Loserville
I’m not what you would call a gamer. Sure, I owned an Atari 2600 and spent countless hours playing Pole Position, Q*Bert, Pitfall, etc. I wasted most of my freshman year of college playing Nintendo until all hours. Madden and NHL 93-95 were staples on the Sega my roommates and I shared in the mid-90s. And I did own a…
I Have No Class
My 20 year high school reunion is this weekend. Those are some of the scariest words in any language. When I turned 30, I was excited. I felt like I was finally old enough where people would take me seriously. Turning 30 gave me a new sense of confidence, as if I had finally arrived at true adulthood after years…
Genius Social Experiment
Give a 13-year-old a Walkman for a week and see what happens. I remember my first Walkman well. It was actually a knock-off, since those early Walkmans were quite expensive. And it was the obvious knock-off: had some crazy decals on it and, worse, a pull-out antenna for the AM/FM tuner. But I loved that thing. Giving up my iPod…
Bubblegum Cards
As my generation approaches middle age, we’re going to have to start answering for some of the things we’re responsible for. Example: ruining baseball cards. It’s not all our fault. The Baby Boomers, as always, deserve some blame. They were the ones who started the nonsense, paying insane amounts for cards from their youth. And they were the ones who…
Times Change
There’s a slew of stories about the 1979 NCAA title game right now. Linked below is the one that appears in today’s Indy Star. My favorite quote is clipped as well, and it’s one that appears in some form in most of the articles, books, and specials about the game. I like it because it reminds us of how much…
Casey’s Coast to Coast
In which I listen to the music of my youth. Those of you that follow my Facebook status may have caught that I spent Sunday morning listening to a 25 year old American Top 40 rebroadcast. Our local retro hits station began reairing AT40s from the 80s last fall and, life with a newborn and two preschoolers being what it…
Best Year Ever
2008 was up there. 1971 was good, at least for me. 1980 was great, with the Miracle on Ice, George Brett chasing .400, and my family’s move to Kansas City. 1992 was fine. 2003 excellent. And 2004 and 2006 important years for extending the B. brand, which we of course did again this year. 2008 also had Aqib Talib and…
Repeat Plays
Another great list from the Onion AV Club. Naturally, it begs the question, what movies are on my list? In no particular order: 1) Star Wars. I probably watched this 50 times between 1977 and 1984. I’ve seen it once all the way through since then. 2) Chevy’s Classics. I’ll bundle the classic work of Chevy Chase together, since watching…
Kiss It Goodbye
If you didn’t flip by ESPN at any point on Sunday, you may not know that the final baseball game has been played at Yankee Stadium. ESPN devoted approximately 800 hours of programming to this historic event. The Yankees are missing the playoffs this year, so they had to fill their Yanks quota somehow. Anyway, lots of people shared their…
First Album Update
Going back to the first album I purchased with my own money for a moment, I’ll admit thinking about Def Leppard’s <em>Pyromania</em> made me a little nostalgic. So I fired up the iTunes Music Store. No <em>Pyromania</em> available there. Jump over to the Amazon MP3 Store. Not there either. So one of the biggest selling albums of the 80s –…