Return of a Classic

Did I mention that I'm pretty excited about the RoboCop remake? Because I am.

For those of you who do not understand, I'll start from the beginning. In the late 1980's there was a little sci-fi movie called RoboCop. It was a gritty tale of a Detroit City cop getting (quite literally) blown to bits by thugs during a bust. His name is Alex J. Murphy, played by the famous Peter Weller (Known for such classics as Buckaroo Bonzai, Screamers, and Top of the World). And since Mr. Murphy was blasted to pieces, the OCP corporation decides to go through with their new project. They take the remains of Alex Murphy and give him robot prosthetics and a partial robot brain. He has lost his humanity, becoming almost entirely machine.

Almost.

See, although he's mostly a robot, he still remembers. He remembers his wife, his son. And more importantly, his assailant. And what he finds later is that the thug who killed him is also in with the lead owner of OCP. It's up to RoboCop to bring down the thugs and the corporation, with his sweet hand gun that fits conveniently into his robo-leg and his finely tuned sense of justice.

Now, with that riveting description typed down for your review, I will explain that as a child I loved RoboCop. The movie was far too violent for a child, so I never really watched the movie. I had action figures, and there was a TV series which came much later. Only in the last four years did I purchase and actually watch RoboCop in it's entirety. Best use of two hours.

As you may already know, there were many fine science fiction movies in the 1980's. There was Aliens with Sigourney Weaver, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, The Thing featuring the alpha man Kurt Russell (Did you know that they're remaking that? Preposterous), The Terminator, and handful of others. But nothing compares to RoboCop. Nothing.

How far along they are into this remake, I haven't a clue. I hope it's soon. After the sequels RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3, and a few short lived TV shows, I believe that the name of RoboCop was ruined. The image, the franchise, was mocked and should have been sealed up tight and remembered for what was, and who RoboCop was, right there in 1987.

But RoboCop is being given another chance. Another chance to blow creeps away. Another chance to use his robo-wit, robo-reflexes, and robo-charm. José Padilha, don't fail me now.

That's it today. Seriously, I know. Next time I'll whip up something intellectual. Or you can send your topics via email at canyon.behind.her@gmail.com. I may or may not get to your topic, but since no one else will send one, yours will probably be chosen to be on Revenge of the Living Blog. I may even mention your name.

Also, you can follow me on the wonderful world of Twitter. Yes that's right. You can follow me @nehemiah810. If you do, you'll see topical tweets like:

"I wish everything could smell like this cake I'm eating."

"Not much for divination, but Phil prophesied about my future wife. She's in Portland and she might be asian."

"Just saw a Propel commercial with Cindy Crawford. Glad to see she's still getting work."

"Important announcement: Good Burger is on ABC Family. That is all."

"Made it through security. Security lady was impressed I have my SNES."

"I finally had that dream last night where I'm about to go on stage to play bass and I'm in my underwear. It was less awkward in the dream."

So follow me, and attain all the rich juice of my life. Because it's there. You just have to have a keen mind to really absorb it and appreciate it.

Alright. Seriously. I'm gone.

Should I Give Up My Childhood and Move On?

Lately, I've had this frightening urge to get rid of the Super Nintendo. I say lately, but actually, come to think of it, I've had this feeling for several years now. Part of me says, "Mike, the 90's are long gone. Get over it, and walk forward, through the dark curtain of the future." Another part then says, "Mike, what joy will you have in this world when that console and all the games are gone? What if one day, a few months down the line, you want to play Super Mario All-Stars, or Dave comes into town but there's no TMNT IV: Turtles in Time? And your children, think about your children! You want to bring them up right, with a knowledge of a better time, forcing them to relive your childhood by watching Ren & Stimpy and The Adventures of Pete and Pete, and feed them Dunkaroos." Then the negative side says, "Mike, you're kids won't give a crap. These 3-dimensional HD graphics take sprite images and mash them until their nothing but juice. 16-bit graphics are dead, Michael. And you need to accept that. Plus, there will always be Zelda and Mario Kart. Just not...your idea of Zelda and Mario Kart."

The 16-bit age offered a lot of challenge. To be rather honest, I had (and actually still have) more difficulty playing old SNES games than these new PS3/Wii/XBox 360 games. Such as a little game called Super Ghouls and Ghosts. Probably one of the most difficult 16-bit games I ever invested time into. Never made it to the third level. Well, maybe once. But the game only had about 10 levels. That's it. No side missions. No online multiplayer. Didn't have to collect all the secret beans to get the ultimate sword. Yet, somehow, it provided hours of entertainment (and frustration). AND TETRIS! Incredibly simple concept. I put so much time into that game on the old big gray brick Gameboy (Pokemon and Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening also stole many hours of my life). SNES and Genesis were so simple. They had like 8 buttons, yet there was so much strategy and timing involved.

I do believe that we should give a nod to Wii for at least making the attempt to retrieve all that once was. Thank you for making playing cartridge games on a next gen game console possible.

Ah. And multiplayer used to be more intimate. There was a time when the person you were against would be sitting in the same room, no more than three feet from you. Now they can be hundreds of thousands of miles away. The internet has made a lot possible. You can play almost any game with anyone around the world. Only thing is, you can't slap the controller out of their hand as you're playing Mario Kart. Ah, childhood.

Okay, enough reminiscing. I feel like an old man. And I'm not.

You hang around a little longer Super Nintendo. The day you finally die will be the day I release you from servitude. Or more acurately, our friendship. We've had a good 16 years. I hope we can have 16 more.

The Headphone Jack Is Not The Same As The Microphone Jack.

Yeah, basically I had my music up really loud on my speakers, in a public place, and I thought the music was still coming in through my goofy green headphones, it was just really quiet. Wrong again Michael. You honorably recieve the stupid award. And by honorably, I meant shamefully. With the exact same shame of farting really loud when having dinner with your wife's/girlfriend's/fiancee's/significant something or another's parents. I don't have any experience in that sort of situation, but I could only imagine. And ladies, it's not that I've been a lonely young man all these years, never to experience the goofiness that is "love", its just, I've never farted in front of ANYONE'S parents. To my recollection. Just because I have action figures on my bookshelf and small collection of comic books underneath my bed DOES NOT mean I'm some creepy nerdy guy. I'm like a Don Quioxte.

"Don Juan"

"Who?"

"Don Juan. He's the ladies man. Don Quioxte was just some psycho Spaniard"

"Oh. Yeah."

"Windmills"

"Right. Windmills."

Actually, you know what? Yeah, I'm the creepy nerdy guy. So...just leave me to my Super Nintendo games. Okay?

Well, here I am, at Bread Co. on Watson. Again. Sans the 30-year-old woman. Maybe she got my note.

I'm here because the laptop's wireless capabilities are having marital issues with the router at our house. For what reason I do not know. Desktop in my room is also having difficulties connecting. Maybe its a love triangle. I thought computers in wireless networks had to be Mormon. And my father has declared martial law. There is a yellow Post-it on the monitor of our front room/dining area computer that reads, "DO NOT mess with this computer!" I think it has something to do with me turning it off yesterday. So if you ever think that you can just go all willy nilly and shut off a computer, you better think twice. The next time you turn off that computer, you could destroy everything in that magic box and really piss some people off. No more internet, or Microsoft Word, or solitaire. Or Mine Sweeper! God have mercy on our souls on the day when the human race loses the only free computer game that has become dear to them.

Anyway, so that's why I'm here. And I've noticed one out of every one person brings a laptop. The 2010 coffee shop is a beatnik cyberpunk world. We're all here to drink coffee and blog!

'Hey everybody! We're having a blog party!"

"...."

Okay. Maybe some other time.

There's really not a whole lot to mention. Yesterday I was going to scoop out some chicken salad from a Tupperware bowl and instead I chased the cat with the spoon raised in the air yelling. Like a savage. Which was similar to the kid who was running around on the hill behind my house with a stick. Those were the good old days. I don't know about the rest of you, but as an only child, there was a lot of chasing imaginary things with a stick. Or a pop gun. I remember right after we moved into the house we're living in now, I got this pop gun rifle. It had this lever underneath the trigger to cock the gun and then when you pulled the trigger it would make a loud pop sound. It was great. Somedays I would grab some beef jerky and run around in the yard with the beef jerky and the rifle and pretend I was roaming the frontier and the jerky was my only means of survival.

My point is, that part of my life was awesome. And seeing that kid running around enjoying his life reminded me of my own youth. I remember after Jurassic Park came out, I would run around in the backyard of our old house in Louisville (which was much, much larger than the yard we have now) with a Nerf bow and arrow and shoot dinosaurs. My life was pretty cool. I would much rather worry about defending my home from a very unexpected dinosaur invasion than say, hunt for a job. But hey, C'est la vie.

I think my real point of all this is, I was envious of that kid. I wanted the best for him. I wanted him to fully enjoy life. But, I also wanted to run around like a lunatic, and throw sticks at bushes as if I were throwing hand grenades at stationary, square-like robots. Problem with me doing that is, I would look like a lunatic. At least the kid looks fairly sane, running around alone, defending our neighborhood from who knows what. Thanks kid.

I only hope to have kids of my own to do that with. My only excuse. But they'll grow up too. And on goes the course.

Yeah. That's pretty much it. I'm going to get some more coffee.