Life in a Vacuum

I was in a class today, and it sucked. Anyway, in this class, the teacher was talking about how we should make an effort to understand what the Muslim extremists really want, and we could come to some sort of understanding. Okay, that’s cool. Later on, she mentioned when she was a nun, one time she was on a bus and even though she thought of herself as someone who didn’t discriminate, she found herself very nervous when she realized she was the only white person on the bus, but now she realizes how silly it was. That’s fine, she admitted to it.
But then people started agreeing with her, saying they were afraid to go into New Bedford, and that they were terrified of going there alone. Here’s what I don’t understand. I assume they weren’t hyper-rich, only on the the assumption that they likely wouldn’t be going here if they were. Both lived relatively near New Bedford, so it’s not like they’ve never seen a black person before in their lives either. Now, I’m making generalizations and unfounded assumptions here, so if I’m dead wrong here, I apologize. But I assume these chicks watch MTV and listen to 50 Cent, Jay Z, Kanye West, Outkast and every other prominent black artist or group around today. If not, then they’re at least familiar with them and aren’t scared by them.

Meanwhile, I grew up on Cape Cod. There were probably less than three black kids in my graduating class, and I can only name one off the top of my head, because I saw him almost every day. I can probably recall the names of four total black kids in my school. There were almost no American-born kids of Latino descent. There were quite a few Brazilian exchange students, and maybe four Asian kids. Everyone else was white. Total whitewash. A third of them were either skaters or in some sort of band, and listened to Sublime and the Foo Fighters. Another third of them were goths and hyper-punks and listened to scream-shit. The last third of them were wiggers. And, as expected, they worshipped the few black kids. There was a sort of reverse-positive racism there. The black kids were like gods. The only kid who wasn’t was a nerd and acted white anyway, and even he had a huge nerd posse. I was a mishmash of the first and third groups, but mostly my own kind of person. I listened to Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Twisted Sister and video game music. But I dressed on some days like the skater/band guy, and other days like the wigger. So I got along with just about everyone. I didn’t watch MTV after they canceled Jackass, and when I did, it was the days of the lame white pop-bands and teen idols. The hip-hop inquistition happened right after I stopped watching.
Then, when I went to college, I lived in Everett. Everett, particularly my neighborhood, is a melting pot of Latinos, black people and hairy white guys with moustaches. My block was primarily Latino. When I went to school, I had to take a bus twice, sometimes four times a day. There were very few white people on the bus. And yet, I never felt like I was in danger, both when I walked to Walgreen’s at 1 AM for a candy run and when I was stuffed into a corner by a class of 40 black kids getting out of school and trying to all fit on the bus.

Now, I’m not saying this so I can call the girls in my class racist. I understand why sometimes they might be scared. But why is it that Anthony, who doesn’t listen to rap and lived the first 19 years of his life surrounded by white people, doesn’t get scared in a similar situation, and yet these girls, who probably list “Love and Basketball” as one of their favorite movies (I’m not being a dick here; every chick in the world likes that movie), are scared for their lives so much that they won’t go to a relatively large city 15 minutes away from them?
I mean, I’m sure it’s just an issue that they’re girls, and there’s an decidedly larger chance of them getting raped or assaulted than me or most other men. But don’t they know that any guy is perfectly willing to “escort” them? I mean, it’s an open challenge to their masculinity. “I’m going into the city. Are you a bad enough dude to stand next to me and make sure I don’t get attacked?” And even if he knows there’s a 0.01% chance of it actually happening, the guy thinks there’s still a chance he’ll get laid because of it. Isn’t that woman’s greatest advantage over men?
During transfer orientation, a bunch of girls were talking about how they want to go into the city and explore one of these days, but they don’t know what to do and who to go with. Even though I had mentioned earlier in the conversation I knew all about the city, and it’s obvious my Ravishing Rick Rude-like body could fend off any potential rapists. I have to wonder sometimes… what the hell is going on in their heads?

Day Of Reckoning

So every single article about the Super Bowl written in a 15-mile radius from me has begun with the following sentence;

“Since the Patriots aren’t going to be in the Super Bowl, many local fans are asking themselves “Why should I even watch?”.

Or some similar sentence. So, let me re-begin the same way.

Since the Patriots aren’t going to be in the Super Bowl, many local fans are asking themselves “Why should I even watch?” “Who should I root for?”. Well, let me answer that question for you. Root for the Seahawks. Remember five years ago, when the Patriots shocked the world, not unlike the Shockmaster, and upset the heavily-favored Rams? I certainly remember. Before that day, the Patriots sucked. Sure, they had made the Super Bowl five years earlier, and hell, they had to be good to make it to the Super Bowl in the first place. And they were. But the Patriots, before that fateful day, were the black sheep of Boston sports. Bill Simmons referred to them as the Fredo Corleone of the Boston sports teams. Even though they had appeared in exactly one more championship game (in 1986 and 1997) than the Sox (‘86) and Celtics (‘86) had in that same 15-year time span, and as many as the Bruins (‘88, ‘90), the team was generally considered a bunch of somewhat-loveable losers. After being raped by the Bears in ‘86, stories came out about cocaine abuse and sexual misconduct with a female reporter. They went 1-15, signed Drew Bledsoe, watched him play B+ quarterback for six years, saw Bill Parcells rescue the team then leave it in the dust, and saw Pete Carroll get bullied by a reporter. Simmons, in arguably the best column he ever wrote, covered this in much greater and accurate detail in the column he drunkenly wrote the night of Super Bowl XXXVI.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox were thrilling fans with Mo Vaughn, Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Nomar Garciaparra, Pedro Martinez, and the immortal Brian Daubach. The Bruins  fans got to see Ray Bourque, Cam Neely, Joe Thornton, Sergei Samsonov, Jason Allison, Anson Carter and Bill Guerin, plus the miraculous, never-replicated rookie season of Joey Juneau. The only team that was worse was the Celtics, who saw Larry Bird and Kevin McHale retire (after gutting it out in one last gasp in 1992), Reggie Lewis and Len Bias die, the lottery balls inexplicably bounce in San Antonio’s favor, causing the Celtics to miss out on Tim Goddamn Duncan, Rick Pitino trade off Chauncey Billups, Joe Johnson and Bruce Bowen, Chris Wallace trade for Vin Baker and draft Kedrick Brown and Joe Forte instead of Richard Jefferson and Gilbert Arenas, and Paul Pierce get stabbed. Of course, you get a little bit of a leash when you’re coming off 16 championships.
Anyway, when the Patriots won, there hadn’t been a Boston championship since the aforementioned 1986 Celtics. The Sox came relatively close, as did the Bruins, and even the Pats in ‘97 kept it close until Desmond Howard took it to the house. But when the black sheep, the Fredo Corleone, the Tito Jackson, the Jeremy Giambi of the Boston sports scene won, and in exciting fashion, no less, they became worshipped. Bill Belichick will not be second-guessed in this town for a while.
And before they went on to win two of the next three and somehow become despised by rest of the world, everybody loved the Pats. “They did it through teamwork,” “Tom Brady gets no respect,” “What an upset,” and so on. When Tampa won the next year, in between despising Warren Sapp and gasping at Jon Gruden, we said the same things for them. “Good for them,” “They’ve suffered enough,” and all that jazz. We felt the same thing all over again in 2004 with the Sox.
In other words, we know what it’s like to be perennial losers and finally win the big one. We also know what it’s like to hear from the fans of the teams who’ve won a few already. As it stands, the Cowboys and 49ers each have five championships. The Steelers sit at four. They want “one for the thumb”. Of course, even though they haven’t won anything in 26 years, it doesn’t stop both the fans and the team themselves from talking trash at every opportunity.

So, Patriots fans, and everyone else not from Pittsburgh, for that matter, don’t fall for the whole emotional “Win it for Jerome” trap. Some guys just aren’t gonna win a championship. Allen Iverson is one, Peyton Manning is another. Feel bad for them, but don’t cry for them; they’ve made their living. Imagine this, for a second. There’s two dudes. One guy has never had sex. Ever. He keeps screwing up when he gets close, but he’s a likeable guy, and you feel bad for him. The other guy had sex 20 years ago, but keeps bringing it up every week, saying “I fucked this bitch once, and I was giving her everything I had, drillin this bitch” and so on, even though he looks like Carl from Aqua Teen. Then a total babe walks in the room. Anne Hathaway, perhaps. She tells you she’s going to die in two hours, and she wants to have violent, hot sex with a guy before she dies. For simulation’s sake, let’s pretend you lost your dick in a gardening incident, so you’re out of the picture. Who are you going to send the chick to? The guy who really wants and needs it, or the dickhead who’s just gonna start all his shit all over again about how he fucked a chick so hard, she died.

Now, on to the actual game. As you have seen, I’m rooting for the Seahawks. I mean, I have nothing against Jerome Bettis or anything (just the jersey he’s wearing and the thousands of goons who cheer for him). And it’s probably a bad idea to bet against a team that (1)  beat the top three seeds in the AFC and (2) has had so many breaks all year that they might be luckier than the ‘01 Pats.
Of course, one of those teams lost their quarterback (an MVP candidate, of all people) on the first passing play of the game, and  another team failed to show up for three quarters and still almost won. These are breaks, but there are only so many. It doesn’t matter that the NFC was so awful this year. Seattle was the best going in to the playoffs and they’re the best coming out. Meanwhile, the Steelers didn’t even deserve to make the playoffs over San Diego.
Let’s look at the matchups. Alexander and the Seahawks’ O-line are better than an out-of-shape Bettis. Hasselbeck has more experience and doesn’t make too many mistakes. Meanwhile, Roethlisberger is young and collapsed last year in the playoffs. Plus, he’s been banged up all year. Polumalu is the better singular player, but the Seahawks have a better secondary as a whole. The same goes for the wideouts; Ward is the best player out there, but the Seahawks are a tad more balanced. Cowher is a better game-planner than Holmgren, but Holmgren’s won it before; Cowher has a tendency to collapse.
Basically, my evidence supporting Seattle is mostly speculative. Half of it is based on “He’s collapsed before” or “I don’t like him”. Really, the main reason I’m picking Seattle, after my hatred for the Steelers, that is, is because I love the underdog in a close game with a spread greater than 3.

THE PICK: Seattle (+4) over Pittsburgh
THE SCORE: Seattle 26, Pittsburgh 20

Azumangalangadingadonga

So, a couple of months ago, I see this animated gif as someone’s signature on a forum.

I thought it was funny, not because some anime chick threw it, but because the dude got german suplexed and was rocketed into space. I showed this to my brother like eight times, because every time I saw it, I kept laughing my ass off. After watching it repeatedly for a very long time, I noticed the throwing motion of the chick. She backhands it, tosses it over her head, runs a half circle to turn around, catches it on her throwing side, and launches it. After studying this motion for a long time (and unsuccessfully trying to duplicate it with a laundry ball), I realized this was an awesome animation. So I private message the dude who had it as his signature and ask him what anime the other part is from. He didn’t know.

A few weeks later, I’m on this same forum, and someone mentions the name Sakaki and shows the original animated gif (this time, she’s intercepting a snowball, which isn’t nearly as funny as a dude who just got german suplexed). So I do a Google search for the name Sakaki (I don’t use the phrase “I googled Sakaki”… it sounds lame. I don’t yahoo or ebay anything, and I’m not blogging right now. I’m searching for web sites, searching for auctions, and writing mini, half-assed columns no-ones interested in. There’s no trendy verb you can get me to use to describe it. Not now, anyway.) and I get pictures of the aforementioned chick. I find out she’s from a show called Azumanga Daioh. Azumanga Daioh is a 26-er about a high school class. There are very few men involved in the plotline. It’s a show about high school girls.

Now, I like to get on my high horse about anime all the time. I like to say that I don’t watch anime and hope it’s good, I watch good things and if they happen to be anime, then groovy. I don’t actively seek out the anime section to see what looks cool (at least, not anymore) and then plop down $20 because one of the chick’s boots are cool and “it might be good”. My friend Dan does that, and a month later he’s trading in the DVD to EB for $5 credit towards some other shitty anime. In other words, I don’t often say the words “I haven’t seen an anime in a while… let’s rent one”. When I do, the name Miyazaki or Lupin is usually included in the sentence. I was skeptical about going to Otakon last summer because I had a feeling I’d be surrounded by cookie-cutter animes that I’d get tired of quickly. Fortunately, I’m not so picky about Asian action cinema. So I had fun at Otakon, even though the only animated things I watched were one episode of a cookie-cutter future cop anime and an odd movie from Korea that didn’t really resemble anime at all.

Part of the reason I like the animes I do enjoy are because they are so different from the usual crap out there. Bebop has very few “action lines” (the crazy rainbows flashing behind guys while they’re suspended in midair screaming), if any. Plus, they don’t have any wacky toy hammers or zany goofs. It’s just awesome, that’s all. Eva has the most complex, awesome story I’ve ever seen, and the animation and acting of the characters and their emotions is unparalleled. I don’t care if you think it’s pretentious and preachy. I think it’s awesome. Even if there wasn’t a single robot fight in it, I’d still say so. Trigun pushes the envelope for me. I enjoyed the story, the gun fights were cool, and the character design was great, but it borders on the anime wackiness that I hate sometimes. And yes, I’m aware that “anime wackiness” is what sets anime apart from Disney movies and Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos. I’m not a huge fan, that’s all. I enjoy the Lupin movies more than I do the TV show, if only because the show is a tad dated and a little wacky for me. The plots are always interesting, though, and the characters all have their unique traits that I enjoy watching them. So those are my big four. Excel Saga used to be in there, but I think I liked Excel Saga merely for the script. There were a ton of unnecessary episodes throughout the course of the series, and a lot of the jokes got lost in translation. It’s not like I hate it now or anything (episodes 24 and 25 are some of the best executed episodes I’ve ever seen), but in hindsight, it wasn’t so blazingly awesome as I thought it was.

Anyway, back to Azumanga. This is from Wikipedia: The series has attained the status of a cult classic because Azumanga Daioh is distinctly different. There is no overriding goal, be it as simple as Character A and Character B finally announcing they love each other, nor is there a grand event such as saving the world from some horrible doom. There is no struggling romance to prolong the series or be used awkwardly for the comedy inherent in misunderstandings. The only goals the series can be said to have are the same goals that high school students everywhere have, that is to achieve good (or at least passing) grades, make friends, put up with said friends, and eventually graduate and have a life of their own.

Now, I’m not a guy who watches Sailor Moon or Princess Nine or any girly anime. I have no idea why this show intruiged me. It’s not like I was angsty in high school, nor do I enjoy watching shows about people in high school. But this one seemed different. It was originally shown as quick 5-minute vignettes in between other shows. Then, at the end of the week, the 5 vignettes would be shown back to back to form one 25-minute episode. So it’s not like I had to get involved heavily in any plot or anything. So I decided, what the hell, I’ll give it a shot. Of course, torrent downloading at my school is blocked and virtually useless, so I couldn’t watch it that way. I didn’t have any money, but even if I did, I wasn’t going to go out and buy a girly anime for no apparent reason, especially since the last girly anime I bought (Puni Puni Poemy, from the makers of Excel Saga) sucked, or at least, wasn’t very interesting at all. So how could I possibly watch a 26-episode series, or at least, the first few episodes of it, without paying for it?

Netflix, that’s how. Netflix has a two-week trial period. I figured I’d end up using it anyway, so I signed up and orded the series, one volume at a time. A few days later, it came. And I watched it.

Now, this is the reason for this long column… easily the longest thing I’ve written since Halloween, when Theo left. When I was done, I sent it back and waited for volume 2. It’s not like I thought it was the best thing I’d seen since Bebop. It wasn’t even a carnal, watch-teenage-hotties-as-long-as-I-can thing. I honestly couldn’t recommend it to anyone I know. It’d be too random for any girls I know (plus… I know so many chicks, it’d take me 8 years to recommend it to each one) and probably too girly for any guys I know, even the anime fans. Dan might like it, but I doubt it. He’d probably say “What the fuck is this?” or “I like that chick’s boots” or something, then throw the disc back at me. And I can’t honestly say I think it’s great either. But I’m still watching it.

I like to create “syndromes” for things. The Natsu Syndrome applies to a cool-looking fighting game character who has so few moves that you end up looking repetetive and cheap when you use them. Final Fantasy VIII Syndrome refers to something that’s a sequel or follow-up to something amazingly popular and great, and when looked at as a continuation is deemed dissapointing, yet would be otherwise considered excellent if judged on it’s own merits (examples include Phantom Menace, Audioslave and MGS2). Sonic Adventure Syndrome refers to a game or movie that you are only finishing because you feel obligated to finish it, not because you are having fun and want to play or watch it some more. At first, I was going to attribute Azumanga to Bio-Dome Syndrome, where something is so bad that after a while, it beats you into submission and you force yourself to enjoy it and laugh at it in order to avoid killing yourself. But Azumanga is a little different. It’s got a little bit of Sonic Adventure Syndrome in it, but somewhere, it does kind of beat you into submission.

There are ten primary characters. One is a tall turbo-babe who’s quiet and anti-social, but not in a lame goth kind of way. One is a hyper, crazy bitch who runs around and yells a lot. One is a 10-year old prodigy trying to fit in with older kids. One is a dimwitted Osakan who acts very timid. One is another tall chick, this one with glasses. One chick has a strange crush on the aforementioned tall quiet turbo-babe. One is a very good athelete, but we haven’t met her yet. One is a teacher who is not unlike Misato, although with significantly less responsibility. One is the aforementioned teacher’s coworker, friend and high-school rival. The last is a guy. A teacher. A guy who became a teacher because he likes looking at high school girls. That dude is funny.

Seems like your everyday wacky bunch of misfits, right? Correct. And yet, the tall quiet turbo-babe ends up gaining all your sympathy, the hyper bitch ends up being really funny, the Misato-like teacher is kind of like a female McGuirk, and the male teacher is a funny dude. If you don’t identify with any of them, you at least recognize them and acknowledge them. Once again, there’s nothing special about the show. It doesn’t have Eva’s storyline or Bebop’s atmosphere. It doesn’t have the beautiful cinematography of a Miyazaki film or the cool action scenes of Trigun. The music is awful. Half the characters are boring. I have no idea why I like this show. In fact, I don’t even know if I like this show. But I at least want to watch more of it. I’ll call it Azumanga Syndrome. It’s some show or game or movie or whatever that doesn’t appeal to you, isn’t fantastic or awful, and could never see yourself buying a poster or t-shirt of, but somehow draws you in enough to force you to keep watching. I’m not recommending it to anyone, because I’m sure the Azumanga Syndrome is subjective and depends on your tastes. But it’s certainly an odd occurance.