So here is a really short update! I got a $100 gift certificate to NYHC Tattoo as a raffle prize during a fundraiser for Jessie Lee a while back.  It was about to expire so I decided I needed to come up with something and I decided that I should get my favorite video game character. And by favorite I mean the only game I really enjoyed growing up. The fact is I hate video games and I haven’t really played any since they added a third button. My parents got me a Wii Fit for my birthday last year because they thought I could use it to work out and I bought a hockey game and quit playing it after one period. I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

So yeah, Bubble Bobble was my favorite game growing up and it reminds me a lot of my little brother who LOVED video games. Bubble Bobble was his game and if it wasn’t two players I probably would never have played it. I used to just hang out in the basement of my parents house watching him play video games all the time.  But Bubble Bobble was one game I played with my brother all the time and then again in college a friend had an NES so we used beat Bubble Bobble on a weekly basis. Since then I think I have only played once, when I was on tour in Atlanta with the Gaskets. This exciting and breathtaking passage is from my tour diary dated Monday March 14th 2004:

Bean and Ross went to an after party for the Jet show that was on the same night, but Teddy and I were pretty fucking exhausted so we stayed in.  Teddy went to sleep and I played Bubble Bobble with Bean’s roommate, kicking ass through level 71.  I owned that shit.

Also normally when I talk about new tattoos of mine I mention who did them and such but honestly I didn’t even get the guys name. It was sort of a new experience. It’s the first time since my first tattoo that I have just walked into a shop blindly and had the first guy available work on me.  He did a good job and it was cool to get tattooed at NYHC a shop owned by NY Hardcore legends Vinnie Stigma and Jimmy Gestapo (and now Lars from Rancid). I made a pilgrimage to the shop in 2001 as a 20 year old hardcore kid when I was visiting NYC with a friend of mine who was looking to get tattooed. Ironically she got a video game related tattoo too.  Weird.

Oh, by the way, you can actually play Bubble Bobble online for free here! And if you are wondering the green dragon is named Bub. The blue one that I didn’t get is Bob.

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