the Michigan City News‑Dispatch, as a video game critic. I joke about what I loser I am that my greatest writing achievement is getting a job at a small town newspaper whose reputation for journalistic excellence has earned it the nickname "The News‑Disgrace" from just about every sentient person in Michigan City (and even a few News‑Dispatch employees).
Being self‑deprecating is charming and all, but I actually am pretty proud of getting the job. Michigan City isn't exactly a bustling metropolis, but the last census put its population at around 33,000. It's not the fucking Washington Post, but that's still a decent audience to reach. 33,000 people is still 33,000 people. It's also cool that I started when I was 14. Most aspiring writers that age are struggling to get printed in their school newspaper. Also let's not forget that it rules to get paid to write about video games at any age. Who hasn't wanted to tell their parents to screw off when they're nagged about looking for a job or doing homework instead of playing video games?
2,200 of the 33,000 people counted as Michigan City residents are inmates in the Indiana State Prison. My writing has been read by more rapists than yours.
Looking back on the way I landed this job, I learned a valuable (and horrible) life lesson. You see, from the age of 12 to 13, I had a hobby of writing video game reviews for epinions.com and GameFAQs.com. Although both sites have the occasional well‑written, thoughtful, quality review, they are for the most part the places where well‑informed, coherent analysis goes to get raped and stabbed in an alley and left for dead. Looking back I would like to think that my work was a cut above the other trash found on those sites. I'm pretty sure my grammar and punctuation were impeccable, my jokes hilarious, and my analysis thought provoking and brilliant. Then I found all of my old reviews on an internet archive and discovered I was no better. Not only did I rape and stab coherent analysis, I smashed its head against the concrete, robbed it, poured sugar in its gas tank, and then I farted in its face. Here are some of excerpts to show you what I great writer I was in junior high. All of the original grammatical and typographical errors have been left in place.
Excerpt from my review of the Sega Dreamcast
"This thing is powerful. Wile people have been fooling themselves into being wowed by the PS2's graphics, they don't seem to have realized that DC's graphics are just as good. Take a look at Jet Grind Radio or better yet, Soul Calibur if you don't believe me. "
Yes, my love of the Dreamcast actually did render me completely blind. Thanks for asking!
This image is from a Dreamcast game. Clearly it created the most aesthetically pleasing graphics in gaming history.
Excerpt from my review of Crash Bandicoot: Warped
"Crash looks better then ever, animation rarely slips below the 40 fps line, and is most of the time much higher."
When I was 12 I wasn't going to let the fact that I didn't even know what a frame rate was keep me from completely pulling graphics-related stats out of my ass. Things have changed since then. For example, I can tell from looking at this screenshot that Crash Bandicoot: Warped was rendered at a rate of 64% polygonicality.
This is Washington Nationals rookie phenom pitcher Stephen Strasburg. He's so awesome that all kinds of sportswriters declared him one of the best pitchers of all-time before playing a single major league game. In his first three starts he's posted a record of 2-0, an ERA of 1.86, a WHIP of 0.78, motherfucking 32 strikeouts, and opposing batters are only hitting .149 against him. I'd compare him to Jesus if it wasn't so horribly offensive to do so. Implying that Jesus holds a candle to him is an unforgivable insult against Strasburg's greatness.
I assumed it was impossible to make him any better, but I was wrong. In my recent visits to the GameFAQs baseball message board, many of us have been actively participating in a topic where the goal is to take the above picture of Strasburg and use the magic of MS Paint to make him better. The results were stunning. Check it out:
Philumcious Phil infused him with Tyrannosaurus power:
I made this one. I feel it's a shame Strasburg has to live the life of a mere mortal baseball player when he was clearly meant to be a Greek god:
MantleNotMouse served up this gem, and then shouted "Cowabunga!", ate a shitload of pizza, and made sarcastic comments for good measure:
Way back in the days of the NES, we played an altogether different type of game. For one thing, the plots of our games rarely if ever made a lick of goddamn sense. If you're the type of guy who has to point out every single inconsistency and plot hole in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, please stay far, far away from an NES. Expect many questions to ensue, such as "Bionic Commando's arm is cool and all, but wouldn't it be a good idea to send a guy who's at least physically capable of jumping?" or "Did Samus really think bringing nothing to the hostile alien planet but a gun that only fires four feet in front of her was enough?" or the ever‑popular "Since when did plumbers shrink to half their size when they get injured?"
She's done such a shitty job arming herself that I'm honestly betting on the walking Bart Simpson heads to win this one.
One of the most egregious examples is Contra. Here we have a game where an evil alien army is doing some really bad stuff off on their remote island base, preparing to invade and probably enslave Earth. The chips are down and to be quite honest, things have never looked this bad. I imagine that this situation resulted in a lot of scientists dramatically removing their glasses and proclaiming "My god...." in a soft voice that still carries all of the weight of a truly apocalyptic scenario.
We are all standing on the brink of destruction. Everyone knows they have only one day to live, and they're trying to make the most of it. Husbands are telling their wives they love them. Overworked office employees are telling bosses to suck their balls. Children are finding out what happens when you pee on an electric fence. This is truly our darkest hour. Humanity has slipped in the shower, sustained a serious spinal cord injury, and fallen into a coma. The human race is on life support, and all of the Christian protestors in the world aren't going to stop this alien army from disconnecting the feeding tube. It's judgement day.
The United States government knows they need to do stop this threat. What will they do? How about a tactical nuclear strike? That would be brilliant! The entire army is holed up on one island. You could win this thing in a few minutes and still have time to fu....... oh, you're not going to do that. So what are you going to do? You're going to send men? That's a great idea! We'll send an entire platoon of the most hardened marines we have to offer by boat, and after the fighting begins we'll drop hundreds more via airplane! With the sea troops and paratroopers combined, they'll never know what hit them! Yeah, we're gonna win this thing!
Alright, let's go! We're go....... oh, you aren't sending thousands of soldiers? Budget cutbacks, I understand. How many are you sending? Two? Only two thousand? That wasn't as many as I was expecting, but it should still work. Oh, not two thousand. Two hundred? Wait, you're only sending two as in literally two guys? I get it, you're sending the two best stealth infiltration experts you have, and they're going to sneak into the compound and assassinate the alien leader. It like it! Oh, they don't do stealth. That cool, I saw a movie once where a jaunty African American and a paranoid Jew stole a UFO and used it to give the aliens a virus. It was one of the most asinine plot developments in Hollywood history, but they were only two guys. It could work. Crap, Will Smith asked for too much? What's the plan then? They're going to just stroll onto the beach, shoot everything in sight, and hope for the best. And they're shirtless. Okay, I'm gonna go get my will in order now.
If these guys aren't available, who the fuck is going to punch the aliens in the face and go, "Welcome to Earff" now?
Not only are these guys the center of the most poorly planned military operation in history, they're also a lot weaker than you would expect a couple of Rambo clones to be. If they're going to be sent to take on the entire army with only a crappy rifle, you would expect them to be superhumans who can kill alien lifeforms with their bare hands, heal wounds with gunpowder, and the ability to behead enemy soldiers with their steel boners wouldn't be a bad touch.
Way back in October of 2008, I wrote a book-length collection of essays on video games and how they raised me and defined me as the man I am today. This 316-page tome carried the thoroughly marketable full title of "Tales From the Video Game Generation: Memoirs, Opinions, and Rants From a Gaming Obsessed, ADD Afflicted Geek Who Never Knew a World Without Mario."
I enjoyed the hell out of writing it. It's an extremely comedic book and it retains all of my typically vulgar language throughout. After all the time I spent writing, editing, and proofreading, I sat on my finished book and did basically nothing in the way of trying to get it published or represented by a literary agent. I think part of me felt that it wasn't good enough to get published, or that nobody would find it marketable enough to pick up because it's a collection of extremely personal essays from a guy that nobody's ever heard of.
That's actually a recurring theme with my work. I'll eagerly pour time into writing a book, making cartoons, blogging, or producing a TV show, and when the time comes to promote the hell out of the finished work and get the word out, I do absolutely nothing. Again, maybe part of me thinks it isn't very good and I'm embarrassed to hype it. Probably another part of that is my belief that if it's good I won't have to heavily promote it. Videos get millions of Youtube views by going viral, and not because the people who made them did a really good job promoting it. Maybe heavy promotion could get a dud video up to 5,000 views, but if it isn't good it isn't good, so I've just assumed that the reason why I don't have videos with millions of views is because they just aren't funny or appealing enough and left it at that.
Anyway, I don't want this book I wrote to just sit in a box without anyone ever getting a chance to read it since I did put a lot of time into it and literally fewer than 5 people have ever read a word of it, so I'll be periodically posting chapters to the blog. Anything with the tag "Tales From the Video Game Generation" is another chapter. A good friend from high school read the book and left some pretty helpful comments, and maybe if people like what they see here I'll consider putting some real effort into getting this thing sold. It's coming up in the next post. Enjoy.
To the average, untrained eye, Tic-Tac-Toe seems like a game that's way too simple to have any kind of discernible strategy. After all, it's a game commonly played by toddlers. There's only 9 squares to work with, and odds are virtually every single time you've played against someone else it's ended in a tie. This blog is here to show you that sometimes there's more than meets the eye. While the game hardly matches the complexity of chess, you'll see that thought can be involved, and a strategy to winning exists. If you follow these simple steps, you will never lose a game of Tic-Tac-Toe in your life. Step 1: The first step is as simple as challenging someone to a game. For this exercise, we'll be taking on Susan. Whoever goes first has a distinct advantage. There isn't really a set protocol for who gets to go first other than taking turns when you play multiple games. We're in a sporting mood, so we'll let Susan go first for this game.
Step 2:
Susan has opted to start in a corner. Most players start in the center, but there's nothing terribly wrong with starting in this way. It probably goes without saying, but if you decide to start in a corner, it doesn't matter which one you choose.
Step 3:
Now it's our turn. We're going to put our O in the center. It is by far the most versatile space on the board because the center square can be a part of 4 different winning rows, while the corners can only be part of 3, and the middle sides can only be in 2. This move should allow us to open up our game and give us a variety of options.
Step 4:
Susan has gone for the opposite corner. Most people aggressively attack and try to make a row right off the bat, but she appears to be setting up something more devious. We need to be careful as we plot our next move.
Step 5:
We'll go ahead and choose another corner because those are the second-most versatile spaces. As it stands right now, we have the advantage because we have more possibilities to win than Susan, who has yet to even string two spaces together.
Step 6:
Drat! Things have taken a turn for the worse. Susan has been planning this all along, and we find ourselves in a bad spot. She is set up to win in two different ways, and we're only able to block one on our next turn. We have to put a circle in the middle left or middle bottom spots for a block, but she'll certainly choose the other and win. If you're as committed to winning this game as I am, there's only one choice.
Step 7:
Stab Susan in the neck with your pencil. If you hit the carotid artery just right, she should be spraying a small fountain of blood. Odds are she's panicking and as a result she's thrashing about and getting blood on everything. Don't worry. She should bleed out in a couple minutes.
Step 8:
Good job! You've avoided losing at Tic-Tac-Toe, but you aren't done yet! You've got a murder to cover up. What you're going to want to do now is smear her blood all over the piece of paper you've been using to play the game and write, "THIS IS WHAT YOU GET, BITCH!" in the blood.
You have now pinned the murder on the Tic-Tac-Toe Killer. Susan is his newest victim. The Tic-Tac-Toe Killer is a real serial killer who's traveling the country, and he's surprisingly open to taking credit for other peoples' kills. I've pinned at least 6 murders on him myself.
Step 9:
You're almost there. Now all you have to do is complete the planted evidence with the Tic-Tac-Toe Killer's trademark: semen. Pull your pants up, you silly goose. If you plant yours at the scene you might as well hand the cops a written confession while you're at it. You need to get some from an illegal Mexican who isn't in the police database. Getting some actually isn't as hard as it sounds. I know a guy who can get it for you real cheap. I'll be in touch.
Step 10:
Congratulations! You're still undefeated at Tic-Tac-Toe! Take a bow, champ. You've earned it!
I am a production technician for a TV station in Cincinnati. During a typical 8-hour shift, I'll be operating a camera or running teleprompter for 2 of them and goofing off for the other 6. The pay for the job isn't exactly all that great, but when you consider that over the last week I was paid livable wages for doing the following:
-Watching copious amounts of baseball
-Honing my talent at throwing styrofoam plates until I got to the level that I could hit a girl in the face over half the time
-Going on a walk through the nice part of town
-Playing Mad Gab
-Playing Life
-Practicing my breakdancing skillz
It's actually pretty fucking phenomenal. Unfortunately, sometimes the job requires you to work odd hours at times when coworkers are too tired or hungover to be particularly sociable, and that means you'll have to resort to watching TV. And because it's during those odd hours such as 8:30 in the morning on Sunday, networks aren't exactly presenting you with their A-game. As a result, sometimes I get the pleasure of watching such well-regarded American cinematic classics as Supercross: The Movie.
Supercross is a shit-soaked 90-minute cinematic tribute to the worst fucking sport in the world. Supercross is a sport where you're on a dirtbike, you're racing a bunch of other people on a track comprised of tight turns and tall mounds of dirt, and the guy who times his jumps right and lands them at the best angle usually wins. I'm sure it's fun to take part in, but as a spectator it ranks somewhere below minor league arena football. The movie follows a positively brilliant plot that we've never seen in movies before. Get this: An amateur has dreams of making it big, he gets his big chance, he makes it big, he alienates his friends because he's changed, man, he resolves his differences, and with the help of his friends, he wins the Big Competition at the end. I don't know where they come up with this shit.
You, the reader, don't give a shit about Supercross and nobody you know does either, so it wouldn't surprise you if I told you that the movie was a box office disaster. On opening weekend it made $820 per theater. It costs a movie studio $2,000 to create and send a film print to a theater. In a movie's first weekend of release, the studio typically gets 75% of the ticket sales. Since the movie opened on 1,621 screens to an opening weekend gross of $1,330,520, Fox made $997,890 yet paid $3,242,000 for prints and distribution. The box office performance of this movie was so shitty that even though Fox paid a great deal of money to produce and market the movie, they would have saved $2.25 million by never showing it in any theaters.
A couple Sunday mornings ago, I didn't have any books with me, none of my favorite websites had any recent updates because it was fucking Sunday morning, and none of my coworkers could be troubled for conversation, so I settled on watching Supercross: The Move on FX. The movie won my attention by default because it was the only thing on TV that wasn't an infomercial or Dragon Ball Z episode dubbed into Spanish. It causes me physical pain to admit to this, but it was actually the second time I've seen parts of it on cable. The first time was because I was flipping through the channels and caught a scene with Sophia Bush, who is so fucking gorgeous that she could convince Kevin Spacey to give chicks a try.
I mention that I've caught Supercross on cable twice because I noticed a subtle difference between both of my viewings. There's a scene where the main character, KC Carlyle, nearly crashes into the bad guy in a race. After they cross the finish line, they get into a fight and this exchange goes down. (I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact dialog and nobody on the internet liked this movie enough to write down lines from it)
Bad guy: Why'd you cut me off?
KC: I'm just racing, bro!
Bad guy: That ain't cool!
(Bad guy rushes at KC and a fight breaks out)
Bad guy: Bitch!
KC: Fag!
Bad guy: Bitch!
KC: Fag!
Bad guy: Bitch!
KC: Fag! Fag!
Bad guy: Bitch! Bitch!
Eventually the fight breaks up and the movie continues to be terrible in different ways. The first time I saw on the movie, which was on a different channel, the constant catcalls of "Fag" were left intact. In the more recent viewing on FX, the word Fag was muted out, and you could only hear the other guy yell "Bitch!" It made for an incredibly bizarre scene where two guys were rolling in the dirt and fighting, while only one voice shouted "Bitch!" over and over.
I wondered why one channel left Fag intact while FX didn't. Odds are it's just simply hypocrisy. A censor decided that repeatedly slurring homosexuals is a no-no, but slurring women just as often is okay. That's probably the case, but I'm a huge fan of FX. I watch literally every single show on that channel and it's my favorite channel on all of television. For that reason I like to think that the geniuses at FX headquarters actually made a conscious decision to improve the movie in ways that never occurred to the morons who made Supercross: The Movie. In my revisionist take on what happened, the suits at FX simply realized that maybe, possibly, having the hero of the movie repeatedly call somebody a fag might make him a tad less likable, so they bleeped him out for creative reasons. Yeah, that's what I'm sticking with.
One oft-used phrase that annoys the shit out of me is, "We can put a man on the moon but we can't (insert problem that one would like solved here)." The idea is to juxtapose a grand human achievement with a failure at a relatively simple task. I could apply the same logic and say, "The military has developed advanced artificial intelligence, but we can't get video game characters who try to get out of the way of bullets?" It's two very different things and it's a stupid comparison to make, especially since video game companies don't have trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to work with.
So I understand that there's a good reason why so many computer-controlled allies in video games are half-retarded, but that isn't going to stop me from bitching about them anyway. Here are the 5 dumbest-assed AI allies of all time, but first we've got honorable mentions.
-Marines (Halo 1, 2, and 3, Xbox and Xbox 360)
Apparently driving Warthogs like Mr. Magoo on acid and standing in the open and getting blown away are parts of Space Marine training.
Natalya (Goldeneye 007, N64)
She’s one of the most brilliant hackers in the world, but she doesn’t fucking understand that standing in front of James Bond as he’s in the process of firing a gun is a bad idea
-Homies in Saints Row 2 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
At some point in this game you will have to complete a mission where a computer controlled character drives a car. Their waypointing will go through a wall, they will crash into a wall, reverse, drive into it again, and repeat the same process over and over, they will never try driving around the wall, you will have to restart the mission, and you will throw your own poop in frustration.
-Fallout 3 Allies (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
Any benefits their assistance adds is ruined by the way that they engage anything within a half mile of you and bring you into all kinds of conflicts that you would rather just avoid. It’s like walking back to the dorms in college with a belligerent drunk friend who wants to start shit with everyone they see.
And now, the top 5:
5 - Grove Street Gang Members (PS2, Xbox, PC)
One of the most hyped features of San Andreas was the ability to recruit gang members. As your respect level goes up, you’ll be able to recruit more and more until you have a full 4-man crew at your disposal. No longer will you be all alone blowing away dozens of enemies all by yourself like some kind of ridiculously unstoppable gangsta Robocop. Now you’ll be doing some serious tactical squad-based gang banging.
That’s an awesomely scary prospect. My mother raised me to fear gangs. Despite the fact that I’m a 23-year old adult, even now she’ll freak out if she catches wind of me coming anywhere near a high-crime area. She’s convinced that if I ever do so much as drive in a bad neighborhood for a couple minutes, the gang members will instantly swarm my car, pull me out, and beat and stab me to death, and then they’ll probably sell my car for scrap to get their next crack fix. I know gang violence is a very real thing, and walking alone in the middle of the night in a bad neighborhood is like signing my own death warrant, but to my mom, gang members are essentially the zombies from 28 Days Later with knives and guns.
The recruitable gang members in San Andreas are like the ridiculous monsters of my mom’s gang-related fantasies times a hundred. The second you try to take them out to take over some territory, they’ll start firing indiscriminately in the general direction of any rival gang member with no regard for what might be between their gun barrels and the guys they’re trying to make dead. Going around or shooting over obstructions will never occur to them and as such, cars, cops, buildings, walls, or your own tender body will be immediately riddled with holes if they happen to be in the wrong place. Because of their tendency to attract huge amounts of police attention by wantonly killing cops, and their penchant for blowing up cars that you’re standing right next to, these guys are more of a liability than they’re worth, and you’re much better off going it alone. It seems weird to say that bringing backup into a gang war is a bad idea, but we’re talking about a group of guys that make the Michael Douglas character from Falling Down look like a calm, quiet, and well-behaved member of society.
4 - Tails (Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sega Genesis)
Unless you remember to go to the options menu first, Tails the two-tailed fox will follow you everywhere in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, perfectly mimicking your actions. Most of the time Tails is merely worthless and annoying. He’ll jump immediately after you jump, he’ll go where you go, and he’ll act like he deserves credit for hitting enemies a second time. His tendency to get credit for hitting an enemy after someone else has already readily taken them down on their own makes him the Ray Lewis of gaming.
Also infuriating is the way that he brings absolutely nothing to the table despite the ability to fly. The power of flight could open up a whole world of possibilities in helping Sonic defeat the forces of evil, but when Tails is controlled by the computer, he’ll stay grounded 98% of the time. I like to think he does that just to be a dick.
Admittedly, Tails can be helpful in putting a second hit on a boss in the unlikely event of him staying alive for longer than ten seconds, but that’s more than counterbalanced by the fact that when he’s tagging along, bonus levels are fucking impossible. Anytime Sonic jumps, he and Tails will switch place and Tails will get in front and take all of the rings that rightfully belong to Sonic. What a greedy bitch. The rings that Tails collect count towards your total, but anything he’s holding is as good as gone because it’ll only be a matter of time before he moronically runs head first into a giant spike trap and loses it all. Tails is like King Midas, only everything he touches turns into shit instead of gold.
3 - Boomer (SOCOM: US Navy Seals, PS2)
If you were ever in chorus or band in school, you know that the object is to do your part right without fucking up or calling special attention to yourself, and hopefully the output will be greater than the sum of its parts. If there was one member of the group who felt a need to show off how much more talented he is by playing extra loud or fancy notes, or by singing louder and doing more exaggerated hand gestures than everyone else, he’d be a distracting presence that completely fucks up the performance. He will call attention to himself when everyone is trying to blend in, and he’ll effectively ruin everyone else’s work. Age that kid a couple decades, put him through military training, give him a gun, put him in a squad, and that kid becomes Boomer.
Let’s say you’re trying to complete a mission in a stealthy manner. Now is the time to stay quiet, be smart, and play your assigned role. There’s no need for anyone to break out and be a hero because you’re in control of the situation. Faster than you can say “Semper Fi,” Boomer will charge out into the open, guns blazing, giving away your position and ruining any element of surprise you tried to gain. Most operatives with any semblance of cognitive capacity see this situation as a time to stay hidden because it’s the best way to complete the mission as well as keep you and your friends alive. Boomer disregards all of that and sees this only as an opportunity to prove how fucking awesome he is. It’s enough to make you wonder if he’s actually a military trained operative at all and not a cancer patient with an intelligence-sapping brain tumor and being part of a military squad is his Make-A-Wish.
Capcom added this mysteriously light-skinned African character to the fold to make you feel better as you go on a black people murdering rampage through the villages of Kijuju. Whether you want her or not, you're stuck with her "helping" you through the entire journey. The way she wantonly wastes your limited supplies makes you wonder how she could ever survive a childhood in Africa without the leader of her village having her executed for the good of everyone else. While a normal person with a mind for saving shit that you might really need down the line might take out a lone weak enemy with a melee weapon, Sheva will use 50 submachine gun bullets at the least to get the job done.
More savvy gamers quickly realized that Sheva shares John Woo's approach to bullet conservation, and tried stripping her of all her guns and exclusively using her as a pack mule to carry extra weapon clips and first aid kits. Their ingenuity was rewarded with Sheva charging at them and wasting an entire hospital's worth of first aid to fix the first minor bump the player contracted. If you asked her to kill a fly buzzing around your house, she would probably set a giant pile of hundred dollar bills on fire to attract it, and drop a dozen priceless crystal chandeliers and faberge eggs on the area to try to crush the fly. As long as it's precious and valuable, she will gladly waste the shit out of it.
Let's put it this way: For lengthy stretches in Resident Evil 4, you had to accompany a petite, helpless teenage girl with absolutely no fighting skill, and everyone who has played both games unanimously agrees that Sheva is the more cumbersome partner by far. Fuck you, Sheva. You’re the reason why I’m glad that God doesn’t let black people go to heaven.
1 - Dom (Gears of War 1 and 2, Xbox 360)
Dom is the brother-in-arms of series protagonist Marcus Fenix. He is good at exactly two things: shouting about his wife and getting killed. The guys at Epic games should be sued for false advertisement on account of the Gears of War cover art showing Marcus brandishing a gun, because I swear shooting enemies is only a secondary gameplay element to reviving Dom because he got his stupid ass killed again. Dom spent so much time mastering the art of getting killed that anything else that might have been important to learn (shooting straight, getting on the right side of cover, keeping allies safe, not being a fucking terrible soldier, etc.) went by the wayside.
However, Dom is something special in the realm of terrible friendly AI. It’s certainly infuriating to see him get repeatedly killed because of such brilliant acts as running headfirst into bosses a hundred times his size, charging toward a platoon that has him outnumbered to a ridiculous degree, and hiding on the wrong fucking side of a wall. It’s worsened because you absolutely have to risk your life to revive him. If you fail to revive him, it’s game over, so forcing yourself into extreme danger because of easily avoidable mistakes made by Dom is a frustrating inevitability. However, even that isn’t enough to make him the worst. A computer-controlled ally moronically getting himself in danger and forcing you to bail him out is most definitely not a trait exclusive to Dom. He occupies the number one spot on this list because he’s a selfish fucking asshole.
Gears of War is an overall excellent game series, but few things piss me off more than getting taken out and slowly bleeding to death because Dom is too fucking busy to be troubled to help you out. For every one time you need a shot of that magical revival drug, Dom will need 12, but no matter how many times you save him, he won’t show a goddamned inch of gratitude. Until he’s done shooting at whatever he’s shooting at, he won’t even bother to glance at his best friend who’s bleeding to death at his feet. Most decent human beings would prioritize saving their friend over anything else, especially since reviving someone only takes about two seconds. Dom is not a decent human being. He is a shitty ally and he probably rapes puppies. Fuck him.
So there you have it. I'm not going to hold up the lunar landings as evidence that all of these AI problems should be rectified, but I had to give voice to my frustration.
From 4th grade until the time I graduated high school, I spent two weeks of every summer at a Presbyterian camp. Even though the tightly scheduled days, happy counselors, and repetition of religious-themed songs were clearly designed to break down our will and finalize our transformations into unquestioningly loyal servants of Christ, they were some of the best weeks of my life.
I made friends in those times that I stayed in touch with for a long time, some of which I still stay in touch with to this day. Well, that's a relative term since by that I mean we read each others' Facebook statuses and we don't really converse regularly or at all, but we are still indirectly communicating on some level, goddammit! Anyway, the point is, camp was fucking awesome and the fact that I never came back as a counselor is one of the great regrets of my life.
It was at those camps that I discovered how much I like making people laugh. Making people crap themselves with laughter at everything I said was a great feeling, and the sheltered religious kids made for an extraordinarily easy audience because uttering literally any swear word, no matter how minor, was shocking and taboo-shattering. Unfortunately, on one fateful afternoon, the fun and games took a dark turn.
The cabins we stayed in had three large rooms: The commons area, the girls' bedroom on the right, and the boys' bedroom on the left. Me and the guys were hanging out in our side of the cabin, and I noticed something strange. On top of a beam that ran slightly below the top of the vaulted ceiling, there was a brown paper bag.
I wondered what it was doing there. It was a good 12 feet or so high, so unless the person who put it there was an incredibly accurate thrower who managed to land the bag perfectly upright on the beam, a ladder had to be used to get it up there. No ladders were readily available to the campers, as far as I knew. The plot thickens.
I absolutely had to know what was contained in the mysteriously suspended bag of mystery. It could be money, pirate treasure, secret documents containing all kinds of spy shit, and if we were really lucky, drugs. Me and the other guys started throwing anything we could find, pillows, shoes, cans of bug spray, whatever, at the bag to try to get it to fall. Eventually, somebody grabbed a broom, reached as high as he could, and successfully pushed that little fucker off the beam. The bag landed on my bed, spilling its contents all over my blankets and pillows.
What did we find? Was it $72,000 in small, unmarked bills? Was it the pistol that killed Huey Long? Was it a hollowed out Bible with a smaller Bible inside? The answer was none of the above, because what was actually previously in the bag and now strewn all over my sleeping area was three crusty, flaky, dried out turds.
I called CSI (Cabin Shit Investigators) to the scene and they determined that the poop had to be many months and possibly even years old, considering how crunchy and aged they were. Yes, that's right. A long time ago somebody decided to take a shit inside a paper bag, then get up on a ladder or maybe even climb on top of a human pyramid and position it high above the cabin bedroom like some sort of demented air freshener.
To this day, I don't know why those turds were there, and despite putting way too much thought into it, I still have no fucking clue what thought process would result in somebody doing that. No matter how long I ponder this question, I still never get an answer. When some people sit and ponder the unknowable, they think about the secrets of the universe. Others wonder what the other side of death may bring us. Still others wonder if the religious texts intended for heaven to be taken literally, of if it is merely an ideal that we should strive to achieve here on earth.
A couple weeks ago, a woman that I work with interrupted me in the middle of watching an episode of 24 and told me she would be interviewing me. The picture above is not a photo of me or her, but that's neither here nor there. She told me that a class project required her to interview an artist, so she chose me to discuss my cartoons, comedy sketches, and TV show. In the politest manner possible I told her that classifying me as an artist stretches the definition farther than the facial skin of a Desperate Housewives cast member, but she went ahead with the interview anyway. Names have been changed to protect my job.
She posted the transcript of the interview on her Facebook page, and I'm reposting it here. Check it out:
Gentile Golem wears so many hats that at first glance one might think he has a multi-personality disorder. The recent college graduate is the producer, director, writer, editor and talent of his public access show, “Moldy Bagels” and cartoon series, “Crapstick Doodle.” As he chases his pie-in-the-sky dreams of comedic success, he will always remember his humble beginnings on a public access channel in Northern Kentucky.
Tell me a little bit about the videos you make.
I make sketch comedy videos in my spare time. Some of them are cartoons. I don’t know if you would call them animated necessarily because the characters’ mouths don’t move. It’s like still pictures. In a four minute cartoon there might be like 60 or 70 frames which is a bit less than full blown animation. But I do comedy sketches, either animated or otherwise, primarily.
What kind of software do you use to make your cartoons?
I use this super advanced program called Microsoft Paint. It was a rigorous six year training program, (laughs) uh, no. What I do is I’ll find something on Google. I’ll search "restaurant booth" or something and use that as a backdrop and then I’ll draw the characters over it.
I understand that your cartoons are actually broadcast on television. What is that all about?
I have a public access show called “Moldy Bagels.” One of the segments that are in every episode is the cartoon series. The cartoon series is called “Crapstick Doodle.” The title was my girlfriend’s idea. I couldn’t think of one and she said that. I didn’t bother to come up with another one so that’s what I’m stuck with now.
What else is in your public access show?
Just whatever I feel like doing really. Some of it is just me being myself, you know, talking to the camera, reading mail that I got from the viewers or just talking about whatever I feel like. But most of it is scripted, comedy sketches. It will be a lot of me, playing characters, just screwing around in my house. I also make extensive use of a green screen that I have at home. I tape it up on the wall in my kitchen and I’ll do like, fake commercials and stuff in front of that, just having fun.
How did you get started doing this?
It’s something I had talked about for a long time because people would say I was funny in casual conversation. I always talked about it and never did it and I saw the other stuff people put up on YouTube. I was taking video production classes in college, so I was like, I know how to do this and I have access to expensive cameras, so why not? So, I wrote some sketches and got some friends together and we had a lot of fun doing it so I kept making them.
Why do this?
Why not?
Is it a creative outlet?
Yeah, I mean, I’m at home. I could just play video games all the time but I like to actually make something. I like to have a tangible product of the time I spend.
What does your work say about you?
God, I don’t know; that I need therapy.
What is your response from viewers?
If more people watched it, I’d be able to tell you. I’d say it’s generally positive though. I don’t know how many people see it besides my friends who are just being nice. Some of my older stuff was too vulgar for some people. My mom doesn’t like some of what I do but…
Do you have aspirations of making it big in cartoon animation?
Maybe not cartoons specifically. Working professionally in comedy would be great. I really enjoy doing it but I don’t know if I have the all encompassing desire or drive to make that my whole life. I read stories about comedians, these desperate, hungry comedians who barely make enough to live. There will be eight of them living in a one bedroom apartment because they can’t make ends meet. They perform a show and make like 300 people laugh themselves stupid and then they don’t have enough money to buy a sandwich afterward. I don’t know if I want that life. That’s a lot of commitment. I don’t know if I’m ready to hit that level.
Is this about being famous and making a name for yourself?
I guess I might like to be famous.
Any last words?
Don’t do drugs.
Today she told me that she received a good grade on the project and her teacher left a note that said, "Good interview, weird guy." Thanks.
