This was a brutal loss for me. I remember I was watching this game right up until it was about to go into overtime. Then my parents called me to dinner and as soon as I was finished I ran down to the basement and turned on the TV to see that the dolphins just won it in overtime. Another memory I have of this game is that there was a ram touchdown that they got after instant replay, a 25 yard pass to Kevin House. There was no time limit for replay back then, and it took like 5 or 10 minutes before they finished reviewing it and gave him the touchdown and the Anaheim crowd went crazy. Had the Rams won this game, they would have clinched the division. Instead, after a dominating season they ended up only getting in the playoffs as a wildcard after losing the final game of the regular season and the division to the 49ers.
Intellivision was always my favorite video game system. In fact, to this day I feel guilty about my childhood self ditching it for the Nintendo in 1987. People always complain about the grown men of today who play video games, but I can recall in the early to mid 80’s all the older guys in my family who would get together and play Intellivision. It wasn’t uncommon to see my 55 year old grandpa(a Korean war veteran) and other relatives fire up a game of Tron Deadly Discs at a family get together. My uncle was especially skilled at games like Astrosmash and Space Armada, and I would eagerly watch him play just to get to see levels I would never make it to in a million years. My own personal favorite games were probably Treasure of Tarmin, Lock N’Chase, and Commando, games which I continued to play well into the mid 90’s. One thing I loved about these games was how merciless they were. No continues, no passcodes, nothing. You could play for hours and when you die, the screen freezes on game over, and it’s back to the title screen.
Intellivision got something of a re-release recently in the form of the “Intellivision Flashback” console, which comes with 60 built-in games. A lot of people worked very hard to get this thing, and it’s great! It even looks like the original.
The only major drawback is that you can’t plug in cartridges. That means you are limited to only the built in games, which include many crappy sports and education games and only a handful of the classics. The makers claim this is due to licensing issues, but that could have been overcome if one had the ability to plug in other original cartridges similar to other retro consoles for NES, Genesis, etc. If you buy this, you can’t play Commando, Lock N’ Chase, Donkey Kong Jr, Atlantis, Burgertime etc. There are still enough cool games to make it worth it though, as the original consoles are getting more expensive and harder to find(in good working order anyway.)
Chicago has become something of a rap music hub in the last few years with a lot of new artists emerging from the area. “Philosopha” with his new album, “Too Dope” seems to be focusing more on quality than involving himself in the drama and infighting idiocy that often plagues the Chicago hip hop scene. He has a unique delivery that is slow and deliberate, almost hypnotic…with a lot of well timed pauses and echos. The song “Trippin” is a good example of this.
If there’s one thing that really comes across with Philosopha’s jams, it is how casually upbeat they are. Not really a trace of anger or melancholy in the tone or the lyrics either. This is a guy who has it together and is making legit music. Just straightforward and chill throughout each jam.
The production on these tracks is smooth and professional, radio quality. There’s not much negative I could say about this although he has a strong voice and some of the electronic processing on it in certain parts seems unnecessary. My favorite track is probably “Used To” which has a strangely memorable phrase “chickens in my rearview” which conjurs up images of a guy driving through a farm on his way to hip hop stardom.
Aside from the fact that aliens from another star system could be millions of years more advanced and have space travel technology we are not evolved enough to even conceptualize, there’s something else to consider, and that is lifespan. If you compare a human’s life expectancy of about 75 years to an insect that may live only a few days or months, the lifespan of a human could be a fraction some alien creature’s exponentially longer life cycle. Therefore something that seems like a huge amount of time for us may be brief moment for some other life form. For example, what if their average lifespan is 250,000 years, or even a million years, whether due to advanced medical technology or simply different biology? Then the journey would not seem so long or unfathomable for them.
I have not seen any evidence that we have been visited(the stuff that passes for “proof” among UFO enthusiasts it mostly garbage,) so I’m not claiming that we have. However, based on what we KNOW about the wide variance in lifespans even within our own meager sampling of species on Earth, the length of time a voyage would take should not necessarily be considered a huge obstacle(for other lifeforms of course, as for us it’s a huge obstacle!)
New single out today “1978.” Disco, all instrumental, 70’s tv show theme style. Available on iTunes. 1978 on iTunes #losangelesrams #battlestargalactica #boogienights #buckrogers #vegas
For those who were around 18(!) years ago when I released 4-track cassettes like”Birthday Boy,” “Outer Space” and “Rebel Without A Life”(which Oliver Hibert did a drawing of the PV Mall food court for the cover) that I used to unironically send to places like Seventeen Magazine and Sassy for review…. or even 10 years ago when I released that creatively pathetic excuse for an album, “Springtime In Paris,”(which for some reason got me a large feature in the print edition of the Phoenix New Times) I would urge you to consider this and my other new songs as some form of artistic redemption(samples, loops and all.) If not well that’s cool, too. I still have another 6 more songs coming out. Where did all the time go? What can we do with the time we’ve got left, those of us who can foresee inevitably bleak life outcomes in our not too distant future while simultaneously maintaining any youthful energy at all? Think about it. Livejournal styled narcissistic rant temporarily over -B.A.
