JJ BANKS’ Blog

     Yesterday I headed down to the Tropicana in Atlantic City to check out “Batman: The Dark Knight” on an IMAX screen. Unfortunately the 4pm, the 7pm and the 10pm shows were all sold out!!! This movie is totally ape! So I headed over to the poker room and played some 1/2 No Limit for 8 hours and banked $179. The Trop has a bad beat jackpot now I guess to try and attract more players. Bad beat jackpots are cool but I’m not really thrilled about the $5 rake they use to build it, because I mean what are the odds you’re actually going to be involved in it? It’s a sucker bet if you ask me, that’s why real card rooms like The Borgata don’t need these kind of antics to attract players. But anyways, I left the Trop around 1am and since I didn’t know how many more times I’ll be out late like this this summer I decided to head to my favorite after hours hangout.

     I got to Jilly’s Arcade in Ocean City, NJ around 1:30am and was ready to take down the “Spider-Man” pinball machine but to my surprise there was some hot chick playing it while her boyfriend was playing air hockey with his friends. C’mon what are the odds? The whole reason I come to the arcade late at night is because I know that most of the machines will be open, and they were, all excpet for “Spider-Man”. So instead I cashed in for a pocket full of quarters and headed over to the “Medieval Madness” machine.

     “Medieval Madness” by Williams is an awesome pinball machine. It’s humorous, has a great layout and very fun and exciting to play. There are multiple ways to rack up a high score from destorying the castle, killing the Dragon, launching catapults, winning jousts…it goes on and on. I had played this game a few times before tonight so I already knew the real key to getting a high score was destroying the castle, which I did a few times and before I knew it I had a ”REPLAY” by getting a score of over 25,000,000. I went to see if the hot chick was still playing “Spider-Man”, she wasn’t, but instead there was some young kid with a huge afro playing it now. WTF? So I looked for another game to play.

     “The Sopranos” pinball machine is a pretty tough machine. The ramps and power-ups are pretty hard to hit and the main level up element is a safe right in the middle of the board that is kind of dangerous and causes a lot of your balls to fall down the middle. But the game is definitely entertaining and does incorporate a lot of the characteristics of the TV show. With a few tries and the help of an extra ball I was able to get a “REPLAY” by getting a score of over 15,000,000 which is actually kind of low for a replay score, but then again this game is really challenging.  I then played a game of the “RollerCoaster Tycoon” pinball machine but the top right flipper on the machine didn’t work so after 3 balls I was done with this game. Jilly’s is pretty good with maintaining their machines, but I’d avoid the “RollerCoaster Tycoon” and “The Adams Family” pinball machines because they have flipper problems. I then noticed that of the 10 pinball machines on this side of the arcade that I had obtained a “REPLAY” on all of them before except for the machine at the very end. So I forgot about playing “Spider-Man” and headed over to the “Harley-Davidson” pinball machine.

     If you want to play a fun and easy pinball machine than “Harley-Davidson” pinball is the game for you. The “REPLAY” score on this machine was 70,000,000 which seems a lot until you start playing and notice that you can score 30,000,000 bascially without doing anything special. Whereas the game isn’t very challenging it does excel at being a lot of fun. The machine shakes and sounds like a real motorcycle. Obtaining multiballs is easy and hitting the jackpots is even easier. So needless to say I got a score of over 100,000,000 with no problem and had my third “REPLAY” of the night. It was around 3am and the “Spider-Man” pinball machine was open but I thought “maybe next time webhead” and headed home.

     Let me tell you about the story of New Jersey’s “Blue Hole”. Located deep in the Pine Barrens of Winslow, NJ “The Blue Hole” is a small but legendary body of water that is said to be bottomless and also a favorite hang out of The Jersey Devil. Although the surface is calm and blue unlike the neighboring flowing rivers that sport a brown undertone, those foolish enough to venture into “The Blue Hole’s” waters have told stories of powerful currents that try to suck you under and freezing water tempatures regardless of the time of season. Some believe the hole was made by a meteorite striking the Earth. Others believe its a portal for the supernatural. Whatever the true secret of The Blue Hole is, I was determined to take a look at it and decide for myself.

The road to “The Blue Hole”

     My journey to The Blue Hole began by turning down a dirt road that lead me into the heart of New Jersey’s infamous Pine Barrens. The road is actually pretty close to the Atlantic Ciy Expressway, which I’ve been on a million times so I didn’t feel that uncomfortable. However, my comfort level soon changed as the foilage of the trees grew thicker and thicker and the image of the main road in my rearview mirror grew smaller and smaller.
 

The New Jersey Pine Barrens

     You see most people that go on these weird travels usually don’t go alone. But yet here I was all by myself driving further and further into the Pine Barrens looking for some obscure hole in the ground. Maybe if I was used to hiking and camping this wouldn’t seem so unusual but I don’t know how to explain it, The New Jersey Pine Barrens has a spirit of its own. Its almost like no matter where you are you feel like someone or something is watching you. Even in the middle of a beautiful summer afternoon I was getting sudden feelings of dread as my Jeep slowly crept down the dirt road.
 

The Parking Lot for The Blue Hole

     Eventually the dirt road led to a circle with a group of trees in the middle of it. This is pretty much as far as you can go by vehicle, so I parked and set out on foot for the rest of the trip.

The dirt road quickly turns to heavy sand. 

     If you don’t have an SUV you probably want to stop before reaching the Tree Circle landmark because the dirt road suddenly turns into sand. Heavy sand that the tires of my Jeep sank into and I could only imagine a normal car gettting stuck in. 

The Broken Bridge to The Blue Hole

     After parking I noticed I was right by a river and what appeared to be a broken bridge. This bridge once made the “The Blue Hole” easily accessible, but about 40 years ago a violent storm wiped it out. At least that’s what they say. Maybe the destroyed bridge is a way of someone saying you don’t want to go down this path any further.

The Water Walkway to The Blue Hole

     Fortunately to the left of the broken bridge is a shallow area of the river that is passable on foot. You can see in the picture above that the rocks on the floor of the river almost make a clear walkway right to the path on the other side. On the day I went the highest the water got was to my knees, but don’t get me wrong, I was just waiting for something to jump out of the water at me. However, I ventured on, knowing that my goal was only a few hundred feet away down the path on the other side of the river.

The Blue Hole

     I had made it to “The Blue Hole”. At first I wasn’t that impressed, but after looking at it for a minute or so the thing I noticed the most was how deathly silent it was around it. No cheerping birds, no wind blowing the branches, it was really strange. Also, its crazy how almost perfectly round the hole is, and how it just seems to appear out of nowhere for no reason. One second your walking on a dirt path and the next there’s just this random round body of water to the left of you. 

What lies beneath these strange waters?

     My pictures don’t do “The Blue Hole” justice but there really is a blue tint to the water. I think its because that same heavy sand I experienced earlier is probably what lies beneath the water causing the sun to reflect off of it and make the water look blue, a la the kind of water you see in The Bahamas. Now did I test out the waters? No fucking way! I’m not going to sit here and lie to you, there was no way I was going in that water. Being in the woods alone is one thing, swimming alone in the woods is just fucking crazy. Again, for you nature freaks out there you’re probably laughing at me and calling me a noob, but I don’t care. I had made my way and found the legendary Blue Hole all by myself, that has to count for something.     

BONUS MATERIAL: Check out this short film about “The Blue Hole”
 

     “Medium Rare” is The Mighty Mighty Bosstones most recent release. It’s a mixture of old B-Sides and some new songs, two of which I got to hear on Sunday July 13th at the Starland Summer Campout in Sayreville, NJ. It wasn’t exactly a real “camp out” but then again I didn’t see any stars so its all good. What it was…was the first time I had seen The Mighty Mighty Bosstones in about 6 years after the band went on a hiatus. Now before I get to the Bosstones let me tell you about the venue.

     This so called “Summer Campout” was one of the most unusual concert events I’ve been to. Now it sucked to pay $35 to see just The Bosstones because all the other bands on the list I had no interest in, but in comparision to how some people pay like $100 to see most shitty bands, I actually got a deal. What was crazy about this and maybe it was because it was staged outdoors in the Starland Ballroom’s parking lot, but you had to park in a vacant lot at the Garden State Technology Building about 2 miles away and then take a shuttle bus just to get there. It was pretty weird, but then again this is New Jersey, so I’ve grown to live with the weird.

     The Mighty Mighty Bosstones took the stage at 6:30pm and the whole band was dressed in plaid. They were bad in plaid once again and it was amazing to see them! They played a great mixture of old school songs and more recent ones but my highlights of the show were when they played a cover of The Clash’s “Rudy Can’t Fail” and for the first time ever I heard them play “Toxic Toast” (they used a pretty cool guitar rift to fill in for the piano part of the song). The crowd was pretty young and older fans like I who had listen to The Bosstones in high school were definitely in the minority, but they can still rock, even if they are moving a little bit slower which was evident in Ben Carr’s dance antics which have slowed down a little bit over the years. Another thing to mention is that there should be some kind of unwritten law about “crowd surfing” in that if you weigh more than 150 lbs you shouldn’t be allow to do it. Numerous times during the show I saw kids getting crushed by these dudes who must have been over 200 lbs crowd surfing. But I also saw these crowd surfing douches eat dirt when then were passed along the crowd to an open space; with no one there to hold them up they usually went head first crashing to the concrete and that was good for a laugh.

     The Bosstones played for an hour and I took the shuttle bus back to the parking lot because I really had no interest in hanging around for The Dropkick Murphys. It was cool because the show ended at 7:30pm and I was home by 9:00pm, unlike most shows you go to when the earliest you get home is usually around 1:00am. Overall, all I have to say is that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are back!!! And I can only hope that this wasn’t just a one time thing. Because I’d love to see them again where they are the headlining band and playing to a non-festival crowd and all Bosstones fans at a place like The Troc or The Electric Factory in Philly. Someday I Suppose.     

     Jilly’s Arcade in Ocean City, NJ is no doubt my favorite arcade of all-time. Not only does Jilly’s have a wide range of both classic and new arcade games, it also has one of the largest selection of pinball machines I’ve seen anywhere, and better yet every play is only a quarter. But what truly makes Jilly’s THE BEST is that during the summer it’s open 24 hours 7 days a week. And this worked out perfectly for me after I left the Borgata last Saturday and didn’t feel like going home. It was 3:00am so what could I do? How about play some pinball? Excellent idea!!!

                                                                                                                                                  South Park Pinball

     What kind of people go to an arcade at 3:00am you ask? Well, it was just me and some riff raff teenage kids shooting pool, along with some Russian immigrant who was the only person working there. It was actually kind of like a dream though to basically have a whole arcade to yourself. No kids running around screaming, no annoying girlfriends hovering over your shoulder waiting for your game to end, the arcade was nice and quiet, just me and the machines, it was a perfect storm. And because of this I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I had one of the best pinball experiences of my life. I not only got my first replay ever on my favorite pinball machine, South Park Pinball, but I scored over 100,000,000 putting me among the highest scores ever on the machine. FYI - the record score is over 400,000,000 - that is just fucking sick, because I rocked the shit out of the game to get over 100 million.

                                                                                                                                                                  Indiana Jones Pinball

     But wait there’s more!!! News Flash!!! Stern Pinball has released their newest machine and its called Indiana Jones Pinball. The game is pretty cool because it showcases all of the Indiana Jones movies from Raiders to the latest Crystal Skull whaterver one. So after rocking South Park I checked it out and within 3 attempts I got what may have been the first replay ever on the machine because the replay score was only at 39,000,000. I finished with a score of 51,000,000 and to tell the truth the machine isn’t that easy. The board has a unique layout that requires accurate flipping oppose to just whack and smack pinball. Also, Inidana Jones Pinball has one of the coolest surprises I’ve seen in a pinball machine in a long time. All I’m going to say is that when you unlock the secret of the Ark, “Don’t look into the Light!”