Debonair hair

As a kid, I remember seeing a red jar of Brylcreem on my grandfather's table in his room. This was probably not such a big deal, but at that time, my grandfather was rather follicly challenged. Despite that, he would apply a gentle spread of it around the back & sides, and a gentle sweep across the combover. It never came across as a particularly noxious, but it did have a very distinct smell. I'm sure I would place that smell if I ever come into contact with it now, even after the 20 odd years since I've last come across Brylcreem.

Created by the British Army to create instant helmets.

I believe that my dad and most of my uncles would use the slick stuff at some point in their lives, judging by the glistening coifs sported in their early years.  At some point as a kid, I even gave it a go, not that I had much sense in how to style my hair. What kid wouldn't enjoy applying warm grease to their head?

Can't touch this. No seriously, don't touch the hair, it won't wash off.

I guess at some point, it fell out of fashion with my family, as most things do. Part of the problem was the curse of male pattern baldness that seems to strike at most of the male members of my family. Some of us may deny it, believing instead in the wow factor of combovers, while others are inspired by the smooth shine of knights like Patrick Stewart.

Real Captains don't wear rugs

I also have to wonder how many of their wives made them give it up, as I can remember my grandfather's Brylcreem stained pillowcases, and it still brings a smile to my face. Maybe it's time to bring back the shine to my head while I still have some hair left.

Monkeybar Madness

Mum, trying to pry me
from the bars

I often wonder if I'm an overprotective parent. As my son tries to walk, I hover near him to catch him before he kisses the floor. As I push him on the swing, I stand under the bar to catch him as he loops the frame. As I take him out for a drive, I strap him into his body-forming, neck-cradling, five-point-harness, side-impact-resistant space capsule. Is this all a bit excessive? No, I don't think so, and yet, as a child, I used to engage in the most ridiculous forms of play almost everyday at school without adult supervision.

I am, of course, talking about the most terrifying of all school yard implements of doom - the Monkeybars, AKA the Jungle Gym, the Climbing Frame, the Borg Cube of Death, etc. Here was a structure, made of steel pipes maybe 5m³, setup for children to play on. On top of that, kids weren't just using this piece of architecture to simply 'climb'. No, we used to race from point to point in 3 dimensions, playing tag (catching), or just to hone our balance skills for the day the ninja academy decided to recruit some fresh meat. Usually this all happened at the same time as various groups of kids tried to play their games in spite of each other.

Looks innocent enough until you realise that the bars at the bottom have been dented by the broken bodies of falling children.
Image Source: Wikipedia

Looking back at it now, why in the world would anyone have approved such a thing? Kids would try leaping between rungs, sometimes directly across, sometimes across and down a level or two. Others would run along the top of the structure just to show how badass they were. There must have been a gap of a meter across! That's just crazy, in hindsight. We're talking about kids between the ages of 6 to 12 play acting like Jackie Chan. I've seen someone dislocate their shoulders from a fall performing those stunts. There were rumours of kids failing to get a good grip and plunging down, smacking their heads and teeth on the rungs as they fell. Back in those days, we didn't have soft foam mats or thick layers of bark to break our falls, just a hard and unforgiving earthen patch. Despite this setup for The Darwin Awards, we still went back up there to play, addicted to the adrenaline, and if we got injured, we would get to skip a couple of days of school, or a caning.

I remember watching a scene from Superman II when a kid was playing at Niagara Falls alternating his grip on some handle bars. He lost his grip, fell, and was saved by Superman. That last part never happened to me on the jungle gym.

Picture this without the waterfalls in the background or Superman to save your ass.

The other thing I remember about the Monkeybars was that the steel bars got extremely hot during the day. Imagine trying to pole-dance while gripping a searing hot rod between your thighs for no other reason than it's a stupid idea. Now imagine kids trying to climb up a blisteringly hot scaffold while gingerly gripping onto the rungs. Yeah, not such a good idea for school any more, is it?

The Empty Arcade

Pac-Tron image by Pixel Fantasy

Ken was crouched in a defensive position, waiting for Zangief to leap towards him before letting rip with a dragon punch. A hand went across the screen and placed a coin on the glass plate, in anticipation of getting a chance to play Street Fighter 2. A quick flick of my wrist and Ken jumped instead. What followed was a flying pile driver and the end of my turn with the game. That was how I used to spend my breaks between lectures at University. I wasn't particularly good at the game, but it was fun to watch and play against others.

After University, I didn't really play with arcade games for well over a decade, as I was busy working and didn't get many opportunities to play on an arcade machine. As time went by, many of the old arcade parlours and fun-lands, like Spaceworld and Thunderdome on Queen Street, have since disappeared. The local dairies too, once a place for local kids to play a couple of games while running chores picking up groceries, lost the arcade machines from the front of their stores. Maintenance was probably too high for the old boxes and new ones weren't exactly cheap either. I come across a few games once in awhile, usually at the movie theatres or at the mall, but at $2 a game, I'm less inclined now to sit down and play, and that's a shame.

My earliest memories of an arcade parlour was in the playground area at the top floor of Jaya Supermarket sometime around the late '70s and early '80s. There were probably only a hand full of arcade games at that time, and most of the space was taken up by a shuffle puck table, a foosball table, a bubble hockey table, various pinball machines and a fairly large carousel. I don't think I've even seen a live bubble hockey machine  in decades.

When was the last time you saw one of these?

I think the first arcade machine I ever played was Breakout, a simple spinner control game that moved a paddle along a horizontal axis to deflect a tiny ball up to destroy an array of bricks. The display used a transparent overlay to simulate coloured rows for the bricks. I'm sure I wasn't much good at it at the time, probably being only 5 or 6 years old, but it a simple enough game to grasp despite the fact that I required a stool to stand on.

There were other games around that time that I remember playing including a first person Formula 1 driving simulator that had a scrolling background, Space Invaders, Asteroids and many more. It wasn't until we went on one of our many holiday trips up to the Genting Highlands Resort that I would have experienced a true arcade with scores of machines blasting out tunes and the great dings that rang out from the multitude of pinball machines. That was what an arcade was all about, the noise, the smoke (yes, people were allowed to smoke indoors in those days) and the hordes of people crowding around the machines.

This used to happen to me everytime I played. Talk about performance anxiety.

There were the classic upright cabinets, the driving booths and my favourite, cocktail tables, on which I played both Frogger and Galaxian. They must have had well over 30 pinball tables too, screaming for attention with their pings and bright lights.

The great thing about arcade games was that you could sit down and get into the game mechanics instantly. Here comes a flaming barrel, press the jump button. A bunch of aliens are descending, mash the fire button. Spin that ball, a spider is about to gobble you up. Swerve right to avoid that oil slick! Whatever you do, wiggle that joystick like mad. Fun, intense, and thoroughly enjoyable. The aim of it all? To get your 3 letter initials up on the High Score screen, to prove that you were a god amongst men.

The Best of the Best, 1982. Boys wanted to be them, girls wanted to worship them.

It wasn't until the mid 80s when the arcade craze slowly faded. There were still some great games coming out like Gauntlet and Operation Wolf, but it wasn't until Street Fighter 2 came out in 1991 that the arcade parlours really got into a crazy fever pitch again. I remember going back to Malaysia in the early '90s and seeing hordes of people trying to master dragon punches, sonic booms and invisible throws. Even so, the many fighter clones that have since come out didn't really bring back the arcade experience for long.

So what happened? I guess the demise of the arcade parlour came about with the release of home entertainment systems like the Atari 2600, personal computers like the Apple II, portable gaming devices like the Game & Watch series and later, the Game Boy from Nintendo. Pay for it once, and play it forever. You didn't have to get your parents to drop you off at the arcade, it was probably cheaper for them in the long run, and you didn't get leg cramps from standing the whole day playing a game. To get decent in a single arcade game would probably require well over a hundred games, millions if you wanted to finish Dragon's Lair (that game was impossible). Instead, you could pop in a cartridge, flick a switch and be blasting spacies all weekend long.

About 5 year ago, I decided I wanted to resurrect some of my childhood by building my own Arcade Machine with all the classics running on it. It took me about 2 months to build the table part-time, and it sat in the living room as a piece of geek pride. After awhile, the glory faded, the endless battles ended, and the machine sat idle down in the basement, waiting. Then, a few months ago, I fired up the box, propped my son on the couch next to it, and watched his eyes light up as I proceeded to blow those crazy aliens from the sky once again.