Philip J Reed, Author at Noiseless Chatter

Anonymous Death

I spent Tuesday night with some friends. They may be moving to Germany. I may be able to count the number of times I’ll see them again on one hand.

It was a fun night. I came home late. Tired, but not enough to sleep. So I went onto 4chan.

No, I’m not linking to it. Nor will I include any pictures. Because during a night of aimless browsing — the very last context I’d expect — I witnessed a murder.

An actual murder.

This is not a metaphor. This is not a cutesy way of making a point.

There was a woman who was murdered and I was there to see it.

I’ll explain, but at the same time I’m not sure how much I can explain.

4chan has a reputation, of course. But I know people who use it, and enjoy it. I think you need to go into the site knowing you’re going to hear a lot of inflated, ridiculous talk. It goes without saying that that talk will focus around subjects that polite conversations do not. You can come up with your own examples. I don’t need to supply them. If it comes to mind, it’s there. Right now.

But it’s talk. It’s words. What are words? I can say anything I like. That doesn’t make it true. And if you get offended by it, you can visit another blog. Right?

Words.

4chan was only words.

And pictures.

On and off over the past few weeks I’ve been dipping into 4chan. No real reason. It just felt like a blind spot to me. It’s a well-known (albeit not well-regarded) corner of the internet that I knew almost nothing about. And, sure, I’ve seen it before. But I hadn’t really explored it. Scroll through the nonsense and you might find something funny. You might not. Does it matter what you find?

I found a murder.

This night, this past Tuesday night, I knew I just wanted to kill time until I fell asleep. And I figured that was as good a time as any to give that site another chance.

The first photograph I saw will be easy for you to find online, if you’re so inclined. I recommend you don’t. It was a woman, naked, on her back. She was in bed, with her head hanging over the edge of the mattress. Her skin was a sickly bluish grey. It was instantly, deeply haunting.

But I did not know what it was.

Online, you can find pictures of dead people. It’s easy. Real, and realistic fabrications. Over-the-top effects to rival Hollywood. Sometimes you can’t even tell them apart. Things spread as fact. Sometimes they might even be.

So I thought, maybe, it was something like that. Some crime scene photograph of an unfortunate corpse that recirculates every so often in circles I don’t have any reason to frequent. Just to gross people out. Just to make them uneasy. Like I was now.

I didn’t click into the thread. But the next thread was something more benign. I don’t remember it now. I think it was something like, “Share something you’ve never shared with anyone.” That was more interesting. Without clicking into it, I could see the most recent reply. Somebody said, “This murder thing has me really worried that it’s real.”

Other threads cropped up. I still didn’t click into the original, but I also couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to know more, but I think what I wanted was to find some logistical flaw. See the string. Spot the seam where the photograph ended and the retouch began. I wanted something I could end on. Some punctuation that would let me go to sleep with the assumption that it’s at least possible that this didn’t really happen.

But it did. As more threads appeared and more photos appeared and old comments by the murderer were mirrored, I was finding it more and more conclusive.

Many pictures.

The same woman.

Impossible to tell how old. 40? 35?

I’ve never seen a dead body before. At least…I don’t think I have. I’ve never even attended a funeral service. I find them disrespectful. And yet, here I am, presented with naked photographs of a woman who has just been murdered. Disrespect to the dead cannot come in any purer form than that.

The first picture was shared with a comment along the lines of, “It’s harder to strangle someone to death than you’d think.”

Can you blame people for thinking it was some kind of very dark joke?

What on the internet isn’t a joke? What on the internet isn’t to be taken lightly? You need to let these things roll off of you.

More photos. The marks on her neck were clear. Somebody worries that it’s real, saying he can’t believe that “a woman was murdered on 4chan for our amusement.”

Whatever amusement there was died down quickly. At least overall. There were still assholes, but it’s impossible to know if they still thought it was some kind of gag, and didn’t want to be on the embarrassing end of some grand reveal.

“Nobody knows,” the murderer said. “Her son will be home soon and he will find her and call the cops. Right now, you people are the only ones who know.”

Who was she? Where was she? What happened? Why was she naked? Were they lovers? Did he initiate some dangerous sex game with her and then take it too far when he knew she’d let him?

Nobody else heard anything. Her neighbors were home. There was no struggle. There was no breaking and entering. Whatever happened, this woman was expecting something very different. She’s dead now.

Her murderer took her life, fully intending to do so. He planned it. He took photographs. He posted them online. He said he wanted to share them before he got caught. As of right now, I don’t know that he has been caught.

Someone finds an article online. Sure enough, the woman’s son found her dead body and called the police. Breaking news. Before long at all, it’s tied to the photos posted on 4chan. That was her. She had a family. Her son has no mother. A woman’s life is over, and I watched it happen. I watched it move from sick possibility to cold, stony permanence.

My stomach hurts. I don’t know what to think. If I think about it at all, I feel dizzy.

Why was she murdered? We’ll probably never know. But the urge to post the single most disheartening, disgusting thing in the history of a site known for being disheartening and disgusting certainly comes to mind.

I don’t know if it matters. Whether this woman was killed in an argument gone awry or she was killed for the “amusement” of a website, she’s dead. It certainly doesn’t change anything her family and friends and neighbors are going through right now.

There’s a real danger to creating an environment that takes things too lightly. Desensitization is very real. I know, because I experienced it. Just a few hours of browsing 4chan over a couple of weeks had exposed me to think I wish I’d never seen or read, but it all just becomes a sort of beige palaver after a while. Drugs, violence, depravity, yes, yes, I’ve seen all this. You just keep scrolling. These things lose their meaning. These things lose their identities. This things, in a very real way, become just words, and you pay no more attention to them than you do a licensing agreement when you install software.

You’re on the computer for something. These words are not that something. So on we scroll. Down, down, down, down.

I saw a dead body. I saw a woman killed for my amusement. I was on that site, wasn’t I? I was scrolling. What was I scrolling for? Had to be something, right? And how much did I have to scroll past to find it? There was a kind of escalation involved, and it was one I didn’t even feel.

Didn’t even feel until it hits like a brick to the gut.

And a woman is dead. Strangled in what sounds like it was a long and difficult murder. Her neighbors watching television. Eating leftover Halloween candy. Her son on his way home, unaware that anything, anywhere, has changed.

That’s what happens, I guess. When you scroll down far enough.

Now how the fuck do we get back?

Pills

I’ve opened up, a bit, about some of the emotional struggles I’ve faced. What I’m not sure I’ve opened up about yet — and what actually has bearing on what happened here at the end of October — is the fact that I take medication.

Which makes me crazy. Right? I mean, I’m not in pain. I don’t have cancer. Is it fair of me to just pop a pill and gloss over the hard times when everybody else has to deal with their problems like an adult?

These are the kinds of things people assume. They must. Otherwise people like myself would be a lot more open about the fact that we take the medication we do. Somebody can mention openly that they take Percocet — a very addictive and frequently abused painkiller — because they sustained a physical injury. Very few people would begrudge them this escape from their pain. In fact, they’d be likely to make allowances for fluctuations in that person’s behavior. They are, after all, on drugs.

Mention that you take an antidepressant, however, and you get a very different response. Anything from a skeptical “You don’t seem depressed…” to an openly dismissive eyeroll. Every so often, yes, you’ll get a response of understanding and support. These responses tend to come from people who have taken them as well, or have close friends or family members who have. That is to say, they’ve learned that it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Why, exactly, is this something that needs to be learned? Isn’t the fact that somebody is taking medication to help them through their problems a good thing? Wouldn’t the far scarier situation be that somebody with psychological issues refuses to treat them?

When this site went down, I was in Chicago. I’ve never been there before. I didn’t get to see much of the city. One reason for that is that I was there on business, and though I wasn’t in the office, eight hours’ of work still needed to be done each day.

The other, much more serious, reason is that I was suffering withdrawals.

I take a pretty minor dose of Zoloft. Not because it’s a magical pill that makes the bad things in life go away. That doesn’t exist.

What does exist is medicine that helps to regulate the chemicals in my brain. And that’s what I need. Before I started taking it, I had issues with anxiety and with depression. Now I still have those issues, but in ways that are far easier to deal with, and to understand. Anxiety is no longer crippling, for instance. It still exists, but the way I experience it now — thanks to medication — is closer to the “normal” experience of anxiety. Depression isn’t as deep anymore, nor does it linger anywhere near as long.

I’ll be honest with you: medication doen’t unfairly circumvent the problem. What it does is give me the help that I need to face it head-on, and learn to deal with it in a way that will not kill me.

It’s not evasive action. It’s not retreat. It’s the opportunity fight in the battles that I used to lose outright.

I say it’s a minor dose because that’s important. It’s so minor that I’ve missed taking it for days, and haven’t had any problem. In Chicago, however, far from my pharmacy, with my forgotten plastic bottle an insurmountable distance away, it happened. I went through withdrawals. When I realized I’d left my medication at home, I didn’t worry. It’s never been a problem before.

But now, all at once, it was. And so when the site went down…well, no offense to anyone, but that was the least of my worries. Sure, I probably could have called my hosting company and handled it that way…but…

…I couldn’t.

At all.

I couldn’t do anything. Because my body was rebelling. My mind was rebelling. They got used to medication that they wanted, badly. And it was mutiny.

That’s the best way I can describe it. I was barely able to force myself out of bed and for much of the trip unable to force myself to eat. My body was having none of it; it wanted Zoloft. Which I didn’t have. And which I could not have. It wasn’t pleasant.

Years ago, before I left New Jersey, I took Lexapro. I was sold on the idea because it wasn’t habit forming, and only had to be taken temporarily. Apparently the medication was designed to “teach” your brain the appropriate chemical levels it would need to operate normally. So you’d take it for a while, and when you stopped your brain would remember how much of what chemicals it needed to produce. Sounded great.

In Florida, I went off Lexapro.

It was habit forming. It didn’t teach my brain anything. And I entered what was probably the worst three or four weeks of my life.

The withdrawals were severe and debilitating. I wasn’t me. So much of that time is a blur, and a dark one. What I remember about it I remember second hand, from friends who were there for me, listened to how I felt, and can remind me now what it was like.

Otherwise I’m left only with scattered details. Mornings that I’d wake up on the floor, unaware of how I got there. Times at work that my brain would seem to shut down and reboot…sensations of sight and sound coming back only gradually. Phantom shadows that belonged to nothing. And a day that I was driving in my car and heard Neil Young singing “Harvest Moon” on the radio. It’s a sweet song, one I quite like, and not sad at all. But hearing it, in that state, I had to pull over, because I was breaking down. Weeping hard. Some emotion had been triggered by it. One I still can’t place. This wasn’t me.

In Chicago, the withdrawal wasn’t as bad as that. It was bad enough that I wasn’t in any kind of shape to do…well, anything apart from the work I was sent there to do. I brought a book, and couldn’t read it. I brought my 3DS, and couldn’t focus enough to play. I had friends near there…but I didn’t want them to see me in that state. That wasn’t me, either.

I meant to say all of this in my last post…but was still recovering. I didn’t have clarity of mind. And I wanted to make sure I got one point across better than I could have at the time:

People taking medication for emotional problems just need a little bit of help. That’s all it is.

It’s nothing to be afraid of, and — as I hope the above makes clear enough — not at all an easy way out. People who take that medication are necessarily working harder than those who don’t need it. For most people, brain chemistry and emotional stability just happen. Like breath. Or a beating heart. You don’t need to focus on it. Sometimes something may interrupt it, but it doesn’t take much to get it back on track again.

For me, and for folks dealing with things so much more difficult than I am, that’s not the case.

Getting things back on track takes labor. It takes time. It takes focus and attention. It’s hard work, because the track may have to be built again from scratch.

Just understand. That’s all.

When you find out that a friend or a colleague or a family member of yours takes some kind of antidepressant, antianxiety, or even an antipsychotic medication, you know the best thing to say?

Nothing.

At all.

Because that’s not them. The medication is a tool, and a necessary one. Otherwise — I can promise you confidently — they wouldn’t put themselves through what’s involved with taking it.

Don’t draw attention to it. It will just make them feel uneasy, even if you think the attention you’re giving it is positive.

If you must say something, let them know you’re there for them, and leave it at that. If you’re not there for them, or you aren’t able to leave it at that, don’t say anything.

Mental health issues are scary precisely because we know so little about them. Limitations in the field of medicine — both logistical and ethical — make it very easy for doctors and scientists to study the physical healing process, and almost impossible for them to study the mental healing process.

We’re making progress. We’re learning. But we’re in dark, scary waters, fighting an enemy we know nothing about.

Don’t be afraid of the people who need help. By definition, they’re weaker than you are. If anything, they’ll be afraid of you.

Help them. Or don’t.

But never hinder them. And be aware that you’ll never know what that person is going through on the inside. They’re suffering wounds so deep nobody — that person included — can see them.

You might think their medication is frivolous. And you’re welcome to think that.

But if so? Keep your mouth shut. And have the decency, at least, not to trip them up as they seek the safety you take for granted.

Crappy Halloween!!

Regular visitors of this site (I like to call them Chatterholes) will no doubt have noticed that THIS SITE CEASED TO EXIST.

What happened?

Well, something very good: October saw the most traffic this site has ever had! Unfortunately that traffic exceeded the agreement I had with my webhost, so Noiseless Chatter (I like to call it Chatterhole Central) was taken offline with a cryptic error message that told nobody anything.

This happened while I was in a hotel room in Chicago, unable to deal with it and without any of my billing information. So it was down for a few days…right before I was supposed to launch The Lost Worlds of Power.

I’m back up, now. To save time and heartache, I upgraded my hosting package. That’s more money, which means I may revisit the idea of advertising. Or maybe I’ll just put a PayPal button somewhere and those who feel inclined can donate. But as of right now, I haven’t given it much thought. We’ll see. I’m open to ideas. As much as I love this site — and all y’all — it also consumes time and money that I don’t always have to spare.

That’s not an ultimatum, though. As long as it’s humanly possible, this site will be here. It’s not going anywhere…I’m just thinking out loud, and trying to decide how to avoid something like this happening again in the future.

So, service as usual will pick up again from this point on. Hopefully the downtime will have discouraged some spam bots, so if you need a silver lining, there you go.

Where does that leave The Lost Worlds of Power?

Technically, since it was supposed to launch tomorrow, I can still hit that deadline. But…I’d rather not. It feels disrespectful to the project as a whole — not to mention the authors involved — to just drop the thing and run after an extended period of THE SITE NOT EXISTING.

So, though I hate to do this, I’m going to bump it back. Most likely a Thanksgiving release at this point…but I’ll give that more thought as well before I promise anything. Basically I want to give it a fair and exciting runup.

Anyway, whatever. That’s that. I’m all laggy from traveling so forgive me if it sounds like I’m unfocused and I have to pee.

WELCOME BACK CHATTERHOLES

ALF Reviews: “I’m Your Puppet” (season 2, episode 22)

When I started doing these reviews, each one took me about…two hours or so to write. (Not counting the viewing time of the episode, of course, but that’s negligible.) Now they take several days’ worth of on-and-off work. Which, frankly, is insane.

I think, however, that’s because I’ve allowed my writing process to evolve into something very inefficient. Even though my reviews are better now than they were then (feel free to disagree…), I think that the change in writing process is coincidental, and is not responsible for any bump in quality. The improvement is far more likely to be down to my expanded mindset, and increased willingness to engage with the material.

So, what I’m doing with this review is going back to my old writing process. If you think this installment represents a major step backward in quality, let me know. Hopefully you won’t even notice. Or wouldn’t have if I didn’t draw your attention directly to it OOPS

Anyway, this one opens with ALF building some shitty car in the living room. (Don’t worry. It gets better.)

As you can see, the construction of the vehicle is pretty well underway, so I have no idea how nobody in the family knew he was doing this. Why not set this scene in the garage where it would make more sense? I’d be willing to believe he was building some jalopy out there that nobody knew about. The Tanners only have periodic reasons to go into the garage, and that’s sort of ALF’s de facto playground anyway, so why not? Why the fucking living room when we find out in a moment that Lynn and Kate are right in the kitchen? How did they not hear this, or see this, happening?

It’s a pretty stupid setup for a sequence of jokes that would have lost nothing (and would not have had to be rewritten in any way) if they just came into the garage instead of the living room to tell ALF breakfast is ready. As it stands, Kate and Lynn walk out of the kitchen at the sound of the shitty car’s horn, which is annoying but not particularly loud. How did they hear that but not the actual construction of the fucking vehicle?

Whatever I SWEAR IT GETS BETTER

You’ll also see that they’re really making sure to get their money’s worth out of those fuzzy dice they dyed green way back in “Help Me, Rhonda.”

The jokes are actually not that bad. For starters, the alien refers to his car as an ALF Romeo. It’s one of those puns that’s exactly stupid enough that it just barely circles back around to being funny. In fact, I’d be willing to give this entire scene a begrudging pass based on that joke alone, but it’s not the only good one.

ALF explains that he’s building a car because it will impress chicks. Then he asks if they like it, and Kate says no. ALF replies, “I was asking the chick. Not the mother hen.”

It’s dickish, but what makes it funny is Andrea Elson’s reaction. As commenter J. Paul pointed out recently, Elson is a bit of a gigglepuss. You can catch her laughing — or trying very hard not to — pretty often. Here, as in “Going Out of My Head Over You” during the brilliant dinner scene, it fits even if it’s not deliberate. It’s a shot at Kate that doubles as a compliment for Lynn, so I buy that the shock of it would make her laugh before she realizes she shouldn’t be doing that.

It’s a nice moment. I think it’s deliberate, but even if it’s not, so what? Most of the stuff this show does deliberately sucks a big cock, so you might as well let it run off the rails now and then.

Lynn asks how he built this piece of shit, and he explains that he used some worthless junk from around the house…such as Kate’s wedding dress for the car seat. Kate rightly gets upset, but ALF replies, “What? Were you planning on wearing it again?”

This…I actually like. ALF did something massively upsetting to Kate, but with one line of dialogue we’re reminded that he didn’t realize it.

Earthlings have this custom of keeping one specific article of clothing that, no, they will never wear again. ALF, an alien, doesn’t know that. He probably sees all kinds of clothing (especially with two growing children in the house) being given away or otherwise disposed of because they won’t be worn again. Why would — or should — he think this old dress is any different? It’s a good way to make ALF an accidental asshole without making him an intolerable psychopath.

Kate tells him to get that monstrosity out of her living room, and he starts it up for some reason without being inside of it, so of course it crashes into some furniture and makes a bigger mess. We linger on a shot of the crashed vehicle long enough that I was sad this whole thing built to a shitty visual “gag,” but then we finally cut back to ALF who says, “Great. Now I have to build a tow-truck.”

And FUCK YOU that’s the funniest punchline these opening scenes have had in a while.

This one has a writing credit for Al Jean and Michael Reiss, which may explain in itself why the dumbass setpiece in the opening scene actually had some good lines in it. It certainly explains why the inane plotline to follow actually leads to a pretty great episode.

“I’m Your Puppet” gets off to a great start in that regard, actually; Willie answers the door, sees a delivery man, and says, “Hi, Pete.”

Those two words say everything, and what follows is a cute little exchange that lets us know the details without spelling anything out too obtrusively: ALF orders so much shit that Willie and the delivery guy come to know each other by name. Of course, the package is COD. Do companies even do that anymore? At the time this aired I’m sure they did (I remember that being mentioned in commercials for mail-order horse shit)…but I can’t imagine Amazon or somebody sending something to your house with the expectation that you’ll pay the postman.

Willie even gets a great line when the delivery guy leaves. He calls out, “Oh, ALF! I have a package and a lecture for you!” When Max Wright gets a laugh out of me so early in an episode, damn me if I can’t help feeling optimistic.

ALF excitedly rips open the box, saying, “It came!” Lynn asks what it is, and ALF says, “Beats me.”

It implies that ALF orders so much shit he doesn’t even know what’s coming, and I thought it was a funny way of doing so, but there’s no laughter so maybe it wasn’t a joke? I have no clue. The artificial audience reactions should make it easier for me to understand this lousy show’s intentions, but all it does is confuse me further.

Then there’s a really odd moment when Willie tells ALF he’s getting “Styrofoam” all over the floor. ALF then eats some and spits it out because “it’s stale.”

Is it just me, or does it seem like Max Wright botched his line and they never bothered to fix it? The joke would have made more sense if Willie called them “Styrofoam peanuts” or “packing peanuts” instead. I really get the sense he just said the wrong thing and they rolled on anyway, disregarding the fact that the gag no longer worked.

Inside the box is a ventriloquist’s dummy, which ALF shakes around a bit and then gives up on, because it’s mute. That makes for a decent line, but a pretty crappy end to the scene, so it’s odd that they didn’t bother to write a stronger joke to close out on.

Just kidding. That’s not odd at all. Even the good episodes of this show are kind of shit.

Later on ALF is still yelling at the dummy to talk. By this point why hasn’t the family beaten him to death with a rake? Or at least explained to him what a dummy is, I guess. This is later in the day, and the Tanners are just wasting their lives in the living room, listening to a puppet yell at a dummy.

Nobody puts a stop to this? Jesus Christ. Shut that fucker up!

ALF threatens the puppet by saying, “Don’t make me get the rubber hose.” The fake audience laughs because if there’s one thing everybody loves about ALF, its his proclivity toward sexual violence.

Willie wanders over and ALF tells him the dummy is broken, which would be a perfect time for Willie to explain what a ventriloquist’s dummy actually is…but instead Jean and Reiss have him do something far, far better.

Willie, eyes half-closed, says: “ALF, I’m not going to raise my voice. I’m not going to threaten you. I’m just going to say, for the 928th time, please don’t ever do this again.”

He then walks away, ignoring ALF’s question entirely.

I’m not even going to type that in phonetic Willispeak, because Max Wright enunciates this both clearly and wearily. It’s actually a really great moment, and it’s kind of sad. Wright plays this very well, with a beaten, hopeless tone to his voice that no doubt plays right out of the actual beaten hopelessness that he feels for being on this show at all.

In fact, the whole “puppet with a puppet” thing may serve as a decent metaphor for ALF as a whole. Just as Max Wright had to deal with one puppet’s nonsense in reality, Willie has to deal with another in his reality. “I’m Your Puppet” might therefore be the recursive nightmare of Max Wright translated directly to film.

ALF then says he’s going to send Willie some flowers, and we cut to Lynn and see that the Styrofoam peanuts are indeed everywhere. Like, all over the living room floor. And, I’m sorry, but that’s a gorgeous little touch.

I really love this. They’re not just in a little pile somewhere…they’re scattered everywhere, and that’s hilarious. It’s just the result of the production crew having some fun. The previous scene mentioned peanuts everywhere, so, hell, let’s give them peanuts everywhere. It’s cute, and ties silently into the frustration on Willie’s part that we just saw.

Lynn then explains to ALF how the dummy works, and demonstrates it pretty effectively. Yeah, you can still see her lips move, but only barely. I don’t know if Andrea Elson had any kind of real-life interest in ventriloquism, but she certainly does it a lot better here than I just did when I embarrassed myself by imitating what I saw on an episode of ALF.

It’s a funny scene, starting with ALF’s astonishment that the dummy sounds just like Lynn.

Then he tries voicing the dummy himself, and his mouth moves very obviously. This I really like, because it’s such a subtle joke. Since the alien himself is being voiced by somebody beneath the floorboards, making ALF an excellent ventriloquist would be easy: Fusco just doesn’t need to work ALF’s mouth. Or maybe he could make its lips quiver slightly. Instead, he operates ALF just as he always does, with big, exaggerated gestures, and I like that. We get to stay true to ALF’s characterization rather than simply rocket the plot along.

Then Lynn tells him he needs to keep his mouth shut while he voices the dummy, and ALF does so…rendering the dummy’s lines muffled and incomprehensible.

So help me fuck this god damned ventriloquism episode is good and I swear to fucking pole-dancing christ I’m going to throw myself out a window.

If you thought I was reaching earlier in terms of the whole puppet with a puppet thing serving as potential meta commentary for ALF itself, you’re not alone. I thought I was, too. But then ALF wonders what to call his dummy.

Lynn says that they usually have goofy names, citing actual examples like Mortimer Snerd and Knucklehead Smiff. This helps ALF decide on a ridiculous name for his own puppet: Paul.

Now, if you’ve been following these reviews from the start, you’ll already know what I’m about to say…but humor me, for the sake of anyone tuning in late.

Paul Fusco is the creator of ALF. He’s also the puppeteer and voice actor behind ALF. On most shows, something like this would be a cute little wink, and little more.

Here, however, things are a bit different. Paul Fusco’s attitude was, by all accounts, why working on ALF was a miserable experience. I’ve joked about his reputation before, but I’ll be completely serious right now and say that that doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person, or even a foolish one. If he had a vision for what ALF should be, it’s respectable, at least in theory, that he committed himself so strongly to it.

In practice, however, there are many more people involved with the production, nearly all of whom seem to have suffered in some way for the sake of what, ultimately, was a pretty shitty sitcom. The filming of each episode took something like ten times as long as that of a standard half-hour comedy, and every one of the actors had to take care as they delivered their lines not to slip into the network of puppet trenches dug through the set.

The experience of filming under these conditions was wearying and unpleasant, leading Jack LaMotta (who played Mr. Ochmonek) to describe it bitterly as one of the worst things ever to air on television, and Anne Schedeen (my beloved, who played Kate) to essentially retire from an acting career that had once been fruitful the moment she was out of ALF‘s contract.

And that’s the good news. Andrea Elson (Lynn) developed a serious eating disorder that I find it impossible not to associate with how often this show treated her like a chunk of meat. Max Wright (Willie), whose conflicts with Fusco were the stuff of miserable legend, became addicted to crack and ended up at the heart of scandal when pictures surfaced of him having sex with hobos in exchange for the drug. After the final day of shooting, before anyone knew ALF had been cancelled, Wright finished his lines, hopped in his car, and drove away without saying goodbye to anybody.

We also know that Jerry Stahl (perennial candidate for the One Good Writer) was battling a crippling heroin addiction that nearly killed him, with suggestions having been floated that squandering his talents on a show like ALF is what kept him in a state of hopeless despondency.

Outtakes from ALF reveal the titular character shouting “NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER” while in the throes of a just-as-insulting impression of people with Tourette syndrome, as well as groping the female actors and making off-color jokes to the visible discomfort of his costars.

All of this is the legacy of Paul Fusco. Again, I don’t think he did any of this to purposefully be remembered as a sack of shit. But, no matter how you slice it, the experience of being involved, in any way, with ALF was one of abject and permanent misery. Paul Fusco, with ALF, put his costars through hell. ALF, with Paul, put his costars through hell.

The naming of the dummy can’t be a complete coincidence. ALF gets a “puppet” of his own…and names it Paul…and uses it to annoy the shit out of everyone around him…with Willie ignoring ALF’s questions, expressing his feelings of dissatisfaction and walking off…with the entire conflict of the episode hinging upon the obnoxious personality of the dummy coming to dominate everything in these people’s lives…it’s pretty damned hard not to see this as an exercise in meta commentary.

And, again, it’s Jean and Reiss behind the typewriter, who would go on to prove through their work on The Simpsons that meta commentary was well within their area of expertise.

Did this turn out to be the best episode of ALF ever? No, but who cares? It’s certainly got the most intriguing, and intelligent, premise yet. And (spoiler!) it handles it well.

The turmoil begins in this very scene, when ALF starts to annoy Lynn so much that she gets up and leaves to do her homework elsewhere. Then Brian comes in asking ALF to play a “computer game” with him. I have no idea what that black plastic thing is supposed to be, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s Brian. ALF tells him the same thing everyone tells him: fuck your dumbass thing. Put that away and do my thing instead.

Brian is willing to help him learn ventriloquism, but then ALF just wants to make the kid do his chores so he walks away.

That night ALF is putting on a puppet show through the plot window. The family is annoyed at first, but then ALF cracks some silly, harmless jokes with the dummy and they laugh. I don’t think they really find it funny so much as they find it cute…the way they would if ALF were some little kid trying his hand at a structured comedy routine.

Of course, the Tanners have a little kid, but I mean a little kid with personality and interests.

It makes sense that this performance would be cute to the Tanners. It’s still a novelty. ALF’s new hobby, for once, is something less than destructive, and they get to see him be happy for a little while. It’s kind of adorable, actually, and if you’ve ever had a little kid try to put on a magic show or something for you, you’ll know exactly how easy it is to be responsive and to play along, even if their skills are a performer are really quite poor and you’re obligated to let them know that.

I’m always so happy with how “real” Anne Schedeen allows Kate to be. When ALF’s performance is over, he calls for applause, and everybody claps. Kate, who is still getting dinner ready, stops what she doing, claps a few times, and gets right back to it. What a lovely little moment. It’s not a joke and it doesn’t advance the plot. It’s just Kate being real.

The fact that the family is only minorly entertained (and majorly humoring him) is revealed when he declares an encore, and they tell him no, it’s time for dinner. He then starts performing “Ebony and Ivory” with Paul, which is quite funny when it calls to mind GOB and Franklin doing something similar on Arrested Development, and not very funny at all when it calls to mind that footage of ALF shouting “NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER.”

Later that night, ALF and Paul show up to watch Willie and Kate fuck. They tell him to leave, ALF and his puppet do some more shitty jokes instead. One of them involves Paul “impersonating” ALF, which means it’s actually ALF’s own voice imitating itself..

This is interesting, for sure. The fact that an initially cute puppet routine quickly wears out its welcome is meta enough, but now it’s actually the voice of ALF that’s annoying the fuck out of everyone.

The dummy, impersonating ALF, even jokes about how he ate the cat. Willie rolls over and groans out an unimpressed “ha ha,” acknowledging one of ALF‘s actual running jokes as being…kind of stupid, actually.

In just a few scenes, we basically have the entire history of ALF filtered through the episode: someone gets a puppet, that someone figures out a personality for the puppet, his routine is novel if not particularly good, and he ends up drilling the puppet and its catchphrases into the rest of the cast long after they wish they could move on to something else.

Anyway, Willie gets up in the middle of the night and hears ALF’s puppet crackin’ wise, but when he looks into the laundry room ALF is asleep, having vivid sex dreams about Willie’s daughter.

The puppet keeps talking, which makes the audience vocally express their worry for the sanity of the puppet who is operating another puppet. I’d have to double check, but I think this is the first episode of ALF directed by Rod Serling.

It’s kind of a dumb moment, and a hell of a dumb act break, but if we continue to view this as meta commentary about puppet-based shenanigans getting out of hand, then it works brilliantly.

There’s also the suggestion that rather than just serving as an outlet for ALF’s obnoxious idea of comedy, the puppet is allowing ALF to give a voice to his subconscious thoughts…but we’ll get to that shortly.

And this is the first time I’ve noticed that THE MOON postcard on the wall. I don’t know how long it’s been there so I don’t want to give this episode specific credit for it…but fuck if that isn’t a damned cute touch.

The next day we see ALF and Paul packing. ALF asks Paul why they have to run away, and Paul replies that “This place is a suburban Sing Sing.” Being as we know that ALF does feel trapped in his situation (and, in all fairness, he really is), and constantly spends Willie’s money for the sake of diversion (which, in further fairness, set up the action of this episode), this lends credence to the idea that ALF’s performance of Paul is giving his subconscious thoughts a voice.

This is…good, actually. On one level we have the ALF metatextual stuff, which works for me. But, on another level, we have an in-universe explanation for it: ALF’s inner turmoil coming to the surface.

It’s an episode about what ALF the show is, doubling as an episode about who ALF the character is.

Jesus God is this bullshit puppet episode actually good? Fucketty fuck this is actually good.

Brian runs off to get his parents when he hears that ALF is leaving, and then Paul actually smacks ALF around a bit, which is decently funny if only for how unexpected and silly it is. When Willie and Kate come in and see ALF getting up this nonsense, they decide they’ve had quite enough of this puppet garbage and try to take Paul away.

ALF tellingly replies, “No! Don’t take Paul away from me! He’ll die!”

It’s a believable moment of panic. Reverse the names Paul and ALF in that sentence, and it’s exactly as believable.

We know it’s silly. We know that the dummy will “die” only in the sense that the ventriloquist won’t be there to provide a voice for him. But it’s also reflective of Paul Fusco’s attitude toward — and possessiveness of — ALF.

When Tina Fey was organizing the 75th Anniversary Celebration or whatever for NBC fairly recently, she complained that “ALF’s people” were difficult to deal with. Immersed in this show as I now unfortunately am, I know that she must have been talking about Fusco specifically, as the concern “ALF’s people” had was that somebody might see that he’s just a puppet. For that reason, ALF’s brief scene in the special ended and the puppet was whisked off the premises, lest it stick around long enough for a rogue camera angle to destroy the illusion that ALF was real.

On The Simpsons they had ALF turn up in “The Springfield Files.” He only said one word (“Yo.”), but Fusco contacted the show after that episode aired and told them that they should have called him; he’d have done the voice, and if they ever use ALF again, to let him know and he’ll come by to record the lines.

TV Tropes — my nemesis in website form — even has a little section discussing the fact that Paul Fusco believed ALF was real and would refuse to admit it was a puppet. As with everything TV Tropes says, however, it’s a heaping pile of bullshit hiding a kernel of truth. In this case, it’s that Fusco doesn’t present ALF, ever, as a puppet. In interviews and such he refers to the character as though he’s real…but I don’t think Fusco ever actually believed that. The guy might have been a jerk, but he wasn’t mentally ill. It’s more the way people will talk about Santa Claus as though he’s real, even if they know he’s not. It’s done for the sake of preserving illusion.

But with Fusco, as we see with the other examples, there’s an element of possessiveness on top of that illusion. It’s the same possessiveness that makes “ALF’s people” such a nightmare to work with. It’s also probably why ALF has never seen a rebirth. As much as Fusco must feel he’s maintaining the character’s integrity, what he’s really doing is making any kind of resurgence for the character impossible.

If it’s such a dramatic event to feature the character for a few seconds as part of an anniversary special, or in a split-second cartoon lineup, there’s no reason to believe that mounting an ALF reboot would go any more smoothly than the original show did.

Willie even says, “Talk about a puppet dictator” later in the episode. It’s impossible to hear that as anything other than the venting of the writing staff.

“Don’t take ALF away from me,” it’s easy to hear Paul Fusco say. “He’ll die.” And that’s really sad, because, just as it plays out in this episode, that possessiveness is exactly what ensures that the illusion cannot survive. It’s mothering turned to smothering.

Paul tells ALF to come along and he’ll teach him how to smoke. When he’s gone, Willie comforts Kate by saying, “Don’t worry. I’m getting psychiatric help.”

Kate replies, “Well, good for you, honey. But what about ALF?”

Dumb joke, but actually really funny with Schedeen’s delivery, which manages to sound both supportive and flustered. Or maybe I just like it because it leads to…

HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK DR. DYKSTRA IS BACK MY FUCKING GONADS LOOK

Man, “I’m Your Puppet” is just dying to get into my pants, isn’t it?

My two favorite episodes from season one were “For Your Eyes Only” and “Going Out of My Head Over You.” You probably already know that, given the fact that I can’t shut the fuck up about them.

In each of those cases we met a strong guest character, which helped us view the show through a different — and rewarding — filter. In the former case, it was Jodie, who reappeared in this season’s “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” That episode wasn’t quite as good as her first, but it was good enough to warrant her return.

The latter case featured Dr. Dykstra, played by Bill Dailey, a psychiatrist friend of Willie’s who dropped by to analyze ALF and provide us with what still might be the funniest scene in the show’s history. In that scene, Willie and ALF impersonated each other as a way of coming to terms with their frustrations. At the time, it played very much like Wright and Fusco coming to terms with their frustrations, and the show was richer for it.

Is it any wonder that I’m over the moon to see this guy show up here? And now? Talk about a perfect reason to bring this character back.

Anyway, before I forget, in the comments to my review of “Going Out of My Head Over You,” Dan the Shpydar had this to say:

I’m surprised you didn’t get into the fact that Daily was also on I Dream of Jeannie, which of course had that same “we have to keep this mysterious being a secret!” theme as ALF. Ironically, I Dream of Jeannie featured far less facial scenes than ALF, despite the fact that they would likely have been much more appreciated to appear in the former.

I didn’t say it because I didn’t know it. But now I do, and so do you. That is indeed a pretty cool bit of resonant casting…deliberate or not.

After a bit of gentle engagement with ALF and Paul, Dr. Dykstra gets bonked on the knee by the dummy. He then goes back into the kitchen, where Willie and Kate ask him if he figured out what’s wrong with ALF. Dr. Dykstra replies, “Yeah. His dummy’s a jerk.”

It’s a great little moment with a perfect delivery, coming off of a way-too-short scene of Dr. Dykstra trying to help the alien and his wooden friend.

He plays along. Laughs at the insulting jokes. He compliments Paul on his sense of humor…and it works. It gets ALF, through Paul, to open up about his frustrations…specifically the rules he has to adhere to when living under the Tanner roof. Dr. Dykstra then turns to ALF and asks if he shares Paul’s frustrations, and ALF says he does.

Whacking Dr. Dykstra in the knee with the dummy is definitely dickish, but I understand it. The therapy was effective, and that made ALF feel threatened. The lashing out is meant to be funny, but it’s also understandable in the context of the situation.

In the kitchen, the good doctor explains to Willie and Kate that since ALF’s arrived, he’s had to be on his best behavior. Both Tanner adults start spouting disbelief about that, which is funny, and culminates in a nice point: that was his best behavior. His worst behavior is what they’re seeing now, through Paul.

The puppet is bringing out the worst in its creator.

ahem.

ahem ahem ahem.

Willie asks what they can do, and Dr. Dykstra jokingly suggests getting the dummy a dummy. “But then you’d be stuck with a really little guy with a really bad temper.”

It’s amazing to me how the presence of a great guest character can kick this show to a whole new level of competence. Why oh why can’t we have more of Dr. Dykstra and Jodie? They have these characters. Why won’t they use them?

Dr. Dykstra decides that ALF needs to have a few minutes of breaking the rules that he feels so oppressed by. He specifically suggests letting ALF eat the cat, but they ultimately decide instead to let ALF break a bunch of shit and throw food everywhere.

Kate, whom I love more by the second, says, “Can’t we just solve this with a buzz saw?” Baby, I been askin’ that question from episode one.

The adults smash up some dishes and encourage ALF to do the same. He’s reluctant, but eventually trusts them enough to do it, and so ALF reverts back to his “normal” bad behavior of breaking things and making a mess.

It’s a bit broad and silly, but it has its moments. Before throwing a plate, ALF asks, “How many points for hitting that picture of Kate’s mother?” Willie, overexcited, replies, “A hundred!!” before his wife scolds him for joining in.

And even though this is nowhere near as satisfying a climax as the first Dr. Dykstra episode had…it’s still decent. “Going Out of My Head Over You” built to a grand statement about its characters. “I’m Your Puppet,” by contrast, opens with such a statement. The fact that it ends on silliness rather than opens with it makes this episode feel like the more hollow one, but really I think it’s just a matter of the journey being inverted.

And, to be fair, though this episode does end up in a fest of destruction, it’s ALF’s enthusiasm for this that allows him to decide to break Paul, so it does lead to its resolution in a relatively natural way. Ultimately, no, it’s not quite as good as the first Dr. Dykstra episode…but it does go deeper in exploring its subject matter, and it gives us more to work with along the way.

It’s also full of wonderful little touches, such as the fact that, in the latter half of this episode, Paul gets his own one-shots when he talks, as though he’s an entirely separate character. It’s a hell of an effective decision, and one I really love. The “smash everything” climax is a bit too clean a solution, but, again, if we view this episode through a metatextual lens, we can’t do anything but close off the episode as quickly as possible. There’s certainly no way we can end with the psychiatrist successfully convincing the other characters that talking through a puppet is insane, because…well, you know. Unless ALF is going to become a show about ALF, we need to put a button on this, however hastily.

It’s twenty-odd minutes of digging into what makes ALF work — and not work — and while I’d love for a longer and deeper examination, I’m impressed that we even got this much out of it. It’s also a bit disappointing that we didn’t get to see the smashed Paul dummy. It’s referred to, and reacted to, but we don’t get to look at it. Maybe it was an expensive prop that they didn’t want to destroy. Or maybe, as the ALF analogue, the image of a “dead” puppet would hit Fusco too close to home.

In the short scene before the credits, Lynn finds Paul’s body stuffed in the freezer.

Who cares. The episode was good. And I was getting very, very nervous that season two got all of its good episodes out of the way up front. The quality of “I’m Your Puppet” feels well overdue at this point, but it was worth waiting for, and that’s all that matters.

It’s also worth addressing a question you probably have at this point: what was so bad about ALF’s behavior through Paul? Why did the review gloss over it?

Well…I didn’t gloss over it. ALF’s normal behavior, to me, is either far worse or exactly as bad as the guff he spouts through Paul. Which, admittedly, makes this episode something of a cheat.

In “Wild Thing,” it was a legitimate problem that we were being told ALF was at his worst without seeing any actual evidence of it. Here…well, maybe it is as much of a problem, but only when you look at it superficially. Taking the metaphor-for-the-sitcom-itself angle, it’s just a means to an end. We can ignore surface-level quirks because when we look a little deeper, we see what’s really happening here.

“Wild Thing” had nothing but its surface. ALF’s confoundingly gentle rampage was a problem because it was the only thing the episode was about. Had it really been about, say, Willie and Brian bonding as they scoured LA for their escaped alien, the lameness of ALF’s shenanigans would have been far less important.

It’s rare that ALF realizes it can do anything beneath the surface. Nearly every time it does, we end up with an episode like this. Or “Going Out of My Head Over You.” Or “Night Train.” In short, it nearly always works…which it what makes it so damned disappointing that the next week has to come, with the writers forgetting everything they’ve learned all over again.

Sitcoms, by design, need to push the reset button at the end of each adventure. But it’s a reset that should apply only to the show itself; it should not apply to the writer’s room.

Anyway, just another quick thought. When I saw the synopsis for this episode (“ALF gets a ventriloquist’s dummy that takes control of him”) I pasted it to a friend of mine. My friend replied, “Oh, right. That’s the top left square in sitcom plot bingo.” I laughed. Because, yeah, that’s a pretty trite and stupid idea.

But there’s a reason I got excited when season two began and I saw Al Jean and Michael Reiss listed as executive producers, and this episode, which they are credited as writing, makes that reason very clear: it doesn’t matter how stupid the plot is if the writing is solid.

That’s something The Simpsons taught us time and time again. While they unquestionably had original plots on the show, it’s just as obvious that they would deliberately draw from the well of cliche for ideas. Ask anyone to describe their favorite Simpsons episode, however, and the odds are good you won’t hear much about the plot. You’ll hear the jokes that stuck with them. You’ll hear about a great moment or two. The plot is only important — or should only be important — in the way that it facilitates those jokes and moments.

So as much as the dumbass dummy plot seemed…uh…dumb to me, I’m glad we had it, if only because the right men were at the typewriter. It’s a good reminder of the fact that concept means nothing, and execution means everything.

Tune in next week when ALF is raped by a panda.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac, spending other people’s money was how you said “I care.” Melmac’s president would say whatever you wanted if you pulled his string. On Melmac, calling somebody “Paul” was an insult. Even worse was calling them a “son of a Paul.”

20 Questions: Magnus Pålsson (SoulEye)

A while back I reached out to Magnus Pålsson, better known as SoulEye, and best known for composing the stellar soundtrack of VVVVVV. He had just released a metal remix of that game’s soundtrack, MMMMMM and he quickly consented to an interview to help promote it.

Great! …except that when my computer crashed soon afterward, I thought I lost the draft. Only recently did I find it, and it might have been a stroke of good timing, since Pålsson had some technical difficulties with his web-host that prevented anyone from purchasing the album until now. So, while the delay wasn’t deliberate, I’m happy to be able to finally post the interview at a time when you can actually buy the album!

(Also, on a personal note, I can highly recommend Adventure. It’s absolutely incredible, and has been on permanent rotation for me.)

1) How did you originally get involved with Terry Cavanagh? How did your contribution to VVVVVV come about?

First of all, thank you for having me on here on this excellent site for an interview! It’s my pleasure to answer your questions.

I had put up some of my music for free download online, and one of Terry’s friends named Charlie asked me if he could use one of my songs for his game. I said sure, as long as I can have a copy of the game when it’s done.

He came back a month later and gave me a copy. The game turned out to be a shoot-em-up where you play a severed dog’s head, raining hot death on evil attacking space-penises that attack you with semen. That game is spunky. It’s called Space Phallus if you want to play it.

Anyway, Terry naturally played Charlie’s game, and liked the song I had provided. (The song is “Retro Tune” and can be found as track number four on my album “S” here.) He emailed me and asked if I wanted to make music for his (then-supposed-to-be) free game called VVVVVV.

I thought it was a great idea, since I’ve loved games all my life, so I was happy to make a songs for the game.

2) How much guidance were you given in terms of your work on the soundtrack? Any specific atmosphere or tempo to reach for?

I got a beta copy of the game. It was using an old c64 placeholder song, but I was largely given free reign. Instructions were limited to just a few adjectives. He would give me the beta, I would play it, and then think, “What does the ideal platformer song sound like in my head?” And then I produced “Pushing Onwards.”

Terry put “Pushing Onwards” into the updated beta, and got inspired by the song so much that he created a new level. And then he needed more music! So I made “Positive Force.”

And then he had that one on loop for days on end, and made another level. And so it went on. We inspired each other, like a symbiotic relationship designed to evolve the game.

At a certain point, I felt there was enough good stuff in there, but I wanted a masterpiece in there, that would stand out for a long time. And thus, “Potential for Anything” was dreamed up.

I cut out entire sections after writing these songs until I got everything “just right.” It took almost a month to complete because of all the structures, details and harmonic intricacies that went into it.

3) I’m not sure I’ve ever read a review of VVVVVV that doesn’t specifically praise the music. Why do you feel it’s stood out to players in a way that few soundtracks have?

I am entirely self-taught when it comes to music, for good and bad. Many people come to me and ask what programs I use, how I get inspired, how to be creative. Sometimes, those who have the hardest time being creative are those who have been taught in various educations that there is a right way and a wrong way to create music. That you should follow a certain structure, follow the rules, and if you don’t do it right, you shouldn’t be in the business of making music.

Of course, this isn’t always the case, and most educations are great. This is not about saying education is bad. And I have a point to make. It’s that if you believe someone when they say that kind of stuff to you, you might unconsciously put a lid on the very thing that made you want to go into music in the first place: your own soul’s unique voice.

For me, music is an expression of my inner life. It’s a way of sharing myself to the world, how I feel. The music I write is therefore “true,” in the felt sense of the word. There have been few places where I’ve forced myself to make music in a certain way. This intuitive way of writing music has also made me make music only when I feel like it. Typically, I like to write music when I’m feeling really good, happy and enthusiastic. If I’m not, the music reflects that.

Given the above, consider that the songs in VVVVVV were written from my heart. They were made without any thoughts on profits, career in music, fans, recognition, future travels, and so on. They were made for the sheer joy of it all. No agenda. All the things that happened later were really unexpected.

4) What was the first album you ever owned?

It was Hey Stoopid (released in 1991) by Alice Cooper. I remember buying it because I liked the music and a part of me thought I became cooler just by owning it.

I would listen to it a few times, but not obsessively. At that point I had no plans for making music. I was just enjoying it. I remember being fascinated how one track was produced so that it naturally flowed into the next at one point. I would hear the click sound when the CD player changed tracks, and keep the same synths playing.

It’s a good album even today, but Alice himself was never my biggest influence. The most enjoyable thing on there was, as I think back to it, was Slash and his masterful play on the guitars.

5) What was the first video game whose soundtrack really grabbed you?

Wizball on Commodore 64. The first minute of Martin Galway’s title track is a stroke of genius.

It made me feel like I was tapping into something magical. Like…welcome to the world of wonders, where anything is possible. I had my C64 hooked up to my parents’ old TV, and its crappy mono-speaker (by today’s standards) was, for once, producing something clear, beautiful, new, and real.

I felt exhilarated by it, and wanted the world to know this feeling, this music, and have the same experience I was having. And my teenage self didn’t give an F. I opened the door to the garden, turned up the music, and hoped the neighborhood would rejoice in this wonderful new discovery of mine, that surely would make all those grumpy grownups a reason to put a smile on their faces. But the only result was my mom telling me to shut it off.

I’m happy to report that by now, my now 67-year old mom likes chiptune music. Well, mine at least. There are a few tracks she plays over and over at her house.

6) What was the first film whose soundtrack really grabbed you? How did it make you feel?

The truth is that I was never aware of being really grabbed by a film soundtrack. The only thing that comes up when I think of early movies with good music is Star Wars (1977). I was still in daycare when I saw that movie, and I didn’t completely get what was going on. The appreciation for that music came later on.

I saw an orchestra playing Star Wars music in my home town of Helsingborg a while back. That was an amazing experience. They played it so true to the originals, but the fidelity and quality of the raw vibrations of the different instruments resonating in my body is something I won’t forget easily.

7) MMMMMM is a complete reimagining of the VVVVVV soundtrack with live instruments in a very different style. What sparked this project? How did you come to collaborate with FamilyJules7x?

FamilyJules7x has a long history of covering game music soundtracks. I remember seeing him do a Super Meat Boy medley, and thought, “that’s cool, I wonder what my music would sound like there,” and a seed was firmly planted in me. Given half a chance, I would make it happen.

But I went on my merry way, and didn’t think of it until way later, when, one day, this subconscious dream was realized, and he made a medley of the VVVVVV music, presumably after a number of requests from his listeners. Or, as he put it: “VVVVVV‘s soundtrack is a work of genius and it’s a crime that I haven’t had a go at these songs earlier.”

Anyway, after popping all my gaskets while listening to that, I wanted to make a full remix album a reality, if nothing else, then for my very own listening pleasure. So I just emailed him and we worked it out. It was one of those “this is right; this needs to be done,” kinds of moments, where my guts had a stronger say than my brains.

I love those moments.

8) Explain “Plenary.” This was a track composed for the game, but which wasn’t ultimately featured, to my knowledge. Where was it meant to have gone?

Allow me to enlighten you. The name “Plenary” means “an adjective related to the noun plenum carrying a general connotation of fullness.”

The track which sounds like this in its original form ) is actually in the game but perhaps not heard very often, since it only plays once, when you complete VVVVVV. Am I to take it you haven’t completed the game?

It was a blast creating this jingle. It has a whole slew of intermingling leads, creating a pompous (in the good sense) fanfare that is fitting of a game complete stinger.

[ed: Believe me, I completed the game! I actually meant “Phear,” not “Plenary.” Magnus was kind enough to explain that track, too, once I’d had my mistake pointed out to me.]

“Phear” was a “song” (it’s more of a sound effect) which appeared on PPPPPP, the game’s soundtrack album, but wasn’t used in VVVVVV. It was supposed to be an Easter egg where if you stood still in a certain room for a long time, the screen would darken, and the creepy sound would start playing over and over at ever-increasing volume. Sadly, it had to be scrapped due to lack of time on Terry’s part for implementation.

9) Name the six biggest influences on your music.

Chris Huelsbeck, Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard, Jeroen Tel, Ben Daglish, and Tim Follin.

You may notice they’re all previous C64 musicians. There are so many others though, and much of what inspires me is unconscious. It’s easy to name these people, as their creations were the music playing during a lot of my formative years. Some of these have gone on to become famous on other platforms as well. Curious fact: one day a few years ago I saw that Jeroen Tel started following me on Twitter. That was a fun moment for me.

10) Name the six biggest influences on your life.

I like how that question was worded. I get to choose any type of influence! I’m going to give them to you chronologically, with the oldest influence first.

1. Games.
I would never be where I am if it wasn’t for computer games. I would play for hours on end, and still do some days, and escape from reality, like so many others. I love it. And at the same time, I’m aware that playing games too much can be detrimental to social interactions, which is where real life is lived.

2. Music.
Obviously. An offshoot from playing games, and hanging around tech-savvy people who liked computers. Music was often a joint interest, and some knowledge on how to work a computer was required to get games working back in those days when it all started. And then it became easy to get music programs working. Suddenly, I found myself at home in making music on a computer, and then I was creating music for others. And now I’m making a living off of it. It’s like I just fell into it.

3. Eben Pagan.
He is a well-known self-development teacher and business coach. He got me started on the road to self-knowledge, which is, like, the best thing ever.

4. Terry Cavanagh.
Again, obviously. And also inadvertently. I never knew what was in store, and how my life would change, after making the songs for VVVVVV. He didn’t either. Terry is one of the most straight-up good guys I know.

5. Decker Cunov.
Decker is transformational coach. If Terry’s influence made external things possible for me, Decker’s influence reshaped my insides in a profound way. With him (and his peers) as a powerful catalyst, I had my mind reset completely after a workshop in personal development back in 2012. I now have a completely different view and approach on life, and those who know me before and after can vouch for me changing.

Because of the great things I experienced in this workshop, I am happy to be part of a worldwide network called “Authentic World.” It consists of people who like authenticity and telling the truth, along with developing ourselves and welcoming different sensations. I educated myself in the subtle arts of the practices that Decker uses in his 6-month course held in your home state of Colorado, and now me and my friends do workshops in Europe in the same fashion, to my great excitement and benefit for participants.

If this tickles your curious bone, more info can be found here. We recently did a workshop in Amsterdam, and if you want to be part of the next workshop in Europe, I strongly recommend signing up for the newsletter.

6. Stefan Molyneux.
Stefan is a philosopher and runs the largest philosophy show in the world. He’s got some 60 million downloads of his stuff, and has almost daily videos put up on his youtube channel. His site is www.freedomainradio.com. If Decker Cunov changed my way of connecting with my feelings, Stefan has changed my way of thinking. He’s radically different than most people, and some of what he says is causing some upsets, but the show contains, in my opinion, healthy and important discussions for any decent human being.

11) The success of VVVVVV must have opened a lot of doors for you, but you haven’t composed for many games since. Are you just being choosy about your next major scoring job?

I have enough material to release a new album tomorrow on my hard drive if I could. There are many reasons for not releasing some stuff. I’ve made music for some games that were shelved at the last moment and now need a new game to make sense, and some games have yet to be released.

To be honest I’ve been dividing my time with other things as well. I’ve been traveling the world and exploring different life stuff. (See my answer to question #5!) I also have a few ideas about making my own game, and am doing research.

The game that is brewing in my mind is a social game about telling the truth or lying, and catching other players doing the same thing. I am still looking for a team on this one (coding and graphics to begin with), and it’s preferable if anyone interested has a solid sense of, and can differentiate between, both objective and subjective truths.

That being said, I’m open for music business! If you’ve got that killer game needing some Souleye TLC, don’t hesitate sending me an email. I would love to make some chiptunes for another fun game. Perhaps they will be chiptunes with some metal infused next time…

12) They’re making a live action VVVVVV movie. Who plays Captain Viridian?

Keanu Reeves. Haha! He took the red pill and became green. Maybe Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt would work as well…let me talk to their agents.

Already confirmed supporting actors are: Christopher Lloyd as Chief Verdigris, Kirsten Dunst as Doctor Violet, Scarlett Johansson as Doctor Victoria, Jim Carrey as Officer Vermilion, and Jim Parsons as Professor Vitellary.

13) Which Mega Man boss has the stage music?

My experiences aren’t THAT in-depth with the series. I’ve played through Mega Man 2 from start to finish, but that was a long time ago.

14) What has your experience been like with fans of your music? I have to assume it’s been positive, as you’ve collected many of their remixes and given them official release on the PPPPPPowerup album.

Oh, the people have been great. Just great. The fans are really nice to me. It’s one of the great things about being in this line of work; you get paid not only in money, but also in little internet hearts! I love my fans. <3 One of the most touching letters came from a guy who had been suffering from depression for months and months, and then he started listening to PPPPPP, and, I don’t know, subconsciously caught on to the subliminal messages that I would never admit to putting in there, because they’re not in there, and anyone who says they are in there haven’t played some of the songs backwards yet because that’s how you really get to…

Wait…I’ve said too much about those subliminal messages. They aren’t there…

Okay, enough with the joking. He claimed that my music helped him out of his depression in a very real way, and was very nice and thankful. His message moved me to tears. When I get feedback like that I sometimes feel like the effect the music had on him alone would have made it worth making the music.

Music is powerful.

15) Name one song that makes you want to turn the radio off every time you hear it.

Oh… I know where this is going. If I bring a song up like that to a friend, they’ll instantly start singing it back to me…

Haha! Well okay, it doesn’t matter. I’ll look forward to getting Rick-rolled with the song in the future.

That which you resists, persists, so… I’m going with a Swedish song called “Hej Monika.”

16) Go back in time and give one piece of life advice to Magnus Pålsson, age 10.

Trust yourself. Find out what your values are, what feels good. Learn how people make meaning out of words. And if the world seems to be doing it wrong, and you don’t quite understand it even if you really try, most likely they’re all doing their best with what they know and the only thing you can do is learn the ways they were taught to do it so that you one day can untangle those webs from yourself and others.

17) Go forward in time and give one piece of life advice to Magnus Pålsson, age 100.

Hey dude, I didn’t think you’d make it this long! But it’s time to face the fact: it’s near the end.

After you’ve said your goodbyes to your, well, to be honest, rather obscenely large family, I want you to have a good time and not fear death. I hear that hard drugs are effective in achieving that.

They’re also addictive and ruin your life in the long run, but there’s no long run anymore, so it’s time to find out what you’ve been missing! Full speed ahead! Geronimo!

On a more serious note though, what I believe is one of the best ways to go is to be in deep connection with your loved ones. Ask them to spend a lot of time with you during those last moments. Knowing that you’ve already imparted what you’ve learned about life with them, and that they’ll be all right. All what we got left is to be with each other, and stay connected for as long as possible.

But then again, that’s true for every moment in life, so why save that piece of advice for later?

18) If you were physically transported into VVVVVV, taking Viridian’s place, how far would you make it before dying?

I would die to the first thing that could kill me, because I’d be in total disbelief and want to see how it feels to die and respawn. If I respawned, I’d be yelling at the fourth wall a lot about wanting to be let out of this Groundhog Day-like spiked-hell existence, or maybe hit on Victoria to create some mini-Vs.

19) Who was or is the handsomest world leader?

Bill Clinton. I’m not that big into checking out political leaders but Bill is definitely charismatic. I even listened to his biography audiobook, read by himself.

20) Your star has risen to the point that every major gaming company on Earth is offering you full creative control over the soundtrack to the next installment of any franchise you like. Which series of games do you give the SoulEye stamp to?

Good question. I went through a bunch of games in my mind before singling out a series, and the honor would go to…

Drumroll…

The Street Fighter series. I think I could really do it justice, legacy-wise, and bring something new and fresh to the series. A bit ironically perhaps, as some of PPPPPP (and therefore MMMMMM) has influences from Street Fighter II. But there you go!

BONUS: Say anything to our readers that you haven’t gotten to say above!

I’m going to go out on a limb and give you a poem on life I wrote two years ago.

As I lay my heart to bare
plain for all to see
the pain I carried deep within
is shared, to more than me

The walls containing my fragile heart
came tumbling down, they broke apart
the life I thought was not for me
revealed itself, and it was free

Connected, I would sense the pain
of life, love, death, my sadness
and for the first time in my life
I made sense of all the madness

The cross I now have to bear
is holding pain, for all who’s dear
I want to ease your heavy burden
shoulder all your fear
staying present, to my purpose
I am with you here.

With strength and courage to be weak
I will shelter all the meek
Let me shield you from your pain
I don’t mind, it’s my gain

I must die, it is my path
from this earth I’m torn
And in knowing but this simple fact
my true love is reborn