More Great Games I Have Known

Back in the day, before the advent of Speed Stacking, there were other great games that the kids used to play. Here is a list of games I used to play growing up that made me the man’s man that I am today:

Nerf Wars

What is more fun than launching yellow foam projectiles at your friends’ faces? Nothing, nothing is the answer to the previous question. The Blaster was classic, the Slingshot was weak at best, and the Sharpshooter was everything the name implied, but any Nerf War veteran knows the Bow and Arrow was the only weaponry you ever needed on the battlefield. The Bow and Arrow’s range and reliability were unparalleled to any Nerf gadget out there and probably still is today.

Super Soaker Fights

The only thing that could possibly rival shooting your friends face with a yellow foam projectile is a highly pressurized stream of water. I remember the feeling of power I wielded when I first got my Super Soaker 50 after playing with those cheap fifty cent squirt guns that I’d get every year in my Easter basket my whole life prior.

Then my next door neighbor doused me with his Super Soaker 100 and the feeling of power vanished. That lucky bastard…

Ducktales

This wasn't so much a game as it was a really great TV show. I just thought I'd mention that.

The Race Track Thing Where You Pull The Trigger And The Cars Go Around a Weird Track

You know what I am talking about, right? I don’t know the technical name of that game but it was fun. Those cars went in the craziest loop-de-loops and on the sides of walls and shit. All of them had the one track piece that criss-crossed so there was always the possibility that your cars could hit each other and go flying off the track.

I remember putting a penny on the track when my friends weren’t looking so they would start crying after I lapped them for the tenth or fifteenth time while their car stood idle. Hilarious.



NASCAR would actually be watchable if they threw in a couple of loop-de-loops in there. A glow-in-the-dark track wouldn't hurt either.

Matchbox Cars

Taking your two favorite cars and hurling them at each other was always a blast. Kids love car wrecks. See crazy race track game above.

Remote Control Cars

This game would have been a lot more fun if my parents would have bought me that one truck with the wheels that became claws. That thing was badass. It could go anywhere. I think it was called the Claw, actually.

I don’t think my remote control car was technically remote control because it had an eight foot cord, which defeated the whole purpose of having remote control in the first place. You couldn’t turn it at will either, it only turned left in reverse so you had to make a full 360 degree circle if you ever wanted to hang a quick right.

Buy you could crash it into shit so it was still fun.


I wish my Civic had claws that came out of the tires. The engineers at Goodyear need to get their heads out of their asses.

Dungeons and Dragons

Some of my fondest memories growing up were when I assumed the avatar of Bron Wolfbane, a Level Five Barbarian from the ancient tribe of warriors known as the Deathlites. I used to play this game for hours on end with my older brother Chris and his friends Nick and Pat.

Wait a second, these aren’t my memories. These are the favorite memories of everybody’s favorite communist, Joe Daniels. I have Joe’s collection of 27-sided dice to prove it.



Joe still makes major life choices based on the outcome of rolling dice like these. Why doesn't he get a magic eight-ball like everyone else?

And speaking of dice…

Craps

More on that fantastic game and my trip to fabulous Las Vegas last weekend in my next post.

Speed Stacking: The Next Baseball?

Way back when, I started a post about Great Games I Have Known, which featured a rant about the sport of Speed Stacking. At first I thought the idea of timing yourself to stack plastic cups into pyramids was preposterous, but then I saw this video:

Super Fast Speed Stacking Chick

Holy shit! That chick makes Jackie Chan look like a freakin’ Ent from Lord of the Rings. You know, cuz Jackie Chan has lightning fast hands and those stupid mumbling trees are slow as hell. Not ringing any bells? Well, the analogy works so back off!

And 7.63 seconds! I don't know what that means but I'm sure it's good. Only one thing is for sure; Team Superhandz does NOT accept posers.

I have a new found respect for Speed Stacking thanks to this video clip. Youtube, you’ve done it again. I only wish my parents made me train for this kind of stuff when I was younger so that I could have been a Speed Stacking champion today. I’ve seen Speed Stacking groupies and they are something else, let me tell ya.

There was so much potential for me to become a speed stacking professional. I remember this one birthday party I had at McDonalds when I completely dominated all the other kids at that crappy Big Mac carton stacking game. My tower reached like 20 containers high when all the other piles were toppling at 15 maybe 16 tops. I was a Styrofoam container stacking prodigy.

Perhaps my parents thought I had unfair advantage since I had a heightened sense of awareness from eating three pieces of chocolate cake and an entire sugar cookie shaped like Grimace. Actually, I don’t think those things on the cake qualify as cookies since cookies tend to have flour in them and those things were just pure hardened sugar fashioned into fun shapes, in my case, an obese purple monster. Those sugar things weren’t even that good.

I shouldn’t complain though, that was a really great Sweet Sixteen party. A car would have been nice but the Golden Arches is a close second.

Someday, when I have kids, I’m going to put them on a strict regime of cup amassing exercises and drills to hone their skills in this fine art. When all the other kids are running around playing soccer or flag football, or going to school, my kids will be at home stacking cups, timing themselves, and then stacking those cups again, trying to beat the previous time.

THAT or doing trick pool shots. Performing trick pool shots is awesome and has equal potential to become a lucrative career when they’re older.



What the hell is this thing, seriously? A purple cone with eyes? The Hamburglar is iconic. This tool, not so much.

Myspace Woes

Lately, it seems, I have been receiving a lot of backlash over my Myspace profile. It seems to be offending a lot of people with its lameness. This week in particular, for some reason, was particularly hard for people to be linked to me via the world’s most popular social networking site.

Even my hair stylist had to comment, “What’s the deal with your Myspace page?”

At that moment, it became apparent that my profile needed some tweaking. After all, if I’m going to be able to pull off a faux hawk, then I better I have online credentials to back it up.

The thing about my profile is that it makes sense if you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time. My fascination with zombie movies and “Call on Me” are obvious to all my faithful readers.

But for the average Myspace stalker, it probably leaves more questions than answers.

Therefore it’s time for a change. A big change. I’m going to craft the ultimate myspace page and then comment later this week on how exponentially more rad it has gotten.

EVERYONE is going to want to be my friend. Everyone.

Also, I might have to take my blog off the Internet for awhile for some routine maintenance. If I do, it’ll only be temporary so no worries.

3/6/07

Before I change my profile, I want one more chance to defend myself.

Here is the link to my myspace page:

Ben’s awesome profile

You’ll notice right away that I used a delightfully clever pun on my last name as a nickname. Woll Street. You know, like Wall Street. But it’s Woll Street. I’m a business major and I work for a real estate developer so that’s funny. Just take my word for it.

Next, you’ll notice my sweet ass profile pic. Like a wild stallion, I’ve got a head of hair that can’t be tamed. It’s also a well known fact that chicks dig long hair, almost as much as they love dicks in boxes for holiday gifts. I think the black and white photography is a nice touch, too. It seems to legitimize that five-year bender I like to call college.

My background is also unique in that I went out of my way to avoid using the default Myspace setting, but I also made it so that your eyeballs don’t vomit like so many other profiles that I’ve seen. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re the ones with about a million different things going on at the same time with no discernable theme or pattern. They’re almost as loud as the obnoxious songs that sometimes play in the background.

Now I know I’d be offending a lot of people by saying those songs are annoying so I apologize. It’s just that I must be the only person on the planet that listens to iTunes while surfing the net so I get kind of perturbed when I have to find and click that stupid pause button every two seconds so it doesn’t interfere with the song I’m currently listening to. It wouldn’t be so bad it you had to do it once but that shit reloads every time you click on something. Surely, there must be a better system out there. Please tell me I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Next you’ll see my random profile information. Admittedly, it’s pretty nerdy. This is where I’ll spruce things up. By no means am I going to sell-out my love of zombie movies, Harry Potter, and Call on Me, but I will strive to make it more universally appealing.

Finally, there’s that whole “shameless self-promotion of my blog” theme that runs rampant throughout the profile. I don’t suppose I’m going to gain any new readers anytime soon so maybe I’ll downplay that as well.

Or make Brain Litter MORE prevalent? I’m going to have to think about that one…



This zombie really knows how to rawk the hawk. Feel free to copy and paste this little beauty into your social networking website of choice.

3/8/07

Okay, are you happy now, World?

I sold out and de-nerdified my myspace layout. At first I thought I’d get real funny and just make it as crazy as possible, but after cruising around a few pimp-my-myspace websites, I realized those sites are more obnoxious than the most profiles that I’ve seen.

It took me forever to download the layout, which I think is pretty trippy. The rest is standard fare. I apologize if I over-hyped this post.

If you really want to know the truth, I am much bigger fan of facebook. It’s just a lot cleaner and user friendly. Even the stalker feature is starting to grow on me. I’m not one to go joy-riding on other people’s profiles but if something jumps out at me when I first login, then I’m all the wiser. Plus you can post unlimited pictures.

I envision a world someday where everyone is divided into facebook and myspace rival factions where civil war is all but inevitable. Friends will be de-linked, walls and comments will be ripe with slander, and chaos will ensue. This uneasy truce we have now will only last so long. I suggest you choose sides wisely.

War is hell.