subhumanzoids

For someone that moved to an entirely new city not even a month and a half ago, I sure haven’t taken many pictures! Before I attempt to rectify this by taking my aging Olympus out to the mean streets of Hoboken, I present to you two distinctly different images.

The first represents an enterprising young man thrusting his hand in the pool of commerce in the interest of making sure that he doesn’t have to walk around the city baring his feet. Nike Air Max 1! I summon your time-reversing powers to give me the power of the “slam dunk” and teach me to “ball”!

The second picture is one of horror, and has experienced no Photo Shoppe adjustments whatsoever. This young demon, named “Rocky” and aged hardly past a puking pup, immediately turned a fully lit room into Hell once the photo was snapped (also, my fingers were over the flash)!

This should fill your grody book quota for the week. While Amazon’s page offers a tidy explanation of the book’s queasy contents, I rather prefer the synopsis on sillasstoys.com.

Owl Puke – The Book is a kit that contains everything you need to learn about the wonderful world of owl puke. Owls eat small rodents and then throw up the indigestible parts in a fuzzy pellet. With the guidebook in hand, you can inspect the professionally collected and heat-sterilized pellet for the bones of the animals that the owl has eaten. A plastic sorting tray is also included. A great science experiment!

Perhaps they will send me one for “review.”

Yuzo Koshiro is simultaneously the greatest and most flamboyant game music composer of all time. Perhaps you’ve found yourself transforming the squalid pit you call a bedroom into a makeshift gay night club by pounding out his Streets of Rage soundtracks. Or maybe you fancy yourself quite the game-rip aristocrat, swaying your hands to the orchestral groove of Actraiser Symphonic Suite (probably one of the greatest game soundtracks of all time).

I find all of this acceptable, even commendable. Today, however, I must ask that you oscillate wildly to one of Koshiro’s finest moments: Super Adventure Island. Within its reverberating walls, you’ll find that this maestro does, indeed, toot his own horn! He also wets whistles, bangs on enough bongos to make DK jealous, and makes a song so sensual in “Essential Vitamins” that Barry White’s likely to leap from his grave and belt a brisk, boner-bopping baritone behind the beat.

Please, see for yourself: Super Adventure Island OST (Megaupload)

As is expected, you can hear a lot of his typical influences in this soundtrack. Lots of “urban” breakbeats, reggae rhythms and funky freakouts. Through these compositions, Master Higgins is able to hammer, boomerang, and fireball his way through an adventure that, to this day, remains pretty darn difficult. You can practically feel the overwhelming pressure to succeed weighing on Higgins’ shoulders in track 13, “Dark Castle of Living Things.”

Go, save the romance!

This one’s a doozy, folks. This amazing new Steven Seagal flick, one which finds him jumbling through a mash-up of all the dialogue he’s spoken since his career began, is a certified must watch.

It’s as if the writing staff of The Onion wrote a Seagal script and played it completely straight. It’s a 90-minute justification for the fat man’s existence that has him running hits for Lance Henriksen, successfully wooing a young (possibly blind and deaf) piece of ass, and trying to overcome the woes of being an alcoholic deadbeat dad that solves the tensest situation with a HI-YA karate chop to the neck of his foes.

Seagal could make a mint if he took his act to Broadway, or heck, even a small-time stage venue would work wonders. Imagine his accented, Brando-whisper tough guy talk in an open arena, perhaps one fitted with a pit like The Globe. Well-rehearsed theatrics could even create an illusion to give someone else time to run out and perform sluggish stunts in a restricting, figure-hiding suit.

Now, come on. It’s Saturday, and if you’re not watching the Elite Eight games tonight (go Cards!) then you might as well watch this:

Lots of major league game composers get a bevy of back pats and buttslaps, and deservedly so. Nobuo Uematsu? Man’s a powerhouse. Koji Kondo? (Deep, nostril-flaring breath) ain’t nothin’ finer. But what about the soundtracks that people aren’t still gushing over at the moment?

What about Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka, composer of some real fan favorites, from Donkey Kong to Earthbound (with Keiichi Suzuki)? This isn’t about DK or Ness, though, this is about a real gem that doesn’t get enough spins on my virtual needle: Super Mario Land.

Oddly enough, I generally associate Super Mario Land with the first time I ever came to New York City, sometime around ’88 or ’89, back when bootleg shirts of “The Sampsons” dotted the landscape; back when Howard & Nester was the funniest dang comic out there about Howard and Nester. At the time, the only thing I was listening to outside of my Gameboy’s tinny, prehistoric speakers was my cousin’s copy of Digital Underground’s Sex Packets, which, when combined, collectively blew my mind.

This was the first time I finished the game (and DU’s album!), and I think I may have solved it a dozen more times that week, never any less enamored by the rousing end credits theme.

Here is the soundtrack, zipped for your pleasure.

Or you can download individual tracks from the original source.

Surely the “Chai Kingdom” track helped develop the way that I view Chinese people: hopping Mr. Vampire-like enemies set to the Gameboy musical equivalent of Coke bottle glasses and me-so-solly gag dentures. What vile creature has Tanaka’s music birthed?