Brian Moon

• Although it seems odd that the role of Cherie Curry is being played by 16-year-old Dakota Fanning, that's the correct age for when Cherie auditioned for the band. If anything, Dakota is a year too old.
  
• But Kristen Stewart does not a Joan Jett make, in my head and without having seen the movie yet.
  

• Asteroids Deluxe, the short cabinet version, Elevator Action, and several others will always remind me of the 7-11 at Park Ave. Kevin and I would play that damned Elevator Action for hours.
  
  
• Dragon's Lair will forever be associated with Kellogg Bowl in Milwaukie, OR. I remember Terry putting quarter after quarter into it, while I stood around and watched, until he got to the end one night. He had done it before, and wanted to show me that at the very end (Spoiler Alert!), when the knight killed the dragon and rescued the princess, his helmet came off and he looked like our friend Andy.
  
  
• There was a video game that involved landing on a planet that was only found at Kah-Nee-Tah in eastern Oregon; it was a black and white vector graphics game in a primitive cabinet. I can't remember the name but I have a vague feeling it wasn't Lunar Lander, though it may have been. I played it once during one brief glorious road trip, with Amy and Terry.
  
  
• I and others from high school would play Battlezone, the tall cabinet version, at the Kienow's in downtown Milwaukie, a store no longer there. Steve Kilgore was the best at that game. Kilgore was also the best I'd ever seen at regular ol' Asteroids; he demonstrated the trick of saving one small asteroid, then flying up constantly and waiting for the saucers to come out, picking them off one by one.
  
  
• I know there were games at the bowling alley in Gresham where mom and dad and Donna and Gary would play, but I can't remember what they were.
  
  
• And the sit-down versions of Pole Position and Red Baron, and several others remind me only of the arcade at Clackamas Town Center. I can still hear the sounds of that arcade, and feel the excitement of knowing all that entertainment was waiting for me. I can hear the jingle of exchanging quarters for tokens, see the specific brass color of them, and feel the groove in one side of the tokens that made sure you could only put the token into the slot one direction. I remember the red-headed guy who worked there, then moved next door to the hamburger place after a while, and spending hours talking to him. I worked in that mall, at a small game store that sold, among other things, Dungeons & Dragons books and dice, for six long years, and spent years there prior to getting a job, and the arcade was a favorite hangout. I could write a week of blog posts about all the silly things I did or saw there.
  

Update:

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Epilogue

"Those frustrated with Twitter are frustrated because they have a belief that a story needs a beginning, middle, and end. And that it should have all of those parts before it’s presented to them. What the hell am I supposed to learn from a tweet? The point of Twitter isn’t knowledge or understanding, it’s merely connective information tissue. It’s small bits of information carefully selected by those you’ve chosen to follow and its value isn’t in what they send, it’s how it fits into the story in your head. There are great stories to be found on Twitter, but you have to do the work."

This [Dwight Shrute]-esque project will let you try out your taxidermy skills. Apparently you can acquire a ‘wetware’ mouse fresh or frozen from pet stores. We just need to wait until fall when our pantry is visited by the less-domesticated variety.

A travel-sized optical mouse acts as the replacement guts. Some creative dremeling brings the plastic housing down to a more acceptable shape. The furry bits need to be processed using the mouse taxidermy guide before they are fit over the electronics. What you end up with is a creepy peripheral that nobody wants to use.

i is sooooooooo comfurbals…

i no care wut you want, ai iz stayin here

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Wow... weird.

In the best practice of biomimetics, we look to Mother Nature and learn to emulate her examples in order to improve our own designs.

Sometimes, alas, this goes awry...as in the case of this unholy abomination that I'm calling the Bacon Cheeseturtle:

Yes my friends, that is just what it looks like: A beef patty in a turtle-shell-emulating bacon weave, with grotesque hot dog extremities. I'm sure there's a personality test in here somewhere--half of you are saying "Mmmmm," the other half, "Gahhh!"

You know your haircut’s bad when you even scare Basement Cat

mebbe “haircut” iz a rong word

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via http://jblyth.com/blog.html

Actually really creepy. Also strangely hot. But creepy.

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Legend (Editorial by Roger E. Moore, Dragon #144)

The mountain pass was called the Demon Tongue, which implied there might be a demon and treasure there, so the party headed for it right away. The characters were hungry for combat and cash – lots of each. I was the DM. We were gaming on the pool table in the medical company rec room in West Germany, a decade ago last fall.

Not many of the details of that adventure are left with me now, but I remember what happened when the adventurers got to the Demon Tongue. The paladin was the point man, mounted up and armored like a tank (he had volunteered for, no, demanded the position). Some distance behind, the wizard was checking the landscape with his amulet of ESP, hunting for enemy thoughts. Everyone else was gathered near the wizard, weapons ready. They were on a narrow road in the pass itself, with a slope up to the left and a sheer drop to the right, when the wizard got a reading.

I rolled the dice and checked the books. The party had found the demon, but the amulet of ESP had malfunctioned. I scribbled a note and passed it to the wizard’s player. He read it and gave me an incredulous look.

“Hey, guys,” said the wizard, reigning in his horse. “That demon is here, but that demon is the Demogorgon. We are doomed.”

Everyone stared at the wizard’s player, then at me. Everyone had read the Monster Manual. The entire party came to a halt. Then the characters began to guide their horses back the way they had come, looking around with nervous grins.

All but the paladin, that is. He stopped where he was, stood up in his stirrups, raised his sword, and shouted, “COME OUT AND FIGHT, YOU MISERABLE @#$ + §&%*!!!” at the top of his lungs. Seconds later, a giant ball of darkness appeared on the road ahead.

Before anyone could react, one of the characters was telekinesized off his horse and hurled into the canyon beside the road. He took 20 dice of damage and became a memory. Every one of his companions bolted – except for the paladin, who roared, “SHOW YOURSELF, DEMON!!!” (The rest of the players screamed that they were riding away all the harder.)

The darkness fell away and there was the demon, not Demogorgon but it hardly mattered as it was one of those brutal 11-HD Type IVs. It grinned through its boar’s tusks and traced a symbol of fear in the air as the paladin spurred his horse and charged the monster. The paladin made his saving throw and cut through the demon with his sword – easy enough to do as the demon was a projected image. The demon just laughed.

Enraged, the paladin began cursing the demon in language that most of us assumed paladins would scarcely admit to knowing, much less using, but the most telling insult was “coward.” I figured that any demon worth his evilness would take offense at being called a coward by a mere mortal, so the projected image vanished – and the real demon appeared on the road, roaring out its own challenge. It began tracing another symbol in the air as the paladin charged again.

The paladin made his saving throw and struck at the demon – and his sword bounced off the demon’s hide, as the sword wasn’t powerful enough to affect the monster. The paladin’s player realized his character had only one weapon left that might do the trick. Wheeling his horse around and coming back for another charge, the paladin drew his dagger +2, then leaped off his horse and tackled the demon.

Had this been any other player, I would have pointed out the usual problems involved in leaping off a charging horse in plate mail to tackle a 10’-tall demon with a dagger, but the paladin’s player had that look on his face that said he was really into it. He wanted that demon badly. He got it. Screaming and roaring, the paladin and the demon tore into each other, dagger against claws and teeth. The paladin slammed home every attack, but so did the demon. Worse yet, the demon began to levitate itself and the paladin over the road. Dice rolled, blood flew, hit points plummeted, and the other players began shouting, “Get ‘im! Get that thing!”

The demon died at an altitude of about 100’. Its levitation spell shut off. The paladin, still attacking, clung to the demon’s body all the way down. When the rest of the party finally mustered the courage to ride back, they found the paladin – in the single digits of hit points, but alive.

“Got ‘im,” said the paladin, brushing himself off.

A legend came to life that evening, though we had not meant to create one. We had courage, heroism, danger, and excitement, all there in the rec room of an Army barracks far from home. Ten years later, the thrill and the glory of that paladin’s triumph still live with me. It doesn’t matter that the paladin wasn’t even my character.

I like a lot of things about roleplaying games – the friends, the laughter, the bad puns, the munchies –but creating a legend is the best part of all. It sure beats playing bridge.

Macho Fail

Macho rarely wins

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This is lovely. I'd like to try it around Portland sometime.

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View the complete Looking into the Past gallery curated by edrabbit. For even more time traveling check out the Looking into the Past group.

Photos from jasonepowell, Tinflower, and Tom™5.

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OH THAT'S HORRIBLE.

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