Month: January 2013

“Arnold doesn’t dance! He can barely walk!”

From: In & Out

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: Narrator for the Exploring Your Masculinity audio tape

The story behind the quote: In and Out was a film that was pretty much a breakthrough for its time because it used homosexuality not as a punchline. Rather, it uses homosexuality as the main plot point. Not only that, it never used (outright anyway) the gay stereotype.

The story is about Howard Brackett (played by Kevin Kline), a teacher from middle school. One of his former students won the Best Actor award during the Oscars for his portrayal of a gay soldier. During the acceptance speech, the student thanks Howard Brackett for helping him… and tells the entire world Howard is gay.

Howard quickly denies being homosexual. However, after an encounter with reporter Tom Malloy (played by Tom Selleck), where he gets kissed by the gay reporter, he starts to question his manhood. He then rushes home to play a tape to try to reaffirm his heterosexuality… with poor results.

Geek wisdom: People are generally paranoid of what others think of us. So, we try to convince ourselves that we are “normal” people. No, we don’t really like comic book because “comics are for kids.” I “used” to play Dungeons and Dragons but I don’t anymore because, well, that would be ridiculous! We try to act “normal.”

The thing is, we are all normal. Our interests and likes make us what we are. However, the first thing we have to do is tell ourselves that our interests and likes are okay.

Be happy with who you really are deep down inside. In fact, you should be proud of who you are inside. If you wanna dance, go ahead and dance!

“What strength! But don’t forget that there are many guys like you all over the world!”

From: Street Fighter

Genre: Video Games

Who said it?: Various characters

The story behind the quote: We’ve already discussed a bunch of Street Fighter II quotes, such as Ryu’s victory quote regarding the “mysterious” Sheng Long and even M. Bison’s quote regarding Tuesday. However, these quotes came from the extremely popular 2nd entry in the series. Most people haven’t even played the original Street Fighter game. Now seems like the perfect time to take a gander at it.

The original Street Fighter game was actually a pretty amazing fighting game… for its time. While there were some games that used different characters like Yie Ar Kung Fu, you normally played as an ordinary guy with no real special skills while your opponents can do amazing things. In Street Fighter, Ryu (or Ken if you’re playing as the 2nd player), you can throw fireballs, perform spinning kicks or a devastating jumping uppercut. While the controls weren’t responsive (you’d be lucky to actually get the fireball motion to register), that was pretty different for its time and did gain a significant following.

Another big innovation would be digitized voices. Ryu and Ken would yell out “Flash Fire” or “Dragon Punch” when they did the fireball and Dragon Punch, respectively. The most memorable use of digitized speech used would have to be the entire quote spouted out by the computer opponent when you beat them. Even though the sound quality was terrible (it was pretty hard to understand it without the subtitles), it was still amazing to actually hear it.

Geek wisdom: You may think that you are the best at a certain thing but you cannot rest on your laurels. You have to constantly practice your craft in order to actually be the best. For example, you may think that you’re the best Street Fighter at your arcade, however, unless you actually go to different arcades and test your skills against new players, you’ll never improve.

Sure there’s a fear of losing, but that fear is also important since the only way you can get better is to try testing yourself against others. If you want to be the best at anything, you have to prove yourself as the best.

“One million dollars!”

From: Austin Powers series

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: Dr. Evil

The story behind the quote: If you don’t already know, the Austin Powers series is a spoof of James Bond movies of the 60’s and 70’s and spy movies in general. However, while it is the hero that is the main star of the James Bond movies, it is the main antagonist, Dr. Evil that usually steals the spotlight. Not because he’s one of those villains that are just pure evil. Rather, it’s his incompetence on actually being evil.

An example of his incompetence would be his blackmailing the world. In the first movie, after being frozen in the 60’s and being thawed out in the 90’s, he attempted to ask all the world’s leaders for the sum of “one million dollars” and the world leaders got a good laugh out of it. It’s because, while one million dollars was a lot of money in the 60’s, it’s not that big of a deal in the 90’s, especially for the world economy.

When he went to the past, he tried to blackmail the world again, this time, he asked for 100 billion dollars (which is the new amount he asked for in the 90’s). The world leaders in the 60’s laughed at this amount as well since, well, that amount of money didn’t even exist yet!

Geek wisdom: There are always going to be changes around us. These changes will happen whether we accept them or not. So, the best thing to do is to always try to adapt. Without us even trying to know about these changes, we ourselves will never evolve.

We can try to cling to the thoughts of the “good ol’ days” all we want. It doesn’t change the fact that changes will happen. We may not always agree or even like the changes, but we do have to at least learn these changes.

“You can’t handle the truth!”

From: A Few Good Men

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: Col. Nathan R. Jessup

The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the film A Few Good Men. While this may be considered spoilers since it happens pretty much at the end of the film (and is actually “the big thing” of the entire story), a lot of people don’t seem to recognize this fact.

Here’s a quick summary of the scene…

Lt. Jr. Grade Danny Keefe (played by Tom Cruise) has pretty much determined that Col. Nathat Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) given a “code red” (essentially an order to punish soldiers without any hearing) which led to the death of Officer Santiago. However, Keefe is without any form of proof. He devices a plan to call Col. Jessup to the stand during the trial and get him angry. In this way, he hopes that Col. Jessup will incriminate himself by admitting that he ordered the code red.

Keefe’s finds a flaw in the Col’s initial statement that Santiago should have been safe since there were orders not to harm him. Yet, at the same time, there were orders that he should be transferred for safety reasons. Keefe repeatedly asks the Colonel why would there be a need to transfer Santiago if there were standing orders not to hurt him. He eventually gets Col. Jessup to admit that he ordered the code red. However, the Colonel makes a speech saying that he gave the order to make sure that our freedoms are kept safe.

Geek wisdom: There are actually two pieces of Geek Wisdom we can pull from, not just the quote, but the entire monologue…

Like Col. Jessup said, there are some secrets that you think you want to be privy to, but in reality, the weight of those secrets can be too much to bear. There are going to be things that we believe that we can handle but we really can’t. We will have to rely on others to bear these (sometimes) terrible burdens and perform terrible actions because of them.

However, as Col. Jessup also said, we do have the liberty to condemn others for doing these terrible things, but we don’t know the full story. We may think that there may have been another way to prevent such horrible actions but there may be details that prevented a peaceful resolution. We do have to keep that in mind before we totally rally against something.