Seven, Eight, Better Stay Up Late

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Los Angeles Theater - Los Angeles, CA
Thirty years ago today, the best film in the Nightmare on Elm Street series made it's debut in theaters.  The Los Angeles Theater had one hell of a good horror triple feature on its screens, showing it alongside The Kindred and Deadtime Stories.

Instant Green Tea Latte

Green Tea Latte
Nescafe Dolce Gusto
I wish we would bring these capsules to the United States, but I have in import them from Japan for now.  It tastes every bit as good as Starbucks.

I'm One With The Force. The Force Is With Me.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Cinema & Drafthouse - West Hazleton, PA

I wasn't sure what to expect from Rogue One, but I'm happy to say that it's an absolutely incredible film that stays true to everything that made Star Wars great.  In fact, with the exception of The Empire Strikes Back, this might be my favorite movie in the franchise.

We saw it at the Cinema & Drafthouse in West Hazleton.  This theater is over a hundred years old.  It first opened in 1915 as The Hersker, and it's gone under several names changes and remodeling in the decades since.  When I was a teenager, it was called the Key Theater and they showed movies that had already come and gone from most theaters, but weren't available on home video yet.  I used to go to the Key a lot because tickets were only a dollar.

The Key survived the 20th century, but it didn't last too long into the 21st.  The theater was sold to a new owner who did a complete remodel of the seating area.  The traditional movie theater seats were removed and replaced with tables.  On March 21, 2003, it reopened as a combination movie theater and restaurant called the Cinema & Drafthouse.  I can't pretend it didn't lose a little bit of it's charm, but it's still a great place to see a movie, and they make a pretty tasty cheesesteak pizza.

Dad Is A Salty Pimp

Big Gay Thursday

My job is pretty awesome.  We just got a sneak preview of the most innovative ice cream on the planet!

Indoor Swimming At The Space Station

Copia
Eluvium (2007)

One of my favorite albums of all time turns 10 years old today.  I first discovered it about two years after it was released.  I was in my junior year Wilkes University at the time, and I listened to it almost everyday for the next two years.  It started out as the first twelve tracks on an instrumental playlist on my iPod that I listened to in the library when I was studying or working on a project.  Before long, I found myself listening to it between classes, in the car, and when I laid down to rest at night.

It's difficult to describe, so I'm just going to go ahead and share the playlist and let you listen to it for yourself.  It's a hauntingly beautiful and other-worldly collection of music that makes me feel like I'm drifting away to a more peaceful place.

Cheesy Genius

This is brilliant!

Take Another Little Pizza My Heart

Happy Valentine's Day!

Training For The Autobahn

Alex Wright (1998)
Former WCW Cruiserweight Champion Alex Wright sitting at a Daytona USA arcade game.  I can just picture him doing that dance to the title screen music.
source: WCWWorldwide

The Big Game

Electronic Football
Tiger Electronics, Ltd.
I had a few of these handheld LCD games when I was a kid.  Most of them were Christmas presents that I had circled in my grandmother's copy of the Sears Wish Book.  In addition to the game pictured above, I remember that I had the Top Gun, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Ironsword games, and my stepfather's brother once gave me a Super Mario World LCD game/watch that was especially memorable for two reasons: it had a headphone jack, and the artwork on the face of the watch had the words "Super Mario Bros. 4".

The Tiger LCD Electronic Football game was the most frequently played of the group.  I wasn't a football fan at all, but this was one of the better games.  Most of them were simplistic and involved your character moving from one side of the small screen to the other while dodging obstacles.  This was no different, except your character had almost a 3-D effect of running down the field (by pressing up) and dodging the members of the opposing team (by pressing left and right).  You also had a teammate who appeared from time to time at the top of the screen, not unlike the enemy spaceship from Space Invaders.  You could pass the ball to this player to move down the field faster.

Considering its limitations, it was a pretty fun little game to play for 20 minutes here and there.  Even my Grandpa would pick it up and play it once in a while.  Shortly after this photo of my grandfather was taken (which was June, 1989), the Nintendo Game Boy was released.  Although Tiger Electronics would continue to make LCD games for the next two decades, they didn't hold the same status in elementary school after that.

My fourth grade teacher once remarked that the Game Boy was a waste of money, and that kids should instead just get a bunch of these Tiger games instead.  Not an avid Game Pro reader, Mrs. James assumed that the games were the same, and that for the cost of a Game Boy which came with one game (Tetris), we could have six Tiger LCD games.  I didn't bother trying to counter this logic.  No amount of eight year old hysterics about the qualities of the Game Boy were going to crack through that adult logic.