One day last week, with a meeting postponed due to snow, I decide today is going to be committed to video games. I very rarely play anymore, with the dissertation, various work and volunteer obligations, family, home, and, well, a life.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has been sitting patiently for five years while I slowly trudged up the hill to completion. I pick it up to beat it TODAY, dammit.
The last save is from 6 months ago. Wow, I don’t turn these machines on that often, do I?
Almost at the end, right outside Ganon’s Tower, I run into peahats and moblins. I note that I’ve been fighting these pixel-beasts since I first played the first Zelda game.
TWENTY YEARS ago.
I have seen statistics saying that the average gamer is 35 years old, and I’m at least a standard deviation from that number yet, but it doesn’t dull the personal fact that my life has developed in large part by the influences of Sesame Street and The Muppets, various comedy and fantasy films of the 1980’s, immersion in Roman Catholicism, Star Trek, and video games, and this mix can be highly contradictory. With the organizations to which I have allied myself, the people I keep close, the decor and media-heavy living space, I’m not exactly giving up childish things. Nor do I want to. Nor does almost anyone I regularly see.
Not being part of that particular tradition certainly aids in NOT doing that, since it seems that the primary monotheistic religious traditions, awash in centuries-old structure, have places for you, your beliefs, and your thoughts, throughout your Earthly- and after-life. That doesn’t really fly with the current (i.e. last 30 years) media-saturated culture.
To not tie this up nicely AT ALL, I’ll close with one of our favorite host segments (from “Eegah”):
- [Joel is pinning a new suit together using Crow as a mannequin. Servo's head has been replaced with a pincushion. Joel accidentally pricks Crow.]
- Crow: Ow!
- Joel: Oh, I’m sorry, pal. I’m just so distracted. I can’t stop thinking about that sweet service station in today’s film. Did you guys notice how sleek and beautiful it was?
- Servo: [patronizingly] Um, no, Joel, I can’t say that I did, heh-heh [aside to Crow] Koo-koo! Koo-koo!
- Joel: I’m serious, you guys! There was a time that we as a nation took pride in our service stations! They gleamed like a beacon of hope from coast to coast. Then one day: kablooey! Sky Chief super service turned into the Tank ‘n’ Tummy. I don’t mind tellin’ ya, the day this country went self-serve is the day that Hell started to bubble over and flood the earth.
- Crow: I hate to burst your bubble, Joel, but what about the bubonic plague? World Wars? Stalin?
- Joel: Well, those are all big things. Hell works best when it’s a lot subtler. Let me give you an example: Okay, what do you think of Adolf Hitler?
- Crow: Well, I hate him, naturally.
- Joel: Okay, now what do you think of the band Styx?
- Crow: Well, they had a couple of decent… [realization sets in] Oh, my God, you’re right!
- Servo: I get it now, Joel! You know, I don’t know exactly when Hell started for me, but I think it had something to do with Christopher Cross.
- Joel: Yeah, and remember the time Charlie Weaver died, and it wasn’t even in the papers?
- Crow: Or when they 86‘d Jarts!
- Servo: I think the first time Flo said “Kiss my grits!”, something all of us withered and died!
- Crow: Using Joe Camel to sell cigarettes to kids seems like a pretty ripe slice of Hell.
- Joel: Yeah, I agree with that. And how about the time Denis Leary released No Cure For Cancer as an album, or when Vicki Lawrence won a Grammy for “The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia“?
- Servo: I know I stand alone on this, but the day Blansky’s Beauties got cancelled.
- Crow: Yeah, you pretty much stand alone on that. Sinbad’s pretty icky.
- Joel: Yeah, and how about the Charlene Tilton workout video?
- Servo: Joel! How can we possibly survive in a world that keeps giving us constant images of Hell?
- Joel: Well, there’s personal liberty, strength of convictions; those have been known to work. And there are the times when we rise as one to beat back Hell. Like the time when we as a nation said “No!” to Yahoo Serious.
- Crow: I remember that. There we were, inexplicably drawn to the slobbering mouth of Hell. Then, at the last moment, saved just like Moses and the Israelites.
- Servo: Now who in Creation is powerful enough to do that?!
- Crow [as Goliath]: Gee, Davey, do ya think it was God?
