Musings from Singapore
The other day, my colleague told me that he was going to buy a pair of glasses that upcoming weekend.
‘Finally!’ I thought. This was someone who’d always had trouble with his eyesight.
I asked him what his plans were after getting the glasses.
“Then I’ll see.”
A man is driving along a country road and sees a sign which says: “$5 for talking dog, take next left.”
Thinking this is some sort of joke, the man decides to check it out. So the man takes the left onto a a farm, and a farmer comes out.
Farmer: “You here about the dog?”
Man: “Yeah, does the dog really talk?”
F: “Sure does, come here and I’ll show ya.”
The man and the farmer walk to the garage, where a dog is lying on a dog bed. It sees them and walks over to them.
F: “Go on, ask him anything.”
M: “Alright dog, tell me about yourself.”
To the man’s surprise, the dog begins to speak, clearly and with proper words!
Dog: “Well, when I was a young pup, I always wanted to serve my country. So, as soon as I could, I enlisted with the airport security as a sniffer dog. I was real good at my job too, got a few promotions and turned some heads. Eventually, the US army picked me up as a bomb-sniffer dog, and I helped prevent tragedies all across the country and oversees. After a while I retired, found myself a nice girl, had a few pups, and finally came to this farm to live out my golden years.”
The man is stunned. He turns to the farmer and says:
M: “Holy cow, you were right! Why are you only asking $5 for this dog?!”
F: “Cause he’s a liar! He ain’t ever done any of that!”
Welcome back to the I Really Like This Thing series, where I do my best to introduce something I, well, really like. They could be music, movies, games – anything, really. The point is for me to share. Worst case, you think my taste sucks. Best case, you learn about something cool.
This time: the YouTube channel Super Best Friends Play.
What’s your definition of a friend?
For me, it’s someone who I can be around with zero stress or expectations. Someone who’ll call me out on my nonsense. A person I can shit on, and who can shit on me (all in good fun, of course). It’s someone whom I wish the very best for.
They’re imperfect yet always trying their best to be a better person. They don’t hide all the bad stuff – they own who they are, flaws and all – and can laugh at themselves about it all.
Could you ever build that sort of relationship with someone you never actually meet, or talk to?
Well, I don’t know, but I think I got as close as I think is actually possible.
Say hello to the Super Best Friends.
Before Twitch and streaming came around, there was only the humble Let’s Play (LP). Edited videos, usually no longer than 10 minutes or so, of games being played while the person(s) playing comments on things as they happen.
With SBFP, 10-minute videos became 30-minute ones over time. And over time, four random Canadians became fixtures of my day-to-day life.
The channel started as Two Best Friends Play; it was just Matt and Pat initially. And it had rough beginnings:
This janky approach came to be a trademark of the channel. Their unofficial tagline was “We promise nothing and deliver less” – a self-deprecating joke very much in line with their “brand”.
Their video and presentation quality would improve markedly, but the largely-unfiltered and unplanned nature of their content persisted and is what I feel makes them so extremely enjoyable. It’s basically the same vibe as watching B-movies with friends at home.
As time went along, Woolie and then Liam came on board. All four of them each possess distinct characters, so things don’t go stale. Plus, the different combinations for different LPs – it could be any pair or trio (and sometimes, all four of them at once) taking on a particular game – helped.
They eventually started a podcast as well, which has been a staple of my week since it began.
It’s really difficult to narrow it down to just five, and I’m doing a disservice to so many great ones, but here are my top five SBFP LPs:
When I started watching this LP, I had no idea whatsoever about the Yakuza games. It was an extremely niche series.
Now, I’m a lifelong devotee, and the franchise has grown leaps and bounds. The games speak for themselves, but it was through the push channels like SBFP (Pat, especially) gave that led to the series’ growth in popularity in the West. And what works there will find its way to Singapore.
This LP showcases pretty much everything Yakuza 4 has to offer, and is arguably one of the most influential series SBFP put out.
A month-long dive into wrestling games great and terrible, Rustlemania was one of the channel’s most enjoyable themed series.
While a part of my enjoyment likely came down to nostalgia from my childhood days of following the WWE, there are nevertheless some true laugh-out-loud moments in this series.
This includes one of THE best moments in all of SBFP history – it left me gasping for air from laughing too much when I first saw it.
The Silent Hill 2 playthrough was really unique: most SBFP LPs are filled with jokes, but this was made to serve as an appreciation of one of the greatest horror video games of all time.
The respect with which Pat (who’s on the controls and who wanted to do this LP) approaches the whole game speaks for itself. If you’ve never heard of this game, or if you’ve heard of it but always wondered about its revered place in video game history, check this LP out.
This is classic Matt-Pat at their very best – playing an objectively shitty game and losing their minds over it. The game is terrible, and the jokes simply present themselves.
It’s one of the most fun, easy watches, and I find myself going back to it every now and then.
This is another terrible-looking game. The difference is that it’s actually good, and extremely self-aware in its “badness”. The jokes and references in the game itself are already amazing, and Pat and Liam bring so much more.
This LP also has one of the few instances which left me quivering in silent laughter (you know the type). It’s essential viewing.
There are many more classics – Matt and Pat are particularly great with survival horror games – but I can’t list them all without turning this into a mini-archive of LPs.
Despite the group’s haphazard nature, they stuck by one rule: they finish every game they start (save for a few, due to extenuating circumstances), no matter how terrible or broken the game may be.
This has led to some classic LPs where part of the fun was seeing them suffer. Yes, I know that sounds sadistic and perverse, but they demanded it of themselves; as an audience member, you laughed both at and with them. You suffered alongside them.
The Ride to Hell LP is probably the most entertaining example of such a game, although the Omikron one isn’t far behind.
They also collaborate with and support many other content creators, from hiring animators to do LP series’ opening animations, to simply introducing their audience to other great video creators.
In essence, they’re just all around decent folk.
Two 30-minute videos a day, every single day, extended my pop culture horizons. Through SBFP, I learned of Persona, of Cromartie High School. I learned of Hajime no Ippo, of Yakuza.
Each and every one of these, among many others, will likely be getting their own episodes of I Really Like This Thing. It’s special.
The Best Friends played as big a role as anything else in shaping me to be who I am today – if not directly, then through sharing the things they loved with their audience.
That’s actually one of the main reasons I have for setting up and maintaining this site: through the things they did and shared, I’ve learned and experienced so much.
Their recommendations have made me laugh and cry in the best of ways, helping me to recognize the depths of my emotions. They made me truly feel things, and helped me to accept, understand, and deal with my inner demons better.
If four regular dudes can do that just by shit-talking each other and getting unabashedly excited about video games and anime (and putting it all on YouTube), then maybe I could do the same. Maybe I can make someone’s day a little better just by sharing some music or video game that’s captured my imagination.
If you’ve made it this far, and are wondering why I’ve written so emotionally about what essentially is just a group of jokers having fun, it’s because the group has broken up.
They separated in late 2018, and I can still remember where I was when I learned of the news, and how I felt. It sounds a little silly for me to say such things about a YouTube channel, but that’s how much they meant to me.
After all, they were there for me almost every day for nine years… which is more than I can say for most human beings.
They’ve all gone on to do their own things now. Matt has his own channel, Liam streams, Pat streams, Woolie still does LPs and some streaming.
A small consolation is that my two favourites, Pat and Woolie, still collaborate regularly. They still do the podcast, which has since been re-branded to Castle Super Beast, and they’ve done a few LPs together.
It’s not quite the same, and I do miss the old dynamics. Still, better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, I guess.
Godspeed, you magnificent bastards. And thank you for everything.
There’s a gang of criminals going around lately. Their crime is highly peculiar – they just keep stealing the wheels of parked police cars.
The police are working tirelessly to catch them.
There was once an old man who lived by a forest.
As he grew older and older, he started losing his hair, until one day, on his deathbed, he was completely bald. That day, he called his children to a meeting.
“Look at my hair. It used to be so magnificent, but it’s completely gone now,” he said. “My hair can’t be saved. But look outside at the forest. It’s such a lovely forest with so many trees, but sooner or later they’ll all be cut down and this forest will look as bald as my head.”
“Every time a tree is cut down or dies, plant a new one in my memory,” he pleaded his children. “Tell your descendants to do the same. It shall be our family’s duty to keep this forest strong.”
So they did. Each time the forest lost a tree, the children replanted one, and so did their children, and their children after them. And for centuries, the forest remained as lush and pretty as it once was.
All because of one man and his re-seeding heir line.
You’re on the way to work, scrolling through Reddit as you go through the motions of the daily commute. Giggling (internally) at the latest nonsense on r/disneyvacation, you suddenly see a hand waving in your face. It’s accompanied by an inexplicably-confident “Hey bro!”.
You look up to see someone who is categorically not a “bro” – he’s not your brother, he’s not your friend – heck, you don’t even know him.
He’s an insurance agent, but that’s not the point. More horrifyingly, he’s one of them.
He’s one of those who calls everyone “bro”.
I’m really not sure how this phenomenon came to be. Personally, the use of the word – both outgoing and incoming – started in secondary school, before seeing a sharp uptick during National Service.
I suppose that makes sense. In both scenarios, we’re trying to fit in and/or make life easier for ourselves. And there aren’t many better ways to do that than to be friends with everyone.
Sadly, it seems to have become a crutch and a bad habit that many fail to drop even after (purportedly) growing up to become young adults and professionals. I may even go so far to say that it’s invasive, placing an expectation of kinship and reciprocation on an unsuspecting victim.
But maybe that’s just me. I place a lot of value on who I call friends and who I don’t. Emotional, sensitive – label me as you please, but I just really give a shit about such things.
(Note that there’s a difference between being friends and just being friendly; you should be the latter as much as you can, but more fussy with the former, in my opinion.)
The closeness that’s suggested by the word adds a layer of expectation on top of your minimum expectations that come from being ripped out of your own little world.
And then it all comes crashing down when you realize it’s just someone trying to make a buck off of you.
Why do you build me up, just to let me down?
Honesty is the best policy in just about everything, I say. That includes sales activities – be upfront about what you can do for me and what you want in return, and I’d respond much better than if you tried to act like my friend.
It’s funny how trying to be friendly can make you look really insincere, but authenticity is what we’re all really craving now, right?
It’s why the term “influencer” immediately garners snickers of derision. We see the vast majority of them as insincere, fake people who are merely pretending to be our friends.
WordPress doesn’t even recognize it as a real word:
The world can be a beautiful place, and a lot of that stems from the friendships and relationships we form with other people. But if you’re not truly sincere about it, even a thousand uses of “bro” will never cut it.
Did you know that cowboys smoke marijuana?
It’s true, they do. The only difference is that they don’t roll joints.
They tumble weed.
A fly feels a bug on its back.
“Hey, bug on my back, are you a mite?”
“I mite be,” the mite replies, giggling.
The fly groans. “That’s the worst pun I’ve ever heard,” he laments.
“What do you expect? I came up with it on the fly.”
I was thinking:
If a parent is trying to put his child to sleep and the child is refusing, wouldn’t it be illegal because technically the child is resisting a rest?
But then I realized it’s a lose-lose situation and it’s illegal either way because if the child willingly goes to sleep it makes it a kid napping.
Two Navy men were washed ashore during World War I.
Their ship, an aging mine-sweeping model, had wrecked off the coast. As they sought shelter in a makeshift camp on the beach, one of them managed to salvage a radio and quickly telegraphed an SOS with their coordinates.
To their surprise, a ship responded within the hour, saying it could be at their location in about two weeks.
The older soldier shook his head, saying he’d rather take his chances swimming out to the wrecked ship and trying to repair it.
“You’d really rather play with that old mine craft all day?” the young soldier scoffed.
The older man shrugged and said, “It’s better than a fortnight.”
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