Review Avenue

I left a dime on top of this stone on Review Avenue. You can’t see it in this picture. The dime, that is. I chose this stone from among thousands on this wall because of its flat surface on top and because it was reachable from the ground without need for a ladder or stepping stone.

I don’t know how long the dime will remain in this spot, but I plan to look for it the next time I find myself on that street.

In the past I have hidden small amounts of change in public places. For years now I have placed 50¢ at a place I walk past. Despite how tiny the coins might seem I can nevertheless see them from a distance, hiding in plain sight about 7 feet above the sidewalk. I placed them on the bottom hook of a letter on a sign with letters that extrude about 2 inches from the wall. I can barely reach the spot, but I imagine that when I need 50¢ I will know where to find it.

Disaster-planning-gone-amok would find me stashing small amounts of coinage all over town, adding up to a small fortune, or at least a bus fare.

The 50¢ sometimes disappears from the above-mentioned spot. The sign’s letters are metal, and I assume someone cleans the sign once in a while, probably spraying it with water or something to prevent corrosion. I checked in on the coins yesterday, though, and they were there, their surfaces feeling very weathered after several months of continuous exposure to the winter elements.

The stone on Review Avenue seems more perilous a place to store a coin. Even if the coin stays put I might simply not be able to find its location again. This wall is probably about a mile long, and to find one stone among thousands will probably be more difficult than I assumed when I placed the tiny dime there. I took pictures of the wider area and can remember the building across the street, though, so maybe I’ll have not such a hard time of it.

A few weeks ago, on 5th Avenue, I spotted 2 decks of playing cards stuck inside the top of a payphone enclosure. Like those two quarters (which the above-mentioned 50¢ comprises) these decks of cards were just sitting there, hiding in plain sight. Anyone’s eyes could see the boxes but to most they would (like the payphones themselves) register as but a sundry blip on the imminent horizon.

Being a payphone guy I noticed the irregular shape of something that was not supposed to be there. I often notice payphones littered with emptied liquor bottles and assorted garbage, but the neatness and conspicuity of the playing cards caught my eye. They had been intentionally placed, not simply tossed there like most payphone refuse. Had they been left for someone to pick up? Was this a handoff, from one card hustler to another? What kind of cards were these? Marked? Were the decks stacked?

I reached up and grabbed the boxes. Something about that act made me feel like I was in the game, though I couldn’t tell you what kind of game. Handling cards is a gleefully grubby feeling for me. I can’t hold even 2 cards without feeling greedy.

Days earlier I happened to have heard that many of the office buildings on this part of 5th Avenue host illegal poker matches and gambling tournaments. This, combined with the sketchy circumstances in which I found them, made me skeptical of the integrity of these cards. The circumstances gave me an illusory moment of paranoia. I imagined that whoever left these cards on the payphone might have surveiled the location to ensure that the intended recipient got them. My intrusion, I imagined, could have ramifications beyond simply intercepting a random transaction. I might be identified as someone who I am not. I might be followed. The pick-up might have been the signal to someone watching, someone who expected to follow me to the place where the poker match would commence.

These paranoid cloak-and-dagger pangs vanished as quickly as they appeared, and I confidently shoved the cards in my pocket. Later, on the subway, I opened the boxes and quickly found that the decks were indeed stacked. One deck had 56 cards (there should only be 52, or 54 with Jokers), and among several card-distribution anomalies I found that one deck had 5 Aces, 6 Kings, 2 Jacks, and 7 Fours (there should only be 4 of each). What little I know about card-playing includes nothing from the world of cheating but these cards seemed to have come from that realm. I am far removed from the details of the possibly concocted scenario from which these cards came — the skeevy world of card hustlers and poker cheats — and I felt neither satisfaction nor exposure in having possibly confiscated a flimflammer’s toolbox.

Whatever the deal (pun intended) with the cards, finding them in that manner re-ignited my interest in stashing harmless and low-value coins and objects in public. I will look for the Review Avenue dime next week, and if ever I stay at a certain hotel in Daytona Beach again I will ask to stay in a certain room so I can see if the dollar bills I taped to the bottom of the dresser drawer are still there after I placed them in 2006.

This blurry cameraphone picture shows a Megatouch Gametime system I saw a few months ago at the Hammacher Schlemmer Store on 57th Street. I am an occasional Megatouch addict, binging on BoxDrop, PhotoHunt, and WordDojo, games which I OWN in terms of high scores. I have been part of no small number of friendly rivalries involving those and other Megatouch games but for the most part I OWN THEM ALL BWAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Megatouch at Hammacher Schlemmer

This Megatouch console caught my attention partly because it appeared that anyone could walk into Hammacher Schlemmer and play it for free. I am not lame enough to exploit such an opportunity by camping out and inviting my buddies to do the same — Hey, PhotoHunt marathon at Hammacher Schlemmer, c’mon boys, it’s free! — but I played a round of WordDojo on the store’s dime.

Apparently there is a secret to Word Dojo, a certain Lantern Trick which allows you to play infinitely. Is it real? I don’t know, but I saw what appeared to be this technique in action on a video sharing site. Even if I remembered how to do it I would never regress to such childishness. My high score on WordDojo is something over 1,270,000. While there are higher legitimate scores in the world I see that those who implement the fabled Lantern Trick trounce all with scores of 100,000,000 and more. To hell with ‘em!

Megatouch games are found at bars, restaurants, and arcades, and the set’s best-known game is probably Erotic Photo Hunt, a what’s-the-difference matching game utilizing the skankiest porn ever produced for its material. It’s a great bar game but a G-Rated version exists as well. If you’ve never seen it before the PhotoHunt game is pretty addicting, and unlike other games on the Megatouch there seems to be no full equal for it on a desktop PC. The difference is the touchscreen interface. I know tablet PCs and other devices allow for touchscreen interaction but even if I could conjure that functionality on this desktop I would not want to use it to punch at this tender, fleshy LCD screen when such gestures might ruin it. The Megatouches are designed for that very kind of abuse.

The cost of this console — $4,000 — is ridiculous. That price might make sense if one expected to use the set in a money-making environment, but even at that it would take a long time to get a return on the investment, and unless you know your Linux operating system (on which the Megatouch operates) you could find yourself shelling out more coin for maintenance and support. Most places that have Megatouches lease the equipment, or do a straight revenue-share with Merit Industries (manufacturer of Megatouch) and/or their middleman.

$4,000 for an at-home, private use copy of a Megatouch console is out of control for two reasons. One is that the games are simply not that good, and in fact they are patently primitive compared to far cheaper games. The other is that a good portion of the fun in these games is the competition against fellow bar-flies and game room cronies. The primitiveness of the games’ graphics are less of a problem when the good fun of competition compensates for it. The Megatouch has no apparent capacity for network play so a set like this in your living room comes with a built-in dead end that beheads a good portion of its enjoyment. And while the literature for this product says it contains 130 games many of them are simply variations or even complete copies of other games on the system — those copies differing mostly in graphical presentation.

This Megatouch-for-$4,000 bogosity provoked some disillusionment in Hammacher Schlemmer. For most of my life when I got a Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue I flipped through it knowing that while I would not be able to afford anything in it I could nevertheless feel confident that the “professors” at the Hammacher Schlemmer Institute think-tank had thoroughly researched the best gifts to be found in various categories.

I say, do your own research, and you’ll find that sometimes they get it right, other times they are wildly off base.

The same day I spotted this Megatouch I saw that Hammacher Schlemmer had chosen a particular digital piano as the best of the best among today’s products in that category. Believe me, I know what I am talking about when I say with confidence that the piano they had on display — it was a freakin’ CASIO! — was just a toy, far from the best in its class and farther still from the best value for digital pianos of today.

I agree with them, though, that Cuisinart makes the best Thermal Carafe Coffee Maker, so I would not say they get everything wrong. But between the ridiculous price for the crippled Megatouch and the P.O.S. digital piano they hailed as the best of the best I started to question the authority of the vaunted Hammacher Schlemmer. With an abundance of “expert” resources available Hammacher Schlemmer has a tougher row to hoe than they did 15 years ago. I think that the place would do well to just ignore more electronics in their catalogues.

Still, I like to let myself believe what Hammacher Schlemmer tells me. I may be a fool for it but I allow the same sense of surrender that let me believe Paul Harvey always told the truth.

Megatouch’s main competitor in this space is the iTouch, produced by JVL. iTouch consoles contain many games virtually identical to those on the Megatouch. Around here it seems you’ll find iTouch sets more often than Megatouches. My favorite JVL game is Getta Line, for which I have not found a satisfactory equivalent on the desktop PC. I wonder how the copyright police feel about JVL’s use of the iTouch name?

I am done talking about this. Maybe I will update this rant later. Here is a recent photo proving my OWNERSHIP of the Getta Line game at a local place.

Getta Line game on JVL's iTouch9+