OK, Hello. Sorry! Alright. Jesus, I said I’m sorry for not posting in like six days, get off my back already will ya!!

Look at those snappers, will ya!!

…If that’s not rude enough, today’s post will also lack a video of any sort. LIS-TEN I’m running out of oldieo videos- I still have a handful but I need to ration them as to not blow my preverbial load too soon. I might be a cheap date, but I surely ain’t no two-pump chump!

So first topic of discussion in our rad rant involves a documentary I saw over the weekend called THE KING OF KONG. We were bored on Saturday and decided to download it on Apple TV to see what all the hub-bubabuzz is about. If you haven’t heard of it, THE KING OF KONG is a documentary that follows a budding rivalry between the world’s two best gamers of the classic arcade game Donkey Kong.

I’ll give you a brief backstory:

In the dawn of the 70s and 80s arcade craze, one man emerged from the sea of laymen to dominate and capture the crown of best video gamer alive. This man was a teenage hand-eye coordinated phenom named Billy Mitchell (photogenically captured below circa 1982).

Back then, Billy held the world records for points in Pac-Man (first of five to get achieve a perfect game), Centepede, Burgertime, Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong Jr. These days, the world has caught up to Billy in just about everything except for his super-human Donkey Kong skills, which is hailed as the all-time greatest world record to obtain. Billy is the icon for arcade gamers, and he definitely acts the part. Presently (as seen below), Billy is skinny with long hair, a beard and always dons an American flag tie at competitions to let the world know who’s #1!! What kind of asshole actually wears an American flag tie? (…that is, outside of entertaining website videos…)

The thing that really pisses me off about this guy is the enormous ego he hides behind his forced, messiah-like features. In fact, I’m positive Billy actually thinks he’s the reincarnation of Jesus. As if God finally returned Jesus to Earth in the 80s as a self-engrossed douchebag who will spend the next 25 years playing the same arcade game simply to remain #1 (maybe it’s a good thing they didn’t have Pac-Man in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago).

SO THE MOVIE - this guy named Steve Wiebe comes out of obscurity to challenge Billy’s all-time Donkey Kong score. Wiebe is a very talented guy, but has always come up just short from #1 status in every facet of life- sports, music, you name it, this guy always misses out or chokes on the big stage.

So Wiebe is your typical underdog trying to take down Billy the Goliath, and in the movie he does so twice, but Mitchell’s numerous cronies outside and inside the records system work hard to maintain Billy’s #1 status. I think Steve’s story really plucks at my heartstrings because in some way we’re connected - both talented and ambitious, but can never really see things through to the end. I was welling up at the part where he’s playing his original piano music to an audience solely comprised of his little brat kids and frumpy wife (Hello, 300 Christo conciertos later and my fanbase consists of Steve Landry and a bonsai tree). Wiebe’s a dreamer, but can never fully accomplish his goals. That is, until **SPOILER** he finally and officially takes down Billy’s score for a world-record high 1,049,100 points.

…But after watching the movie and reading up on their rivalry to date, Billy has recaptured the all-time high with 1,050,200 - nudging out poor Wiebe by a measily 1100 points, C’MON what’s with that bullshit!!

In summation, I was thoroughly entertained by this documentary, and though it was the best thing I’ve seen since THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

ON A related note - the next day, Nolan is looking up world-record scores on Twin Galaxies (the official scoring site) and he finds the speedrun high for Super Mario Bros. This record is considered 2nd greatest outside of Donkey Kong, and we find out that this 17 year-old kid-genius named Andrew Gardikis (from Quincy, MA might I add) holds the fastest time (using warps and straight) with 5:08!!! That’s just insanity. Nols looks down the list and 6th best time is 8:07, so he asks me what my fastest time ever is. I tell him I have no clue, but I think I can beat it in under 10 minutes for sure. So all my buds talk me into running a speed trial to see how far off I am. Mind you we just came in from hiking and already had a few drinks under our belt that fine lazy Sunday, so I was fairly exhausted and just out of it (aka not at my peak). My time with a few fixable errors was 8:15, and could have easily been about 7:50 had I not screwed up seconds from the end (waiting for that one fucking hammer brother to approach me!). I am pretty pumped I am that fast even without practice or anything, so now I’m on a quest to come close to Andrew’s record. I think running the course a number of times, I can get it under 6 minutes but not much closer than that. This kid’s world-record run is posted on youtube here (however it’s his unofficial 5:00 because of a few illegal moves, but still mind-boggling).

When I grow up, I want to achieve greatness like Andrew Gardikis…

So once I get close to that, I’ll post my best Super Mario speedrun on the RAC for your senseless viewing pleasure…

*_*_IN_*_*_OTHER_*_*_NEWS_*_*

Speaking of bloodshed and unrealized accomplishments, after shooting a scene with Big Daddy this past Sunday, I’ve officially decided to pull the plug on the endless pilot of THE SURVIVAL. We’ve shot 3 days and have a few scenes, all hilarious, but the problem is we can’t exactly find compatible time for the cast (*cough!* of two people *cough!*) to shoot. It was crazy, sort of funny, and a fun time acting opposite Chris and watching Kenny B turn into a damn fine little DP. The worst part like always is my untrained acting performance, but half the time we were drunk or something else so I guess I snuck a little method in there!

Here are a few stills from a pinnacle scene near the end:

This may look weird, but the build-up to this scene justifies me wearing a trashbag (love that runner!) and scooping fistfuls of dry cocoa.

Big Daddy does his best Kurtz (Brando) from Apocalypse Now as he readies an attack on BC to obtain a glass of water.

BDL and Brento battle in the sloppiest man-fight after the kitchen sink confrontation.

Now that THE SURVIVAL is over (before it began), I have to brainstorm some new videos I can do basically by myself - I’m open to any ridiculous suggestions, or maybe you’d rather me spare you the pain of producing anything in the future (probably the best choice)!

SO MY QUEST to find a job continues. I’ve been interviewing quite a bit lately, but the last few stinkers have started to sketch me out into thinking that maybe I will never find a non-suck ass place to work.

Not to EVER talk negatively about a former or prospective employer, but let me vaguely generalize the last interview I just went on to better illustrate:

I pulled up to a nice, family-sized house in some-suburb. Park the car, go behind the side of the guy’s house to find a shed/office. Knock on the little door, the guy briskly greets, then has me wait outside the shed on a little black metal foldout chair. The sunlight is blinding me and I’m about a foot away from a swingset. After a 7 minute wait, the applicant before me exits and we have an awkward exchange before this guy has me enter the back room of his shed/office. We’re sitting about a foot from each other in director chairs. He starts to grill me right away about the negatives in my resume, and I’m already tapdancing two minutes into it. We awkwardly exchange back and forth for the next few minutes. He asks if I grew up in Boston, I tell him 45 minutes south of the Bean in Bellingham, MA. He tells me that he grew up in the town my grandmother and her crazy family lives in, and in a fit to capture a morsel of common ground, I told him as such. He asks what street they live on, and for some reason I went blank uopn recalling, so I explain that she’s near the highschool and a convenience store. He asks for the surname of that side of the fam and I told him, which when thinking twice I’m not sure if the potential of this guy knowing of them is a good card to have during this interview.

Anyway, he went on about what the job is, what the company aspires for, then wrapped it up around 8 minutes in. I leave and immediately reflect on what that job fully involves and demands, and thought, well, that was a fantastic waste of gas. 100% lack of chemistry for the first time on an interview EVER.

At one point he asked me what I saw myself doing in the immediate future, and the first and only thing that popped in my head at the time was that I’d like to be the head writer for the Cafferty File blog on CNN, just to make Jack Cafferty read my hypocritical and contradictory questions so he looks like an idiot on air. I am fascinated by the combination of Wolf Blitzer and Cafferty on The Situation Room - it’s like they’re the sassy couple for baby boomers and older. Cafferty thinks he’s hip like a teenage girl with a blog, you can see his smug pride burrowed deep in the valleys of his wrinkles.

Move over Anderson you queen! It’s Cafferty-time.

I obviously couldn’t tell the shed guy that, so I tapdanced some more. But I can’t help but think that I’m just not cut out for another desk job when thoughts like that cloud my head during interviews. I am kinda fucked!

…oh what-everrr, I’ll be fine. Happy thoughts and that shit, right?

I’LL have to drink some metamucil so I can get regular with my future posts. Another oldieo video right around the corner (a goodie), and in the meantime I’ll bake-storm up some more video goodness for you to eat.

Rad rant - thx guys!
The Boston Rat

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 9:39 am and is filed under Rad Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.