Archive for November, 2007
One Liner’s Comedy Club
Originally, today, both Sarah and I were supposed to go downtown to do the thanksgiving baskets with the Revive Group as a servant project. But, since I got out of work so late last night which messed up my lifting plans, I went this morning instead. Dave and I had a tough week getting to the gym, and this was really important to me. I gave Sarah the option of waiting for me until I got back to go down, or she could go without me. She went without me, and she was done really early because by the time I got back just after 10, she was home again. There wasn’t that much to do, so it probably worked out for the best.
We went out and ran some errands. We finally got me some new shoes, we stopped and got some wax for Sarah’s new paraffin bath, and the third stop we made was at Petsmart. I had been meaning to go look at the puppies, we had gone a couple of times with no luck since we got Nokes last February. We saw a full bred Shar-pie there, and we knew we were meant to stop by today. This dog looked exactly like Nokes, the coloring, the size, the tail, except for the head which was obviously different. But we are convinced that Nokes must be a Shar-Pei, Retriever, Shepherd mix. The dog was cute, named Zeus, with big slobbery jowls.
We left without another dog, good for us. We made a couple more stops, including picking up a new bone for Nokes, before getting back just around 1 pm.
I got right to work. I had intentions today to do a full GMAT before our plans later started. I worked hard, but didn’t quite start early enough, and I had to stop at about 4:40, with the last section left at 1:15, and our dinner plans starting at 6. I was bummed that I had to stop the test, but I was hoping that I could come back to that section, it looked as if the test was on pause.
So, while Sarah got ready, I played some Jr. Pac-man. We still didn’t leave on time, I almost cold have completed the test.
We met up with Dave, Paula, Katie and Patrick at the Oaken Barrel in Greenwood. I know one of the guys who started the restaurant, this was one of the places I had always wanted to try. It was Dave’s birthday, he’s a youngen’, and he wanted to go out for dinner and then do One Liner’s Comedy Club afterwards. Worked out great, two things I had been meaning to try.
Dinner was very good, and Dave got a desert for free in the end. It was a good time.
One Liner’s, now that was something else. I had thought, “You know, I should do a long writeup on this place”. The service was horrendous, abhorrent if you will. But our main Comedian was hilarious, so it was a little bit of a paradox. I thought I could do a long writeup on him too, but it is hard for me to focus long enough on those things that are less important with so many very important things going on right now.
So, the service. It was like they were running credits cards by hand via the Pony Express. It was so slow, they had one person running the checkin and even that person’s pace seemed comical in how long it was taking. The second guy that came up front was not nice to people coming in, was short with them when asked simple questions like “Where do I go after I have my tickets”. If you hadn’t been there before, screw ya’, because we weren’t telling you where the main stage is. For a new timer, it wasn’t apparent to us that was for sure. Just a low class operation that looks terrible on the inside.
Once inside the stage area, again, pretty low-quality. Granted, I haven’t been to a comedy club before, so this sets the bar for me. I hope there are other places that are a little bit nicer. Maybe in proportion, the cost for admission is lower, so they don’t have as much money to keep things clean, or have walls instead of black curtains. I don’t know… In relation to the cost, they force you to buy two things off the menu, which is a croc too. I would almost rather pay 2-3 dollar more per ticket then to feel this social pressure to buy something off the menu just because. We just had a huge dinner, and I didn’t feel like eating or drinking anything else. Not to mention, I had a GMAT to come home to, so I wasn’t drinking any beer that would make me sleepy. Just low class I thought.
So, the first comedian, Will C, no creativity laced with a ton of crass, offensive, and attempted shocking humor. We were glad to see him leave.
But Michael Mack, the main performer, Great! Very creative in his stand up. He did the whole singing comedy with a guitar. Some of the songs were short, some were long, but they were funny. That wasn’t the original part. He had a couple of bits that were something I hadn’t seen before. He grabbed some names from the crowd, women’s names, turned the lights down low, and then just singled people out and sang a song about them. The names were randomly matched with whatever person he saw, but he did some great ad libbing, and the planning songs were funny. Then, the last bit, was faces of rock. This left everyone shocked and roaring with laughter. I personally loved the Queen Song Bohemian Rhapsody, he did an awesome job from there to the end. I would go see him again with someone who hadn’t. He was crass and vulgar, but at least it was mixed in so it didn’t feel like he was hitting you over the head with it.
After the show was over, everyone pretty much went home. It was an early night.
It wasn’t until I got home that I found out that my test timed out. I was upset, that I had essentially wasted one of my practice tests. But, now I know. It truly is like the real thing, even though it is on the home computer. I studied a little bit and went to bed.
Former CEO of Universal & Mr. Do!
Before we went to Michigan the first weekend of November, there was a post in the Klov forums about the versions of Mr. Do! I had mentioned one member had a couple of email exchanges with the former CEO of Universal, the company that made Mr. Do!
I emailed that member this week (shacklefurd), another coin-operated arcade game collector in Indiana. He emailed me back saying he wasn’t sure he still had the email address for the former Universal Games CEO, but he would check.
Here’s crossing my fingers. How cool would it be to find the company that made the Mr. Do! with white sideart and in finding that company discover that some of their former employees still have some of the white Mr. Do!’s in great condition. No sideart flaking at all. I can dream:)
If Shacklefurd doesn’t still have the email address for the former CEO, does anyone else have any leads? This Mr. Do! is becoming a little bit of my collecting grail. Shoot me an email if you can help me with any information about Gleeb or Universal.
Update – 4.15.09
Wow! Quite a bit of time has passed on this one. But, Jason S. was able to track down an email and more importantly a name for the former CEO of Universal and apparently he worked with other companies such as Exidy and Data East among others.
The original email he had bounced, and the new email I found got rejected, so I am going to keep digging. But I hope to finally find some answers to the white Mr. Do! character artwork license, possibly to a company on the east coast.
Circus Charlie sideart sold
I kept an eye on the peeled off Circus Charlie sideart that was on ebay this week, but I never did bid. Not a priority project for me right now, I couldn’t justify paying at least $18 for some beat up Circus Charlie artwork just to scan and vectorize it with no guarantee that I would reproduce it.
Buzzkill! won it, and I found a profile that matched his name on the Google Group forums, so I emailed him at buzzkill@comcast.net to see if he could help me out in scanning the (Konami) Circus Charlie sideart. That was the day after the auction ended on Wednesday of this week. I haven’t hear anything back yet, and I doubt I will.
If I am meant to get a scan of the Charlie sideart / sticker, I will. No big deal. But I don’t expect that something quite like peeled off artwork will come on ebay again anytime soon.
Having a beer with Johnson’s
Tonight was a crazy night. I had to work late to hit a deadline, and that meant that Sarah had to stay at school until 6:30 for the musical. She had the longer day of the two of us. From there she went out with the faculty for a low key get together. I came home.
When I got home, I took the dog on a walk, made myself some dinner, and hung out with Nokes since he was alone in his crate so long today, and a cople of days this week.
I got in about a half an hour of studying, and Sarah called. Johnson’s were going to drop her off from Southport. They stopped in a visited for a little bit, Paul and I had a beer (only one for me because I intended to get back to studying). But by the time we wrapped things up, it was about 11, and both Sarah and I were exhausted. Tomorrow should be better for studying, we have most of the day open.
Pengo CPO Vector Update 1
I started working on vectorizing the Pengo control panel overlay (cpo) the day after I scanned it. In the first day I got the Pengo on the underside of the joystick (down motion) finished, as well as most of the Pengo eskimo player 1. On day two, I finished the eskimo player 1, and two players by mirroring the same artwork. Today, I also finished Pengo pushing an ice block into a sno bee on the upper left. But just Pengo, not the ice or the sno bee themselves.
Don’t know what tomorrow will bring for the Pengo artwork, hopefully continued progress.
There has been a ton of great debate and information on the Klov forums over the past couple of days on this Pengo project. We’ll have to pick between the two versions of most of the Pengo artwork, I will probably only do one set of reproduction artwork for this Sega game. We’ll have one marquee, one bezel, and one control panel reproduced. There is only one version of the Pengo sideart.
Pengo CPO Scanned
I decided last night that I would be a little more pro-active about the Pengo control panel overlay scan.
I took my control panel off of my Pengo, gave it a much needed scrub down with some citrus cleaner (hadn’t been done since I purchased the Pengo game about 15 months ago) and then I scanned the artwork in and pieced it back together.
This way, if I never hear back on my email about another Pengo CPO NOS scan, I have this one, and it has great detail at 600 DPI for the original scan, downsampled to 300 DPI for tracing.
I did notice looking through my found image files of Pengo control panels that there was another version. There was a second Pengo CPO that had a numeral “I” and “II” for the player buttons, and it had Pengo pushing the ice blocks into the sno bees. I actually like this Pengo overlay version better, but don’t know how rare it is. (I will try to post the file of this NOS Pengo overlay when I can.)
Does anyone know anything about this Pengo overlay, or have a example applied to their Sega Pengo game?
NOS Pengo CPO’s surface
A topic came up on KLOV last night via Brian Koening in WI. He got two NOS Pengo control panel overlays in a bulk buy from an operator. Now, there haven’t been an overwhelming amount of people, but it seems as though there are a lot of people who like Pengo, and their control panels have some sort of damage. There have been topics in the past about whether NOS even existed.
Brian is talking about having the CPO’s done on an inkjet and then laminated. Oy! You have got to be kidding me. He has a guy he has an allegience with and wants him to do the Pengo reproductions.
Brian doesn’t answer my emails, I must have done something wrong. But as luck would have it, I was revisiting some arcade collectors websites yesterday. I was on Appolo’s arcade website, and at one time they had a NOS Pengo CPO that they were talking about scanning and vectorizing.
So, I emailed Dawn asking if I could get a scan of the Pengo CPO.
We’ll have to see what she says. From reading their site, they have a ton of turnover in games and may not have it anymore. And she may not give me a scan, or even let me buy a scan or trade for it. Who knows, they don’t know me from anyone else.
I just hope we don’t have to have the first round of reproductions for any of the Pengo artwork be inkjet laminates.
Watch for updates here.
