My Life with Video Games

I haven't disappeared. I've just been sick, the kids were sick, not necessarily in that order. When you have kids, flu season seems to last for 11 months. Ugh. Everyone is better now. Anyway, I thought I'd post an article I did for... I can't remember. So many places wanting free content, I just can't keep them straight. My Life with Video Games. Enjoy.

I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember. It started one fateful evening when my family went out to dinner and there was this new machine at the restaurant, and it wasn’t a pinball machine. It had two long blocks and the goal was to knock the smaller block past the other player’s larger block. Yes, it was 1972 and the game was PONG, I was mesmerized at the time like a teenager watching Charlie’s Angels, and soon the video game industry was born.

I remember playing a pinball machine my grandfather had in his basement, but even then it was an antique. You stuck a penny in and you got to play, but all the ball really did was hit some metal strips and then went into one of the various holes with no fanfare whatsoever. I don’t even thing electricity was involved. So to play PONG, it was a revelation.

And thus with the birth of the video game industry my pixual awakening occurred, and I knew right then I would lose many, many hours of my life staring at a screen in someone’s basement for the next 30 some years. Voluntarily. Tanks made of blocks, dragons that looked like ducks, and a game where all you did was fish was all it took to amuse us back then. Seriously, Fishing Derby?! I don’t think that game is on Activision’s remake slate anytime soon.

OK, now that I’m in LA, I’m all growed up and have a family of my own. I still play video games. Due to little things like earthquakes there are no basements here so it kind of ruins the nostalgia a little bit, but it’s still just as shut-inny.

I remember hooking up our Atari 2600 to a 19 inch television. It was basic, blurry, and we loved it. Except for that E.T. game. Even back then we know that was a piece of crap. But our favorites were Missile Command, Superman, Adventure, and Megamania. Of course, Combat, the game that came with the system gave us a bunch of hours and a few headaches as well.

“Why don’t you guys go outside?” was all we would hear from upstairs. OK, we did go outside a lot, but half the time was indeed spent sequestered like an indecisive jury going over forensic evidence. But we were trying to get to the next level on Pac Man, which looked nothing like the arcade game.

Now, like a lot of guys, I never stopped playing video games. I never “took a break”. From the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo machine with the stupid robot to the Sega Genesis to the X-Box 360, video games have matured with us, and we have matured with them. Well, sort of. We’re making more money now, at least. We have to as the new systems and games are a lot more expensive.

I never got into the online play as much, with the shooters and World of Warcraft. Mainly because I think I might like it a little bit TOO much. But I like the social experience. That piece of nostalgia can still ring true. I would go to Halo parties with four X-Boxes linked together and eight dudes in one room, eight in another. It’s so cool to frag someone and then hear a very loud expletive immediately coming from the neighboring room.

But the gaming industry has matured to the point where, like movies and television, there is something for everyone. But that means there is also more stuff you have to be aware of and keep your children from. But, hey, this time it’s easy, right? We’re in Best Buy or GameStop and usually know more than the clerks anyway. We know what’s appropriate and what’s not. We’re DUDES. We can tell The Covenant from Spyro. Mario from Sam Fisher. Banjo from Kazooie. It’s our wheelhouse.

Now my four year old daughter and I are playing Kingdom Hearts together. Disney and Final Fantasy, how can you go wrong? OK, she’s not really playing as much as telling me what to do. “Go see Winnie the Pooh! Talk to the Princesses! Read what they are saying!”

Now with two young children I have a lot less time to play, but at the end of a grueling day, an hour with a wireless controller definitely relaxes me. Unless I’m stuck on a boss fight in God of War, then it’s not so relaxing.

Video games have come a long way. And they have caught up and in some ways surpassed other entertainment mediums. So as parents, this means we have one more thing to watch out for. But like I said, it’s something we’re already intimately familiar with. So FINALLY, something that’s easy for us. I try to hide my “adult” games and don’t even let my daughter see the covers so as to not even arouse her curiosity. So it’s Kingdom Hearts at 7:00pm, Bedtime at 8:00 pm and then Resident Evil at 9:00pm. And then usually bed by 9:45. Because I’m an adult. I can go to bed whenever… the kids let me.

Comedy and Japan

Time for the monthly blog post. I like blogging, I’m finding, but if I force myself to make more posts, I find I don’t enjoy it as much. Isn’t that the point? I’ve seen a lot of “final posts” from bloggers who ran out of things to say and they had been updating quite regularly. Hey, slow down, Fast Eddie. Blogging should be like any other writing: You do it because you love it. If you’re not loving it, change it so that you are. If that means less updates, then so be it. OK, rationalization over.

Now, unless you live in a cave without wifi, you are aware of what’s going on in Japan. The easiest, quickest way to help is just to go to redcross.org.

Now when you think of comedy, it’s difficult to think of it as anything more than entertainment, and how it can lighten your mood. But can it really help people?

Graham Elwood and I have been doing the comedyfilmnerds.com podcast for over a year now and we’ve been really loving it. It’s been fun, liberating and just very satisfying. We have many listeners, from all over the world. That’s what’s so amazing about the internet. You can now really reach people all over the world with your work. As long as they understand your language of course.

We have listeners in Japan, and we started hearing from them. And what we heard was heartbreaking. Thankfully, the fans we heard from were safe and so were their families. One guy e-mailed and said it took him 8 hours to walk home from work since the trains weren’t running. He was worried about his family and listened to us on the walk, and it made him feel better and gave him a few laughs as he walked home with no way to contact his family. When he finally got home, everyone was OK.

We received another e-mail from another fan about how Comedy Film Nerds fans and other writers for our site kept her company via Twitter during the hardest time. So thanks to Facebook and Twitter, we could communicate and ultimately make a connection with each other. Isn’t that the whole point of social media? Or is it to play Farmville?

To have what we do in some small way help people, especially during a tragedy, is about as big of a compliment there is. Ultimately, as artists, no matter what we’re doing be it writing a novel, painting a pastoral landscape or telling a joke, the end goal is to make someone’s life a little better, by giving them an escape, (or in rare cases, having your work stay with them) even if just for a fleeting moment. Artists have certainly done it for me, and to hear we’ve done it for other people is again, the ultimate compliment.

So Graham and I were humbled and flattered by the e-mails. But obviously, there is so much more we can do. So please help. Jokes are great, but people need food, clothing, and shelter as well. Redcross.org

How I Lost My Shit at the Walgreens

OK, so my blogging frequency has sucked lately. Bloggers often say “Well, I just didn’t have anything to say.” Not my problem. I have plenty to say, and according to most people around me, a bit too much. Time is more my whole issue. So I’m doing once a month, more if I have time. There aren’t any rules, right? I don’t HAVE to do once a week, right? It’s still free content. (plug) Please buy my book.

Last night the headline almost read “Comedian Throttles Walgreen’s Employee For Gross Incompetence And Stupidity At 5:00 Am. And He Was Completely Justified, Other Customers Applaud”

Our two year old finally got Pink Eye. Everyone else in his preschool class had it, so it was only a matter of time. Our doctor called in eye drops to the Walgreens. They couldn’t get it filled for hours and Griffin was already asleep so I would get it in the morning. 4:45 am rolls around and Griffin is up, crying and complaining about his eyes hurting and goo coming out. Fine. Off to the pharmacy I went.

Sadly, the days of the neighborhood pharmacy and competent pharmacy staff are over. Everything is corporatized and lowered down to the cheapest possible way to operate. When I was a kid we had a neighborhood pharmacy and the pharmacist’s name was Burt. He knew you and would help you out. Any problem with a prescription or insurance, he’d take care of it. And, if you can believe it, he knew how to work the cash register.

But I wasn’t going to see Burt. I was going to a corporate pharmacy run by apathetic, lobotomized sloths. I knew I was in trouble when I was waiting for my prescription and the guy in front of me had a problem. He got it resolved.. eventually. My turn. She can’t find the prescription. The woman behind the counter is literally rooting around on the floor for the prescription because everything is in bins because no one has alphabetized them yet. She looks at me, hoping I’ll tell her I’d come back later. No way. I look back and say “Keep looking. My son needs the medicine.”

She finds it. Finally. It’s already been 10 minutes. She tells me it will be $120. I tell her we have insurance. I even give her my card. AGAIN. Not working. She’s typing the numbers in right from the card. Nothing. She FINALLY gets it right, with the manager’s help. Another 10 minutes. The price goes down to $15.

I’m starting to lose it. It’s 5:00 am, I haven’t slept in 10 months due to Griffin’s sleep disorder, my son is suffering because this idiotic woman can’t get her shit together.

She starts to ring it up along with a few tissues and some other small items. I run my card and enter my pin. Her register starts to beep. She looks like a cat after you flash a flashlight into its eyes. She tries again. More beeps. I don’t need my receipt. I can’t take it anymore and lose it. We’re going on 30 minutes now. I tell her “You figure it out. I’m leaving” So I walk out. I hear her call the manager and yell after me that I can’t leave. I keep walking.

It’s then that a little voice in my head says that “Hey, maybe you should stop walking.” So I turned around saw the idiot following me, and I went back with this now hyper stupid person to the pharmacy department.

Turns out this idiot made a perfect sweep of being incompetent, and the transaction didn’t go through at all. So if I hadn’t turned around, I would have been stealing thanks to her moroness. I yelled at her that I didn’t have any more time and my son was sick, and she better get het manager back here immediately.

Now, here’s where it’s going to sound like I’m making it up. Both her and the manager show up, no apology, and neither can get back into the pharmacy department because this idiot didn’t know the combination to the door. It shut and locked behind her when she followed me out.

And apparently the manager didn’t have the combination either. They kept trying. I looked at them like they were the dumbest people in the world, which they probably were. Not because they couldn’t remember the combination, but because IT WAS AN OPEN AIR PHARMACY. I actually had to say “JUST CLIMB OVER THE COUNTER!” That type of security won’t keep out a mildly determined four year old. It’s like locking a screen door.

Now at this point, I know not to call anyone an idiot or stupid, because that would be rude, but here are the names that went through my head at the time: Stupid Stupiderman, Lady Duh Duh, Idiota Moronica, Dommo Arrigato Mrs. Retardo, How are you alive because you are so stupidicus?, Queen Dumbass, and Retardabitch. But I kept them to myself.

Moron Lady climbed over the counter, thank God I made the suggestion, and then let her idiot manager in. They rang me up. Over 40 minutes now. I was ready to let loose on these people, but again, I kept my cool and told the manager, “You need to train your people better.”

The manager calmly replied “she’s a floater”. I paused. The Manager’s response was very telling. Many words were said underneath what she actually said. What she was really saying was, “Like the corporation who employs me, I just don’t give a shit.” She obviously didn’t care that this person had no idea what she was doing, and didn’t care that this idiot behind the pharmacy counter who was normally stocking candy and Slim Jims was in charge of giving out prescription pharmaceuticals. There was no apology, nothing, and it was a little scary. It’s the new corporate strategy: Cutback and hire apathetic morons. Well done.

Ironically, I had originally switched to Walgreens because Rite Aid kept fucking up my prescriptions. Guess the joke’s on me. I miss Burt.

24 Hours in Monterey... Alone

Well, the holidays are now over and I have to say I think the kids really enjoyed them. The adults, well, let’s just say the kids really enjoyed them. We had our bouts of illness, at some point everyone was down.

The real killer happened when our two year old got sick and we had to cancel our two day Monterey Trip. Sort of. The wife and I haven’t gone away for a while and we had planned two days in Monterey over six months ago while the grandparents looked after the kids. We were both looking forward to it. Mainly to unwind and sleep since our two year old also has a sleeping disorder and won’t sleep through the night no matter what we try. Everything from blacking out the curtains, changing the bedtime, talking clocks, rags filled with ether, etc. It just doesn’t matter. That kid is UP.

So we had to cancel the trip. The problem is, in order to save money we got an advance internet rate that was non-refundable. So our hotel room was paid for and enjoying Monterey without us. We called the hotel and they wouldn’t budge. We tried to see if any of our friends wanted it—no takers.

Finally on the second day we agreed (mostly me) that ONE of us should use it, since it was paid for. I offered it to my wife but the little one was in “I Want Mommy” sick mode so it made more sense for me to go. I love rationalizing.

So off I went on the 5-6 hour drive to Monterey, by myself. I got to the hotel, checked in, enjoyed some free wine and went to a nice dinner by myself. Walking around Monterey it’s all couples and families. Walking around by myself I got a lot of looks like “Oh, he must work here.”

I have to say, I really missed my wife. It was the whole point of the trip. But still, it’s been a tough year and even alone the trip was worth it. Walking around by yourself and looking at the ocean, well, there are worst ways to spend an evening.

So I went back to the hotel, laid down and… couldn’t sleep. I was too hot. There was no way to regulate the temperature in the room. There was just a knob with no numbers or markings of any kind on it. Note to hotel: If you are going to renovate, add a freaking thermostat to your rooms. So I was too hot. Then I finally fell asleep and woke up at three in the morning freezing. I moved the mystery knob and hoped the room would warm up. It did, eventually, and I went back to sleep.

I got up, had a lame continental breakfast (included in my already paid for room, I was tempted to ask for yesterday’s too) and was on my way.

Driving back on Pacific Coast Highway, looking at the scenery, I finally felt my body start to untangle. You can’t look at the beautiful Northern California coast and not be affected by it. No wonder it costs a billion dollars to live there. I stopped, took some pictures, and took my time getting back.

So it wasn’t the best vacation ever, but it did drive a point home: Everyone needs a change of scenery, even just for 24 hours. I felt a lot better when I got back. I still do, just from that little trip. Now I’m sure my wife is starting to price hotels in Santa Barbara as I type this…

Go Random!

I thought it was time for another random smattering of mini-posts. Actually, it was time for any type of post at this point. Have I lost interest in blogging? Not really, I just seem to be losing time.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! In our land of cable news and iPhones sometimes we forget all the things we are thankful for. And one of them isn’t cable news.

Hey Pandora ad department, if I am listening to free music through the internet, do you really think I can afford a Jaguar?

Two year old still is only sleeping 6-8 hours a night. Problem is there seems to be no problem. It looks like that’s all he needs. Dammit!

Saw a billboard for a loaf of cheese. For the love of God, people. Seriously. A cheese loaf. Stop the insanity. Although, I can’t wait to have a nice piece of bread in between my two slices of loaf cheese.

I am reading The Hunger Games and I am absolutely surprised about how good it is. Sometimes I read stuff to see “what all the fuss is about”, although I’m pretty sure I’ll never read the Twilight series. But The Hunger Games is in a class by itself. Satire, Pulp, and Science Fiction all in one “young adult” novel. It’s like reading a book version of the Japanese film Battle Royal, but with a world of backstory.

I’ve been watching The Walking Dead and now I’m having zombie apocalypse dreams. Again. Thanks, AMC.

I was just at the LA ZOO and I’ve never seen a zoo under constant construction more than the LA Zoo. It’s taking them over TWO years to build a freaking Reptile House. It’s just walls, cages, and lizards. Get on it!

This concludes our random blog post. Our irregular schedule will resume shortly.

My Two Worlds Collide

I recently went on the road and did a few great shows in Indiana at the Comedy Attic. It was a blast. Here’s how I knew I was in Indiana: There were TWO bibles in the hotel room drawer. One from the Mormons, and one from the Gideons. The funny thing was they were on opposite ends of the drawer, like they weren’t allowed to touch. Or there would be a Godsplosion.

Usually when I go in the road it (is rare, a break, I get some adult time and can talk about things other than Wow Wow Wubbzy, and I get to sleep in). Most of these things didn’t happen this time, and it was a very interesting trip.

First of all, no sleep. The travel schedule was tough with flying into Chicago, so no sleep. And then we did the Bob and Tom radio show the next day, so no sleep again.

But what really caught me off guard was when we got to the club’s green room where we hang out before the show. There was a pack ‘n play in it. The club owners had just had a baby. And he was in the green room. This caught me off guard a bit. My life had always been so compartmentalized. It was the weirdo entertainment side, and the baby/family side. They were never in the same room before.

Now, this little boy was adorable and only eight months old. And I have to say, I’m not a FOOPK (Fan Of Other People’s Kids) so it’s unusual for me to be enamored with another baby. But I was missing my kids a bit so I held him a little.

So as the shows went on over the weekend I would do my set and then sometimes hold the baby if the club owners had to take care of things like work lights and drop checks. So I was actually doing standup and occasional babysitting in the span of about 30 minutes. I even gave the new parents some tips since I had been through it twice now. I was the dude giving sage baby advice in a comedy green room. When did that happen?!

So I got to sleep in ONE morning and then pulled another all-nighter of travel back to LA. Wow, what a trip. The shows were great, the trip was fun, and it was interesting to see my two different worlds collide for the first time. Now let's never let that happen again.

Waiting for Superman

So I saw Waiting For Superman and it was just as depressing as I thought it would be. Our schools are a mess. Check. We had to pretty much do what a lot of parents must do now, and that is to lottery or permit your way into a better school. That is really just wrong on so many different levels.

Our “home school” is close by and in a beautiful neighborhood surrounded by expensive homes. And I know not one of those kids living in those homes goes to that school because after we toured it, we realized it was a mess. We have neighbors with young kids on either side of us, neither sends their kids to our “home school”.

One thought is, well, if your school is bad, get involved and make it better. Sorry, don’t have time for that and that’s really the principal’s job. Why would I subject my child to a bad school when I can send her to a better one down the road and get involved there, thus making a good school even greater? It takes years to make a school better, even with strong PTA involvement and by that time your child has already paid the price.

The movie focuses a lot on the teachers unions and while their tenure is a problem (It is next to impossible to fire an incompetent teacher) there are many other problems. Lack of funding and all sorts of bureaucracy hinders the evolution of our schools.

And our schools NEED to evolve. They just have to. We have an unemployment crisis in this country and high tech jobs are going unfilled because of a lack of education and training.

So fix it. The solutions seem so simple. Eliminate tenure. Lengthen the school day (no parent would be against that) Increase the funding. Stop having teachers pay for school supplies. Eliminate waste from the top down, not the bottom up as most companies do. Cut administrators and salaries at the top and work your way down to the teachers. Without good teachers, there is no education system.

I’m not trying to get on a high horse here, but this affects everyone, not just people with kids. As the film shows a bad school pours hundreds of uneducated, unmotivated kids back into the community. What are they going to do? What CAN they do? Not work at Oracle, that’s for sure.
Right now we are in a good grade school. But what about middle school? Then it starts all over again… but I’m already exhausted.