Should Hulk Hogan Run for President? Yes.

We don’t discuss politics very often on this website. Obviously, part of this is because we’re a site about old video games, and those worlds really don’t cross over too often.  Another reason is that the members of our staff come from all kinds of ideological viewpoints, and the best way to prevent knife-fights in the office is to avoid the subject entirely. And finally, it’s just better for the website. There are a surprising number of partisan readers (on both sides) who, if they found out our leanings, would say “I had no idea Stryker was a Republican/Democrat! I don’t agree with that party! I therefore forsake this blatantly conservative/liberal website.” This is especially problematic for me, as my political viewpoint tends to be “Contrarian”, meaning that whatever you believe, I’m likely to start believing the opposite, purely out of spite. I… I tend to get punched a lot at debates.

The point is, we’re usually not very political. But then we made a truly awesome discovery. One that we were all able to agree on regardless of our political leanings, and one that we felt could have a major impact of the future of this country:

The ideal Republican candidate for the 2012 Presidential Election is Hulk Hogan.

Now don’t get us wrong.  We don’t all unanimously agree that Hulk Hogan would be an ideal president (although a disturbing number of the staff have decided that, yes, actually he would). And Hulk Hogan might not even want to be president. Or he might not be a Republican – for all we know,  Republicans might have spent the last 30 years metaphorically punching him in the bald spot, and it’s just a matter of time before he rises up, wags a finger at them, and lets loose with a massive leg drop on the GOP.

I guarantee this would never happen to President Hogan.

That seems unlikely though, considering how closely Hulk Hogan embodies almost everything the Republican voters seem to want in a candidate. Don’t believe us? We’ve come up with a handy analysis comparing just how well Hulkamania aligns with current right-wing philosophies on the issues that, going by how much press coverage they get, must be the most important to voters in the upcoming election:

Foreign Policy: Hulk Hogan favors an interventionist foreign policy that aligns pretty closely with the Neoconservative philosophies of the Bush White House. Hulk believes that a real American will “fight for the rights of every man.” It’s important here to note that this means every man in the world, not just every American, thus indicating willingness to invade foreign dictatorships and help spread democracy abroad.

However, one important distinction to make here is that unlike Bush, Hogan has a proven track record of building and leading powerful coalitions. As leader of the NWO, Hogan was able to establish himself as an indomitable superpower not only through his own strength, but by surrounding himself with both powerful allies like Kevin Nash and Randy “Macho Man” Savage, as well less powerful, but strategically important allies, such as Konnan and Syxx. In doing so, he was able to face off against major threats such as Sting and Goldberg (the pro wrestling equivalents of Iran and China) and come away relatively unharmed.

The Economy: The Republican plan for the economy seems to center around two basic tenets:

1. Socialism is bad
2. Everything is socialism.

Using the rules of logic, we can combine these statements to draw the conclusion that “Everything is bad,” which seems like a pretty accurate description of our current economic situation. The key to fixing this bad economy appears to be hating socialism. So what about it? Does Hulk Hogan hate socialism hard enough to make the economy grow again?

I mean, does he hate it as much as he hates shirts?

Hogan hasn’t said much on the subject, but we can interpret a lot from his actions. His opponents will probably jump on his long running feud with the “Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase and try to paint it as typical class warfare against the rich. However, it’s important to note that throughout the feud, Hogan never once tried to forcefully seize and redistribute the Million Dollar Man’s wealth, even when Dibiase was clearly using that wealth against him (trying to buy the Championship, bribing officials, etc.). Above all else, Hogan strongly believes that you have to earn everything you get – a championship has to be won in the ring, not purchased, just as hitting someone with a boot to the face doesn’t entitle you to their money.

And even clearer example can been seen during Hogan’s time leading the New World Order. The NWO had many members covering abroad spectrum of abilities and prestige. As their leader, Hogan had the power to “redistribute” some of this, by putting lesser known wrestlers into higher profile roles within the organization, or teaming up more famous guys with lesser known ones. However, Hogan ran the NWO as a meritocracy, allowing the biggest spotlight the fall upon his brightest stars and forcing the lower tier ones to earn their keep or be dumped from the stable.

Patriotism: From the Red, White and Blues that every Fox News telecast is bathed in, to the Tea Party guys dressed up as Uncle Sam, it’s pretty clear that the right takes patriotism pretty seriously. It not merely a question of whether or not you love America, but how much? Do you love America enough to DVR Glee for it, even though you hate that show? Enough to let it decorate the bathroom with tiny little soaps you aren’t allowed to use? Do you love it enough to come back home to it after a night of heavy drinking when Greece has been making passes at you all night long? Any viable candidate will answer yes to those questions, but how many can honestly say someone wrote a song about just how much of a real American they were? There’s only one person in the world who can answer yes to that last question. Here’s a picture of him getting ready to punch you in the face… with the American flag.

 

Look out!

Health Care: Although it may not be as big of a priority as some of the other issues, health care is a pretty hot-button topic, and one that ties directly into the economy, which is the biggest issue. Democrats say increasing health care costs are a big part of what’s destroying the economy, while Republicans point out that Obama’s health care reforms vaguely resemble socialism (assuming the definition of socialism is “forcing you to buy defective products you can’t afford”), which as we discussed earlier, is what destroys the economy. Rather than get bogged down in the policy quagmire, Hogan’s approach to health care seems to focus on the preventive side of things – two of the three tenets of Hulkamania are taking vitamins, and training hard (the third is saying prayers, which might not win over Dems or Independents, but ought to go over great with the base). The idea here seems to be that by taking personal responsibility for our health, we can make ourselves healthier, which will drive down the cost of insurance, thus making it affordable on the free market. A logical, capitalistic approach that ought to appeal to Republican voters.

Gun Control – As crazy as it may sound now, there was actually a time in recent American history when people tried to make it harder to buy guns. There really isn’t much controversy over this anymore, as both Republicans and Democrats have since come to the conclusion that guns are wonderful. The only debate anymore is whether you believe guns are “pretty sweet, I guess” (liberal), or “really  freaking sweet” (conservative). Still, as someone who spent his entire adult life inflicting unarmed violence on his enemies, it’s easy to see how Hogan might see guns as unnecessary, or worse yet, something that reduces the demand for Americans to develop 27-inch biceps.

Hmm… Let’s see where the Hulkster comes out on the issue:

From the proper angle, the explosion kind of makes him look like Carrot Top.

Ah, yes. I believe that on an NRA approval scale of 1 to 10, this picture would receive a score of “Idaho”. Looks like gun owners have nothing to worry about… unless they happen to be in a boat, obviously.

So there you go. After careful research, I think it’s safe to say that Hulk Hogan would be the ideal Republican presidential candidate.  Also, feel free to suggest some potential running mates in the comments – after all, pro wrestling has no shortage of guys with experience being irrelevant and mostly forgotten (Glacier? D-Lo Brown? That guy from Harlem Heat who wasn’t Booker T?).

Brad Goes to Ireland! Final

In order to get back to the important business of talking about old video games nobody plays anymore, I figured it was about time to wrap up the Ireland articles.  Follow this link to check out a photo album with tons of awesome pictures. As a special bonus, a lot of the captions were funny comments I had originally planned to include in the articles, but wasn’t able to work in coherently.

Brad Goes to Ireland! 4

Part 4 – Castles

Like many countries in Europe, Ireland has a lot of old castles.  Simply saying that doesn’t properly convey just how many castles there are, however.  The Irish landscape is littered with old castles the way my hometown of Buffalo is littered with abandoned factories and decrepit grain mills.  They’re EVERYWHERE.  If you travel for more than a few kilometers in Ireland without seeing a castle, you’re on a body of water.  And even then, look down through the water – see that rocky looking structure below the surface?  Yep, castle.

Now of course, not all of these castles are in great shape.  Which is to say that some castles are actually just a broken stone wall with a sign proclaiming whatever castle it used to be.  And even fully restored, a real life castle might be a little different from what you’ve seen in movies or Dungeons and Dragons.  Some of them are truly impressive, with high walls, towers on every corner, courtyards, and large keeps in the center.  Most are just towers.  Some may have actually been gift shops that were built recently but look like castles.  Here are some of the ones we saw:

Disclaimer:  We weren’t taking really good notes when we went to these castles, so there’s a chance that some of what’s written here may not be entirely accurate.  Which is why a website that’s normally about old Sega games might not be the best place to learn European history.

Roscommon Castle

Roscommon Castle, as originally drawn up by its architects

After looking at the picture, you might be thinking “That must have been a really nice castle at some point, it’s shame they never restored it,” but actually, this pretty much is the way Roscommon Castle has looked for most of its existence.  It was originally built to help fight off an impending invasion, which sounds like a pretty good plan, except that Ireland didn’t have any universities at the time, so they had never researched the treadmill crane or architecture, which meant the castle took forever to build (by the way, if you got that joke, congratulations, you’re a nerd).  In fact, shortly before being completed, that “impending invasion” became an “actual invasion”, and the castle was destroyed.  A few centuries later, an effort was made to restore the castle, which once again was thwarted by an invasion.  Then few centuries after that, another lord took up residence and finally completed the construction, at which time Oliver Cromwell burned it down, because as it turns out, he was kind of a dick to the Irish.  And he fucking hated castles.

Ashford Castle

Nicknamed “Fancypants Castle” or “Uppityville” by, well, us, Ashford Castle in one of those castles that looks exactly how you would imagine a castle to look.  It’s surrounded by water, with a bridge, walls, a gate house, towers, and most importantly, a golf course.  The golf course was likely an addition that was made when it was converted from a castle to a 5-star hotel, though I’d like to think it was there all along.  I imagine there would be no better way to break the spirit of a besieging army than for them to know that while they throw themselves futilely against your impenetrable walls, you’re working through a 12-pack of mead and fixing up your short game.

Bog Castle

This castle wasn’t actually called Bog Castle, but it’s name has been lost to time (ie – it was hard to pronounce and spell, and thus forgotten), so we renamed it after it’s most distinguishing natural feature, a huge bog that surrounded it on three sides.  While not quite as fancy as Fancypants Castle, Bog Castle is still quite castle-y, with an outer wall and imposing keep.  In addition to these traditional defenses, it also manages to keep modern-day invading hordes at bay with it’s formidable 5.00€ admission policy.

Bog Castle has had many different owners over the years, and as recently as the 1950s was purchased by a wealthy English lady, because if there’s anything that British aristocrats love, it’s going to Ireland and imposing their will on the Irish people from inside their castles.  It might sound pretty neat to live in a castle, but it didn’t look especially great from the inside.  Besides having to make significant modifications to accommodate all the technological innovations of the past 500 years, such as indoor plumbing, electricity, and heat, castles really aren’t the most space-efficient structures.  Despite being fairly huge, Bog Castle only had a handful of rooms and actually seemed a bit cramped on the inside.  In that regard, out of all the castles we visited, this was the one that most closely resembled the He-Man Castle Grayskull playset.

Gift Shop Castle

Not a true castle, but instead a small tower at the Cliffs of Moher that was converted into a gift shop when the area became a popular tourist destination.  Or at least that’s the story.  I don’t know – I’m not saying I don’t believe the legitimacy of the castle’s history.  And I certainly don’t want to imply that this thing was built in the 1980s with the specific purpose of being a gift shop.  But it does seem a little suspicious that someone just happened to build a castle right on a spot that would later become one of the biggest attractions in the region.  Not to mention that building a tower on what is probably the best naturally defended area along the entire coast of Ireland seems a bit redundant, as the Cliffs of Moher are 300 feet high and almost completely vertical.

This is the view from gift shop castle – What were they defending against, Spiderman?

Brad Goes to Ireland! 3

Part 3 – Getting Around Ireland (And Living to Tell About It)

Ireland’s public transport isn’t quite as robust as what you might see in a lot of Europe, but between the trains, buses, cabs, tourist groups, and extensive walking trails, there are plenty of ways to get around without having a car.  But if you don’t drive a car, you’re missing out on about half the fun, and 90% of the danger.  Most roads in Ireland are just barely wider than two cars, with absolutely no shoulder, high stone walls or hedges on each side, and are extremely twisty.  Sometimes there are turns for what looks like no apparent reason at all, almost as if it’s a video game just trying to keep the challenge level up.  If the road does end up being straight for any significant distance, they’ll throw in some roundabouts to keep it from getting too easy.  Often times there aren’t even intersecting roads – they’ll just build a roundabout on the off chance they might need it some day.  Also, you share these roads with cyclists, walkers, and occasionally farm animals, so you never know for sure what might be around the next blind corner.

Sometimes the oncoming traffic is… cows.

People make a lot of jokes about Irish drunk drivers, playing up to the ol’ stereotype that the Irish like to drink, but drunk driving isn’t really a bigger problem there than it is in the US.  Part of it might be their stricter legal limit of .05% BAC for DWI.  But I think the bigger reason is that the roads are so treacherous that most drunks don’t get more than a few feet away from the tavern before crashing into a wall.

Oh, and you’re not going slow on these roads, either.  The speed limit on a road such as this is usually around 100kph, which converts to roughly 65 miles per hour.  Ireland changed over to the metric system for speed limits only 5 years ago, and I’m pretty sure when they did, they just took all their old speed limits, converted them to kilometers, and then rounded up to the nearest multiple of twenty.  The result is expressway speed limits on what would barely qualify as a driveway back here.  Not that anyone drives the speed limit anyway.  Since there are very few places for the police to sit in a speed trap, and almost nowhere for them to pull anyone over anyway, you can pretty much go as fast as you want.  And while for any sane person “as fast as you want” would probably be at least 20kph less than the posted speed limit, for the typical Irish driver this means going as fast as the car will go before the wheels fly off.  Ireland is the first place I’ve ever driven where I’ve actually thought “Hmm, maybe this speed limit should be a little lower.”

People generally just take this turn at 70mph and hope there isn’t a truck coming the other way.

At first this all seems to be crazy, but the longer you are in Ireland, the more you begin to see it in the context of a country that isn’t quite as safety obsessed as our own.  They have a sport there called Gaelic Football, which looks kind of like a cross between Speedball and Rugby, except with about 40% more murder (and if you read my article on rugby a while back, you know how crazy that is).  Girls play it.  And no, I’m not demeaning women, here – I mean actual girls play it.  As in, females under 18 years of age.

I went on a hike in the woods and came across a huge hole in the ground.  Now, back here, something like that would have a 10 foot high fence around it with barbed wire and warning signs.  In Ireland?  They put in some slick, uneven stairs and a makeshift handrail.  They’re daring you to go down there.

So we did.

In the States, it seems like every time a person gets hurt or killed doing something, no matter how frequently other people were able to do it safely, and regardless of how unusual the circumstances surrounding that particular incident was, we immediately put up a warning sign, or put in some new safety rules, or just ban that activity altogether.  By contrast, in Ireland, this hazardous activity would become the new standard for not being a pussy.  Someone goes off the road and crashes their car because they took a turn too fast in the US?  They lower the speed limit and set up radar traps there for a while.  Same thing happens in Ireland?  They put up a sign that says “Slow”.  Another car crashes in that same spot?  They put up a sign that says “Slower”.  And if that doesn’t work, they’ll just move the walls closer to the edge of the road.

I’m kidding about that last part – they couldn’t possibly move the walls any closer to the road than they already are.

It’s a different mentality – here in the States, we seem to think we’ll all live forever if we can just put up enough warnings signs and pass enough safety laws.  The rest of the world does not share this delusion.

On the other hand, the few warning signs we did see weren’t messing around.

Those of you interested in seeing more pictures from the trip can click here.

Brad Goes to Ireland! 2

Part 2 – A Quick Guide to London.  A Really Quick Guide.

Although we had originally planned to fly directly from New York to Ireland, the delays from the previous day messed up that plan, and we instead ended up going to London first, then Ireland.  Still, I mean, London – that’s not a bad detour to have to make, right?  It’s almost like getting a free bonus destination on your trip.  Of course, our layover was 5 hours, which falls right into that sweet spot of being “way longer than you’d want to hang out at an airport”, yet “not enough time to pass customs, go into the city, see anything good, and make it back in time to go through security again and get on the plane.”  So we had to settle for experiencing one of the world’s most culturally and historically important cities from within the confines of Heathrow Airport.  I think I almost saw Wembley Stadium.

Getting through customs was the part of the trip that I most dreaded.  I get nervous just going over to Canada, so the prospect of entering into a real foreign country was terrifying.  It conjured up images of people in militaristic-type uniforms with eastern European accents (don’t ask my why, I guess in my imagination, the British import ex-Soviet KGB agents to be customs agents, you know, for extra terror), demanding to see papers and rifling through our luggage, which would then all turn out to be contraband due to some obscure English laws regulating which clothing and shampoos are legal in their country.  Next thing you know, I’m in the British equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, being held as the UK’s most feared and hated smuggler of Hanes underwear and Pert Plus.

I didn’t have my camera in London, so here’s a picture of a castle from later on in the trip. We didn’t remember its real name, so let’s just call it Bog Castle.

None of this turned out to be true, of course.  Getting through customs in England simply requires a passport and for you to answer the following three questions:

What is your name?

What is your quest?

What is you favorite color?

Having completed that task we were free to spend the next few hours exploring the airport at our leisure.  And let me tell you, if you’re going to be stuck in an airport for a while, Heathrow’s not a bad way to go.  Much better than JFK.  If for no other reason, because you can enter a raffle to win a sports car. And not like a Mitsubishi Lancer, or a Ford Mustang or something, I mean an actual sports car.  There was a Ferrari F430 parked right there in the terminal, to show off just one of twelve choices of prize cars you could win.  Now of course, your odds of winning were pretty slim, and the tickets were roughly $30 each, but still…  it was really, really tempting.  Forget about all the commercials you see for Powerball or the state lotto.  If you realy want to convince someone to “have a go” at your superexpensive supercar drawing, just park an Audi R8 in front of them.  I’m assuming contests like this must be illegal in the States, because there’s no other logical reason we wouldn’t have something so awesome back home.

Nice sunrise, but still not as pretty as the cars at the airport.

The other thing you’ll notice at Heathrow is that there are more candy stores, because British people, despite stereotypes, don’t seem to be as uptight about enjoying sweets as we are.  As a guy who loves candy (and cake, and ice cream…), I can tell you that there is a bit of a stigma in the US about eating sweets.  People here look down on you just because you occasionally eat an entire birthday cake or box of ice cream.  Sure, we might be the world’s fattest people, but we do it on good ol’ American cheeseburgers and beer, not chocolate.  Desserts are considered unmanly, or childish.  But in England (or at least at the airport, during this brief 5 hour span), you will see adult men and women buying and enjoying candy right out in the open, without any secrecy or sense that they’re doing something socially unacceptable.  Oh, how I envy them!  Especially as I finish off the last of these zebra cakes with the lights off and the shades drawn.

Brad Goes to Ireland!

My apologies that the site basically went through all of September without any updates.  Anyway, we’re back, and I’m going to make a dedicated effort to updating more frequently.  With stuff about my trip to Ireland.

Why?  Because that’s what I did last month – you know, while I wasn’t updating.

Admittedly, those 6 or 7 of you who still read this site probably do so for the classic game coverage and not for travel advice.  But you gotta write what you know, and until I get caught up on playing crappy SNES games or whatever, going to Ireland is what I know.  For what it’s worth, it’ll probably be funny and I’ll be sure to throw in a healthy dose of game references.  And if that isn’t enough to intrigue you, then just back in a week or so.

Part 1 – Getting to Ireland

Because Ireland is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, getting there from the States requires taking either a ship or and plane, and since this isn’t 1880, you’re probably going to go with the latter.  For those of you who don’t travel much, flying is a quick and (relatively) inexpensive way to get from the place you are to some other place you probably didn’t expect to be, usually while spending inordinate amounts of the time that you had naively planned as part of your trip stuck in airports.

Before I talk about Ireland, I just want to take a minute to discuss Hartford, which was the first stop along our way.  Those of you who follow the site closely probably know I’m a retro sports nut, with a soft spot for relocated/defunct teams, so you can imagine how excited I was to be in the former home of the Hartford Whalers.  By which I mean the city in general, not the airport specifically.  Obviously the Whalers didn’t play their games in an airport – that would be crazy.  They played in a shopping mall, which is clearly a much more appropriate venue for an NHL franchise to call home.

Fan entrance located between The Gap and Orange Julius.

Believe it or not, it isn’t just me who hasn’t gotten over the departure of the Whalers yet.  The stores at the airports where loaded with Whalers merchandise (and in a cruel twist of fate all the stores were already closed), people were wearing Whalers t-shirts and hats, and there was even a sign advertising a recent fan convention.  This is significant for two reasons.  First, I’ve always said the NHL should put the team back in Hartford, but it was more just wishful thinking/nostalgia than something I ever thought practical.  Until now.  The NHL really should put a team back in Hartford.  People will go.  They’d probably outdraw the Coyotes, Thrashers and Panthers combined.

The second reason this is significant is because my flight wasn’t actually supposed to go to Hartford.  Whoops.

Nevertheless, after a two hour bus ride (because Delta apparently thinks busses are just as good as planes), to the wrong airport (because they also apparently think New York’s two airports are interchangable), and then waiting for a shuttle that didn’t exist to get to the right airport (because they must also think they are genies and can make a shuttle appear out of thin air just by saying there is one), a terryfying cab ride with a driver that were were a good 51% sure wasn’t a professional kidnapper (much better than our odds of surviving at LaGuardia at 2 am), and a 26 hour wait for the next flight, we somehow ended up back on track and were able to continue our originaly scheduled trip to Ireland.

Well, except for the part where we went to London.

Most of New York has gotten better in the past few decades, but if you still want to see a slice of the old, scary 70s/80s NYC – you know, the one that inspired movies like The Warriors and Escape From New York - a quick trip to LaGuardia will do the trick.

A Brief History of Canada Day

Today we take a break from writing about Genesis games to celebrate a national holiday.  Some other nation’s holiday, but still…

Canada Day is a day that often gets overlooked here in the States for two reasons. The first is because of its proximity to our own Independence Day, which tends to overshadow it. The second reason is that many of our employers won’t give us foreign holidays off which, if you ask me, is ridiculous. Nevertheless, living in a city that is literally a 5 minute drive away from our northern neighbor, I feel it is my responsibility to tell the rest of you about Canada Day, and Canadian history.

Canada was founded in 1987 by Viking explorers who, a few years earlier, had landed on the Eastern shore and driven out the indigenous population of cowboys and dragons (believed to have crossed over the frozen Bering Straight in prehistoric times). At the time of its founding, Canada was made up only of the Providences of Ontario, Newfoundland and Quebec (which immediately attempted to secede), but over the years, a new providence was added every time the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup, bringing the nation to its current total of 13, plus two territories (which represent Blue Jays World Series titles).

The first president of Canada was Abraham Lincoln, who was elected, despite being both American and dead, because he gave the nation “instant credibility” and “Star power”. Under the zombie reign of Lincoln, Canada hosted the Olympics and conquered Austria. After Lincoln finished his 2nd term, a parliamentary system of government was introduced, and the first Prime Minister of Canada, Bryan Adams, was elected. The current Prime Minister is Don Cherry, who is awesome.

A lot of people think that Canada is a frozen tundra, but that’s actually just the Eastern Providences. Saskatchewan and Alberta are actually large grassland, not unlike sub-Saharan Africa. They even have giraffes and stuff.British Columbia is mainly rainforest, and Manitoba is completely underwater – it’s a little known fact that Canadians can breathe underwater.Another popular misconception about Canada is that it is some kind of enlightened, liberal society. While this is true of the coastal areas, everything between Toronto and Calgary is actually loaded with NASCAR lovin’, gun toting rednecks, which emigrated from Ohio during the Clinton years. The flag of Canada is a red maple leaf on a white background, except in the aforementioned central area, where it is instead a white number 3 on a black background.

The history of Canada Day is long and complicated. Shortly after the nation was founded, Canadians discovered that Americans enjoyed traveling to their nation during the American Independence Holiday. Too polite to tell them to go away, Canadians instead decided to grant themselves their own holiday in the hopes of leaving Canada a few days before the Americans arrived, thus avoiding them. They made July 1st a national holiday, giving them ample time to clear out of the nation before we arrive. Because all Canadians are really friendly, they decided that “Avoid the Americans Day” was a mean thing to call it, and instead made up a story about it being a day of celebrating national pride.

So now you know about Canada Day. Be sure to enjoy it this year!

A Quick Visit to Buffalo 2014 (Non-Gaming)

For those of you who don’t know, this website comes to you live from Buffalo, NY.  It’s pretty much as bad as everyone says, but people keep insisting that its going to get better someday (these are mostly the people who already moved away for greener pastures).  Will it get better?  Let’s take a quick trip to the future to see!

As you come into the city along Route 5, you notice that the road has been changed from an elevated highway to a glorious 4 lane, ground-level boulevard. This allows you a better chance to take in the city’s skyline. You peer through the holes in the rotting, abandoned Cargill mill to take in some of downtown’s many attractions, most of which are also abandoned, decrepit grain mills, but also includes such sights as the building frame of the still-not-completed downtown casino, and the spooky, abandoned train station that lords over the East Side like the tower of Isengard, only more menacing.

It’ll still be there.

Of course, making the area more accessible to people also makes it more accessible to animals, and it isn’t long before a deer runs over from Tifft Farm and gets hit by a car, causing traffic to back up. While you wait for the accident to clear, the Buffalo Police show up. As part of their latest “ticket blitz” (in protest of their most recent dispute with City Hall), they begin issuing parking tickets to all the cars stuck in gridlock. You begin to explain that your car isn’t really parked, just stopped in traffic, but think better of it as the officer reaches for his taser. While you wait for the cop to finish writing the ticket, the running back for the Toronto football team (in town to promote the two regular season games the team will be playing at Ralph Wilson Memorial Stadium later that year) walks up and steals your hubcaps.

You decide to turn on the local sports radio station to see if there are any other reports of marauding Toronto players committing crimes, only to learn that Thomas Vanek and Ryan Miller, both of whose contracts were strategically timed to expire in the same off-season, have just signed with the Hamilton Tigercats and Carolina Hurricanes, respectively. Miller admits that he had wanted to re-sign with the Sabres, but says that GM Darcy Regier was too busy playing Mafia Wars to sit down and have a contract negotiation. When reached for comment, Sabres owner Tom Golisano expressed support for Regier and Head Coach Lindy Ruff by saying “Holy crap, I still own a hockey team? I thought I sold it at the garage sale when I moved to Florida. Well, that’s cool, I guess.” Later in the day, Team President Larry Quinn will announce contract extensions for Maxim Afinogenov and 45 year old cyborg defenseman Teppo Numminen, whom they hope will be the foundation for getting the team back into the playoffs.

Eventually the traffic clears and you can drive into the city. As you finally enter downtown, you are introduced to the City’s latest red-light cameras. The city’s traffic lights, strategically timed to turn red just as cars enter the intersection, rake in millions of dollars of revenue for the city annually. Hundreds of pedestrians are hit by cars every year as an outcome of the confusion. The resulting personal injury lawsuits from these accidents generate so much revenue for attorney William Mattar that he is able to buy Niagara Square, which he subsequently has relocated to Amherst.

As it is now after 5pm on a weekday, driving around town reminds you of one of those post-apocalypse movies, such as The Omega Man, where all the people have disappeared. An eerie silence envelopes the city. Despite this, there is nowhere to park, as all the potential sites for parking inconveniently have very historically important abandoned building on them which the Preservation Society will not allow a single one to be torn down. Apparently Buffalo was built out of solid gold upon the ruins of ancient Greece.

Growing frustrated, you decide to take a trip up to Canada. However, this is impossible as the city still has not made a final decision on a plan for a new bridge. You’d take the Peace Bridge, except that it collapsed into the Niagara River last month during a blizzard. Instead, you head over to the Duty-Free store and stock up on Paris Hilton’s designer perfume, so that you too can smell like expensive booze and used condoms.

And thus ends our glimpse into the future of Buffalo! What exciting times lay ahead for us.

And thus ends our glimpse into the future of Buffalo! What exciting times lay ahead for us.

Theseus and the Minotaur (Non-Gaming)

Nobody really expects much out of the movies they see in school. They’re done on tiny budgets with Grade Z actors, and have the additional handicap of trying to teach you something. These films can usually get away with being really bad though, because in terms of entertainment value, they only need to be more interesting than a normal day of classes. Logic then dictates that the worse a class is, the worse the movies shown in it can be. Nowhere was this principle proven truer than in my Latin class, where we watched some of the worst abominations to ever come across the screen and were thankful for every minute of it. There were a lot of bad movies, but none were worse than a typical non-movie day of Latin class. Not even the day we watched a little gem called Theseus and the Minotaur.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Greek myth of Theseus, it goes something like this: one Greek city-state had to send a bunch of women and men to Crete every few years. Crete’s evil ruler, King Minos, would put them into a labyrinth to be killed by the Minotaur, a monster that had the head of a bull, and the body of a man. I believe the sacrifices all had to be virgins, though I don’t really remember for sure. If they really were sacrificing that many virgins though, it might help to explain why ancient Greece never developed any mythology based on Star Trek.

The people who got sacrificed were chosen by a lottery and one year the daughter of the king was chosen. To keep things simple, I’ll refer to him a King Beard, since he had a beard. Obviously this was displeasing to him, so King Beard got Theseus to go along and slay the Minotaur. I don’t remember if Theseus was just some guy who also got drafted for “get killed by the Minotaur” duty, and the King picked him out of the group to save the day, or if he was some great hero and the King snuck him in amongst the sacrificial people. I probably should have done some research, except I’m writing this at work and they don’t have volumes of Greek Mythology laying around the office.

The movie begins in the king’s palace, as they are getting ready to leave. The palace seems to be built entirely out of brown paper and cardboard, with squares drawn on it in black crayon to give the impression of bricks. It’s actually kind of hard to tell where floors, walls and ceilings meet, because everything is brown paper with squares drawn on it. To keep the look of these drawn-on bricks authentic, their lines aren’t very straight, for much like ancient Greece, there were no rulers or other straight-edged objects handy when the sets were made.

The king explains to Theseus what he must do, as tells him if he is successful, to signal his victory by flying a white sail, instead of the black sails that the sacrificial ships are accustomed to. As he’s telling him all this, we can tell that they are in ancient Greece, because all the windows in the palace are actually watercolor paintings of the acropolis, not unlike the ones you’d see painted on the walls of your favorite Greek diner.

Theseus then boards the ship and sets sail. For the sailing scenes, the director of the movie utilized the cost-effective method of using miniatures, or models, instead of building and filming real, full-size ships. Unfortunately, the Toys “R” Us he went to must have been all out of Ancient Greek Boat model kits that day, because Theseus appears to be sailing in a Spanish Galleon. This little inconsistency becomes pretty insignificant once compared to rest the problems with the sailing scenes, however. Everything appears to have been filmed in a bathtub, and zero effort was been made to disguise that fact. The water is crystal clear, completely calm, and you can even see the ceramic white bottom. Would some blue dye, a little sand, and a small fan to create waves have really hurt the budget that much? As we’re about to see, yes.

On the way to Crete, the ship must pass under a huge statue that straddles a strait. Unfortunately for our hero, as well as for the credibility of the film, the statue comes to life and starts throwing rocks at them. Well, kind of. What actually happens is that we see a shot of the model Spanish galleon in the bathtub, and then in a different shot, we see the statue. Or rather, we see a painting of a statue standing over a body of water, and there is a voice over. That’s right, instead of using expensive special effects, or having an actor play the statue and tower over the model boat, they just drew a picture of a huge statue and had the cameraman says its lines. And it’s not even a very realistic looking painting. As bad as this special effect sounds, it’s even worse when you stop to think that the whole scene is supposed to be about an inanimate object (the statue) coming to life. They represented that in the movie with something that doesn’t move. The statue throws rocks at the boat, which of course they can’t show since it’s a painting and doesn’t move, so what we see is another clip of the galleon with rocks falling into the bathtub around it. We don’t even get so much as the classic “shaky camera while the people on the boat run back and forth ” scene with someone off-camera throwing bucketfuls of water at them. Nope. Just the boat in a tub, then a painting of a statue, and then the boat in a tub with rocks.

After this ordeal, Theseus arrives in Crete to meet King Minos. His castle is also made of cardboard and brown paper, and looks similar to the other castle, but with different, evil-looking paintings for windows. King Minos is very convincingly played by a piece of plywood with a picture of a guy painted on it. At this point, I don’t know what to think – on one hand this is a step up from a painting of a statue standing over a boat, because you can place the wooden cut-out of the King onto the set and have him share scenes with the live actors (which he does to hilarious effect). But on the other hand, the King is just a guy. I understand that maybe they didn’t know how to create a gigantic living statue, but getting a king is easy. You just need a person and a crown. I mean, they even could have just had the guy who played the first King put on some different clothes and shave off his beard or something.

The voiceover of King Minos tells Theseus some stuff, and then he’s off to the labyrinth. Before he enters, a woman talks to Theseus. The movie doesn’t say, but I think she’s the daughter of King Beard (I would have done some research to verify this, but honestly, is not knowing really detracting from your reading experience?). At least a real person plays her. She gives him some string so that he can retrace his steps to find his way out of the huge maze. It’s a good idea, but ultimately proves unnecessary, as the “labyrinth” in the movie mostly looks like an empty warehouse. At its most maze-like it sort of looks like LaserTron. Have you ever gotten hopelessly lost at LaserTron? Me neither. Somehow I think you would have been ok without the string, Theseus.

Eventually Theseus finds the Minotaur. You probably shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that the Minotaur is just a plywood cutout with a painting of a Minotaur on it. And while I’m sure its probably the only way they could have recreated the man-bull on a budget of about $14, this does not make for a good fight scene. We see Theseus, and then from off-camera someone yells and throws the Minotaur cut-out at him. I’m not kidding. The Minotaur goes through with this savage attack pretty much the way you might expect any piece of wood thrown at a person would – it bounces off our hero and falls flat on the ground. Naturally, the editors apparently didn’t see any need to cut the shot until well after the monster hit the floor.

We are then treated to many shots of the Minotaur being thrown at the screen, Theseus swinging his sword, and a lot of zooming and twirling of the camera. Finally, we see Theseus standing triumphant with florescent pink blood dripping from his sword. They never actually show Theseus killing the Minotaur, either because animal rights people would get upset, or else because it’s really hard to stab through plywood with a cheap sword. Theseus then gets back on his ship, forgets to put up the white sails, and heads for home. King Beard looks out his window (a painting of the sea), sees the black sails, and dies of grief. Or maybe just lays down from grief. Or possibly from fatigue. It’s hard to tell.

Even for a “educational” film that you watch in school, Theseus and the Minotaur is impossibly bad. Two main characters are played by wooden cut-outs and another is a painting. That’s roughly half of the cast, and there was absolutely no good reason for King Minos not to have been played by a person. The acting is bad, the sets are horrendous, and any educational value the film might have had is lost as the ineptitude of its filmmaking is completely distracting. It’s hard to imagine anyone watching this movie objectively and thinking that it “works” on any conceivable level, which leads me to believe that the people who made and released it must have been in a staggering amount of denial.

Even so, was still better than spending the day learning about conjugations and declensions. Cave canem!

A Tale of Mystery and Romance – Starring Captain Lou (Non-Gaming)

It all started in the December of 1995, in my senior year of high school. I was walking out of school to my car with one of my friends when I was approached by a strange woman who asked me “Are you Brad?”. Normally, I go to great lengths to hide my identity, but this was 1995, and I was eagerly anticipating a covert delivery of some extremely rare pogs featuring Sonic the Hedgehog. I had been forewarned that their method of delivery would be… unsual. And so I replied in the affirmative. But rather than being told “I have your pogs,” I was instead informed that a girl in school “liked” me. Seeing as I hadn’t dated in a while, this would have been great news, except for the fact that I had no idea who the girl in question was.

I recalled the mythology we had learned in Latin class, and tales of how Aphrodite was sometimes known to assume the form of a mortal and spread messages of love. There was an unwritten rule in such situations. When the Goddess of Love takes the form of a teenage girl and appears before you, you are allowed to ask her one question. See’s not a genie – you don’t get any wishes, just information. The logical thing to do in my situation would have been to ask this messenger to identify the girl for me, so I would know who it is. But I’m kind of dumb sometimes. Instead, I asked what this girl was like. “I don’t know,” My informant told me “she’s nice, I guess.” Then, having answered my questions one, she disappeared into a cloud of smoke.

Days passed, and I was not able to figure out who this girl was. I asked my friends and only one of them, my best friend Jay, knew her. For some unknown reason instead of showing me who she was, he instead encouraged me to ask her out. Let me tell you something – when you are 17, unattached, and hang around with a bunch of losers, you don’t need anyone to encourage you to ask out a girl that “likes” you. You just need to know who the girl is. Jay could not figure this out. Perhaps he was the Greek God of Dumbass.

About a week later, while working at the supermarket, I was approached by former WWF wrestler and Cyndi Lauper video star Captain Lou Albano. Or at least it sure looked like him. He asked me if I was Brad. Thinking about what a great country we live in where Captain Lou will deliver pogs of your favorite video game characters to you at your workplace, I eagerly said yes. He handed me a slip of paper with a phone number. “Call her” said Captain Lou “and wish her a Merry Christmas. It will make her day”.

I was a bit reluctant to call now, because it seemed creepy that my informants had changed from friends of this high school aged girl to look-a-likes of former WWF stars. But seeing as my romantic alternatives were none, I figured it was worth a shot. I immediately went home and washed my work pants, with the number inside the pocket. And I bet you thought that only happens in commercials.

Now it was about two weeks later, and a virtual army of classmates had been recruited to encourage me to ask this girl out. But none of them seemed to grasp the idea that I did not know who she was. Finally, just after Christmas, Jay and a girl from my film class talked themselves into starring roles in my final project – a bold piece on the evils of shopping at the supermarket I worked at during my shift. Though dedicated to my film, they had ulterior motives. After shooting the movie, they spent 2 hours telling me what a great match I would be for this girl. But they were of course unwilling to provide me with such basic information as say, the general vicinity of her locker, a vague description, or any other thing that might actually help me identify this individual.

A month passed. But if you’ve ever seen my website, you know that a month of inactivity isn’t really anything unusual for me.

It came time for annual Valentine’s Day Dance. This is where the plot accelerated as my History Teacher unwittingly joined the cause! He asked me who I was taking to the dance. Of course he did this in the middle of class, like this – “So in 1852, Henry Clay won re-election to the Senate. Brad, who are you taking to the dance on Saturday?” Before I even realized what an incredibly disturbing turn our history lecture had suddenly taken, I replied I had no date. Luckily, this wasn’t a way for him to ask me out. Instead he did the one thing that was worse. He dedicated half of the blackboard as a place for girls to sign up to go with me.

Now that can seem really awesome if you’re the captian of the football team, and at the end of the day there are 1,000 names on there. But I was expecting the embarrassment of Jay signing it and then that would be it. However, at the end of the day, there were 3 names: Jay, a girl I worked with on the school newspaper, and inevitably, you-know-who had been written by some member of the ever-growing conspiracy. It was at this time by her best friend who offered to show me who she actually was.

Of course, high-school kids, even the really smart ones, can be pretty stupid at times, so the idea of a simple face-to-face introduction never crossed our minds. Instead, she decided to go with the foolproof plan of sitting next to her at lunch. All I had to do was find her, and then the girl next to her was the one to ask out. Easy right? I sat down at lunch and watched over the whole cafeteria, waiting for her to come in, and when she did you better believe that I watched her like a hawk. She walked over to her table and, realizing the importance of sitting next to the girl on this particular day, beat the daylights out of the person who had been sitting next to her and sat down… right in between TWO girls I did not recognize. At least the odds had gone from about 1% to 50%. Of course, when you have my kind of luck, this wasn’t good enough. I needed 100%… Hell, I needed 150%. And right now I needed a good idea.

But good ideas and me and separate entities, so it looked like I was screwed again. If I was smooth, I would have figured something out, like making up a petition and asking all of them to sign it. But then again, if I was that clever, I probably wouldn’t have been this desperate to date a complete stranger in the first place. So I had no good ideas. I do have sharp eyes though. And later that day I spotted one of the two “girls that might be her” talking to someone I knew. So I waited until she was gone and then asked my friend who that was he was talking to. It had to be one or the other. My friend verified it to be her.

The rest of this was going to be easy. I recognized this girl as someone who had walked by my locker every day on her way out of the school. I would just wait for her and ask her out. No problem! So as she walked by at the end of the day, I looked at her and said “Hey”… the sound of which was drowned out by 1,000 students stampeding home. She didn’t hear me! She kept walking! I was going to blow it after all! So I did the only thing I could think of, I grabbed her sleeve and hoped she wouldn’t assume I was crazy and start hitting me with heavy stuff.

Weeks later, I found my Sonic Pogs inside a box of cereal.

* * *

I originally wrote this story back in early 2002, for me and my brother’s short-lived website I Want a Peanut, which was later merged into the (marginally) more succesful HMCHL.com. Everything in this story (except for the POGs) is true, at least as best as I can remember.

It feels a little weird to republish it now, considering that in the time since this originally went online, I met a different woman who eventually became my wife. Then again, she was 14 at the time all this happened, so a story about me trying to get a date with her back then would have been both completely fictional and a little bit creepy (funny how a 3 year age difference doesn’t seem like a big deal now). Even so, I’ve always liked this piece – it’s actually sort of… nice, which isn’t something I usually even attempt, let alone pull off successfully. Plus I got to call my friend Jay the Greek God of Dumbass! I mostly kept this story anonymous, but if anyone recognizes themselves in the story and wants to leave a comment to make their claim to fame, go crazy.