Fading Away

This week, a significant portion of my youth passed away.

First, the news broke a couple of days ago that Ozzy Osbourne passed away, a few weeks after the Black Sabbath Farewell Concert. While it wouldn't shock me if he decided euthanasia was the best answer to his struggles, it could also have been due to complications from Parkinson's Disease. Ozzy's death reminds me a bit of Freddie Mercury's passing, who died a day after he publicly announced he had HIV. In both cases, I suspect they both knew it was time.

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I began listening to Ozzy midway through high school. Given that my parents were very strict about what music I could and couldn't listen to, I had to get around that by copying acquaintances' cassettes of heavy metal bands. That way, my parents couldn't really see what I was listening to, and once I got a car --and a cassette deck in said car-- I did most of my listening while driving or on my boom box while working after school or over the summer as a janitor. Bands such as Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Scorpions, and Autograph found space on my Maxell and TDK blanks, but the second heavy metal album I copied* was Ozzy's Blizzard of Oz. It may have been a copy of a copy, since the sound quality wasn't very good, but at least I had it.

I couldn't find the cassette with Blizzard of Oz on it,
but I could find these.

It took my going away to college --and away from the prying eyes of my parents-- for me to more fully embrace music found on "Satanic" lists by Evangelical preachers.

The funny thing is that since I began listening to heavy metal midway through the 1980s, I came to Ozzy first through his solo career. To me, Black Sabbath was this band from the past that wasn't really relevant today. This was hammered home by my encounter with graffiti I had to clean off of a chair in my high school (I was a janitor, remember?) that said "Black Sabbath Rules The World". A couple of coworkers happened to wander by, snorted, and one of them said derisively, "They need to put an album out first!"

"First an album, next the world!" the other quipped.

It was only much later, in the 1990s, when I began listening to Black Sabbath and realizing that hey, they weren't half bad after all.

Still, Ozzy had penetrated into the national consciousness through the Satanic Panic. I didn't put any credence in all of the claims --I played RPGs and wasn't about to sacrifice small animals to Satan, after all-- but plenty of people did.** 

Ozzy even found himself in the then popular comic strip Bloom County:

From the 1987 compilation book "Billy and the
Boingers Bootleg", Page 80, by Berke Breathed.

From the 1987 compilation book "Billy and the
Boingers Bootleg", Page 81, by Berke Breathed.

Yes, I was a Bloom County fan, and yes, I had all of the compilation books.

Here's the proof. I still have the floppy
record that came with the book.

In case you wondered what the songs sound like, here's one of them (courtesy of YouTube):

Over the years, my interest in heavy metal waned, but I still have a soft spot for heavy metal from the 70s and 80s and what it meant to my own personal declaration of independence as an adult. While the Bloom County cartoons played up for amusement the concept that Ozzy was just a "regular guy" playing around with heavy metal, the reality that came out decades later was that he pretty much was just a regular guy after all and his Ozzy persona was just an act. 

***

Yesterday, the news broke that Hulk Hogan had also passed away, and with that another chunk of my youth vanished. 

I wasn't that much of a World Wrestling Federation fan, as I used to watch the rival organization World Championship Wrestling (the home of Dusty Rhodes and "Nature Boy" Ric Flair), but you couldn't not be aware of WWF and it's biggest star, Hulk Hogan. Among the WWF pantheon, I cheered more for Andre the Giant than Hulk, but Hulk was the face of the WWF. There's no denying that.

This was at the end of Andre's career,
when he "turned bad" and wrestled against
Hulk in 1987. From The Detroit News.

To be clear, I wasn't one of the pro wrestling fans around school who were so far down the rabbit hole that they subscribed to one of several wrestling magazines, but I was enough of a fan that I could at least hold my own with those hardcore fans. The fans fell into two camps: those who loved Hulk and those who hated him. Most people loved him, but there were a few contrarians who preferred Hulk's enemies (such as Rowdy Roddy Piper) instead. 

But that Golden Era of wrestling is fading from memory. Hulk is just the latest to pass away, as Dusty Rhodes, Andre the Giant, Randy Savage, Rowdy Roddy Piper, George "The Animal" Steele, and The Iron Sheik are all gone.

***

Finally, overshadowed by Hulk Hogan's passing, was also the passing of Chuck Mangione. You know, the "Feels So Good" guy.

This is the full version. The radio edit/singles

version can be found here.

If you're of the right age, you couldn't avoid Feels So Good. It was all over the radio, and it helped to drive the Soft Rock radio format to greater heights. The irony was that while I heard it on radio all the time --my parents listened to Soft Rock, after all-- my biggest memory of Feels So Good tied into our first color television set. 

That first Saturday we had the Sears color television around the house, I woke up and went downstairs to turn on the TV. It was pretty early in the day and before the Saturday Morning Cartoons came on, so I flipped to one of the independent or PBS stations (I can't remember which) and suddenly there was a video of the sun rising on my screen with Feels So Good playing as an accompaniment. Being one of the first color TV images I ever saw at home, that moment was etched indelibly in my mind. 

Over the years I grew to appreciate Chuck's jazz output and his loyalty to his hometown of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music, of whom he was an alum and an instructor. I learned much later that Chuck was also an alum of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, of whom he played alongside Keith Jarrett. 

***

All three of them had left an indelible imprint on my youth. Maybe it wasn't the three themselves that I remember most, but what they represented: rebellion, guilty pleasures, and the music my parents listened to. Still, it feels weird to be reminded of my past only when that past is permanently lost to us. 

In an ironic twist, at times like these I'm reminded of this little segment from George Carlin. George's stand-up comedy hasn't always aged very well, but in this case it actually has. The entire video is worth watching, but I highlighted this one specific bit at the 4:55 mark:

Note to self: Google doesn't like it if I try to embed

YouTube videos at a specific time marker.

*The first was Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry. Yes, really.

**And still do today, just to be clear about it. If people give them half a chance, these devout folks would attempt to eradicate "satanic" music and books once more. After all, look at all the attempts to ban books and media today. Cancel Culture is not simply a thing on the political left.

Small Worlds

I was on SWTOR the other day, playing around with a new Jedi Shadow, when I finished up Taris and returned to the ship. There I had my latest conversation with Qyzen, and I was reminded once again about how intertwined the characters in the SWTOR universe are.

You might remember the conversation, about Qyzen and his rancor trophy. You might even remember how important the trophy meant to Qyzen. But do you remember who he worked with back then?

Qyzen mentioned it in passing, almost an offhand remark: Braden.

As in, Braden the NPC at the beginning of the Bounty Hunter story.

The more I play SWTOR, the more I'm surprised by the entanglements that the PCs, the primary NPCs, and their companions have. I realize this is by design, but Bioware didn't have to do this. They could just as easily had 8 class stories that were completely disconnected from the others, but these little intersections serve a larger purpose: that everything the PCs do is connected with each other. They are, to borrow a term from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, ta'veren.

***

But I had another case of Deja Vu when my wife and I watched an ESPN 30 For 30 documentary about Ric Flair the other day.*

No, really.

I suppose you'd never guess by my writing that in my teen years in the 80s I followed professional wrestling.** While I realize that some people had their older siblings or their friends get them interested in the (so-called) "soap opera for guys", my father was the one who introduced me to pro wrestling. When he was a boy in the 50s and early 60s, he used to ride bikes with his friends to the Cincinnati Gardens to watch wrestling there***, and he developed a love for the sport. Even though he and I would mainly talk about college basketball, I hadn't realized that he'd kept up with pro wrestling all through the years until I was cleaning up his old Mac after he passed away and discovered the WWE link at the top of his favorites.

Watching the documentary, titled "Nature Boy", was a chance to get back in touch with my youth. I'd not followed wrestling since my time at college, and the over the top drama and plotlines couldn't help but make me chuckle.****

Yes, pro wrestling certainly earns its moniker of being a "soap opera for guys". The obnoxious boasting from the wrestlers, the choreographed moves, and the so-called drama of the production was something you simply couldn't take seriously. However, as I watched the documentary from a vantage point of almost 30 years removed from following the sport, I realized just how much the pro wrestling world had impacted the design of some of these newer MMOs.

For example, here's a pic from TERA Online:

Complete with championship belt.

And now contrast it with a few classic pro wrestling stills:

The Nature Boy himself, Ric Flair.
"Wooooooooo!!" indeed.
From villains.wiki.

Randy "Macho Man" Savage on the left
and Hulk Hogan on the right. If this doesn't
scream "protect the princess, boys!"
I don't know what does. From reddit, but a
version of this is on wikipedia.org.

But a larger influence is found from the world of women's pro wrestling.

Yes, that is a thing.

When I was in college, there was GLOW, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, that hoped to capitalize on the popularity of the WWF and WCW, but was frequently relegated to Midnight on Saturday nights. But the WWE has spent a while now promoting women's wrestling, which includes Ric Flair's daughter, Charlotte:

Her dad used to enter the ring wearing
a cape/robe of his own. (From wwe.com)

And a couple of other pics:

From wwe.com.

From lethalwow.com. (No, not a World of Warcraft
site. Just sayin'.)

Now, the reason why I point to pro wrestling versus Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is that the MMA clothing is strictly practical in nature, whereas the influence of pro wrestling's undeniably sexed up outfits can be seen in ArcheAge:

My short lived Warborn. Alas that ArcheAge
has a two character limit for non-subs.

And in TERA Online:

My Castanic. What is it about "devil" characters
that people find so appealing? I suppose you could
even throw Draenei into that mix, even though
they never were corrupted.

It feels... odd... looking at pro wrestling and seeing MMOs instead. In its own way, the plotlines in pro wrestling is analogous to these newer MMOs, where story isn't quite as important as bashing people, looking good, and preening like an alpha. But I shouldn't be surprised, because pro wrestling is pop culture, and MMOs do reflect pop culture. Sure, other MMOs may not reflect it as obviously as WoW does with its quirky names and questlines, but pop culture does extend a long shadow over MMOs (and video games in general).

We may think we're playing games that are immune to or isolated from what we consider to be the larger world, but we're not. The larger world does provide at least a subconscious influence on our smaller gaming worlds, and we should pay attention to that influence. MMOs and other games (video and otherwise) reflect their times.

Even if those times include eyebrow raising wrestling outfits.





*To be perfectly honest, my wife set the DVR to record it, not me. I wasn't so sure whether I wanted to watch it, but I figured "oh hell, why not."

**More World Championship Wrestling than what was then known as the World Wrestling Federation (now called World Wrestling Entertainment, after a lawsuit from the World Wildlife Fund forced a name change). As one person in the documentary put it, the WCW was for more blue collar people who loved to watch wrestling, and the WWF was geared toward kids and teens.They operated in two completely different circles.

***As well as watch the NBA team the Cincinnati Royals, whose most famous player was Oscar Roberston. Oscar, known as The Big O, was one of the greatest players of his generation and one of the all time greats of basketball. Given that The Big O's career overlapped that of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, "Doctor J" Julius Erving, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, that's saying quite a bit. The Cincinnati Royals moved to Kansas City in 1971 and were renamed the Kings, and in 1985 they moved to their current location in Sacramento. For the rest of his days, my father was mad at the Royals management who basically sold off the team's best players and then used the plummeting attendance as an excuse to move.

****Okay, I guess I ought to confess one other item: during my Sophomore year at college, I got hooked on the NBC daytime soap opera Days of our Lives. (I blame my roommate at the time, who was hooked on it before me.) So, for several months I would take my lunchtime break and pull up a chair by a television set around campus to watch Days. After about 5 months' worth of shows, however, I just threw up my hands and said that the plot was way too over the top for me to find remotely enjoyable. Still, it does give me an appreciation of how much work and acting skill to keep the show going every week out of the year.