The summer I turned ten years old, my family and I returned to Panama for our bi-annual visit. We would always stay with my mother’s sister and her husband and son. My mother’s sister’s name is Carolina. Her husband’s name is Pacho and her son’s name is Aris. Pacho comes from a semi-wealthy background and in turn his son Aris was spoiled to death.

Now, in Panama being privileged is having enough money to buy shoes for your feet. My cousin Aris was beyond privileged. He was royalty bratty and spoiled. His possessions compared to those of a wealthy American single child. He had gadgets and gizmos that were ridiculously expensive in the states, let alone in impoverished Panama.

Hanging out with him as a child was a chore because he never enjoyed sharing any of his toys and video game systems with us: his America cousins.

Regardless of his annoying habits and petty ways, I had some fun experiences with Aris.

In particular, he introduced me to the Role Playing Game genre through a game on Sega Genesis called Shining in the Darkness.

It was a first person view dungeon crawling RPG with Japanese Anime style characters. At the time, the graphics were amazing. It played and animated like a cartoon, which was quite a feat for a game at the time. I remember it being for sale at Toys R US for over 70 dollars.

As fun as Shining in the Darkness was, nothing could have prepared me for when Aris introduced me to Final Fantasy II for the SNES.

The game was beautiful with a soundtrack that brought tears to my eyes. I’m not being hyperbolic here, I literally cried when I heard the theme songs of all the main characters before they engaged in the final battle of the entire game.

Ah….to think that games could make me feel that way…


And they still do.

In late 1980s my family and I all resided in a house in North Torrance. In 1988 a show named "In Living Color" debuted on the Fox Television network. The show featured a young Damon Wayans playing a character named "Homie the Clown". Homie was a disgruntled homeless clown or entertained people by cursing at them, showing them his bottle of shit, and by hitting them with a sock stuffed with another rolled up sock inside of it. His catch phrase was "Hell no. Homie don't play that." He'd then proceed to whip you in the head with the sock.

After seeing this hilarity on televison, my brothers and I thought up a game entitled "Sock Wars". We would each take a sock and roll up another sock or two inside of it. Then we would proceed to smack the shit out of each other with the socks while saying things like "Paulie don't play that."

When that sock hit you in the face it hurt like all hell. However, it didn't hurt as much as the belt whips across our asses that our mom would give us after the wars subsided. The reason my mom would give us a good beat down was simple: we stretched out every damn pair of socks we owned from playing sock wars.

She was hella pist.

Damn.

Shit changes quick.

I got accepted to the Game Art and Design Program at Art Institute of California- San Francisco. I gave Bishop Montgomery my two weeks notice and at the end of next friday I will be hanging up my teaching boots. Actually I'm teaching summer school, then I'm officially done.

Shit has come full circle.

After this summer, I'll have come and gone as a teacher.

I'll be moving back to Berkeley in fall.

In two years I'll be applying for jobs in the Video Game Industry. I hope to see myself as a level designer or a project manager. In other words, IM GONNA MAKE MOTHERFUCKING VIDEO GAMES.

Never in my life, have I come closer to a childhood fantasy. Whats even more suprising, is that I never fantasized about becoming a game designer when i was kid. It wasn't until I became an adult did I start fantasizing about it.

Fuckenay.

My mom is a bowling fanatic. She bowls two to three times a week. Naturally, I spent a great majority of my time in the bowling alley nursery as a I grew up. I remember the room to be a brown and orange color. There were scrawny pathetic looking cats painted onto the wood paneling. "Alley cats' they were refered too. I hated that goddamn nursery so much. I remember crying and trying to escape virtually every week that I was there. Luckily, there was an older girl named Katrina who I had claimed as my girlfriend that let me lay my head in her lap during movie time. That was always nice, but when she wasn't there I was a terror to deal with in the alley.

Thankfully, after enduring the tortourous three hours of pseudo-baby sitting my mom would arrive to rescue me. She would give me 50 cents to play some arcade games with. It was in those arcades that my thirst for gaming was born. The gaming passion was further ratified by the arrival of our 8-bit nintendo, but it was those first bleeps, blips, bloops, and kabooms that got me hooked.

I remember one day in third grade I wasn't feeling well. It was a tuesday and I was bummed because tuesday was taco day at school. My mom took me bowling instead, and I sat at bench wtaching her bowl. I wandered into the arcade at some point and a huge crowd was gathered around a new game. It was the first of its kind, Street Fighter II. I heard hadokens, sonic booms, and all sorts of other yells coming from the box. I watched mesmerized by the beautiful Chun-Li who proceeded to wreck havoc on a monster looking fighter named Blanca. My lip was hooked and I was towed by the boat that is video game love.

I watched as ten players attempted to defeat the final boss, M. Bison. No one succeded. Round after round he trounced the opposition. Then, a man entered the arena quietly. He put his quarter on the board, representing his desire to get a round in. Three bouts later, the man was playing the game. He chose the weakest looking character, Dhalsim the yoga master. He proceeded to trounce M.Bison. The crowd oo-d and awe-d in amazement. This man was a god to me.

15 years later, I hold this memory dear.

Adrien, Daniel, and I were with my mother inside some shop in Del Amo Mall. While she perused whatever she was perusing; the brothers Bellezza perused a twirling rack of comic books. There I was exposed to my lifelong obsession: The Batman.

On the cover stood barrel chested, 6'0 tall behemoth man in black with eyes white and slanted behind a cowl. A cape flowed from his shoulders down a length that encompassed the entire bottom portion of the cover. He watched over a New York-esque city like some predator over his prey. This was no ordinary superhero in bright neon tights "whamming", "klabbaming", and "biffing" through bad guys in repetitive pages.

No. This was a man of resolve with a thirst for justice through breaking backs of criminal scum. This was a detective with the intellect of a philospher, a genius, a prodigy. A man who never used guns or took lives, just kicked ass and cracked cases. This was no brash bull-headed, all brawn no brains hero like Superman or the Hulk.

This was the BAT!

I fell into that comic and I still haven't emerged. Its been 15 years.

I met Marlo in Algebra class when I was 14 years old. She sat on the otherside of the classroom and she was an acquitance of my friend Halston. Marlo was 4'11 and filipina then and today she is still 4'11 and filipina. She has been dating Bernard since we were 15, which was seven years ago.

Our sophmore year we had geometry together and we bonded over relationships. She broke down many female stereotypes for me; including the one that females don't fart or take dumps. She also taught me how one should treat a lady. The dating timeline was a useful tool she taught me about and it went like this:

1) 1 Month- hold hands
2) two months- kiss
3)5-6 months- first base
4)1 year- "i love you"/2nd base
4) 5 years marriage
5) 6 years- have sex

In all my years in the HS dating scene, my longest relationship was 4 months.

i hated that timeline....


marlo is still my best friend. 9 years and going strong. I love you, Marlo! (the only one i can say that platonically about)

About two weeks ago I had an epiphany. I was sitting over my stoichmetry homework from Chem class and feeling utterly depressed. Here I was, a college grad, stressing over yet another college class that I may or may not need to take because as a newly college grad I have no true idea of where I am going with my life. So taking this class could help me in the future if I decided to, for example, go to medical school. However, if I wasn't going to be applying to some type of medical school or medical related job in the near future, then why should I be wasting my time and energy over balancing chemical equations. The truth is, I only took the class because on a fleeting whim I decided I would probably pursue medicine as a career.

Do I like medicine? Not in particular. I trust doctors over all, but I know that even some of their best efforts aren't always the best. One can never truly tell what ailment someone, a patient, might have. Long story short, being a doctor is a long and painful road. It is fulfilling but it is also life draining. Besides, I know that I'm too much of a louse and a sloth to walk that road without bitching the entire time. In fact, I know I would bitch because I don't want to be a damn doctor.

NO. So what do I want to be when I grow up?

Cuz I sure as hell aint grown up.

Well, they say that you should pursue what you like. As simple as that statement is, that's a pain in the ass. Because people aren't too keen on twenty-something year olds that play video games. Correction, worship video games. I know more about Konami's Castlevania franchise than anyone really should know. I know the title of music tracks from the game. MUSIC TRACKS! As well as most games streching back as far as 1986.

On my stomach, I closed the chemistry book on my bed, closed my eyes and said " I shall make video games."

You only live once, and if you don't ever try doing what you love to do than you'll grow up just bitching about life. Regretting any decisions is something I don't want to have to be doing very often. While studying that chemistry book, I just whined about how I should have majored in Biology in college so that applying to medical school would have been easier. It would have made looking for a job easier.

But the fact of the matter was, I enjoyed all the classes I took in college even though I only majored in Psychology; and truth be told finding a job with a major in psych is rather difficult. But fuck, why do we even go to school then? Shouldn't we just be made indentured servants to some skillful maestro surgeon or even truck driver? It would make it easier.

All rambling aside, my catharsis was achingly simple. If I spend all my time playing, thinking, and debating about video games then I better put that passion to use. Yeah, it may not contribute to society overall in the long run (although I can bullshit reasons why it can) at least I'll be happy knowing that I tried doing what I wanted to do. Besides, that's what church is there for. Volunteerism. Wanna feel better? Volunteer. Feel shitty about how meaningless your life is, go down to 3rd street and feed some po folk. Make you feel better right quick. Or maybe not but there otherways to contribute to this world besides your job.

Right?
RIGHT?
Ah well fuck it.