Montreat! Montreat! Montreat!

Although I've certainly shared videos, myself, I have to admit that I really wish that people didn't share videos on Facebook and elsewhere as much as they do. I would much rather everything shared was text. The reason for this is that I do much of my browsing during downtime at work, and I don't wish to disturb my co-workers with the sound (obviously, an audio-only piece can be even worse). Also, it's much easier to leave a page of text alone when a task comes in, and come back to it once I'm done, than it is with video.

All this means is that, when I started to see this video of "Stuff Presbyterian Seminarians Say" making the rounds on Facebook Monday morning, I waited until I was at home that evening to finally watch it. You can watch the video for yourself after the jump, or just go straight on to my comments.
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Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - BurgerTime

Although I was only 8 years old at the time, I nonetheless have always thought that 1982 was a pretty good year. Besides being the summer I lived in Walnut Creek, which I've always considered an important part of my childhood story, I later began to notice that a great many things I enjoyed had origins in that specific year. Sitcoms such as Cheers, Family Ties, and Silver Spoons all started that year. Michael Jackson's Thriller was released and Madonna made her debut. I've also discovered, in the years since, that several of the video games that I still remember fondly dated back to 1982. Admittedly, some of the most significant games—Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, for example—had already been introduced by that time (in 1980 and 1981, respectively), but by 1982, the golden age of video games was well underway (Professional video game referee Walter Day of Twin Galaxies actually says 1982 marks the start of the golden age, citing the date of a TIME magazine cover story. I don't go quite that far, but it's worth pointing out). To commemorate the 30th anniversary of some of these important video games, I'm going to feature a different one each month.
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New Super Mario Bros. Wii Boxed Sticker Capsule Toys

My current living situation is such that I need to go out of my way to get quarters from time to time. As I've discussed in the past, this is not something one can do as quickly and easily these days as perhaps one once could, but there are still a couple of reliable outlets near where I live. One such outlet is a pizza place that still has a change machine near a selection of video games they have on hand. Because getting quarters is a service that I am glad they provide, I generally use at least one of the quarters I get on one of the video games, but this past weekend, I was informed that the video games were out of order. I therefore spent some quarters on something I think I've only done twice in the past decade: a capsule toy machine. In this case, I spent a dollar on one of the sticker boxes from the new "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" game.
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Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - Pac-Man (Atari 2600 version)

Although most of these monthly video game features will be about games you would have had to pump quarters into to play, the rise of the home console was an important facet of an earlier generation, as well. And since I can't properly feature Pac-Man's 30th anniversary this year (not that I let it go by completely unnoticed at the appropriate time), celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Atari 2600 home version (which, according to an article in the April 5, 1982 edition of TIME Magazine, came out this very month 30 years ago) seems to be the way to go.
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Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - Q*bert

Although I haven't actually seen the movie yet, the release of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph in theaters this month is one that has relevance for these video game posts. In case you haven't heard about it, the movie features a 1980's style video game villain (the eponymous Ralph) who tries to transcend his role and do something good for a change. Although Ralph and the game in which he is featured are newly-created for the movie, Wreck-It Ralph features a number of actual video game icons in a series of cameo appearances. Among these is the hero of this month's game, Q*bert.
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On Quarters, Coin-Operated Laundry, and Inequity

When I was a kid, and my friend and I would go to play video games, getting quarters with which to play was a minor challenge. Usually, the question was far more one of whether we had any money at all rather than one of making change, because at most venues where video games could be found, there were convenient change machines standing ready to convert our dollar bills into quarters we could pump into the games.

These days, I really don't play coin-operated video games anymore, but my need for quarters still exists. Only nowadays, I need quarters for a far more basic need: to do my laundry using the coin-operated units in my apartment complex. But getting quarters nowadays is much more of a challenge than it was back then:
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Notes from Montreat Epilogue 1: David LaMotte Concert

I stayed in Montreat for an extra day to see David LaMotte in concert. It's easily the only time I've only ever seen him in a dress shirt and jacket. The reason he wore such "nice" clothes on this occasion was that this concert was tied to a Patron's Dinner for supporters of the Mountain Retreat Association (although the concert itself was free to anyone able to attend). Before the concert began, they also introduced a short fund-raising video which included clips from the conferences I was attending for the previous couple of weeks (among others). That video is now available online. Check it out on Facebook! That the video was shown as planned is a testimony to the hard work of Montreat's Summer Staff, who had to deal with an unexpected technical problem. The light bulb in the video projector which hangs some 15 feet off of the ground had burnt out, and they didn't have the time before people would start arriving to get a ladder tall enough to change it properly, then test the projector out with the new bulb. So they wrangled a portable projector and scrambled to get the sound and video all working together in the last 40 minutes or so before the concert began. No one who arrived with the bulk of the crowd (and therefore didn't see all this scrambling in progress) would have even known that there was a problem!

David LaMotte's roughly hour-long concert included songs from across the spectrum of David's 18 years (so he tells us) of singing and touring. It's the first time I've ever heard a few of his songs live (even some songs that I know he'd written before the last time I saw him live about 9 years ago). One such song, "S.S. Bathtub" is a song from his children's album, recorded in 1998. It was especially cool when he interrupted himself while discussing a different song to talk to a small child in the front row (who requested "S.S. Bathtub") and, when learning that the boy would be three the next day, got everybody to sing "Happy Birthday to You."

Another noteworthy moment of the concert is when David sang his cover of Sting's "Walking in Your Footsteps." He did the same basic technique I described Jeffrey Harper using in my last post: looping various background sounds and stretches of music, and then layering them one on top of the other. I'm only sorry that I didn't keep track of how many layers David ultimately used. It seems like he must have had at least 10 going on at once!

Perhaps the most special bit for me was getting to speak with David briefly after the concert. There was a bit of a line, but after waiting 9 years, I wasn't in any hurry if he wasn't. He recognized my name, and even commented about how I was usually on the "other coast" and how we had just missed each other a number of times over the past few years. That made my day! Definitely worth staying an extra day in Montreat for!

Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - Pitfall!

While the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man was the highest selling game in that system's history, Pitfall!, the holder of the #2 position, has a perhaps more interesting and unique story. To tell it properly, however, it isn't enough to go back 30 years to the game's introduction in 1982. I need to go back a few years more....
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Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - Donkey Kong, Jr.

The most famous videogame character of all time is (with apologies to Pac-Man) Mario. I would therefore be amiss not to feature one of Mario's earliest adventures. Of course, I've already missed the 30th anniversary of the very first Mario game, Donkey Kong, which premiered in 1981. However, when that game first came out, the protagonist did not yet have the name "Mario" (he is referred to as "Jumpman" on the cabinet). The first video game in which Mario is referred to by name is our subject for this month: Donkey Kong, Jr.
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White Flour: The Video

Five years ago, the city of Knoxville, Tennessee was the site of a most unusual demonstration. A group of white supremacists marched through the city, but (sadly) that wasn't what was unusual. The unusual part was the form of counter-protest staged in response.
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Loot Crate Highlight of the Month - April 2013

So I'm still getting the hang of this Loot Crate thing. It wasn't until some time after I'd posted last month's highlight, featuring a Darth Vader Bobble-Head, that I'd realized "Maybe some people don't want to get spoiled by the subject line or the image they see before they've even clicked the link...". No one posted any angry comments last month, but I'm going to play this a little more coy this time around. If you want to see which item I've highlighted from this month's Loot Crate, click the "Read more" link (or keep reading the next paragraph, depending on what your current view of this page is like). If not, no harm done....
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Parents, Beware!

First off, I can't take credit for digging this video out of the depths of time. It came from CrazySteve, by way of Nala (CrazySteve cites yet another source, but that's as far back as I'm going to go...).

Before I make any further comments, though, you need to see the clip.

OK, seen it now? Good. Now we continue with comments.

In case it's not already painfully obvious (which means you probably don't know me and/or haven't ever read my blog), I do not agree with the opinions stated in the video.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's say I was concerned about the "witchcraft" that shows up in the Voltron segment. Has anyone noticed that the "witchcraft" is being performed by the bad guys? Bad guys, by definition, do bad things! If folks are concerned that kids might emulate this behavior, we should just eliminate all villains from all fiction everywhere, lest a child decide that they'd rather be like the bad guy (not that I don't think that kids do like to emulate bad guys once in a while, but this is pretty flimsy reasoning for keeping these things out of our fiction).

No doubt these are the same folks who hate Mickey Mouse for doing the Sorcerer's Apprentice bit. At least there, Mickey is the "hero" of a piece. Ignore the morality lesson in that story (to spell it out for those who need it, beware of using shortcuts to do your chores), just make sure you're not watching the mouse do magic! And, of course, none of us need reminding of what such folks think about Harry Potter....

But it wasn't enough that the protectors-of-our-children (patent pending) condemn Voltron to the fiery furnace, they also set their sights on Transformers because of the level of violence in it, even to the point of killing (gasp!). To illustrate this point, they show us... not the infamous "death of Optimus Prime" clip from Transformers: The Movie, but a scene from War Dawn, a second season episode (making it possible that TF:TM hadn't yet been screened when this video was created. War Dawn came out about 8 months before TF:TM. However, you can ignore the 1984 date shown as the date by YouTube. War Dawn itself didn't appear until December of 1985!). Not only is the "evil" of this scene again perpetrated by the bad guy, but the two robots (not humans!) killed here are described as restored to life by the end of that episode itself! If these self appointed protectors-of-our-children wanted to make a fuss, they might at least have complained that this sequence trivializes death, making it look like a dead person can simply be restored to life with little difficulty, but they didn't even have that much imagination.

And I haven't even addressed the point that "real" killing was forbidden on US afternoon cartoons at the time (you ever notice how, even in the military-based GI Joe cartoon of the era, nothing more "alive" than a tree trunk ever got hit by all that laserfire?). How hard did the protectors-of-our-children have to dig to find this clip, that they could even claim represented death? I'm fairly confident that they wouldn't have found any "real" deaths in any other pre-movie episodes.

Even if I agreed with the concerns about witchcraft and violence in children's television to the same extent as these folks, their arguments are terrible! Just what did they think they were accomplishing?

As I've said in the past, such diatribes by people with too much time on their hands does a horrible disservice to the reputation of Christianity. It's no wonder I have to wade through so many comments online where fans think horrible things about Christians. You don't have to look far to find examples like this. Never mind that millions of Christians are able to live lives of integrity and faith without buying into this fear-mongering. And, if that weren't enough, we have to fight those within our faith who accuse us of "letting evil win, by doing nothing" (to paraphrase a statement often attributed to Edmund Burke, although he may not be the origin), or passively allowing these kinds of "sins" to be portrayed in cartoons.

But, since I don't agree with those who created the video in the first place, I must not care enough.... At least I have faith that God will sort it all out in the end.

Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - Mr. Do!

As the year 2012 comes to a close, I find myself tying up loose ends. The bulk of my attention this past couple of months has been in some combination of the usual Christmas preparations with a move out of the apartment my wife and I have lived in for the past eight and a half years. I finally got the last of our personal belongings moved out of there this morning. Of course, the task of properly moving into our new home has barely begun! But, for now, that can wait. With the original Star Wars trilogy playing in the background as we await 2013, I have one more blog entry to finish up before the ball drops: the final video game 30th anniversary of 2012: Mr. Do!
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Theft of the Golden Disk video

Created by members of the official Transformers Collectors' Club, this 2-part video features several of the characters from the BotCon 2006 exclusive set (not to mention the dragon character you see in the picture here in a pre-Beast form!). They even got original Beast Wars Megatron voice actor David Kaye to reprise his role for this fan video!

It's a Wonderful Life Revisited

For many people, watching It's a Wonderful Life during Christmastime has become something of a Christmas tradition. I myself haven't watched the movie all the way through in years, but something hit me the other day, and so, thanks to Google Video, I was able to download a copy of the 1946 classic, which I watched last night. (Disclaimer: contrary to a popular legend, It's a Wonderful Life is NOT in the public domain. Although Google Video was offering the video for free in 2006, and was presumed to be doing so legally, the link has since been taken down.)

This movie is so steeped in American culture that even most people who've never seen the movie have some idea of the plot: George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) is about to commit suicide, and an angel is sent to save his life. In order to convince George that he is wrong in his belief that the world would be better off without him, the angel shows George just what the world would have been like if George had never been born. Eventually, George is convinced of just how much his life has been worth, and he chooses not to commit suicide.

I had a fairly good recollection of George's state of mind at the time the angel is sent to save him: the Bailey family Building and Loan is in dire straits. George's uncle has misplaced an important deposit, and George is accused of misapropriation of funds. Unable to collect the money, facing jail time, and possessing a $15,000 Life Insurance policy, George believes that he'll be worth more dead than alive and proceeds to a bridge, from which he intends to jump.

What I'd forgotten, and what particularly struck me during this viewing, was just how miserable George was throughout his life up to this pivotal moment. All his life, George has had dreams of leaving his "crummy little" home town of Bedford Falls to travel the world. He has ambitions of building great things and striking it rich. Unfortunately for George, every time he is just about to be able to leave, something happens. For example, on the night before George is to leave for college, George's father dies. Not only is George tied up for the next three months putting his father's affairs in order, but it soon becomes clear that the family Building and Loan will be shut down unless George himself agrees to take over.

It also suprised me just how much I identified with George's reasons for taking over the Building and Loan, rather than just letting it go. Bedford Falls is almost entirely owned by banker Henry Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore), a hard-bitten old man who has made his fortune on the backs of people trying to make a life for themselves. George knows that, without his family's Building and Loan, most people will never know the financial security that can come with owning one's own home, being forced to pay Potter's exhorbitant rental rates, never being able to scrape up more than the bare minimum to survive on. Although the monetary figures, being in keeping with the era, seem miniscule compared to the rates of today, this is a situation that is near to my own heart (in fact, I've written on the subject a number of times over the past couple of years). I wish there were more "Bailey Building and Loans" in today's world!

But again and again as I watched the movie yesterday, I was especially aware of the personal cost George Bailey had to pay for "doing the right thing." For another example, on the evening of George's wedding day, he discovers that the bank has closed down in the wake of a financial crisis. He then discovers that his uncle, in a state of panic, has likewise locked up the Building and Loan. Potter is circling like a vulture nearby, ready to pay Bailey patrons 50 cents on the dollar to snatch up their shares, enabling him to shut down his main competition. Bailey (at the suggestion of his new wife) is forced to use the $2,000 (a huge sum in that time) saved up for his honeymoon to give his patrons the money they need to get through the crisis, thereby preventing the Building and Loan from being shut down for good. It's a very memorable scene, and is a wonderful illustration of the kind of person George is. He consistently comes to the aid of others, despite the often considerable costs to himself.

In many ways, I identify with George Bailey. He is the kind of person I very much want to be like. But I grow weary of the financial frustration of living in Southern California, and often feel "trapped" in my current situation, much as Potter observes that Bailey feels "trapped" in Bedford Falls during another important scene. While I don't believe I could ever be described as suicidal, I find myself very much wishing that there was "another way" for people such as George to attend to the needs of others. While I haven't forgotten the ending to It's a Wonderful Life, where the people of Bedford Falls all gather together, pooling their resources to help George out of his situation, and he realizes just how "rich" he truly is in the love he has from his family and friends, I don't have much faith in similar community miracles happening today. Perhaps I have become too cynical. I very much want to believe in such miracles, much as I want to be the kind of selfless person that George Bailey often was. But that can be a pretty hard place to be....

Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator

I have to confess to a bit of uncertainty about whether this month's entry really fits as a 30th anniversary. The Wikipedia article suggests that Sega didn't release this game until 1983, and for all I know, their sources may well be right. However, I'm going by the copyright date Sega included on the game itself, which places this game in 1982, and therefore as worthy of inclusion. For those who are sticklers for accuracy, and who believe that the 1983 date is indeed more accurate, I can only hope that my placing this entry toward the end of the year helps (although I have my own reasons for not featuring this game in November or December).
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The Perseverance of Weird Al Yankovic

Meeting Weird Al at BotCon 2009

The odds are you've probably already heard that Weird Al Yankovic's most recent album, Mandatory Fun, has officially been named the top album on the Billboard chart this week. Although Weird Al has been doing albums for more than three decades, this has never happened before, so it's kind of a big deal. Suffice it to say, being an album of parodies and funny novelty songs, this is not the kind of thing that normally tops the charts (in fact, according to Buzzfeed, the last comedy album to debut at #1 was in 1960, by the still-living legend Bob Newhart - UPDATE 7/26/14 - I've since verified that the last comedy album to reach #1 at all was in 1963, so it's still been more than 50 years however you slice it!).
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Video Game 30th Anniversary of the Month - Popeye

When Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario (and many of Nintendo's most popular games) was working on Donkey Kong, he wasn't originally looking to build a game around a giant ape and a carpenter with a propensity for jumping (only later did Mario become a plumber). Hoping to develop a game to combat the seemingly-insurmountable popularity of Pac-Man, Miyamoto had originally intended to license existing popular characters that would provide an immediate draw to game-playing audiences. Those plans fell through at the time, and Donkey Kong became the history-making game we know today. However, in 1982, Miyamoto was finally able to acquire the license he had been seeking, and thus Popeye and his friends became video game icons, in addition to comic and cartoon favorites.

Although Popeye isn't as ubiquitous these days as he has been in previous decades (I'll have something to say about the possible reasons for this at the end), if you know anything about Popeye, you can expect at least four elements to almost any Popeye story: the "sailor man" himself, his girlfriend Olive Oyl, his rival Brutus,^* and a nearby can of spinach. All of these elements are present in Nintendo's game, as can be seen in this image of the game's opening moments.

The object of the game is to move Popeye around the board collecting various tokens of Olive's affection (hearts in the first round) as they fall toward the water below. Objects at higher levels are worth more points, and if a fallen object stays in the water for too long, it sinks and Popeye loses a turn (it's not good to anger Olive!). Of course, Popeye must do this while avoiding contact with Brutus. Brutus will pummel Popeye into the icy waters if he makes contact, which he will attempt to do not just by chasing him, but also by jumping up to tackle Popeye if the sailor is above him, and by reaching below should Popeye be underneath. If that isn't enough, Brutus can send a volley of bottles flying towards Popeye to knock him out. Popeye can avoid this fate by punching the bottle at just the right moment.

Once per board, Popeye has the option of eating a can of spinach, which generally can be found on the side of the board. To grab a can of spinach, Popeye "punches" it, and he immediately turns red and the famous "Popeye the Sailor Man" song starts to play. The song will play through exactly twice, to indicate how much time Popeye has to use his spinach-powered super-strength to knock Brutus flying into the waters for a temporary cool-down. During this time, Olive's hearts will hover at the height at which they were when the spinach was eaten, and are worth twice as many points as normal.

Another way of stunning Brutus for a few moments is to punch the barrel at the top of the board (only in round one). If you time it just right, it will fall over Brutus' head, and he will be unable to move until it is removed. In theory, Popeye can touch Brutus without harm while Brutus is thus incapacitated, but I don't recommend it. The effect really doesn't last all that long, and it's a pretty senseless risk with absolutely no payoff.

As Popeye collects one of Olive's tokens, it appears at the top of the board. Once Popeye has collected enough of them, he completes the round and moves on to the next one. There are three boards in the game, which repeat in cycle after you have completed them, getting harder to pass each time (and they aren't exactly easy to begin with!).

Other famous Popeye characters make appearances in the game, as well. The Sea Hag appears on the sides of the board (Often two of her at once! Apparently she creates a clone) to throw bottles much as Brutus does, and Wimpy and Swee'Pea appear on the second board, although neither play an active role.

The character of Popeye first appeared in 1929 (just months after Mickey Mouse), and was an enduring favorite for many decades, as the existence of this game attests. He hasn't been quite as popular in years since, possibly at least in part due to changing attitudes about the value of telling children that they can solve their problems by punching out bad guys. I'm certainly sympathetic to concerns that children should not be taught to use violence, but Popeye's had some very positive effects on children, as well. Spinach consumption was reported to have gone up by 33% in a five-year period coinciding with Popeye's animated introduction in the 1930s, and it seems that even as recently as 2010, a study showed that children ate more vegetables after watching old Popeye cartoons (I'd link to the study, but it's apparently one of those things accesible only on an academic database). Surely this a character worth keeping around! Perhaps the recent comic series from IDW (the same company that produces Transformers comics) or the upcoming movie to be directed by Genndy Tartakovsky might help restore Popeye's popularity.

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^*I'm having trouble finding a definitive source to say that this name, rather than the character's original name of "Bluto," was the one used on the Nintendo video game, but that seems to be the general consensus. For those who don't know, the name "Brutus" was created back in the late '50s when King Features (wrongly) thought that they didn't own the rights to use the "Bluto" name. The character has swapped back-and-forth between names ever since, although some more recent interpretations have suggested that the names refer to twin brothers.

Memories of Pengo

I'm kind of a sucker for penguins. Especially of the "cartoon" variety. I think this probably dates back to when I was in elementary school, and my best friend and I would often ride our bikes to the local Big Lots, where they used to have an assortment of video games to be played. One that I latched onto fairly quickly was Pengo.

Pengo is, in many ways, a standard video game of the early 1980's. You would play the role of Pengo (who is, as the name implies, a penguin), who would navigate a maze of ice cubes while trying to avoid contact with a number of "Sno-Bees" that also populate the field. You complete a round by eliminating all the Sno-Bees. This is generally done by pushing ice cubes, which you do by facing the cube and pushing a button, which sends the cube flying across the board until it hits either another ice cube or the edge of the board (if the ice cube is already next to another cube or the edge in the direction you're pushing, the cube you're pushing is instead crushed). Any Sno-Bees caught in the cube's path are knocked out. You can also "stun" Sno-Bees by pushing against the edge of the board (as if pushing an ice cube). Any Sno-Bees along that edge are stunned, and you can simply walk over them in this state. But, be careful! If you wait too long, the Sno-Bee will wake up and try to kill you again! Some ice cubes are Sno-Bee eggs, which hatch to replace Sno-Bees you've removed. These cubes are signified by flashing at the beginning of each round, as well as when an egg is hatching. You can safely eliminate an egg just by crushing an ice cube that contains it.

Bonus points may be gained by lining up the three "diamond cubes" in a row horizontally or vertically. If this is done against the edge of the board, it's worth 5000 extra points and temporarily stuns all active Sno-Bees. But if you can manage to line up three diamond cubes in the middle of the board (as seen here), it's worth 10,000 extra points!

For every couple of boards you completed, you were rewarded with a series of dancing penguins that danced to the tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." This was always my favorite part of the game, and is probably the main reason I enjoy animated penguins so much. I'm also fond of this tune; indeed, "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee," which uses this tune, is one of my favorite hymns! Other games have similar "rewards" for completing a set number of boards, but I really do enjoy this one the best.

Thanks to advances in computer technology, it's fairly cheap and easy to find ways of enjoying this game today. I definitely enjoy the nostalgia trip. Bring on the dancing penguins!

BotCon 2010 Video

I won't be able to attend BotCon this year, but I thought that some of you might appreciate having a link to the video being used to promote this year's event.  Here you go!