Friday night kinda got screwed up for me. I had decided I wanted to see City of Ember with the boy. I was kind of leary of this decision, but there was nothing else on for a kid here other than High School Musical 3, which I absolutely did not want to see at all. Going back as far as Grease
Yup, High School Musical 3
When I got home, I was welcomed by a scene something like this:
Taking the boy to see High School Musical 3 didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.
This political season has taken on the apperaance of a full blown episode of Monty Python. That’s a good thing. McCain is not running at this time, and Obama is intent on debating himself in front of the entire nation. Somehow, if McCain showed up, I don’t think it would make much difference as far as Obama is concerned. Joe Biden is working himself to death to get kicked out as Obama’s running mate, often criticizing his candidate. And, of course, there’s the rest of the story. The media is working themselves feverishly trying to make Sarah Palin look like a lunatic. Today’s round goes something like this:
That’s her a few years ago getting blessed by a Reverend Muthee against witchcraft. Now, as usual, this is going to blow up in the media’s faces as far as embarassing the candidate goes. I say this because her personna is that she is just like us. She’s not an elitist lawyer from Harvard who has Barbara Streisand sing to her for $28,000 a pop. She’s an ordinary every-day run-of-the-mill ex-high-school-pageant-queen who sorta accidentally ran for the local PTA and wound up as governor of Alaska. Some of us can relate to that, we’ve often wound up places we really didn’t intend to be. And, best I can tell, quite a few of us have had to be blessed from witchcraft.
What’s that? Smoky wavy lines obscuring everything again? Uh oh, here I go:
When I was just out of high school, I hooked up with some, let’s say, fascinating babes. One particular had everything going for her any red blooded American 19 year old would desire in a babe. She had boobs. She had blonde hair. She had long legs. And, for the most part, she couldn’t remember your name the next day. At nineteen, that was perfect. I won’t go any to any further details of what was great about her, this is kind of a family oriented place. But, nah, better not go there. You know what I’m getting at.
However, after a period of time, probably a couple of weeks, things started to go bad. We were cruising around town one night and the conversation somehow devolved to the point that we were discussing whether or not we should break up ( in manspeak, whether I could leave her ). It went on in the usual elder-teen manner with me basically stating how easy it would be. As we were nearing McDonald’s, she uttered something I just could not understand. Given my horrid hearing, I figured it was just me. It really sounded she was choking on something like water. It wasn’t human language. So, I asked her to repeat what she had said a little louder, which she did. It still didn’t make any sense. So, I asked her in my most proper Kentucky diction something to the effect of “what was that?”. She then informed me that it was an ancient Wiccan spell assuring that I could never leave her. She was quite pleased. I was quite amused. I suggested we test this spell. So, we drove in to McDonald’s, I sent her inside to get some food, and drove off. I never saw again. At this point, I was quite pleased. I doubt she was amused tho.
I related this tale to a couple of my college buddies with great glee and laughing. However, they were concerned. They truly felt I was taking this witchcraft stuff too lightly. They did some research, and found a good witch near their hometown in the dark backwoods of Tennessee and suggested we go visit. I wasn’t too gung-ho on this idea. However, there was a liquor store about a mile or two from her house and they promised to make a stop. That sealed it.
It was a dark and rainy night when we arrived at the good witch’s house. Now, I immediately grew concerned because the bad witch was a smokin-hot blonde babe and the good witch was this middle-aged fat woman that looked kinda scary. She had her whole house looking like a witch’s lair. The beer was NOT helping with the situation either. I was feeling kinda hesitant about the whole thing so my friend explained to her what had happened. Since I had no clue what it was the bad witch had said, she had to ponder what it might have been. Basically, in her mind, it was some type of captivity spell. Sounded good to me. Whether it was or not, I didn’t want to be captive to anything at nineteen. So, we shelled out about $50, sat down, she blew some kind of smoke in my face, shook my hands till they hurt, and uttered something a lot like what it was the smokin-hot bad witch had said. She closed her eyes, shook a little bit, and smiled and seemed quite pleased with herself. She felt the hex had been removed. My friends were pleased, I was ready to leave. I don’t think we even stopped to get more beer on the way home.
When it was all said and done and I had a day or two to ponder it all more deeply, I came to the conclusion that I felt exactly the same as I did before the smokin-hot bad witch hex, and no different after the butt-ugly good witch’s counter-hex.
My life has since had it’s usual ups and downs. I’ve done a lot of things I regret now that I’m older and calmer. Two things I’m sure of at this point:
I will add that Sarah Palin’s method of getting blessed against witchcraft makes for a lot less headlines than if she had gone the traditional route as I did.
I had the most annoying nightmare, or dream, the other night. I’m not looking for any interpretations here, just wanting to put it in print so that it can be forgotten.
Now, not sure about most people, but when I’m going to have a nightmare, I know it. I get this creepy feeling that something very bad’s going to happen. I don’t like nightmares, so this creepy feeling upsets me. Sure enough , a scene emerges of being in a dark, creepy house. There are people there, people I know. They are sitting around talking to each other. They are talking about stuff I don’t have any interest in talking about. Now, a person doesn’t run around shouting something bad’s going to happen if they don’t know what it is, so I just kind of try to fit in without engaging the conversation. I’m bored. Very bored. And, anxious because I know this is a nightmare and something awful is going to happen to someone. But, I can’t say anything about it because I don’t want them to think I’m any nuttier than they already think I am. So, I stand around bored and anxious waiting for the clue that something awful will happen.
It never does. I just keep standing around bored and anxious. I finally get so frustrated that I basically shout in my nightmare that this is the worst nightmare I’ve ever had. That sudden explosion of temper actually wakes me up. I go to the bathroom and come back to bed hoping that this nightmare of nothing is gone. When I went back to sleep, I returned to the same dream. However, this time, I wasn’t anxious because I knew this was the lamest nightmare of all time. Best I recall, the nightmare dissolved into the usual wild sex that allows me to sleep like a baby.
As part of my daily grind, I often have to write software for others who can’t afford it, don’t want it, or just don’t understand what a great database can do for their lives. Today was one of those days. I fixed it up real quick, put it on a flash drive, and instructed the powers that be that it ran on Access. Simple enough I thought. Idiot proof.
About 3 o’clock I get this call that they can’t open and want me to re-send it via email. Now, double-clicking on a flash drive is tantamount to double-clicking on your hard drive. It either just runs, or it don’t. Where it’s sitting doesn’t make much difference. I sent it anyway. About 3:15 I get another call. It’s still not working. I ask if they have Access installed, they don’t know. However, he had the simple fix.
He wanted me to fax it to him.
I need a new job.
When I was about sixteen or so, I did what pretty much every kid does, I went alternative. About the only way you did that in rural Kentucky was buying mainstream music that just wasn’t quite the Osmonds. Things were pretty wide open in those days, so radio stations and most tv really couldn’t quite pen down acts into very narrow categories as they do now. One of those bands that seemed to fly all over the musical genre in 1979 was Blondie. They had a couple of hits with songs like Heart of Glass
Here’s my favorite Blondie song, Union City Blue
I have referred to my ‘66 Corvair a couple of times in the past here. Particularly, my first road trip, and, my adventures in the wilds of Keno. Literally arising from the ashes of a long ago fire, I found this today:
That’s it peeps. My actual ‘66 convertible Corvair. Man, I was SOOOO cool those days!
A friend of mine is a cable guy now. He was marveling at the creative lengths people would go to get a free signal. That brought back some memories. When I was a kid, FM radio hadn’t quite proliferated the world yet. AM was still king. because I lived in rural Kentucky, the more progressive stations at that time were far, far, away. Now, with AM, that didn’t stop anything. It just meant you needed one heck of an antenna to pick up places like Cleveland and Chicago. I had an old radio that was in one of those big boxes about the size of a small refrigerator that had been given to me to destroy. It occasionally would pick up WGN in Chicago, barely. They were playing the songs I liked ( not the Osmond Brothers for example ). However, it was spotty at best and the least cloud cover they were gone. Now, me and my buddy figured out real quick that the more antenna you had, the better your signal got. We also figured out as well that motors had literally miles and miles of copper wiring. So, we did the logical thing and ran the antenna loop into my mother’s washing machine. This worked fabulously as there were two neat bolts to screw the wire loop onto. So, we stripped power cords and ran a loop down the hall to the washing machine and hooked it to the back of the radio. We tested our connection and I really can’t remember whether it helped the signal or not. Either way, we lost interest and went outside to play. After a while, when it was getting dark and I was heading home, I noticed a very bad thing. Smoke was coming out my bedroom window. Mom threw what was left of my radio away. When she wasn’t around, I discretely threw away my very special wiring. Best I recall, she never did say anything to me about it. I think she knew she didn’t have to.
When I was born, a long time ago, my mom probably laid in the hospital watching Bob Barker on Truth or Consequences. I feel this is very likely because from 1962 until 1975 or so, we watched it every single chance we could. In 1975 we did what almost every family in the US did in 1975. We watched The Price is Right. When I left my mother and went to college, I joined the Sigma Nu fraternity. Nevermind that James Dean and Harrison Ford were alumni, you HAD to know that Bob Barker was as well. And if you got a autographed picture of Bob Barker, as I did, your initiation went a lot smoother. We probably had fifty autographed pictures of Bob Barker on a small wall in our small house. I graduated college and started working, and Bob was right there with me. I am now a father, heavily in debt, doing what all fathers do in their mid 40’s. Only one thing remained absolutely the same during all the trials, tribulations, and challenges of my entire life. Bob Barker was always there. Not in a fatherly kind of way, but more like some cosmic force guiding those who sought a certain amount of serenity in their lives. People were always happy when Bob Barker was with them. Always. For fifty years, they were always happy. What religious figure can make that claim? There was no hell with Bob Barker. Just happiness dashed with a little disappointment that they couldn’t spend more time with Bob Barker.
As of last night, that constant cosmic serenity left the building for the last time.
Life’s gonna be kinda weird from now on.
The hardest working man in showbiz has finally retired. James Brown died last night. He was the man who infused soul into the public mainstream and made it work. He’ll be remembered forever for yelling “High! I feel GOOD!” I can’t think of a better way to be remembered. Here’s how I remember him:
Original post, August 14, 2004:
Ever do one of those things in college that sounded really good at the time, but when thinking back, probably wouldn’t have done it? I used to do that an awful lot.
For Christmas break, 1985, Mike, Bobby, me, and Craig decided to go to Washington, DC to ring in the new year.
Sounds simple enough so far. To top it off, Washington was hosting a free New Year’s Eve bash featuring none other than one of my all-time favorite performers, Mr. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. Still sounds simple enough? Well, this is where it gets interesting.
When we showed up for the show, there about 10,000 black people, and us. For the very first time in my entire life, I knew, without any reservation or question, what it felt like to be a minority in a big city. I’m not exaggerating here. Things went fine for a long time, however, after a point, these gangs started doing these lines dances where they would form a chain, push the crowd back as far as they could or felt like, then ram themselves into the crowd on the other side. They did this repeatedly. Well, my buddy Craig, the one in the hat, decided he’d had enough of that. So, the next time they came through, they proceeded to start pushing the crowd back, and one got too close to Craig, so Craig promptly punched one guy in the face and kicked the other in the nuts. I knew right then my life as I had known it was completely over, we were dead. Well, what Craig effectively did was sever the last 3 or 4 guys of the gang from the rest of the pack. Now, I’m a pretty scrawny guy, but Craig’s pretty stout, Bobby’s pretty stout ( they both played linebacker in school ), and Mike’s about 6′6″ tall. With me pretty much hidden in back, they looked effective. And, to top it off, when the other guys started to pose for a fight, a bunch of REALLY big guys jumped in beside us, black and white. The 3 or 4 stragglers were greatly outnumbered at that point. Then the strangest thing happened. The 3 or 4 gang members started dancing, and danced theirselves away. We enjoyed the rest of the show unbothered by the “chain” gang. We did learn however, that one person did get killed at that show. That’s when it set in that we probably wouldn’t be doing that again. But for one night, it was a blast.
I often brag that the little town I live in is the best kept secret in the world. The scenery here is beautiful, sometimes stunning, and incredibly diverse. Although Lake Cumberland dominates the tourism media and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, there are other little nooks and crannies of this area I enjoy almost as much. Keno is one such place. To get to it, you have to go over this little tiny bridge that offers this view:
You’re a couple of hundred feet or more above some train tracks that have been carved out of a mountain. Why they didn’t just tunnel through is beyond me. Rumor had it that you could drop a match from the bridge and it would light on the way down. We tried it a few times and I swear it worked with the old wooden matches. Someone I "knew" once dropped an old refrigerator off the bridge. It absolutely exploded when it hit. Don’t ask me how I know that.
Looking the other way offers a similar view:
Now, ya see that little road crossing the tracks down there? That was one of my hangout spots in high school. To get there, you take this dirt road that meanders around and down the hill. If you meet another vehicle in the wrong spot, you’d have to back up that dirt road quite a ways. Once you got there, it looked something like this:
Now, once you see the tracks, you’re not too far from them. That led to some interesting tales when I was a kid.
Now, ya gotta understand, a guy only took a girl there for one reason only. And, occasionally, I did. One particular time, I had a couple of friends and a date who would, in my possibly all-time favoritest car, my ‘66 Convertible Monza, which looked something like this:
Except it was silver.
Me and my buddy had enough beer and drinks to figure we could score, so we headed out for the cheapest place to get some. Which, at 18 years old and in a small town, meant the woods. So, we headed to Keno. We got there easy enough and pulled right up to the tracks. It was a perfect evening. I had the top down ( on the car ), the Moon was setting in between the hills ( the tracks head due west ), and everything was progressing perfectly. During the make-out session, I opened my eyes, and the platinum blonde babe I was making out with was actually glowing. I mean it, she looked like an angel. There was like this halo surrounding her hair. Then I kinda noticed the halo was getting brighter and bigger. So, I finally looked a little closer, and around her, and saw it was a train coming. Now, trains in town move at about 30 miles an hour, and this thing was still in the distance. So, I just released the emergency brake ( Corvairs didn’t have Park ). The car slowly started moving off the tracks. It wasn’t ten seconds later that the entire planet just seemed to erupt in total chaos. The car was rocking and bouncing, there was this incredible roar, and it just felt like the entire Earth was falling apart. It seems that in the country, trains go a LOT faster. Now, I’m here to tell ya, when you miss a train doing eighty miles an hour by about five feet, you WILL remember that forever. Needless to say, we didn’t score that particular evening. And, we didn’t really care at the time. I can’t remember my date’s name, but I do remember that train, and my car, to this day.
Another time, same plan, different date ( the other one wouldn’t go back with me, although, I’m told, she did with a lot of other guys ). There was this story of the Keno Monster that all males used to entertain and sometimes scare dates. You have to understand there is not a light of any sort for miles within that bridge. The trick was to sit on the bridge, which is scary enough, and tell the story of the Keno Monster doing in, by varying means depending on the storyteller, kids making out on the bridge. Smart plan huh? Well, I was executing that plan in a different vehicle at the time ( my Mom’s 78 LTD, MASSIVE back seat ). Things were progressing smoothly, I had my date pretty much incredulous that anyone would sit on the bridge just to taunt the monster that only attacked those sitting on that bridge ( it’s only about 50 feet ). But, the plan is to get the date to drink hard liquor and subsequently succumb to our whishes by getting them to sit on the bridge and drink. So, the plan was working. We got kinda close and things were going the way things usually go with two eighteen year olds drinking alcohol in the middle of nowhere. When, all of a sudden, we heard this horrible howling and screaming, and something started pounding and rocking the car. Whatever it was climbed on top of the car and jumped while simultaneously pounding on the hood and just raising total hell for about five minutes and then it totally disappeared in the dark. We had to leave immediately after the Keno Monster attacked for fear it would come back. I ditched the date ( mutual agreement actually ) and went to exactly who I thought it was. However, none of my friends would confess, and all had alibis. There are only two conclusions that can be deduced from that terrifying event. Either the Keno Monster is real, or, less likely, some total stranger had a hell of a laugh that night.
That’s all I’ve got to say about Keno.