Country:United States State:New Jersey Birthday:10/25/1983 Gender:Male
Interests:Film, Video games, Basketball/sports, All sorts of books, Piano/Music, Philosophy/Religion Expertise:Making movies mostly Occupation:Mostly Unemployed Filmmaker
So I started writing an article about the "closing of Astroland" for Helium.com, this cool writing site, just for the hell of it. And thus far I'm only going for humor with them. So I wrote it as an openly hypothetical remembrance since I thought I had never visited the place before. Then, halfway through, it dawned on me that Astroland was Coney Island, the amusement park of my youth, rendering my commentary unsubmittable. Coney Island must not be defamed.
Anyways, because I don't like letting writing go to waste, here's the first half of a fake article that I'll never finish:
Astroland...what a place. If I had ever been there or if I had ever known of its existence before writing this article, I'm sure I would have loved it.
Too many times people write reactions to amusement park closings or circus fires on the basis of experiences had at the places in question. This leads to bias and, logically, an unfair skewed analysis. You won't find that in this article. I'm writing from a wholly unbiased perspective, speaking entirely in the hypothetical.
I can only imagine the rides at Astroland, how futuristic and ahead of their time they were. Perhaps it was one of the reasons for the park's closure. Perhaps the novelty of a theme park based wholly on a talking dog from the Jetsons just wore off. I don't know. If I were a conspiracy buff I'd probably speculate that it was the machinations of fans of Cogswells Cogs that did the park in.
But I don't travel that dark road of paranoia. I don't dwell on why or what could have been. I prefer to remember the good things, all the memories that I might have had during the park's probably illustrious lifetime. Riding the roller-coaster that most likely had a terrifying drop or one or more loop-the-loops. Going on a flume-like ride five times in a row on a hot summer's day. Spinning into nausea on one of the park's many or only spinning rides.
"If you're among the cool kids, you haven't needed us to tell you to watch the YouTube series Life in a Game. We like the show, and not just because of the insane number of references to video games, but also because it plays so fast and loose with logic. It's a little like being on a drug specifically engineered to make you feel as if reality is being controlled by the world's raddest 8-year-old.
"In this third installation (the second half of the second episode) Guy finally does battle with his nemesis the Red Jackal. Even if you don't care who wins, you can pass the time seeing how many nods to video games you catch. Oh, and if you want the story so far, here're parts one and two."
This just seems like such a friggin good deal and if I weren't poor I would totally take advantage of it: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat136300050007&type=category&initialize=false&initialize=true&_requestid=223255
So if you're feeling generous and want to get me a Christmas present, please get me Carnivale season one. It's $20! That's awesome. Although if you do, let me know so that nobody else gets me it. I don't know anything about that show but I've heard it's good.
In other news, I finished up Life in a Game 2-2 although everyone reading this probably has already been spammed about it. If you weren't though, here you go:
I had some really weird dream events last night. First off, I had a dream where I was hanging with my best friend Joey from Brooklyn and then for some reason this creepy girl from high school was there and she cursed me to forget all of the piano that I've ever learned. And that really scared me so when I woke up at around 7 or so I stumbled to the piano and attempted to play one of the few songs I still know. Heart racing, fearing the irrational, I made my way through the song and lo, it turned out I wasn't cursed. Content, mind at ease, I went back to bed where I started dreaming again.
In this second dream, I was Dave Grohl and I was playing Halo or Half-life with Zach Braff and we were taking shots of some liquor each time one of us died. I won, Braff passed out. The next morning I was myself again and everything was strange. I was trying to invoke in Zach a hallucination that would take us to the land of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys by humming the theme song and showing him a magazine about it. I don't think it worked, but I kept singing the theme song. Then we were walking down the street and for some reason I thought I was playing a Spanish character in some show or farce so all I spoke was Spanish in a stereotypical accent. But the strangest thing of all, which has never happened to me, was that somewhere in that second dream, I don't know where, I told somebody about my first dream, saying "Yeah I had this dream a girl cursed away my piano skills and then I woke up and frantically scrambled, at 7 AM, to the Piano where I attempted to play one of the few songs I still knew." Then we laughed, whoever "we" was.
Luckily it didn't become an infinite recursive loop or I would have been trapped for all eternity in this cycling bizarre dreamscape. I am thankful that I escaped. Or maybe...is this the third dream?
Hey yyoooooo. Do me a favor. If you go to www.funnyjunk.com and check out the top Youtube videos section you'll see that Life in a Game 2 is currently in the top 10. If you can, please go and vote a 10 for it so that it can go even higher. I dunno how popular the site is, but still, it'd be cool.
