Category Archives: Pointless Nostalgia

Pointless Nostalgia Video, Politics Schmolitics

Your New President: Trump Castle

I remain convinced that 1) the Trump-for-President talk will fade as soon as a more viable Republican candidate emerges, and 2) even if it doesn’t, he will have his ass handed to him as soon as he attempts any serious campaigning. The man is a grown child, a spoiled brat, and he hasn’t the slightest idea of what he’s in for if he actually runs for office.

The biggest nightmare that awaits him in running for office is an arena in which he can definitively lose. I don’t think Trump could handle that, because he has never truly and unequivocally lost at anything. In business, you can technically fail–as Trump has done many times–yet still turn a profit and, in a sense, win. Now that he’s dipping his toes into political punditry, he still can find a way to win when he loses. When Obama produced his birth certificate, Trump got to take credit for “forcing the issue.” So even though he lost in the sense that he was dead wrong (and also lying, it seems, about having all those “investigators” in Hawaii), he could claim that he “won” by making the president respond to his idiotic needling.

But when you actually run for office, you can lose. Not only that, but everyone will know exactly how badly you lost. I can’t imagine that Trump would put himself in such a position.

However, since speculation about him running will not go away, I promise to regularly post some Trump-related monstrosity until it does. First up, an ad that is deeply ingrained upon my psyche. Because Trump was not satisfied with just plaguing Atlantic City with his tacky casinos. He also had to pollute the local airwaves with his cheesy ads. If you lived anywhere in the tri-state area in the last 30 years, you probably saw this a thousand times more than you ever wanted to. The 80s-riffic jingle in this ad gets re-stuck in my head once every few months, at which point I raise my fists to the heavens and scream TRUMP!!!

How classy was Trump Castle Hotel and Casino? You can hazard a guess based on the fact that a large yellow sign that blares FREE PARKING gets as much screen time as anyone else in this ad.

Also, if you want to know what kind of person would seriously contemplate voting for Trump for president, peep this comment that appears below the video.

A Henry VIII-esque slob of a king and FREE PARKING–an inspiration to us all! TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP..

NYC, Pointless Nostalgia

My Encounter with the Wondrous Hypercolor Tapestry

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I hate to be one of Those People, but New York City ain’t what she used to be. Then again, she never was. In New York, the old is constantly being subsumed by the new. The pace can range from light speed to glacial, but nothing can last. Complaining about this is almost as old as the city itself. I bet Peter Stuyvesant bitched when they started building houses above Canal Street.

There is one thing that has disappeared from New York in my lifetime, however, and I do think the city is worse off for it. That is the Weird Little Shop, which has virtually no chance of surviving in the NYC of the 21st century, where real estate is at such a premium it can no longer accommodate the eccentric dreams of kooks who somehow luck into retail space.

By Weird Little Shop, I don’t mean a place that specializes in one curious niche, because those still exist in droves. And I don’t mean a thrift store, either, because there are still plenty of those, too. And a thrift store usually has some kind of focus and organization. What I mean is the kind of hovel that had zero focus and sold whatever the hell it felt like. Not a single thought or deed was spared to appealing to anything but the proprietor’s whim.

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Pointless Nostalgia

Humiliation Theater and The Last Haircut

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I used to joke about going bald before it happened. I already was well aware of the scientifical fact that if your mother’s father was bald, chances are you would be, too. My grandfather lost his hair by his late 20s, so I figured it was only a matter of time for me (while also hoping my grandfather’s hair loss was hastened by three stressful years in the Pacific during World War II). In high school, I began to grow my hair out, thinking I should do so while I still could. And when I say out, I do mean out. My hair did not grow down no matter how long I left it uncut. It grew sideways, like a mushroom cloud.

Early in my freshman year of college, I visited my cousin Staten Island. He was still in high school, and we went out and did the normal kind of weekend things that I was too uptight/immobile to do when I was in high school. At the moment, it felt like practice for all the things I should be doing in college. Relaxing. Not thinking. Having fun.

The Sunday I was set to go back to NYU, my uncle found an old Polaroid camera. Use it up before I throw it out, he commanded, so we did, taking dumb pictures of each other doing goofy stuff. The photos never developed. Everything was cast a muddy greenish-gray.

I stuffed a few in my backpack to take back to my dorm. On the bus trip back, I pulled a book out to read and noticed it had weird goop on the back cover, whitish, like dried Elmer’s glue. I looked in my bag and saw the culprits were the Polaroids. The dying film stock was leaking. I took one of the photos out to see how bad the damage was inside my bag, but I forgot to keep inspecting when I got a closer look at the picture. Something about my hairline didn’t look quite right. My part seemed higher up, like someone had grabbed me by the back of the head yanked my scalp back as far as it would go. It took this weird, half-formed Polaroid to show that I was already starting to lose my hair.

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