Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

I kinda wish I didn’t blow that “born back ceaselessly into the past” hed on a stupid post about making your blog look like a Geocities site. It would have been much more appropriate here. Oh well.

As you may be aware, your favorite blogger celebrated a birthday this week. Also, my birthday was this week, too. (See what I did there? With the self-deprecating implication that I might not actually be your favorite blogger? ::tap tap tap:: Is this thing on?) Anyway, as the early part of my mid-20s fades away in the rearview mirror of time’s unceasing advance, the idea of growing up has been on my mind. I have enough self-awareness to bristle at the concept of a “quarter-life crisis,” so don’t worry, this won’t be a post about how confused I am about the future as I watch the sands of time slip through my fingers like so many grains of sand.

But I have been thinking about all the years gone by: some wistful stuff, but mostly good stuff, and I was grasping for something appropriate to post about on the event of the anniversary of my natal day. First, I considered discussing the pants-wettingly exciting news that John Nolan and Shaun Cooper are back in Taking Back Sunday, reuniting the Tell All Your Friends lineup that produced Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun’s third favorite album of the last decade. (I’m seeing them in June, and worry not, treasured reader, that show will get the eff blogged out of it.) But then I came across something better, a bit of nostalgia so potent that Adrian Veidt himself would be compelled to stroke his chin in admiration. Let me tell you a story.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have a Nintendo, but my cousins did. Whenever we went over their house, we played a lot of Duck Hunt, a lot of Mario, a lot of Monster Truck Rally. Every now and again, we’d fire up Bases Loaded. RBI Baseball, with its Weeble-esque renditions of Major League stars, was probably the more beloved baseball game of the era, but, because it didn’t have a license from MLB, Bases Loaded had the probably unforeseen advantage of being able to make up teams and players out of whole cloth. There was a New Jersey team, so of course I played with them every time I had the controller in my hands. Anyone that’s played Bases Loaded knows where this is going: I’m about to talk about Paste.

Many pixels have been spilled talking about Bo Jackson’s prowess in Tecmo Super Bowl, but Paste, the number three hitter in the NJ lineup, surpasses even him. Paste hit 60 home runs and batted .467 last season! He was less than a god, but far, far more than a man. So you can imagine my delight when, just a day after my birthday, as I was reminiscing about my youth, I came across this brilliant video tribute to the immortal Paste. Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 16th, 2010 at 12:02 am and is filed under Reading and Writing, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.