2009 Cubs: Autopsy Report

Its been quite a while since I've written about the Cubs, but what has there been to write about really? My last post was in mid-August, when the season was on the precipice of falling apart, and after that point the Cubs season seemed to slip into a sort of catatonia, which the monumental tailspin that was looking possible as the Milton Bradley fiasco heated up not coming to pass, but with the team also never seriously threatening to get back into the race. Bradley--who, with two full years left on his deal, is perhaps now destined to go down as one of the worst signings in Chicago sports history--was eventually suspended for his behavior and his vague accusations of racism coming from Cubs fans. A few other players were shut down with injuries that they likely could've played through were the team still playing meaningful baseball. Even still, the openings left by these players were filled out for the remainder of the year mostly by "quadruple-A" type players who have been lingering around in Iowa for a while. As such, it was hard to even drum up any excitement for next year watching the team in September, as there wasn't really any sort of crop of prospects chomping at the bit for big-league at bats.

The team eventually finished the year 83-78, which actually gives them their first streak of three years with a winning record since the early '70s, more an indictment of how inept the team was for much of its history than anything else. A just over .500 record and missing the playoffs is plainly unacceptable, given the money that was spent on building the roster, and given that in many ways the Cubs' front office completely hedged their bets on winning either last year or this year. Now, the Cubs have a lot of players locked into expensive, long-term deals who probably aren't going to get any better or, in some cases, may not even play in a Cub uniform again. The team's new ownership isn't expected to be able to add much to the already massive payroll, as it tries to deal with paying off some of the debt from the purchase, and looks at options to renovate the stadium. In order to keep the team competitive in the coming years, its going to take some creative moves with limited resources, and I'm not sure that Jim Hendry--who as of right now is still going to be the team's GM next year--is up to that task.

No player better exemplifies the failed expectations of the team as a whole moreso than Milton Bradley, the team's biggest free agent signing of the off-season. Bradley, oft-injured throughout his career managed to get on the field for 124 games, but hit for an OPS barely above the league average, and manged just 40 RBIs despite batting mostly in the middle of the order (he moved to the #2 spot late in the year, and seemed to fare a bit better there). Other free agents from last year that were discussed as other options for a left-handed power bat were Adam Dunn (38 HRs, 105 RBIs with the Nationals) and Raul Ibanez (34 HRs, 93 RBIs with the Phillies). Both of them are also true left-handed hitters, as opposed to Bradley, a switch-hitter who is actually a worse hitter from the left side, despite being brought in to be an RBI producer against right-handed pitching. Beyond his bad production, his the effect of his constant negative attitude and oft-times laziness on the field can't be discounted. Normally I stray away from stuff like "clubhouse presence", which is unquantifiable, and which I'm not really in a position to know anything about except secondhand from columnists and reporters who sometimes don't seem to know what they're talking about either in spite of their greater access. With Bradley, though, it was stark enough and obvious enough to seem to be a significant distraction for the team. Bradley still has two years left on his deal, and now face a situation in which they seemingly have to trade him, even though its difficult to see how. The Giants expressed some tepid interest immediately after the season, but nothing concrete has come from it up to this point. Any trade made would most certainly involve the Cubs eating the bulk of the salary.

There were many, many, other problems besides Bradley, however. Alfonso Soriano, another owner of a huge contract, had his worst year in a Cubs uniform, hitting a meager .241 with 20 HRs and missing a big chunk of the back end of the year with an injury. He'll be 34 next year, an age at which hitters often start to see a marked decline in their hitting. Was this year a fluke, or has that already started with Soriano? After winning NL Rookie of the Year last year, Geovany Soto hit a putrid .218 and ended up splitting playing time with journeyman Koyie Hill at the end of the year. Kosuke Fukudome had a marginally better year than 2008 at the plate, but still only hit .259 with 11 HRs. Finally, there's Aaron Miles, who made a couple of million dollars this year to fill in for Mark DeRosa after he was traded. He played below replacement level and, pathetically, hit 5 RBIs all year. A couple of days ago, the Cubs signed Rudy Jaramillo, the former Ranger's hitting coach, who has a ton of respect around the league. Its certainly plausible that he could correct some flaws that have crept into the batting stances of some or all of the above players, but really the lineup as a whole has to be dramatically better and, as I mentioned earlier, financial constraints are probably going to limit how different the lineup can really look next year. One name that's popped up as a possible target for the Cubs is Mike Cameron, who at 36 still has decent pop in his bat and still plays a good defensive center field. Without a real possibility of signing an absolute top-tier free agent, Cameron would probably be a good addition.

The best component of the team throughout the year was its starting pitching. Even though four of its five main starters (Ryan Dempster, Ted Lilly, Carlos Zambrano, and Rich Harden) spent part of the year banged up, and the fifth (Randy Wells) started the year in AAA, the starting pitching was remarkably consistent. Even Rich Harden, who had a ton of issues with high pitch counts in his starts, managed a 9-9 record and a slightly above-average ERA. Cubs starters averaged about 5.97 innings per start, with a 3.71 ERA. In other words, they basically averaged a quality start. The bullpen wasn't horrible either, but had a higher ERA of 4.11 and its back end of Carlos Marmol and Kevin Gregg both went through significant periods where they struggled mightily closing out games. Marmol clearly regressed from where he was in 2008, still proving hard to hit, but giving up 24 more walks in 13 fewer innings. Gregg was passable for much of the year and managed to amass 23 saves, but collapsed in the 2nd half of the year and finished with a 4.72 ERA. One thing that can be said about the bullpen is that--in a year in which there weren't many true prospects ready to come up in the Cubs's system--it did provide a couple of possible bright spots. 25 year olds Esmailin Caridid and Justin Berg both got to pitch some down the stretch and put up good numbers, albeit in very small sample sizes. You can find an infinite number of relievers who started out their careers with a good dozen or so innings and turned out to be nothing, but I'm straining to come up with something positive to write here.

Basically, it seems to me that if the Cubs are going to be any good in 2010, a couple of players have to have a year that comes completely out of nowhere. They kind of got that guy this year in Randy Wells. They may have to somehow find a couple more guys like that next year who excel beyond what they were projected to be, because there isn't much to be done by way of free agency, and the team as constructed seems to be slipping into a malaise of mediocrity. Uh... go Cubs go?

Cowboy Bebop Session #3: Honky-Tonk Women

Session 3: Honky-Tonk Women

In appearance and attitude, Faye Valentine represents the classic noir style femme fatale character. Perhaps take out the parts where she's kept in suspended animation for a few decades and where she's, you know, in outer-space (and I guess the purple hair as well), and she'd fit right into a Dashiell Hammett or Mickey Spillane story. She's as alluring as she is strong-willed, and seems to personify trouble. Later on in the series, she'll actually more play the role of the redeemer character--another archetype for female characters used in a lot of films in the noir period--the character who tries to save the protagonist from being destroyed by the true femme fatale character. That all comes later though. We see her from the ground up, starting with her big white boots, as she walks into a shop on Mars, apparently getting tailed by three guys. She pulls a sub-machine gun out of a grocery bag and opens fire. "The first rule of combat is to shoot them before they shoot you," she explains. She doesn't get shot, but she gets caught as a bunch more people show up. We get our title card, and the next time we see Faye, she's back out in space on a floating casino in handcuffs. She's speaking to a man who refers to her as "Lady Luck", "Poker Alice", and the "Queen of Hearts" (red!). He apparently offers her an ultimatum to keep her from being turned over to the police--the details of which we're not privvy to at the moment--and with a flick of his wrist produces an Ace of Hearts (also red!)

Spike and Jet are also in the casino, on an elevator talking about a dream that Jet had. They hit the casino floor, and after a brief stop off with the three old codgers who we first saw in Asteroid Blues and who will pop up from time to time throughout the series, we see Faye again, now dealing at a blackjack table. She produces a blackjack hand with the Queen of Diamonds and the Ace of Hearts, two red cards. Spike starts playing at her table, and starts winning. We get something of a dream sequence as Spike gazes at her and we flip between a bunch of quick shots of slot reels and roulette wheels spinning. We then flashback to Faye's meeting with the mysterious well-dressed man. He explains that all she has to do is wait for her "target" to arrive, who will lose all of his chips and give his last one to her as a tip, which she is to deliver to this man. Spike ends up losing everything he's won except his last chip, and decides to "keep it as a souvenir." Thinking him to be the target going back on the deal, Faye runs off after him. The actual target, not sure what just happens, runs off as well. While leaving, Spike turns around to see someone winning a slots jackpot, and runs into the target, causing both of them to drop their chips. They end up picking up each other's chips. Faye finds Spike and tells him that he's ruining the deal. Spike reveals that he noticed she was cheating the entire game, and swallows his (or actually the target's chip). Spike gets into a tussle with a bunch of security guards, much to the chagrin of Jet, while Faye remotely activates her ship. The casino execs put a price on Faye's head, as Faye gets captured by Spike and Jet on her way out and they lock her up in the Bebop's bathroom.

Jet analyzes Spike's chip and finds that there's a chip (the computer kind) hidden within the chip (the poker kind). This leads us in to another exciting episode of "Big Shots: The Bounty Hunters!" Faye managed to get herself on the show. Faye contacts Gordon--the head casino guy--with some sort of transmitter disguised as a lip gloss container and tells him that her captors have the chip. Spike and Jet decide that they're doing to turn in Faye for the 6 million wulong reward, which Faye decides is somewhat low-balling her worth. Gordon contacts Jet, and Jet reveals that he knows the chip-within-a-chip is a sort of master decryption key that the police misplaced some time ago and have been looking for ever since. Spike gets into a space suit, with boots that can apparently latch onto the side of a ship at the push of a button, and in a cool little sequence floats his way over to the ship with the casino brass. The deal is that Spike is going to flip them the chip at the same time they're going to flip a briefcase full of 30 million wulongs to Spike. Unsurprisingly, this is not actually how they're planning on having it go down in reality. A casino lackey opens fire on Spike, but mistimes it so his shots hit a rotating mechanism going around the outside of the ship. By the time its rotated past them again, Spike is gone floating upwards again. Faye meanwhile has picked her locks and escapes in her ship. Spike catches the chip, while Faye snatches the briefcase with a detachable claw. Team Casino opens file on Faye, but come closer to shooting Spike than her ship and end up getting blown up with one of their own missiles. At the end of the episode, Spike and Jet are walking into the casino again, musing that all the chip is good for now is one bet. Its another ending where the Bebop crew are surviving, but not thriving, such is their plight. Spike turns around watches Faye zoom off in the distance, looking from far away a bit like a shooting star.

The main purpose of this episode is to introduce Faye as the female lead of the series, but its a fun episode on its own merits. The shootout in space is a creative twist on your standard wild west-style showdown. Up next, we meet the eco-terrorists led by a crazy woman who reminds me vaguely of Mom from Futurama in Gateway Shuffle.

Cowboy Bebop Session #2: Stray Dog Strut

Session #2: Stray Dog Strut

A guy in a bathroom stall is unwrapping bandages that were over his face. He's sporting a big afro and some gawdy jewelry. Three guys with guns position themselves in front of the stall door and tell "Abdul-Hakim" to come out. Almost in one fluid motion, Abdul-Hakim knocks all three of them out and calmly walks away carrying a briefcase. Seeing as he's a tall black guy who knows martial arts, I think Abdul-Hakim may be a nod to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who studied martial arts, and was the veritable "final boss" at the end of the pagoda that Bruce Lee was fighting his way through in Game of Death, the movie he was filming when he died. Also he was a vampire. Seriously, its sort of awesome. And actually, going to the IMDB page, his character's name was Hakim, so that would seem to increase the chance that I actually know what I'm talking about. We get our title screen--"Stray Dog Strut"--and then see the Bebop cruising through the gates on its way to Mars.

Aboard the Bebop, Spike kicks the TV, which is coming in as white noise--weirdly still a problem in the future--and gets it to work, and we get our first glimpse at Big Shots: The Bounty Hunters. I'm convinced that this needs to be made into an actual show. I never make a point to watch "America's Most Wanted" with John Walsh, though I do hear that that show has had a lot of success over the years in terms of getting people to give valuable information to the police that eventually lead to the capture of some high profile suspects. Now, if it was a black guy and a ditsy blonde girl inexplicably wearing cheesy cowboy outfits and telling me how to "wrassle up some criminals" I know I'd totally watch that show. I think the execs at Fox have some retooling to do. Anyway, the Big Shots hosts tell us that Abdul Hakim is a notorious criminal and in his latest caper he stole an experimental lab animal. Conveniently, as the show's ending, Spike gets a videophone call from "Doc", who had his lab busted up by Hakim, and who has a description of his face post-plastic surgery (hence the bandages). The game is afoot.

Back on Mars, Hakim ducks into a little hole-in-the-wall Chinese bar (literally ducks in, as he's taller than door) and asks for some lao chu. The drink is red, maybe fitting in with the whole red motif I mentioned in the previous Bebop post, or maybe just coincidentally. A scruffy looking guy runs into him at the far and tries to apologize, and is somewhat miffed when his apology is met with silence. Abdul-Hakim grabs a cockroach crawling across the table, drops it in his drink, and shoves it down the guy's throat. During the tussle, a man with glasses manages to sneak in, grab the briefcase, and run off with it. He hops on the back of the trunk, opens up the case, and is surprisingly met with a growling noise. Elsewhere, two guys in white coats are driving another truck, discussing how Hakim took out three of their associates and how Hakim has no idea how much "that thing" he's carrying is worth. Spike talks to the proprietor of a weapon's shop who talks like he should be in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and who tells him he'll find what he's looking for at a pet store. The spectacled man is trying to sell whatever's in the briefcase to the somewhat eccentric pet store owner, when he sees Spike, in an amusing moment, watching him through the other side of a fish tank. Spike takes him to be Abdul-Hakim with another new face. The store owner opens the case and produces... a pembroke welsh corgi! Spike leaves as the guy attempts to talk the pet store owner into giving him more than the 2 wulongs she says the dog is worth. Abdul-Hakim shows up and puts a gun to his back and asks for it back. Quite a commotion breaks out, and Spike sees Hakim come running out as he's walking away dejected. Suddenly he's interested again. The two guys in white coats follow in their truck as well.

Hakim runs after the dog while Spike runs after Hakim. In a great rule of threes bit, the chase brings them in the path of a crowd of people watching two guys play a game of Go. The corgi ducks under the table on which they're playing, Hakim swiftly jumps over it, and Spike, uncaring, just crashing through it, sending pieces flying. Then the two guys in white coats show up and stop in their tracks as the Go crowd just scowl at them, crouched over the ruins of their board. Spike catches up with Hakim and they have themselves a bit of a spar, seemingly being roughly equal in skill. The corgi thinks, "to hell with this" and jumps down onto a passing barge. Spike and Hakim both jump down after it. Spike ends up falling in the river, but comes up with the dog. Spike brings the dog back to Jet, who confirms that its just a regular corgi and nothing else, but seems to take a liking to it--moreso than Spike, who is just annoyed by the whole concept of pets. The dog's owner, however, is worth a fortune, says Jet, and he has a plan.

The two guys in white coats, meanwhile, are back in the truck, with some of their also white coat-wearing brethren, still trying to track down what they now describe as a "data dog." Spike takes Ein for a stroll down the street, as Hakim tries unsuccessfully to postpone a meeting with the guy he's supposed to meet up with when he has the dog. Hakim gets stopped by an old man sitting on the sidewalk who says he can tell that he's looking for something, and insists that Pico, his tiny little bird, can help him find it. Begrudgingly, Hakim hears what he has to say. The men in white coats decide they need to turn on the dog whistle, which Ein (they haven't named him in the epsiode yet, but I'm just going to say it. Tired of writing "the corgi") and about a hundred other dogs hear, causing them to start yapping and following the truck. The fortune teller tells Hakim that Pico has picked the moving card and that what he's looking for is about to move, and then says its here just as the big cluster of dogs run down the street being Hakim. This is the second time in as many episodes that a character has gone to a sort of mystic or a spiritual guide for answers and they've pointed them in the correct direction (in "Asteroid Blues", the old Native American mystic tells Spike where to find the "red-eyed coyote). Of course, in Hakim's case, he likely would've figured it out anyway when he heard a cacophony of yapping dogs, but I find it interesting nevertheless. The dog catchers try and launch a net to catch Ein and manage to catch every dog except him. Hakim steals a car from a newly wedded couple, almost runs down Spike, and picks up Ein. Spike gets into his red ship (pretty sure it has a name that I can't recall right now) and pursues Hakim. Ein bites Hakim and jumps out of his car, causing Hakim to lose control. Spike goes after the tumbling Ein ("this is why I hate pets!") and manages to catch him safely on the wing of the ship. Hakim and the dog catchers both go spilling off the side of the road and into the water. Spike brings back Ein to the Bebop and still hasn't warmed up to him, suggesting, maybe only half jokingly, that they just salt him and eat him.

This is more of a lighthearted, comedy-of-errors sort of episode, and there's not that much to discuss in terms of the overarching themes of the show. Its one of my favorite episodes though, with a bunch of genuinely funny bits and an amusing story that manages to throw in a pretty bulky cast of characters and still come to a resolution in just over 20 minutes. Except for maybe "Venture Bros." (new episodes start up again Sunday!), I'm not sure if I know of another half hour show that does that as well as "Bebop." Up next, we meet Faye in what she describes in the episode preview as "a stardust session played in an off-key melody."

Zombieland

Zombieland (***)

The concept of the zombie movie is so ubiquitous at this point that the movies don't even require a set up anymore. In Zombieland, the actual origins of the zombie outbreak are pretty much skipped. Its assumed that once you see your first couple of examples of rotting, shuffling, living dead chasing terrified people around that you can get the gist of it from there, and it can jump ahead to a time when most of the unlucky citizenry has been killed or infected, and only a few hardy survivors are left. One such survivor is Columbus (all of the principal characters use cities as their aliases so they don't get too attached to each other by using their real names), in his previous life a loner who spent most of his time playing World of Warcraft and subsisting mostly on Mountain Dew Code Red. He's our protagonist and our narrator, played by Jesse Eisenberg, recently in Adventureland, which I didn't see. Eisenberg plays his character when the same sort of nervous, awkward, deadpan expressions that Michael Cera has made a name for himself with. At times its actually too much like Michael Cera, to the point that it kind of seems like he's doing an impression of him. Anyway, Columbus has managed to survive this long, as he reminds us of throughout the movie, because he lives by a set of rules of his own devising. He always "double taps" to make sure a zombie's really dead, he's leery of bathrooms (you're never more vulnerable than when you're on the toilet), and he always checks the back seat upon getting into a car.

Out on the road one day, Columbus encounters Tallahassee, played by Woody Harrelson, who pretty much makes the movie with his good ol' boy redneck shtick. Tallahassee's rules are somewhat less complicated: basically, kill as many zombies as possible with whatever gets the job done. He drives a black Cadillac Escalade with a big cow-catcher sort of thing on the front and a Dale Earnhardt style "3" painted on the side. He seems to be holding up pretty well in post-zombie America, except that he has a craving for twinkies that never seems to be satisfied. Tallahassee freaks out after he and Columbus stumble upon a Hostess truck that ran off the road, only to find that its full of nothing but Sno-balls (Tallahassee hates coconut). Venturing into a supermarket to search for twinkies, Tallahassee and Columbus run into Wichita and Little Rock, who scam them and end up stealing Tallahassee's Caddy. Eventually, though, Columbus and Tallahassee catch back up with them and eventually work out an uneasy truce. Thus, the four of them journey on through "Zombieland" together. Between this and the Left 4 Dead games, 4 seems to be the official size of a zombie survival group.

That's about all there is to say about the plot really. The movie is 79 minutes of tongue in cheek zombie madness, made by and for people who love the genre. In the middle there's a pretty good chunk where there actually aren't any zombies for a while, but it leads to a hilarious cameo by a man we'll only call "BM" for now. As I said, Woody Harrelson's performance is far and away the best part of the movie, as he keeps up his "I don't care 'bout nothin' but killin' zombies and NASCAR" bit as he finds himself in increasingly absurd situations. By the end of the movie, he's riding a roller coaster while fighting off zombies trying to climb up the track with a shotgun. Jessee Eisenberg as Columbus and Wichita and Little Rock aren't nearly as memorable but all have their moments. The writing is clever, and manages to make the movie funny, while not seeming too much like the horror-comedies that have come before it, like Shawn of the Dead. Zombieland is a fun 79 minutes of zombie killing.

Concerning Cats with Megaphones

Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
Playtime 08:02-10:58

"We'll cross the ocean to the new continent.... even if we are wearing Shinra uniforms."

Nearest I can tell pretty much everyone hates Cait Sith. While I certainly don't make a point of using him regularly in my party (whoever decided that his Slots limit break should have a chance of killing the entire party is a douchebag), but he makes me laugh sometimes. I love his goofy little jigs and just the absurdity of the whole character. Its a cat with a megaphone telling a giant, fat, frankly somewhat retarded looking moogle what do to. And since you find out later that Reeves is telepathically linked to Cait Sith, I guess there's some type of weird multi-tiered mind control thing going on, since presumably Reeves is controlling the cat which is controlling the moogle.

I made two attempts at the Speed Squre game at the Gold Saucer and failed both times, slightly less miserably the second time. God, that's incredibly frustrating. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to put a shooting minigame into a game that uses the PS1 D-Pad, but suffice to say it wasn't a good idea. After the Gold Saucer you get thrown down into the desert prison and have to find and confront Dyne, Barrett's also-gun-armed and now somewhat crazy in the head acquaintance. The flashback to Barrett and Dyne trying to dodge Shinra gunfire is kind of awful. I realize that circa 1997 there was only so much you could do with 3D, but if you look at Scarlet during the cutscene, she's not even holding a gun. She's literally "firing" her empty arm at them. That bugs the hell out of me every time I see it.

I'm starting to gain levels some of my basic materia (All, Fire, Ice, Lightning), and I have mostly weapons with double growth slots equipped right now (you find a big string of them going along at this point in the game). I really like materia as a magic system. It can be frustrating at times, and having to swap around materia as you swap around your party members gets tedious. Its much less frustrating though, than the bizarrely concived Junction/Draw system they implemented a game later in FF8. It wasn't in any way intuitive at all to learn, although at the same time, once you got late into the game and had a stockpile of good magic, it was easy to completely break the game. With the push of a button you could, say, bring your characters HP from something like 2,000 to the max of 9,999. Materia isn't at all volatile like that, but its also pretty customizable. With some tweaking, you can come up with some interesting combinations, especially with Elemental and Added Effect materias. I also like that most materia will buff and/or debuff some of your stats, somewhat making up for the fact that unlike the earlier FF games, all of the characters aren't all that dissimilar to begin with, as opposed to a game like FF4 where you sure as hell weren't ever going to get anywhere mashing Attack with your caster class characters.

Right now Cloud's at level 21, and I'm saved outside of the Gold Saucer doing a few random battles before taking my sweet-ass buggy down south. Its not too long before I get to Nibelheim. I don't remember what level you have to be at to feasibly beat the boss you need to get past to get Vincent. I'm probably going to try it on the first time I get to Nibelheim regardless, so it could get ugly.

Cowboy Bebop Session #1: Asteroid Blues

I'm going to keep going with my FF7 posts, but I've developed a hankering to re-watch "Cowboy Bebop", far and away my favorite anime, and indeed one of my favorite TV series regardless of its country of origin or whether its animated or live action. The show has a certain brilliance in a way that it melds a bunch of different genres and themes, yet also exudes a style all its own. Its not like Kill Bill, which is almost just four hours worth of Tarantino coming up with random B-movie references (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, I really like Kill Bill as well). The movie builds off of a lot of other things: film noir, westerns, science fiction, martial marts movies; but in the end it isn't a hodgepodge collection of all of these things. The sum total of it is something more. As egotistical as the tag line--which you see in some of the background of the bumps coming in out of the commercial break and elsewhere--may sound its kind of true: "The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called 'Cowboy Bebop.'"

Basically my plan is to just start watching and write down my thoughts as I go. Some of it may pertain to what I'm watching at that exact moment, other times it may be larger themes of the whole series. At any rate, let's start with episode 1.

Session #1: Asteroid Blues

The series shows its noir influence from the very outset. The scene that serves as our introduction is a rainy alleyway. Everything is a muted blue color, almost making it look like a sepia tone. Our first glimpse of Spike is of him standing, nursing a half-smoked cigarette, with his head down and his eyes obscured in shadow. We hear a very melancholy sounding music box playing. Music boxes are a pretty widely used storytelling device, I think. The first thing that comes to mind for me is A Few Dollars More, where you'd hear the same sort of music box tune every time there would be a flashback of Indio, the villain, and his ex-lover. I don't know if the usage in "Bebop" is a direct homage or if Dollars inspired it, but I know that Shinichiro Watanabe, Bebop's director, and the rest of those involved with the series know their Man with No Name movies, because there's a more obvious The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly reference later in this episode. Spike drops a rose in a puddle as he walks away. The red in the rose stands out against the bluish-black background. We start to see quick cuts of Spike in a bloody shootout with a group of gunmen who we don't know anything about right now. Again, the color red stands out in the washed out looking scene. I think the color red is tremendously important in the series. Already, I can think of a bunch more places that it comes up. The music box tune comes to a stop, and we cut to the series's standard opening, complete with its theme song, "Tank", which I have nothing to say about other than its one of the coolest damn openings ever.

After the opening, we get the title screen and see that we're watching "Asteroid Blues" and get treated to, appropriately enough, blues music on a harmonica. We meet Spike and Jet, cruising through space on their way to Earth, and, inbetween Spike complaining about the lack of beef in Jet's bell peppers and beef dinner, we deduce that they're bounty hunters. Jet has their next target lined up, who's hiding out in Tijuana. In the future, its hard out here for a bounty hunter, and Spike and Jet are broke, as they are pretty much perpetually throughout the series. Jet and Spike, as we'll pick up on throughout the series, started out on opposite sides of the law and kind of met in the middle. Jet was an ex-cop, Spike is a ex-crime syndicate member, and now they're both bounty hunters. They're both sort of half "flawed": One of Jet's arms is prosthetic, and, we find out much later, one of Spike's eyes is fake as well.

Down on the surface, in a dusty old bar in TJ, Asimov walks in, looking a bit like Antonio Banderas in Desperado, with his pregnant lady friend, the femme fatale of the episode. Asimov follows the bartender in the back and is trying to sell him some "red eye" or "bloody eye" (again, the color red shows up), evidently the street drug of choice in the future, which you spray directly into your eyes. Asimov's whole vision turns red, and the drug seems to give him superhuman reflexes as he literally dodges bullets when a gang of men start shooting up the bar. Spike, meanwhile, having landed, is consulting a Native American mystic regarding Asimov's whereabouts. The mystic is a character who sort of bookends the series. He's here at the beginning, shows up again in the middle, and is there again at its very end. He tells spike that the "red-eyed coyote" will appear north of town, and then: "death." Spike, nonchalantly, says "he was killed once before, by a woman." As Spike turns to leave, says somewhat ominously, "Wakan Tanka, guide his spirit," and we get a close-up show of him blowing away a lump of sand from the palm of his hand. We're far removed from the unpleasantness at the series's end, but even here Spike seems to be a character whose fate has been sealed.

Jet, meanwhile, visits the now-destroyed bar, and gets some information out of two guys who show up mentioning that they need to get the bloody eye back. Spike, landing to get gas, happens to run into Asimov in passing in the bathroom, and then--much more literally--runs into his lady friend, and gets caught stealing a hot and a bunch of her other groceries. Evidently she finds a certain charm in this, and they speak flirtatiously for a bit as Spike gasses up. Eventually, Spike reveals that he's a bounty hunter. Turns out, Asimov was right behind Spike listening in, and almost chokes him to death but stops at the behest of the woman. They get in their ship and fly away and the girl tells Spike as he's laying on the sidewalk, "Adios, cowboy." Jet finds Spike, still laying on the ground, passed out, and after Spike comes to announces that the job's not worth it, but Spike knows that Asimov is going to Mars after he sells his bloody eye, and he stole a sample of it during their tussle. Spike, in disguise, sets up a deal to buy bloody eye from Asimov, and Asimov tries to pull out the vial of it that he no longer has. Spike pulls off the goofy sombrero he's wearing, reveals the vial he has, and asks Asimov, "Do you know how much you're worth?" He's wearing a poncho that looks a lot like Blondie's from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and that's what Blondie asks of Tuco in the movie. Spike and Jet are a lot like detective characters in a noir crime story, but they're also not at all unlike gunslingers in a spaghetti western movie. The episode "Cowboy Funk" much later on in the series, will pit Spike against a literal cowboy, and gives us more of the spaghetti western influence on the series, complete with music that sounds a lot like an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Spike and Asimov have another tussle, but their interrupted by more gangsters trying to gun down Asimov. In the chaos, his girlfriend is nicked by a bullet and we she that she's the one carrying the big stockpile of bloody eye because the vials all come spilling out onto the ground. Asimov is furious that she almost lost them, and, looking into his eyes, the girl realizes that he doesn't really care about her at all, just the drugs. With a somber jazz saxophone tune playing, Asimov, drugged up to all hell, flies up off planet and into space, tailed by Spike. With a blockade of police ships looming ahead, the girl decides enough is enough, and shoots Asimov as Spike, his ship now side-by-side with theirs, watches, horrified. Before she dies, she tells Spike again "Adios." Their ship gets riddled full of bullet holes, and the girl drifts out into space, leaving a trail of red eye vials. At the end of the episode, Spike and Jet are again aboard the Bebop, Jet again making up some "bell peppers and beef." They're back to where they were at the start of the episode. C'est la vie.

The episode first and foremost introduces us first and foremost to two of our main characters, Spike and Jet, the original Bebop crew. Jet is more of a wiser, calculating man, Spike is more wreckless and impatient, yet also has this dark, somber aura about him. It also establishes the noir overtones that are going to pervade the series. It tells a self-contained story where the protagonists track down the antagonist they're seeking, and make it out of a fight with him alive, but the resolution is anything but happy. Spike, already having been "killed by a woman once," here watches as a woman dies needlessly, her only crime seemingly being hooking up with the wrong guy. Their brief flirtation suggests that maybe, had she escaped and fled with Spike, maybe she could've been happy, but in a noir story, characters always seem bound by their fate, and dreams can never really manifest themselves into reality.

The next episode is a much more light hearted one, and one of my favorites--Stray Dog Strut--where everyone's favorite Pembroke Welsh Corgi makes his first appearance.

The Man in the Black Cape

Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
Playtime: 06:00-08:02

"Am I... human?"
"He continued to read, as if he was possessed by something, and not once did the light in the basement go out."
"I challenged Sephiroth and lived. Why didn't he kill me?"

I completely forgot about all the silly minigames in Junon Town. First, there's having to do CPR on Priscilla, a girl whose entire purpose in the game seems to go no farther than to exist you can save her and get the Shiva materia as a reward. Then there's the part where you have to have the dolphin boost you up to the top of the high voltage tower, which I never seem to get right the first twelve times. Then there's the marching scene, where you basically just have to march in line (I won 6 potions, I don't know if that's good or not, nor remember what I usually get). Now I'm saved on my way to the docks to do drill for Rufus's send off.

Before getting to Junon was the big flashback to Nibelheim with Sephiroth going insane and burning the town. I'm still not entirely sure I get the entirety of the story with Jenova, and the Cetra, and how Sephiroth came to be. You get bits and pieces of it here. The Cetra were the original inhabitants of the planet, but came from elsewhere. Mako is like the physical manifestation of the Cetra's wisdom. Jenova is something that fell from the skies during the time of the ancients and sat in the ground for about 2,000 years before it was pulled out by the Shinra. I know on Disc 2 there's an optional scene where you can find a recording that Professor Galt made going into some of this. Going to have to do that and pay attention. I'm sure there's more explained in the game than I can really recall right now, but even so, I don't think they do as good a job painting the complete picture that they could have. Some of the telling of the background feels incomplete.

Cloud's at level 17 right now as I'm sitting in Junon. I got my first two summoning materias in the form of Shiva and Choco/Mog (the animation for which never fails to make me laugh). Now that I'm starting to accrue some materia, at some point in the near future I'm going to make a post talking about the system, which I think is one of the best magic systems in the series.