The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - January 31st, 2008
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
|
09:25 am
[Link] |
Movie Review: The King Of Kong
Billy Mitchell is a man made for movies, a lean man with a carefully-sculpted mullet that seems to have only grown in strength since the 1980s. He dresses in the same outfit every day, a dark shirt and garish American tie, and makes absolutely no bones whatsoever about how he is the best. And he is the best...
....At classic videogames.
Yes, there are still folks out there who are trying to crack the secrets of Ms. Pac-Man. They take it very seriously, posting their scores at Twin Galaxies, the official repository of all videogame high scores. And Billy was the best twenty-five years ago back in 1982, and remains the best today. He is the first man ever to achieve a perfect score at Pac-Man. At one point, he held five world records on high scores on five different videogames. He is the Bobby Fischer of coin-ops, the Muhammed Ali of the joystick, the Tiger Woods of the arcades.
But what he is most famed for is Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong is one of the most popular videogames ever, and one of the most brutal. It requires precise timing and skill as you're barraged with random barrels and fireballs and fiendish treadmills that keep switching direction; most people don't even make it halfway up the first level. Billy is one of two people in the world widely acknowledged to have "finished" the game - which is to say that he has played until the game's internal variables rolled over 256 and died.
The second-highest score in the world is roughly 500,000. Billy's was 874,300. That's how good he is. And Billy carries that egotism over into every facet of his life; he cheerfully tells the camera that there's no one as good as he is at selling hot sauce. He owns a chain of restaurants, and is famed for his self-promotion and mystery. He doesn't show up much, but when he does, it's always a splash because Billy wants to be remembered. And videogames taught him what he needed to know to thrive.
Enter Steve Wiebe.
Steve is an out-of-work teacher who is blessed with just a touch of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - not the kind where he has to cross himself five times after entering a doorway, but the kind where when he gets into something, it's all he can think about and he cannot stop. He taught himself to be phenomenally talented on the drums, was a star pitcher, writes beautiful songs, and basically can do anything with his hands. But he's never made anything of himself because he's quiet; Steve's not good with crowds, self-promotion, or dealing with failure. A friend says that he's seen Steve tear up more than any other man he knows, because Steve is so frustrated at not getting things perfect.
Steve has a Donkey Kong machine in his garage. Getting into the game, he tapes his performances to submit them to Twin Galaxies. And he has the triumph - Steve scores a million-point game, rolling the score over (it only has six digits) and getting to the kill screen.
He sends in his videotape. And that is where the politics begin.
For the world of videogame high scores is insular and suspicious by nature. It's too easy to fake things these days, with MAMEs and hacked ROM boards and just plain digital trickery. There are referees who judge videotapes sent in, and they have very strict criteria. And Steve is an unknown, while Billy is, well the poster boy for the entire championships. He has powerful friends in the classic videogame industry.
Steve's innocent videotape becomes the source of an uproar that has to be seen to be believed. Because the strength of The King of Kong is that it takes you deep inside a world that you barely knew existed. Oh, as a videogame nut I was aware of Twin Galaxies and that people were still trying to beat old games... But the kind of people who devote their lives to this sort of thing are colorful beyond repair, and the details of the videogame inner circle, where they continually squabble and fight, are laid wide open.
The King of Kong is brilliant at making you feel like you're continually stumbling upon the inner cabal. These men carry out whisper campaigns, hold decades-long rivalries, make bold statements about the integrity (or lack thereof) of their colleagues, and they're so into it that you occasionally are carried along with it. By the end, you know who you're rooting for, because you're a part of the world.
If you'd told me that a seventy-five minute documentary would be my favorite movie of the last six months, I would have laughed at you. But The King of Kong is the best non-fiction film since Spellbound, a constant source of delight and joy; you pick favorites from the cast and want them to win. It's the kind of movie that I know I'll buy not because I want to see it over again - though I do - but because I know that from now on, I'll be continually asking in disbelief, "You haven't seen The King of Kong?"
I'll take it down from my shelf and put it in the DVD drive. I will play it for them. And I will watch their faces as they, too, see the wonder of the arcades and smile.
|
|
12:49 pm
[Link] |
A Special Kind of Porn
One of my favorite porn sites of all time is The 4 Real Amateurs Network. And honestly, judged on volume, it's not that great a deal. Unlike other porn networks, which will give you three or four new videos a day, 4 Real updates maybe three or four times a week. Furthermore, most of that video comes from only two of the women on the network, Brooke and Anna, and one of them (Brooke) isn't really my type.
So why is it so good? I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized why:
They laugh.
Seriously. The site deals with swingers and wifeswappers, which I've seen a thousand times before. But so much of porn is grim; the women work that cock like they're producing poisoned widgets at the death factory, glaring angrily at it like they wish they could annihilate every penis in existence. They kiss reluctantly, as though putting their tongue inside a mouth was like licking a leper. They get the orgasm in a studied, focused way, as if they are not summoning pleasure but a kind of tantric chi.
That's not the sex I know.
The sex I know involves a lot of goofiness. There's "Ow you're on my hair" and the occasional glimpse up as you make eye contact and smile because this is all so funny, and occasionally there are giggle fits when you brush the wrong thing by mistake. The glory of sex is that it's an enjoyment, something you do because you're relaxed, and the slow build-up to that swell of oh-my-God-it's-all-I-can-feel-right-now is what makes sex work.
These women giggle occasionally. They make silly comments. If there's a big orgy, occasionally they sit back and take a break to have a glass of wine. They're not cracking wise all the time, but there is a sense that this is what they do for fun, and the camera's there merely to pay some bills and give some thrills.
And it's interesting, because there are videos where they get into porn mode, where they're trying to act sexy in the glowering way that women are supposed to in porn, and whoops. Right turnoff. Why would I want a woman who looks that furious? Why would I want to get with someone who's racing frantically to the finish line, barking orders like a drill sargeant, and then gets so caught up in the process that their orgasm doesn't look like an orgasm, but rather a body-wide series of muscle cramps that have arrived after a forty-minute workout?
I wonder what other men think is sexy. It must work for someone, and probably a large majority of them, because that grr-porn seems to be what they want. I look at the hard plasticine bodies of the top porn stars, who look injection-molded and kind of bitter, and I don't see a hint of merriment in those pooched-out lips. I see someone who's clocking in at the factory, licking whatever's put in front of her to get the money she needs, and that's not at all sexy.
Imperfect is beautiful. Fun is beautiful.
Maybe I'm wrong.
|
|