Mea Culpa

THIS IS DR. SPARKLE SPEAKING

Dr. Sparkle does not apologize for his actions.  He has neither the inclination, nor the time for apologies. He is busy shattering pillars of mighty marble with his enormous, mighty hands. He is too preoccupied uprooting forests, and shattering the trunks into a thousand pieces. He takes these slabs of rock, these massive oaks, and like Prometheus creating fire, transforms them into mighty, mighty videos, to be posted onto Youtube. He would go into more detail about how he does this, but you would not be able comprehend the Herculean efforts required of him. While posting this comment, the wind blows gently through Dr. Sparkle's magnificent head of hair, which is neither the color of apricots nor of strawberries, but of a seriously overripe banana.

Needless to say, I expected Chrontendo 45 to be out by now. But I've been really busy. This weekend, when I hoped to finish the new episode, and instead ended up helping my mother paint her spare bedroom. My mother's been sick - first cancer, then a splenectomy, so you can't blame me. Also, she recently got a dog: a weird little Japanese dog. I'll post a picture some day. Normally, I'd take full responsibility for the tardiness.  Instead, to be more consistent with the tenor of the times, I'll simply blame President Obama. He simply hasn't created an environment which makes me comfortable creating videos about videogames. Perhaps if he would lower the taxes of the video creators, I'd be less hestitant.

One other thing I'll blame the President for: the scarcity of good DS games in my area. Upon the advice of this site's readers, I've been on the lookout for some interesting DS titles. But eventually I remembered why I have so few DS game to begin with: ALL I EVER SEE ON THE SHELVES IS CRAP! I have several stores in the my area that carry a good selection of games, both vintage and recent. There's no problem finding cheap copies of Mass Effect 2 or overpriced copies of Valkyrie Profile. I could turn up SNES carts for Chrono Trigger of Axelay with no problem. But when it comes to the DS: it's endless copies of Minute to Win It, Ben 10, and The Biggest Loser! I guess people always hang on the the "good stuff" when it comes the DS, and the crap ends up being traded in. Well, I suppose this is what the internet is for.

So, my greatest enemy - we meet again!

Anyway -- Chrontendo 45, its been recorded and everything, and just needs to be edited.

A New Beertendo

I know what you're thinking. "Beertendo? That's not the reason we check this blog! We want more videos about Goddamned videogames!"

This is undoubtedly true. However, Chrontendo 45 is not ready yet, but it should be at the editing stagne within the next few day.  What can I say? I've been busy and distracted. I've even been playing a non-Chrontendo related videogame: Radiant Historia. It's a pretty darned good RPG from Atlus that might remind you a little of Yasumi Matsuno's tactical RPGs, or, due to the time traveling theme, Chrono Trigger.  Now that the DS is a "retro" system, I'm suddenly more interested in it, and am trying to pick up games before they start becoming harder to find.

Stolen from Gamefaqs.

Perhaps Chrontendo readers can make some suggestions?  I'm aware of the many good RPGs and adventure games for the DS, but what are some good action games? I know of the Castlevania DS titles, and Contra 4 and Bangai-O Spirits, but what other good stuff is out there?

On to the next beer in the Russian River "religious" series of Belgian inspired beers! In the first entry, we covered RR's Santification, a sour blonde, which I liked quite a bit. Today, we have Damnation. Beer fanatics, might think, "Damnation? It sounds like a Golden Ale." And you would be correct. Golden Ales, or Blonde Ales are, in the words of Jeremy Marshall, "fermented out for a crisp and dry finish with a detectable malty sweetness that is like bread or toast rather than caramel." Golden Ale is a somewhat vague term, and to further confuse matters, some sources call this style of beer a Belgian Pale Ale, even though it tastes nothing like a British or American Pale Ale. Beer Advocate calls Damnation a "Belgian Strong Pale Ale," which is appropriate since the alcohol level is pretty high, 7.75%.

Compared to Sanctification, Damnation is a lighter, straw color with a thick head of foam that sticks to the sides of the glass once it recedes. The flavor is yeasty, with very little bitterness. It's not nearly as fruity as the Sanctification; the main fruit flavor is banana, and there is a bit of spice - maybe cloves? There is also an odd, almost vegetable flavor in the background. It's tough to describe. Damnation has a very faint sweet fruit aftertaste; maybe a bit of lemon?

Russian River describes this as "inspired by Duvel" but I like Duvel better. In fact Duvel is usually the considered to be the definitive example of the Belgian Golden Ale.  I think I would take most of the big Belgian Golden Ales, like Duvel or Delerium Tremens, over Damnation. Even North Coast's Pranqster is really good, and has the added bonus of being easy to find and cheap compared to Damnation. My local grocery store normally has 4-packs of Pranqster on the shelf.

To add a bit of scientific rigor to the proceedings, shortly after trying Damnation, I went out and got a bottle of Duvel, for comparison (readily available at any local Trader Joe's.)
Duvel is, again, pretty light in color, with a huge head of foam that sticks to sides. Duvel goes down extremely easy, with a big malty and yeasty flavor. But at the same time, it's very dry and crisp. It tastes "cleaner" than Damnation and just has a really beautiful flavor, perhaps with a hint of banana.

And about those names: its a tradition to give Golden Ales sinister names. "Duvel" means "devil," and another famous Golden Ale from Belgium is called Lucifer. The Lost Abbey has an Inferno Ale, and so on.... There is also Malheur (misfortune), Mischief, Horny Devil, and various similarly named Golden Ales.

Our scorecard:

Sanctification: B+
Damnation: B-
(Bonus Beer - Duvel: A)

On Internet Comedians and Internet Irony

(Author's preface. I originally intended this post to be a short space holder that presented a couple links to internet videos. However, the first half went off on a tangent and grew to unwieldy lengths. So I'll just stick the link to qaylIS' Godzilla video series up here instead of burying it at the bottom. Die Geschichte von Godzilla is a rather impressive looking series chronicling the Godzilla films, and is entirely in German. So folks who are not good at understanding spoken German, such as myself, will be pretty lost here. If you do speak German, check it out. Anyway, on with the rest of the post...)

As Dr. Sparkle, I tend to stay clear of all those social media time-wasters. I have enough on my plate without trying to tend to a Chrontendo Facebook account (though I have, God help me, considered opening a Twitter.) Anyway, I haven't added any subscriptions or contacts or anything like that on the Chrontendo Youtube channel. Perhaps someday I will, but there is a lot of good videogame related content out there and I don't want to pick and choose among them.  However, I do have a soft spot in my heart for internet drama - as proven by my references to Christian Chandler on this blog - so I decided to point out my love for Mysterious Man's funny and intriguing Youtube videos.

He's often accused of being a troll, though I would classify him more as an "Internet Performance Artist." His shtick is recording awful video reviews in the persona of a Nintendo-hating, XBox/PS3 loving, hardcore gamer dude. Classic retro games such as Super Metroid or Ocarina of Time are given quick, dismissive reviews almost always resulting in a zero out of ten rating. Nintendo fans are described as infantile, brainwashed, etc. All of this is done with an overweening sense of confidence and an almost infuriating Jimmy Stewart-esque drawl. His videos tend to hit-and-miss, but when everything clicks, it works wonderfully. Here, for example, where his disgust at the "Lego world" of Earthbound contrasts with a sort of a hushed awe at Call of Duty Black Ops:



I'll be completely honest and admit that the Chron CD-i video was partially inspired by this guy.

The interesting thing is this: his videos generate a surprising level of anger among the viewers, with a huge number of dislikes and lot of very nasty comments. A few people have even gone so far to create counter-reviews and even point-by-point refutations to his anti-Nintendo rants. I'm not sure if these are folks are playing along with the Mysterious Man character, or if they are sincerely enraged by his videos. I find the latter option extremely difficult to believe, since the parodic nature of the character is soooo transparent. Aside from being obviously very familiar with the old school games he claims to detest (knowing where hidden items are, for example) in one video he clearly shows a Mario-themed piece of artwork on his wall.

We know then, that Mysterious Man is inviting his viewers to see right through him. But it must be very tempting for the viewer who "gets" the joke to also engage in a bit of internet play-acting by posting furious comments on his videos, etc. This allows the viewer to feel they are on the inside of the joke, not the outside; i.e. they are aligned with the perpetrator of the joke rather than the target. Then, of course, some viewers will get the joke, and recognize that others also get the joke, and can then feel a sense of superiority those commentators who do not get that others get the joke. (You and I, dear readers, fall into this second set of viewers.)  At this point, I'm not sure how more levels of meta-knowledge we can add to this.


In contemporary American mass culture, the dominant mode of discourse is irony. As Americans, it is often not clear whether we like something, or merely "like" it. So much so that an actual aesthetic movement called the "New Sincerity," purporting to be non-ironic, emerged in the 90s, though it turned out to be mostly just a bit of sincerity with a layer of irony slathered on top. Anything that might be really and truly sincere is suspect; witness the widespread animosity directed towards Emo music in the early 2000s. All those crying teenagers drove us apeshit. Mysterious Man's videos drip with irony, and I can't help being reminded of David Foster Wallace's classic essay, "E. Unibus Pluram" and its discussion, via Mark Crispin Miller, of this successful 1986 Pepsi ad.



The gag here is that the ad takes a blatantly cynical, self-aware look at advertising itself.  It foregrounds the manipulation of the sheep-like masses through advertising, in an ironic contrast to Pepsi's slogan, "The Choice of a New Generation." The semi-astute viewer will note this irony, realize that Pepsi is winking at him, and then enter into a sort of collusion with Pepsi. Wallace calls this Pepsi's "unctuous flattery" of the semi-astute viewer. The second layer of irony here is that vast numbers of viewers will be drawn into this same collusion, thus becoming the sheep-like masses they laugh at while watching the ad. All of this was quite ingenious in 1986. Now, most TV ads work on this principal, as far as I can tell. (It's also interesting to note that this ad is so closely associated with DFW, that 3 of the 8 YT comments mention him.)

Going back to Mysterious Man, I wonder who he's really making fun of. While he assumes the role of a smug yet clueless Call of Duty fanatic, that's clearly not who he is trying to provoke with his reviews. Instead he seems to be taking aim at the humorless, thin-skinned retro game enthusiast. But he is so obvious and ridiculousness with his provocation that I can't take that seriously either. And what are we to make of the various "answer" videos like this? Or this? (A response to an MM video that was later deleted by Youtube.) Are these serious or ironic? Why would someone craft a well-reasoned response to an accusation as silly as 'liking Nintendo makes you gay'? Is MM engaging in a form of unctuous flattery that not everyone can perceive?

Whatever the true motives of the person behind the Mysterious Man videos, I find the layers of irony and ambiguity fascinating. That's why I rank MM a step above the usual assortment of internet goof balls and trolls.

That's Octogon, Not Otakon

Now that Chronturbo 3 is safely in the can, we can turn our attention to the new Chrontendo. I'm hard at work on it now. The highlight will probably be a mini-history of Tetris, and the horrible mix-ups that occurred over the rights to that game. If you don't know the full story, you will hopefully find it to be fascinating stuff.

I have no videogame related content for you today, but I will encourage you to test your knowledge of literary iconoclasts and hip-hop eccentrics with the quiz below. This is actually quite brilliant, since you would not necessarily notice the similarities between James Joyce and Kool Keith. Maybe some day I'll share the New Wave/Punk cover art quiz I created some years ago.

Click here to take the quiz. I scored 9 out 10, by the way. Hudson Hongo is also known as the fellow behind Literally Unbelievable. If you ever want to lose all faith in mankind's capacity for critical thinking, check out Literally Unbelievable.

Also, I don't normally post silly videos I that I find online, much less things posted on Cracked.com. However, I've been playing the NES TMNT game, which naturally brought to mind a certain terrible early 90s rap song, and this Corey Feldman song is in a very similar vein. I don't know what exactly is going on in this video, but I can tell one thing: Mr. Feldman's dance moves are incredibly sick.


Seriously, those moves are SICK as HELL! I think I now have even more respect for Corey Feldman.