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Re-Making Super Mario World in 3D

A guy re-makes Super Mario World so that it's 3D.

This is not so much interesting to me because of the game development - I don't really care - I love the aesthetic of the pixels and colors. It's so visually pleasing.

Late Show - Best of Amy Sedaris

Ah, Amy Sedaris, eases the pain.

Movie Theater Popcorn At Home - Results

 A while back, I shared a video which claimed to have cracked the code on movie theater popcorn at home and I teased that I would try the experiment myself. I have done so and can now report back from the field.

First off, using Amazon and area grocery stores I was able to obtain the recommended elements. Here is my own photo as proof.

The Results

It works. The result tastes exactly like movie theater popcorn in my opinion. In order to be authoritative, I would like to have tried other methods and recipes to determine a ranking but I have not done that so all I can say is this is as authentically movie theater popcorn as I can imagine any popcorn being.

Criticisms and Warnings

Jeers to the original video for not giving ingredient measurements. Yes, everyone is going to need to figure it out according to their own tastes but that's going to happen anyway, you might as well give a starting point. You can keep adding more coconut oil until it's enough, so that's easy, but I overdid the Flavacol and paid the price. So for that I will pass on to you: 1/3 to 1/2 of a tablespoon.

The video mentions using 4 test kernels and waiting until all 4 have popped before adding the rest. It's a small moment in the video but a very important point: wait until all 4 have popped. I lifted the lid and got a kernel pop as I was working with it. The result was a spray pattern of oil on the wall and myself and probably other places that I just haven't found yet. Wait until all 4 have popped.

Other Notes

Part of the movie theater experience is the fake butter chemicals. For the video, I believe that's the "Popping and Topping Oil" that is covered briefly. I love the fake butter chemicals and would have liked to evaluate that as well but here my completionist tendencies butted head-on against my sense of trying not to eat like an absolute madman and I excluded that aspect as overkill. A future consideration perhaps; if you try it, you  let me know.

One of the ingredients that he recommends (and I bought) was the "Movie Theater Butter Salt." That seems unnecessary to me. It's salt and the Flavacol is salt, so why both? Well, you might find at the end it needs more salt, but in that case, why not add more Flavacol? I say you can exclude this item but there may be a nuance I'm missing. Dunno.

What Is This Stuff?

Are you like me, are you horrified by a giant orange vat and a substance called Flavacol? What are we talking about here? Well, here are the ingredients.

Snappy Popcorn Colored Coconut Oil - Coconut oil and beta carotene. So that's actually, surprisingly, not horrifying.

Flavacol - Salt, natural flavors, artificial flavors, dyes. Hmm, so that's not actually horrifying either.

Popping and Topping Oil - Soybean oil, artificial flavor, beta carotene - Don't need more seed oils but not horrifying in the grand scheme of things.

Surprising result! Did not expect that.

NFL Films

Recently the idea came to me - perhaps in preparation for the Super Bowl - to watch all the Eagles' season recaps from NFL Films in chronological order. NFL Films loom large in my past and so I can't explain why I never thought of this sooner. Then, seeing that the Eagles season recaps reach all the way back into the 1940's I narrowed my own scope to start at 1983 and... well, I'm up to 2014 and I haven't decided where to stop. It's an idea I highly recommend if you're so minded (just substitute your own team, era or year).

NFL Films, particularly the NFL Films era from the 70's to 90's is a form of entertainment that will never be duplicated. The combination of the stentorian narrator, the classical music, incredible slow-motion footage and clever writing is unlike any other cinematic experience before or since. They are not just first in their genre, they are the pioneer of the genre.

The particular point of relish for me is the writing. Oh man, the writing. When is the last time you read (or heard) anything like this:

"It was under the hot summer sun of Camp Swamp Fox where the Eagles began to tread their comeback road, a path paved with a back-to-basics brand of fundamental football. The enthusiasm of assistant coaches... spread through the Eagles camp. There was an air of optimism filtering through the August heat. It sent the Eagles sailing through three pre-season victories and in September, it carried them to San Francisco's Candlestick Park where the 49ers' plans for a happy home opener were ambushed." - 1983

Or, consider the intro for the 1989 season:

 "There are moments in a lifetime which defy explanation, moments when the natural becomes supernatural and mere words cannot do justice to a man's deeds- deeds which spring from desperate circumstances."

There was one particular phrase that leaped from my screen and captured my imagination. It was from the 1991 season recap: 

"It was more grit than glitter, more spit than polish and it was the Eagles who sparkled."

I marveled and wondered, has professional writing deteriorated this much that, just a generation ago, we were getting this sterling quality from a football video? I couldn't comprehend it, except I considered maybe phrases like these were available cliches, plucked out of the ether of the time and since-forgotten. Then, as I progressed through further seasons the shroud of mystery lifted: 

1992 - "Even for a defense long established as more grit than glitter, more spit than polish..."

1994 - "Zordich was the classic strong safety - more grit than glitter, more spit than polish."

1995 - "They were more grit than glitter, more spit than polish; most of all, they were winners."

1996 - "And while Ricky Watters projected flash and dazzle, he was really more spit than polish, more grit than glitter."

1997 - "And Michael Zordich, the rugged safety who's more grit than glitter, more spit than polish."

Ok, so yeah, they have their saved templates, sticking them in when needed. It is still an admirable style. Even if there are cliches, they are wonderful cliches. 

It seems to me, the end of this classic writing style of the Golden Era coincides with the end of the 1990's when Pat Summerall takes over as narrator. Around this time, the narration is akin to the list of events you'll see written in a newspaper rather than the dime store novel panache of the past. It's prose rather than poetry, literal rather than literary. Ornate oratory was found old-fashioned, the mechanical was modern. The soaring spirit was discarded and faded - moving onward rather than forward, advance without ascension.

Yes, but NFL Films after that are still pretty great, though.

One of the goofy but endearing idiosyncrasies of the NFL Films season recaps is that they all end with victory. If a team wins the Championship, that's obviously a victory. If a team loses in the playoffs,it's a success and they've established that they're one of the elite teams in the NFL. If a team doesn't make the playoffs, they showed the heart of a champion. If a team only wins 3 games, they showed their courage and character through the adversity and never gave up. If every member of the team gets injured in the first game and they go 0-16, well, we look forward to next year when the players will be back and the ship will be righted. Every team for every season is victorious, either by actual victory or moral victory or looking ahead to a bright future. The narrative can never be: the team just stinks and watching them is a waste of time; the narrative is always: your team is bound for ever-increasing glory, glory, GLORY.

When GameGrumps Met RedLetterMedia

Apparently Arin met Mike from RedLetterMedia. It's not much of a story, just an interesting nugget. 

Skip to 30:00.