Alrighty, might as well take another stab at this “blogging” thing…

Here’s a news flash that I thought was my duty to report (a few months late, but I have a good excuse… which I’m sure you don’t want to hear, so I won’t have to make one up bore you with it):

THE LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS SIGNED YUTA TABUSE!

That’s right, baby!  The Clips picked up Yuta before the pre-season and immediately put him to work.  Which means, of course, the long-awaited return of…

 The Yuta Line!

Minutes Played	Shots Made/Att	3-pointers Made/Att	Free Throws Made/Att	Rebounds	Assists	Steals	Blocks	Turnovers	Fouls	Points
20.0	4/4	0/0	0/0	4	6	3	1	0	5	8

However, before I could even blog about it…

October 31, 2005: The Clippers today waived guard Yuta Tabuse it was announced by Vice President of Basketball Operations Elgin Baylor.

Freaking heck… with moronic moves like that, NO WONDER these guys haven’t been to the playoffs in almost ten years!  Maybe these bozos were setting their sights a little too low.  Since they haven’t made the playoffs in so long, they were looking for something to snap them out of their slump.  Of course, they turned to the one man who could deliver them to the promised land… YUTA!  Don’t believe me?  Well, take a look at this…

2002-03 Denver Nuggets record: 17 wins, 65 losses
2003-04 Denver Nuggets with Yuta: 43 wins, 39 losses and made the playoffs!

2003-04 Phoenix Suns record: 29 wins, 53 losses
2004-05 Phoenix Suns with Yuta: 62 wins, 20 losses and made the playoffs!

2004-05 Los Angeles Clippers record: 37 wins, 45 losses
2005-06 Los Angeles Clippers with Yuta: currently in 2nd place in their division and playoff-eligible!

Don’t ya see!?!  Just having Yuta exposed to your team for a short while means instant success!  Oh sure, none of these teams won the NBA championship, however.  The Suns came the closest, who coincidentally, were the only ones that actually let him play during the regular season.

So, I’d like to give those NBA teams a little hint… in order to win a championship, STOP FREAKING CUTTING HIM!!

Sigh.

Anyway, instead of a year’s worth of cool blogs about Yuta, you’ll just have to read lesser blogs such as…

 

Once again, Dramamine Boy’s Xanga delves into a topic that occurred before 80% of its readers were even born!  That’s right, it’s the Nintendo Entertainment System’s most popular game of all time*, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!

*Okay, maybe if you don’t count Super Mario Bros… and yeah, Legend Of Zelda was pretty popular too… oh, there’s Donkey Kong… and Tetris… hmmmm, Final Fantasy was good… and I played a ton of Tecmo Bowl… hey, nobody asked for your opinion!  It’s the most popular NES game ever, I tell you!

This was a great game.  It was first called Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! and then later, after Nintendo decided to stop paying Mike Tyson any royalties, it was just called Punch Out!  Regardless of the version, I had yet another name for it… THE MOST RACIST VIDEO GAME EVER!

Don’t believe me!?!  Well, I think we can start by taking a look at the main character of the game (who you control).  His name is Little Mac.  Little Mac is a boxer.  Little Mac is a white boxer.  Little Mac is a white boxer that looks like Fred Savage from The Wonder Years.  Little Mac is a Fred Savage look-alike boxer who is about 3 feet tall.  And three-foot tall Fred Savage’s goal is to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World.

 

That’s Little Mac on the right… who is apparently being managed by the cop from the first Die Hard movie.

Yeah… that guy.

Needless to say, realism isn’t one of the features of this game.  I mean come on, the guy is so small, he has to jump in the air to hit people in the face!

And this little guy is trying to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World!?!

Fine, I guess since it’s a video game, we can give them the benefit of the doubt… as unbelievable and impossible as it may be.  Let’s look at his opponents, shall we?  There are boxers from all over the world, encompassing many different races.  Each one offers a foreboding presence against the 3-foot tall Little Mac.  However, these boxers also have weaknesses by revealing patterns, or should I use the more proper term… STEREOTYPES… which Little Mac exploits to be able to weaken and hurt them, eventually sending them to a humiliating defeat.

And who gets the worst racial treatment?  Of course… the asian boxer.  Piston Honda… I mean geez, let’s just ignore the fact that his freaking name is “Piston Honda”!  When you’re kicking the crap out of him, what does he say?

What.  The.  Heck.

Does Von Kaiser say “Bratwurst, Oktoberfest, Seig Heil”!?!  Of course not.  Doggone asian video game character discrimination, I tell you.

And of course, kicking the crap out of the asian guy gets you a trophy.  Not only that, but you get to kick the crap out of the asian guy TWICE in this game.

“But Dram”, I hear you utter, “isn’t the game made by Nintendo, a japanese company?”.  Why yes, it is.  However, you know once The Man got his hands on it, he had his computer cronies change the code and turn this uber cool game featuring asian Little Tak into this racial abomination with crappy Little Mac.  Just another example of The Man tryin’ to keep an asian video game character down.

It’s not like the asians are the only ones that look bad.  I mean, Bald Bull is like 300 pounds.  Little Mac… 60.  Where was Al Sharpton when this was going on!?!

And hey, what country is Mario from?  Isn’t he supposed to be from Italy?  But he doesn’t speak italian.  He speaks some strange language unknown to this earth.  Is he from the same country as Miss Othmar from Peanuts?  They seem to speak the same language.  For example, when someone gets knocked down, Mario comes in and counts…

Mario Says:	wah	wah	wah	wah	wah	wah	wah	wah	wah	wah	wah-wah!
Translation:	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	KO!

Is that the only sound that is involved in this language?  I just hope I’d never have to interview Mario.  I would ask him a question and he would say something like, “Wah-wah wah wah-wah-wah.” and I would say, “Wha’?”

“Wah.”
“Wha’?”
“WAH!”
“Wha’?”

and then he might slug me or hit me with a big red hammer or something.

Heh… I said “slug”.  Nobody says “slug” anymore.

Anyway, after dominating all of the races from around the world, this little 3-foot high mini-me of a fighter gets a chance to kick the crap out of the Heavyweight Champion of the World, Mike Tyson.

I can understand this, cuz it was like every week back in the ’80s when midgets were climbing into the ring and smacking Mike Tyson around like a little baby.

Not that smacking babies is something that should be condoned… but you know, I’m just sayin’… it’d be easy to do.  Seriously, what’re they gonna do?  They’re babies!  I mean, not only have they yet to advance to an adequate level of motor skills and reflexes to defend themselves, but they also lack the vocabulary and communication skills to express to anyone about the abuse they receive!

But yeah… smacking babies is just wrong.

Okay, so instead of the scrawny white guy kicking the crap out of the league of nations, I thought it would’ve been a lot better if they changed the opponents to make it more “racial friendly”, if I can make up a new term.  For example, how many people would’ve bought Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! if you could beat up…

A Care Bear!  I mean, who WOULDN’T want to kick the crap out of a Care Bear!?!  All big and fluffy and stuff… they’re just begging for a good punch to the face.  Especially that stupid Love-A-Lot.  More like, “Love-A-Lot…To-Beat-You-Up”!

Yeahhhhhh… um… it’s pretty obvious that I suck at snappy comebacks.

Or even better, how about…

BOY GEORGE!  Oh good lord, what kind of mad rush would there have been at Toys “R” Us if they added a chance to beat up “it” in the game?

And yes, I called him “it”.  When the Do You Really Want To Hurt Me video played on MTV (back when MTV played these things called “music videos”), my friend and I had the following conversation:

Friend: That’s a girl, right?

Me: Uhhhh… that’s a guy.

Friend: Are you sure?

Me: …no.  But his name is Boy George!  That’s gotta give you a clue right there!

Friend: Maybe it’s a play on words.  Look at her dance… that’s a girl!

Me: Dude!  That’s not a girl!

So, since we weren’t sure, we both agreed to call Boy George “it” until we determined exactly what “it” was.  I believe that ended up taking a couple of weeks, since this was before the age of the internet, where you actually had to like, go to the library and look things up in books and stuff.  What a frikkin’ pain.

…

Okay, back to the blog!

I know, it’s just the floating head of Boy George.  I couldn’t find a decent full-body picture on the internet and didn’t feel like putting Boy George’s head on top of Don Flamenco’s body or something.  And anyway, who needs a body?  I mean, the game would be awesomely better with a defenseless Boy George Head for everyone to pummel!

Insert your own person here!  They have games now where you can scan in a picture of someone’s face and incorporate it into the game.  For example, in NBA Live, you can scan in a picture of Regis Philbin, stick it onto the body of a player and then spend the whole game dunking on his head.  Now, wouldn’t this be the perfect game to incorporate this into?  I mean, just think how many hours everyone would spend playing this game if they could continually beat up people that bug the crap out of them!  THIS GAME WOULD BE BIGGER THAN JENGA!

Inserting baby faces is not allowed.  Cuz, you know… that would be wrong.

Until next time, “wah-wah wah-wah!”