WTF (Weekend Top Five) sounds much better than WTT doesn't it? No, its not a matter of laziness at all. Pfft.
Another post for posterity even if just my own.
For a change let's start at 1 and work our way up.
1. Disbelief
A brief moment when you can't believe you have to start all over again. But why is the rum gone?
2. Mourning
And then you realize you do and you take a moment to consider what the hell just happened.
3. Acceptance
Finally you're able to just look back and laugh at the whole thing and take it for what it's worth, hopefully remembering more good than bad.
4. New Interests
Not that you wanted to, but your mind branches out searching for something new to cling to.
5. Re-Attunement
In the end (harr de harr harr), you decide to let sleeping dogs lie and life take its course and leave yourself open to like and love new experiences, things and people. And the helicopter.
I have to start posting more cheerfully. It might sound I'm depressed or something.
Yes, I know, it's not even the weekend yet! It's just the end of the week. Well... I have another post lined up for the actual weekend. I've been busy and I'll be even more so. So if you desperately missed me or are just bored at work, I'll leave you some lines to entertain you for a few minutes.
You know what I hate? Not a whole lot, I'm a very mellow person. But there are a few things I really can't stand.
3. Michael Jackson
Not a new pet peeve by any stretch but it has certainly escalated since his death. Why can't he stay dead? I don't see anyone rushing to produce two or three more Amy Winehouse shows/CDs/Experiences now that she's dead. I had little patience for the man-like entertainer when he was alive and dangling babies out of balconies but he's become downright unbearable now that he's dead. If Supernatural has taught us anything is that "what's dead should stay dead"
2. American Localization/"The Office" Phenomenon
I have nothing against the United States as a whole. In fact, it might be a very nice place to live for all I know and I' m sure it's filled with delightful people and others not so delightful, much like any other charted place on this our blue Earth. But what I can't swallow is the torrent of Americanized TV shows I've come across in the past few years, most of them copied directly from the Brits, those funny buggers. The first time I ever experienced this was with a show called "Coupling". I was a follower of the show, if not a die-hard fan. Imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch another episode and discovered I was watching the first episode again but with a different cast with an American accent. My mind couldn't process this aberration and the show was cancelled to the delight of all after just four episodes. I wasn't quite so lucky with the American version of "The Office". While I found the original version to be funny and sarcastic, most of the American version just comes on as a bit... sad.
On a related note, the complete opposite happened recently with the "reality" show "Wipeout" as in that it spawned in the US and birthed a myriad of international versions, including a British one. One of Fox's many channels here plays at least three versions of them each night and I was never sold on the American hosts. But that Richard Hammond, although not the funniest man to ever grace my screen, manages to make me chuckle more often than the other two's puns ever will. Plus, you don't get Americans calling themselves "Ginger Ninjas". Canadians, maybe.
1. Mario
I miss VGCats, don't you?
I cannot express in words how much I dislike this character. The overweight midget plumber with a mustache that would impede even the most voracious of animals to get any soup in. I hate him. I'm tired of him. Why would a child ever be fascinated by a plumber in overalls throwing fireballs at turtles is beyond me. They keep revamping it and remodeling it and putting him in new "exciting" scenarios. Why can't they just make another character for kids to look up to and play as? Every time I hear a "itsa me" I feel like snapping my index in someone's eye. I hate Mario and it should be impaled, burned at the stake while I dance naked around the fire in delirious ecstasy.
When I heard through the grapevine that they had used a piece from WAR's soundtrack in a promo for Fox's American Horror Story I felt in me the urge to expose a bit more of these blatant rip offs of game soundtracks. It happens quite frequently, people just don't notice because the target audiences for one medium and the other rarely meet. Except in me.
Example: where does TLC and The Sims cross paths? Me. You can imagine my disbelief and outrage when I hear something from The Sims 2 buy mode as background music for TLC's "Outrageous Kid Parties" promo. Mike believed me then but failed to raise an eyebrow in concern. Well, that wouldn't be the end of my battle for awareness to this issue. There were other instances where I've caught familiar samples of soundtracks in channel promos but damned if I could ever find them online, obscure as they were.
A few days after the TLC incident we were having dinner and on comes Solitary, a reality show in one of the multitude of Fox channels. This time I wasn't going to stay silent about it anymore. I absolutely loved this particular game and as soon as my brain unfroze and I realized what they had done I had to make it known. Mike didn't believe me on this one at first, seeing as he actually liked the show. But I showed him. And I'll show you.
The madness spreads. Mike began by turning his nose but there's no mistaking those strings.
Actually, I have mixed feelings about this, to be honest. Soundtracks are the unsung heroes of videogaming. I personally have spent way too many hours of my life burning images of menus on tv screens just because I liked the music as background for my daily chores. So, is it that wrong for other people to make use of someone's genius work and spread it further through another medium? Yes, it is, especially if credit isn't given to those who deserve it. But I like it that people who would otherwise never be exposed to them have and their lives are richer for it. In some miniscule way. Well, even if they don't know it, I do.
Ok, not really a shock. He's a very intelligent man to be honest. But he rarely decides to comit his thoughts to post. I'm very glad he did. And in doing so he managed to sum up my life in WAR since inception.
Remember the '90s? I do. I had the best time in the '90s. They were my thing. It was a time of baggy clothes and ludicrously large shoelaces. Mike will tell you how he loved the '80s, how all the best music came from the time of pink spandex overalls and big frizzy hair. I'll say the exact same thing about the nineties. Because I heart them and I want them back.
As with all decades, the '90s can only be said to have oficially taken off circa 1994. It is a well known fact that the first few years of a decade actually belong to the one that preceded it. It's like an acclimation period, when people and trends interiorize that the calendar has changed and that some major change is, in fact, required for evolution to proceed.
Having been born in 1985, I remember most of the nineties. Just the other day we were surfing the youtubes for old favourites we used to watch as kids. Bear in mind that these things reached us with a slight delay, rights having to be purchased and some things needing to be dubbed.
I remembered spending hours in front of my second parent, my old Sony Black Trinitron, delighting at the sight of this magical shows from foreign lands. Some lands were even more foreign than I could ever imagine.
One of the shows that made an impact on me was Gargoyles. I can't believe how I'd forgotten that show existed. It was so emotionally charged. These creatures, these stone-made-flesh men had been betrayed but they still believed, they endured and, every day at dawn, after toiling anonymously for our safety, they would return to their perch on top of that tower. Everything about this was totally completely fucking epic! Shows like this shaped our generation, shaped what we play and watch and listen to. You can't deny that. Well, maybe you can and you could even have a point but hey, I liked it. 'Twas awesome.
Other awesome things included several anime I didn't even know was anime until I sat down and actually thought about it a few years back. I also remember the music. It defines a decade, doesn't it? What young people listen to.
I wasn't very picky when it came to music, I'll admit. I'd usually just endure what everyone else was listening to and I won't bore you with the musical torture I endured growing up. But I did grow to like Simon & Garfunkel and Cat Stevens a lot during this period. My mom was upgrading her vinyl (or as I saw a young hipster say the other day "a vinyl CD". I stared at him, slack-jawed in horror) collection and when she brought these new CDs home I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And I liked it. A lot. Pair that with my obssession with videogame music, a mild taste for Nirvana and my unbeknonwst passion for Smashing Pumpkins and a Sara had been reborn. People will ask me what kind of music I like. I tend to cringe because I can honestly say I love Ryuichi Sakamoto or Madredeus but also adore The Strokes and some Placebo. I will dance David Fonseca on my way home or drum my fingers on my legs to Iwasaki Taku. I'm all over the place when it comes to music and I have my experiences in the '90s to thank for that.
Also, I couldn't dance but, let's face it: nobody could dance in the '90s. Nobody. Just check the first season of Buffy, you'll see what I mean.
