Numchuck Skills

Did you know that you aren't allowed to brink nunchakus on a tour of the White House. You might be thinking, "Well, of course not. A turtle or guy like Michelangelo (the turtle, not the guy) could do some serious damage with nunchakus!"

You'd be right, and that's why the rule is in place. And this isn't weird. What's weird is that there is actaully a sign with a silhouette of nunchakus with a red line through it, specifying for the literate and illiterate alike that you aren't allowed to bring your Japanese fighting sticks along while visiting the State Dining Room.

Nunchakus are really amazing. They were the weapon of choice of the coolest ninja turtle, they received shout-outs in the best movie of 2004, "Napolean Dynamite" and they provide countless hilarious instances of dudes crushing their nads on film. Truly, they are Japan's finest export. That, I guess, and Sega Genesis.

I say Sega Genesis because my parents never bought me a Super Nintendo and I never bought myself a Playstation or X-Box. I know those other new fangled contraptions are better, but they didn't have "Altered Beast."

"Altered Beast" was the signature game for Sega before "Sonic the Hedgehog" came along. It was the story of a guy (or two guys, if you played in two player mode) that walked around killing zombies and blobs and stuff and eating magic floating eggs in a quest to save his (or "their" in two player mode) girlfriend. Every time he ate an egg he got way stronger. On the third egg, the guy would turn into the beast du jour and you'd pretty much be invincible and you'd win the game if you got that far.

The altered beasts were, in this order: wolf, dragon, bear, tiger, golden wolf. The weird thing was, the dragon was by far the best. It could fly, had a really cool shield and could breath some sort of lightning/stick out of its mouth. By the end of level two, the game was pretty much all downhill. In fact, you went from the super-cool dragon to the worst character in the game, the boring-ass bear. I wonder, sometimes, who the ad-wizards were who came up with the idea to put the dragon second and the bear third. Why not just flash a message after level two saying, "Hey bro, the fun part's over. Go play outside or make yourself a sando or something"?

You know, the bear blew bubbles that turned things into ice. How stupid is that?

Don't get me wrong, though. Bears are still cool. My favorite bear of all time was Teddy Ruxpin. He was a magic half-bear, half-walkman that told you about all of his adventures with his giant caterpillar friend, Grubby.

On second thought, Teddy Ruxpin was a dick.

He apparently went on like a hundred awesome quests and stuff before he was caught by Playskool and put in that box. When I was a kid, my biggest quest was crapping my pants and trying to fix it before my mom found out. Teddy just sat there all day, telling you how much better his life was compared to yours. All day... preaching.

But he wasn't so great. He didn't even have nunchakus. Michelangelo had nunchakus, plus he lived in the real world and had adventures that I could relate to.

Here's what's bullshit: Teddy Ruxpin is way more likely to be able to meet the president than Michelangelo. Even though we all agree that what Mike has done for New York was way more valuable to US domestic security than Teddy's prancing around the land of Grundo, there is no way Michelangelo is getting in that White House with those nunchakus.

...and I wouldn't want to be the guy to ask a giant ninja turtle to please observe the "no nunchakus" sign.