Monthly Archives: April 2012

On Running

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Joe| 1 Comment

At the behest of my father, I ran cross country in high school. He demanded that I do some kind of sport, and I chose distance running mainly (I think) because it meant that I didn’t have to really cooperate with a team or do anything complicated. I didn’t have to learn to hit or kick or pass or anything subtle. I just had to learn to run. I thought it would be simple. I was right. Running is very simple. That does not mean that it is easy.

Since high school, I have only rarely jogged. When I lived in Narita I regularly biked through the rice fields and bamboo groves near my apartment, but seldom jogged. Last year, I went to a gym on a regular basis (before said gym went under) and worked on a number of exercises and weights a few times a week. I did not run, though. Bicycling, jumping jacks, push-ups, weights- these were all well and good. Anything but running. Running was the only exercise that I actively did not want to do.

I’ve started running again. I hate it. It feels great.

Jogging is at once an act of punishing self-abnegation, and also a source of great satisfaction. It does hurt. When I run, I huff, puff, and feel various parts of my body buzz and twist in pain. Or, if not pain, then some other feeling that is certainly not pleasure. I’m steady, but I do not go particularly fast. Every moment is a moment in which I have to tell myself “I have the capacity to withstand an additional moment of pain.” Every pace invites the next, and every unit of distance screams “we will withstand more.” Running is an act of passing through pain in order to get to other, additional pain, and more pain after that. Lots of life is like that. Running makes it explicit.

It is satisfying, though. I’ve only started running again recently, but at the end of a jog (or during it) I pause and realize that I do not need to be passive. Also, I realize that even though I create difficulty for myself (such as jogging arbitrary distances) I can also overcome such difficulties. Running is a visceral reminder that a human can take action and self-create both challenges and solutions. We can act. We do not wait to act or simply get acted upon, we do not just observe or stew or bide time. Running (such a simple activity) is a reminder that we can dramatically do. Also, it’s good for you, so that’s a nice bonus.

I would not say I like like running. I do however, enjoy it. I would not describe myself as a masochist, but knowing that one can both create (and subsequently crush) a given challenge using only the power of one’s legs makes for a worthy satisfaction, and a good pain.

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Posted in Athletics, Self Improvement

Why I Loved, Loved, Loved, Loved Cabin in the Woods

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Joe| Leave a comment

If you haven’t seen Cabin in the Woods yet, go see it. Don’t read this blog post. Don’t read anything else about it. Don’t watch the trailer. Shun all articles, comments, advertisements, and even headlines that mention it. Just go get it all up in your sense organs and take it in. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, and you (yes, YOU) need to watch it.

If you haven’t, go away. Now.

There are spoilers ahead.

Click away if you haven’t seen it. This is the Internet. I’m sure you can find something else to read.

Alright, is it just us? Have we all here seen the movie? Cool. Guys, I loved this film. Loved, loved, loved it. Here’s why:

I will now imagine every conventional horror movie being expertly manipulated by Josh from The West Wing.

Cabin in the Woods isn’t a spoof or a parody like the Scream movies. It doesn’t ask the audience to laugh at other horror movies, or love them less. It’s not biting the hand that feeds it. Instead, Cabin provides a backstory for just about every other horror movie ever made. It takes tired genre tropes and turns them into something we can actually appreciate by turning them into plot points. Instead of skewering cliches, it provides a reason for them. Why are horror movies the way they are? Because the Ancient Gods say so, that’s why. Why do people make stupid decisions? Because of pheromone gas. Why do the characters fall into such neat archetypes? Because of poison hair dye and spiked weed.

The next time I see horror characters who are badly drawn, who make stupid decisions, or who generally fall into easy stereotypes, I’m just going to assume it’s because Josh from The West Wing and his coterie of murderous poindexters are pulling all the strings, substituting common sense and depth of personality with the ritualistic motions of the horror genre.

It fire’s Checkhov’s gun gleefully into the air, again and again and again.

As soon as I saw the Hellraiser-esque ball puzzle in the basement scene, I couldn’t help grinning. I knew exactly what would happen if someone solved the puzzle, and (by implication) what all the other things in the basement did. My suspicions were confirmed moments later with the shot of the whiteboard that listed a plethora of horror monsters and baddies. I had to admit, I was a little tiny bit disappointed when the baddies turned out to be “just” some shambling corpses, and understood Bradley Whitford’s disappointment when he said that he wanted to see a merman.

The ending, though, completely reversed my earlier disappointment. If anything, it was only because of my disappointment earlier at not seeing a giant snake or werewolf that made me so ebullient when they appeared later. Cabin in the Woods is one of those few movies that satisfied all of my expectations and didn’t leave me exhausted. It knew when to overload the audience with horrors, and also when to stop, creating, and then masterfully satisfying, audience desire.

It’s a movie that gives us a good damn look at all of the awesome carnage.

I don’t hate shakycams or fast edits if they’re used well (I don’t hate anything if it’s used well, actually) but unstill cameras and rapid chopping have become all too common in movies. I loved the camerawork in Cabin. The frame actually stayed put from time to time, and instead of giving us brief and frenetic looks at the action or various monsters, director Drew Goddard let us have a good, long look at everything that was happening. When the menagerie of horrors sprung from the elevators toward the end, I was immensely happy that we got to actually see them. Goddard didn’t just give us a brief flash of monstrous action- he lingered on the beasts and the gore lovingly, serving up a beautiful, bloody feast for the audience.

Speaking of the audience…

The Ancient Gods are us.

At least, that’s what I think. The white-shirted manipulators ominously say “we’re not the only ones watching.” No, not at all. The Ancient Gods are. They demand a certain amount of satisfaction, titillation, conflict, gore, sacrifice, messiness, and all in a prescribed formula. They are us. They are the producers who want movies packaged in a particular way, and the audience who wants certain expectations met. If the manipulators (i.e., the film makers) fail, their world falls apart. Box office receipts plummet, audiences walk away unsatisfied, and a giant fist rises from the ground, rage-quitting the world in anger. The Ancient Gods for whom film makers create elaborate, cruel, blood-soaked illusions are those of us sitting in the theater seats who demand new sacrifices year after year. Those sacrifices must follow a certain pattern, they must be of a certain type, they must follow rules. Otherwise, the Ancient Gods, the audience, will not be assuaged.

I, though, walked away from Cabin in the Woods immensely pleased. Mr. Goddard, Mr. Whedon- your sacrifice is acceptable.

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Posted in Uncategorized

In Praise of Makoto

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Joe| 1 Comment

I love fighting games. I love Soul Calibur, Super Smash Brothers, Mortal Kombat, and Guilty Gear. I even kind of tolerate Tekken, if there’s nothing else available.

For and away the best by far, though, are the Capcom fighting games. Capcom has been making pretty much the same game again and again since Street Fighter II over two decades ago, but it’s a successful format which has successfully consumed a good portion of my fan energy, despite (or maybe because of) its sameness/consistency.

I will admit to being a fairly boring Street Fighter player, in that I usually choose Ryu or Ken, easy-to-use characters who spew fireballs. However, due to zoning out after work and playing way too much Street Fighter III at Ground Kontrol, I think I have a new favorite Street Fighter character: Makoto. We need more Makotos in video games. Badly.

We need more female characters in games.

This is kind of a “duh” point, but it’s important. We actually need more female characters in all media. A frightening amount of movies and TV continue to fail the Bechdel test, prove the Smurfette principle, and otherwise fail at portraying half the species in any meaningful way. So, there’s that. But…

We need more female characters whose gender is not the defining characteristic of their being.

I love Chun-Li as much as any fighting game nerd- she’s fast, she’s dodgy, and if you know how to play her she can be really, really cheap. However, Chun-Li is very much Street Fighter‘s Smurfette- the defining bit of her character (at least initially) was that she was the one lady amid a series of dudes. Her little bit of victory banter wasn’t anything about her fighting style or any kind of trash talk. She said to her vanquished opponents “I am the strongest woman in the world.” It was all about her XX chromosomes. Later additions like Cammy and Sakura hit the same note- their gender was pushed front-and-center, and their identities as martial artists were secondary.

Makoto’s different. She’s a fighter first. Wearing a gi, she’s doesn’t have any kind of costume that shows off her tits or ass, and there’s no obnoxious schoolgirl posturing or spurned-lover weirdness like there is with Sakura and Cammy, respectively. Makoto looks and acts like a martial artist, and in Street Fighter III it’s her martial arts skills and her fighting style that define her, rather than a costume that barely covers her butt. She is a martial artist who is female, rather than a female martial artist. We need more of that. Which brings me to my last point…

We need more female characters whose play style transcends their gender.

Let’s go back to Chun-Li again (and I want to emphasize that I like Chun-Li, I’m not trying to rail against her or anything- I just want a broader pallete here). Chun-Li is lighter, faster, and dance-ier than the other Street Fighter characters. Her play style, broadly speaking, is strongly influenced by the fact that she’s female. This is true in lots of games. The female characters are the quick, light ones speedy-dodgy ones.

Makoto, on the other hand, hits hard. Makoto is all about hard punches and high, close-range damage. She is not a character who flits about elegantly or whose movement or play style is at all feminized. One of her moves is a choke, and one of her super techniques involves her turning red, hulking out, and turning into a relentless damage juggernaut. The Street Fighter character whom she resembles more than anything else is Zangief, the immense Russian bear wrestler.

When Capcom designed Makoto they did something right. They’ve put out a lot of nonsense like Crimson Viper, but with Makoto they got something right. I’ll take Makoto over the Laura Crofts or Bayonettas of the world any day- more than anything else she’s a punching, choking, utterly punishing martial-arts damage machine. She just happens to be a woman. We need more ladies like her.

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Posted in Video Games