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Put another nickel in the nickelodeon
By ELB | October 16, 2003
So here we are in the Rose City. The hostmanship is top notch, the drinksmanship is through the roof, but perhaps you dear readers are growing tired of my many drunken stories, so I’ll regale you with a tale of what may be the most physical activity I’ve logged this year.
After eating a superb breakfast My Dude, my bosom chum James, and myself set off in search of adventure. It brought us to the Avalon. Now, I’ve never really been much for video games, unless you count the Kool-Aid Man game on my Grandma’s Atari, but the Avalon was an arcade unlike any other. First of all, everything cost a nickel. Ok, sometimes they cost five nickels, but the point is I had a pocket bulging with nickels and it made me feel kinda rich, secondly there were two big screen TV’s presiding over the hall. One was tuned to Dexter’s Lab and the other to a program I believe was called Mengele: The Nazi Angel of Death. Sometimes the bodies stacked like cordwood was a bit distracting. I soldiered on.
I explored the myriad of shining, sparkling video game fun. I avoided all the claw machines, and the driving games. There was some dinosaur game that played Love Shack really loud. I skipped that one too. Instead I just went for my old favorite: Skee Ball. This is my favorite game because (1) I doesn’t involve staring at the video game screen, which always makes me kinda sick to my stomach, and (2) You get tickets, which are them traded in for fabulous prizes such as Chinese finger traps, and those little plastic poppy things that you’re not supposed to stick to your eye.
I exhausted most of my nickel bag of funk, but not before amassing over 200 tickets. Then I got to really looking around. Perhaps playing the field a little. I rocked the bowhunting game, but not as hard as James. I tried my hand at a little air hockey. This time James coundn’t hold up. My Dude, on the other hand, is a certified air-hockey guru who schooled me time and again. Then we got hot and itchy in our sweaters and had to play a sit down game. This is why we’re married and not professional atheletes. Or even amature athletes.
Most of these games were entirely in Japanese. Many of them involved shooting of some sort. A new breed of game that challenged your dancing/drumming/guitar rocking ability took me aback. I learned that I have none of the above. Save all the rhythm-based games, the games were basically the same as the ones from my childhood, only now they have better graphics and chairs built right in.
Tomorrow we’re off to play four square. I swear, by the time you all see me again I’ll be so fucking cut.
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