The Mario Minister

If I may simplify this article, and I may because it's about video games, it's a sandwich:

Bread: generic discussion about Mario's role in video game industry

Meat: the Palamore family's relationship with Mario
Bread: Mario history and context

We'll get to the meat soon enough, but first a query: how was the Palamore family selected? More generally, when a reputable newspaper runs a fluff piece, are its journalists held to ethical standards? If Jose Antonio Vargas (author) went to college with Brad Palamore (subject), or even worse, if the pair played video games together, could we trust Mr. Vargas to be objective?

On several occasions in college, friends of mine who wrote for the school paper called me for quotes. I understand the practice. If it's awkward to talk with a stranger, it must be all the worse to talk with a stranger about some nearly-guaranteed-to-be-inane topic. Plus you could meet the stranger later. Anyway, soon I started mentally replacing “Students” with “Friends of the Clown who Penned this Junk” while reading the school paper; eventually I started physically replacing the school paper with books and magazines. To this day I have not stopped.

Mr. Vargas, may I borrow your segue? (What about your sweet graphic?)

It's all Mario, all Nintendo, all the time at the Palamore residence in Arlington, where it's not entirely clear who's the biggest Mario fan.

Oh man, I hope we get to the bottom of this by the article's end!

Is it 8-year-old Matthew, who proudly declares, "I have Mario's voice," and spontaneously says " Mamma mia! "?

Imma Wario. Imma gonna win. LOVE THAT SHIT. Matthew, if you're ever in the city, give me a ring. “Mamma mia!” would be a ladykiller, but you'll need a freaking serious fake ID. So far you are awesome and have my vote.

Or Curtis, 10, who goes on and on about "Super Mario Sunshine"?

While I like the name Curtis, I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about. “Sunshine” is a little suspicious, especially coming from a second-born son*.

Or 12-year-old Chris, who can't decide which of the family's eight Mario games is his favorite?

In this day and age, I think we need a biggest Mario fan who knows where he stands on the tough questions. I bet Chris voted for Mario Kart before he voted against it. Also he probably looks like Death. PS September Eleventh.

STYLISTIC ASIDE: notice how Vargas deftly alternates strategies as he reveals the ages of the children. First we meet “8-year-old Matthew,” then “Curtis, 10,” and finally “12-year-old Chris.” The monotony is so well averted you almost forget you are reading quotes from children about video games.

Or is it Brad -- the boys' 30-year-old dad, a minister at the Arlington Church of Christ -- who jokingly introduces himself as "Luigi" and has very fond memories of a five-day binge of pizza and "Super Mario Bros." on his Nintendo Entertainment System when he was 10?

This paragraph should have been a list, and soon it will be. Here are some properties of the quantity “Brad Palamore”:

• Basics: human, male, 30 years old


• First child had at: age 18


• Occupation: minister


• Introduces himself as: Luigi


• Apparently thinks people will understand the reference and find it funny when he: introduces himself as Luigi


• Engaged in fraternity brother-like behavior at: age 10

Exercise for the reader: describe in greater detail a five-day pizza binge. Devote at least 100 words to each of the five days.

Silence! The quantity speaks.

"The thing about Mario is, you can play it with your kids," says Brad Palamore, a self-described "Nintendo dad."

(1) If by “the thing” Mr. Palamore intends “that which distinguishes it from other activities,” this claim is either patently false or patently sad.

(2) While I don't aspire to be a “Nintendo dad,” that's a big improvement on “Luigi.”

But he is about to clarify (1):

"You don't have to worry about what they're seeing on the screen because as a kid yourself, you've seen what goes on in a Mario game."

GRAMMATICAL ASIDE: “...as a kid yourself, you have seen...” means you are a kid. Like, now. Like, in 2006, you are a kid. Probably he meant:

...as a kid yourself, you saw...
OR
...as a kid, you saw...
OR the clumsier
...having been a kid (yourself), you have seen...

Were I interviewing a college friend/video game buddy for a newspaper article, I would grant him/her perfect grammar. Furthermore, I would tweak his/her statements to make their meanings both clear and correct. Mr. Vargas, you're an honest man.


OKAY, so his ministership might be accompanied by a taste for video game censorship. This is stupid, but fine. Let's meet him on his turf and assume children can't tell fact from fiction, which incidentally is false. It remains to decide: is Mario good for children?

Positives: Important Lessons

• If you see a mushroom which appears to be moving along the ground with no assistance from another force, eat it.


• Likewise, eat fluorescent flowers.


• Jump on your enemies, unless they have a spiky shell, in which case shoot fire at them.


• If you are unable to shoot fire at your enemies, run past them.

Negatives: False Notions

• Every now and then, plumbers run into dragons.


• Also princesses.


• Plumbers are related to pipes in the following way: they (plumbers) go into them (pipes) and are then transported to different worlds.


• Not only did Plumbers and Dinosaurs once Roam the Earth simultaneously, they got along so swimmingly that plumbers were frequently able to ride on the backs of dinosaurs.


• If you need to break some bricks and can't find a sledgehammer, go ahead and “bop it with your head.” [Vargas' glorification, not mine]

One other thing, Mr. Palamore. Aren't you a little worried about the five-day pizza binges?



*If you can't access that, here are the first two paragraphs. I like gay people, kids, and gay kids. I found the following article interesting and thought this would be a good time to mention it, that's all.

Brothers in arms

Jun 29th 2006 | TORONTO
From The Economist print edition
Some men are gay because their mothers have already had many sons

RAY BLANCHARD, a researcher at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, was reviewing some data a few years ago when he noticed something odd: gay men seemed to have more older brothers than straight men.

Intrigued—and sceptical—he decided to investigate. He recruited 302 gay men and the same number of heterosexual controls and inquired about their families. How many siblings did they have, of what sex, and how had the births been spaced? How old had their parents been when they had had them? Dr Blanchard found that only one detail seemed to predict sexual orientation: the more elder brothers a man had, the more likely he was to be gay. Neither elder sisters nor younger siblings of either sex had any effect, but each additional elder brother increased his chance of being gay by about 33% from the population average of one man in 50.
...