Like everyone else, there are some things I like that I just don’t want to admit to. Most of them are childhood pleasures that I’ve never outgrown. Sad, but true. 

As I write this, I’m hungry, so let’s talk food, shall we?

Count Chocula cereal. Few things in life are as good as cereal that turns the milk chocolaty. Is “chocolaty” even a word? If it is, it probably shouldn’t be.

Pop Tarts. Especially, chocolate fudge Pop Tarts, with icing, of course, but any other Pop Tarts with icing will do. Pop Tarts without icing are nasty.

Hershey’s chocolate. Seeing a pattern here? When I was younger, I used to love all kinds of candy, but as I got older, my tastes narrowed. Chocolate connoisseurs sneer at Hershey’s, but what do they know? Only one bad thing comes from Pennsylvania (hint: their name rhymes with “Filthadelphia Beagles”), and Hershey’s ain’t it. 

Bacon cheeseburgers. Slow death by heart disease in every greasy handful. But I can’t resist. 

McDonald’s French fries. Ditto. Everyone likes Bob Marley, and everyone likes McDonald’s fries. 

Tater tots. Related to, but even better than, Mickey D’s fries. Remember when you were a kid and the school cafeteria was serving tater tots with lunch, and you felt like it was a holiday? Yeah. That’s what I’m sayin’.

Cheap beer. My friends like to drink expensive imported stuff, or micro-brews with hints of raspberry and crap like that, but I’m just as happy—happier, actually—with Miller Genuine Draft or even an Iron City. And that Tequiza crap with the lime flavor? Love it.

Coca-Cola. Eventually, either my dentist or my gastroenterologist will tell me to give up Coke. And that will be one sad, sad day. 

Let’s move on to some other things….

Kiss. I’m talking the original line-up during its golden era (1973-1977). Kiss was the first band I really liked. Destroyer was the first album I ever bought, and “Detroit Rock City” was my favorite Kiss song. I wanted to play drums like Peter Criss. When Joni and the kids are out and I’m doing housework, I like to crank the Alive! CD. My poor, poor neighbors. 

Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, Skid Row, Scorpions, Quiet Riot, and other 80’s hair-metal bands. When just about every rock critic asserts that Guns N’ Roses were one of the greatest rock bands ever, liking them is not much of a “guilty pleasure.” I didn’t like them when they first came out, but they eventually became my favorite. I devoured Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusions I and II. I went to two of their concerts, and one Halloween, I even dressed as Axl Rose. Man, I loved GNR, but I wished the band had simply broken up instead of sorta lingering on with Axl as the only original member, obsessively working (so the story goes) on a long-awaited comeback album, Chinese Democracy. 

As for the others…what can I say? I preferred David Lee Roth over Sammy Hagar, but I liked both versions of Van Halen. Skid Row put out two killer albums (Slave to the Grind was awesome) and then sort of flamed out. Scorpions’ World Wide Live album features, at one point, a German guy speaking in English to people in Paris. Wrap your head around that. Quiet Riot was one of the dumbest hair bands, but I love their remake of “Cum on Feel the Noize” anyway…

Godzilla. Not that 1998 crapfest movie with (shudder) Matthew Broderick. No, I’m talkin’ about those old school, 1950’s/1960’s Godzilla movies I used to watch on Saturday mornings as a kid. So cheesy, yet so much fun. I must rent some for my kids. 

Battlestar Galactica. Not that dour cable TV version—I mean the cheesy 1978 series that was a Star Wars ripoff. “Bad” cannot begin to describe the original Battlestar Galactica, but I loved it when I was a kid, and I still think fondly of it now. 

Comic books. When I was a kid, my dad gave me a huge cardboard box full of comics—Spider-Man, Werewolf By Night, Metal Men—that I devoured. Spidey was my favorite as a kid, but I also read Fantastic Four. 

I stopped reading comics when I was a teenager, then started up again in college, blowing vast sums at the Closet of Comics store just off the University of Maryland campus. X-Men were my favorite: I bought just about any X-Men title there was: Uncanny X-Men, Classic X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, X-Force, etc. 

I also bought anything done by John Byrne (Fantastic Four, West Coast Avengers, Superman) or Walt Simonson (Thor). Of course, I owned Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. I stopped collecting comics back in the mid-1990’s, when the X-Men storylines started resembling really bad soap operas, and I haven’t been back since. But I have been known to peek at a graphic novel or two since….

Superhero movies. I saw Superman I and II with Christopher Reeve. I watched both of those wretched Tim Burton Batman flicks (Batman, Batman Returns) and their annoying sequels (Batman Forever, Batman & Robin). Batman Begins was superb. I loved the first two Spider-Man movies; the third was okay. And the biggest problem with the Fantastic Four movies is that the portrayal of Dr. Doom sucks so much ass.

Dungeons & Dragons. Major geekery here. A classmate in my sophomore year of high school introduced me to D&D and I played until 1998, well past the age when I should have known better. And the only reason I stopped playing was because I moved to Scenic Convenient-to-Nowhere, Maryland, too far from where most everyone else in my playing group lived. 

I played 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, not that water-downed, politically correct 2nd Edition crap TSR came out with after running off E. Gary Gygax (the chief architect of D&D). I’ve bought the books and dabbled with 3rd Edition, but it’s just not the same. A lot of the humor and amateurish charm is missing from 3rd Edition: it’s "slick" and "edgy" and "professional" and "cool" and just not right. 

You can snicker about D&D all you like, but it was a healthy escape for me during some very tough times at high school. My folks didn’t need to worry about me running around with “the wrong crowd”: I was always gaming with my “dork” friends, usually at my house, sometimes at theirs. And as for D&D being geeky—well, it’s not much geekier than grown men participating in fantasy football leagues, methinks: what’s fantasy football besides D&D for ex-jocks?

Warhammer 40,000. I started playing 40K in 1987, but didn’t really get into it until 1994. It’s filled the gaming void I’ve had since I quit D&D. I like 40K so much, I have another site dedicated to it. 

Yahtzee, Risk, “Sorry,” Scrabble, etc. I know, I know, I know: how bourgeois, how pedestrian, how typically suburban and banal to like old board and dice games like these. If you think that’s bourgeois…

Norman Rockwell. Sad, but true. Did the America that Rockwell depicted ever really exist? I highly doubt it, but it ought to have. Cut me some slack here: at least I don’t like Thomas Kinkade. 

Some other things I’m ashamed to admit to liking….

Breaking glass. I just like the sound of breaking glass. I don’t mind taking the recycling to the dump because I can listen to the bottles and jars drop one-by-one into the bin….

Driving really fast with the windows down and the radio cranked. I just make sure to turn the stereo down at stop lights. Well, most of the time I do. 

Playing in the snow. I spent eight formative years of my childhood in Phoenix, Arizona. You know how much snow Phoenix gets? Zero. So one nice thing about moving to Maryland was experiencing snow. When it snows, I’m out there with my kids, throwing snowballs, making snowmen, or chasing and wrassling the dogs (Cookie likes snow, too). Even though I’ve lived in Maryland over 27 years, I never get tired of it—in fact, I wish it would snow more often. I feel sorry for grownups who can’t appreciate how beautiful and how fun snow is—you know, the folks who complain about driving in it. Sure, it’s difficult to drive in snow, but so what?

Go-karts. Go-karts are like tater tots: I can never get enough, and I can’t imagine anyone not liking them.

Mini-golf. Real golf is pretentious and expensive and boring. Mini-golf is silly and inexpensive and fun. The defense rests, Your Honor.

T-shirts and blue jeans. As I cruise into my 40’s, I realize that I really ought to give up T-shirts and blue jeans (or at least, not wear them so often). I’m not a teenager or a college kid anymore, but I still feel like one, and when I’m not at work or church, I dress like one. So be it. 

That’s all I’m willing to admit for now….
 

Posted December 2007