VIDEO GAMES

Prior to 1981, I had no clue what a video game was, my sister would stand for hours in front of those giant Pac Man Machines in front of TG&Y, K-Mart or Roses and I had no clue what the concept of those machines were other than they drew her undivided attention to them, leaving me to my own devices trying to get free horoscopes out of the horoscope dispenser or gum out of the candy machines.

We got our first taste of home video games at my sister's friend Laura Moon's house with her Atari 2600 and Space Invaders. A few months later, we woke up Christmas morning 1982 to find that Santa had left us an Atari 2600 under the tree.

The Atari went straight to my sister's room since my parents just weren't interested in watching us play video games all the time or to be more exact, watch my sister play video games after I loose interest after I lost all my men 3 minutes into playing. We didn't have many games to choose from, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Asteroids and Space Invaders were pretty much our game collection at the time. Many years later, I got my Nintendo Entertainment System Complete with Super Mario Brothers and Castlevania.

Those were my all nighter games that I'd play until the system would throw up the screens of death that NES was so famous for.

Over the years, Terry had played PSOne & PS2 games like Silent Hill and Tomb Raider, those never really interested me. I'm a classic and board game freak. Give me a few minutes of Super Mario, Pole Position, Bubble Bobble, Uno, Wheel of Fortune and The Game of Life and I'm happy. We have a PSOne, PS2, GameCube with a Gameboy Player as well as my GBA SP and it seems that no matter how advanced systems get, I just can't abandon the classic concept. I've always found it a little odd though that the graphics on home video games are never the same as the arcade graphics no matter what system you're playing on. Even Ms. Pac-Man appeared slightly different. Since I'm not one to really care about covers, artwork or cases I found that gamestop and eb games has the perfect cheap selection for me...Disc only games for around $2.99. I've also found that eBay is great for cheap buys at a fraction of the cost of new selection. I've always been a huge pinball fan but unfortunately video pinball was never that great...Remember Pinball on Atari 2600?


It was a total different concept of pinball, not the smae at all. A few months ago, I discovered by accident Pinball Hall of Fame Gottleib Collection, I've never been a huge fan of Gottleib tables because their level of difficulty was not my thing, I like to refer to them as Take My Money Machines. After my Gottlieb purchase I found the super cool Pinball Hall of Fame Williams Collection...Now those are my tables...I was a huge fan of the Williams FIRE table back in my skating rink days, unfortunately it wasn't featured on the game but it has a few comperable tables as well as Pinbot. Pinbot was the table I used to play all night long on slow nights at the 9th Circle back when I was a hustler. The Williams Collection is like playing the real tables, aside from the limitations of the PS2 contoller the buttons aren't really in the best place but I found that I can compensate by holding the controller upside down so I can use my thumbs on the buttoms. Several people have referred me to PC emulators but unfortunatly I just can't get into PC games...I ususally feel like I have to be constuctive on some level while I'm in front of my PC...not that I was when I was obsessed with beating Terry on Cafe World and Farmville. So what's your favorite game?



My Idea of Heaven

Remembering Record Stores

Remember the concept of record stores? It seems most people have forgotten what it's like to flip through vinyl records or stare at walls of cassette tapes and browsing the CD long boxes during the time they were placed near the registers due to their higher value. I love a good record shop...before digital downloads, FYE, amazon and B&N overthrew the market we had Record Bar, Turtles, Peaches, Coconuts and the Mecca...TOWER RECORDS. 

During my younger years, my sister and I were only exposed to the latest hits via WABB 97.5 or a vinyl 45 from TG&Y or K-Mart. Our full length albums were usually whatever was on clearance or those wonderful K-Tel collections jam packed with the shorter than edited radio versions. Once in a while, my mom would drive my sister and I to the mall but our mall visit came with strings attached...LIMITED TIME. My sister would cover the metal and rap (or what they called rap back in the 80s), pop/rock and new releases quicker than anyone I'd ever met. Even before she had an actual job, my sister also always managed to have a little cash to buy a tape. I went for the 12" singles and the M (for Madonna) section of pop/rock and hope my mom would buy something for me before she dragged us down to JC Penny's if we were at University Mall or Montgomery Wards if we were fortunate enough to be at Cordova Mall. Vinyl became obsolete toward the end of my elementary school years but I preferred snap crackle pop over the cheap tape decks and players we had eating or mangling my favorite tunes.

Record stores have definitely changed over the years for sure. There was a time went you walked in and the staff consisted of 5 highly knowledgeable sales people and 2 managers that were just as knowledgeable at any given time, now you are lucky to find 2 sales people anytime and most of the knowledge is of current top 40 or whatever they are performing on American Idol. I walked into FYE a few weeks ago and a generic rap track was blasting from the speakers, I asked the sales guy if they had "Love Never Dies" on CD and he asked "Who it by?" assuming it was just a song. When I worked in music stores I knew what all the new releases were several weeks before their release dates and would've known that it was not a group but a cast recording. Fortunately, there are a few old timers that know they have a corner in the market for vinyl freaks like me. Here in Atlanta, we have Fantasyland Records, the only store that I make sure I'm wearing comfortable shoes to shop. The selection rivals 4 record superstores in the space equal to a mall store. My days are Fantasyland are usually all day affairs. Breakfast at Einstein Brothers, flipping through vinyl, lunch at McDonalds, flipping through more vinyl...Then off to meet Terry and we're on our way home. There really is something special about the feel and sound of vinyl that totally rocks my world and no matter how many CDs I collect, I usually end up with the vinyl version spinning on my turntable if by any chance I can get my hands on it.

Upgraded Electronics? REALLY?

I've always been a little ahead of the people I know in terms of gadgets and electronics or at least so I've been told. Over the past 30 years, we've seen TV's stereos, appliances, computers and game systems go from peices of furnature to pieces of plastic and aluminum that fit in the palm of your hand. With the changing of the times, it seems expectations regarding new gadgets move just as quickly. Some things I'm happy to upgrade but others I just can't abandon. If it were up to me, they'd still make Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment Systems with all the classic games still in print.

Walkmans and Discmans would still be alive and well if mp3 players and iPods wouldn't have happened. A few weeks ago, I pulled out my Philips Touchscreen CD player and headphones from my manbag and a teenaged girl stared at me with her mouth open like I'd just popped an 8 track into a hifi...Have we really gone that far that even an advanced discman capable of having no buttons and playing mp3s is considered obsolete? I just can't bring myself to spend the money on an Apple Touch, even though I want one really badly and wouldn't complain if I were gifted one...I do love my Creative Zen Touch from 2004 which my nephew looked at in wonder and asked why is it so thick...My answer was because it has a 40gb hard drive like a computer. I only bought my Pink Gameboy Advance to replace my Purple Gameboy Color because I wanted to play classic NES Castlevania which I've never beat. Thanks to the burglers that broke into my house this past December, I had to upgrade my stolen Pink GBA to a GBA SP in blue...why didn't I get a DS Lite? Because I have GB, GB Color and GBA games and it seems that the DS is only capable of playing it's own games and those formatted for GBA...my favs are on GB and GB COlor. I've only upgraded my cell phone when my old one was either a few steps away from breaking in half or I sent it swimming in the washing machine with all the other items I didn't take the time to retrieve from the pockets of my pants and shirts. My current phone can play videos, mp3s, the radio and all kinds of crap but really I don't text, surf the net or send emails from my phone...I have a laptop and it's less frustrating for me to bother with than pushing all the wrong buttons on my phone with my fat fingers. Is it really necessary to have something the size of a bar of soap to do keep track of your life and entertain you? So after all of this, I have just one question....Don't you feel awkward using what would be considered outdated in public?

Tabloids and why I love them

I've always loved fantasy stories and things that are too good to be true. My life reads a lot like that but it's totally true. I guess it would be to no one's surprise that I love tabloids. Not the celeb news though. I'm not a Perez Hilton, National Enquirer or Star fan. I don't care if Britney's snatch is blue or Lady Gaga fired her crew or they found Michael Jackson's nose in Bubble's poo. I don't know those people and I'm not interested in their drama. I don't read much in terms of newspapers, watch the news unless I know something important is going on in the world and I need to be informed and even still I somehow know what's going on in the world. Tabloids are so much more fun to read anyway.

Give me Bat Boy or stories of a 500 pound infant and his mom that's a mere 97 pounds. I don't mind GLOBE or National Examiner, they feature stories of real people in addition to a little bit of celeb fluff. My favorite was Weekly World News but the only thing that remains in print similar to WWN is the SUN. WWN is online but it's just not the same as when I was a kid though. When I was younger I'd secretly ride my bike down to the Jr. Food Store and see other kids spending their money on candy, sodas, Slush Puppies and bags of potato chips, I spent mine on the Weekly World News and a cheap Faygo Root Beer. It would take me a week to read the stories in the paper completely and then a day or so to reskim it and enjoy the advertisements. Did I care if stories were made up? Nope. I loved that part of them. There was something magical in stories with headlines like Woman's Breast Implants Explode Thanks to Low Flying 747. Did I believe it? At the time, yes and even now, I'm sure there was some truth to some of the stories but the point of a tabloid is to go into them knowing there is a requirement to suspend your disbelief. You just can't disagree that there isn't entertainment value in stories with headlines like Grossed Out Surgeon Vomits In Patient or North Korean Sub Probing US Lake, Is Kim Jong Il Poised To Attack?

Silly Purchases? Definitely....Waste of Money? ABSOLUTLEY NOT!!!

~Adrian

Click here to purchase Bat Boy Lives from Amazon.com

Me me me

Wow, I've had this account forever and a day and have yet to post anything on it. I started blogging way back when everyone was on myspace but when I made the switch to facebook, there was no blog so I sort of abandoned it but somehow I missed my mindless, sometimes drug induced, rambles and I thought that I'd just start doing video blogs on youtube. Unfortunately, much like the rest of the population of the planet, when I feel like blogging...I'm usually decked out in my boxers and nothing more. I don't think many people want to see my moobs (man boobs) while I talk about myself, my day or shit that's gone down in my past...so here I am...typing away with lots to say but no readers. What happens if I post something really cool and I have no readers until a year from now? Would there really be a huge demand in a year for old mindless chatter? I guess I'll see.

So currently I'm unemployed, other than selling my crap on eBay, etsy and doing psychic readings on keen.com and bitwine...yes I am a psychic reader for real and YES I will do a reading for you if you contact me through either my keen.com, etsy or bitwine accounts. Yes, I'm saying no free readings, it's my time damnit and you'll get enough of me for free here, on facebook and a little bit on youtube.

So what am I planning to do here? Hell if I know but to be completely honest, being the mental case that I am...I'm sure it will involve strange, comical and something a little intriguing or at least like a wreck on I-75, you don't wanna look but you got to.

BTW-If there's anyone in Atlanta with connections to a decent paying office job...hit me up.

~Adrian