TALES FROM THE START OF MAY!

So no new podcast this week. I apologize profusely. It’s been quite a busy week/end to be honest. And the brain-scrambling heat waves haven’t been a huge help either. I realize that I never posted anything about Mother’s Day at all. Think I’ll be talking about it in this post, as well as a medley of things pertaining to life and what have you.

As I blogged of earlier, there was a special Isotope showing of Star Trek at the Balboa theater. We did end up going. And by we I mean my mother, my sister, Tori, and myself. The momster had an excellent time. She met my good friend STORM and got her complementary Spock ears, which she was digging. The movie itself was amazing. I’ll try not to go too in depth on it, for fear of spoiling it for those who still haven’t scene it (grimace). It’s really a “get the team together” story more than anything. It was quite artfully done though. It updated the Star Trek mythos, replacing things that may have seemed out of date and tacky in the original with sleek new additions. If there was any eye-rolling tackiness left, it was done very tastefully and very self-aware. There was a bit of fan pandering, dropping in certain lines and what have you directed towards Trekkers themselves. But what good nerd movie doesn’t have a bit of the fanboy porn? The bad ones. So I repeat, If you haven’t already seen this movie, make sure you hit the theater right now and take a glimpse. You won’t regret it.

I was on a movie roll these past two weeks. Not only did I have the pleasure of seeing Star Trek, but was able to see Angels and Demons as well. Full disclosure here, I actually haven’t scene all of the Di Vinci Code movie, nor have I read all of the books. But I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. It was a good suspenseful thriller. The religious overtones were interesting, and drove the plot, but one could easily imagine replacing religion with something else entirely. Religion was merely a vehicle for the story to be told through. I would give it about an 82 on the overall.

Lot’s of comics reading getting done. One of the best pages of the week can be found within the new issue of Nick Fury’s Secret Warriors. “Hello White Men. Thirsty?” is going to be a page that lives on in my memory for awhile. Still haven’t read all of them yet, but it was a huge week. I’ve gotten through about half my stack, and there really hasn’t been a terrible book in the bunch quite yet. Wolverine was pretty good, but so far was the weakest of the bunch. If you pay attention to the site, you’ll note that the I Kill Giants trade came out this week, and is the first book in the Accidental Book Club. Better get to reading that sucker. It’s supposed to be fracking awesome.

That kind of sums up this week or so. I mean AP testing happened, so school is sort of coasting. There’s still a tad bit of work to be done, leading to finals, but there’s definitely a more lax tone to it. Stay tuned to the website for more blog entries and, Rocket Raccoon willing, a new podcast next week. But for now, I’m Tristan Leder, and I will be seeing you soon. GO TEAM!

Honor Thy Mother

 So Mother’s Day is coming up. Everyone got some stuff planned? I hope so. Mom’s are some of the most important figures in our lives. They shape and influence us right since we were...well born! They deserve the recognition of being amazing people, and hopefully you give them some credit everyday. However, you should be extra special this Sunday. Please feel free to fill me in on some of your Mother’s Day activities.

I know this Sunday I’ll be spending some quality time with my Mother. During the early afternoon, the fam will be getting a Mother’s Day brunch, grandma included. That should be awesome, but what my Mom and I are looking forward to the most is only the newest, hottest Isotope event. The famed San Francisco comic book lounge, through their awesome amount of awesome, will be taking over the Balboa Theater ( Balboa @37^th AVE) and having two screenings of the new Star Trek film. They’ll be setting up shop in the lobby, there will be a costume contest, trivia, two movie showings and free Spock ear’s for all attending mothers! It’s certainly not something to miss. It’s going to be truly a super “stellar” night to spend with your mom. GO TEAM!

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

You know, you may not know, but arcades were hot shit in the days gone by. You'd go there with friends, bring a pocket full of quaters. Maybe challenge eachother, see who could get the higher score in a game. Now being as old as I am, I was not able to completely indulge in the arcade experience. I would however play the ocassional arcade style game, with the big machines and joysticks, maybe at the local pizza shop or what have you, only occasionally making it to the gaming Meccas that are/were arcades. I', sure many of you readers out there have similar experiences invloving Metal Slug and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. I know you're there.

King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters is a look into the aracde culture that is still present in the world today. The docuementary is focused on the world of competitive retro arade gaming, centerin mainly around two characters.

The first character we meet is Billy Mitchell set a high score in the arcade game Donkey Kong back in 1982. He now (from what I could tell in the film) runs a chain of successfull hot wing restauraunts. The other character we meet, and who's journey we follow throughout the movie is Steve Wiebe, a teacher at high school in Washington who sets out ona journey to break Mitchell's high score.

The film starts off giving some backstory on Mitchell and the competitive gaming scene as a whole. The arbiters of the who retro game shindig is an organization known as Twin Galaxies. They say whether or not a high in a game is legit or not. If it isn't registered with Galaxies, then your score is useless.  From here we meet Wiebe, and learn about his "interesting" past and what exacly motivates him.

The rest of the film follows Wiebe through out his journey into retro-game stardom. His triumphs and his failures. The good times and bad. His wife and kids. Playing Kong for ours on end while his son yells at him about the fact he needs to poop. Ahhh, good times.

This documentary is by far one of the best I've seen. It's interesting, it's original, it's funny, it's just outright wacky. What really gets me though, is the story. Though this is a documentary, you could easily market it as just a normal movie, and I would be totally cool with that. Most documentaryies, like the recenetly seen Helvetica, focus so much on information about the subject that it's almost more like a text book that just happens to have a video component. Now, I know that's just the nature of the beast when it comes to documentaries, but Fistful of Quarters is different. It has story. It has characters that we can not only relate to, but by the end of the film, feel for. It doesn't shove facts about this culture of yester-year down our throats, rather presenting them smoothly in a manner that gels with the over-arching story. The way the film handles what it is, is extraordinary. You have a movie about 40 something year old nerds who spend most of their time playing video games that rest of the word seems to have forgotten about. Tell me that doesn't sound like a topic that could be easily be made fun of. The movie in no way, shape or form seems to be poking fun at the people who truly love the retro games. It's their passion. Who are we to make fun of it.

The story, sensibility and overall eccentricity have landed high on my list of must see movies. If you haven't had the good fortune to see it yet, this movie is worth your time.

I give it a:

15/17