The World According To Darfh
The last few days have been quite hellish in these parts (heck, the entire summer has been hellish), so I’ve been pretty much cooped up inside my air conditioned house for the past week or so. Getting tired of the same old, same old, today I decided to trek out to the EB Games closest to my house (note: this EB Games is also a stone’s throw from two or three GameSpots as well). While I was there I remembered that I was getting pretty low on Memory Card space, so I decided to pick up another card. Since it was a bit cheaper, I ended up buying a “pre-owned” memory card.
Yeah, I know.
The first thing I notice upon getting home: this is a Japanese PS/2 memory unit — the katakana script on the card is a dead giveaway. Okay, no problem, though: I can still use it. Upon inserting the PS/2 and checking the contents of the card, I got quite a laugh. Seems that the previous owner of this memory card — Scott, according to one of his game save profiles — didn’t feel like clearing off his savegames before pawning off the unit. Ah, mirth and merriment abound.
First off…what’s this? 007: Nightfire? Ah, I see you were suckered into buying that piece of crap too, eh, Scott? I remember plunking down $50 for that wonderful game back in the day — now you can get it for $0.99 (I’m not joking). Scott’s not off to a good start with his game library.
Next…NBA Street Vol. 2? You mean someone bought that game? Yikes.
But wait, there’s more! Blitz: The League…Harry Potter Quiddich World Cup…and just about every single Grand Theft Auto known to man (okay, the GTAs aren’t bad). But the biggest head scratcher came from the dude’s Star Wars: Battlefront 2 save game. You see, according to the savegame files, Scott decided to give his ingame profile the name of…Darfh-Jew. Yes, “Darfh-Jew”. Ignoring the fact he apparently misspelled “Darth”, what exactly is a “Darfh-Jew”? Is it a kosher Sith Lord? One that does bar-mitzvahs? (I’m sure the Force Choke bit goes over really well) I’m just trying to wonder what exactly possessed “Scott” to come up with the name “Darfh-Jew”.
The world…may never know.
“Splurge” Review AND MORE!
You knew this was coming, right?
Since I posted my thoughts of the Puffy concert in Detroit last week, I figured I’d post my thoughts on the album that spawned said tour – Splurge, due out today in the U.S. on Tofu Records. You cannot escape the Puffy machine…at least when I’m posting, that is (which seems to be all the time lately). That said, I fully expect Chief Oddball to revoke my posting privileges very shortly because he’s probably sick of my constant posting (for the record, I’ve had posting privileges for nearly two years, yet before this past week I’d posted all of two times).
Anyway, the album. Well, I’m a big Puffy fan, so it’s hard for me to objectively rate these things. The fact that I know nothing about music is another hindrance. That said, this is one outstanding album. It rocks in all the right places, shifts gears here and there for some tremendous ballads, and even gives us a solo track apiece for Yumi (“Rakuda no Kuni”) and Ami (“Security Blanket”) once again (something that hasn’t happened since 2002′s The Hit Parade). That in particular is a welcome treat – in fact, Ami’s “Security Blanket” may very well be the best track on the entire album.
Knee-Deep In 12-Year Olds…
Okay, there’s too much doom-and-gloom ’round these here parts lately. It’s time to FUNK. IT. UP!
I’m not a regular concert-goer; since attending my first real concert in 1993 (not counting the time my dad took a friend and I to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when they were a “rock band” around 1990 or so), I’ve only been to a handful of shows – around 11, according to my count. But I like to think that I make good decisions on what shows I do see. By my count, these are the rock shows I’ve seen:
1993: Paul McCartney
1994: The Rolling Stones (the Spin Doctors opened for this show…I never knew the Pontiac Silverdome – with tens of thousands of people packed inside – could be so quiet as when those clowns played)
2000: Kiss w/ Ted Nugent and SKID ROW!
2000 or 2001: Steve Howe (lead guitarist for Yes)
2001: Tori Amos
2002: Paul McCartney again
2004: Neil Innes (a.k.a. Ron Nasty from The Rutles)
2005: Tori Amos again, Ted Nugent again, Tori Amos yet again (the latter two shows occuring within three days of each other)
So I’ve definitely seen some heavy hitters. But it’s very possible – even likely – that the loudest, most energetic concert I’ve seen was the one I saw this past Tuesday: Puffy (or, as they’re known in the U.S., Puffy AmiYumi), a “Rock Show From Tokyo, Japan”, as the stage backdrop informed us. At the very least, Puffy certainly gave me the most bang for my buck – at just over $20 a ticket (including Ticketmaster’s silly service charge), I got a more outstanding show than I may have otherwise expected. Compare that to $50+ tickets for the Nugent and Tori Amos shows, and the $90+ tickets for the second Paul McCartney show, and Puffy’s a downright bargain.
(You know what else was a bargain at the Puffy show? The merchandise. When I saw Kiss and Nugent in 2000, I picked up two shirts for around $80 total; at the Puffy show I got a CD – autographed! – two shirts, and two paper fans for the grand total of $64. The shirts were only $20 apiece and the CD was $18, a far cry from the usual insane prices for concert merchandise.)
Trash Bandit
The garbage truck stopped by a few minutes ago, so I went outside to roll the standard-issue trash can back into the garage. In the process of checking to ensure that the can was empty, I discovered some unexpected new trash in it that hadn’t been there just two hours prior when I checked to see if the trash truck had arrived yet. It was a yellow plastic Best Buy bag. Tied shut. Random junk inside.
It’s like the fourth or fifth time this has happened. Someone I call the “Trash Bandit” routinely deposits what I call “aftertouch trash” in our can, so named because it always appears there after the garbage truck has emptied out everything we put there. The aftertouch trash always consists of a random plastic bag full of random junk, usually household crap, although one time it was a Taco Bell bag full of used wrappers and an empty drink cup.
I have my suspicions of who it is. Namely, the really old man who lives across the street. The reason? Once, the aftertouch trash bag was full of discarded junk mail and envelopes, and the address on all of it belonged to his house. What I can’t figure out is why. The old dude’s got the same county-issue trash can that we all have. He puts it out, full of his own garbage, every week. It’s like some bizarro pathology drives him to save an extra little bag of special goodies just for me, wait until the garbage truck makes its rounds, and then throw it in my empty garbage can like a macabre offertory.
Today, though, there was very little time elapsed between when the garbage truck drove by and when I found today’s mystery package. I’m starting to think that maybe the trash truck goes down his side of the street first, spills shit all over the road, and then when they come back up our side of the street and get to our house, the garbage men pick up the spillage and toss it in our can…after they empty it. Which would be an even greater stupidity, in my estimation, but what’re ya gonna do.
One of these days, I’m gonna be the Smokey to this trash’s Bandit. Quoth Sheriff Buford T. Justice, “I’m gonna barbeque your ass in molasses.”
Food Long Since Forgotten
So I was up late on a recent evening occasion, and although there are far more weighty things with which I could be occupying my brain, I settled instead on the topic of long-forgotten grocery goodies that I once enjoyed as a kid. Oh yeah…this is serious stuff.
Undoubtedly, each of you can think of something you used to enjoy snacking on as a child, but which you can no longer obtain for one reason or another. Maybe the product has been discontinued. Maybe it’s a regional product that’s not sold where you currently live. Or maybe the recipe has been changed and the darn thing just doesn’t taste like it used to. Whatever the reason, when you really think about it, you probably still long for those good old days, when pleasures were as easy to come by as opening the cupboard in your childhood home’s kitchen.
Here are some of the tasty yummies I used to enjoy, but now sorely miss:
Apple Slice soda.
Slice soda — introduced in 1984 largely as Pepsi’s answer to Sprite — once included this oft-forgotten flavor amongst its ranks. It was like drinking carbonated apple juice, but somehow way better. I used to drink great gobs of this stuff whilst sitting at the dining room table in 1986, playing Donald Duck’s Playground on our IBM XT computer. Um, wow.
Keebler Chocolate Fudge and French Vanilla Creme sandwich cookies.
Originally packaged in blue and yellow bags, respectively, these cookies were the ultimate retail snack. No grocery store cookie has ever tasted this good since. These were first discontinued in the early nineties and then reissued a few years later under the “Keebler Classic Collection” moniker, although they no longer tasted anywhere near as good! They were finally discontinued permanently around the turn of the century. My dad and I both used to make a big production out of dunking the chocolate fudge cookies in milk. Damn, was that tasty.
The Last Ride
I thought the Holden plant in Australia was going to keep building the GTO through August, as they did last year, but apparently I was wrong. The Australian media reported that on June 7th, the last Pontiac GTO — clad in Spice Red metallic — rolled off the assembly line at 9:37 pm. Unlike the last Holden Monaro, which was produced early this year, there was very little fanfare, just a group photo with some of the line workers next to the final historic vehicle.
Overall production figures for the GTO were way up this model year, at just over 14,000 — that’s 3,000 more than the 2005 model. Nearly 10,000 of those units were built between January and June alone!
GM still plans to bring the GTO back into production in the 2008 or ’09 model year, most likely based on Holden’s next-generation 2007 Commodore platform. While engineered by Holden, it may actually be produced here in the United States as the majority of the Aussie coupes were sold here. I hear tell that there may also be a rear-drive, performance-oriented Buick coming out of the same package deal (a new Grand National, anyone?).
But as GM’s plans can change with the direction of the wind, current GTO owners should savor what they have today — one of the finest grand touring coupes ever built, and one of the performance values of our time.
Dump Truck
Apple and I spent the morning hauling another huge load of recyclables and trash to the local recycling center, or as I affectionately call it, “the dump.” We used my boss’ truck to transport all the goods. This was the second time I’ve done this, and I have to say it was a lot easier with Apple’s help. This trip, however, was much more…interesting than the previous.
My boss, who lives in town, has been in China for the last seven months and asked me to take care of his Ford F-250 pickup truck while he was away. He bought it used for a song several years ago, as it had been in a flood and was salvage titled, so it’s not exactly a shiny new monster toy but more like a dilapidated “hick truck” that still manages to get around pretty good, despite the rust, hanging wiring harnesses and broken parts. (Hey, at least the A/C still works.) The reason for my looking after it was twofold: 1) Exercise it so it wouldn’t completely rot away mechanically, and 2) move it around so his condo association doesn’t think it’s a derelict and tow it away — like they already did once, while he was still in town, no less.
Anyway, I brought the big red beast home and we loaded it to the brim with old refrigerator and car parts, used motor oil, glass, electronics and other stuff. As we were on our way to the dump, I noticed that the brakes on the old truck were getting really bad. There was practically no resistance in the pedal, and you’d get no braking response at all until the last centimeter of the pedal’s travel. Not good — indicative of impending brake failure, actually — but now that the thing was all loaded up and we were on our way, I had to get rid of all the crap. Thankfully the truck is a stickshift, so I drove more carefully and used engine braking to help slow it down. Fortunately there was very little traffic.
