With the Michael Jackson trial coming to a close, Leno, Letterman and nightclub comedians everywhere are scrambling to cash in on their last punch lines at Wacko Jacko's expense. Well, I'm going to take the high road.
But, speaking of things your kids shouldn't be playing with, I would like to talk about video games.
People say they're inappropriate. People say they're too violent. People say the rating system should be more strict. I disagree -- because at least we have a rating system now.
When I was growing up, our games were just as disturbing, but we didn't have any way of knowing it at the time. I mean, did anyone ever stop and think about the concept behind the game Hangman?
"Okay, Lance, here's how it works: You guess the seven-letter word at the bottom of the page, or we're gonna kill this guy for no apparent reason. His life is in your hands.
"Go!
"F, Lance? F? Do you really think that someone deserves to die just because you don't watch enough Wheel of Fortune? Okay, well, I'm just gonna draw his head in the noose -- there -- and you take another stab at it."
I'd start to feel so guilty by the end of it. I'd keep making them add on new body parts:
"Q? No? Well, I don't see any eyebrows. Can't you put some eyebrows on him and let me guess again?"
Yeah, I'm sure I wasn't traumatized at all by the fact that this poor guy, who I was slowly killing with my own stupidity, got more and more lifelike with each wrong guess.
And then there was always Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Nothing really horrifying about that game, is there? Just what kind of sadistic, Third-World surgical procedure was that game based on? Oh yeah, it just screams birthday party fun doesn't it?
"Okay kids, when you're done with your cake and ice cream, we're all going to head into the living room and pretend to reattach the dismembered tail of a mutilated donkey! He'll just be sitting there, slowly dying from the bloody nub on his a--, but I'm sure he won't mind if we blindfold you, spin you around a couple hundred times and hope for the best!
Woops, Sally missed again! Ha ha ha, looks like you pierced the chest cavity that time. Oh well! Bobby's turn!"
And, let's not forget Clue. Remember Clue? Somebody starts out dead in that game. We don't know who, we don't know why and, ultimately, it doesn't even matter because the object of the game from there is just to see who can come up with the most heinous murder-scene combination imaginable.
I don't know what kind of circumstances you have to be in to bludgeon someone to death with a candlestick in a library, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that cooking up such scenarios is not going to make putting an eight-year-old to bed any easier.
A candlestick, lead pipe, kitchen knife, monkey wrench, you know, stuff that's easy to find around the house -- in case you want to act the game out. A great for game for impressionable young minds, isn't it?
Me and my brother would play with those little weapons so much that we ended up losing all of them. So, whenever we wanted to actually play Clue, we had to substitute in the pieces from Monopoly -- which just made the game twice as violent, if you wanted it to make any sense.
"Oh, it was Professor Plum in the kitchen with the Scottie dog. Yeah, apparently the Scottie dog had rabies, and the Professor was the only one in the house who knew about it. It was the perfect crime! I could've sworn it was Mrs. Peacock in the lobby with the top hat."
See? We didn't have rating systems on our games, and look how we turned out.
Besides, who would have thought that the game Moon-Walker, based on Michael Jackson's life, would have ended up being rated MA? You can't predict everything.
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