Category Archives: 1995

No One Loved Their Past More Than Me… And Now It’s Time To Leave It Behind

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Anyone who knows me, even a little bit, knows I’m completely obsessed with my past. I’m not talking about my relationships or my friendships. I’m talking about my experiences. From school to my toys to shows and movies I watched to stores my family shopped at. I had the happiest childhood of anyone I’ve ever met. I still enjoy the shows I enjoyed as a child, including He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe, The Lone Ranger and Looney Tunes.

The happiest period of my life was from whatever point I can originally remember (probably the age of four) through the spring of 2005. At that point, things went downhill and, being honest, they continued in a downward spiral for the next 18 years. The negative points of my life were definitely a result of unhappy relationships but that’s a story for another time.

A couple of times I tried to recreate happy times during my not-happy period and it was an absolute disaster. For example, one of my happy times was a dinner and shopping trip with my parents on December 29, 1995. I attempted to recreate the experience in 2008, with a cretin I was dating at the time. Some of the stores I had been to in 1995 were closed, as was the restaurant I ate at with my mom and dad. Everything about the 2008 trip was bad. So bad, in fact, that it almost ruined the original experience for me, which was the exact opposite of what I had been trying to accomplish. And I’m worried I’m going to do it again.

I have plans this year to do a project I did in 1995-96, as well as 2001. My project is to create myself on NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07, playing my way all the way through. I’ve went in depth on my project in previous blog entries so I don’t want to belabor the issue, but I’ve been wanting to do this again for over 20 years. And I figured with better equipment (I can play the PS2 games on my backward compatible PS3 instead of the NES I had in 1995). But I’m concerned I’m going to be disappointed because it’s not a carbon copy of my original project. Even though it’s more a matter of mindset than anything else. But I’m hopeful that I can see my way clear and enjoy it.

Which brings me to the whole purpose of this entry.

My obsession with my history is a double-edged sword. While I loved my childhood, my teenage years and my early 20s, that time is gone and nothing I can do will bring it back. And I’m trying as hard as I can to let those days dissolve into the past and not base my whole life on how happy I am NOW in comparison to how happy I was THEN. The fact is, I should be happier now than I’ve been at any point in my life but I just can’t feel it. I can’t find it. I am hoping that finally getting on with my project will bring back the happy I felt in 1995 and 2001. But I can’t let that be the singular deciding factor in what I’m dealing with.

The past 18 years haven’t been so bad that I couldn’t get through them but they have been horrible. Relationships I wouldn’t wish on anyone. One with a fat piece of garbage in the late 2000s that nauseates me even to think about, and she was the one I attempted to recreate my 1995 trip with. The whore of Preston County in the 2010s who nearly ruined my life. A girl in Chicago who was 35 going on 15. These situations made the past 18 years absolutely dreadful. And I’m past all of that now. I’m in a situation that is perfect now. I should be happier than I’ve ever been. But I’m letting those miserable 18 years pull down my happy past as well as my current and my future. Even women I wasn’t romantically attached to, like a girl I knew from 1999 until 2023 just decided to make my life a little more miserable than it needed to be. And I considered her to be my closest confidant in a complete and total friendship situation. After re-assessing the situation, I realize she needed to go as much as the women I had dated in the past. And that needs to be something I never look back on.

I have to let the good and the bad go and stop thinking about how happy I was from 1982 to 2004 and how miserable I was from 2005 to 2023. Those times are both over, and while I’m not as happy as I was in my younger days, I am MUCH happier than I was at any point since 2005. And rather than focusing on either of those things, I am trying so hard to focus forward. And I just don’t know if I can pull it off. If my project doesn’t work out, I don’t know what I’m going to do from there. I’ve put all of my eggs in one basket and I’m afraid I’m going to drop it. And then I’ll know that things are far worse now than I’m willing to accept.

So, for the next 2 months I’m focused on updating baseball rosters on MLB The Show 23 and making an attempt at running franchise mode this season. And if that falls short by any length, it’s time to start on my project and I have everything leaning on that decision. We’ll see what happens but right now I don’t have the highest of hopes and I’m still obsessed with the past. And I have to get past that to move forward regardless of what I’m going to do.

I know this is all kind of a mess, I just felt like it would do me good to get all these feelings out and see how things go in the future. Thank you for taking the time to read. Peace.

The Ultimate NCAA Sports Video Game Project

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It’s difficult to even know where to begin with this blog entry. Even though it’s many years in the making, it’s still difficult to put everything into words and try to lay the groundwork for an explanation. So this may seem long-winded and rambling but it’s the most important blog post I’ve ever written.

In late June I’m going to be walking away from social media and the Chicago White Sox. Yes, I know, I’ve said it before and did not follow through. This was a timing issue more than an issue of desire. I’ve been planning this out carefully, down to the last detail. And while I’ve been considering this move since at least 2011, the actual want to do this stretches back much further than that… 2001… 1997… As far as 1993.

I’ll begin with exactly what my plan is and why I want to do it. The plan part is easy, I want to play an entire college “dynasty,” or career, in the video game world. I want to play four seasons of college football, basketball and baseball. You may wonder what that has to do with the White Sox or social media, and I’ll get to that as I go on. The why, I can’t answer for sure. It may be a midlife crisis, it may be a longing for happier days, of which I’ve had many, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It may be a lot of things combined.

As a lot of you know, EA Sports stopped making college sports games in the 2010s (and at least one college franchise in the 2000s) due to the athletes not receiving any kind of royalties due to their likenesses being used in the games. The last college football game hit the shelves in 2014, the last college basketball game in 2010 (both on the PlayStation 3) and the last college baseball game (of which there were only two) in 2007 (on the PlayStation 2). So it is here that I made my decision to play the entire Dynasty on the 2007 games for the PlayStation 2. NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07.

Yes, they’re severely outdated (like 16 years outdated), but that means less than one might imagine since updated rosters are available not only for download but on memory cards that can be purchased from eBay or other online stores. So while the graphics will be extremely dated, the experience won’t be.

Now, I want to take a step back in time and explain how I got to this point.

I have a long experience as a sports video gamer. One of the absolute highlights of this came back in 1993, when my friend Calvin and I spent a weekend playing Baseball Stars on the NES.

Baseball Stars was the first video game to include a fully programmable option, you could create your own teams and your own leagues, even with the ability to make players male or female. This was unheard of at the time, and that game was, and still is, one of my all time favorites. Calvin and I had what might be considered a fantasy draft, selecting players for our teams, as well as one minor league team each. We then created ourselves and our entire teams and proceeded to play an entire season.

The idea of “creating” yourself in a game stuck with me. My next favorite sports game (chronologically) was Tecmo Super Bowl. This was the first sports game to feature not only real teams but real players, but the “creation” option hadn’t reached it’s point in time yet. At this point, my senior year in high school, my friend Joe Nunez and I played a complete season, just “pretending” we were the players in the game, as Joe played as the Cleveland Browns and I played as the New Orleans Saints. But I wanted to “be” me.

In the summer of 1995, I bought a copy of an old NES game called John Elway’s Quarterback. This game had neither real players or real teams, just a bunch of bland players and city names instead of teams. It’s at this point I began the “dynasty” concept; I would play four “seasons” of football on John Elway’s Quarterback and then I would start playing Tecmo Super Bowl as an NFL draftee.

John Elway’s Quarterback doesn’t have any kind of stat saving ability, so while I played I kept a spiral notebook in my hand, and every time I completed a pass or ran for positive yardage, I would write that number down in parenthesis in my notebook, and if I threw an incomplete pass, I’d mark that with an “x.” Then I could figure out my completion percentage and total yards, as well as my touchdowns and interceptions. I used the “Los Angeles” team on the game as the UCLA Bruins, and when I finished, I was “drafted” by the Cleveland Browns. I proceeded to play seven seasons with the Browns on Tecmo Super Bowl, winning three Super Bowls before I quit. For whatever reason, I didn’t keep all of my stats like I wanted to.

The next time I decided to do a Dynasty was 1997, and it was much more advanced and involved than the 1995 version. This time, I was using the Super Nintendo and was playing both football and basketball at UCLA, using College Football USA 97 and NCAA Final Four Basketball and when I finished, I created myself on Madden 97. This was leaps and bounds ahead of what I had done before, with College Football USA 97 keeping all of the important stats I needed and, while NCAA Final Four Basketball didn’t really have a season option, I made the best of it and played what amounted to four full seasons. When this was finished, I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers on Madden 97 but I never got around to actually playing for them.

This was not my least successful run, but it was definitely not my best. While College Football USA 97 was a million miles ahead of keeping my own stats with a “fake” team, there was still no option to create myself (however, on the Sega Genesis version of College Football USA 97, player creation IS an option) and the game play was so unbelievably slow, there was no real enjoyment to be had playing the game. But the fact that I was able to play football AND basketball was a revelation and really did change everything.

Fast forward to 2001. I had upgraded to a Sony PlayStation and the first thing I did was purchase NCAA GameBreaker 2000 and NCAA Final Four 2000, as well as NFL GameDay 2000. These games were all produced by Sony’s 989 Studios, and what a major improvement compared to my previous dynasty. I could play a full career at UCLA in both football and basketball with real stats, schedules, etc.

I enjoyed this immensely, and allowed myself to be drafted on NFL GameDay 2000 and ended up with the Carolina Panthers as a second round pick. I decided to run with it. A couple of games into my second season with the Panthers, it said my character had suffered a knee injury and I ended up being out the rest of the season. This was doubly bad when, at the end of the year, I was on the Panthers’ list of retired players. This bothered me more than it should have, and it would be nine years before I decided to try again.

I went on to pick up MLB 2000, and by 2004 I was completely off on college (and pro) football and basketball, and subsequently bought MLB 2004 and MLB 2005. Once the MLB The Show series started, I bought every game every year, including 2023. As I mentioned, during this time, EA Sports stopped producing college sports games, and at some point in the early 2010s I did buy NCAA Football 10 and NCAA Basketball 10 and eventually bought NCAA Football 13 and NCAA Football 14. They were never used and, in fact, NCAA Football 14 has never been out of the case. I just didn’t feel anything anymore for college sports, I was all in on baseball.

The problem with that is I have burned myself out beyond the ability to even function anymore. My life has been all baseball, all day, 365 days a year since 2004. I got on social media in 2005 (MySpace) and it’s been posting stories and lineups and transactions every day for 18 years. And I am ready for a change.

And I’m ready to take a step back in time to happier days and even though I know the experience won’t be the same, I still want to take the time and do this one more time, a little better than the last time I did it, because now it’s time to play college football, basketball and baseball. The complete experience.


I have procured brand new, unopened copies of NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07 as well as updated rosters for each. I’m going to create myself and play all the way through, all three sports, until I “graduate.” After that, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I may “get drafted” on Madden 07 or I may buy the newest Madden (whenever that may be) for the PS5 or I may break down and play Road To The Show for the first time on MLB The Show. I’m not worried about it right now. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Right now, my focus is on unfocusing on the White Sox.

I’ve not yet decided if I’m going to do this dynasty with the WVU Mountaineers or the UCLA Bruins but at the moment it’s definitely 90% UCLA. That decision will come within the next month. The other decision I’m battling with is what to do with social media. I know the vast majority of people who are friends or followers on social media are there for my White Sox posts, so my plan at the moment is to just create new social media accounts strictly for college sports. I’ll keep my other accounts in case this idea falls flat or something happens to hasten my return to the way things are now. I’m hopeful that doesn’t happen and I hope my friends who enjoy college sports will follow me to my new platforms. That decision will also be made in the next month.

So, in closing, as I stand right now, I’m fully planning on making this project a reality. And while I’ll be using PS2 games, I have a backward compatible PS3 that does upgrade the graphics slightly. Once I’ve made the decision, I’ll be boxing up all of my White Sox memorabilia and putting it in storage. I figure this project should take roundabout two years to finish completely, at which a White Sox return is certainly possible.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

BACK IN THE CLINK: FACEBOOK JAIL 2022

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Back in the clink.

This is my 11th trip to Facebook Jail, and I consider it to be just about as legitimate as the rest of my trips.

A friend of mine had posted a video on my wall, taken at the MLB All Star Game in Los Angeles. A group of kids were standing behind a fence waiting for a player to sign baseballs for them. At one point, a man with gray hair and a gray beard, forced his way into the line, shoving children in the process, to get a ball autographed. I commented that this man “should be taken behind a building and have a few of his bones broken.” Shortly thereafter, I was told that I would be going to Facebook Jail for 5 days.

My crime? “Inciting violence.”

To be fair, I had 2 prior warnings. In December 2021 I posted a meme featuring a scene from the film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In the scene, Clark and Rusty Griswold are hanging Christmas lights on the roof and the caption read “Rusty, like Jeffrey Epstein, these lights aren’t going to hang themselves.” This was a violation for “promoting suicide,” even though Epstein memes are strewn about Facebook like party favors on New Year’s Eve.

In November 2021, I committed the ultimate sin, which I’m surprised didn’t land me in Facebook Jail permanently, or maybe even in “real” jail: I posted that there are two genders and everything else is mental illness. That was removed for “hate speech.”

So, before I jump into where I go from here, I just want to put a few things out there because I’m not ashamed of my beliefs and I will continue to hold them whether or not I’m able to mention them. There’s a fine line between free speech and a complete shutdown on same, so if this also gets me into trouble, well, I’ll talk about that later in this dissertation.

I hate Joe Biden with the fury of 1000 suns. If I woke up tomorrow and he had died from COVID, I’d consider it a national holiday. I think he’s a miserable, lying, good for nothing, worthless piece of garbage and he has been for as long as I can remember. I first became aware of him in 1987, during the 1988 Presidential race, which we covered in my 6th grade social studies class. This was my introduction to politics. Ol’ Joe was running for the Democrat nomination but had to drop out after it was discovered he was falsifying (i.e. lying about) his academic history.

Along with Joe, I hate his entire party, especially the far left liberals. The ones that Malcolm X very eloquently outed in the 1960s who have only become worse over time. The “woke” folks. The “trans community.” You people are all sick. Like mentally ill.

I’ve made no attempt to hide my feelings about these “people” on social media, and to be fair to the Facebook cocksuckers, er, “fact checkers,” it wasn’t my posts on this garbage that landed me in Facebook Jail. To be honest, I’ve had very few problems posting my thoughts on these subjects on social media, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

The issue at hand is that I was at a tipping point anyway. I’m not in a good place in my life. I’m burned out on baseball (I think), but I’m not sure if I’m actually burned out or if its being pushed at me by certain people in my life that I’m burned out. There is a person in my day to day life that is doing everything possible to change everything about me. I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t do that to anyone. I keep hoping it will subside, but if it doesn’t, I will need to extricate this person from my life. However, there’s also a possibility that she’s being honest, I may well BE burned out.

I’ve been trying to roll my life back as much as I can to the last time I was happy, which was anytime between 1995 and 2005. Actually, to be completely fair, I was happy from the day I was born until around May 2005. Since then, it’s been one disaster after another, more misery piled upon more unhappiness, so I’ve been trying to find a way to go back to happier times.

What has been at the center of my unhappiness for 17 years? Social media and the internet. I don’t beat around the bush about this, it’s been women on social media that have made me miserable for 17 years. Every unhappy moment and every aggravation can be traced to some female I never should have been dealing with in the first place. This is not hyperbole in any sense of the word. These are facts. Those who have been around me can verify that this is a fact.

So, part of what I have been looking at doing to try to turn back the clock is getting rid of social media. Beyond that, I have fantasized of getting rid of my smart phone. I recently got my dad a 4G flip phone (which I had no idea still existed) and this has made me yearn for one. I can’t get rid of the internet completely, as I have 2 internet businesses I run so getting completely off the grid is impossible. But it’s possible to remove myself from 90% of it.

However, I’m not positive that’s going to make me any happier, and a large number of friends have agreed that leaving social media isn’t going to make me any happier. One person, though, thinks its a great idea because, as mentioned, she would like to change everything about me. My theory up until now has been if I changed social media to fit me, I might be OK with it.

I’ve been active on Twitter for a decade, and I’ve had less trouble on there with my posts than I have had on Facebook, which seems to be the polar opposite of the problems most people have. I’ve had an Instagram account since around 2016, and my problems on there are pretty much equal to my problems on Facebook (which makes sense because they’re under the same corporate umbrella and are likely policed by the same “keystone cops” who fact check on Facebook.

Ultimately, I don’t think turning back time (or making a half-assed attempt to) is going to be the answer, it might seem novel at first but I think it would get boring very quickly. Yes, I was very happy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but I’m also not the same person I was back then. Everything has changed, including my mentality. I was naturally happy back then. Now I would be taking an angry and bitter version of myself who is 20 to 25 years older and trying to stick myself into a situation that is devoid of the few things that make me happy NOW but trying to recreate the things that made me happy THEN. Considering how much has changed, I just don’t think it’s possible.

When I look back 25 to 27 years ago, I was in college. I had a girlfriend across the county. I had one video game console, an original Nintendo. I watched Three’s Company and Perry Mason on a daily basis, taping them off television and watching the VHS tapes over and over and over. I had my cat, Bubbles. My mom was still living then, obviously. I didn’t have a lot, but I was so happy.

Fast forward to now. I have everything. PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 5 consoles which play games for every generation, as well as a Retron 5 to play everything else. A 55-inch 4K TV. Those shows I enjoyed? I have the entire series on DVD, not just the ones I mentioned but several others that were a huge part of the 2000s for me. I have more “stuff” than I have room to put it.

And it really doesn’t do anything for me. Back in those days I had a word processor that looked just like a computer from the early 1990s, complete with a full size CRT monitor. I was so happy. Now I have a $1000 gaming computer with a 25” monitor and it’s just kind of “meh.” The 55” TV instead of the 25” TV. A Blu-ray player instead of the old VCR I build out of parts from 3 broken ones. Multiple streaming services instead of cable. But I also have DISH Network. I have everything.

And I have nothing, because none of it is making me happy.

I know a lot of this, and by extension, my unhappiness on social media, is mostly in my head. I do things that annoy me. For example, if I would just completely ignore the news, be it on the radio, the TV or the internet, and I never saw Joe Biden’s face again, that would go a long way toward making me less angry. I need to stop listening to people who want me to change for their benefit. My life is my own, it belongs to no one else and no one else should have any say in it.

So at this moment, what I’m looking at doing is, when I return to Facebook on Tuesday, changing my entire presentation. Instead of anti-Biden memes and “woke is a joke” posts, I need to stick strictly to baseball, maybe a cat meme here and there, and not let politics so much as be a blip on my radar. All the news does is make me angry, and it needs to be cleansed from my life.

I also need to eliminate the people who cause me these problems as well. And there are several of them. Whether or not that means unfriending, unfollowing or just blocking, they need to be where I can’t see them and don’t have to deal with them. I am just at a point in my life where I can’t deal with such flagrant stupidity and mental insanity. Especially when it accomplishes nothing for them and nothing for me. I’m also going to go on Twitter and do the same thing.

Hopefully, this will work. If it doesn’t, I’ll admit I was wrong and consider my other options, including complete disconnection from the world and an attempt to go back to 1999 in 2022. Even though I know it won’t work, at least I will make the attempt. I hope I won’t have to, because it will likely hurt more than just knowing how much unhappier I am today than I thought I was.

In closing, I apologize for the fact that you just spent 15 minutes reading the ramblings of a guy who just let his mind vomit out everything that was going through it and you won’t get those 15 minutes back. But if you happen to see this and you know of a way I can try to close my life off to things I don’t want to see or hear about in the digital age, and how to keep from voicing my displeasure on social media with everything that aggravates me, please fill me in.

Thank you for your time. Peace.

Letting Go Of The Illusions Of The Past…

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Anyone who knows me has no doubt become annoyed at one time or another as I have reminisced on the happiness I had in 1995. It was truly an amazing year. For Easter, my girlfriend at the time presented me with the love of my life, my tabby cat, Bubbles, who passed away in 2013. I graduated from high school and started to college. I reintroduced myself to some of the classic TV programs I had enjoyed in my youth (particularly Three’s Company and Perry Mason).

I also began my lifelong love of sports simulation video gaming. Something that didn’t exist at the time but that like-minded people helped to bring to fruition in the following years. I also began my love of UCLA athletics. This actually started when I picked the Bruins to win the 1995 men’s basketball tournament in the pool at school, and they did, the first time in my life a team that I followed one any kind of championship. The UCLA baseball team would follow suit in 2013.

But when you brush away all the fluff, 1995 wasn’t the best year ever. By a long shot. There were still a multitude of annoyances. A relationship I was quickly growing tired of, that engulfed all my spare time and left me with little opportunity to enjoy any of my growing pursuits.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, since next year will mark 25 years since my most “incredible” year. And today I realized, I have had at least three better years than 1995; the earliest being 1982, followed by 2010, and amazingly, 2019, which may be the best year of all.

I started Kindergarten in 1982. My obsessions at that time were the Lone Ranger and the Dukes Of Hazzard. I would soon be introduced to Masters Of The Universe. It was a great time to be a kid. And I remember few moments of unhappiness. My uncle committed suicide that year, but at five years old, who has a grasp on the concept of death? I do remember sitting on his front porch, trying to play his fiddle as I saw the musicians do on Hee Haw every Saturday night.

My family took our first vacation in 1982, to New Mexico and the surrounding area. I remember it, but not clearly. Obviously there were more important things going on then.

To compare 1995 and 1982 is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but taken in the right context, there really is no comparison for me. No doubt, 1982 was the better year.

The same applies to 2010. I had become a single man in November 2009 after a rather annoying three-and-a-half year relationship that was ill-conceived and ill-advised. I would spend a full year single, 375 days to be exact, minus a six-week period where I was in a “Facebook official” relationship that was anything but real. I had an amazing time and really started to grasp what it meant to live. I had good years prior to that (2000-04 were absolutely incredible and maybe equal to 2010, but included more minor aggravations) but 2010 was the closest thing to perfect.

Until now.

Today I elected to take stock of things and I realized that this is, without question, the golden year of my life. I should be happy beyond description. I have everything I could possibly ever want. In 1982, I had a 19” tabletop TV, a ColecoVision video game console and a small, handheld cassette player with three blank cassettes. The VCR hadn’t made it’s way into my world yet.

In 1995, things had expanded dramatically. I had a 25” TV, VCR, Nintendo Entertainment System, a 200-watt stereo with dual cassette deck and a Sony Walkman plugged into the auxiliary jack. I was videotaping Three’s Company and Perry Mason from TV and watching them at my leisure. At that time, it felt like I had it all and I had no idea what the future would bring.

Now it’s 2019. I have a 55” Samsung Smart TV, a DVD recorder, a PlayStation 3 and 4, a Retron 5 (which plays a multitude of old video game cartridges), a 400-watt stereo with a 5-CD changer, an incredible PC I built myself, a Samsung Galaxy S8, more DVDs and CDs than I could ever watch or listen to for the rest of my life, and enough money to have anything I want.

Even though that’s the case, I still find myself dreaming back to 1995. And I can’t stand it. The problem with me is, when I’m unhappy, I try to wish myself away to happier times. But when I’m in happy times, I do the same thing. I can remember back in 1995 reminiscing about happier days, 1982 and 1985 and 1989. Then by the time I got to the early 2000s, I was pissing that time away wishing back to 1995. And here I am, in my happiest period, still wishing the same.

In 1995, I didn’t have the luxury of pulling up any TV show in the world and watching it at any time I wanted, only the ones I had managed to tape from TV and even then, I had to wait to tape them day by day, because the concept of just buying a season or complete series of a TV show was non-existent. Cell phone? Nope. And the concept of a smart phone wasn’t even close. Back then I was at the mercy of whatever baseball game happened to be on at the time. Now I just turn on the MLB app on my Smart TV and watch the White Sox game when it’s on.

This is, literally, my time. Everything is in front of me. As happy as I have been in the past, in 2010 or 2002 or 1995 or 1989 or 1982, this should be putting all of those years past to shame. But I keep trying to sabotage myself, either through constant reminiscing of year’s past or trying to do stupid things to wreck the current wavelength I am living on, like introducing women into the fold. No woman has ever brought anything but misery and unhappiness into my life, yet I kept remaining open to allowing more and more of them into my life. Why I keep doing this is beyond my comprehension.

Some have said it’s just a part of my life that’s missing. I disagree. From 1996 to 2005, I was single. I spent nine glorious years as a single man. And that’s what 1982, 2010 and 2019 all have in common, there is no woman taking over my life and making it unhappy and dramatic and boring and miserable. That’s how 2010 came to a grinding halt, I allowed a bottom-of-the-trash-can greaseball to come into the picture and it was almost instant misery for the seven years that followed.

So why would I be stupid enough to even consider allowing that to happen again?

I am NOT a good fit for relationships. For one thing, I am extremely selfish and protective of my time. I have things I want to do and one of those things is watching White Sox baseball, a privilege for which I pay money. If I am doing so, that is going to take precedence over other less-important things, like whatever some girl wants to do. I also enjoy spending my money on me for a change, so I have spoiled myself to the ultimate degree. Not just the smartphone and stereo and TV and game consoles and DVDs but all the other little purchases that make my day seem a little happier.

And then I realized just how much women can negatively affect my life, as this past Friday I allowed a female to corrupt my schedule, missing Friday night’s White Sox game to watch a movie. It took me three days to get myself back into my groove, and to what end? What was the point of spending my Friday night doing anything other than what I want to spend my Friday night doing?

Now, understand, I’m not saying I am 100% anti-woman, if I ever met a woman who enjoyed baseball and video games and Star Trek who cooks like Nigella Lawson and is built like Raine Michaels I might give it a go. But until that time, why should I sell myself on millimeter short?

I have taken great pains in the past week or so to detach myself from anyone who brings anything but happiness into my life. This has included pretty much every local single woman in my area. Whether they had an interest in me or not (not in 96% of the cases) didn’t matter. I needed to build a wall and they needed to be on the other side of it. I have changed my Facebook settings so I am almost unreachable unless you are a Facebook friend or you know my cell phone number.

And even those who I know had it are finding themselves blocked and unable to use it.

I just can’t let this time period be corrupted. This is MY time. This is my golden hour. This is the point in time that my whole life has been focused on. When all the parts come together and make a complete picture, this is it. I will not do anything to ruin it, and that includes spending it reminiscing about times in the past that don’t hold a candle to what I have right here in front of me.

From this day forward, and maybe through the end of my life, it’s all about me. I cannot have it any other way. I nearly ruined my life a number of times, and I managed to extricate myself from those dilemmas and reach the point I am at now. And I am going to make the most of every second. Everyone deserves to be happy. And now, finally, it is my turn. It’s all about me.

Thank you for taking the time to read. Peace.

The Best Years Of My Life: A Retrospective

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As I reach what could be considered my “mid-life” point (40), I have been taking stock of my life and doing a lot of reminiscing.  And the more that I think about it, the more I can say, without hesitation, that three years of my life stand out above all others:  1983, 1995 and 2010.  In those years, I turned six, 18 and 33, respectively.

1983

Naturally, 1983 is the most difficult to fully put into perspective, on the basis of the fact that I was six.  But, I can clearly remember some aspects of that year.  I “graduated” from Kindergarten and started first grade.  The most important happening that year took place in the summer, when I discovered He-Man and the Masters Of The Universe.  I saw the cartoon on TV and immediately needed to go to the store to find the action figures, which I saw during commercials.  I can remember this vividly.  Mom and dad took me to a local store and I got the Skeletor figure, though I wanted the He-Man figure, but it was not in stock.  In fact, it would be several months before I finally found a He-Man figure.  But I would spend the following six years as a fan of the franchise, and now I own the entire series on DVD in a limited-edition, numbered boxed set.

I was also a huge fan of The Lone Ranger and The Dukes Of Hazzard.  The Lone Ranger had a momentary resurgence of popularity in the early 1980s due to the release of the film “The Legend Of The Lone Ranger,” released in May, 1981.  The release of the film lead to the old 1950’s TV series seeing air again, as well as the release of an animated series, both of which I remember well.  I can remember going to the store and getting caps for my cap guns and plastic Lone Rangers masks.

The Dukes were another matter entirely.  I was completely obsessed with the Dukes in 1983.  I couldn’t wait for Friday nights.  And then Saturday mornings, when The Dukes, an animated version of the show, was airing.  I had Dukes action figures, posters, cars, play-sets, shirts, pajamas, lunchboxes.  You name it, I had it.

I now own a limited-edition boxed set of The Lone Ranger, which was released in 2013 to coincide with the release of “The Lone Ranger,” a Disney film that was a box office bomb, which lead to the boxed set being pulled from shelves sooner than expected.  I also own the complete Dukes Of Hazzard series, and films, on DVD.

I got my first bike in 1983, for my birthday.  It was, surprisingly enough, a Dukes Of Hazzard bike.  The good news was, I had a new bike.  The bad news was, I had to ride that bike for the next six years, because I didn’t get another bike until I turned 12, and my Dukes bike was so small it barely held me anymore.

I also got my first “personal” TV in 1983.  It was a 13″ color TV with wood-grain housing and no remote, because it had knobs as opposed to buttons.  I got years of usage out of that TV, in fact, I still had it in the late 2000s, when I went HD.

Kindergarten was great, I have nothing but good memories of it.  First grade, not so much but nothing bad.  I would have many betters years in school.

I went on vacation in 1983 with my family and we visited one of mom’s friends who lives in Michigan.  She had the coolest electronic gadget:  A VCR.  I can clearly remember being amazed at the concept of putting a tape in this machine and then watching a movie.  With no commercials and to watch at any time, and stop at any time.  We got home from vacation and went straight to the Magnavox dealer and bought one.

1995

Naturally, what stands out here is high school graduation and starting to college.  I enjoyed high school immensely.  At the time, I was happy in all facets of my life.  And I was looking forward to getting out of high school and moving on.

My home life was great, my love life was great, my academic life was great.  My two obsessions at the time were playing Tecmo Super Bowl on the Nintendo and collecting AC/DC albums on cassette.  I had gotten Tecmo a couple of years previously but my playing really hit its peak in 1995.  I played seven consecutive seasons with the Cleveland Browns, winning three Super Bowls.  And one of my fondest Tecmo memories was an all-night season my friend Joe Nunez and I played, he with the Cleveland Browns and myself with the New Orleans Saints.  We still mention it to this day.

I had been collecting AC/DC albums since 1993 but in 1994 Atlantic Records re-released the band’s first 11 albums, digitally remastered.  So I kind of had to “start over” to an extent.  Then, in September, they released their first new studio album in five years, “Ballbreaker.”  I played the cassette completely out in no time.

One of my favorite memories of 1995 was my TV show collections.  In June, I started taping Three’s Company every day, as two episodes were shown on TBS every morning.  Later that year, in December, I started taping Perry Mason.  I watched those tapes until they were so worn out the sound was pretty much gone and the picture was quite snowy.  I have replaced both with complete series DVD sets over the years.

I was such a fan of these two shows that I wired my TV through my stereo and recorded the soundtrack from episodes of each show onto cassette to listen to in bed or while I was driving.  When I started to college, I would take a cassette with two episodes of Three’s Company on one side and a single episode of Perry Mason on the other.

I LOVED college.  It was the happiest era of my life, bar none.  Life was constantly in motion and I couldn’t wait to get to each and every day.  Couldn’t wait to get up and go to class.  Couldn’t wait for class to be over so I could go home and watch that day’s Three’s Company and Perry Mason episodes.  Couldn’t wait to play Tecmo Super Bowl after dinner.  Couldn’t wait to go to bed and do it all again the next day.

What’s odd is that as soon as 1996 turned over, everything went downhill and 1996 will forever be known as the second-worst year of my life, after 2017.  My girlfriend and I split, my best friend at college just up and quit without a word, my parents lost their jobs when the company they worked for closed the plant they worked at.

But 1995 was absolutely exceptional from the beginning to the end.

2010

Wow.  What can I say about 2010.  I had one obsession in 2010.  Girls.  All girls, all the time.  I had two or three dates every weekend, sometimes two in one night.  At times, it might just be a girl coming over to watch TV.  Sometimes it was a legit dinner-and-a-movie date.  Sometimes it was a straight hook-up.  Sometimes it was a platonic dinner.  Sometimes it was all of the above.  Whatever it was, it was great.

I was made to be single.  This is the life I would choose if I had a choice.  As Benny Hill said, “why make one woman miserable when you can make so many so happy?”  And in 2010, I did my best to make as many women happy as I could.

The only thing that stands out to be in 2010 as far as entertainment goes is that I discovered The Rifleman, and bought a bootleg DVD set on eBay.  And yes, I had a girl over to watch a few episodes of the series after it arrived in the mail.

Speaking of bootleg DVDs, I also found a guy selling a set of Marvel Comics animated shows that were produced in the 1960s, based on the actual comic art.  These programs are well known among Marvel fans but they have never been released on DVD in the United States, though a European release does exist.  So I found a seller who had gotten a hold of the European DVDs and burned them, quite professionally, onto Region 1 DVDs.  We negotiated a price and I was thrilled to get those in my collection.

My average 2010 week was spent at work during weekdays and in the pool every evening, blasting AC/DC and watching the sun set behind the house.  Then on the weekends it was restaurants, movies, shopping and girls, girls, girls.

The only bad thing about 2010 is the way it ended, the last six weeks of the year were nothing like the first 46, which included a broken ankle and several months spent in a walking boot.  But I won’t let that stain the year, overall.

EPILOGUE

I have said on many occasions I would not trade my life for anything or to anyone.  I have had the most enjoyable life, with so few exceptions, and the memories are priceless.  And 1983 (childhood), 1995 (teenage years) and 2010 (adult years) are the pinnacle of each era of my life.  I’m hoping that 2018 will measure up in some way to these three years from my past, and so far, its doing pretty well.

Peace, and God bless.