Reading Rainbow

Were your parents too cheap to buy you a Shogun Warrior when you were a kid? Did they not love you enough to shell out for a complete set of Strawberry Shortcake dolls? You're a grown-up now - head to the flea market or Ebay and fill that nagging hole in your soul! Who's going to stop you? Your spouse or significant other? Your financial planner? Why are they trying to keep you down? Do they hate your happiness and well-being?

As a kid I wanted anything associated with Star Wars, even more so than dinosaurs and Peanuts, my previous obsessions. Put a Star Wars sticker on a comb and I'd start negotiating: "Mom! Dad! You know how much I love combing my hair - please, please, please get this for me. I won't ask for anything else until Christmas, I swear. I'll brush my hair every morning please, please, please!" Then I'd get it, be a styling combed hair little kid for a couple days until I got bored and wanted a Star Wars pencil holder or trash can.

Couple weeks ago I finally recalled the name of a Star Wars book I had as a kid. The way I remembered it, it tied the movie in with its influences in westerns, war movies, and science fiction serials. There was photo of John Wayne from The Searchers, as well as that half guy from Freaks that I'd dare myself to look at. There was a chapter on Universal monsters which I was also getting into at the time. Even though it was a kid's book, it still planted the seed of an idea that a movie (or any artwork, actually) is more than what's on the screen, it's all sorts of previous influences and inspiration and can be a way to understand the bigger culture.

This meant that I was one of the few kids on the playground in Mississippi who was able to say with an affected sigh, "Yeah, Star Wars was OK, but it was better the first time when Kurosawa called it Hidden Fortress."

After finding the generically named The Star Wars Album on Amazon for three bucks (and 25 on Ebay - come on people, knock it off), I found that I was sorta right in my memories. The Star Wars Album is a quickie production with no author listed but manages to be better than it should be. The first twenty pages or so deal with the influences, then about a third of the book is taken up with movie summary, then there's info on the art and models and behind the scenes stuff.

Flipping through it, I remembered how many of the movie photos I tried to draw (and also remembered how I was sort of annoyed the book spelled out names like Artoo Deetoo.). And yeah, the picture from Freaks that fascinated and terrified me was there, ready to terrify me again.

This photo really  messed with me as a kid.

Funny how such an obvious cash-in held such a place in my memory for so long, and I'd suspect began my obsession to research and investigate my media tastes, from finding out all I could about the movies that influenced Star Wars (well, the monster and sci-fi stuff) to poring over Thank You notes on punk albums and noting what shirts my favorite bands wore to find more musical obsessions, the book started me down a collector nerd path of which I've only recently sort of stepped off of.

Years later (or between Star Wars movies) I was became obsessed with the Hardy Boys. I saved all my money to buy as many books as I could. I wanted a brother I could solve crimes with (I had a perfectly fine sister, but detectives seemed to travel in same-sex groups), and if I couldn't have that, at least give me a bumbling fat comic relief character who would blurt out something so stupid yet genius that he would help crack our case.

I had a friend who was equally obsessed, and we'd trade books after school in my mom's classroom, filling in the gaps in our respective collections. He had one book, however, that he would not part with - The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook. I don't blame him at all. Damn, did I want that book. I needed that book. He wasn't using it - he never told me about solving any crimes or tracking clues at all. It just sat in  his stupid house while crime ran rampant in Bradenton.

I did get to borrow it, and committed some of the techniques to memory, which is more than he ever did. In the years since I've forgotten most of it, but I did remember it had a glossary of criminal slang which I hoped I'd overhear some unsavory character use someday so I could tell the cops or my dad or something.

I figured while I was buying ancient Star Wars books, I should probably shell out for the Detective Handbook. Who knows, maybe it had as big an effect on me as The Star Wars Album did. Or maybe I can finally launch that detective agency this city needs, or at least learn some cool old-timey slang.

I had completely forgotten that Detective Handbook opens with a bunch of  chapter-long cases designed to illustrate different aspects of detecting to junior sleuths. Like one chapter would deal with making plaster casts, one would tell you how to dust for fingerprints, that sort of thing. Also, one chapter is called "The Case of the Shabby Shoes," which I think was Tim Gunn's first big case. These were kind of cool, but learning that criminals call the electric chair "pew" or a passer of counterfeit money is called a "queer shover" (at least whenever this thing was first published) is sure to repay the 2 dollars I paid for it in no time.

Sharpening my observation skills.

Overall, it's not as corny as I would have thought, and had I owned it when I was younger, many crimes might not have gone unsolved, or maybe I could have used my powers of deduction to free some innocent people. Instead, my meager detective skills were put to use investigating bands and records, crime continued to spiral, and we ended up electing a TV conman as President of the United States.

One of the great things about being an adult is that you're fee to use your wealth and discretion to fill up those nagging holes in your soul. So check that Paypal account! Hit the yard sales this weekend! Get on Ebay at work! You've got childhood trauma to fix!

Elf Power

Nobody gives much thought to Santa's elves. Santa and his reindeer get all the love and recognition while his elven workers tirelessly churn out toys for ungrateful little kids day after day up at the North Pole and we don't even know their names.

I know what it is like to be an elf, for I have walked in those pointy shoes.


I went to an after-school art program when I was in second grade in Mississippi. It was on the first floor of a creepy looking two story-house with a wrap-around porch. The house was surrounded by weeping magnolia trees and majestic oaks dripping with Spanish moss. The class was taught by Mizz Elizabeth, a kindly but gnarled old woman who loved children almost as much as she loved her snuff and cursing the Yankees.

OK, so I made all that up, except for the two-story house with the wrap-around porch. However, my internet class, New Southern Writing: Hush Your Mouth is accepting applications.

It was actually taught by a college student. There were about 15 of us in there, and I was the youngest. We were making paper mache heads for the Starkville Christmas Parade, which apparently still exists. I don't know what everyone else was making, but I was going to be an elf.

Some are born elves, some achieve elfness, and some have elfness thrust upon them. I can't remember if I chose to be an elf, or elfness was thrust upon me for being the youngest in the group. Either way, I was fine with it. Elves were an important part of Santa's village, and I was going to be representing them in the parade.

It took forever for the paper mache to dry. I remember we added layers and layers of the stuff every week, although I mostly remember getting Cokes from the old timey machine on the porch and wondering what was going to be our snack for the day.

I had a dentist appointment on the painting day. Well, sort of. It had gotten cancelled or something, so instead of painting my big elf head, I sat on the porch and waited for my parents. When the other kids came out of class, I jumped from behind a pillar and yelled "Boo" at them.

The teacher asked to see me. I thought this was a bit of an overreaction to a Booing, but she was actually upset that I had skipped class on the important painting day. That got me worried. Was I going to have an elf head that looked like it was mummified with the Starkeville Daily News? That was no way to represent elfdom.

She explained that she had actually painted my elf head, which of course turned out way better than anything my 7 year old hands could have done. This taught me a valuable Christmas lesson that has served me well in life. Forget about it, and someone else will always come along and fix it.

The night of the parade, I was dressed in my huge-ass elf head and the elf suit my mom made for me. I don't remember what everyone else in the class was, or where they were. Maybe they distributed everyone throughout the parade to ensure adorableness equality? All I knew was that I was a solo elf.

"Just follow the band," said my handler.

And I did. I followed the high school band all down the parade route. People were cheering and waving. I knew they didn't care about the band. They loved the elf. The guy that made their toys. The guy that put in the hours. The unsung worker toiling for Santa was finally getting his due.

I waved. I brandished a plastic hammer, demonstrating the old world craftsmanship one can only get from elves. I affixed a few people with a stare (I really couldn't do anything else, since my eyes were painted on), showing that it wasn't just Santa who knew who was naughty and nice. Little children were in awe of me. Working people identified with me. I was the hit of the parade.
 

I struggled to keep my apron on and my arm was getting tired with all my hammering. My feet hurt walking the parade route, but I was a trooper. I was Elf. 

After walking like what seemed like hours, the crowds started thinning out. "This part of town doesn't have much Christmas spirit," I thought, and I kept walking, following the band.

The band wasn't playing much anymore. I figured they were as tired as I was. I kept up my antics. I couldn't let down Christmas.

We reached the high school where the band members got into their parents' cars. I finally took my head off. I was alone. Someone asked who my parents were. I had terrible pronunciation back then, so when I said, "Charles and Marilyn Adams," they said, "Saws Adams?"

Finally, my parents walked up. Apparently I was supposed to have stopped walking about a half mile ago, but with my only direction being "follow the band," what else was I supposed to do?

Later I was able to see myself on TV. I was hammering up a storm, waving to children, and being the best damn little elf I could be. I had done it. I had achieved elfness.

Quicksand! Dang, Now We Are In Trouble.

Growing up I thought quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be.

OK, I totally stole that line from an ecard thingy my girlfriend posted on the facebook, but truthfully, I was fascinated and terrified of quicksand as a kid. It took up a large part of my fears - probably a smaller part than getting eaten by a shark (we lived in Mississippi. The chances were pretty slim.), but still something to look out for.

It seems a large portion of entertainment geared towards kids had people sinking slowly into quicksand, generally British explorers puffing on pipes and uttering something like, "Oh, bother." Quicksand was everywhere in cartoons and old movies - if you were outside, chances were pretty good, at least according to TV, there was a pit of quicksand just waiting for you to fall into.

These old movies also taught me that gorillas and skeletons were somehow the most terrifying things ever back in the old days, but that's another story.

I asked my parents what quicksand was exactly, and they told me it was just water and sand. TV was right! The stuff was all over the place.

A few months later, I had an enemy. I can't remember exactly why we were enemies, just the usual little kid stuff, I suppose.

Wait! I remember! He totally called bullshit on my cyborg story.

See, during this time, "The Six Million Dollar Man" was was a popular television show. The hero was an astronaut who almost died until the government implanted super-strong robotics in him so he could solve crimes and beat up Bigfoot.

Cashing in on that popularity, I had half-convinced a group of kids that I too, had robotics in my arm. Luckily, nobody asked me to lift anything heavier than my 6 year old muscles could handle. Maybe there just wasn't anything heavy enough for me to lift to impress them with, or maybe I got out of it because, hey, kids are dumb.

But this one kid wasn't buying it. He wanted proof. I explained that peeling back the fake skin on my arm and revealing my circuitry would cause an explosion that would kill us all, but he was skeptical. Worse, I could see the other kids were losing faith in my robotics, also.

I don't recall how I got out of my lie, maybe my timing was right and everyone had to go home to eat before I had to whip out my circuitry, but I could sense that the crowd had turned against me.

I couldn't eat my dinner that night. Who the hell did that kid think he was, ruining my story and calling me a liar? The nerve! And he turned all my other friends against me! How dare he slander me like that! I had to get back at him, but how?

I had the answer. Quicksand.

I was able to get out after dinner and run to the back of his apartment building. There was a sandbox outside. I set a hose into the box and turned on the water.

I got the quicksand to a good consistency then went home in the dusk, secure in the knowledge that I was gonna make that kid pay for doubting me. Like a mini Walter White, my enemies would perish due to my knowledge of science.

I had trouble sleeping that night. What if that kid didn't know not to struggle against the quicksand and drowned? There were only about 7 inches of the stuff, but who knows how powerful quicksand is? Maybe it ate a hole in the bottom of the sandbox or something.

What if some other kid went in the sandbox? What if a baby crawled in there? I only wanted to punish my rival for his slander, not kill any innocent babies. And I didn't even really want to kill that kid, just sort of punish him a little. I might have gone a little overboard with my revenge.

My stomach was really churning now, but it was too late for me to go back and fix my trap. All night I was haunted by thoughts of innocent people drowning in my quicksand trap. One after another, they all fell in - a mailman, my parents, my sister, my teacher, friends - who knows how many people would die before the sun came up and I could fix things?

As soon as I could make an excuse to get out of the house, I ran over to the sandbox. In the light of the day, my quicksand trap didn't look all that lethal. In fact, it looked like a bunch of wet sand in a plastic sandbox. I might have poked around just to be sure there were no babies trapped in there, but everything seemed OK.

Walking home I reflected on the beauty of human life, the futility of revenge, and more importantly, the importance of always being honest in storytelling. This was going to be a new start.

OK, not really. I was like 6 or 7 years old. I had a lifetime of revenge fantasies, lies, and exaggerations to go. But I did learn a vital lesson. If called on my bullshit, I could totally whip up some quicksand.








P.S. When doing a Google image search for British explorer in quicksand, about half of the images were cartoons of scantily clad ladies up to their chests in quicksand. You people are weird.

Mighty Big Shoes to Fill

I went Bigfoot crazy a few weeks ago. It started when I caught an interview with an author plugging his latest book on NPR about the legendary creature (his shocking conclusion: Bigfoot probably doesn't exist, the 'bigfoot community' is sort of nuts). That sounded pretty cool. Then, within a week, two or three people mentioned Bigfoot or sent me a Sasquatch-related link.

Realizing this was a plate of shrimp moment like the movie Repo Man told us all about, I was powerless to fight fate so I loaded up my Netflix queue with whatever Bigfoot movies they had, checked out the NPR guy's book from work, and would have listened to Bigfoot music, if I could figure out what that was. I have a hunch he would listen to Fu Manchu.

Bigfoot was everywhere when I was a kid. Exploitation filmmakers cranked out films about him, he was on TV, he even had his own line of shoes, which I remember pitching a fit for in Buster Brown. I do not recall if my shitiness was rewarded.

I do, however, remember lots of time spent in the woods looking for the beast. This was back in the late '70s/early '80s when parents didn't really care what their kids did, just as long as they did it somewhere else, or at least did it quietly.

And man, did I love hanging out in the woods. My friends and I used our Bigfoot hunts as an excuse to follow trails for what seemed like miles and to freak each other out with outrageous lies as we got deeper and deeper into the woods. You could also fairly regularly find piles of waterlogged and moldy Penthouse and Playboy magazines out there which was an added bonus and safer than running into Bigfoot.*

There are adults who still do the same thing, although they are completely serious, which is funny, because even as kids we knew we were wasting our time. If you have cable you might have seen those ghost hunters who walk through haunted houses in green light challenging ghosts to fights. I'm serious. Half the running time is guys in Ed Hardy shirts yelling stuff like, "'SUP GHOST?! WHY DON'T YOU SHOW YOURSELF? YOU LIKE SCARING LITTLE KIDS AND WOMEN? WHY DON'T YOU MATERIALIZE RIGHT NOW, GHOST?"

The ghosts never show up.

As with many things I loved as a kid or teenager, Bigfoot tracking is probably the next ridiculous thing to hit the mainstream. Next time you're out on a relaxing walk in the woods looking for old dirty magazines, don't be surprised if you interrupt a camera crew shouting "C'MON, BIGFOOT! WHY YOU GOTTA HIDE, BRA?! I'M RIGHT HERE IN YOUR WOODS, DUDE!"








*Do you remember the thrill of spotting the back cover of a magazine somewhere as a kid, seeing a cigarette ad, getting excited thinking you had found some forest porn only to realize it was just a Newsweek or something? If I could bottle that euphoria and exhilaration I'd put 5 Hour Energy out of business.