Best of the Blog

Random posts from the LJ I've had for years:

Life in Weird Chicago - life in the big city and and as a ghost tour guide.

Appetite for Deconstruction - postsanalyzing pop culture

Blog Archives

ENTRIES 2002-2005

9/18/02
Want to feel a weird feeling?

Try eating matzo ball soup while reading a book about the guy who kept Einstein's brain in a jar of formaldahyde for several years. G'head.

12/8/02
Just got a call from the local radio station. They're giving away their "Best of 2002" awards, and it seems I've won "Funniest Song" (for "Pushing Cheerleaders Down the Stairs") and "Most Unique Style."

However, I refused to accept the awards as a protest for the fact that I was not nominated for "best looking." What gives?

2/13/03
Perhaps you all heard about Laura Bush cancelling a poetry symposium when she head that some of the poets would be reading anti-war works. Yesterday, I ream a poem called " 'Kids nowadays,' muttered Hoover" at a symposium that was held in response and, when the mic wouldn't work, I cracked that "Laura Bush is probably hiding behind the tree, holding some vital piece of the mic and laughing." I didn't know that the media was present. This, of course, was the quote they ran with.


4/8/03
I have decided that, henceforth, the term "yo" will be considered incorrect. The correct word is "yohm."

4/12/03
I don't remember whether I already posted this, but I have a great idea for a new TV show. It would be on right after Meet the Press, and would be called "Meet the Weirdos." We'd take whoever was on "Meet the Press," and sit 'em down with a bunch of weirdos to talk for an hour or so about whatever the weirdos have on their minds. I'd watch it.

4/16/03
I have a plan for a new business!


We will design and sell things that seem amusing to drunks. Toasters with built-in flashlights. Can openers with a radio attatched. Shiney things. Corkscrews with a compass in the end. Screwdrivers with flashing lights on the end.

We'll have catalogs (laminated) in every bar in the world.

We'll call "Things You'd Better Not Forget To Buy Before You Go Home Or Your Wife Will Kill You."

Credit card orders are accepted 24 hours a day.

Got the idea from Skymall, of course.



7/9/03
Know what's weird?

Watching the "call to arms" speeches from Henry V on one channel, then changing channels and watching the big battle scene at the end of Ernest Goes to Camp.



7/17/03
One should have a "theme" when redecorating one's bathroom. Like "Mediterranean" or "New York City." Since it's important to keep one's budget in mind, one shouldn't go for anything too fancy if one's budget is less than $15. That's why I picked "New Jersey" as the theme for my bathroom.

Seriously, though, it's decorated with pictures from Weird NJ magazine in dollar store frames. One whole wall is covered with old artwork featuring depictions of The Jersey Devil. It's really quite a cool bathroom now.




7/27/03
My first exposure to punk was in 1986. My family was in Minneapolis visiting relatives, and one night we took a trip downtown. At least part of the reason we were going was "to see the punks." I'd never even heard of a "punk" before.

I was the first to spot one. Upon seeing a guy with a large green spiked mohawk, I pointed and shouted "There's one!" I remember the guy grinning at me as my parents quickly rushed me away, telling me that they didn't like to be stared at. Nowadays, I know that I probably made that guy's day.

Over the rest of the evening, we saw an awful lot of groups of punks walking around downtown. Every time some of them would approach, my parents would whisper that I was not to stare at them, point at them, or say anything to or about them. It was very similar to what I was told at the zoo next day when we approached anything dangerous.

It wasn't until much later that I actually heard any punk; for years, my only impression of the whole genre was seeing people with brightly colored hair wandering around downtown Minneapolis. All I knew of the punk scene was that it was like Halloween every day. It's a wonder that I didn't grow up to be a hardcore punk myself.



9/07/03
I found myself with a strange craving for gummi worms tonight.

So, sometime after dark, I found myself down at FoodMax, buying gummi worms and the Weekly World News (in rare form this week, the cover story is that an alien is in jail following a fist fight with Bill Clinton over Hilary. I couldn't pass that up. The speakers overhead very softly blasted Springsteen's "Backstreets" followed by Olivia Newton John doing "Midnight At The Oasis." I'm not making this up.

The cashier was a young fellow named Webster. Looked as though he may have been young enough to have been born AFTER the Webster TV show, which would indicate that his parents were very cruel people.



9/18/03
Lesson Number 1: Never wear a "West Wing" t-shirt to a class in the business building. This is a dead giveaway that you're from "the other building." They don't care much for that building.

"You aren't a business major, are you?" they asked, upon seeing my shirt.

"Nope. Creative writing," I said.

"Has anyone who ever majored in creative writing ever actually made any money?" someone asked.

"You'll be dead by the time you're forty. Most writers are," said another.

"All I know," said still another, "is that most writers turn out to be gay."

Sure, business majors are more likely than I to go on to become rich. But at what cost?



11/13/03
Appetite for Deconstruction
Okay, that article I linked earlier interested me so much that I went looking for similar stuff, and I came upon a thing about the story "The Golden Arm." This story always bugged me.

You've probably heard this basic ghost story: a woman with a golden arm dies and asks to be buried with it. Her husband steals it before she can be buried, and is haunted by her voice saying "who's got my golden arm" over and over, closer and closer, until it's right at his bed and she shouts "you got it!" Mark Twain used to tell it a lot. I heard him. (And if you say that I'm too young to have heard him, well, you remind me a lot of my oldest daughter).

How this woman came to need a golden arm, and how she came to die, never seem to come up. But I'll bet she lost her arm doing something stupid and she probably deserved to die. What kind of person gets a golden arm? It would be expensive as all get out, and likely useless as a prosthetic device. Also, it would probably be really heavy. Maybe she died from having her spine twisted all out of wack.

Then, in light of the expense, asking to be buried with it, when her husband could surely use the money, is just plain greedy. Here we have a woman who was probably all for abolishing the estate tax! Why does a dead person need an expensive prosthetic device? Would it make her the envy of all the other ghosts?

Still, this story scared me when I was a kid, and I'm not ashamed. If you ask Bloody Mary to come out of the mirror, you just get what you ask for. But the sort of woman who would buy a golden arm and then demand to be buried with it is certainly the kind of person of whom one should be afraid. Very afraid.



11/21/03
Ever Meet a Burger That Could Take a Bite Outta You?
My car broke down today near a field in the middle of nowhere. Again. I stepped out, made the necessary cell phone calls, and sat back to wait.

Then the cows arrived.

At first there were just a couple, far off in the field. Then, in a moment, there was a whole herd of them.

"Moo!" I called, since I was bored. I soon came to realize that this was not the best idea I ever had, as they all took notice of me and began to proceed towards the barbed wire fence that separated the road from the field.

I grew up in Iowa, where statues of cows (some of which are made of butter) are not uncommon. But seeing a whole herd of cows (I stopped counting at 40) lumbering towards you can be quite unnerving.

Soon they were right at the fence, five feet away from me, like a group of fans at a ropeline clamoring for an autograph. I tried to remember my Iowa days.

"Hmm..." I thought. "Cows aren't....vicious...are they?"

I looked at them, forty or more along the fence, some poking their heads through and staring right at me. They were drooling obscenely, snarling, stinking, and, in some cases, peeing noisily. They had thick ropes of snot coming out of their noses. They certainly LOOKED vicious.

Thinking of all of the hamburgers I've eaten over the years, I decided I'd better make friends with them.

"Hello, ladies," I called. "My car is broken down. Some sort of electrical problem."

"Moo," said one of them.

"Moo," the rest chimed in. I hoped that 'moo' was cow talk for "sounds like the alternator," and not "you look tasty."

"Um..." I continued..."anybody here from out of town?"

This went on for about fifteen minutes before the farmer came and drove them away.

"These things aren't vicious, are they?" I asked.

"Sure are," he said with a nod.

"Well, I don't think they know anything about cars," I said. "They haven't been very helpful at all."

He nodded and, with his four wheeler, drove them away from the fence and out of sight. I was in a much better mood for the rest of the time I spent waiting for help on the car to arrive. Surviving an encounter with 40 enormous animals is a real pick me up.

NOTE: while I was standing there, a passing motorist was so amused by the sight of me trying to persuade 40+ cows that were lined up at the fence not to break through and trample me that she stopped to take pictures. If she makes good on her promise to send me one, I'll surely post it here. (ed - she never did)



11/30/03
Here in Georgia, it's illegal to sell alcohol on Sundays.

This morning, I had trouble buying a jar of "Emeril's Vodka Sauce," which I found in the spaghetti sauce section.

"Is there vodka in this?" asked the cashier.

"It's not a drink," I told her.

"Still," she said, checking the ingredients and, I'm sure, imagining me sitting on a bench in the parking lot chugging tomato sauce straight out of the jar. Absolut Spaghetti?



12/22/03
'm talking with an old friend about the old days, back before there was internet porn. I wish to point out that middle school kids nowadays have it made.

They have never....

- talked an adult into letting them rent "Revenge of the Nerds" for the fifth time, all the while staying ready to explain "you know, the plot is so complicated..." if need be.

- forced themselves to stay up until 4, convinced that, at some unholy hour, USA is allowed to show nudity.

- bribed a schoolmate to get them a subscription card to Playboy and plotted to subscribe using a post office box and praying the mailmen wouldn't know what was up. And going on long, long late night walks to work out all of the details of the scheme.

- dug through the artistic photography section or drawing section at Waldenbooks, having heard rumors of all sorts of nude goings-on.

- had to hide what few naked pictures they could acquire in hidden spots in the attic, behind shelves, etc.

- paid good money to see "Milk Money," possibly the worst movie ever, just because it MIGHT have a butt shot (it doesn't).

- been very, very excited by the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Nope. Kids today have no reason to have done any of them, since they can see all of this just by opening their e-mail. Think of the time they must save! If I had that kind of time opened up for me when I was a kid, and put it to good use, I could've invented something, learned another language... I could've been a contender!

I've never done any of them either, of course. I'm just saying, hypothetically, is all. I just want to make sure we're clear on this.



3/9/04
From the idea department: caffeinated donuts.

From the even better ideas that no one else seems to like department: Viking-style maps Manhatten that say "here there be monsters" where New Jersey is.



4/06/04
Nothing brightens a slow day like telling Mastercard that your roommate can't come to the phone right now because she's in Yemen working for Halliburton. How said roommate and I kept a straight face while I went through a good long conversation detailing her job overseas I'll never know.


4/8/04
Here's something most of you don't know about me: I'm an award-winning opera singer.

It's true. In my sixth grade music class, we did a unit on opera, and, in small groups, we had to act out (if not sing) scenes from "Amahl and the Night Visitors." I sang my part, and, though there were no awards scheduled, the teacher actually gave me an award for my portrayal of "mother."

She told one of the other classes that I was the best mother she ever had.



7/6/04
It has been pointed out many times, and I agree with said pointing, that "retard" is really, really not a nice thing to call some one.

Hence, last night a new term was coined - "Repug." (pronounced REE-pug, emphasis on the first syllable). A repug is "one who is repugnant."

As in:

"You have mustard all over your face. You look like a total repug."

"My boss has been acting like a complete repug lately."

"Boy, how about that Dick Cheney? What a repug!"



10/19/04
So, for my "interview" today, I was to spend a day shadowing a senior employee to see what my job would be. It took me about five minutes to figure out that it was a pyramid scheme, but, by that time, I was on the road to Elk Grove Village, and had no choice but to spend 8 hours watching a slick jerk from whom I would NOT take a chocolate covered pretzel go door to door to give me an incredible offer.

Tomorrow, I will go back to the office. I spent a whole day, and, the way I see it, they owe me money. Also, I'd like to blackmail them. And I have the stuff with which to do it.

The message to slick jerks with Flock of Seagulls Comb-Overs is clear: don't waste my time.



10/20/04
So I called up the office of the company that insisted it was not a pyramid scheme.

The manager and I had a little conversation. I said I should be paid for the training I went through yesterday, he brought up that I had signed a contract stating I was only an unpaid observer. I brought up reasons that the contract was invalid, and how they had made it invalid, and then brought up the Better Business Bureau and the Fair Labor Act of 1957 (it really pays to know about that one).

So we had a little battle. I mentioned that I was a writer who named names. And haircuts. He said I was threatening him, I said I was just asking for profit-sharing (which is what they call how they pay their salesmen). I also said that if you want to get into "what this is like," I can say that what they did yesterday wasn't that far removed from locking me in a trunk and trying to get me to join a cult.

Anyway, I'm getting paid for yesterday.



11/24/04
One thought on being fired from retail work:

I may have drawn her name, but if my boss thinks for one minute that I'm still going to be her "Secret Santa," she's got another thing coming.



12/7/04
At my current job (as a merchandiser for Mattel), I spend a lot of time prowling the back of K-Mart (an disorganized mess - you could have an Indiana Jones movie in there), Wal-Mart (same mess, more crap; one could die back there of any number of causes and they'd have your clothes on the clearance rack the next day), and Target (well organized, spacious, and altogether a very nice setup, as these things go).

Words of wisdom from my boss:

"Every now then, you hear a really good fight in the back of a K-mart."

I wish this job lasted til after Xmas.



12/8/04
I remember one day in pre-school when some kid's mom had milk and cookies with us. The cookies that day were large care bears, decorated as such with about five pounds of frosting. We went around the table and told which Care Bear we were eating.

"I have Cheer Bear," someone said.

"I have Tender Heart," I said, happy to get the bear that I actually owned in plush form.

Then came the bombshell:

"I have Halloween Bear," said the kid's mother.

"There's no Halloween Bear!" we all retorted.

"Oh," she said, "They probably have Halloween Bear, and Christmas Bear, and Easter Bear..."

I was shocked and apalled - there were no seasonal Care Bears! Where would they go the rest of the year - cold storage? This was a grown-up, and she didn't know that there were only so many Care Bears? It was like saying that the Berenstain Bears had a third cub during the summer. How could an ADULT not know this basic biological fact?

Now, Care Bears are back in stores, after a fifteen-year-or-so disappearance. Most of the originals are back, but, in my time in the toy departments, I've seen several bears that were not known to science in my day. Harmony Bear, Do-Your-Best Bear...where did these bears come from? The year after my pre-school encounter, another tribe of Care Bears, the Care Bear Cousins (which were not really bears, but other assorted animals), was discovered, but how other Bears came to join the usual tribe is probably shrouded in secrecy.

Another concern is that Grumpy Bear, who acted as a cynical counterweight to the saccharine other bears, seems to have vanished. Perhaps the poor old grouch died, perhaps he was seduced by whatever the dark side was in the Care Bear universe. There was probably a time when I knew this - but now I'm a grown-up myself. And I've forgotten my biology, too. (ed - he was still around, just hard to find)


12/13/04
If I were a pirate, my pirate name would be Land Ho.

Yep.

Land Ho Calrissian.


(sorry, I needed some tomatoes. Start throwing).


1/28/05
Here is a survey. Fill in the blank.

"Be careful what you wish for; you just might get ___________"

Possible answers include: "A ticket to Cleveland," "a hernia," "it," "a mint-condition copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #365," "eaten first," "herpes," "a cactus," "to eat a bag of hell," "shingles," "arrested," "a great deal on these tires," "drunk," "a surprise visit from Christopher Marlowe: Gay Atheist Spy."


2/18/05
I applied online for a job as an online "appointment setter." This would be a telecommuting job. In response, they asked me to answer the following stupid questions. Here is what I'd LIKE to say:

1. Do you consider yourself a team leader or a team player? Why?

In most situations, I feel forced to take the lead, because if I don't, we're likely to be lead by some jerk who talks about "leadership skills" a lot. I'm sick and tired of hearing jerks talking about "leadership skills." Also, the leader might start calling me a "team member" or a "partner," and insist that I always, always refer to customers as "guests." I simply cannot abide by that. I don't have any problems with being politically correct; hell, I think people who complain about it are usually just jerks looking for victim status. But I draw the line at management-speak. Someone has to step in and make sure that doesn't happen, and it's likely to be up to me.

2. What would you consider your most significant accomplishment?

Making money off a pyramid scheme by threatening to write an article about the company naming names and making fun of the manager's haircut (a "flock of seagulls combover") if he didn't send me a check. A copy of the check is framed above my computer.

3. What are your career goals? Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years?

I hope to become an appointment setter. In five years, I want to be right here, sitting on my ass, still setting appointments for eight bucks an hour. On the side, I hope to make Zig Ziglar cry. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I know it can be done.

4. Would you rather be a business owner or an employee? Why?

I'd rather be an employee. If I were in the ruling class, I'd be trembling about the upcoming communist revolution. Down with the bourgeousie!

5. As a leader, how would you motivate others?

Oh, hell, you can't motivate people who are working for eight bucks an hour. Why should they be motivated? They can work their butts off for you, and they'll still just be making eight bucks an hour - better to do it without getting sore. Of course, if you insist that I motivate them, I can always whip the hell out of them. That always gets results. If you're the fainty-dainty type of company, though, I can always resort to motivational "successories" posters: if they fail to work, I'll make them look at them.

6. Why should we work with you?

Because if you don't, I will write an article about your company and make fun of your haircuts. No one will be spared, biatch. UPDATE, AN HOUR LATER:
Oops. Accidentally mailed that in. Clumsy me!



3/19/05
Did Mattel work today - acted as "bodyguard" at a "meet Barbie" event. The model was dressed as "Fairytopia" Barbie - the kind with fairy wings, blue eyeliner, etc. She looked, frankly, a bit terrifying. If I were a kid, I would have been afraid that she was going to sacrifice me to a strange god. Then again, I thought that about lots of people. The playground monitor probably actually was. My playground monitor was not a pleasant person - Miss Finster from "Recess" has nothing on her.



5/9/05
Lots of people ask me for advice on songwriting. Well, the main rule for writing songs is that you should write what you feel like. I do have some other suggestions, though. Here're some:

1. Rhyme scheme, meter, and structure can be jumped up and down on if you know what you're doing, but if you ignore them, you'll just end up with a messy song that will not be nearly as artsy as you think it is.

2. Be very careful with the terms "my pain" and "my tears." And watch what you say about your soul. Questioning the nature or purpose of "this life" (in those terms) will get old fast.

3. When in doubt, say something about the moon. You can't go wrong with a good moon line.

4. When writing a protest song, don't use the term "land of the free" ironically. It seems like a good idea, but it isn't.

5. If you're writing a parody, heed these words: Start, heart, part, be, me, free, see, and other words that are so, so easily turned into "fart" and "pee" are the enemies of the smart writer.

6. You can use cuss words just for the sake of using cuss words, but there's a good way and a bad way to do this. If you think the way you're cussing in a song will amuse people (Ben Folds is good at this), you're probably doing it the good way. If you think you're going to shock anyone, you're doing it the bad way.

7. If you write about your life or people you know, you're asking for trouble.

8. Don't just say "the street" or "the town" if you can help it - be specific about which street or town you mean.

9. You can be writing a song about a town a thousand miles from any body of water, and it still probably won't hurt much to put a sailor in the song in most cases.

10. On the other hand, clowns almost never work. Especially sad ones.

11. If you aren't prepared to show up for gigs dressed like an elf, it's usually not advisable to use terms like "hath," "thou," "runneth," "thee," etc. Some people can get away with talking like they're in a movie about knights. Most people can't.

12. The quality of a song is not measured by how hard it is to play. Don't worry if your song is only two chords. Also, all the minor augmented ninth chords in the world won't make a bad song good.

13. Changing the perspective of a song from third to first person, or the other way around, can improve it greatly. Experiment with your pronouns.

14. Cake left out in the rain is not a great metaphor for a failed relationship, especially if you refer to said cake as a park. Seriously.

All of these, of course, can be broken in the right situation. Maybe even #14 (though I doubt it).



6/2/05
Comment card from three girls, slightly younger than I, after a few margaritas.




7/1/05
Songs are like buried treasure. Sometimes your metal detector goes off and it's right beneath the sand; you have the whole thing in a couple of minutes. Other times you have to dig awhile, and before you get to the song you find a tin can, a car part, a candy bar wrapper and a dirty diaper. Sometimes that's all you find. I may be in for some digging.

I had a great chorus of a new song written earlier today and I was determined to finish up a draft of it and get to the Gallery after work. Unfortunately, I had to close, which kept me there til 12:45 in the morning (and my whole section was redneck city, and if there's one thing life in Georgia taught me, it's that rednecks don't tip worth a damn, but that's another story), and I kept singing that chorus in my head the whole time. It's a good one; the soaring, majestic kind that I don't manage to do very often. I even hobbled together two verses and a bridge.

When I finally got off I changed into a decent t-shirt, got a cab to Clark and Lake (the cabbie was doing 60 in the Loop - quite a ride) then hopped the blue line train and, in the end, made it from Navy Pier to Bucktown in just over fifteen minutes. This is no mean feat. It gave me just enough time to grab a beer and get onstage to try the new song, which went over VERY well, though I'm not really satisfied with the verses or the bridge yet. It was just a good chorus and whatever lines would stick.

Now it's time to keep digging through all the versions that are going to come up before I get the right one - this one seems to be buried deeper than most.. I imagine that there'll be a version based on Great Expectations, one the sounds like an answer to "rainy days and mondays" by the carpenters, and maybe one that sounds like the beach boys. Right now it the best line actually rhymes "building" with "morning," but I'm not sure I'm gutsy enough to try that. But one of these versions is going to work out - I'll get this song done sooner than later, and when it's right, I'll know. I wish I had a piano around here.
(ed - the song became "I Don't Believe In Summer")



9/13/05
My agent got an e-mail from a company called BookByte - they make little promo films for author's books. In the ad, they said they were going to do for authors what music videos did for musicians. One of my agent's other clients pointed out that that wasn't likely.

My response:

You're right, Luc. BookTV will start out showing nothing but Book-Bytes, but pretty soon it'll just be showing clips of them in the morning, intercut with endless shots of teenage girls shouting "Rushdie 4-evah! I wanna give a shout-out Ahsley and Jen-Jen back in Dayton. Whooo!"

Then, of course, it'll soon be all original programming:

"Pimp My Typewriter"

"Falstaff and Guildenstern" (a crudely animated piece of crude humor)

"BookTV Sports" (Speed typing competitions and clips of people snowboarding)

"Newlyweds" (the antics of Jonathan Safron Foer and Nicole Krauss)

"The Easton Ellises"

"Unprompted" (popular authors read unedited versions of their works)

"Yo! BookTV Poetry"

"Horrorwriter's Ball"

"Jackass!" (members of The Rock Bottom Remainders (Stephen King, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, etc) hit themselves with shovels, staple things to their bodies, and ride bikes off cliffs)

"The Dave Eggers Don't-You-Wish-You'd-Put-Me-On-The-Real-World-NOW Show"



11/6/05
In the post Halloween aftermath, I got to thinking of the age-old question: what is Count Chocula's first name?

Here are some suggestions:

Don
Steve
Dave
Lawrence
Todd
Bradley
George
Doug
Norman

note: this ended up on McSweeneys.



12/25/05
During tonight's trivial pursuit game, it became useful to me, at last, to know that China was under martial law in 1989. I knew this because the imposition of martial law in Beijing was immediately followed by the rock n roll and cola wars, after which Billy Joel declared that he could no longer take it.

Adventures as a Detective / Pizza Man

ADVENTURES OF A PIZZA MAN
In 2002, I lived in Milledgeville, GA, which wasn't exactly a boom town - few places were hiring, and almost nobody paid a nickel over minimum wage. Let me tell you, to be halfway through college with eight years of work experience and unable to get a job at Big Lots - which would have only paid 30 cents more per hour than I made bagging groceries in eighth grade - was pretty depressing.

The downtown area, near the college, is gorgeous, but a great deal of the town was pretty sketchy - it had a mental hospital which, back in the 19th century, was the largest such institution in the world, along with seven or eight prisons. The neighborhoods around these could only be so good. I've yet to find a neighborhood in Chicago as bad as many of those in Milledgeville - they can't build them that badly here. They'd never make it through the winter.

I finally found work as a pizza driver, but it was rough going. Some people find that town to be a nice place to live, but I'm pretty sure that nobody finds it a nice place to deliver pizza. Many of the streets had no street signs. It seemed as though most of the houses were unnumbered. Sometimes the house would turn out to be in a small trailer park hidden in someone's back yard. There was a list on the wall of about 40 streets where we wouldn't deliver after dark (normally because of poor lighting and signage, but some were just plain scary).

Tips were abyssmal, but the work was exciting. Finding the houses involved a lot of keen detection skills, and, in some neighborhoods, you had to be ready to face danger. Eventually I started commuting to the suburbs of Atlanta, where the houses were all numbered and the streets were all well-lit. The work was easier, and the tips were far better, but I didn't get nearly as many stories out of it. Kept that job until 2004, when I finally moved to Chicago and got rid of my car altogether. I still sometimes toy with the idea of doing it again, though. Just not in a small town.

5/27/02
My First (and only) Day at Domino's
I showed up on time. The manager did not. He, a fellow not unlike Jabba the Hutt, came in late, spent ten minutes talking about how hungover he was, then noticed I was there. "#$%#," he said, by way of greeting, "I didn't wanna have to #$%!@ with none of this $#%^." Sadly, this was the most intelligent (and intelligible) thing he said all evening. I was, at length, set up with a cd-rom training thing which took a couple of hours. The manager would occasionally poke his head in to say "that ain't how ya answer the phone. I'd be like 'bitch! i ain't goin' deliver nothin, come out here so I can #$%^ ya!" Fortunately enough, his drawl was so thick and his mumbling so intense that I couldn't understand much of what he said other than the curse words, which made up roughly half of what he said. Perhaps the most intelligent thing he said was "ain't that the mouse over yonder?" which demonstrates that he at least had very basic computer skills.

The rest of the staff wasn't a whole lot better. A bit friendlier, but not much better. They way they talk to the one girl who works there would be considered sexual harrassment by any court, though she doesn't seem to mind (though I certainly plan to explain sexual harrassment laws to her at the first opportunity).

I'll be going in tomorrow morning to fill out paperwork (I was supposed to do that tonight, but the manager said, about six times, that he didn't feel like finding it.) I'll be dealing with the much-nicer owner then, and am internally debating how much to tell him about the other guy. But I can't imagine a worse first impression.


5/28/02
I went to see the owner down at Domino's, just to make sure he knew what Larry, the manager, was like (see last post). He shrugged it off. He also shrugged it off when I said that the one female employee could sue for sexual harrassment, and that I'd do anything I could to help her.

Well, that was that. "Hell," I said, as I got back into my car, "I'd surely be better off working for Pizza Hut than Jabba the Hutt."

So, well, I drove to Pizza Hut.

After getting hired there, I drove back to Domino's to give them my hideously ugly uniform back. They understood.


6/04/02
On the whole, my first day at Pizza Hut was far, far more agreeable than the one day I spent at Domino's. Drove around town, got to go inside of several prisons (an awful lot of our deliveries go to either the mental hospital or one of the many local prisons. None of them tip well).

I only got to do one delivery on my own, and my car had a snafu midway through. Heard a loud, frightening noise, and every light on the dashboard came on. Luckily, the car was still running, and I managed to get it back, where I determined that some sort of belt had snapped. Some force exists in the universe that does not wish for me to own a car.

Borrowing one now in order to keep working.


6/5/02
Adventures in Pizza Delivery
I was assigned to make the delivery to Orchard Hill Road. It was an order some said we shouldn't have taken; the sun was going down, and Orchard Hill Road is one of the 30+ streets to which we won't deliver after dark. You wouldn't think there'd be so many bad neighborhoods in a town this size, but there are. Some streets are on the list not because the neighborhood is bad, exactly, it's just that there are no street lights and the houses are unnumbered. These places are hard to find by day, and impossible to find by night.

It was hard to find Orchard Hill Road; many of the streets down which I had to turn had no signs to identify them. I was lost. It was getting to be a race against the sun...could I make find the right place in time?

Well, long story short, I found it, and the fellow who had ordered the pizza seemed perfectly friendly. It wasn't what I'd call a nice neighborhood, but the guy gave me one of the best tips of the night. Not that that's saying much; half of the people in this town don't tip at all.

Weirdest sign of the evening: "No radio noise beyond this point" at the entrance to a trailer park.


6/6/02
First, the interesting sign of the day was at Georgia Military College, which is housed in what was, before the Civil War, the state capitol building. A plaque in the front announced that Alexis de Toqueville stayed there for awhile during the 1820's.

This new job as a pizza delivery man is likely to be very educational.

I think I'm going to like this job (except for the part where I make deliveries to neighborhoods where I ought not tread, which happens a lot). I get to see the inside of places I normally wouldn't see, like military schools, prisons, and Baptist youth centers, and explore the dark recesses of this weird old town. This was a very classy town before and just after the Civil War, so it's not unusual to see a Victorian mansion sticking out of the ghetto like a sore thumb. Today I found myself on the corner of Wolverine Street and Panic Avenue. I need a photo of that. (edited later to add - never got one. street sign was missing.)


6/9/02
Starbucks Pizza Delivery
I must admit that I enjoy delivering pizza for the most part. It's an easy job (mostly), and a relaxed work environment. Of course, "relaxed work environment" is another way of saying that they don't exactly run a tight ship. After a week, I still don't have a uniform. I've been making my deliveries in a plain black shirt and pants that I just happen to own (I know, I know...a real stretch from my normal wardrobe!)

I was starting to feel like a bum, so today I took matters into my own hands. I didn't have a Pizza Hut uniform, but I DID still have my old Starbucks apron. I'd been keeping it in the back of my car.

I'd joked about using it for deliveries. I'd told people I was considering it. Last night, I told Carol that I was planning on doing it. There was no going back.

So, right before going off on my first delivery of the evening, I slipped it on. Now I looked like a sport! Wearing some kind of uniform looks better than not at all.

So I made all of my deliveries tonight wearing a Starbucks uniform. And here's the really weird part....NO ONE NOTICED. Not one person even gave me a funny look. Perhaps they'd never seen a Starbucks apron before; there's no Starbucks within about 80 miles of here (yes! such a place does exist!) But Milledgevillians, with all of the observational skills that allow them to find their way around a town where only about half of the streets have street signs, didn't notice that I was wearing entirely the wrong sort of uniform.

Here's the other interesting thing: my tips soared. I went from averaging 70cents per delivery (including the 50 cents I get per run automatically) to averaging about nearly a buck. It can't be because of the apron - people decide what to tip well before you get there, and, as mentioned, they didn't notice the apron anyway - but, well, it's interesting, isn't it?

Today's Interesting Sign of the Day was one in a very rich gated community near the lake: "Please drive gently." I don't see how it is possible to drive gently. You can drive slowly or carefully, but being gentle in a machine the size of a car just isn't going to happen.

Today's Best Quote From a Redneck: (on why there were no numbers identifying his house): "We used to have a mail box, but we took it down. We weren't getting no mail, anyway."


6/12/02
There's a remote street in town called Cambridge street, and, from the looks of it, it might just as well be Cambridge, Massachucetes. All of the houses look very New Englandish, and, (this is the really cool part) you have to drive through a covered bridge to get there. I kept expecting the headless horseman to show up! If one of the mail boxes in the neighborhood had said "Crane" or "Van Tassell" I would have died of pure glee.



6/13/02
I have to work tonight. While I admit that I generally enjoy my job by day, I really, really hate it after dark. Finding the houses is a challenge by day, but scary by night.

Got lost in a very dark trailer park ghetto trying to deliver a pizza. No lights in the neighborhood, no numbers on the trailers, no tip. Of course, I was more upset that the rich guy in the house on the lake who had about a mile long driveway only gave me 28cents. I wanted to knock on his door and ask if it bothered him that an octogenarian woman living in a tiny place on Wolverine Street had just given me four times what he gave me, but thought better of it. I guess you don't get rich by handing out a lot of tips.

6/14/02
Tried an experiment while working last night regarding the wearing of my Starbucks apron on deliveries. Once again, no one appeared to notice, but the results speak for themselves:

Deliveries made, total: 10
Deliveries made, with apron: 5
Deliveries made, without apron: 5
Average tip, with apron: $3
Average tip, without apron: $0

That's right. Not one person tipped me when I wasn't in the apron, but the tips when I wore the apron were awfully high, regardless of the neighborhood. Normally, you can look at where you're going on the map and predict pretty reasonably what the tip will be.

Perhaps the variables weren't all controlled, and I'm no scientist, but you can't argue with results, my friends.

6/17/02
In Milledgeville, there is a place I call the cop farm. It's a little complex of nice-but-tiny duplexes, and just about every car in every driveway is a police car. For obvious reasons, I drive exactly the speed limit in that neighborhood.

Today I made a delivery to there to a guy whose name, I swear to God, was Magnum.

He tipped me two bucks, but didn't notice the starbucks apron. Some detective!


6/22/02
Yep. It's the Apron.
Yesterday (friday), they gave me a uniform at Pizza Hut. So I wore that, without the Starbucks apron I've been wearing. I made less than five bucks in tips the whole night.

Tonight I made my first two deliveries without the apron and didn't get a dime. Naturally, I decided that I'd better put the apron back on.

My first delivery of the evening WITH the apron was to 201 Jefferson Street - The Walker House!

The Walker House is a 19th Century light-green gothic revival mansion. Mr. Walker, so the story goes, was the meanest man in the entire state. He made his sick son work in the fields, then wouldn't call a doctor when he collapsed. The kid wound up wandering out of bed, getting dizzy, and falling down the stairs to a grizzly death. The house is now haunted by either Mr. Walker or his son, depending on who's telling the story. Some also say that it's haunted by Mr. Walker's first wife, whom he also killed.

So I went up to the house in my apron...inside the door, I could see the infamous staircase...I knocked and waited...and waited...

Finally, the door was answered by a guy in a Braves t-shirt. He tipped me five bucks - not only the largest tip I've ever been given, but more than I'd made the entire previous night.

Clearly, the apron is staying on.

In all, in my first night back in the apron brought in a record $26 in tips. That shatters the old record of $20, and is a 500% increase over what I made without the apron.

So I may have a uniform now...but the apron isn't going anywhere.


6/24/02
The Continuing Storrrrry Of a Man in an Apron

I had to make a delivery to the front desk at the Hampton Inn. The place was empty but for an excitable fellow who immediately referred to me as "his main man."

He then proceeded to ask me various questions about the girl on the phone who had taken his order. It seems he was trying to entice her to "hook up" with him that night, and that she had expressed tentative interest. "And when I say ' get a room,' I MEAN 'get a room!" He said. "We run the hotel!"

He gave me detailed instructions on what I should tell the girl about him. How he looked, etc. Mostly, he was concerned that I let her know that he ran the hotel.

All the while, naturally, I was waiting for him to shake my hand and slip me some "hello money." Naturally, if you're going to ask a stranger to help you in your sexual conquests, a bribe is appropriate. But no such thing was forthcoming. In fact, the guy didn't even tip me - not a dime! And I was wearing the apron and everything!

So I took his name and number back to the girl who worked the phone.

"What did the guy look like?" she asked me.

"Like he had some sort of disease," I replied.


6/27/02
Here's what's nice: slumber parties full of scantily clad girls always tip extremely well. And they often offer me a beer.

Of course, I'm not about to take a beer while I'm out driving, and I doubt that any of the girls at these things are my type, but, still it's nice.

Today, I delivered to a group of girls who were painting a t-shirt that read "suck for a buck." I kept waiting for them to ask if I had a dollar (I had about twenty), but no such luck.


6/29/02
Does Killings Avenue SOUND like a good place to go after dark?

It's a street that is just like it sounds - bad neighborhood, no street lights, no numbers and on the houses and trailers, has a train track running practially in the people's front yards. The dogs aren't tied up and they all like to chase cars. Keeping from hitting them with no lights is tough work, since they aren't bright enough to get out of the way on their own.

I had to go there after dark last night. Even with the customer on the phone, it took me forever to find the place. She thought that standing on her porch would make it easier for me to find her place, but you couldn't see the porch from the road. When I got back, I promptly added Killings Avenue to the list of streets where we can't deliver after dark. There were no objections.



7/02/02
The problem with delivering to certain places (the veterans' home, the hospitals, etc) is that you rarely have enough information to find the place. For example, you might get an address reading "Veterans Home, room 302," but that won't tell you which of the four buildings in the veterans' home it's in in the first place. And they all have a room 302.

Such was the case last night. I was sent to the hospital (the regular one, for the first time, not the mental one), and spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find the nurse in the ICU who had ordered the pizza (she tipped me two bucks).

When I finally got back, the boss asked me where I'd been all that time.

"Show some sympathy!" I cried. "I just got out of the intensive care unit!"


7/10/02
Nothing happening much lately, Nothing terribly exciting happening at work - except for that delivery yesterday where a guy was running around the yard shouting "do you wanna die?" but I'm not sure he was even talking to me. Didn't stick around to find out.
Also of note: there is a street here called Swint. Does that sound like a word for a private part to anyone else?

7/13/02
CAUGHT!
After over a month of not one customer noticing the Starbucks apron, last night it was noticed by TWO different customers!

The first was a guy in an apartment. I suppose it's worth mentioning that he was an Asian guy, because I've delivered to about two Asian people in the entire time I've been making deliveries in this town. This town is almost exclusively black and white.

The other guy was an officer at one of the prisons.

Both reacted to seeing the apron by asking excitedly whether there was now a Starbucks in town. "They have the best coffee in the world," said the guy in the prison. That was interesting to hear, because in the time I spent working at Starbucks, I heard a lot more people telling me they thought the coffee there was remarkably overrated.

7/15/02
Whilst delivering pizza tonight...

I was bitten by a dog on two different deliveries. Neither time was bad enough to break through my shoe, but, still, the dogs bit me and I'm pissed off. The owners saw the whole thing, and proceeded to say things like "oh, that dog's just a big lover" and tip me exactly a dollar, like it was some priveledge for me to be bitten by their obnoxious mutt. They're quite lucky that, while the dog was attatched to my shoe, I didn't just start shaking my leg violently around. No jury would've convicted me (I hope). Normally I make it a rule that, if the dog is not tied up (and few of them are in this town), I call the person and make them come outside. No matter how politely I ask, people seem to get awfully offended that I think their gigantic dog isn't just barking and growling at me because he likes me.

Having a dog outside but untied and then calling the pizza man ought to be an arrestable offense. Especially if you only tip the guy a lousy buck.

8/31/02
Get Your Hands Off Me, It Makes Me Feel So Cheap!
Made a delivery tonight to a bunch of rowdy rednecks who were staying in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere. While one tried to figure out the difference between a 10 and a 20, another asked if I had any joints on me that I could sell them.


"Nope," I said."

"We'll see 'bout that!" he said. He then began to pat me down to make sure I didn't have any, while his buddy gave me exact change - no tip - for the pizza. Boy, did I feel cheap!

Just before I left, the joint-searcher asked if I knew of any local whorehouses.

Now, I'm the pizza man. Of COURSE I know where the whorehouses are. But I'm not about to be helpful to drunken jerks who feel me up for drugs and then decline to tip me. However, I was not above lying to them.


"Sure," I said. "Go down this road about 2 miles, then you'll see a road called Laboratory Road. Take a left down that, and you'll see a white house with a sign that says 'Miranda's'. You can't miss it."

There is no such house as the one described. In reality, those directions will them to a place in between the mental hospital and two of the prisons.

Likely as not, they belong in one of those places, anyway.

10/16/02
I drove around in the rain and in the dark (very low visibilty) through dirty streets all night, dealing with people who were really rather mean to me, all for a total of $6 in tips for the whole night. I may not have this job much longer. In the summer, I had daylight to keep the job, well, reasonable. The loss of daylight hours make this job WAY harder.


I still haven't told you the story about the eggs.

Or the one about the ketchup.

Or how I've come to know that stolen flowers DO smell better.

I have not listed the racial comments I've overheard (about me) coming from inside the houses or from my manager, who only seems to know three words (starting with F, S and N) (though she's still nowhere near as offensive as Larry).

I have not told about the "nursing home for elderly patients" at the mental hospital.

Or about the one time I delivered to a patient who insisted he was supposed to have Sprite as a topping.

Or the time the cops searched the pizza box for drugs before I could go to the door.

And I have not listed the huge amount of car trouble I've had because of this job - the roads and driveways tend to be in horrendous shape, and my car takes a beating nightly. I have a warranty with Goodyear, but the only Goodyear place in town is called (and I'm not making this up) Bubba's Tire Center. The quality of the work I had done there was so terrible (the repairs would last a week, tops) that it's worth the money to pay to have a better place to the repairs properly.

It's time to go, I think.

But I certainly hope I can go out with a bang. I still regret not going out of Po'Folks with a bang. I tried and tried, but just couldn't get myself fired at that job.


10/18/02
This Pizza Hut Life For Me is Through...You Oughta Quit This Scene, Too
In the past two nights, three people have accused me of being racist (twice for not being able to break a hundred dollar bill, once for parking in the street rather than the driveway). Apparently some people think that, if you call the pizza man a racist, he'll give you your pizza for free to show that he isn't. Didn't work.

Tonight, a busy Friday night, I made $2.31 in tips. And they've decided that it's my responsibility to do a good deal of the prep work in the kitchen now.

So I told them to find themselves another patsy. Thursday will be my last night at Pizza Hut.

And I still have the addresses of assholes and repeat-offender non-tippers.

Coming up next - Revenge in Milledgeville!

12/06/02
Back in Business
I just returned from my first night delivering for Papa Johns in Gwinnett County (suburban Atlanta). Here's a list of ways that delivering here is different from Milledgeville:

-Tips. The most I ever made in a single run in M'ville was $9. Tonight, I made 12 on my first run. Made a good deal more in the course of the first night than I made on my best night ever before.

-Friendly people. The customers and co-workers all seemed friendly and respectable. Not one person seemed particularly trashy, and no customer was openly mean to me. No shouting.

-Nice neighborhoods. No run-down houses with bullet holes in the doors. I never felt nervous about leaving my car running. Sure, some of the guys might've been corporate crooks, but you can pretty generally walk among them without too much trouble, as long as you don't bump into anything or sign anything.

-Signs! All of the streets have legible signs, and the houses are numbered. Most streets even have street lights!

-Quality product. While the "Chicago Dish" is okay at Pizza Hut, most of their pizza tastes as though it's been deep fried. At Domino's, at least in Milledgeville, it tastes like it's been deep fried, then stepped on. Papa John's is pretty good stuff.

-Roads. I already mentioned that they all had signs, but forgot to add that they were all paved. Even the driveways!

-Busy workload. There was always a pizza or two to be delivered. I never had to wash any dishes or oil any pans. In fact, they don't oil pans here.

Memorable Gigs

Notes from some memorable live sets I played, back when I played often.


2/11/02
Tonight's set(an open mic 20min set in the Arts and Sciences Auditorium)marks the first time I've had the plug pulled on me!

3 of the 4 people who preceded me sang a capella religious stuff. Of the hardcore I'm-going-to-heaven-and-you're-not sort. The third guy even made it very clear that they'd come to make the evening into "Church." In response, I happened to let it slip to a couple of people that I was going to close my set, after "Lullaby in 12 Nursery Rhymes," by singing a soulful a cappella rendition of either "Shalome" or a song of mine called "Folksingers All Want To Go To Hell." The news got back to the guy in charge of the event. So, right after "Lullaby," they pulled the plug. I think that's a sign that I'm moving on up in the world.

It was a good set, anyway. "Cheerleaders" went over especially well, as usual (applause mid-song!) and I did manage to get in some knocks on Valentines Day (sorry, Gwen).

Here's the setlist:
Uncle Herbert's Extra Rowdy Funeral
Polly Vaughn Dreams of England
Friday Avenue (extended)
Pushing Cheerleaders Down the Stairs
Lullaby in 12 Nursery Rhymes (extended)


6/19/02
The Wednesday night show in Douglasville marked the first show I've played with more than one other member of the band in over a year.

I think that the set went reasonably well; it featured an intro to "The Radio is Haunted" that I think is worth reprinting:

"Let me take you away to the far away town of Atlantic, Iowa. There's a place there called Van's Chat and Chew...I hope you don't do both at the same time. Anyway, the jukebox there is full of teenage car crash death songs from the late fifties...stuff like 'there were some kind of guts all over my wheels / internal organs on my windshield." There're also a few songs by Whoopty Norm Nettleman and the Dairyland Dutchmen. You can't have a jukebox in Iowa without Whoopty Norm."

The full setlist:
After It Rains Again (new rock arrangement)
The Radio is Haunted
Hallelujah (by Leonard Cohen)(everyone else is covering it, why not us?)
Cheerleaders
Lullaby in 12 Nursery Rhymes (extended)
Axl

The extension of "Lullaby" was a verse of Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero" at the beginning and a verse of Dylan Thomas' "In My Craft or Sullen Art" at the end.


7/26/02 - Pittsburgh
I never pictured Pennsylvania as a scenic state, but I found it to be lovely and mountainous. Even the retail wasteland, perched atop mountains, looked nice ("look!" I would shout at at the best buy on top of the mountain. "Shangri-La has a bright yellow sign now!")

Jamie had never been in an airplane before, but was a remarkably good first time flyer. He never said a word about crashing or dying. His only disappointment was the lack of Hare Krisnas in the airport. Well, that and the fact that the head of his guitar broke on the plane.

We arrived in Pittsburgh very early. I love that, in this day and age, you can wake up in Atlanta and be in Pittsburgh with plenty of time to spare before lunch.

For dinner, we took the shuttle to a nearby mall with the delightful members of Ilk, the Swarthmore College Filk Performers. Filkers performers close to my own age! They were a fun bunch, and a great band, what with the bodrhan and violin and all. Actually, they sounded a lot like the old Maritime Band, back when I had Joe on drums and Margret on violin (how I miss that violin!) Frankly, the whole weekend made me want to switch to Swarthmore. If I were a rich man...dai dai dai dai dum....

Our set began with the usual Technical Difficulties Tango. Jamie's guitar, as I said, was broken. And mine broke a string right before the set, so we wound up borrowing another one, and it took us a few songs to get them properly in tune.

Other than that, the set went well enough. The crowd was Standing Room Only!

Here's the setlist: Uncle Herbert
Come Home, Father
Thought She Was a Goth
One Man's Poetry
Boy Named HTML
Big Bad Retail Wasteland
The Radio is Haunted
We Have Ways
The Death of Me Yet
Cheerleaders
Lucy Loves Lincoln
Some of My Best Friends Are Weirdos
Song for Lee Greenwood
The MTV
Snowflakes In Your Hair

The next day, we did "Howl (For Mayor McCheese)" a smaller show.


9/10/02
I was the first person playing at an on-campus outdoor event last night.

"First up," said the very white MC, "Adam Selzer is gonna come here and represent for y'all! Let's hear some representin' for Adam Selzer!" I grabbed the mike. "Just by way of correction, that I have never represented before and will not in the forseeable future. I'll play some music, but I'm not here to represent anything." Worst introduction since Alan Lomax introduced the Butterfield Blues Band. I played "After it Rains Again" then improvised a long intro to the next song. "To quote the ungrammatical vernacular, there are many things which are not where it's at. Full scale reproductions of the one ring from the Franklin Mint are not where it's at. Brunswick Stew and other foods in the ketchup family are not where it's at, and bracelets with four consonants stitched in aren't where it's at. But one thing that's almost where it's at is polka music; it's like klezmer without the soul. Here's one off the 'Whoopty Norm Tries to Outdo Lee Greenwood' record. Song about our founding fathers." I then played my polka song, "Lucy Loves Lincoln," about getting dumped by a girl obsessed with Abe Lincoln. This is the same event, albeit run by different people, at which I had the plug pulled on me back in February. After sitting through several people singing hymns and saying that they were trying to turn the whole thing into a Christian event, word got back to the sound man that I was going to close my set by singing "Folksingers All Want To Go To Hell." BTW - new gig announced: I will be playing a "halloween special" show with Joe Cato on drums on October 26th at Lake Laurel in Milledgeville. Officially, the event is a halloween party for Vampire gamers, and the set will be full of halloween-themed songs. A new verse of "Cheerleaders" has been written just for the occasion. Other band members may also appear (and anyone who WANTS to be appear should get in touch, maybe we can work something out). More details when I have them.

Archaeology

My top dresser drawer has been my junk drawer for as long as I can remember, and some of the junk has been in there for a long, long time. Every time I open it, I wonder if I'll discover the cure for some disease (or possibly some bacteria that'll give me cholera). Anyway, here's some results from a recent dig:



A handful of ID cards - my 8th grade school ID, a metallica fan club card from 97, and an MST3K Info Club card from about 95.



M.U.S.C.L.E. men! They've been in that yellow thingy for YEARS - the first use I remember using the yellow thingie for was to carry around Garbage Pail Kids 1985, but I've had it since before that. I'd say the muscle men found their way in in the late 80s, though they've been in the drawer since 86 or so. Also included: some arrowheads my neighbor gave me (early 90s), a Steve Avery rookie card (89 topps), and a magnet that probably dates the the early 80s.



In eighth grade I had a hat that was covered in buttons (no, this was not hip at the time. I was a dork, then, too). Left to right: an anti-smoking one that I think I got at the Iowa State Fair in the early 90s, a handmade one (it was supposed to be an anarchy sign over a smily face with the words "crazy days are happy days." Uncool though my hat was, this button was well-admired), and a "why be normal" that came from a store at Merle Hay Mall called DV8. They sold buttons like this, incense, and a fine selection of junk made outta hemp. I thought they were the coolest store in Des Moines.



Four early 80s audio tapes. I think they found their way into the drawer when I digitized some of the stories I recorded on side 2 (which I did a lot of in the 80s) a few years back. The stories are wacky and full of references to "Muppet Babies." Hearing them a few years ago, my mother described them as "what A.D.D. sounds like."



My mom started working for Mattel in the late 80s; this is some Toy Fair schwag she picked up. A Ren and Stimpy cassingle signed in ballpoint by Billy West (who did the voices and ended up doing many Futurama voices). The button advertises a "The Last Action Hero," a total flop film that Mattel was all excited about in 1993 or so. I never saw it.



Finally, we have me in the costume I wore to school on Halloween one day in high school. Going to a school in Gwinnett County, Georgia dressed as Gene Simmons - even 15 years after most of the religious groups stopped talking about KISS - was an excellent way to attract interesting lectures. I'd put it on the Weird Chicago bus, but I'm pretty sure Simmons would try to sue me or something.


There was also something in there that's making me itch, but I'm a bit afraid to guess what it might have been.

Uphill Both Ways: Toy Collecting Before Ebay

Last night I talked awhile on the phone with Seth, one of my oldest friends, and we reminisced about what toy collecting was like in 1992 or 93.

It was a very different scene in those days - actually, it wasn't a scene at all. It was just the two of us, really. None of the comic book shops in town had large sections of Star Wars memorabilia. There wasn't a store in town that sold such things. There certainly wasn't an ebay. But it was an age of bargains. I was into collecting Star Wars stuff (this did NOT make you cool in those days) and Seth was into Transformers (this did not make you cool then, either). Star Wars and Transformer geekiness wasn't at all like it would later become in those days - the great transformer revival, in particular, was something we never would have predicted.

And in those days, man, the hard part was just finding the stuff in the first place - action figure dealers were harder to find than drug dealers (I guarantee you there were more drug dealers in Des Moines than toy dealers). We spent countless saturdays biking to garage sales, wandering around the giant flea market at the fairgrounds, and bugging kids around the neighborhood who were cleaning their closets. Now and then we'd have really big scores - shoeboxes full of figures for five bucks, boxes of vehicles for ten. Seth once got an ENORMOUS box of transformers - so big we had to take turns shlepping it - for about ten bucks. I got to where I could spot a booth with Star Wars stuff at a flea market from any point in my peripheral vision.

We would scour the newspaper classified ads - there'd be someone selling Star Wars stuff about every six months or so. We had a whole catalog of vague leads; people who knew they had a whole case of stuff in their attic somewhere, thrift stores (that may or may not have existed) in some small town or another that were said to have a box of stuff sitting in the corner. I bought a whole bunch of stuff from some guy out in Colfax, and a Cantina Adventure Set from a guy named Doug who turned out to be a serious collector - he had two ROOMS full of stuff, and was my hero.

If we needed a specific piece of some sort, the process generally involved writing letters to comic book shops that advertised in the back of Action Figure News and Toy Review (which, itself, was not easy to come across, as no store in the area I could go on my bike carried it). Or risk my parents' wrath by making a long distance call to one of them - a call that could cost me a dollar that could have been spent on a Marvel Tales Spider-man reprint or a slim jim and a jolt cola.

My main hunt then was for Imperial Dignitary, a wrinkly dude in purple who appears for about five seconds in Return of the Jedi. I never saw a loose one for sale, only carded ones (one of which I eventually bought when the opportunity came up - we drove to the address of one of the stores that advertised in magazines on a trip to Chicago. It was just someone's house, in reality, but the woman was very nice and sold me some of the stuff that they had in stock in their living room). There are currently several loose ones on ebay, all for what would have been a dream price for me even at the time. And blank "card backs" with bubbles are easy to get - NO ONE had those then, or knew of anyone who did. Getting some of those was like a pipe dream for me.

If you'd told me about ebay then, it would have seemed like a dream come true. And it is, in many ways. Maybe the Good Old Days are now.

In other ways, though, it's ruined collecting. For all practical purposes, the vintage figures are still in stores - more expensive than they were in 1985, but just about as easy to get. Even in 1985, getting a Han Solo in carbonite was nearly impossible. Now, if you have the cash, it's as easy as placing a bid.

I remember one spring, around this time of year, Seth and I made a pilgrimage to Mason City, Iowa, to visit a comic book shop that sold figures - the guy who ran it was kind of a jerk, but he usually had the best booth at the flea market. This is probably the only time that anyone, anywhere, EVER, got excited about a trip to Mason City, Iowa. It was a great day for me, one that I'll always remember fondly, even though the place didn't turn out to be a particularly great score. And there'd be absolutely no point in taking that trip nowadays.

And we didn't have emo, either. In my day we had "alternative." And we didn't get to download it, we had to buy it, or copy it off a friend. And there were no CD-Rs; we had to use cassettes. And we liked it! We liked it fine!

Reflections on '90s Alternative as Oldies

Today the cafe is blasting the 90s alternative classics station - I suppose that listening to songs that you loved as a kid in an oldies context is sort of a rite of passage. Since I'm not working on anything in particular this morning, I'm taking the time simply to reflect a bit on the music that was so, so important to me when I was a teenager, now that I can sort out which songs from the era are going to be the "oldies" and which I'll never hear again. Just as with any other era, the songs that are hits when they come out and the songs that become "standards" may not be related to each other at all. I rarely hear a song on classic rock radio that I don't know, but if I look at a Top 10 list from any given week in 1968, there'll be maybe one or two songs that I recognize. Many of the standards were never big hits in their day. I'd say that it was all about the Test of Time, but there's probably more to it than that. And one day, I'll figure it out.

Anyway, today the radio is playing...


Alanis - "You Oughta Know"
There are some good lines here ('every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope you feel it' - nice). This is also about the only song I know of that makes the F word sound like a really dirty word, not just filler. Some people say it for shock value (korn, I'm looking at you), some people say it for fun (Ben Folds has more fun with swearing than anyone), and some just say it because they need an extra syllable or two. The way she spits it out here actually sounds dirty. The hurt in this song alone made people complain that she was "too angry" to this day, even though I honestly can't think of another song by her that's particularly angry. (saw her live twice, once in an arena, once in the park).

Hole - songs from Live Through This
Courtney Love did some good work when she was taking credit for songs that Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan wrote. She's right up there with Wagner in the ol' "you can't let your opinion of the artist influence your opinion of the art" stuff. (never saw them live)

Green Day - "Longview"
I don't think the "they aren't punk anymore' backlash that got so pervasive in the mid 90's was because they were signed to a big label; it was because they suddenly became every prep's favorite band (after Aerosmith). This record layed bare the dirty secret that puberty sucks for everyone - prep, geek, and punk alike. That's why the preps dug it, too. We shouldn't have blamed them. I wasn't surprised when they made a record as good as American Idiot 10 years later - I knew they had it in 'em. Since I wrote this, they've also played "Basket Case," which single-handedly deconstructs the entire adolescent mindset. I remember thinking that that song described my life perfectly in those days, and I think everyone else did, too. (saw them live once, in a lowdown club in '95 on the Insomniac tour. I guess it was technically a "theatre," but it was too crummy to be called anything but a club).

Cake - "I Will Survive"
Still amusing, but no more necessary now than it ever was (saw them at a fesitval once)

K's Choice - "Addict" (or whatever this song is called)
One of the better songs about the old "I can quit whenever I want" myth. I thought their song "I Smoke a Lot" was a more amusing look at addiction, though. (saw them once, opening for Alanis at the arena show). I remember seeing people on a bus singing along to this song.

Oasis - "Live Forever"
This is a fine song, even though they apparently couldn't be bothered to think up an extra verse, leaving them to just repeat one of them at the end. Given the aspirations that are a theme of the song, it was a perfect way for us to be introduced to a band so determined to take over the world (and who came as close as anyone did in those days). Of course, the "buzz bin" clip only showed two seconds of the song, and it was the falsetto line in the chorus, which made me think they were one of those really artsy alternative bands that are hard to listen to. I remember I fell in love with the song listening to it on headphones while waiting for my ride to come on a cold, snow night. (never saw them live).

Bush - "Glycerine."
I didn't like them much then. Still don't. That one record had hit single after hit single, but I haven't heard many of them in years. They haven't stood the test of time very well, I guess. This is probably the only song you're likely to hear on oldies radio. Maybe "Come Down." What else did they do again? I can't even remember. (never saw them live).

Nirvana - "Heart Shaped Box."
I wasn't a big fan of anything of theirs other than Unplugged, which I thought justified the hype all by itself, but listening to them now it seems perfectly clear that they were head and shoulders above most of their contemporaries. And, ten years later, they're still big with the kids - I see Nirvana shirts at just about every school I visit.  (never saw them).

Smashing Pumpkins - "Tonight, Tonight"
I think that even before Mellon Collie came out, there was a sense in the air that this would be the Last Great Alternative record. Funnily enough, they hadn't really played this one on the radio today when I started writing this entry; I just started typing this because wanted to write about it. But it just came on. Either my psychic powers are in full bloom or my brain has figured out the pattern of oldies radio the same way some people can figure out the pattern on Pac Man. I remember that the time I saw the Pumpkins live, Billy Corgan kept apologizing for how badly they were playing that night, but I didn't notice. I think the problem was that, with the video screens and stuff, they were acting like a glam metal band, which is really what they were, but that was not a hip thing to be in the mid 90s.

Beck - "Loser"
I don't remember if we realized how funny this song was when it came out - the pervasiveness of whiny songs made it too easy to mix this in with the rest without realizing that it was satire. Looking back, it's hard to imagine I thought a song that opened with "in the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey" was supposed to be taken seriously. (never saw him live)

Jewel - You Were Meant For Me -
My image of Jewel is kind of tarnished by the fact that after she became a hit, she wouldn't shut up about how she lived in her van for a while, and apparently started thinking she was an angel sent to remove pain from the world through poetry. And the opening lines of this song ("got maple syrup, everything but you") sounds kind of corny, but the rest of the song really makes that first line work. It's actually a damned good song. Not by any strech the sappy love song people think is - it's a post-breakup song by a girl who sounds like she's about to embark upon a rewarding career as a stalker. It's the little details; making a line about leaving wet towels on the floor sound devasting is tough to do, but she pulls it off here. Outside of the corny intro that turns a lot of people off, there's really just one bad line: "consoled a cup of coffee, but it didn't wanna talk" - what did she expect? Maybe the coffee was busy talking to Neil Diamond's equally unrepsonsive chair from "I Am I Said." This one is sung with the same vulnerability that allowed Jewel to do the only version of Ian and Sylvia's "Someday Soon" I've ever heard that actually captures the foolishness of a teenage narrator.      I'm still not entirely sure whether we were supposed to take that dance album she did seriously. It's one of those albums that I think is probably pretty great as long as you can see the humor behind it (like "Thick as a Brick," "Bat Out of Hell," and "Welcome to the Black Parade.")

Alice in Chains - "Man in the Box"
This is one of those songs that got into my head so thoroughly that hearing it now makes me feel exactly like it's winter 93/94 again. Moreso than others. I don't think it's nearly as wickedly cool now as I did then, but i can see what the appeal was. (never saw them; they didn't play live too much)

Gin Blossoms - "Hey Jealousy"
 I swear to God, the first time I heard this on the radio, I thought it was John Stamos singing. Between the voice and the fact that it sounds, musically and thematically, much more like a classic rock song than anything else that was on the radio at the time, I spent about a week wondering if this was a Jesse and the Rippers song. In more recent years I've gotten WAY more into this song and their other hit, "Found Out About You." Doug Hopkins, the songwriter they fired before recording the album because he was in no shape to be in a touring band, may have been a genius.

Nine Inch Nails - "Last"
I honestly think this may be the first time I've EVER heard this song on the radio - they sure didn't play it on KGGO ten years ago. The only time I ever heard it anywhere other then my own headphones was at a Nine Inch Nails / Ministry laser show at the science center (and I'm not 100% sure they played it there). I remember thinking that the line "this isn't meant to last" sounded like he was saying "this is your mental ass," which might, in fact, be WAY better. It's interesting how some songs that weren't really hits in their day still become standards - "Break On Through" by the Doors was a total flop in 1967, for instance. And "Heaven Beside You" by Alice in Chains seems a lot more popular now than it did back then. (saw NIN live on the tour with David Bowie in 95, same week as I saw my first Dylan concert)

Jars of Clay - "Flood"
One of the bigger "christian rock" crossover hits. I remember hearing a lot of religious kids at school slag these guys off for being "too secular." I keep wanting to say "if you can't swim after forty days, then you've probably been dead for about 39 of them."

Live - "Lightning Crashes"
I feel as though I've softened a bit on my position on "Lightning Crashes" - when it came out, it sounded to me like a blatant, clumsy attempt to say something profound about birth, death, and eyeballs. I still think it would work better as the last two minutes of an ER episode than it does as a song, but now I'm just impressed that they got they managed to work the word "placenta" into a song. That's tough to pull off. It's still not my favorite of their songs, though. I prefer "Selling the Drama," which I first heard on the radio on the way home from a Metallica / Danzig / Suicidal Tendencies concert in 1994 (which was, up to that point, probably the highlight of my life).  I saw them live for the first time in 2000, when they were on tour with Counting Crows (who tend to get lumped in with Dave Matthews as a prep rock band, but were, in my opinion, about the most under-rated band on the planet). Saw them again on tour with Counting Crows in 2007.

Collective Soul - "The World I Know."
Like Live, these guys would have been a terrific rock band if they didn't have to be an alternative band.
See, here's the thing about Collective Soul: what they really are, when you get down to it, is a sing-a-along arena rock band. They just had to sort HIDE that side of themselves, because it really wasn't cool to be one of those in 1995, when music was supposed to be harder to listen to. Fist-pumping, sing-a-longs, guitar solos, etc, were considered lame tropes of "mainstream" songs (as opposed to "alternative" songs, which, of course, was the mainstream at the time). At the time, it was really, really uncool to like Springsteen. Sometimes I wonder what we were thinking in the 90s.

Pearl Jam - "Dissident"
This was probably my favorite of their songs; it sounded great blasting in a video arcade (specifically Laser X, the awesome laser tag place at my mall that occupied the space formerly occupied by Aladdin's Castle). "Daughter" will always give me a warm feeling as it reminds me of being in a van full of people singing along to every word. Most of their songs made very little linear sense, but they managed to convey emotions pretty well - "Yellow Ledbetter" manages to convey sheer ragged glory and full-on emotion with barely an intelligible word in the lyrics, and "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" is a devastating character sketch. I think that grunge might have fared better if they'd called it "impressionist rock," a lable which probably applies better to Pearl Jam than any other. (never saw them live, they had that thing with ticketmaster that kept them from touring much back then)

Stone Temple Pilots - "Interstate Love Song"
Time has not smiled on STP. In those days, we thought they were a shameless Pearl Jam rip-off - we didn't MIND, but we knew, deep down, that they were hardly innovators. The difference is that now I can listen to Pearl Jam and think "hey, that really was a good song." I don't get that same feeling with STP. Maybe a twinge of nostalgia and an appreciation for a really good riff here and there, but that's about it.

Did The Bangles Foreshadow "Twilight?"

So I was just wandering through the grocery store and singing along with "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles. It's a catchy song; I like the vocals - Susanna Hoffs has a fantastic voice (check out the albums of classic rock covers she did with Matthew Sweet - incredible!). But the lyrics really disturb me nowadays - it's one of those "I just met you, but you solve all my problems and I can never be without you" sort of deals. With lots of creepy touches. You know. Like, say, Twilight. Let's deconstruct it, shall we?

Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling
Do you feel my heart beating
Do you understand
Do you feel the same
Am I only dreaming
Is this burning an eternal flame?

I hope the guy she's singing to DOES feel the same, or this is some pretty serious pressure. Nothing about this song makes me feel like they've been a couple very long. They're one of those new couples that are in love after one date (like Romeo and Juliet, Edward and Bella, Jack and Rose, or, well, to be fair, Alley and Edward in I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It). Or, anyway, the singer thinks they are. That she has to ask the guy so many times if he feels the same is not a good sign.

What if he closes his eyes, gives her his hand, and says something snotty, like "no, I don't think we're there yet?"

Or, perhaps more likely, "No, I don't feel your heart beating. Do you think maybe I'd have better luck if I put my hand under your left breast instead in your hand?" Seriously, Bangles. Your heart is in your chest, not your palm. Maybe if he was holding your WRIST...

Anyway...

I believe it's meant to be, darling
I watch you when you are sleeping
You belong with me
Do you feel the same
Am I only dreaming
Is this burning an eternal flame?


That's either really sweet or more than a little bit freaky (edit to add: Like when Edward spies on Bella while she sleeps - it's creepy, but some people think it's romantic. This song really does have a "Twilight" vibe, don't you think? Did the Bangles predict the phenomenon?).

Also: does she mean "when you sleep in my bed, I enjoy watching you sleep when you fall asleep before I do," or "I watch you when you are sleeping using some high powered binoculars and a carefully arranged system of mirrors?" There's a fine line between being sweet and being a stalker, and this girl is straddling it.

Say my name...

My favorite line, though I wish she'd added something like "b---h" at the end. There's space for it in the meter!

sun shines through the rain
A whole life so lonely
And then you come and ease the pain
I don't want to lose this feeling

Here we have the singer staking her emotional well-being on a guy she probably hasn't known long, and who she may be stalking. She's leaving herself vulnerable by repeatedly asking "is this burning an eternal flame," practically daring him to say "no, probably not" (edit to add: or say "Yes! Eternal!" and turn her into a vampire). Actually, with her slightly-more-weathered voice that she has now, Hoffs would make an awesome vampire. If that's what the song is going for, she should go for it.

Funnily enough, it's just now that it occured to me that she might be saying "is this burning, the one I feel inside me, an eternal flame, not just lust?" I'd always imagined it as "is this, what we have between us, setting an eternal flame alight?" I'm almost sure it's the former. I suppose my original thoughts came from the fact that the song was a hit when I was a kid. Plenty of songs about sex went right over my head. Certainly she's got the burning within, or she wouldn't be watching him sleep. If they were setting a fire, the line would be "is this lighting an eternal flame."

(edit to add: "Or, perhaps it's "is the burning feeling I've had since you bit me turning me into an immortal, and will therefore be a flame burning eternally inside me?")

Songs That Scared Me As a Kid

SONGS THAT SCARED ME AS A KID

-"The Ghost Of John" - you've probably heard this. "Have you seen the ghost of John / long white bones with the skin all gone." We sang it in first grade music class.

-"The Old Woman All Skin and Bones" Raffi's arrangement of this old folk song about the woman who lives down by the old graveyard ("oooh ooh ooh ooooh") scared me a bit, and scared the crap out of one of my friends. I remember we made up a parody of it called "The Old Woman Who Drank Old Milk" that went on for several verses, each more disgusting than the last. I wish I remembered more than a few verses. Playground Jungle entry

-"Little Lies" by Fleetwood Mac. The organ part was a bit spooky, but Stevie Nicks' backing vocals made me think she was a witch a long time before I knew who she was or heard any such rumors about her.

-"Scarborough Fair" - this was playing on the radio one morning when I woke up at about the age of 9. It spooked me good. Sounded very ghostly to me.

-"some song" - another song that I heard in the middle of the night was some song about a ghost ship. One line, I think rhymed "the captain felt a chill" with "the tomb grew closer still." I might have misheard. I've never found out what song that was, and googling the lyrics doesn't help. People I ask about it tend to suggest "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." That wasn't it. (update - turns out it was a religious song called I Am the Lighthouse - the line was "the two grew closer still," not "the tomb." Whattaya know?)

-"Karma Chameleon" by Boy George (though I just knew the Kids Inc version) - I misheard some lyrics in this one and thought it was about death (listening to it now, I suppose it's as good a guess as any). It disturbed me in the same way that scene in A Boy Named Charlie Brown where Schoeder plays the second movement of the Pathetique Sonata and the screen is filled with images of gravestones, cathedrals, and Warholesque Popes disturbed me (and if there's a stranger scene in all of mainstream animation, I haven't seen it).

- "The Age of Not Believing" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks - I can't remember, exactly, whether this actually scared me or just depressed me. Maybe a little of both. After all, it's a song about puberty, so it should have done both. Edit to add: a couple of days after this was posted, my mother called me up from a Toys R Us that was blasting the song over the loudspeaker. Why in the world would they play this in a toy store? Isn't it all about being too old for toys?

I can find a lot of songs in my playlist now that would have scared me then if I'd heard them - I can imagine that Long Black Veil would have scared me out of my wits if I'd ever heard it as a kid.