What Would Jesus Do?

Hello, Space Monkees.

Yeah, this is going to be one of those serious ones.  I'm always inclined to apologize for these, since they're so out of tone with the rest of this blog.  But on the other hand it does have a lot more substance than say, a review of "The Wolfman" or some anime I've been watching online.  So I guess this has its place here.

(For this entire commentary I'm going to assume that everything in the New Testament of the Bible actually happened exactly how its said.  So the Pharisees will just be the foolish opponents of Jesus as they are shown in the Bible, instead of the honorable scholars and precursors of modern Judaism and the Rabbinic culture that they actually were.  Whoever wrote the Gospels was extremely biased against these men for some reason or another.  However, I'm of the opinion that you can find some eternal truth in any story - even ones completely fictional, and since many believe that there is eternal truth in the Gospels, I'll just follow the mode of thinking.)

Jesus, as a symbolic figure, was a nice guy.  I think we all have to admit that at some point.  You may not believe he was the Son of God and a member of the Holy Trinity and all that jazz, like me, but you can at least find good life lessons in his ministry.  He was generally a very good person*, healed the sick, taught a bizarrely egalitarian message for his day, and believed in the good will of men.  I don't know how far his philosophy of everybody giving everything to the less fortunate might work as a society maker, but the saddest part is that nobody has ever really tried (except perhaps some Medieval monastic orders, debatable due to their isolation).   Today, more people call themselves "worshipers of Christ" than any other religious group.  I'm not saying that these people are not generally good people who look to the Son of Man for guidance every so often.  The vast majority of Christians are people who believe in right and wrong, good and evil, and are driven by their belief system to generally do what is right and just.  That alone makes the entire Christian faith something that should be commended, not despised.

And yet, the tragic part of this story is just how many people have such a warped sense of what Christ was about.  Jesus did not say that homosexuals were evil (he's silent on the subject in every Gospel), and he most certainly did not believe that they were to be hated or killed.  I mentioned earlier that Jesus's philosophy was egalitarian, meaning that he treated all people equally, no matter who they were, what they did, or how "unclean" they were seen in the eyes of the Hebrew culture.  This is why he walked amongst lepers and prostitutes.  If Christ were to appear today, he would be walking the streets of the inner cities, washing the feet** of every group this society hates or chooses to ignore:  the homeless, illegal immigrants, AIDs victims, etc.  And all these people would go to the Kingdom of Heaven long before our modern-day Pharisees.

The Pharisees were an ancient religious society during the time of the New Testament, and the chief opponents of Jesus's teachings during this time. They repeatedly come into conflict with the Son of Man, due to their strong beliefs in the letter of God's commandments, not the spirit.  These were the ones who were grievously offended by the idea of a Messiah cavorting with prostitutes and tax collectors***.  To the Pharisees, the chief concern was not to include, but to exclude:  to hate the unclean and sinful rather than try to help them or lead them to a more virtuous status.  More important to them was that Peter and the Apostles wash their hands before eating bread, rather than any true love of God or good works.  There was no love to their dogma, only empty rules and self-righteousness.

Is this sounding familiar yet?

I've alluded previously that there is a very large segment of the American population whose entire value system is very alien to me.  They call themselves Christians, and yet their key concerns seem to be with the most frivolous aspects of the religion.  So instead of feeding the hunger or clothing the homeless, they'll make donations to ludicrous "museums" (and I do use that word lightly) which attempt to put together a "scientific" (I'm using a lot of words lightly) basis for creationism/intelligent design.  Its an obsessive, militant call of "all or nothing" which somehow forces the entire religion to defend itself at every front, or else it will all collapse like a deck of cards.  If you were to listen to these folks, you would come away with the idea that Christianity's main concerns are to:  A) evangelize, B) hate 99% of the world, basically anybody who thinks, looks, or acts differently - especially homosexuals, C) abortion, and D) wait for the Apocalypse when all the sinful fools who didn't believe what they believe are burned in a glorious bit of fire and brimstone.

So there we are:  from "love thy neighbors" to "fear thy neighbors because their not like us and wait for God to punish all the sinners in the soon-to-come End of Days".  I don't know how it happened, but its there, and you have to face it.  Oh yeah, they'll try to help you through conversions, hoping that through a complete change of what you love and find true you can join them in Heaven once the end comes, but that's about it.  If you're starving on the street and are forced to pitifully beg, you won't get a dollar - you'll get a religious tract.  Though one should remember not to be hateful of these people.  They're not evil - purely by intentions they are doing a good work - but they are severely misguided, in some cases dangerously so.

Ultimately, I have to blame the leaders of these people, who I truly do hope are just charlatans leeching off their congregations.  Several must be, using the new mass-market Evangelical Christianity to get huge profits.  Yet others are quite simply deranged individuals.  Pastor Wily Drake, of the First Southern Baptist Church in California - I am not making this up - launched a campaign last June to pray for the death of Barack Obama.  Seriously.  And he continued his campaign today just in time for President's Day.  Dear me, what would this guy have said if atheistic Presidents like Jefferson or Lincoln were in office?  This man, supposedly of the same Jesus Christ I described earlier, wants the President of the United States to die, and for God to do it.  Obama isn't just misguided in Drake's eyes, no, he's so evil that he needs to die.  Forgot about the long Christian tradition of repentance or conversion, Obama is beyond saving.  Worse is that this isn't just the most lunatic of the lunatic fringes, Drake has a large following, and was even a third-party candidate for Vice President back in 2008.  He also protested Disney back in 1996 for "promoting homosexuality over family values" (perhaps the good Pastor didn't like Nathan Lane's character in "The Lion King", and damn him for not appreciating Timon!).

To be a little more topical, let's look at Pat Robertson's comments about the recent disaster in Haiti.  In a feat of extreme historical ignorance and hateful insensitivity, Robertson implied that the earthquake, and all of Haiti's tragic history, was caused thanks to a "pact with the Devil" during the Haitian Revolution.  He was met with almost universal derision even from most of the Evangelical Right, but the comment itself is still telling.  Similar statements were made about Katrina and New Orleans back in 2006, from none other than (and I am not exaggerating this) the Most Evil Man in America, Fred Phelps.  Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson would probably want nothing to do with each other, one is a respected newscaster in at least one fringe section of this country and the other is a crackpot who protests military funerals and gloats over natural disasters because he are tolerant of homosexuals in this country and leads an incestuous cult in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas.  But they both come from the same tradition, the same strain of religious thought.  We are better than Them, They will die in Armageddon, We will Triumph with God - all extremely unchristian thoughts.  The real Christ loved everybody, Fred Phelps' God "hates Fags"... and Jews, and Catholics, and Sweden, and Ireland, and pretty much all six billion people on this planet except for the seventy-one poor souls who follow pastor Phelps around****.

How did a religion of love manage to create so much hate?  Its truly stunning.  Though at the very least, one can remember fondly that most of the two billion Christians are good, honest people working to the best of their ability to make their lives and the lives of others better.  The rest... well, Jesus still loves you, I imagine, despite how embarrassed you must make him every day.  Just try to remember, before declaring that God hates so-and-so, What Would Jesus Do?

-------------
* Interestingly, though not without sin, a claim that goes only to the Madonna, Mary, Mother of God, the only person to be born Immaculate, without Original Sin.

** Washing feet was an extremely symbolic gesture, completely out of character for one who claimed to be the Son of God and a great King.  In those times, most travel was done on feet, totally barefoot.  You can only imagine what the Apostles' feet must have looked like after a long day's travel through the harsh Palestinian Sun.  Washing feet was the something the Son of God would have done to him; a servant's task.  There was no depth Jesus was not willing to sink to in order to save our souls.

*** Tax collectors were back then, as today, extremely hated members of society.  If you pay attention to just whom the taxes were going to, Rome, the hated occupiers of Israel, you'll know why the Pharisees were so annoyed by seeing Christ sitting down at a dinner table with them.  No liberation leader should be sitting down with the agents of the enemy!   This is but one of many contradictions of Christ that I find so fascinating in the man.

**** By the way, Great Britain knows exactly how to deal with people like Phelps:  bar him entry into the country.  He's one of the sixteen people who are officially and publicly banned for entering the country due to being "considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour [American sic] by fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the United Kingdom".  Way to go, UK!

Castlevania Series

Hello, Space Monkees!

As per every video game article I write, for some reason this series is 100% Japanese.  Will there come a day when I finally find an American game interesting enough to write to necessitate writing something about it?  Probably.  But until that day, most I'll just ignore them all since most western games are needlessly violent and gritty, horrifically ugly thanks to a foolish goal of photorealism, and shooters of some kind or another (I hate shooters).  So instead, here's a Japanese series.

At the very least, this isn't Square Enix or Nintendo.  Instead its Konami!

Back in the era when Nintendo ruled the universe, Konami made a series of very popular and excruciatingly hard games based in the lore of classic Universal horror movies called "Demon Castle Dracula".  But we Americans, knowing better, renamed the franchise to the much cooler-sounding title, "Castlevania".  The early games were crude, you ran around with a whip and beat the shit out of Dracula at the end of his side-scroller castle (which I assume is called "Castlevania", none of the games have ever answered that).  The action was good, but your character was... fragile.  And slow.  And couldn't step in water.  And really got messed-up on the stairs.  Luckily I was born many years after this period ended, and so I missed the nearly entire thing, save for one remake.

Instead, I ignored the franchise until, oh... last August.  My story with this series begins back in E3 2009, when I was watching the trailers following the conference looking for some Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda stuff.  One of those trailers was the most awesome trailer ever.  (Watch it, seriously.  It has Patrick Stewart!)  My mind was literally blown right out the back of my skull from how awesome that trailer was.  Following cleaning my wall of brain bits of neural fluid, I decided to look the series up a bit more.  Previously, all my Castlevania experience was from the Angry Video Game Nerd's first review, and that didn't paint a pretty picture.  Somewhere within my searching, I found a series of artworks for Castlevania's "Dissida", a game called "Castlevania Judgment".  This time I had the exact opposite reaction.  If the trailer for "Lords of Shadow" was the most awesome thing ever made by man, the artwork for Judgment was by far the worst.  They were awful.  They were abmoninations.  They were a mockery of every single standard of aesthetic beauty from cave paintings to the present day.  Please, do yourself a favor and do not look them up.  You'll be a saner person for it*.  So at this point I was very intrigued.  How could one series provoke such opposite reactions of joy and horror in me and not be Final Fantasy?  I had to play one of these games.

Lucky for me, this latest generation of handhelds has seen no less than four Castlevania game releases.  So not only could I explore a brand new series, but I could also do with the cheap convenience of the DS and PSP.  My first step was "Symphony of the Night" since the Internet people say its the best of the series.  As a general rule, I always try to start a series with whatever is considered its finest achievement, that's probably a good tip right there.  Anyway, the problem was that my Symphony was bundled with another game called "Dracula X Chronicles" a 2.5 remake of some old-style Castlevania game made God-knows-what-system back God-knows-when.  So before I could reach the cream of the crop, I'd have to play through this game.  ("Symphony of the Night" is a hidden unlockable that will take you days to find - or you use GameFAQs.)

"Dracula X" was not such a great game at first.  Its a level-based sidescroller that would be entirely linear if not for a few alternate paths here and there "Star Fox 64" style.  You start out with a dude named Richter Belmont, who is easily the slowest and most pathetic video game character I've had to play as since... well, ever.  This isn't the NES, people!  Richter only has a whip, and he doesn't attack all too quickly.  He also can't run.  So while eighty zombies are tearing me to shreds, Richter will just do a leisurely stroll through the level like nothing is wrong.  He has no double-jump, instead just this terrible black flip thing.  I was ready to throw the game out and abandon Castlevania altogether until GameFAQs told me of another way:  Maria Renard.  Maria is a little girl you can rescue in one of the early levels, and then she becomes an alternate playable character.  And she is fucking gold compared to Richter.  She runs for one thing.  Also she has a double-jump, and a nice slide dash move, and she can attack about three times as fast and with twice the range as that worthless Richter dude.  The only downside I can see is that Maria fights with owls, which is a little weird.  But she's the only way to play that game, trust me.  "Dracula X" is hard, one of the hardest games I've ever played.  Dracula himself took me three days to beat.  Even so, with cute little Maria, this game is actually not bad.  I don't know what kind of people play this game with Richter, and I really don't want to meet them.  They're obviously deranged.

So that leads me to "Symphony of the Night".  This game is actually a direct sequel to "Dracula X", but this time neither Maria or Richter are central characters, though they do show (Maria is now grown-up and little fetching in a new outfit).  Instead its Dracula's own son, Alucard.  And no, not the happy fun "Hellsing" laughing Alucard, instead its somebody completely different.  Alucard is pissed-off at his father for something that happened in "Castlevania 3" I think, it doesn't really matter.  Since Castlevania has risen once again, Alucard is going to run in and kick some serious ass.  This game was at the time of its PS1 release, completely different from the older games in the series.  Its still side-scrolling, but instead of levels you explore the entire massive castle in a labyrinth of rooms, boss fights, and items to uncover.  The exploration is what I really love above everything else in this game.  The castle is alive, and there's so much to find, its just wonderful.  I love the feeling of wandering deep into the maze without knowing if you'll ever find a Save Point.  There actually is a system behind the battles this time, with RPG mechanics hiding in the background.  So Alucard will find new weapons and armor to equip and gain levels with killing enemies.  Its all not particularly complicated, which is good.  Kill things, gain EXP, numbers go up.  That's all you ever needed, wasn't it?  The game is actually really good looking for 2D.  Alucard's sprite is probably the most beautiful bit of spriting ever done for a video game.  He's animated in a brilliant way that makes his actions seem fluid and realistic.  You don't need 3D for characters to come to life, "Symphony" taught me that**.  But with this transition to a new style of gameplay, the difficultly was not at all limited.  Bosses in this game are real challenges, and coming up with strategies to defeat them are what make this game come alive.  I never could find a good way to beat Galamoth, so instead I just bought tons of Potions and threw everything I had at him until I won... somehow.  This was a load of fun, and one of the best games I've ever played.  The plot isn't Shakespeare, but the action is where its at.  And the horrible voice acting of the PS1 version has been replaced, thankfully.

After that, I was in love.  So in rapid succession over the last five months or so I bought all three DS Castlevania games.  They all were good, but none of them seemed to live up to "Symphony"'s standard, and I don't just mean graphics.  This is probably because Konami doesn't actually make new Castlevania games.  Its the same game, over and over again.  No, I don't mean like the old Zelda joke that every game is just a rehash of the last one.  Its the same game.  Literaly, you'll run into the same enemies, with the same sprites that were used ten years ago o n the PlayStation.  As an example, in "Symphony of the Night", you'll run into an enemy that is nothing but a giant ball filled with zombies that shoots lasers.  Its a freaky, awesome boss.  But by the third time I fought it a few games later... things weren't so cool anymore.  They don't even come up with much new music (the music is awesome), they just remix old songs.  Bloody Tears, a super-cool song from "Castlevania 2" has been remixed like eight times now.  These DS games are pretty much rehashes of "Symphony" just with different layouts and weirder battle systems.  For example, "Dawn of Sorrow" requires that you steal enemy souls to get new weapons and learn skills, which changes nothing to the game.  All that is changed is that you spend hours killing the same enemy over and over again trying to get their soul to get the next sword upgrade.  The later "Portrait of Ruin", which was a step-up, just has two playable characters.  That's it.  Two characters.  Also forget about any kind of continuity to this series.  Its actually worse than Zelda because Konami keeps on saying some games aren't canon, but then they are again.  Who knows?  Who cares?  I've killed Dracula like five times now, it doesn't matter to me.

Don't get me wrong, these are still great games and they're all worth playing (except "Dawn of Sorrow", that you can skip).  But still, can we have a little variety to these handheld games?

I would play the console games, but I've heard nothing but bad things about them.  And as for "Judgment", don't make me laugh!  Interestingly, the artwork for that game is even more offensive now since I know who these characters are.  Poor Maria, why did they turn you into a lolicon Vietnamese sex slave and cage your owl inside a staff?  Why?

But then there's "Order of Ecclesia", my personal favorite out of the entire series.  You play as Shanoa, a witch who never wears a back to her outfits.  She runs around trying to find Albus, the Balthier-clone on the picture up there who has gone insane and is trying to become Dracula.  The big change this time is that you don't spend the entire game inside Castlevania.  Instead you can wander around a World Map and visit a town.  This minor change gives a much greater feeling of freedom to the games, I think.  Alucard might be cool, but Shanoa is a far prettier character to play as.  I'm also a big fan of the battle system, where basically everything is a spell.  You don't have a sword, you summon one to kill enemies with.  It plays about the same, but somehow this system makes it work with a faster pace and a deeper system.  However, this is all my opinion.

So there we are.  Its been a nice ride with this series so far, despite some bumps.  It seems that the "Symphony" style of gameplay is coming to an end, however.  For now, the series is moving into its future... which is with Patrick Stewart with the certain-to-be-awesome "Lords of Shadow".  I'm realistic about that game, its certain to be a linear adventure game without any of the exploration that I fell in love with.  But it has Patrick Stewart!  Make it so, Konami.  I'll be there.

----------------------
* For example, I've seen all those artworks and now I run for the hills every time somebody says the word "Boojum".  AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

** Unfortunatly very few games seem to have reached that level.  "Chrono Trigger" came close, that's about it.  And since 2D is basically dead now, nobody will ever try.

For the Snark Was a Boojum, You See

Hey, Space Monkees.

Here's a cautionary tale of what awful effect staying up to 4 AM can have on an overly superstitious mind:

One night, while I was happily in bed, staying up needlessly late for no particular reason.  By this point midnight had long since passed and I was now knee-deep into the true dead of night.  I went over to the Anime Network to watch another episode of the delightfully bizarre psychological cartoon called "Ghost Hound", which regrettably is only available in English subtitles.  Before the episode even began it gave the title.  Typically the title is completely harmless: just references to cutting-edge psychological concepts.  Looking them up makes for very interesting reads.  But this time... it was different.  The title was especially long: "For the Snark Was a Boojum, You See".  Immediately chilling horror poured straight into my veins.

On the surface, it does not seem so scary.  Weird, admitted, but nothing much.  Yet, these words struck some kind of elemental cord straight inside me.  What in God's name was a "Snark" or a "Boojum"?  I did not know, but I could tell these were monsters, either physical of allegorical.  Snarks did not sound like particularly pleasant, yet I would certainly rather see fifty of them over a Boojum.  That word, "Boojum"... It didn't sound frighteningly, actually more silly.  And yet...  Yes, there was something much more sinister about it.  I could envision myself drowning in laughter and suffocating on my own glee if I were to run into it.  Whatever torture was this monster's specialty, it would be enough to make me wish for death before it was over.  No, I would wish I had never been at all.  This was no monster, it was something much worse.  The awful sights that Dante envisioned might be enough to scare chruchmen into piety, but a Boojum would send God himself fleeing into the night.  What an awful thing.

Somehow though, I could see no form for the Boojum or the Snark (though I was certain they were monsters and I would be able to recognize them by sight).  In fact, even though a Snark might occupy physical space, the Boogum was far more eternal.  Perhaps I could escape a Snark, but if it were a Boojum...  Nothing could save me.

No!  These were ridiculous thoughts, the product of a mind with far too much time on its hands.  I needed to see that I was just inventing nonsense, some sign that no such things as a Snark or a Boojum ever could be.  My fears eventually drove me to the computer.  Even though the walk was a short one, I was filled with fear.  It was a cold, dark night.  The only light came from the uncaring glow of the computer and television, making crooked shadows all through the house.  Finally I reached the computer, but I immediately regretted the move.  If only I could have just snuggled up with my blanket and gone to bed, then all this Boojum business could pass, harmlessly.  In my extremely tired feverish mind, for some reason my blanket and its warmth took on a mystical quality.  If only I could just wrap myself up, just maybe I could escape the Boojum's alien powers.  But it was too late, if the Boojum wanted me, I would already be gone before I could reach sanctuary.  All that was left was to learn more.

As I typed in the words into the Google searchbar, I prayed that no result would come up.  I hoped beyond hope that maybe I just misread the episode title and perhaps there was no Boojum or Snark.  It was all to nothing, however.  Before I was done typing the third word of the phrase "the snark was a boojum you see" and then the entire phrase was filled so suddenly I almost fell out of my chair.  The results were not a good sign.  The first was a link to a Wikipedia page of where "Ghost Hound" got the idea:  a Lewis Carroll poem called "The Hunting of the Snark".  If anybody could have tapped into some sort of unconscious current of immortal horror, it was suspected pedophile Victorian poet and mathematician Lewis Carroll.  The man wrote "Jabberwocky" - I was doomed.  The second link was to a PDF document that read out in screaming letters "THE SNARK WAS A BOOJUM!".  In my mind I saw a mind like my own.  Some poor victim of the Boojum's power that had been driven completely insane; now nothing but a lunatic shouting and raving across the Internet.

I was too frightened to open either link.  My God, what sort of evil had I uncovered here?  If I were to read more, the horror would just get worse.  Carroll had found something elemental here, and I did not want to know anything else.  All I wanted was to return to my bed and go to sleep; hoping that the morning light would keep away the demons and Boojums.  Perhaps when I was more awake and my mind less mossy, I could convince myself this entire thing was just some insane trail of thought I conjured up out of an out-of-control imagination and lack of sleep.  But unfortunately, there was one major problem...  I had to go to the bathroom.

Around every corner I imagined the Boojum waiting there for me.  Even though I could imagine no form for it (for nothing was horrible enough to justify this fear), I could still see it waiting there, ready to feed on my soul.  Oh lord, how had things progressed to this point?  What terror!  Though my fear might have been great, the biological imperative to empty my bladder was greater.  I would rather be torn apart by an abstract fear than live up to embarrassment of wetting my bed.  And I went on to the bathroom, once again cursing my fragile human body.  I knew that one day it was going to get me killed... or in this case driven mad by the Boojum.

By the time I flushed the toilet I realized I had made a huge mistake.  Closing the door out of an automatic habit of modesty was certainly not the smartest move.  The Boojum, seizing the opportunity to corner me thanks to my fatal blunder was certainly standing there right behind the thin wooden door.  Its eyes (now I was certain it had eyes, maybe not a face or a head, but there were eyes) were fixed solidly at the bathroom; waiting feindishly for me to move out and then rip me to pieces.  No... I would not be ripped to pieces, this was no beast - it was far worse.  It did not have claws or fangs or poison barbs, no tentacles or armor or breath.  It was far too elemental to be just a mere monster.  I could not even say that it was evil, no this thing surpassed evil.  The Boojum was the most horrible thing ever devised.  The entire universe, all meaning, everything was in the mercy of this creature.

Words cannot describe the despair I felt as I opened that door.  Soon it would all be over.  The only thought that came into my mind was "would I even get a scream out before it finished me off?"  Somehow I prayed that I would at least get that mercy, that at least some little tangible sign of my evisceration could escape and reach everybody else in the house so they would know that a terrible fate had befallen me.  Otherwise, there would be nothing left.  The Boojum would lick my blood off the bathroom tiles, leaving no trace of my demise for my loved ones to find.

And now came the moment of my judgment.  There was nothing left, I left myself up to fate.  But then, behind the door, there was--

...nothing!  Not a thing at all but an empty wall.  If anybody or anything had been there, even if it were my own mother, I would have gone mad from fright.  But instead it seems that the Boojum and the Snark it was pretending to be instead had other plans for me.  They had decided to give mercy to me, why I had no idea.  So I did not tempt fate by doing anything else that night.  I went straight to bed, and forced myself to sleep.  Despite my brush with mortality, the sleep came easily, and there were no dreams.

By morning, the entire incident seemed very silly to me.  "What kind of lunatic must I be, coming up with such a wild story based upon a single line?  There was no Snark, and no Boojum.  If there were such things, they certainly weren't forces of pure malevolence from another dimension, or whatever I was imagining them to be that night."  I had a good laugh about it, feeling invincible now that the Sun was up, forcing away all paranoid delusions.  But yet, curiosity still nagged at me.  There was a Lewis Carroll poem to read!  Its never a bad decision to enjoy some work from my old friend Carroll.  The poem was okay, as silly and incomprehensible as the more famous "Jabberwocky".  Even so, something still felt a little different about this work.  Something a tad bit off...

Then the fear came crashing back to me like an anvil smashing into the head of Wile E. Coyote.  I read the final verse, and knew that all my fears were very real.  The Boojum was real, and just as awful as I imagined:

"In the midst of the word he was trying to say
         In the midst of his laughter and glee
He had softly and suddenly vanished away
         For the Snark was a Boojum, you see."

I could not stop screaming.

A Solution to America's Problems

Hello, Space Monkees!

The United States of America, largely by the random draw of fate, just so happens to be my homeland.  It isn't a perfect country, but its certainly not a bad one.  (There are certain parts, like Detroit and the South, that are very unpleasant, I will admit.)  It has really everything I could need:  McDonalds, Disney World, movie theatres, the kick-ass ice cream of Magic Fountain at 907 Broadway Bayonne, New Jersey, and a colorful political scene that will keep me entertained for many years.  Also it has, you know, my entire family and all my friends and pretty much everybody I've ever cared for... that too, I guess.  What I'm trying to say is that I'm rather fond of this polity.  Ah, who am I kidding?  I love the big lovable goof!  Oh, America, you might trip a lot because China keeps tying your shoelaces together, but I'll still be laughing--with you, of course, not at you.

However, if I were going to say that things are going particularly well lately, I'd be a liar.  We're stuck in two wars, the buying power of the middle class is constantly shrinking, and the government can't seem to ever get its affairs in order.  The standard of living has declined in this country, that's a fact.  Back in the 50s, families could buy a new model car every year, and that's on the income of only one working parent.  Today, with both parents in the work force thanks to economic necessity, you'll be lucky to get a new car every decade.  And it won't be a nice one.  I know we now have Obama Magic to back us up, but what can you do against a trend like that?  People have been bemoaning the fall of this country's greatness for an entire generation, and not without a basis to their fears.  Obviously a radical solution is in order.  Yes, we need something drastic.

And I think I have the solution:  sugar, spice, and everything nice.  Plus one extra ingredient:  chemical X.

(bump, bump, ba-bump-a-bump)

Yes its the Powerpuff Girls!  Just what the doctor ordered!

Clearly only the superpowers of three little girls with no noses, fingers, and freakish bug-eyes are what America needs to become great again.  In an age of supervillains (which is exactly what Osama Bin Ladin is) we need to counteract the problem with superheroes.  And what superheroes are more powerful than the Powerpuffs?  They have all the powers of Superman, without actually being Superman - which is perfect!  I hate Superman!  In a single flash of superpowers, these perfect little girls can defeat Al Queda, balance the budget, bring back our manufacturing sector, and stop pretentious, nihilistic crap like "the Reader" from getting nominated Best Picture.  Plus, they can defeat any giant fish monsters that come out of the oceans to defeat us.

Yup, we definitely need you girls, wherever you are.  Please come back to us, Powerpuff Girls.  The day needs to be saved, once again.

(Or if they're not available, we can always Dial M for Monkey.)

Where the Wild Things Are

Hello, Space Monkees.

I knew a certain day was coming.  The day that I would review a movie for the Q? that I absolutely hated.  Its an inevitability of being a critic, even if you are the most unprofessional one in the entire Internet (I'm not, but I'm in the running).  I feared it more than anything else, not knowing exactly how I could handle it if such a foe appeared.

But that is not this day!

Here's a story from my childhood that I think is one that everybody has experienced at some point.  You're a little kid, its getting late.  Your parents make you put on your pajamas and put you to bed.  But not really being tired (despite the yawns that escape without you even noticing) you immediately begin to scheme for ways to keep them in the room.  You ask for your teddy, who was in my case a little blue bear in a stripped nightgown named "Goodnight Bear"*.  Then you throw him to the ground so they can pick him up again.  Anything for just a few more minutes of being awake.  Eventually you ask for a bedtime story, and your Mom or Dad picks out of a little pile of children's picture books a little book with a forest on it, "Where the Wild Things Are".  Oh, how you loved that story.  You'd even ask for Mommy or Daddy to read it again.  And then again.  And somewhere in the ten sentences that composed that little story, you nodded off to sleep.

I think the tale of the bad little boy Max who wanders off to the land of Wild Things in his imagination is one that we all know.  In fact, the book is so old and timeless, that my own Mom was read the story by my Grandma.  What surprising is that despite the book being written in 1963, it took this classic tale nearly fifty years to finally be adapted to the screen**.  Though after seeing Spike Jonze's very original re-imagining of the story, I can tell you that there will be many more surprises along the way in this review.  This is a movie that has really caught the critics off guard.  They expected just another Disney-standard children's film like the excellent and silly "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" from a few months earlier.  What they got was something completely different, something far more frightening.

A good place to start would be purely in art style.  If I were to imagine a "Where the Wild Things Are" movie, I would think it to be a cartoon with an art style similar to that of the book.  Instead, Spike Jonze gives us something unique.  Its live action mixed with CG, but in a new way.  Rather than having the human actors (well, actor) interact with a ball on a string while the boys at Industrial Light & Magic fill in the character, instead most of the Wild Things are made by performers in massive costumes, or animatronics.  Only the faces are CG animated.  It makes the creatures seem like giant stuffed animals, yet somehow far more real than even the impressive effects that "Avatar" supplied.  Despite the live action, you can still recognize the creatures from the original drawings.  Its an ingenious way to bring these characters to life, and something the movie really deserves credit for.  The world around them is just the natural majesty of our own world, in all its own magic.  The film is strikingly beautiful visually, though what isn't these days?  I fear that with so many gorgeous films and unique are going to spoil us eventually.  Adding to the brilliant atmosphere is the soundtrack, which is largely vocal and sung by what sounds to be an actually little boy (its actually Karen O, Jonze's ex).

Being an adaptation of a story that is, as I mentioned earlier, ten sentences long (I counted), the plot of this movie would naturally have to be expanded.  But how do you go about it?  Do you, like "the Grinch", focus on the title character and let Jim Carry make a fool of himself for two hours?  Do you just make up an entirely new story with the same basic elements like "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"?  Or do you simply fail miserably in every way like "Cat in the Hat"?  Well, Spike Jonze had his own answer to the question, an answer so different from what anybody was expecting that the studio heads shuddered to even release this movie.

Like in the book, Max leaves home and goes to the faraway land, and becomes the king of the Wild Things.  More or less, the general patterns of the story remain intact.  The monsters don't get sent to bed without supper, but you get the idea.  This time when Max finds the monsters, you'd be hard-pressed to differentiate this movie from a horror tale.  The Wild Things are bitterly unhappy and divided, just over-sized children like Max himself.  In order to avoid getting eaten, Max claims himself to be a mighty king and becomes their ruler.  However no title can prepare him for the job.  He is still just a child, and he cannot possibly lead these Wild Things.  From the start, you can see a tragic ending careening right into these characters.  Throughout most of the movie, I was extremely frightened for Max himself.  In a world this dark, what will keep him from getting eaten once the Wild Things figure out that he is just a boy?

Each of the monsters are expanded and given personalities, an inevitability of expanding this tiny story into a feature film.  The most central Wild Thing is Carol, voice by James Gandolfini, from here on referred to as "Monster Tony Soprano".  Monster Tony Soprano ultimately just wants everybody to live together in a great city where they can be happy.  But its all falling apart around him.  His beloved K.W., voiced by Lauren Ambrose, here on referred to as "Monster Claire Fisher", is tired of all the fighting and is teetering on leaving for good.  MTS believes strongly that Max is a great king who will solve every problem, so much so that any expressed doubts reveal that furious Soprano temper we HBO viewers remember so well.

The movie manages to range very well from happy fun childhood adventuring to the worst of primeval terror during its 101 minute run.  At one point everybody will be lying together happily in a big pile, and at another moment they're ready to kill each other***.  Ultimately it all comes out looking less like the original story and more like "Lord of the Flies" with twelve-foot Wild Things.  I think what Spike Jonze was going for was not so much a movie for children, but a movie about childhood, using the monsters as living metaphors for the various child-like personalities people may have had or still have (in my foolish way I've been all seven at one point or another).  Max is taught the difficulties of parenthood, and just how immature he truly is.  This job is beyond him, and slowly but surely this truth is made clear to him.  He leaves the island with a much greater appreciation for the difficulties that his mother goes through, herself not being a perfect person, while raising him.

For that alone, I think this is a truly brilliant movie, easily one of the best of 2009.  However, the question that I think many people have asked still remains a difficult one:  is this movie for kids?  I hate to be the kind of person who would ever make the distinction between what a person should or should not see, but honestly I do not think they would understand the movie's real message.  Most would grasp the moral on some level, but they would be more confused as to what made the monsters so unhappy in the first place.  Why be so sad in a place that's so fantastic?  Since I can't recommend this movie for my own little relatives, I can't say this movie is a kid's movie at all.  And honestly, you can't fault this movie for being that way.

And so, the only way I think can end this review is an eternal truth that I think we can all understand:

"Wild Thing! You Make My Heart Sing!"

-------------------------------
* The years have not been good to Goodnight Bear.  His nose has fallen off, and his hat is warped and stained with drool from where I chewed on it for nights on end.  His fur is dirty and caked with cat puke in a few places.  And worse, he only has one eye left, and the stuffing is sticking out of the socket.  Yet I can't find myself to throw it out.  I love him too much.

** Its been in Development Hell for nearly thirty years now.  Back in the early 80s, the development team that eventually became Pixar attempted to adapt the book with digital backgrounds mixed with 2D character animation.  What little they made was well...  not so great.  Another attempt came along with "the Grinch" with a brief teaser trailer being all that was made.  Spike Jonze's own version has been in the works for nearly half a decade, and its been a hard battle for him to get his vision onto the screen.  For that alone he deserves some credit.

*** SPOILER ALERT:  I'm referring to a moment where MTS ripped another monster's arm off!  "Hey, that was my favorite arm!"  And... we never gets it back!  My God!  Instead, for the rest of the movie the Wild Thing walks around with a pathetic twig sticking out of his shoulder that kinda looks like a hand.  Easily the most disturbing thing I've seen this side of Tim Burton...