Things That Warm An Aging Nerd's Heart
Last night for dinner, we went to Chow. It's the newest restaurant in the Urban Food Group stable, and my brother-in-law's put in a ton of hard work getting ready for the opening. (Creedmoor and Strickland in Raleigh, in case you were wondering). Chow's a more casual affair than their other joints like Vivace and Coquette - TVs with sports on, pool tables in the back, pizza and burgers on the menu - you get the idea. And they also have one of those sit-down tables for two with a video game built into it, the sort that was omnipresent in the 80s. Except back then, the machine had one game on it - usually Space Invaders or Galaga or, if you were really lucky, DigDug. The one at Chow, on the other hand, is a multi-game beastie, loaded to the gills with the 80s greatest arcade hits. Burgertime. Time Pilot. Mr. Do. (Seriously. Mr. Do.) Trax. Mappy. Pengu. Everything, with the exception of Sinistar, that sucked quarters out of my pocket when I was a kid.
We weren't alone at Chow last night - my sister Becky was in town for a speaking gig and so the family gathered. Mom, Dad, Becky, sister Marla (whose husband is the aforementioned mighty Chef Ian) and her two kids. Jake's the older of the two. He's seven, and he was enthralled with the video game table. This being my area of professional expertise, it was Uncle Richard's responsibility - nay, pleasure - to play with him. More to the point, I got to introduce him to the highlights of my misspent youth. Time Pilot, he dug big-time, though he didn't quite master the art of not flying in a straight line when getting strafed by enemy squadroms. Qix, the first game I fell in love with, he cleared a level first time out. Mr. Do, after some trial and error, he worked out the physics of Giant Lethal Apple Combat. Burgertime...well, we won't talk about Burgertime. But his dad's a chef. There's time.
I think I pumped five bucks' worth of quarters into that thing. I consider it money, and time, more than well spent. Maybe this is the new-millennium equivalent of tossing a ball around in the backyard (though we do that, too). Whatever it was, it warmed the cockles of this aging nerd's heart.
And next time, I'm totally going to pwn him at Qix.
We weren't alone at Chow last night - my sister Becky was in town for a speaking gig and so the family gathered. Mom, Dad, Becky, sister Marla (whose husband is the aforementioned mighty Chef Ian) and her two kids. Jake's the older of the two. He's seven, and he was enthralled with the video game table. This being my area of professional expertise, it was Uncle Richard's responsibility - nay, pleasure - to play with him. More to the point, I got to introduce him to the highlights of my misspent youth. Time Pilot, he dug big-time, though he didn't quite master the art of not flying in a straight line when getting strafed by enemy squadroms. Qix, the first game I fell in love with, he cleared a level first time out. Mr. Do, after some trial and error, he worked out the physics of Giant Lethal Apple Combat. Burgertime...well, we won't talk about Burgertime. But his dad's a chef. There's time.
I think I pumped five bucks' worth of quarters into that thing. I consider it money, and time, more than well spent. Maybe this is the new-millennium equivalent of tossing a ball around in the backyard (though we do that, too). Whatever it was, it warmed the cockles of this aging nerd's heart.
And next time, I'm totally going to pwn him at Qix.
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