And stay tuned for sunglass talk!
You ever play the Journey arcade game? Back in 1983–the year of my birth coincidentally—the band Journey was so hot that record stores could not contain them and they started showing up in arcades as well. The game tasks you with helping each member of the band retrieve their stolen instruments, with no less than two of them—singer Steve Perry and keyboardist Jonathan Cain—having to brave assembly line havoc at the glowing dildo factory. The game uses digitized pictures of the band’s faces over cartoon bodies, giving their total figure roughly the same proportions as my actual body.
I imagine the m-cyclins or whatever was in charge of mitosis in my mom’s womb built out the cranium first and then one of them checked the blueprint to see “oh no, this is supposed to be one of those fucked up ones!” and they had to pull material from the rest of the body to make it work. It’s the only logical explanation for my cranium to ear size ratio.
I only mention this because after about a year of trolling eBay, I finally found a reasonably priced pair of Ray Ban Outdoorsman II Aviator glasses. That’s the model that David Hasselhoff wore for many an episode of Baywatch, so I’ve been hoping to get a pair to join my bootleg Terminator 2 sunglasses in the “glasses that look like the ones the guy wore on that thing I watch” collection.
I got the larger lensed version which is great because again, I have a head similar to lovable 90s video game caveman Bonk. So with the good news out of the way, it’s time to tell you that the temple arms don’t quite clear my ears, making the balance on my greasy nose very precarious.
These are a vintage pair of glasses that I’m roughly 75% sure aren’t bootleg, so I rolled the dice and ordered some official replacement arms at an obscene price to see if I can get these things to fit my damn head. I do not know if newly manufactured arms fit frames made under the previous corporate owner, but sometimes half the fun of buying stuff is trying to get it to work. I like a little adventure, even when it ends in a real Ship of Theseus situation happening on the bridge of my nose.
The Lies We Get to Believe
As I get older, I find it’s easier to believe one’s lies about oneself, because they can no longer be tested. The years go on and the letters “v”, “n”, and twin “e”s run rampant on all the “I could do” sentences floating in my mind, turning them into a graveyard of “I could’ve done”s. Even my most low level dreams and goals—say doing a two week tour as a live session player with a random legacy band—are being assaulted by v, n, e and e as we speak, as I slowly become too old to be an interesting choice should a member of Danger Danger take ill in the northeast United States. It’s okay, had I been paying attention when I was younger I could’ve started a guitar based YouTube channel where my thousands of followers would launch me straight from my bedroom to the Former Members section of the BulletBoys’ Wikipedia page, though my name probably still wouldn’t be in blue text.
Of course, the most interesting “what if?” Is to wonder what would happen if I didn’t have Cystic Fibrosis. Would the chip on my shoulder that has rocketed me straight into a midrange data administration job still exist? Would I still have one of every Swamp Thing figure ever made?
The closest thing I have to an answer to those two questions is a half-brother roughly 10.5 years younger than me. He has a lot more money, but a lot fewer Swamp Things.
Honestly, I’d rather have the Swamp Things.
Things I Like
Nothing says “summer” to me like Street Fighter. Many of my summer childhood memories involve me doing things—camping, going to the beach, being outside in general—that I was forced to do instead of playing Street Fighter II. Though to extend some credit to the well meaning adults in my life, camping probably made the many hours I spent playing Street Fighter even sweeter.
Street Fighter 6 came out last Friday and I’m the adult now, so I played a lot more of it this weekend than I probably should have. The thing is, none of my friends were ever really all that interested in fighting games, so I spent a lot of time playing against the CPU. Street Fighter 6 has a full fledged single player adventure mode that lets you build a truly terrifying custom avatar—a thing I love— and randomly uppercut passerby on the street—a thing I didn’t know I would love, but boy I sure do. The standard arcade mode is pretty good too, though it’s dangerous for me to play, because the idea that I might be good at kicking things someday is slowly worming around in my head and things like this make it seem like a great idea to take up martial arts at 40.
Though I suppose if I injure myself trying to kick through a board, I can pass the time by wandering around Metro City as an impossibly greasy and ill-proportioned divorced dad, uppercutting anyone who looks at me wrong. Truly an age of wonders.
