I think we'd all like to reclaim our time...

Better sit down for this. I don't know if you heard, but did you know that Micheal Cohen lied to Congress? And that he's going to jail for it? I mention this in case you didn't catch it the nine or ten times Republicans on the hearing committee repeated it. So Micheal Cohen has maybe not been the the most upstanding guy. In fact, I daresay he's behaved downright criminally. Which, if you haven't heard, has lead to his going to jail.

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth for realsies this time. Pinky swear."

-Micheal Cohen, earlier today

Maybe if he didn't commit so many
crimes, Congress wouldn't have to
waste time investigating them.

The whole first half of the day (I think they're back in session now, but I fold) has been kind of a shit show. Democrats keep asking questions about all the illegal things Cohen and Donald Trump have done, hoping in vain that someone, somewhere will looked shocked at the idea that maybe Donald Trump isn't on the up and up. Meanwhile, Republicans have been expressing their outrage at what a big waste of time this all is and how Congress has more important things to do than looking into crimes committed by the President.

Which, do they? Have better things to do I mean. Obviously they have other important things to do, but the President paying hush money, lying about his business dealings and contacts and maybe even being beholden to a foreign government seems, I don't know, important? And in fact, isn't looking into this literally Congress' job?

"Uh...nyet, don't worry about it."

-The guy who picked our President for us

"If only someone saw this coming..."

-The woman most of us voted for

Maybe I'm biased (I'm definitely biased), but I'm pretty ready to believe what he's saying about the President's alleged crimes. Like, it all sounds like the kind of shit he (or say, a mob boss) would do, and while I don't blame people for being suspicious of Cohen's motivations, I do blame people for pretending that Trump's given us any reason to believe anything he's ever said. He made up that shit about Obama's birth certificate, he made up three million illegal voters to explain away his loss of the popular vote and just the other day he claimed to have invented the Fourth of July.

Look, again, I freely admit my bias here. And yeah, today has been full of partisan grandstanding and preaching to both parties' respective choirs. But with all the GOP committee members bloviating about how sleazy Micheal Cohen is, and what a liar he is and how going to jail he is, is it weird that they all seem to have forgotten that he spent a decade lawyering for Trump?

"Ladies and gentleman of the committee, Micheal Cohen is a liar and a cheat.
I ask you, why are we wasting our time listening to him? Only a complete fool
or a crook would even associate himself with this sleaze..."

-Representative Jim Jordan,

talking about the President's

friend and lawyer of ten years

Today in the literal definition of absurdity:

"The President? A sleazy racist?
I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!"

-No one ever

Wait, seriously? Absurd? I'm not sure Sarah Huckabee Sanders is really the person to point out absurdity given that her job is to try and spin everything the President does and says as something other than dishonest, mean-spirited garbage. But ok, what am I talking about? Why this. If you clicked, and I know you didn't, you'd have read a story about a woman called Alva Johnson, the director of outreach and coalitions for the Trump campaign in Alabama, who is saying that Trump forcibly kissed her and also that she was discriminated against by the campaign on the basis of her race and sex and has filed a lawsuit.

Although, it's probably
only a matter of time...

A spokesperson was quick to defend the campaign  against the discrimination charge saying:

"The Trump campaign has never discriminated based on race, ethnicity, gender or any other basis. Any allegation suggesting otherwise is off base and unfounded."

-Kayleigh McEnanay, spokesperson and as yet 

un-indicted member of the Trump campaign

"It's why we voted for him!"

-idiots

Huh. I'm not sure 'off base' and 'unfounded' are really the right words here. Because what Johnson is claiming seems highly probable and fully consistent with everything we know about Donald Trump and the people he surrounds himself with. I mean, wasn't Trump's campaign platform entirely based on discriminating against people based on race, ethnicity, and gender? The 'Make America Great Again' slogan is kind of just code for 'white men should continue to run things forever,' so what exactly is implausible about Johnson's accusation?

Why would she lie about this? I mean,
it means admitting that she willingly
worked for the Trump campaign...

As for the accusation of sexual misconduct, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed it by adhering to the administration's long standing policy of calling any women who accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault liars. Which, after the 19 previous accusations (I think Johnson makes 20), you'd think someone in the White House might start to wonder? Unless, huh, you don't suppose they know this is absolutely a pattern and they're just lying to protect their gross boss, do you?

Does she think we're talking about
some other President Trump?

Anyway, here's Huckabee Sanders' dumb response about how guilty Trump isn't:

"This accusation is absurd on its face. This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eye witness accounts." 

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders,
incredibly with a straight face

Absurd? Absurd. Is it possible that she misspoke? While she said that the accusations are absurd, could she have meant to say something like: "We take these claims very seriously and welcome a thorough investigation?" Because it kind of sounds like she doesn't know what absurd means.

Above: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is absurd.
Accusing Trump of sexual misconduct is just another weekday.*

But it does describe the President himself.
He is the literal definition of absurd.

I just have so many questions. Like, what does she mean multiple credible eye witnesses? Who are they? How did they find a single credible member of the campaign team, much less many members who would offer eye-witness accounts? Aren't most of them either in or going to prison? But I think an even more pressing question is how Huckabee Sanders defines 'absurd.' The dictionary defines the word as "ridiculously unreasonable, unsound or incongruous," which describes exactly zero of the accusations.

Ok, so accusations and lawsuits aren't the same thing as proven facts. Cool, everyone's entitled to the benefit of the doubt, right? But do any of these accusations sound even remotely out there? But we've all heard Trump on tape talking about how great it is that he can forcibly kiss and sexually assault women, so is a twentieth woman accusing him of exactly that absurd, or just, you know, a crime?

Pictured: Trump, Billy Bush, Arienne Zucker moments after Trump
and Bush discussed their fondness for sexual assault. 

*Hey, get me: two Beckett references in as many weeks. Looks like that theatre degree is finally paying off.

He knows it's already a thing, right?

In another brilliant innovation from the man who routinely brings us angry tweets and Oscars commentary, Donald Trump, the former host of The Apprentice, has decided that the fourth of July should be the date for a brand new celebration-'A Salute to America.'

Wait, Obama Inauguration big or Women's March big?
I ask because the administration isn't great at estimating crowd size.

Pictured: a fictional President who's
a murder and played by a sex offender,
whom most of us would rank above Trump.

Fireworks? Entertainment? An address by our favorite President? Which, our favorite President? Does he really think that...whatever, moving on. Now, some haters, that is people who are alive and aware of things, have pointed out that the Fourth of July is already an American holiday and has been for over two-hundred years and that's true, but Trump's Independence Day celebration will be totally different because it will include a parade. Yes, a Fourth of July Parade. Now that's thinking outside the box if you ask me.

Well, maybe not so welcoming
 to these guys...so welcome to most.

CNN asked spokesperson for D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser for some clarity about how this celebration is different from literally every celebration since the end of the eighteenth century:

"Like you, we are assessing what will be different this year but we know these celebrations only truly salute America when they are inclusive, diverse and welcome all,"

-D.C. Mayor's Spokesperson

"So how come there's
no white history month?"

-some idiot

No, not at all different. So obviously that's coming from the Mayor's office where they are no doubt scrambling to prepare for whatever half thought out propaganda fest the President suddenly decided to throw for himself at tax payer expense. I mean, c'mon, the President would never use words like inclusive and diverse. If you recall, Trump based his entire campaign on persuading racist idiots to vote for him by railing against inclusiveness and diversity. And isn't he trying to appropriate funds to built his dumb wall? And-forget it. Sometimes we just have to pick our battles.

Because suddenly Americans need an
excuse to celebrate how great we think we are?

So you're probably wondering why Donald Trump is throwing himself a Fourth of July parade and the go-to answer is because he's a narcissistic goon in need of constant praise and validation, but that's too easy. Not incorrect, just too easy. I mean, sure, this is a guy who has routinely throws rallies for himself between his extended golf vacations so he can bask in the adoration of the aforementioned idiots, but this feels like something else, something sinister. But what?

Maybe he thinks if he throws a parade we'll all forget about climate change or the wealth disparity? Like a bread and circuses thing? Or maybe it's an attempt to distract us from the fact everyone responsible for getting him into office is going to prison. Or could it be, and I don't think this is as paranoid and crazy as it sounds, some kind of trap? Guess we'll just have to wait for A Salute to America Day, which, and save the date, is on July 4th.

Whatever Trump's real reasons are, if he starts blaring Prince
music and showering parade goers with cash, run. Just run.

Don't be the Biff.

So the problem with the question of what one would do with a time machine is that there's a couple of things you kind of have to do. Like, you'd have to the responsible things, right? You know, things like kill Hitler, prevent 9/11, and maybe have a little talk with the Bernie or Bust people about how the electoral college works. Time travel stuff.

That bird that landed on Sanders' podium in
Portland was tried to warn us. If only we'd listened...

Although I did once see a production of Beckett's
Endgame in which time seemed to stand still.

You shouldn't say, give your younger self a sports almanac in order to bet on sports, get rich and cheat at life, right? That would be pretty selfish. It's the difference between being a Biff Tannen and being a Sam Becket. I bring this up because-huh? No, you're thinking of Samuel Beckett. He's an Irish playwright who wrote Waiting for Godot. To my knowledge, he never traveled through time. I'm talking about Sam Becket from Quantum Leap. You know, Scott Bakula? Anyway, I mention this because of this.

Yeah, idiots like a fox...

Yeah, it's another nerd auction that hit an absurdly high price, but you know that because you clicked the link, right? Right? I give up. Ok, so if you had clicked, you'd see that last week a mint, sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. went for $100,150. Of money. Which is crazy, because like everyone in America had a copy of Super Mario Bros. So what kind of idiot paid a hundred thousand dollars for one? A groups of idiots actually, who pooled their resources to buy the most ubiquitous game ever.

Now who's laughing, then wheezing,
then catching their breaths and then
laughing some more? Us, that's who.

Or did they? Well, yes, they did, but I'm trying to suggest that there's more to the story. It's called good writing. So this particular copy of SMB-huh? That's the acronym for Super Mario Bros. It's called lazy writing. So this particular copy is unopened which itself is super rare, but what's even more rare is that this is a copy from the initial test market run of the NES from 1985 and '86 back when everyone was busy doing coke and dismissing the video game industry as a childish fad for loser jerks who'd rather play those dumb game tapes than go outside and get some fresh air and exercise.

Pictured: A 4 bedroom, 3 bath house in
Cleveland Heights, Ohio for $99,999,
$151 less than this copy of Super Mario.

Assuming there's actually a copy of the game inside and not say, shredded newspaper or something-what? Who knows? No one's ever opened it. What I'm getting at is that there's nothing special about the software itself. It's the same vanilla $.50 garage sale pack-in game everyone has squirreled away in their parent's attic. It's just that this particular copy is worth enough money to buy a house. Well, not a house here in California, but a house. I don't know, Ohio. Look, the point is it's a rare, expensive copy of a game and that the California housing market is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. What? I can have two points...

Which brings me back to the time machine question, because holy shit, I'd like to say I'd only do the responsible, grown-up time machine stuff. But realistically, between Hitler-murder and 9/11 thwarting, I would 100% drop by seven year-old me's house and convince him/me to take better care of the boxes my NES games came in. Oh, and while I'm at it, maybe pick up a copy of Stadium Games and never open it.

Look, if we're being honest, traveling back in time to buy up
mint in box copies of video games and auctioning them off in the
present would beat the hell out of working. Of course, selling
rides on a time machine would be pretty lucrative as well.

Slèaze-Majesté

So I get that Alec Baldwin's kind of a creep and no stranger to angry, threatening tweets, but still, I'm rooting for him on this one.

Wait, he knows SNL isn't the news right? Holy shit,
 did he think he was watching himself on the news?

If nothing else, Trump's presidency
has made SNL great again.

Yup, that's the President musing about how television networks are just allowed to criticize him and how come they aren't facing swift retribution? Apparently he was butt hurt that Alec Baldwin reprised his Trump impression to mock the President's declaration of a national emergency. You know, the one that sixteen states are currently suing him over? Anyway, I think the irony here is that SNL for the most part isn't funny. In fact, the only thing keeping them in the zeitgeist is ripping on his administration. In many ways, he could solve everyone's problem by resigning.

He then suggests that this should be looked into, because something something 'the real collusion...' Holy shit, right? Like, the obvious answer to why they can get away with 'Republican hit jobs' is because this isn't Stalin's Russia, but shouldn't he know that? Isn't he the President of America?

"What, suddenly he's pro-investigation?"

-Robert Mueller

I'm just being diplomatic. Their
beef with Obama was that he's black.
Because they're racists. Some of them
maybe just a little, but still, racist.

And yes, we are now living in a world where the President of the United States is feeling threatened by an SNL skit and so is making weird, sweaty threats about retribution. Threats against Saturday Night Live. He basically called for a Nixon-esque Saturday Night Live Massacre. I mean, how did we get here again? Like, I know the people who voted for him are by and large unreasonable goons, but is this the world they really want to live in? Like, their beef with Obama was that he wanted people to have affordable health coverage, but their guy wants NBC tried for Lèse-Majesté.

Huh? Yes, I looked it up so I could sound fancy. It's a French term for the crime of insulting the King or Queen of a country. In effect, treason. Which, no. I mean, he's a former game show host, not Louis XIV.

Although he does like to pretend he lives in Versailles.

"It makes perfect sense, and you in the media
had better start being nicer to us...or else..."

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders

There's nothing that says anyone has to be nice to the President. If anything we're obligated to express our disgust, because America. In fact, he himself spent the eight or so years leading up to his Presidency railing about Barack Obama, but now he seems to put making fun of the President in the category of ' grounds for retaliation.' Meanwhile, insisting for years that Obama was secretly from Kenya and therefore illegitimate based entirely on a rumor that he himself made is totes fine. How does that even make sense? Oh, right.

Anyway, Baldwin tweeted today asking if he should be concerned about his safety and no, of course he shouldn't, but he's got a point. Threatening critics with retaliation is some straight up fascist nonsense and someone ought to 25th Amendment the shit out of him before it's too late. Which...it's too late, isn't it?

Pictured: Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe who thought
about, but evidently didn't, 25th Amendment the shit out of him.

(not pictured: all the dumb, angry 

tweets from the President about this)

Because priorities!

I know I've been talking about frivolous things a lot recently. Video games, things that are and aren't Coachella, video games again. I guess I just needed something to distract me from the unrelenting trauma that is the national emergency we are apparently in the midst of. Huh? Healthcare? Education? Guns? No, I'm talking about the national emergency that is the President not getting what he wants. 2/15: Never forget.

"What am I supposed to do, not build the wall I promised
the rabid-foam racists who voted for me I would build?"

-Some guy

Getting your hands on guns is
easy, choosing the date is hard.

Although speaking of guns, we did have a fatal mass shooting yesterday in Aurora Illinois. Huh? No, you're thinking of the Aurora Colorado shooting in 2012. This is a whole new Aurora mass shooting. Guess we'll have to call it something else. And just days after the one year anniversary of the Parkland shooting. You know, if you're planning to carry out a massacre, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a day that isn't already the anniversary of some other mass shooting in America.

Did you every read about how the ancient Romans had so many festivals and celebrations that by the time the Empire started to collapse, half the days in the year were holidays? That's us, but with murder.

Never thought we'd outdo the ancient Romans
when it came to murderousness, but here we are...

"Guns don't kill people,
folly artists kill people."

-Dumb idiots

It's gotten so bad that when we hear a loud bang our first and not unreasonable assumption is a mass shooter and not say something that sounds like a gunshot, like a fire cracker or a pan dropped in the kitchen. Even in situations where a room full of people should reasonably expect the sound of simulated gunfire, like say at a play. Say at-oh, wait, heads up, I'm about to spoil Hamilton, which, if you haven't seen it and who has? Tickets are like a million dollars. But if you haven't seen it, listened to the sound track or if you failed middle school social studies, it ends with a shooting.

Last night at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, during the scene where Aaron Burr shoots Alexander Hamilton, a man in the audience suffered a heart attack and had to be carried out. But between the staged gunshot and the general sense that any of us in America can be murdered by a shooter at any moment, someone freaked out.

To be clear, the gunshot was not a surprise. It happens in
a duel, so there's a countdown and everything. They even sing
a song about it first, so it's not like you couldn't see it coming.

"If audience members had more guns
this wouldn't have happened."

-Wayne LaPierre, 

head of the NRA*

Details are pretty fuzzy, but according to witnesses, someone in the house shouted for the lights to come up and people panicked thinking that there'd been an actual shooting, which again, this is America so, 50/50 chance. Two audience members were injured in the chaos, the man who had a heart attack is in critical condition and apparently a child had a seizure of some kind. Basically it was a shit show, but the take away here is that when there's an emergency in a crowded and darkened theatre, assumption one is that someone with issues got their hands on a legal, easily obtained firearm and opened fire.

Holy shit, right? And to be clear, the fault isn't with a panicky audience, I mean what else are they to think? But sure, the President's dumb border wall is a crisis. Oh well, at least this grossly unconstitutional overreach won't ever come back to bite him or the GOP in the ass.

"So if you win, what are you going to declare a national 
emergency first: Education? Guns? Me, I'm thinking healthcare. 
Just naionalize the whole thing. It's going to be sweet."

-Kamala Harris, planning some comeuppance

*Not an actual quote, but 100% what he would say about this. 100%.

Right in my 8-bit Achilles heel...

Yes, this again. Like the previous post, this is going to get a little nerdy. Video game nerdy, so I'm not offended if you want to take a warp zone or fast travel out of here...no? See, those were video games references and-sorry. I'm better than that. Not much, but better than that. As I mentioned before, I'm a grown ass adult with one-ok, many-weakness(es). A weakness that video game manufacturers can, and do, exploit at will.

A super-obvious glowing vulnerable point?

I don't get it, am I just particularly motion
sensitive, or do people just love puking?

In this case, the weakness is nostalgia for video games from yesteryear, specifically the halcyon days of the 8 and 16-bit eras. It was a simpler time. No micro transactions or DLC, no laborious cutscenes that go on for ever and no nausea-inducing faux stedicam moments, Resident Evil 4, I'm looking at you. And while it seems at times that current gaming is like 90% free-to-play FPS nonsense and mobile games, there is also a renewed interest in retro gaming. 

...you know what? Don't worry about it.
I'll just code a new game from scratch. Huh?
No, I don't, but I'll learn. It'll be easier.

Sometimes this takes the form of retro-inspired games like Shovel Knight or The Messenger which are games in the style of classic games often with similar 2-D graphics, but without the migraine-inducing difficulty or password systems with super-long codes that require you to distinguish between a 0 and an O or else loose hours of progress. Huh...yes, evidently I am still bitter. Or sometimes retro gaming means just rereleases of previous games on current generation consoles, like the nine or ten times I've bought Final Fantasy IV. You'd think after a while I'd stop falling for this, but you'd be wrong. And the worst part is, I don't regret it. Because I am a chump. Anyway, a third type of retro game, is the re-make.

This category is often the most fraught with the possibility of failure. Take any of the Square Enix remakes where they took the gorgeous pixel art of the originals and replaced it with dead-eyed Hummel figurines. 

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the
graphical style they went with is a warcrime. 

We didn't have the phrase 'the feels'
back in 1993, but this game? The feels. 

So back to my weakness. Nintendo today announced a Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening remake. Did that sentence fill you with renewed purpose? No? Congratulations. You have perspective and a well balanced set of priorities. But I'll press on. The original was a Game Boy game from 1993 and was a sequel to A Link to the Past. For decades now, fans have debated which is the better of the two, but either way, they are objectively among the best games ever. And Link's Awakening might actually edge out the original with its emotional story and gut-punch ending. 

It wasn't perfect, the controls were kind of a chore what with the two-buttons and the Gameboy's small screen was kind of blurry. But I've got to imagine that the controls on the Switch will be better and the remake will be in HD with a new art style. It's sort of a tilt-shift diorama with characters that are-and this is not a phrase I throw around a lot: cute as a button. I'm in. So in. They know how to my exploit my weakness and I let them and keep coming back for more. They're insidious. 

Goddamnit, here, take my money.

Today in things that are not Coachella:

You know how sometimes I go off on a subject that I may find totally interesting but you maybe don't care about? Maybe you're not into sci-fi or don't really have a strong opinion about the next Mega Man game. That's cool. I mean, I wonder why we're even friends but still, it's cool. Anyway, today's post is going to get into the weeds about Burning Man, so if it's not your cuppa, bail out now. If it is, buckle up. If it's not, tune in next time for, I don't know, probably something about Star Trek?

Yeah, that's a safe bet...

You know, people who shout
'woooo!' instead of saying words.

Still with me? Super. So I tried to watch one of the Fyre festival documentaries on-huh? Yeah, there's two. For those unfamiliar, Fyre festival was some kind of gigantic failure/scam in which would be festival goers paid ridiculous sums of money to go to a luxury music festival that turned into a shit show. I think the organizer went to jail. I say 'I think' because I couldn't get through the documentary. It was depressing. Not because of the cheese sandwiches or disappointed wooo people, but because of a comparison.

You heard me, umbrage. And yes,
I picture her too when I hear that word.

Early in the documentary, someone says something like 'Fyre Festival was supposed to be the next Burning Man or the next Coachella.' Which, no. I've been to Burning Man like nine times and no, it's nothing like Coachella thank you very much. I don't mean to yum yuck Coachella people (yes I do), and I get that Burning Man isn't everyone's thing, but I take umbrage at the lumping together of those events with the Burn. Defensive? What? No, you are. But for real, I want to clarify that these are different things.

Limited showers, but amble squeegees.

Sure, they're both multi-day events and have limited shower facilities. And there might be some other passing similarities, but Burning Man is, ideally, an anti-commerce happening were shit gets set on fire. I'll spare you the cultish recitation of the Ten Principles, but just know that it's pro-participation and personal expression and actively opposed to commercialization and profit-making where as Coachella is definitely commercial and Fyre Festival was pyramid scheme or something. The point is that they're different.

Coachella and things like it are about something you go see. Maybe you go see a band or a DJ or whatever, but with Burning Man you have to like, do something. You can't just roll up in a luxury RV, freshly showered with sherpas and private chefs in tow sporting those incredibly offensive, culturally appropriated feathered headdresses and not expect someone to vandalize your stupid plug and play camp.

Pictured: people doing it wrong.

Pictured: people doing it right.

Self-reliance is one of the event's things. You build your camp, you make art or perform or something and then, at the end, you break it down and comb the desert floor picking up every last piece of trash. It's participatory. It's not supposed to be a vacation. And you're really not supposed to network or try to launch your dumb product there, and that's what's apparently been happening recently. Fortunately, the organization is trying to do something about it. Marian Goodell, the CEO of Burning Man, which itself sounds like a contradiction, announced a new effort to de-glamp and de-commodify the event.

Do your research Quiznos.
We like Subway, okay?

Calling it a cultural course correction, Goodell laid out a bunch of changes to the ticketing policy which will hopefully make it harder for plug and plays to buy up and resell tickets. As for treating it like Linkedin, or using the playa as a background for a commercial photo shoot, there's not a lot to be done other than calling it out when we see it. They did once sue Quiznos for an ad where Burners traded back rubs for sandwiches which is exactly the opposite of how the gifting economy is supposed to work, but still.

Anyway, like I said before, if you're not into the whole Burning Man thing this was probably incredibly boring for you, but if you take one thing away from this it's that it's not goddamn Coachella. It's very important to me that you don't confuse me with someone who would go to Coachella. Totally different.

This is a picture of people at Coachella where as...

...this is people at Burning Man and-at least, I think-
I think that's right...just trust me, they're totally different.