“David Hasselhoff hit his head on a chandelier, showered himself with broken glass and severed a tendon.”

How is this even possible?

First, Trader Joe’s is pretty alright.

Second, “Dongmonger” would be a terrific name for a band.

Finally, you know how I’m always saying I’m going to hell? Well, here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to go there, and after the 28th or 29th time I teabag Ann Coulter, they’re gonna ask me to leave.

I will get a lapdance to Joe Walsh’s “The Confessor” every single fucking day, administered by someone who’s really familiar with the song.

There will also be Nyquil flavored Pocky and public beatings of reality television stars.

Gimme.

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 has officially been declared “Pole-Smoking Wednesday”, due to this day totally smoking a fucking pole. Celebrate however you feel appropriate.

I just walked 3.4 miles in 83 degree heat while carrying 20 pounds of baggage. Took about an hour to do.

Now, on the upside of this, it’s nice to know that, despite getting nowhere near as much exercise as I should, I’m still capable of doing this almost completely without ill effects.

But, on the downside, it’s kind of odd that, despite living where I have for 14 years, and despite the fact that I can probably find a place to stay on at least 5 continents at all times, I wasn’t able to think of anyone who lives near here who’d be able to give me a 10 minute ride at 12:30 in the afternoon on a weekday without disturbing their sleep or somesuch.

I find it kind of profound that I have tons of friends all over the world, and almost none in the town where I receive mail. I’m not sure if that one’s me or the town.

Blue Cheer were fucking awesome. If you have the means, and many of you do, as they’ve got a lot of tour left to play, I strongly recommend you check them out. It’s not very often that you get to see a band as historically significant (and still viable, not to mention LOUD) as they are play a small club for 15 bucks. If you don’t know who Blue Cheer are and their MySpace page doesn’t tell enough of the story, head to Wikipedia for a more thorough (but still slightly incomplete) overview.

After meeting up with a few of the regulars at the Blue Cheer show, we headed over to Mr. Black (a complete and total 180 from the previous hour-and-a-half’s festivities) for something called “Plant This” where a few more regulars had congregated. Moved it on the floor for a bit as the music was at least passable (even if it clearly wasn’t Blue Fucking Cheer), though one of the DJs broke both my heart and the heart of a lovely girl named Amanda by fading out Shannon’s “Let The Music Play” too soon. This also rendered me completely unable to socialize, so I wandered off in a stupor (like that’s a fucking stretch for me) and probably totally gave poor Amanda a complex, which is a shame because she really was delightful. Hopefully the promoters will have another go at the event and she’ll show up, so I can attempt to be just slightly less socially retarded.

Top Of The Pops Cancelled

I’m not exactly sure how or why this affects me, outside of that it just seems so…impossible. I wonder what, if anything, will show up to take its place. British readers, is there some other show like it that people watch now in place of it?

Hitler Cats!

This will probably be everywhere this week, but…it’s too good to pass up.

For those of you who are not Stateside and use iTunes, “The Ritual” will be available in all worldwide iTunes Music Stores soon! Also, for those of you who use Rhapsody, I’ll have it there soon as well. Currently, it’s available on the US iTunes store, the new Napster and MusicNet (the last two, I was like “screw it, it’s free” on).

For those of you who are late to the party…

For those who have been asking (Kage tells me that people have been), “The Ritual” is now available on the iTunes Music Store! (Link will open in iTunes, or ask you why you don’t have it if not.) “The Ritual” is a film score I recorded in 1994 for Propaganda Videozine III, and to date, there’s never been a proper release of it in any format. There were maybe 20 cassette copies pressed at the time it was completed (Anyone out there still have one of those cassettes?), and some bootlegs do exist, but that’s it. First-time release, comin’ atcha live! Signed limited edition CDs are probably on the way, but hopefully this will tide you over.

“Tell them I said hello!”
-Me, upon hearing someone tell me they were going to pee

I am back on the first page of search results for “black cock” on Google, coming in at #7 with a bullet! I am still the #1 result for “my big black cock”, and I’m holding steady at #2 for “scott crawford”.

Strangely, my MySpace account is ranked lower than my tribe.net community, falling just past the first set of results for “scott crawford”.

The search results for “reverend scott crawford” are also rock solid, including my largely unused domain, this site, the comments feed for this site, my page on the Slashdong Wiki, and the piece on Warren Ellis’ site where he first discusses Slashdong (which I’m credited for telling him about).

This is all good, if incredibly vain news. Keep up the good work, my hairy-palmed readers! Someday, I’ll be the #1 search result for EVERYTHING.

NONE OF THEM ARE FAKE

(This was expanded from a LiveJournal comment, because I went on forever.)

justj0hn asks: “What were your top 5 coin-op video games back in the day (1980-1990)?”

OK, arcade game-wise, you’re talking about 3 different eras for me, and you’re also talking about a situation where the games I liked then are not necessarily the games I like now, so I’ll go with the ones I like then first (though all the ones I’m going to name would get serious consideration now, too).

The eras I’ll split it up into are 1980-1983, 1984-1986, and 1987-1990.

For more info on these and other arcade games, I highly recommend the Killer List Of Videogames site.

Part I: 1980-1983

Tron: to me, this game changed the rules forever, because at the time, there was so much to it, and it was just so fucking cool. It was the first of 2 Kansas/Land Of Oz moments from the era, the 2nd of which is at the end of ’80-’83.

Mr. Do!: simply put, one of the best coin-ops ever. So well-designed, so brilliantly colored, and (I have to say it) so much better than Dig Dug. If you can’t afford a coin-op and don’t like using the MAME emulator, I highly recommend the Super Nintendo version if you can find it, as it’s a near-perfect port of the game, plus it has a head to head option! Mr. Do DEATHMATCHES!

Donkey Kong Jr.: I liked it better than the original. No slight to Donkey Kong, but this one was just way more fun for me. I’m weird like that sometimes, though.

Crystal Castles: finally, a trackball game I could feel good about pinching the hell out of my hand playing! This one’s an early example of the eventual mid-’80′s “Atari Games” house style, post-their obsession with vector monitors.

Qix: I only played it a few times back then, but it blew my mind. Great sounds, and a simple but totally engrossing concept. The first great puzzle game, years before Tetris.

Zoo Keeper: So fast. So much fun.

Pole Position: the first really good driving game.

Tempest: Tempest was probably my first psychedelic experience, years before drugs. That, and I could spin the hell out of the controller without a care in the world.

Joust: man, Joust was fuckin’ cool. Still is. Simple concept, done elegantly, and yet, done by game designers who just had to be wacked out of their mind on drugs.

Cloak And Dagger: the end of one era and the beginning of another, when Atari’s coin-op division started doing a lot of cool shit. Another big step forward, and you can’t hate a game that has a corresponding movie with Dabney fuckin’ Coleman in it!

Dragon’s Lair: The other major post-Space Invaders/Pac-Man Kansas/Land Of Oz moment of this era, the reasons for which can probably best be summed up in the following exchange…

“Holy fuck. Look at that! It’s a cartoon!”

‘But the game suc…’

“To blazes with the gameplay, man! It’s a fucking cartoon!”

Oh, and if you’d like to watch the “fucking cartoon” in its entirety, here it is!

Part II: 1984-1986 (this era is mostly Atari Games stuff)

Paperboy: An Atari Games masterpiece. This was the first of 2 games from the era that wasn’t just a game, but a lifestyle. Cool proprietary controller, early example of a video game with “attitude” (a concept that was beaten to death later on, but was revolutionary back then), and just a lot of fun.

Gauntlet: when you play this game, you learn quickly that there are two absolutes: you’re going to run out of money and you’re going to die. It’s the first video game that was like real life.

Marble Madness: the other Trakball game I loved back then aside from Crystal Castles (and also Atari Games). I’ve had others grow on me since (Quantum and Millipede in particular), but back then, there were only 2, and this one was gorgeous. Fun fact: Mark Cerny, the guy who later designed Crash Bandicoot did this game when he was in his late teens.

Return Of The Jedi: Another Atari Games classic, and a nice movie-to-game conversion. The original Star Wars arcade game gets most of the glory, but I played this one a lot more in the arcades (mostly because Star Wars machines break if you breathe on them wrong). I remember shovelling a lot of quarters into this one.

Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom: another great movie-related game, and yet more Atari Games goodness. I’ve probably had more fun playing this game than I have watching the movie it was based on.

720: if I could pick a very small handful of coin-ops to own, say 5 or less, out of any that have ever been made, this would make the list. The game’s finite, but it hardly matters. Brilliant, brilliant stuff, and yeah, a total “way of life” kinda game. Until Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater II came out, this was the best skateboarding video game ever made, and it’s still got the silver medal.

Hang-On: cool motorcycle racing game, not too much different than Pole Position, except for one key ingredient: on the higher-end machines, you got to sit on a replica motorcycle that leaned into the turns! Primitive (no feedback or mechanics) but very cool immersion-style cabinet, in that respect, one of the first in a series that Sega did like that (Space Harrier, Thunder Blade, and a ton of others).

Karate Champ: this was the first proper head-to-head fighting game that made the rounds, and it’s still a blast to play, even with the limited moveset. Alas, the low kick also made it the first game where you had to worry about that most distasteful of game players, the sweeper. You know the type, especially if you’ve played a lot of Mortal Kombat.

Mat Mania: still one of the best wrestling games ever made. Simple, stupid fun. Can you spot the guy in the crowd with the Einsturzende Neubauten t-shirt?

Pac-Land: a video game about a cartoon about a video game. How meta!

Road Runner: a video game that’s just about a cartoon, and a damn good one, too! Love the Atari 2600 and NES ports of this too, lots of fun.

Goonies (a.k.a. Goonies II in home release, because there was a Goonies I video game for computers): Only played this once in an arcade, at the place across the street from Brigantine Castle. My mom and I went all the way down there, only to find out it’d recently closed (but not yet fallen apart or burned down, so I at least got to see the outside). So, denied of that experience, I at least got to piss away about $5 in quarters on the Goonies game, which mostly impressed me because they did a nice job with the Cyndi Lauper song in the game soundtrack, but was still fun.

Honorable Mention: Ghosts And Goblins: not because it was a great game (it was alright), but because the music depressed the hell out of me back then.

Part III: 1987-1990 (the “79 Deli” era, so named because all of these games were played extensively in the establishment of the same name in Marlboro, NJ)

Double Dragon: there were so many games like it, but this one was something special. They screwed up so many home versions of it, too. The only good one was the Genesis one, but even on that, you can’t pull off the trick at the end of the 2nd part where, if you stand near the edge of the level by the elevator holding the bat, it falls to the ground at the end of the round and you get to use it at the start of part 3. I could consistently beat this one on two quarters after a while, but rarely if ever on one.

Super Baseball Double Play Home Run Derby or Strike Zone Baseball: I can’t honestly remember which version the deli had, but they’re virtually identical games! This one was sort of a knockoff of Cinematronics’ World Series Baseball, but with a home run derby set up as a second game. That was where I had most of my fun. (Screenshots here.) The 79 Deli record was 572 ft., set initially by Dave the cop, and later matched by yours truly. Had this cool little pullback analog joystick that controlled it, and it was an awesome controller (used well in the next game on the list, too). This would probably make my list of “games to own” too, along with 720, coin-op 4 player cocktail table Warlords, cockpit sitdown Sinistar and one of a few vector games (Tempest, Space Duel, Quantum or Warrior).

John Elway’s Team Quarterback: made by Leland, the same company that put out Strike Zone. Top down football game, a bunch of fun in the arcade, total crap at home. Keys to winning: play as the Cleveland Browns and run the Bootleg a lot!

R-Type: I was really pissed when they replaced Double Dragon with this at the deli, but it grew on me. Still such a weird game, awesome landscapes, tough enemies, and lots of shooting.

Super Contra: way better than original Contra, sorry.

Final Blow: “I had a lovely blow last Tuesday!”-Dudley Moore

But seriously, this was a short, slow, plodding, brutal boxing game that I played the hell out of, but had no idea they’d ported into James “Buster Douglas” Knockout Boxing for the Genesis until I just read the KLOV entry! Now I’ve gotta get that friggin’ game and see if it’s a good port! Been avoiding that shit for years!

Tiger Road: weird little sidescrolling (earlyish) Capcom beat ‘em up that you can probably land as a MAME ROM or get for Turbo Grafx. Odd weapons, monks, kinda funky, but cool.

Story here.

If you ask me (an enthusiastic meat-eater for the most part), lobsters get a totally shit deal. I mean, these guys crawl along the floor of the ocean eating garbage, minding their own business, then they get yanked up in a cage, lumped in with thousands of their friends, thrown around in and out of the water, sent to some tank in some friggin’ store or restaurant where every douchebag and their mother bangs on the glass and usually lumped in with the crabs (and they hate those assholes), and finally picked out by one of the douchebags, taken home, and BOILED THE FUCK ALIVE. That sucks, dude, and they don’t taste so goddamn good that it justifies it. So, like, fuck eating live lobsters, and awesome of Whole Foods for being like “We ain’t gonna shit on our friends the lobsters no mo’!”. Hopefully, they stick to their guns on this.