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mygif

Do you mean the Star Trek TNG pinball machine? Oh man, I loved that thing when I was younger (I’d say “when I was a kid,” but I’m only 17). I used to make a beeline for it every time I went to the arcade at the local bowling alley; its still there today, even though pretty much every other awesome thing in that arcade is gone.
Incidentally, Chuck Colson really did find God, even if it was shamelessly publicized to garner sympathy. Not a big fan of his or anything, but all the same.

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mygif

“Nobody is as good at pinball as they are before they turn twenty.”

LIES, sir. I am *way* better at pinball now; back then, pinball existed solely to suck quarters out of my pockets faster than any arcade video game ever could, even Targ. Now, thanks to the training simulation that is Williams Pinball Classics on the Wii, I can survive up to TWO AND A HALF MINUTES on a single credit! (Note: this assertion has not yet been field-tested, as I haven’t managed to find a pinball machine in my current hometown.)

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mygif

You need to get a book deal. You could be the Canadian Wil Wheaton!

Okay, except for the not-appearing-on-Star-Trek bit.

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Leggo My Lego said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:06 am

Wow. I’m from OOB, and definitely watched Glory and some of the other movies you mentioned in the Temple, probably at the same showing you did. Small world.

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NCallahan said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:16 am

Damnit, Chris, now I want to visit Maine! You’re story of nearly getting killed by Mother Bitch Ocean makes me want to visit Maine!

Visit Maine and eat a Stouffer’s pizza!

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Lister Sage said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:26 am

There is absolutely nothing special about Disney. Nothing! Once you’re in your teens, which was when I went, the whole thing losses it’s majesty and it becomes just another theme park. Epcot was double crap unless you like a lot of foreign food (which I do, but we only went to the German restaurant).

There’s a great entry in The Completely Unofficial Doctor Who Encyclopedia about the Doctor Who pinball game. You’d have to read it yourself to really appreciate how funny it is, but needless to say it depicts the first five(?) Doctor’s running away from Davros and some Daleks, which really is not a flattering depiction of the Doctor. Also, the art of Peter Davison is supposed to have very girly hair. If I get time I’ll transcribe the entry.

I think some of the cause for your daredevil tactics is to make your mother realize that you even existed. Either that or she’d just given up. I’ve noticed that with parents of multiple children; the more of them they have the less they seem to care what their children do as long as they come back by the end of the day.

One final thing, and boy is this going to make me sound like a hypocrite, is that this thing really tends to ramble. You start off saying ‘I nearly died once. Let me tell you about it’. Then you spend nine paragraphs on this tangent about what the town was like, which is nice setting, but is superfluous to the real story. I mean by the time you start talking about cookies, I’m thinking “So when are you going to almost die?” Luckily, that’s when you get back to the point.

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karellan said on June 24th, 2009 at 10:46 am

I almost died once. I was in a car with my brother and my friend Tony, and we were driving at about 135 mph, because we were late for Tony’s curfew. We got home, went inside, and sat down on the couch to watch some TV. We heard a muffled “foomp” noise from outside, and when we went out to investigate, discovered that the engine of the car had exploded, scattering flaming debris across the yard. The engine block actually melted and fell through the bottom of the car to create a slab of bubbly metal in the driveway.

Lesson of the day: when you change your own fuel filter, get that fuel line back on FUCKING TIGHT.

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K. McAleese said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:11 am

I don’t know…I suppose I was expecting bodily injury, but I’ll acknowledge that nearly getting drowned must be scary to a kid.

My near-death experience involved a red light, a speeding car running said light, and me walking across the street. Result? Broken leg, lacerations along my left arm from the windshield, and a $400 ticket for the driver.

Lesson? Your mother was right when she said “Look both ways”.

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Joysweeper said on June 24th, 2009 at 11:28 am

Damn. I’ve almost drowned a few times and it’s been panic-inducing every time (and yet I kept going back in the water, like an idiot) but never like that.

You’re pretty good at stories, MGK. There might have been quite a tangent at the start there, but I like it.

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mygif

That old chestnut, eh? Almost drowning in the ocean has happened to me, like, 8 times. Imagine the story you just told, except also imagine getting dragged over a coral bed.

I think the time I most feared for my life was when I was on a class trip to France and me and a couple friends thought it would be a good idea to sneak up the back side of a Benedictine monastery so we wouldn’t have to pay to get in, but it was on the edge of a cliff in the mountains. So we were climbing around on the edge of the cliff trying to find a break in the fence, when suddenly I realized that I was one misstep away from a very terrifying and painful death, and was like, “I am retarded! Get me out of here!” and climbed down and paid the 5 euro or whatever.

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mygif

Maybe *all* Catholic moms can find a church on vacation — mine sure as hell did, and never let us escape it.

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Lawnmower Boy said on June 24th, 2009 at 1:20 pm

There’s this moment, when you’ve met someone, and you’re getting to know them, when, suddenly, they start telling you about their psychic powers, or when they were abducted by aliens, and the bottom just goes out. You think to yourself, “is this person crazy? Or are they lying?”
So it is with people who talk about Ohio, Kansas, New Jersey, the coast of Maine. Obviously these places aren’t real. They’re too one-dimensional, hooks to tell stories about “those crazy Americans.”*
So what do you do with someone who claims to have actually been there? (Or, worse, been _born_ there?) Back away slowly, I guess.
Fortunately, if you’re just reading their blogs, it’s not so much of a problem.

*You know what other places aren’t real? All those towns that only exist on the exit signs and mileposts of Highway i between Vancouver and Hope. Chilliwack? Abbotsford? Langley? Fort Langley? (What’s wrong, run out of silly names?) You can tell they aren’t real. Otherwise, why would they have built the highway around them?

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mygif

1) OOB is one of the greatest places imaginable to be a kid or a teenager. I spent the most memorable summer of my life there when I was 15.

2) I can’t believe this people who’re accusing you of “rambling”. The long introduction is totally central to the story. Geez.

These are good. Thank you for doing them.

Doug M.

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mygif

There is absolutely nothing special about Disney. Nothing! Once you’re in your teens, which was when I went, the whole thing losses it’s majesty and it becomes just another theme park.

LIES.

Disney World, as far as I’m concerned, gets BETTER once you’re an adult. Going as a teen with your family, yes, is not as much fun as going as a little kid– you can’t go off on your own, your younger siblings can’t do the stuff you want to do– but once you’re over the hump it gets amazing again.

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Sofa King said on June 24th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

Went to Disney as a little kid. Got sunburned and mosquitios up my nose, but I went through the Haunted Mansion about 4 times and loved it.

My ocean story just had me sitting in the water and looking up to see a wave with a horseshoe crab in it looking over me with wigglinh leggs and I screamed and the wave grabbed me and turned me in a somersault and nearly pantsed me. Good times.

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JQ_NW_American said on June 24th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

As someone who was born and raised in the US, I was familiar with all of the brands you mentioned, except Laverdiere’s. The only trace of Laverdiere’s now on the internet is an article titled “Rite Aid to buy LaVerdiere’s” from May 1994. I was 2. For a second there, I was worried I wasn’t giving my country’s franchises their due.

Furthermore, a little math reveals that I was 11 in 2002-2003 and never, ever would have gotten away with any of this. I live in a beach town with both ocean and bay (and a lake or two) and my parents would not have let me get anywhere beyond ankle deep. Beyond this, I would not have been able to amble around town for fear of stabbings and pedophiles. Even small, out of the way towns makes one wary of tweakers.

I guess things were different in the 1950s.

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Dennis Brennan said on June 24th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

I’m from Philly, and only discovered the Maine shore (Ogunquit, specifically) when I was about 30. To most people around here, going “down the shore” means southern New Jersey.

Ogunquit’s nice for me and my wife, and for our kids (they’re very little), but I wouldn’t think that kids between the ages of, say, ten and twenty-one would appreciate it as much– Ogunquit doesn’t have the boardwalk/mini-golf-type amenities.

Seeing all of the French Canadians there was kind of strange- in most places in the U.S. (vacation destinations included), when you hear a non-English language it’s more often Spanish than anything else.

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mygif

you know, I don’t have an I nearly died story. At least none I can think of

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Andrew Jeanes said on June 24th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

I was in Steam Whistle Brewing today and noticed that they were setting up pinball machines and standup arcade games in their gallery space for some event. No Doctor Who, but they did have the Data East Star Trek and Star Wars machines.

None of my “I nearly died” stories has a preamble entertaining enough to make it worth telling.

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mygif

What the fuck is “a Laverdiere’s?”

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squishydish said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:26 am

Aside from a few near-death car misses, I do have one good story:
In San Antonio when I was in college, it snowed an inch or so and the whole city was paralyzed. People were borrowing cafeteria trays to use as makeshift sleds to ride down the slope of the nearby overpass (which was empty because the city had no plows).
I went with some friends to hike around the nearby Japanese Tea Garden. We were having a snowball fight on a path that turned out to be adjacent to a cliff; I dodged and stepped back into space and felt myself falling.
I had time to think, “I could die, I could break my back.”
Then I hit water and went under. I was so stunned that for a few seconds, I didn’t know which way was up.
(See the fifth picture down, “Looking at the cliffs and the outside edge of the pond” at someone else’s blog at http://newsprout.blogspot.com/2008/04/san-antonio-japanese-tea-garden.html)
Eventually I reoriented myself and stood up in the chest-high water. I realized that snowballs were falling all around me; I thought at first that my friends were throwing them at me.
I heard them yelling questions and shook my head in bemusement, which freaked them out more since they had been calling, “Are you alright?”
As I waded across the pond to the edge and dragged myself out onto the pavement, they rushed down to join me.
They said that when I made that tremendous splashdown into the koi pond, all the fish seemed to think it was feeding time, because they went streaking TOWARD me. That’s why my friends were throwing snowballs around me, to drive them away.
So in a way, I dodged three deaths that day: by falling, by drowning, and by being nibbled to death by giant goldfish.

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mygif

Hahahahaha, squish, I´m pretty sure your story just one-upped MGK´s, not for writing style, in which he dominates, but for sheer ridiculousness.

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mygif

I had wondered how on earth it transpired that my sister went to the Maine seashore and came back engaged; it all seems much clearer now.

Must plan visit.

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I am a big fan of the old-school ZooBooks.

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mygif

How funny. I’m an American from Michigan, and every summer when I was a kid my family went up to Goderich, ON for a couple of weeks. It was pretty much the exact same experience, just reversing the countries. A little movie theater on the town square, old-timey atmosphere, and brands / chains that were different and intriguing. Now my sister is taking her kid there every summer. And though the city has grown it still retains the friendly, traditional without being uber-conservative atmosphere. If you’ve never been, it’s a great place to spend a couple weeks in the summer.

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Mary Warner said on October 14th, 2009 at 10:22 pm

I’ve nearly died several times, but I don’t have any interesting stories about it. With me it was always endocrine disorders leading to dehydration, and fluctuating blood-sugars, and also I had a few serious bouts of pneumonia. But there’s never any excitement in disease.

I’ve lived in the US my entire life, and I’ve never heard of Laverdiere’s, or Shaw’s, and I’ve only heard of Waldenbooks on TV. There are none around here.

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