Super Mario, love machine

Kotaku featured an odd article from the Fresno Bee, in which the article's author talked about Super Mario Bros. Wii as a metaphor for his marriage. I will resist the temptation to make some sort of crude remark about possible Wiimote attachments designed around this idea and simply say that this metaphor doesn't really work for me. Like most people, my most prominent mental image of marriage comes from my parents, so the first video game metaphor for marriage that pops into my head is Killer Instinct: lots of senseless aggression, really loud guy bellowing constantly, boxers locked in combat with genetically engineered velociraptors. Mine is an all-too-common story, sadly.

And yet, despite this disconnect, I can relate. I've often thought my own romantic relationships resembled the Mario games. Admittedly, in my case the area of similarity is less "working and making decisions together" and more "man struggles alone across hostile landscape gathering the currency and exotic reality-warping plants he needs to win woman back from thuggish bad boy she keeps shacking up with," but the parallels are still striking.

Wario sleeps with the fishes

Via Kotaku, a glimpse into the dark underworld of gaming: In New York City, men dressed as Mario and Luigi were caught on film beating and robbing a taxi driver at a Staten Island gas station. They were accompanied by an accomplice in a tuxedo who stood lookout and a fourth man who was not visible on the security camera footage.

I should have seen this coming. The signs were there. Consider Mario without the rose-colored haze of childhood nostalgia and look at the man's lifestyle.

He spends most of his time in the company of "goombas" and violent thugs with names like "Bullet Bill" and "the Hammer Brothers." As games like Mario Kart, Dr. Mario, and Super Smash Bros. have revealed, he can often be found violently interfering with the outcome of racing events (almost certainly for gambling purposes), distributing prescription drugs despite a complete lack of any legitimate medical or pharmaceutical credentials, or at the site of brutal underground blood sports. He claims to be an independent contractor in the sanitation industry, yet his primary source of income comes from big gold coins that people apparently just leave in his path for him to collect as he passes by, no doubt offered so that Mario will "protect" them from any "accidents" involving kneecap stomping or fireballs lobbed through a storefront window.

How could we have been so blind? Mario is a short, stocky Italian-American from New York notorious for stomping his enemies to death. He's basically Joe Pesci's character from Goodfellas with less profanity.

Captain Lou Albano, R.I.P.

I was saddened to hear a few weeks ago that pro wrestling legend Captain Lou Albano, who portrayed Mario on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, had passed away. I loved that show as a kid.

The first time I saw a commercial announcing it was quite an exciting moment for me, since video game tie-ins weren't nearly as plentiful in those days. (Aside from the repugnant and mercifully short-lived Nintendo cereal.) The only other video game-based cartoon I knew of was Captain N the Game Master, which seemed sub-par even then: Megaman and Kid Icarus both suffered from bizarre speech impediments, some marketing genius had decided that one of the main recurring villains should be King Hippo, of all people, and primary antagonist Mother Brain's voice always made her sound like some wealthy dowager from a Marx Brothers movie, overcome with shocked indignation after being insulted by Groucho. So, the existence of a Mario show was certainly a welcome development, and the addition of a cartoon based on The Legend of Zelda that appeared every Friday only sweetened the deal.

Of course, Mario isn't just beloved in America; he's a global phenomenon that brings together people of all lands and races, like McDonald's or Michael Jackson or hatred of the movie Battlefield Earth. If you regularly watched the show after school like I did, you may remember the show's intro sequence and opening theme song. So, in memory of Captain Lou Albano, relive the magic of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show... in German!



Rest in peace, Captain Lou, and thank you.

The accoutrements of privilege

The North American branch of Club Nintendo, which gives members points that can be redeemed for prizes when they buy Nintendo products, is giving new “Elite Status” rewards to people with Gold or Platinum memberships. Apparently, they’re sort of the American Express Centurion Card of video game customer loyalty programs, but without that annoying “wealth and high social status” crap mixed in. I'm not sure how many mini-game collections you have to shell out for to reach these Olympian heights, but Platinum members get a rather snazzy Mario hat.











It says “One Size Fits Most,” which means I’m screwed because I inherited my father’s monstrous size 8 skull along with his brown hair, dour Northern European stoicism, and deep-rooted inability to ever truly trust another human being. For those of you who aren’t cursed with a grotesquely bulbous head, a word of warning: Use extreme caution wearing a hat like this if you live on the western coast of the United States. It is well-known in the law enforcement community that the Bloods have used red Mario hats, turned to the left side, as a symbol of gang affiliation since the early 90s. If you don’t know what you’re doing, one moment you’ll be cheerfully walking the streets of sunny Los Angeles, and the next you’ll have unwittingly crossed into Crip territory and met your death in a hail of 9mm hollow points and cheap Legend of Zelda replica swords.

(Source: Kotaku)