PicoBlog

“I think the excitement I felt in that church this past Thursday was a kind of communal release. A catharsis for the weird writer girls of the world. There is maybe something still a little radical about sharing some intense and silly info on yourself and then inviting everyone to a pizza party. There is something radical in loving someone anyway. And maybe there is something radical in not knowing who that person you are loving anyway is.

There have been a few surprise stories in European football this season, but perhaps none so heartwarming as RC Lens qualifying for the Champions League. Under manager of the year Franck Haise, Lens have played the most attractive football in France, gaining them many admirers. Their attacking, dynamic style helped them convincingly beat Paris Saint-Germain, Marseille and Monaco on the way to finishing second in Ligue 1, just one point behind the mega rich Parisians.

“Any fool can fast, but it takes a wise person to break a fast”  When I tell people I have done over a dozen long, multi-day fasts, ranging from 3 days to 7 days, they are usually shocked at how difficult it must have been. But on the contrary, the hard part was not the fast, the hard part was breaking it properly. I have broken the fast both ways, and the difference in the short term and long term is astronomical.

Jim Morrison (1943-1971) wanted to be a poet; instead, he became a rock star. Throughout his short life, Jim rarely went anywhere without a notebook. As a teenager, every time he learned a new word, he’d write it down and create a story around it. According to his sister, Jim had a remarkable vocabulary. He found school boring and decided real education was to be found in the library. When he graduated from high school, he asked his parents for the collected edition of Nietzsche’s works.

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. Such was Namco’s early 1980s output that a game that thrived in arcades, spawned a number of sequels, influenced other games within its genre, and helped to push said genre forward was seen as merely a success rather than as revelatory.

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. Burning Rangers is often cited as one of the best games on the Sega Saturn, which I don’t find to be wholly accurate. It’s one of the best ideas on the Saturn, for sure — rather than going around fighting and killing as was so often the case in video games of the day, the focus here is on being heroes who nonviolently save people from fires.

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. Square is and was primarily known for their role-playing games. They’re a major publisher at this point, with subsidiaries they’ve both formed and purchased over the years, but that centerpiece, Square? JRPGs has been their thing forever.

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. You’ve probably played a game developed by Platinum before. Chances are very good that it was all about speed, sharpening your reflexes, honing your instincts, brutal action, visceral combat, etc. Bayonetta, NieR: Automata, Vanquish, Astral Chain, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, MadWorld… these are the kinds of thrilling action games that Platinum built their reputation on.

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. If Metal Gear Solid was the series' The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time equivalent, as both a translation of the 2D franchise into 3D as well as an expansion of its ideas made possible by both experience and new tech, then the Game Boy Color’s Metal Gear: Ghost Babel is its Minish Cap equivalent.