Childhood Favorites: Legos

First: I hate walking through stores. I am not naive enough to know why they place bread and milk on the opposite sides of grocery stores or why they always have batteries at the cash registers. Its all part of their plan to have you buy more useless junk because in America we have the attention span of a 5 year old. With that said, I was walking through a store last week (lets just call it Mal-Wart) and there was a mom holding back a screaming because they went past the toy aisle and the kid just kept screaming "LEGO! LEGO!" because the mother had mistakenly walked down the aisle with lots of Lego sets in it.

I'm sure there was once a point in time where we were all screaming "LEGO!" at the top of our lungs. I know I probably did.

The first set of LEGO's I got as a kid was when I was about 3 years old (my parents were rule breakers, because I wasn't 4 like the box suggested) and it came in the common "Blue Box" that the basic LEGO sets come in today. It was simple: two people, an assortment of 5 differently colored bricks, in various sizes and then one of their small build panels. Like most kids of the time I started to play and then I was hooked. I would spend countless hours building, destroying, rebuilding, destroying... Then as time when on I was able to accrue more pieces: Like the Technix kits and other simple LEGO kits. Eventually my play pail was full of various LEGO pieces and parts.

We were also fed commercials through Nickelodeon where we were told to tell our parents that the only things we wanted for Christmas were MORE LEGOS! Sure enough their marketing ploys worked and kids were begging their parents for the newest LEGO sets come every December. Soon the collections expanded: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lego_themes

LEGOland - The Mecca of LEGO

But you can't mention LEGOS without talking about LEGOland. The first park opened in 1968 and since LEGOland's have opened up across the world. The big one here in the US is the one out in Los Angeles. While I have never been, it is on a list of future stops (thats for damn sure...) I have been to other smaller LEGO outlets though like the ones in Chicago and Orlando.

If you're like me then you also remember the excitement when your younger cousins (or even children) open up that box of LEGOS at Christmas or on a Birthday and you think to yourself: "I could get that together in about an hour..." then you sit there in awkward silence because you're afraid that your girlfriend or wife just heard you meant to think internally, but instead announced it to everyone in the room. Its as if playing with LEGOS is a shameful kid activity.

But there are many people that have made it cool to play with LEGOS as adults and even have jobs where they do nothing but play with LEGOS all day. They have LEGO jobs at their corporate offices (where some of the people even get to design new sets all day!) and there is even something called "LEGO Serious Play" which is a corporate team building event that strives for executives and employees to collaborate using LEGOS. There are also the LEGO model builders who have built replicas of buildings through out the world.

If only I had the skill to build this

Since this is also a Cubs Blog you can't help but wonder: is there a guy out there that is building a LEGO version of Wrigley Field? Well, yes there is. It is still under construction, but mind you these masterpieces of plastic brick take a while to build.

http://legowrigley.blogspot.com/

The Friendly Confines (in LEGOS)

Childhood Favorites: Weird Science

A couple weeks ago it was revealed that my spouse had never seen the Anthony Michael Hall vehicle, 'Weird Science'. Having not seen it myself in over 15 years, I thought it would be a great opportunity to revisit one of my favorite movies as a kid. Unfortunately, some things are better left dead.

There's a reason you don't see 'Weird Science' in the TNT rotation along with 'Road House' and 'Teen Wolf'. I'm not sure that I can confidently explain what that reason is, but suffice it to say that this is not the masterpiece you might remember. I'm not even talking about the far-fetched premise of creating a smoking-hot woman out of a 1985 computer. That may have been the most believable aspect of the film. The missile that randomly spouts from the foundation of the house during the climactic party scene? Bill Paxton being turned into a poor man's Jabba the Hut? The fact that this movie starred a one Ilan Mitchell-Smith? You'll remember him as the nerd that wasn't Anthony Michael Hall. He gave up acting in 1991 and is now an assistant professor of English at Angelo State University. That was probably a wise move.

Despite the presence of Robert Downey Jr. in the early throes of substance abuse, and one scene at a blues bar where the boys reminisce about "great big titties" with their elder African American statesmen, this movie offered nothing. Bras on their heads? The random motorcycle gang that crashes the party? Again, the missile? State of the art mid-'80s computer graphics? Ilian Mitchell-Smith walking around in women's underwear?

All in all, 'Weird Science' gave us very few laughs. The wife pretty much sat through it stone-faced as I tried in vain to make excuses. It did not prove to be the quintessential '80s film that I remembered, and was probably one of the worst John Hughes flicks. The lesson? Don't blindly pledge allegiance to movies from your childhood. Well, except maybe 'Flight of the Navigator'.

Childhood Favorites: The Junior High Dance Edition

Most of us have been to at least one Junior High dance in our lifetime - maybe you went because your girlfriend/boyfriend dragged you, or because you promised your friend you'd be their middle school "wingman," or because your Mom said you needed to be more social. Or, hell, maybe you went to school dances because you actually enjoyed them. I personally didn't go to many dances while in Junior High. Why? Well, for starters, I had acne on my forehead, and the only way I could cover it up was to sport a giant wall of bangs. I also had a retainer that I was still getting used to, so I sometimes made the mistake of spitting when I spoke to people. I was also pretty tall, and a lot of the boys hadn't caught up to me height-wise yet. In short, no one wanted to ask Jolly Green Giant-bad bangs-acne face-"say it don't spray it"- E-Claire to the dance. Anyway, enough about my awkward adolescent years (I'll save the rest for my therapist)...The point I want to make it that when you went to school dances, you could usually count on hearing certain songs. So I polled the Pomp Culture Collective on the songs they always heard at their Junior High Dances, and here are some of the highlights...

C'mon N' Ride It (The Train) - Quad City DJs. The minute this song came on, naturally, everyone would form a train and start parading around the auditorium (or gym, or wherever the dance was being held). However, about a minute into the song, a chaperone would get on the mic and say "Excuse me! Please break up the train!" From what I remember, they thought forming a giant train was considered too "rowdy." Not quite sure why dancing around with your hands on someone else's shoulders was considered "rowdy," but whatever.

Macarena - Los del Rio. Even an uncoordinated jackass like me could do the dance that went along with this song. From what I remember, you basically moved your arms around and did a quarter turn when you heard "Eehhhh Macarena!"

Friends In Low Places - Garth Brooks. This was usually played to appease the country fans. However, since it starts out kind of slow, people would always assume it was a slow dance and grab their dates - only to be disappointed when it sped up. Suckers! (Side note: If you sing the opening lines of this song in front of Daft Funk, he'll get really irritated. It's kind of funny. I did it just now, and his response was "Oh my God I hate that fucking song!").

Let's Get It On - Marvin Gaye. Is this really the message you want to send to a bunch of 12 and 13-year-olds with raging hormones?

I Swear - All-4-One. This song was usually preceded with something like "Ok - I've got one for all the couples out there..."

Mambo No. 5 - Lou Bega. In this sassy little number, the chorus basically consists of Lou Bega listing a bunch of girls' names. And at the dances that I went to, if you happened to be near a girl who had one of those names, they'd usually go ape shit. "Ohmigod! He said "a little bit of Erica by my side"and my name's Erica! Ahhhhhh!!!" Whatever, Lou. You didn't use my name.

Tubthumping - Chumbawamba. Holy smokes, if you wanted to get the dudes on the dance floor, this was the song that would usually do it. And who knew you could sing the words "Pissing the night away" so beautifully?

This Is How We Do It - Montell Jordan. I like how Montell Jordan takes time to "designate a driver" in this song. That's very safe and responsible. Good job, Montell.

End Of The Road/I'll Make Love To You/It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday - Boyz II Men. I bet these songs are still played at school dances.

More Than Words - Extreme. My friend and I tried to sing/learn this song on the guitar. We harmonized and everything. It was pretty awful.

Free Fallin' - Tom Petty. John Mayer has no business covering this song.

Blame It On The Rain - Milli Vanilli. Little did you know at the time that as you were lip-synching along to this song on the dance floor, so was Milli Vanilli.

Informer - Snow. This is what I used to hear when this song came on: Informer! kdlsflsjfksjfksdj sdjaskdjaskdjg...licky boom boom down!" However, I have a much clearer picture of the lyrics now that I've found this.

Lyrical Gangsta - Ini Kamoze. The chorus of this song went something like this: "Nah na na na nah...Nah na na nah na na na nah na na...Nah na na nah." Hmm...That might've been one too many "nahs"...

Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. I don't think this song needs an explanation.

Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice. Whenever I threaten to "wax a chump like a candle," I usually just get a funny look...

Humpty Dance - Digital Underground. I, too, like my oatmeal lumpy. (unless that's some kind of euphamism...If that's the case, maybe I don't like lumpy oatmeal).

Everybody Dance Now - C+C Music Factory. Dancing to this song usually made me tired.

Poison - Bel Biv DeVoe. Situation is serrrriiiioouuuuusssssss.....

I'm Too Sexy - Right Said Fred. The video for this song made mesh shirts hip again.

Anything by MC Hammer - Who could forget this classic? Or this one? And the hits didn't stop after "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em!" After that, he became just "Hammer," and did 2 Legit 2 Quit. I could never do the damn hand movements that went along with that song. And just for fun, I'll throw in this song.

Childhood Favorites: The Nickelodeon Edition

"Welcome To Good Burger...Home Of The Good Burger...Can I Take Your Order?"

If, after reading that quote, you either A) said something like "Oh man! I remember Kenan and Kel! They were hilarious!" or B) said something like "The Good Burger movie sucked!" then you're probably in my age group...And you probably spent a lot of your tween years watching the various programming options on Nickelodeon (although I don't think we were referred to as "tweens" back then. I think we were simply referred to as "eleven" or "twelve".) Or maybe you didn't watch Nickelodeon because you had a life when you were 11 or 12. But I certainly didn't. Having acne and braces doesn't really land you any dates to the Junior High Sadie Hawkins Dance. But we'll discuss my painfully awkward adolescent years some other time...For now, let's re-live the Nickelodeon lineup of our childhood:

"Hey Dude." This was a show about a bunch of teenagers working at a dude ranch. The ranch was owned by Mr. Ernst, and his son Buddy was around, too. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Ernst bought the ranch to get away from his job as an accountant, and Buddy was pissed at the change of scenery. Who knew this show had so much back story? Anyway, from what I can remember, this show's basic formula was as follows: One of the employees gets themselves into a "pickle," (I think it was usually Ted. He was kind of a menace, from what I remember) and they spend the majority of the episode trying to get out of it, with everything getting wrapped up nicely by the time the half hour was over. Oh yeah, and this show had a sweet theme song. I'm pretty sure it both began and ended with some guy saying "Heeeeyyyyy Duuuuuuddde." I couldn't find the theme song on YouTube, but I did find this.

"Salute Your Shorts." This show was kind of the same deal as "Hey Dude," but instead of kids causing trouble at dude ranch, they were causing trouble at summer camp. The only characters I really remember are Donkey Lips and Budnick. They were always up to no good. There was also "Ug," who was the adult figure on the show. And who could forget the rediculous theme song at the beginning of the show? "Camp Anawana...We hold you in our hearts...And when we think about you...It makes me wanna fart!" Hah! Potty humor is fun! This is the best clip I could find of the intro. Ignore the random dude that seems to pop up every 30 seconds or so.

"Clarissa Explains It All." Ah, Clarissa Darling. Girls wanted to be you...Guys wanted to be with you (but only to hold hands...This was a show for kids, after all). This show was basically about the various happenings in the life of Clarissa. In the show, she breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience, hence the part in the title about "explaining it all." She has a pest of a brother named Ferguson, and a best friend named Sam who always entered her room via a ladder (how edgy!).

"All That." This was a sketch comedy show - kind of like SNL for teens. It launched the careers of people like Amanda Bynes, Jamie Lynn Spears, and Nick Cannon...Who went on to do things like star in the remake of "Hairspray," get pregnant, and marry Mariah Carey. It was also where we first met Kenan and Kel - the greatest buddy comedy duo since...Um...No one. I didn't find them funny at all. However, apparently someone thought they were funny...Because they got their own spin-off show (cleverly titled "Kenan and Kel" - to which Coolio sang the theme song. Side note: Coolio randomly made an appearance a house party when I was attending UCLA...I wasn't there, but my friend told me about it the next day. I have no idea why I decided to share this with you). And I'll admit that I actually saw "Good Burger" in the theater. I'll blame it on having a younger sister. Did you miss the movie? Here's a taste. You can now see Kenan on the actual SNL...Yelling at all of us to "FIX IT!"

"The Adventures of Pete and Pete." Honestly, I still don't know if I get this show - even today. It featured two brothers with the same name, a man known as the "strongest man in the world" who waltzed around in spandex, a band playing on the front lawn in the opening credits (the band is Polaris), and everything was shot with weird camera angles. And why on earth did little Pete have a tatto of a lady on his arm? Here's a fun fact for Cubs fans: In the show, Pete and Pete's Mom has a metal plate in her head which can pick up commentary from Cubs' games.




Ok, let's move on to some game shows, shall we?

"Guts." Do do do do ya have it? GUTS! This show featured contestants competing in various American Gladiator-type events, and at the end, everyone got to climb the giant mountain known as the "Aggro Crag." The winner took home a piece of the Aggro Crag, and probably some kind of mountain bike prize pack. When I was a kid, I wrote a letter to the people at Nickelodeon complaining that I thought host Mike O'Malley was a sexist because he never interviewed the female contestants as much as the male contestants. I also noted that I thought he should be nicer to referee Mo. Why don't I have that kind of motivation now?

"Double Dare." Oh come on...I couldn't not mention Double Dare! Who knew that trivia questions and slime could go so well together? And let's not forget the various versions of Double Dare - like Family Double Dare and Super Sloppy Double Dare. Good stuff.




"Legends of the Hidden Temple." I don't remember too much about this game show - except that there were various challenges involved, and the teams were named after colors and animals...Like "Green Monkeys."

And finally, my favorite show of all...

"Doug." Who didn't love this show about the everyday lives of cartoon adolescents? Characters included Doug, Skeeter, Porkchop, Roger, and Doug's love interest - Patti Mayonnaise. I remember that everyone in the show loved a band called "The Beets," and their big hit was "Killer Tofu." And there was also "Quailman" - the superhero invented by Doug that involved wearing your underwear outside of your pants and a belt on your head. I think they tried to re-do the cartoon a few years ago, but it sucked because no one's voice was the same.

I'll close with this fitting tribute to the Nickelodeon shows we loved - performed by some young men at the University of Michigan. Rock on, boys...

Childhood Favorites: The Awkward Years Edition

Continuing a series we did over at TMS, today I'm going back to the middle school years, a virtual treasure trove of awkward absurdity. The amount of "What the hell was I thinking?" items from this period of my life is too large to count, but here are some of the real doozies.

Tight-rolled pants - Who ever came up with this fad really needs to be tried for war crimes. If you grew up during this time period and claim to have never tried tight-rolling your jeans or pants, then you my friend are a goddamn liar, because everyone did it at one point or another, even if it was just briefly in front of your bedroom mirror before you said, "This is fucking stupid."

However I never got the memo that it was stupid. Neither did the hundreds of other kids in my junior high. Of course at that age we're so impressionable and naive, constantly wanting to fit in and be like the most popular kids in school. I firmly believe the popular clique could have showed up one day wearing assless chaps and ballgags and we would've followed suit without question.

Thankfully this fad died out before I reached high school. Now there have apparently been recent sightings of Katie Holmes with her jeans tight rolled. SON OF A BITCH! Scientology is behind this. I should've known.

Slap Bracelets - Remember these abominations? It was a cheap metal band that was usually covered in some printed fabric. Then you slapped the band on your wrist and it would wrap around? I never quite got the point of them. Would I normally wear a bracelet? Hell no. Would I wear one that slaps around my wrist? Shit yes. These things quickly fell out of favor when consumer groups began to complain that the bracelets sharp edges were dangerous and some dumb bastard kids were cutting their wrists. Wrist cutting huh? Slap bracelets may be responsible for starting the Emo Kid trend.

Umbro Shorts - Hey, you wanna wear soccer shorts? What? No, we're not actually playing soccer, we're just gonna wear the shorts because it's cool. Another strange trend that everyone seemed to embrace, no questions asked. They weren't even that comfortable to wear. Whenever you sat down for long periods of time the nylon would stick to your sweaty legs and leave you with swamp ass.

Seriously, if you're wearing soccer shorts, and you're not playing soccer, you look like a moron. At least the kids on the short bus weren't popular, or we all would've all been wearing hockey equipment.

Lifeforms T-shirts - I will say this. I never owned a No Fear shirt, because those were "lame". However a shirt with a bungee jumping crocodile or skydiving frog on the back? Hell yes, sign me up! I had like 4 or 5 of these puppies, all of which involved some sort of reptile or amphibian doing something extreme, like they were auditioning for a Doritos commercial.

Looking back there really are no words for how incredibly stupid these shirts were. A kid wearing a Lifeforms shirt had a 45% chance of getting his ass kicked by a kid wearing a Big Johnson shirt*.

*Turned inside out of course. That and the Coed Naked shirts were the bane of every assistant principal's existence.

Another Bad Creation - Ha, you laugh, but I bet you still know the words to Iesha and Playground! I won't even bring up that other child rap group that made you wear your clothes backwards.

I swing my beats .. at the playground..ya know!

Childhood Favorites: May Or May Not Have Sucked Edition

Remember the part in the movie High Fidelity where John Cusack goes back and looks up Catherine Zeta-Jones (Is it Zeta-Jones or Zeta-Jones-Douglas? Or Zeta-Jones-Drew Douglas-Roberts? The mind reels...), who plays the girl he remembers as being perfect in every single way? Remember how when he finally meets her later in life, he realizes that not only is she not as perfect as he remembers, but that she's actually quite boring and snobbish?

That's the way I feel with some of the things I grew up loving. There are certain things that I remember from my childhood that gave me so much joy, and when I re-visit them as an adult, I realize that they aren't really as great as I remember them being. Let's take a look, shall we?

The Goonies



Easily one of my favorite movies as a kid. I remember watching this movie hundreds of times and loving every second of it. I loved the adventure. I loved the comedy. I loved Sloth. I got a copy of The Goonies for my birthday when I was a sophomore in college and couldn't wait to get it back to my room to watch it again. When I did...I was severely disappointed. Look, I was expecting it to be at least a little worse than I remembered, mostly because I had built it up so much in my mind. But it was just plain bad. Sure they were child actors, but the acting was horrid, even for kids. And there were just too many times where there were like 4 people talking at once and all of them seemed to be mumbling. And even for the time period, a lot of the special effects sucked. Still, I can see kids of today still enjoying it. I guess I was just disappointed that this movie wasn't as good as I remembered, while a lot of other movies I loved as a kid from the same time (Ghostbusters, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Star Wars) were all still fantastic.

Big League Chew



In little league, this stuff was worth its weight in gold. There weren't too many places around where I lived that sold Big League Chew, so when someone on the team could convince their dad to stop at the 7-11 2 towns over to get some, you had to be that kid's best friend to get just a few shreds of that delicious stuff. I tried Big League Chew again a few years back and was horrified both by the consistency and the "flavor". I may have never noticed as a kid, but even after chewing this stuff for an hour, it's still thin and gooey enough to almost be classified as a liquid. There's no "stick" to it, which means that you can't use it to blow bubbles. And it's got so much "gum flavor" to it that I almost had to spit it out as soon as I started to chew it. There was so much sugar in it that I immediately contracted Chip Wesley Disease (aka diabetes).

TMNT II: The Arcade Game for Nintendo



When I was young, I first saw this game in the arcades, and it was the greatest thing in the world. Keep in mind, I was a young Ninja Turtle fanatic. When the game came out for the NES, I just about crapped my pants. Paired up with the Game Genie, you could mow through the game every time you popped it in. I used to beat this game at least once a day for an entire summer once. When I got to college, I decided to give it another try for nostalgia. What used to be a fast-paced exciting game featuring my favorite characters of all time had turned into a boring repetitive game that I couldn't even force myself through once. How could I have spent so many countless hours playing this game as a kid when it was so dull?

Childhood Favorites: Convenience Store Edition

Growing up as a kid I had the privilege of living down the street from a convenience store. I have memories of riding my bike down to the Handimart to blow what little cash I had on all sorts of nonsense that of course was completely awesome at the time. In this edition of Childhood Favorites, I'd like to share some of the crap that I was willing to dig under couch cushions to scrounge up loose change for.

Candy Cigarettes & Jerky Stuff - Honestly, I don't know how everyone in my generation isn't smoking like a chimney right now. The number of candy/snack items imitating tobacco products they had out there to help us "look cool" is staggering. Can you imagine if a kid whipped out a pack of candy cigarettes now a days? He'd probably get expelled from school. Yet back in my day you could drop 35 cents on what appeared to be a pack of Lucky Strike, when in fact they were just long white peppermint candy sticks. If you missed out on the candy cigarette era, just go eat some peppermint Altoids. They taste the exact same.

Jerky Stuff was the bomb. Not only could you look like a little Lenny Dykstra with a wad of beefy goodness in your bottom lip, but each tin came with a circular baseball card in the bottom. What's that? You're tin of jerky is cashed? Not all is lost, look who's at the bottom, why it's Chris Sabo's goggle-clad visage staring back at you!

Suicides - You may have called it something else, but the ridiculous concoction of taking a cup and filling it with all different kinds of soda from the fountain was called a suicide in my neck of the woods. Why limit yourself to just one choice of soda when you could drink 7 at the same time? While I haven't had a suicide since the original Bush administration, I can't recall them being any good. In fact my recollection of them is that no matter what the mixture it always tasted about the same. Kind of like when you thought it'd be cool to mix all your paint colors together, only to realize it just makes everything a shit brown. Nonetheless if you never had your taste buds accosted by this sugary amalgamation of sodas, then your truly missed out in your childhood. Although it'd be kind of funny nowadays as an adult to be at Subway filling up your soda with folks waiting behind you and then suddenly bust out the suicide.

Wax Pack Baseball Cards - I started collecting cards right at the tail end of the innocent era of baseball cards, before jackasses started buying case upon case of packs as an "investment". I remember going down to the Handimart and buying a pack of Topps for 45 cents. All I ever bought were Topps. Fleer and Donruss were for communists. Anyway I remember getting a pack and being completely stoked whenever I got a Cub. It didn't matter if it was Ryne Sandberg or Chico Walker, those cards were like gold to me. Oh and who can forget the gum? Good luck chewing one of those down to a malleable wad without cutting your gums on one of the rigid corners.

Garbage Pail Kids - Holy shit. I remember the uproar parents had when these came out. This stuff would probably be pretty tame to today's standards. Adults trying to get rid of them just made their appeal that much greater for us kids.

Cheap Candy - I've never been much of a saver. If I go out to the bar with $40, I'll probably spend every last dime before calling it a night. I think this behavior began in my early days at the convenience store. Always looking to buy the most I could with what money I had, I constantly found myself looking to the bottom shelf to see what 5 and 10 cent delights I could buy. For me the candy of choice were Laffy Taffy's, Now and Laters, and Bazooka Joe gum.

Laffy Taffy's were always a good buy. You could get a fruity piece of taffy to chew on plus there were the jokes on the inside of the wrapper. "Oh he threw the clock out the window because he wanted to see time fly! Comedic gold!"

Bazooka gum didn't go without it's perks as well. Each piece of 5 cent gum came with a small Bazooka Joe comic. So as you bit down in your rock hard piece of gum you could read a tiny comic strip about the travails of Bazooka Joe. Unfortunately they were never printed all that clearly and the stories were sometimes as cryptic as a David Lynch film. Also Bazooka Joe had an eyepatch. That's always a good look. If I ever lose an eye I'd go for the patch over the glass eye. Although the overrated 'pirate fad' would ruin it a bit. I'll have to wait until that dies down before having an eye gouged out.

Now and Laters puzzle me. I honestly don't remember enjoying those little SOB's at all and yet I still bought them. Forget Laffy Taffy, baseball card gum or Bazooka. In terms of hardness Now and Laters were seemingly made of freaking Tupperware. Apparently kids have a grudge against their jaws. Fact, only diamonds can scratch a Now and Later.

Clearly Canadian - What the hell happened to Clearly Canadian? They seemed to disappear as fast as they emerged. There was that brief period of time in middle school and high school when CC was the drink of choice. Between that and Crystal Clear Pepsi we apparently were digging stuff that appeared clean and pure.

PB Max - I'd kill a drifter if it meant getting M&M/Mars to bring back the PB Max. This was one of the greatest candy bars ever. Like a big square peanut butter Twix with peanuts in it. Once they bring that back I'll focus my attention to Hershey to bring back the Bar None.

I could go on forever talking about things like how the Skor bar is vastly superior to Heath (more chocolatey toffee goodness for your buck) or the various other candy I used to buy such as Mambas (ghetto Starburst) or Zotz, but I'll have to save that for another day.

Childhood Favorites

We've had a bit if negativity here in the Saloon over the last few months, which is evident in the number of War Criminals we've named. From Black Friday to assholes that sit in front of a TV in hopes of winning a TV, nothing has escaped our wrath.

But now the holidays are over and the stress that cames with melts away. Sure, you may not be able to shake the thought that you aren't going to have another day off of work until May, but such thoughts are easily suppressed by hard alcohol.

Speaking of hard alcohol, I want to take a trip back to my childhood. What better way for all of us to take a post-holiday mental vacation than to look back upon our youth and remember a time when things were simpler. Keep in mind, I was born in the early 80's, so if you're much older or younger than that, the following things may or may not have brought you childhood joy.

So without further ado, I present to you...

Daft Funk's Random Childhood Joybringers

Super C


Man, did I play the crap out of this game. For a lot of people out there, the original Contra is their co-op NES shooter of choice. But if it's one thing we've learned from The Terminator, The Godfather and World War I, some sequels can end up better than the original. Super C, the lesser-known sequel to Contra, kept everything great from the first game, and replaced everything that sucked.

Remember those levels in Contra where instead of viewing your character from the side, you had to spend the level looking over his shoulder and the perspective used in each of the rooms made Salvador Dali paintings look natural? Super C chucks those out the window and replaces them with levels where you can actually see the action from above and move in all 4 directions. This is a huge improvement. If you have played both Contra and Super C, you know what I'm talking about.

And how about the 30 life code from the original? Not only does it work in Super C, but if you team the game up with the all-powerful Game Genie, you can put in a code that gives you an extra life for every bad guy that you kill. Considering there are approximately 845,962 bad guys in Super C, the chances of you making it through the entire game are pretty good. I've played this game so much that without having to look it up, I can still remember that this particular Game Genie code is AENTTTZA. Boo-ya!

(Looking back, I always thought that the spread gun in Contra and Super C was the best gun, but the lazer is also very useful. Sure, it's kind of slow, but the fact that it can cut through a bad guy and continue on to kill everyone standing behind him has massive potential. If I were to go back and play Super C again tonight, I'd want a team with one person armed with the spread gun and one with the lazer. Unstoppable.)


New Jersey


Bon Jovi's New Jersey was the first cassette tape I owned and I listened to it so much that it got worn out faster than Lindsay Lohan on a New Year's bender. This album comes out fighting, leading off with the underrated Lay Your Hands On Me and goes straight into the classic Bad Medicine. Owning this tape easily let to a purchase of the Young Guns II soundtrack, which led to the Crossroads greatest hits collection, multiple denim jackets and terrible hair.

Random note: I saw Bon Jovi in concert on their Bounce tour in Chicago and the band Less Than Jake opened for them. That was the strangest pairing of opening band and headliner I've ever seen in my life.

The Technodrome


Who cares if this thing was nowhere close to scale? Chances are only one kid in your neighborhood had this thing and that was the only reason you hung out with him. Usually the kid with the Technodrome was the only child that lived down the street and had a mom that thought good parenting was buying their kid whatever they wanted. This kid was a prick to everyone and always got to pick what the group was going to play because if he didn't get his way, he would threaten to take his toys and leave.

Putting up with this punk kid to play with his Technodrome proves how awesome it was.

A Stick


If you were ever an 8 year old boy, you know what I'm talking about. For young kids, a stick is the best toy you could ever have. It could be a gun or a sword or a staff used to beat Nazis. And if you could find a stick that was even remotely straight? Man, you were set. And since your mom would never let you bring the stick inside the house, you had to find a place to hide it so you could use it again the next day. Plus, you had to hide it well enough so that your rat bastard friends wouldn't find it in the morning and steal it. On second thought, kids are assholes. Especially the kid that had the Technodrome.

ProStars/Hammerman













Good thing I didn't know what "selling out" was when I was little.

ProStars was a cartoon about Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretsky and Bo Jackson going around and fighting crime. That's it. Check out the intro clip here.

Hammerman was a little more...out there. There was this dude, Stanley Kirk Burrell (no relation to Pat) that was a good dancer. He spent his days helping kids learn how to dance at the local community center. Every time he needed help stopping bad guys or Communism or whatever it was he was fighting, the hammering beat of his rapping rhymes activates his magic dancing shoes and become the superhero Hammerman. Also, the shoes could talk. And when he danced, music notes would float out of them and subdue bad guys. Plus, his landlord was the stereotypical Jewish landlord that only an 80's cartoon show could get away with. Check out Hammerman here.

Tiger Handheld Videogames


I can remember playing these games for hours on end. I also remember that my grade school didn't allow us to have them in school, but we would all sneak them to school anyway. And then someone would get busted every few days because they would put their backpack down and it would sometimes turn the game on and make a bunch of noise in the middle of class. My two personal favorites were Double Dragon II and Wizards & Warriors. There was no memory card. There was no password. Hell, there weren't even pictures. You either beat the entire game in one sitting, or you walked away with your tail between your legs. There was no in between.