Blue Screen Of Death

Magic, Statistics, and The Holy Grail

2011-05-25T12:09:00.007-05:00

The following will be dry and probably be of interest to no one but other magicians, and even then that's doubtful. But I'm writing it anyway... ;-)

So, for the last few years, due in part to the legendary (at least in magic circles) David Berglas, many in the magic community have been obsessed with an individual effect called "Any Card At Any Number", shortened to ACAAN. The basic plot is as follows:

One spectator names a number, a free choice between 1 and 52. Another spectator names a playing card... another free choice. A deck of cards, which has been lying in full view the entire time, is handed to a third spectator who counts down to the selected number, dealing cards face up. When the selected number is reached, the playing card at that position matches the card named.

Ta Da!

Here's a Youtube clip that looks pretty much like this pure effect being performed:

ACAAN- The Berglas Effect

While Berglas didn't originate the plot (early descriptions of this plot include "The Acme Card Trick" by Chas. Shepard in the March 1908 issue of The Sphinx, a couple methods exist in Erdnase, etc), his performances of ACAAN have become stuff of legend. In fact, many think it is just that, a legend. He rarely performs this effect. Few have actually seen him perform it first hand. Those who have, however, including magician Barrie Richardson as related in his book Theater Of The Mind, describe an effect that seems impossible. Barrie actually got to witness it twice. On one of these occasions, David and Barrie were driving somewhere when David suddenly asked Barrie to name a number, which he did. He says he had a free choice, with no use of equivoque. Then he was asked to name a card. Again, a free choice. David then told Barrie to open the glove compartment of the car and remove the deck of cards he found there. He did so, and then was told to count down to his number and turn over the card at that number. He did, and it matched the card he named.

Over the years, this pure version of ACAAN has also been called "The Berglas Effect", and duplicating this effect using a set of conditions has pretty much become the Holy Grail of magicdom. The required conditions are as follows:

1. No stooges (i.e. confederates/secret helpers of the magician)
2. Free choice of card and number
3. Only one deck
4. Spectator counts the cards, the magician never touches deck during the entire effect.

Berglas seems to have met these predictions, but he's never revealed his method. Well... not fully. In The Mind And Magic Of David Berglas, a book that was eagerly awaited by the magic community due to the fact that supposedly Berglas would reveal his method to ACAAN, he devotes and entire chapter to this effect. However, the secret can basically be summed up as follows: You have to be David Berglas to do the Holy Grail version of ACAAN. He claims to use psychology, audience management, luck, the right time and right circumstances and taking advantage of such things when they come up, and several different methods and means in order to achieve "The Berglas Effect". It's an interesting read, but there's no way someone reads this chapter and then is able to go out and perform ACAAN for his friends at a bar.

So the search for this Holy Grail continues.

Several marketed versions have been released over the years, but none fulfill the requirements set forth fully. Some use two decks, some turn out to be more of "Card At Any Number" (notice the missing "A"), some use multiple decks, some limit the choice of number, some require the performer to count the cards. Etc. However, and this is where it gets interesting (really!! ;-p), all this causes philosophical arguments within the magic community. Many think that this ACAAN effect is really just "magic for magicians", that the average layman doesn't really care, that, to them, the effect is no more amazing than any other card trick, and that some (especially The Invisible Deck), are even stronger from a layman point of view with basically the same plot. (For those who have never been forced to watch me perform the Invisible Deck, the plot is basically someone names any playing card, and that named card is found to be the only reversed card in a pack of face-up cards).

Let's focus on The Invisible Deck (ID) for a moment. An argument can be made that to the spectator this plot is the same as ACAAN. A freely thought-of card is proved to be known in advance by the performer. In fact, the plot is simpler and more direct than ACAAN, because no counting or choice of number is required. The fact that ID is easy to do, has no set-up and an instant reset is another plus in its favor. But magicians love to fool other magicians, and to say that the ID is universally known among magicians would be an understatement. We all want the Holy Grail, we all want to fool fellow magi, and we all sometimes forget that the point of magic, especially to a working performer, is entertaining laymen (or at least our family and friends if we're hobbiests). Thus the obsession with ACAAN.

There are also disagreements about the need to steadfastly stick to the conditions "required" for a pure ACAAN as if they were handed down to the magic community by Moses himself, i.e. if all the requirements are not strictly met, but to the layman the effect is the same, who cares? Often, no matter what conditions are met, the spectator walks away thinking he saw the magician perform the Holy Grail version. One forgets all the minutia of the routine the performer used to achieve the result. As an example, compare this version of ACAAN to the one above:

This version obviously isn't the Holy Grail, but really, does the spectator care? When he or she thinks of the effect later, and describes it to his friends, how will it really differ from the pure Holy Grail version that Berglas supposedly has performed? Again, it would seem that only magicians care about this. We're a bored lot it would appear.

I'm also interested in the statistics, and while I'm better at most at such things, the ACAAN problem it's hard for me to wrap my head around the supposed odds involved. Magicians, amazingly enough, also can't agree on this (again, we're bored). Many say that ACAAN isn't that amazing, anyway, because it only represents a 1 in 52 chance, which isn't that high. However, I don't know if i agree with his. To me, ID does represent a 1 in 52 chance: A card is named, it is the only card reversed in the deck. I tackle this problem this way: how many decks would the performer need on hand to assure a successful completion of ACAAN on the one hand, and ID on the other.

For ID, you'd need 52 decks. Each deck would have a different card reversed. One deck, for example, would have the two of hearts reversed. Another deck would have the Queen of Clubs reversed... and so on, using a separate deck for each card, totaling 52 decks. You'd either have to have 52 decks hidden about your person, pulling out the correct deck once the spectator names a card, or you'd have one deck and take your chances. The chance you'd be correct with only one deck is thus 1 in 52. Right? Right.

Now let's move on to ACAAN. Most magicians claim this is also a 1 in 52 chance, but to me this can't be correct, since these are the same odds as ID, and obviously ACAAN has two different criteria: the card, and the position. In my way of thinking this would require 52 decks just for a single card, say the Queen of Clubs. You'd need one deck where the Queen of Clubs was the first card, another deck where it was in the second position, and so on until you had a deck where the Queen of Clubs was at position 52. This would seem to require 52 decks for each card, or 52 X 52, or 2704 decks of cards (hidden about your person. Fun!).

However, others have sussed the odds as follows: Once the number is named, there is then a 1 in 52 chance that the named card is at that location. In other words, spectator A picks the number 17, then spectator B picks the Queen of Clubs. Once the number is named, there is a 1 in 52 chance that the Queen of Clubs is that card. Makes sense.... BUT that would mean the ID and ACAAN share the same odds, and that seems counter-intuitive. I've tried to think about this, and perhaps, since the order of the other cards make no difference, there are 52 possibilities out of a total of 2404 for a given card, or 52/2704 = 1/52. But again, this is the same as ID.

My head hurts. I need input from people on this. But if true, and if most spectators sense this on some level, then why not just perform ID and be done with it? Why? Because magicians are bored. ;-)

And no, I am not a geek... :-P

D Minus

2010-03-31T15:05:00.001-05:00

The lowest grade I ever received for actual work submitted (not counting zeros or what have you for not doing an assignment) was a D- (D minus), for an essay in 11th grade honor's English on A.E. Housman's poem, "To An Athlete Dying Young". In this class, taught by Mrs. Dedman, we'd often read a poem in class and then have to write an essay, right then and there, on what the poem "meant." Mrs Dedman was of the belief that a poem had one and only one correct meaning, and that she knew what that correct meaning was.

This bothered many of us, since we liked to think that the meaning of a poem or short story might be open to interpretation, and that sometimes a poem was a poem, with no hidden allegories to ancient Greece, or no cryptic jumbling of proper names that when correctly re-jumbled would refer to the author's gay lover. Or what have you. Sometimes, like a cigar, a poem is just a poem. We all went round and round about this all semester, but Mrs. Dedman was not swayed.

Anyway, and to continue after this bit of background, we all read the Housman poem in question and couldn't make head nor tails of it, other than what is spelled out in the poem's title. You could not stretch out the title, however, into a three or four page five-paragraph expository essay, with intro, three paragraphs of points, and conclusion. We all complained. We all gnashed our teeth. I just seethed.

So she said, "Go!" and most people began writing. You could hear the scratch-scratch-scratch of pen on paper fill the classroom; it reminded me of the squeak-squeak-squeak of basketball player's shoes on a highly-polished parquet floor when the announcers are quiet. I did no writing, however. I just sat there, thinking. And seething. Finally, with about 10 minutes to go in the period, I started writing. Oh, I was sarcastic and bitter.

I wrote something like, "A.E. Housman's poem has a theme that you'd think only AE Housman would know, or maybe one that could be determined and analyzed by many people, each coming to a different conclusion based on their life experiences... but you'd be wrong. No, it is only the high school English teacher that has the gift of analysis... She, alone, is bequeathed with the author's true intent like manna from heaven"... etc. It went on in that vein, because I didn't care anymore. With about two minutes to go I threw in something about "planting the stiff" and forgotten races and turned the paper in, without making eye contact, and leaving the classroom with the speed of an athlete dying young.

Several days later Mrs Dedman returned our now graded essays. But before she did so she read a bit from one of them, one talking about "planting the stiff" and overbearing 11th grade English teachers. The class laughed. When I got the paper back and saw the D - I seethed some more. However, it turned out that was one of the better grades. Some of my classmates had received the dreaded F- - (F minus MINUS); we didn't even know such a grade existed. I mean, if you failed, you failed... what is this minus stuff? And minus minus? WTF?

No one could believe I wrote what I actually wrote, and had the guts to turn it in, but if those grades had been curved, I'd have had an A, so who was the fool now? Eh?

We had to return our papers that same day, since we were not allowed to keep the essays we wrote in class (or any essay we wrote at home, for that matter, but theoretically we could have had a copy of take-home essays at least) out of fear that we'd give these essays to some future student. I really, really, wanted my essays, however... especially the D - one, so I asked Mrs Dedman at the end of the year if I could have them.

"No," she said, "we have to keep them. They weren't very good, anyway".

Oh, that Mrs Dedman: How I loved her.

In Which Hank Takes Advantage Of The Remaining Vestiges Of Fever And/Or Tamiflu(tm) Side Effects

2010-03-17T13:15:00.001-05:00

See subject.

Yeah, I think the fever is breaking, but just a bit. I still feel a bit loopy. Or I should say more so than usual. At least my synapses are more quiet at night... at the beginning of this fun-filled H1N1 week I really couldn't sleep, because my dreams would be filled with the same fever-induced mind-numbing repetitive Kafkaesque (hey, that's a word?) images which are hard for me to describe "sober": basically, dark, black & white imagery of a repetitive nature where somehow I lose sense of the size of my physical self. I feel either incredibly large, or incredibly, small, either folding within myself or folding out to infinity. In a bad way... but that's a given. Usually, at some point, I force myself to awaken, get up, attempt to dry my sweat-soaked hair and pillow, and turn on some light in order to break the dystopian-like state of my nightmare. That sort of describes it... but not really. Throw in a bit of "Eraser Head" meets Lars Von Trier put on a constantly repeating 20 second video loop that appears in your head every time you close your eyes, and we get a bit closer.

But enough about me.

How are you doing?

I've always been a retrospective person, almost to a fault, and this last year more so than usual. I think the death of my grandfather was a big impetus, but again, I'm wired to look backward, anyway. Still, his passing, thinking about his life where it intersected with mine, and the fact that there would be no common nodes ever again going outward to the future really made me realize that you can't hold on to time. He was the anchor that let me believe for a while that you could, but with that gone all bets were off, or rather the obvious had to be accepted. There is a before, there is a now, and there is a later. When I was young I focused too much on the "later"; most of my adult life I've focused on the "before". Someday, pretty damned soon before it's too late, I need to focus on the "now". But those of you who know me well know that I'm a broken record in this regard. I'm introspective enough (probably, again, to a fault) to know this is my problem, but either too lazy or to dumb to do anything about it, other than, of course, harp on this and complain about it. But to actually change my outlook/thinking?

Nah. That would be too easy. Or too hard? I don't know which it is, and that's not just the Tamiflu(tm) talking.

That Damned Glass

2010-03-10T15:33:00.001-06:00

Do we really need despair and heartache to remind us that our otherwise mediocrity isn't so bad? Do we need joy and contentment to tease us, to show that this same mediocrity and sameness is, well, static and mediocre? That we should hope for more but not be surprised if it gets even worse?

The ubiquitous famous glass is always either half empty or half full; it never has just the right amount of liquid. This sad and tired metaphor is thus overly simplified by people, forcing one to chose a life-view paradigm, pessimism versus optimism, where really we miss the real lesson: that the glass is never correct and is constantly taunting us with either more or less liquid. Whoever first noticed that glass had something, but instead of asking us to choose sides he should have thrown it against the wall and called it garbage, plain and simple.

Enter God. He has a plan, you see, and thus both the highest summits of our existence, as well as the lowest abysses of our anguish, are honky-dory by him. (Or Him. Though, to be fair, I sometimes wonder if a deity whose "Big Picture" is so big that we're supposed to shrug off the deaths of 400,000, say, in an earthquake as 'part of His plan', really deserves capitalization of his pronoun. Or His. But, as usual, I digress). Are you telling me that this creator knows all, let allows us free will, and that evil and badness and despair and loneliness and poverty are part of his grand scheme? Why? So we can feel better about ourselves? So we can notice that dirty chipped glass is in fact half full? Are you telling me that the butterfly has to be stepped upon so 20 million years later primates rule the earth? That's fine for the primates, but it sucks for the butterfly. I can't ignore the butterfly, and I can't ignore the half-empty glasses.

Thus, exit God. I know that may be harsh, but in a world full of glasses of stagnant water and millions of butterflies cast aside for the greater good of some distant future or someone's peace of mind I say we hardly knew ye.

"I Walked Into Your Class But Couldn't Find Your Name"

2010-01-27T11:50:00.008-06:00

I was in grad school, in a never-ending quagmire that is EBD ("Everything But Dissertation"), finishing up a teaching certificate as a potential safety net, when I got divorced. My daughter was 2.5 at the time, and in order to bring in a bit of extra money I had started teaching computer skills at an Austin day care center chain a few months before The Event. It didn't pay much, but they provided free daycare for Adri, so it was a win-win: some extra money, and Adri got to socialize with other children her age. I also started subbing in these schools during the hours I didn't have computer classes, and eventually a director at one of the schools offered to pay me more if I exclusively subbed at her school. There was a signing bonus and everything: a gift card to TCBY!

Adri, therefore, became a full-time member of the Two Year Old Class. She got her own cubby, complete with hand-painted name card above her coat hook. I'd drop her off, teach computers at various schools, sub at her school, eat lunch with her, and take her home. It was wonderful, and I could have done that the rest of my life and have been happy.

However, that was not to be for a myriad of reasons that are not relevant to this post. Suffice to say that one day Adri no longer came to my school. Of course, she still went to day care, just somewhere else, because heaven forbid she see me more than her mother. No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask? However, the director, being a human being and all and sensitive to these matters, didn't remove Adri's name card from her cubby. I'd walk in to the Two Year Old class to get a student for computers, or fill in during the two-hour nap time while a teacher went to lunch, etc, and see her name there. It was comforting for some reason, perhaps because as long as her name was there there was a chance that maybe she'd return.

One day, a few weeks later, I walked in to the class and her name placard had been removed. It felt like someone had hurled me off a 20 story building and then kicked me in the ribs for good measure as I lay sprawled on the concrete below. I didn't cry, but probably because at that point anything inside me capable of expressing such emotion had been ground up and spat out months earlier. A friend walked into the room, however, and saw me. She did cry, I comforted her while really comforting myself, and went home.

On the plus side, I went home that day and wrote a song including the above incident that I've always liked. It's too bad that I require intense emotional pain to write music now. ;-)

Sam Cooke, Barney The Dinosaur, and The Acquisition Of Language As An Extended Developmental Psych Project

2010-01-22T15:34:00.004-06:00

When my daughter was first born I couldn't wait to have a conversation with her. Well, let's back up for a moment: during the entire nine and a half months that my daughter was awaiting birth I couldn't wait to have a conversation with her. After she was born, therefore, I wasted no time in attempting to speed up her acquisition of language and development of vocabulary.

I would sing to her all the time, our favorites being the collected works of Sam Cooke. She really liked the low bass voice that opened up "Chain Gang", the "Well don't you know..." part that I'd sing in a exaggerated deep, booming voice. She also liked "Cupid", especially the "thwwwwirp" sound/onomatopoeia that mimicked the sound of the arrow (" ...and let you arrow fly.... thwwwwrip ... straight to my lover's heart..."). But the best and most favorite of all was "Only Sixteen", which I sang whenever she reached a "6 milestone", as in:

"She was only Six hours, only Six hours, I loved her so..."

...which was the first. But of course, I sang the song at 6 days, six weeks, and six months as well (which was the last time). Those of you who find this hard to believe and/or a bit Temporally OCD on my part are referred to a previous missive I wrote on my abnormal obsession with time and numbers, here.

I had to do a lot of singing to Adri, because she was what was called "colicy" back then (still used?), or in other words, she cried a lot at night when left alone in her crib to sleep. I'd sing Sam Cooke and rock her in different exaggerated ways in order to calm her. It usually worked.

I also, of course, figured that the more she was exposed to language the quicker she'd start talking. So I'd sing and do a lot of pointing to objects and naming them, mostly her body parts ("this is your foot. These are your toes", etc). This is no different than any parent does, of course, but I was doing it specifically to speed up the day when she and I could have a conversation.

She picked up language quickly, as most young humans do, and when she was still pretty young I could ask her where her nose was, for example, and she'd point to it. I kept a running tab of how many words she understood in this manner. It was easy to do so at first, but the number grows in a logarithmic manner, with a steep upwards curve. At first she knew, say, 10 words, then 50, then 200, all in quick order. I actually kept track until it was well over 500 (when I couldn't sleep, which was often when I was younger, I'd sit in bed and think of things. Back then, I'd go over all the words Adri knew, counting them instead of sheep until I fell asleep).

In what seemed like an eternity then, and a blink of an eye now, she gradually began to be able to hold a conversation with me. Sure, it was mainly about Barney the Dinosaur at first, but then progressed to explaining to me why Barbie needed a Barbie Car of her own, to what she was learning in school, to what friend said what about who, to the point that I sometimes wondered why I had taught her to talk in the first place; she was very verbal, and she felt comfortable telling me anything. ;-) At the risk of embarrassing her if she's reading this, the pinnacle of my "I can't wait until we can talk to each other" project occurred the day she called me all excited to tell me that she'd had her first period, going into detail about how, when, and why. Part of me wished she'd simply sang "Wonderful World" to me instead.

But only a part of me.

Hills Like White Elephants

2009-08-26T11:04:00.004-05:00

Often, when he was alone, Ted would think of that teddy bear, the only remaining tangible thing from that time. Not that he had the teddy bear, of course; he assumed she still had it, but then again, why? Why would she keep the only remaining tangible thing from that time? She did have it for awhile, at least. He knew that much. A teddy bear with a terrible secret living amongst all the other innocuous stuffed fauna that lived on top of her bed. When he'd walk into her room back then he'd see the bear staring at him with accusing jet-black cold pieces of plastic that passed for eyes. And now, years later, it was the teddy bear that still haunted him. He'd forgotten the little details of the rest, somehow... the little details that really mattered. Those were, thankfully, gone. The damned bear, however, remained in his memory, with its stupid sewn-on grin and lifeless black eyes.

They'd gone to a mall afterward, and Ted had bought the teddy bear and given it to her on the spot. Just another for her collection, or so he'd thought. Something they could look at that afternoon and hold, instead of looking at each other. She'd smiled a sad smile and stroked the bear's fur while Ted looked at his feet, trying desperately to only think of the bear and not the other missing thing. Missing things, rather, for several things were lost that day. Ted's purchase and gift of the bear was a somewhat feeble attempt to fill that emptiness, and emptiness that would just grow larger until it was an abyss swallowing him whole. But he couldn't know that at the time. No... give her the bear, look at your feet, think of nothing... especially don't think about that... and everything will be fine. If not today, at least tomorrow. Surely tomorrow things will be better.

Tomorrow was not better, nor the next day. The bear remained. Perhaps it was the bear's fault. Its stupid black eyes that stared at you, because it knew. Ted hated that bear. Things were fine before the bear, and then there was this accusatory teddy bear on the bed, and then things weren't fine. Ted couldn't believe that was just a coincidence. She, however, didn't seem to even notice the bear, and never talked about it.

Eventually she left, or maybe Ted left, but in any event Ted stopped thinking about that day and enjoyed a respite from the evil teddy bear's glare. However, there were times when something would be said or happen that would trigger a slight memory of that day... when he was alone and feeling unfulfilled or otherwise down... and the bear would come back, eyes black as ever.

And he'd wonder what that bear was doing now.

Talahi Diaries, September 10, 1966 / 2005

2009-08-19T11:25:00.013-05:00

In a fitting piece of irony, synchronicity, coincidence... or whatever you may call it... the very first entry in the Talahi diary was written on the same day that the very last entry was entered, 39 years later:

September 10, 1966

Drove to Lake Geneva to look at property for a summer home. Went to Joerm [?] Realty. Mr. Clifford showed us several. We fell "in love" with a house in Indian Hills. [Grandpa]

That's the house they put an offer on two days later (according to the diary). The offer? $14,000. I don't know if that offer was accepted, but the house was purchased, and they closed on October 14, 1966:

Closed deal on purchase of property in Fontana. Will name it "Talahi" (our T.C. annual) which is Chippewa Indian for "Under The Oaks." Very appropriate w/ our oaks. [Grandpa]

"T.C" refers to St. Cloud State Teacher's College, as it was called then, and is where my grandparents met. Here's a picture taken just three or so months later, early in 1967:

Fast-forward 39 years to September 10, 2005. My grandparents were now living in Dallas, but were spending the summers at the lake house. However, we didn't want my grandfather to make the long two-day drive, so the last couple of years I'd drive them up there and fly back home. At the end of the summer I'd fly back up there and drive them back. After 2005 we didn't think it was a good idea for them to be up there for three months by themselves, so they stayed year around in Dallas. This particular September day was the last time my grandfather was at Talahi, and, as usual, I made a diary entry:

September 10, 2005

Breakfast at Hot Diggity Dog. Today we'll make the house ready for the winter. Will leave tomorrow in the AM. [Hank]

"Hot Diggity Dog" was a hole-in-the-wall eatery of the type that my grandparents were so fond. It was in Walworth, and was open from 5am to 1pm, basically serving breakfasts to local farmers and the occasional hot dog to tourists.

Now, I was up at Talahi last summer (2008) to load up a U-Haul full of furniture and boxes that I then drove back to Dallas, but I was unable to make a diary entry. I really wanted to, knowing that it was the last day I'd ever be at Talahi, but unfortunately the diary had been packed in one of the boxes and I couldn't find it. I contemplated "faking" the entry, adding it after the fact, but in the end chose not to. The entry of September 10, 2005, coming 39 years to the day after the first entry, thus, is the final entry.

Here's a picture of the house from 2004. (Click on it to see a larger version). In almost 40 years the pine trees at the front of the house have grown from about 3 feet high to about 40, and the new edition that we built onto the house is visible on the left. The composition is kind of odd, but I wanted to capture the feeling of the tall, majestic oaks that surrounded the house and property. They were, after all, the inspiration for the house's name:

New Money-Saving Anti-Socialism Idea!

2009-07-24T19:11:00.001-05:00

I want to privatize the police and fire detartments. Why this socialized protection? We all should have to pay a monthly fee to something called "civil protection", and, after we've met our deductible (over $200 in theft/damages), then the police will come out and investigate. We'd still have to pay them a small "appearance fee", of course. I think the police force might even start showing a profit finally!

Of course, if our house had been broken into in the past due to a faulty lock before we started our civil protection plan, then the police wouldn't have to come if we had a new theft due to the preexisting condition of the faulty lock. Same thing with the fire department. Oh, you have a roof with wood shingles instead of composite? Well, that's not covered, then.

If you wanted to higher a private investigator/consultant, furthermore, you'd first have to get the approval of the board of directors of the civil protection plan/police force. If they approved it, their fee would be covered under the plan (less the small copayment, of course). Furthermore, this plan would just cover regular beat cops. If you wanted a specialist, say a homicide detective, that, too, would first have to be approved by the civil protection plan, after filling out 12 forms and making seventeen phone calls, but hey, it's the cost of freedom.

To make this civil protection plan more affordable, we could force your place of employment to offer a group plan, and pray and hope that they payed a portion of your premiums, because, dammit, obviously your home and property's safety should be the responsibility of your employer. Of course, if you were laid off and lost the civil protection coverage, the 911 dialing service on your phone would be disconnected. That's a shame, but if you just got a new job with a new employer who paid your civil protection plan, you'd be fine. Stop being so lazy. And oh: that old door lock, alarm system, and roof are now no longer covered since they're preexisting conditions, so let's hope the burglar comes through your back window.

Next up: My plan to end socialized military, because the private sector (Haliburton, Blackwater, et al), do it so much better and earn some green to boot.

Uncle Sam

2009-07-22T10:51:00.004-05:00

It seemed that Sam had an attitude problem, but that wasn't Sam's problem; no, that was the problem of all the ingrates and losers who constantly made Sam's life a living hell. If Sam's misanthropic tendencies were allowed to play out, furthermore, this wouldn't have even been an issue. However, and alas, this was not to be the case. Sam was forced to share his day to day existence with whom he so lovingly referred to as "the scum of the Earth." Sam, it must be pointed out, was not what one would call "a people person."

Sam was, however, a "Sam person." Oh, Sam was a big fan of Sam. It was rare that Sam could ever get enough of Sam, and on those infrequent occasions when he got a bit bored with himself, he'd think of "the scum of the Earth" and a smug expression would wash over his face. Did I mention that Sam wasn't a People Person? Anyway, to continue:

One evening, after Sam had just finished admiring his check book balance and had reread all the cloying inscriptions written to his ten-year-ago self in his old high school senior yearbook, the phone rang. Sam, it must be pointed out, was not a fan of the phone, as it required a bit too much interaction with "the scum of the Earth" for his tastes. Social norms, unfortunately, dictated that he own such an instrument, and Sam was nothing if not a creature of social norms (at least since the advent of caller ID).

Sam looked at the phone display and noticed that it was yet again "Unavailable" phoning him, and oh how he hated Unavailable. He wasn't too thrilled with people he knew, remember, so Unavailable? Unavailable was "the scum of the Earth's" handmaiden. So he hesitated.

The phone kept ringing, using that annoying electronic tone that Sam was sure the Motorola corporation had invented just to annoy one person: Sam.

ring ring ring.

Finally Sam succumbed.

"Yes?!", he practically spat into the mouthpiece.

The other side was silent for a beat or two, just long enough for what passed for Sam's patience to be tested and broken into a thousand little pieces of misanthropic shards.

"WELL?!", Sam (impatiently) barked.

"Uh... Reverend Philips? Is that you? I just wanted to tell you that the new hymnals have arrived."

"Great," Reverend Sam Philips intoned as he made a sarcastic smile at the phone handset before hanging it up so forcibly that his "World's Greatest Uncle" coffee cup fell from the nearby shelf and shattered into a thousand little pieces.

Sam always hated that coffee cup.

Talahi Diaries, July 28, 1967

2009-07-21T19:24:00.006-05:00

In a previous Talahi Diary entry, I erroneously stated that the May, 1967 entries were my grandfather's last. As it turns out, there was one more, and this was his actual last diary entry:

July 28, 1967

Hankie, w/ popgun, basket of grapes & jar of fire flies, goes to sleep by himself in tent @ 8:00pm - Awakened at 1:30 am, & came in. [Grandpa]

The tent in question, here, was a small, two-man pup tent. I remember this night well, and I remember it was thunder that woke me up and frightened me enough to want to go inside. What I didn't realize then, however, was that evidently my grandparents were very concerned about me sleeping alone in the tent (in the front yard, mind you... not even in the back) and kept wanting to go out and tell me to come inside. My mom, however, was one of these "let him learn things on his own" types, and kept telling my grandparents to let me be, that I'd be okay, etc. Followed by my grandmother doing some more worrying and asking again if maybe I should come inside, followed by my mother getting more aggravated with them and forbidding them to "rescue" me.

I find none of this surprising in the least, as it fits with everyone's personality traits to this day.

Not mine, of course; it's not like I'm still afraid of thunder. Just so we're clear.

Moon Over Talahi

2009-07-20T16:40:00.005-05:00

Forty years ago we watched and waited for Neil Armstrong to take his first step on the moon up at the lake house, Talahi. We'd invited two other families up for the weekend, the Muellers and the Flannerys. The Muellers had five kids, the Flannerys had seven kids, so it was rather crowded. The two-bedroom addition had yet to be built on to the cottage, so us fourteen (!) kids slept in this huge army-surplus tent outside. At least, it seemed huge to my five-year-old self. I remember the smell of wet, rotting canvass that was the tent.

It was dark, and we were watching the landing on an old black & white 19-inch TV that got horrible reception, but we didn't care. When my mom told me that the module had landed, I went outside and looked up at the moon, trying in vain to see the little astronauts walking about on its surface. Needless to say, I did not succeed, and it had to be explained to me that the moon was very far away.

I based "farness" when I was young on how long it took to drive up to the lake from Oak Park (about two hours):

How far away do great grandma and grandpa live? Answer: it's like driving to and from the lake four times.

How far to California? Fifteen Lake House Round Trips. (LHRT).

"How much longer do we have to drive?" "Only about one more LHRT".

So, when I asked how far it was to the moon, I was told it was something like ONE THOUSAND LHRTs:

"Well, if we drove to the lake, turned around and drove home, we'd have to do that one thousand times in order to get to the moon!" my dad told me.

I thought he was nuts, and it sounded like a booooring trip, but it was no wonder I couldn't see the LEM on the moon that summer night in 1969.

So here we are, forty years later, and nothing really more has happened vis-a-vis manned space exploration. By now I expected us to all to be able to have cottages on the moon, for chrissakes.

Oh well.

Talahi Diaries, May 5-7, 1967

2009-07-15T12:27:00.016-05:00

In 1966, when my grandparents decided to purchase a summer house near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, they were given a little red diary by their friends Grace and Army. They were to use this diary to record all their time at the cottage. My grandfather made several entries at first, but then stopped after about a year. Several years later I found the diary and started to make entries every time I was up at the lake, and this continued for the next 30 years or so until my grandparents decided to sell the house a year ago (it's still on the market, by the way). I'm going to transcribe all of my grandfather's entries here, in chronological order, but I'm going to start with his entries from the weekend of May 5, 1967, because this is where I randomly opened the diary just now. As it turns out, these were the last entries he made, so it's sort of appropriate. I'll offer any associated memories I have with a given entry. Won't this be fun? ;-)

May 5, 1967 (Friday):

Drove up from O.P. [Oak Park] w/ Grandma & Grandpa Toti & Hankie. Fixed nice fire in fireplace. Arrived about 7:30 pm after having burger @ Marengo. [Grandpa]

When we'd make the two-hour drive from Oak Park to the lake house in Fontana, Wisconsin (one of three villages on Lake Geneva, the other two being William's Bay and Lake Geneva), we'd often stop at a burger joint named "Yum-Yums" in Marengo, IL. If ever a place warranted the "joint" moniker, it was this joint. A hole-in-the-wall right across from the local high school, it served shakes, malts, and "char-broiled" burgers, including my favorite, the "pizza burger" which of course had mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce on it. The color scheme was late 60s "harvest orange" and brown, and it had the requisite booths with faded vinyl seats in said color with rips where the stuffing was coming out, cigarette burns on the tabletops, and a juke box in the corner. It was great.

Grandpa and grandma Toti were my grandmother's parents, and thus my great-grandparents. They lived about 800 miles away in Eveleth, MN, but my grandfather would drive them down to the Chicago area once a year or so to visit.

May 6, 1967 (Saturday):

Hankie woke up about 5:45 am. Built kite for Hank. Broke 1st time but Hankie got to fly it at College Camp Field. Poppy did a lot of yard work - Nice day. [Grandpa]

My grandfather made this kite out of a paper bag from Carson Pirie Scott and strips of wood, and some rags for a tail. The night before we'd glued and tied the sticks together in a cross and the cut the bag to a kite shape and glued it to the cross. I was anxious to play with the kite right then, but my grandfather told me the glue would have to dry first. I was very impatient. He also made a kite string caddy and wound what seemed like miles of string around it in preparation for the next day's event. I of course was so excited to fly the kite that I woke up really early; I remember the sun wasn't up yet, and see now that it was 5:45 am. My poor grandfather. I still can clearly see my grandfather struggling to get the kite aloft in the relatively calm morning. I still don't know where College Camp field is in Lake Geneva, maybe someone can enlighten me.

I'd never heard my grandfather refer to my great-grandfather as "poppy" in my life; it was usually "Fred", and occasionally "papa", rarely "Bona Fede" (his real name), but never "poppy". I don't know what that was about.

May 7, 1967 (Sunday)

Left for O.P. about 7:00 pm on May 6th [Grandpa]

I don't know why he entered this on the next day rather than on Saturday, but I include this entry for completeness.

And yes, my grandfather called me "Hankie" his entire life.

Gramp's Memorial Service

2009-05-20T14:37:00.002-05:00

Whistling

2009-05-11T08:49:00.005-05:00

My grandfather used to tell us that when he was a teenager he "worked from sunrise to sunset for two bits a day", riding a horse herding cattle in Minnesota during The Depression. Usually he'd remind us of this when someone was complaining about how much something cost, or how much work they had. He never said it begrudgingly; he was proud of his cowboy days and recognized the color this story, and others, brought to his "Grandpa Biography". Back then, of course, he rarely talked about his past, saying he didn't want to bore us with such stuff. However, as he grew older, and especially during these last few years, he shared more and more stories.

However, what I'll remember about him most, and the image I'll always have of him will be of the strong leader of our family, the person everyone turned to when they needed something... emotionally, financially, or just guidance or to ask questions. He was the one constant in my life, especially my early life. He was full of life and always happy, a strong man who would still get emotional about the plight of a child or the death of a pet. He became the Assistant Superintendent of the school district where I grew up outside of Chicago, and was loved by all his teachers and staff who called him "Dr. Wes" and who knew to expect a hug or two from him whenever he'd visit their school or they were at the administration building.

He was one of those that believed that hard work and "keeping your nose clean" would get you anywhere you wanted to be in life. Even while busy twelve months a year with teacher contracts, teacher recruitment, curriculum, and other stressful school administrative tasks, he still found time for his Lions Club, doing many fundraisers for the blind including selling candy at el stations, writing the newsletter, and even becoming president of his local chapter. He also was the head of the area's American Legion, which, among other things, awarded scholarships to outstanding local students each year. He'd march with them, holding the American flag, each year in our Memorial Day parade, very proud of his students and his country. He was a very patriotic man, having lived the American dream and having fought in World War II for that dream, and it is because of him and his beliefs that I get so incensed when some try to claim love of country and patriotism as the sole ownership of The Right.

Sometimes I'd be at my grandparents' house, and my grandmother and I would always know when my grandfather was home from work because you could hear him whistling from a block away. I'd look out the window and see him walking his usual very brisk walk, Hamburg hat on head, whistling away with a smile on his face as he approached the front door.

That's how I'm going to choose to remember him right now. I wonder if he's whistling again, finally.

PyroPeep

2009-05-09T20:32:00.002-05:00

Multimedia message
Originally uploaded by ahsv

Live from Todd's wedding: Gizzie burning a peep, for heresy I'm guessing.

Cashier Chaos, or HOW DARE YOU

2009-04-08T17:39:00.006-05:00

Anthony loved working the registers, even if Rickie, the diminutive cashier from Guam, was shifted up there with him. Sure, Rickie needed many smoke breaks and had to get at least three refills from the coffee shop per shift, but it was a three hour shift after all ("A Three Hour Shift", Anthony sang to himself to the tune of the Theme from "Gilligan's Island". Anthony was nothing if not musically literate).

"If god had meant us to go more than three hours without coffee, we'd have been born with a coffee spigot on our forehead", Rickie always said between gulps of coffee, purposely using the lower-case 'g' just to piss off the one or two religiously devout people who still worked at the book store. No one knew how he could imply a lower-case 'g' orally, but somehow that damn Guamite succeeded.

Anthony would put up with Rickie's disappearances, because working the registers was a welcome respite from some of the other tasks. Anthony was basking in the glow of the Rickie-less checkout area, full of good cheer thinking of the mental image of a coffee urn growing out of Rickie's head spurting hot java goodness everywhere, when a customer had the audacity to interrupt his revelry with a question:

"Yes, I have a book on hold."

He looked, but couldn't see the source of the query.

"Excuse me, hello? Do you have my book?"

Anthony finally saw her, a little old woman even shorter than Rickie (though with no coffee urn growing out of her head), furtively waving her little hand.

"Yes, and what is your name?", Anthony asked.

"Mrs. Fergason"

"Ah... we file under first name... what is your first name?" Anthony innocently asked.

"HOW DARE YOU!", the woman crackled.

"I'm sorry?", Anthony parried.

"HOW DARE YOU call me by my first name! How disrespectful!", she went on.

Anthony tried to explain that the held books were usually filed---

"HOW DARE YOU!!!" --- the old lady interrupted.

---so he just needed the first name ---

"HOW DAAAARE YOU!!!"

---to find the book.

"It's Agnes, but I don't see why that's any business of your's!"

So Anthony, armed with this most private of information, went to retrieve her book, looking in the 'A' cabinet.

There was no book for an Agnes there.

He was starting to get an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He quickly went to look under the 'F's, just in case.

The pit in his stomach, however, just got bigger.

Slowly, and with much trepidation, he approached the little old lady.

He cleared his throat.

"Mrs. Fergason, I'm sorry but you're book is not here."

"HOW DAAARRREEE YOU!" she screeched.

Anthony apologized. He offered to try to find another copy of her book. He called a shift leader. Nothing would placate Mrs Fergason (don't call her Agnes). Belinda, the shift leader, offered to look in the back for Mrs Fergason's book, and after a couple more HOW DARE YOUs, she was off on her quest.

Anthony and Mrs. Fergason waited together in what would have to be described as an "uncomfortable silence" that even Rickie's return with coffee cup in hand and scone in mouth couldn't lighten up.

Finally Belinda returned with a book in hand, the same title that Mrs. Fergsan had put on hold.

"Is this the exact same book that you put on hold for me when I telephoned last week?", Agnes asked.

"Well, no", Belinda started ---

"HOW DAAARRRE YOU!!!!"

Working an info shift was beginning to look better and better.

Yet Another TV News Appearance.

2009-04-06T00:41:00.001-05:00

It must be because I'm so photogenic:

The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't

2008-11-26T23:11:00.004-06:00

Bert had had enough. He was damned if he was going to sit at the kids table again this Thanksgiving. It was okay for a few years, but dammit, he was 52 now. Enough was enough. He could barely get his knees under the wobbly card table while sitting, for one thing. He also was a bit sick and tired of eating his meal off a Batman(tm) plate... a George Clooney Batman plate at that! And no matter what his sister Fran said, he was pretty damned sure that it was Kool-Aid(r) and not a "fine Cabernet sauvignon" that he was being served, either. You didn't serve "fine Cabernet sauvignon" out of a sippy cup. He wasn't that dumb.

So Bert came prepared this time. Oh yes... he was prepared. He'd boned up on his Thanksgiving trivia. He'd been hitting the elliptical machine for months and taking a multivitamin every day. He'd been practicing various cooking skills and honed his knife technique until he was able to finally mince an onion in under two minutes.

Oh yes, he was ready.

However, Fran through him a curve ball, and the first round consisted of making a soup out of three randomly picked ingredients. Bert got a can of anchovies, a packet of fast-rising yeast, and a frozen Fudgesicle(tm).

He did not shine.

The next round found him battling Jimmy for the wishbone. It wasn't fair. Sure, Jimmy was only 9, but he was spry, and had surprisingly strong, if pudgy, fingers, with a grip that could kill a cat. That, combined with the fact that Bert still had melted Fudgesicle stuff on his fingers pretty much sealed his fate. With a quick snap Jimmy triumphantly held up his much larger piece of wishbone. It took all the restraint Bert had not to shove the small sliver of bone remaining in his fingers down Jimmy's smug little throat, but somehow he prevailed.

So that left trivia. He was ready for this. He anxiously took the piece of paper with the questions on it and began.

"Which two teams traditionally played each other the Saturday after Thanksgiving in what is still one of the biggest rivalries in college football?"

Bert smiled. He knew this one. Army vs Air Force he wrote confidently.

"Which two pro football teams have traditionally played a Thanksgiving game?"

Who does Fran think she's playing with? Bert thought to himself, scribbling down the obviously correct answer, Detroit Lions and The Washington Redskins. The hours of studying were clearly paying off.

The last question was, "What was the name of the ship that carried the pilgrims to the New World?"

Damn. Bert new it was either The Nina, The Pinta, or The Santa Maria, but he couldn't remember which. Dammit. Wait. The Nina. Yes. It was The Nina, which Bert hurriedly scrawled into the last answer blank before handing the paper back to Fran, feeling absolutely sure that this year he'd be at the adult's table for dinner.

Later during the drive home, while Bert was trying to figure out where it all went wrong, he suddenly had an epiphany: Next year, he'd spend the holiday at Luby's.

The Halloween That Almost Wasn't

2008-10-15T12:33:00.001-05:00

When I was young growing up in the 'burbs of Chicago, we had a season called "fall" that many of you here in Texas are probably unfamiliar with. The highlight of "fall", or "autumn" if you will, was of course Halloween, when we'd all go trick or treating, unaccompanied by an adult, from the moment school let out until about 8 or 8:30. My friends and I would cover at least ten blocks, easily, sometimes making a pit stop at home in order to unladen ourselves of a full bag of loot and grabbing an empty one, then quickly continuing our autumnal journey into the quickly approaching night.

Every year there'd be at least one house, usually inhabited by an elderly couple with a strange ethnic accent of some sort, that would provide a stumbling block for our candy-grabbing sojourn. First of all, these people would give out something like apples, or a shiny penny, or worse yet, some home-made thing involving raisins, nuts, and what appeared to be lint. When the old lady handed out the "treat", moreover, she'd invariably insist on placing it in our hand, rather than tossing it in the bag, which was creepy enough, but then she'd smile a (mostly) toothless grin while patting us on our shoulder with her boney fingers.

*tap-tap-tap* "There's a good boy. Now run along!" (toothless grin).

I'd take her advice and quickly go down the front stairs, feeling her rheumy eyes burning a hole into the back of my vampire costume as I found sanctuary in the company of my friends on the sidewalk.

That was the best-case scenario.

However, every other year or so, this old couple would not be content with freaking us out with bruised fruit or questionable home-made "things"; no, sometimes they'd want us to come into their "front room" for a second. They'd have cookies there, or so they'd claim, and we simply had to come in, since we reminded them of "our Henry" or something. So of course we'd go in, since none of us wanted to appear to be scared of a harmless old lady in front of the others. We'd go into the front room and be forced to sit upon a "davenport" covered in dark red faded worn velvet that smelled of a mixture of mildew, cigarettes, and Ben-Gay while the old lady passed around a tray of "cookies" sitting on an ancient tattered lace doily while her cat meowed constantly in the kitchen.

I'd keep one eye on the old lady and one eye on the front door while I pretended to eat a "cookie", shoving it under one of the understuffed sofa cushions when the old lady would turn to yell at her cat or something.

"Would you boys like some milk?"

We drew the line at drinking stuff in the front rooms of strange old ladies on Halloween, so we'd tell the lady we had to be going and start heading for the door. Somehow, this frail old lady would suddenly possess the speed and agility of a world-class sprinter and beat us to the door. She'd have something in her hand that she'd place in our hands forcibly and then forcibly close our fingers into a fist so we couldn't see what it was.

"Stop by again. Our Henry would have simply loved to have met you!"

We'd finally get the courage to open our fists to see what was inside when we were approaching the next house, invariably finding a questionable after-dinner mint or something inside.

Yeah, I don't see how the title of this blog post applies, either.

Suspension Of Blog

2008-09-25T09:44:00.001-05:00

Sorry, Dear Readers, but I'm going to put this blog on hold for a while due to our nation's financial crisis. Once it gets solved, rest assured the blogging will start again, but for now, this blog is suspended.

The Haunted Pricing Gun

2008-09-21T09:49:00.000-05:00

That ill-fated morning, that morning that the price gun first started talking to me, began like any other day. Except, of course, for the fact that the price gun started talking to me. Have you ever seen the original 1958 The Fly? Remember at the end of the movie when the fly with the small little human head gets caught in the spider web and pleads "help me!" in that squeaky, quiet, spiderlike way, and Vincent Price ignores it? Well, it was nothing like that.

No, my price gun talked to me all right, but it did so with a much more baritone kind of voice. It sort of sounded like that guy from Everybody Loves Raymond, I think his name is Pat Garrett or something. Or maybe that's Billy The Kid's friend. Either way. The price gun sounded either like Raymond's older brother or Billy The Kid's sidekick; I can't be bothered to figure out which is right, and, frankly, is it really that important? I mean, Christ, the price gun started talking to me, and you want to argue over which historical figure it sounded like? Please.

"Hey Hank," the price gun said innocently enough that morning, "whatcha doing?".

(Actually, now that I think of it, the price gun sounded a bit like Bea Arthur of "Maude" fame. But that's neither here nor there).

Of course I ignored this query, coming as it did from an inanimate object. The price gun, however, would not be ignored.

"Hey! What's your problem? I'm talking to you!", the price gun continued.

I made a furtive look around to see if anyone else had noticed or heard the rude comments issued towards me. No luck. I was the first one at the store, besides the shelving crew, of course, and they hardly counted.

I glared at the price gun in my hand, not really believing what was happening... from a clearance gun no less.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you, jackass", the price gun continued.

"Look, what did I ever do to you!!", I yelled at the price gun, giving it a few hard shakes for good measure.

A frightened SIM looked at me with horror and darted into the bowels of SIM-land when we made eye contact. She didn't appear to take to heart my efforts to convince her that I was sane, and frankly me stopping in mid-explanation to tell the price gun to "go to hell" didn't help matters. Clearly, I was on my own.

Throughout the rest of the day the price gun spat out commands and comments:

"Price that book at $3, you jackass! What are you thinking!"

"Oh, so you're going to price this book $7.98, even though the exact same title is sitting on the same shelf, priced $5.98? You moron!"

"Faster!! Faster!!! Dammit, that dude who whistles prices faster than you!!"

Et Cetera.

Needless to say, it did nothing for my self-esteem. This obnoxious talking price guns evidently knew which of my buttons to press.

"$2?! $2?! What the hell? Tell me, what's the difference between a $3 book and a $2 book? Or a $2 book or a $1 book. THERE IS NONE, JACKASS!"

"SHUT UP!!" I yelled at the price gun, having put up with about as much as anyone should have to put up from a brainless piece of plastic.

Several startled customers slowly started walking away, protectively guiding their children and small dogs to the nearest exit, as if I was some sort of book-pricing madman.

I'd had enough. I gathered about 40 South Beach Diet books onto a pricing table.

"And just what do you think you're doing, mister? Don't you dare!"

I ignored the bastard price gun from hell and slowly changed the price to read $29.98.

"Don't you even THINK about it, Jackass!!" the price gun yelled... but I could sense the dread in its basso voice now.

Slowly, I started pricing the books. Then I built up tempo. Faster and faster. Faster still.

*whomp-ka-chick* *whomp-ka-chick* *whomp-ka-chick*

Each time I slammed the pricing gun down harder on the face of the book, and each time its pleading voice got weaker and weaker.

"NO!!!!..... No!!!..... no!!!!! .... no! ....."

*whomp-ka-chick* "no" *whomp-ka-chick*

Faster and faster, harder and harder, until the pricing gun was nothing but smashed bits, shards of blue plastic flying everywhere along with my spittle, as I went faster and faster until the last book was priced.

When it was over I struggled to catch my breath, only to see Benedict, our store manager, slowly shaking his head.

"Yeah, Hank: About your pricing method.... Yeah. We're going to have to work on that. Thanks"

It was time for lunch.

Ah, Me

2008-09-17T16:40:00.002-05:00

Found at FiveThirtyEight.com:

So I've spent the past couple of days at meetings of various kinds in New York, and there was certainly a sense of impeding doom among many Democrats here. The cute analogy that I've come up with are that Democrats are like Cubs fans -- they assume that something will go wrong until proven otherwise.

See Cindy? See? Is it any wonder I'm the way I am? I have two strikes against me. ;-)

Good Parent vs The Nanny State

2008-09-02T11:08:00.003-05:00

John McCain, being a good Conservative, is against spending federal money on teen pregnancy prevention programs. His VP running mate, furthermore, agrees, stating in the past that sex-ed programs would not receive her support. After all, sex education and the prevention of unwed teen pregnancy is the role of the family, not Big Nanny Government.

It's the parents' job to teach their children about unwanted pregnancies, and preferably through the promotion of abstinence only.

Oh wait...

Whistling While You Work

2008-08-13T15:00:00.013-05:00

So, the other day I was in the Buy Area [1] when a customer [2] sauntered in carrying the semi-usual Monday morning garbage bag full of books and other ephemera [3]. So far so good, right?

"Is that all you have to sell today?" I asked, beaming my perfect Buy-Lead beam of a smile, full of teeth and good cheer (Well, okay: I might have grinned a bit, anyway, when I greeted them).

"What, this isn't enough?", the young lad [4] replied to my ill-worded query.

"No, no", I explained, "I was just wondering if you needed help bringing in more stuff [5]" (Note: I didn't actually say "[5]", that's just another footnote (see bottom of post) for your (the reader) benefit. But to continue):

He dropped the bag on the floor, and after complaining about having to show his I.D. and being told that we'd [6] call him over the intercom in about 20 minutes asked where the bathroom was and left, presumably for bigger and better stuff.

All the while this was taking place, Jason [7] (not his real name) was whistling Mozart's complete 40th Symphony, Second Movement [8] and annoying the hell out of some employees and random passer-bys in general. His warblings were fine by me; at least he hadn't disappeared for 20 minutes on a combination smoke/bathroom/coffee shop break like my pricer, a short little guy from Guam [9] named Rickie who had to stand on one of the portable stepping stools just to reach the pricing table. No, one could question Jason's [10] choice of musical pastime, but one couldn't question his work ethic.

I got Dierdre (after I finally found her in her section, where evidently the acoustics didn't allow her to hear my plaintive calls for her over the intercom) to do the buy, I called back the customer. After only about five calls he sauntered up the the buy counter, and I made him the offer.

"Marcus [11], we can give you six dollars."

"For ALL THAT?!", he asked incredulously, gesturing at his stuff on the counter with a sweep of his hand.

I interrupted Jason's rendition of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" in order to ask him to reevaluate the buy for me. He did so, and offered Marcus five dollars.

Marcus wasn't amused.

"But look at all of that! It's great stuff!"

"Well", Jason explained, "first of all the law book is from the 1940s, and we really have plenty of 1980s National Geographic, and most of ours don't have cat vomit on them, either. Finally, the used nine-volt batteries and the half-opened package of cocktail napkins, while nice and all, really won't sell well at this store."

Jason smiled broadly at Marcus, convinced, in his boyish innocence, that Marcus would understand.

Marcus didn't understand. Marcus pointed a stubby little finger at Jason, me, and even the diminutive Guamite who'd finally returned.

"You guys are all rip-off artists! Screw this!" he added, and then put all his stuff back in the trash bag and started for the exit. Halfway there he stopped and turned around to face us again. Rickie the Guamite hid under the pricing table.

"Do you guys buy DVDs?" Marcus asked.

"Yeah, but it depends on condition, supply, and demand" I said.

"Cool".

And then he was gone.

Rickie got up from under the pricing table, Dierdre went back to hide in her section, and Jason[12] regaled anyone who would listen with the first twelve verses of Dylan's "Shelter From The Storm".

I drank my now tepid coffee.

footnotes:

[1] That area of the store where we make offers for stuff that the general public brings to us. Sometimes from their own homes, not always from dumpsters or abandoned VFW centers.
[2] either a buyer or seller; in this case, a seller. Sellers sometimes complain that a given book costs too much, buyers often complain we don't pay enough for their books.
[3] a fancy word for "junk"
[4] Young but over 18
[5] See [3] above
[6] "we'd" = me
[7] Not his real name, to protect the innocent as well as the guilty
[8] The "Jupiter Symphony", opus 34
[9] A US Territory somewhere in the Pacific. They don't have to pay income taxes.
[10] Again, not his real name
[11] That is his real name, however.
[12] How many times do I have to say it? It's not his real name.
[13] There was no [13]. Pay attention

In Which Hank Reviews A Movie

2008-07-27T11:08:00.006-05:00

Warning: some spoilers contained herein

So C i n d y and I decided to kill about 4 hours this Saturday by watching The Dark Knight at our local cineplex. What follows are my thoughts on said experience.

The movie was showing every half hour somehow (maybe it was on 5 screens, who knows), so at 1:30 we bought tickets to the 2pm showing. First off, it was $7 a pop for tickets, and this was the "cheap" matinee price. So we dropped $14 in ticket fees and another $10 or so in gas since the theater is about a 8 mile round trip from our home (okay, maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but still, with the cost of gas this does become a factor). We entered the theater and it was totally empty. I was expecting it to be a bit full since it was due to start in just 30 minutes, and since a friend of mine has been keeping me updated on how much this movie was grossing and I just assumed it would be crowded. Not then, anyway. We sat smack dab in the middle, which was nice. Ten minutes later the theater began it's loop of trivia question slides. In all, there were (literally) only about five of these, so we, the audience, were asked about 20 times who said what in a given movie.

Finally, people started arriving, about 10 minutes to showtime. Unfortunately, the couple behind us included one of those guys who doesn't realize/care that he's in a public place, and talked full-volume about this inane thing and that boring thing. So we had ten minutes of that, combined with about 15 more slides asking the same dumb movie trivia we'd been viewing for the last ten minutes.

At 2pm, the house lights finally dimmed. The movie was about to start! Right? Nope. You see, in order for the theater to charge such cheap, affordable prices for their tickets, we had to watch about five commercials for Sprite, JCPenny, etc. But that's cool, since the tickets are so cheap and all. Finally, with the commercials now over, we all (about a 2/3 full house) collectively settled down to watch the Batman. Right? Nope. What then followed was about ten previews. Again, I'm not exaggerating. We had to sit through at least ten previews, along with the Loud Guy behind me complaining the whole time about how many previews we had to see, and how he'd timed his day around the running time of this movie, and assumed that would start at 2pm, and now he'd miss his next item on the agenda, etc. The good news is the preview for The Quantum of Solace looked really good.

With all that housekeeping out of the way, the actual movie did, in fact, actually start. I was a bit afraid, since I'd read several opinions that the PG13 rating could really have been an R, and specifically I'd heard of some sort of "pencil trick" that many pointed to as an example. Therefore, when the pencil scene started I was ready to look away. However, that was unnecessary, as they don't actually show anything. The same can be said for many scenes in the movie that could have potentially been overly violent; they always cut away right before the blood and gore would have made its appearance. Which is fine by me, but I wonder, then, about all the "this should have been R" chatter. Why? I actually wonder why it was PG13 instead of simply PG. Remember the Michael Keaton Batman movie with the Penguin? Now that was an overly violent movie. I seem to remember Danny Devito biting off someone's ear or nose or something, and they showed that. That was overly violent. The Pencil Trick? Not so much.

So the movie continues, and whenever Christian Bale is wearing the batsuit, he talks with a weird voice. That always bothered me in the first movie, but I was told by my Comic Book friends that he does that in order to disguise his voice. Fine, okay, so I'd just accepted this tepid explanation, and we have this movie where, in one scene, he uses this voice when talking to Rachel (I think that's her name), and another scene when he's alone with Lucius Fox and uses this same voice. Now, both of these peeps know that Batman is Bruce Wayne (or vise versa as the case may be), so why the strange voice? Then it hit me: I guess that batsuit's collar is just overly tight and Bale's thoat gets constricted, thus causing him to sound like a four-pack-a-day pissed-off sociopath. Or something.

So then the movie ends, with the death of Rachel and the birth of Two-Face, and... wait. The movie doesn't end? It keeps going. But why didn't it end there? It's the two-hour mark, after all. My body tells me the movie is about to end, as does my mind, looking at the plot. But no, we still have (as it turned out) another 30 minutes or so, and another couple of plot lines. But then it does end. I think? Yes, this is definitely the end. Okay. I can tell it's the end because the couple behind us are finally quiet.

So we walk out of the dark theater into the bright, 100 degree weather both thinking that the movie was okay, but that it was too long, and we wonder how/why so many people are seeing it several times, since to us its too expensive and a bit too long and a bit too much of a pain to sit through ads and trailers and people talking, etc, to hear some guy struggle to talk in an ill-fitting suit.

I'll be buying the Blu-Ray, though.

up to date

2008-07-23T12:44:00.003-05:00

...this blog isn't, even for me. But here's a recap of the last couple of months:

Nothing, really. I've moved from Pets & Nature to Nostalgia/collectibles over there. A d r i 's 20th birthday, and C i n d y and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary as well as 10th "meeting" anniversary. Simba continues to be a creep.

Most importantly, a couple of weeks' ago my grandfather was rushed to the hospital, and a couple of days later we were told he probably wouldn't make it through the night and to come and say our goodbyes. He made it through the night, and is doing much better, though he has to convalesce for about a month at the same extended-care facility he convalesced at last year. I doubt this will fix that whole frog thing, however (see previous post).

I just mowed the lawn.

There. We're all caught up.

The Frogs

2008-05-28T20:38:00.006-05:00

So my mom collects a certain type of animal-themed stuff. I won't say which animal so as not to influence you, because I want to ask you, the reader, what you see in the picture below:

My mom has these figurines on her tabletop right now. She has different stuff for every month of the year, and this, evidently, is for May. Okay, now here's the question: What are these figurines?

Do you have your answer?

Is your answer "frogs, Hank, they're frogs"?

What was your first clue? Their green hue? Their three-toed web feet? The fact that many people collect frog stuff and these look like frogs?

Why, you ask, am I wasting your time with this? Well here's the thing: We were having a family brunch the other day and my grandfather looks at the frog figurines and laughs, saying,

"I still can't get over those two black people you have on the table! Hahaha, they look so funny, that black farmer couple!!!"

To make matters worse, my grandmother joined in, agreeing that gee those figurines of representing black people were hilarious.

This bothered me and an argument ensued. Why do you think these are black people, I asked both of them.

"Well, for one thing, they're black colored!"

"No they're NOT, they're green!" I countered in disbelief.

"No, they're black!", they both disagreed. "Well, I guess if you really look at them maybe they're sort of green, but at first glance they're black colored."

"NO THEY'RE NOT, THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY GREEN, AND OBVIOUSLY FROGS!", I sort of yelled, in all caps, in horrid disbelief.

"But they're wearing a bandana! And the one has a fishing pole! Just like blacks!"

My head almost exploded.

"What, only black people wear bandanas? And did I miss the stereotype that says blacks love to fish?" I stammered.

"Yeah, blacks love to fish, and they dress like that in the old books. Look at Huckleberry Finn for example!"

"But Huck was white, for crying out loud!!!"

"But there was Jim, and he wore overalls, too."

"What the hell are you going on about? They're FROGS!"

"Hehehehe... Well, I guess we never noticed they were frogs. We both thought they were black people. Look at the big-lipped mouths."

BrainfryBrainFryBRAIN-FRY.

"But they're GREEN, and you know mom collects frogs, and they have three toes and fingers! You realize how racist you guys are!!"

"Look, Hank, if we showed these figurines to 50 random people from off the street, every single one would see that they were black people. We're not racist, those figurines just look like black people."

"NO, grandpa, of those 50 people, 50 would say they were frogs. Well, maybe there would be one racist amongst them, but even that racist would see they were frogs... frogs that reminded them of black people, but frogs none the less."

At which point my grandparents laugh and shake their head at their dumb grandson. I then complained that my grandmother in particular has always been a racist, albeit a "positive racist", in that she says things like, "Oh, that Avery Johnson is a good looking black man", or "that black woman talks in a very intelligent manner", or "Oh, look at that poor black boy walking down the street. I feel so sorry for him, since he probably has to walk everywhere and has never been in a car". That sort of thing.

At which point she stopped laughing and began to act hurt, as is her wont. My grandfather, on the other hand, kept looking at the frogs and laughing during the entire meal while I seethed.

End of Rant.

Various Lost Theories

2008-05-17T23:46:00.008-05:00

My thoughts on what may be really happening on Lost:

1. Jacob is Locke, in the future. Or the past. Whatever the point of view may be.
2. The Orchid is the site of the time travel anomaly/machine.
3. When Locke goes into The Orchid in the upcoming episode, he time travels. This is the beginning of the loop that I think everyone on the island is in.
4. Everyone on the island are trapped in a time loop created by Jacob/Locke (see above).
5. It's not that Richard Alpert is immortal, or that he hasn't aged; rather, he's simply a time traveler. He appears the same age he was when he met Locke as a boy and when he met Ben as a boy because he *is* the same age; from his point of view, it's all probably happened in a couple of weeks, jumping back and forth hither and yon in time. We see him look the same as he looked 30 years ago, but it's only been 30 years in our time line, not his. You get the idea.
6. I think that perhaps what viewers call the "flash-backs" and "flash-forwards" may not be dramatic devices at all but actual time jumps, either in the various character's memories or actual real leaps in time. But I could be wrong.
7. There's a chance that the time loop everyone is trapped in varies and branches off into an infinite number of possible futures/pasts. The flight might have actually crashed into the ocean and be lying in a trench in one of these possible futures. It might not have been staged by Penny's dad at all.
8. The Oceanic Six are dead; everyone else survived.
9. Why did that statue have four toes? Easy: The Others (the Island's Original Others) were all fans of The Simpsons.
10. The Island is a ultra-sophisticated prison in the future; all the main cast members are there for murder. Almost everyone has killed someone. Oh, you think Sun didn't kill anyone? And just how did whats-his-name fall out of that 20 story window? The doc? Killed someone on the table. We know about Sawyer and Kate. Locke? Killed his father at some point. Hurly? You think a meteor really is what took out that Action Five news reporter? Jin? He had blood on his hands more than once. You get the idea. They're all serving time in some meta-world prison akin to ST:TNG's holodeck or something.
11. It's all taking place in a snow globe owned by some autistic kid in Boston.

Happy Birthday, Cindy!

2008-05-08T09:42:00.001-05:00

Ibid. Or is that op sit?

Pic

2008-05-06T22:16:00.001-05:00

My sister and I, about 33 years ago. Check out the pants:

Song TwoFers

2008-04-22T22:10:00.007-05:00

(Updated below)

Or whatever they're called. A pair of songs that are usually played back-to-back when aired on the radio. Example: Queen's We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions. You know, songs so often played consecutively that some think they're really one song.

Here are some examples that immediately came to my mind:

The Cars' Moving In Stereo/ All Mixed Up
The Cars' Shoo Be Doo/Candy-O
Def Leppard's Bringin' On The Heartbreak/Switch 625
Boston's Foreplay/Longtime
The aforementioned Queen
Pink Floyd's Brain Damage/Eclipse
The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/With A Little Help From My Friends

Now, granted, you don't always hear these back to back, but you usually do (and especially did when the songs in question were new).

Any others?

UPDATE: additions from email/comments that I agree with:

Van Halen: Eruption/You Really Got Me
Green Day: Brain Stew/Jaded
Led Zeppelin: Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid
Journey: Feeling that Way/Anytime (can't believe I forgot that one)
Elton John: Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding

The One About The Marmot

2008-04-19T00:09:00.007-05:00

Several days ago I came upon a polecat, a ferret if you will (and even if you won't), sunning himself on the pavement behind a 7-11 in my neighborhood.

"Well, hello there, Mr. Ferret", I said.

The ferret said nothing in return (being a dumb animal and all), and instead returned my greeting made in good cheer and fellowship with what I swear was a look of contempt on its weasel-like face.

I looked for a nearby rock with which to chunk at said rodent, but found nothing but half-degraded cigarette filters and mutilated Big Gulp(tm) lids. Realizing I'd met my match, I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked home, forcing thoughts of gloating polecats out of my mind.

It was hard.

But I digress.

The point is, just what the hell is a marmot? Anyway, here's another tune:

Make It Last

(a favorite of C i n d y ' s, so it has that going for it).

New Taste Sensation

2008-04-09T11:58:00.002-05:00

When I was playing a solitaire game of Gnip-Gnop the other day, an idea hit me: What if instead of water, one used coffee when making the college student's meal of necessity, ramen noodles?

What a great breakfast treat! Mmmm, mocha java pork ramen!

Someone try this and get back to me.

Your Name

2008-04-09T11:49:00.003-05:00

A song written for A d r i:

Your Name

Just A Test

2008-04-02T16:40:00.005-05:00

My dear wife and I wrote a song together a few years ago. I like it fine, but really this is a test to see how this method of streaming audio works on Blogger, because I don't want/am too cheap to pay for a monthly account at Hipcast.com or what have you.

Click on title for streaming audio:

Nobody's Child

You Spin Me Right Round

2008-04-02T12:12:00.004-05:00

Speaking of records, when I was eight or so my stepdad was letting his old band practice in our basement on Friday nights. This was around 1971 or so, and they did covers of bands like Rare Earth, The Guess Who, CCR, etc. I eventually got to keep the 45s they used to practice to, and thus is was years before I realize that "Get Ready" was originally a Temptations song, or that Frijid Pink playing "House Of The Rising Sun" on the Parrot label was not the originator, either. But I digress. The point is I loved how those labels looked... the twisted tree, vulture, and dark orange background of the Rare Earth label, and the parrot with the straw hat on the Parrot label, in particular.

I saw some of these labels before I knew how to read, and thus always associated the songs on those labels with those images. They were so much more interesting that the dull bell-on-gray-background that was the label of my "I Think I Love You" b/w "Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted" Partridge Family 45 that I purchased at Korvettes.

Later, when I was about 11, I sold all those old 45 singles to my then 8 year old sister for 10 cents each. The transaction was nullified a few hour later when she went crying to our mom that I'd cheated her out of her hard-earned allowance. After that, I lost track of those records, which is a shame, because I'm betting that they'd be worth a bit more than 10 cents each today.

Of course, this is if they were sold on eBay or something, not at my store.

Recommended Site

2008-04-02T11:45:00.004-05:00

One of my coworkers has a new blog that I'd like to recommend: Jukebox Mafia. He's one of the vinyl guys at the store, and as such has access to and vast knowledge of old, obscure, interesting 45 recordings. The best of which (or worst?) he is now putting on his blog, complete with scan of the label, mini review, and streaming and download links. It's nifty-fab, so please check it out.

Watching Lost

2008-03-26T17:01:00.003-05:00

Before And After With The Reivers

2008-02-19T17:01:00.000-06:00

"In Your Eyes", 1987:

Last Saturday at their reunion, 21 years later:

The Reivers - The Other Side

2008-02-18T21:43:00.000-06:00

Circa 1991

At Mav's game

2008-01-25T20:41:00.001-06:00

At Mav's game
Originally uploaded by ahsv

Hank (sent from phone)

Christmas Presents Past

2007-12-12T17:29:00.000-06:00

So everyone and their brother knows that Jesus got three presents for his first Christmas: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Setting aside the question as to just what the hell myrrh is for the moment, I have a question. What became of these gifts?

First of all, you'd think that with the gold Ma and Pa Christ could have finally left the stable and rented an actual room in the inn. I don't care if the inn keeper claimed there were no vacancies; you know how inn keepers are. I'm betting that if a gold sovereign had been slipped surreptitiously to the manager on duty a room would have "suddenly" become available. Plus, they'd still have had gold left over to purchase some pay for view movies or whatever.

Furthermore, if they'd invested some of the gold I'm quite sure that Jesus could have gone to a respectable university (I hear Judea Polytechnic was a fine school back then) instead of having to become an apprentice to a carpenter. Sure, carpenters can make good money, but there's always the problem of union dues, etc. If he'd graduated and gotten a real job, moreover, I'm betting he could have afforded to just bring the damned wine to that wedding in Cana instead of having to resort to cheap parlor tricks.

Now let's unset aside the question of what myrrh is. Wikipedia informs me that is

...a red-brown resinous material, the dried sap of the tree Commiphora myrrha, native to Somalia and the eastern parts of Ethiopia.

So that clears that up.

I'm guessing the Christs didn't know what the hell it was, either, and probably fed it to the goat or something.

But that still leaves the frankincense. What happened to the frankincense? We never hear of it again in the Gospels, so I'm guessing that maybe they regifted it or something. For all we know, John the Baptist got a shitload of frankincense for his first birthday or something. Who knows.

At Hockey game

2007-10-20T19:00:00.001-05:00

Stars vs Ducks

Hank (sent from phone)

Random Spittle

2007-10-17T11:02:00.000-05:00

1. Simba turns 13 some time this month. He doesn't look a day over 11.

2. I can't even remember what movie we're supposed to be reviewing over at that other blog.

3. Congratulations to Verlinda on her upcoming retirement, even though she's too young to get an AARP card at this point.

4. Congratulations to my grandparents on their 64th Wedding Anniversary next week. Sorry, no link. My grandfather's LJ account got yanked due to the copyright holder complaining about his slash pairings. (But here's a link to a post about how they met.)

5. I've never liked the word dirigible.

6. Obama as president would be great for this country, better than Hillary will be for this country. However, either would be so much better than a thug as president of this country at this juncture in our history that I'm willing to forgive any problems I have with a Hillary nomination. Why can't everyone be as logical as me? Why do they hate America so?!?

7. Why do people always feel obligated to have ten items on a list such as this?

8. See above.

9. Working at the bookstore is hard financially. We're all allowed a "stash" to store stuff we want to buy, and we get a good (50%) discount on almost everything (exceptions: nostalgia and DVDS, which are only a measly 20%). My goal is to break even, meaning not spend more than I earn there.

10. The Cubs broke my heart again this year, but what else is new.

11. C i n d y and I are having trouble agreeing on a boy name (and no, this is just an intellectual exercise at this point). She likes names like Declan and Rowan. I want a normal name that people won't giggle at during attendance taking at school, yet I don't want it so drab and plain that it's "Michael" or something. Any suggestions?

Everything At Once

2007-08-24T15:47:00.000-05:00

I can count on one hand the number of times everything has been good at once. Actually, I can count on one finger. It was basically last year around May, for about two weeks. It was good while it lasted, but I should have appreciated it more. Usually, if one part of my life is up and good, there's the other part that's down and bad. I'm not whaa-whaaing about this [1], I realize it's par for the course for most people's lives, and I actually have it much better than probably 70% of the world. Still, I can't help wondering what it would be like to have everything at once.

Cindy and I are the one constant that's always good. Cindy's professional career is usually good, too. Right now it's great. She got a good raise and a great year end bonus. I'm happy for her, she deserves it. My daughter, on the other hand, is not constant. Just when I sort of get to stop worrying about one thing, another pops up. If that gets solved or at least fixed a bit, an old thing rears its ugly head, or a brand-new crisis comes forth. If she's mentally healthy, then she's physically sick. If she's physically fit, then sure enough her emotional well-being is horrible. Usually, of course, it's a bit of both, because some of her emotional stuff directly effects her physically.

Sometimes it's almost a bit too much for me to take, for she's a thousand miles away and there's very little I can do at the spur of a moment after a frantic phone call. Also, there's really only so much you can do for other people; they really do have to help themselves, especially if that "help" is going to be a permanent, life-changing help and not just a short, temporary antidote. Now I'm sounding like John Galt or something. While I'm all for teaching people to fish, they have to be alive to make use of this skill. It's a fine scary line and I don't know where it is with her sometimes.

My own professional career is also inconsistent, too, but I've more or less given up on that a few years ago. By "given up" I mean given up worrying about whether or not I've made a difference to the world (not to my friends or family, but the world in general in a professional, what-have-you-done-to-make-this-a-better-place kind of way). Still, occasionally, this gets to me a bit, too.

Because of this I have to guard myself from unhealthy thinking. For example, when a bunch of things are going well at the same time I often get worried, wondering if there's another shoe about to drop in order to punish me in a sort of schadenfreudeish (pretend that's a word) kind of way for daring to realize my good fortune. Like most people, I don't have to worry about that too often, however.

[1] I mean besides making a blog post about it and all. ;-)

How To Improve Soccer

2007-08-23T09:53:00.000-05:00

Since I'm calling it soccer and not football, obviously the improvement I'm going to suggest applies only to the American version of the game, in an attempt to make it more palatable to the American sports fans who constantly complain that soccer is too low scoring for their tastes.

So you watch an NFL football game on TV, and the score ends 21 - 7, and a great time (and a few beers) were had by one and all. And yet, if you think about it, the score was just 3 - 1; the NFL just happens to award 6 points when one moves the ball across the opposing team's goal line. The extra points don't count; everyone considers them a waste of time, anyway.

Therefore, all we have to do is to get the MLS to change its scoring system. Instead of a goal scoring one point, they could say that a goal scores 53 points. All those people whining about low scores would then flock to the sport after a few 106 -53 results. Everyone is happy (and by "everyone", I mean the lazy American sports fan with low attention span who likes big numbers).

Once again, you're welcome.

Stacy's Heart

2007-08-21T15:33:00.000-05:00

Background Information

So today I finally finished Stacy's Heart by one Cary Rainey. (He doesn't really have a blog per se, so I'll link to this LJ instead.) Even though I purchased this book when it was first published in 2001, and even though my lovely wife read it a couple of weeks after we received it, I didn't get around to reading it until about a week ago. Why did it take me so long to read a book published six years ago, you ask? I could say that I was an extremely slow reader, but that wouldn't be true. I could say that I'm a procrastinator. Yeah, that's true, but not the point, here. Truth be told, I was afraid to read it. I "know" and like the author, and I was afraid to read it and discover I didn't like it.

See, I gathered from Cary (may I call him Cary?) and others that this book was in the style of a Stephen King novel, and that sent red flags or smoke signals or little beeps... or whatever other metaphorical warning signs one cares to imagine... in my direction. This was for two reasons, really:

1. I don't like Stephen King novels ("horrors!", I can hear you thinking right now, followed by "pardon the pun". I know it's hard to believe, but it's true... that I don't like King, not that I can hear your thoughts). I appreciate King's writing and realize he's good at what he does, it's just not my cup of tea. I still read his stuff, however, and enjoy them to a certain extent. No, it's just not number 1 that worried me, but rather that combined with

2. So here's this unpublished novelist guy who's written a book that might be attempting something in the style of King. Now, imagine writing void of any real talent or style that strives to be like Stephen King. I don't know about you, but I imagine something that just gloms onto the violence and gore at the expense of real writing, and who wants to read 500 pages of descriptive blood and guts with no story, characterization, pace, style, or talent. Yuck. Especially considering #1 above, the fact that I'm not too keen on blood and guts and horror fiction even when it's done well.

So I was afraid to read Stacy's Heart out of fear of disappointment and thus put it off for six years. To cut to the chase (yeah, I know, it's a bit late for that already), I worried for nothing. I really enjoyed the book. It's not void of talent or style, and even if you took out the vampires and violence, you'd still have a pretty good tale in the vein of Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. And, truth be told, perhaps a few scenes involving stakes through the hearts of the undead would have livened up Wolfe's book a bit. He could have called it then Look Homeward, Demon or something... but I digress.

Plot/What The Hell Happened?

In a nutshell, Stacy's Heart is basically the story of Kyle Crader, successful author now living in beautiful southern California, who has to reluctantly come back to his Alabama hometown in order to promote a movie based on his wildly successful first book, a satirical novel that pilloried his hometown and is both loved or hated for all the wrong reasons. The return dredges up memories of the unrequited love which was at the heart of his self-induced exile (or escape) in the first place.

Oh yeah, and there's some vampires running amok, too.

If you insist on a non-nutshell version and don't care about spoilers, continue reading. Else, jump to the next section. You'll be glad you did.

At the insistence of his publisher and agent, Kyle returns to his home of Birmingham, Alabama, to promote the opening of the film Coming Down Fast based on his best seller by the same name. Some have used this movie and book as an excuse for a series of racist crimes that have occurred, and Kyle finds himself thus being harassed by local politicians and lawmen. He puts up with this because he wants to see Stacy again. He'd been in love with Stacy during high school, but never got around to telling her how he felt. Then, on graduation night, he left Birmingham in his dust for places west after discovering that his buddy Darren and Stacy were kadoodling.

Now, after his return, he hooks up with Stacy again, along with some of his other boyhood friends, all of whom would be right at home in the basement of that kid in The Seventies Show. Still, he can't tell Stacy how he really feels. While in Birmingham he becomes intrigued with Lacy, who evidently is a cutter, someone who gets erotic pleasure from being cut or cutting. Kyle begins his new book using this cutting fetish as his main theme. It turns out that most of these cutters are actually vampires, vampires that are sick and tired of hiding in the shadows. They want to be out in the open. They want to rule over humans. And, apparently, they want Kyle to be their leader. Kyle isn't too keen on the idea, and they try to use Stacy in order to get him to change his mind. Kyle battles these vampires, killing several with the help of some wolves, some sharp sticks, gasoline, and his wits. However, in the end The Big Daddy Vampire kills Stacy, and Kyle does become, albeit unwillingly, a card-carrying member of the undead.

Upon his return to Los Angeles, however, he kills himself by self-stakeification, after first sending off the new completed manuscript to his publisher.

End Scene.

General Musings, or, Hmm This Is Interesting

The book within the book, or rather the book within the book that's already written and is the basis of the movie within the book, is called Coming Down Fast. This book doesn't seem to be very autobiographical to Kyle Crader's life in Birmingham. Instead, it seems to have taken a page from Charles Manson, who was trying to use the Tate/La Bianca murders in order to incite a race war in the United States. Manson wanted the murders to be blamed on "The Blacks" and hoped "The Whites" would rise up in anger, causing an apocryphal race war that would bring about the End Times. Manson believed The Beatles had predicted and were encouraging this through songs such as "Helter Skelter", from which one assumes Kyle Crader gets his book's title. The unintended consequences of this book are a series of race related crimes across America. The racists love Crader and the book, viewing it as a sort of "how-to" manual, whereas the authoritarians who miss the satire intended overreact in the form of censorship and even try to hold Crader legally responsible for the various hate crimes that follow in the book and movie's wake.

There's also a second book-within-the-book; this is the follow up book to Coming Down Fast called The Cutters, that Kyle is working on during his downtime in Stacy's Heart. This book seems more autobiographical, for Kyle seems to more directly deal with his high school relationship with Stacy and their mutual friend Darren . This book is ostensibly about a group of people who derive erotic pleasure from cutting each other, but in reality in appears to be a thinly-veiled account of that night senior year when Kyle saw Darren and Stacy hooking up, and the ramifications that caused.

When you add the fact that the real author, Cary Rainey, also grew up in Birmingham, also wrote a book about his home town, and also left for California, you're presented with a book within a book within a book within, I think, still another book? It's sort of like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, swallowed whole by a vampire. Or something.

Okay Fine. But Did You Like It Or Not?

The book was more character-driven that I'd expected. Minor characters, like for example the truck stop short order cook and the man running the homeless shelter, to name just two, come alive on the page and are more than just afterthoughts. Kyle's various fuck-up friends from high school are other examples. They fleshed out the story and made it more than the series of gruesome killings that it could have been. You believe that they could be real people. Again, lesser writers would skimp on these details in their hurry to get to the scene where someone gets their face blown off. In this I was pleasantly surprised. And when he did get to the violent scenes, A. Cary Rainey comes through with flying colors, creating the ballet of blood and mayhem that is the hallmark of such prose. Even if I'm not into that, I "know what I like" as the boorish art critics say.

Furthermore, the flashback structure, going back and forth from the present to the past, was used well and helped the pace a bit, though I think there's room for some improvement in this area. Still, Mr. Rainey (I think I can call him that), at least tried; again, more amateurish writers would have just slapped everything down in a chronological manner, and if they addressed Kyle's past at all it would have simply been a few perfunctory paragraphs at the beginning. The back and forth helps create the tension, at least the non-vampire-related tension. There's not only the back and forth between present and past, but also the back and forth between dream and reality. Cary does a good job keeping us guessing at which is which, too.

He uses music to set the mood, too, and in a manner that's a lot cheaper than the way Stephen King does it. (He can simply state that "Living After Midnight" was playing on the car stereo; by not quoting lyrics, no money has to change hands with the music publishers. Etc). It's almost cliched to invoke musical references in horror fiction, but screw it. I like it in general and liked it here.

So yes. I liked it. A lot, actually, and that surprised me.

P.S. One Robert Lieberman did a great job on the cover, too.

Finally

2007-08-20T13:43:00.000-05:00

So, in 1987 when The Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me first came out, it was a double album in vinyl, but a single CD. It was just a tad too long to fit on one CD, so they left out one song, Hey You! Since I was at that point only buying CDs, I never got that song. Of course, they can make CDs a bit longer, now, and you can now buy a version of that CD that includes Hey You! (including an entire extra disk of demos and outtakes)... but of course I didn't know that until today. Now, however, what with the joys of iPods, I've added that song where it belongs (track number 8) and can thus finally listen to the album as Robert Smith intended!! Yay me!!

This is why no one has ever written the perfect time travel story

2007-08-17T12:40:00.000-05:00

I had no way of knowing that the first time I met Jesse would be our third meeting. To be fair, the first first time I met Jesse it was our first meeting, but through the quirks and twists of quantum physics and time travel, eventually our "first" meeting would end up being our third and final meeting. Our last first meeting was our third first meeting. Our fourth meeting, or rather our fourth first meeting, did not even occur at all, for Jesse of course never showed up at the Starbucks on the corner of Frankford and Old Denton that day in that time line. I guess, then, that you can't even call it a fourth meeting at all, since in the time line that encapsulates this narrative it never occurred. I'd seen to that by making sure Jesse didn't survive into any of my future time lines, though it took me three attempts to accomplish this.

The world is a better place without Jesse, but I guess you only have my word on that. Of course, perhaps all my work was for naught, and like some ironic Twilight Zone episode it will turn out that the world without Jesse is actually worse than the world with him. Maybe, as a result of my fiddling and tinkering with bifurcating universes, our future will now be one where giant Praying Mantises take over the UN and enslave the human race... but I was willing to take my chances. And if the worst comes to pass and we do have to pay tithes to our insect overlords, you can at least take solace with the knowledge that in a different time line/universe that is not the case.

Of course, in that future you still have to contend with Jesse.

You're welcome.

Ponderings

2007-08-14T19:40:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else ever wonder what it would be like to open up the vegetable crisper drawer in the fridge and see a small family of albino rats living in there? Not a big family... say three or four "individuals". Okay, here's another scenario: you open up the crisper and you find a small family of regularly-pigmented rats in there. Would your reaction be any different?

That, my friends, is a microcosm of the racism we see in the world right there.

Okay, now forget the rats. Let's say there's a small band of woodland elves living, not in your crisper drawer, but inside the lint trap of the clothes dryer. It doesn't matter what their hair color is, in case you're wondering.

The Obligatory End Of Summer Post

2007-08-14T11:00:00.000-05:00

Summer to me will always be the summers I had as a kid in Chicago. Not having to get up to an alarm. Watching the game shows, Dick Van Dyke, and Bewitched in the morning, reading a book while eating lunch which usually included Mr Salty(tm) pretzel sticks. Then there'd be the Cubs game on channel 9 after lunch ("It's a beautiful day for a ball game, for a ball game today!"), followed by bike riding and general outside horsing around until dinner, then a game of team hide and seek, running bases, or kick ball until it got pretty dark, which thankfully wasn't until 9 or so. Then a can of pop, which was a rarity in our household, and a couple of those Flav-Or-Ice (r) popsicle thingies up in my dark attic-converted bedroom, with no AC and only a box fan in the window to provide any relief from the heat, the only light coming from my 12-inch black and white TV where I'd watch old movies until 3 am.

Summers as an adult pale in comparison, but at least I have AC, now.

Movie News

2007-08-01T10:56:00.000-05:00

We watched Slaughterhouse-Five the other night. Not bad for a sequel, but I still prefer Slaughthouses one through four.

How Much Of A Hank Fan Are You?

2007-07-27T16:16:00.000-05:00

I found this great quiz over there at that quiz place, and here are the results:

You are 76% Hank-Fan! Why it's not 100% is beyond me.

Hank is overjoyed that you did so well. He's also a bit scared, truth be told. But a fan is a fan. If Hank didn't have better things to do he'd send you and autographed picture. But, alas, he does. Sorry.

How Much Of A Hank Fan Are You
Quizzes for MySpace

I encourage all of you to take it! Oh, and there's the other quiz I made, the informative Which Marx Brother Are You?

You're welcome.

Massage and a Haircut, Two-Bits

2007-07-26T14:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had to go get my quarterly haircut. A man cut my hair, but not one of those stereotypical male hair stylists who you assume bats for the other team. No, this guy appeared to by heterosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that). I mean, he dressed sloppily and his hair wasn't combed, for starters.

Anyway. After he was done, he got the blow dryer to blow away the loose hair that had accumulated on my neck and shoulders. While doing so, however, he started massaging my neck. I didn't notice at first, or rather, I was sitting there with my eyes closed thinking, "oooh, that feels so good. How did he know my neck was stiff?". Suddenly, however, it dawned on me: "WTF? Why is he massaging my neck? That can't be proper. It's never happened before."

Of course, I didn't say anything, and truth be told was a bit disappointed when he stopped.

Second Time's A Charm

2007-07-24T14:52:00.000-05:00

I'm going to tell you a story now. I'm going to say that it happened to my friend. I'll even give him a name. Karl. There. So now we all know that what follows are a series of events from my dear friend Karl's life.

One fine summer weekday when Karl was about six he thought he heard his father in the basement. This was odd, because his father was usually at work during the day. Karl, being an inquisitive lad, made the trek down the rickety, dark steps that led to the basement done up in the mod stylings that were common in the late 1960s. Being a basement, it was kind of dark even during the day, and yet there was no light on. Karl could just make out his father, however, sitting in the easy chair at the far end of the basement.

And he could hear him. He was making some weird kind of sound that was familiar to Karl, though at first he couldn't place it. He was crying! That's it! But Karl didn't know that men cried; he thought only children and women cried. He didn't like this at all.

Karl's dad noticed him and beckoned him over. Karl asked what was wrong, and his dad stared back at him with his red eyes and told him between stifled sobs that "mommy doesn't love me anymore, and I have to go away." Karl always says he doesn't remember anything after that. His next memories sort of begin when Karl, his mom, and sister move into an apartment. He used to tell me interesting stories about the Apartment Era, too, but that's for another day.

Evidently Karl's mom remarried pretty soon afterward, and since Karl and his sister were still relatively young, Karl's mom wanted her children to call their new stepfather "dad", something that came easy to his sister. Karl, on the other hand, found this uncomfortable. However, the stepdad eventually became "dad".

Flash forward about 12 years, and Karl is a freshman in college. One day he gets a call from his "dad" asking if he knew where his mother was. Karl had no idea and told his "dad" this. Just then, as they were on the phone, Karl's "dad" said to hold on, that the doorbell was ringing. So Karl waited. When Karl's "dad" came back on the phone, his manner had decidedly changed. This time Karl knew his "dad" was crying right away. He was becoming an expert at this.

"What's the matter?" Karl asked.

"Your mom has just filed divorce papers on me. I guess she doesn't love me anymore" was his dad's reply.

Karl always wonders what the odds are that a child would get to have this conversation twice in a lifetime. I always tell him they are low indeed.

The War Of The Rosin

2007-07-23T18:37:00.000-05:00

While Mrs. Jennings, the orchestra director, was busy yelling at the Second Violas, Clay and Eric started rosining up their bows. Not with just a little rosin; no, the boys who had been sent to the purgatory that is Third Violin laid it on thick. Five, ten furious strokes of the rosin across the horsehair, and they were just getting started.

Mrs. Jennings appeared to glance at the boys for an instant, but all she saw was, apparently, Clay and Eric going over the sheet music.

Ah, they're finally taking this seriously, she thought to herself. Maybe by the end of the semester I'll let them play Second Violin.

The boys were saved from further ruminations by Mrs. Jennings, however, when Sarah, the goody-two-shoes concert mistress, raised her furtive little hand accompanied by a bleating "Oh, Mrs. Jennings! Mrs. Jennings!"

Clay and Eric hated Sarah. They hated her prissy hair cut, and they hated her bought-not-rented violin that she lovingly wiped off every time she either took it out of its case or put it back. Without fail. Never missed the wiping. They hated her velveteen rosin bag. A bag for rosin! The boys could never forgive that. That was taking it too far.

"What is it, Sarah?" From her tone one might infer that Mrs. Jennings wasn't too fond of Sarah, either.

Sarah beamed at her recognition. She Had The Floor, now, and she was in her element.

"Well, I'm pretty sure that Moon-Hi was five minutes late again today, and you know what you said about people being late."

Taking advantage of the diversion Sarah had presented them, the boys resumed their rosining. By now they both had completely saturated their bow strings with rosin. All was right in the world, and the Sarahs that inhabited it were forgotten for a moment while the boys sat back in satisfaction, waiting.

"All right, people, eyes on me. We're going to start from the third measure on the second page. Ready?" Mrs. Jennings' baton was poised. For a moment Clay imagined Mrs. Jennings using it to jab at Sarah in the ribs until she cried. Mrs. Jennings noticed his smile and thought to herself that at last she was finally getting through to Clay.

The boys started playing, anxiously awaiting the measure that was coming up... the measure whose dynamic was labeled ff, the measure that was fortissimo, the measure that was meant to be played very loudly indeed. With down strokes from the bow, no less. Oh yes, the boys were ready.

As each note passed and the measure came closer, the boys' anticipation became palpable for anyone that had been paying attention. Fortunately, no one was. They were Third Violin, after all. Finally it arrived, and Clay and Eric struck the strings with gusto, sending a cloud of rosin dust upward and outward that was a joy to behold. Their laughter and coughing was finally interrupted by the annoying rapping of Mrs. Jennings' baton.

Followed, of course, by a prissy harrumph from Sarah.

Oh yes. All was again well in the world.

Hey Stèphane!

2007-07-09T18:19:00.000-05:00

How come you didn't tell me that I spelt oeuvre wrong in my last post?

Public Service Announcement

2007-07-06T13:20:00.000-05:00

It seems three people with too much time on their hands have started Yet Another Blog, to whit:

Criterion Cineasts

...in which Your Dear Blogger, His Dear Wife, and Their Dear Friend attempt to review the entire Criterion DVD Movie ouvre [1] (with the exception of Salo).

If you, too, have too much time on your hands, check it out.

[1] should of course be oeuvre.

At the Myerson Symphony Center

2007-06-29T20:49:00.001-05:00

06-29-07_2046.jpg
Originally uploaded by ahsv

Hank (sent from phone)

The Range Girl

2007-06-28T14:45:00.000-05:00

Back in 1941 my grandfather was a senior at what was then called St. Cloud Teachers College (and is now St.Cloud State University). My grandmother was a sophomore. They were both music ed majors, but there the similarities ended. My grandfather was a BMOC: president of the senior class, popular, and a Good Middle Class Protestant Amercian Farm Boy from central Minnesota. My grandmother, on the other hand, was a CATHOLIC, Italian, poor, and from the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota. She was a Range Girl!! Evidently it was assumed that all Range Girls were sluts for some reason. Loose women. Dirty first-generation immigrants who worshiped the Pope. That sort of thing.

Well, my grandfather needed a pianist for his choir, and my grandmother was one of many that tried out for the job. She got it, and my grandfather was smitten. You know the old chestnut where a guy will claim that the first time he met his future wife he knew they'd marry? Well, this was the case here. Grandpa told one of his friends that first day that my grandmother would be his wife.

And it happened in the end, but not without a fight. From whom? Not their parents, who I guess where pretty enlightened. Neither really cared that their child would be marrying outside their faith, or outside their ethnic group (my grandfather's family were German). No, the family didn't care, but the school administration did care. Evidently the dean of students called my grandfather into his office one day and told him he had a promising career in front of him and thus why did he want to get involved with that Italian girl? I mean, heck, all her clothes were hand-made! He could do much better.

My grandfather still rants and raves about this to this day, and who can blame him.

Newspaper clipping

2007-06-27T16:20:00.000-05:00

From November, 1976. Guess which one is me:

I Used To Miss You Before You Were Here

2007-06-21T15:22:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned this to people, and they think I'm odd. To whit: how is it possible to miss someone retroactively, if indeed that is even the proper nomenclature? This is what I mean:

I have a pretty good memory of my childhood, going back to when I was still in a crib to about college time, at which point my memories all get clouded and jumbled together. But my early life: clear as day. However, when I think back to, say, first grade, when I was building a "King Kong" plastic model, or when I remember when I was four or so learning to ride a two-wheeler for the first time (begging my mom for what seemed weeks to take the training wheels off the purple Schwin I had), or the time I hit a home run in little league... I suddenly realize that my daughter's not there. Where the hell is she? Here I was, living my life, as happy as a clam (well, I wasn't that happy; maybe I was as happy as a scallop. Yes), yet my daughter wasn't alive. How could I have been happy without her? Why didn't I "miss" her? I certainly "miss" her in my memories. See what I mean about "retroactively" missing someone?

I go through an old family photo album and find a group picture of our family. Everyone's there... with the exception of my daughter. Yet we're all smiling, totally oblivious to the fact that someone isn't there.

Etc.

Now of course I know, intellectually, that this is normal. Of course my daughter isn't there; she hasn't been born yet. There was no one to miss back then. But what the hell does that mean? Where are we before we're born? It doesn't bother me so much wondering where I was before I was born, for I take it as a given that I simply wasn't. But my daughter? That's another story.

People miss people when they die, of course, and some wonder where they are (since the Vatican got rid of Limbo recently, the possible answers just became fewer). What I experience is the exact reverse of this: missing someone before they were born, and wondering where they were before their birthdate.

I thought that perhaps I was the only one that ever thought about this, but the other day I heard on the radio someone talking about just this. So while I may be crazy or odd, at least I'm not alone. So there.

At the cubs game

2007-06-20T00:35:00.001-05:00

At the cubs game
Originally uploaded by ahsv

Pitching change

Little Hank Thwarts Time

2007-06-14T14:23:00.000-05:00

One day, when I was about three, I wanted cookies. My mom, being indulgent back then, decided to honor my request and put a batch of chocolate chip cookies in the oven (which was this one, in white, which Rachel Ray now uses on her show). However, I was an impatient lad, so after about probably six or seven minutes I went to her and asked if they were ready yet.

"No, they have a few more minutes," she replied. "I've set the timer. When it goes off, they'll be ready."

After receiving this news I nonchalantly walked back to the kitchen and advanced the timer until it was right next to the zero. About 10 seconds later it went off and my mom removed the cookies from the oven.

"See what happens when you're patient? You get rewarded!", she said as she handed me a yummy hot cookie fresh from the oven.

I ate it with smug satisfaction.

The Crime Of Miss Jane Marple

2007-06-06T11:01:00.000-05:00

I've done some research and have come to a startling conclusion that may force Scotland Yard to reopen dozens of murder cases. After reading several books and doing some thinking, I'm pretty sure that I've discovered that a famous women who is loved by millions across the world is, in fact, a cold-blooded killer.

Who is this murderous bitch, you ask? None other than Miss Jane Marple.

Oh, she was clever. She let her unsuspecting victims believe she was just some "old pussy" as the British used to say decades ago... a frail, somewhat gaga little old woman who wouldn't hurt a fly. She'd get herself invited to various country manors, or guilt her poor unsuspecting nephew Raymond into sending her on some cruise or vacation, and then she'd go to work. Oh, she'd appear to just be sitting there knitting, but she'd be plotting. Oh yes, she'd be plotting.

I started to suspect when it dawned on me that it strained the laws of probability to believe that Miss Jane Marple just happened to be on the scene of so many murders, at least twelve major "events", some of which had more than one murder occurring (the second and sometimes even third murder often occuring towards the end of the account, when one suspected that perhaps the author was running out of plot). What are the odds, I ask you, that one little old bitty would just happen to be on the scene of so many murders? They'd be pretty high if she was simply an innocent bystander. If she was really a serial killer, however, it all starts to make sense.

I noticed that even for an old lady Miss Marple took a lot of naps. I mean damn, she was always going off to her hotel room or bedroom or state room or whatever to doze for a couple of hours. Almost luncheon? Well, time for a quick nap. Lunch is over? Okay, time to snooze a bit until afternoon tea. Oh, we're going to go for a hike or excursion or play croquet after dinner? Fine, but first a bit of a lie-down is in order. I mean, come on.

Now why is this "dear" old lady sleeping so much? Is knitting that tiring? I think not. Rather, I think dear Miss Marple is not sleeping at all. No, I fear that when she professes to be napping she's really out garroting, shooting, or poisoning someone. It's the only logical conclusion.

I know this must be a shock to those of you who have always looked upon this monster as some sort of dear Aunt or something. However, facts are facts, and the sooner you realize that Jane Marple was someone who's true nature makes Hannibal Lector seem like a hungry boy scout, the better.

And don't get me started on that nosy Belgian...

Things I learned from The Dick Van Dyke Show, pt 1

2007-06-04T11:01:00.000-05:00

The Dick Van Dyke Show (referred to as tDVDs from now on), from the 1960s, was my favorite TV show when I was young. It was already in reruns then, on WGN, before it was a superstation. Part of the reason I loved summers was that I got to watch the show every day (except weekends when it wasn't on, dammit), and one of the joys of being home "sick" from school was watching The Petries (along with all the games shows!). Since I was about 5 or 6 when I started watching this sitcom, many cultural references, ideas, themes, etc were first exposed to me via my 12-inch black and white TV and those zany folks from New Rochelle, NY.

In fact, that's the first thing:

1. The existence of many geographical locations and cities. Every time I hear about New Rochelle, Danville, IL, and Schenectady, I of course think of tDVDs . New Rochelle for obvious reasons, and Schenectady because of the episode when Rob writes a joke about a train conductor with allergies. Danville was the hometown of the Petrie boys (and I gather the real-life Van Dyke boys as well). This was the first time I'd heard of either of these cities.

2. The whole Rashomon theme so often explored in TV and movies. You know, the one where you see the same event(s) through different points of view. I first saw this in the episode The Night The Roof Fell In, where we get three versions of the Petrie's spat: from Rob, Laura, and the goldfish. Every time I see this plot device used, even when I finally saw the original source, Kurosawa's movie, I think of tDVDs.

3. Subtitles for movies (their mere existence) and the snobbery associated with them, from The Lady And The Tiger And The Lawyer ep.

4. Vic Damone, the crooner. I went out with his daughter for about 6 months years ago. When I learned who her father was I said to her, "You mean that guy from that Dick Van Dyke episode?!" She didn't even know her dad was on the show. The episode in question, Like A Sister, featured Damone playing someone named Rick Vallone, a handsome crooner who brought romance into Sally's life. I didn't know until I met his daughter that he was a real person and not just a character on some sitcom.

5. The Catskills (their existence), and the fact that many Jewish comedians got their professional start there.

6. Jack Paar. I didn't know he was a real person until years after I watched the reoccuring character of Stevie Parsons on tDVDs (obviously a conglomeration of The Tonight Show's first three hosts, Steve Allen, Paar, and Johnny Carson).

7. The USO. My first exposure to them was on tDVDs in all the flashback episodes that showed Rob and Laura's courtship and early married life.

8. Frank Sinatra. Another crooner. The first time I'd heard him mentioned was on the episode, The Masterpiece, where Rob and Laura inadvertently purchase a painting by Artanis, which they learn is Sinatra backwards. Later in my life, when I again heard mention of Sinatra, I immediately thought "Oh yeah! The guy who painted that clown!".

9. Fellini's 8 1/2. When I first heard of the Fellini movie, I of course said to myself, "Hey! That's like the title of that tDVDs episode, 4 1/2!! ".

10. British Pop Music. Long before I'd heard of The Beatles, I knew The Redcoats, lovable English singing moptops who have to hide out at the Petrie's house prior to a performance on The Allan Brady Show in The Redcoats Are Coming. Again, when learning of the whole British Invasion in general and Beatles in particular I thought back to that episode.

11. The word "bupkis" in particular and Yiddish in general, from the episode Bupkis about a song Rob cowrote years ago.

12. The movie The Wild One and Marlon Brando, from the episode when Rob buys a motorcycle, Br-room, Br-room.

13. Bar Mitzvah. I learned about this religious rite where I learned most of my early information, from the episode Buddy Sorrell, Man And Boy.

Little House In The Red Station Wagon

2007-05-31T12:35:00.000-05:00

One summer I saw half of America backwards. A greater poriton of the western United States receded from me at about 60 mph as I read the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder oeuvre from the rear-facing jump seat of a red station wagon.

We started out from Chicago. I grabbed my sister's box set of Little House books so I'd have something to read. By the time we got to Mount Rushmore I'd finished Little House In The Big Woods. The Four Stone presidents were fine and all, but I was disappointed at how small they looked from the observation deck; on TV and the movies they always appeared much bigger.

Deadwood, South Dakota, however, was an interesting town. Hey, is that the same Deadwood as the TV show? Either way, it had the grave site of some famous Western outlaw or hero, I forget who now. Maybe Wild Bill Hickcock? Someone like that. We went to a Safeway there and got a bunch of grapes which we ate in the town square as I started Little House On The Prairie.

Back in the jump seat, I skipped Farmer Boy because I didn't want to leave the Ingalls family and started On The Banks Of Plum Creek. That got me through most of Montana and Wyoming, at which point we stopped at Yellowstone National Park. Eh. We saw Old Faithful, and again I was not impressed. Much ado about nothing, really, yet there we sat with about 20 other people waiting for a bit of water to issue forth. Next.

I was well into By The Shores Of Silver Lake when we got to San Francisco. This was the middle of the summer, and it was like 48 degrees. We'd crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog, and thus I saw nothing of the bay or bridge. Laura was beginning to annoy me, however. Why couldn't she go blind? Oh well.

I enjoyed Fisherman's Wharf, and even bought a magic trick at a shop there (The Pull Apart Dove Box Vanish... it took almost half of the money I'd budgeted for the trip, but no matter). There was a lock-picking set, too, but it was too expensive ($20) so I had to pass. All the seafood looked great, but of course my step dad is even cheaper than me, so we didn't get to try any of it.

A few hundred miles and The Long Winter later, we were in Los Angeles, or rather Anaheim, where we finally got to sleep in real beds at the home of our uncle and aunt. I'd never heard of Anaheim before outside of people on game shows who were occasionally from there. Everyone was from some California town on game shows when I was growing up in the 1970s. I used to envy Californians because they got to go on game shows.

While there my mom, dad, and I also went to Universal Studios while my sister chose to go to the beach with my cousins. To this day she thinks she was gyped. She whines about these things, but did she ever have to help paw in the wheat fields or carry heavy pails of water to maw so she could make the morning biscuits like Laura did? No. So shaddup.

Back in the jump seat, we were off to San Diego as I started Little Town On The Prairie. The Ingalls family were really starting to wear thin on me by this point, but I carried on. San Diego had nothing really to offer other than Sea World, so off we went to view various aquatic mammals debasing themselves for a few pieces of herring. However, we did get to go to MEXICO while we were there (It was only later that I realized that Tijuana hardly counts as Mexico). I bought a really tasteful leather belt there; it wasn't gaudy or anything. Really.

We drove through Needles, California when it was 117 degrees Fahrenheit, and we had no air conditioning. But I didn't mind; after all, the folk who lived in the Little Town on the Prairie didn't have AC, either. I finished that book as we got to the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon? Eh. Again, TV and movies had built it up in my mind. I base most things on what I learned on TV... usually The Dick Van Dyke Show, but that's a post for another day. For the Grand Canyon, however, it was of course The Brady Bunch. And guess what? We didn't get to ride down into the canyon on donkeys. This disappointed me to no end. I at least wanted to throw a rock into the big hole, but I couldn't as I seem to remember signs saying specifically that you couldn't do this. The Grand Canyon hates 11 year old boys.

I read most of These Happy Golden Years and The First Four Years as I saw New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, and southern Illinois recede from me during the next few long days. I didn't read all of these last two, however, since the covers made them look dull and "girlie". I wanted to read about making your own smoke house, not about early marriage life. Who needs that?

We finally got home and I put the Little House books back in my sister's room. Someday I'll have to read Farmer Boy, but it won't be the same if I'm not reading it while traveling backwards in a station wagon.

Ask The Answer Man

2007-05-24T14:31:00.000-05:00

1. Who Was Jack The Ripper?

I've done a lot of research on the subject, and discovered the answer: He was some dude named Derek Lembarckle. So now you know.

2. Using the 12 notes of the western musical scale, how many hit songs are possible?

Exactly 17,561. Okay, 17,562 if you count stuff by The Knack.

3. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Clearly the egg. The chicken didn't evolve (or "get off Noah's ark" for those of you who believe that the earth is only 6000 years old) until much later than many egg-laying animals. The dinosaurs, for example, were laying eggs for millions and millions of years before the chicken was even a gleam in the eye of the chicken's most closely related ancestor.

4. Who was Woodward and Bernstein's Deep Throat?

Okay, you'll have to trust me, but I knew it was Felt and was ready to tell you years ago when that damned Felt himself beat me to it a couple of years ago. But I could have told you it was him! Really!

5. Is it true that the hand is quicker than the eye?

I'm disproving this right now. If I wasn't so lazy I'd vid it and post it, but I am so lazy. Therefore, let me try to explain: Imagine me blinking really fast. Okay. Now, imagine that while I'm doing that, I'm holding up my right hand and really quickly pressing my forefinger and thumb together and then separating them and then repeating this as fast as I can. You could see that obviously my eyelids can blink at a much faster rate than my fingers can open and close. Ergo, No. The hand is not quicker than the eye.

Happy Birthday, Cindy!

2007-05-08T13:31:00.000-05:00

See subject.

Objects in the Mirror

2007-05-03T14:48:00.000-05:00

As I was driving home last night, I noticed a strange sound that seemed to be coming from my glove compartment. The first thing that came to mind, of course, was "why the hell is it called a 'glove compartment', anyway? When was the last time anyone stored their gloves in there? It should be called 'old sticks of gum - random change - three year old oil change records - compartment', but whatever", but that soon passed as the odd noise continued.

Slig-a-slig-a-slig-bffffff went the glove compartment.

I alternated my stare from the traffic in front of me to the glove box.

Slig-slig-bffff-bfff-SLOG continued the glove box.

Then nothing.

Just as I had convinced myself that I'd imagined everything, there was a almost inaudible Poof! sound, followed immediately by a bright flash of bluish-white light that shone through the keyhole and edges of the glove box.

That's odd, I thought to myself as I almost rear-ended the car in front of me that had so cavalierly stopped at the red light ahead of us.

Good, I thought, I can rummage through the glove compartment while the light is red and see what's --

But, as is always the case whenever I want a stop light to stay red, it immediately changed green. The car behind me, furthermore, set the all-time record for time lapse between light change and impatient honk: .03 seconds by my reckoning.

The search of the glove box would have to wait until I got home.

Try This At Home

2007-04-30T15:25:00.000-05:00

In my younger days a certain group of friends of mine had a running "joke" that we'd perpetrate on all newcomers to our little group, be they new girlfriends, coworkers, or what have you. We'd all done this "joke" to each other the first time we met, and we were all constantly on call to "perform" it at a moment's notice.

This is how it went. And yes, it was childish, mean, and in bad taste, but it was HELLA funny. Try it and see. Trust me.

So, say there was some new girlfriend at the party or get together. One of us, we'll call him Y, would go up to her and start talking about X, X being another of our friends at the given get together/party. Y would tell the new girlfriend, "What do you think of X? He's kind of quiet, isn't he? [Or if he was overly gregarious, we'd say something like "see how he's overcompensating?" Whatever]. The one thing he's really proud of, however, is his father. He was an Olympic sprinter. X likes talking about him; why don't you go ask him about his dad, say you hear he's really fast or something. This will get X to come out of his shell a bit and make him feel more at ease."

So girlfriend or new coworker would do so. X would listen, then stare at her. Hopefully, he'd be able to make himself cry a bit, but either way, X would then get really mad saying, "that's not funny. You know my dad doesn't have any legs!!" and storm off (hopefully before laughing; this was the hard part when you had to play X).

This, of course, would cause the new girlfriend/coworker/neighbor to get furious and yell at Y. Occasionally, especially if the "victim" was a guy, he'd often try to take a swing at Y calling him a bastard, etc.

Then we'd all laugh and let the new girlfriend in on the joke. The new person of course wouldn't think it was funny even after we explained the setup to them. HOWEVER, invariably, if this new person became a bone fide member of our merry little band, you'd see the former victim perpetrate this little "joke" on the next new person that happened along.

This made it all doubly funny, because after the new victim was victimized and then brought into the fold, we'd tell the old victim that see, it is sure funny when you're the one doing it, isn't it, but of course the new new victim wouldn't think it was funny. As usual. Until the next party when they did it. As usual.

Sometimes years would go buy, and just when I forgot about the joke, I'd be at a party when someone would come up to me and ask me about my dad, asking how fast he could run the 100 yard dash. I'd then have to quickly go into my role...

Good times, good times.... ;-)

Fish and Ponds

2007-04-29T13:59:00.000-05:00

A saying/adage that bothers me is

"would you rather be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond?"

To me it's a non-starter, as I don't want to be a fish at all. Why do I have to be a fish? If I have to be something aquatic, maybe I'd opt to be an otter (it's a "playful water mammal" according to the crosswords). But are we really obligated to pick an aquatic animal? Why not, say, a wood tick?

"Would you rather be a wood tick on a big animal or a big wood tick on a little animal?"

...or something.

Okay, maybe I could be a fish, but I'd never live in a pond. I'd want to live in an aquarium with one of those treasure chests or sunken old ship playscapes. It would have to have an under gravel filter, too but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

Maybe I'd want to be a kangaroo.

Letters Of Debt

2007-04-29T13:58:00.000-05:00

I don't understand why it's "IOU". Shouldn't it really be "IOY"? What's up with that.

Another Political Test-Thingie

2007-04-13T10:38:00.000-05:00

You are a
Social Liberal
(68% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(26% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat

Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Time

2007-04-06T11:59:00.000-05:00

I hate time, I hate clocks, I hate calendars. All they try to do is remind me of the time I've wasted and to point out to me that it's "now" now, it's no longer "once," and that really soon "now" will fade away to "yesterday" again, with non-stop speed and a cold disregard for my desire to hold on to "now" and not dwell on "once."

If you know what I mean... which you probably don't since I think I have a problem in this regard, with this obsession with time.

When digital clocks became all the rage in the mid-70s, I of course became fascinated with them. I had one on my nightstand that was popular at that time: each number was divided in half, and on the minute the top half of the minute place would drop with a little "click", displaying the new minute.

As I said, this both fascinated and horrified me at the same time. Here, clearly delineated with both visual and auditory cues, was the exact moment when the present became the past.

2:53 pm.

*click*

2:54 pm.

2:53 pm has now been relegated to the annals of the past, never To Be again. I couldn't go back to the more Innocent Time of 2:53 ever again. Whoops. Now it's not even 2:54 anymore, it's 2:55. See how quickly things recede into nothing but memories?

See the horror?

I took this to extremes one Sunday afternoon in 1976. The digital clock on our kitchen oven was the kind that didn't have half-numbers, but rather each number turned on a wheel. I looked at that clock that Sunday afternoon to see it was 1:09. I told myself to savor this, because this is it. The One And Only Time this "now" will be here. I watched with a slight dread as the time turned to display 1:10.

An hour later, at 2:09, I thought to myself, "So now that was an hour ago. It's in the past, and now it's no different that the Past that contains last month, or Pearl Harbor, or the American Revolution, or the birth of Christ. It's all "ago", it's all "then"... and to think that some day in the future *this* moment, when it was 1:09 on a Sunday afternoon, will also be years and decades ago. Huh. I don't like that."

And yes, those were almost exactly my thoughts word for word.

The next day I remarked how it was "a day ago that it was 1:09". The next day, "two days ago". Then a week later I thought that. A month later. A year later. Ten years later. Finally, after about the 10th anniversary, I slowly forgot about my poor, lost 1:09 pm on Sunday afternoon.

But occasionally, if I look at a digital clock and it's 1:09, I still remember.

And yes, I realize that this can't be normal.

Someone once told me,

You can spend your time searching for meaning, for railing against the
universe for being so cruel in making you insignificant, or you can just
take whatever time you have, be it forty years like Nate or 102 like
Claire and look on each day as the opportunity to grow into the person
you want to be.

This is truth, and I wish I could live my life this way. Sometimes I do. Too often, however, I let the unforgiving passage of time get to me. I pessimistically think that that we have not even a nanosecond of "now" before it becomes "once", when instead I should optimistically realize that we actually have an infinitely long "now." It's *always* "now". Don't worry about yesterday or tomorrow; take advantage of "now" and live.

Etc.

A Realignment

2007-04-01T17:32:00.000-05:00

Okay, that's it. I'm completely fed up and unexcited by any of the potential Democratic candidates for president. I mean Barack? Not black enough, and kind of style over substance. Plus his name sounds awfully muslimy. Edwards? How could I vote for a man who'd put his own career ahead of his ailing wife? Hillary? I don't know... too... womanish. I think during these times of The Terrorist Menace we need at *least* one Y chromosome sitting in the oval office. If not two.

So who does that leave me with?

Mitt Romney. He's my man. And if Newt is his running mate, so much the better.

They Don't Even Bother With The Question Mark Anymore

2007-03-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

Via Crooks and Liars:

Pop Quiz: what would happen if CNN broadcasted a graphic saying something like "Republicans Hate The Poor" or "President Bush Vetoes Bill That Would Save Starving Babies"?

I'm betting that the likes of Malkin, Limbaugh, Instapundit, Powerline, etc, would be in a gaggle for weeks, it would be the main story on all the Sunday morning talk shows, and the subject of countless newspaper editorials.

But for Fox? Business as usual, nothing to see here, move along.

Hey, Scott

2007-03-27T11:50:00.000-05:00

Did I ever tell you the story about how I was known as "Scott" for about two years? If the answer is "yes", then move on. If the answer is "no", then get yourself a cup of coffee, maybe a bagel, empty out your ash tray, take your shoes off and get ready. The story will commence after the next line break.

Okay.

I was living in an apartment that shared a breezeway with another apartment which was rented by a couple of lesbians. Now, their sexual orientation may not be important, but every time I use words like "lesbians" my site moves up in the Google rankings. Plus, I always refer to these two friends of mine as "The Lesbians" in real life, so why should it be any different here?

One day when I was out on my apartment's patio one of The Lesbians drove up, got out of the car, smiled at me and said, "Hi, Scott!" before going inside. I didn't have time to correct her and didn't think it was that important, anyway. The next day as I was coming home from work she was leaving, and when she passed me she said, "home from work, Scott?" before she was gone.

Again, no chance to correct, and again, I didn't think it really mattered, anyway.

This continued for weeks and months. One of The Lesbians had a grandchild who came to visit, and he called me Scott. The other Lesbian had two kids that spent half the time with her and half with her parents.

They called me Scott, too. "Hey Scott, when is Adri coming again?" Etc. I didn't think it was my place to make a liar of their parents, so I let it go.

The Lesbians had cats. My roommate at the time was fond of saying, "Man, imagine if those cats could talk. The things they've seen!". He was also fond of calling me Scott in front of The Lesbians, just because he knew this bothered me.

So now over a year has gone by. The Lesbian's cats have had kittens, and they're selling them. Adri wants a cat, so I ask if I can buy one ("one" would end up being Simba). I do, and have to write a check...

I know this is IT. I can no longer live this duality; it will be found out that I'm Hank and not Scott, because my checks of course are printed with my real name. So I bring over the check and sheepishly explain that the check is real, that I'm not Scott. The Lesbian of course asks why I let it go on so long, and I tell her that at first I never had a chance to correct her, and then I thought it would never matter, and later it became too late. I'd let them call me Scott for so long that it was just too awkward to set the record straight.

I've always wondered why "Scott" and not "Fred" or whatever. Maybe I just look like a Scott.

Playlist

2007-03-13T12:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, because There Is A Need, I've added a playist courtesy of Project Playist to this blog. It's the last element on the right-hand column. You know, right there ----->

You can add these things to your Myspace page as well, but I can't be bothered with that right now.

BTW, I have it on shuffle, so if you don't want to hear what's presently playing, either skip the song, pause, click on another visible song, scroll to see more songs or, you know, leave. ;-)

Aurora Borealis

2007-02-28T16:51:00.000-06:00

I've talked about the canoe trip I took in high school through the wilds of Cananda before on this blog. What follows is yet another anecdote from said trip.

Up where we were, about 300 miles or so north of Winnipeg, the days are long in July. I'd say it was at least 10pm before it got dark. Therefore, we didn't get to see it dark that often, since we were usually sound asleep by 9 or so. After all, we'd been up at 5am and canoed and portaged on average 30 miles before making camp, cooking, cleaning, and setting up the tents. Hell, we were lucky if we were still awake at 9pm.

Thus, we didn't get a chance to see the Northern Lights. Fred, my cousin and guide on this trip, thought we were lazy bastards because of this, and I guess he had a point. It also got kind of cold at night, so once we were in the tent we were usually in there until the morning (when we'd see hundreds of blood-gorged mosquitoes hovering around the top of the tent, but that's a story for another day).

One night, however, I woke up having to go to the bathroom and simply couldn't wait until the morning. I got out of the tent and wandered out a bit into the brush, and while standing there happened to look up.

Wow.

Later I realized it was the Northern Lights, but at the time, due to the fog in my head because of my sleepiness I thought I was in a dream, or on X or something (1). It was amazing... the whole sky sort of folded upon itself and shimmered a bit, all in complete silence... there was no wind or loon calls or water rushing. It was nothing like what I thought The Northern Lights were supposed to look like, which is another reason I didn't realize what I was looking at until much later (2). I finished and went back to sleep and promptly forgot about the whole thing by morning.

I'd really love to see that again, but fully awake this time.

(1) I'm guessing, because I've never actually tried X
(2) "much later" being several months later, when I suddenly remembered the whole thing.

Take Back the Flag

2007-02-28T16:28:00.000-06:00

You know what annoys me? Yeah, it's hard to believe, but I do get annoyed occasionally. I'm annoyed that some have usurped the label patriot and claimed the flag for themselves.

Here I am, a bed-wetting Liberal, a progressive, a Democrat. And like most B-WL/P/D, I love my country. However, the dirty nasties have caused the word patriot to be almost an epithet to me. When I see someone pounding their chests, proudly proclaiming that they're A PATRIOT (always in caps), they're usually at best misguided ideological neocons, and at worst fascists (literal fascists). All those militiamen stockpiling weapons in the hills of Montana in order to prepare themselves for the armed-combated they know is coming when the black helicopters land and the blue-capped jack-booted One Worldists take over America call themselves "patriots", too.

Dick Cheney is a "patriot."

Et Cetera.

When I see a flag flying outside a home or from a car window I think the same thing, something like, "lookout, there's a Right Wing thug." Fairly or unfairly, this is what I think. Therefore, I feel that I can't fly a flag, lest some thing that I'm "one of them."

Now, this may be my problem, not the neocon's problem. After all, who cares if many associate flag-waving or "patriotism" with mind-numbing 100% agreement with this current administration? And actually, if more Liberals put flags on their cars and bandied about the word "patriot" when describing their personal ethos maybe we would reclaim the word and the flag from those that would paint us as America-hating Commies.

Point taken.

It wasn't always this way, however. I grew up in a very progressive village, and everyone put the flag up on Flag Day, The Fourth of July, Veteran's Day, and Memorial Day. We'd have big Memorial Day parades, where us kids would decorate our bikes with red, white, and blue crepe paper. We said the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag every morning in school. We watched "A Bicentennial Minute" on TV between Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley.

Et Cetera.

I blame Ronald Reagan. The same man that attempted to make Liberal a dirty word succeeded in claiming Patriotism and The Flag for The Right.

But then again, I like to blame Reagan for almost everything. Five sticks of gum in the pack instead of seven? Reagan.

Indian Cups and Balls

2007-02-28T16:26:00.000-06:00

I'm selling this wonderful magic effect here. Check it out. What do you have to lose? Okaythen.

When Today Is A Long Time Ago

2007-02-16T11:14:00.000-06:00

My favorite musical has always been Carousel (imdb - wiki - official R&H site). I'm not alone, since Time named it the best musical of the 20th Century, and Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein considered it their personal favorite as well. In a genre replete with bright-shiny faces, comedy, and happy endings, Carousel is much-welcomed anomaly.

I know it's hard picking "the best" of anything. I have a hard enough time selecting "the top 10" of anything, be it movies, songs, books, albums, bands, or whatever. But for me, Carousel as best musical is kind of easy. This despite the fact that Carousel was a box-office flop as a movie, and despite the rather uncomfortable take it has on domestic abuse. The latter is a more serious reason to dismiss the musical, but for me, at least, the songs are just too strong, too powerful, too moving, and too well-crafted to toss this work on the apocryphal "junk heap of history" simply because Julie Jordan says that "It is possible dear, for someone to hit you, hit you hard, and it not hurt at all." If I could excise that line, I would. But I can't, and thus I'm left with the music.

The best song in the best musical is also a somewhat easy call: "Soliloquy." (lyrics). This is the song that basically captures the inner dialog Billy Bigalow is having with himself (is there any other kind of inner dialog?). In this single song we see the transformation of Billy from a self-centered braggart to someone actually concerned with the fate of his unborn child, realizing that he has a responsibility that must be met, etc. It redeems the musical, for without it Billy would simply be a lout.

The song's structure captures this. It starts upbeat, with Billy in full "I'm going to have a son who will be just like me, lucky boy!" mode, then slowly evolves in a more thoughtful, poignant tone as it dawns on him that he could just as well be the father to a girl as a boy. This all could have been handled in a trite, schmaltzy manner (and I guess some would argue that it was), but instead the song, to me, becomes the crowned jewel of the song catalog of Rogers and Hammerstein. Considering how many wonderful songs these men were were responsible for, this is saying a great deal indeed.

I may not cry at Beauty and The Geek, or during that scene in the last episode of the British version of The Office when Dawn finally goes to Tim or what have you, but I do sometimes (almost) cry when listening to Soliloquy. That has to count for something, no? ;-)

But wait. There's more. There's If I Loved You, You'll Never Walk Alone, The Carousel Waltz, When I Marry Mr. Snow, When The Children Are Asleep, June Is Busting Out All Over, What's The Use In Wonderin'... my god. What a line up. I'd put If I Loved You, especially, up against anything that's been written since as a love song, or rather a "if-I" love song.

So watch it sometime, even if you find the above-quoted line from Julie Jordan reprehensible. At least there's not rape (Seven Brides For Seven Brothers) or forced sexual servitude (Paint Your Wagon). But there is great music.

And That's Not Even Counting Tony Randall

2007-02-12T14:50:00.000-06:00

Famous Couples with a greater than 10 year age difference:

(for no particular reason. Really. ;-)

Prince Charles/Lady Diana : 13 years
Ron and Nancy Reagan: 10 years
Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie: 12 years
William H. Macy/Felicity Huffman: 12 years
Sonny/Cher: 11 years
Bob Dole/Elizabeth Dole: 13 years
JFK/Jackie: 12 years
Jackie/Ari O: 23 years
Jerry Seinfeld/Jessica: 17 years
Rudy Guiliani/Current Wife: 11 years

My oh my. What a bunch of degenerates. And look at all the Republicans on the list. Tsk, tsk. Where's the morality? I don't know about you, but the first thing I think about when I see Brad and Angelina is how sick and disgusting it is that they're 12 years apart.

What I Don't Miss About Real Winter

2007-01-16T10:59:00.000-06:00

It's' cold here today, and by that I mean it's 27° (Fahrenheit). Not bitterly cold, but cold by Dallas standards. Sometimes I sort of miss the harsh winters of Chicago, where everything had a blanket of white (well, white for a while, then more like a blanket of grey) for weeks on end. When it does snow here, which is rare, it rarely sticks for more than a day or two, and then usually just on earth and grass, never pavement.

What I don't miss, and here we're finally getting to the point of the title, is the shoveling of snow. And it's not really the shoveling per se that I miss, but rather a small event that is a subset of shoveling snow. I don't think this event has a name, but I'll call it the "scrape-thunk-ouch!" event. To whit:

You're a 12 year old boy either shoveling your family's sidewalk out of forced servitude or a neighbor's sidewalk for a buck.

Okay. So far so good. You shove the blade of the shovel down through the snow until it hits the hard sidewalk, then you angle the shovel so it's more parallel with the sidewalk and push forward, thus clearing a snow-free path.

Fine.

Every so often, however, whilst pushing forward, the blade of the shovel will meet resistance from a seam or crack in the sidewalk, and thus suddenly your forward progress is halted with a thunk. Also, since you've been using a fair bit of force to push the shovel forward, this sudden stop is rather jarring and unexpected, and due to the cold temperatures, it sends a wave of pain through your hands. Ouch.

Hence the aforementioned name of this event.

So yeah, I don't miss that.

Leaves

2006-12-17T09:30:00.000-06:00

This is why I hate raking leaves:

Those Durn Kids!!

2006-11-06T17:55:00.000-06:00

We live about three blocks from a school, and around 3:30 every day we get all these kids traipsing down the street on their way home. There's always two or three that insist on walking across all the lawns instead of using the sidewalk, and I complain about this all the time.

The other day I realized that this means that I've become that apocryphal crazy old man who yells at the neighborhood kids to "get off my lawn!!!"

What's next, black socks with sandals?

Come Out Flying

2006-10-30T15:58:00.000-06:00

As avid readers of this blog know (and the 's' on the end of 'reader' is stretching it, I know...), when I was young I was an active practitioner of prestidigitation (magic to you). A couple of weeks ago we saw the movie, The Prestige. There's a series of scenes in the movie that depict the original working of the Vanishing Bird Cage illusion. In the original working of this trick a live bird was often killed for the sake of "art." In the movie, after seeing a performance of this trick, a young boy gets all upset about the vanished bird, wanting to know what happened to him, bemoaning his death, etc. Finally, the magician produces the bird (actually, a totally different bird. The original has been killed, you see) to "prove" that the bird is in fact fine. The boy, however, will have none of it. He's still very upset and asks, "yes, but what about his poor brother?".

The child was no fool.

This scene reminded me of something that often happened when I performed with live animals. Brian, Tom, and I did magic shows for senior citizen centers, and we'd use doves in productions, transmutations ("Dove Thru Glass"), and vanishes. For a finale, we'd usually do a double version of the Flip-Over Box effect, where two of us held identical boxes in which doves were placed before... voila... they disappeared.

Cue thunderous applause.

Except afterwards, at the senior centers and old folks' homes, there'd always be three or four old ladies who would get all distraught, worrying about what happened to the poor dear birds. We eventually learned that we had to show the doves again after the trick so the little old ladies would realize they weren't dead, disembodied spirits in the Ether, or what have you. This didn't make for good theater, but these people had lived through the depression and two world wars, for crissakes, so the least we could do was allay their worries about our performing livestock.

Which we did.

...to thunderous applause, followed by several deep, pretentious bows.

I never told the old ladies one of the Vanishing Dove tricks I saw performed. Basically, it involved my first dove, my mom's ferret, and a faulty ferret cage lock.

Dixie Cups

2006-10-13T10:08:00.000-05:00

Whatever happened to Dixie Cups? You know, those little 2-inch or so disposable paper cups? When I was growing up in the late 60s/70s they were ubiquitous. Everyone had them.

Most were plain white, but there were some with riddles on them ("How do you know an elephant has been in the fridge? Answer: There are footprints in the butter". Etc). Some were black and orange for Halloween, green and red for Christmas.

They were everywhere. I think they were designed for the bathroom, for rinsing out your mouth or taking pills, but people had them in the garage to hold loose bolts, in the sewing room holding buttons... kids used them for crafts. Etc. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see... Dixie Cups. They had dispensers, too, that you bought, from the simple plastic to the chrome plated affairs that I'd see at some of my more wealthy friends.

Yes, the Dixie Cup crossed socioeconomic lines like no disposable cup had previously.

Now they're all gone (much like something else from my youth that I've already asked about, the horizontal hold). You never see a Dixie Cup. What happened to them? Did people stop rinsing, sorting, and crafting? Where does one go for stupid riddles now? (Aside: we also got our riddles as kids printed on popsicle sticks). Does anyone even remember the Dixie Cup? If I wanted to buy a Dixie cup today, could I?

Who mourns for the Dixie Cup?

Hey, I've been busy.

2006-10-03T16:13:00.000-05:00

Op cit. Or is that ibid?

Ode To a Green And Blue Bird

2006-08-03T14:05:00.000-05:00

Over there.

New Feature

2006-07-26T16:33:00.000-05:00

Taking a cue from Jim over at fahrbotz.com, I've added voice commenting via Odeo. Look for the little link at the bottom of each post here and fire away.

Monday Simba Blog #4

2006-07-24T15:54:00.000-05:00

Our story continues.

"Are you talking to me?!"

"Are you talking to me?"

"Huh? Because it sure looks like you're talking to me!!"

"Who are you talking to? You talking to ME?!?!"

Lik-M-Aid Fight

2006-07-20T15:31:00.000-05:00

The following is all true.

No, really.

It's not like that cartoon story or anything. (Which was just partly true).

Once, when I was about nine, I needed some money so I could go out and buy some candy, specifically some Lik-M-Aid. After a furtive search under the couch cushions yielded nothing but some assorted lint, I got a bright idea:

My friend was over, so we decided to stage a fake fight and charge my sister and her friend a quarter each (twenty-five cents for those of you on the metric system) to witness this fight.

Which we did.

However, my sister got wise that she'd paid not for a real fight but a fake fight and wanted her money back.

Which we refused.

So my friend and I took our new-found monies and went to Jim's, a local candy store, and bought the aforementioned confectionary treat.

It never tasted as good as it did that day, bought with money fleeced from my sister and her friend.

My sister to this day complains about this, and it was what, 30 years ago or more? What's with that?

Sorry

2006-07-18T13:07:00.000-05:00

If you're coming from there, there really isn't a new post here.

Carry on.

Monday Simba Blog #3

2006-07-17T10:02:00.000-05:00

In our third installment:

"Yes, I know I've been out five times today already. What's your point?"

mumbles some cat-expletive under his cat-breath

"Well? I have butterflies to chase and dirt to lie in. What's the hold up?"

$@!!*%$

2006-07-12T14:58:00.000-05:00

Thinking back on it, I don't know how I could have been so stupid. It was obvious what was happening; I just refused to believe it.

It started about a month ago, when an off-hand comment from me brought an anonymous email to my inbox:

Look, jerk: I know you think all of this is very funny, but it's not. You've been put on notice. You'll hear from us.

It wasn't signed, but it was inclosed in ascii art that resembled one of those thought/dialog balloons that comic strip/graphic novel artists so often use to depict dialog. And I wasn't the only one: several of my friends had received these "threatening" emails as well. We all just shrugged it off to someone bored with the whole Nigerian bank scam.

We were wrong.

Slowly, things began to change. Little things at first, like CSI: New York being preempted by an hour of Casper The Friendly Ghost cartoons. I just chalked that up to some drunken studio technician at the network. Then, at a stop light, the person in the car next to me rolled down their window and yelled "Yabba dabba Doo!" at me before speeding off (I think he we going to the Sonic, but I can't be sure). Sure, that seemed odd, but then they also had a Texas Tech bumper sticker, so who could tell.

It didn't end there, however. I was at my brother's house that weekend, and he fell asleep while we were watching golf on TV (the guy has no attention span). Suddenly, he started emitting this "zzzzzz" sound. Yes, "zzzzzzzz", like he was some sort of electronic snake. Not his normal snore at all. To make matters worse, as I was leaving his wife saw a mouse and actually yelled "eek." No exclamation point, just "eek" followed by a period. I stood there in shock as the cause of this odd outburst scampered into this perfectly-cut arch of a hole in the baseboard. I'd had enough and left, the Hartford Open results be damned.

The drive home was surreal. I drove the same route I always do from my brother's house to mine, but for some reason the scenery kept repeating. I swear I drove by the same tree outcrop and rock grouping about five times. Finally I arrived home, and after almost running into the garage door (my depth perception had been getting really bad, lately) went into the living room and called for my wife.

At least some things were consistent. As Julie took my hand and gave me a squeeze of reassurement I felt much better. "What's wrong with me", I wondered to myself. Suddenly Julie's squeeze got a bit too firm. I looked down and my world exploded.

Julie was missing her middle finger. I let out a little girl scream, but she just laughed. Slowly and with great dread I removed my hand from her's and checked out my own hand.

I, too, only had four fingers.

The cartoon takeover was almost complete. I tried to think of what I should do next, but every time I almost thought of a solution this bright light would come on above my head scaring me silly.

It was too late.

As I type this out, my last journal entry, making typing errors right and left (have you ever tried typing with just eight fingers?), with my world slowly turning a weird shade of pastel hues, I can hear a sort of silly symphony playing in the distant. It's getting closer and closer...

I'm afraid that that's all, folks.

Monday Simba Blog #2

2006-07-10T08:25:00.000-05:00

Simba does Monday blogging:

"What was I thinking?! Why did I eat half my bowl of food before I ran around the coffee table seven times trying to catch that animal that looks remarkably like my tail?"

Sigh.

"Why?"

yawn.

"I wonder if 24 is a rerun tonight... and why haven't they killed off Kim yet?"

Movie Mistakes That Ruin Suspension of Belief and Are Otherwise Just Annoying

2006-07-08T09:31:00.000-05:00

While we were watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night, I noticed a flaw in the story that ruined it for me. Charlie's grandfather was an employee of the chocolate factory, and thus Charlie wouldn't be eligible for the contest. As you know, such contests are always not available in Guam and to employees and their family, as well as being void where prohibited.

Plus, there' s no purchase necessary, so why did he have to scrounge for money to buy a bar in the first place?