I was recently standing on the subway platform waiting for the 2, 3 to go to work. Normally I walk, but I deemed it too cold. My walking, or not walking, has nothing to do with what I want to write about, but I just want it to be known that I pride myself on walking to work, thus saving money and getting some exercise. I even think it helps me lose weight. It really does not. But I love to put on my headphones and look at all the people swimming downstream on 6th Avenue as I hide unseen behind these magic headphones and check them all out. Perhaps it is hiding that I want to write about so this fits. Back to the subway platform. There are always billboards to read on the subway platform. I hate most of them, but they always get me thinking. A new film starring Katherine Heigl got me thinking “Why?”  A poster for the Metropolitan Museum gets me thinking that I don’t go enough and this gets me thinking that life is slipping through my hands. Thank God the Met billboard does not depress me sufficiently to turn around and jump in front of the oncoming express train. After I think about “why oncoming and not incoming?” I am calm. But talk about a selfish act; suicide stops the subway running for hours. Recently I saw this billboard that was an ad for the Braun Cruzer, which is some intricate electric shaver that would let you write your name in your neck in hair I think. It had the five boroughs of New York City represented by five different ways to have facial hair. Manhattan was an effete “we stole everything from alls y’all” Wall Street handlebar mustache; Brooklyn was the goatee, of course. Staten...

With Halloween now safely past us, we’re officially into the holiday shopping season. Many Christmases ago, a big name video game was rushed to store shelves and officially became the biggest video game flop – ever! The production cost was so high; it nearly bankrupted the huge company behind it and ripped apart the video game world for years! In June 1982, Steven Spielberg released his mega blockbuster hit, E.T. into theatres. The film was the first to surpass Star Wars as the highest grossing film at the time and is ranked as one of the greatest science fiction films ever made. At the same time, the Atari Corporation was experiencing great success with their Atari 2600 video game console. The unit had been on sale since 1978, but now thanks to large demand lowering the cost, it was becoming more affordable for the masses. Millions of units had flown off of store shelves the previous Christmas. Americans were eager to plug this magic box into their TV and turn their home into an arcade! The Atari was the officially known as a “video computer system.” Up to this point, only single novelty video games were available for the home, with the most famous being Pong. Players loved being able to play video table tennis without having to drop a ton of quarters at the arcade and were hungry for more. Atari answered with their new console, the Atari 2600. It connected to a television set with a single cable that would be inserted to an exterior switch box, mounted on the back of the set. That switch box would change between the antenna and the game. If Atari would have included one of these in the box, it would have really saved a few trips to Radio...