Last year, I made an animated Beaksmas special for a few friends, and they liked it. This year, I made a new one and posted it on YouTube so that more than ten people will have a chance to see it.
The usual warnings apply — it’s got a lot of inside jokes and senseless violence. Plus some foul language, though not as much as usual. On the upside, it has Christmas Ogres.
Those of you with long memories may recall Night of the Ponies, a cartoon I posted last year. I promised a follow-up, then failed to deliver it for a very long time. Then my cousin got married and I turned it into a cartoon, creatively titled My Cousin Got Married.
Like every other artsy type out there, I’m not entirely satisfied with the end product, but you didn’t come here to listen to me apologize. So watch it.
[Ed. note - I promised some general pop-culture commentary. So let’s start that trend off by paying tribute to nerds who know more than their bosses.]
If ever there was a marriage of convenience, it is that of Pixar and Disney. One had ideas, one had money, and they figured there would be no harm in combining those resources. As is often the case, cracks appeared.
The two companies clearly have differing opinions on what makes a good animated feature, and that becomes even more obvious whenever one of them releases a new movie. Over the last few years Disney’s animation department has become nearly irrelevant, while Pixar seems well on their way to becoming undisputed masters of the medium.
At this point in their relationship, I have to assume that Disney is growing quite uncomfortable with the beast they created. Pixar started out merely upstaging their parent company with prettier pictures, and have since moved on to films with smarter plots and more fully-drawn characters; true “all-ages movies” rather than “kids’ movies.” Now they’ve moved into viral marketing with a strong anti-consumerist tone.
“Buy N Large” is a fictional mega-corporation that fits into the storyline of Pixar’s next movie, “WALL-E.” The concept is that Earth has been completely buried in the detritus of rampant consumerism (due mostly to the practices of companies like Buy N Large), so the human population migrates into space colonies, and a fleet of robots known as WALL-E’s (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth class) is left behind to clean up the mess and make Earth habitable again. After 700 years, only one WALL-E unit remains active, and he’s struggling valiantly to clean everything up on his own, with little success. Meanwhile, the Earthlings have gone soft(er) after seven centuries of living the good life in space, becoming even more lazy, gluttonous, and materialistic than they were on their homeworld. That’s not even the plot of the movie, that’s just the premise.
Apart from that surprisingly dark concept (dark for a Disney property, at least), the other thing that caught my interest was the design of WALL-E himself (check out the trailer for a look at the little fella). Designers were instructed to “see it as an appliance first, then read character into it,” according to Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, who also joked, “I’m basically making ‘R2-D2: The Movie.’”
Is there even a market for WALL-E? I know I want to see it, and a few of my friends have expressed interest, but we’re a weird bunch of bastards.
The amusing part, which Horatio so astutely pointed out when I brought this up to him via e-mail, is that Disney isn’t going to do anything to stop this. From Horatio:
Disney is in an interesting position here. Generally just about any artist or company can get away with whatever they want, as long as they’re popular, successful, and profitable, which is why Trey Parker and Matt Stone can say absolutely anything they want on national television, and Viacom has to lick it up and meekly beg for more. […] Any media conglomerate would give up half their holdings for a property like South Park, or for that matter, a property like Pixar. […]
And whether they like it or not, Disney has accumulated a lot of social baggage. The Silent Majority Voters that make us so nervous make Disney nervous too, because they’re the ones who demand that Disney continue to serve up innocuous shit that can be put on the TV to babysit children without supervision.
Of course, Disney’s tried its hand at computer-animated features without Pixar’s assistance, with mixedresultsatbest. That works in Pixar’s favor as well, not just by making them look good, but by providing some useful camouflage. Amid the sea of formulaic CGI crap produced by Disney and others (hello, Shrek!), it’s likely that weird little movies like WALL-E will slip unnoticed onto the DVD shelves of wholesome families nationwide. From there, it can go to work indoctrinating children against consumerism, and instilling in them an incurably nerdy love of robots.
Five years ago — half a goddamn decade — I found a beak on the porch outside a University building, and convinced a few friends to join in the madness. Anyone who cares knows the story by now, and anyone who doesn’t know the story can find it if they care.
We scribbled a series of Beak Scriptures (quite silly in retrospect), hastily set up a website, and started trying to change the world. The world didn’t change, so we bided our time by drinking a lot of beer, writing Scriptures a little less frequently, finishing college. We switched to writing political and pop-culture essays from a Beakly perspective, but inspiration was slow to arrive and we were lucky to produce two articles a month.
Parallel to this, I had kept up a regular e-mail correspondence with Horatio, and in the process he and I both ended up penning countless pages of absolute genius, and just as many pages of really funny drivel. Very little of it ever made it to the site, for reasons I don’t fully understand. I initially blamed a lack of motivation. Lately, though, it seems the issue was pure bad timing.
When you have a Big Idea (for example, a philosophy based around the discovery of a beak), that idea will manifest itself via the available resources. If you play the guitar, you take your Big Idea and turn it into music. If you like to paint, your Big Idea ends up on canvas. When we found the Beak, we simply didn’t have a lot of resources, so instead of taking advantage of our Big Idea, we postponed it and started gathering some.
In the five years since then, I’ve become a much better writer and artist. I’ve learned to use PhotoShop and Flash, to blog using WordPress, to put together a decent website (although this site needs a bit of work), to edit audio and video, and probably some other things I’m forgetting. Most of my friends have gone through a similar process. I can’t speak for them, but I know I didn’t learn these things because they’re marketable skills, or because I wanted to be a better, more well-rounded individual. I learned them because I figured that they’d eventually be useful for promoting this ridiculous Beak universe of ours.
Well, here I am five years later, facing off with a big old heap of irony. In the time it took for me to learn all those things, I sorta forgot what the original inspiration was. Here I am, able to make the most of my talents, and I’ve got no use for them. I’m reminded of the words of cartoonist James Kochalka: “Craft is the enemy.” From his letter of the same name:
“You could labor your whole life perfecting your “craft,” struggling to draw better, hoping one day to have the skills to produce a truly great comic… If this is how you are thinking you will never produce this great comic, this powerful work of art, that you dream of. There’s nothing wrong in trying to draw well, but that is not of primary importance.
“What every great creator should do, must do, is use the skills they have right now. A great masterpiece is within reach if only your will power is strong enough (just like Green Lantern.) Just look within yourself and say what you have to say.”
He’s addressing his fellow-travelers in the world of comics, but why shouldn’t this advice be just as valid for every other art form? People spend years preparing before taking on their Giant Personal Project. Most of them abandon those projects before they even begin because they can’t remember the last time it was fun for them. The few who soldier on find the experience slow and joyless.
There are few things that annoy me more than bloggers who make hollow promises to update more frequently. “I know I haven’t posted anything lately, but from now on things are gonna be different!” Those promises, though, are usually made by people who aren’t very interested in their own projects. They invest themselves in something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but lose interest after making use of their original idea; after that, they’re working out of their element.
For the last few years, I’ve been working like that, dedicated to a project I love but directing my energy in questionable directions. I’ve been looking, feebly, for some new complaint to make about George Bush, when I’d much rather be overthinking pop culture. So I had to ask myself:
Why sit around waiting for the day when I’m ready to write a revolutionary philosophical treatise, when I’m ready to write a critical analysis of Final Fantasy VI right now?
Cheers to my fellow Beakniks, for five years of this madness. May the next five be busy.
Given their status as working-class Italian-Americans who spent at least part of their adult lives residing in Brooklyn, it is likely that Mario and Luigi are Catholic, although their adherence to official church doctrine is probably debatable. Indeed, it’s hard to go to confessional every week when King Koopa is always hiding Goombas and Bob-ombs in the booth. However, while they’ve never demonstrated official interest in evangelism since their exile in the Mushroom Kingdom, the Super Mario Brothers do appear to have adapted.
Take, for example, the Holy Grail in virtually every Mario installment, personified as the Princess who must be rescued. Princess Toadstool-Daisy-Peach is coveted in a half-desire-half-worship dichotomy, making her a surrogate for the Virgin Mary. The frequent and unexplained three-princesses-in-one dynamic may refer to the Holy Trinity as well. (I am aware that Princess Daisy is not the same individual as Princess Toadstool a.k.a. Peach. In fact, they rule in neighboring kingdoms. But for the sake of this metaphor, think of Toadstool as the Father, Peach as the Son, and Daisy as the Holy Ghost. The Toadstool/Peach divide is analogous to the active roles of God and Christ in the Bible, with the same multi-aspect Being named as Toadstool in the Old Testament [NES, SNES], and Peach in the New Testament [N64, GC, Wii].)
Yoshi and his dinosaur kin, as well as Toad and his mushroom kin, both hearken back to the Colonial era, and are generally regarded by Mario and Luigi as Noble Savages: honest, useful, and strong as oxen, but still intellectually and morally inferior. Mario and Luigi view Yoshi and Toad with the same arrogant condescension that Cortez displayed when conquering the Aztecs.
Mario clearly considers himself to be the local Christ figure, and his brother to fill the shoes of a disciple or apostle. Mario’s arrogance is so strong, in fact, that he does not even bother to wonder which apostle would be most appropriate. John the Baptist, perhaps, if not for the fact that John was born before Jesus, and the suggestion that his little brother filled the role of precursor is something Mario could not abide (thus do we assign the role of John the Baptist to Pac-Man). Conversely, Luigi himself dreams of the day he can have his “Saint Paul Moment”, capitalizing on Mario’s fame and glory and subtly re-writing Mario’s words and deeds to suit his own purposes.
Wario, as Mario’s opposite, is a parallel of the Antichrist. In the Bible, the Antichrist is totally devoid of independent character development, existing instead only as the direct opposite of Jesus Christ. Similarly, Wario’s existence is meaningless without Mario to mimic and antagonize.
Bowser is Satan, of course, but as with all things in Catholicism, he is a more disciplined and orderly villain than the Protestant Satan. As demonstrated in such games as Super Mario Kart and Super Paper Mario (in which Bowser becomes a playable character), Bowser is a professional antagonist, not truly evil, but a being with a role he knows he must fulfill. This is akin to the Satan depicted in the Book of Job, who makes a bet with God seemingly out of boredom.
The race of turtle-like Koopas, with their ancient heritage and strong national pride, perhaps parallel the Jews, ruthlessly and perpetually antagonized by Mario and his followers, and unjustly vilified in Mushroom Kingdom literature. Like many traditional Roman Catholics, Mario and Luigi demonstrate a bigoted blind spot when dealing with this group.
In contrast to both Bowser and Wario, who fit into a standard Catholic pantheon, Donkey Kong can be viewed as an altogether more primitive, savage deity not unlike Quetzalcoatl or Huitzilopochtli. This is perhaps where we see Mario and Luigi come closest to missionary work, wandering into the jungles outside of the Mushroom Kingdom and stroking their moustaches in disapproval as the squat mushroom folk slice each other’s throats, drink the blood of their kin, and offer the spent carcasses to the ravenous Kong. The origin of Mario and Luigi’s heroism therefore may in fact stem from a crusader-like desire to free the souls of the Mushroom savages from their penchant for heathenistic blood sacrifice.
Lastly, we can propose a pantheon of obscure Saints for Mario and Luigi to call upon, modified for use abroad. These are typified by the magic boxes full of money, food, and weapons which appear to the Mario Brothers at convenient moments throughout their travels. Some official Roman Catholic Saints were most likely transferable, such as St. Ansovinus, the Patron Saint of Gardeners, blessing Mario with Fire Flowers, or St. Dunstan, Patron Saint of Goldsmiths, blessing Luigi with renewed vitality each time he collects 100 gold coins. Patrons for more unorthodox items such as Invincibility Stars and Raccoon Tail Leaves are presumed improvised.
Are you using Pandora yet? Are you? Because if you aren’t, stop what you’re doing and head over there right now.
The concept sounds familiar at first. You set up your free account, you plug in the names of a few of your favorite bands, and it puts together a personal radio station for you. Same old crap, right? Wrong! Thanks to the amazing pseudoscience of the “Music Genome Project,” it identifies the traits of the songs and artists you like, and automatically cues up other songs that share those traits. And not just songs you already know! Little obscure bands, and long-forgotten filler tracks by bands you thought you knew.
And if Pandora makes a bad call? Gives you 50 Cent when you asked for Public Enemy? You can say, “I don’t like this,” and the service will acknowledge the screw-up and refine the selection in the future. As I understand it, it’s comparable to training your TiVo, but what do I know? I can’t afford a TiVo.
Observe: An hour into my first session, it hit me: I had only specified bands with male vocalists, and that was all it had been playing. So I entered in a couple groups with women on vocals, and it combined that information with that data it already had. Twenty minutes later? Bikini Kill. I didn’t even ask for Bikini Kill. It didn’t even cross my mind. But damned if I wasn’t happy to hear it!
I swear, I don’t normally get this excited about the wild world of products and services, but that was before this little miracle-machine came into my life. Really, try to trick it! Give it country, rap, punk, and Tom Waits. You know what you’ll get back? Daniel Johnston. Thank you, robot servant!
Oh, you have no idea how badly I want this to be it. To be the thing that people use as their primary online identity. Met someone nice? Hitting it off? Why scare them away with your poorly-designed myspace profile? Now, you can direct them to your cooler digital surrogate who knows more about music than you, and who lets you take credit for its good taste.
It’s not perfect yet; there’s no standalone player, so you have to listen to it on the website, and every so often you suspect that the selection isn’t as vast as you’d hoped– especially when you hear the same obscure song for the third time in one night. But this stuff can be fixed with a little work on the part of the developers; an upload here, a keyword there, and your favorite band is in on the action.
Limited or not, Pandora has potential to be something great. As long as they don’t let users post photos and blogs, we’re cool.
The greatest problem with religious video games, the problem that made them funny and pathetic at the same time, was they way they attempted to work around one of the hallmarks of gaming — namely, killing shit. I recall one Christian game for the NES which was essentially an action game, except with Bibles taking the place of ammunition. When you shot your enemies, instead of falling down dead, they knelt down and prayed. The concept was the same as countless far-more-violent games, but at least the screen wasn’t filled with pixelated corpses.
Yes, it’s a “Left Behind” strategy game, based on the best-selling series of Evangelical novels of the same title. Unlike the cheesy Christian games of years past, this one uses next-generation technology and a realistic New York City setting, in which you join up with the forces of righteousness, find heathens, and fucking kill them. Not with prayer or any weak shit like that. With bullets. Admittedly, there’s also a “spiritual warfare” element, in which you can try to convert the Jews, Muslims, gays, secularists, etc. But sometimes, the conversion doesn’t take, and you move on to plan B. Which is to say the killing.
And just like “Starcraft” let you play as the Zerg, “Left Behind” lets you play as the followers of the Antichrist, turning your guns on the Evangelical forces. Of course, the Christians will be more than happy to kill you right back.
And hey, just to amp up this toxic super-freakout of a story even more, how about this: the whole affair is tied up with a megachurch empire led by pastor Rick Warren, a.k.a. the “Purpose-Driven Life” dude. Apart from a conventional advertising campaign in gaming magazines, Warren hopes to see the game marketed and distributed through megachurches nationwide. And why the fuck not? You can already get your your music, your espresso, and your salvation in one place, so why not toss some holy carnage into the mix?
If you’re like me, you think this is some kind of joke. Surely they wouldn’t come right out and say “kill the infidels” like that? Well, it’s real, and Gamespot has a page for it. Take a look at the screenshots if you need proof of all the killing that’ll be going on. There’s not much ambiguity here; we’re looking at little digital New Yorkers getting blown the fuck up by dudes in military uniforms.
Don’t get me wrong here, I love me some violent video games. And I’m reluctant to heap too much criticism on this project, not because it isn’t a colossally bad idea (it totally is), but because I’ve spent a lot of time slowly and deliberately explaining that no, I do not want to go out and kill people after playing one of these games. Then again, I’ve never heard a sermon about the coming war with the orcs, or read a book about “reparative therapy” for zombies — not one that was presented as non-fiction, at least. Even the infamous “Grand Theft Auto” is far from realistic; if you do that shit, you’re gonna get caught or killed in the process.
But to steal a line from Dr. Venture, can’t you see how this is maybe different? After all, the events of the “Left Behind” books (and the game) are being presented as something that’s going to happen fairly soon, and this material is being marketed to people who share that belief. Even the most loathsome violence in “GTA” is presented as part of the game’s decidedly unrealistic world, but “Left Behind” has more in common with the grimness of “The Passion of the Christ” (a comparison made by the game’s developers). Which is to say, realistic or not, you’re expected to take it seriously.
Screw it. I’m not going to get my head around this madness anytime soon, so I’ll just point out that it’s creepy as hell, and maybe come back to it after I’ve had a stiff drink.
