The House by the Beach

I tried not to get involved in the whole bloggin' business. Honest, I tried my damnedest not to get caught up in it. But after much consideration, and seeing as how I have dreams that eventually involve journalism, I figured "Why not?" But if this is going to be the first of many, I think an introduction, to who I am and why am I doing this, is in order.

Hey look... we got a State coin too!

First things first: I am originally from Puerto Rico. As a result I guess it would be wise to point out, for the sake of our collective sanity, that English is in no way, shape or form my native tongue. Spanish would be the one holding that honor. Secondly... I am a gamer/anime/movie fanatic: NOT the kind of dude that goes to Cons dressed as Sailor Moon playing Game Boy Color (Oh Nostalgia~) while berating people who don't know how awesome the movie Legend is (Tim Curry...you deliciously evil bastard you). But rather the approachable nerd, the one who hides it better than the rest; and God forbid actually showers daily.

Keep America beautiful, stay indoors.

Shocking, I know...

Not the real Straw Hat Rican.

The source of my love for Cinema (and by extension Anime and Video Games) roots back to the place where I was raised. Essentially, I was raised in a small video store/mini market... think of the movie Clerks but without the liberal use of the words: fuck, shit and 37 dicks. Now imagine that same video store owned by a Tachycardia-suffering rican woman and a "too cool for school" rican man. Yep, my childhood was pretty insane...

Oh Japan <3

 
So insane that I was watching stuff like Go Nagai's Mazinger Z unrated at the tender age of four. "It's just cartoons." my parents would usually reply to concerned family members over the dubious nature of the material... I mean for God's sake, one of the female robots shot breasts (yes... she literally shot her breasts) at someone. Not to mention the liberal use of nudity in most of Go Nagai's work, essentially if there wasn't a sex scene and or incredibly crude language... my parents would let me coast through it.

And then came Atari.

The Source

You see, when my parents started this video store thing, they started it with some connections (a business runs on money after all), which eventually all came back to produce certain things for yours truly. There was an Atari factory not 10 miles away from my hometown, and one of the main Q&A guys was a member in our Video Club. I suppose you could say I owe that man a LOT for introducing me to the Atari 2600. It was practically love at first sight, if a 4 year old boy could be in love with giant piece of black plastic and wood that is (don't make it dirty perverts~).

The next two decades were spent on practically me and my undying love of video game systems of lore: Nintendo, Sega Master System, Genesis, Super Nintendo, N64, PSOne, Dreamcast (oh how you got the shaft...), PS2, Gamecube, Xbox (easily the worst 200 bucks ever spent) and finally the Xbox 360... I omitted the handhelds because, let's get real, that's a lot of systems to mention. All that molded my video game persona slowly but surely. Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy (before Square Enix), Street Fighter, Megaman, Mario Bros. ; these are the games that defined me.

House M.D. makes any blog 110% better.

"Well Straw Hat Rican, if we may call you that, what does all of this have to do with what you are doing here?"

Well my dear reader, if there IS one of you still actually making it past the first paragraph. Yes, you may call me that or SHR, I'm not particular; the reason why I'm telling you all of this is simple: perspective. What this little corner of  internet rental space is going to accomplish relies on perspective. You have to at least understand where I come from to get an even better understanding on the things I review/talk about. If I say I love One Piece, but tell you beforehand that I also love Dragon Ball Z... you can at least make a general assumption about me. Or if I tell you: "Hey... that movie District 9, was easily the best sci fi of 2009", but I warn you that I absolutely love Star Wars and the Aliens Anthology from the get go... it makes it much easier for us to come to an understanding on why I like the things I like.

They started so happy and young...

For now thou, I'll leave it at that. What I will tell you is that I should be doing this weekly at the very least. Most likely I'll review the current episode of One Piece (and a column of what exactly One Piece IS will be made too of course) along with either some TV reviews (30 Rock/The Office/Justified/Dexter/Walking Dead/SNL/etc etc) and maybe even some video game reviews (blame World of Warcraft for stealing my console roots). Until then... I'll see you at the house by the beach~

Not SHR's House by the Beach