I’m half man, half Game of Thrones

I’ve never watched Game of Thrones, but it’s no secret that it’s an enormously popular show. I’m reluctant to get into it, for a number of reasons. I’ll probably cave eventually, and once I become part of the George R. R. Martin-verse, I’m sure I’ll be defending and championing it as vociferously as everybody that I know. But until then, it’s kind of nice to be in the dark, to not know why everyone else is talking about it, what the reason is behind all of the excitement.

And it kind of allows my mind to wander in ways that wouldn’t be possible if I were to be in on the action. For example, while I don’t watch the show, while I haven’t read any of the books, I still have the tiniest idea of what’s going on. Through overhearing snippets of other people’s conversations, from catching thirty-second glimpses of the show while picking stuff up at my brother’s place, to witnessing the barrage of billboards and online advertising getting everybody all pumped up for season three, I think that I have somewhat of an idea of what’s going on.

So with this extremely limited knowledge, I’ve pieced together a synopsis of what I think is happening so far. Years from now, when I finally decide to sit down and watch, I’m assuming I’ll be underwhelmed and unsurprised, seeing as how I’m pretty sure that all of the stuff I see in my head is probably exactly what’s going on in the show.

Let’s start from season one. When the show was in production, I remember reading some article about George R. R. Martin in the New Yorker. It told about this fictitious continent filled with kings and a vast library full of different characters. Once season one aired, I remember seeing this short clip of some albino lady standing in a field, naked, with a little dragon crawling over her body, and a whole field of men bowing down before her.

She’s definitely an alien. From a world at least three thousand light years away, she crash landed to shake up whatever they call this version of Middle Earth. Maybe this little baby dragon – he’s actually a cyborg, but you can’t see any of his robot parts – he’s going to one day grow up to be big enough to destroy any one, or all of the kingdoms. And so this alien lady appears and everybody has to kneel down before her, lest she direct the baby dragon’s future robotic wrath at them.

Season two. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything Game of Thrones related during season two. I did however, manage to catch about thirty seconds of an episode while I was waiting for my order at the pizza place. At first I thought it was the Lord of the Rings. I thought it was that guy who gets killed after killing like thirty-five orcs. But then the pizza guy was like, “I just love Game of Thrones,” and so I figured out my mistake.

In the clip, one of the kings executed some guy for desertion, then immediately went over to his little son and asked, “You understand why I had to do that, right?” and the kid totally didn’t understand, he was just staring at this litter of puppies. “Can I keep them daddy, can I? Can I?” and then the king was like, “Only if you walk and feed them yourself!” It was a little boring, actually. It reminded me more of an episode of Full House than an epic fantasy series. Also, right before that deserter was executed, he started babbling about something winter related, a white-walker, or a snow-giant or something from the north. “Nonsense,” the king said, “we haven’t seen those winter guys in over a thousand years.”

Cut to season three, currently airing. There was a ton of buildup this year in terms of marketing campaigns and billboards and magazine advertisements. It was definitely some very aggressive marketing. Most of the billboards didn’t say anything, they just showed various characters, one at a time, half of their faces were regular, but the other half were blue. Interesting. Then I saw some other ad and it said, “Winter is coming.”

So that’s where we’re at now. Putting two and two together, I’ll surmise that everybody’s scared of these snow people that the deserter was talking about earlier. The alien robot queen, she’s probably their messiah, destined to bring destruction to the kingdoms. But she’ll fall for humanity, maybe develop a romance with some human. The king is still a huge asshole who executed one of his own men without listening to him, without believing that he actually did see a winter-walker, and that mistake is going to bite him in the ass. Or it would, but there’s a twist: based on those half-regular, half-blue billboards, I can only assume that everybody turns out to be from the north, that the enemy that they dreaded was within themselves all along. And then the robot dragon self-destructs and blows up the whole planet. Deep.

I probably nailed it, although as of yet I have no way of knowing. While I’m at it, here’s my prediction for Iron Man 3. Tony Stark is at the pinnacle of his career. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, it all goes wrong. Really wrong. The bad guy shows up. He hits Tony where it hurts, hard. Really hard. Tony almost dies. You see his chest-light start to flicker. But he makes it. The chest-light is brighter than ever. And then he beats the bad guy. Roll the credits. But don’t leave yet! There’s a clue at the very end. Did you see that guy? Did you see what he said? Did you get it? Did you understand? Yeah, me neither, but Iron Man 4 looks like it’s going to be fucking sick.

An open letter to Big League Chew

Dear Big League Chew:

I’m writing for several reasons. I wanted to start out this letter by writing, “I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news,” but I’ve decided against that particular opening. First of all, it works much better face to face, because I can make it more interactive, like, “What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?” and then you could decide, depending on whether or not you’d like the good news first, to build you up for the inevitable bad news. Or maybe you’d prefer to get the bad news out of the way, take that bitter medicine, and then take the good news to sort of chase down the negativity.

Anyway, I’d like to point out that I’ve always been a Big League Chew fan. Ever since I was a little kid, I preferred your gum to other little kids’ chewing gums. I’ve never been a fan of Bubble Tape. Between you and me, although I’ve never busted out the tape measure, I’ve always been skeptical about there being a full six feet rolled up in that package. Bubble Yum? Bubbleicious? No thank you. I did flirt with switching to Skittles Gum as my go-to brand, but after the novelty of them tasting and having the same chew as Skittles candy wore off, I realized that it would be Big League Chew for life.

Even if I didn’t get the reference when I was a little kid, that the pouch of gum was supposed to be shaped like a pouch of chewing tobacco, that the thin strands of gum were supposed to be similarly identical, it didn’t stop me from fully enjoying your product. Whenever I watched a pro baseball player chewing something from a pouch, which, to be perfectly honest, I can’t really ever remember seeing, but maybe if I saw a movie or something where the pitcher was chewing some chew, I’d just assume it was Big League Chew.

I love Big League Chew despite any baseball references, although the name made the baseball connection almost automatic. Also the cartoon baseball player on the pouch. But I prefer Big League Chew for several non-baseball related reasons:

By not having individual pieces of gum, I’m free to choose exactly how much gum I want in my mouth at any given time. I’m not bound to individual sticks, having to decide between one or two. With Big League Chew, I can chew the equivalent of one and a half sticks, or one and three quarters sticks. It means more options for me, which I love.
Unlike the other big gums, like the ones I’ve mentioned before, Big League Chew is definitely the chewiest. Nothing is worse than a big mouthful of gum that offers no resistance to your teeth. You’ll be chewing and chewing and it won’t stay in a cohesive wad. It’s totally unsatisfying, too liquid-like, too easy for stray pieces to get stuck in between the big molars in the back of your mouth.
Big League Chew gets points from me in regards to flavor selection. I like how you guys keep it simple. Regular. Grape. One time I saw Green Apple, I think, although that might have been a dream. Regardless, it’s usually just regular. It makes the decision making process really easy, on my end.

Having said all of that, I do have to mention some areas in which I think there’s definitely room for improvement. (Remember the whole good news/bad news thing? Yeah, so I gave you the good news first.) Where Big League Chew has the best chew, like I said before, I think you guys could work on taste. While the initial few chomps definitely pack a lot of flavor, I feel like the intensity of that flavor drops precipitously after a minute, a minute and a half. I’m not expecting it to last forever, but maybe three minutes, four minutes, that might be an improvement.

Other than that, I just want to say, keep up the great work. I love Big League Chew to the point where I refuse to acknowledge any other chewing gums. In fact, I can’t even really chew anymore, because I’ve spent the majority of my life chewing Big League Chew. My jaw doesn’t close right, making chewing gum an impossibility. But I still buy it anyway. I’ll bring the pouch to my face and take deep breaths in. I’ll put some in my mouth and let the flavor just soak through my tongue. It’s still great.

Big League Chew For Life,

Rob G.

PS – One time I wrote to Pepperidge Farm telling them how much I love Milanos and they sent me a whole case of cookies. Any chance you’d like to up the ante? Let me know.

The American Express Black Card

I love it when people pay for stuff with an American Express Black Card. Technically it’s called the Centurion Card, but nobody calls it that. It’s always just the Black Card. It’s just like a regular credit card, except it’s nothing like a regular credit card at all. What’s yours made of, plastic? Ha! I’m laughing at you, because that’s pathetic. But I’m also laughing at myself, unfortunately, because I don’t have a Black Card either, I just have a stupid plastic card, just like you. Ha!

How does it feel to know that I could be sitting next to you at a restaurant, and I could be waiting there with a pair of scissors, and when you take out your credit card to pay, I could snatch it out of your hands and cut it into pieces before you even realized what I was doing? You dumb jerk.

But go ahead and try that trick on an American Express Black Card. I hope you have enough cash to buy several pairs of scissors. Why? Because the American Express Black Card isn’t some shitty piece of plastic. No, it’s made out of metal. If you want to cut the Black Card, you’d need like a pair of diamond bladed scissors. And have fun trying to buy a pair of diamond bladed scissors with your stupid plastic cut-in-half credit card. The saleslady will be like, “Ha! That’s cute. Security!” and they’d toss you straight out of the diamond bladed scissor store.

Look, it’s not for everybody. If the Black Card were for everybody, like if American Express decided to change its policy, to make it easy for anybody to apply for a Black Card, people currently holding Black Cards would revolt, they’d all start applying for some new even more exclusive credit card, like a card made out of moon rocks, or mercury.

Because its exclusivity is what makes the Black Card the Black Card. You have to be really, really rich to get one. There’s a huge membership fee. You’re required to charge a ridiculous amount of money every year. And what does this all get you? What makes the Black Card different than any other credit card?

It’s about sending a message. It used to be that if you wanted to tell a complete stranger,

“Listen pal, I know that I don’t know you, that you don’t know anything about me, or what I do. But I want to let you in on something. Come here. Come closer. Ready? Here it is. I am super rich. Like much richer than you’re imagining in your head right now. Here’s a pad and paper. I want you to go ahead and write down how much you think I made this month. No, seriously, I insist. OK, let me see. Yeah, not even close. Ha! Let me put it this way, you could work you’re entire life, and that wouldn’t be half of what I spent on lunch. Now get out of my face, asshole,”

you’d have to actually call them over and make them listen to you.

Nowadays all you have to do is pull out your Black Card. It’s great, because most of the time, the people that are handling your credit card are exactly the people that you’re trying to put in their place: salespeople, waiters, the guy making your coffee, the gas station attendant. Now you don’t even have to say anything to them. Just barely acknowledge their existence, don’t look them in the eye as you hand over that hefty slab of a status symbol. Watch them try to act like they don’t care, like they’re not trying to bend it with their hands as they run it through their machines.

You don’t have to have any more of a human interaction with them besides rubbing it in their face, that you’re rich, that you’re a really, really, really rich person, somebody with so much money that all of the ridiculous fees, all of those stories you hear about how impossible it is just to be invited to be able to purchase a Black Card membership, it’s nothing to you, it’s a micro-fraction of half of a drop in the bucket, a bucket so big that most everybody else’s buckets, even if they were combined into one big bucket, it still wouldn’t be big enough to hold even half of one of those micro-fraction drops of yours, the one you used on your Black Card.

I hope that someday I’ll be able to have my own Black Card. I’ll walk into a restaurant, a car dealership, a yacht club, some private wine cellar somewhere, and if my eighty thousand dollar watch doesn’t give it away, if the people I’m dealing with don’t recognize my designer suits or my helicopter waiting for me outside, if for some reason I ever find myself in a position where a regular nobody for some reason doesn’t recognize who I am, what I’m worth, just exactly what I’m sitting on top of here, I can just pull out my black metal credit card as a subtle reminder to everybody of my lot in life. It does all of the same things as your credit card, only the money supply behind it is nearly infinite, no upward limit. It’s the ultra-wealthy equivalent of going to a screen-printing place and having a t-shirt made up that says, “I am richer, much, much richer than you are.”

Fiji

I just love Fiji bottled water. People always say stuff like, “That’s so stupid! It’s just water!” and you get the same old tired arguments about wasting money, wasting plastic. It’s like every time I go to the store and buy a bottle of Fiji water, I can’t help but detect a look of disdain from whoever’s working the register. He’s like, “Anything else?” and I catch his eye, he’s making a weird face at me, and that tone of voice, the way he said “anything else,” is he mocking me? Hey buddy, if you’ve got a problem with my choices a consumer, why don’t you say something to my face instead of lacing all your forced little interaction with almost imperceptible contempt? Almost imperceptible. I’m very perceiving. Just, listen guy, next time, don’t say “anything else,” because if I want something else, I’ll let you know, all right? I’m not shy. “Nothing else, thanks.” “$4.99.”

People just don’t understand. They just don’t get Fiji bottled water. Yes, it is worth the price. It’s a premium product and you’re paying a little extra for it. Frankly, I think that, considering everything that you’re getting when you buy a bottle of Fiji, it’s not even that expensive. Before you even open it up, your eyes are rewarded by getting to look at that bottle. It’s square. That’s unusual, you might say. Already, your curiosity has been piqued. And no, I’m not just talking about people who’ve never seen a Fiji bottle before. I see at least twenty every day, and I still get that same reaction, my heart gets filled with just the slightest hint of mysterious apprehension, like, ooh, a square bottle, and my pulse starts to quicken, maybe my heart skips a beat.

And I think of all of the other “premium” waters out there, your Evians, your Pellegrinos. How utterly pedestrian. A plain bottle. Some generic looking label. No thank you. But the Fiji bottle – did I mention it’s a square bottle? – it’s got this label on the inside, like you can only see it through the bottle. Like the bottle is looking through you, too. It makes the Fiji logo sort of pop out of the background, and it transcends just the visual, it’s like, when I say it pops, it’s actually popping. Pop! My whole audio-visual cortex is just alive, synapses on fire, going crazy with delightful stimuli. The back inside label is a work of art in and of itself. It’s this lush tropical scene. I imagine the real Fiji is just like the paradise the label portrays. I’ve never been there, but I don’t think I’ll ever go. I wouldn’t want to be disappointed.

And the water. We haven’t even gotten to the water yet, and I almost hesitate every time I’m about to open a bottle. Dare I disturb the perfection that lies within? Does my insatiable thirst even warrant but a few drops of this precious life-giving elixir? Ultimately I can’t hold my desire back any longer, I cave in, I twist open the bottle and drink heartily from the font of Fiji.

What does Fiji taste like? If you’re asking this question, all I can say is, you ignorant fool. I’ve actually said that. One time I was at a pizza place ordering a slice. “Anything to drink?” the guy asked me. “Fiji,” I pointed to the fridge behind him. He kind of looked confused, turned the bottle back and forth in his hands a few times before putting it on the counter. “I don’t get it,” he started talking at me, “What’s so good about this stuff? Why do you want to pay five bucks for water?”

And I just stared at him, “You ignorant fool,” I started, before restraining my anger. I realized, this might be an opportunity, to shed light upon ignorance. But what could I possibly say? How do you begin to describe that which the English language is simply incapable of communicating? I tried, “It’s like … imagine you’re floating through a cloud … no, imagine that you are the cloud …” And then the phone rang, he held out a finger to me and was like, “Hello? Pizza place.” By the time he was done, he said, “Next!” and looked right to the lady behind me.

Someday I’ll have enough money to bathe in Fiji water, but for now I’ll have to live with just drinking it, using it to brush my teeth, occasionally moistening my toilet paper with its gentle touch. Fiji is more than a bottle of water. It’s something, an idea, an aspiration, everything that’s right with humanity, all of the beauty in the world turned to darkness and then soaked with Fiji to become something better, something more beautiful, more radiant than ever before, than ever imaginable. Fiji be to you, my friends, to your family. Fiji be to all.

Confessions of a button masher

Button mashing. It’s when you’re playing a video game against somebody else, usually somebody a lot better than you, somebody who’s wiping the floor with you, laying waste to your virtual avatar. It’s cheap. But sometimes there’s absolutely nothing left to do. You’re backed into a corner, chances of survival are looking grim. So you tighten your grip on the controller and you start mashing.

It doesn’t work on sports games. If you try to mash on a racing game, you’re going to wind up with Lakitu, that stupid cloud guy, hovering in your screen telling you that you’re going the wrong way. One time I tried to button mash on a game of iPhone Scrabble, and I wound up texting a whole bunch of gibberish to my boss.

It has to be a two-dimensional side-scrolling fighting game, like Mortal Kombat, or Street Fighter II. Different fighting games will feature different characters and various weaponry, but at heart they’re all basically the same (with Super Smash Brothers being the exception.) You and your opponent are facing each other, and you have to fight until they don’t have any more energy or life or whatever it is, and they die.

All of your buttons represent a rudimentary move, for example, A for punch and B for kick. Put simply, if I move my character over to yours and hit A, you’ll get punched, and you might lose like one percent energy. If I keep doing this, punching you a hundred times, you’ll eventually die. But that’s not very fun. And so fighting games employ combos. Combos make your fighter do cooler stuff, and they exact more damage from your opponents.

So you might press down, down-right, right, A, and your guy might shoot out a fireball. Or start hitting Y in rapid succession and you’ll start doing this hyper kick, totally demolishing anything that comes your way. In theory, you’re supposed to figure out these moves, and employ unique sets of combinations to overpower the enemy’s unique set of combinations.

That’s the idea anyway. First of all, none of the games ever tell you which characters work with which combinations. You’re kind of left to figure everything out by yourself. Or, that’s how it was when Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat came out when I was in the third grade, before the Internet, before we could go online and look everything up.

I had the Internet freshmen year of college. I was totally able to go on the Internet and look up the different combinations for every character in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, our dorm floor’s fighting title of choice. But try as I might, regardless of how many classes I skipped so I could memorize button combos, despite all of the hours I clocked in practicing level-ups and power-ups and special bonus combos, I could never really get to the point where I could rely solely on my reflexes and my bank of stored knowledge to successfully get through a fight.

Eventually there would come a point, I’d be getting clobbered, the end clearly in sight, I’d have no choice but to forgo any sort of strategy and start wildly hitting all the buttons. The thing about button mashing is, it works. You just take your thumbs and start hitting both sides of the controller as furiously as possible. All of the sudden all of those ultra high-level combos, the ones you’ve only seen performed by the highest level computer players, you’re doing them. Sure, it’s not happening in any particular order, and maybe you sent a couple of attacks in the wrong direction, but just keep mashing, keep going, it’s starting to work, you’re starting to close the gap.

The thing about button mashing, I already told you that it’s really, really cheap, but it’s also kind of unsustainable. It quickly depletes whatever energy your hand muscles have stored up. And if you somehow manage to get through the debilitating thumb cramps, pretty soon the skin on your fingers is going to give, the constant friction. A video game blister is nothing to laugh at.

And so you’ll start button mashing, the surest sign that there is of a desperate player staring death in the virtual face. And you’ll look to your real life opponent, and he’s just kind of like, really? You’re really going start button mashing? Fine. I’ll still kick your ass. But you start coming back. He can’t get close to you because you’re character is throwing everything it’s got, everything the both of you didn’t even know it had in it. And after that gap gets closed, holy shit, it looks you might actually win here. And then maybe you take the slightest edge.

Your opponent unleashes a guttural cry, “You fucking cheap fucking button mashing asshole!” and then he starts mashing buttons also. Now who’s desperate? But where your hands are calloused, built up, used to the unrelenting pain and pressure that come from the repeated thrashing button mashing doles upon your hands, he’s too technical of a gamer, unfamiliar with the art of pure gaming chaos, the wild unknown of giving everything your fingers have to a PS2 controller.

And so it’s a noble attempt, to stoop to my level, but it proves unsuccessful. As my opponent’s player hits the ground in 64-bit slow motion, he takes his controller and slams it to the ground, “Get out of my dorm Rob! You’re not allowed to play this game anymore! So fucking cheap!” He’ll calm down. It’ll gnaw at him from the inside, the chance to beat me fair and square, to prove button mashing isn’t a real technique. But I’ve got to tell you, it works. It’s not for everybody, but button mashing is a viable strategy, an art form even. OK, not an art form, but it works. Try it.