Nintendo on Ice

The Stanely Cup Playoffs start this weekend. I’m a longtime hockey fan and I really can’t think of anything more exciting to watch than playoff hockey. And with the Rangers actually being good this year, I’m usually a bit more engaged. So I decided to celebrate this upcoming awesomeness by playing a game of Nintendo Ice Hockey.

That’s right, I said Ice Hockey.

To anyone who grew up playing the NES, Blades of Steel is the superior hockey game, and I’ll agree with that. But Ice Hockey, which came out in 1988, was one of the first games I ever got after I received my Nintendo for my eleventh birthday, and I think that it was probably one of the games I played the most. So as much as I did enjoy Konami’s entry into the hockey game category, I think my heart has always been with the original Nintendo game.

When Nintendo came out, it was a true cut above the Atari 2600 and while it had a number of iconic adventure and arcade-style games, the sports games were very solid even if they weren’t as popular as, say The Legend of Zelda or Metroid. Ten Yard Fight would be completely forgotten in the wake of Tecmo Bowl, but was still a good football game; Baseball earned the nickname “glitchball” among me and my friends, but we still played it endlessly; Pro Wrestling remains one of the best wrestling games for the NES; and when I was in college, my roommates and I played endless hours of Golf. Ice Hockey was as good, if not better than all of those.

Like I said, I got Ice Hockey sometime after my eleventh birthday, and I think that I used some of my birthday money or Christmas money to pay for it because I distinctly remember going to the store with my father to buy it one morning and that we stopped at Pachysandra Nursery, which was on Lincoln Avenue in Sayville, just south of Sunrise Highway (I’m pretty sure they went out of business years ago). While he picked out whatever plants he was going to put in the backyard (probably pachysandra), I opened the box and pored over the instruction booklet. Normally, it’s something I probably wouldn’t have read, except that I was stuck in the car at a nursery and needed to occupy myself before I got to play the game at home.

When I did, it was easily one of the most “wow, this lived up to everything I hoped it would be” moments of my young life. The game was internationally themed, as you would play for and against different countries; the Calgary Winter Olympics had happened that year and I had spent a lot of time staying up to watch the hockey games, so it was right up my alley. And instead of a game like Baseball, where you picked your team and the only difference between them and your opponent was a different-colored jersey, this time around, you could actually build the four men you had on the ice.

As part of your team, you could choose from a skinny guy, an “average” (or “medium”) guy, and a fat guy. Each came with their pluses and minuses: the skinny guys were great face-off men and very fast, so I usually put them at center; medium guys were wingmen and all-around good; and the fat guys, while not very fast, were oustanding shooters and could also bump people off easily. With that in mind, I always had a skinny guy at center, two medium guys for wings, and a fat guy taking up the rear. I guess technically he was on defense, but I usually ended every face-off–which I often won–by passing him the puck and letting him lumber his way toward the opposing team’s net.

This always worked and resulted in my team–always Canada–running up a score of 20-30 goals on whomever was the poor team I chose to play (the options were the U.S.A., Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the U.S.S.R.). Face-off after face-off was me passing it to the fat guy, whom I called Walter Hudson (after an infamous news story about a guy on Long Island who had to be cut out of his home … and in retrospect, I was an insensitive asshole when I was 11), would score. Sometimes, the computer would figure out what I was up to and get a ltitle more aggressive, but I could reestablish the pattern pretty easily.

So the other day, I went down to my basement and put in Ice Hockey. I’ve come a long way from the Sharp Linytron that my parents had bought to put in the basement and got to play on our older flatscreen Samsung (Nintendo looks great in HD, btw). I chose Canada as always and decided to take on Sweden. I was rusty at first, forgetting which button was passing and shooting for a moment and getting used to how the players moved around. I scored first, but by the time the second period started, I was only up by a goal. After a couple more goals in the second, I went into the Zamboni break with a comfortable 7-4 lead.

But this was disappointing. I spent years running up the score on Sweden, sending them home to cry in their IKEA beds, and I was not going to rest until I did some serious damage. And that’s when my usual tactic–which I’d tried all game with limited results–started to work. Goal after goal after goal became a 16-6 final score.

When it was over, I turned the game off and went upstairs to make dinner–adult responsibilities, after all–but it was nice to spend a little while recapturing the fun of being 11. Let’s hope that the playoffs are this fun and Let’s Go Rangers!

Stalking Back in The Glass House

It’s been more than a decade since I wrote about it, but my high school had some random elective courses and the one that I have some random memories of was You and the Law. I took it thirty years ago durin gmy junior year, and it was one of those classes that existed to give me a break from APs and a nightmare of a physics course. We went to the Suffolk County courthouse in Riverhead to see some proceedings, and we visited the county jail where we could get yelled at my inmates–I mean, “scared straight.”

The rest of the time, we watched TV.

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Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 152: The Crisis Hangover

Worlds lived. Worlds died. The universe was never the same. But it took a little while for that universe to never be the same, and in this episode, I take a look at the period between December 1985 and July 1986 where DC’s titles began their post-Crisis eras, wrapped up things leftover from before the Crisis, or ended their eras altogether. From the continuing adventures of the Titans to the Last Days of The Justice Society of America and finding out Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, it’s a curious bit of DC continuity.

Apple Podcasts: Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download

Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page

The music in this episode is “Invincible” by Beat Mekanik and is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License.

Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 151: The Uncollecting III: The Domination

It’s time once again to dive into The Uncollecting! In this year’s episode, I take a look at the PBS series Legacy List With Matt Paxton along with articles that explore the “legacies” of our generations’ past, like brown furniture and memorabilia collections that are left behind. I also give my own update on how this now long-running project has been going.

Apple Podcasts: Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download

Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page

And here are links to the shows and articles that I talk about on the episode:

Legacy List With Matt Paxton Season 5, episode 5 on PBS (may need streaming subscription to watch)

“It Came from the ’70s: The Story of Your Grandma’s Weird Couch” by Lisa Hix (Collector’s Weekly, 8/27/18)

“But Who Gets the Comic Books?” by George Gene Custines (The New York Times, 7/30/23 — subscription needed)

A Night Without Armor

I Say to You Idols

I say to you idols
of carefully studied
disillusionment

And you worshipers
who find beauty
in only fallen things

That the greatest
Grace
we can aspire to
is the strength
to see the wounded
walk with the forgotten
and pull ourselves
from the screaming
blood of our losses
to fight on
undaunted
all the more
Kilcher, Jewel, “I Say to You Idols.” A Night Without Armor, HarperCollins, 1998, p. 52.

Though it’s more of an artifact of 1990s pop culture these days, Jewel’s poetry collection A Night Without Armor was a New York Times bestseller when it came out, with more than a million copies sold. While big sales of a book connected to a popular singer aren’t out of the ordinary, sales of poetry books rarely ever hit this level and if they do, they’re from well-known poets, poets who are currently making or have made a big impact on our culture, or classical bards like Homer and Virgil. Even Jewel said she had a hard time getting a publisher to print it despite being huge at the time.

If you remember A Night Without Armor, you probably remember a few things: first, its success; second, its mixed reviews, which range from praise to balanced criticism to insults*; and third, that moment with Kurt Loder.

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Coloring In (And Outside) The Lines

A Return of the Jedi coloring book. Everyone had at least one of these. Image from eBay.

I have a very vivid memory of the time I was in the first grade and I colored in a phonics worksheet with a big dark green crayon that was from the Whitman company. When I got it back, my answers were correct but my teacher, Mrs. Hickman, had written “Messy! You can do better!” That night, ashamed, i sat at the top of the stairs crying until my parents noticed and came to comfort me.

I suppose I should go on a long rant about Mrs. Hickman and how things like this are scarring to young children and how she destroyed any chance I had toward learning and because of her I never liked school, but I’m not. The truth is, she was one of my favorite teachers and I have great memories of her class. But what I can say is that my tendency toward messiness coupled with being a high-achieving student is probably the reason I’m such an anxious mess all the time (and may be some undiagnosed ADHD, but I’m no expert and I have no idea if that’s true). And I never could color outside the lines. When I think of the coloring books I had as a kid, I think of how so many pages were just scribbled all over. I also think of the ways I’d try to “correct” things when I was older, coloring around the mistakes and filling things in to make them look like they weren’t drawn by a manic toddler.

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Live the Adventure!

This Steel Brigade giveaway appeared in a number of comic books in 1987. I scanned this one from an old issue of The ‘Nam.

The moment was intense. I broke the seal on the dossier with my decoder at my side, began to decipher the secret message in front of me. My mission was of utmost importance because if I wasn’t successful, I would jeopardize our national security. Sitting at my desk, I worked quickly. A dot and a dash was an “A”. Three dots was an “S”. A dot, two dashes, and another dot was a “P.” It was coming together easily and the further I got, the quicker the solution came. When I finished, I put the decoded message in the mail and waited for my reward.

Four to six weks later, I got it–a patch and a certificate.

While it wasn’t as crushing to my childhood innocence as Ralphie Parker decoding and Ovaltine commercial, the anticlimax of toy-related mai-ins and ocntests could be very real when i was a kid. Sure, many of my friends and I have glorious tales of saving up proofs of purchase for a special mail-away figure, but I also remember toy inserts or ads inc omic books that promised something really cool if you filled out an entry form.

Now, most of these were for contests or random merchandise, but Hasbro did the children of America a solid with their G.I. Joe toys back in the mid-1980s. I wasn’t there for the Sgt. Slaughter or William “The Refrigerator” Perry figures (although my friend had both), but in the summer of 1987, I did spot an ad in the back of a comic book for a G.I. Joe figure based on myself.

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Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 150: Continuing the Search

It’s episode 150 of the show, and for this episode, I revisit my series of episodes about America: its history, its people, and its culture. After talking about my interest in books about American “stories” (and the many books I’ve read over the years), I return to Peter Jenkins’ A Walk Across America by looking at its newly published “sequels”: Barbara Jenkins’ book So Long As It’s Wild and Jedediah Jenkins’ book Mother, Nature.

Apple Podcasts: Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download

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The Suburban Squall

Though the individualistic teenagers I teach might be loathe to admit it, they all wear the same clothes. Oh sure, they all find ways to express themselves, but self-expression via nonconformity in clothing has been de rigueur for adolescents since they first gained a sense of purchasing power in the 1950s or 1960s. They may all say they aren’t one of the sheep-like masses, but look in their closets and you’ll find a hooded sweatshirt, a pair of stretch leggings, and a beat-up pair of jeans in the same way my generation had an array of flannel shirts, alternative band T-shirts, a beat-up pair of jeans, and the Lands’ End Squall Jacket.

First introduced by the Dodgeville, Wisconsin-based clothier in 1983, the Squall is a medium-weight nylon jacket with a fleeced lining that is suitable for the majority of autumn, winter, and early spring when the weather is cold but not the Ice Station Zebra conditions that make you bust out your Lands’ End parka. The company says that it “best exemplifies all of our know how. Popular for its classic style and versatility, it’s reliably warm, and made from durable windproof waterproof fabric.” That definitely appeals to the parent in me who wants to make any $50-100 jacket last as long as possible, and Lands’ End definitely knows I want dependability when it comes to my purchase at least according to their explanation of why the jacket is called “Squall”:

Reminiscent of our nautical past, the word ‘squall’ usually defines a sudden gust of wind bringing on storms of rain, snow, or sleet. Not the most comforting of images, is it? But at Lands’ End, Squall has come to define dependable warmth for generations … you might not be a captain sailing a ship through the choppy ocean but you certainly weather your fair share of storms throughout the day. Unlike a typical squall, our winter jacket may not be the cause of the storm will certainly be there to keep you cozy, dry, and protected from whatever is brewing on the horizon.
(source: Landsend.com)

I know that’s a lot to say about a jacket, or any article of clothing for that matter but the Squall jacket earned that pretense. My parents bought me my first Squall jacket sometime in the fourth or fifth grade; it was blue and I’m pretty sure that my sister got a red or pink colored one, and they were pretty much permanent fixtures during the transitional seasons all the way through high school, not just in my house but in my school and town as a whole. It was, in a sense, part of the suburban uniform of the 1980s and early 1990s. Those of a certain vintage and upbringing may remember going outside in the late winter and early spring, riding around on your bike in search of a friend to play with, and once you found them trying to figure out what to do because both of your moms kicked you off the Nintendo and out of the house. Sometimes, you got a bunch of other people together and played a rough game of touch football; other times, you just kept riding around while carrying on a conversation about whatever kid or teen topics came up. The specifics really didn’t matter, to be honest; you just remember that you were wearing the jacket.

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1993: The Year in Sports

As another year draws to a close, I’ve been reading a lot of list-based blog posts and articles, most of which are about books, movies, and music that I more than likely missed this year because I have no idea how to pay attention to any of it anymore. I miss the glory days of Entertainment Weekly because while I was a regular reader and subscriber, I at least knew what was out there even if I didn’t always see, read, or listen to it. And you could say the same for sports, which I have been watching more of lately but still have a problem following. I don’t know what it is, but since I don’t watch SportsCenter anymore, I can’t seem to remember to check standings or keep up with what’s going on in various leagues. Shit, I can barely tell you who the major players on a number of the teams I follow.

This was always kind of true, even when I was younger. My parents did not get the newspaper and we didn’t have cable, so the only way for me to keep up with scores was the local news; I often missed standings and stats, though. But I knew a lot of what was going on in the world of sports because I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

Of course, that’s nothing unique among teenage boys in America in the 1980s and 1990s. Sports Illustrated was one of the most subscribed to magazines in the country and so iconic that getting the cover could be a blessing in a “cover of the Rolling Stone sort of way” or a curse, depending on how your team was doing (Long before the “Madden Curse” was the “SI Cover Curse” where a team or player was on a hot streak, got themselves on the cover of the magazine and immediately started to slump). I can’t tell you how much of it I read on a weekly basis–although it’s not hard for you to guess that I spent a lot of time looking at the swimsuit issue every year–but I can say that it was a formative piece in my “sports education.”

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