Redondo Beach Fun Factory!

Lyndsay and I had to kill some time while the guest house we are currently staying in was getting shown to future tenants. So we ventured on down to the Redondo Pier and went to the Fun Factory.

It’s this arcade down by the beach. They have a tilt-a-whirl in the middle of it. A wall of skee-ball lanes. Zillions of those crappy gambling/aim the token machines. And randomly throughout are some awesome arcade cabinets.

Lyndsay cashed in $10 and we set to work to take over the place. We started off with a little Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker.

We dropped about a buck in the machine before we danced so hard it broke. Right as we finished the second boss. I was player one for the record. Then we moved right along to an old favorite of mine.  The TMNT Arcade game.

A lot of times people would give up after so long. But we had a crap ton of quarters and determination. We played as all four turtles at some point in the game. Each one had technical difficulties of a different kind.
Leonardo’s joystick didn’t respond correctly. He could move Up, Down and Right, but no Left. This meant that if you walked too far to the right side of the screen you were stuck and couldn’t go back. So as Leo, I spent a lot of time either getting punched by off-screen baddies to the right, or hanging out on the left and letting Lyndsay do the dirty work.
Michelangelo's joystick did every direction except Up. I could sometimes go Up on a Diagonal Left, but not always. So as Mikey, I stayed at the bottom half of the screen trying to keep everything under control.
Donatello had the most responsive joystick. Go figure Donny would be the best off technically.
Raphael also had a fairly responsive joystick according to Lyndsay.

Lyndsay started off as Donny, but we learned that the joysticks weren’t the only glitch. Every quarter in the first slot gave both Leo and Mikey two lives, and every quarter in the second slot gave Donatello and Raphael two lives. This worked out so that for every quarter you could play as two turtles. We played for most of the game where I would switch between Leo and Mikey, and Lyndsay would handle Raph and Donny. This became a problem when, due to the old blurred screen, you would lose track of your turtle. Lyndsay would think Donny died when it was Leo and so she would activate Raph. Then when Leo respawned we would have three turtles running about. You really show your skills when you micro-manage an arcade cabinet. By the end of the game we had switched to just using Don and Raph, so that each quarter gave us both a pair of lives. I’m not sure exactly how much we spent, but we had $2.75 left when this screen came up.

Not exactly a history making end to a video game, but it instills one with a sense of pride to know we wasted over $5 in quarters to earn this screen.

To use up the last few quarters we made our way to another old favorite of mine. The Simpsons Arcade. We tried out all four characters on this one too before we ran out of change. Marge was a little sticky on the joystick. Caused me to lose a bunch. Homer worked great, which is good, because that’s my personal favorite and the best character to be in this game. Bart seemed to be a little iffy on the joystick when Lyndsay was playing, and Lisa while fine with the joystick, her jump button didn’t work. That caused a few issues. We got to the 8th level before letting the timer run out but I was pleased to see a screen pop up alerting me that my time as Homer earned me the #1 score on the machine. I entered my initials and took this shot for bragging rights.

All in all, it was a really good night. Some great gaming. If I make it back I might pop a couple quarters into the Episode 1: Racer Arcade, that’s the one with Anakin’s pod that you sit in. Let me see if I can find a picture online of it….

There we go. Fun Factory, you get a C+ in my book. You got really high scores for having the great cabinets, but you lost points for not having any pinball machines. Also the machines you did have had major problems. If you’d hire someone to restore those or just sell me the machine, you could go down in history as the greatest ever.

Until next time true believers,

“The Erik”

What are you doing with your life!?

Well, where do I even begin…
(psst… try the beginning.)
Oh, good idea, me.

So life never ceases to amaze me. Never letting me rest too long, always keeping me on my toes. I wrote on here awhile back about how my life got twisted, turned upside down. And I told you all about how I became a technician near Bel Air. Torrance to be exact.

I haven’t talked much about my adventures in California. Of which there have been many. Not as much as I would have liked, but I wasn’t established here very well. I packed up and moved so quickly that it put me behind on my bills and forced to borrow from friends. Friends should never be treated as banks, and I hate borrowing from them, but desperate times causes us all to bend our own personal rules.

10 months I have been out here in Los Angeles. It has flown by so fast. From the first few months trying to get settled, the next few months trying to balance work and play. Then moving down to Torrance with Lyndsay to be closer to my office, and now even more new adventures, but we’ll get to those soon enough.

From the first couple of weeks out here and getting my rental car rammed on the way to work, I realized this was going to be a completely different ball game from mild Kansas. And boy was it. The accident with the rental was drawn out for a few months. A crazy senior from Yemen was the one who ran the light and smashed into the car. A month after the accident he tried to sue me for injuries. Luckily, because the evidence that he ran the light was overwhelming he decided to withdraw his suit.

Kyle and I played car tetris with most of my worldly belongings loaded up his parents’ denali and played “Convoy” across the country. We bought walkie talkies so we could talk to each other even though we were in separate cars. The “10-4 good buddy” jokes only lasted about 5 hours into the trip, but they repeated at hours 13 and 21. We also discovered that our separate FM transmitters for our mp3 players had a range large enough so that we could both listen to the same music. Basically we turned our road trip into raid night on ventrilo. “More DOTS! Many gas stations, left side!”

The car lasted until around February. When I fell prey to Interstate 405. The 405 has been dubbed the absolute worst highway in the whole Unites States for traffic. I was mildly handling the 60-90 minute commute to work from the apartment. In fairness, California residents did warn me that it would be a horrible drive. I was a naive Kansas boy who thought 30 miles meant 30 minutes. Which it does in Kansas. But alas, during the routine stop and go, I go’d went i should have stopped and rear ended the car in front of me. Really did a number on my car. It was drivable, but it was ugly. Then on top of that, to save money back in Kansas, I had set my insurance deductible to a ridiculous $2000. The initial estimate was set at $2600 for the structural damage. The hood was bent in on itself and couldn’t be opened. While I saved up for it, I rode the bus to work to save on gas and to give my poor car a break. The bus ride changed my commute time from 60-90 minutes, to 2 to 2.5 hours. I was not enjoying life very much. With the commute to work taking a round trip total of 5-6 hours out of my day, starting with catchign the bus at 4:30AM and getting home around 7PM, I had enough time to eat and sleep before starting the cycle over.

But I lived with Kyle and all my new friends, Heather and Arazi, TJ, and the illusive Turner. And while they were not roommates proper Laura and James were there all the time. This was my new family. But our schedules did not play nice. Kyle for instance, slept in until noon… 9AM! Sorry Kyle, you were totally up by 9. Some days. When you had something to do. So Kyle’s average sleeping schedule had him still in bed at least 5 hours after I left the apartment. I would estimate his average bedtime was at least midnight, probably closer to 1AM. Out of the 24 hour day, I was away with work for around 15 of them. Leaving me with 9 hours inside of the apartment for leisure activity and sleep. 6 of those hours were during my friends’ prime time, 7PM-1AM. So from those hours as a group we would hang out, play video games like Rock Band or maybe even board games, watch movies, just generally being an awesome little group of friends. We were a community. But by the time I got home, I wanted to go to bed. I rarely did at first. Thinking, “I’ll sleep tomorrow!” and I would partake in the evenings activities, trying to make it through the day on 3-4 hours of sleep.

Eventually the need for sleep won out, I would come home, sometimes trying to sneak into the apartment as to not let anyone notice my presence and go straight to bed. I would remain there asleep until they came looking for me. Wondering why I would not play in all their reindeer games. Weekends would come and I just wanted to lie in bed the entire time.

My work ethic faltered, my social life faltered, and my friends began to feel I was being distant. I began to feel my routine was becoming a rut. Then I actually started feeling the need to become distant. I am pretty sure this caused some ruptures in some of my new friendships, which I hope one day they can be repaired.

But it came down to a choice, Work or Play?

What could I do? What would any of us do? Seriously, what would you choose?

Feel free to leave some comments, I’ll be continuing my tales and catching you all up on my many adventures. Until next time, true believers…

“The Erik” Sanburn
Sleepless Wonder

Project Wolfman: Or I How I Learned to Stop Shaving and Love the Beard

Day 49: Today was my birthday. The beard continues to grow. With each day it looks more and more like an upside down afro.  While browsing the internet I discovered how much I am starting to resemble Kurt Russell from 1982’s “The Thing.”

My hair growth is not as noticeable at this juncture due to the rapid facial hair expansion across my jaw. More updates as the beard thickens…

Project Wolfman: Or I How I Learned to Stop Shaving and Love the Beard

Sometimes in a man’s life he has to make some tough decisions. And then sometimes he make make some really questionable decisions. One such decision is my acceptance of TJ’s challenge to go a whole year without shaving or cutting my hair. I thought to myself, “Why not?” And then TJ upped the ante a little, to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse. TJ and Heather added some brutal stakes into this little challenge. If I maintain uninterrupted hair growth for a whole year, I will be rewarded with a 12 pack of Pepsi every week for 6 months. That’s approximately 288 cans of Pepsi! How could I resist!? There is a downside obviously, should I forfeit and give myself a much needed trim before the year is up, then I will be buying Heather and TJ a 12-pack a week for six months.

So here we are after the first month. April 1st, 2011 is zero day. We’ll see how crazy my hair gets this coming year. The things I do for Pepsi and/or money. One of these days I’m going to get myself into trouble.  Now if you’ll excuse me I have some hair to grow.

 

Until next time true-believers!

“The Erik” Sanburn

Earthquakes are God's cell phone vibrating...

I like to stay topical in my blogs. That's why I'm currently posting a five part story that took place last year some time about some stuff that no one cares about. So I keep hearing about these earthquakes all over the place. They were all the buzz after Haiti got one. Well Los Angeles isn't about to be topped by some little island, we got our own earthquake this morning! So I thought I would provide some rudimentary knowledge about earthquakes for everyone since these quake things are going around nowadays.

EARTHQUAKE SAFETY TIPS

Earthquakes can strike without warning, and being prepared for such a disaster can mean the difference between life and death. Here are some tips to help you and your loved ones make it through a quake:

• Those living in areas not prone to earthquakes can respond quickly to the plight of disaster victims in quake zones by complacently smirking and saying, "I told you so.
• To minimize loss and damage in a quake, try not to own things.
• Experiencing an earthquake is terrifying, but a majority of people caught in one do survive. During the tremors, try to resist the temptation to have sex with pets or houseplants.
• Practice your burrowing-out-from-under-40-tons-of-rubble skills ahead of time.
• Look out your window often. If you see a large, zig-zag-shaped crevasse moving rapidly from the horizon toward your home, step either to the right or the left.
• Do you have a treasured childhood toy? Perhaps a stuffed animal, such as a teddy bear? Well, let's see Mr. Bear help you now.
• For those who fear earthquakes, it may comfort you to know that a majority of the damage during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake did not come from the tremors themselves. Instead, it was from the raging, out-of-control fires that consumed most of the city.
• A doorway is the safest place to be during a quake. Eat, sleep and work in doorways.
• Be sure to mail your house insurance payments a full five business days before a major earthquake strikes.
• In the event of a quake, get under something heavy, such as a desk, a table or your uncle.
• If you are caught in a major earthquake in Southern California and are part of the entertainment industry, take a moment or two to reflect on how grossly you've wasted your life.

So there are some good tips for earthquakes. I had never felt a "quake", as the cool kids call it, before. I wasn't sure if that was what it was when I woke just before 4 o'clock this morning. Kinda felt like i was sleeping on a vibrating phone. All in all, I'm glad nothing bad happened.

Until next time Donutheads,

"The Erik" Sanburn