Tuesday, July 28, 2015

My Top Ten Scooby-Doo Stories

It's been about a week since Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery was released, but I've only just managed to track down a copy of it. And what can I say? It was a bit of a bizarre entry in the Scooby canon. Any time the gang has a 'We meet somebody famous' episode, there's always the threat of too much time having to be allotted to the guest stars. And while KISS did admirably well for a new generation of audience (who probably has no idea who they are), the story was a bit of an oddity.

At the risk of spoiling it, a good chunk of the story is spent in a chemically induced hallucination, i.e. a drug trip. Totally not kidding there. Nobody deliberately takes drugs but the trip is there, in all of its family entertainment glory. If you're watching it with children you'll probably want a heads up for the conversation that may and should happen afterwards. But hey, that's rock and roll.

As for the rest of it, the animation is as stunning as the past several direct to DVD movies have been. The gang all gets their moments. And the combination of classic KISS songs with a prerequisite Scooby chase scene through the world's trippiest amusement park certainly rivals the bulk of music videos created today.

Overall, it's a decent film. If you're into KISS, definitely go for it. If you're really into Scooby like I am, then also go for it. If you're only kind of into Scooby then there's better stuff out there.

What kind of other stuff? Well, I'm glad I pretended you asked. Scooby-Doo has a 46 year and counting history of shows, movies, specials and miscellaneous appearances including the epic fan fiction Scooby-Doo's Unsolved Mystery written by yours truly, which happens to be available on this very blog site through this link. But let's say you only kind of like Scooby-Doo and you don't want to have to peruse through the whole library yourself just to find the good ones. I'm happy to say that you're in luck, because after a painstaking couple of minutes I've complied a list of ten Scooby stories that I feel just have something 'special' about them.

10. Scooby Doo! in Where's My Mummy? (2005 DVD)

This video was part of the second wave of Scooby DVDs, heavily influenced by the What's New, Scooby-Doo? series. I simply adore the TV show, but I have to say that most of the movies from this period felt like episodes that were needlessly padded out to fill an eighty minute plot. And this one is really about the same as the ensemble around it if it weren't for one detail; the use of Velma.

It's hard to talk much about it without spoiling the plot (an aspect of Scooby-Doo that has become surprisingly important in the recent decades). But I will say that there is a point in the film where the gang believes Velma has been killed.

It's a Scooby movie, so the handling of it doesn't become overly heavy handed, but it is in there. And the image of Scooby howling for her is still a bit haunting. When you think of Scooby-Doo as a franchise you typically remember the slapstick chase scenes set to peppy music and the plethora of tropes that have entered the population's vocabulary; and those elements are important to the series. But at its core, Scooby-Doo is a kid's franchise about facing something unpleasant and overcoming it. And this video shows a poignant side to Mystery Inc. in demonstrating how they deal with death.

9. Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy (2014 DVD)

You may remember last summer when this video stirred up a little controversy over Daphne's dress size ballooning into obesity. I think people made a bigger deal out of it that it was, but there were still a few bits that were worthy of concern. Obesity, and the way people whose bodies are obese are treated, are very important issues. It's possible that Scooby-Doo may have tapped into them a little deeper than they were prepared to handle. It's a fair discussion, but at the end of the day it's still Scooby-Doo. We don't exactly hold Fred Jones accountable for teaching kids about trespassing.

Moving past that, the best Scooby-Doo stories are the ones that could not have happened to any other protagonists, and Frankencreepy requires the Scooby gang be present. It's a double dose of homage to both the classic Universal film as well as the classic Scooby adventures. Once again Velma is at the center of the story, but the rest of the gang all have subplots targeting something about them personally. What can I say? It works a hell of a lot better than that damned 2002 live action movie.

8. Bedlam in the Big Top (1969 episode)

I really wanted to include a classic episode on this list, and Bedlam was the one that stood out the most.

Watching the old Scooby-Doo episodes is a bit like revisiting the classic Doctor Who series. It takes a bit of resolve to get through them. But here we are in the very first season, in a time before musical chase scenes and when Shaggy still actually had a bit of a spine. This was when Scooby-Doo was developing its own vocabulary and template. You can turn to What a Night for a Knight, Hassle in the Castle, or A Night of Fright is No Delight for better examples of a typical Scooby-Doo caper but Bedlam in the Big Top features a unique idea that I would love to see revisited. Namely, the fiend who coerces the gang into putting themselves into danger.

I have a theory that the quality of a Scooby story correlates to whether or not Daphne matters. And while this episode didn't exactly give her any development, she at least had some screen time. And there was something about the way Ghost Clown brought out a smile in her as she was being hypnotized that has always stayed with me. You have to wonder what kind of darkness she actually carries in her.

But the payoff in the episode is Shaggy. As a child I had very few characters I felt like I could relate to, and by default Shaggy was my guy. The Ghost Clown had already put Scooby on the trapeze and Daphne on the tightrope, but when he sent Shaggy into the lion's cage I felt this rare mix of concern and excitement. It was more than a little gratifying to see that Shaggy is the one who figures out how to defeat the clown at the end.

7. E-Scream (2006 episode)

What's New, Scooby-Doo? is probably the apex of the Scooby series. It seems like every one of its 42 episodes found a different trope to deconstruct, and it never got old. Clearly this show was created with a multi-generational audience in mind, as some of the mysteries are surprisingly sophisticated. You can't look at an episode like The San Franpsycho without wondering how the production team managed to cram a back story, a guest voice, multiple red herrings and three chase scenes into a mere 22 minutes.

Fred steals practically every episode, with veteran Frank Welker finding that sweet spot between no-nonsense leader of the old series and the buffoon of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Mindy Cohn has taken over as Velma and also find the perfect blend of classic enthusiasm and humor-potential snark. But it's Daphne who gets the most needed makeover. Grey DeLisle-Griffin's background in comedy invariably had an influence on the way her character was written. To this day Daphne's personality has yet to be nailed down, but DeLisle-Griffin is clearly having fun fleshing her out.

I could recommend just about any mystery in this series, but it's the finale episode that really breaks the mold. To say anything about E-Scream would ruin the fun. Suffice to say, it's telling just how vital each member of Mystery Inc. is to the show's dynamic; in that you can end a series with the dog's name in the title on a Velma-centric episode and it still feels right.

6. Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost (1999 DVD)

I'm sure there's a reason they sometimes put an exclamation point after Scooby-Doo in the titles of these things and sometimes don't.

This one came out on the heels of Zombie Island, which was really the home video that revived the whole franchise with an impressively animated foray into real supernatural occurrences. Witch's Ghost takes it a step further by bringing in Tim Curry as Ben Ravencroft, introducing the Hex Girls (who should have had a spin-off by now), and upping the ante of the Scooby formula. Twice.

First up is a romantic angle between Velma and Ben (wonder how that works out). Then of course there's the central mystery, which is spaced out carefully. And just when it feels like things are wrapping up there comes a bonus act. Again, it's hard to talk about the film without spoiling it. But it was an instant classic when it was first released, and it still works as a holiday tradition anywhere between Halloween and Thanksgiving; kind of unique.

5. Night of the Living Doo (2001 special)

Scooby-Doo has been parodied by everybody. Even House of Mouse did a nod to it on at least one occasion. But nothing has quite the gusto of Scooby and the gang lampooning themselves. There was a famous Johnny Bravo episode involving Mystery Inc. which escalated into one of the all time great chase sequences, but that was a showcase for Johnny Bravo first and foremost. Night of the Living Doo is pure Scooby.

David Cross is particularly brilliant flip-flopping between comic and straight man depending on the situation. Gary Coleman tries so hard to be the unwanted voice of sensibility. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy appears out of nowhere. And of course there's Mark Hamill, because Mark Hamill. It's the Scooby and the gang at their most irreverent.

It's a testament to just how strong these characters are that they can parody themselves and never stop being themselves. Hanna-Barbera created the show and followed it up with at least half a dozen Scooby clone shows, and none of them (Captain Caveman, Jabberjaw, Speed Buggy, etc.) ever matched the iconicness of the original team. But when you can do self-parody and still walk away, that's pretty versatile.

4. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010-2013 series)

Yep. The whole damn series. Sorry, but that's the way it goes when you ave an overarching plot that spans 52 episodes.

It wasn't their best series, but it was probably their ballsiest. There are certainly weaknesses. Fred's obsession with traps almost comes across as a fetish, and one that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. There's the animation shift in style, which honestly just takes some getting used to. And then there's the teen-aged relationship drama which got in the way more than it didn't. Velma and Shaggy dating? We all knew that wasn't going to end well.

But at the same time, this was the series that got to break the rules. When someone's feelings were hurt, you felt it. There wasn't a wisecrack that restored the status quo. When it was funny, it was What's New, Scooby-Doo? funny. But when it got serious, it got dark.

Season 2 in particular really took off the gloves. Bad things happened to good people. Tragedy struck. Likable characters were killed. This isn't your father's show about kicking the Creeper in the kneecap.

But this was ultimately Scooby's show. It was a fascinating character study to watch the cowardly Great Dane throw down the gauntlet when he was pushed over the line; and he was. There's an inner badass lurking beneath all of the whimpering and jumping into Shaggy's arms. If the cosmetic issues of the series kept you from giving it a chance, I'd really like to encourage you to try it again. There's a real gem in Crystal Cove.

3. Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase (2001 DVD)

Okay, full disclosure: this is the lamest mystery the gang has ever taken for-freaking-ever to figure out. But that's not the point of this one. It's all about the romp through the virtual world, featuring (count 'em) three musical chase scenes.

The gang arrives via invitation to the anonymously named State University where their friend has invented a machine that transfers living matter into computer data a la Tron. Of course he uses this global changing technology to create a Scooby-Doo video game. But an evil virus that looks a little like Freakazoid's mannequin enters the real world and does some truly, unforgivably inconvenient things to the SU campus.

And here's the fun factor from the get-go. We know it's a real virus and not some janitor in a virus costume (?) which means Shaggy and Scooby get to dole out the biggest first act beating they've ever inflicted on the main villain. It's kind of gratifying.

Inevitably the gang winds up being pulled into the virtual world where they have to play through each of the ten levels of the game, collecting the box of Scooby Snacks that has been hidden about twenty yards away from their entry point. It's not a very good game. And while the 'anything goes' fantasy world is never fully realized, it still proves to be a lot of fun.

And then comes the final level where it really gets good. The gang encounters virtual versions of themselves, and Daphne (in probably her first real moment of character development) shows a subtle sign of not getting along with herself. We have a few surprise cameos from former monsters (What is it about the Creeper that makes his appearance so cool?) and multiple victories for the entire cast. And, oh yeah, the culprit turns out to be exactly who you think it is.

2. The Scooby-Doo Project (1999 special)

This was a series of about one minute segments parodying The Blair Witch Project that aired on The Cartoon Network and was then compiled into short film format. At the time Blair Witch was all the rage, and everybody was doing a send-up of it, but Scooby was the best.

The Scooby gang were all the 2D style drawings set to a live action background and a real Mystery Machine. The then-current voice cast all reprised their roles from Witch's Ghost including Frank Welker as Fred, B.J. Ward as Velma, Scott Innes as Shaggy and Scooby, and the much missed Mary Kay Bergman as Daphne.

This is an example of a parody that outdoes its source material. First off, the running time manages to hit all of the important beats of the movie without feeling rushed; Blair Witch should always have been a short film. Second, the insertion of the Scooby gang into the story somehow feels right. It would be harder to accept Fred and Daphne in a Paranormal Activity spoof, but Blair Witch was meant to be. Third, as funny as this is, it's also kind of creepy. To the best of my knowledge, this is Mystery Inc.'s only official venture into dark comedy. Their fate is left ambiguous.

1. Scooby Doo! Stage Fright (2013 DVD)

Okay, so why this one? What sets this above the rest of Scooby's misadventures? To begin with, the production team started with an inspired idea, take a classic horror story like The Phantom of the Opera and combine it with a (mostly) current pop culture phenomenon; in this case the American Idol craze. That's solid enough for a Scooby story, but then they got ambitious.

What we are treated to is a complicated plot borrowing quite a number of ideas (a famous Agatha Christie mystery comes to mind) carefully woven together. I can't risk spoiling the journey, but Stage Fright is one of their most cleverly crafted mysteries to date. And they still found time to work in a narrative that could only be a Scooby-Doo story.

It may be an overstatement to say this film has everything, but for the life of me I can't think of what they could have left out. Fred gets some Batman: the Animated Series styled action. Daphne gets some Meg Ryan. Shaggy and Scooby remind us that they do in fact have sleuthing abilities. And Velma gets all the best lines. The humor is sharp. The chases are choreographed. And we even have a couple of new songs to showcase the singing talents of DeLisle-Griffin and Welker.

The short version, Stage Fright is the new bar for Scooby's production staff to aim for, and it's going to be a tough feat. Just know I've got a box of Scooby Snacks here and I'm prepared to start distributing them.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Editorial: Who is Monty Python?

It was this time last year that the five remaining members of the Monty Python troupe presented their farewell performances at the O2. And while their body of work under the name 'Monty Python' essentially ended with 1983's The Meaning of Life, the team has continued to endure in various forms for over 45 years now. Acknowledging founding member Graham Chapman's death in 1989, the Monty Python team has actually existed longer without Chapman than with.


So what is it about this group of comedy scholars that just seems to continue to feel 'currently active'? Even in a performance of Spamalot involving nobody of the troupe, it still feels like Mr. Python is present and irrepressible as ever.


When you look at The Rolling Stones, a band that has been together since 1962, it somehow doesn't feel like the n factor that made them The Rolling Stones is present anymore. In the same way, The Beatles ended when they ended, a full decade before John Lennon's death. Monty Python is a curiosity that continues to thrive, even in spite of its own creators trying to shut it down.


To figure out how this strange creature keeps kicking, it may be necessary to understand what Monty Python is; no easy task. You could probably pose the question to a single member of the troupe twice in one day and get conflicting answers. You can't really nail down the Python anymore than you can nail down a solid definition of comedy, but that doesn't mean the attempt would produce nothing of value. So let's look at it.


The Larch's Seeds

You could make a case that much of Great Britain's current comedic sensibilities are a direct byproduct of World War II. When you look at the programmes which resonated so loudly in Europe that we heard it here in the States, there is a noticeable preoccupation with death. Perhaps this was also a reflection of the British Empire's decline, but when you look at the classic Doctor Who serials, there is a lot of death that nobody reacts to.

When you tie these elements into the teenage rampage of the sixties leading into Beatlemania, it's almost like watching the phoenix emerge from the ashes. Whatever rebelliousness was happening in British culture at the time also coincided with the emergence of television, a medium seeking out voices.

David Frost, a man who probably deserves both the praise and criticism he receives, inevitably emerged as the very face and personality of television. The Frost Report tapped the veritable Who's Who of British comedy writers who would go on to become the vital organs of the entire generation of comedy as we know it, including the future Pythons.

Eric Idle once identified John Cleese as the 'head' of Python, and Terry Jones as the 'heart'. Much of the creative tension between those two forces produced the epic flavor of surreal comedy that gave us the name Monty Python; absolute nonsense, yet somehow effectively defined by what the beast felt like it was.


Oxford vs. Cambridge

On the one side you had the Palin-Jones sketches, comprised of Oxford educated friends Michael Palin and Terry Jones. Their style tended to be right brained, with a strong sense of visual presentation, and a lot of off the wall ideas. Jones would go on to direct the Python films, and it was his passion for the overall feel of the show which molded the individual episodes into their own 'thing'.

What you can recognize the most in the Oxford boys on the Myers-Briggs scale is an overwhelming sense of intuitiveness. The Palin-Jones team could easily be credited with giving Monty Python his childish delight, be it innocent or naughty. Like a child, there is the thrill of discovery; a belief that if you peel back the layers of reality and let the silliness run rampant, the world will undoubtedly become a somewhat more amiable place.

That optimism was not present among the Cambridge chaps. Both of these men were taller, and had the look of the authority figures Monty Python would be lampooning, and perhaps by unconscious effect their sketches tended to be based on the humor of adulthood. Graham Chapman and John Cleese wrote sketches very verbally (well, Cleese did), concise and carefully structured. In Cleese's account, any sketch that started with an ordinary situation and ended with people screaming at each other was a Chapman-Cleese sketch.

I find this dichotomy in Monty Python to be particularly fascinating. Unlike the Oxford team, who welcomed a sense of chaos in its harmlessness, the Cambridge team seemed to show a genuine fear of that x-factor. Their beast behind the veil wasn't a whimsical creature, but a destructive force that could barely be contained.

There are legendary tales of Cleese and Jones locking horns. Probably each man represented an insurmountable obstacle to the other. But some wonderful things happened during that clash.


The Bridge Troll

I don't think Terry Gilliam would mind the title.

Gilliam was in a unique position, in that he never had to submit anything to the group for approval. He simply did whatever he needed to do to fill the time which had been allotted to him for an episode. Gilliam's animations may very well have rescued Holy Grail from losing the audience's attention span.

Terry Gilliam, with his college aged American sensibilities in the sixties, had a spirit of anarchy (which seems to continue into his seventies). There was probably no comedian more equipped to serve as the bridge between right brained Oxford and left brained Cambridge.

His animations may have represented (in its purest form) that stuff that made Monty Python who he is. It's significant that many of the crude cutouts Gilliam used were taken from respectable paintings and then crammed into a meat grinder. There was some real envelope pushing violence Monty Python got away with on television because of Gilliam. It was almost like a stream of raw material that flowed between Cambridge and Oxford; that creek where the Pythons came to play.


So I Became a Waiter

There's a reason I've saved Eric Idle for last. When you think of Monty Python, you probably remember the dead parrot, the silly walk (Cleese-Chapman contributions), the Spanish Inquisition, the Lumberjack song (Jones-Palin sketches) and the Gilliam animated title sequence(s). What of Eric Idle?

There's Nudge, Nudge of course and a majority of the Python songs, but it's a fair question (on the surface) to ask how needed Idle really was to the overall quality of the comedic entity. Well to skip a bit, I'm of the opinion that the whole reason Python worked the way it did was because of Eric Idle.

Watching several post-Python interviews with the surviving members, I keep hearing Idle being referred to as the most philosophical of the Pythons. So what the hell does that mean? Translated into comedy, Idle was the one who truly understood timing. His contribution came in the form of an intuitive ordering of structure; cutting this sketch off here, bringing this linking bit in, cutting to the animation and so forth. When the other Pythons spoke straight into the lens it was like they were speaking to the camera. Idle's eye contact felt like he was actually addressing the audience.

The Circus needed a ringmaster to actually function, and Idle may have taken the role on more selflessly than any other ringmaster in entertainment. Unlike David Frost, who was a master of looking like he had written the jokes he was telling, Idle really wrote his monologues and really understood the ambiguous reptile named Monty. In essence, Eric Idle served as the link between the chaos and the audience, and the pieces of Monty Python would never have held together without him.


And Now the Punchline...

The question of who Monty Python is remains on the table and it is doubtful anyone will agree with my answer, but here it goes. I believe Monty Python is the soul of comedy. Comedy existed well before the lads got hold of it and will continue to exist for as long as the human psyche has flaws. There was a living energy that flowed through the great comedians long before history was written down. It flowed through the Marx Brothers and the Muppets and the Satellite of Love. But in the late sixties, through the brilliance of six comedians in their top form who were touched so deeply by the muse, comedy was given a name.

And it had a much nicer liberty bell bong to it than Bunn, Whackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Poetry Slam: With Six You Get an Apology

It's funny in a way, when I started this blog my intention was to go through the past couple of decades of stuff I'd written just to compile it all into a central location. But then I had to start doing reviews, and having opinions, and...well...you can see how it's been turning out.

Still, I thought it might be slightly fun and mostly stamina testing to look back on where I've come from as an attempted writer. Which mean I'm digging out the high school notebooks with all of the teenage angst ridden light verse.

In ninth grade, my English teacher assigned us a choice of poetry projects, and I opted to write a parody of a famous poem. I went with Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. I'm not strong enough to reprint my version here, but I credited the snow themed stanzas to another Frost poet named Misty.

What I learned about poetry, was that the conciseness of it allowed one to feel a sense of accomplishment over a completed half page of content. Over the next couple of years a few other opportunities to fulfill an assignment by poem presented themselves, and I dusted Misty off each time.

Writing through a fictional persona gave me a sense of freedom to be a little less judgmental of the end result (and it shows), but it also granted me a sense of quantity in developing a kind of style. I started off trying to write purely humorous pieces, or 'light' when the humor seemed absent from them. But as I was in my late teens and heading into the dreaded adulthood (combined with then-unrealized chronic depression) Misty became kind of the voice for any kind of expression I was able to find for myself.

Here is a little bit of what I wrote back then.


Opening Night

This is probably the first poem I wrote where I wasn't still trying to tie Misty to Robert Frost in some capacity. I have it listed as a 1989 poem which probably places me in spring of my eleventh grade year, right after we performed Hello, Dolly!.

No golden trophy compensates
A soul's undying feat
To strike the set undaunted,
To repel a roved repeat.

No silver medal inundates
The final chorus bow.
No blushing ushers rush to dab
The tired, furrowed brow.

Within the one who speculates
On finalized accord
And mocks the common dissonance
Is found the true reward.

I'm noticing two trends here that still affect my writing today, as well as my perceived 'quality' of writing. One is my gratuitous use of vocabulary words, even if they don't necessarily fit the context properly. The other is my basic love of internal rhyming.


When It's Over

This one is from 1990, following the Teen Theatre production of Godspell for which I was called upon to act, sing, dance and be crucified. It was probably the most intense stage production I've ever been a part of, having gone into it knowing literally nobody else in the cast and working so closely with them for as long as we did. After the production ended, it really felt like I was going through a breakup, and this poem (containing no fewer than three references to the soundtrack) was my way of giving the show an epitaph.

Last week I went out walking.
What else was there to do?
All the stress was over.
The tribulation through.

I stood beside a stream
Which flowed without a cause.
My memories were cluttered
With loneliness and flaws.

Day by day I came there
With willows by my side
Until I heard some laughter
And watched my grief divide.

I turned to find the laughter.
Whose joy could sing so free?
And as I turned I realized
The laughter came from me.


Neurosis

Yep, learned a new word in my high school psychology class. I must have still been hung up on Godspell where I opened this one with the beatitudes. Aside from that, I don't think anything really inspired this one except that I was a teenager, and as such I felt that the world around me was already functioning without a clear place for me.

Happy are those who are gentle and soft
For theirs is the bread that will leaven.

Happy are those who are heckled and scoffed
For theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Happy are those who are blind to their pride
For they are the ones who will see.

But what of the smile that's been wounded inside
With a rage disallowed to be free.

Yes, why is the world so determined to laugh
That it won't take the moment to cry?

Why do we bend our emotions in half
When they grant us the passion to fly?

Look at the pills we consume to escape
Being buried alive by repression.

Bribing a doctor to listen and gape
Brings us further in debt with each session.

Why must we wait for the angels above
To lift all of our stresses away?

All we require is someone to love
With no superficial display.

I want to care for a soul who is grieving.
No cover, no shield and no fee.

I want the world to have trust in believing.
But who gives a damn about me?

I know. It's so cute the way I've figured it all out, isn't it?

It's really interesting to me now to see the negative opinion I clearly had back then about therapy and mood stabilizing prescription drugs. For the record, I've seen many therapists since then, and I currently take depression meds. Also, my rhyming hypothesis about only needing love proved to be a bit unfounded, as I learned the hard way. Ginny (my wife, in case it's not self-evident) is the best thing that has ever happened to me. But within the first year of our marriage, my depression hit full force, and I wound up spending some time in a psych ward, where I learned quickly that antidepressants were not going to make me any less me. It turns out the depression was actually doing that.

Regardless, I'd like to mention that this poem was a bit of a milestone for me, in the sense that it was the first time I'd ever written an obscenity down. I'd avoided swearing for the first fifteen years of my life before finally starting to dabble with the 'television acceptable' words in tenth grade. But having written this poem DOWN (and in PENCIL no less) there was definitive proof that I was no longer the squeaky clean Cherub I used to be. I've gotten very versatile with profanity since then.


Song of the Spyre

We're still in 1990, but I've graduated by this point and I'm not exactly looking to the future with hope.

I don't know why I came up with this spelling of the word 'spire', but I wanted to create an alternate variation on the muse/guardian angel concept, possibly imagining the Spyre of the poem as Misty herself. By this point I was imagining her as new age goth-type, even if that wasn't a thing that had quite caught on yet. But she'd come full circle, what with me borrowing from Robert Frost again; although this time I'm not being humorous. On purpose anyway.

For the record, the last three words in this poem are yet another deliberate callback to Godspell.

Two roads in wood diverged, and I?
I just kept walking toward the sky.
And with the junction far behind
I pushed the two roads from my mind
And made a pathway of my own.

So wearily I went alone.

The endless trail proceeded dry
So much I had to sit and cry
Until a Spyre heard my plea.
She took my hand and walked with me.
And on we journeyed into night
With sky lit black and stars lit white.

She, to my ease, did not away
But sang instead, "You'll never stray
Alone in this horizon wide.
I'll always be there by your side."


Debbie Kicked Me

I really have no explanation for this one. Just know I'm three years into college, and it's inspired by an actual event.

One day, while I was thinking, rather casually, of anything that struck a chord in my imagination I discovered that my mind can operate in any fashion that I want.

And while I wandered in a daze of windows leading nowhere, candlesticks, and astroturf, and run-on sentences, I felt a sudden added pressure to my thigh that made my body jaunt.

I whirled around to face the culprit. Maybe I was loitering and someone in the building had the order to evict me.

But soon I came to realize, the only thing which had occurred was (did you read the title?) Debbie kicked me.

I'll never truly understand her reasoning for this. Perhaps her body had been taken over by a demigod.

I'd find it rather odd if this were true. But on the other hand, I guess I also find her rather odd.

I originally had the intention of continuing this poem into an epic about the various people in the world I'd look forward to kicking myself. But even my muse that had set this thing in motion jumped in and suggested I cut my losses and walk away from this one.


Star of Love

Last one for this blog. I'm still in college here, but every once in a while I've taken to trying my brain at songwriting, despite my lack of skill with any instrument. I obviously can't include the music that's meant to go with the lyrics here, but the song is meant to be sung as a kind of lullaby.

If I ever get In Vanessa's Room pulled together, this song will most definitely be on the roster (You can read more about that here if you're interested). Good night!

Star in the night
Dances set in flight
Whispering abound
Laughing to the ground

Glittering
The clouds and trees
And glistening the lake
Softly sighing
Through the breeze
That drifts into a wake

Star of love
You smile above
I'm gazing from below
Imagining
The distant worlds
You know

Shine on me
Your mystery
So far away you seem
But lay your head beside me while
I dream


Light in the sky
Reflections soaring by
Reaching for your hand
To be carried to another land

Swirling in
A lost design
Where rainbows chase the rain
Chanting muses
Still benign
For whether cast or vain

Star of love
Releasing dove
The magic that you bring
I wish upon you
Hold me in
Your wing

Play with me
In fantasy
And show me how to fly
And let me dive beside you from
The sky


Stream slumbers deep
Clowns and angels weep
Oceans everlast
But the dreams vanish fast

Time is still
But surging on
With visions out of sight
Shattered crowns
Can barely don
The mourning of the knight

Star of love
The wonders of
The streak
Of falling glow
That dimly trails
The journey where
You go

Think of me
In memory
The one who loves you free
But don't look back
There's nothing left
To see

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

A Good Game is Rare: The Rise and Fall of Monkey Mountain

Back in the SNES era of videogames there was a friendly/heated rivalry with Sega. It was the non-sports enthusiast's alternative to My Team vs. Your Team. This being the days before the internet, the rivalry was sorely limited to outlets like the magazine letters column and game store banter, but it was definitely there. My favorite example was on the underrated SNES game Uniracers, which would garner you a protest from the programmers if you dared try to use the name 'Sonic' as your avatar.

Suffice to say, Mario emerged as the mascot with the better career, and it looked like he was going to be unstoppable during his N64 period. But then Nintendo backed out of their deal with Sony and their disc based system. Sony, being understandably angry, decided to release their hardware anyway, and the Playstation was born.

The Nintendo/Sega rivalry carried over into the next generation, intensified by bad blood. For example, Sony's whole marketing strategy with Crash Bandicoot was to have the costumed character calling out Nintendo from the parking lot with a megaphone.

To make matters worse, Squaresoft had been one of Nintendo's biggest cash cows on the SNES, with the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, and the much beloved Super Mario RPG. But Sony worked out exclusivity with Square, which led to the Playstation only Final Fantasy VII (and this unprecedented love affair with boring, brooding Cloud Strife).

The N64 started hurting very quickly. Super Mario 64 was available right out of the gate, and was awesome. And Wave Race to this day remains the greatest jet ski game in history. But Zelda got delayed for over a year, and Nintendo's third party developers really had trouble with the cartridge-based system. The game library was noticeably sparse.

And then there was Rare.

Nintendo's primary ally in the nineties may very well have kept Nintendo in business. I've always wondered why Nintendo turned down the deal to buy out Rare completely going into the Gamecube. When you think of Rare, you think of the Rare of the nineties. And this week's blog is my personal experience with the game company from the United Kingdom who could do no wrong.

Until they did.

Every Secret of Monkey Island

We really have to start with the Donkey Kong Country series on the SNES. They had some hits prior to that, notably the Killer Instinct franchise, which for me (merely tolerating the one-on-one fighting genre) was random button bashing and a bunch of noise and B. Orchid. But it was the return of the iconic ape that really pulled you into this fantastic world.

DKC was a platformer, in the vein of the Super Mario Brothers series, but something about the jungle beat and the grunts that the reptiles made as you trounced them just made you feel the gorilla. Donkey had a personality now. He would occasionally mug the camera or beat on his chest like he was subtly hoping for the player's approval. He had a brotherly fondness for a Curious George type sidekick named Diddy. He endured the cartoony abuse from his elder. And when he saw his bananas were stolen he hung his head in sadness. Donkey Kong was a real character now.

Of course it didn't hurt that the gameplay was solid, both satisfying and frustrating in all the right ways. And when DK stepped out of the spotlight for the sequel it opened up a position for Dixie Kong, one of the greatest (neglected) female game characters on consoles of the time.

Donkey Kong Country 2 is rightfully hailed as one of the most perfect games ever made. There were a lot of secret areas in DKC1, but 2 implemented a system to let you know whether or not you'd found them all, and gave you an alternate ending for the added effort. It's also funny, looking at Diddy and Dixie together. We know from the manual that they are dating, but nothing about their behavior indicates that except for the amount of comfort they have with each other. Even amidst hornets and phantasms trying to kill them, Dixie can't resist tasting the honey-lined walls she's climbing and Diddy has to put his hands up on the roller coaster of death.

Then comes Donkey Kong Country 3, which gets a bit of flack. Some of it is deserved. No gamer wants to deal with a damn baby. When Dixie takes a hit and starts crying, you want to put your arms around her, but when that God awful Kiddy Kong throws a tantrum you just want to drown his ass.

The gameplay is just as good as in its predecessor, and some of the level designs are truly creative. In fact, there's not really anything to complain about if you take the game as a solitary experience. It's when you compare it to DKC2 that the weaknesses start showing up. Mainly, while each individual level is fun in its own way, there's not really the sense of overarching mood that the past game had. In DKC2 you really feel like you're going in one pirate ship and out another, through a theme park and a beehive and back out. DKC3 comes across as a later season of a TV show you've invested in where the ongoing story arcs are abandoned in favor of a more episodic format. It's not bad, just a little disappointing.

Party Like it's 1997

If memory serves, Donkey Kong Country 3 was the last SNES game released to which anyone paid attention. Eyes were on Nintendo's newest system, which came out of the gate roaring and then stalled and stayed there. Rare rolled out a new Killer Instinct, but it wasn't until the following year that they started giving us their A-game.

First came Blast Corps, which is a gem of a concept that I haven't seen duplicated anywhere else. There is a computer controlled transport vehicle carrying a nuclear bomb, which malfunctions and has to head straight to a shelter before it explodes. Unfortunately, there are several towns worth of empty buildings in the way, and you have to bulldoze/shoot/ram them out of the way. It's the idea Michael Bay wishes he could have. The learning curve is easy, but the difficulty ramps up REAL QUICK. You're not meant to rent this game, you're meant to own it, and pull your hair out in frustration until that damned dump truck finally swings in the miracle arc without stopping.

And on the heels of Blast Corps came GoldenEye 007. Now I'm also not a fan of first person shooters, but I fully understand what people who are see in this game. On top of being a movie-to-game adaptation that people actually liked, the mayhem and death count really was fun. And that of course carried over into the multiplayer. It was just simple enough and complex enough to find that perfect balance.

And finally Diddy Kong came back with a Mario Kart emulation that added collection quests, an adventure element, and Lord knows how many challenges. What Mario 64 did for running around, Diddy did for driving. It was fun and it was hard, and so worth the effort. Of note was the appearance of both Banjo and Conker as playable characters before either of them had there own games on the market.

Dueling Banjos

The following year was Banjo-Kazooie, a title that looks like nonsense but may have been the most perfect 3D platformer ever created. It's been almost twenty years and this game is still great. I can't think of another game that feels as rewarding of exploration as Banjo-Kazooie. There are so many times where you're just going, "I wonder what's over here -oh, awesome!" Even the nuisance level Rusty Bucket Bay comes at the right time and is really not as bad as people claim it is. This whole game feels like one big Easter Egg hunt, quite literally when you finally go into hacker mode.

At the end of the game, Mumbo the shaman reveals that there is going to be a sequel, insisting that it is going to make Banjo-Kazooie look like a joke. So expectation were high for the sequel. Banjo-Tooie hit the shelves two years later.

Eh.

It probably had more fun bits than I remember, but the game just seemed to be more work than play. Fetch quests weren't satisfying anymore. It was more, "Oh wait, I can't open that door yet because I haven't hit this button on this other world, but I need that ability first and I've got to get rid of Kazooie and somehow get back on top of the mountain." The game was bigger, but Rare filled the space with tedium.

Part of the problem was that the developers were starting to throw all their tricks into each game. Hance, every Banjo-Tooie level has an obligatory first person shooter challenge, a vehicle mini-game, and way too many timed events. I'm actually convinced that Rare was beginning to develop a negative attitude towards gamers, as we were being given challenges to just keep us busy.

Striking the Kong

There were some other ttitles Rare released that people seemed to like, which I frankly haven't played. Jet Force Gemini got a positive response and was hailed as the spiritual successor to Blast Corps, while Perfect Dark filled the kind-of-next-GoldenEye void. And then there was Donkey Kong 64.

Dear God, I get exhausted just thinking about this abomination. Take the frustrating elements of Banjo-Tooie, having to swap characters out at specific locations, and then imagine it with five characters. It starts out fine, but it gets old by the second level. So since I've wasted too much of my life playing this game I'm going to sum up.

1. I like Tiny Kong, but why no Dixie?
2. Lanky was cool too. Chunky was unneeded.
3. They killed Wrinkly for no damn reason.
4. The best was when DK had to play his own arcade game. That's not a good sign Rare.
5. Holy hell Candy! Were you trying to one-up Lara Croft?
6. The DK Theme is stupid, but it is the greatest stupid theme song. Ever.

Rated M For Misuse of the Word 'Mature'

Fun fact about me: I NEVER throw video games away, or trade them in for that matter. I will probably never see Attack of the Timelord! or Quest for the Rings brighten up the TV screen in front of my Odyssey 2 again, but damn it, I'm holding on to those cartridges from now until the flying spaghetti invasion. But there is one isolated time I have ever considered returning a game to the store.

Conker's Bad Fur Day.

You know, it's honestly my fault. All the warning signs were there. The game was being touted as "Nintendo grows up" which in retrospect I take to mean "made it into...seventh grade?" Scatological 'humor' everywhere. Obscenities beyond gratuitous. Violence that was deliberately mean spirited. And my God! Chris Seavor's voice just makes me want to choke him so many times over. I hate this f**king game.

But it was from Rare, a company whose work I had respected, admired, and overlooked the monotony of when it happened. I thought, how bad could this game be? It was worse than I could have imagined. Conker's inability to jump, swim, or speak with any finesse still makes me want to pull my hair out. The game's movie parodies were essentially reference humor, so prevalent movies like Meet the Spartans. The rest of the humor was completely devoid of actual humor, apart from the one joke "I can't believe they said THAT on a Nintendo game!" told over and over.

And to make matters worse, this piece of shit developed a very loud cult following, of which I seemed to travel in the online circles. I still see this game pop up on "funniest games of all time" lists and I die a little more each time. It's not funny, it's just pushing infantile buttons; button mashing them even.

Memories of three amazing Donkey Kong Country games on the SNES can't trump Conker as the first game that comes to mind when somebody mentions Rare, and I'll never forgive them for that.

Stop 'n Swop

I played Star Fox Adventures on the Gamecube, which was Rare's final Nintendo hurrah. It wasn't bad, just not very memorable. I know Fox got shoehorned in at the eleventh hour, but the game was honestly mediocre already. Then Microsoft bought Rare, and, I guess they're still relevant.

Maybe game companies have creative peaks and valleys just like individuals. It seems like Rare honestly blossomed brightest with Banjo-Kazooie. For all I know, Conker may have been an intentional self-destruct button, because it really felt like they no longer cared about their players.

Today I feel about Rare the way I feel about that friend I was really close to in my younger days, but either they changed or I grew up and they didn't. It was a fun relationship while it lasted, and if Rare sends me a friend request I'll accept it. But I've no reason to comment on their posts.