crude futures

The arcade video-game death of Michael Jackson, 1990

In 1990, SEGA released Moonwalker, an arcade video game starring Michael Jackson. In the game, you maneuver a Michael Jackson "benevolent gangster" sprite through a pool hall, a dark alley, and a graveyard. You (Michael Jackson) fight thugs, robots, and zombies with supercharged dance moves, and you free tied-up child hostages to the bit-tunes of "Bad," "Smooth Criminal," and "Beat It."

If Michael Jackson receives too much enemy damage, he falls on his face and cries "help me!," begging the defeated player to insert another quarter and revive Michael's mission to heal the underworld.

If you do not insert another quarter, Jackson's corpse transmogrifies into stardust and flies heavenward. Then the stardust rains down and crystallizes into the words GAME OVER.

See 6:18–7:00 in the following video.

Christina's World

Ghost without saying

It
ghost without saying.

It ghost without saying.

What?

It ghost without saying.

Cream Cheese Theatre 2

Presented by an anonymous friend....

--------------------------------------------

Cream Cheese Theatre 2

Topic: Going Meat Free!
My friend Sumi wants me to stop eating meat. She almost had me convinced last night. We were on the phone and she said, "You really have to stop eating meat." And I was thinking, you know, maybe this is it! This is finally when I put my good health and the good of our planet ahead of the tastiness of the Chicken Torta sandwich they serve at the Love Cafe. But then we got off the phone and I got a text inviting me to a barbecue. It was a great barbecue!

Topic: The West Wing
When The West Wing is on TV, I don't even have to pay attention to the story. I can just listen to the music and vaguely scan the murmur of intelligent voices and I get all goose-pimply and optimistic for the future. And it feels like, by gosh, I've done my part for America. Thanks, The West Wing!

Topic: Expensive Cupcakes
Here at the Love Cafe, they sell really expensive cupcakes. Like $5 or something. And I come in here pretty much every day, but I don't buy the cupcakes. Don't look at me, they're $5! Instead, I have the granola or the tasty Chicken Torta sandwich. But while I'm eating my granola or my tasty Chicken Torta sandwich, I'm looking at those cupcakes, and I'm thinking, "I wonder if they're stale?" Because, guess what, friend: $5 cupcakes don't move. My mom used to do retail and always talks about wondering if she could get back in the game, but I don't even think my mom could move $5 cupcakes. Hey, Love Cafe — think about it!

Topic: What are you reading lately?
What are you reading lately? Is it fiction or non-fiction? Is it from the library or the book store? Is it by Flannery O'Connor or Elizabeth Dole? Is it a slender volume of poetry or an action packed Tom Clancy thriller? Is it serious creative non-fiction or is it a bodice-ripping beach read? Or are you making America cry by reading nothing at all?

--------------------------------------------

Joan Jett + Gyruss in Light of Day

A month ago, I tried to rent Light of Day from my favorite video store, but they couldn't find the VHS tape (it's not on DVD) when I went to check out. "Our copy must be lost," they said. "The computer says it hasn't been rented since 2004."

On Friday night, I was back in the store. "Did you guys ever find your copy of Light of Day?," I asked an employee who wasn't involved in the original tape search. "You know what? I bet I can find it," he said. And about three minutes later, he had the tape in his hand. It had fallen behind the store's VCR. "We were just watching it in the store a few days ago," he said. "It was a double-header with Satisfaction."

So anyway, I just watched Light of Day. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Joan Jett plays Patti Rasnick, a rock-n-rolling single mom from Cleveland. Although her life is a mess, she finds spiritual relief in coin-op video games — especially Gyruss. I love this frame still (actually a photo of my TV) from near the end of the movie:



PATTI: I've been trying to live my life by an idea. You see that machine? [Pointing to Centipede.] That's an idea. Rock 'n' roll — that's an idea. All those video-game monsters, bip-bip-bip. All those bipbips are separate. No moment is any more important than another. Nothing comes together — no heaven, no hell, just moments.... I go out there every night just to hear the beat: dvv-dvv-dvv-dvv, dvv-dvv-dvv-dvv, dvv-dvv-dvv-dvv. And that's all there is, man.

Clearly, Patti has never played Super Mario Bros. The movie was released in 1987, but its heart is in 1983 or '84.

I don't know why this movie isn't on DVD, but here's my best guess: There is a naked bathtub scene involving Michael J. Fox's character and his nephew, a 5 year-old boy. It's a touching scene in the most innocent sense of "touching." If the child's penis is what's holding up the DVD release, someone should just add digital underwear to the kid, or a strategic suds dollop. Then copies can be pressed for Netflix and Target asap.

Cream Cheese Theatre

And now, a guest post by an anonymous friend....

--------------------------------------------

Cream Cheese Theatre

Topic: Blueberries
It's time for blueberries to be $5.00 for two pints at the grocery store. These are the blueberries with chemicals that will kill you, and they are also the ones that are going to flood poor black people out of their homes in third world countries. I must really like blueberries!

Topic: The Real Housewives
When are they going to do a real housewives of Rwanda? I bet never!

Topic: Regret
I guess I'm never going to stop profoundly regretting things that actually don't really matter. Oh well!

Topic: Katie Couric
Katie Couric should stop by my house for apps and cocktails. We could swap stories about our hardscrabble upbringings and we could indulge in the kind of idealism that leaves you with a little bit more hope, a little bit more direction, a little bit more commitment to changing the world for the better. And maybe Katie would leave feeling like, hey, somebody understands.

--------------------------------------------

The skyscraper is ugly. What a heightmare.

The skyscraper is ugly. What a heightmare.

The fight was ugly. What a fightmare.

The bite was painful. What a bitemare.

The party was terrible. What a politemare.

The poem was bad. What a tritemare.

The pants were too small. What a tightmare.

The kite was ugly. What a kitemare.

This lamp has no shade. It is a brightmare.

I'm not personally "Up the Junction," thankfully, but I love this song.

If you're too impatient to watch all three minutes, at least check out these three smokin' seconds:

1:01
1:02
1:03

A logo I designed is on a Toyota in Southern Sudan

My fearless coworker Greg just got back from a months-long "business trip" to Sudan, where he was overseeing the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation's project to build an educational center in the village of Marial Bai.

Just before Greg left, he asked me to design an official-looking logo for the Foundation's Land Cruiser. Here's the thing I made him, which uses the colors of Sudan's flag:



As Greg learned the hard way on his last trip in 2008, vehicles without official-looking logos get hassled more often (at checkpoints, border crossings, etc) than vehicles with logos.

Here's the freshly logo'd Land Cruiser, in situ.



Greg says nobody hassled the logo'd vehicle at all the whole time he was there.

Success!!!

100-page tribute to David Foster Wallace in Sonora Review 55/56

The new 400-page double-issue of Sonora Review — which I designed over a few weekends in March — features a 100-page tribute to David Foster Wallace, who was once the journal's fiction editor. The issue also includes a selection of "Gorvey Garfoul" drawings by me!

The beautiful artwork on the front & back covers is by Matt Furie:



The DFW tribute section includes a lot of good material:

• A conversation between Rick Moody and Wallace's editor, Michael Pietsch.
  
• "Solomon Silverfish," an uncollected short story by David Foster Wallace. (The story originally appeared in Sonora Review #13 in 1987, right after The Broom of the System was published.)
  
• A portfolio of intense, personal artworks by Karen Green, who was married to Wallace for the last years of his life.
  
• A thoughtful memoir by Michael Martone on his longtime professional relationship and almost-friendship with Wallace.
  
• Recollections by Glenn Kenny (aka "Dick Filth"), Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, Charles Bock, and Ken Kalfus; and more.

The only way to get a copy, as far as I know, is to mail an $18 check to Sonora Review c/o the University of Arizona. Click here for full ordering details.

If you'd like a copy, I suggest that you order it soon. I don't know how many copies got printed. Probably not a lot.

Cover design for The Men Who Pour Cement, a novel by Kimball MacAleese

The upcoming June issue of The Believer includes a funny piece by famous novelist Steve Hely called "Short Takes on Books that Don't Exist." I enjoyed making this book cover for one of Hely's eleven imaginary books.

The Men Who Pour Cement
by Kimball MacAleese
MacAleese is the great also-ran of twentieth-century American letters, behind his contemporaries Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway—whom he once challenged to “write about your own g-damn country, and let the matadors and the spaghetti-eaters write about theirs.” That same frenzied nationalism is evident in MacAleese’s fiction, like this epic novel, lovingly reissued after nearly seventy years, which focuses on the daily lives of builders working on the Grand Coulee Dam. —Steve Hely