Shoes at the Door

Author: Scott

  • Have You Ever been Affected by Positivity… ?

    Have You Ever been Affected by Positivity… ?

    From today’s title, you may have guessed that this is a follow-up to my last post about how a little hype can go a long way in helping us enjoy things that we actually enjoy. Last time, I talked about how the pervasive negative attitude surrounding video games at the moment might actually be affecting my will to play them, even good ones. Today, I want to talk about how a short, fun, positively toned video can help you enjoy something that isn’t actually all that good.

    Meet Cecil from GoodBadFlicks. He’s been making great videos for years that are mostly about silly horror films made on a shoestring budget. To me, what makes Cecil stand out is all the background work he does in his research, often reaching out to the cast and crew of even one-time projects filmed in the 1980s. It’s amazing how often people are willing to talk about that one silly horror movie they made over thirty years ago. As he is a professional editor, the videos are all well-made and his unpretentious, positive, emotive voice goes a long way in charming you into his perspective for a few minutes.

    Not that Cecil doesn’t extend far outside of my range of appreciation at times, as some movie awfulness is irredeemable beyond even what a charming and sympathetic backstory can add. However, I can’t undersell the effect these stories can have on me in adding to my appreciation of an otherwise badly received film. These short videos can actually help you enjoy some movies well beyond their face value by adding a lot of human context. One might say, however, that this can draw you out of a movie, making it less immersive and experiential. True, but this is exactly what some movies need. You see, Cecil’s videos don’t make the movies good, but they do make them more fun to watch. And for that, he deserves a spot in my little internet hall of fame.

    But now I want to be clear about what I mean regarding what I have said about positivity and negativity. Like any good and worthwhile conversation, some people have seen fit to take things too far. Like I said in the previous article, many of us don’t want to admit how certain dialogues affect us on a subconscious level. We want to believe that we are completely in charge of our minds, and that our perceptions regarding our immediate, personal area of control are unflawed. A few years ago, I had a roommate that began to rely on a show of anger as a coping mechanism for all of the life situations he found confusing or difficult. Obviously, as most coping mechanisms will do, this led to the further obfuscation of the core issues and, indeed, negatively affected his personal relationships and ability to be promoted at his job. Nothing new there. But what I didn’t realize, even knowing all this, is how much the experience was affecting me, even though I wasn’t always the target of his anger. When I finally moved out, I noticed a big change in myself and in my overall mood.

    Though this is something important to consider, I don’t believe that positive vibes are a worthy or healthy lifegoal by themselves. They are the perks of true accomplishment and rewards for maintaining good relationships by relinquishing self-centeredness, grudges, and personal criticism while embracing grace, forgiveness, and sacrifice. It is also worthwhile to discuss how negative vibes can distort the clarity of what I just mentioned, subverting good goals and good relationships for toxic, codependent ones, which can include ridiculous, self-prescribed goals for achieving happiness that can’t and never do pay off and enslaving relationships with the imbedded goal of trying to keep an unappeasable person happy.

    Ironically, this downward spiral can also be caused by seeing other people as a means to an end, with the end being positive vibes only. Though it would require more investigation on my part to know for sure, this seems to be the idea behind groups that desire to turn positivity into a movement or even a sociopolitical obligation. Positive vibes at the cost of truth are made of the same substance that cause the same psychoses brought on by pervasive negativity. The fact is that positivity doesn’t necessarily cancel out negativity in the context of living a healthy, flourishing life of meaningful goals and relationships. Negatively criticizing people for not positively affirming your toxic relationships and debilitating life goals, for example, will thrust you into an unnavigable world of negativity incomparable to even a temporary relationship with a negative person. Truth, however, cancels out lies, and it provides a cornerstone for a life that can enjoy positivity with no strings attached. What I mean here is that we often need friends to offer a second pair of eyes on things that may seem obvious to us in our present predicament. Good assessment on their part might not be too positive or affirming, but it could lead to enjoying true positive feelings together in the long run, which should linger far longer than those forced out of others and consumed like an addictive drug with all the diminishing returns natural to such things.

  • Have You Ever been Affected by Negativity… ?

    Have You Ever been Affected by Negativity… ?

    Here at shoesatthedoor, we talk a lot about how contemporary social media algorithms affect our view of reality. But I usually think about this in the context of either searching for or consciously receiving new information. When we consciously form opinions on the state of things in the world, we sometimes think uncritically about the apparent data algorithms are presenting to us. This is to say nothing of how the volume of selected content coming down the pipeline affects us on a more subconscious level.

    For those of us who are making these connections, I think the tendency is to unplug. But we’ve still got a job to do. Some of us have got to put on the hazmat suits, wade in, and curate the material, separating the chaff from the chaff we like. Then how can one know, you may ask, what can be safely regarded as that upon which one may carve an informed opinion? Well, perhaps forming an opinion on the state of things is overrated. But perhaps there is some good advice out there for vetting material such that some opinions will be slightly better than others.

    As you may know, I began this exploration into blog curation with video game videos on YouTube. I wanted to explore why I liked the videos I liked, and why I didn’t the ones I didn’t. Today, I want to share another piece of that puzzle, but previously unbeknownst to me, it turns out to operate on a more subconscious level. At this point, I must say that I usually don’t want to admit when I’m being affected on a subconscious level. I’m a little too proud for that. But right now, with the all the apparent data in front of me, I find no better explanation for the ennui I now feel toward video games than that which accounts for the sheer force of the overwhelming quantity of negativity about gaming being uploaded every single day.

    I don’t think it would be overly simplistic and small-minded to point out here that it wasn’t always this way. When I was young, my favorite publication, PC gamer, did nothing but get me hyped about every single game coming out. The negativity just wasn’t there, except when certain releases were obviously crossing the line in their lack of quality control. Gaming publications of yesteryear doubled as your excited friends and as your guardians watching out for wolves in sheep’s clothing. And the excitement didn’t just come from my having been young. In 1994, PC gaming and its magazines, including PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World, were made by and for more mature audiences. The video above rightly points out that old games are not necessarily better than games today (though there are good elements that have been lost). And if they are better, where has the excitement gone? Perhaps a little bit of hype is not such a bad thing, especially when handled by a third party. But don’t forget that some gamers used to get so hyped that they would issue death threats to these publications for negative reviews even before playing the game. Well, I guess they won. The publications of yesteryear are no more. Sure, some of them are around in name, but they have been bought out to the degree that they can no longer serve their original purpose. Now, hype has turned to hate, and no doubt by the same people who were issuing death threats for negative reviews.

    This brings us to our headlining video. I’ve been watching NeverKnowsBest‘s videos for a while, ever since he made one about how the classic video game RPGs of the 90s were more fun because they were more imbalanced and exploitable. He’s not in the running for my hall of fame, however, because he’s doing what I’m doing, editorializing curated material. And he’s doing a great job. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but that’s not the point. He’s helping and encouraging people to have more informed, thoughtful conversations about the topics he covers, which is exactly what I want to do here at Shoes.

    Watch the video and hopefully it will complement what I’ve written above. But I do want to make a couple of comments on its observations and conclusions. First, the situation is not really that bad. Though I feel sorry for those who have been laid off, I feel as though I have to feel just as bad for those who have been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood. This is an industry based on entertainment technology, and it is about as predictable as the fickle human beings that provide its custom. I don’t think that it is very caring to act as if people don’t have to think about their career paths, encouraging them to follow their dream. If we really want a world where everyone is simply following their dream, we really shouldn’t be getting angry at the fact that nobody’s dream is to make my dream come true. Funny how, conversely, anger is the primary emotion that pursuing dreams seems to produce. And in terms of demand, I think it would also be rather uncaring not to remind people that they really don’t need the entertainment they think they do. You can do your own research, but you might easily believe that links have been shown between the crazed demand for entertainment and the social isolation that stems from postmodern consumerism. Gaming used to be so much smaller, and it was never better regarded than before postmodern dialogues began to reconstruct the meaning of “community”.

    Second, the end of the video mentions elements of recent criticisms regarding what is being called “winner-takes-all capitalism.” Though this concept might be worth thinking about in some areas, I think it would be rather dangerous to give people the unqualified idea of clamoring for a marriage of government intervention with entertainment dissatisfaction. The fact that some games have such a large piece of the market might mean that a lot of people are actually having a lot of fun. Do less popular game projects need government protection for not being as fun to as many people, or because people simply do not have time to play all the games? Are the games of any such real value? Or is the ideal simply that the purpose of such government intervention would be to ensure that people never have to think about their career path and follow their dreams? Maybe if I lived in a country that taxed corporations and not its poor dreamless employees, this might not be the worst idea, but it certainly could not be too high on the list. It just seems like a bad idea to put the pitchforks in the hands of the angry mob, the very stupid angry mob who are now appearing on my YouTube side bar now that I’ve watched this video.

    However, I must also lament here the state of independent games. As the big game releases of the last five years have been a little rough for me personally, looking back, I find that I have been playing a lot more indie titles than previous. Like the video mentions, I do remember a time between 2008 and 2014 when you could simply browse for good and interesting games on Steam. But now, with Valve adding 16K games a year, they have effectively, like everything else, offloaded the curation duty onto publications that no longer exist. Who could have possibly handled it, anyway? And what could government intervention do here but somehow protect us from the natural consequences of evil so that the ship never has to right itself? Is that good? Exactly how many of these sixteen thousand projects deserve protection, anyway? Each year? Is capitalism bad because it can’t do that? Not that we don’t all suffer from it a bit, but I still think the questions must be posed.

    Like the video mentions, people have been predicting the death of gaming for a very long time. But despite all odds, some very special people seem to be drawn to make them, no matter the consequences to themselves. It’s always been that way. The sad truth is that we’re the ones who have changed. We’ve let the algorithms get under our skin so much that we can’t even enjoy what we enjoy. There is more to it, more than even what I and the video have stated. But if you want to get in on the conversation, you must respect what NeverKnowsBest has brought to the table. So check out these other two highly recommended videos.

  • Blogs, CDs, and, Hopefully, Baggy Cargo Pants.

    Blogs, CDs, and, Hopefully, Baggy Cargo Pants.

    One thing that often comes up in conversations about interests in resurgences and retro items has to do with whether or not younger people are getting into it too. For us not young folks, seeing young people getting into the things we liked in our day is at least the most apparent argument against the “It’s just nostalgia” debates likely still raging across uncountable message boards and video posts. Even if you’re not engaging in such drivel, seeing young people play with your toys might feel rather affirming while such negative dialogues still permeate the public consciousness. And I believe in being very fair about it. Not everything can stand on its own, but I have to believe that some things can.

    Watch this short and interesting video about why people are getting back into CDs. I had no idea that digital rereleases of old tunes were being doctored. It is rather staggering. But I do think that perhaps the only reason to feel bad about this information is that we live in a world where there is now no limit to how much power technology can give to corporations or other groups who have a pointed interest in doctoring the past. Unlike the fellow in this video, my concern is not that young people won’t appreciate the human quality of undoctored music, but rather that they will. Not everyone will, of course, but I don’t think anyone who grew up when I did would dare to put much hope in something good being popular. No, my concern is that the trend in question, of doctoring old music, points to the bigger trend of (post)modern attempts to burn the past. In the case of media, the most obvious explanation has to do with simple greed. But erasing the past also gives one an authoritative monopoly on repackaging and reselling its contents, and that is a powerful thing. Ironically, this is exactly the kind of thing that the early purveyors of postmodern thought wanted to prevent. That might seem like a heavy place to go when talking about paid music streaming, but human reliance on the digital pipeline has only increased since its inception, and I wonder how many more bait and switch routines we’ll see in the coming years.

    But as for young people, I’m not too worried. About as many people care about good music now as they did when I was young. The fact is that there is probably always going to be a group of people out there who enjoy experimenting with different sounds. That really has nothing to do with trends, but it does have something to do with the wild souls of human beings that feel drawn to certain variations of sounds. In some way, the trendsetters, even when digital augmentation was unavailable, always seemed to hold up technical precision as a rather lofty ideal. But those few who, for whatever reason, deign to take just a few more steps deeper into the world of music are probably going to be bucking the trends anyway. They will find their own way, just as they always have. But I do hope that the digital world does not make doing so that much harder than it needs to be for the sake of making a few extra dollars.

    Additionally, the news presented in this video really does nothing for us who have always had to defend electronic music as a true artistic endeavor. Ironically, I always felt that the real trick to making electronic music that wasn’t just for dance clubs was in what the artist had to do to put the human element back into the music. In many ways, that is the “art” of electronic music – freeing it from its reductive roots and surpassing the stereotypes. I once saw a video of Portishead, and a guy was playing the digital drums live. He didn’t need to, right? Or maybe he really did.

  • Have You Ever Revisited Lumines II… ?

    Have You Ever Revisited Lumines II… ?

    Well, Michael posted about a DDR track and a GBA game and, somehow, I landed here, posting on shoesatthedoor and thinking about Lumines II for the psp. That was the first time I had ever heard music like this while playing a game – and over its music video, too! It was an incredible moment I had not expected. The game started out like the previous one, a kind of Tetris-style game with a slight musical component. Suddenly, the song changed, and the background faded into the music video. It was spectacular. And this wasn’t the only one. The game even featured one of Takagi Masakatsu‘s song-moving-painting things, perhaps one of his best. At the time, it was a multimedia experience that felt quintessentially Sony. I’m not really sure if companies compete for that wow-factor anymore, or maybe I just don’t notice it, except for in racing.

    Near the end of university, and just after, I traveled a lot, and I spent a lot of time on airplanes and in some other rough places with my psp, playing Lumines II and Taiko no Tatsujin. Hearing these songs really takes me back, not to anyplace good, but to a place I was pretty thankful for having them.

    I had known about Takagi Masakatsu before. I used to hang out on some website that was all about minimalistic music. I forgot what it was called. I found Masakatsu there and this other little band called Lali Puna. I also bought a couple of his CDs back then, probably the rarest things I own. Hopefully, with this blog, we won’t lose anymore websites.

  • There’s Plenty of Old Anime

    There’s Plenty of Old Anime

    There’s plenty of old anime out there for those who know how to find it. Thankfully, there’s a lot on YouTube that’s easy to find, and not all of it is old rips. But I want the old rips, too.

    Lately, I’ve been catching up on some Cat’s Eye on @AnimeonTMSOfficialChannel (Tokyo Movie Shinsha). I guess they figured they’d make more money on YouTube views than trying to sell this oldie. But it’s a win for those of us who want to cozy up with some city pop skylines. Cat’s Eye also has one of my favorite, and not overused(?), anime tropes, what I call ‘the cafe’ or ‘the hub’. A lot of the episodes have the characters returning to their cafe between story beats. Sure, other shows have characters going back to an office or an apartment, but that’s not where you want to be. Besides, it’s too Charlie’s Angels. You want a good hub. You want to go to that familiar place where everybody knows, well, probably just your face. And what’s with the highway outside? This is one of those cafes you need a car to access, isn’t it? That’s why it’s always empty. Who doesn’t dream of working at a bookshop-cafe with no customers?

    You can also find some anime feature shows on private channels, and uploaders like to add in some period-appropriate Japanese commercials for fun. You can find shows of varying quality on Group Therapy PodCast and Orbital Bacon (the links go to the playlists). When I find some others worth mentioning, I’ll try and post them as well. One thing I like about Orbital Bacon is how he pays tribute to the old Saturday Morning Anime show on the Sci-Fi channel. But for old rips that are of mostly decent quality, check out English Dubbed [VHS] and VHS Era Anime. There’s some better-quality stuff on archive, but we’ll get to that later. The reason I like seeing this stuff preserved and available is that a lot of old anime distributers are not around anymore and the dubs they licensed had to be redone for present day streaming, for copyright purposes. The problem is that since these are no longer big, expensive productions, localization dubs seem to be going to the lowest bidder. Now, the translations are overly stiff and snooty (for weaboos only), and the voice acting is vapid and emotionless. Even if the old dubs did sometimes take a few too many liberties with the content and the translation, they were still sometimes pretty fun to watch.

  • Have You Ever Gone on an Adventure Game… ?

    Have You Ever Gone on an Adventure Game… ?

    Well, Dan Avidan has.

    So, in my last post, I reminded you about how I was putting together this internet hall of fame, but I didn’t elaborate on it much. The reason I want to bring this up again is because I somehow want to extend to you, the reader, the experience of how this sort of curation can yield certain dialogues that you might not have expected when starting out. For example, I started out with the kind of videos that I understand the most, that is, videos created by writing, editing, and performing. We started with video games and then we added movies, and there will be more stuff coming from other new categories, as well. But what about videos that don’t really require editing or writing? Obviously, the internet has a lot of those. Do we add to the hall of fame Sparks the kitty, that does that cute little thing with the box? It doesn’t really seem to fit. But what about Game Grumps, the YouTube channel that features a couple of guys playing video games – and that’s it?

    What do we do when we are observing something with a perhaps unidentifiable and unquantifiable quality that, although having no discernible label, is noticeable in both its presence and absence? Not only that, but how do you pin this quality onto something when it’s not always there?

    Sometimes, Game Grumps is pretty good, but not always. But then, I’m not sure if I fit into their biggest audience demographic. And that’s okay. They should be thankful for having an audience demographic, perhaps more so if that demographic is a little different from themselves. And they do seem to be thankful. But in terms of entertainment, some episodes really knock it out of the park for me. And maybe the simple fact is that these guys just are entertaining, except when they’re not. Perhaps the problem has something to do with the art of improv. I also tend to think that when the dialogue gets off of the game in front of the people playing it, the entertainment suffers. For example, in one of the most entertaining episodes to date, the P.T. demo (10 million views), the dialogue stayed on-game the whole time. At any rate, when deciding for the hall of fame, I want to see each candidate for their best. And for me, that’s going to be Dan’s solo adventure game series.

    Now, I usually go to Game Grumps for laughs, but these videos are special. I really wish Dan had kept going with these, but I’m not sure how big of an audience there is for this kind of thing. While playing through Sierra’s Space Quest adventure games, Dan shows himself to be quite the capable host, taking the audience on a tour of what might be a rather inaccessible experience for most, all while keeping the dialogue going with his smooth, mellifluous voice. And it’s a tour that’s worth taking. It is worthwhile to experience old PC gaming in its best possible light instead of complaining about its lack of modern conveniences because putting the games in this light helps us understand how they were first played and enjoyed. This is almost, if not equally, as important as game preservation by itself. How many books have been preserved in libraries without most people ever having known how to appreciate them? Of course, I do take that to be the bigger problem. Nevertheless, we may have learned something from Dan, here. And that makes Game Grumps good enough for the Internet Hall of Fame.

  • Have You Ever Created a Hall of Fame?

    Have You Ever Created a Hall of Fame?

    Well, this is my first one. Since I started working on this blog, I’ve wanted to create a little “Hall of Fame” to recognize the internet’s creators and performers that stand out most to me. I started with Games Sack and Iron Pineapple, and I tried to start some interesting conversations about what perhaps makes them stand out over the rest. Today, we’re meeting Oliver Harper, a creator and performer that uploads classic movie retrospectives to YouTube.

    Like the previous two hall-of-famers I covered, Oliver’s videos are a product of editing, writing, and speaking, and, as before, he does it very well, naturally and concisely, and without the use of overly emotional blathering and creatively debauched and tiresome youtuber language. The experience is quite smooth, and the harmony between the writing and the editing is nice and punchy. A lot of the experience is down to Oliver’s choices, his curation of material, if you will, that reflects some thoughtful deliberation on what would be most interesting and engaging to his audience. Part of this material includes a great deal of thought-provoking context and history for each film, and this is one area where Oliver really stands out. I don’t know where he is getting all of his information, but it’s not from Wikipedia, and it’s not full of the copy-and-pasted errors and rumors repeated on so many other, similar channels. No, this is good reporting. As someone who has collected a lot from books and interviews and a variety of other published material over the years, I have to say that curating such material well is a significant skill that cannot be neglected when doing this kind of work. We should be thankful for those who have it.

    One other thing that makes Oliver interesting to me is the fact that he shares my birth year. Where I grew up in the United States experiencing these movies, he grew up with them in England. The similarities and contrasts between these experiences are fascinating to me, and it truly adds to the viewing experience. The film commentaries on Oliver’s channel are also a nice bonus, but many of his recent partners are a little lacking in charm, for my tastes, that is, except for comedian Nick Helm. Nick actually had his own TV series at one point. It made me laugh, but it was a little too nihilistic for me. I’ll put their Judge Dread commentary below for you to sample. At any rate, I heartily recommend Oliver Harper for some lunch break viewing.

  • Have You Ever Eaten Soggy Cereal…?

    Have You Ever Eaten Soggy Cereal…?

    Well, this guy is done with it. It’s food day here on ShoesAtTheDoor.com. No, it isn’t, but I should have posted this under Cereal Man. This is okay, though. It gives me a chance to talk about this show separately from its channel, The Dice Tower, which I plan to cover later.

    This is Crowd Surfing, the panel show that covers pertinent information about crowdfunding campaigns that are, at the time of recording, live. Most of the campaigns are related to board gaming, but, as you can see, they have also been working on covering the weird and wonderful as well. This is also another opportunity for us to point at someone and say, “Look, they’re doing what we’re doing!”

  • You Were Doing It Wrong…

    You Were Doing It Wrong…

    You didn’t know. We didn’t know.

    It needed more hum anyway.

  • Have You Ever Scrolled Down… ?

    Have You Ever Scrolled Down… ?

    I almost never do. But when I saw this today, I felt I had to leave a comment. One person, who apparently felt the same way, goes by the username of JoeButtCrack. That’s what I get for scrolling down.

    I subscribe to this channel because it’s full of old cartoons from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Now I have a new reason.