The Internet Ruins Everything (OR: Arcade Nostalgia And The Legend Of The Silent Asian Kid)

[Currently Listening To: Autolux - Future Perfect]


A couple months ago, while I was back home for a bit, I found the time to have a party at my apartment, in an effort to see some of my L.A. friends before I split town again. It was pleasantly mellower than most of our parties and, although there were no passed-out midgets like last time, at least we had my new arcade table, which drew fierce competitions and long waits for a chance to play (I should have set it to require quarters). By the time the cops shut us down at 4:30, we were playing scandalous games of Twister, molesting passed-out strangers, and trying to get Emilie to stop puking in my bathroom. Good times.

The morning after, I stumbled downstairs expecting the worst. Amazingly though, nothing was broken or stolen. There was nobody still passed out in the living room. The mess was relatively minor. Everything had survived intact... Or so it seemed, until I sat down at my beautiful arcade table and shrieked in jaw-dropped horror. What I saw before me was the most terrifying of worst-case scenarios. The unthinkable, the impossible, that which I feared the most had happened...

Someone had beat my high score on Ms. Pac-Man.

It wasn't even a situation I had considered. I didn't think it could be possible. I didn't think any of my friends were skilled enough. But someone was, and truth be told they didn't beat my high score so much as they annihilated it. Pulverized it. Raped it, sodomized it, tortured it, pummeled it into a formless bloody heap of guts and fluids, and then lit it on fire, just for fun.

Following that dreaded discovery, I became completely obsessed with returning to my 8-bit throne. For two weeks it consumed me, gnawed at me, ate away at my psyche as if a vital piece of my being has been stripped away and I needed to get it back. I sat at that table for hours, exasperated, attempting again and again and again, and I could not even approach that impossible score. And every time I played I would have to look at that big six digit number, sitting up there at the top of the screen, taunting me. Laughing at me as I failed, again and again. As my frustration and desperation grew. And I knew I would soon have to leave town, and I would do so with a great weight on my shoulders. I would leave my home knowing that my beautiful machine was still infected by someone else's superior abilities. It would be like going out of town and leaving your wife with another man. Lying awake every night thinking about some stranger fornicating with your beloved in your own bed - soiling your sheets with their passion - and knowing you could have done something to prevent it, if only you had been better at Ms. Pac-Man. Or something like that.

Anyway, my frustration led me to the nerd mecca of the internet in search of some sort of tips or tricks to aid me in my mission. Obviously, I have the master controls to the game - I could lower the difficulty setting, or increase the number of lives. But I am not a cheater. I would derive no satisfaction from that. I want to earn this. So perhaps, I thought, the internet would provide me with useful strategies from a seasoned Ms. Pac-Man veteran. And of course it did, but the effect was more defeating than anything. Because the internet is the ultimate humbler. The internet ruins everything. You can't compete with the online global arena. There is someone out there with more time, more ambition, more skill than you. If you have a good idea - someone has already done it. If you've made an interesting observation or thought of a funny joke - you're not the first. If you think you have a kick-ass video game score - you don't. No matter what, there is someone on the internet who is better than you. There is someone smarter, more talented, more creative, and certainly there is someone better at Goddamn Ms. Fucking Pac-Man.

You see, what seemed like such a monumental score to naive little me was dwarfed a hundred times over by the unfathomable achievements of video game obsessives around the world. Even my most triumphant run on Ms. Pac-Man didn't even begin to touch the scores discussed so matter-of-factly by the geek elite on various gaming websites. Such a little fish was I, in such a very big pond.

Most alarmingly, I discovered this document, which breaks down every miniscule aspect of Ms. Pac-Man with stunningly complex scientific analysis. This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read, and also humbling beyond description. There is so much I never knew. This runs so much deeper than I could have ever imagined. Here I was, just chasing ghosts and eating fruit. Thinking that's all there was to it. As if it's really that fucking simple. And now, thanks to the internet, I can never again feel good about my high score, no matter what it might be. Because it will never touch this. Now that I've read this, I know that I am merely a day tripper in the world of Ms. Pac-Man. I rode in on the tour bus with a group of overweight couples from Wisconsin, and I snapped a few photos, and bought a t-shirt, and went home. Dinner at Bennigan's. A couple of nice postcards to send to Mom. I'm George Bush checking up on Hurricane Katrina. I came down and got my picture taken handing sandwiches to some little black kids, and then I washed my hands and choppered straight back to the ranch for my pedicure. I don't know shit about Ms. Pac-Man. This man - nay, this God who wrote this document - he's fucking Sean Penn. He's the Sean Penn of Ms. Pac-Man, wading through the fucking flood waters, and I'm looking down on him from my cushy leather seat on Air Force One. This is how the internet has changed things. You don't stand a chance.

Before the internet existed, in the innocent golden years of my childhood, Nintendo was a way of life. I, along with my friends and schoolmates, lived and breathed Nintendo. We dreamed Nintendo. It was a language, a culture, a social structure. And the schoolyard was our internet. It was there, on the picnic benches and tire swings of the vast recess empire, where secrets were traded, rumors spread, strategies discussed. It was from a strange group of fourth graders we first heard descriptions of the b-levels on Super Mario Bros. Someone's neighbor's brother knew how to get invincibility on Kid Icarus. A friend who went to another school brought us the bathing suit code for Metroid, scrawled in green marker on a tattered napkin, like an archaeologist presenting us with scriptures from an ancient civilization. I remember how excited I was to be the first kid to receive the issue of The Nintendo Fanclub Newsletter that showed the very first screenshots of Zelda 2. Zelda TWO?? They're making a new Zelda??? It was as big of news as there could be in our little universe. I couldn't wait to get to school the next day, to present this gem to my peers so we could pore over those tiny images, and speculate wildly about what the game would be like. In the only world I knew, I had a valuable piece of information that no one else did.

I cannot imagine how boring it must be for kids these days, to have that sense of discovery stripped away. Now, all of the secrets are up on the internet before the game is even out. Someone has already beat it, and spoiled the ending for everyone. The wildly exaggerated rumors and legends that persist amongst gradeschool kids can be easily extinguished with a quick Google search.

Does anyone remember the apparently nation-wide childhood rumor, popularized after the release of Back To The Future II, that hover-boards did in fact exist but were prevented from being released by parents concerned about their safety? The version I heard - and believed - even went so far as to give these cruel parents an identity: The Parents Association of America. This group was responsible for stifling the availability of any and all cool inventions, lest we helpless children hurt ourselves playing with them. Oh how we loathed the PAA, wondering suspiciously if our own parents were members of this evil superpower. Today, of course, a rumor like that would be snubbed before it even had a chance to take on a life of its own. Some savvy kid would have looked it up on the internet, and smugly shut the whole thing down.

In my youth, the only microcosm we had of today's online global arena was the arcade. Mine was the last generation of true arcades, which have been in steady decline since the advent of home gaming consoles, and are now barren wastelands of outdated music and redemption games. A far cry they are from the glory I knew as a child: endless rows of brilliantly glowing screens; a cacophony of midi theme songs and digitized sound effects; kids shouting and banging frantically on buttons; big beautiful gaming wonders far beyond the reaches of our paltry home Nintendo systems. Paradise. But the arcade took away the safety of competing in the comfort of your living room, where your only opponents were your peers - friends, neighbors, acquaintances from school. Your friends presented a challenge, to be sure, but a manageable challenge. You knew their moves. You learned their weaknesses. With enough practice, you could destroy them. You could be better than anyone you knew - anyone in your little childhood universe. That is, until you took your skills to the arcade, where a melting pot of competitors waited anxiously to put you in your place: kids from other schools, kids from other grades, and - worst of all - teenagers. Like the internet, it opened the arena to an unmanageable scale. Someone at the arcade was bound to be better than you. And chances are, it was the S.A.K. - The Silent Asian Kid.

The Silent Asian Kid was a phenomena largely associated with the rise in popularity of Street Fighter II. Seemingly overnight, Street Fighter II became a religion amongst adolescent boys. We played it constantly, whenever we could, lining up to take turns pissing our allowances away with match after match of martial arts bliss. We debated intensely over the merits of each fighter. Great tournaments were held to determine who amongst us was the best. The genius of it, of course, was that the winner got to continue playing, and the competitor would have to put in another quarter for another chance. So the mark of a good player was someone who could stay at the machine for long periods of time, vanquishing any foes who dared to step up and challenge him. A boy's social status was, for a while, determined largely by his prowess on a Street Fighter machine.

We knew all of the locations of SF2 machines around town - in pizza parlors, laundromats, movie theatres - and my friends and I would seek out the least-known machines to avoid long lines and hone our skills in peace. But no matter where we went, there was always the possibility of encountering a Silent Asian Kid. The term S.A.K. is derived first from his ethnicity, and second from his behavior. The S.A.K. can be immediately identified as trouble, simply because he's always found playing SF2 by himself in a crowded arcade. NO ONE played SF2 by themselves, unless they were SO good that all potential opponents had finally given up. So when you dare approach his machine, you are already nervous. This is his turf. You are the challenger. The skills you were once so confident in are already being called into question. You're doubting yourself. Hands shaky, you insert a quarter into the machine. His machine. The S.A.K. says nothing. Not a word. He doesn't even look at you. You are as significant to him as a fly buzzing around his peripheral vision. He chooses Ryu. They always choose Ryu. You can almost feel him sneering when you select Ken, or Blanca, or Chun-Li. Laughing at what a foolish decision you've made. Of course he doesn't actually laugh - he doesn't do anything. He just stares straight ahead, showing no emotion. An unflinching rock of confidence. A merciless killer. Your palms are sweaty as you hold the joystick. Fuck this guy, you're thinking. I can do this. You've trained for hundreds of hours. You've mopped the floor with all of your friends. You're a fucking God at this game. Unstoppable. You can do this. The match begins... And within seconds, it ends. You didn't even see the S.A.K. blink. You didn't see his hands move. But you're dead. Just like that. He says nothing in regards to his victory - you remain unacknowledged. You walk away humbled. Defeated. Twenty five cents poorer. The only thing left to do is dick around on a non-competetive machine like TMNT until the S.A.K. finally gets tired of winning and retires for the day. Then the machine is open again for everyone else in the room.

Nothing ruins an arcade like a Silent Asian Kid. The internet is like millions of S.A.K.s all united together to take the fun out of everything. So now, as I return home to face my tainted arcade machine, the only thing I can do is forget about those Pac-nerds whose mighty scores mock me from across the information superhighway. Forget about all the S.A.K.s in the world. Try not to think about how no matter what I do, I'll never be able to have a score that matters. I will never, ever be a competitor in the global Ms. Pac-Man arena. I'll just keep chasing ghosts and eating fruit, insignificantly.

Whatever. At least I get laid.

On the Subjects of Normal People, My Hatred of Sports, and Harvesting Paris Hilton's Organs

[Currently Listening To: Wilco - Kicking Television: Live In Chicago]


Everyone has their own personal Hell. Some situation, fictional or otherwise, which is uniquely unbearable to them. I think I, as someone growing exponentially less tolerant of most of the people in the world, have a great many personal Hells, and the other night I found myself in a classic one.

It was saturday night in the faux-French city of Montreal, Canada. For those of you unaware, Montreal is part of the Quebec province, which has decided that, contrary to the rest of Canada, it is going to pretend to be French. It doesn't look like France - it still just looks like Canada, which looks like America only newer and whiter. But everyone speaks French. Everything is written in French. Except that the rest of Canada speaks English, and everyone in Quebec speaks English in addition to French, which means that almost everything is written out in both languages. It's idiotic, and completely unnecessary. It's kind of like going to Indiana and finding that everyone speaks Japanese. You're not French. Get over it.

Anyway, it was saturday night, and my friend Brett and I were attempting to find something fun to do. We seemed to be in kind of a lame touristy part of town, so our only lead was a friend of ours who was meeting some other friends at a bar near our hotel. In a completely unfamiliar city, at least it was a start. The bar was called MacDougal's, or O'Brien's, or McGillycutty's, or some other trying-too-hard Irish pub name, and I could tell the second we walked in that I hated it. It looked like any other Americanized Irish pub, but it had the atmosphere of my most dreaded of watering holes: a sports bar. I hate hate hate sports bars, largely because I hate the people who inhabit them: I affectionately refer to them as "normal people." You know the ones. You might be one. There are millions and millions of them. Bland, uncreative, worker bee types who demand little from life and receive little in return. People who sit in a cubicle all day only to come home to sit in front of their television. Who live their lives vicariously through sitcom characters. Who watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" and laugh because the laugh track tells them it's funny. People who have no use for art. Who like music that the radio tells them is good, and listen to it quietly in the background. Big Dave Matthews fans, or whatever else is safe and pleasant. Nothing too challenging. People who wear the same clothes as everyone else. Mall shoppers. The Gap. Old Navy. Chain restaurants. SUVs. People Magazine. Suits. Ties. Stock reports. The status quo. Nine to five. Monday through friday. Suburbia. Golf. People who open a newspaper and reach for the sports page first. People who are the most excited and alive when watching a complete stranger kick a ball over a line on television. Empty vessels, waiting to be told what to do. TV will tell you what's entertaining. The radio will tell you what good music is. Advertisements will tell you what you want. The mall will tell you what to wear. Society will tell you how to live your life. Go to college, get a stable job, sit at a desk, sit in traffic, sit in front of the TV, sleep, have some coffee, sit down and read the sports page, sit in traffic, have some more coffee, sit at a desk, repeat, repeat, repeat, retire, die. No variance. No risks. No creativity. No personality. Never deviate from the norm. Never dig beneath the surface. Nothing dangerous or unusual. Caffeinated faux-happiness. Comfort. Stability. Consistency. Repetition. Blandness. Just a straight line. A flat line. And then you're dead.

I know these people well because I went to high school with about two thousand of them. Silver spoon suburban kids, all with the same Ambercrombie clothes, the same rich parents, the same vacant personalities. Attack of the clones. Beautiful. Wealthy. Popular. Idiots. I see those same people from time to time when I'm back home, and it's strangely satisfying to watch them settle into their lives of quiet misery. The star quarterback who had everything in his safe little high school world, suddenly found he wasn't quite good enough to make the college football team. Without the football team, his 2.0 GPA and gradeschool reading level couldn't get him into the good university. Community college. Business degree. He gave up, and got a job with Dad's company, and married the prettiest girl in school, who's now fat and bitter that her dreams of being a veterinarian were shoved aside so she could drive their two point five kids to soccer practice while her husband bones his secretary. But none of this is to say that I was one of those bitter lonely kids in high school who got picked on by the jocks, and was about to go fucking Columbine on everyone. On the contrary, I had a great time in high school. I had a lot of fun, a lot of friends, and nothing but great memories. I did, however, regard 95 percent of my fellow students as complete fucking tools. It's not bitterness so much as self-righteousness.

Anyway. Back in Flappynuts McFannybucket's Irish Pub, or whatever the fuck it was called, we squeezed through the ocean of normality and sat down at a small table. The bar was stepping up to the rare challenge of offending all of my senses simultaneously. It smelled of old beer, with an occasional au de urine wafting in from the bathroom. Someone was blowing cigarette smoke directly in my face. It was noisy - a cacophony of loud conversations and television noise. Everyone was drinking light beer with their eyes glued to one of several large television sets on the wall. The game was on. Yes, the game. "The game" is a strange phenomena in the world of sports where no matter where you are, you can refer to a particular sporting event simply as "the game" and a sports fan will know exactly which game you are talking about. This term can be upgraded in occasions when said game is extremely important, whereupon it is then referred to as "the big game." In this case, the big game was hockey - Montreal vs. Toronto, to be specific. There were allegiances to both teams present in the bar, but mostly we seemed to be amongst Montreal natives, as was evident from a massive uproar every time something good happened to Montreal's team. When a goal was scored, nearly everyone in the bar leaped up, threw fists in the air, screamed loudly, clanked their beers together, hugged, high-fived. Brett and I, meanwhile, had no idea what was going on. Eventually we just sort of got into it, and started shouting along with them every time the burst of excitement occurred. We'd turn on the best phony machismo we could, and shout in deepened voices "FUCK YEAH!!! GO TEAM!!! THAT'S HOW YOU PLAY THE FUCKIN' GAME!!!" or "YES!! TOUCHDOWN!!!" or "HOMERUN!! FUCK MY NIPPLES ARE GETTING HARD!!" or "AAAAAAA THAT WAS FUCKIN' AWESOME!!! GODDAMNIT!!! JACK ME OFF, BRETT!! FUCKING JACK ME OFF!!!" We quickly drew ire from the mongoloids around us.

By now you may have gathered that I cannot stand sports. For my entire life, it has been something that's always felt like a battle I had to fight against the rest of the world. As a child, you were just sort of expected to play sports. Little league. Girls' soccer. Basketball at the YMCA. In white upper-middle-class suburbia, every kid played a sport or three. Except me. I was the loner only-child with not even a shred of interest in organized athletics. I wanted to draw comic books, and have adventures in my backyard, and play Nintendo. I wonder sometimes if there was an exact moment in my youth when my father realized that his only son was going to be an art fag rather than a jock. I wonder how much that crushed some piece of his soul. He was, after all, a sports fanatic who wanted nothing more than to have a son he could coach - and it was in this interest that he once and only once talked me into joining a team - the basketball team, when I was in kindergarten. Just because he wanted to be the coach, and you had to have a child on the team in order to do so. I was his only hope. And so it was that my father's dream was exchanged for his son's misery. I was easily the worst player on the team - a bumbling little pudgeball who spent most of the time sitting on the bench - although I was far more content there. From the bench, at least, I could watch the game and imagine tentacles coming out of the floor and squeezing the guts out of the kids on the team I particularly disliked. Or a meteor crashing through the ceiling and incinerating them all. I would hold onto the bench and imagine gravity suddenly reversing, causing everyone on the court to fall to their death, gored violently by the rusty ceiling beams. I was a strange child. Imagination was my sport. I went through gradeschool as the kid who couldn't climb the rope in gym class, but was widely known as the best artist in school. That saved me from being a loser, but I always wondered why creativity was valued so much less than sporting ability. By the time I got to high school, and the art and music programs were heavily underfunded while they built the football team a new field, I began to realize that it's simply the way of the normal people, and it's never going to change. They value entertainment designed for simpletons, and they outnumber us creative types a hundred to one. Sports are, after all, the common language of normal people. It unites them. It gives them a purpose. It provides them with accomplishments to live vicariously through. A true sports fan will feel like he has personally succeeded on some level when "his" team - a group of complete strangers with athletic skill he will never possess - wins a game. Sports fans shout "we did it!" when their team wins. No. No, no, no. YOU did not do anything. YOU sat on your fat ass, drank beer and ate pretzels, while the game was won by athletes who do not know you and are in no way connected to you.

I have nothing against people who play sports - rather, I have all the respect in the world for them, since I've never had any athletic abilities of my own. Instead, I despise sports fanatics, and moreover society in general for placing sports on such a tremendous social pedestal. Why are sports figures so much more highly regarded than brilliant scientists, doctors, authors, artists, or philosophers? Why do we worship these mongoloids who run around knocking each other over for a living? Why do retard rapists like Kobe Bryant make tens of millions of dollars a year, while public school teachers struggle to pay for books for their students? No one should make that much money. No one. Particularly not idiot basketball players who read at a fourth grade level and can't think of anything better to do with their riches than buy a seventh Hummer or a third pool for their fifth mansion. Our world needs a system of checks and balances for wealth. A panel of highly-educated officials to determine who deserves the money they've been given. Not just sports figures - the entertainment industry is rife with guilty parties: Julia Roberts, you don't deserve that much money. We're sorry the idiot masses deemed you someone of value, but they were wrong. We're giving half of your net worth to hard-working families who are struggling to get by. 50 Cent, we're taking every penny you have ever earned. Bragging about being a former crack dealer who's been shot nine times and then grunting into a microphone does not make you deserving of your wealth. Sorry MTV tricked everyone into thinking you were talented. Paris Hilton, we're very sorry. Really, we apologize, but we're going to have to take all of your money, and also we're going to have to kill you and harvest any of your vital organs not too damaged from substance abuse. Again, we apologize on behalf of the people of America. They're not the smartest bunch. They let you believe that you're significant or deserving of attention on any level whatsoever. There are millions of people far more deserving of your money, your organs, and the air that you breathe.

We got the hell out of that bar as fast as we could - and just in the nick of time: As we were stepping out, the entire room exploded with cheers and shouting - apparently signifying Montreal's victory. A number of fratboy types lurking outside the pub perked up with interest, and asked us "who won the game?" Montreal, we told them, without being entirely certain that it was true. "FUCK YEAH!!!" they shouted, and gave each other high fives. "WE'RE THE FUCKIN' WINNERS!!! FUCKIN' RIGHT!!!" You sure are, guys. You sure are.

Why are people so fucking stupid? I could start a whole new tangent on that subject alone, but I've rambled enough for today. Time to get on an airplane.

The Valleys Of New Orleans

[Currently Listening To: The Veils - The Runaway Found]


I haven't updated my blog in such a long time I've started receiving death threats. Relax, people! Go do something productive with your lives. It's just that I've been busy, traveling like crazy, and I don't like to update this page unless I have the time to do it right. More updates are coming soon. Promise. In the meantime...

A few days ago I was in New Orleans, one of the four cities I have called home at some point in my life. It's the first time I'd been down there since Katrina hit, and I was anxious to see how the city was holding up. In the French Quarter, where we stayed, things almost felt normal. Very little damage was evident; shops were open, Bourbon Street was lively on saturday night... But beyond that, it was a ragged ghost town. Miles and miles of neighborhoods closed and abandoned, deemed uninhabitable for months. Places and parts of town I knew like the back of my hand, now completely unrecognizable. Garbage and debris everywhere. Almost everything closed, almost everyone gone. It is clear that despite its disappearance from news headlines, New Orleans has a very long way to go before it gets back to normal - if it ever does.

We had the opportunity to tour the ninth ward, the most heavily-damaged area of the city, still closed to the public. The scale of devastation was unimaginable, spanning miles and miles. It transcended anything you've seen on TV, anything you've imagined. I took quite a few pictures while I was down there, and they've been posted online in hopes of giving people a better idea of what's really still going on down there, nine weeks after the hurricane. Take a look, and pass the link on to some friends:

New Orleans: 10_28_05