The Results Are In!

And they liked it.  My mother was even very cordial.  I don't know what to say.

In preparation for a feast

I enjoy cooking.  I think I've said it before.  There is a zen art to cooking that is lost when you start microwaving foods.  Or you start watching Rachel Ray.  

Nothing personal, Rachel, but I'm not a fan of your dumbed down recipes.

I like the rushed feeling I get when I'm supposed to be doing 10 things at once, and then I figure out exactly how I should be doing that.  Without burning something.

Cooking is very fluid... it's almost like a battle.  Sun Tzu once said, "Those who do not employ this knowledge, challenge with certainty of defeat."

I'm not sure what this means or how this applies to cooking, but I thought it would seem more relevant to include a quote from a prolific strategic writer.

The point is that my parents are coming to dinner tomorrow night.  My wife and I do a lot of hosting.  She likes playing hostess at these events, and I like people enjoying my work at these events, but never is there a time when I draw more criticism than when my parents come over.

My father is usually very graceful in his complements, but will usually attack the desserts as a source for my corpulence, not that I'm terribly obese, though I am overweight by any measure.  

The interesting fact is that he has no complaints about my stuffing my face with food during dinners in the past, and that this and my general inactivity are the cause for my bloating.  Desserts had less to do with this, simply because I don't enjoy desserts to the extent that others do.

My mother... well... the thing about her is...  if tact were measured in degrees, we'd have to use the Kelvin scale to ensure a proper gauge of her lack of tact.  It would be 2 degrees Kelvin.

She is a fantastic cook, most of the time, and her ability to explore tastes, or to taste and then define food is extraordinary, but she (like myself) has the tendency to focus on only negatives.

Example:  My wife and I purchased a townhouse this last April.  I was 23.  My parents' first home, was an identical home, not a block away.  I wanted this house because it was already home when I walked in.  When they purchased that identical home, my father was around 44, my mother, slightly less than that.  

Normally, when your child does something responsible, or as an improvement on what you've accomplished, you compliment them on the decisions, as my father did.  He said, "I thought you'd spend a few years bouncing from apartment to apartment, but this what a good decision, and I'm proud of you."

Now, I didn't have it as rough as they did.  I did not immigrate to this country.  I did not start with nothing here.  And they gave me a lot of the tools that I have today to accomplish what I have.

"It's very small."

Keep in mind that we lived in an identical townhouse, 4 of us, and sometimes 5 (my uncle and cousin both exercised long term stays during our tenure).  I actually have more usable square feet, due to a lack of 3rd bedroom.  But that's her way of saying "It's a nice place, it's going to be very nice when you finish it.  I can't wait until you have children and you have to buy a bigger house.  When are you having children?"

She means well, and I still love her for it, but it's a bit embarrassing when your wife is standing there and doesn't have the language translation manual on Gunz' Mom.

So tomorrow night, there it is.  Cocktail weenies, challah bread and Mario Batalli's baked ziti recipe (with nutmeg!).  To top it all off, some flan. 

I'm hoping to have the same success as with the coach purse.

Product Licensing At Its Best

As an avid gamer, I enjoy the caveats of entertainment that the others in my age group or older have tended to resent as immature in the years before our generation's emergence.  Something about the interactive entertainment genre just lends itself to the type of person I am.  I don't think it's escapism, I've always got my feet planted firmly on the ground, and contrary to many of my peers, I am absolutely able to stop playing when I need to.

But I enjoy playing.

That's not why you're reading this, though.  You definitely expect me to complain about something.  Ha.  You're not going to get it this time...

Ok, I'm kidding with you, of course I have something to complain about.  Mostly, it's licensing.  Movies and Games have been intertwined with each other since the glory days of the Atari 2600.  Shitty games about movies and television shows and shitty movies based on games have done nothing to but to midly suggest to gamers that if the game exists previously in another format you should STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM IT.

In truth, there are games that are pretty decent and based on movies, but those certainly come few and far between.  But even more rare than that, is when a movie studio decides to cash some chips in on the gamer market and make a movie based on something that simply doesn't work as a film.  The best game-based-movie... well... that's tough.  I'd probably pick Silent Hill, but only due to it's loyalty to the source material and excellence in execution.  The little girl in the beginning screaming "Silent Hill!" unconvincingly almost caused me to walk out of the movie, but I've never done that before and I tried to convince my suspension of disbelief that that never happened.  

I was treated to quite a glorious representation of a movie that felt like it should have been about 45 minutes longer due to the complete story explanation in the middle of the movie.  I can't even blame the director.  The whole segment seems so out of place.  It feels like an executive decision.

But I digress.  For every Silent Hill, there are 10 Mortal Kombats, for every Resident Evil (which rates a "meh" with me) there are 10 Hitmans.

Of course, then there are films so indelibly bad that an incomprehensible charm exists while viewing these titles...  Super Mario Brothers or...  Street Fighter.

That's right, they made a movie about a fighting tournament.  They did it again in Dead Or Alive, which I've already berated.  

Here's the kicker.

 

Street Figher: The Movie: The Game

That's right, following the trend of successful movies being made in to games, due to Street Fighters overwhelming popularity with children and teenagers familiar with the subject, that and Kylie Minogue was particularly hot in the "Cammie" outfit, they decided the best way to punctuate a movie about a game was to make a game about a movie about a game.  When it was released in arcades, this co-in op was a fairly decent play.

When finally released to the Playstation, it actually was bad enough to create a temporal vortex.  Most people forgot its existence.  The vortex would have destroyed the universe, except that it created a paradox; when most people, having failed to acknowledge its existence, moved on with their lives and didn't contemplate the sheer idiocy it would take to make a game about a movie about a game, it prevented any real questioning about our reason for being here.

Just forget I wrote that and you'll be fine.

Neurosis

Go on and act like you don't do it, too.

Hello Lakeville

What the fuck?  Fix your roads.  Apple Valley has got their shit locked tight.  

It's like a motherfucking mine cart ride to get to work.  Are you intentionally damaging roads?

I Can't Stop

Sometimes you watch a movie so inexorably bad that you can't stop watching until the end.

Imagine watching a movie about a fighting tournament created to celebrate the best fighters in the world, which then becomes corrupted by an evil-scientist-cum-business-man who's wish is to install nano-machines into the best fighters and collect a "database" of fighting data on them.  To what end, you ask?

To create a pair of really ugly sunglasses.  Sunglasses which allow you to predict the fighting styles of the opponent you are going to face.  Which he will sell to the richest evil men in the world.  Who aren't really the fighter types.  And as far as I can tell, would really only be worth the purchase if you were going to fight any of the 20 people the data was collected from, if you wanted to stretch your imagination far enough to believe that that sort of thing is possible.   

Did I mention that they were sunglasses?

I don't know what's worse, that someone thought making a movie out of a fighting game that actually has ZERO storyline was a good idea, or that the film ends in a manner that suggests that if they received enough money, they would try to squeeze out a sequel.

It's not really all as simple as all that, but the long and short of it comes down to exactly that plot summary.  Toss in scantily clad women, stereotypes, bad acting and horrible cliches, not to mention Eric Roberts, this is the movie you get.  

You get, 2006's very own Dead or Alive.

People's Champion

Parenting is one of those highly debated issues that inspire even the woman in the corner with the 9 children jumping around, swinging off her like a jungle gym and running directly in to you without so much as an apology, to give her opinion on how to best raise your crotchfruit (yes, there it is again, Connie).

She thinks that she is more informed on how to raise children because she is a mother.  There are definitely qualified mothers, but she's wrong.  Just look at her.  Her daughter is rifling thru her purse in search of candy she already told her that she doesn't have.  Her two oldest sons are hitting each other and then yelling for attention.  The youngest is in her arms.  Did I neglect to mention the cigarette in her mouth?

I think I'm qualified to tell you how to raise children because I was one.  I still remember.  I know that my parents did a pretty good job.  We can put together a list of things that qualify me as a successful child rearing:

1)  I am a productive member of society.   (I am not in jail, I do not claim welfare or unemployment --before you argue with me that claiming welfare or unemployment isn't wrong, please remember that you are on a computer and connected to the internet and that your children are hungry.)

2)  I have a job, and am capable of holding said job for more than 45 days at a time.  (Years, in fact.  The shortest job span I've ever had was with Burger King, when I was 14 years old, and made the decision to switch to McDonalds after 3 months of employment.  I also don't quit at the drop of a hat.)

3)  I pay my bills.

Now, I never went to college, but I did complete high school, so coming as far as I have is a testament to the kind of job my parents did with me.

Not to say that they're perfect, because they're not.  And not to say that I'm perfect, because I'm not.

But I am respectful, for the most part, and I don't have an enlarge sense of entitlement.

There is one thing that I see wrong with today's children, and it's that we're afraid to discipline them.  Some parents do take it too far, and there are more than a few document cases of abuse.  But how is it that you always here those stories about the guy getting arrested for spanking his child for throwing a fit, and the guy down the street who whups on his kid everyday never gets investigated by CPS?

Know what?  Your parents' parents were pretty cool.  They ended up productive.  I also guarantee you that they got railed at least once a week.  Maybe they didn't even know what for.  Just a *whack* and a stern "you know what you did" and the kid straightens out.  And those kids, when told to take out the trash, were zero to trash gone in 5 seconds or less.  Usually accompanied by a "Yes, Sir."

They knew how to work.  I'm not saying that you should raise your children like that, I'm just saying that there really isn't anything wrong with showing your children that there is a penalty for being a fuck up.

In my memory, I don't have very many occasions to recall where my dad un-cinched his belt or raised his hand, though my mother did her fair share of it.  I could tell you my father's favorite story.

Remember Caldor?  We were in one, and I was in the middle of throwing a fit.  I wanted some toy, and by some virtue of psychology, I decided that I could best acquire this toy by annoying and embarrassing my parents until they agreed to purchase it.

Rather than give in to this, my father took no less than 2 seconds to lift me by the rear of my pants and give me a good *whack* on the rear for good measure.  It shut me up.

Everything in the Caldor stopped, and my mother whispers to my father, "You can't do that, someone will call the police."  

My father, in this position, becomes the Malcolm X of properly punishing your child.  He shouts, "Let them call the fucking cops, we'll see if they can take me in for teaching my child right from wrong.  I'll go to jail.  Gladly.  But I won't be a bad father."  Activity resumed and life went on.  I also knew better than to throw another fit like that again.

The funny thing is, I see parents preach positive reinforcement.  While I agree to a certain extent, the fact is, you cannot continue to reward your child for what is expected behavior.  You also cannot ignore your children when they continue to do wrong.  It might not encourage the behavior, but how does he know not to do it again?

So from me to you, discipline your children.  Or expect them to live with you until you die... or they kill you for the insurance money.