Unwinnable

I like wrestling. I can’t stop. I’ve quit actively watching wrestling many times, for many years, and caught maybe ten minutes of the WWE between 2002 and 2009, but during that time I still regularly checked several different wrestling websites multiple times a day. I’d buy burned DVDs of ’80s NWA shows that were transferred over from decaying old VHS tapes of the original TBS broadcasts. Even if I can rarely tolerate the WWE, I still can’t get over my childhood obsession with this weird fake sport that’s offensive, insulting, exciting, hilarious, occasionally smart, always sordid and often deeper than most people will ever acknowledge. And yet, even though I can’t shake my love for wrestling no matter how hard I try (and I tried hard after Chris Benoit, you guys), I still have no interest in watching this weekend’s WrestleMania. (more…)

Television has always had an uneasy relationship with the South. The Andy Griffith Show and Designing Women offered a respectful look at the region that birthed me, but for every such program there were three shows in the vein of Beverly Hillbillies, The Dukes of Hazzard and Carter Country. At best, the South barely exists in the eyes of TV producers; at worst, it’s a foreign, backwards world to be mocked and scorned. Thus, it’s a point of pride that the single greatest figure in recent television history hails from the South. (more…)

I just watched RoboCop for the first time. It’s pretty good.

I was too young to see RoboCop in the theater. I tried to watch it on HBO a year or two after it came out, but that early bloodbath in the OCP boardroom scared me away. The violence was too graphic, the comedy too black for fifth-grade me. By the time I was old enough to appreciate the movie, RoboCop had been transformed from this forbidden grown-up thing that scared and alienated me into a patronizing kid’s cartoon, just another marketing machine that hit the same toy/comic/cartoon trifecta as G.I. Joe but with the success of the Air Raiders. RoboCop was too mature for me in elementary school and too childish for me in middle and high school. (more…)

I work at home. Three feet away from my desk sits a 12″ VHS combo TV from 1992 and several outdated consoles. Two, maybe three days a week I play a game on my morning break. Some times I play a familiar favorite, other times a game I’ve barely heard of. I might start from the beginning or load up an old save file. Occasionally I write about them for Unwinnable. It’s not about nostalgia or some naive notion about the “purity” of old games. It’s also not just about having fun. I want to see how these different games from various times fare against both their contemporaries and the games of today.

It’s time I made it to the top. (more…)

I work at home. Three feet away from my desk sit a 12″ VHS combo TV from 1992 and several outdated consoles. Two, maybe three days a week I play a game on my morning break. Some times I play a familiar favorite, other times a game I’ve barely heard of. I might start from the beginning or load up an old save file. Occasionally I write about them for Unwinnable. It’s not about nostalgia or some naive notion about the “purity” of old games. It’s also not just about having fun. I want to see how these different games from various times fare against both their contemporaries and the games of today.

It’s time I made it to the top. (more…)