One, Two, Three Strikes... I'm Out

The Phillies season started yesterday with a 7-3 victory against the Washington Nationals.  It didn't look like it was going to be a good day for the Fightins for most of the game.  Nationals pitcher MacKenzie Gore struck out 13 batters while giving up just one hit and no walks through the first six innings.  The Nats went to their bullpen in the top of the 7th and the Phillies beat up on five Washington relievers to win in extra innings.

Getting shut down by a league average starter who led all of baseball in wild pitches last season and has yet to finish a season with more wins than losses is not exactly an inspiring performance from this Phillies lineup.  It's especially concerning coming off of another early playoff exit last season which saw the Mets exploit the Phillies free-swinging tendencies at breaking pitches outside of the strike zone.  The Phillies had the fourth highest chase rate in 2024, which was highlighted in a mid-September series against the Brewers in which they struck out 40 times in three games, including back-to-back games in which Phillies batters struck out sixteen times.  The Mets had them well scouted, striking out 41 batters in the NLDS.  With this team's reputation for mashing fastballs and chasing every other pitch out of the zone, I'd be shocked if opposing pitchers don't feed the Phillies a steady diet of curveballs, sinkers, and cutters while laying off of the heat.

If I'm being completely honest, I'm not feeling overly enthusiastic for the 2025 season.  I expect that the Phillies will have a good season and will reach the playoffs (barring major injuries), but I don't have a lot of hope that they're going to win the World Series.  For the most part, they're running back the same team with the same flaws that saw them go down in defeat to the Astros in 2022, the Diamondbacks in 2023, and the Mets in 2024.  Three of the four major additions to the team in 2025 are pitchers (starter Jesús Luzardo and relievers Jordan Romano and Joe Ross) who seem more like low risk lottery tickets than the missing piece to a championship.  The only new position player is 32 year old left fielder Max Kepler, who is not only another left-handed bat to a lineup that's already a bit too heavy from the left side, but also a career .238 hitter whose best season is now six years behind him.  Any one of these guys could be due for a change-of-scenery comeback season, but even in the unlikely event that all four of them have career years, it's not going to fix the problem that saw them get outsmarted in the playoffs for the past three seasons.  I hope they prove me wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

However, my lack of enthusiasm for the 2025 season has less to do with the team itself and more to do with the cost of seeing them play in person.

I reserve the right to change my mind, but I think this is going to be the first season since 2014 (not counting the pandemic) that I don't go down to Philadelphia to see a game.  The amount of money that I'd have to spend to see a game at Citizens Bank Park compared to what I'd spend on a night out doing anything else that I enjoy has gotten so out of whack that I just can't justify it to myself anymore.

First of all, parking is $25 and it costs $8 in tolls each way on the Turnpike, so we're already over $40, and that's not counting the cost of gas for the 200 miles round trip, or food and drinks at the ballpark, or ticket prices.  Speaking of which...

 

When I first started going to games, the Phillies published their ticket prices at the start of the season.  The cost was determined by how good the seats were.  Generally speaking, the closer you were to the field, the more expensive your ticket was.  They had a special deal once in a while that brought the price down, but the only way you'd pay any more is if you bought your tickets from a third party, like StubHub or eBay, or from a scalper outside the ballpark.

The Phillies don't publish the cost of their tickets on a list like this anymore because they've adopted Dynamic Ticket Pricing.  Prices are set on a wide variety of factors, none of which the customers are informed about other than that it's based on "demand".  Some of the factors that go into the cost of your ticket are obvious.  For example, tickets to a game on the weekend, an interleague game, or a games against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers will theoretically cost more than the average game because they're in demand.  However, there's no easy way to know how much more these games might cost because the prices of any game can change at any time for any reason, and you aren't told what those prices are until you log into the website and choose a game and a seat.  If you log in the next day to choose those same seats at that same game, the cost of your ticket may be higher or lower than it was the day before.  You might get lucky and get a halfway decent deal on your tickets, or you might be a sucker who pays twice as much for your seats as the person who you'll be sitting next to.  Sounds like fun, huh?

When I go to the ballpark, I prefer to be either behind home plate or on the first base side, but I'm not super picky about how close I am to the field.  I've had seats where I was just a few rows from the infield grass, and I've had seats that were in the top row of the 400 section with the fence to the outside of the ballpark at my back.  So, when tickets for single games went on sale, I logged in to see how much tickets would be for my birthday.  My birthday falls on a Tuesday this year and they're playing the Padres, but there's a fireworks show after the game, so where this combination falls on the team's dynamic pricing hierarchy is anyone's guess.

When I logged in, I headed straight for the nosebleed seats - the 400 section, also known as the Terrace Deck.  Specifically, I went to Section 420 which is behind home plate, and I picked two seats in the very last row.  We sat in these exact same seats several times over the years.  I remembered that because... well.... 420... and because our seats were right next to a beam that kind of made it feel like you were sitting in the corner.  Surely there can't be too much demand for a game in the middle of the week in the highest seats in the ballpark (no pun intended)... right?

They're showing today at $65 bucks each, which means a night out at the ballpark on my birthday for my wife and I, including gas, tolls, parking, and food, would cost around $250.

Look, I get it... inflation is a bitch and I can't expect things to cost the same in 2025 that they did in 2011, but this is a Tuesday night game against the Padres... one game out of 162 regular season games that the Phillies will play this season.  Unless Zack Wheeler pitches a no-hitter or Bryce Harper hits four home runs, there's a pretty good chance that I wouldn't even remember who won the game by the end of the month without looking back on my blog.

To put the value for your dollar in perspective, the total cost for tickets to the first six nights of the 2025 season at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater comes to $62.  That's nine movies across six nights (not counting secret features) at my favorite place in the world to relax and hang out with my friends... all for $3 less than the cost of a single ticket to a Tuesday night game at Citizens Bank Park.  I'm sorry, but this isn't even close.  Two and a half hours at a ballpark is not worth the same amount of money to me as roughly 30 hours at the drive-in.  Even if the drive-in didn't exist, if I'm going to spend $250 bucks on a night out with my wife, I'd rather go to a concert, or go out to a nice dinner and to a museum that she likes, or an aquarium or something like that.  Hell, I'd rather go see a minor league game at Reading or Allentown and pocket the difference.  The point is that I've reached a point in my life, and the Phillies have reached a point in their pricing, where I just can't justify it anymore.  I'm not saying that I've seen my last game at Citizens Bank Park, but unless I hit Powerball or the team drastically reduces their prices, going to a Phillies game has fallen to the bottom of the list of things I'm considering to spend my entertainment budget on.

Soak Up This Blip We're Livin' In

This song came up on my Instagram feed last night.  It pretty much captures my view of life, the universe, and everything in a catchy little tune that has been stuck in my head since I first heard it.

Important (The Way I Wrote It)
Ian McConnell

I’m pretty sure that life doesn’t have a meaning

And if there’s a god then he doesn’t look like me

And I’m just a member of the current apex species

But there will be another when the humans go extinct

We’ve only been around two hundred thousand years

Of thirteen and a half billion years

How can we think the pinnacle is here?

Isn’t that arrogant?

There’s a couple hundred billion trillion suns

And we act like it all was made for us 

There ain’t no way that we’re the only ones

I’m not important, and neither are you

So let’s do whatever we wanna do

Bask in our cosmic insignificance

Soak up this blip we’re livin in

Cause nothing matters anyway

Isn’t that great?

Cause humans aren’t really gonna kill the planet (yay!)

We’ll just make the planet unlivable for us (aww…)

But earth will keep right on spinning 

Way long after we ain’t in it

And life will keep right on livin 

Til the sun explodes and oh

I’m not important, and neither are you

So let’s do whatever we wanna do

Bask in our cosmic insignificance

Soak up this blip we’re livin’ in

Cause nothing matters anyway

Isn’t that great?

I don’t mean to be a downer

I don’t even think it’s sad

The universe is gigantic

And it’s kinda beautiful that

I’m not important, and neither are you

So let’s do whatever we wanna do

Bask in our cosmic insignificance

Soak up this blip we’re livin in

Cause nothing matters anyway

Isn’t that great? 

This Card Really Ties The Whole Faith Together, Man

This dude is now available for wedding and funeral services.  Payment for services rendered is accepted in the form of Burger King gift cards.  Nothing too extravagant, man... just enough for some double cheeseburgers and a Coke.

Whatever your expectations are, lower them significantly and you're sure to be satisfied.

This Is Not How Life Is Supposed To Feel

I Saw The TV Glow
A24 (2024)
The trailer for I Saw The TV Glow played a few times before movies that I saw at my local Regal Cinema, but they never ended up showing the film.  In fact, no theaters in my area carried it.  The closest I could find was an AMC that was over an hour away.  For most movies, I would have just said the hell with it and waited to catch it on streaming or home video, but I tend to really enjoy A24 films and the trailer did it's job on me.

 

This is not a movie that's going to appeal to everyone.  In fact, I can only think of a handful of people who I'd recommend it to, but I thought it was incredible.

Brigette Lundy-Paine, who co-stars in the film with Justice Smith, has called this film an allegory for being transgender.  I can totally see it, but the vibe I picked up was more about how time speeds up as you get older and how people tend to search for a higher purpose to prove to themselves that there has to be more to life than this.  However you interpret this story, it's presented in a way that you can't look away from.

She Calls For You Tonight To Share This Moonlight

The Gaia Wind Tape

Ominous Whispers
Illusion Of Gaia (1993)

I found this VHS tape while sorting through old boxes in the garage and it brought back a lot of memories.  It's a piece of music from a video game that's approximately three minutes long.  This is a loop of that song that takes up the entire runtime of the tape.

The game is question is Illusion Of Gaia.  It was released on the Super Famicom thirty years ago today and came over to the United States on September 1st of the following year.  It has a nice balance of action, puzzle, and RPG elements with rich 16-bit sprites and an immersive and fun story that can get pretty dark and even a little deep at times.  It's one of my favorite games on the Super NES.

One of the things that drew me into this game was the music, and there's one song in particular that plays midway through the game when you reach the Incan Gold Ship.

 

When this game was released in the United States, I was 14 years old and living with my grandparents in West Hazleton.  One of the reasons that it caught my eye at the store was that it came with a free t-shirt that came packaged with the game.  I bought it, brought it home, and had just gotten to the Incan Gold Ship in the game when I started to get tired.  The music in this part of the game was so relaxing that I just left the game on and laid back in my chair to take a nap.  A few hours later, I woke up to that music still playing and continued on in the game.  It would not be the last time that I'd fall asleep listening to this part in the game.  Something about that song just stuck with me.

Five years later, I downloaded a handful of Illusion Of Gaia songs on Napster and found that the song from the Incan Gold Ship was one of them.  The file was labeled as "Gaia Wind", but I learned much later on that it's called Ominous Whispers.  I burned it onto a CD-R which I sometimes listened to when I was going to sleep.  One day, I got the bright idea to pop the disc in my Playstation so that I could listen to it with the visual effects on screen.  The vertical one looked especially cool to me with this song playing, especially with all of the lights except my blacklight turned on, so I recorded six hours of this on my VCR to play whenever I wanted to lay back and relax for a little while.

So, to recap, this is a song from a Super Nintendo game that was downloaded from Napster, then burned onto a CD-R and played through the original Sony Playstation from which it was recorded onto a VHS tape.  How's that for 90's nerd culture?

The Night The Fog Rolled In

Philadelphia Flyers vs Pittsburgh Penguins

Hersheypark Arena - September 26, 1998

My dad had been cleaning his house out last summer to try to get rid of some clutter when he found this ticket stub to a pre-season hockey game between the Flyers and the Penguins in the back of his desk drawer.  It's from a game that he and I went to 25 years ago when I was 18 years old.  When he gave it to me, I had trouble remembering that I had ever been to a Flyers game with my pop, but the memories came flooding back to me as soon as he said "it was the game with all of the fog".

Sunday News - Lancaster, PA  (September 27, 1998)

This is one of those situations where a picture doesn't tell a thousand words.  The ice was covered with fog to the point where you could hardly tell that a game was being played at all.  The article that was published alongside this photo does a much better job than either the photo or my memory could do.

Sunday News - Lancaster, PA  (September 27, 1998)

An article written by Kevin Freeman for the Lancaster Sunday News explained the cause of the situation.  Hershepark Arena was built in 1936 without air conditioning.  As a result, the warm air on the ice caused so much fog that the game had to be stopped 19 times so the players could skate around in a circle to try to clear the fog.

Apparently, this game has become somewhat infamous.  I came across a transcript from a speech given by NHL play-by-play commentator Mike Emrick in 2011 to commemorate the 75th birthday of Hersheypark Arena.  He spoke about the fact that the machinery that was used to make the ice was worked by a 102 year old man named Milt Garland, who was recognized at the Prime Time Awards held in November 1997 as the oldest working person in the world.  One of the challenges he faced was the condition of the ice in September during preseason games.  The game that Dad and I went to on September 26th, 1998 was specifically called out due to the fog and thin ice risking the safety of the players.  According to Mr. Emrick, there was discussion after the second period about whether or not they should end the game early, but they decided to keep playing so that they wouldn't have to issue refunds to the 7,000+ fans in attendance.

Lebanon Daily News - Lebanon, PA  (September 27, 1998)

Sunday News - Lancaster, PA  (September 27, 1998)

Unless there is some other game that I'm forgetting, this was the first NHL game that I had ever been to.... but who knows.  Maybe my dad will find another ticket stub from a game that we went to that I've forgotten about.

I Am Serious... And Don't Call Me Shirley

Airplane
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, or even those of you who just happened to stumble across this blog one day and keep coming back, but I have a weird brain.  One of the many ways that it behaves in a manner I don't understand is in what it chooses to encode as an everlasting memory.  This is a little hard for me to explain so bear with me.

Sometimes, I'll find myself in a time and place that feels especially vivid to me for no good reason.  When this happens, the world around me takes on an almost dreamlike quality and I feel happy and totally alert, but also calm and at peace.  It's not like this happens at especially important or meaningful moments in my life, and it doesn't last for more than a few minutes.  It just kind of sneaks up on me randomly, and when it does, whatever I was doing in that moment is cemented into my brain in a way that few other memories can match.

This does not happen to me very often; perhaps once a year at most.  I wish it happened more often than it does.  Hell, I wish I could take a pill that made my entire life feel like it does in those moments.  It's not something I can predict or plan for, and I don't see it coming in advance, but I always recognize it when it's happening.  The most recent time was during intermission at Night Two of Camp Blood VIII at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.  I wrote about this earlier this year, but in a different context because when I am in a moment like this, whatever things I was experiencing at that time tend to become fused together in my mind.  I can't think of one without thinking of the other.

One of those moments happened on Christmas night when I was a teenager.  I'm pretty sure it was 1995 because I was living at my grandparents house in West Hazleton.  It was pretty late at night.  We had already eaten dinner and exchanged presents earlier in the day and, for all intent and purposes, Christmas was over for another year.

Two of the presents that my grandparents gave me that year were the movie Airplane, and a tape called Abbott & Costello: Volume One which began with the Who's On First skit.  I was alone in my bedroom at the top of the stairs, sitting in the recliner that I still have in my house today, and I watched both tapes.  That surreal feeling that I did a really poor job of explaining washed over me, and that moment has been burned into my memory ever since.

There's no reason that I can think of for this to be an especially strong memory, but it is.  I can close my eyes and picture every last detail.  One of the other side effects is that the movie Airplane and this particular collection of Abbott & Costello skits have become paired in my mind, to the point where I can't think of one without the other (click here for a longer, but equally inadequate explanation of what I'm talking about).  In recent years, I've started watching these two tapes as a double feature during the holiday season to try to recapture that feeling, like a junkie chasing a high.  It doesn't work, but it's still a pleasant experience.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Airplane would still be a bucket list screening for me even if I didn't have a bizarre psychological phenomenon associated with it.  It's one of the funnest movies that I've ever seen.  I can't remember when I saw it for the first time (although I know that it was before Christmas 1995), but since it premiered in theaters worldwide when I was literally one day old, I never got to see it in theaters... until tonight.

Every night that I spend at the Mahoning is nice, but tonight was especially pleasant.  We were parked in the front row between our friends.  Gene and his son Ben were to our left, and Kate and Mike were to our right.  The sky was a little cloudy, but none of them seemed to be blocking the sun so it was pretty hot, but we all set up our camping chairs and sat around talking for a few hours while the sun went down.  Sometimes the conversation was deep, and sometimes it was just fun and silly, but regardless of the tone, it was always very pleasant.  I don't make friends very easily, so the fact that I've met so many good people on this lot whose company I enjoy and who seem to enjoy mine is something that I appreciate very much.

Gene hopped in the projection booth to give a presentation with ten fun facts about Independence Day before the trailer reel (he's a very funny and creative dude), and then we all kicked back and watched one of the greatest comedy films of all time.

My brain didn't kick into that other-worldly feeling that I tried to describe at the top of this post, but I still had a moment right before the start of the movie where I closed my eyes and reflected on how fortunate I am.  This is a good life, and I'm glad that I'm here to experience it.

How Old Is This Guy?

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

BBC Two (1981)

This is the last day that I'm going to be able to make this reference, so I've got to take advantage of it.

A Trip To Hawaii

Ethel Mae Tom and Sharlene Nani Tom
O'Hare International Airport - Chicago, IL  (June 15, 1988)

That's my maternal grandmother (Ethel) holding a video camera on the left and my mother (Nani) trying to take a nap on the right.  I took this picture of them at Chicago O'Hare 35 years ago while we were waiting to board our plane to Hawaii.

My maternal grandmother (who my cousins and I all called Mom Mom) had just bought a new video camera shortly before she, her husband (who we all called Pop Pop), my mother, and I left Pennsylvania to spend three weeks in Hawaii.  Over the winter, I came across the tapes that she recorded while we were there.  Some of them were in pretty rough shape with warping and static on the picture, so I digitized them before the tape could degrade any further and I uploaded them to a playlist on YouTube.

Watching these tapes 35 years later is a bittersweet experience for a number of reasons.  Mom Mom was by far the person who I was the closest to on my mother's side of the family.  We didn't see eye-to-eye on everything, but she was a pretty damn cool woman who didn't take crap from anybody and I always admired that about her.  She was also the only person on that side of my family who was patient enough to give me a place to live when I going through rough times when I was a kid.  I've come to learn as an adult that I am on the spectrum, but folks really didn't know how to handle that sort of thing in the mid to late 80's, and I can tell you first hand that just about everything that they tried made things much worse.  Mom Mom's method was simple, but effective.  We'd grab a couple of Nintendo controllers and she'd just sit and talk with me while we played video games.  She passed away in 2005.

Mom Mom wasn't perfect, as anyone who knew her will attest, and one of the ways that has affected me in recent years is in my heritage.  Her husband, who we all called Pop Pop, is half Hawaiian (his mother is from Oahu) and half Chinese (his father came from the Canton province in South China).  When I was born, I was given a Hawaiian middle name, and I was raised to believe that I was Hawaiian.  For the first 40+ years of my life, I had no reason to ever question this.  That all changed when an Ancestry.com DNA Test showed that I don't have a drop of Hawaiian or Chinese heritage.  At first, I thought it could be a mistake, so I had a second test done, this time with 23 And Me, but the results were the same.  So, if you're wondering why I refer to Pop Pop as my grandmother's husband instead of calling him my grandfather, it's because he isn't my grandfather.  I never knew my maternal grandfather.  I learned not too long ago that I'm not alone in this discovery.  I'm not very close at all with my mother's side of the family (for many reasons that I won't get into here), but I talked with two of my cousins who told me that my oldest uncle also had a DNA test and learned that he isn't Hawaiian or Chinese either... so that makes two out of my maternal grandmother's four children that were fathered by somebody else.  I know that the socially acceptable thing to say here is that he's still my grandfather because he treated me like his grandson when I was growing up, and that's all well and good, but we've never been especially close.  When I see Pop Pop on these videos from our trip to Hawaii, I don't think of him as any less of a grandfather to me, but I do feel like I am a fraud for proudly claiming a culture and a heritage that isn't really mine to claim.

There are a lot of other things that make this a period of my life that wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows, but I'm not going to get into all of that here.  I'll go through some of the things on these videos at some point.  I can't imagine that anyone is going to want to spend six hours watching my old grainy home videos, but who knows.  Maybe I'll be old and senile at some point and start digging through this blog trying to figure out who the hell I am.  If that ever happens, hello "future me".  Have fun following the breadcrumbs.

Whatever Path You Take In This Life, Be True To Yourself

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Cinemark - Moosic, PA

One of the most challenging things I found about signing up for an account on Letterboxd was the option to pick my four favorite films.  It doesn't ask for your favorite action films, or comedies, or crime dramas... just your four favorite films of all time, period.  I changed my mind on the things that I have listed at the third and fourth spot quite a few times before I settled on Pulp Fiction and The Big Lebowski, but the first two on the list were movies that I didn't even really have to think about.

Rocky and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon are my two favorite movies ever made.  It would be pretty hard for me to choose my all time favorite out of the two because I experienced them in very different ways.  Rocky was released in theaters three and a half years before I was born.  I saw it for the first time on home video when I was a teenager, and I already knew the story before I saw the movie because it had become a part of pop culture (especially in Eastern Pennsylvania).  The movie still had a profound effect on me, but I can only imagine that it would have been even more impactful if I was a teenager in 1976 and had gone to see it in the theaters for the first time, with my only expectations coming from the trailer and newspaper advertisements that promoted the film.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was a very different experience for me.  I was at Battery Park in March 2001 and there was a restaurant within walking distance of the hotel called Lili's Noodle Shop & Grill where I had dinner.  This is where I had real ramen for the first time (in other words, ramen that didn't cost ten cents that I made in the microwave).  The restaurant had a "dinner and a movie" deal that allowed you to add a voucher for a movie ticket at the theater next door to your check for a discounted price, so I did that without really having a movie in mind that I wanted to see.

After dinner, I went next door to see what was playing and I saw that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was scheduled to start in about ten minutes.  It had gotten a lot of positive buzz at the time so I was aware of its existence.  I didn't really know what it was about, but I figured that they make thousands of movies in other countries every year and very few of them ever get a wide release in the United States, so for this one to be getting so much good publicity, it has to be a pretty good movie.  So, I cashed in my voucher, took my seat, and spent the next two hours being absolutely blown away by the story that unfolded on the big screen.

This was the most incredible experience that I've ever had at a movie theater in my life.  I'm sure a big part of what made me connect so strongly with it was that I was going through a lot of stress.  I was 20 years old, and my mental health was not at all in a good place.  I went to New York because I wanted to escape and forget about everyone and everything for a little while and let my mind calm down and reset.  Although I didn't realize it when I got the ticket, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was exactly what I needed in that moment in my life - a two hour escape from my life into a beautiful world with lush landscapes, an amazing cast of deep characters, two incredible love stories that are told throughout a story of revenge and regret, and some of the best fight scenes I have ever seen before or since.  This movie told me a story that made me feel like the world around me had disappeared and been replaced with theirs, and it came at a time in my life when I needed it.

I ended up seeing the movie in theaters two more times after that first time.  The second time was at a movie theater in Parsippany, New Jersey that I stopped at on my drive home from New York.  The third and final time was at the Hoyt Theater (which is now a Regal Cinema) in Hazleton, PA after I got back home.

The DVD was released in the summer of 2001, and I watched it so many times over the past 22 years that I don't think I even need the English subtitles to enjoy the film.  It's not that I've learned Mandarin Chinese, but I have so much of the dialogue memorized through sheer repetition that a translation is no longer necessary.  I've only watched the English dubbing of the film one time, and I have no desire to do so again.  I'm not trying to be a film snob, but it's just not the same.

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to experience this movie on the big screen again, but it's been re-released in theaters in the United States starting this weekend.  They're not screening it at my local Regal Cinema, but Cinemark in Moosic is showing it and it's definitely worth the extra miles to see this incredible movie at a theater one more time.

If you haven't seen it, this is your chance and I can't recommend it strongly enough.  Even if you're not into martial arts films, this is such an incredible movie that there is no one I can think of who wouldn't enjoy it.

Just Another Rush-Inspired Psychological Phenomenon

My brain does a lot of really goofy things that I don't fully understand.  One of those things it sometimes does is link two or more completely unrelated things together.  The example that I always go to when I try (and fail) to properly explain this to people is that my mind has forever linked the Sega Master System game Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars and Royal Dansk Butter Cookies.  I cannot physically experience one of them without mentally experiencing the other.

Now I know you're thinking "yeah dude, one thing reminds you of another... that's not a big deal", but this isn't the same thing.  There are plenty of things in this world that remind me of something else, but this goes to a whole different level.  I thought at first that this might be related to classical conditioning, but the thing I'm talking about doesn't require repeated exposure and there's really no physical manifestation.  It's just two external stimuli randomly becoming fused together in my memory.

I should probably also mention that neither of these things hold any special significance to me other than their bizarre pairing with each other.  Don't get me wrong, I like Alex Kidd and butter cookies just fine, but neither of them would crack my top 100 list of favorite video games or favorite things to eat.  Nevertheless, if I even look at a tin of those cookies, I swear that I can hear the music from that video game in my head, and when I play that game, I can taste those cookies in my mouth.  I'm sure that I must have munched some of those cookies while playing the game at some point in my childhood, but I've eaten lots of things while playing lots of different video games.  I can't think of any other combination of food and game that have smashed together in my mind like they were held together with crazy glue, to the point where I am incapable of experiencing one without the other.

The Alex Kidd / Butter Cookies link isn't the only example of this in my life.  One other example that comes to mind, although it's not quite as strong of a connection, is that I always hear the Belinda Carlisle song Circle In The Sand in my mind every time I see Garbage Pail Kids, and I always picture those stickers in my mind when I hear the song.  That song got a lot of radio play in the late 80's and it came out at around the same time that I collected Garbage Pail Kids, so I'm sure there must have been a time when I was looking through my sticker collection and the song was playing when I was a kid.  But why did those two particular things become so inexplicably linked on my brain?

The only other mental pairing that I can think of as I'm writing this is the one that I'm about to explain below.  It's not like my entire brain is organized in this way, but I'd estimate that there are maybe a dozen other pairs like these in my mind.  I should really start keeping a list of them as I notice them to see if there are any patterns.

 

The most recent time that this happened to me is the one that I've been thinking about a lot over the past month, and it involves the 1982 Rush song Subdivisions.  I have heard this song many times over the years, but on the night of September 2nd going into the morning of September 3rd of last year, it became a part of one of these mental pairings.  The thing that makes this pairing strange is that I think I could feel this one burning into my brain as it was happening.

It was during Night Two of Camp Blood at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater in between the screenings of Graduation Day and Blood Rage.  I forget who was DJing that night, but one of the songs that he played during the second intermission was Subdivisions.  I remember that it was just past midnight and the lot was packed with cars and people (Camp Blood is one of the most well-attended events of the year).  I was laying back in my camping chair in front of my car, and I was playing Pinball FX 3 on Switch - specifically the Space Station pinball machine.  I remember that as the synth hit in the beginning of the song, I looked up from my game and looked around for a little while.  I saw the people walking around and smelled their popcorn and burgers as they walked past me on the way back to their car from the concession building.  I looked up at the stars and felt the cool night air.  As the song played on, I had an overwhelming feeling of peace and serenity in which I felt truly at home, and I fully appreciated how special this exact moment in time was.  If life was a video game with save states, I would have saved my game right then and there so I could go back and re-experience this part of my game whenever I wanted.  It is very rare that a moment hits me as hard as that did, but when it happens, it feels other-worldly; almost euphoric.

As the intermission drew to a close, the feeling of that moment faded away.  It's not that I felt sad or that I stopped having fun or anything like that.  I enjoyed the final movie of the night and was still having a hell of a lot of fun, but the drug-like high of that moment had passed. 

I didn't think too much about this moment until I was playing the Space Station table on Pinball FX 3 recently, and I could hear Subdivisions in my head.  I've never been a massive Rush fan.  I've always liked them just fine and all, but unlike a lot of the things I write about, I don't have any strong childhood memories or decades-long fandom associated with the band or their music.  It was never a band that I connected with in the way that so many others have.  In fact, I didn't even know the name of the song that forced its way into my mind as I was playing pinball on Switch, despite the fact that it's one of the band's biggest hits.  I had to go through a few of their songs on YouTube before I found it, but as soon as I heard the synth in the beginning, I could almost feel the cool air on my skin and smell the popcorn from that night.  Once I noticed that this mental pairing thing had happened again, I started to pay attention to the song... not just hear it, but to really listen to it, and it was like a light switch in my brain got turned on.  I think I might have even said out loud to myself "oooh, now I get it".  Since that day, I've been listening to Rush quite a bit, and it's like I've unlocked a whole other world of music that I always knew was there, but somehow never truly experienced.

I don't know what the point of any of this is, but I wanted to write it down while I'm thinking clearly enough to put words to what I'm feeling.  Do other people experience these pairings and just not recognize them or talk about them, or these random moments of euphoria that seemingly come out of nowhere and then fade away just as fast?  Are these two phenomena connected and I've just forgotten about the euphoric feeling associated with the other pairings in my memory?  Is this just something that can happen with autism?  It's not the kind of thing that I can dismiss it by saying "it's all in my head", because it's obviously all in my head... but why is it in my head?  What the hell is this? 

Anyway, here's Subdivisions.

Subdivisions
Rush (1982)

Sprawling on the fringes of the city

In geometric order

An insulated border

In between the bright lights

And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided

Opinions all provided

The future pre-decided

Detached and subdivided

In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer

Or the misfit so alone

Subdivisions

In the high school halls

In the shopping malls

Conform or be cast out

Subdivisions

In the basement bars

In the backs of cars

Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth

The unattractive truth

But the suburbs have no charms to soothe

The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city

The timeless old attraction

Cruising for the action

Lit up like a firefly

Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires

Or lose the race to rats

Get caught in ticking traps

And start to dream of somewhere

To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory

Of lighted streets on quiet nights

A Good Dude Who I'm Going To Miss

Ken Box
1956 - 2022

The Hometown Farmer's Market is a place I've been coming to since I've been old enough to walk.  It's only open on Wednesday and a lot of the vendors set up their shops outside, so it's a place that we typically go to quite a bit in the Spring and Summer but not so much in the Fall and Winter.

It was 66 degrees yesterday, which is not at all typical for mid-February in Northeast Pennsylvania, so we decided to stop by after work.  It's the first time that we've been here since last summer.  One of the shops here that I was looking forward to visiting was a used bookstore that's in the back of the main building.  I've found a lot of awesome things here over the years, but the main reason I wanted to stop was to talk with Ken.  He's a hell of a nice guy who I've spent hours talking with about books, movies, and baseball, but especially about music and concerts that we've been to.

The store is still there and it's still open, but Ken wasn't there.  A sign was tacked up out front to let his customers know that he passed away on September 24th of last year.

I didn't know him well, but I'm going to miss him.  I don't make friends easily, but he was an extremely nice person who was easy to talk with and very knowledgeable about rock and new wave.  Every time I came to the shop, we'd end up talking for an hour... and then hour and a half... and then two hours... and it felt like only 10 or 15 minutes had gone by.

In addition to being a bookseller and an encyclopedia of knowledge about rock music, Ken was an artist and he created a lot of framed collages that are still hanging in the store.  The one that caught my eye last year wasn't really a collage like some of the others, but it was a framed collection of The Far Side comics that he cut out and arranged.  I'm a big fan of Gary Larson's comics, and when I noticed this resting on a pile of books last summer, it started a conversation that Ken and I had about The Far Side, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and other newspaper comic strips.  It was still there in the shop last night, so I bought it off of his friend who is now running the shop.  I'm in the process of remodeling an area of my basement as a rec room to read, watch movies, play video games and listen to records, and I'm going to hang this on the wall above the table that's next to my recliner.  

Thanks for being a good dude.  Hope to see you on the other side someday.