Virtual Fools

Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Every summer we make our pilgrimage to this lovely place where you can play the greatest of arcade games, eat heady ‘za (pizza those who don’t know), battle all the Jersey sunburned white trash for walking space, and teenage girls dressing like whores. This night was no different. The trick has become finding new things to make fun of and take pictures of to convey what the boardwalk is really all about. We’re uncut. Uncensored. Unintentional. Uneducated. Unibrowed. HA! Did you say “un-ibrowed”? Yeah, you’re a tool. BONG. Without further ado, Seaside Heights Revisted:

What we need to start with is a bit of an overview. Seaside Heights is in New Jersey. Okay, done. Next step is to understand the rules laid out by the city so that you can enjoy your stay at the beach. And where better to find them than an information sign?! So Kevin, Jimmy, Tiger and I travelled over to the Info Sign to see what’s what.

Excellent. It appears the only rule is that we have to have a GREAT DAY. Thank you, Seaside, for suspending law for at least the duration of our visit. It’s gonna pay off we hope. Well, almost all law was suspended anyway. Apparently the drinking age hasn’t been lifted because some kid in a Boy Scout shirt asked us ‘If we were over 21 yeards of age?’ in a high pitched voice. Oh. And then later on some kid asked to bum a cigarette off of us. Is there something about our group that screams, “ask us for illegal things!”? I sure hope not. I feel bad for the kid though. Not only was he not old enough to buy cigarettes, but cigarettes are mad expensive. Just check out the price of a pack in the lower left hand portion of this picture.

$5.65. DAMN EXPENSIVE. But that’s not important. Let us proceed into the temple of every imaginable form of entertainment short of feature films and strippers. (The second of which we could arrange to have fixed… if you catch my meanings.

This place was kind of creepy. Upstairs is an indoor mini golf course (crappy, I might add). To do more exploring, Kevin is up on the second floor willing to brave the wilds of the North Pole. BEWARE THE POLAR BEARS, KEVIN! THEY FEED ON HUMAN FLESH!! AND THE GORILLA!! AS DO GIANT MICE!! AND DON’T PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS UPSTAIRS, KEVIN!

I went up to save Kevin and I came face to face with the gorilla. I looked him straight in the eye and suddenly felt as if he was staring at me from somewhere else. Oh wait! Dear God, it’s TWINS!!

This has to be the most popular gorilla ever. Though painted differently, we’ve seen this baby at two other places along the coast. Well, we have at least two on camera. There are probably more… this monkey is such a slut. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s a gorilla, not a monkey. One is from a rooftop golf in Rehobeth, Deleware and the other is from Old Pro Safari Golf in Ocean City, MD.

Irregardless of multiple-monkeys, we did get to enjoy one thing at this place. Tiger took a few swings at the ol’ batting cages. Special props to Coach Dante for getting us all the way to Toms River, home of the 1998 Little League World Series champions! Without him and Tiger we’d still be stuck back in Red Bank, NJ. Oh wait. That’s the episode of Clerks Animated we’re currently watching. TV and real life are so similar that sometimes I can’t tell the two apart. Just like I can’t tell these gorillas apart. But one primate certainly stood out among the crowd on the boardwalk.

What a creepy ass chimp. I particularly like the fact that his hand is in his pocket. It’s a level of realism that reveals the amount of effort that went into his creation. He’s still a shady lil’ primate though. Needless to say I didn’t even get near the dirty bastard, much less ‘press his buttons’. I’ll leave that to the female creepy ass chimps. Or perhaps it’s better left to the other inanimate heroes of the boardwalk? I don’t want to steal the thunder from the likes of…

Another plastic statue willing to serve all at any cost. Bud Man is a national hero. If you’ve ever held a beer, you have a friend in Bud Man. He doesn’t feel it’s right to draw lines of distinction between beer drinkers based on brand. Whether it’s sitting back with a cold one watching the game or getting sloshed at a kegger, Bud Man is keeping a watchful eye on you. (Note: He doesn’t like liquor or wine. So if you’re drinking either of those you’re on your own. He told me so when I was taking the picture.)

But the main reason that man and beast alike come to Seaside Heights is to shop…and boy, will you get your money’s worth! One favorite haunt is “THE COOL PLACE ON THE BOARDWALK,” which has not only a wide assortment of “COOL STUFF” but also a massive selection of “NEW HOT ITEMS.” Curious, we took a closer look:

What ho! Novelty plates! I (now Kevin: like Ulysses or Mrs. Dalloway, this narrative shifts points of view with the snap of a snapperific hand) have something of a hard time understanding the appeal of Dixie/Texan flags in NEW FUCKING JERSEY, but other than that, good stuff. I won’t hesistate to kick the ass of whoever gets a Tweety bird novelty plate, though. The rest of the stuff was just wayyyy too much to take, so…

…Jimmy and I threw in a look of disgust and MOVED THE FUCK ON. Walking the Seaside boardwalk is like being thrust into the middle of a huge carnival in which no one is really having any fun. Everyone seems to be doing stuff, people are buying things, the ‘za is flowing like wine, and there are plenty of members of the opposite sex to affix one’s eyes to, but it doesn’t all quite add up. Here is why:

In most of the arcades and casinos, there are these depressingly huge cranes. They ruin kid’s dreams. At a going rate of $5 for 3 tries, they are expensive…and no one wins. The small ones are bad enough, both slightly pricey and pretty damn addictive, but something this big could just make life shit for some little kid. Here, Tiger gawks at the crane and shakes his head. But what else would someone want to win from a crane? Stuffed animals seem the logical winner, and I’m sure that all of us have been victorious at one time or another when they are on the line. Laser pointers, watches, even jewelry attacted to styrofoam boxes - none of these things are new to us.

But the “You’re fired!” t-shirt is. Let me detail, if I may, the contents of this unit: “You’re fired!” shirts, Orange County Choppers shirts, Von Dutch shirts and hats…tis about it. What the hell is Von Dutch anyway? I feel like such a geezer now that I have no idea where the so-called popular clothes come from. But wearing Von Dutch clothes isn’t the only way to look like a Von Skank at Seaside. There seems to be a citywide coalition to keep girls and women looking like whores, and they do their work well. Observe, if you will, some other trends in the “instantly looking like a trashy/venerial disease spreading tart” genre.

Here are some shorts or shirts or something. “Summer ‘04″ is innocent enough. “Jersey Girl” has racked up some negative connotations in, say, the last 20 years. Still, I’d let my unborn and as-of-yet nonexistant daughter wear a shirt that said that if she wanted to. But “Von Drunk”, while clever at first, is just sort of trashy. And “I look much better Naked” is one of those things that should just be left unsaid. Most of the women who actually do look better naked can just suggest it with something like a ridiculous amount of cleavage, not a phrase. But there are worse offenders as far as horrible ideas in clothing go.

What we had taken to calling “Ass Shorts”, the booty-showing kind that have various lewd phrases printed across the buns seem to have been one-uped this year by these ass panty phrase things. There are some repeat phrases going around this year, but “Squeeze Please” and “Italian Princess” seem to be easier to find on these buttox-huggers. However, we found even better ones inside of a store. Away from the Puritanical morality of what stores can actually show on the boardwalk, there are better phrases like “Rub Me” and even the most softspoken of all, “Fuck Me”. At least the person buying those is honest.

Enough fashion but not enough shopping. Other great establishments include Big Hearted John’s, the only store dedicated to PAYING IT FORWARD and American Pie. Oddly enough, American Pie sells neither the film of the same name nor the song by Don McLean of the same name…therefore, they are losing soooo much business.

When I think boardwalk, the first thing that comes to mind is paintball, so I was pleasently surprised to see Shoot the Geek, a place with whose message I agree. Virtual Fools has recently rededicated itself to attacking all geeks, ourselves included, with paintball guns from a range of 50 or so feet. Even families enjoy the fun!

Anybody else notice that picture of Hitler on the counter? Eggghhhh.

Winding down, the gang ended up in the destination: what we’ve dubbed The Greatest Arcade in New Jersey! “Flashbacks” is located a handful of blocks in from the start of the boardwalk… near the first pier. There’s a carosel inside, which seems to be the only landmark for finding it considering we have no clue what the whole amusement center is called. (Bobby takes over writing again). We discussed Flashbacks a couple of years ago when we first went, in our article entitled Rediscovering the Retrocade, before they remodeled it. It’s better than ever, with 80s movie posters, great tunes playing overhead, and the finest selection of classic arcade games this side of the prevailing westerlies.

Without blinking an eye I dropped two dollars into Tempest (the most excellent vector game ever crafted). It was fairly easy to get a top 10 score on there… just start at one of the levels that gives you a huge bonus for beating the first level… But that was cheating. The highest scores on there were 20 times anything I could imagine getting. But a proud ‘Bob’ claims 8th, 9th, and 10th places on that machine, for the time being. I played some Super Mario Bros., slammed my fists at two very poorly played games of Galaga, destroyed androids in Mechanized Attack with the help of Tiger, and made Gabby Jay suffer through some wicked Body Blows.

This game is absolutely awesome. Gyruss basically plays like Galaga, where you are a ship blasting away formations of aliens that appear on the screen and then attack you, but in a circle around the enemies who are “deeper into the screen”. One of my cronies in the Gamers Club at school also enjoys this game, so I played a game in her honor. (Granted, I suck at the game, but it’s the thought that counts.) You can actually pick up this game on Konami Collectors Series: Arcade Advance for the GBA if you’re so inclined. It goes for like 10 bucks usually and also includes Rush’n'Attack and Frogger, to name a couple.

Kevin successfully navigated the entirety of the Simpsons Arcade Game, though some of his success needs to be attributed to a random little kid who plopped a quarter into the machine during the middle of a stage without saying a word to Kevin. This supports my theory that the only bond needed to form a successful team for beating a game is the knowledge that your quarter can make a difference. A fine lesson, indeed.

But who wants to end their article with a moral? Especially when there are other questions at hand. Like, for example, why is this article entitled Do You Like Tapes and CD’s? Well, we bring you to this sign we saw near the end of our excursion.

So, do you like tapes and CDs? Because you can tape my dick to your forehead and C-Deeeez NUUUTTSSSSS!!!!