Sorry, this is a total fecking rant here. It must be said, I feel, so spread this article around. Fads, ah yes, the bane of the underground at every point in history. You know how it is, stuff is cool until the GAP starts selling it, or one of their stupid stores (Hot Topic, etc.). Now, sometimes I don't mind fads that play on the underground, provided they occasionally give nod back to where they came from. Hmmm, then again I don't think I can name a time where that's happened. Anyway, there are two things that have been getting on my nerves over the past two years or so. This, my friends, would be the obsession with referencing ninjas and zombies that keeps flying around popular culture and has become such a static part of America it makes me fucking sick. Let me explain why.
Ninjas
Thankfully I don't need to go into the history of the term, we all know what ninjas are. The history you may not be aware of, however, is where 'ninja' started to really enter the American mind. Ninjas started to form in popular consciousness around the time of the big kung-fu movie craze in the 70s. With awesome shows like "Kung Fu" and movies like "Five Deadly Venoms", martial arts spread. You'll notice already, there is no real mention of 'ninja' yet. This is because the character really doesn't start to enter the hipster shitload until the 1980s, riding on the ass of kung-fu. This first wave of ninjaness occured with a variety of horrible, and thus awesome, B-movies such as the shameless "Enter the Ninja" of 1981. These beautiful, pirate-video-game-art-styled masterpieces lasted until the mid-90s with stuff like "Nightmaster" (yes the Nicole Kidman is in it) breaking records in the straight-to-video box office, and allowing all of us who appreciate shitty movies enjoy this 'ninja' thing.
Then, of course, we can't ignore the popularity of stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the rise of the rip-offs with such awesome results as Biker Mice from Mars and Stone Protectors. Lesser known influences include the ninja "martial arts" phenomenon that gained headway through suspect book companies like Paladin Press, with infamous "how to guides" like Ashida Kim's Ninja Mind Control. This led to the acknowledgement of several "ninja schools" with members such as Stephen K. Hayes, who claim to practice the "true" ancient art, though it's pretty much a total forking joke. In fact, true story, a friend of mine once took part in a ninja training camp by one of the guys who trained under Hayes. During practice on the first fucking day, he asked to have one of the students approach and strangle him so he can reveal a secret ninja method for getting out of a full-on, double-handed choke. So, my buddy comes up, lays his hands on his throat, and watches as he turns purple, eventually yelling to him (hands still on throat), "you're scaring me, I'm going to let go now".
Anyway, so bascially all of the above, aside from my self-aborbed comments, is behind the public's perception of the "ninja". What has happened over the past two decades is a slow trickling of the term into a variety of fucking annoying situations. For example, you can set your Myspace mood to "ninja", adjust your Gmail account so there are little fucking cute ninjas all over the place, go 'ninja' when you want to steal a Pop-Tart from a roommate, any situation that requires stealth or sneakiness that you don't fucking have in the first place. Can we please stop using this term where it doesn't apply? It's getting out of goddamn hand. For example, I was reading through a shitty indie rock band's interview in a local shit paper when I noticed the one guy referring to the other's 'ninja booking skills'. If this means being able to book a pizza parlor where no one listens to you and turn up the televisions to drown out your shit, I'm pretty sure you need to watch the entire American Ninja series.
So please, can we stop with this? Most of the people calling this and that 'ninja' are fucking losers who can barely walk a mile let alone scale walls, hold their breath underwater, or make cool smoke bombs out of magnesium. And then there are other times when it doesn't even fucking mean anything. Ever see that juice commercial where cranberries are referred to as the 'ninja fruit'? So what, it rips your throat open with a sickle or poisons some throwing stars and tosses them in your face? What the hell is that supposed to mean anyway? Obviously something about being an antioxidant, but ummm, wild blueberries then totally school cranberries and win the title, making the latter something more like the 'drummer boy' fruit.
Fucking hipsters, it's getting old, kill it and let me go back to living in my cave and watching "Ninja the Protector" before you find out about it and ruin my life. At least the fad seems to only exist in application, not actually delving into the underground B-movie wonderland of the ninja in America, so that's part's not ruined. If one of these hipsters rode around on a fucking motorcyle with a fucking swinging sickle like this dude below, I'd let them say whatever they fucking wanted.
Zombies
I can handle the ninja thing sometimes, but there's something even worse, zombies. I doubt I need to go into much detail with the history of this, so rampant is it in popular culture. It started out quite awhile ago, in fact, but it wasn't until the release of movies like "Night of the Living Dead", that the zombie really started to enter popular consciousness. This fad slowly grew, but it remained largely under the surface for some time, something you might see at a drive-in and talk about a little and maybe joke about. Not until the late 90s did you really see the idea of the 'zombie' creeping into places it didn't belong. As more movies came out and big-budget remakes like the newer, horrible, "Dawn of the Dead" hit theaters, the zombie started to become more of a permanent fixture. And I mean more than a cool Halloween costume, more than something to watch alone, something to ninja about...
Fucking zombie. I don't have to say much here. Let me explain it with examples. Ever see a bunch of hipsters go on a fucking zombie bar run where they dress up like zombies and get some drinks? No, well how about shit like The Zombie Survival Guide, which some crank managed to write up and somehow convince someone to publish? Yeah, it's a real fucking book, look up again. Ever hear hipsters talking about their 'zombie escape plans' at a show? How about a zombie 5k run where you run a normal marathon with a bunch of idiots dressed as zombies behind you, mainly walking, but some running for a few yards until they realize how out of shape they are? Here's a fucking flyer, it's a real thing:
Seriously? When did the zombie become so fucking lame? Have any of you watched something like "Return of the Living Dead 3"? You know, the movie where the girl's father does some military testing, she gets infected, and then keeps away the 'hunger' by sticking glass and metal into herself until she looks like a complete freak?
Ever actually sit through "Dead Alive"? Or, even better, did you even fucking know about it before "Lord of the Rings" triology came out? And one more, ever watch Zombie Lake just to laugh at the unnecessarily long, under-the-water bush shots and the incredible lack of a time line? You know, it's like the 1980s, and there's this one little girl who's father is one of the zombies, but he died during World War II? I bet you've never even seen this gem:
Yes, that's green paint, and yes it's a real movie you never knew about because you're a hipster. What gets me the most about this fad is that it's a bunch of people doing what everyone else is doing because it seems cool now. And even more annoying is the few of them stepping slightly into cool Zombie Lake places, pretending they understand why it's awesome. Why can't you people ever do something because you think it's cool? I don't really give a shit to the extent that my zombie love has been tainted like my ninja love, much as my love for Immortal after seeing a shirt sold at Hot Topic, but it's fucking annoying as piss. People making zombie jokes, fucking books about the imaginary fucking creature on how to kill them in your imagination, cut the shit out. It's not cool anymore, it crossed that line about five years ago. Fuck you.
I guess my main problem is, as I get older, I see lots of the things I chose to do for me becoming "cool" now just because a group of losers has arbitrarily decided it should be so over time. Most of these scum no little of anything I talked about above, and those that do share the same disgust as me. So stop with the ninjas, cut the zombies, and leave me alone. You're attacking me by proxy.
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