ccording to director Mel Gibson, film critics from across the nation have proven their fealty with the dark lord Satan by panning his latest film The Passion of the Christ, a gruesome religious horror flick released to overwhelmingly negative critical response last week. This novel reaction to film criticism has raised questions nationwide over whether the 48-year-old actor and filmmaker is merely berserkly fanatical, or just completely insane. Not helping Gibson's cause is the director's non-figurative conviction that Satan tried to keep his film from being made, and might have succeeded if not for the intervention of the Holy Ghost. Unfortunately for Gibson, the Holy Ghost was unable to prevent Satan from pointing out to film critics the film's turgid tone, plodding pacing, uneven characterization and excessively pointless violence.

"They are the forces of Satan or the dupes of Satan," Gibson offered charitably, giving non-fans the choice of being either evil or stupid.

"Holy shit was that a bad movie," disagreed Satan's minion Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times, who must've been typing his review while drenched in lamb's blood. "That piece of shit was worse than We Were Soldiers."

The film opened to sellout crowds after months of speculation that it was going to be really offensive to Jews, generated by Gibson cashing in on his "Jews Killed Jesus" Catholic offshoot faith and his father's reputation as a notorious Holocaust denier to market the film with the catchy tagline "The Jews Hate It," despite the fact that no religious groups had seen or commented on the film at that point.

In interviews, Gibson has explained that his Traditionalist Catholic faith, which rejects the Vatican's exoneration of the Jewish race for the death of Christ, grows from his bond with his father Hutton Gibson. In either a brilliant marketing ploy or disturbing evidence of inner turmoil, Gibson's answers to requests to clarify his own stance on the Holocaust have been rambling and evasive.

Unable to go five whole minutes without saying something unnervingly kooky, however, Gibson's response to New York Times writer Frank Rich's article pointing out that the director was inventing nonexistent Jewish outrage to market his film was like something straight out of The Passion itself. "I wanted to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog." Luckily for Gibson, from all reports Rich's dog is one of those "turn the other cheek" sorts who is unlikely to accuse the director of speaking for Satan.

The relentlessly masochistic tone of Gibson's film has caused some to ponder the director's obsession with torture, as evidenced by the mandatory torture sequences contained in nearly every film in which Gibson has appeared. From being electrocuted in Lethal Weapon and drawn and quartered in Braveheart, Gibson even went so far as to insist on adding an unscripted toe-smashing scene to Brian Helgeland's Payback. Though he was unsuccessful in similar attempts to add a testicular electrocution scene to the chickflick hit What Women Want, it was not for lack of trying.

Meanwhile, The Passion's large opening box office is sure to inspire imitators, and early word that such knock-offs as The Passion of the Weekend at Bernie's and Friday the 13th XI: Run, Jesus, Run are already in the works. Additional reports hint at an upcoming franchise of movies where Belgian marshal arts expert Jean-Claude Van Damme will beat the shit out of Jesus for two hours in various exotic locales. Whether the makers of those films will be able to pull off Gibson's brass-balled bluster, claiming that critics of The Passion's blitzkrieg of violence are merely deficient in character and unable to handle the power of his flawless cinema, may well depend on how closely they can duplicate that crazy look in his eyes.

t was another close call when the mysterious Masked Jackson led police on a 2-hour chase through Aspen, Colorado Saturday. In another familiar ending, the Masked Jackson slipped away from the authorities, appearing to disappear into nowhere as the police nearly collided with an entourage belonging to celebrity Michael Jackson, who happened to be in the area.

The event followed a similar incident Tuesday when the Masked Jackson was spotted in nearby Glenwood Springs shopping at a Wal-Mart. Police rushed to the scene and pulled over a vehicle fitting the vigilante’s description, but found only pop star Michael Jackson in another case of mistaken identity. Though the singer could not provide any leads in finding the Masked Jackson, he did tell police, “I’m sorry I missed him. It would have been neat to see him in action!�

The Masked Jackson has been an enigma since the first sighting in the mid-1990s in Hollywood, California, when he foiled a liquor store robbery by a pair of L.A. toughs. The police have consistently sought the vigilante for questioning and warned the public, “Please, leave crime-fighting to the law, good citizens.� But the Masked Jackson continued to lend a hand in criminal incidents over the years, foiling three bank heists, busting up a Van Nuys chop shop, and saving a pair of Siamese twins from a burning tenement building. Public outcry has been favorable, but authorities still insist the vigilante must be brought to justice.

In many cases, police pursuing the Masked Jackson have crossed paths with the performer Michael Jackson, leading many to question if there is a connection between the two. The issue was first proposed to Jackson (the pop star) in a 2003 Barbara Walters interview.

“It seems everywhere the Masked Jackson is found, Michael Jackson is not too far behind,� Walters said in the interview. “Michael, I’m going to ask you point bwank: Are you pursuing the Masked Jackson?�

Michael Jackson dismissed the question, describing himself as “a normal, decent man who has been accused of outrageous lies,� and saying the apparent connection between himself and the Masked Jackson are “mere coincidences.�

Internet conspiracies abound, despite the singer’s denial. Some reverse the popular claims and suggest the Masked Jackson is pursuing the child abuse defendant, hoping to catch him in a trap before he can molest another youth. On the more radical end of the spectrum, some claim the Masked Jackson and the King of Pop are much closer than anyone’s admitting.

“It’s obvious who the Masked Jackson is,� alleged a poster on a Masked Jackson fansite bulletin board. “Masked Jackson? Michael Jackson? It’s got to be LaToya! She might even be using his help to get around all those places, and that’s why he’s always nearby.�

Another poster disagreed with the assessment, claiming instead it was Janet Jackson who was the more likely suspect. He cited the circumstantial evidence that Janet Jackson did not attend the Grammys at the last minute, and how the Masked Jackson stopped the theft of the awards with convenient timing. Michael Jackson, who also did not attend the awards, was presumed by the accuser to be waiting out back in his limo to aid his sister.

Webmaster CaptJacko posted an official response on the site index page: “I sincerely doubt Michael Jackson is helping anyone fight crime. He’s a pervert, and he gets off on touching little boys—just a big disgrace for the Jackson family. It’s a shame he can’t be a little more like the Masked Jackson.�

The history of video games thus far can be neatly divided into three eras: the Arcade Era, which was covered in part one of this series, spanned the rise of video gaming up from the primordial, pixilated ooze. Second was the Console Era, when gamers finally gained the opportunity to play lame, half-assed knockoffs of their arcade favorites at home, for the quarter-saving initial outlay of several hundred dollars. But it did mean less time spent developing cancer in the smoke-filled game room of the local bowling alley, so progress was progress. Thirdly came the No-Arcade Era, after home consoles got so good that there was no reason to go to the arcade any more, unless you were too broke to buy Camels and needed a fix of second-hand smoke, or you wanted to play that life-sized Stuck In Traffic driving game.

But forget about that third era for now, you'll just get confused since this column is all about the second one, the rise of the consoles. From the first, shitastic home Pong in 1972, through the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision and Chevy's little-known and ill-fated foray into the gaming business, Impallavision, home consoles have sprouted hair on the nads of an entire generation.

The very first home video game console was Magnavox's Odyssey in 1972, an impressive bit of engineering done in by the fact that they never made any games for it. This oversight on Maganvox's part quickly became apparent in 1973, when home gamers grew bored of playing with the console's menu screen and realized there were no games in this game console. Magnavox attempted to re-release the Odyssey as simply a "console" in 1974, hoping to profit on mystery alone, but this tactic soon proved as futile as their attempts a year earlier to convince gamers that the Odyssey was actually full of fun games, but that finding them was the most challenging game of all.

The Odyssey was soon superseded by Coleco's Telstar in 1976, a big oval box that put out more radiation than a Russian microwave. Coleco originally started out as the Connecticut Leather Company (I shit you not), which over the years had made leather craft kits for shoe makers and, just for the hell of it, plastic kiddie pools. Their experience with kiddie pools made them a natural to enter the highly competitive world of complex consumer electronics, but unfortunately a complete lack of engineering know-how left Coleco with a product more deadly than Hasbro's ill-fated "Exploding Porcupine" doll in the mid-70's. Coleco made one last stab at saving the Telstar with their "It glows in the dark!" ad campaign in 1977, but after a while the mounting death toll began to hurt the company's bottom line.

In spite of never having put out a home console, Atari was dominating the home console market by the mid-70's due in large part to the criminal ineptitude of their competitors. The company was started by a couple of computer science drop-outs, Noel Bushnell and Cole Dabney, who had both been kicked out of college for refusing to toe the party line about things like not making grilled cheese sandwiches on hot motherboards or obeying programming language syntax. Though they originally wanted to name their company Syzygy, for the sound a keyboard makes when you sit on it, that name was already being used by an Indiana roofing company. So the two had to settle for Atari, a Japanese chess term meaning "Eat shit and lose."

After the success of their initial run of arcade games, Atari decided to take the next logical step by opening a chain of restaurants featuring singing robot animals in 1977. Pizza Time Theater and its mascot, a terrifying man-sized rat named Chuck E. Cheese, was an instant success. But once he saw his vision in action, Bushnell, who'd thought of the concept while getting stoned at Disneyland the year before, was scared straight and immediately steered Atari's course toward the home console market.

Atari released the 2600 later that year, which was quickly followed by Bally's copycat console, the Bally Professional Arcade. Though Bally would not answer questions about who exactly these video gaming professionals were that the console was being marketed to, the system was a minor hit due to the workout provided by kids moving the unreasonably heavy console from TV to TV whenever they wanted to play the console's only game, Meathead.

Again boosted by the ineptitudes of their competitors, Atari made another bold move in 1978, releasing the Atari 400 to compete with Apple's line of home computers. Consumers, however, prefered the way Apple's computers went "boop" and did nothing useful, and Atari quickly withdrew from the shitty computer market. Magnavox would also briefly try to dethrone Apple with their Odyssey 2 home computer, which quickly failed due to a complete lack of software.

Sales of Atari's 2600 skyrocketed in 1980 with the release of the system's first game, Space Invaders. Finally finding the key to home console success through the synergistic combination of system hardware and games, Atari was quickly aped by toymaker Mattel with the release of the Intellivision later that year. Realizing Mattel's console wasn't selling well due to its association with intelligence, Coleco named their new console Colecovision in 1982 and cleaned up, in spite of the system's bizarre controllers that looked like some kind of garage door opener from hell.

Later that year, a Chicago man would drop dead of a heart attack while playing Atari's Berserk, sending video game sales through the roof.

That event was to be Atari's last hurrah for some time, however, since at around the same time Atari released their home port of Pac-Man for their 2600 console, in a version so stupefyingly shitty as to cause the infamous video game crash of 1982.

From late 1982 through 1985 the home video game market went down in heinous flames, due to the dozens of different consoles being released almost daily by anyone with a soldering kit and a bad idea. Consumers eventually grew confused, trying to play Danavision games on their Scatari console, or trying to plug Donkey Kong Jr. into their toasters. Soon gamers gave up and went back to playing Stratego and throwing rocks at squirrels, spelling death for the video game industry. And it wouldn't be until 1985 that a fat ethnic plumber would roust the industry from its watery grave and once again enslave the minds of a generation. But that's a sunshine story for another day.

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