Ghetto Games Part 1

I think one of the things I miss most about being a kid was Ghetto Games. For those of you who didn't grow up poor. A ghetto game was something you could pay with little money. Footballs and baseballs are not that cheap but could usually be stolen from a school or a youth center, if you were slick enough. For the more God fearing kids some would just save up their allowance and trust me at $2-$5.00 a week that could be a long wait. Or that could be your one gift it was Christmas. So on a block with 10 kids at least one would have a football or a basketball. Now you never really needed anything other than a ball to play a game in the ghetto in the 80's. Except maybe a spray paint can.

See basketball is supposed to be played with a hoop. But sometimes the hoops would be stolen from the parks. Enter the spray paint can. You get a spray-paint can, which any body could get for cheap, you find any flat surface where you could draw a small box slightly larger that the ball at roughly hoop height. Than if you want to be fancy you lay out a half court in front of the wall but more often we used things like sewer caps and light poles as our markers for out of bounds. So it's entirely possible that you could get checked into a brick wall a light pole or an oncoming car, depending on how close the score is.

With stickball if you could find an empty lot to play with a wall you didn't need a catcher, because the wall became the catcher. See you paint a box on the wall that was roughly the size of a torso to create a "batters box. If you pitched the ball and the batter did not swing but you got it in the box it was counted a strike, and the ball would usually bounce back. So paint was actually pretty helpful in setting up some of the rules.

But the game I played the most was Street Football. The super bowl has nothing compared to the intensity of a simple game of street football. People would actually come out to see us play and would root for different players. There was no such things as teams cause we were all from the same block so 2 guys would choose up teams. And it would usually be 6 to 10 kids playing and each game was just as important and different as the next or last. Now we usually played 2-hand touch but that does not mean it was a gentle game. In fact I have a dent in my head named after Street football.

See what happened was it was a 3 on 3 game and we were down by 2 TDs and time was running out. (meaning the sun would be going down soon) And I'm not a fast guy but I used to have pretty good hands. So John (the QB) was going for a Hail Mary and I was running as fast as I could go trying to catch that damn football. I see it. Hell, I can fucking taste it, because I know I can make this catch. I just have to jump up and we'll be one more TD closer to a tie and if we tie at least we can't get bitched out. Because we all know bragging rights are the most important thing when you are growing up.

So I'm running, I'm seeing the ball, I'm running, I'm running, I jump... and than I wake up with my cousins and friends standing over me saying "is he dead?" "I don't know but who's going to tell his aunt?" "John can tell her, Eric's his cousin." "If he's dead can I have his kicks?"

"You're not taking my sneakers." I say as I start to become aware of my surroundings. Now as near as I can piece together after I jumped I went head first into light pole. And knocked my self the fuck out. The cool thing is I had just performed such an incredible stunt in the fact that I had stood back up and was willing to play some more, I didn't want to be called a bitch. But John and Randy wouldn't let me. Since my aunt was a nurse they made me go tell her what had happened while they hid. All in all it was a great game, even with the bleeding from the ear.

From behind the table: It’s Fucking Street Meat!!!

This one doesn’t really qualify as behind the table but screw it, I’m writing it, I can put what ever I want.  I could put the alphabet backwards if I wanted to… You can’t stop me.

What has quickly become one of the staples of the Comic book convention scene is the New York Comic Con. Considering that in 2006 was the first Convention it has grown in size to rival the San Diego Comic con, a Convention that has been around since 1970 and I say it’s a better con… mainly cause I’m from New York, but seriously we have the head quarters to Marvel and DC, we have the Museum of Natural History and we have Section 8 Comics (oh come on, how could I not plug my company). 

What we also have is some of the best food in the world and while most people know about the street vendors and how you can get hot Dogs and pretzels but what some people may not realize is depending on the place and time you can also find street vendors selling roasted nuts, Italian sausage, piraguas (Spanish snow cones), ice cream and chicken, beef or lamb shish kabobs.   One such shish kabob cart is stationed outside of the Jacob Javits center home to the New York Comic Con.  It’s also the site of the following conversation during the 2009 New York con.  Please note Customer 2 was dressed up as a Jedi.

Vendor:    What would you like?
Customer 1:    Is this Pork?
Vendor:    No we have Chicken, Beef and Lamb.  No pork. What would you like? 
Customer 1:     Is it Kosher?
Vendor:    Yes it’s all Kosher. What do you want?
Customer 1:    Are you sure?
Vendor:    Yes all kosher, all very good.  There are people behind you, what kind of Shish Kabob do you want?
Customer 1:    Cause I’m Jewish and I can only eat Kosher food.
Customer 2:    Order your damn food or I will shove my light saber up your ass.  It’s fucking Street Meat! You’re lucky if it’s not a womp rat!

No I Don't Want to be Rich

So I was working a Convention in a museum with my Business Partner Wilson.  As soon as Wilson stepped away for a moment this rather studious looking gentleman came up and I went into the whole spiel about our books and what I had to sell.  After I mention that I'm also the company owner the following conversation occurs.

Science Geek:         So you started your own company so you could have your ideas published?
Me:            Pretty much.   I also try to help other writers and artists.
Science Geek:        Well I have this great idea see I am a geologist and there is so many great stories that can be created.  Especially when you add in all that we know about various dinosaurs and animals that are extinct but because their skeletons are preserved in rocks we really have a wealth of data…
Me:            Well we have a submissions page on our website so you could send me a proposal. (I hand him one of our flyers with our website on it.)
Science geek:        I don’t have the time to write it and I’m not really a writer but I figured if I gave you the idea when it sells we could split the money.
Me:            Wait you want me to write a story based on your knowledge of science but you don’t have a character concept, a story or even the time to write up a proposal.  Than I have to spend my money to get artists to work on it and hope it hits big so I can give half to you? 
Science Geek:        Yeah, it will make you millions. I know it! 
Me:            Thank you but that doesn’t seem like a project that I would be interested in working on.
Science Geek:        Don’t you want to be Rich?
Me:            No, No I don’t. 

The Last Tough Generation

Now this will sound a little like bragging but I believe I came from the last tough generation in history. I'm sure everyone says that this is just part of the whole "kids have it so easy today blah blah blah." No this has nothing to do with that. Each generation will always have it slightly easier than the one before, that's just the nature of time, technology and the normal human desire to see there kids live easier than themselves. This has more to do with seeing a difference in the way kids are raised today. See I grew up with all these stories of serial killers who were all abused and molested. So somewhere along the way a logic jump was made that we can’t discipline our children physically. Which is some bullshit. Everyone learns through positive and negative reinforcement I don't care what scientist, sociologist or any other fucking "ist" says. If you learn that if you do good things good thing happen you keep doing good things and the opposite is true. If a child knows that if he is disrespectful to his elders he will get the shit kicked out of him he tends to be more respectful.

One night while stopped at a red light two little shits walking across the street stopped in front of the car to talk to some one else. When the light turned red I honked the horn. The kids moved to the side but as I started to move one of the little failed abortion started yelling at me "Why you fucking honking your horn!!!" I stopped my car and started to back up the kid started moving fast and there is no way I am going to win a foot race with 14-year-old punk. In retrospect I should have hit him with the car.

When I was growing up I would never have mouthed off to some body... Hell I wouldn't of stopped in front of a car at a green light. Why? I been hit a lot by the time I was 16 and I learned i didn't like that.  See my dad was a hard drinking partier who didn't always come home, but we knew which bars to find him if we needed to. My mom was slightly more responsible but much more bitter about having to watch her own kids.

So it was not uncommon for my brother and I to be shipped to my aunt's house while my dad and mom "went to go see a man about a horse." I always wondered what fucking horse till I figured out they were going to party so hard that they didn't want to kids to see them wrecked the next day and that must have been fucking Olympic levels of debauchery cause I have seen my parents fucked up so many times that whatever happened on "those" weekends must be something so spectacular that I can only imagine animal erotica was involved. And trust me that image has often made me wonder if I should just eat a bullet rather than contemplate it as far as I have.

Anyway on a number of occasions I would eventually screw up in some way while my father was in some form of intoxication and I would eventually be beat. My parents don't remember these disciplinary steps to well but I do. By the time I graduated High school I had been hit with my fathers hand, a belt, a switch (A type of branch), a phone chord, a phone, a shoe, a can opener (Both kinds), a frying pan, a portable radio, the bible, a base ball bat, a can of creamed corn (closed), a plastic bottle of baby powder, a soft ball (there not really soft) A chanqlueta (flip flops), a Frisbee, a car and a few other items. By the way I am missing gaps from my childhood memory.

The other thing you have to realize was that it was totally acceptable for someone else to discipline your child. Granted my grandmother may have been a little crazy and gone too far on occasion. She would beat her grandchildren for the slightest thing. I remember getting beat because I was crying from a beating I had received 5 minutes earlier. Yeah the bitch was crazy in her later years she became a nice old lady but I know the truth she is trying to trick god so she can get into heaven. Hippies like to use the phrase it takes a village to raise a child. But kids from my neighborhood knew that it took an entire block to beat a kid's ass.

See not only could you not fuck up in front of your parents, you couldn't fuck up in front of your parents' friends cause they would smack you around a few times than tell your parent. So now you get beat for fucking up as well as embarrassing your parents in front of others. The worse thing is I know that my growing up was fairly tame compared to other kids. See these events were not daily. And I deserved to be disciplined but what would happen is the punishment would not match the incident. I grew up with kids who would just get beat for walking in the house. See I never viewed my life as the victim of abuse. Some people may disagree with me but to me that was just the price I paid for being a brat. But I knew kids who used to get hot irons to their backs. Cigarettes put out on them. See the difference between me and those kids were that even when they didn't do anything wrong. While I may not agree with my parents over how I was punished I've learned to understand that I should have been disciplined. Not necessarily with a can opener, than again I was a pretty big kid...

Dangers of Being a Geek

I have been a geek for a long time and it's not easy, although it is almost always fun. Now you have to understand that while most people immediately think of Geek as a nerd that dresses in a Storm Trooper costume and goes to some sort of geek conventions. This is not the definition of a geek but merely an example. A geek is some one who takes any thing to an extreme. Yes you too might be a geek. Guys who go to weekly meeting of fantasy foot ball wearing some sort of uniform are geeks. People who go to kiss concerts dressed as members of kiss are geeks. And anytime you step outside of the norm you run a risk of being ostracized. But sometimes there are hidden dangers that people don't realize.

Like the Batman urban myth.

I first heard this story when my friends mother broke out laughing while reading a dear Abby column. As the story goes a guy coming home heard a woman calling out "help! Help!" The guy knocked on the door and asked if everything was ok and the woman said she could not open the door. because she was tied up. After breaking down the door the guy finds the young lady is tied to her bed dressed as a sexy robin while her husband dressed as batman is unconscious on the floor. Apparently The couple were enjoying some sex games where the husband was supposed to jump from the dresser onto the bed but hit the ceiling and knocked himself out leaving the wife tied up.

What makes this so funny to me is the whole conversation that brought this up.

"Honey tonight could we try something a little freaky?"

"Like what?"

"Well I was thinking we could dress up in costume tonight."

"Do you want e to be a hooker again?"

"Well I was thinking we could do something from comics"

"Ohh can I be cat woman or maybe Wonder woman."

"Well I was thinking more boy wonderish."

I wish this was the only crazy sex story I have ever heard involving geeks but well there is the whole world of Furries and Plushies. If you don't know what this is these are people who dress up as animals for fun. Now not all of them engage in kinky sex acts but some really get off on the idea pf doing it as an animal. As such some of the costumes can be really intricate. Well as the rumor goes one guy who was rather large and just getting into it had a really intricate panda suit made. While engaging in some carnal delights he didn't take into account how hot the costume got. Apparently not wanting to stop and get a glass of water he just kept going until he passed out.

Being a geek can be hard.