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Thursday, January 06, 2011
"It's on like Donkey Kong": A comprehensive history
San Francisco political minutiae is the absolute last thing I want to write about, either on this blog or in the San Francisco Chronicle. I've managed to go 10 years -- the entirety of his term as supervisor -- without writing about Chris Daly. It seems like the safest thing would be to extend the streak for two more days.
craziestgadgets.com
It's so on.
But as one of the Chronicle's video game critics, and the newspaper's popular culture critic overlord, I feel the need to add to the commentary surrounding Daly's well-publicized Board of Supervisors tirade. Specifically, his use of the words "It's on like Donkey Kong."
So I decided to research the history of the phrase, finding where it originated and some of the more notable uses of "It's on like Donkey Kong" over the years. I've heard it myself more than once during interviews. (Most notably from celebrity chef Guy Fieri.) But looking back to its origins in the early 1990s, I was impressed with its storied past. "It's on like Donkey Kong" is as rich and diverse as America itself.
Surprisingly, the phrase didn't originate with professional wrestling. Below is a time line covering the most important moments. I swear I'm not making any of this up ... Read More '"It's on like Donkey Kong": A comprehensive history' »
| Jan 06 at 03:33 PM
Reconnecting with Pheena, the Lawrence Hall of Science whale
My daughter beckoned me to climb atop the whale at the Lawrence Hall of Science, and the moment I put my hands on the thin spine, I rocketed back to some distant past when I spent an entire morning climbing and sliding and jumping.
"Wasn't I just here?" I thought to myself, "Didn't I just climb all over this thing ... yesterday?"
It made me feel incredibly nostalgic and, well, old, to think that my 4-year-old is now scrambling atop the very creature I was once in love with.
I had taken her to the hall of sciences high above Berkeley for just a fun father-daughter outing. I hadn't been in years, decades, and I was excited to go back. It turned out that half the exhibitions were closed for a remodel, but that somehow made the experience even better. We had the entire place nearly all to ourselves.
There were times when we were the only people on the replica of the fin whale in the main plaza. And inside, there was no competition to use the experiments, no crowds to fight for lunch. We wandered aimlessly around the halls and spent as much time as we liked playing with the ball mazes, miniature roller coasters and building blocks. Read More 'Reconnecting with Pheena, the Lawrence Hall of Science whale' »
| Jan 06 at 06:30 AM
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