(While I’m out of the country, I’m reposting some content from my archives. This one was originally published at the very beginning of 2003 when Jon and I were broke and living in my mom’s basement.)
Aside from the fact that this creation is maddeningly brilliant (link via TMN), and I’ve played it probably a good four dozen times since I found it yesterday, it has completely thrown me into a mid-Eighties reverie wherein I cannot stop thinking of the following:
1. Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies, two at a time. Grape Shasta afterward.
2. Spending entire days during summer vacation watching Clue on VHS over and over again, knowing how it ended but still suspecting Miss Scarlet every single time.
3. The sound of my parents fighting in the next room.
4. My thirteen-year-old brother chasing me around the living room couch, stopping suddenly like he was about to give up, and spitting a gigantic wad of warm phlegm across the room onto my right cheek. Me screaming.
5. The girl up the street with the gigantic boobs. She was two years younger than I was, and in order to compete I had to wear a huge padded bra. And on my ten-year-old, 80-pound body? SO SUBTLE.
6. My dad’s dramatic crush on Loni Anderson.
7. Pictures of Andy Gibb, John Stamos and Scott Baio splattered over every inch of my sister’s bedroom walls.
8. Smurfs.
9. Pulling up to soccer practice in a beige Ford Taurus.
10. Courtney Smith, Courtney Carrington, Courtney Price, Courtney Dees, Courtney Nelson.
11. The dream I had about being trapped in a burning building, and right as I’m about to succumb to the smoke and flames David Hasselhoff and KITT show up to my rescue.
12. My brother trying to pull his socks off by the toes, giving up halfway through and walking around with them just like that, halfway on/halfway off, all day long.
13. The smell of Pond’s Cold Cream in the morning as my mother took off her eye makeup.
14. Matching my socks to my turquoise Converse high tops. Pinch-rolling my Lee jeans.
15. Hardee’s.
16. Sitting in my father’s lap before school, listening to Air Supply and rocking back and forth, hearing him whisper in my ear, why won’t your mother come back to me?
17. Hall and Oates.
18. My sister’s hairdo, which I think I can safely blame for the death of my first goldfish.
19. My “Love Boat” themed Trapper Keeper.
20. My first triumphant completion of Pitfall.