Why Must Our Artistic Tastes Have To Change Over Time?

Please bare with me on the writing style of this blog post. I try to stay stone-faced professional when I write these, unless it is pure comedy like with my Top Ten Things You Can Do In Naughty Bear post. This one is not a pure comedy, however, this one has a more blunt and personal feeling and I think speaking the way I normally would (barring curse words) is the best way to get this point across.

As of only a few minutes before I started writing this post, I went through my rather long list of YouTube subscriptions. I have had a YouTube account for many years, and with the account I have both created my own videos to help promote myself, and watched content for almost every day of my life for the past few years. There are several channels I still watch often, and some of them are channels I only recently started watching. This content ranges from Let's Plays, deep frying multiple foods, podcasts, animation, video essays, and other notable styles. 

If you had asked me only a few months ago, I could have gone on much longer.

I made the mistake of not counting how many subscriptions I had before, but I have since unsubscribed from a great deal of channels I used to watch all the time. I no longer like videos such as movie reviews where the person just recaps the whole film and adds jokes or pointless pop culture references to eighties kid's films. My patience has worth thin for many half-hour videos I used to set aside time for. While I am willing to wait for a product I really like to release a new episode, I have also decided that some of them are taking far too long compared to my personal investment and interest. To put things in a retrospective for just how many videos I do not care about anymore, I also just reduced the amount of videos in my "watch later" list. The number used to be almost two-hundred, now it is only seventy-three, and a few of the videos I left in had a good deal of hesitation.

Funnily enough, the deleting of over half my "watch later" list came from me looking at it and basically saying the true yet cliched line of "I'm not going to live forever". My head was sick of the fact I was never going to actually watch most of these videos in my too short lifetime, and in doing so, I further questioned if I really cared about what I was admitting I wouldn't watch. Most of the videos that were scrapped came from channels I decided to unsubscribe from. Granted, there were some channels I am still subscribed to and still love that also created videos I deleted from my list, but in many of those cases it boiled down to the fact that I still liked other content they made but no longer liked the kind of content I chose to delete.

Online content is not the only art form I now have different opinions on.

I would like to admit that this and the previous year is the first time in a long time I started reading for pleasure again. My reading choices varied from classics, to unheard of, and to everything in-between. My time reading again not only reminded me of just how much reading is, but I discovered that for the first time in my life, I really love the murder-mystery genre. I used to hate it. I used to think it was cliched, either completely predictable or so unpredictable that it made no sense , or they were just plain boring. And yet after reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I have been going in and out of phases were all I watch or read is murder mysteries. Even bad ones catch my attention and interest.

This sudden genre-love was not my only discovery. During my time reading again; I have fallen in-and-out of love with J.K. Rowling's style (Loved Casual Vacancy, thought Cuckoo's Calling was way too long and padded,), I have gotten closer to liking super-heroes other than Spider-man, and I've outright grown a respect for literature that is far stronger than the one I used to have. That is saying something considering my career is "writer".

After graduating college last December, I took this year to relax and take in all the art and media I didn't have to time for before. I never expected to learn so many things about myself and my personal tastes. Some things are still true; I still love crime-dramas, I still love realism, I still think satire is the hardest and highest form of comedy, and I'm still completely disinterested in high fantasy.

And yet there are many things that aren't the same anymore. I went from regretting that I had a list of video games I never finished, to realizing that there are many good reasons to not finish certain games. I went from being the kind of person to argue that story-telling in video games is more important than gameplay, to realizing that there were too many examples of a good or great narrative being undermined by the fact the controls were nothing short of awful. I have realized that even though it remains my least favorite genre, there are many country songs I genuinely enjoy.

The real funny thing about this, is that I always knew this could happen for things you liked or disliked as a child or early teen. I have always encouraged people to re-watch shows they loved as a kid, to see if it held up to their expectations or not. I've heard too many people defend something with "I loved that as a kid!", meaning they could very well be defending something they don't even actually like anymore as they haven't given it a watch as an adult. I also very recently re-watched the entire CatDog series and discovered a show I thought I didn't care about was in fact very entertaining to me.

We are often told, and just as often talk about, how we become different people as we grow. We even discuss how our literal taste buds change as we get older. Children don't tend to care for vegetables and no one likes beer the first time, that sort of thing. I am very much a different person than I was only a few years ago. Still, I never, never suspected that I would so quickly grow out of something. The very stuff I appreciated everyday of my college life, I now find unfunny and uninteresting only one year after my graduation. I take no regret in my former interests, but it is shocking to look at something I spent so much time admiring, and having to admit it was basically just a phase I was going through. I also never expected to go through phases as a full grown adult man, but I guess those can be more mature than we're often led to believe.

You know, when I was a kid, I hated mint. It disgusted me as a flavor, it killed anything it touched. Now I think mint is one of the most delicious flavors I've ever tried, and I think it goes good with everything. When I was a kid, I thought Tiny Toon Adventures was a good show, and now it's one of my favorites because I know understand so many animation in-jokes that they snuck in, blatantly or otherwise. When I was a kid, I liked the Teletubbies, and I don't need to tell you the utter disdain I have for that show as an adult.

You want to know something else though? In high school, I hated Dr. Pepper. I do mean the cola, in case that is the name of an actual person or a TV show or something. For years, I've wanted to buy it and see if my taste buds are different. See if I'd like it now. I feel it's worth doing, even if it would have been less than ten years ago when I hated it. Seeing how fast I've grown out of media I loved in college, maybe I should revisit some things I used to not like five or six years ago. I remember thinking The Graduate was boring, maybe I'll understand it now. I remember thinking Jaws was a chore to sit through, maybe current me thinks it's a suspenseful experience like I always did with Alien.

What I'm saying is, I think it may be important to find your Dr. Pepper. Something you remember having a strong opinion on, but can't shake the fact it may be different now.

My title for this post is still a question, and I guess I should try to answer it. The truth is, it really just confuses me that said tastes can still shift so hard later in life. I know that I like different things than I did as a child. I know that my early teens have little impact on my tastes in adulthood. I don't understand why there are things I enjoyed as an adult, that I almost despise one year later. I understand growing as a person, I can understand having a completely different personality even after a short amount of time, there are too many life experiences to list that can that to you. I just don't see a reason why my artistic taste buds have to have a drastic change again. I don't think I'll ever again like the stuff that helped keep a smile on my face during college's hard times, and I don't get why.

Sometimes your favorite movies are removed from the list when more come along. Sometimes a growing problem with a TV show makes you give up on watching the newer seasons. And I guess, sometimes you just sit down and go "I don't like this anymore and I don't think I ever will again".

I don't know what to tell you in this case. Things change, even in the span of a year. You can devote a good chunk of your time to something you won't care about anymore down the line. Again, there is no regret for me in this, I will still cherish the time I spent caring about something. It's just weird to live in a world where that can be the only positive thing to say about something you adored not that long ago.

Is Depressing Music the Best Music to Listen to?

The first post I ever wrote for this blog was about my musical tastes revolving newer and older styles. I remember that practically from the second I mentioned Harry Chapin's Cats in the Cradle, I had the urge to listen to that song again versus everything else I mentioned. In the back of my head I never really questioned this, and that is because of something I simply always felt was true, but maybe it is time that I fully questioned it.

What is the novelty or songs about depressing subjects that are more intriguing than songs about more uplifting subjects?

For whatever reason, I can not remember the last time I sat down and listened to a piece of music that was about someone simply having a good time. I can think of several songs of this nature, and several that I like, but I cannot remember the last time that I picked one of those out to listen to. More often than not, I prefer something like the aforementioned Harry Chapin piece. Or perhaps one of Jim Croce's heartbreaking pieces on broken relationships or horrible people.

It does not help that even upbeat songs can get into these subjects. Take the classic song Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, by BJ Thomas. The beat tells me I should be happy, and the lyrical flow talks about a man who seems to roll with the punches, but the lyrics themselves very much imply the guy has little to nothing to be happy about. Granted, that certainly makes the piece uplifting for the many who need to hear that, that life doesn't have to get you down.

Honestly that's sort of the main reason I wanted to talk about depressing music. Out of all media and forms of art, I find music the be the one that can nail this message very well. Music has the power to make us connect with what is going on, on an emotional level that things like books and movies can't even get to. It is weird how a purely audial art form can make us connect better than something we see as well as hear, but I suppose the idea of closer your eyes and picturing it for yourself has some power when it comes to raw emotion.

When I was in high school, I remember often listening to the music of Vampire Weekend whenever I was feeling down. My idea was that if I wasn't feeling all that great, I may as well listen to the melancholy or overtly depressing tones the band would over, so I could ride out my emotional state faster. I have no idea if this was smart nor practical, and certainly no idea if it worked, but it is interesting to note that while I could have just laid down and cried my eyes out, I instead decided to let my emotions be carried away by music.

Maybe my question isn't so much why depressing music is the best kind, but why we can let music ride our emotions more than anything else. Of course, I will still argue over the depressing lyrics or tone over something bouncier or carefree, as I do not personally have experience listening to happier music to get over a funk, but that is a personal experience and I am sure there are many who could argue the opposite. That's the fun of art. No one is truly right or wrong, it is all based on interpretations and personal experiences. One person's favorite song of all time is guaranteed to be someone else's most hated song of all time, and there is nothing wrong with that.

I suppose what I was trying to do was decipher the feel meaning of personal connections toward music styles, lyrics, bands, and overall feelings people have with them. This is hard to do with any art form, but thinking it over, I think music may be one of the hardest ones to do this with.

 I guess the answer to my question is that for myself, yes, the raw emotional dump of something like Don McLean's American Pie or Wham's Everything She Wants is more powerful over something like Grand Funk Railroad's We're An American Band or Lou Bega's Mambo Number 5. Just for comparison sake, all of those songs are ones that I have purchased and listen to, my argument is that while I like many songs, there will most likely always be that connection I personally have to them that makes me crave listening to one over the other. I can enjoy Tom Jones singing about an attractive woman, whilst enjoying a break-up or falling out of love song even more.

And I guess that is as far as my point can be made. Music is special to all of us, and whether we prefer the blues or country, I think there may be some kind of correlation that is special to each and every one of us. Whether you like ballads or songs that only last a minute or less. There is something special about our connection to music. 

The Rise and Sadly Possible Decline of Toys-to-Life

In the year 2011, Activision decided to give a completely new concept for a character they owned the rights to. This character was Spyro the Dragon, the hero of games such as Spyro the Dragon, Spyro: A Hero's Tail, and before this newest series, a trilogy under the franchise name of The Legend of Spyro. This new series was named Skylanders, and it started with Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. The idea was that Spyro, and every other playable character in the game, was usable by placing a toy onto a device (called a portal) that would read the chip in-bedded in the bottom. These games were aimed for children, and at the time of release, I did not think it would be something I'd be interested in. I'll also be the first to admit that a bit of my teenage arrogance had yet to shake off, I had only just gotten into college, and at the time I was simply nothing more than mad that a franchise from my childhood was receiving another reboot that was not enough like what I was used to. A completely unfair mindset I am glad is long gone from my personality.

In hindsight I can easily call this a genius bit of marketing. Children already hound their parents to buy them toys and action figures, and in today's age, video games are hardly the niche crowd they used to be. I'm willing to bet most children today now own a gaming console or handheld, or at the very least have parents who are willing to let them use theirs with the parental controls turned on or maybe even off. Plus, aside from Spyro and Cinder (another The Legend of Spyro character), all of the games characters were new and unique to the game (and that has held true until the inclusion of Crash Bandicoot characters from this year's installment and the brief cross-over with Nintendo characters Donkey Kong and Bowser). Any child who enjoyed the game would want to get more of them, without needing prior knowledge to all but two characters. This was a completely new game franchise, and they had nice advertisements as well. Ones that showed you just how many unique characters you could collect and play as.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yYMw0TnZRY

The games ended up becoming a success. Activision has even admitted the franchise has, by this point, earned them over a billion dollars in sales. As with any major success, there are always those who decide to try their own hand at it. Enter the Disney Corporation, and their toys-to-life game, Disney Infinity.

Infinity's goal was to let you play with your favorite Disney and Pixar characters, and once the second game came around they added in Marvel, and the third game added the Star Wars franchise. Disney Infinity 2.0 was the first toys-to-life game I played. I randomly decided it was time to give this genre a chance, and I figured I might have fun collecting the toys.

I was more right than I thought. I immediately fell in love with this style of game. I'm the kind of person who has always liked collecting things, but many times I ended up getting rid of my collection because I came to the conclusion that I never used them for anything. I understand why many people my age will buy toys or figurines and place them on their shelves, but for me, I always just sat there wishing I could actually use them for something. Disney Infinity solved my problem, and I could now collect very impressive looking figures, and I could use them with something, in this case an addictively fun video game.

I have heard from some that they do not like this genre, without remotely trying it for themselves, as they believe it is the gaming industry succumbing to greed. I have always been a realist, and this outlook makes it a little easier to counterpoint this kind of idea: finding smart way to charge customers for more money was not remotely new when the original Skylanders came out. I will even be the kind of person to argue that this formula is kinder to the customer than others ways.

This is far kinder than buying an extended warranty for something that some makers have intentionally made sure will have an issue just after the regular warranty will run out. This is far kinder than paying up to two to five dollars for an extra outfit your character can wear in a game, or for an extra weapon for them to shoot. Toys-to-life had to pay roughly fifteen dollars for an action figure or well designed figurine, that you could use with a game you've bought or just something you could look at. You never had to buy the game if you just wanted some of the figures, and fifteen dollars for a toy is fairly average a price when you see what some collectibles are selling for today. Especially since whenever they released a variant, they tended to be the same price as the usual toy. Infinity had crystal versions of eight characters that were exclusive to Toys-R-Us (supposedly the variant for Mickey Mouse was not exclusive, but I never saw him in a store other than Toys-R-Us), and would later take their Star Wars figures and release a version where their lightsabers would glow when placed on the portal. Skylanders on the other hand took their most popular characters and would release several different paint jobs for them.

My personal experience for Skylanders only goes as far as the most recent game; Imaginators. It has made me wish I'd given one of the older games a chance, as I really enjoy the beat 'em up style, and I think the humor and writing is very solid. It reminds me a lot of the Ratchet & Clank games, it's made for children and you can tell, but they make the characters unique from their first word, and there are several jokes smarter than you'd expect. As for Infinity, I have played all three games in the franchise, and I love each one for exactly what they are. Infinity 1 is a fun sandbox game that lets me play very fun stories set in Disney worlds, Infinity 2.0 is a very in-depth builder that lets me create whatever I want and then some, and Infinity 3.0 is an even better mix of both.

Now, there are other games of this genre. (Heads-up but even with the new editing I’m doing in 2019, I haven’t played Starlink: Battle for Atlas or Lightseekers. I own a Lightseekers toy and I want to play Starlink, but i can’t comment on what I know far too little about)

- Amiibo -

The one to release after the first two was Nintendo's example, the Amiibo. I only have six of these little guys myself: Kirby, King Dedede, Metaknight, Wedding Suit Bowser, and Pac-Man. They mostly sit on the shelf because the idea was they are useable in any game with Amiibo support and not just select games, but when I have used them I’ve loved what they do. I did in fact get every purple coin in Super Mario Odyssey thanks to Bowser, and I don’t regret. They may mostly be decorations, but they did help bridge the gap for me maybe more than Infinity did for buying collectible figures. I still have less non-toys-to-life figures than other people my age, but I get the appeal now and it’s probably because of Amiibo.

- Lego Dimensions -

I was very excited when this one was announced, as I have been a fan of the LEGO video games since LEGO Star Wars, and I had already started playing Infinity 2.0 by that point. Having played it, it does feel a little too close to a LEGO game than a Toys-to-Life game, if that makes any sense, but it also features some of the greatest levels and game play moments that I have ever seen in a LEGO game. I also assume they made some decent money from LEGO collectors, who can now buy single characters plus a vehicle, versus the hundred or so dollars per building set. Especially with some characters/franchises who are exclusive to the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGT9PrwRHdY

And now, for the other part of this posts title.

Earlier this year, Disney Interactive made an announcement that to many, myself included, hit very hard. Disney Infinity, for reasons they would later reveal, would be cancelled. The company behind the game was going to be closed, and Disney Interactive would basically be shut-down, the only games from the studio would now be licensed out to other companies. At the time, it was hard to see where the complete sense came from. I could not kid myself that they had to still be making enough money, cancellation would mean they weren't making enough in some fashion. Part of me felt like they should at least release the rest of the intended figures for 3.0, but I give them my respect for deciding to release as many as the did, as the original deadline for those chosen was so close to the cancellation announcement. We still got Alice, the Mad Hatter, Time, Nemo, and Dory, even if Peter Pan and other announced and soon-to-be-announced figures will not see the store shelves.

They have since explained more. Basically they could not keep up with how many extra characters they had unsold, as they put that duty on themselves versus another company. These are still the best looking Toys-to-Life toys, so I can easily look at them and believe that were too expensive to make for them to allow these problems.

But it was also no secret that Disney Infinity still managed to top the charts (when compared to competitors) before it's cancellation, even with Lego Dimensions stealing that spot on it's release date. The death of the strongest led many to question the entire genre's demise, but at the time Activision and Warner Bros. attested that they were not leaving the scene. LEGO Dimensions currently had a four-year plan, they will release toys for the game for four years, and then after that, they either create a sequel or they continue with just the first game, depending on what audiences crave after the time limit. But, since the original post, Dimensions was cancelled after their final character packs. Unlike Infinity, they left the game with all promised characters, but, unlike Infinity they did not give a compelling final playset, making the end still hollow when if it was some of their best characters. Beetlejuice, the Teen Titans, and the Powerpuff Girls were still great even if they had nothing much to show for it, even counting their fairly robust worlds and an exclusive episode of Teen Titans GO!.

As I said earlier, Activision has now released the sixth installment of their franchise.

And it has sold worse than the last year's game. If that sounds bad, I have a tweet that is unfortunately far more worrying.

I found it through a retweet from the Toys for Games Twitter, so both Twitters are good sources for further information.

Skylanders had already spawned off into Skylander Academy on Netflix. With no irony I can say it was one of my favorite exclusive shows on the platform, and as of 2019 the show has ended after three fantastic seasons. Activision is currently no longer keeping it a secret that they are trying new things to stay on top, the last Skylanders game was only on mobile, and Spyro was given a remaster/remake for the original three games. I feel it is safe to say the series is dead, but, I can’t shed too many tears as this finale felt more like a finale than the others got. Dimensions and Infinity tried their best to end on great notes, and both did and didn’t. Skylanders had a great last game, and a TV show with a finale that while did feel open enough to expand did in fact conclude the themes and story.

As for myself, I will of course still play the games I have bought, and am still going to buy more of the toys. I have earned the Platinum trophy for Infinty, Infinity 2.0, Infinity 3.0, Lego Dimensions, and Skylander Imaginators, and I even got the DLC trophies for 3.0 and Dimensions. I even got a second copy of both Infinity 1.0 and 2.0. Toys-to-Life started, for me, as a way to get collectibles I could justify owning. Now, it's a genre I have had countless hours of mindless fun in, and if its future depends on me spending a little more of my money, I won't complain. It may have been a fad, kind of like pogs, but I’ll be damned before even feeling remotely upset that I found my personal equivalent of pogs!

Many of us have a weakness when it comes to our money. Some of use shill out for fun mobile games, some of us like bar-hopping, expensive cars. For me, I have no problem admitting I am a grown man who likes buying video games where you can place toys on a device to play as that same character.

Top Ten Things You Can Do In Naughty Bear *Language NSFW*

There was once a video game that people called Naughty Bear. They all called it that because that was the name it had been given by the people who created and named it. This game with the naughtiest of teddy bears was a stealth game, where you had a specific target you had to eliminate in any way you felt, and unlike other stealth games where you needed to be silent as possible, this game rewarded players more when they did their best to leave no witnesses. You were a surprisingly tragic agent of chaos in a world of stuff and fluff, angry at how everyone you know completely hates your guts to the point of bullying and sometimes outright death threats, and the game ended up critically panned by thousands of people. However, as unbelievable as it is that someone could disagree with other people's opinions, there are people out there who played the game and decided it was fairly average and could have their fun with it, and now one of those a-holes is about to tell you a list of ten things you can do in the game. Yes, I am telling you them, not writing them down and asking you to read them. That is how a blog works.

Number 10: Play Naughty Bear

In the video game Naughty Bear, you play as the character Naughty Bear as you play the video game Naughty Bear. Therefore, the number 10 thing you can do in the game Naughty Bear, is play Naughty Bear.

Number 8:  Drive other bears insane

While you could just straight up kill any bear whose back was turned to you, you could also scare them by saying boo like you were three years old. They could also be scared by witnessing your carnage, and when scared enough, they would go crazy, and one further boo could cause them to commit suicide by inhaling so hard they became balloons and exploded. Somehow.

Number 9: Knives

Because knives, are weapons.

Number 7: Break shit

You can finally live out your Hollywood gangster fantasies by walking over to someone else's shit and breaking it for no real reason. Some things would be repaired, making them a trap for the bears because they have no sense of danger when they are focused on something. Others didn't do a Goddamn thing except give you more points. To fully appreciate Naughty Bear you really had to go out of your way to punch the fuck out of a stone statue of a unicorn-teddy-bear hybrid. Break all the shit. No shit gets unbroken. 

Number 6: Realize the gun mechanics in the game kinda suck

Once you finally enter a level with guns, you realize how easy it is for the enemy bears to pump you full of lead, and then when you get your hands on them, the aiming is bullshit and the damage is somehow pathetic. Also why does a stealth game lack silencers for their guns?

Number 5: Forget that there was a much better sequel

Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise was released sometime after as a download only title that was cheaper and lacked online multiplayer, which was weird as it used to be the law that all video games needed a shitty online multiplayer implemented that no one fucking played anyway. They also changed up the formula to prevent you from being bored by doing exactly the same thing every time, had graphics that worked very well for the style, was a lot more fun, made you never have to use guns because the developers went into the future and realized me and only me complained about how shitty they were, and ended up just plain being a good game that managed to get good reviews. And nobody fucking played it anyway because nobody knew it existed despite the first game being infamous. I am going to believe in a conspiracy theory that a select cult of people worked together to erase the sequel from people's collective memory after the first game reminded them of how evil they could be if they felt like it. .............. Because it makes as much sense as any of those fucking shit-ass half-baked theories I keep hearing from people who are so far up their own ass they throw the fuck away anything they've actually seen just to come up with some ludicrous bullshit so they don't have to ever think about facing reality and how uncomplicated and straightforward it is so they can live in fucking fantasy land instead of contributing to society-

Number 4: Bananas

There are no bananas in Naughty Bear, however, you can eat a banana while you play Naughty Bear, so therefore bananas are the fourth top thing you can do in Naughty Bear. It mostly got up this high because I forgot I was going to do this joke.

Number 3: Watch this creepy trailer for the sequel.

Because holy shit it's creepy as much as it is funny.

http://www.505games.com/games/naughty-bear

The other thing that makes it a top ten qualifier is that the ad reminds us of the existence of Panic in Paradise, which makes those theorists, who don't exist and who I made up, have been given the middle finger. Which is good. I mean, come on, the poor game didn't even get a Best Picture nomination. :(

Number 2: Be sad that the game's official site no longer exists.

The url would have been http://www.naughtybearthegame.com/ so use that if you want your little heart broken. Unless it becomes a porn site or something, which wouldn’t suprise me with a domain name like Naughty Bear. …… Yeah you know what don’t click on it it’ll probably become a porn site or something actually bad like a Trojan virus site or a third-party candidates campaign page!

Yet somehow the multiplayer still works. I got the multiplayer trophies in the game just a couple of weeks ago, so they at least paid one server fee, that's nice of them. (It’s currently 2019 as I tidy things up and I think the multiplayer is still available today as well. Genuinely pleasantly shocked the devs care that much)

Number 1: Shove a teddy bear's head in a toilet

You cannot beat the classics, but Naughty can beat the ever-loving shit out of his prey with an open toilet. Some of which are in the kitchen because piss, shit, and uneaten food work wonders together. The newest Hitman game lets you do that to, but not nearly as often and this game came first anyway so who cares? Because I don't.

And those were the top ten things that you can do in a video game people don't really care all that much about. An in-depth description of how to beat every level will appear on this blog never, because I was an asshole who unlocked a costume to hide in plain site and beat the game with it, so my strategy is too cheap for you to care. May your bears be naughty, may you play Naughty Bear, and remember one thing;

http://www.505games.com/games/naughty-bear

Where the hell is the rest of this picture? Naughty's poor little featsies.

A Retrospective: CatDog

So some day, a fairly nice day

There was the birth of a child

And a stir was caused by this

It wasn't some kind of bird or amphibian

It was feline, and a canine

If you will, a CatDog.

(I was going to parody the whole theme song but the formatting looked uglier than I thought it would).

So CatDog is an interesting thing for me to discuss, both in it's history as well as my personal experience. CatDog was a 1998 TV series that ran on Nickelodeon, and the pitch behind this show has fascinated me since I learned this. Apparently, series creator Peter Hannan recorded the theme song in a bathroom (I don't know if it was his own or a public one, the source didn't state) and sent the tape to Nickelodeon. From the song alone Nickelodeon knew they had a hit and greenlit the series. Nickelodeon was so kind to the show that they gave it more episodes per season than normal as well. This is something to remember a little bit later, but it's very impressive. Also, I looked it up and Hannan is not a traditional cartoonist, he's a composer and illustrator. He's not the first person to get an animated show without starting out as a full animator, the only reason I'm bringing this up because this may explain why the artwork for this show looks the way it does, as well as why the theme song is so well loved.

You'll notice I'm very relaxed while talking about this show, the reason I want to talk about this show is purely on a personal basis so it wouldn't fit to be as professional and analytical as I was in my last retrospective or my book reviews. The thing is, when I was growing up through high school I was the kind of person who believed the cartoons I grew up on were not only objectively superior but basically the only good ones. Not much later in life I realized that was stupid, and as my hubris, I tried thinking of shows that didn't hold up as well. I was always drawn to CatDog, I couldn't help but shake that I found it very average. A few months ago I bought the complete series box set, because it was time to see if I was right.

-Season One-

The basic premise of this show is that the main characters are a conjoined twin, one being a cat named Cat and the other is a dog named Dog. The other half of the premise is that the world just completely hates them. Nothing is allowed to go there way, they need to lose according to the statues quo. There are bullies named Greaser Dogs (or just Greasers most of the time) who always have to get away with their actions, which are based upon the fact they hate CatDog for being both half cat as well as not technically a dog. There is also an evil green rabbit named Rancid Rabbit, who usually gets away with his actions driven completely by greed. Sometimes he's beaten badly, but even if he loses, so does CatDog.

The genre for this type of show is sometimes called "Sadist Show". It's a divisive style, but, I personally have liked this genre several times over. For me, it can be done wrong, and CatDog's first season dipped into that a bit. As I said, they always lose. I don't mind main characters losing, but if it's always supposed to be that way, it's hard to root for them when the set rule means it can't change. The rule was so enforced that if it looked like CatDog was about to win, some kind of caveat needed to happen so that didn't. 

Another problem that occurred was on how unlikable Cat could be, or rather, how much he wasn't. When your main character is constantly attacked and forced to lose, it's useful for them to be fairly bad people, as bad people getting karma is funny. Sadly, Cat's mean streak wasn't hard enough for it to be funny. On the other hand, the villains were so blatantly mean that is was hard to be happy about them always winning.

Compare this to other "sadist shows". Ed, Edd, n' Eddy made Eddy a jerk, and while Double D and Ed weren't bad, they were not blameless. The other kids were mean, but they were developed to seem like kids, and they were being scammed, so winning for them wasn't a horrible thing most of the time. Fairly Odd Parents doles out abuse equally for everyone, but the heroes still do win so you can easily root for them since it's not a consistently sad story. Drawn Together is really mean towards every single thing, but it does mean that the characters are getting their karma, so it can be easily quite funny.

There was one thing I was quite happy with, Winslow. Winslow was a blue rat who was their neighbor (via a mouse hole). He was a jerk, not an outright villain, just a jerk who liked messing around with CatDog. He managed to be funny, and, he was allowed to get the abuse handed right back to him. Moreso than Rancid and especially more than the Greasers. Meaning, while he wasn't an actual villain, he was a funny jerk who could get karma very easily. It was what the show needed to aim for. Speaking of;

-Season 2-

While I had almost complete apathy for the first season, I still put in the disk for season two once I was done. From the first episode, something very interesting happened. I think I wasn't the only person who had those complaints from the first season, because everything I complained about, and one thing I wasn't, was addressed.

For starters, the Greasers were suddenly allowed to lose. Not only that, but they were also given a few episodes that softened them up a little bit. They were still villains, but this was the season we learned Cliff does ballet, we got deeper development in Shriek's crush on Dog, and Lube was given a lot more stupid things to say. I like how Lube was written. He was the dumb one, but the show never used that as a reason to say "He's not so bad after all." When they wanted to soften him, they just did it, his stupidity did not override the fact he loved being a bully just as much as the other Greasers did. I've seen too many shows, especially for children, that believe being dumb absolves them from wrong. This show doesn't believe that, and I thank it for much for it.

That also went for Dog. If Dog was incredibly stupid in an episode, the chances of him getting karma went up by a lot. Cat also finally became legitimately cruel when the show needed him to be. Cat's punishments now fitted his personality, and it was funny to see him get roughed up, as well as Dog now that it was very clear how many things were his fault. As for episodes were they did nothing wrong, they thankfully addressed those too. While they could still be punished for no wrong doing, the show decided to let them win every once in a while. As for the caveat, some episodes kept it in but made it so minor that is was just a punchline and didn't override the happy ending. Other episodes just plain didn't have a caveat at all!

The genre itself also changed to a more traditional style of absurdist comedy. CatDog could now stretch their body for miles on end, and unlike the few times we saw it in the first season, this was permanently a thing they could do instead of something they could sometimes do. Situations fit absurdity more than the harsh cruelty of season one's style. It added a lot more humor, from any kind of place the writer's felt would work with the bizarre world they created. I went from laughing about once an episode, to finding the entirety of the episodes funny.

The other thing they changed, the thing I said didn't need to change, was the animation. Season one's animation was good. The art style looked clean and it moved fine enough, it was good animation. Suddenly, starting with season two, the animation became brighter and more fluid. It went from a show that looked good, to a treat for the eyes on occasion. I have to applaud the writers of this show for clearly listening to the public, and the animators for decided they could improve something that was simply okay the first time around. So, what does that mean for;

-Season 3-

You may have noticed I barely mentioned the other characters in the show. I was waiting for season three, as this was the season where the cast suddenly became more of an ensemble. Characters who had been there since the first season, one from the second, and a brand-new from the third, all became important to the episodic stories. Everyone talked to each other a lot more, and became more involved.

We had Lola Caricola, the newest character. Lola was a purple bird (Yellow-bellied whippoorwill, a fictional species) who studied other animals as her passion in life. She was one of the nicest characters to ever exist in the show, however, her debut features her not remotely understanding the main character's personal space, setting her up as a still part of this world of fairly unlikable people. I really liked Lola. New characters during a show's run is nothing new to me, I watch a lot of TV. What matters is if they fit, and Lola fit.

As for older characters, we have Randolph, Mervis, Dunglap, and Mr. Sunshine. Randolph was the TV reporter and sometimes celebrity. He was very outgoing, and yet not as egotistical as you would expect for this show. He was also enthusiastic about everything, his catchphrase being "and I LOVE it!" It wasn't hard to not love him too, at times he did feel like he came from a different show, but he still fit so well.

Mervis and Dunglap are remembered by many as the two characters who always appeared together, enough that the character entry on TVTropes calls them that.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/CatDog

However, until season three they hardly ever interacted with each other. It was rare they'd be in the same episode. I have a funny feeling they ended up taking advantage of the fact John Kassir voiced both characters anyway, and it worked out for the best. The two finally got more development as characters. They were sometimes CatDog's only friends, but the both of them were so hardheaded that they would turn for a quick laugh, and despite always being around each other and apparently even sharing a living space together, they clearly outright hated each other. Anything set them off, and it was very funny to watch.

Mr. Sunshine didn't have too much to delve into, his joke was that he spoke in monotone. They did write him as a character, but with nothing too strong other than the way he spoke. This was a nineties show, and I can't help shake the fact it may have been a Ben Stein reference. Remember that? When the nineties loved Ben Stein? Enough that they would have him voice characters, or just base entire characters on him even if they couldn't get him? I don’t know why this happened, but it happened for a while until suddenly it didn’t. Maybe the joke was exhausted?

Oh, also there was Eddie the Squirrel. A squirrel who wants to be a Greaser Dog. A lot of people hated him for his voice but I think Eddie worked fine, he was purposefully annoying and got a lot of punishment dealt out to him. Starting in season three, Eddie had more moments of defiance, having enough of the Greasers treating him poorly. This ranges from him joining a group helmed by CatDog and being their friend for the episode, to creating an evil robot and ruling the town with an iron fist.

It's not too often I can tell which season of a show I'm watching from the episode's style and tone alone, but I've always loved it when that would happen. CatDog ended up being a really good example of that. With that in mind, I have only one thing left to bring up;

-Season 4-

CatDog ended up getting a made-for-TV movie. The plot was that CatDog discover the possible place they came from, and go looking for their parents. It's funny and heartwarming, and I insist watching it even more than the rest of the show if you aren't sure about re-watching the entire series. It's shorter than re-watching a season and it's really good. After that, there was the rest of the fourth season. Now, earlier I said Nickelodeon gave the series more episodes per season. For some reason, this completely changed in season four. They got a lot less episodes than usual for this show, although most likely the same amount as other shows, and they didn't even air them until years after the series was done. It's not as uncommon a practice as you may think. Sometimes a show is cancelled after episodes have been finished so they hold onto the episodes and dump them out later. Sometimes they don't even admit the show was cancelled until the episode dump has started. Many TV stations do this even to this day.

With only a few episodes, all I can say is once again they seemed to listen. The Greasers were mostly relegated to cameos, they never got to be an antagonist aside from the movie. Both Lola and Eddie only cameod in the opening of the movie and never appeared in the rest of the season. I guess people got tired of them. I like the change of the Greasers, because for some reason, the writers started building Winslow as the new main antagonist. It was an interesting change, and we even learned it's a family tradition to be a mean prankster, passed down since the cavemen version of Winslow’s species. I was a great set-up the fourth season didn't have enough time to develop, so I can't help but wonder how it would have ended up. As for Lola and Eddie, I missed them, but I do understand using them less if backlash was harsh.

We also found out Mr. Sunshine's real name is Cornelius, and its not an ironic nickname, he used to be a few happy guy before events I won't spoil. Said episode also features Peter Hannan as a narrator character, who gets violently attacked several times, more than anyone else in the episode. I love it when creators are humble in cameos, and with this it worked great.

At the end of the day, I'll have to think of another show for my hubris. Aside from the apathy I felt for season one, I heavily enjoyed re-watching CatDog. It knew how to grow, it knew how to have a unique season-by-season feeling, and I grew to really enjoy the characters. The back of the complete series box calls it "one of you're favorite Nickelodeon shows", and yeah, it might be.

Reviewing Classic Literature: The Jungle Book

Today, Rudyard Kipling’s original novel The Jungle Book may be more well-known for it’s many adaptations from the likes of Disney, Chuck Jones, and many others. It is not uncommon to hear about the book itself, but the adaptations make the original more on the iconic side than the beloved classic side, as it is easier to hear opinions on the adaptations than the source material.

            There may be a reason for that. It’s impossible to discuss the book without admitting it is aged, in two specific ways. In the last review I mentioned that the original Tarzan of the Apes was dated in its race relations, but Burroughs was well-intended. Jungle Book is also dated in regard to race, however, Kipling was not well-intended. Kipling was open about his support of Imperialism, and if you are familiar with the subject, you will understand why it’s not controversial to state that no one should be proud of British Imperialism. The Indian tribes in this book are treated overall terribly. Superstitious morons who lie and believe anything they are told, with main character Mowgli being practically the one exception, and bare in mind he was literally raised by wild wolves. In short, the novel has racist themes, and they become uncomfortable. There are points in this novel were it feels Kipling was outright saying he believed Indian people to be savage and inferior to white people, (and he outright says that about all Asian people in the sequel, although that is for another time).

          The other dated aspect is the writing style, and the prose of the poetry and songs. There are songs in the novel, however, it is common for them to not rhyme. Reading them rarely feels interesting, and usually feels out of place, despite the fact they always come at the end of a chapter. As for the regular wording, adjectives tend to be overused and styling can get out of hand very easily. When you read something very old, such as The Bible or works by Shakespeare, you encounter the word “thou”. While I am usually the person to argue people never in fact used this word, and it was purely a fiction device, what I’ve read from those examples did show me that these writers knew how to use the word and when. Kipling’s writing felt the opposite. Words like “thou” and “thee” are thrown around as if to make the stories sound smart, but instead make the dialogue stilted and hard to digest. This style of writing can make the book become boring or derivative at any point, no matter if the subject itself is interesting.

         If you read my last review, you may remember that I praised Tarzan of the Apes for writing animals in a way that made them feel like animals. Kipling writes animals almost exactly the same as humans, with only a rare few animalistic references. This becomes confusing in some parts, there were occasions I honestly forget whether an animal or human was talking, as there is little or no difference in the way they speak or act. In one of the later stories, I could not tell who the main character was, as everyone bled into each other, and this is despite the fact the story in question was named after the supposed main character.

            I say stories as The Jungle Book is a collection of short stories. Mowgli is the main character of around half of the full book, with the latter half being unrelated stories. These other stories are The White Seal, Rikki Tikki Tavi, Toomai of the Elephants, and Her Majesty’s Servants. As these stories are short, it’s difficult to say anything of their plot without saying almost the entirety, but I'll do what I can. The White Seal is about an albino seal who loses his pack due to hunters, Rikki Tikki Tavi is about a mongoose protecting his new human family from a family of cobras, Toomai is about a boy who is working with elephants, and Her Majesty is about a parade. The last two stories are the least interesting, making the book unfortunately end on a very dull thud. For reference, Toomai is the one whom I couldn’t figure out the main character from the others, and Her Majesty is literally only about the parade, nothing else happens.

            White Seal works surprisingly well. You feel horrible for the seal and his plight, and it is the closest to feeling like a story about animals. It pulls no punches and still works today, despite the novel’s heavy aging. Then there is Tavi, one of the more popular stories from the collection, and it deserves this status. Tavi himself is very likable, and his agenda works out sympathetic and understandable as well, I personally feel the general writing improves. However, there is a common criticism today that the cobras are more likable then the human family, and many readers have said they rooted for them instead. Admittedly, I did as well. The humans family is not written strongly in the slightest, they are fairly flat, and that kills my interest in caring about them. As for the cobras, the main cobra Nag is given a very humanizing moment. Both Nag and his wife Nagaina want to kill Tavi as he is a predator, which is understandable from an animal’s standpoint. Nagaina suggests killing the humans just to hurt Tavi, and Nag objects, morally horrified, until Nagaina reminds him the humans will kill all of their unborn children just for being cobras, and he changes his mind. In this, instead of making Nag evil, only Nagaina appears evil, and Nag comes across as a creature with morals who will break them if his children come to harm. He becomes the most likable character, and you don’t want him to lose.

            Then there are Mowgli’s stories. Mowgli himself, and his friends, are interesting and their iconic status is understandable. They are all unique, and fit within the realm of the story. The prose still fails far too often, but the stories featuring Mowgli and his friends still mostly work. I do have one major complaint, and that is Shere Khan. It’s not that he is a bad character, quite the opposite, he is a good character, but he is so underutilized that he fails as a villain. A good villain is intimidating, it keeps the audience afraid of them winning. Shere Khan plans to kill Mowgli, but rarely shows up, and it is easy to outright forget he exists. I won’t say exactly how his part in the story ends, but I will say it’s pathetic. Shere Khan had potential, and nothing else.

         When it comes to classic literature, the question is whether or not you read it for yourself. In the case of The Jungle Book, it is better to understand it. Sometimes iconic means knowing the source and what people liked about it. Reading it for yourself may not prove as enjoyable as simply watching one of its many adaptations. If you do want to read any of it, I suggest either the stories involving Mowgli, The White Seal, or Rikki Tikki Tavi, and the last two stories should be skipped altogether. The story is in the public domain, so doing so should prove easily enough. I personally cannot recommend the entirety of the novel, but at the end of the day, the ideas were there, and the ideas were good. It was all about the execution.

Classic Literature Review: Tarzan of the Apes

Originally published in a magazine in 1912, and later as a novel in 1914, Tarzan of the Apes is the first book in a long-standing pop culture franchise, written by the late Edgar Rice Burroughs.

            After countless adaptations, the rough story is known by many, but for those who are unaware I will give a small description. Lady Alice and Sir John Clayton, whom also share the Lordship of Greystoke, are marooned after a mutiny, and are forced to spend the remainder of their lives in the deep jungles of Africa. Before Alice dies in her sleep and John is murdered by Kerchak the gorilla, they birth their only son, also named John Clayton. John junior is adopted by the gorilla Kala, who renames him Tarzan. Tarzan lives his life in the gorilla pack until one day, many years later, the jungle is visited by William Cecil Clayton, Samuel Philander, Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, and his daughter Jane Porter. I will leave out the rest of the story as much as I can to focus on my critique.

            A good chunk of the book is Tarzan growing up raised by Kala the gorilla. This section of the story plays as a style of coming-of-age story that stays unique to this day. It is not fully uncommon for the “raised by wolves” storytelling to come around, however, Tarzan is written the way you would expect someone who was raised as a gorilla to act. He does not know the concepts of human society, he only knows how to act like a gorilla. Tarzan is, by default, a gorilla. It makes him a fascinating character to behold. He’s a literal animal. He hunts for his own food, he has no fear in fighting anything that may be stronger than himself, he has little interest in anything besides eating and sleeping. From time to time, a bit of advanced human survival skills come along, yet he is written more realistically an animal than many other stories I’ve read dealing with animals.

            Allow me to describe my favorite scene in the book. Up until this point, Tarzan has been absolutely hated by his adoptive father Tublat. Tarzan does something to annoy Tublat so much he goes on a murderous rampage, killing a few fellow gorillas in the process. Tublat makes the mistake of accidentally hurting his mate Kala. Tarzan leaps at the protection of his mother, by grabbing Tublat by the throat and stabbing him several times in the chest with his deceased father’s knife. After he is done, the gorillas go along with their lives as if nothing happened. It’s truly an invigorating and shocking experience to read the hero of the story, for lack of a better word, shank one of the book’s major villains. Even more to have the other characters show no reaction to it, this is an everyday thing for them.

            On that note, Tarzan is allowed to brutally assault the other villains of the book as well, as he knows too well how to fight and kill. These villains being Kerchak, the tribe leader who regularly goes on the same rampages Tublat did on the day of his death. Terkoz, Tublat’s son who is openly despised by the other gorillas, which hints he is even worse than Kerchak. Finally, to avoid further spoilers, we have Sabor. Sabor is either a lioness or a leopard depending on which version you are reading, as Burroughs later discovered lions do not live in rain forests. This was the copy I read, and it featured Sabor as a lioness, in case you would rather read that version:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tarzan-of-the-apes-gore-vidal/1121226491?ean=9780451531025

            As for the human characters, the majority of them are incredibly nice people with their own agendas. Professor Porter is seeking a treasure, and Philander is his friend making sure the old Professor’s scatterbrained tendencies don’t get himself killed. Will Clayton is a strong and kind individual who in his own right is a force to be reckoned with, even if Tarzan is far stronger. Then there is Jane. Jane is absolutely wonderful. She is not an action hero in her own right, however, she never loses her cool when in danger, and is the kind of person who when encountered by a lion, her first reaction is to shoot it. She is known far and wide today as Tarzan’s true love, but I personally believe she deserves more recognition as her own character, as she is a strong character. She is also the woman of Will Clayton’s affection, giving the story a love triangle.

            There is another member of the party I left out, but it she is more difficult to talk about. The group also has a maid named Esmeralda, who is a heavily negative black woman stereotype. Instead of discussing her as a character, as she lacks one, it is necessary to discuss Burroughs’s thoughts on race. In a way, Burroughs was progressive and well-intended for his time, but still wrote like the kind of man who did not fully research what he was talking about. To explain this better, there is a native tribe in the book which is mentioned several times. They are all bloody-thirsty, murderous cannibals, a horrible stereotype for African tribes, one that has died out and is not used in fiction anymore as a result. However, Burroughs does not paint this as their fault. He claims they are this way because of the actions of British invasions and Imperialism, and also points out that those actions were far worse in comparison.

            There are other black characters in the book as well, and they are not treated as any different than the white characters, although I understand later books do say unfortunate things about human races and apparently outright evolution in regards to this topic. In short, as I said, Burroughs meant well but the execution was not completely solid. Esmeralda feels and sounds like a racist caricature, and there is still a tribe of cannibals. Admittedly, this tribe is still written as if these are people instead of inhuman monsters, and their given reason for evil makes him incredibly sympathetic in-story. It should have been done better, but for what we got, it is far better than some other novels from the 1910’s and before.

            Tarzan of the Apes is, at its heart, a jungle fantasy story. It’s action sequences are action-packed, gruesome, and bloody. It’s romance subplot is surprisingly well-written and catches your attention, even if you have heard how the original novel ends beforehand, which I did. The characters are memorable, my favorite being Philander with Jane at close-second. All in all, it is easy to see why Tarzan of the Apes remains a classic.

            The question when it comes to classic literature is, do you read it for yourself? In this case, I give the original Tarzan of the Apes a heavy recommendation. Some aspects have not stood the test of time, but the rest of the book remains fresh and new despite being just over a hundred years old. If you live in the United States, the book is in the public domain, and access to it is easy. If you do not, it is probably not all that hard to secure a copy. Either way, it is worth seeing as to why Tarzan has become a hero of pop culture.

A Retrospective: L.A. Noire

On May 17th, 2011, Rockstar Games and Team Bondi released a game for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. In fall of that year, a complete edition was released, which also saw it's PC port. (And not too long after this original blog entry, the game was given a port to the Nintendo Switch, where it shockingly looks as good as it did before, as well as VR support for the PC port which I never tried) That game, L.A. Noire, promised to be a detective story unlike video games have ever told. A new type of facial recognition technology had been used for the game, one that captured a face to near life-like proportions. You would have to actually watch a real human face when they told you something important, and you would have to decide if they were flat-out lying, holding something back, or telling you the honest truth. When I saw the trailer for the game, I was excited for everything they promised.

http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/screens/album/1851/9481/

My previous experience with Rockstar games was with Red Dead Redemption, their now classic western deconstruction. I knew Rockstar were utter geniuses with character and story, and their graphics and gameplay weren't anything to sneeze at by this point. I knew they would deliver on their promise of a fantastic detective game.

One thing I specifically remember being excited for was that protagonist Cole Phelps would be a far more heroic character than the norm for Rockstar. My least favorite part of Red Dead Redemption was the fact you could still go on a shooting spree should you see fit; as it betrayed the character growth of former-outlaw-just-trying-to-get-his-family-back John Marston. The completely immoral characters found in Grand Theft Auto could barely get away with an understandable reason for a completely player-controlled feat, and the complete removal of the feature made me happy.

Remember that in just a short bit.

I got the game either the day it came out, or just after. I didn't pre-order the game but I did immediately head out to give them my sixty dollars, not willing to wait a few months for a price-drop. Something I only do for Rockstar games and RPGs, for the record. From my first few minutes of the game (disregarding my inexperience with the controllers leading to me running over a streetlight being literally the first thing I did), I was hooked, it was already proving to be everything I wanted it to be.

I loved Cole Phelps, I loved solving crimes, I loved the setting of a noir 1940's. I remember thinking the only thing that could have been better was if the game let me play it in black-and-white. A quick search through the options resulted in me finding out that I could indeed play the entire game in black-and-white, and I did.

Halfway through that first playthrough, the very thing I didn't want somehow ended up bugging me. I ended up missing the carnage I could ensue from Red Dead Redemption. Normally I don't care for doing such things, but when I play a Rockstar game, and they let me, I do realize I am bored of being the greatest and most heroic person in that games world, and I fall into the murderous sprees that almost everyone who plays these games eventually do. L.A. Noire felt so much like the Rockstar game that it was, that my brain rewired itself to try and convince me the game needed to let me do anything. This proved fruitless and the game was so hard-wired into keeping Phelps an honest and good cop that even if you tried running over a pedestrian, they manage to evade your vehicle roughly eight or nine times out of ten.

After my first playthrough, I went back to the missions so I could get one hundred percent on every single case, and I also went out of my way to find every single collectible.

http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/screens/album/1881/6601/

The man being questioned above is from the prologue, meaning the game outright tells you the answers to what you need to do for everything he says. You will wish the game was that easy when you try to get one-hundred percent, while not every performance is exactly subtle in the correct answer, making sure you have the right evidence to back up a claim can be an easy miss that sets back the entire chapter. The game is supposed to be hard like that, and it achieves it. I did in fact complete the game but I don't remotely remember a third of the correct choices.

The mentioned collectibles were even more of a nightmare. The golden film reels were easy to find with an online guide, and the street crimes you need to stop show up on your map whenever you are not in story mode and driving to them will activate them without the phonecall that the story version requires beforehand, but the cars were almost impossible from sheer annoyance. Some only showed up in one place, meaning a guide was usable. Others just happened to maybe spawn with an NPC riding in them, which meant you'd have to commandeer them, claiming a police emergency. So many cars looked so alike that it took ages to get them all, and you gained no reward outside of and achievement.

My first playthrough and a half tainted my opinion.

Thankfully, it didn't taint my final opinion. I decided to play the game again one more time. Without bothering to get everything, willing to mess up without restarting the chapter. Just actually play the game for what it was.

The game was not Grand Theft Auto, Bully, or Red Dead Redemption. The collectibles were just something else to do if you wanted it. L.A. Noire was a well-written crime story with wonderful characters and the best facial recognition technology of the time. When I let the game be itself, I realized just how great it was.

http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/screens/album/1891/6471/

I believe the best way to discuss my second playthrough would be to mention the character in the above screen, wearing the pink suit on the far right. That is Cole Phelps's partner in the Vice cases, the bigoted and corrupt Roy Earle. I hated Roy the first time, and for all the right reasons. The man was a corrupt cop, doing anything for a dollar, along with easily going along with the harsh bigotry of 1940's America. He was meant to be hated, and it worked. Then I listened to him a little more the second time. During one of the cases, Roy and Phelps discussed corruption, as it dealt with the case. Phelps, good boy at heart that he was, showed disgust and could not understand how anyone could sink so low.

Roy's reaction, surprised me.

Roy spoke like corruption was a terrible, lowdown thing, and he also outright stated that with the way to world worked, there was no other way to do anything. So much of Roy made sense to me, he almost garnered my sympathy out of it. He was no Archie Bunker, but I stopped seeing a man who was simply evil and spiteful, instead I saw somebody who well and truly believed he was a terrible person because the world only lets the terrible people get anything done. It did not redeem him, and it didn't need to, it simply gave me a surprisingly relatable layer to a character I originally didn't think he had or needed.

For those you don't know, Team Bondi (the other studio behind this game) has since closed it's doors. Despite loving this game, I sadly have to say it may have been deserved, as I've heard many terrible business practices, including towards Rockstar despite the latter studio being the only reason the game likely got it's final funding at all. We'll never see a sequel to this game, the technology is too expensive, and Bondi's original plan of the sequel adding full-body motion scan just as good as the facial would have made it even more so. Instead L.A. Noire sits in that pile of great games that are complete stand-alones in a vast ocean of games that for some reason needed a large franchise. I do highly recommend seeing just what I love about this game for yourselves. I played the 360 version, and I also own the complete version for the PC (and as edited in above I also have the remastered Switch port since this original posting), awaiting the day I finally get a high-end gaming computer so I can play the game in the way I truly believe would be best (although having it portable it fantastic as well).

I do still think it's worth completing, despite the time and effort, but L.A. Noire is a story experience and it's best to never forget that whilst playing.

Now here's a blooper reel made from the people behind the motion capture. They actually took real flubs and dully modeled them just for the sake of doing it, and in five minutes it really shows just how great the motion capture was. (Please note this version of video is uploaded by a fan, but the company hasn't released the footage themselves, and this is the best quality one. Should that change I will re-upload the official version)

Why Do I Prefer Older Music?

There has been a stigma for the past few years, a decade or so. If you want to be technical, I suppose this argument has always existed for some, the idea that something must be better because it came first. This is not inherently true for certain things, certain pieces of technology or genres of art inarguably grow as people experiment with them. Of course, with art in mind, you will instead have people who argue on when the form peaked, or when it slowed down. One of the biggest ones would be music.

As far back as my high school days, I heard a lot of support over older music being much better than the current state of music. For those respective time frames, I mean music from the seventies, eighties, and even early nineties, versus the music brought upon the two-thousands and two-thousand tens. With the chosen headline, there is no point in pretending I disagree with this. I like disco, I love Motown, and I miss ballads. Now, I have no personal hate for modern music. I quite like Lady Gaga, I find Miley Cyrus can be a non-guilty pleasure, and in general I think Pop music is going mostly in the right direction for it's genre, even with the duds I've heard.

That doesn't change my opinion on older music. I do highly prefer everything older music did better. There is no better way for the comparison than to compare all of those aspects.

-Story-Telling-

If the detractors are to be believed, musicians today no longer write their own songs. I don't think this changes everything, however, there is a closer connection when it is your own words. I would say more, but I'm not going to pretend I know every song that was written by the person or band who performed it. I can easily tell you why Queen is still considered by many to be one of the greatest bands of all time, and how they wrote every song. I can't tell you how many Motown singers wrote their own songs, because I'm not even aware of how many Motown singers existed. Honestly, I have a bigger problem with modern lyrics. Two, to be specific.

The first of which is story-telling. Music used to tell grand stories. There were five to seven minute ballads that we don't get much of anymore. Stories are still told today, but a lot of them tend to be about a fictional version of the singer. These existed before, but they are everywhere today. For some of you, you may think I'm only talking about rap music. A genre where the singer is always a gangster, some unlikable anti-hero boasting about their accomplishments. I may agree with liking older music, but this stance on rap is a little far for me. I agree it happens, but I have enjoyed several rap songs that both subverted and completely absorbed this trend. I unironically enjoy Kanye West's Power, for both being about that kind of person as well as practically an essay on why they are not ideal people. Personally, I think that negative connotation fits better for country music, both old and new.

But on the subject of country, a great example of story-telling and lyrics is folk music. This has slowly disappeared, and that saddens me. Allow me to tell you the tale of one such singer, Jim Croce.

I outright have a tattoo on my left arm due to one of his songs. Funfact I guess.

-http://jimcroce.com/?page_id=773

Jim wrote songs about other people. Sometimes they were in first person, often he was recounting this fiction person's exploits. Usually, they weren't good people, and he treated them as such. Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown is about a local brute,  Working at the Car Wash Blues is about a narcissist who isn't happy because he's not on top of the world like he believes he deserves. The nicest I can remember him being to a horrible person is Roller Derby Queen, where the main character admits to have fallen in love with an ugly and cantankerous woman he saw in the audience of a roller derby. Jim also wrote break-up songs. He could tell you the entire love story of these two people, and how it fell into shambles. Usually these were sad, although One Less Set of Footsteps is a wonderful subversion, the entire song is someone boasting how happy they are to be done with the other and how bad everything was.

Sometimes simple is good enough. These were all one sentence apiece for a three or four minute song. I can do that for many other great songs. The Devil Went Down to Georgia is about a boy beating the devil in a contest. If you want a more modern song, Girlfriend is about a jealous teenager who thinks the boy she likes is wasting his time by dating someone else.

I said earlier I like Lady Gaga, yet I'll be honest, I don't know what most of her songs are about. Bad Romance is straight-forward, as is Poker Face. My favorite song she's made, however, is Judas, and I've tried but I really don't know what that song is about. I've heard the lyrics, they don't make sense. I hear something about loving Judas, but somehow I don’t know enough to fully know how she feels. It could be lust, it could be legitimate love. As I really like the song, I can obviously overlook it, but I have to end up admitting I most like it because of her voice and beat. In the case of a lot of other songs, the story just isn't interesting. It goes back to many inflated egos, as it reflects the times, I assume. I miss hearing about people. Likable, lovable, hateable, determined people. I feel we used to get fully-fleshed out characters and their life-story. I truly miss that.

There's something else about Judas that shows a point. It's the other thing I feel about today's lyrics.

 

-Gibberish-

The real reason I don't understand the story of Lady Gaga's Judas, is the same problem I have with both some of her songs and modern music in general. Not the existence of gibberish, the outright love of gibberish.

For those sitting there, smugly assuming the old songs never used gibberish, here is my counter-point. There was gibberish, it was just used a lot less.

Here are some lyrics from the aforementioned Judas:

In the most Biblical sense,
I am beyond repentance
Fame hooker, prostitute wench, vomits her mind
But in the cultural sense
I just speak in future tense
Judas kiss me if offensed,
Or wear an ear condom next time

I supposed I could make sense of this, seeing them in front of me. I've never known what these words were until I looked them up, because she sings them so fast it becomes garbled. Yet, even after taking some time with it, some of it is still random words to rhyme or sound interesting.

Now, for comparison. Here are two of the continuous lines from the famous song, Harry Chapin's Cats In the Cradle:

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon

Yes, it is gibberish, but I can still hear it when I listen to the song. I never had to look up the lyrics to understand them. I even have an opinion; the singer is recalling the stories he regrets never telling his kid. Who knows if I'm right, but at least I can form an opinion the second I heard the lyrics for the first time.

I've been hard on Gaga, so I will be more than kind and say that the reason she uses gibberish is clearly from her Queen influence. Queen loved gibberish.

I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning very very frightening me
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo Figaro - magnifico

That is Bohemian Rhapsody, and I don't think I had to tell you for you to know that. Like the last example, you hear it from the first time. Unlike the last example, you don't have a clue what it means. I assume that the main character is going crazy, the song seemed to be heading that way from lyric 1. Of course, that helps my earlier point. Even with complete gibberish, this older song makes sense story-wise; It's about a man who may or may not regret killing a man, and is apologizing to his mother for becoming the kind of person he is.

Nonsense can work easily, but today I am hearing more use of nonsense than regular words. If I may just be mishearing, than the problem is that modern songs have a tendency to sound like gibberish and are muffling their words too much. Sure, sometimes a song is fine just for it's beat. However, lyrics matter, in more than one way.

 

-Lack of Variation-

I said earlier that pop is mostly headed in the right direction. I've noticed this mostly because pop and country and rap are all I hear for new songs. Pop is simply "popular music", I wish this was a joke, but I took a Popular Cultural Studies class and the professor flat-out told us this is what it meant from day one.

Again, I want to say out of all of these genres I only dislike country. This isn't just new country either, that's the reason I specifically chose The Devil Went Down to Georgia, just so I could be a little nice to lovers of the genre. It's a perfect song, I'll always go out of my way to praise it.

As for older styles, I have already mentioned disco, Motown, and folk. There also seems to be a strong lack of new punk rock, classical rock, soft rock, jazz, rhythm and blues, I'm even noticing a lot less Christian rock, classical hip-hop, grunge, really I could go on. When I was a child, all of these and more played on the radio. Now, the stations are almost all dedicated to old rock. Sure, I love old rock, but there seems to be something weird about the branching out of current music versus what we’ve already been listening to for two or three decades. If you are able to tune into a college radio station, cherish it, because I've heard that students today are experimenting with music more than mainstream radio stations, meaning you won't get the exact same five songs throughout the week.

Part of me thinks boy bands came back as strong as they did because the people were clamoring for something different again.

Regardless of the radio, I do not know of the last new song that wasn't pop, rap, or country. There is so much new country, that they hold an event every single month on local programming to hand out awards and congratulations. Mainstream rap has outright eclipsed the hip-pop it evolved from, and swallowed it's other variations. Pop has now just become whatever people feel like slapping the label on. Is Miley Cyrus a pop singer or a country singer? Ask whichever song she just performed.

The most consistent thing with her music is being weird, most likely her higher-ups are hoping for and achieving a Madonna effect. Again, I do still enjoy her work from time to time, and I honestly appreciate an artist who tries to be distinguishable from their peers.

Edit: F**k John K. I’m not taking down this picture but in no way do I associate with him or condone the man’s actions.

-http://www.cartoonbrew.com/music-videos/john-kricfalusi-animation-miley-cyrus-bangerz-tour-96601.html/attachment/miley-bangerz-e

Maybe I could completely blame my disinterest in modern music on it's lack of variation. If I get tired of pop I'd like to be able to hear a new Motown song. I've mentioned Motown a lot, it's time to be frank, I really miss Motown. I would also live for a new Jazz song, but it's been a long time since I was aware of them. They must exist, but the mainstream is just hiding them away, in fact I'm betting that's almost exactly what's happening. Treating them the same way Hollywood used to treat Indie films.

However, I do believe there is something else that attributes to what has happened. How apropos that I already mentioned Hollywood.

-Following Too Much in Other's Footsteps-

There is a YouTuber by the name of Jim Gisriel. Good fellow. Has far more subscribers than I do right now. He has a very thoughtful video on how Hollywood is starting to get too nostalgic when it comes to blockbusters:

I really think his point can apply to modern music as well, I’ve already mentioned as such. Miley Cyrus's shtick feels very derivative of Madonna. I said Lady Gaga probably uses fast gibberish because of her outright admittance to being inspired by Queen. This is not the first time that musicians took direct influence from another and of course that’s not a bad thing in and of itself.

The Beatles were inspired by other rock musicians, and they are considered the people who made pop music start to gain momentum, or to some, the people who created it in the first place. Current rap came from older rap, I stated as such, as well as the fact rap came from hip-hop in the first place. And then there's not only the many genres of rock, but rock music has it’s roots in jazz and rhythm and blues. Music, like all art, evolves over time.

I'm just afraid that the current evolution has turned a few heads too many. The current executives looked very hard at what stuck, and only decided to take a few of those genres forward. The insanity of certain songs was taken forward, without a long enough sit-down as to why they worked in the first place. Stories became too self-involved to be relatable, and boasting became very common after it's use beforehand. Gone are the days of Carly Simon's You're So Vain, now it's common for the main character to be the one who's vain.

A great song can make you laugh, can make you rethink your life, can outright break your heart. I can still enjoy new pop and rap, but it's been a good while since I completely loved a new song. I suppose we'll just have to wait for the next breed of musicians to learn from past mistakes and failures, and see how that pans out.