It should be no secret that I love classic arcades. Not only does it bring back a nostalgia factor for me, I genuinely enjoy spending the time to play the games.

Admittedly, my favorite classic arcade isn’t even in Houston. That honor has to go to Pinballz Arcade in Austin. Consisting of two floors of both classic and modern arcade and pinball machines, it’s easy to spend several hours in there just going from game to game, having a blast. In fact, the last time I was there, I ended up spending most of my time playing Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition and Street Fighter X Tekken against Jenn Dolari. Of course, I don’t go there as often as I’d like for the simple already-stated reason: it’s not in Houston. As I go to Austin once every year or so, that’s about all I get to do there.

There are options in Houston, however. The most popular one is a place downtown called Joystix. Most of the time, it’s a distributor of video and pinball arcade machines, from as old as Pong to as new as Terminator Salvation. Twice a month (on the first and last Friday), they open their showroom from 9 PM to 2 AM for a $15 cover fee, and every single game is available to play. In addition, drinks are available at the lounge connected to Joystix through a door.

Unfortunately, though I’ve been to Joystix several times, I don’t really enjoy going there anymore. There are two major problems I have there. The first problem is that even though the place sells the machines that are on the showroom floor, they’re not always of good quality. I’ve come across machines with unresponsive controls, damaged screens, or were plain not operational. The second problem is just how popular the place is. Within a half-hour or so of the showroom’s opening, there are so many people that you’re almost shoulder-to-shoulder at the machines and people are pushing against you to walk down the aisles. It gets even worse in the lounge, where it becomes a solid mass of people. Jennifer ends up not enjoying it because she feels crammed in when sitting in a corner reading her book or checking her phone, and it gets so loud and so crowded I come close to a meltdown.

Several months ago, my friend Josh told me of another arcade that had opened around 59 North and Beltway 8 called the Game Preserve. I ended up going there with Jennifer, and ended up having a good time. It has fewer machines than Joystix does, but they tend to be in a better state of repair. When a machine DOES malfunction, it’s generally repaired quickly. Since my last visit there, they moved to a newer facility where instead of being in a converted small warehouse space, they’re in a pure office space with working air conditioning throughout the facility.

The only two problems I can think of with the Game Preserve are that it’s pretty far from my house and that they don’t tend to have newer machines. The only really new machine they have from the past five to ten years is a single Tron: Legacy pinball machine set to one side, though that’s understandable considering the place is owned by a collective of collectors. That’s not to say they don’t get additional games every so often; they recently added the pinball machines Bram Stoker’s Dracula (one of my favorites) and Twilight Zone to the game floor. As for the distance, it’s around 45 miles from my house, which means I really am only able to go when I’m on that side of town, which is not very often anymore.

I’ve personally found the staff at the Game Preserve to be very friendly and helpful as well. My friend Louie wanted to go to an arcade for his bachelor party earlier this month, and had originally thought of Joystix. Instead of spending $600-700 or so for a couple of hours to have Joystix by ourselves (Louie doesn’t like it crowded either), we went to the Game Preserve where it was nowhere near as crowded and spent far less. In fact, we were prepared to spend $60 total to get in ($15 per person), but the staff informed us that if I paid $30 for a bronze membership for the month, the rest of us could get in free. Not only did we do that, I went back this past Sunday with Jennifer and spent a few more hours playing. :-)

If there was a classic arcade like the Game Preserve closer to my home, I would be a very happy camper. Still, I enjoy the chances I do get to visit the Game Preserve and Pinballz Arcade, and I’m glad that there actually are decent arcades out there, allowing me to live a little bit of nostalgia and play the classic games the way they were meant to be played. ;-)

It’s been five and a half years since the parent company for Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, leading to the closing of every single one of both chains’ restaurants. I thought the brand was well and truly done. A year or two ago, however, that thought was turned on its head when driving to my friend Louie’s house. I noticed (to my shock) that a Bennigan’s had opened on the corner a few blocks from his house. The logo was different, but the theme looked to be the same. Once I got home, I checked online and found it was a resurrection of the original brand. I was curious, and resolved to try it someday.

The problem for me, though, was that the Bennigan’s was the only one in the city, and Louie’s house is very much out of my way most of the time. Therefore, my opportunities to go were extremely limited. I only ended up going once, and that was when I spent a day car shopping back in August. In the end, I was seriously underwhelmed. The food tasted pretty much like I remembered, but Bennigan’s never was good enough to be a “go out of your way” place. In addition, the customer service wasn’t very good. The wait staff didn’t really seem to care, and I didn’t feel like we were welcome there. I chalked it up as indulging in some nostalgia, and didn’t feel an urge to go back.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. This past Saturday, I went over to Louie’s house, and found that the Bennigan’s had closed and was now a 59 Diner.

It turned out the problems I had noticed with customer service were not due to an isolated incident. Not only did people get terrible service at the location I had been to, a new location had opened in the Woodlands and their customer service issues were just as bad.

The sad thing is that Bennigan’s is falling into the same trap it fell into before it originally went bankrupt. Even back then the customer service was becoming horrible, to the point where people like me were swearing off the chain. Unless the food is absolutely fantastic, no one is going to come back to a restaurant where the service is awful. Bennigan’s was never terrific food; it was at best okay but cheap. This revival of the chain will probably not survive unless they get their act in gear.

It’s sort of a shame, as Bennigan’s was a fixture in my adolescence. Still, the way the company looks now, perhaps it’s better that it stay buried in the past.

I suppose it should come to no surprise to some that I enjoy reading, and am a pretty fast reader to boot. Unfortunately, I tend to buy books to put into my library, and they end up sitting there because I find myself spending evenings watching TV or playing video games instead. This started becoming unacceptable to me, so I decided to do something about it.

A few weeks ago, I declared Sundays to be reading days. This happened after I found myself stuck in bed with severe back pain (due to aggravating a back injury), and wanted to be productive at least. I ignored my tablet and laptop all day (as my desktop PC was still inoperative), and spent the day reading instead. The first book I read was The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan (the third book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series), and Heat Wave by Richard Castle. After doing that, I decided that I would go ahead and make it a point to stay off the internet every Sunday until I’ve read at least one book. :-)

Last week’s book was Blowback by Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett. Blowback was very much an impulse purchase; Jennifer and I were at Murder By The Book, a local independent bookstore specializing in mystery novels, when I happened to notice the book on a table. I didn’t know she wrote mystery novels, and in fact this was her first one. I knew of her as the former CIA operative whose cover was blown in retaliation for her husband revealing that one of George W. Bush’s claims regarding Iraq’s WMD developments were false. The book itself was a pretty decent mystery thriller, involving a CIA operative seeking out the man who was murdering her contacts, hoping he’ll lead her to a mysterious terrorist/criminal mastermind she had been pursuing. It’s obvious Plame used her background as an operative in the novel. I’ll likely pick up the second book, if/when it should come out.

I went ahead with a “related” book yesterday: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. While the thriller film Green Zone was based on the book, the book itself is non-fiction and does not delve into the search for WMDs in Iraq. Instead, the book (based on interviews and the author’s own experience on the ground) delves into the American occupation of Iraq after the invasion, leading up to the handoff of sovereignty to the Iraqis. It’s a pretty damning account of how badly the attempts at reconstruction and formation of the new government were handled. The common theme throughout the process is that qualified and experienced individuals were pushed aside and ignored in favor of those who followed the Bush administration’s political orthodoxy and told them what they wanted to hear. As a result, the country was left in far more of a mess than it was when they found it. I’m seriously considering picking up my own copy of the book; the copy I read was borrowed from my father-in-law, who received it from me as a Christmas gift a year or two ago.

The next few books in my list will likely be The Cuckoo’s Calling by “Robert Galbraith”, Necropolis by Michael Dempsey, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter J. Miller, Jr. All three are books I picked up at Half-Price Books and intended to read, but never got around to doing so. My hope is that by scheduling one day a week as a pure reading day (excluding any needed errands or chores, of course) I’ll be able to knock out most of my literary pile of shame. :-)

Of course, that will mean I’ll need to buy more books, but that’s a never a bad thing…

If you have a Goodreads account, I’m on there too. You can find me at http://www.goodreads.com/drkbish; I’m always open to suggestions regarding good books. :-)