The Funk is Gone

Unexpected and unwelcome Christmas news yesterday morning with the passing of James Brown. That he had been admitted to an Atlanta hospital was on the news on Sunday, but there was no indication that his condition was any worse than a case of pneumonia. So it came as quite a surprise to me to hear that he had died. I can't say that James was a big influence on me musically (which is very clear if you ever see/hear me trying to play a slap-funk bass guitar), but I love his music. And his moves! Even as he aged he had moves that men half his age only wished they could pull off--and poseurs like Usher will imitate but never duplicate.

The years I lived in Augusta, Georgia were interesting around the holidays. It was no secret where James Brown's house was, and the large piece of property surrounded by an extensive chain-link fence was a dead giveaway if you didn't know. Early each December during the time I lived in the town we always made it a point to drive by his house, which was decorated elaborately for Christmas. The African-American Santa Claus and choir boy decorations were the highlight. Ah, good times.

So rest in peace, James, and hopefully you're in a better place bustin' out a killer version of "Sex Machine" for St. Peter. Take it to the bridge!

The Maw of Hell

I'm not a religious person, but this makes me fear that perhaps the evangelical doomsayers may be right and that the End Times are almost upon us. While I cannot be certain, it's a good bet that Revelations mentions Billy Idol singing Christmas tunes as a warning sign of the apocalypse. So grab some wine and crackers to enjoy with this cheese. The only thing missing is a motorcycle crashing through a church window as Idol snarls/sings, "It's a nice day for a White Christmas. . ."

Make it go away!

It's a lovely day here on campus--the sun's out, the temperature's a December-like 70 degrees, and it's commencement day. Roughly 2,000 students will receive the university's acknowledgement that they've sat through the requisite number of classes, turned in an appropriate number of papers and exams, have listened to enough mind-numbing lectures, and are now ready for the world of fastfood drive-thrus. Learning to supersize an order for a free apple pie is an honors course, naturally.

I work on the oldest and most beautiful parts on campus, which is nice. But on days like this there's a downside. About 100 yards from where I sit there's a bell, at least 100 years old, that's traditionally rung after home football game victories, and by students when they've taken their last final exam. With today being commencement, the bell's been ringing off the hook (it's ringing as I type this). It makes opening my window on such a nice day a pain in the ass because that's all I hear--DONG, DONG, DONG, DONG, DONG. There have been more dongs today than Paris Hilton will ever see in her lifetime. Every student and their mother (and father and brother and sister and grandmother and grandfather and sometimes aunt & uncle) has been ringing that damned bell today. One of these fine days I'm going to make good on my threat to either cut the rope on the clapper or grease the bell rope altogether. That should make for some excellent entertainment. And, SURPRISE! There goes the bell, AGAIN! Turn it off! TURN IT OFF!!

Christmas...more or less the same

The holiday season is upon us once again, a season of good will, giving, and dealing with psychotic shoppers in the stores. Given that I don’t like crowds that much, I try to do my shopping at off-hours when the crowds aren’t at their most beastly, or order things online and avoid the crowds altogether. I made the mistake of going to Toys r’ Us last weekend looking for something on my daughter’s wish list, spending a total of five minutes in the building, not finding what I was looking for, and being rudely cutoff by other customers in the store. I guess that was my fault for wearing my “Invisible Man” Halloween costume to the store. Fortunately I left the store before I was compelled to sink my knife into someone’s ass.

Tis also the season for holiday television programming, not all of it is all that great. Naturally there are the shows you expect to see each year: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman. It’s kind of cool for me to have my daughter watching some of the same programs I did as a kid many, many years ago and enjoying them just as much—despite the crappy stop-motion animation of the Rankin-Bass programs. Unlike the “old days,” my daughter has some of these programs on DVD and can record others on our DVR. When I was a kid you had to schedule and prepare accordingly. Programs like Rudolph came on once a year, and if you missed it, you were shit out of luck until next Christmas.

The ABC Family and Hallmark channels are chock full of “holiday” movies these days. It seems all the movies they’re showing follow one of three plotlines: something threatens Santa’s ability to perform on Christmas Eve (and not in a sexual manner); Santa needs to intervene in a situation that threatens a family; Santa has a kid who’s learning the family trade. Let me tell ya, you haven’t seen quality cinema until you’ve seen Steve Gutenberg playing Santa’s son, uttering unlikely and awkward “Ho, ho, hos.”. But I’m having none of that as I write this. On my television is an episode of Adam-12, an old favorite of mine. I’ve put an Adam-12 DVD boxset on my Christmas list this year, so we’ll see if Santa (and not Steve Gutenberg) will leave it under my tree.

Christmas feels a little different this year. For one thing, for the first time ever I’ll have all my grandparents and my dad at home on the 25th. Not in the flesh, mind you, though that would be nice. All my late relatives will be home in photographic form. During the past year a number of old family photos turned up, especially last May while helping my mother with an in-town move. Old, unseen (by my eyes) family photographs were to be found in a box of pictures my mother has in her possession. I have been digitizing these old photographs, correcting any flaws or blemishes in them and adjusting the color and lighting levels as close as possible to the originals, and then having them output, framed, and hung in our hallway. It’s nice to have all my grandparents together again, even in photographic form, though it’s hard to look at the portrait of my father at the age of two, his innocent eyes looking into the camera, and knowing what life had in store for him.

It will also be the first year that I’ll get to watch the film, A Christmas Story, knowing that one of the major players in the movie is now gone. Darren McGavin, who played the Old Man, passed away last February. Oh sure, I watch plenty of movies where most, if not all, of the principal actors and actresses have long since passed away. But for some reason it’s different with this film. I first saw it in 1985 and immediately fell in love with it. Still, the twenty-four hours of A Christmas Story that runs on Christmas Day is a bit much for me.

It’s safe to say that I’m not the only one who loves the movie. Recently someone bought the house that was used for the exterior shots in the movie, renovated it, and opened it as a museum dedicated to the film. And from the looks of the pictures, they had a pretty good turnout for the grand opening at the end of November. It’s hard to say why people like me love the movie. Maybe it’s the film’s setting in 1940 America. The country wasn’t involved in the Second World War yet, things seemed more innocent despite world events at the time. Maybe we can relate to Ralphie and his experiences. How many of us dreamt of turning in an essay so good that your teacher would excuse you from all future writing assignments? How many of us have wanted that one Christmas gift so much that we’d go so far as demanding to see Santa so we can tell him personally of our request? I always wanted a guitar growing up but never got one until I was old enough to buy my own. I had to settle for footballs (Football? What’s a football?), bicycles, Big Wheels, countless G.I. Joes and accessories. My daughter put a guitar on her wish list this year. She’s only seven so I don’t think she’s quite ready for a guitar. But I found one just the right size for her and her hands, so she’s getting her equivalent of an “Official Red Ryder, carbine-action, two hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.”

Oh my God....

I have to admit that a lot of the stuff my daughter watches on television is well beyond my comprehension. While she doesn't watch the Wiggles anymore, it's stuff like this that affirms my stance that my daughter will not have a television in her bedroom anytime in the next decade.

No teacher left behind

I saw something last night on the local evening news that was pretty indicative of the state of education in Georgia. It was a story about Miller Grove High School in Dekalb County. Under the criteria set forth in the No Child Left Behind act, the school failed to make "adequate yearly progress" this past year. Apparently the teachers were displeased at the low levels of parent participation and involvement at the school, and in an effort to remedy this, have scheduled what is in essence a pep rally at the school this weekend for the parents. They're using a number of methods to get the word out to parents, including using the media and standing in front of the school while holding signs. But what I found to be amusing in all this was the school's street front electronic sign. During the news story, they showed the sign displaying various messages about upcoming school events. When suddenly, on the sign appears the words, "Parent Ralley," with the time and date of this pep rally. I wasn't sure if I saw what I thought I saw, so courtesy of my DVR I rewound the story and sure enough, there was a big ol' glaring typo courtesy of someone at the school. I'm not surprised the school didn't make AYP this past year, and somehow I don't think parent involvement is alone responsible for their not making the grade. Maybe they should "ralley" their teachers instead.

Rummy leaves office

I've been playing with Photoshop for ten years waiting for this moment. My friends, almost all of whom would prefer that I not have their picture fearing what I'd do to them, can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Woot!

Geez, I'm too old to be using the word "woot." What the hell am I thinking? I guess I'm just in a good mood today in spite of the GOP taking over the state of Georgia, and in spite of finding out today that the 4% salary increase for state employees in January will be accompanied with a 12% increase in insurance premiums. Four more years...four more years of this crap. This is the only place I've ever worked where you can get a raise and actually be worse off and make less than you had been.

Perhaps I'm in a good mood for two reasons. One, it's official: the Democrats will take over both houses of Congress. Yee-hah! On one hand, I'm glad that they've won and will hopefully govern in a manner in line with what I think is important. On the other hand, I hope the Dems don't whiz this opportunity down their collective leg. The Democrats have been known the past couple of decades of pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory, of shooting themselves in the foot politically. Please, oh please, not this time!

I'm also in a good mood because for the first time in quite a while I bought hockey tickets yesterday! My friend Greg and I had been talking about going to a game last season but it didn't pan out, so we've been discussing going to one this season. As luck would have it, my beloved New York Islanders are coming to Atlanta one Friday evening in January! And I have tickets just six rows off the glass. In theory that should be close enough to catch a few broken teeth as players get checked into the boards. Atlanta has a good team this year, so I don't expect the Isles to come out on the winning end, but that's not the point. I get to see them play for the first time since 1991, when they came to Atlanta to play an exhibition game against the Boston Bruins. Sweet! Game on!!

Poll Dancing

I've got a serious Election Day hangover today. Not a hangover in the traditional sense, my serious drinking days behind me as at my age it's far too easy to pull muscles as you worship the Porcelain God the next morning and it takes far too long for them to heal. Rather, my hangover this morning is due more to sleep deprivation, having stayed up late last night to watch the election returns come in. Most political junkies like myself will be sleepily wandering around aimlessly today, looking for a Starbucks fix so that they can stay awake just a little while longer.

Here in Georgia the election results were disappointing but not unexpected. Sonny Perdue was re-elected as governor, handily defeating the Democratic challenger Mark Taylor. I still think Cathy Cox would have been a better match for Perdue, but hey, I just vote here. The Republicans won all the right elections in all the right places to consolidate their power in the state. Casey Cagle won the lieutenant governor's race on a platform of "hope and opportunity for all Georgians"...except for the gays who are still persona non grata with the Jesus Krispies here in the state. I didn't vote for Cagle but I'll give him a chance. Karen Handel won the secretary of state post. I'm not very encouraged by having someone with just a high school education under their belt being responsible for overseeing elections and professional licensing in the state. Talk about knowing all the right people! And everyone's favorite ripe jolly ol' elf, Kathy Cox, was re-elected state school superintendent. You remember Kathy, don't you? She's the one a couple of years ago who wanted to remove the word "evolution" from all the textbooks in Georgia and replace it with "gradual changes over time." With Georgia's continued lackluster performance in educational standings and SAT scores, all I have to say is "Congratulations, Georgia!" for re-electing someone who clearly didn't deserve it. I hope you enjoy wallowing in the mediocrity that you voted to retain.

As a resident and employee of the state I'm disheartened by what I see coming down the pike over the next few years now that there's nobody to stand in the way of the GOP agenda in the state. Four more years of lackluster state funding for the university system, meaning that I can't buy supplies for my department except when absolutely necessary and students had better get used to being taught by part-time instructors and graduate teaching assistants, not tenured and tenure-track faculty. Four more years of pathetic 2-3% raises, coupled with 8-10% increases in insurance premiums as the state dumps even more of its share of the cost onto state employees. Four more years of my wife and I buying classroom supplies for our daughter's classroom as neither her teacher nor school have the resources to buy them. Four more years of paying high property taxes because the county has to make up the funding for its school system the state pulled during the recession a few years ago and has conveniently not restored. Four more years of kids being creatively disqualified from the Medicaid and PeachKids health insurance programs. Four more years of discriminating against people because they're Hispanic or gay, or Hispanic and gay. Four more years of balancing the state budget by slashing state agency budgets to the bone, and in some instances into the bone. Four more years of Sonny Perdue. Four more years of mediocrity. Four more years.

On the bright side this morning, the Democrats took control of the U.S. House for the first time in twelve years. No more free passes to use the Constitution as so much toilet paper for our esteemed president, Halliburton. No, sorry, I guess technically our president is george w. bush--or dick cheney, depending on what day it is and who you ask. It remains to be seen whether the Senate will follow suit as there are two more elections in Virginia and Montana that are still way too close to call. It'll be days before they're decided, and I'm guessing it'll take at least a couple of weeks and will involved a lawsuit at some point. So while Georgia's looking quite depressing these days, the whole world at large is starting to look better.

Creepy, cooky, spooky, ooky

Ah yes, yet another Halloween in the books, another twelve months before my zombie costume comes out of storage again to be put to use. Though after last night, I’m of the mindset that next year requires a new costume as the zombie gig wasn’t scaring the kids like a couple of years ago when I first wore it. We don’t go overboard with decorating for Halloween; usually our setup consists of a pumpkin, a clear door cling with an image of a skeleton on it for our storm door, and a strobe light behind the storm door. I used a blue gel in the strobe last night and set it on a slow cycle, and the combination of the blue color and the appearance/disappearance of the skeleton on our storm door looked really good from the street. It’s not much, but at least it doesn’t scare off the kids like our neighbor did last year. He invested a lot of time and effort to create a spooky setting for his house, which included some of his friends coming over to assist in the effort (I remember the sound of a chainsaw coming from the direction of his house). He did such a good job that kids would get to his driveway, look at the house, then move on, too afraid to venture to the front door. When you’ve created a setting where a child is willing to pass on getting more candy rather than risk their life going to your front door, then Mission Accomplished!

The fall weather at the end of October reminds me of those times many years ago when I would go from door to door, adorned in some costume (usually my Hot Wheels or Batman costume), asking for candy. The neighborhoods where I lived in New York had sidewalks, which are very conducive for getting your parents to go out on an extended candy hunt. It was also not unusual for kids to begin roaming the neighborhoods in fairly large groups, adding new kids who were just hitting the streets and joining up with the larger groups. It was like having multiple, miniature riots roaming about, all with crazed looks in their eyes located behind their Ben Cooper masks seeking an evening of sugar-crazed, chocolate-driven hedonism and iniquity. Nobody had evolved to the point of egging or TPing houses that gave out bad candy, and flaming bags of dog crap were definitely out of the question as nobody wanted to risk a severe grounding/spanking for stealing matches from our parents. It was just a fun evening going around seeing how much candy you could fit into a bag that was almost as big as you were.

Now as a parent it’s my turn to play the role of supervisor for my daughter’s Halloween activities. The past couple of years I’ve stayed home and passed out candy while my wife took the child around the neighborhood on her Candyland Expedition. Last night, as I’ve done the past couple of years, I dressed in my zombie costume in which to greet the trick or treaters in the neighborhood, and there weren’t that many. I see kids around all the time, so I’m wondering if there are fewer than I think around or if they’re choosing not to observe a “satanic” holiday. Beats me. This year, though, rather than stay inside where the strobe light would give me yet another headache, I hid out behind the cars in our driveway. Once the kids got on the front porch, I crept up the walkway (the only way in or out) and yelled “BRAAAAAAAINS!” One of the first times I did that it was to a brother and sister who were obviously out for an evening to be scared by a middle aged person in a zombie costume. The girl screamed as I came up the walk, and did what every big sister would do in a situation like that: she grabs her brother and swings him around so he’s in between me and her. It was such a funny reaction on her part that I took off my mask and let them take whatever they wanted from our candy bowl. It was the funniest reaction I had seen since our trip to Myrtle Beach this past June when we tipped our crappy waiter at Joe’s Crab Shack $1 on a $45 bill (and he didn’t even deserve the $1, let me tell ya).

My daughter returned with my wife after about an hour, bearing a plastic pumpkin full of candy—and some good stuff at that. I know my daughter went out and got the candy, but I’m wondering if she’d really miss a couple of those Reese’s peanut butter cups. As a parent, I must taste test these things to make sure they’re okay for her to eat, after all! After my daughter went to bed last night, visions of Processed Sugars dancing in her head, I took a few minutes to dump out the contents of her pumpkin pail to look over her candy, and it’s a good thing I did. As I’ve already mentioned, she got some good candy this year, and some folks around the neighborhood spent some money on quality sugar-fixes this year. But there’s a cheap bastard somewhere in our neighborhood. As I rummaged through the pile of candy I discovered someone had purged their pantry of old EASTER CANDY and had passed it out for Halloween last night! I’m sure you’re thinking, “How do you know it was Easter candy?” You can tell by the wrapper. You’d expect a Halloween theme on the candy: a ghost, a witch, a monster, certainly. But the Easter Bunny? I doubt it very seriously. And I don’t think chocolate eggs are easily found on store shelves come October.

One on hand, that’s a good way to get rid of old candy in your house, and I have to admire their audacity in doing that. But what kind of cheap sonofabitch gives out candy that’s at least six months old to little kids? Probably the kind of cheap sonofabitch that has an adjustable rate mortgage on their house, in which case all I have to do is sit back and wait for the for sale sign to go up in their front yard and I’ll know who the guilty party is.

It's nice to be popular...

...but damn! It's rare on this campus that you can literally be on the ground floor of a brand spanking new department, like I did three years ago, and help get it going and be independent and functional. To be honest I've enjoyed the challenge of helping establish a new academic department in a major research university, and managing the administrative side of things here. I've never held a job before where I've had so much leeway and authority in the decision making process. For the most part I've made the right calls, especially on the more difficult issues that have come up. The times when I didn't get things right I chalked it up to a learning experience and tried not to let it bother me that much. And did I mention that I LOVE having my own office, with an actual door that I can close when I need to work on things without distraction? It's sure nice from my cubicle days not that long ago.

That our department deals with international politics and foreign policy only spelled future successes and challenges for us when we set up shop in a newly renovated, century old building back in 2003. We've added faculty, as funding and the school's "Master Plan" has allowed us to. But we're in danger of becoming victims of our own success and current world events. When we started offering classes three years ago we had 150 majors in our program, and about 12 faculty members. Yesterday I was told that we now have 713 students in our program, and we only have 16 faculty in our department. So there's quite a demand for our courses and we're struggling to keep up with the pace. In comparison, the departmental Thigh of Zeus we were torn from a few years ago, Political Science, has 809 students in their program. My initial estimate earlier this year was that we'd catch up with them about 2009-2010. With these new counts we'll not only catch up with them next year, we'll surpass their program. And still with only 16 faculty members. We sure could use five more to keep up with demand. To top off this big, steaming pile of academia, I've just taken on the task of generating class schedules. My job description, like my waistline, just keeps growing and growing. Wish my paycheck grew at the same rate, though.

All we want to do is eat your brains....

We finished up the interviews for our front desk position today. In years past it was pretty easy to pick out the clear front runner after talking to all the candidates. It's not so easy this time. We got a number of really good applications this time around. We'll all get together tomorrow and make our choice of who to make an offer to, but it won't be easy. Wish we had enough money to hire two people, but that's not an option. Right now, this song pretty much captures how I feel right now.

Anywhere but here....

Ah, finally...fall weather is starting to set in around these parts. Oh sure, high temps in the upper 70s is still pretty warm by northern standards, but in the south it's a welcome relief to the 80s and 90s that permeate the region from May to September. It's a beautiful day out today as I sit here at my desk, perusing job applications, wishing I was anywhere but here. Our front desk person left a week ago and now I've the task of screening apps for a suitable replacement. Unlike past recruitments for that position, we've gotten some really good applicants this time, four or five of whom really stand out for me.

A new job for myself would be a nice change of pace. My boss is a nice guy, but he's a dink. He loves coming up with new ideas that he will pawn off on others, let them do all the work, and he'll take all the credit for. He had one of our former front desk persons type most, if not all, of a three book volume he was working on--and then misspelled her name in the credits. Dink. Not to mention he looks at our meager operating budget as "his money." For example he wants to publish research papers four times a year and send them out to other colleges and universities. He obtained $2k in funding from somewhere on campus to do this; already the anticipated expense for just 3 mailings has hit $2,600. I'll take that extra money out of one of his research expense accounts before I tap our department's meager operating budget. I like my boss on a personal level, but in terms of administration and running this department, to restate, he's a dink.

It's a beautiful day out today, and I'm not doing anything that I want to be doing--either today or of late. With gas coming down to a more budget-manageable $2.10 a gallon, I want to take a day off and head to the mountains and go hiking. Not a short two or three mile trail, but one of the longer seven to twelve mile trails. The leaves seem to be turning much faster and earlier than usual this year. There are lots of yellows, and some reds and orange, even at this lower elevation. I'm sure the mountains are much more colorful now and would make a great subject for a day of photography. I want to go hit some small mountain towns and find apple butter or jugs of apple cider. I want to find a huge-ass pumpkin to set on my front porch and take a chance that some little bastard (like myself in my younger days) won't take it and smash my mailbox with it. Many years ago in kindergarten I remember going to a farm somewhere on Long Island where my classmates and I were to get a pumpkin to bring home for Halloween. My mom sent me with X amount of money, and damned if I didn't use it all and get the biggest pumpkin I could find--almost as big as I was! And damned if I couldn't carry the thing.

But no...I'm stuck here at work. Where would I'd rather be? Anywhere but here.

41*

Sie haben ein Datum.

Wenn sie einem mitglied eines bandes, daß sie auf das hören, sie denken erklären, daß sie heraus verkauft haben erwarten sie das zu haben, das zu ein lied gemacht wird. Ich liebe es! Entspannen sie so sich -- sie haben ein datum mit einem Prostituierteen mit einer Penis! Traurig für den schlechten Deutschen.

New York's not my home...

...but it used to be.

A few weekends ago Nickelodeon ran a virtual festival of Brady Bunch episodes. Like a car wreck, I didn’t want to watch but couldn’t turn away either. It had been a long, long time since I sat and watched that many episodes of that show. When I was much younger I really enjoyed watching the Bradys when they came on. It would piss me off whenever Richard Nixon would preempt the show just so he could go on t.v. and proclaim that he was not a crook. I clearly recall telling my mom that I hoped George McGovern would win the 1972 presidential election because I hated Tricky Dick for taking the Bradys off the air on a number of evenings. I also recall my mom telling me it wasn’t nice to root for McGovern. Time would prove me correct. Even as a child I had better political instincts than my parents.

Most of the episodes I watched were from the early 1970s, and three things occurred to me as I watched. First, how many churchgoers these days grew up on that show, not knowing that the actor leading this iconic family was really gay? Hey folks! Your ideal dad putted from the rough! Second, how nice it must’ve been to deal with serious family problems in half an hour. Lastly, where was I in life when these episodes were first aired? At the time I was a youngster living on Long Island, enjoying life in the suburbs of New York.

Ever since that fateful Tuesday morning of the eleventh of September, 2001, I’ve felt what amounts to a certain homesickness for Long Island and New York. It’s a process that really started a few years before that with a sociology class I had and an assignment of researching and writing certain aspects of your family genealogy. At the time I was about to become a parent so gathering a family history was (and is) important to me. But none of this wouldn’t have been necessary had my family not moved from New York to Georgia better than thirty years ago. Why we moved is beyond me; ostensibly it was because my dad had found a job in Georgia, so we packed up the truck and headed south. Once I was asked what brought me to Georgia during voir dire while serving on jury duty. My response was: “I was nine years old and too young to argue with my parents.” That got a laugh from the gathered jury-fodder. But life once we got to Georgia was strikingly different from what it once was in New York.

At the time I was watching the Brady Bunch as first run episodes my family was living in Uniondale, home of the New York Islanders. One of our neighbors was a plumber who worked on the Nassau County Coliseum while it was being constructed; I remember him coming home on quite a few occasions wearing an eye patch because he had suffered some sort of injury. The neighborhood was typical suburbia: modestly sized houses with modestly sized yards, sidewalks that ran the entire length of the block (not common in Georgia), trees lining both sides of Hawthorne Avenue.

The house that we used to live in looked like it was originally built as a single family dwelling, but was divided into a two-family house when we were there. It was by no means a new house. In later years I had assumed it was built during the post-war boom of new housing construction on Long Island in the late 1940s. A check of the online property records for Nassau County showed that the house was actually built in 1924. We lived on the first floor, and I remember the layout very well. My brother and I shared a bedroom at the front of the house. There was a firehouse at the end of our block and I recall being awoken in the dead of night by the engines heading off to a call, our curtains a reddish glow from the lights on the trucks. The living room, which is probably much smaller than I remember, lead into the kitchen, where one would find the staircase which led to the basement. The basement made a great play area; my dad had set up a large sheet of plywood upon which he set up an HO scale train set, and my siblings and I would do art projects down there as well. The stairs leading down made a great launching pad for my GI Joe jeep, at least for the first two attempts after which it snapped in two thus depriving me of an opportunity to sell it on eBay for $200. The basement is also where the huge oil-fired furnace was located. The thing would heat the house very well during those cold Long Island winters, but at a price. It would suck every drop of moisture out of the air and then begin draining fluids from your body. As the saying goes, you’d have to be primed like a pump before you could work up a spit.

Our neighbors were great too. Right across the street from our house lived an elderly lady, Mrs. Rugheimer, or Ruggie as everyone called her. I really wish I had a time machine for many reasons. Her house was literally like walking into an antiques shop, a collection of items accumulated during her long life and her husband’s days working on the construction of the Panama Canal. As a kid I didn’t appreciate her house, and I think the scary bear skin rug you encountered when you entered her house had a lot to do with it. She taught me many things, including how to tie my shoes. You were also aware to be on your best behavior when Ruggie was around as she had no problems telling you when you were misbehaving and then letting your parents know. Ruggie was truly a one of a kind lady and a very special early influence in my life. She died in 1984 a few months shy of her 92nd birthday.

Next to us lived the Hanson family. Mr. Hanson was the plumber I mentioned earlier who worked on the Nassau County Coliseum. Mrs. Hanson was Irish (or maybe Scottish, I can’t remember exactly), and my parents would put one of the stereo speakers in the kitchen window and blare one of their albums of bagpipe music as a cue that it was time to come over for drinks. Across the street and next to Ruggie lived the Friedel family. Their kids were a little older than my siblings and me, but they were often guests in our yard and attendees at birthday parties.

There a quite a number of other kids in the neighborhood, you could ride your bike or big wheel all the way up the block without worrying about street traffic. You could also ride around the corner to Frank’s candy store for a sugar fix (if you had saved your pennies or the Tooth Fairy was generous) or to the Sunoco gas station, where I would go to complete my collection of NFL player stickers they were giving out in 1972 (or where my dad would take my brother’s bike and mine to put air in the tires only to know things had gone wrong by the sound of a small explosion as he over inflated them). The neighborhood where my mother-in-law lives in Michigan reminds me a lot of where I lived in Uniondale; so much so that the first time my wife and I visited her mom after our daughter was born I spent a fair amount of time just walking around the neighborhood and enthusiastically offering to shovel the driveway when it snowed (oddly enough nobody objected to my volunteering). I don’t know what the neighborhood on Hawthorne Avenue is like now, but thirty-five years ago it was a great place to be a kid.

I went to school at Cedar Street School for kindergarten, followed by California Avenue School for first through third grades. Miss Van Note was my kindergarten teacher at Cedar Street, and our afternoon class was her first teaching assignment after graduating from college back in 1970. I remember our classroom was a fairly large space with a bathroom at one side of the room, an area set up like a house at the other, and a collection of tables/desks in between. We did the usual kindergarten stuff—played with modeling clay, colored, got free play time, got to be kids. On one day in particular a nurse came to class to administer TB tine tests. The tests back then were quite different from how they do it today. The device used to inject the medicine into the skin to bring about a reaction looked like a small rubber stamp, except with four ominous looking needles sticking out of the bottom. To a five or six year old child it’s a very intimidating experience. But to make everyone feel better the nurse would take her pen and use the four needle marks on your forearm to make a bunny face out of it. To this date whenever I’m stuck with a needle I feel a compelling urge to turn the needle mark into a bunny face. Cedar Street School was razed in 1972 and turned into a park (it stood roughly where third base and the shortstop positions are on the ballfield).


California Avenue School was already about fifty years old when I went to school there, and it’s still around today though with a few additions to accommodate the increase in students. And I'll bet they still strictly enforce no street shoes on the gym floor. Red Chuck Taylors were my gym shoes of choice. Mrs. Braddick was my first grade teacher. I remember my sixth birthday fell on a school day, and I sat in her class first waiting for my mom to stop by with birthday cupcakes for the class, and then waiting to get home and play with the new hook and ladder firetruck I got for my birthday that year. Ms. McEachern was my second grade teacher. I don’t remember much from my second grade year, except for finding out my kindergarten teacher, Miss Van Note, transferred to California Avenue when Cedar Street School was closed, and my friend Rodney. Rodney was quite a rambunctious kid. Our classroom was on the second floor of the school that year, and quite often Rodney would climb up on the window sill and threaten to jump. Each time Ms. McEachern would get Rodney to climb down, yet another crisis averted. One day we had a substitute teacher, and Rodney decided it was time to test her and climb up on the window sill. “Come near me and I’ll jump,” he threatened (as he always did). The substitute went to get him off the sill and suddenly Rodney disappeared. Seconds later there’s a scream as Rodney landed in the holly shrubs below the window. For Christmas that school year I had the pleasure of drawing Rodney’s name for our inter-student present exchange. For whatever reason I told my mom that I wanted to give Rodney a cap gun. Bad call. Rodney began firing the thing in the classroom, which was promptly taken away from him. Luckily for Rodney he did that in 1972, not in 2006, where he’d probably be tasered, pepper sprayed, and possibly shot by one of those cop-wannabe “school resource officers.” I’m not sure if he ever got the thing back; maybe it’s still sitting in a drawer somewhere at California Avenue like the teacher’s desk drawer of confiscated booty from A Christmas Story.

Sports and entertainment were never short on supply in Uniondale. In the winters they would fill the tennis courts with water and create outdoor ice skating rinks. It was at the Uniondale public park that I learned to ice skate. It was there that I also found out how hard ice is when you fall on it. After we left New York it would be twenty-seven years before I would don ice skates again. It was during our last trip to Michigan in 2001 when I would go ice skating again. For the first few minutes it was a very dicey affair as I tried to figure out how to keep my balance. But after about ten minutes all the training I had undergone in Uniondale came back to me and I was skating fairly well for someone who hadn’t tried to balance themselves on two blades for almost three decades. During the warmer months there were backyard missions that GI Joe had to conduct, and untold numbers of dangerous jumps that our Evel Knievel stunt cycles performed. Of course there was little league baseball to play, and the team I played on would practice on the open field across the street from Uniondale High School. That year our team was sponsored by Associated Supermarket; our blue uniform shirts had a fairly large ‘Super A’ on the backs. I can’t remember how well our team did in 1974, but I do recall that I didn’t play very well my first year in little league and that our team went to Shea Stadium that spring to see a preseason game between the Mets and Yankees.

In the summer there were always parties going on either at our house or at a relative’s. I can recall many a summertime gathering at our house, in particular one evening when a few alcohol-emboldened family members, my dad included, went skinny dipping in our above ground pool which I had the unfortunate circumstance to witness. About the time they dove in Ruggie turned on her front porch light across the street, causing well-founded concern amongst the "adults" in the pool. I don’t remember it, but it was at a party at my uncle’s house when I was two years old that I learned to tap a keg and pull a beer (I didn’t drink, just played bartender). There's a picture in a photo album my mom prepared for me as a high school graduation present as proof of my all-important life lesson. It’s a skill that’s come in handy as I’ve gotten older.

Summertime entertainment would not be complete without mentioning watching Fourth of July fireworks at Eisenhower Park or waiting in line for milk at the Dairy Barn, a drive thru milk store, or trips to Jones Beach to go swimming. Of course, who could forget going to fire tournaments during the summer? To the uninitiated, these tournaments were in essence fire companies from all over Long Island who’d get together and compete in a series of skill drills: connecting hoses to hydrants; planting, raising, and scaling ladders. It sounds pretty simple but the tournaments are very competitive and damned impressive to watch. Check out someone’s album of fire tourney pix on Webshots. And these too.

There’s so much about New York and Long Island that I could write about, but I think I’ve rambled on enough. When I posted my comments for the fifth anniversary of 9/11 I emailed the link to one of my former neighbors from Uniondale. After almost thirty-two years she was a little surprised as to how much I still identify myself with New York. And I think what I wrote to her is a fitting end to this entry. I may have spent most of my life in Georgia but I’m still a New Yorker at heart. I’m a fan of the Giants and the Islanders. I’ve been to Safetytown, Nunley’s, and the Jolly Roger. I know you go to Eisenhower Park to play and Roosevelt Field to shop.

New York’s not my home. But it used to be.

Eight lanes of Chaos

Living in a college town I’m accustomed to bad drivers and bad driving. Every year we get a new crop of wet-behind-the-ears kids with little to no experience behind the wheel who use the town like a drivers ed course. Naturally it doesn’t help when many of these kids have parents who possess crappy driving skills as well. Many of these kids come from the Atlanta area, and the roads around Atlanta are the movie “Deathrace 2000” incarnate. Anyone who’s ever driven on I-285 or I-75/85 has had at least one experience where their life flashed before their eyes.

Which is why I’m surprised yet not surprised to find some of the worst driving in town not in or around campus, but at my daughter’s elementary school. Within the past year the county has upgraded the four-way intersection in front of the school from four lanes to eight lanes, adding a turn lane to each direction. I thought they would be adding a traffic signal to help control the flow of cars but that’s not going to happen. Without any signal or a cop to direct traffic, it’s eight lanes of chaos each weekday morning.

Traditionally the rule of thumb is if you’re first to the line, you’re the first to go. The rule of thumb is chopped off each morning as lines of self-absorbed parents jockey their way to get their kids to school on time, regardless of who they cutoff or, sometimes, even if the crossing guard is hold her stop sign as kids cross the street. One morning only a few weeks ago the guard was starting to escort a young girl across the intersection. They had just entered the crosswalk, the guard holding her stop sign well in hand so everyone could see it. The asshole in front of me figures he’s got time before they’re in his way so he proceeds to ignore the stop sign and go anyway. I see him and his piece of crap, rust-covered white van almost every morning, and every morning I shoot him an “eat shit and die” look. How self-absorbed can one be that they’re willing to run over someone else’s kid so that their kid makes it to school on time.

I had noted this bad driving parent phenomenon quite some time ago. On those occasions when I found myself driving through a school zone in the mornings it never failed that I would be passed by a parent driving well in excess of the 25 mile per hour limit and watch as they would cut off oncoming traffic and pull into the school driveway. Long before I was a parent I was looking forward to the day when having a carseat in my vehicle would grant me sovereign immunity from speeding tickets in school zones.

Once you’ve managed to get through the four-way intersection in front of the school, the front driveway turns out to be worse than the intersection. If I had a dollar for every thoughtless, rude, and downright stupid act of “driving” I’ve seen in the front driveway at my daughter’s school, I could retire right now. On many occasions I’ve been cutoff by other drivers who had just dropped off their kid(s), one instance requiring that I slam on the brakes causing my daughter, who was just getting out of her booster seat, to go flying between the two front seats of my van and into the dashboard. How one misses a large silver van with the headlights on is beyond me. Just last week someone parked at an angle in front of the building; with a line of cars coming in, this one, thoughtless person effectively blocked in the four cars already there when he/she/it decided it was more important to get their kid to class on time—and then walk them in, perhaps to argue with any teacher who dared give their kid a tardy.

Sure, we’re all dropping our kids off in hopes that they’ll learn something useful on any given day. It seems some of the parents need to spend some time at the desks as well. As I’ve said before, for a college town we’ve a lot of stupid people around here.

So much younger then

Last night was a first. Showed up for the Monday bowling league not to play, but to inform my teammates that I needed to quit the team. Well, I didn't actually quit; I'm still on our roster but as a substitute and even then I won't be available until January. A funny thing happened to me last Friday morning as I got ready for work. In the mirror in my bathroom I noticed that my left arm looked a little yellowish at the elbow. At first I thought it was the lighting but a closer examination showed that my elbow was not just yellow, but bruised and badly at that. Looks like I've a grade II muscle sprain in my arm that takes 8-10 weeks to heal for persons much younger than myself. Wanna see? When you sprain the muscle and connecting tissue so badly that it bruises, it means: 1. you're out of shape; 2. you're not as young as you used to be. Fortunately I don't think I've torn anything that will require surgical intervention to rectify. But gone are the days when I could just throw myself into whatever physical activity I wanted and not worry about pulling or spraining muscles or otherwise incurring injuries. This whole aging process thing really sucks. And it's not as though I mind getting older, but it's that sudden stop at the end that bothers me.

For 9/11

At the beginning of 2002 I was asked to write a brief commentary reflecting on the attacks of September 11, 2001, for the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society for inclusion in a book of remembrances they were compiling. The entries for Georgia were published in the regional newsletter. While others wrote about patriotism and vigilance and retribution, I chose a more personal observation of the day which I was later told more in keeping with the intentions of the project. For this fifth anniversary of that tragic day, I’m posting what I wanted to write but had to edit down for space considerations.

For me there are only a handful of days for which my recollection of them are so clear it is as if I’m still living those minutes and hours: the day my father passed away, the day my daughter was born, the day Elvis died, and September 11, 2001. That particular Tuesday broke sunny and clear, for all intents a very nice, uneventful day. I had a 9 am class that day, and it was in my criminology class that we first heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We all assumed it was a small commuter or perhaps even a private plane which had crashed; nobody seemed to be overly concerned about the news. All of my classes that semester were in the same building where I worked, so between classes I went to my office to check my online sources of news and information. That something was amiss in the world became evident as I could not access any of my usual sources for news, their servers being overloaded from demand. I finally did manage to access MSNBC’s site to discover that it was actually an airliner that had crashed into the World Trade Center, and also that a second plane had crashed into the second tower.

By this time the first WTC tower had collapsed. Stunned, I made my way to my next class upstairs, where other students were talking about what had happened. I mentioned that one of the towers had collapsed and someone said that both towers had collapsed. Both? That couldn’t be, I told myself. I was young when I lived on Long Island and we didn’t go to the city that often. But I do remember seeing them on the skyline, especially the last time I visited New York in 1978. These buildings were enormous, their huge presence in Manhattan were on a scale that photographs could not convey. And now they were gone. I was dumbfounded, numbed by the news. My first thought was for my family in New York. Were any of them there? Was everyone okay? The professor had come in and was about to start class when I told her I couldn’t stay.

I headed back to my car to head home for a little while before I had to go to work. The rock station I normally listened to had been preempted for news about what had happened in New York, and, I was to find out, in Washington. There was also a report of an airliner that had crashed in Pennsylvania but nobody was sure if it was related to the earlier events or not. What the hell was going on? Had we seen all the attacks that were going to happen or was there more to come? There was an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty.

I made it home and immediately turned on the news. It was there that I finally was able to see video of the morning’s attacks in New York and Washington. As I watched, my thoughts turned to those people in the Twin Towers who were trapped and of the first responders who went in to rescue them. And like millions of others did that day, I watched many of those people meet their fates in clouds of pulverized concrete and twisted steel. My feelings were not of anger for those who perpetrated this act, but that of quiet despondence and frustration--the human race had devolved to committing violent acts of mass murder in order to pursue someone’s agenda.

By the time I made it in to work most of the major news services had been able to respond to the massive amounts of bandwidth being asked of them that day. The afternoon was spent watching streaming news coverage of the tragedies. Five o’clock rolled around and I headed off to pick up my then two-year old daughter from daycare. I felt a sense of urgency this time for no apparent reason. As I turned onto the road where her daycare was located, I listened to the live coverage on the radio as WTC 7 collapsed. It truly had been one exceptionally horrible day. I arrived at the daycare and found my daughter in the area where all the children would gather at the end of the day waiting for their parents. “Daddy!” she yelled as she came running. For her it was just another day. I gave her a big hug as I usually did, but it was different this day. There was a renewed appreciation for her and my role as parent/protector, and for everyone who plays an important role in my life. How many children had lost one or both parents that day and would never experience the simple act of a hug again? I made the most of that hug on that afternoon.

That was five years ago, half a decade, 1,825 days, 260 weeks—and I still remember it like it was yesterday. Watching a documentary yesterday on the construction and destruction of the Twin Towers brought that fact home to me, stirring up some of the unsettling emotions I felt on that fateful day.

Hanging by the front door at my home is a black and white print I purchased and framed this past summer. It’s entitled “Manhattan Morning” and features the Manhattan skyline with the Brooklyn Bridge in the foreground and the Twin Towers rising up behind. It’s a reminder to me of the ambitions of David and Nelson Rockefeller, how they transformed the New York skyline, how that skyline once looked, how it will never look again, the people who died on September 11, 2001, and how important the people in my life truly are.

Breaker one-nine!

Oh my God! I thought this song was the guano thirty years ago, now I can't stop laughing at it. The video cranks the cheese factor up to 11! This is why I'm horrified that some people think bringing the 70s back is a good idea.

Technology & the Bully

Read a news story today about how schools in Rome, Georgia are implementing a system in their lunchrooms where kids can buy their lunches using their fingerprint. It's kind of disturbing if you think about it--fingerprints for elementary school aged children will be kept on file somewhere for those who choose to participate. Is it a fair trade to swap convenience for a part of yourself to be on file with a government agency? But what I find even more disturbing is how this particular technology will change the role of the schoolyard bully. Once upon a time they'd beat you up for your lunch money. Will they now cut off fingers instead and use the amputated digits to buy their lunches? This is something only Geraldo Rivera and his penchant for yellow journalism can answer! The bully gets practical training as a mafioso or member of the Yakuza, while the poor fingerless victim is condemned to a life as a shop teacher.

Happy Birthday to me....

No, it's not really my birthday yet. That auspicious date doesn't arrive for a few weeks yet, though it seems I've received my first birthday present. Many months ago, right about the time I pulled my right hip flexor muscle, I decided that maybe I was ready to return to bowling in a league once a week. It had been almost nine years since I had done that; I left my last team in mid-season at the end of 1997 as I was about to start back to school. The thought occurred to me that maybe I would want to do some pre-season exercising, try to get back into some sort of physical shape. Then again, this was bowling we were talking about. I wasn't about to be asked to run a 5k race or bench press 300 pounds. The way I saw it, I was in fine shape to bowl--a little overweight, spare tire around the waistline, everything was a go. The only thing was I was lacking was a Wal-drobe, my pet name for having all your clothes come off the rack from WalMart.

I've participated in many sports over the years, but I can say that I am pretty competant when it comes to bowling. While working at Rhone Merieux I was once asked to help organize a company-wide bowling tournament, and I was glad to help. A bunch of people signed up, and I helped assign them to teams based on their assessment of their skills (beginner, advanced, etc.). When the night of the tournament came I realized to my horror that I had put two really good bowlers together on one team; it was almost a certainty that they'd win the contest. That evening I threw my best three game series ever, around a 650, including my personal high game of a 277. We wound up in a first-place tie with the team I accidently put two skilled bowlers on.

Like golf, it's a bit harder than it looks; throwing one good game is one thing, throwing three good games in a series is another. Unlike golf, I'm pretty good at bowling and have done it long enough where I don't feel the need to practice anymore to keep an average in the 170 range. So little things like practice and doing some workouts didn't seem to be that important. I forgot, however, that I'm closer to forty-one than twenty-one and perhaps a little practice and a few workouts might have been in order.

The first week of the league passed uneventfully. I finished injury free and with a total series score that earned me a 151 average--not bad but a little under what I'm capable of. The pulled muscles made themselves known starting the next morning. Most of the following few days were spent either with plenty of Advils in my system, on the heating pad, or both. It took a few days but everything felt ready for another night of league bowling. I showed up at the bowling alley last evening confident that my muscle pulls were healed and could look forward to beng rid of such problems for the remainder of the season. Boy was I wrong. On my first practice throw my left bicep let me know that it was still not quite over the experience of hurling a sixteen pound ball at fifteen miles per hour an untold number of times the week before. That was okay, I thought, I can play through that. On my second practice throw my left quadricep gave me a little warning twinge. Standing away from where everyone was lining up to take their practice throws I tried to stretch out my quads. After many years of playing soccer and trail hiking in the mountains my quads are fairly well stretched and I rarely pull them. But they seemed to be really tight as I went through my usual stretching routines. Satisfied I had taken care of my quads, I headed back in line to take another practice throw.

For the record, if a muscle is nice enough to give you a warning twinge, pay heed to it. On my third practice throw my left quad decided that if I wasn't going to pay attention to it, it would do something more drastic to get my attention. My approach to the foul line was met with a sharp pain in my upper left leg, sharp enough to cause me to instantly break into a sweat. I limped back off the approached and sat down, mentally evaluating this new turn of events and whether or not I could continue. It was obvious that I couldn't continue and that to even try to would likely only worsen whatever injury I had just endured. So I packed up my stuff and headed home to put ice on my upper leg.

I awoke this morning expecting to find that my quadricep had tightened up, but that wasn't the case. It didn't hurt like it did last night, but it was still uncomfortable. Apparently I've strained or sprained the muscle as it's obviously not a pull. As it turned out, my daughter wanted me to walk her into school this morning, so I obliged her. She asked if my leg still hurt, and finding out it still did, began running to the front door. That was nice of her, considering I couldn't run after her. So my first birthday present of the year seems to be a nasty sprain of my left quadricep. They say to keep a sprain elevated, but there's no way I can do that at my job without looking like some sort of pervert. Keep your comments to yourself, Sylvia.

ICUPKN

Hah! I was going through a box of photos I'd taken about ten to fifteen years ago when I happened across this jewel. It was taken in February 1992 during my technical college days. One morning I parked my car and hustled off to class; afterwards I came out and found this purple madness parked next to me. I made it a point to bring my camera with me the next day, and sure enough the car was parked next to me again. Don't you just love the trophy hood ornament and the obviously well-crafted license plate on the front bumper? The barely visible mirrored disco ball hanging from the rearview mirror really pimps this ride. You can't read all the words on the windshield in this photo, but it says "Ain't it Grape?" Want to see the full sized version?

One Little Victory

Yesterday was big news in Georgia regarding education and SAT scores. Sonny Perdue, our esteemed governor and self-proclaimed proponent of education (even if he did cut $1 billion from education funding and is taking credit for classroom initiatives begun long before he considered running for office) got up behind his podium trumpeting that Georgia was now 46th in the nation in SAT score results, up from dead last last year. Being a re-election year for Sonny, the trumpet was blown pretty loud. I say this objectively and as a student of history when I state that Georgia has a long tradition of religious zealotry and anti-intellectualism when it comes to education. On many occasions the state government if not outright tried to bring about the demise of its flagship state university, then it tried to set it on the course to destruction. So education, for all the rhetoric and grandstanding, has never been an overwhelming priority in the state for either the Democrats or Republicans. There have been political debts to be paid, shady backroom deals to be made, and that's been the priority.

But not this year. Georgia has moved up four places in the SAT standings! On the surface it looks like improvement, but the silver lining on this cloud cannot conceal the severe storm underneath. If you compare the SAT with last year's criteria, eliminating the new written portion of the exam, then Georgia ranks 49th. Overall the average scores in Georgia have dropped this year by three points, so it's not so much that we've moved up as Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii's scores dropped more than ours. In terms of the math portion of the exam, Georgia still ranks last in the nation; in writing 41st, in reading 45th. We're still in the bottom 10% of the nation in scores, and seeing who's behind us means that states that we could traditionally count on to act as a buffer between us and last place, Alabama and Mississippi, are ahead of us. Elect me as president; I'll immediately rescind the "No Child Left Behind Act." It's time to make the classroom someplace to teach, not train students to take exams.

Some may find 46th place as something to be proud of. I don't. But Sonny did.

OUCH!

This looks like it really hurt. Stupid bastard! Only one jump on the diving board!

Era of discovery

Stumbled upon or was reminded of some interesting things this past weekend. My brother had his fortieth birthday, which is fine by me. I hated being the only one amongst my siblings who were in their forties. Now I have company and I can call someone else an old bastard for a change. I had the house to myself before heading to his surprise party on Saturday so I put Harold Lloyd's "The Freshman" from 1925 in the DVD player. I was only able to watch twenty minutes worth of the movie before I had leave. When the wife, daughter and I returned home later that afternoon, I turned the movie back on. Usually my daughter doesn't like to watch silent movies with me, but for some reason she sat down with me on this particular day. It didn't take long for me to realize that she was reading the captions which were so necessary to convey parts of the dialogue and storyline in silent movies. It then hit me that this was great reading practice for her! What a great idea: she's introduced to the 1920s comedic genius that was Harold Lloyd while at the same time practicing her reading skills!

I was also reminded of another good band from the 1980s. I found a couple of their videos on You Tube. This band's first two albums are really, really good. Do you know who they are? You get three guesses.

Relax...

...you're in good hands!

Yeah, well get bent

I had to call the ticket office at the campus' athletic association this morning. Everyone I know had received their season football tickets, and mine hadn't shown up yet. Turns out I'm not getting tickets after all, even though they charged my credit card for them four months ago. Seems I didn't rank a high enough priority number. The gentleman I spoke to suggested that I order again next year and move up in the priority number line. Hmmmm, have my credit card tapped again for tickets I won't receive and then not get back $15 for your shipping and handling charge for tickets you neither shipped nor handled? Sorry, but fuck you buddy. And fuck this sorry-ass university I work for and graduated from.

A taste of fall

The weather this past weekend was pretty nice. A cold front blew through on Friday and Saturday, dropping the temperature around here into the upper-70s for the high on Saturday. Nevermind that the sky was overcast, it occasionally rained, and the humidity was still present; it was still cool enough to keep the windows open all day and night. It was a hint of things to come in the next couple of months and now I'm really looking forward to the change of season and possibly hiking trips in the mountains.

Good thing, bad thing

One of my all-favorite television shows is Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a rarity in the medium of television: smart, well-written, intelligent, it didn’t pander to get cheap laughs. The premise of the show is a guy is launched into space (first Joel, later Mike) who is stuck watching bad movies with his two robot companions and add their own comments/dialogue/jokes as the movie plays. At the end of the very early episodes of the show, Joel would make the robots mention one good thing and one bad thing about the movie they had just watched, rewarding them with a RAM chip for their efforts. Life of late has seemed to be a similar situation for me of late: one good thing, one not so good thing.

Good Thing: Last Friday evening my wife and I took our daughter to go swimming in the diving well at the physical activity center on campus. Once again we all had fun at the pool. Our daughter still enjoys jumping off the three meter diving board, and is getting braver on the one meter board, jumping off after getting a running start instead of just standing on the end and jumping. Admittedly I love diving off the boards as well, harkening back to my younger days and swimming in the pool at my grandparents’ apartment building.

Not So Good Thing: I got to go swimming again the next day, though I hadn’t planned on it. Late in the afternoon we headed to the store to pick up birthday presents for a party the child was invited to attend on Sunday plus a few groceries. We had been in the store for about forty-five minutes when we began to hear loud rumbles of thunder. The skylights in the ceiling were no longer bright with sunshine; rather they were dark, occasionally brightening up with flashes of lightning. The lights flickered as the storm outside got worse. I turned to my wife and advised that we should finish up and go, the sooner the better. I knew the store had only an half hour power backup for its registers (on the plus side, the security system also had thirty minutes of power backup, so after thirty-one minutes everything was FREE!). My worry was that if the power went out we’d be stuck in a long line of yahoos all also wanting to get out while the getting was good.

We beat most of the crowd, but not all of it. We were only second in line, but the lady ahead of us had her cart crammed full of stuff, enough to fill two carts actually. After about twelve minutes we had our turn at the register. As we headed out, the foyer at the front door was filled with people, none of whom wanted to leave and with good reason. Although it was only a few minutes past six in the afternoon, it was dark outside, quite dark. A strong wind was blowing, the rain was coming down in buckets. It was simply the strongest storm we’d had in these parts in quite some time. As my wife wondered aloud how long the storm would last, I was contemplating making a dash for the car.

The car wasn’t that far away, but in a driving rain it may as well have been parked a mile away. The number of people gathering by the front door was increasing exponentially, so my choice was clear—time to make a break for the car. Knowing I’d have to literally throw things in the back of my car, I handed my wife the bags containing eggs and bread and ran off into the rain. At first things went well; I can’t run as fast as I did when I was sixteen, but I can still make good time. Running up the lane in the parking lot, I rapidly closed in on my car. I hadn’t been struck by lightning yet, so that was a good sign. I was almost to my car when a car came down the lane towards me, plowing into a sizeable puddle of water, drenching my running shoes. Sonofabitch! No time to get angry or flip the driver off. The rain was still coming down pretty hard and the lightning seemed to be closing in on me. I get to my van, open the rear hatch, and throw in eight bags of stuff. I had spent a total of fifteen to twenty seconds outside but it looked like I had just jumped in the pool.

Good Thing: My daughter started first grade last week, and on Friday she had her first show and tell day. Whatever she brought in was supposed to fit into a small lunch sack the teacher had sent home and should be something that tells a little something about the child. She couldn’t decide what to bring, so I casually suggested bringing a Marx Brothers movie, specifically the movie Horse Feathers. I didn’t think she’d go for it, but she loved the idea. My DVD recorder had botched this particular disc and it wouldn’t play, so if the disc was lost it was no big deal. My daughter has been exposed to a number of older movies and comedy acts. She’s familiar with the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and for the past few weeks on “family night” she’s picked The Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, and Dracula as the movies we’ve watched. She knows Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert as those people from It Happened One Night. It’s nice to be able to watch old movies with my daughter and have her like them, though I know sometime in the future she’ll think poorly about these movies because her dad likes them and whatever dad likes is not cool.

Not So Good Thing: Last Saturday I was watching The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio when my daughter came wandering into the living room. I quickly pulled up the channel guide looking for something she could watch; I didn’t think she was ready for a movie about Howard Hughes and his substance abuse and mental health issues—not to mention I didn’t want her handing me some excuse one morning that she can’t go to school because there are GERMS EVERYWHERE.

I found the movie The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl on another channel, and tuned that in. Being a good dad, I sat with her and watched the last forty five minutes of the movie. I know the film’s target audience is children, but I’m just a big kid (ask my wife) so in theory I should have enjoyed the movie. Instead, it was like Hell on the t.v. screen. The film, about a boy’s dream about two characters he created in a notebook, was so astoundingly bad that I think anyone who watches it actually loses IQ points. Bad dialogue, bad hair, I think this piece of junk was made in 3-D, which is very scary. Who would want to see Sharkgirl and her overbite coming at them in 3-D? I certainly don’t want to have to deal with the nightmares of incisors chasing me down a dark street. But I was a dutiful dad and watched the movie with my daughter. She liked it, of course, and that’s what truly mattered. And after watching only half this movie, I’m hoping that my physical rehab and psychotherapy sessions will stop my slurred speech, annoying drooling problem, and get me back on the road to living life without wearing Depends.

Well, obviously!

Poor FDR. Once again I put his biography on the backburner to work on another book. The new book is yet another biography, this time of Julius Henry Marx, better known to most folks as Groucho. It’s an enlightening book which put a great number of things in perspective to me. Take for example the film Sunset Boulevard, which depicts a silent film star who has been all but forgotten by Hollywood. After reading Groucho’s biography I have to say the film was pretty accurate in Hollywood’s attitude at the time. By 1950 many actors and actresses who had come of age in vaudeville and silent films were truly being left by the wayside by Hollywood. Groucho was able to endure because he and his talents for ad-libbing on his You Bet Your Life program made the leap from radio to television. Other notable artists, such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, weren’t as lucky, finding work hard to come by. I finished off Groucho’s biography this past weekend, but obviously I won’t finish FDR’s unless I stop allowing myself to be distracted by new books.

Sometimes it amazes me that people miss those things in life that I think should be obvious. From time to time we all suffer from brain lapses that cause us to overlook details in life that should be as clear as the nose on our face. I’m guilty of suffering many such brain lapses and I readily admit that. It comes with the territory of being a male: forgetting birthdays, anniversaries, and on occasion our girlfriend’s/wife’s name is not beyond the potential of those of us who suffer from the XX chromosome syndrome. My dad was notorious for forgetting my brother’s and my birthdays, not to mention those late night dashes to the store because he just remembered his anniversary was the next day. There’s no need to again bring up his knack for resorting to his go-to gift of a toaster oven, so we’ll skip that part.

By way of example, I point out my experience of last week. Many years ago when I worked in a law firm I obtained a commission as a notary public. It came in very handy when preparing releases to obtain medical records and other sundry tasks in the office. A few months back I let my notary expire; it came down to a choice between having repairs made to my car’s transmission or renewing my notary. It was an easy choice. I knew I’d be submitting a new application as soon as the money became available again. So last week I took my completed application to the courthouse to regain my status as a notary. I handed over the form and took a seat while someone in the clerk of courts office typed up my new certificate. The lady who typed up the form called me to the counter, handed me the certificate, and asked me to proofread it to make sure all my information on it was correct. It took me about half a second to find a major error on the form.

“You’ve got the wrong gender,” I pointed out.

Incredulously, she said, “You’re kidding me,” somehow not believing that she had made that big of a mistake. I showed her the certificate and the line where it said I was female.

“Unless I’m heading to Sweden for a reassignment, I think it’s wrong” I told her, but in a manner indicating I thought the mistake was funny and wasn’t angry.

The clerk was beside herself, apologizing profusely, but I told her it was okay and it was the best laugh I had had all day (which was quite true). She mentioned that she had been making all sorts of mistakes that day, to which I had to chime in, “Just so long as you don’t make a mistake sending someone up for a stretch at Alto state prison, you’re fine.”

Putting the wrong gender on a public document is one thing; spending more money than you actually have is another one of life’s obvious details that most of us should know. But not all of us do. A couple of weeks ago I read a letter to the editor in our local paper that addresses the federal budget deficit. Not to worry, the writer heralded, the national deficit is a good thing. The money we’re spending that we don’t have is actually an investment in our future. Boy, I’d sure like to try that with my credit card company. Let’s see…purchase a very expensive plasma screen television, default on the payments, and tell my creditor that it’s an investment in our future. Somehow I don’t think that story would get very far. Most of us should know that if you practice deficit spending to excess, the interest alone starts to eat you alive and you never put a dent in the principal. And for some reason I don’t think massive cuts to the student loan and Pell Grant programs are an investment in our future. It seems most of our “investment” money is going to support our goodwill tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the press recently was perhaps the biggest “That’s So Obvious” story that’s happened in quite some time. In an announcement that fairly screams “My Career is Dead and I Need Some PR,” Former N’ Sync member Lance Bass came out of the closet. That this made the news and was a surprise to anyone is a mystery to me; I’ve been saying N’ Sync is gay since 1998. One can only look at the musical group to conclude that Bass was gay. For starters, look at the band’s name: N’ Sync. For five males to be in sync is strange and unnatural. The only thing that should be in sync is a house full of sorority girls, not a group of guys. Second, just look at this photo. If that doesn’t scream gay I don’t know what does (maybe except for this photo). Now I don’t begrudge anyone for their sexual preference and the friends I have in the local LGBT community will confirm that. But this is one Lance I don’t want in my pants. Obviously.