The Gay Geek (May 13, 2008)

Like we need more reasons to steal toys from kids.
If you’re a gamer of a certain age there’s a certain nostalgia for old tech video games and their blocky, pixelated graphics … and for those of you who tend to be a bit of a domestic diva here’s a flickr-essay on how to use a PlayDough Fun Factory to make old school graphics cookies.

Check out these Space Invaders cookies:

I figure the technique could be used to make other video game cookies (especially if you go back to the limited graphics of the early game systems) – think this could be adapted to create a Dig Dug, Pitfall or Oregon Trail cookie?

(Additional ideas that you'll have to Google yourself: Agent USA, Gorf and Kaboom.)

Remember Starcade, Bart? It’s back in pog online video form.
While we're on the topic of old school video games, who remembers the 80's syndicated video game game show Starcade? Besides those occasional segments on That’s Incredible! about Donkey Kong or Ms.Pac Man tournaments, I remember it was the only TV about video games at the time.

If you’re in the mood to relive blocky graphics, cheap production values, obsolete prizes (OMG, a cordless phone! Cordless!), hosts who are clearly clueless about their subject and overall mesmerizingly bad television, you can now watch episodes online. They even have the special episodes dedicated to the laserdisc games Dragon's Lair and Cliff Hanger ... which aren’t as much fun now that the novelty of those games have thoroughly worn off.

I think I have to revise my former claim that Pink Lady was the worst show I ever watched in my youth. Yikes. Be sure to check out episode #19 for the (what should be) classic line, “Alex, you could take Pooyan home with you.” That just sounds so, uhm...

Pretty boys and "rotten girls.".
The always astute John Jakala wrote a little about the fujiyoshi phenomenon recently, something that’s been on my radar for a while. If you haven’t heard of fujiyoshi, in some ways its supposed to be the female counterpart to the otaku, except the term is usually thrown out as an insult (fujiyoshi translates into "rotten girl"). Fujiyoshi enjoy shounen comics (which are aimed at boys), gravitating to the good-looking guys in the story and imagining them in gay relationships, sometimes creating fanfic and fanart to that effect. Weekly Shounen Magazine – the source for plenty of the titles Viz publishes stateside under the Shonen Jump imprint – have tried to gear their titles towards the fujiyoshi audience, deliberately adding homoerotic elements to their various series, like all those scenes of the guys showering together in the basketball manga Slam Dunk (which I couldn't find scanned online, damnit).

The fujiyoshi audience has been credited with pushing titles aimed at male audiences to evolve to appeal to female readers as well. Presumably, that’s why cheesecake manga-ka Oh! great’s recent title, Air Gear, has a protagonist as attractive as the female characters in the series – if you’re gonna be tawdry, may as well have something to appeal to all audiences.

I almost picked up Air Gear when I saw the art and then I remembered all the stuff I read about his previous title, Tenjho Tenge, and decided against it.

What I find interesting thing about the fujiyoshi is the parallel to the HoYay fans stateside who like to find moments of homoerotic tension between the likes of Sylar and Mohinder in Heroes or the Winchester brothers on Supernatural (or if you’re into old school HoYay, there’s always Clark and Lex on Smallville). While there's the risk of fetishization, these audiences are challenging the old common wisdom that women are turned off by gay male sexuality, an idea that's been used in the past to encourage closeted actors to stay closeted and as an excuse to avoid depicting same-sex romances.

So while I wish Heroes would give us a real male couple to go along with all the implied ones, I was encouraged to hear the Heroes producers acknowledge that segment of their audience. At this point they couldn't claim that if Sendhil Ramamurthy kissed a guy on the show, his straight female fans would suddenly have trouble fantasizing about him.