Donald Pleasence at 3:06 – what???

Utica, NY! not too far away.

since i blew it on game night and accidentally used the warp whistle and skipped world 7, here’s a sped up playthrough. it’s almost like really playing it sort of. i don’t know how the guy does that 99 lives trick in the fortress… either it’s some glitch/cheat or he edited out of the video where he went in and out of the fortress a million times. it’s also funny when the song stops and the video continues in silence.

i put “game night” instead of video game night because i wondered if we could inject board games or something (Game of Life night?) into it at a later date. who knows. anyway, even though i’m pumped about game night, somehow i can’t imagine it being as prolific as movie night, if just because we’d run out of games to play or something, i don’t know. but i’ll start a list of games like the movie list:

River City Ransom
Strider 2
Super Mario Kart
Tenchu 2 (sort of)

I’ve been absent the past few days. I feel especially bad about that considering zach’s latest post on lookout cartridge. I feel like I’m sort of slinking in here with my low brow dumbness. If I had to make a comparison, it’s like I’m embodying at once both of samwise gamgee’s characterizations of gollum, slinker and stinker. Hope you enjoy this survival guide though.

I was actually looking for “speed runs,” videos of people playing the same NES titles I used to. Searching youtube I discovered an entire world of game reviews. I must have spent like 2 nights going through them all. When I’d find another competent reviewer my heart would lift in joy in hopes that I’d find someone who played “Predator.” That happened eventually.

Anyway, I can get you started if you aren’t already aware of this stuff. I don’t want to fill up the post with embedded videos so I’ll just post like 2 and link to others.

1) What is going on?

The basic idea here is that someone plays a game, records an audio commentary, and edits everything together. For the most part the reviews are of poorly made NES titles, but those are the ones you want to watch. A large number of these are of notorious movie games like Jaws. It is sometimes strange to think about how video was gaming back the days of NES. From what I can gather, most games that are based on movies are pretty bad still today and usually are just made out of a desire to capitalize on whatever happens to be popular at the moment. However, in the past I think, game studios were able to get away with this at an entirely more egregious level than would ever happen today.

Like I said I’m only going to post two videos here. This one, titled “NES Apocalypse” is by armake21. There are actually a few reviews in this video, including “Predator.”

2) Who is doing it?

I think this is, or at least was, fairly popular. As with all fads, it becomes increasingly more difficult to separate out all the pale imitators. I have to confess, the first reviews I watched were by the irate gamer. Although, it seems he might be a relative late comer to this field, and a little heavy on the post production. I like Armake21, and the angry video game nerd. Definitely check out avgn’s review of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

3) Whither the speed run?

There is room for many different forms of NES nostalgia on youtube. Enjoy speed runs, and enjoy these reviews.

Over the weekend, C-Span devoted an entire afternoon to a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shurgged. Incidentally, another example of how deplorably biased C-Span is in programming. I’ve never read Atlas but did read The Fountainhead in high school, read parts of her philosophical work and seen the Lifetime style biopic. I’ve also read a fair amount of the literary criticism because it’s mostly negative and I get a kick out of it. Given that The Fountainhead was foisted upon me with the imprimatur of the state, I feel a particular license in criticizing anything Rand. I remember being the only person in my English class that took issue with this stupid novel. Though I may not have had a real conception of left and right politics at the time, I understood that I disagreed very deeply with the vision of life that the book was espousing.

At one point or another, I think most of us will find that a close acquaintance has become enthralled with the semi-cultish Rand philosophy. Maybe it’s happened to you already or maybe it has yet to happen. I’m offering this brief survival guide as a first line of defense.
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so often think about being a dr. manhattan type character or like the authority where you just step in and are like: “this is how it’s going to be from now on.”

story link.

video link.

Meanwhilst

I think an apology is in order. To any Dean’s Worlders who happen on the site through naftali’s link, please view the post below through the lens of totally irrational anger I was looking through when I wrote it. Although the post had been percolating for weeks, it was written immediately following an intensely, almost aggressively negative experience in a DW comment thread. Even as I was writing the post I knew it was flying further and further away from my true feelings. As is evident from the post’s preamble, I really do enjoy the site and was trying to provide a window for my friends into why I gain so much pleasure from participating in the comment threads there. I think we can count that mission a pretty unqualified failure. Special apologies are due to Dean, Daves S and P, Kevin D, Ron, and Aziz who all came in for their small or large share of totally uncalled for and (as Dean pointed out in a comment below) patently untrue criticisms. The post really doesn’t accurately capture my feelings about the site, something probably best expressed through my actions in reading and attempting to contribute to the site on a daily basis. I won’t edit the post below so as not to retcon the past, but please accept this apology. Sorry, guys.

Update: Please see the apologia for this post above under “Atonement – Dean’s World.“  Basically what it boils down to is that the characterizations provided below of various front-pagers and commenters at DW are less the sum total of my opinions about them, and more the worst momentary impressions I have ever privately held towards each of them.  Read the commentary below with that filter on, and be sure to actually check out the site to make up your own mind.

I can’t really explain what it is that first drew me to Dean’s world. I think it might have been a link from humor blog defective yeti, who referred to Dean’s World’s creator as “the estimable” Dean Esmay. And while I think my primary initial interest in the site was in pissing myself off by getting incensed at some of the site’s denizens’ ragingly conservative viewpoints, I think the longer I participate there the more I’ve come to view it with a certain fondness and maybe even admiration (or even, in my deepest, darkest recesses, an aspiration to be invited as a front-page contributor). However, the site has grown pretty large compared to my first forays into its wilds several years ago. Dean himself has receded into the background as of late, with a host of new front-pagers taking charge. Thus, as the blog morphs from one voice to many, there might be some initial confusion or frustration from the neophyte looking to unlock the site’s many hidden treasures. In an attempt to alleviate the initial deluge of information one might get from casually glancing at the site, I present to you my Survival Guide to Dean’s World.

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Mark and I are probably the only people who actually spent any amount of time watching the TLC show What Not to Wear. WNTW is a fashion reality show where they take the tragically unhip and teach them how to choose clothes that will more attractively fit their ages and body. What really bugged me about the show, though, and the reason why I basically had to stop watching it, was that the female half of the fashion gurus, Stacy London, viewed fashion as basically a monolith of whatever she says goes. Like she’s the fashion decider or whatever. No matter who the person was, she’d suggest that they spend thousands of dollars on single outfits that were so unbearably time-sensitive that they’d be sure to be out of fashion within the month, if not the week. It was such a common thread that she completely ignored the personal styles of whoever was the show’s victim that Mark and I dubbed her part on the show as “the Stacy Stamp.” Like some couture assembly line where each person coming through the show is stamped and molded into Stacy’s unique, godawful image.

That’s why it was so surprising to me to turn on the Today show and see that she was sitting there giving Merideth Viera fashion advice for spring (full video segment with attendant story is here). Is everyone on crack? I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that I could probably use a course in “What Not to Wear,” but having said that I think that I’m a pretty decent judge of what does and doesn’t look good on other people. I watched the whole segment basically gasping in horror at the fashion travesties trotted out for display, of which the above picture is only the most egregious example.

With all that set-up you might think the survival guide would be fairly long and detailed, but it’s actually pretty simple:

1. Ignore everything Stacy London says.

That’s it. If you follow that simple rule you’ll probably do just fine.