So back in the day my dad was at the arcade near my house constantly. He used to brag about having long lines waiting to play the Indiana Jones game he used to play all the time. Of course what they were probably complaining about is a late 20s guy taking over the arcade booth for hours on end because he had a disposable income. Either way, he considered himself the master when it came to video games. He kept his household title for a bit, until Legend of Zelda just about broke him.
It’s a level I’m never going to forget. The 5th underworld/dungeon or whatever you want to call it in the original Zelda. It had a secret area you had to navigate,which to get into and through was surrounded by a bunch of stronger darknuts. For those not familiar with the game, darknuts were knights who you couldn’t hit from the front and you had to hit from the sides and back. Their spastic movements made this really tough, especially in these rooms considering blocks made it tough to maneuver. Oh yea, hits from these darknuts would take off 3 hearts at a time, which was pretty big.
For my dad this was too much. For two nights he stayed up cursing and screaming at the TV all night. He told my mom it took him something like 12 hours to finish the two rooms. Since he knew I was right behind him in the game, that I would be doing that level soon. So he couldn’t wait to find out how long it would take me to do it. When I got to the area I breezed through it, and a few days later my mom asked me and I told her I had finished it.
That weekend my dad found out from my mom, and he didn’t believe me at all that I had finished the level in under half a hour. He actually made me go back and play the level again so he could watch me beat it. Apparently he never thought of using bombs on the darknuts. He also complained that I cheated by using bombs, but that has more to do with his ocd. Thankfully my mom defnded me and said I didn’t cheat and he stormed off.
After that he never really played the NES that much. At one point he bought a joystick controller because he complained that the directional pad was screwing him up. That lasted for one day before he threw the controller into the wall. His ocd continued though. He used to claim we were cheating at games if we didn’t beat everything on screen. Don’t forget these were the days of the NES in which enemies would respawn if you moved offscreen. There were games that took me days to beat instead of hours cause I would try killing everything instead of running past it.
So I’ve mentioned before that I’ve worked overnight stock for Giant. If there was one thing I eternally hated about the job, it was having to “Face” the products. This was made even more fun by the fact that my hands aren’t exactly small. So it was a ton of fun, especially when working with items that barely fit in the row they were in. See, you had to bring forward 2 pieces of merchandise to the front of the row. Because I guess otherwise people would think that we were sold out of that item?
It was easily the worst part of the job. First off, if your in the aisle with Ketchup and don’t SEE your brand of ketchup at the very front of the row, aren’t you going to take a peek and see if maybe there’s some pushed back? 90% of the time when you go to the grocery store, especially after 10 or 11, most of the products aren’t faced anymore anyway. You would have to be an idiot to not realize whatever your looking for is no longer there just because you can’t “see it”.
But it would be the end of the world to the higher ups if we didn’t face merchandise. You know, because we were actually trying to get EVERYTHING out and on the shelves that came in. But I guess looking pretty > having product on the shelves to buy. Then again everything about the company was ass backwards anyway. Since most of the bosses didn’t get in until 10 AM (it’s nice being in charge) they would complain that we didn’t put enough water on the shelves during the summer. Needless to say if they came in early they would see we stocked plenty of water, just the contractors bought it all up and no one else would stock the shelves. Despite us leaving a note and all the water by the doors to the floor.
I think they just loved to blame the night shift for everything, since we got something like an extra 75 cents for working overnights. For anyone that’s worked overnights before, that 75 cents really isn’t worth the level of frustration involved in working overnights. Changing your sleep cycle so that you sleep during the day is the absolute worse. Plus everyone loves to call you when your asleep, conveniently forgetting that you work at night. To top it all off? One time I put my head down to fall asleep, and a god dam parade came down the street.
How do you at age 30 end up with all your possessions in a box, living in a dumpy hotel room on Route 309 in Pennsylvania? Quite simply make every wrong possible choice in your life. Have the few times you actually try to help people end up backfiring on you and just about every bit of karmic retribution being leveled down on you. Every time I’ve seen the chance for a somewhat peaceful regular quiet life I’ve gone running from it with hilarious consequences.
I don’t want to get into everyone of my poor life choices, as there are those that are reading that will annoy me. But so far I’ve sort of dated or were flirting with 4 different females who in their next relationship proceeded to get married. It’s weird that I probably have some sort of fear of commitment (my longest job/time at a school/relationship etc are all 3 years) considering that my parents were together until I was 18.
It also doesn’t help that I have a relatively insane gamblers mentality in everything I do. Giving up the known for the unknown is a path I continually take, and continually regret. You’d think at some point I’d learn a lesson, but apparently not. If there anything age has done it’s improved my self filter according to a friend of mine. In the past I would speak my mind no matter what the consequences. I think a lot of people claim they have no “self filter” but they are really jerks, like I was.
I am incredibly self destructive though. I think it’s a self persecution problem. If I’m left to think by myself without any noise or anything to distract me, every horrible moment of my life continually plays in my mind. Everything that went wrong won’t just go away and be forgotten. All I can seemingly ever remember is everything that’s gone wrong, and it haunts me. Thus anything good that happens to me, I don’t think I deserve and slowly but surely I destroy everything good in my life.
It’s probably why at this point in my life I have about 3 friends who would actually help me if I needed it. Probably part of the reason I’m up late right now drinking some lemonade infused vodka and ranting about it on a blog no one will read anyway. Probably part of why I play so many different games and lose track of time. I want to lose myself in the games. I want to be the dictator making decisions, or the mighty warrior striking people down. Probably another (among multiple) reason that I loved medieval fighting so much. It felt like I was truly alive.
Another problem is that I feel like I am a bit of a split personality. Am I a thuggish brute or an overanalyzing bookworm who likes comedy that makes you think? There are a bunch of ways that I feel like I am an opposite within myself. I’m sure there are ways that doesn’t help my personality either.
I’m rambling and it’s late, so it’s a good idea to publish this.
So lately I’ve been watching some of the TGWTG rejects, like the film renegado, Demoversei, Horror guru and blockbuster buster… Wait, Blockbuster Buster is actually a part of TGWTG? They are getting desperate. Once you let in someone like blockbuster buster, your basically opening the door for all the other half ass Nostalgia Critic ripoffs. I mean at least at one point they were bringing in people who had original and unique content.
But that’s not really the reason I’m writing. It’s more how I’m amazed that watching these videos that some of the TGWTG will show up in ANYTHING. Look, I realize they aren’t on the level of internet fame as the Nostalgia Critic, but even I have better knowledge of how to manage a brand. I don’t even have a brand really, unless you somehow count the Failure Experiment as a “brand”.
But these people, especially Obscurus Lupa, Damanda Hagan and Phelous show up in almost all these videos. At some point you have to wonder why? Look, you show up in someone’s video once, maybe it’s something special or a one time event. But when you show up over and over, whats the point? Your not going to suddenly make a new fan of you out of a fan from someone else cause you appear in 5 of their videos. If you can’t get them on the first try it’s probably not worth it.
Secondly when you show up in all these videos it just cheapens yourself. It looks bad when your watching all these TGWTG rejects and keep seeing the same faces from the actual TGWTG. If your a random viewer or watching a few of those rejects for laughs, it just gives the impression that they are just as bad. In the long run when you show up in all these cheesy crappy video reviewers show, it seems like you are just as low as them. I mean really, how often do you see Nostalgia Critic or any of the TGWTG “Big guns” showing up in cameos? There’s a reason, they know better.
It’s funny, cause if I was in charge of TGWTG and actually cared about their brand (which they obviously don’t) I’d be keeping them to a limited number of cameos not just for these outside reviewers, but even reviewers within the TGWTG family. It’s like they don’t even understand that it cheapens the whole band by basically doing every possible cameo they can.
But what do I know, it’s not like I make any money. Or that anyone cares what I say.
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Blockbuster Buster, Damanda Hagan, Failures, Film Renegado, Obscurus Lupa, Phelous, Rape, Reviewtopia, spoony, TGWTG, That guy with the glasses
And such brilliant moves as this will keep them on top:
That’s right, you can own this bundle for ONLY 135.94. If you bought all this content separately it would cost you a whooping 125.31. That gives you a savings of +10 bucks! What a great deal from Paradox and Amazon! I can’t see why Paradox ever gets a backlash from anyone.
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