6 posts tagged “bakersfield”
Shelby and I took a break from working on Project: Unicorn Giggles to go out back and check on her animals. Not shown in our footage is their pig, exotic birds and chickens. There are also some fish tanks and tadpoles floating about, but they're not as cute as Chief and the other kittens. Enjoy!
I always consider these trips to Bakersfield and exercise in exile. With the exception of the Chris and Susan Show, I've hardly even glanced at any video game related news or articles. I've done three things this week: sleep, eat Sonics and costume. Somewhere between all that, I make time to play with Momo, but that's about as stressful as it gets.
Of course, if I said I hadn't been even playing video games that would just be weird. Also, GameTap rolled over to their new hotness this week and I've been all over it.
If you logged into GameTap this week and didn't notice much of a difference (outside of the mountain of Neo Geo games just added), then we'd all be in the same boat. For as much as I love the interface, I was hoping for some sort of a makeover. The big change came over at the website where there are now message boards, customizable profiles, published playlists and more. Not everything is working at the moment, but their new site and giggle-to-yourself-in-the-night-worthy Summer lineup has me absolutely giddy over what's coming next.
Their releases for this big week consisted of some heavy hitters in Metal Slug X, Panzer Dragoon and Tomb Raider: Legend. It also included Art of Fighting which, in light of the recently released anthology for the series, is a laughable trip down memory lane. Though, to be fair, Panzer Dragoon is also a Hell of a lot more hideous than even I remember, but it's hard to complain with Panzer Dragoon Zwei coming in a few weeks.
And that's my shining endorsement. So the next time you see my quotes all over the Myst Online advertisements, maybe you'll see, "Jared Rea says: In a week where all I wanted to do was get fat and avoid video games, I still made room for GameTap!"
How is this possible? I explain an old theory of mine.
After a three hour drive and tons of Polysics later, Shelby and I have arrived in Bakersfield. I agreed to drive her home both to save money on all the flights we'll be doing, but also so that I could be down here for a week to help out with Project Unicorn Giggles. Aside from the soreness on my butt, the trip was relatively pain free. Although we've only been in town for an hour or so, the signs of Bakersfield are all around us.
The biggest of which came from the quaint, little market across the street, complete with old man slicing meat in the back. I wasn't sure whether or not to summon the memories of Rocky or The Brady Bunch, but either way we got some good cuts of turkey.
Up front was a nice enough lady who lamented about the heat. Yeah, it's hot. Despite being just across the street I swear I got some sort of burn from the walk. According to her though, this shouldn't be a problem.
"You should know all about it. You've lived here all your life, right?"
Then she called Shelby's family "kinfolks." Welcome to Bakersfield!
Hey. I don't want to go to work today. I just want to stay home and say, "I feel like total crap!"
I remember getting up this morning and setting up my Macbook Pro atop my luggage. I sat down cross-legged, opened up my feeder and stated looking for the news of the hour. Then, not an hour later, I found myself back in bed, whining incessantly. I'm not exactly sure what had hit me, but I stood in bed until about 20 minutes ago where I found the will to get back up to check my email. I think it's the water.
My own personal exile continues as I've been down here in Bakersfield, visiting Shelby since this past Thursday. Though I'd prefer that she comes up north for a visit, it's good that I come down here every so often. Both to reconnect with her side of the family and to escape from the Bay Area for a bit. This town still creeps me out to no end, but at least there is a Sonics seemingly on every corner.
It is also a very anti-nerd establishment. Their one comic book store was like the reanimated corpse of a video rental store, posing as a front for comic books. Stuffed into a tiny corner behind rows and rows of white shelves and dusty VHS cases was a singular shelf for new releases. They had plenty of Civil War, but not what we were actually looking for. Inside a dirt stayed case was a lone Yu-Gi-Oh starter deck.
To get what we really wanted, a World of Warcraft: TCG deck, we had to go to Hot Topic. How messed up is that?
I prepared for my 3 hour layover in LAX this Friday with a trip to Toys R' Us. While I was hunting for Hotel Dusk, I ended up getting Phoenix Wright out of lack of books I want to read at the moment. A few people may recall just how much I hated Phoenix Wright when it was released here, and I stand by everything I said. If you want to play Phoenix Wright, just read a book. This situation is the anomaly.
I'll be back in the Bay Area this weekend, should some cracked out, meth addict of a high schooler not stab me first.
In roughly three hours I have to be up and out of bed in order to catch a ride to the airport. For the next week (Sept.25-Oct.2) I'll be down in Bakersfield, California, hanging out with the girlfriend in preparation for Ani-Magic 06. Honestly, I'm not actually looking forward to the latter, but the former will be fun. I just wanted to give you all a heads up in case I don't actually manage to update my Vox sometime between here and there. There will be photo shoots, there will be Animal Crossing and yes, there will be cosplay.
Speaking of which, I won't be doing anything new aside from Tezuka Kunimitsu from Prince of Tennis. Does that even count? My Seigaku uniform has been sitting in my closet untouched since October of last year. No, wait. I did wear the shirt while on the "Damn You Internets!" panel at Fanime back in May in which during a drunken swing, I spilt a drink on it.
Shelby and I will be pairing up again for Eureka Seven cosplay which, funny enough, she recently won a contest for. Aside from that she'll be doing a lot of Pop'n Music (Which I'll be joining next time). This week she also plans on making little matching outfits for her dog, Momo, to join in on both the Eureka Seven and Pop'n Music groups. This is, hilariously enough, not the first time she has done this.
Maybe I am looking forward to that more than I thought. . not that anime conventions in the middle of nowhere actually do make me excited. Well, Bakersfield is a horrible place and if I don't get to sleep I won't be awake enough to experience it. See you all later!
