The Corona Diaries Vol. 63: A Haven for Nerds

(late July 2022)

(Watch this entry's prelude.)

When I was a boy growing up in Chicago, my mother would occasionally take me and my brother out to Novelty Golf which was out in Lincolnwood at Devon and Lincoln. We’d play a round of mini-golf and then head over to the Bunny Hutch to fill up on ice cream before retiring to the game room where my brother and I would play video games. For my part, I used up the quarters my mother had bestowed upon me like shit through a goose because I was so bad at the games.

These are fond memories and they came back to me when I met some friends one day for lunch at the Bunny Hutch-like Michael’s Frozen Custard before heading over to NerdHaven Arcade on Madison's east side where $15 bought me hours of gaming goodness.

NerdHaven opened during the pandemic lockdown and miraculously survived. In fact, the arcade did so well that the owners decided to keep their long-term lease. This had the side effect of really irritating their landlord who was keen on selling the mall the arcade is in to an also pissed off developer who was forced to put the kibosh on a sizeable ($40 million) housing development and reformulate plans.

Those plans have been modified with a new, scaled-down development in the works. Oddly enough, the mall is undergoing something of a renaissance with vacant storefronts filling back up. I was happy to hear that Ace Hardware was moving back in so I don't have to go quite as far for home improvement supplies.

For our money, we got unlimited videogaming and a boatload of tokens for the pinball machines. Most of the pinball machines were newer with all sorts of digital doodads and often times would speak at you whether it be the bon mots of Homer Simpson or some evil villain taunting you. There were a few games where a flipper was well-hidden and I didn't notice it for a couple minutes. It came in handy when the game suddenly decided to drop 5 or 6 balls at once for me to deal with. I was busier than a one-eyed man at a burlesque show trying to keep all of them in play.

I was there with a couple friends who are a bit younger than me and were more familiar with the games of the 1990s and later than I was. I did not play much in the way of video games or pinball beyond 1991 or so. If memory serves, the arcade I frequented between classes closed and neither I nor any of my roommates had gaming systems. This is not to say that they don’t like the games from the 80s that I prefer as I teamed with one of them to win a long-time favorite of mine, Heavy Barrel. But they definitely knew the newer games much more than me.

I had flashbacks of Ollie North when I saw this one:

 

We ended up playing for 3 or 4 hours and I walked out of there with a blister on one hand from playing Beach-Head for much longer than was safe. I loved this game on my Commodore 64 back in the mid-80s so I had to just had to play it. The graphics and sounds have been beefed up and I think the game was set in a more modern context. Whereas the original was a World War II-Pacific Theater kind of setting, this newer arcade game was more turn of the century with modern helicopters, uniforms, etc. While it was fun, I do miss the guys I mow down with my machine gun yelling “Medic!” like they did on the original.

NerdHaven is near home – just a short bike ride away – and I look forward to stopping in there again.

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This summer saw the release of the sixth volume in one of my favorite mystery series, The Vinyl Detective, by English author, playwright, and former Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel. This time the titular hero and his girlfriend go Nordic noir in Attack and Decay.

Perhaps with a nod to Yojimbo, our protagonist is nameless. He is an audiophile, a connoisseur of fine stereo systems and a record collector with an extensive knowledge of music and the various pressings of many albums over the years, although jazz is his favorite. Usually, he is hired by someone to locate a copy of a rare album with mystery, murder, and mayhem ensuing.

This time around our hero and his girlfriend, Nevada, are sent to Sweden in search of a rare and precious death metal album by a group called Storm Dream Troopers. Soon the peace and calm of reclining on IKEA furniture while eating lingonberry pancakes is shattered when people start being killed in ways described by the songs on the album.

I adore these novels. There’s a good dose of humorous snark in the dialogue with digressions into the technology of sound reproduction as well as the history of various places and times. The discussions on the finer points of wine go over my head but each novel has cats!

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Speaking of Yojimbo, I got to see it on the big screen!

This may have been my first time seeing it in a theater but it was certainly the first time I’d watched it in ages. It was remade as A Fistful of Dollars which launched Clint Eastwood to stardom.

It stars Toshiro Mifune as an itinerant rōnin who comes upon a town beset by rival criminal factions. Our hero inserts himself into the situation in a bid to clean up the town. I had forgotten how funny it was. I laughed aloud at the rival gangs readying for battle yet afraid to attack first, for example.

I have the sequel, Sanjuro, on bluray and now I have a good excuse to skip out on chores and spend some quality time in front of the TV.

I also recently went to see Pola X by French director Leos Carax. If memory serves, I mentioned seeing his latest film, Annette, in a previous entry.

 

It was based on Herman Melville’s Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, albeit rather loosely, I have read. I am completely unfamiliar with this novel, however, so cannot say just how loosely Carax’s tale adheres to the source material.

Pierre is something of a dandy who lives with his rich mother in Normandy. He is an aspiring author and is courting a childhood friend named Lucie. Along comes a woman named Isabelle claiming to be his half-sister. Pierre teams up with her and a couple of Romanian refugees that are part of Isabelle’s retinue, I guess you’d say, and they head to Paris where all kinds of adventures happen. For instance, they end up at a derelict factory inhabited by a cult that trains for war out on the shooting range when they’re not performing avant garde noise rock.

I really liked Pola X. It was a weird yet fun bildungsroman, of sorts. I kept wondering what kind of strange events would befall Pierre next and they didn’t disappoint.

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My Frau recently made shakshouka, a Northern African dish. It’s eggs in a spicy tomato sauce.

I guess it’s something you’d find in the northwest part of the continent like Morocco and Libya. The eggs get poached in the sauce as it cooks. I cannot recall the exact spices she used but I'd wager that red pepper, cumin, and paprika were involved.

She served it with some goat cheese sprinkled on top and a few slices of flatbread on the side. It was extremely tasty! A little spicy so my nose ran but not hot enough to cause me to weep openly as with her doro wot.

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The Frau and I recently went to nearby Middleton for dinner but not until after we had made a stop at the National Mustard Museum there. This was my idea because I had acquired a mysterious hankering for a new type of mustard and one that wasn’t available at my local supermarket. I don’t know why this should be. Perhaps it’s just a side effect of getting older to spontaneously get odd cravings like this.

Ideally, I’d get a jar of some variety of Düsseldorf mustard and something else off of the beaten track.

The museum is pretty neat. In addition to shelf upon shelf full of jars of mustard, there are all manner of mustardy things to see such as these mustard pots for times when you want to add a little class to your dining table and the maker’s jar just won’t do.

There are also mustard bath powders and a mustard plaster.

So what did I get? I came home with 2 jars. The first was medium-strength German mustard that cried out to have soft pretzels dipped in it. I do believe that Löwensenf is made in Düsseldorf but who knows. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a big company that offshores its mustard production to Vietnam or some such thing.

Gut aber nicht ausgezeichnet. I found it to be milder than medium hot. Plus the clove is fairly prominent. Not bad but I think it’ll be the full strength stuff next time.

I also got this:

 

Now this mustard is hot as it has been laced with ghost peppers. It bypasses full strength and goes straight to Defcon 2. I brought it to work along with some pretzel sticks to share with my co-workers who enjoy spicy foods. This act of generosity ended up accidentally causing a work stoppage when a small group of us had to leave our desks to fill our mugs with ice water. The mustard was very good and it caused me to shed a tear or 4. Plus I got a nice endorphin rush.

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Bonus photo. Here’s an article from an issue of the Milwaukee Journal (or was it the Milwaukee Sentinel?) from circa 1914. Notice “clew”. Boys will be boys, eh?

(Watch this entry's postlude.)