Banditos! Banditos! Banditos!

Unpleasant Male Fragrances

Salty Prospector, Sudden Whiff

Neu Djerzhei

Princess Magic Hymen's Rainbow Flavor Surprise: For Boys!

Axe Re-Load Shower Gel

A Fistful of Dolphins

Old Leathery Crevice

Mannish Tang

Axe Re-Load Shower Gel, for reals, what was the idea there

Technorati Tags: fragrances, Axe Re-Load Shower Gel, naaaasty

A Caucus Conundrum

An Iowan farmer is on his way to the caucus with three candidates:  Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, and John Edwards.  He needs to take them across a river, but his raft can only hold two people at a time.  If the farmer leaves Barack Obama and John Edwards together on one side of the river, they will begin telling inspirational tales of ordinary Americans and one will have died of boredom by the time he gets back.  If he leaves Mike Huckabee and John Edwards together, Huckabee will devour Edwards.  Can the farmer get all of his candidates across the river in just seven crossings?

Answer:  I do not care.  Go away, Iowa caucus.  Stop boring me.  Take New Hampshire with you.  You're the two dullest, least decisive states in America, and it's time for everyone to stop pretending your opinions matter because "we've always done it this way."

Joe Biden, please shoplift something and punch a cop.  This isn't your year and you know it.  Did you think it would be different from the other 25 times you've run for President?  Go out swinging.  Mitt Romney, please, please clear up some common misconceptions about the Mormon faith.  Everything we've heard about Mormons is wrong, right?  Do the underwear thing, Mr. Romney.  Do the underwear thing.

Technorati Tags: Iowa caucus, Huckabee, Obama, Edwards, Biden, Romney, Ron Paul, just kidding! Ron Paul can suck it

Children's Poet Laureate -- For Kids!

I'll write more about this another time, but I wanted to show you Jack Prelutsky, who the Poetry Foundation named America's first Children's Poet Laureate in September.  $25,000.  That's some serious dough.  I bet I could write some decent poetry for kids.  Tell me, who do I have to blow around here to become Children's Poet Laureate?  Just kidding -- I know that's not how it works.

He seems like a nice fellow, and I have nothing bad to say about his stuff or children's poetry in this post.  (In another post I will totally lay into those damn children and their poetry.)  And he looks pleasant and friendly, like a low-carb Santa.  That's the kind of face you want for a Children's Poet Laureate.

But what about . . .  

THIS GUY!  Michael Rosen, Children's Poet Laureate for the U.K.  Graargh!  Author of A Child's Garden of Terror featuring this gem:

I'm nobody!  Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell

The Ichor Demons trapped in Hell.

 

How dreary to be Somebody!

How public, like a kitten

Perhaps the one I sacrificed

As tomes of bone were written.

I'm just joshin' ya, Michael Rosen.  You just look a little sinister in that pic.  You're a nice man and a good poet and I'm impressed that you found time to write when you're not teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.  That poem was actually written by Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst, who lies peacefully in her grave, for now.  I used to visit it pretty often just to make sure.  Sometimes she got halfway out but I would read her some of my poetry which helped her fall back asleep.

 

Technorati Tags: poetry, Poetry Foundation, Jack Prelutsky, Michael Rosen, Children's Poet Laureate, Emily Dickinson, sacrificial kittens

(The banditos stole photos and whatnot from here -- good article, good blog, but not mean or slanderous enough)

The Poetry Foundation's Unholy Deviltry

Is unholy deviltry redundant?  Or is, perhaps, not sufficiently redundant enough?  Bad Poetry Foundation!  Bad, wicked Poetry Foundation!  Stop sucking so very much!

The nation can't stop not talking about the new direction of Poetry magazine since it received a hojillion dollars from Ruth Lilly and created the Poetry Foundation, headed by John Barr, a "businessman poet" with some odd ideas about how to increase the cultural relevance of poetry.  His plan doesn't involve giving money to poets, which I think is kind of a shame.  I mean, the Poetry Foundation gets over three million dollars a year.  If they spent a million each year and bought a hundred poems from a hundred different poets for ten thousand each, they would kick-start a goddamn Poetry Renaissance.  First of all, everyone would know those poems.  Secondly, those poets would be set for life, not from the money, but from the fame.  We'd live in a country where everyone had a favorite poem (countries like that exist, just not this one) and being a poet would suddenly become a respectable career choice, or at least as respectable as trying to be a movie star.  And while poets are actually kind of more self-absorbed than movie stars, they usually drive sensibly and don't make sex tapes (thankfully).

Instead, the Poetry Foundation created a website that is supposed to be your one stop shopping spot for upbeat, accessible poetry and criticism, and funded a few of those programs that show up every time we get a new Poet Laureate.  Children's outreach stuff, contests, and a couple of odd grants, like one for a first book published by a poet over 50.  The Poetry Out Loud contest is a sort of national spelling bee where kids memorize and recite poems.  From the website:

While some element of performance is appropriate, the recitation of poetry, in this context, is a bit different from theatrical acting. Overdone, highly dramatic performances will often distract the audience and the judges from understanding and enjoying the poem. For example, character voices and exaggerated gestures are usually not appropriate.

Uh, OK.  So you can overact, but only in that specific way that bad poets overact when reading their own work.  Swell.  So much for slam poetry -- more like gentle caress poetry.  Say what you will about slam poets (and I bet they don't care), but when it comes to performance, they go all in.  The best ones don't sound like any of the other ones, and their performance becomes an essential part of the poem, kind of a live translation.  When you combine poetry and performance, the result should be deeply personal.  But for this contest, the kids aren't reading their own poems, or even their favorite poems.  Poetry Out Loud only considers poems from their pre-approved collection.  Maybe I'm wearing out the italics here but I'm pissed.  Way to kill any possible spontaneity, you cheesy motherfuckers.  You cheesy motherfuckers.

Laura Bush canceled a poetry conference at the White House after Sam Hamill and other anti-war poets declined her invitation.  Worse yet, some anti-war poets accepted it.  They had plans to hand her some political poems or something -- it was pretty scary.  Sharon Olds' 2005 open letter in The Nation is one of the better protest gestures, but there have been plenty to choose from during these war years.  Vietnam-era poets did the same stuff, too.  So if you're trying to get kids excited about poetry, real poetry, don't send them to the national finals in D.C. to read only "acceptable" poems with "acceptable" style.  Poets come to D.C. for only one reason: to start something.  Or to become Poet Laureate.  There's also William Carlos Williams, who was appointed Poet Laureate but did not serve, because they were afraid he'd start something.  There were rumors that he was about to open a red wheelbarrow of whoopass on our nation's capital.

What set me off on all this today was The Writer's Almanac, another Poetry Foundation program that plays every morning on the local NPR station.  It's just a couple of minutes of Garrison Keillor moistly huffing his way through some writing history and birthday shoutouts to famous writers.  He also reads a poem each day.  For some reason, the choice of poem drives me absolutely crazy.  Often they're fine poems, but sometimes they're so simplistic and trite they practically ruin my morning.  One time he just quoted the lyrics to some old show tune.  I wanted to go out and slash tires.  Today was worse, though, because he cheated.  Of all the poems to read aloud, this is the undiscovered gem I heard tonelessly recited from my radio speaker:

Faith's Review and Expectation

by John Newton

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ'd.

. . . and so on.  Aha, very tricky of you.  I'll grant you, that's technically a poem.  But in another sense, I just heard the world's least charismatic singer adding weird pauses to the world's most famous song.  Well, two can play at that game:

Holla'back Girl

by Gwen of Stefani

Uh huh -- this is my shit:  All the girls,

Stomp your feet.  Like this. A few times -- I've been around

That track.  So it's not.  Just.  Gonna happen like

That . . . Because I ain't no

Holla'back girl.

Your base and baseless calumny

Shall not draw hollas from my throat.

'Neath bleachers you'll receive from me

A punchful lesson, learned by rote.

For this shit is bananas.

 

Technorati Tags: poetry, Poetry Foundation, Writer's Almanac, refusal to holla back

Day Watch (Дневной дозор)

The Russian sci-fi epic explodaganza Day Watch is the middle part of a trilogy that began with Night Watch and will conclude, maybe, with a movie called, maybe, Dusk Watch.  (It's all very complicated, so let these folks explain it and tell them thanks for the images I stole from their site.)  In the Watch mythology, Good and Evil gave up fighting years ago and created a truce which allows each human to choose, without interference, which way to flip.  Some folks, known as the Others, have special powers, and when they choose a side they join up with the Night Watch (good) or the Day Watch (evil).  Sounds backwards, right?  Well, the Night Watch "watches" the Day Watch, and vice versa.  There, now it makes as much sense as it ever will.

Day Watch throws a lot of complicated mythology at you and if you haven't seen Night Watch it won't make a lick of sense.  Even if you have, it makes two, maybe three licks, tops.  One nice thing is that Day Watch actually explains a few of the things that were glossed over in Night Watch, as well as bringing back every character from the first movie.  Really, every single character, even (mostly) inanimate objects.  I normally find that excessive but here it helped me keep track of how all these goddamn things tied the hell together.  By the end, they tied together, well, let's just say very tightly.

I liked Night Watch with some reservations and I liked Day Watch much more.  It's  funnier, for example.  Dispensing with the complicated mythology means there's more time for character-based comedy.  From the very first scene to the goofy credit sequence, the movie regularly reminds you that although the fate of the world hangs in the balance, the fate of the world always hangs in the balance, and we're not dead yet.  It's a bit like Men in Black.  The two main plot devices are a magic piece of chalk and an evil yo-yo.  I am not kidding at all.  The Watch trilogy has been called Russia's answer to the Matrix trilogy, because it's full of crazy stunts, loud music, and CGI destruction.  But I believe it is superior to the Matrices, because although I didn't see Reloaded or Revolutions, I bet they had, at the most, a marginally evil yo-yo.  Day Watch has the most evil fucking yo-yo I've ever seen going all Tommy Smothers on downtown Moscow.

Unlike the first film, Day Watch gives screen time to the forces of evil, who are more entertaining, and not all that evil.  The good guys have the coolest wheels (a beat-up municipal truck) and the hottest hottie (Olga, played by Galina Tyunina -- I wasn't crazy about Alisa, but decide for yourself) but the evil guys have better clothes and dance moves.  Also, the good guys are at least as evil as the evil guys.  They're a bunch of sanctimonious, manipulative assholes.  The evil guys aren't sanctimonious.  The Watch series depicts Light and Dark Others as bureaucrats and ogliarchs, respectively, each side constantly bending the rules of a corrupt system.  If you had to choose, wouldn't you party with the ogliarchs, too?

I saw the subtitled theater version, and as someone who speaks Russian at the level of a child or a dog (a sneaky, Bulgakov type dog), I thought the translation was sort of off but nothing important was missing.  Some of the jokes didn't make sense in English, but you can still tell they're jokes.  I don't know how you would translate "yolki palki" -- imagine if it were OK for a little kid to say, "Fuck me!" in surprise.  Just barely shocking, but mostly cute.  But the subtitles read, "Eh, do as you want," or something equally unfunny.  It's as if they translated that line from Snakes on a Plane as, "I have serious concerns about the total serpentine content of my aircraft."

However, these are no ordinary subtitles!  They show up all over the screen, in different colors, with pretty fade and dissolve effects, all contextually based.  The word "blood" will be red, and drip off the screen, whereas "mint" is green, and "snow" gets blown away as if by wind.  As someone drums and sings aloud, the words bounce to the rhythm.  It sounds gimmicky but after a few minutes I started viewing the subtitles as an integrated part of the images on the screen, as opposed to a distraction.  my favorite example is when an unseen force starts whispering things that aren't really speech, like the jungle on Lost, so the subtitles flash a bunch of nonsense words rapidly across the screen.  It's very cool, but I can't really explain the full effect, even if I worgy huplar glumaphs rinklor moo -- yeah, that doesn't work.

If it's playing in your area, and it won't be for long, I highly recommend Day Watch, and I'm not just saying that because Vladimir Putin can kill anyone he likes at any time.  You should have a high tolerance for loud music, fast action, and magic chalk, and renting Night Watch beforehand couldn't hurt.  But that's all you'll need to experience and even enjoy this movie.  Actually, you'll need some way to pay the theater people, too.  They should take cash or a credit card.  And find a ride to the theater, unless it's within walking distance.  Also, wear clothes.  (Banditos readers -- I included these last few suggestions in case this review gets reprinted in Ain't It Cool News.  Ignore this.)  Again, the movie is Day Watch, so sit down and watch it, and if something on the screen is scary or makes you feel funny, use your inside voice.

Technorati Tags: Day Watch, Dnevnoi Dozor, Night Watch, Light Others, Dark Others, all the other Others, Bulgakov, Putin, Ain't It Cool News, that idiot Harry Knowles

Phone In Friday: Let's Fight!

“You just opened up Hand-ora's Box.”
“You just popped in a DVD of Thomas the Tank Injury.”
“You just entered a hemisphere of pain.”
“Looks like it's time for a movie starring William Hurt.  One in which the protagonist gets punched by me.  For example, The Accidental Tourist in West Punchadelphia.”
“I guess somebody wants to play Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne?  Is that too subtle?”
“Kittens get hittin's, and I just heard a meow.”
“Luncheons get punchin's, and I just heard a sandwich.”
“Gimme an A!  Gimme an L!”  [See if you can spell ALTERCATION.]
“Looks like somebody has a meeting with former House Majority leader Bill Fist (R-Tenn).”
“Your ass is glass, and I'm the master artisan.”
“Your mouth is writing checks that your body will endorse and hand over to me, at which point I will deposit them in my high-injury Roth IRA.”
“Like L.L. Bean's fall catalog, you're going down.”
“Like L.L. Cool J's momma instructed me, I'm gonna knob your couch . . . was that it?  She mumbles.”
“I'm gonna hit you so hard, your name will get hyphenated.”
“Oh, it's in now.”

 

Puzzle Quest Epithets

Continuing the casual games theme, I still pick up Puzzle Quest when I want a quick gem-based battle against a goblin that cheats.  That screen is an April Fool's joke, but they really do cheat, I'm sure of it.  If I match four gems in a row, I get a free turn, and that's it.  If the enemy matches four gems, he gets a free turn, and then matches another four, and then he matches five skulls and suddenly it's "You hath been defeated" and I have to turn the DS off for a while because all I can think about is how easily I could snap that hinge.  That'd show 'em.  Shit assers.

I discovered a whole new epithets for the suspiciously lucky bad guys in Puzzle Quest.  When I get mad at God of War, I just say, "fuck!" but when Puzzle Quest baddies attack me I cry out, "Shit asser!"  I think it started with just "Shit!" when the screen fills with Four in a Row,  Four in a Row Again, Five in a Row, You're Really Boned, Guess Who's About to Hath Been Defeated? It's Ye! (And annoyingly, the words fill the DS screen so I can't see the board and I have a nasty surprise when I finally get my turn, if I even get one.)  "Shit!" is the immediate recognition that something bad happened, but then I start to take it personally, and want to insult whoever did this to me.  I'm already sort of syntactically primed with "shit" so I call them "Asser."  Is it a corruption of "bastards"?  It's completely unconscious, and when I try to hold it in I still do it in my head.

Google finds a few pages with "shit asser," but mostly in French.  Make of that what you will.  I like that it doesn't target any gender, race, or even species -- it applies to every single baddie, because they all have asses that shit.  (Except maybe the ghosts.  Do ghosts shit?)  If you would like to include "shit asser" in your life the proper emphasis is "Shit asser!" followed by furiously snapping the DS shut and punching a wall until you find a stud.

Denis Dyack and Playing Pretend

In an interview with gamesindustry.biz, Denis Dyack, who has been working on a game called Too Human since before humans descended from trees, opined that gamers want “shorter, better games.”  Presumably all that development time has gone towards making Too Human better, which sounds nice.  But the really brilliant strategy has been to make it proportionately shorter.  It was originally planned as five PSOne discs worth of game, and now, hopefully, it will fit on a single 5 1/4” floppy.  But it will still cost $60.

Saying a game has 60-100 hours of play doesn't mean much.  Chutes and Ladders has 60-100 hours of play if you're very, very unlucky.  However, for a truly fun game, that's at least $1/hour of fun, a rate you can't even get from very entertaining illegal immigrants.  The real question is, what is the dollar-per-fun ratio in Too Human?  Well, the game isn't out yet, so reviewing it would be unfair to Denis Dyack and probably upset him.  So, let's examine an imaginary action/RPG instead.

Excessively Homo Sapiens: Dollars/Fun

$1 = Opening it for the first time.  That's fun no matter how awful the game turns out to be!  It's true!

$1 = Ooh, pretty manual!  Hmm, too much/not enough information. Screw this, let's install this thing.  I didn't come here to read.

$3 = Opening cutscene.  THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER.  Come look at this, honey!  What?  No, I can't pause it.  Fine, I'll tell you about it later.  You'll love that.

$10 = What is this?  Oh, it's the tutorial.  Clever, I didn't realize I was in the tutorial for a second there.  Oh look, people are telling me how to do things.  This was all in the manual/This should have been in the manual instead.

$10 = This action stuff is pretty exciting, if a little easy.  Is this for the RPG players?  Come on, I can handle it, give me a challenge!

$4 = Menus?  What?  Upgrades?  Leveling up?  Oh damn it.  I'm in the RPG part.  I wish I had a gun big enough to blow away this boring-ass crap.  I'll just randomly choose things.

$5 = Yee haw!  More action!  And it's more challenging, too!  Yes! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?

$1 = OH MY GOD THAT THING JUST ATE ME

$1 = YOU ATE ME AGAIN YOU SON OF A BITCH

$1 = STOP EATING ME I MEAN IT

$6 = Screw this.  I'm going to Gamefaqs.  I think it's a bug.

$4 = Damn it!  I screwed myself when I leveled up.  I knew I shouldn't have put all my points into Emotional IQ!  Better reload a save.

$8 = Put all points into Shootery, and . . . that was easy.  Oh well.

$15 = Look at the size of that thing!  Oh, that was easy, too. Hooray.  Gamefaqs said I should start building up my Smack Laser now, because I'll need it for the final boss.

$16 = Branching storyline.  I guess I have an important choice to make.  Should I kill the baby bunny or pat its head?  This is a real moral dilemma.

$23 = I have to collect how many pieces?  Oh come on.  Why is it that everyone thinks they can break the most valuable thing in the universe into 3 to 20 pieces?  Someone is just going to go all over and re-assemble them.  And fuck, it looks like that person is me.

$42 = Here we are at last.  Me and the guy I'm gonna kill.  Maybe I can learn his pattern, time my attacks just right – Ow! Ow! Ow! Fine then.  Smack Laser!  Smack Laser!  Smack – oh, he's dead.

$100 = Why is everyone crying?  Oh no!  I just got the bad ending! So I was supposed to pet the baby bunny?  How the hell was I supposed to figure that out?

As you can see, if anything, games should cost more than $60, a lot more.  And then we enter the realm of replayablity, where you try to suck more entertainment out of that disc by playing it over and over again because that money sure ain't coming back.  Can you get 100% and the super special secret ending?  Answer: No.  No you can't.  But you can get carpal tunnel syndrome.  And the next time you pull out your credit card to buy a game, you'll do it with your teeth.

(Note to Denis Dyack: Stop Googling yourself and get back to work on the game!  It's not going to ruin itself!)