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[13 Apr 2009|02:30pm] |
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Hi Whitten.
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| i know i said this was retired, but... |
[02 Oct 2007|01:12pm] |
on the off chance anyone wanted to know:
1. i like college. look at how much i like college here:
anthonysmithgoestocollege.blogspot.com
2. i miss a lot of you. you know who you are, missed people!
3. send cookies.
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| And I figure |
[04 Jul 2007|01:45am] |
What better way to go out than with a story:
The Fisherman’s Lure
By Anthony Smith
There is a fisherman fishing on a lake in Upstate New York. His stomach is fat and full from breakfast, and it is only by the grace of good clothing that it can remain tucked away like a secret inside his button-down shirt. He hasn’t shaved because he has no one for whom to shave. Women find his appearance repulsive, and when they do not, he finds theirs appalling. He is also a smoker and as such has a mouth that tastes like a distant relative’s overeager kisses.
He often muses that when there is no one there with whom to share it, the world is his: This lake; this landscape, obscured in fog; this quiet morning of tranquil water; everything. This consoles him in his loneliness. He longs for someone else and always has, but he is frightened. He knows nothing of being a lover and knows that if he wanted to be one, he should have started learning when he was very young and full of promise. Now at the apex of his life, he chooses to be a fisherman instead.
Growing up, his inclinations never tended towards fishing. A city boy, he preferred artistic pursuits like reading classics or the writing of short stories. Very deeply steeped in this frame of mind, he bought his first fishing rod. He was seventeen. It was at his girlfriend’s fancy. Since then, three decades have come and gone as renters do. Thirty years, and she has been the only one.
“I don’t want to fish,” he insisted.
“And you never have to. But every man should own one.”
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about it.”
“Just because it isn’t a novel doesn’t mean you can’t do it.” She giggled at her own joke.
“I honestly don’t know how.”
“Didn’t your dad ever teach you?”
“No, my dad never taught me.”
She ran her fingers up his cheeks and through the thin parts of his hair. She thought about kissing him, but decided against it. “My father took me out to fish a few times, when I was very little. Too little to remember it, but even still. I was at an age when there is no difference in the way boys look and girls look, except for the obvious, of course.”
“Of course,” he echoed.
“And he treated me like I might grow to be the son he always wanted if he raised me properly.”
“A little bonsai boy?” he asked, but she didn’t understand. She was not as smart as he, and they both knew it. He wanted to apologize, but that would only make things worse.
“Whatever. The point is, I’ve been fishing and you haven’t. Perhaps that makes me more of a man than you!” She laughed, but he did not. She kissed him and paid for the rod herself. He didn’t love her, but has spent many moments since wishing that he had.
On this morning, thirty years later, he remembers the way she laughed as though such a thing could never be true. Thankfully, though, these truths which seem unsightly when compared to the beauty of a morning such as this can be tucked away, safely and quietly, inside one’s shirt alongside his beer-belly, or perhaps in the confidence of one’s back pocket.
The old rod does not catch much in and of itself. As such, he has had to travel to the nearest Bait and Tackle to purchase a lure.
“What kind are you looking for?” The only employee was a middle-aged man with gray hair who looked as if he would be more at home in a sepia of a famous vacation place as it looked many years ago, when it was just beginning to thrive.
“I didn’t know there were kinds to look for.”
The olding man laughed. “I take it you don’t fish professionally.”
“No, I am done with doing things professionally. I’m making the final preparations before I retire.”
“Congratulations.”
“I just bought a house in Somerset.”
“You must be rich, then. Are you one of those celebrity types who wants to get away from it all? A writer, let’s say? We have our share of famous writers who like the quiet out here. They say that Hemingway had a little bungalow in Old Harbor. I don’t know if that’s true or not. A lot of what we hear around these parts is bullshit, but we like it just the same.”
He stopped listening halfway through the man’s story. “I might have been a writer. But now I’d like to fish.”
“Why?”
“It’s what men do, I’ve been told. Give me whatever lure will catch a fish!”
Again, the clerk laughed. “Well, they all catch fish. Do you want to catch big fish like for eating, or would you prefer small, pretty ones?”
“I’ve got plenty of food. How pretty are we talking?”
“Very pretty. They say that the Indians in these parts would wear them from their ears like jewelry. Personally, I think that’s bullshit. Local bullshit, like the kind what I was just talking about. But you get the idea, that pretty.”
“Then I’ll take that.”
When the clerk bent down to rummage through the contents of a large crate, the fisherman took his first look at the walls of the store. They were decorated with an entire career of fish preserved semi-perfectly in little picture frames. It was like being in a museum of no real importance to anyone but the man who built it. He wondered what would happen when he, decades from now, would find that he had spent all of his money he had earned on Wall Street. What proof would he have that he had ever been alive and done his human share? And who would care to listen to a businessman if he wasn’t wearing a suit and, in spite of how handsome his father looked at the hour of his passing, was becoming very, very ugly?
When he emerged, the clerk brandished a small, red lure with fine, yellow strings weaved into it. “I call this the Little Lady. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and skin as red as townhouse brick has my Little Lady. Doesn’t she look like she’d break your heart?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“They all do. Surely, you understand. You look like the type that gets his heart broken by the ladies on a regular basis.”
“I do.” Again, another lie.
“I made it after a girl I used to have a thing for. Well, that might be a bit of an understatement. I did marry her. But now…” He scratched his head. “It really does look just like her. That’s why I stopped making them with little lady faces painted on. Now they’re just, well, what you see.”
“How much?”
“Well, this is a very special lure.”
“Money is of no consequence. But even still, something reasonable.”
The clerk smiled. “For you? One-hundred fifty.”
“That seems pricey.”
“I’m already making you a deal. That’s half the price. But I’d like something in return.”
“What?”
“You come back to me with your first catch and I’ll hang it up on this here wall with the rest of them.”
“Done.”
They made the exchange. The clerk said, “I look forward to seeing you again.”
“All right. Me too.”
Years pass. Every morning, he places his entirety in a small canoe and paddles to the center of the nameless lake. He casts his line, waits, and catches nothing. The Little Lady dances in the water, swaying in whichever direction the little current carries her. After a few hours of no fish, he convinces himself that she is mocking him as women have and continue to do and snatches her from the water. More fishermen begin to come and try to engage him in friendly competition or, worse, polite conversation. He never responds to either attempt. Annoyed with his luck, he leaves. At home, he shuts himself in his study and tries to remember how he used to write when he was young and full of promise. But he cannot. He makes himself a small dinner. He watches the stars when he remembers to. Every evening, he sleeps bitter.
But this morning is different and worth writing about. To his surprise, the rod is almost pried out of his idle hands. He regains grip and, with minimal resistance, reels in the fruit of so many years of efforts. A tiny fish ascends from the water, soaring through the air as though it had wings and then falling into the small boat because it does not. Upon closer inspection, he sees that it has red scales that glisten like a precious jewel under the fading moonlight and emerging sunlight. The hook bursts out of where its cheek might be if it were a human. The Little Lady’s blonde hair flows over the fish’s eyes. For an instant, the impulse is to save its life and throw it back, but that disappears quickly. He has felt for the first time in thirty years a sense of victory. He revels in it, and holds the fish the way his mother held him in his arms when he was tiny and fragile.
Another fisherman sails out to the center of the lake. He smiles at the newcomer, then yells, “I caught one! I finally caught one!”
The other fisherman, blonde-haired, smooth-faced, and beautiful for all of it, takes his wedding ring and puts it into his shirt pocket for safety. He does not look like he can be older than thirty. His voice is soft and inviting when he says, spitefully, “Now you talk to me.”
The enchantment is broken. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been coming out here for years. Every time I’ve tried to speak with you, you’ve ignored me. You leave when anyone tries to talk to you. And now that you’ve finally caught something, I’m supposed to be your friend and congratulate you? Pat you on the back and offer you a beer? You’re something else.” He never makes eye contact as he scolds. His concentration is on his task, which is the catching of fish. He is a real fisherman and knows it.
“But it’s so pretty. I’ve never seen a fish like this.”
“I’ve seen plenty fish like that, plenty fish. You’re nothing special.”
The fisherman puts the fish into his shirt pocket and says, “You don’t have to be mean. Perhaps we can start over. Would you like to know my name?”
The other doesn’t answer. Every time either boat drifts, little ripples are sent towards the shoreline. The tiny waves bump against each other, and then settle completely. Nothing happens on account of them.
The other fisherman’s line begins to tug. The ceremony begins again. He catches a fish. He cuts the center of it with a small knife the instant it is in the boat so as to end its pain quickly. “And besides, the only reason I wanted to talk to you in the first place was to tell you that you’ve been going about it all wrong, all these years.”
“All these years? Has it really been that long?”
“Don’t you feel it? They told us in church one day that lonely people carry the burden of time and feel each second like a curse, but then I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Maybe you’re right.” The fisherman sighs. Any victory he felt is gone. He thinks about drowning himself, but decides against it. When he does, it will be years later, when he has spent all his money and there is no fisherman around with whom to share the unproud moment of his passing. It will be a private affair, just as everything in his life has been. The ripples will die out, just as they always do.
“You’ll never catch anything with a lure like that. Whoever sold you that really took you for a ride.”
“He said for me to come back to him with my first catch.”
“You kidding? That man never expects you to come back. Local bullshit. Watch out for it. It’s our specialty.” The other fisherman laughs until he does not laugh.
Then there is silence. More fishermen arrive, as they always do. The breeze clears the fog away, and the dying moon fades into the sunlight and the bright blue sky. He can see the trees and the surface of the pond and the faces of all the beautiful men in all their painful splendor. Morning is here. “I’d better go,” he says, but more than an hour has passed and the other has since paddled away and no one hears that he has spoken.
He drifts back to the shore and gets into his car. The ruby red fish and the lure have become one shameful entity, and he never bothers to separate them. He drives away, thinking about returning to the Bait and Tackle to ask for a refund, but knowing he cannot bear what the clerk will say when he sees the little fish against the hook. He imagines the conversation.
The clerk says, “It’s a pretty common fish, and normally I don’t discriminate against the type of the fish. If you look, well, you’ve already looked, and you’ve seen I’ve got some really ugly bass here. But the problem with this here fish is that it’s got a hook coming out the side of it. Now, you tell me who wants to look upon something as ugly as this? No one likes an ugly.”
The fisherman, fat, balding, and smelly, challenges, “You sold me a bad lure.”
“You caught something.”
“After so many years!”
“Maybe you were doing it wrong.”
And he cannot say whether he has or has not. He knows nothing about fishing except that it is something that men do if they are in need of doing something. It is romantic until it is disheartening.
He arrives home and tries to commit these sentiments to paper as eloquently as he can. He finds that they read like an article in a local newspaper written by any so-and-so with a high school diploma and a word processor. When he was young and full of promise, this would come as a complete embarrassment. The wood snaps. The pencil breaks in half. It is the last sound he hears all day. Evening visits, stays a while. He makes himself dinner. A star shines, then others do. He sleeps bitter.
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| Did the wine make her dream of a far distant stream? |
[03 Jul 2007|11:21pm] |
So, I'm leaving livejournal.
It's been fun, it really has been. Thank you all for your support and everything. But as I leave high school, I think I should shed all high school things. Especially when they're tainted with so many memories that one wishes he could forget in their entireties and remember in their entireties.
I hate the way this keyboard makes my fingers feel and miss my laptop, which broke. I feel so bound to one place without it. And so I must travel, so as to avoid eCabin fever.
But I will be relocating to thirdbaseinahammock.blogspot.com
Thank you, all of you. You've been wonderful. And at least one of you is really, really, really incredible in bed and an even better kisser.
Love,
Anthony
P.S. And I really do mean love.
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[03 Jul 2007|12:49pm] |
so.
lately, i've been having dreams. really bad ones. people i love try to kill me. they're all so vivid. last night, i got into a fight to the death with my boyfriend that seemed to go on forever. granted, it ended in probably the most intense sex dream of my life, but pre that, he was trying to kill me and wouldn't stop until he did. and even when, like, it was a sex dream, he had a knife and i noticed it mere seconds before he stabbed me with it and said something like "Nice try."
and i dont know, i wake up from these thinking that the people involved don't care for me anymore. i think i'm losing it. i'm going crazy, that must be it. but i just want to be happy. life isn't terrible right now, but i'm perceiving it that way.
also, in my dream, i had terrible acne. it was strange.
and freud says we are everyone in our dreams, which might be true because he was wearing my underwear in my dreams. maybe i'm self-destructive, but that doesn't make sense because i'm not.
i'm going crazy, that must be it. and i know i don't have anything to worry about... but i think i'm losing my grip. i've somehow come very close to convincing myself he doesn't love me anymore. that's no way to be.
i shut my eyes, and all the world drops dead
i lift my lids and all is born again
i think i made you up inside my head.
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[27 Jun 2007|03:59pm] |
Okay, so, one of the editors of the New York Times has this sort of writing challenge type thing called Fiction 55. In it, he challenges people to write 55 word stories in which one has a clear idea of who the characters are, etc. etc. So it should conduct itself much like a lengthier story, but it can only be 55 words. No more. No less. This afternoon, I tried my hand with three. Tell me what you think.
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( TWO LOVERS )
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( DINNER DATE )
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( PANDORA )
Well, ladies and gents?
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| It's so much fucking better now! |
[27 Jun 2007|03:16pm] |
Like in the Stories
By Anthony Smith
“For my Creative Writing teacher, Deborah McKay, who told me I could write something beautiful and got this instead.”
On the day that Bill arrived, there was the post-funeral procession there always is but he was still proud enough to think they had prepared it just for him. Trumpets sounded first, and then died out. Next came a little silence, followed by a cool breeze that seemed to last forever. But that, too, ended. The sun shone, and he could still feel it. As he listened to the other souls shuffling anxiously, he wondered if that would go away one day, feeling. He noticed a little girl tinkering impatiently with her new halo. “Poor thing,” he thought.
On a nearby cloud, an angel played a song of invitation on its harp. It appeared to him as a beautiful young woman, blond-haired and vacant-eyed, decorated with long, pale fingers crafted for plucking. And it wore a white gown which flowed down the length of its body like the way Bill’s mother used to pour him a glass of milk out of a bottle when he asked for it. Her instrument was twice her size, and it made the angel’s cross-legged existence next to it seem dollish. She was the plaything, it seemed to suggest. But even still, it was enchanting, all of it. The song. The soft strumming of the angel on its cloud. Death. Everything.
He shouted to her, “You play it well!”
“My harp?”
“Your harp.”
“Thank you,” she replied, and continued on.
“Were you a harpist on earth?”
“I do not like to talk about ‘on earth.’ No one here likes to think about ‘on earth.’ And no one here talks at all.”
“Why not?”
She stopped playing. “It’s a distraction, and not a welcome one. I play my harp. I have been playing every day for the past three-hundred years. It is enough.”
“I see,” Bill said, but he did not.
Again, a silence. Again, a breeze. Then a voice commanded, “Single file, please,” and everyone complied in spite of being terrified. One by one, trembling with fear, they marched onwards towards the Gates, which in their old age no longer glimmered so brightly. But Bill could tell that once, long ago in a time older than fact or evidence, those Gates would swing with the consciousness of how they were so new and so majestic and worth fabling. Now in their old age, the Gates began to wither as any precious metal does. Ten servants were tasked with polishing them weekly. Through a dull, metallic hue, the Gates blushed.
St. Peter stood their vigil, just like in the stories they had been told, over and over, by parents and priests and Sunday school teachers. Bill smiled. In spite of the grandeur of it all, the whole ceremony seemed so quaint, so old-fashioned. It was almost as if he could predict how the rest of his days would unfold.
One by one, they were met. One by one, they were read the stories of their lives. The Saint traced each line prose with his finger as though he were following a delicate, almost translucent thread. He began at the moments of each of their deaths, the causes and the circumstances surrounding their passing. Grown men were seen to cry. Teenagers of both genders bit their lips and clenched their wrists in shame. Then, the stories spiraled backwards. Lives were unlived. One by one, they had their tearful breakdowns for the mistakes of their adulthood and their happy, nostalgic romps through childhood. An old man closed his eyes and rocked back and forth as if he were in a comfortable rocking chair that he missed very greatly. The stories unraveled until there was no more thread left, and both listener and Reader had arrived at the beginning, the first choice the soul had ever made on earth. And then, the dead were reborn.
After the telling, each was sorted into one of two groups. The rightmost group was significantly smaller in size, and its constituency seemed somehow more humbled than the larger group on the left. When the little girl was placed into the rightmost group, all realized their fates. Her lot expelled sighs of relief. A stout woman cried tears of joy and raised her hands in the air. Those of the other group began to scream madly. The angel sounded its music over the yelling.
Bill shuddered. It was his turn next.
“Bill Phillips. That correct?”
“That’s me. So the bible was right, huh?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m a good Christian. I always have been. Maybe I didn’t go to church that much, but I have been a good person.”
“So you say.”
“But what will happen to all my friends of different faiths? My loved ones?”
“Heaven exists for all of them, Bill Phillips. The only difference is in the judgment.”
“I see.”
“Don’t lie.” Saint Peter clenched his fist. “Of all the people to lie to!”
“I apologize,” and this time, he was sincere.
“There’s a lot written here about you. You were famous.”
“That’s true.”
“People loved you.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I refer to your family, Bill Phillips.”
“Oh,” Bill laughed, “I suppose that’s true. But isn’t it like that for everyone?”
Saint Peter was silent.
“Ah,” Bill went on, “I suppose that’s true, too.”
“You were a good man. You gave back. You’ve only broken one heart in your entire life.”
“Whose heart did I break?”
“A young woman’s heart. She was the one that killed you.”
It was as if he had been punched. He stumbled backwards as though enraptured. He fell onto his back.
“What seems to be wrong, Bill Phillips? Were you under the impression you passed away in your sleep at the ripe-old age of twenty-two?”
In spite of Bill’s delirium, Saint Peter continued on. His story seemed to unwind effortlessly through so many years, as if it did not take a lifetime to craft: His final parting with Natalie, the woman who would end his life; The moment he realized he did not love her anymore; The evening he watched her sleep and she inhaled so heavily that her breasts caressed his chest and he realized he loved her; The time he paid for both of them at a fancy restaurant because she looked at him with unproud eyes and said, “Please, I’m broke.”; Their first kiss; The moment they met in a 7-11 well after midnight; His college graduation; Drinking too much with no consequences; A late night conversation with an intelligent sorority girl whom he swore silently to himself after she’d fallen asleep that he’d marry and then never saw again; The stressful time he stayed awake until the morning writing a term paper; High school graduation and how silly he looked in his robes and hat; Losing his virginity in the backseat of his father’s car; His first kiss that mattered; Grade school; His first kiss that did not matter; When his obese, homely, and kind Kindergarten teacher bent over so that her breasts fell out of her shirt and all the kids pointed and shrieked in disgust; The day he told his father he did not love him and then repented when Bill saw him cry; And then another day, when he picked a flower for his mother and gave it to her after dinner.
So forth, and so on. One story, the years in between when nothing seemed to happen but dreams and nightmares, and then another. The knots and the thread. Bill was tangled in it. In an effort to escape him, one cold tear slid down his face. It did not want to associate itself with such a sad, young man.
The ending came in the form of a lie that he was sick so Bill did not have to go daycare and instead could stay home all day with his mother and help her cook. When Saint Peter finished speaking and observed him in the silence and the breeze, Bill realized he was still lying on the floor and bolted upwards.
“Well?” Bill asked.
“Well?” Saint Peter echoed.
“Which way do I go?”
“I’ve never heard a man rush his judgment before, Bill Phillips. Are you certain you would like a hasty answer?”
“Can an answer be made quickly?”
“It might not be favorable. You wouldn’t want to end up in the wrong place.”
“Not unless the wrong place is here, right?”
“Believe me, Bill Phillips, even Heaven can be a wrong place. You would not want to end up somewhere you shouldn’t be. As it is on earth, so it is up Here.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“You’d like your answer on your terms?”
“I’d like my answer now, yes.”
Saint Peter grinned and turned the page. Written on it, Bill could just barely discern a different story, recorded in a different handwriting.
“The rightmost group, Bill Phillips.”
“Thank you.” He sighed with relief as he took his place next to the little girl, who had since grown listless with her halo and now talked to strangers for amusement.
“It’s just like in the stories,” she said.
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“The wicked are punished and the good get what’s coming to them. Like in the ‘Blessed Be’s’.”
Bill laughed, “The Blessed Be’s. I remember those.”
“The only thing is, they don’t look so wicked, those people. Do you think we can help them, Mister?”
“I don’t think we can do anything, kid.”
Those were the last words any one of the Heaven-bounds ever heard spoken. As the angel had hinted, speech was frowned upon by the Peace-Keepers. It might spark a disagreement, or at the very least, cause a minimal amount of unpleasant noise. In an effort to preserve the peace, the people of Heaven are encouraged heavily to choose other more honorable pursuits over the spreading of words, such as attending the Holy Philharmonic, which plays for three hours every evening when the first star winks across a blackening canvas.
So began the day Bill realized he was condemned to an eternity of clean, clustered condominiums; of listening to string instruments while drinking watered-down white wine; of never being hungry but always wanting food; of smiles, or not-smiles, but never anything else.
He imagined that in Hell, the lost souls must speak to one another if only to document their suffering. “How did the saying go,” he wondered, “was it that misery loves company?” It must not seem so deathly in Hell. He longed to hear them in their shrieking agony. He thought himself evil for thriving in their pain, but then he banished all thoughts of the place altogether.
Just one day, and already he grew weary of his listless bliss.
It was also on his first day that he realized he had been given wings and could fly. He examined them the way he once examined his first small tuft of pubic hair, and was proud of both in a similar vein. His wings were large, white appendages like those of a giant peace-bird that flies through one’s most reckless daydreams.
For a time, they brought him much amusement. He would spread his wings as widely as he could and fly upwards over the one mountain of Heaven, hovering for a few minutes and observing the landscape and its mountain spirits before lowering himself back down. He occupied himself for many years this way, waking up to ascend and then descending into the sunset.
Those that saw him thought he ought to get a job, but never confronted him about it. None had the motivation, and supposing one did, Bill would never stay still long enough to hear it. For all of Heaven and earth to see, he was free and happy. Not even the Peace-Keepers suspected how exquisitely it tortured him to be able to separate his eternity-life into moments classified by “flying” and “not flying.” It was nothing like in the stories he had been told. This was not the paradise he had been promised. Or perhaps it was.
For many years, he was unhappy. In the paradise of death, he aged nostalgic for life. He yearned for the one that he had lost, one of fame and its hefty anchor of leisure. He longed to see Natalie again, but knew he never would. He closed his eyes and tried his very best to pretend that he was back in USC with all his friends, drinking beer and playing cards. In the silence of Heaven, cascaded by the peach-dark of his eyelids, he could almost feel the smooth face of the Queen of Diamonds that once won him three-hundred dollars. And his fans. And all his adoring fans who cut his pictures out of magazines and taped them to their walls. He tried to miss them individually, the way they would miss him, but could not.
“To be free again…” For a moment, he was unsure as to whether he had spoken or if he had merely thought the words loudly in his head. Either way, it did not matter so much. Sunset came. He descended. He traveled home to sleep and groom his wings.
Barely over thirty, he was still very much a young man. As such, the soul of Bill Phillips found itself bored quite easily. But that, too, would pass. Everything does.
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[27 Jun 2007|03:42am] |
This will be the closest I come to ever writing something "Fantasy". And it's more spiritual than anything. A man dies, is judged, and experiences the afterlife. Just a story, no implications, no social commentary, no nothing. Maybe. News to me if there is. I like it, though. Actually, I love it. And I hope you will, too.
( Like in the Stories )
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| Top Ten Video Games Ever |
[23 Jun 2007|03:51pm] |
So I got bored and I decided that I’d make a list of the top ten video games I’ve ever played. Now, this isn’t necessarily an objective list, but it certainly is a helluva fun one. So, let’s hit the ball running.
10. Duck Hunt- NES
It was a good idea. Your child is four. Give him a gun. Have him point it at the television and kill ducks as they flap around madly. If you missed the duck, you were humiliated by a dog that game out and laughed at you. Why he was immune to your bullets is perhaps a question for another time. Animal rights activists out there (four-year old girls) could also play the other game in the bundle, Clay Shooter. But it just wasn’t as rewarding as watching a duck lose all its feathers when hit and fall to the ground. Nothing really is.
9. Halo- XBOX
Why so low? Like I said, this isn’t an objective list. And I am not very good at Halo at all, so I like to nitpick it. This will be the only XBOX game on the list. I personally dislike the system immensely. But that’s because it isn’t made for me. I have tiny Asian hands that, try as they might, can’t seem to grasp the controller the way your big American ones do. And what’s with making the controller so damn big and the buttons so damn small? The buttons make me feel like a fucking clown in a clown car. But this isn’t supposed to be a review of the XBOX, rather a review of the game in question. And it’s a really fun fucking game, but only if you can get a group of people involved. The one player leaves much to be desired. Same goes for Halo 2. But if you can get your friends in, then you’ve got yourself a fun fucking afternoon/evening/morning/Sabbath.
8. Super Smash Bros. Melee- Gamecube
Another game rated lower than one might expect it, and for the same simple reason as Halo. It only gets really fun when one invites his friends over. Any game that has to rely on three extra people to bring out its intrinsic goodness automatically gets points deducted from its score. But when you do get those people, man oh man, what a great fucking game this becomes. And there are so many different play styles, too, to suit many different personalities. I love myself some Zelda/Sheik, and I can’t see why anyone would pick a different character. But then, that’s just me.
7. Sonic and Knuckles- Sega Genesis
This game was fucking innovation. Who would ever have guessed that you could hook up a Sega game to another Sega game and affect the game play so damn drastically. Well, Sonic and Knuckles was an amazing of its own accord, and an even better game when you hooked it up to all the other Sonics and watched as Knuckles glided from place to place, turning a 15 minute level into a 30-second glide. However, that one part in Sonic 3 in the Carnival level that is impossible to beat is still fucking impossible, but oh well. At least you have Knuckles. Also, in that game, Sonic got this crazy super power involving a shield. Man, oh man. That was sick. And the bosses were so good as well. Especially the first one! And especially if you played as Knuckles!
6. Earthbound- SNES
People who play Super Smash Bros. might wonder, “Who the fuck is that Asian boy that looks/dresses like Anthony?” Well, the answer is Ness. And the game he calls home is Earthbound, for Super Nintendo. Never played Earthbound? That doesn’t surprise me. The only reason I know about it is because after playing Super Smash for N64, I wanted to figure out what games everyone came from. They ranged from the amazingly disappointing (Captain Falcon) to Earthbound, probably my favorite game of the bunch. It’s an RPG for RPG fans! This game sort of emerged at the same time as that flurry of Final Fantasies and Chrono Trigger, making the SNES the maiden system for the RPG. Which isn’t to say they didn’t exist before, but it’s the SNES that really made them stick. Earthbound emerges as a sort of self-conscious parody of the silliness of RPGs. In it, you take down bureaucrats, goth kids, arcade nerds, corrupt politicians, rabid cats, and kangaroos, and all other sorts of displaced members of society. It’s an RPG, but rather than setting it in the sort of aristocratic, monarchical worlds of Final Fantasies, it takes place in Suburbia. You solve puzzles by knowing lyrics to Beatles songs, and other sorts of cool things like that. It’s an amazing, amazing game. And its difficulty is exactly where it needs to be, as well as its length. This will keep you occupied. You can probably download it from my friend’s site at www.dohgames.com, but don’t hold me to that. Oh, also, this game is fucking hilarious. I’d rate it higher, but people might be pissed.
5. Mario Kart Double Dash- Gamecube
Okay, I’ll say it. This one’s better than the original. It’s more how a racing game should be, in which every decision affects how your car will work. Also, the tag-team game play adds an element to the game that is pretty hard to beat. The one problem with this game, however, is that the levels are either too easy or too complicated. I should qualify the latter. The graphics are often dizzying and misleading. Every part of the level looks the same, so you can never really tell how close to the edge you are. This is especially true of the ice levels, and especially especially true of Rainbow Road. But even still, the Mario Kart games are the most popular racing games of their kind. But they’re not the best.
4. Crash Team Racing- Playstation
This is the best racing game of its kind. Like Mario Kart, but dare-I-say better? The characters aren’t as cute, though. Not NEARLY as cute as the Mario Kart characters, but the game itself is impeccable. One player adventure mode was so sick. There are, like, thirty different weapons. The levels are amazing because you can take a lot of different paths, and there were so many characters on screen at any given moment. And the fact that the levels are so wide encourages passing people by. And the weapons! I already mentioned them, but they deserve to be mentioned again. The weapons are so sick. My personal favorite was that electric magnet ball thingy that puts the blue shell in Mario Kart to shame, but they were all really, really good. More fun and better than Mario Kart, but not as popular. Too bad.
3. Silent Hill 2- Playstation
A psychological nightmare. Do not play this if things scare you easily. When this game was created, Resident Evil games should have stopped being made altogether. They had been put to shame by the terrifying, albeit slow-paced, nightmare that is Silent Hill 2. The weapons were pretty lame, but that only made the game that much better. You felt defenseless in a world of pure evil. And unless you have no soul, this game gave you nightmares for weeks. Pyramid Head. Pyramid Head. I can’t even. This game is probably dated because of the graphics, and I don’t know if one will find it as scary as one might have. However, with the advent of Silent Hill 5, there’s going to be a whole new world of terror. Especially when one plays it for the PS3.
2. Final Fantasy VII and VIII- Playstation
It’s a tie! Which one is better?! And so begins the great debate amongst Final Fantasy fans. Granted, VII is the more popular of the two. But I like VIII. Why? Simple. VII was about how cool the bad guys were. VIII is about how cool the main people were. VII was about the corruption of this company, and a creature created by the decadent state of society. VIII featured one of your friends being put into the breasts of a main character. VII had Gold Saucer. VIII had motherfucking Tonberries. VII had the really easy Materia system. VIII had the really complicated, but then really cool Junction system. It’s really hard to say which is better. You play them for different things. If you enjoy a more weapons-based gameplay and story line, as well as a more Gotham City approach to your RPGs, then VII is the game for you. But if you like stories of fate and magic and evil sorcerers, then you’ll want to play VIII. But either way, you won’t be disappointed. Unless you don’t like RPGs. Then you will be disappointed.
1. Super Mario Series- Nintendo, Super Nintendo, N64, but not the ones for Gamecube that suck.
This is the only video games series that you have to think of in its totality. The first one had its faults. The second one did, too. Luigi could jump much too high in the second one, and once you figured out how to work the potion/tube trick, you never really played the game in its entirety. Super Mario 3 was absolutely amazing, but once again- the ole double whistle trick. You could beat the game in five minutes. So, then comes Super Mario World for the SNES. And it’s just glorious. Yoshi. Fucking Yoshi MADE that game. And the switches. I feel like playing it right fucking now, shit. It’s just the best. It’s a classic. It’s what made video games really catch on for kids. Everyone owes this game a mess of debt. And at least a week of playing time. It’s glorious.
Well, that’s it. Agree, that’s cool. Disagree, that’s cool, too. But I’m just calling it as I sees it.
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[23 Jun 2007|03:20am] |
This is long, but this is good. Maybe. It's for a playwriting contest. I really would like your help with it. It's due by Sunday. This is just the first draft. I started it at eleven o clock PM and finished it at 3:20 AM. It's a drama, but it has got its funny moments. You should read it. It will make you a better person. You will be more attractive afterwards. I will be your friend.
It's called, and quite appropriately:
( Story )
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| PLEASE READ AND REVIEW! |
[21 Jun 2007|09:26pm] |
So this is an interesting one. A complete experiment, actually. A lengthy play, perhaps even a scary one. It's about a florist and sixteen-year old boy, or at least it starts out that way. It's a ghost story. There should be more ghost story plays, I think. Maybe this will scare you. Maybe it won't. I like it, though. And hopefully, you will, too. But I beg of you to review and tell me what you think. I BEG!
( A Flower for Scarlett )
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[19 Jun 2007|02:08pm] |
This was posted before, but I did the tag badly. Now it's working.
I used a short story I wrote earlier this year and turned it into a one act. Or maybe it's the first scene of something, I don't know. Who knows! But I like it. It seems like every time I write about this sort of thing, none of the characters are all that likable. But oh well. That wasn't what I tried to do.
Enjoy, at the cost of your soul :)
( A play! )
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[06 Jun 2007|11:30pm] |
so i realized this evening that Britney Spears's "I'm a Slave 4 U" is the funniest song ever.
Listen for these choice lines. They're the funniest in the entire song.
"Little girl, don't step into the glove."
"Cause dancing's what I love*"
*especially listen to how she sings "what I love". You'll split your sides.
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[27 May 2007|02:12pm] |
this is highly ironic.
i was writing this thinking of all the times i should have cried but did not. they were all associated with lawrenceville pomp, and all those things they said we'd miss. the campus is nice. i'll miss the campus. but not enough to cry about it. and the people... should i cry about them? most of them i'll see again soon, so it's like, it hasn't set in.
when it did set in was when my creative writing teacher gave me an envelope, and inside of it there was the tarot card she drew for me when she read my tarot cards at 4 am and told me that i and someone i loved were nourishing each other.
or when my beat generation teacher put seven pennies in my hand and said, "each penny represents a day of the week during which i shall think about you constantly. i love you."
or when dhruv hugged me really tightly and didn't say anything. and then when hilary did the same.
or when i got my diploma, and i could hear so many people cheering.
or when people i love and people i did not realize i loved until i saw them at the ceremony flocked to see me afterwards.
or nate's insisting that i don't eat with my parents.
or, and especially this because this is what did it the most, when adam wrote me a letter and gave me a poem that has been in his wallet for the past ten years.
it isn't a lawrenceville thing, i think it's a people thing. a you, and me, and everybody thing. i think we just like to know that people care about us. and so i'm not crying because i'm leaving this place, or because i won't ever see these people again. that's not it at all. it's sad, but it's not enough to cry about. each ending is a beginning, and all that jazz. so why cry about that?
i am crying because life can be so beautiful sometimes, when the sun is shining just right, and everyone has taken great pains to look presentable.
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[19 May 2007|11:36pm] |
Lullabies for Lonely Adults
I.
Loud, little cricket
the night is still.
The silent dark
is everywhere.
Loud, little cricket
the night is still.
The shivering trees
let down their hair.
Loud, little cricket
will chirp until
his mother moon’s
no longer there.
Loud, little cricket
will chirp until
he isn’t welcome
anywhere.
(And as my mother fumbled
quietly through the memory of her childhood
hoping to find another verse
I continued to cry.)
II.
I’m sorry, pretty, tiny thing
but that’s all that I can give.
What is it that you want from me?
I do not know what more I have.
Are you hungry, pretty, tiny thing?
I can give you milk if you are hungry.
It isn’t much
I know, but it’s everything I have.
Or are you restless, pretty, tiny thing?
I can rock some more if you are restless.
It isn’t much
I know, but it’s all that I can do.
(And she did both, she loved me so.
But I did nothing but continue on.)
Your father?
(She shook her head.)
Then (She sighed.)
I am afraid you must keep on
like that.
(And I remember how her hair upon my face
as she kissed my forehead
made the spring seem like an early month of autumn
in which the sun cannot decide if it is dead or dying.)
III.
Oh, you’re sad! You’re tired!
I am, too!
It isn’t just you, my pretty, tiny thing
it’s everything!
This room.
This rocking chair.
This hungry giant of a house
that’s much too big for you and me.
We should throw a party, don’t you think?
Even if we don’t enjoy the neighbors
it’s a good excuse
to use good silverware and eat good food.
And when the guests ask
“How do you do?”
I’ll say
“Just fine!” And won’t they be surprised
to find the house cleaner than it’s ever been,
And when they ask me how I do it, I’ll say
“That tornado man I married is blowing somewhere else
and good riddens, too!” Yes, that’s what I’ll say.
(But I, the child of a storm and its eye, raged on.)
Or maybe not.
If you’d like, my pretty, tiny thing, I know another song
about a woman who slept through her prime
or a molting shrub who thought she was an evergreen.
But these are lullabies for lonely adults.
(She kissed my head, caressed my cheek
continued on in spite of it.
She held me as my father did.
The song was long. I fell asleep.)
~Anthony B. Smith (2007)
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[19 May 2007|12:56am] |
My First Night in an Empty Bed
I.
This is written just to say
that I have found the perfect way
at last, and quite by accident
I stripped myself, I thrashed about
I bucked my hips, I closed my eyes
like you-know-how, and there I was
A knotted tangle of a man
a foot for
arm a hand
for leg
a criss-crossed mess of
flesh and
bone
All up upon
a cool, damp pillow
the way a raft floats out to sea.
II.
An hour passed. I fell asleep.
I drifted through the trickling dream
where I am young: a sailor’s son.
My mother drowned.
My father at the steering wheel
is screaming, cursing at his men
and what I found upon the bow
a wounded bird.
I stroked its chest, I kissed its head
I asked it, “Would you like a drink?”
It cooed a word. My father slurred
“It has no chance.”
He made me throw it overboard
I named it, then away it flew
and right before Dawn found the shore
it spiraled down.
(That was when I woke up
with tears in my eyes, with sweat in my hair
and reached for you.
I always do.)
III.
But met the greasy, wall instead
all cold and sticky, yes, at last!
No man, no breath, no beat at all!
And not too hot to fall asleep!
I might even need my sheets tonight!
I can’t remember the last time!
And all this space, it’s so much space!
My bed is queen-sized after all!
And I can turn the T.V. on
and leave it blaring with the volume up!
Up, up, all the way—
I finally have lift off!
So I shall rest my best tonight.
I shall not be ashamed to snore.
This is no way to live, my love
but it is one way to sleep.
~Anthony B. Smith (2007)
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[17 May 2007|09:38pm] |
Top Ten Things I Hate
10. Static electricity. No one ever says, "Oh yeah! Thank God for that static electricity!" It's just terrible.
9. When you buy gourmet cupcakes for a person and spend a whole bunch of money on them, but everyone else eats them. Fucking sweet.
8. Gravity. For the same reason as static. Also, it keeps me from flying to White Castle.
7. When you realize just how low your standards are by getting an erection when everyone else is repulsed.
6. When you hate a person, and everyone else loves this person, and so you try your best to like this person. But just when you become a fan, everyone is all like "he fucking sucks." But it serves you right, conformist.
5. Liberals and fauxpen-minded fools.
4. Tricks. Don't be a trick.
3. Central New Jersey. That I must drive an hour and fifteen minutes to an Ikea is unacceptable.
2. "Wesleyan? I've never heard of it! Wait... isn't that all girls?"
1. When people aren't gay.
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[04 May 2007|01:33am] |
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you know whats great? that episode of batman where poison ivy gets married.
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[30 Apr 2007|11:22am] |
Reasons why this fall will be great:
1. College
2. New "Stars"
3. That's all you need.
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| READ ME |
[27 Apr 2007|01:45am] |
I'm on a writing binge. Sate me with your comments!
This is a fun, pomo, avant-garde read. I hope to develop it into something cool, and I get to have fun with being self-consciously quirky. Were I a better writer, this could be compared to a combination of Roth (dialogue-wise) and Pynchon (narrative wise). And it's good ole magic realism, even though it occurs in NYC.
And it all combines in its own tortured way to create Anthony Smith's Smith-Style. Well, just read it. It's fun, especially if you are a fan of fun.
Babies talk!
( The Courages )
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