Watch someone else barely miss a gold star on an easy level of Mario N64 repetitively into eternity
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Watching someone else play video games is like going to a restaurant and having someone eat your food for you.
While my brother DJ and I weren’t gamers by any stretch, we owned a Nintendo and a bit later, an N64 console. Both items were heavily contested over, as selfishly we sought self fulfillment in championing our respective niche games. A surprise to absolutely no one, the only game I excelled at was Yoshi’s Story.
This game was about six Technicolor Yoshis (anthropomorphic dinosaurs with crippling ADHD) who were on a pilgrimage to retrieve the stolen Super Happy Tree from Baby Bowser; the goal of every level was to eat as much as humanly possible and the negative implications caused by the game’s antagonists, such as giant smiling sunflowers blocking the road, effected Yoshi’s happy meter. No one ever died.
While DJ was learning questionable survival skills in Tom Clancy and Golden Eye, I was having the notion drilled into my spongy mind that happiness is a solely contingent on eating food; here, the foundation for my Hanger-induced demonic transformation into a societal threat was cemented. If only Grand Theft Auto was around when I was 7, maybe it would’ve taken me less than three times to pass my drivers test and my apocalypse skill set would be more robust than solely “Javelin”.
So apparently Amazon purchased Twitch, an online video gaming site, where pro-streamers make $5,000 per month playing 40 hours a week. WHAT. I thought that when someone else played a video game in my presence, it was time to get a snack. I’m sorry but there is no greater form of torture than watching someone else play a video game. They should make inmates at Guantanamo Bay watch a rotating circuit of children with poor motor skills and zero spacial awareness play Tetris. I remember as a kid we would always go to someone’s house in our neighborhood to watch video games and there was always the one kid who you would rather stick white hot forks in your eyes than watch struggle through Rainbow Road in Mario Kart. Right off the bat, he always forgot to blow into the cartridge before playing it. Rookie. Typically this was same kid who had a subscription to Nintendo Power – he wasn’t better than you but definitely richer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. You know what else this hypothetical male neighbor of mine, who we all knew, did? Use the same move over and over and over again. Oh that repetitive round house kick that clearly hasn’t been working the last ten minutes in Mortal Combat? Yeah, you should probably do it again 15 times for good measure. Meanwhile, as things clearly weren’t going well, the music began to rapidly speed up and you knew HE’S ABOUT TO DIE – your turn was on the horizon. Confronted with pending annihilation, he would reset the console and exert an authoritarian decree for a do-over. Flash forward to adulthood, this same terrible person believes he can seduce women by doing super cool in-game moves with the follow up, “Bae did you see that?!?!” How are these people not knocked off by natural selection?
As most of the 90’s gave us unrealistic guarantees of the future, at least the below rings true with how the whole “being adults” thing has turned out for most of us:
So on a masochistic note, please enjoy looking at food that was eaten by someone who was not yourself.
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Nickel & Diner‘s Kale Cashew Bowl with a poached egg, roasted sweet potato, avocado, asparagus, green beans annnnd bacooonnnn
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Seabird‘s Salmon Poke with seaweed, dill poazu and avocado
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My glitter taco purse
It’s Gucci
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Benson’s Prosciutto, Mozzarella and Baked Egg Flatbread
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OCA + Positive Food‘s Oca 3 crepe made with Brazilian tapioca, scrambled eggs, dried tomatoes, truffle oil, and Parmesan cheese crust
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Atoboy‘s Fried Chicken with spicy peanut butter and garlic
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Citizens of Chelsea‘s Barbie Bowl with dragon fruit, banana, raspberry and almond milk
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SISTERS‘ Buratta with Brooklyn greens and farm fruits
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Llama Inn‘s fried chicken thigh with piccarones (sweet potato mini Peruvian donuts), chancaca honey, picked chilis, and fermented hot sauce
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Bar Bolonat‘s Avocado-Toast-Esque Latkes with potato, quinoa, avocado, and a poached egg