The musings of a madman...

September 3, 1998… I was 19, it was a Monday.      I had to work that morning and needed to be there to open the store, so I was in the mall at 9:30am.  When one of my guys got in with me, I snuck away to whatever FYE was 20 years ago to make a quick video game purchase. If I had known that the game I was about to buy would change the direction of the next year(S) of my life, I would have--…  fuck that, I’d have bought THREE!      I worked 9:30-6 that day and IMMEDIATELY rushed home to my Playstation (the boring-looking-ass Playstation 1!), locked away in my bedroom and proceeded to not be heard from other than to work, eat, bathe or shit for weeks.  If at any point I can remember a favorite game becoming my favorite that quickly, this was the time. The story was fun going through.  It was engrossing to have a story with layers and twists and shit, mixed in with the “sneaking around and cutting dumbass guards’ ...

Down here in NC, we had a couple of the smaller mom-and-pops record stores in my city, both like 2 miles apart, named School Kids and The Record Exchange... I went to high school right in between them, and would go to one every Tuesday after school, which one depended on whether I had to go to work or home. Soon after high school ended, School Kids moved about 3 blocks down, Record Exchange moved to their place. Within 18ish months, School Kids was closed (there is a bar on one side and an H&R Block on the other where they were now)... The Record Exchange, living in School Kids' old spot, would stick it out for about 5-6ish more years, but there is now a Walgreens situated where that building and the aforementioned H&R Block were known for having been. Now, as someone who has lived and gone to school in the city that he was born in all his life, I have seen plenty of the world outside of my home city/state/country, but it had not at the time dawned on me that those were not...