The Best Jesus-es.

James Frey got at least reasonably wealthy and famous by making up a story and claiming it was true -- something that more and more authors are finding easier and easier to do, giving us absolute proof that many Americans now subscribe to Stephen Colbert's reasoning for real.

The Christian Science Monitor proved as much when it said that the book 3 Cups of Tea had an "essential truth" about it despite being (allegedly?) riddled with lies and essentially about as true as Where The Wild Things Are, upon which it appeared to be based.

Having kicked off that trend, James Frey is at it again.

Frey, who owes his continued ability to be able to make a living doing something most people wouldn't consider to be "work" at all to the extreme gullibility -- excuse me, deeper truth seeking-- qualities exhibited by the kinds of people who watch Oprah (and who now watch the show about the making of Oprah), has a new book coming out, and he would very much like this book, too, to be a best-seller, which poses a bit of a problem for him, in that nowadays, to have a best-seller, you pretty much have to write a controversial-but-possibly true book, a book in which you claim to have built a school for Osama bin Laden's kids, or at the least a book in which you threaten to kill a kid's rabbit if she doesn't play violin at a virtuoso level. (I'm assuming that's what the "Tiger Mommy" book is about; I haven't and won't read a book which promises to be full of exaggerations... I mean, deeper truths.)

(Although, as long as I'm on the subject, I have to admit that it's possible that Tiger Mommy and its ilk are not exaggerations or simple lies/ deeper truths. As someone who chronicles many aspects of his life, I can tell you that it is possible for a writer to try to find things which are more interesting to write about; one way to make your writing zing is to do something interesting, and then write about it. David Sedaris went to Japan to quit smoking, and wrote about that, because, I assume, writing about quitting smoking somewhere less interesting would be somewhat less interesting. I've fallen prey to just that temptation: once, I decided that I would write about a trip to a midnight movie that Sweetie and I took. [Although I decided to see the movie first, then write about it later, so that's not quite apt.] Given that some writers seek out a way to make their life interesting, I have to allow for the possibility that Amy Chua didn't make up how bad a mother she is simply for the purpose of writing a book, but instead simply deliberately decided to be a bad mother in order to get a book published.)

(It's also possible that the concept of "doing boring things in interesting locations" would translate well to reality TV, so I call dibs on Help Me Do This!, the reality TV show where we help people achieve their goals by sending them someplace weird: Watch as Ron tries to start his bakery business... at a monastery in southern France! Meanwhile, Angela is going to finally take the plunge and learn to bowl... while scuba diving on the great Barrier Reef!)

Back to the point: James Frey has a problem, because at this point, even if he were to be filmed live building a school for the Taliban with the help of his Mandarin-Chinese speaking children who he found while praying to spaghetti during the time he spent traveling with Reese Witherspoon's circus, nobody would believe it, anymore than we believe that Barack Obama isn't really the same person as Osama bin Laden (ever seen them together in person? And why do their names seem to be anagrams of each other?). So Frey has to do something else to justify his existence/sell books, and that something else, in this case, is to pretend that modernizing Jesus and seeing what he'd be like in today's world, is a new and/or controversial idea.

Or, as Fox News put it: "James Frey's New Book Has Messiah Smoking Pot, Sleeping With Hooker."

With a headline like that, any author is more or less deemed to be immune from such writer-ly maladies as "humdrum sales," "lack of publicity," or "needing to write a good book," and I don't doubt that Frey has done the bare minimum to justify the controversy: I am certain that he has supplied his publishers, who recognize the value of not one, but two controversial names associated with the book (James Frey, and Jesus), with an actual book full of actual words arranged, more or less, into a narrative structure; I'm also reasonably certain that in this book, Jesus will in fact, smoke pot and sleep with a hooker.

But will the book be good? All signs point to no, for a couple of reasons: First, most books aren't very good. Have you noticed? Most things aren't very good, and books are no different: the cream rises to the top, because there's less cream and it's something different than the elements it is initially surrounded by. So it is with most human endeavors: many of them are not very good.

Which means that the odds are against Frey's book, or even my books, being very good. (Although, in my case, I beat the odds. My books are very good, and you should read them.)

But Frey's new book -- called, hopefully controversially, "The Final Testament of the Holy Bible" -- has more going against it than that.

It is, for instance, written by James Frey, who has proven that absent controversy, he cannot sell a book. Good writers can sell books simply by writing good books. Bad writers have to invent a fictional friend, or throw a three-year-old into the snow, to get people to buy their books, a move that works because you can't return a book once you've bought it, so the author gets to keep the money you threw away on what turns out to be a collection of words spattered over a fake controversy. (Although, in Frey's case, his publisher actually did offer to give you your money back, but the refund wasn't specifically because the writing was bad.)

Frey's new book -- which I hesitated to mention because I don't want to publicize it, because you should not buy it, as I guarantee you it is awful, and you will hate it, but won't likely get a refund because even class action lawyers have not yet figured out a way to sue God -- is also guaranteed to be awful because Frey has chosen to make it so deliberately controversial...

... which it isn't, really, but which Frey desperately wants you to believe it is, so that he can sell you a poorly-written book on the basis of all the controversy a pot-smoking, hooker-bedding Jesus can generate...

Interviewed by Newsweek, Frey "opened up" about his controversial choice of this controversial subject which he contoversially would now discuss:

Your new book follows a modern-day messiah in New York. How did you choose the subject?

I’ve always wondered what it would be like if the Messiah, or Christ Returned, were actually alive and living in our society; who would that person be, how we would identify them, how would they live, and what would they believe in, how would society react to them?

That kind of thinking is what sets Frey apart from other, lesser people: who else wondered what it would be like if Jesus lived in our society, with the Internet and all! That's a concept that's never been explored, I imagine. I mean, we've had Hamlet retold as a story about dogs, and Anna Karenina updated and moved to New York City, and even a modern-day Romeo And Juliet, but Jesus in modern times? I can't possibly imagine such a thing. Lucky for me, James Frey can, and even luckier for me, James Frey can do so in the most artful way possible: by having someone who's not even a traditional publisher publish his book:

You’re publishing this work in partnership with art dealer Larry Gagosian. Why not go through a standard publishing house?

I wanted to make a really beautiful book. Something readers would be excited to own as an object.

So, if you're keeping track, note that now James Frey is a self-publisher -- but because he previously snookered a publisher into putting his "writing" into print, he's not described as such; instead, he's artfully not going through a standard publishing house.

This is the beautiful book the "formidable" James Frey has published with the grateful help of the art world:



And it is artfully unlike anything you've ever seen before, provided you've never seen these four images I found in Google in about 40 seconds:






But those books don't have Jesus in them, and they don't have Jesus as (re)imagined by the "formidable" James Frey, who, you should know, "is not like other writers." That quote comes from his website, where you can learn that his book is available for pre-order and will be shipping April 12 (from which you can also learn that James Frey does not update his website at least monthly), and also you can learn that someone, somewhere, once confused James Frey himself with Jesus, as demonstrated also on his website:

He has been called a liar. A cheat. A con man. He’s been called a saviour. A revolutionary. A genius. Now he has written his greatest work, his most revolutionary, his most controversial. The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.



That's actually when it hit me: James Frey might not be writing fiction this time at all; he might be telling the absolute truth this time, that Jesus really is alive and living in New York City, and that in fact James Frey might be Jesus.

He doesn't come right out and say it, but it's there if you want to see the Truth. Not only has James Frey been called a saviour (note the British spelling, suggesting that Frey was called a saviour by someone of higher class than you), but also the website notes that Frey lives in New York City (just like the Jesus in his book!) and also the website notes that in writing this new book, which may or may not be fiction, according to James Frey:

My goal was not to retell the story of Christ. ...My goal was to create a new mythology. One that is relevant in a world with nuclear weapons, advanced physics, the internet, genetic testing and manipulation, one where we know homosexuality is not a decision. My goal was to create a mythology, ...James Frey

I like to think that, if that quote were read aloud, the final two words would be said in a wistful, windswept voice: Jaaames Freeeey.

It isn't just James Frey who thinks that perhaps James Frey might be Jesus, though: it's people who comment on his web chats, like when he interned at Gawker, (which I imagine Jesus would also totally do in between all the homosexuality and murder he'd be doing, too), and Frey was asked this question, which amused him but which he also thought was "just plain weird:"

Q: “You look like you’re from the Bible. What’s your favorite part? Don’t say “all of it.”
Yours in Christ, Lornetta Churchypants”

James: “My favorite part is when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding around. I want to follow them and see what kind they shit they stir up”

So you know what the next Final Testament will be about: What if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse came back to our modern world, where we have nuclear weapons, and physics, and telephones without cords, and what if they were totally unlike how they were pictured in the original Bible, and instead were a fun-loving bunch of people, like maybe if Rex Ryan were an Apocalyptic Horseman?

But we're still on the current Final Testament, which may or may not be fiction -- Frey's own website suggests that he still believes A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard were true-- and which may or may not show us that Jesus/James Frey is, in fact, living in New York City with his wife (and his dog -- the site has a link to the dog but when I clicked it was, sadly, broken, so I was unable to determine what kind of dog Jesus would own if he came back and lived in New York City with his wife.)

There are also links on the home page of Frey's site where you can click through to find video answers to questions you didn't even know you had -- suggesting that Jesus would totally approve of Youtube, if He came back (and who says He hasn't?), and that Jesus also would ask people on the street whether they could judge a book without reading it:




You can also find out, if you'd like, "What kind of music is James Frey into?" (I'll save you the trouble of going to look: mostly Bob Dylan, with some AC/DC mixed in.)

You can also find out how James Frey writes, the short answer to which is: weirdly. His essay on how he writes mentions how he may find himself sobbing at the keyboard... or listening to Bob Dylan. Or not. He also listens, while he writes, to:

Happy music, sad music, cheesy music, angry music. I listen to beautiful music and repulsive music, music that I don’t understand, music that confuses me. I listen to hardcore punk, gangster rap, heavy metal, love songs, the latest teenage pop hits, classical symphonies, classic rock, opera, jazz, disco, new wave from the eighties, funk from seventies. I have a two thousand song library of music on my computer and it is always on while I write.

I don't remember Jesus being into music, much, but, then, this is the Modern Jesus, who maybe likes cheesy music, perhaps as an ironic counterpoint to killing someone and defying the government.

Did I mention that Modern Jesus, in Frey's Maybe-True Book, defies the government? Because he does:

What if the Messiah were alive today? Living in New York. Sleeping with men. Impregnating young women. Euthanizing the dying, and healing the sick. Defying the government, and condemning the holy.

Don't bother asking why Jesus would condemn the holy; he's probably doing it ironically.

Frey's writing sounds more fun to watch create than to actually read:

If anyone were to ever watch me write, they would probably think I was either an idiot or lunatic or both. I dance, I yell, I throw shit and kick shit and break shit. Sometimes I cry and sometimes I shake and sometimes I’m sick. I talk through all of it, say the same sentences over and over and over.

Which proves my suspected point even more: If Frey must throw himself into his writing by becoming the very thing he writes about, getting angry to write the word angry and curling his hair whenever he writes calamistrate, then if he wrote about Jesus living in New York, what does that tell you about what Frey had to do to achieve those literary heights (?)?

(But, Jesus or not, I question his taste in music:

While writing this essay, every single word was spoken before it was written, most of them several times. I listened to Bruce Springsteen, Anthrax, Run DMC, Taj Mahal, Queen, Journey and Debbie Gibson.

I bet the Journey song was Don't Stop Believin'. Because Modern Jesus totally wouldn't stop believin'.)


So is Frey Jesus? He won't say:





Probably because he's still living in the Matrix. Take the red pill, James Frey!

So it falls to me to determine whether Frey is, in fact, Jesus, here to help you by helping himself (or something like that, with some government-defying and genetic testing thrown in), by comparing him to other Modern Day Jesus-es, to see how closely Frey hues to what has become a not-new concept at all: That of Jesus living amongst us, taking part in our modern-day life and befuddled by our modern-day foibles, but still being Jesus, and possibly sleeping with hookers.

Note that I am not saying that Frey hasn't come up with something totally new that hasn't been done in any way, shape or form before, because clearly he has; the other Modern-day updates of Jesus fell far short of Frey's all-new, controversial concept of a Modern Day Jesus, because all these other ones I'm going to mention weren't trying to create a new mythology that would be relevant in a world where we genetically test hookers with nuclear weapons, or whatever.

Also, note that I'm completely unfamiliar with Frey's book beyond the blurb and the Newsweek interview, but I'm not going to let that stop me, because truth is a slippery concept, as James Frey/Jesus and I both know. "What is truth? Pontius Pilate asked, only nowadays, that question would be asked by a homeless man on 5th Avenue, because that's very controversial.

So, to help you determine whether or not James Frey is, or is not, Jesus Come To Live Amongst Us In New York City With An Unpictured Dog, I have put together a list of The Best Jesus-es, which I will explain to you and rate on a scale of 1-5 Fake Friend Leonards, 1 being the lowest score and furthest from the actual truth of what Modern Day Jesus is, and 5 Fake Leonards being the highest score, but also the furthest from the actual truth of what Modern Day Jesus is.

(I'm using that kind of scale because I'm not trying to create a system of measurement, but a new standard of ratings that will be relevant in a world where we have genetic testing and where women are free to paint their sons' toenails pink. Try to keep up with me, and James Frey, here.)

1. Jesus of Suburbia:



Background: "Jesus Of Suburbia" was more than just the eponym of a song on a moderately-good Green Day album; he also (going by what I understood the concept of the album to be) might have been a kid living in suburbia and selling drugs. Or something like that.

Jesus of Suburbia hangs around a 7-11 a lot, and takes Ritalin, and tries to avoid the "moms and brats," while being mad that nobody ever died for his sins in Hell, and he does drugs but there's nothing wrong with him because "this is how [he's] supposed to be."

According to Wikipedia, which exists specifically for things like this, "Jesus of Suburbia" was created when Green Day's lead singer, apparently tired of singing about masturbating, asked "himself what sort of person the title of "American Idiot" referred to," and came up with "a powerless everyman."

It turns out that Jesus Of Suburbia isn't just a powerless "everyman," but also a character named "St. Jimmy," who dies. Oh, and [SPOILER ALERT! ] Sorry.

How Relevant Is Jesus Of Suburbia in a world where women are free to genetically test artsy publishers, or something?

2 Fake Leonards: So, not very relevant. The fact that Jesus Of Suburbia turns out to also be a regular guy makes him seem kind of relevant to our life, but Jesus Of Suburbia did not, so far as I can tell, kill a single hooker, and killing a hooker is the bare minimum for what has to happen in order for we, as every men who may or may not live in New York City, to relate to a person.

2. Family Guy Jesus



Background: When Jesus is discovered working in a record store, he's invited to dinner at teh Griffins, where he and Peter trade stories and he magically creates sundaes for the kids. But things take a turn for the worse when a newly-celebrified Jesus overdoses in Mary Kate Olsen's apartment and needs to be bailed out of jail by Peter. The Second Coming is delayed for a while because Jesus feels he needs to be more mature.

How Relevant Is Family Guy Jesus in a world where nuclear weapons interview people on the street, or something?

37 Fake Leonards: so, not very. Despite the way I subverted your traditional notions of "counting from 1 to 5" by including 37 in that -- something I did to create a new numbering system that is relevant to our world, where women are free to count any old way they want-- Family Guy Jesus just doesn't relate to our world. He doesn't defy the government, for one thing, and Jesus would totally do that, just the way Jesus defied the Roman Empire back the first time around by refusing to submit to their rules and not going to be crucified. Jesus was a rebel, man.

3. Sexy Jesus



Background: Technically, Sexy Jesus is only a fictional character ... or is he? The star of "Hamlet 2," Sexy Jesus uses a time machine to go back and save Hamlet, defeating the devil and working through his issues with his father, all while helping save the reputation of a small-time recovering alcoholic drama teacher. With his surfer body and catchy theme song, Sexy Jesus is a messiah for the pop age.

How relevant is Sexy Jesus in a world where we know the "internet" is not a decision, or something?

4 Fake Leonards, so, not very. Jesus, if he were alive today ... if?... would definitely be sexy because he'd be having all that sex with hookers and homosexual affairs that were not decisions (?) but time travel is not possible, at least not until James Frey writes a book that involves time travel and must actually invent a time machine in order to write about it, which he will likely do just after he finishes writing a book about curing cancer.

4. South Park Jesus:



Background: Jesus may live in South Park, Colorado, but his influence is worldwide, as he and his other "Super Best Friends" battle evil (including Satan, who threw a boxing match against Him to collect on a bet), organize Rod Stewart concerts, and start cable TV talk shows. Jesus' powers in South Park are mainly resurrecting himself, but he does throw a mean glaive.
How relevant is South Park Jesus in a world with genetic testing and manipulation of mythology, or something?

You can't judge a Fake Leonard without reading it, so not very. I think the key point to take away from this is that despite the many numerous efforts in the past to modernize and update Jesus, nobody ever actually modernized and updated Jesus in such a controversial and formidable way as James Frey has; that's likely because nobody ever had the sheer guts to put on some Debbie Gibson music, writhe in agony, and really tell the story of Modern Day Jesus the way it was meant to be told: On a very special episode of Oprah.

But watch out, Jesus/James Frey. You may just get some competition:




Click here for more Best of Things That Don't Really Fit Into Other Categories.


Click here for more SemiDaily Lists.

"I have a secret place I call Naboo... Gungans swim there, Empires start there." (Star Wars References.)

The other day, I noted with due mystification that kids on a playground were making Star Wars References when they seemed obviously too young to be doing so. Reader Rogue Mutt suggested they were watching Clone Wars, which would be a pretty good explanation, but reader Terrence pointed me towards this even BETTER source of that knowledge:



Check out Terrence's Twitter feed at @terrenceisdaman, where you'll get updates on what he ate for breakfast on Mother's Day and mystifying comments about Portal 2.

You're just going to have to take my word for it on this one. (Star Wars References.)

If you look closely at this picture:





It still won't really mean anything to you, because you don't know what you're supposed to be looking for or what it shows, other than in a general way, meaning that you know it shows kids on a playground, and that it also has something to do with Star Wars because of the post category that appears at the heading and in the tags.

But you can't figure it out beyond that -- take my word for it on that, too -- so don't bother searching the photo anymore for the clue, because I'm going to have to tell you what the photo means.

The photo is evidence, of a sort, that Star Wars actually has infiltrated our DNA, and here's how it proves that: I was at a playground yesterday with my two youngest, Mr F and Mr Bunches, and they were playing. Mr Bunches is the kid in the gray sweatshirt at the left of the photo. Near Mr Bunches were some other kids, who I'd peg at about 6 or 7 years old, tops.

As I watched Mr Bunches climb up, the other kids -- 6 or 7 years old, tops -- were discussing what they were going to play, and they said this:

"Let's play Star Wars."

"I get to be a Jedi."

"I'm Anakin."

I'd have videotaped the exchange except (1) I already had my camera, not my video recorder, on, and (2) guys shouldn't be videotaping strangers' kids at the playground anyway, and (3) I don't know, yet, how to post videos, so you'll have to rely on my solemn oath as a blogger/father that this really occurred, which is amazing because the last Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, came out in 2005, so these kids couldn't have possibly seen it in the theater and weren't around for Star Wars mania and have all kinds of competing heroes and movies and the like -- but they weren't playing Harry Potter or Iron Man or Hannah Montana or anything, they were playing Star Wars.

And also, Who wants to be Anakin? He's maybe fifth on the list. At best.


Click here for the complete list of Star Wars References.

IS THIS ART? Table of Contents

Another day, another new feature here on The Best Of Everything, where the future hasn't arrived yet but promises to get here as soon as it can. This feature is called:

IS THIS ART?

And it's pretty self-explanatory. I will present you something, and ask you: Is this Art?

Here are things that might be ART:

Can't decide what to wear? Painting naked people to look like art.

Superheroes are part of the 1%. Meet Human Slinky.

A videogame based on meeting an artist.

Getting paid to get other people to strip.

Losers bowling in video games.

The 8 Best Video Games, #2 (MiniBest!)

If you follow pop culture for any length of time, you quickly realize one thing: Most people are really lame.

There was probably a nicer way to put that, but since the theme of this series of MiniBests seems to be to insult people, I just went with my instincts, the same way I figure renowned chef/extremely fat person Ina Garten went with her instincts when she said she's too busy to cook a meal with a 6-year-old boy who's dying of leukemia, forcing him to go with his second-choice wish to swim with dolphins, which just goes to show that dolphins are kinder to kids than fat chefs are, and also goes to show that if you get mad at me for saying you are lame, at least try to keep it in perspective, will you? I didn't decide to horribly disappoint a dying 6-year-old simply because I'm too self-important/fat, like Ina Garten did.

Also, remember, I didn't pick you out specifically, I just said most people were lame, so if you're insulted, then, technically, you decided that you fit into the category of lame, not me. Don't kill the messenger, because the messenger is you.

I decided that most people were lame after I got a smartphone and then got Angry Birds, letting me finally see what people had been talking about for the better part of a few months last year, and when I did finally see it, I thought "Really? That's it? A revved up version of Atari's "Circus" game?"




See? I'm pretty much right, except that on Angry Birds the sound effects are slightly better. But it's pretty much the same concept. So why were people so excited about this game? Because people are lame.

Then again, video games, like movies, books, cooking TV shows featuring fat ladies, and pretty much every other form of entertainment are all just variations on a theme, aren't they? Someone once said that there are only seven basic stories, and then someone else once sent me a quote that took issue with that, saying that novels, in particular, have only two plots, but the point is, nothing is really original and everyone pretty much steals everybody else's ideas, so Art Buchwald definitely should not have sued Eddie Murphy is where I ended up with that chain of thought.

It's early.

Video games tend to fall into one of a few categories, just as all other entertainment does, and the only reason that people aren't making fun of the fact that videogames have categories, too, is that most adult people don't care about videogames; no matter how many times someone at Slate hectors us with news that videogames now "gross" $500,000,000,000 per second or whatever it is that they make, we just can't get excited about it because in the popular consciousness, "video games" are not played or enjoyed by "regular people," but by people who look a lot like Kevin Smith looked in Die Hard: Whichever Number It Was That Kevin Smith Was In.

You have your first-person shooters, your racing games, your maze games, your games that claim to be totally different games that nobody can figure out, like Myst, and then your games that are, frankly, incomprehensibly categorized as "games" despite the fact that they are patently not games, like "The Sims", a "game" that I never understood the appeal of, either. How is it a game if you simply recreate a life? The time our Middle Daughter ("Middle") tried to get me to play it, she told me I had to make my Sim cook dinner, buy furniture and get a job... and those were all the same things I'd done that day.

(Well, except get a job; technically, I had one of those, but I'd spent that day at "work" reading comics online, so it all balanced out.)

The only fun thing about The Sims ever was my reading an article about a video game player who tried to drive his Sim insane, with hilarious results that probably mean that he, and I, and anyone else who thought it was funny, should be arrested and should definitely not be put in charge of other people such as employees or children.

You probably think, after all that decrying of video games that are just versions of other video games, that I'm going to now come out of left field and name, as the #2 Best Video Game, some video game that "broke the mold" or "changed the field" or "innovated" or something, but you'd be wrong. As a general rule, nothing I say in a post has any relation to anything else I say in a post; it's all a stream-of-consciousness rant that's designed to keep you distracted from the fact that major corporations have tiny remote laser capability, raising serious questions about the future direction of our society, because you just know that at some point McDonald's is going to start packaging Happy Meals with miniature lasers, and I, for one, cannot wait for that because I have always wanted a laser gun.

Remember: "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."*

*Obligatory Star Wars Reference, which is extra-obligatory (obligatorier?) today.

Which is the philosophy I used to come up with the #2 Best Video Game, which is:

Berserk!



Stop the Humanoid! Stop the Intruder! I have never forgotten those eerie-mechanical words emanating from the arcade console of this game, the latter part of the phrase raising in pitch to indicate that there were more than one robot talking.

Berserk was a first-person shooter game stripped down to its barest elements: No story line, minimalist graphics (because that was the best we could do at the time), no goal, even: just run through room after room of deadly killer robots.

You didn't know what you were doing -- but you knew you weren't supposed to be there, because you were the intruder. You might not even be human -- you were a humanoid -- and there wasn't even time to ponder all those questions because you had to keep running and shooting and running and shooting.

This is the part of the post where I wax philosophical about the game and its larger meaning in society, but, honestly, I'm a little scatterbrained from watching videos of videogames on Youtube, and also wondering if I shouldn't have picked Robotron 2084, instead, so I'm going to just let you Mad Lib it and finish up this post for me:

In fact, the video game Berserk makes ___________(insert pronoun) wonder whether _____________(pronoun for group) have some deep-seated ___________ (emotion) that we mask by inventing _____________ (social activity), which we then turn to whenever _______________(a kind of food that only grandmothers like) gets on our nerves, which, when you ___________________(a verb that applies uniquely to NASCAR) about it, is really what ________________(someone who once dated Barack Obama) meant when _______________(are you still reading this? Why?) said ___________________(punch line to your favorite knock-knock joke.)


Previous entries in this Minibest:

1. 2001 Madden NFL for the Playstation 2.

I'm going to go get my spot for the parade! (Star Wars References)

There'll be a parade, right? There has to be, because it's Star Wars Day!

Or, more accurately, "Thtar Warth Day." Today being May Fourth, a day Star Wars fans have dubbed "Star Wars Day," because... do I have to spell it out for you? Okay:

May the Fourth Be With You.

Wow! Funny!

The day actually comes -- according to ABC News, which figured it could spare some manpower to report on this critical issue -- from a mistranslation of a George Lucas interview by a German TV channel, making this just the latest in a long list of achievements of Western Civilization which owe their birth solely to German mistranslations, a list that includes "toast," and "James Van Der Beek."

As legend (?) has it, George Lucas was interviewed by, probably, some Germans on German TV, and said "May the Force be with you," but those wacky (?) Germans mistranslated it as "We are with you on May 4th," and "Star Wars Day" was born.

But don't for a second think that a single day could serve as a celebration of the only thing our culture bothers to worry about anymore: There are actually two Star Wars Days: The other is May 25, commemorating the day the movie was originally released to begin filtering into our bloodstreams like... like... what's the word I'm searching for, here? I'm sure it'll come to me.

Like Star Wars References? It doesn't matter if you do, because that's all you get anymore. Click here to find more of them.

Off The Top Of My Head: The Best Books I Ever Read.

What's this? Click here for an explanation.

I started thinking of this as I got ready for work this morning, after an article in Newsweek made me remember Sherman McCoy and The Bonfire Of The Vanities. So here's the

Off The Top Of My Head List Of...
The Best Books I Ever Read:

The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Stand
Jonathan Norrell and Mr Strange
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The World According to Garp


...and I'm done.

Off The Top Of My Head: Table of Contents

Here's all the lists I've got so far:

The Best Sci-fi books, etc., that have nothing to do with Star Wars Or Star Trek.

The Best (?) Smurfs I Can Remember Without Cheating.

The Best Movies Everyone But Me Seems To Have Seen

The Best Rings In Pop Culture.

The Best Books I Ever Read

The Best Obscure TV Shows I'm Pretty Sure Only I Watched.

The Best Movies In Which A Dance Featured Prominently.


Gut feelings count for something, right? They do if you read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and/or if you'd like to set up a system for your life where you never have to ponder anything or do research and instead can justify everything by saying something like gut feelings count for something.

That's how I came up with the concept for Off The Top Of My Head. Well, that and that I keep trying to come up with posts that won't take me three weeks to write and you three weeks to read. I thought to myself "How can I get some filler for this blog"

That is, I thought to myself "How can I create posts that are quick to read and yet create the same thought-provoking response that most of my posts here do?"

And the answer was to go with my gut feelings: To create, from time to time, lists that I write up as fast as possible without any, or at least much, explanation of the contents of that list. Here's how it works:

I think up a topic.

I begin typing the entries on the list for that topic.

As soon as my mind goes blank, I stop.

The Four Best Stupid Questions About Disney Cartoons.

As a famous philosopher once said, "Never start out with a quote from someone. It's lazy writing."

That's why I'm going to jump right into this post without the usual foofooraw, a word, which, if you Google it to try to find out whether it's a real word, Google will ask you "Did you mean 'foofaraw,'? as though that is a real word.

Of course, if you click that link and tell Google Yeah, I mean foofaraw, even though you didn't really -- lying to Google is not (yet) a federal offense, you know -- you'll find out that foofaraw is a real word, meaning "a fuss over a trifling matter."

So, in the end, I really did mean foofaraw, even though I first said foofooraw. Thanks, Google!

I have, over the past four years, watched many a Disney cartoon, because the Babies!, who are getting close to five years' old, have watched many a Disney cartoon, too, although my watching Disney cartoons predates Mr F and Mr Bunches' existences; I watched The Little Mermaid when it first came out on video back in the 1990s (and bought the soundtrack, too) and watched The Lion King, too, when that came out because by then I had nephews who watched Disney cartoons, and then I watched Hercules when the older kids watched that (and used Hercules to help get over my irrational fears of the Jeeper Creeper, so I'm kind of an expert when it comes to Disney cartoons, which makes me the perfect person to ask

The Four Best Stupid Questions About Disney Cartoons, the third entry in my series of posts about stupid questions, and we'll begin today's (stupid) introspection with:

1. Why were the Wall-E's needed?

If you've watched Wall*E, then you know that the lovable little robot who [SPOILER ALERT!] saved humanity because he was in love with another lovable little robot had a job to do: he, along with apparently many other Wall*Es, were created to gather up trash and compact it into little squares, which they then used to build monumental trash towers.



Leave aside, for the moment, the question of how that was supposed to help clean up the over-polluted world we humans had created: the Wall*Es were, after all, simply stacking the trash neatly in and around the cities we humans abandoned, not moving it to someplace else. Let's assume that they were doing that in order to, say, launch all the trash into space and lob it into the sun, as a noted genius once said humans should be doing.

If you assume that the Wall*Es were actually doing something useful, the question still remains Why were there Wall*Es at all.

Or EVEs, for that matter.

In the movie, after all, once Eve finds the plant and returns to the spaceship, it turns out that Otto the Autopilot is under orders never to let humans return to Earth.

[OH, UM... SPOILER ALERT? Sorry, I was a little behind on that one. Blame it on my deregulated FAA Air Traffic Controller Training.]

That plan is revealed when the captain of what apparently is the only spaceship full of the only surviving humans tries to get the ship to go back to Earth because plant (and therefore other kinds of life) is now sustainable; but upon trying to execute that order, the captain finds a secret video that tells him that it's all been a ruse, and that there was never any plan to go back to Earth in the first place, because the Buy'N'Large people who set this whole thing up figured that the Earth was beyond redemption and would never be cleaned.

Which, if that was true, doesn't explain why a massive corporation created all the Wall*Es to clean up the place: they were never going to come back, so why bother pretending they're going to clean it up?

Also unexplained: what happened to all the animals on Earth? Not a single animal was seen on the spaceship holding all of humanity, which means either there's another spaceship out there, full of animals (or full of people who learned to love Zebra McNuggets, which is far more likely) or humans returned to Earth to live life as vegetarians.

"So I've just been part of this massive government make-work project...
but I'm only doing that until I finish my screenplay.
What say we go back to my place?"

2. Whatever happened to the OTHER Lost Boys in Pinocchio?

Just how many chances do you think Pinocchio should have had to prove he can be a good boy? After failing the first time -- going to join a theater company instead of going to school, a choice that paid off handsomely for the Olsen Twins, who are now almost billionaires and are getting richer selling ridiculously overpriced clothing to Mrs. Obama, but for which Pinocchio was punished -- Pinocchio is given a second chance, which he blows even more spectacularly, going to drink and smoke cigars on Pleasure Island.

Which could have made the stupid question "How does a puppet drink or smoke, since he has neither lungs nor a belly?" but I went more profound and philosophical with this one.

Pinocchio narrowly avoids becoming a full-on donkey, you'll recall...



... by coming to his senses just in time and getting off the island, after which [SPOILER ALERT ABOUT A STORY THAT MANY PEOPLE WILL CONFUSE WITH THAT ONE ABOUT JONAH AND THE WHALE, WHICH WILL THEN CAUSE THEM TO THINK OF FOLK-POPSTERS 'NOAH AND THE WHALE', A GROUP THEY REALLY LIKE BUT WHICH HAS BEEN KIND OF REPLACED, ON THEIR PLAYLISTS, BY SLOW CLUB... OR IS THAT JUST ME]

Pinocchio and Jiminy run into Geppetto, who has been swallowed by a whale, and they save him, after which Glinda The Good Witch (I'm pretty sure that was her) makes Pinocchio a real boy... because why? What did he do that was so good? Run away to stop becoming a donkey? Wasn't that why he left the island?

(I've just looked it up and realized that he set off to save Geppetto and sacrificed his life to do so, which means that Pinocchio effectively co-opted pretty much all of the Biblical heroes into his story, a fact I'm only pointing out to get you to overlook that I was wrong about whether he was a good boy or not.)

So Pinocchio is a real boy and dances to celebrate with Geppetto and everyone's happy, except that Pinocchio never seems to tell Geppetto about the magical slave ring that's going on.

Sure, maybe that took place offscreen - -maybe, after the movie ended and Pinnochio settled into life as a real boy, he said over dinner one day "Hey, Father, by the way, did you know that men are kidnapping bad little boys, turning them into donkeys and selling them into slavery?"

But I don't think so -- because wouldn't that be pretty much the first thing you said when you woke up as a real boy?

Assuming you're a good real boy, that is: wouldn't you say "Hey, great, I'm a real boy, and now I can help do something to help all those other kids."

But, no, Pinocchio just seems to go on about his life, never bothering to wonder what happened to Lampwick and the rest.

"Oh, yeah. Those guys.
Well, maybe they like being donkeys, right?"

3. Where were the super-villains in "The Incredibles?"

The whole plot of The Incredibles revolves around the idea that Americans -- I'm assuming it's America, because the insurance industry makes its money screwing people over and the government claims to be out of money -- would reject superheroes who want to help them and engage in a variety of frivolous lawsuits making outrageous claims about people whose only purpose in life was to protect them.

That would never happen, right?

Right...

Anyway, after the trial lawyers got hold of super hero claims -- and somehow forced the government to pay for damages caused by the heroes, who must have had some government affiliation to cause that, right? -- the super heroes went into hiding and the government passed a law mandating that no superhero lawsuits could be filed anymore.

Which is great... except that it left a bunch of supervillains running around, in a world where the police needed help to catch a bank robber.

Now, granted, the movie was pretty short on naming the villains-- there was Bomb Voyage, and that Mole Guy at the end, The Underminer, and other than them, and Syndrome, who wouldn't have been a villain if Mr. Incredible hadn't been such an incredible jerk (see what I did there?) But there were other problems -- including the guy with the missile in this clip:



So if there were other supervillains, what happened to them? Did the police suddenly become much more effective? Did Syndrome kill them off? Did they go into hiding, too?

It's easy to be a superhero
when the only people you fight are
skinny muggers.

4. Why did Buzz Lightyear stop talking when Andy came into the room?

The original Toy Story movie is generally lauded as the single greatest human achievement ever, judging by the hyperbolic way people rhapsodize about it.

Don't get me wrong: I loved it as much as the next guy, and, like the next guy, I tried to blame my tears, at the part of Toy Story 3 where the toys are going to be incinerated, on dust in the theater.

But Toy Story had a major gaping plot hole: If Buzz Lightyear didn't know he was a toy, why did he stop moving when Andy was around?

As I gathered, the rules of being a toy are that you're not supposed to move around people. Woody says as much, at the end, when they're all going to rescue Buzz from Sid: "We'll have to break some rules," Woody tells them.

(That, by the way, is supposed to be kind of a dramatic moment: Woody is advising toys to break the rules. But that's about the least disturbing thing Woody -- who I've pointed out previously wasn't the nice guy everyone thinks -- does. Woody, remember, knocked Buzz out a window and then lied about it.)

Woody's plan then goes on to break those rules, proving that toys, when they want to, can move around in the presence of people. They just choose not to.

Which means that Buzz, at the beginning of the movie, can move around even when Andy's around. So why doesn't he? Buzz, after all, doesn't think he's a toy -- most of the plot of the first movie revolves around Woody's efforts to get Buzz to realize his place in the world (and, not incidentally, to realize Woody's place in that world.)

If Buzz doesn't think he's a toy, why does he act like a toy?

Toy Story 2 explained part of this by pointing out that all Space Rangers are to be in "hypersleep" until they're purchased -- which is why America wasn't terrorized by legions of tiny men struggling against their plastic bonds at Toys'R'Us stores -- but nobody ever explained why Buzz, once freed from "hypersleep" at Andy's birthday party didn't immediately start moving around, and enlist Andy and his other giant friends in an effort to help him take on Zurg.

"I'm telling you, Sheriff, these people are HUGE, and
I'm going to enlist them to help me fight. Heck, with
just a few of them, I can quit being a low-paid Space Ranger
and set myself up as Emperor. If you thought a clone army was
tough to beat..."*

Click here for more Stupid Questions.

Click here for more Kids' Stuff.

*Obligatory Star Wars Reference.

WHODATHUNKIT!?: Royal Wedding Edition: The 3 Best Things You REALLY WANT TO Know About The Royal Wedding.

Welcome to my attempt to cash in on the royal wedding.

If you, like me, said "Which royal wedding?" then you are part of an elite club that includes you, and me, and anyone else in the world who wonders why, if people love royalty so much, only Britain's royal family gets the publicity?

After all, according to "The International Commission on Nobility and Royalty," which is a thing, there are 87 different countries that have royal families, which came as a surprise to me because I would have sworn there were only about 10 countries in the world, all told, and I guess that explains why Olympic opening ceremonies are so long. (I just thought athletes like parades.)

The ICNR's list of 87 countries with royal families is a little misleading, though, and needs some explanation. First off, the ICNR notes on Asia are as follows:

ASIA (The "de jure" sovereign kings, emirs, etc. of various former little nations --- too many to keep track of)

That's why America is falling behind China, you fools! We're too lazy to count the royal families of all the nations. Do you think the Chinese are not counting them? Oh, they are. And we'll realize our mistakes only too late.

That notation made me wonder just how small those former little nations (which sounds like it might be a Disney Family cartoon, doesn't it? Former Little Nations: Join the Adventure as Baby Nations romp around the world discovering new things about each country! With their friends, Carrie The Cartographer and Boatie, these Former Little Nations will have your kids learning and laughing!)

Just how small those former little nations are, given that the list counts such countries as "Grenada," which is most famous for being the most ridiculous war-movie setting ever, and Luxembourg, which is most famous for my constantly getting it confused with Monaco.

The list also includes Zanzibar, which would be a good name for a new kind of candy treat.

With all those royal families, you'd expect that people would get confused when the media (meaning: Katie Couric) says the royal wedding, and everyone would start flipping through their People Magazines to find out if that suave devil the "Elective Prince of The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta: "de jure" over past territories and still an independent subject of international law: His Most Eminent Highness the Prince and Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing as of March 11, 2008" has finally found that special someone, but no! We just automatically assume that it's Britain's royal family.

Doesn't seem fair, does it, if you are the Elective Prince... etc. etc. Grand Master Fra' Matthew Festing as of March 11, 2008"? No, it doesn't, and I hope he'll find at least some consolation in the fact that he can serve to let nerds prove that George Lucas wasn't being ridiculous when he had the Queens of Naboo be elected for a term, because the Elective Prince... etc. etc., Grand Master Fra' of Malta is also elected.*

*obligatory Star Wars Reference

But, all fairness aside**

**as Republicans like to say

I've caught "Royal Wedding Fever," the symptoms of which include a desire to get a bunch of hits on my blog from all those people who really do have "Royal Wedding Fever" and who will call in sick to work this Friday... the wedding is Friday, right? ... and watch in breathless anticipation as nothing much happens.

And when they do watch that, they're going to need something to talk about after they finish the topic of Kate Middleton's feather hats, which I understand can dominate the discussion for upwards of 73 straight hours -- or roughly 1/4 the time this wedding will take to be completed. And you, too, are going to need something to talk about, because you, like me, probably won't watch at all but will want to feel like you're a part of society by pitching in and saying something about the wedding, so I'm again providing that phenomenal public service that this blog does from time to time, to wit:

WHODATHUNKIT!?:
Royal Wedding Edition:
The 3 Best Things You REALLY WANT TO Know About The Royal Wedding.

In presenting these things, you might think that I'm hampered somewhat by not having read or watched anything about the Royal Wedding, by not ever having been to England, and by not actually being sure who "Kate Middleton" really is.

You would be wrong. I have never let a fact get in the way of a good opinion.***

***As Republicans also like to say.

And so I can therefore freely provide you with the following three AMAZING facts that will serve as conversational fodder/my blatant attempt to up my page rank during the upcoming festivities, secure in the knowledge that it just took me four tries to correctly spell festivities.

1. The wedding is in an abbey, so Kate Middleton's mom's dream that her daughter would have a 'nice church wedding' is going to be crushed.

Westminster Abbey -- hands down, the best abbey Joey has ever seen -- is a busy place -- it holds 1,500 "daily" services a year, raising the question Have the Brits found a way to get more days than the rest of us -- but it isn't just a church, per se. An abbey is a home for monks or nuns managed by an abbot, which means maybe I am missing something and this wedding is going to be hilarious:




So, if an abbey is something that's headed by an abbot, then a fair question to ask is what's an abbot?****

****Nothing; what's an abbot you?

Nevermind what that joke is supposed to mean. I looked up the definition of abbot, and found that it's:

a man who is the head or superior, usually elected, of a monastery.

You saw that coming, right? I sometimes can't believe that English counts as a language.

But Westminster Abbey is not just an abbey, and not just home to the world's most famous dog show (which will take place immediately after the wedding, Friday). It's also a little bit peculiar, as noted on its website:

Westminster Abbey is one of the world’s greatest churches, a designated World Heritage Site and ‘Royal Peculiar’, which means the Dean is directly answerable to the monarch.

That's according to its website -- yes, the Abbey has a website, and a Twitter feed, and a podcast. There's a lot going on at the Abbey, including the "Office For The Royal Maundy."

I don't know what the Office For the Royal Maundy is, so let's move on to:

2. The "Office For The Royal Maundy" is a church service in which the Queen gives money to old people.

Seriously: At "The Official Website Of The British Monarchy," the informational overload includes information about "Maundy Thursday," which is the Thursday before Good Friday, and which is also the day the Queen gives "Maundy Coins" to elderly pensioners in recognition of their service to the community.

This year's Maundy Coins (shown at right) were actually several coins in two purses, totaling 5 pounds, 135 pence, which is equal to 11 Bosnian Convertible Markers. "Bosnian Convertible Markers" are, of course, the money used in Bosnia, which I am pretty sure is still a country. *****

*****I am not US-centric. Why should we always convert money to simply "US Dollars"? Other than the fact that other countries' money seems fake, I mean?

The Maundy tradition is said to date from the Last Supper, following Jesus' command to love one another, his "mandate." (Maundy is a corruption of mandate, another reason why English ought not to be considered a full-fledged language.******)

******And another checkmark against English is the past participle.

In the past, the British monarch didn't just give a couple of pence to the lads; he would get down and wash their feet, too, but that tradition ended with James II. (James II was, I believe, the British Monarch who abdicated the throne to roam the world in a giant peach.)

3. Kate Middleton might actually be some sort of goddess and/or Antichrist who heralds the end of the world.

Scoff if you want, but don't scoff too loudly lest you be left behind when the world comes to an end. This part of the Royal Wedding hasn't actually been played up -- probably because the media (meaning: Rachel Maddow) are part of a massive conspiracy to keep you, the good people of the world, from knowing that the world is going to end if this wedding goes through.

To come to that conclusion, I have put several actual facts together in what will immediately become apparent is the only logical way, and they lead inexorably to the conclusion that unless we stop this wedding, it's over for humanity.

FACT ONE: Take a look at this actual billboard from the actual world:



That's the work of a group called "Family Radio," which doesn't seem like a church name, but neither does Westminster Abbey, so who are you to judge?

Family Radio sets out, on its website, a timeline from the Bible that helps prove that the billboard is right. Highlights from that include:

11,013 BC—Creation. God created the world and man (Adam and Eve).

....

1988 AD—This year ended the church age and began the great tribulation period of 23 years

....

1994 AD—On September 7th, the first 2300-day period of the great tribulation came to an end and the latter rain began, commencing God’s plan to save a great multitude of people outside of the churches
....

2011 AD—On May 21st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation.

Fact Two: In 1988, George Bush was elected.

Fact Three: In 1994, the "Republican Revolution" occurred.

Fact Four: Neither Fact Two nor Fact Three actually plays into this, but I thought it would be fun to note that when people vote for Republicans they are bringing about the rule of Satan. Keep that in mind, everyone.

Fact Five: The world will not actually end on May 21; that's only Judgment Day. The world actually will go on existing until October 21, 2011, again according to Family Radio and/or God:

By God’s grace and tremendous mercy, He is giving us advanced warning as to what He is about to do.

On Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011, this 5-month period of horrible torment will begin for all the inhabitants of the earth.

It will be on May 21st that God will raise up all the dead that have ever died from their graves. Earthquakes will ravage the whole world as the earth will no longer conceal its dead (Isaiah 26:21).

People who died as saved individuals will experience the resurrection of their bodies and immediately leave this world to forever be with the Lord. Those who died unsaved will be raised up as well, but only to have their lifeless bodies scattered about the face of all the earth. Death will be everywhere.

Fact Six: God and/or Family Radio have the date wrong for the end of the world. Family Radio notes that the Bible says this "all the dead people scattering" period will last 150 days

The Lord also emphasizes these awful 5 months of destruction in the final verse of Genesis, chapter 7:

Genesis 7:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Five months after May 21st, 2011 will be October 21st, 2011. It so happens that October 21st of 2011 is also the last day of the Biblical Feast of Tabernacles (held simultaneously with the Feast of Ingathering).

While five months after May 21 is October 21, October 21 is not "an hundred and fifty days" after May 21. October 18 is. So if you thought maybe you'd make it until Friday the week the world ends, guess again. The world will end on a Tuesday.

Fact Seven: Kate Middleton and I share the same birthdate, January 9. That's not really critical either, but it is kind of neat. Also born that day? Bob Denver and Richard Nixon.

Fact Eight: Remember how the world is actually going to end in October, not May? Well, guess who got engaged in October? (If you guessed "Kate Middleton," then you are half-right: Prince William did, too.)

Fact Nine: Kate Middleton's face has appeared on a jellybean.



Jellybeans are, of course, traditionally associated with Easter, which is kind of a religious holiday associated with something-or-other. I can't remember. But I'm pretty sure this jellybean thing means something.

And that is why I am off to England, to stop the wedding, with only the help of my loyal band of followers, the Former Little Nations and Carrie The Cartographer. We'll all get on Boatie and, joined by our special guest the Elective Prince... etc. etc. Grand Master Fra' Matthew Festing as of March 11, 2008 will do our best to stop the wedding, save the world, and otherwise come up with what sounds pretty much like the back cover blurb of Dan Brown's next novel, am I right?

Han Solo took a shortcut? (Star Wars References.)

This comic strip, from XKCD:



Might have equally had what I assume to be Luke Skywalker saying, in the fourth panel, "I thought a parsec was a unit of measurement equal to 3.26 light years. So what you're saying is that you found a way to reduce the actual distance traveled for the Kessel Run, which of course would shorten the time as well, most likely, but that doesn't actually prove that the Millennium Falcon is a fast ship, but merely that you're better at celestial navigation than other pilots... which just goes to reason, since any starship that can get around this galaxy can go light speed, and light speed is pretty much the fastest that anything can go. So I guess it's important to us that you can find shortcuts like you did on the Kessel Run, even though the idea of a "shortcut" between planets is sort of a ridiculous notion, anyway."

Or, the author could have opted to reference a different movie altogether. But it's, like, why would that happen... in a world?

The 8 Best Video Games, #1 (MiniBest!)

I don't often post about video games on here, and there's a reason for that: they're for losers.

I'm serious about that, in the same way that I'm serious about thinking that everything I'm no good at is for losers. In my world, things divide up into three categories:

1. Things I Am Good At, And Therefore Like.
2. Things I Am Not Good At, And Therefore Say Is For Losers.
3. The Mysterious Third Category That I Will Explain In The Next Paragraph Or So.

The Mysterious Third Category actually could be titled "Things I Am Not Good At But Still Want To Like And So I Try To Do Them But Am Never Very Good At Them And So I Like Them But In My Mind I Create A Separate Category Of The Thing Which I Then Decide Is For Losers."

But that's a pretty long title, and also, if I'd just come out and said that, there would have been no sense of mystery driving you on to read this post further -- and what kind of writer would I be if I just blurted out a bunch of stuff with no particular meaning and didn't give you a reason to keep on reading?*

*I'd be the Jonathan Franzen kind of writer.

The Mysterious Third Category includes things like golf, which I really really like to play, but which I am horrendous at. I am the world's worst golfer, and I say that with a kind of pride because it's good to excel at something, even if the thing you excel at is not excelling at something.**

**Yeah, try to wrap your head around that.

Because I love golf but am no good at it, I have subdivided golf into categories, which are:

a. Golf when I'm playing, and
b. Golf when anyone else is doing it.

And, as you'd guess, golf when I'm playing is fun and cool even though I'm no good at it, but golf when anyone else is doing it is lame and stupid and for losers, so if you watch golf, play golf, once thought about golf, looked at a golf course as you drove by, or just read this paragraph in which I said golf seven times*** then you are a loser.

***Did you compulsively go back and count them the way I always do whenever someone numbers something? We both need help.

Video games used to fall into category number one. Sort of. I wasn't ever really good at video games, not the way guys in 80s movies were good at video games. Guys in 80s movies were always so good at games that they could play them for hours, or play them while drinking large sodas at the pizza place, or play them in such a way as to get girls, or play them in such a way as to get to be The Last Starfighter.

And I was never anywhere near that good -- but I was able to play them, at least -- able to understand them and work the 1 or 2 controls that were required of video games in the olden days: track balls, a button or two, maybe a joystick.

Video games have advanced way beyond that level, advancing to the point where the average video game controller requires at least three hands to work properly, so that kids someday will Zaphod Beeblebrox themselves, maybe... I don't know how they're doing it now, working all those controls, or working the two different controls required for the Wii that not only require you to press buttons but to move around, too, and that's why I've drifted away from video games over the years.

Well, that, and I grew up.

And that, and the growing up thing, and also, video games got really hard, even without the controller. I can remember playing Super Mario Bros. 2, and exploring around in Mario's world and thinking "This is amazing, it's a video game that also lets me explore," which was kind of an expansion of the old Atari 2600 game Adventure, a game that I always loved but which lacked a certain element of graphics, and also a certain element of game play.

I always liked games that combined challenges with adventures, getting to explore a world and also try to do challenges, at least until I got caught up with modern games, which happened when I played Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. I got the game from a friend, who told me it was great for exploring and game-play.

You know what it was great for? Shooting a (*#)$%& monkey.

That's all I could do. My experience with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was limited to: start the game. Slide down the hill, avoiding the pit. Go into the tomb. Shoot the monkey before it bit me. Slide across the vine...

... never advance any further.

I was able to play Lara Croft: Tomb Raider for about 5 minutes at a time, and never got further than sliding across that $(#&% river.

Things got worse from there: I couldn't get Spider-Man out of the warehouse, Ratchet & Clank kept sinking in quicksand, I shot one-- ONE-- stormtrooper*** in Star Wars: Battlegrounds or whatever it was.

***Obligatory Star Wars Reference.

And then, the final blow to modern video games: I played The Boy in Madden football, and I lost... 68-3.

And, yeah, I kicked the field goal just to not be shut out.

I had never lost to The boy in Madden football before, in years and years and years, but the new game required use of all the buttons and the controller could be moved to make your guy lean and there were all kinds of new tweaks that made it almost exactly like playing football...

... provided that NFL players were to sit around in a circle and move a small controller.

What's the deal with how complicated these games are? I'm not talking just about figuring out levels and how to win and strategies: I'm talking about games that require practice sessions to learn how to work everything. Because if the idea is to make it seem as realistic as possible, well, MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED.

Sitting in a beanbag chair waving a controller around pressing buttons does not make it seem almost exactly as if you're returning a punt or hang-gliding or figuring out whatever "The Cake Is A Lie" means. It just makes it more complicated, and serves as a barrier to people who want to play a game.

Did you ever sit down to play a boardgame with friends and see a packet of instructions as thick as your arm and decide to just do shots, instead? Me, neither; I didn't have those kinds of friends and don't live in a modern sitcom. But that's the point I'm trying to make here: Even the most complicated-seeming board games, like Axis & Allies and Monopoly and such were, at their heart, simple. The strategies could be complicated, but the play was simple.

I think video games got away from that. They got away from making things devilishly hard to figure out how to get past all those flaming barrels the monkey was throwing at you, or how to get past Bowzer, to making it devilishly hard to hit A+B plus RTCTRL plus turn the controller to the left plus wiggle the joystick and so on. They got carried away with the fact that they could pack 16 different controllers onto one thing and decided to make you use them all to play a game, sometimes at once. Videogames became not about reflexes or thinking, but about whether you were capable of using each finger independently of all the others.

Which I can't.

Let me emphasize that the fact that I could not get further than the monkey and the river on Lara Croft wasn't because I couldn't figure out where to go next. I could. I just couldn't get Lara Croft to do it. I couldn't manipulate the then-8 controls well enough to make Lara Croft do what I wanted to do.

The equivalent, in terms of the games I grew up with, would be if in Risk I'd decided to attack the Kamchatka peninsula, but wasn't able to lift the dice to roll. When I lost 68-3 to The Boy in football, I was completely unable to remember to fade back, hit a button to get ready to pass, watch the "Quarterback's Eye," hit another button to throw the pass, keeping it held down longer in order to throw a bullet pass, then hit a different button to switch control to the receiver, at which point I'd hit a combination of buttons to leap, catch the ball, stiff-arm, speed burst, and gain three yards.

I'm confused just typing that.

And maybe kids today can work those controls, but I can't, and kids today are losers.

So I decided, after recently rediscovering Pac Man and remembering that once upon a time I could control my video game avatar and actually play, to celebrate, over the next 8 MiniBests, the 8 Best Video Games, and today's is number one, number one being:
2001 Madden NFL for the PlayStation 2.

I picked this one as the first entry on this list because it was the last "modern" videogame I enjoyed playing and didn't need to practice at to play.

Every boy I know grew up wanting to play football -- harboring dreams that they would someday be in the NFL, playing for a playoff spot and then the Super Bowl. Some of us****

****Specifically, me.

Have still not really given up on that; there's still a part of me that thinks "Well, with a little conditioning, I could probably start at quarterback and go, say, 11-5 with a 92 rating."

(That part of me is the part that doesn't recall that I got really winded the other day playing Chase with Mr Bunches.)

Madden NFL football was the first football game to give us a chance to do that without getting winded or having to go outside: prior football games that I actually owned looked like this:



and then this:




And then this:



But Madden NFL looked like this:



And by 2001, it had pretty much hit perfection: Just the right level of challenge in the game play, just the right level of complexity: It was possible to play it on the old controllers, the ones that didn't have 73 different buttons and a gyroscope in them, the plays were fun, the teams were pretty evenly matched. I loved the 2001 version of this game, the only one I ever personally owned. I set up a season and picked my team, the Buffalo Bills, and got them into the playoffs and everything -- picking apart defenses and going for it on fourth-and-long and otherwise managing to get the feel of what it might be like to play in the NFL the way I wanted it to be and without getting my head torn off.

Of course, no good thing can be left untouched -- EA Sports wants to keep getting new money from players, so they have to offer new things every year, and they tweaked it and made it harder and "more realistic" and... worse. Every new feature made the game a little tougher to play, but in the worst way possible: by making it harder to work the controls. The competition didn't get better -- it just got tougher to actually make the game do what I wanted it to do.

Again, that's like simply making the dice heavier; sure, it makes the game tougher to play, but not in a good way.

I blame, in this case, a complete lack of creativity combined with a complete lack of smarts on the part of Madden NFL lovers. EA Sports couldn't come up with new games that would appeal to football fans, but wanted to keep getting $40-70 per year from them. So they simply recreated the wheel each year, with some new unnecessary feature. And the gamers just went ahead and bought the new version, each year, to get updated stats and new uniforms, at full cost with a few options that they hadn't needed the year before to enjoy the game.

And at some point, EA Sports ran out of useful tweaks and simply added new tweaks like "quarterback eye," a horrible innovation where your QB has to look around the field and you have to wait until he looks at the receiver you want, until you get sacked, and a bunch of other stupid things.

Imagine if the thinking behind EA Sports' yearly Madden updates were applied to, say, books or movies or TV shows. Sure, in other entertainment, they release sequels and imitators, but if the EA Sports Madden Model were applied to books, then John Grisham wouldn't even need to change the names in his assembly-line thrillers. He'd have released The Firm, and a year later we'd get The Firm 1993, this time with some footnotes and an extra chapter that flashed back to Tom Cruise's law school days.

The Firm 1994, 1995, etc. would have kept going until there was no more story to add and instead we got a new way to shuffle the chapters, a cover that was slightly more green but could be changed to blue by sliding it counterclockwise... and so on.

All of it not adding to the story and making it more difficult or annoying to just read the thing.

Sometimes, things are good enough. And any update or change has to actually add something to the experience you're trying to create. Looking at the Madden NFL changes as time went on from 2001, it seems to me that the "experience" Madden NFL was really trying to re-create was the experience of trying to solve a Rubik's cube you're not allowed to look because you're driving a car on the freeway at rush hour at the time. Or at least that's what it felt like to me, losing 68-3. So excuse me if I'm not looking forward to future ideations of that "game" which I'm sure will include such enhancements as "requiring that you hop on one foot in iambic pentameter in order to tackle the runner."


Click here for more MiniBests!

THIS is a THING!? Table of Contents:

THIS is a THING?! is my attempt to explain pop culture to you, without my actually having to endure the pop culture on my own; that is, I'll take something that's really popular among other people, and I'll try to explain it to you... but I'm not actually going to invest much*

*any

of my time or energy in watching, listening to, smelling, touching, or otherwise experiencing that thing.

Here are all the THINGS that are:

Instagram

Peeps Dioramas.

Fake Walk-offs from interviews

Lip Dubs.

Planking

Bad Lip Reading

Maybe Lady GaGa is planning to turn herself into a Tusken Raider? (Star Wars References)

I was skimming through The Superficial's comment roundup the other day, because sometimes i care about what other people think, if what other people think is funny and makes fun of celebrities, when something caught my eye.

Two things, actually, caught my eye, and the first has nothing to do with Star Wars. The first was this picture of Lady GaGa:



Which made me wonder what is going on with her face? Is that a photoshopping screwup, or has Lady Gaga gotten triangle cheek implants? (The latter is actually more likely than the former; I'm about 90% sure that the triangles are the beginning of Lady GaGa having some sort of replica of Red Square being built around her head in order to make a point about (and I'm quoting from her in the future, here) "Oppression... or something."

Luckily, I was able to wash that image out of my mind the same way you'll be able to: By looking at what someone humorously thought about Sean Penn's look as he walked around: