games

His First Joke

For the first time in his life he has come up with something funny. Months later he still calls back to it. And it is funny.He’s had funny moments before. He’s pulled some physical gags and laughed at himself and then asked if it was silly. But this is his first joke. Sometime late summer the subject of a sweet dessert came up. He was asking for it and I didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t saying it right. His pronunciation was off. It didn’t make sense. It was something he got somewhere and I didn’t know what it was. At four he’s too young to have things in his life I’m not aware of. We both laughed (hysterically) as I made it into a game of twenty questions. He caught on to the bit and riffed with me. He was asking for something that sounded to me like “Fruit Myer”. “Is it cold?” “Yes!” He said laughing implying that of course it is served cold. “Is it in the refrigerator or the freezer?” “It’s in the freezer silly!” […]

On Fatherhood: Almost 40 With a 4 Year Old

How different his world is in 2014 than mine was when I was his age in 1978. This is the blessing of the late blooming father. Had I begun the child rearing phase of my life a decade or more ago things would be different. We could enjoy the Hunger Games together, we could both simultaneously suffer from Bieber Fever and I could have eaten all of his leftovers without worrying about calories. Not so when 35 years separates us. Now I can easily justify saying, “When I was your age.” “When I was your age, we called a thirty second video clip a commercial.” Will I be able to teach him to appreciate the things that made me who I am today or is he too far removed from my generation? Will the coming of age moments for me be relevant for him? Will the movies, books, video games and music mean anything now or will they be campy and ironic to him? I’ve begun compiling a list of media he will need to consume (and appreciate) as he

I was a Nintendo Fanboy at Five AM

I got to Walmart at 4:30 am armed with a large coffee and my hacked PSP, ready to play an hour and a half of ExciteBike on a Nintendo emulator until the store opened. The Wii was to go on sale at 6 am, and I was number 11 in line. Rumor had it there were at least 20 to go around and only one purchase per person. I was feeling pretty good except for the fact that it was too cold to play my PSP, and soon my coffee would be gone, with nothing to keep me warm but the glow of the Coke machine I was leaning against. By the time the store opened, there were more than sixty people in line. A few were there to buy “X-mas gifts,” but upon further questioning, we all learned the game was for them. The crowd was all over twenty except for one kid with his mom. There was a mix of guys and girls in the line, and not all the girls were there with their boyfriends/husbands. I was

What’s on my dock

As friends make the jump from windows to mac – I often get asked what mac apps to use? Where are some good places to get software? What’s in your dock? Here is what is currently in my dock… some programs I use often – others I recently downloaded and need them visable so I remember to try them out. Most are free… I left out the standards “I” Programs. Itunes and whatnot. My Dock djay – Uses Itunes tracks with two digital turntables.. not sure what to do with it. But’s it’s fun to play with. Now I really have two turntables and a microphone. quicksilver – A quick app launcher. the precurser to ‘spotlight’. It works much faster than spotlight and has many plugins to make the program dig deeper into your computer. It searches bookmarks and address book entries as well as Ichat logs. appzaper – They had it free one day. It’s a great way to delete apps and makes a cool sound when deleting. Like uninstall for windows in that it deletes many of the

My theme park – My babysitter

I grew up in the theme park Busch Gardens and its water park sister, Adventure Island. They were my babysitters. They were my Grandma’s house. They were home. They were where I went when school was out for the summer, where I went when I was too sick for school or where I went when the parents didn’t want me around for the day. They were where my sister and I did our homework and worked on after-school projects. We weren’t latchkey kids. We were turn-style key kids. “Pick you up at the gate at 5” was as synonymous as “Don’t give your grandma a hard time.” Growing up, my parents both worked in management there. He was the VP of Marketing. She did the same for the Special Events department. Both titles had their own distinctive perks for two spoiled theme park kids. Marketing, through the eyes of a child, was more about trade than advertising. We had plenty of coupons and free food cards to eat wherever the current ad campaign was partnered. One month it may be

WHERE ARCADE GAMES GO TO DIE

With not much on my plate yesterday I made the short trek out to Crabtown to see what it was all about. I figured if it was listed on the internet on a website devoted to classic arcade game rooms and was ranked high on the most games list… I should check it out. Especially if Mapquest said it was just 9 miles away. I clicked on “map the scenic route” because it was going to take us to the heart of Glen Burnie, MD and all routes in Glen Burnie are scenic routes. As my buddy Ben said on our drive out, “If you’re ever feeling down about yourself, go to the Wal-Mart in Glen Burnie.”Growing up in a game room in Tampa I have missed the days of sweaty palms full of quarters and the sounds of dozens of games all blaring the sounds from the high scores screen. I look for classic games when i travel and have seen a few here and there but the idea of an old game room full intrigued me. The posts

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