Man's Day

Jennifer: "So what did you and your friend Pat talk about?"

Me: "Oh, you know, the usual stuff. We talked about how we were both getting fatter and talked about each other's clothes. I really liked that Ben Sherman shirt he was wearing. We probably gossiped about people we know."

Pause

"Then we drank some appletinis and went out to buy some new shoes."

Actually, I'm pretty sure we talked about the usual punk music and stupid movies at some point, but still. And I would like to point out that the appletinis and shoes were completely made up. Really.

Portrait of the Artist as an Old(er) Man

I'm terrible about uploading pictures from my camera. Probably as bad at taking photos in the first place. These are from last month's artwalk. I had a couple of decks in this skateboard art exhibition. I am now an established local artiste.

Here's Jacksonville's newest artist displaying a skateboard deck which has sat in his closet for 20 years.



Second deck on a brick wall. It makes it classier.



Oh crap! I totally forgot! There were Asian breakdancers. Yeah, no shit. I felt they were distracting the masses from my artwork, but nevertheless, they were pretty cool. I got a lot of pictures like this, right before or right after someone would bust a move.

Hey, now that I think about it, I wonder how I get my boards back? Well, for a while you can go see my decks, along with a bunch of other cool ones at the gallery downtown above the jewelry store. Listen for the breakdancers. I don't think they let them out yet.

WDUV, The Dove

My mom drove me and my sister to school up 'til middle school. Although the radio had the usual number of buttons, the only station she ever played was WDUV, "The Dove." It sounds like a Christian rock station, but they played what they called "Beautiful Music." I've found out that "Beautiful Music" is an actual genre, or at least Jones College Radio in Jacksonville uses the same phrase.

If you were lucky, WDUV would play stuff like instrumental versions of Beatle songs, or string-heavy versions of "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" along with your Sinatras, Streisands and lesser crooners.

WDUV still exists, so I took a look at today's playlist. Lou Rawls, Barry Manilow, Perry Como, sure. Wait, Billy Joel? Elton John? Those guys would have sounded like Black Flag at the WDUV I grew up with. They also seem to have retired a lot of their '50s and '60s instrumentals, branching out to more contemporary (i.e. late '80s) artists. Sellouts.

When I took driver's ed in high school, our instructor had a game. He'd put the radio station on and you couldn't change it until you correctly guessed the song. I could ruin the game in seconds flat.

"Oh, it's my turn? Well, that's "This Magic Moment." Jay and the Americans. Before that it was "Secondhand Rose" by Barbara Streisand. "Little Spanish Flea" by Herb Alpert started it, and we heard the very end of "There's a Kind of Hush" by Herman's Hermits."

"OK, you win. You get the radio for the rest of the class. So am I turning it to 98 Rock or Y95?"

"Nah, I'm cool. I think there's gonna be a Lennon Sisters marathon coming up. Don't want to miss that."

Have You Played Atari Today?

I stumbled across this site a couple weeks ago that reviews Atari 2600 games. It's pretty funny that they'll say things like, "graphically, the game leaves a bit to be desired, but gameplay..."
Of course it leaves a bit to be desired graphically! It was made in 1982! That started a coworker and I to start talking about those awesome graphics on the Atari cartridges. They were all Frank Frazetta looking, usually with a guy in the foreground screaming at you.
This also prompted the following conversation:
Coworker: "I had one game, I can't remember what it was but there was a big square and you had a ball that you bounced against it and..."
Me: "That was every Atari game!"
C: "Yeah, I guess so."
M: "That's totally a dad game. 'I got a game for you. How about bouncing a ball against the wall for a couple hours?'"
C: "Just do it outside away from me."
M: "If you're bored you can help me dig holes for a fence today."
C: "Now that's a dad videogame. It would be called Fencepost! with an exclamation point.
M: "And the cover would have a guy in a hardhat up front screaming while in the foreground some other guys were raising a fencepost like in Iwo Jima."
C: "From the Dadgames laboratories, makers of such previous hits like Mowing! and "Keeping Quiet in the Car!"
M: My dad was always hard at work on his game, "Stop Slamming the Door!"
C: "Man, imagine coming home from Sears all excited with "Saving!" only to find out it's about saving electricity by shutting the door when the air is on."
M: "The cover would be a lineman in a hardhat screaming while some kids throw money out of an open door."

My Dinner with Tupac

Hey kids, do you like the hip-hop music? You do? Well, did I ever tell you about the time I hung out with Tupac Shakur in Atlanta? I didn't?

Well, that's because there's really not much of a story there.

We got a delivery order for a club downtown near the end of a day shift. The club was pretty well-known, although I have no idea what the name was now. I ended up getting the order, which was fine; the craziness of lunch had died down, so I could take my time, and clubs were usually pretty good tippers.

So I gather a box of food and drive downtown. "Man, am I lucky," I'm thinking to myself. I get to close out my shift with a big ol' tip. Everyone knew that clubs tended to tip well, they were second only to strip bars in knowing the importance of tips.

So I get there and there's a group of about 10 guys waiting for the food. They're wearing big gold necklaces and a couple guys are sporting diamond earrings. Right away they start trying to determine who ordered what. This happened a lot, especailly at hospitals or strip clubs. This meant you had to stand around while everyone argued with each other for about a half hour. In strip clubs, it wasn't too bad, they have naked ladies there and you'd end up with a fat tip for your trouble(get your mind out of the gutter). In hospitals you'd end up standing around forever while all the nurses paged each other, then paid with a handfull of change and stiffing you on a tip.

So I was used to that. All the guys seemed to be deferring to a guy in the middle. I had no idea who he was, but they seemed to act like he was important.

I stand around while the guys discuss the bill (by the way, America? You know when a good time to do this is? AFTER YOU'VE PLACED THE DELIVERY AND BEFORE THE DRIVER SHOWS UP.), then take my cash and leave.

On the way home I realize I've been stiffed. Hell, the whole thing was as crappy as going to Grady Hospital.

Couple days later we're watching the news and I realize that the guy in the middle was Tupac. I had checked out of hip-hop after they stopped discussing sucker MCs and waxing and milking, so I had no idea.

Anyway, Tupac was on TV because he had shot an undercover cop the night after his posse stiffed me. Or been shot by an undercover cop. If it had been a dude from Fugazi or Jesus Lizard or the Didjits cold shootin' cops, I might have paid more attention.

Apart from the weirdness of figuring out that I sort of met someone famous (OK, was in the same room with someone famous), I was just pissed. Famous Tupac and his friends can't leave a tip? With all that gold they were wearing? LL Cool J would have tipped me. Run DMC would have tipped. Boogie Down Productions would have tipped me and dropped some knowledge on me.

Tupac would be dead a few years later. To this day the media wants you to believe it had something to do with a West Coast/East Coast rap war, but I've heard on good authority that it was a server, delivery driver or wait person pissed off over a missing tip.

To the Gothic Castle

I don't really remember how we ended up at the gothic guy's apartment. It was one of those blurry nights back in the early '90s in Atlanta with my roommate Rachel. Somehow we were out with our neighbor, Juliet.

That was strange in itself. We shared a hallway, and were nice enough to each other, but she would go on these screaming and crying jags late at night. We weren't really sure if we were supposed to do anything or not, so we'd just turn the TV up louder (free cable!) and drink more Natural Light. I remember our downstairs neighbors warning me about her. "I'm from Ireland," she said. "I know about banshees."

So we tended to keep our distance.

Somehow after drinking somewhere Juliet ended up taking us to a friend's apartment. I don't remember the guy's name, let's call him Raven or Mykel or something. I remember the apartment was painted black and he had a lot of black and spiky furniture. He also didn't seem to want us hanging around. Probably because we looked pretty square, and weren't our stripper neighbor.

Raven kept talking to Juliet while Rachel and I giggled about how much of a cliche the dude was. I mean, he was wearing leather pants, just sitting around the house! Sure, it was immature, especially since the guy had begrudgingly given us more beer and a dark place to sit in, but you know how it is in your early 20s. And hey, we had to amuse ourselves somehow while he tried macking on our neighbor.

"What's the matter, you don't like Nine Inch Nails?" Raven yelled over the stereo.

"Yeah, they're OK, I guess," I said. "They played them in the mall last week while I was shopping for Dockers."

"Oh yeah? Well, check these out."

With that, Raven dropped a pile of photographs on my lap.

"I don't know if I want to look at dead people, man."

"What's the matter, can't take it? Well, I've got tons of these. Most people can't take it, but this is unfiltered, in-your-face reality."

"Yeah, well, I guess you totally win...hey, wait a minute! This picture's from a movie. That's from Dawn of the Dead, right?"

I ended up trying to talk horror movies with the guy, but he was a little crestfallen after finding out that his in-your-face reality was actually concocted by special effects wizard Tom Savini.

I can't remember how we left the guy's apartment, or if we were still with Juliet, but I can say with about 90 percent certainty that we ended up getting Taco Bell, drinking Natural Light and watching Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I never really did make that many friends in Atlanta.

One of My Favorite Work Stories (No, Really)

Couple years ago I'm walking through the stacks when this old guy asks me for the "DVD tapes."

"Aw, crap," I think. "Guess I've got my work cut out for me with this guy."

"Well, the DVDs are all in this area," I said. "Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"

"I've been looking for tapes of the Judy Garland Show for years, but I doubt you'd have any of them."

"Yeah, we've got the Christmas show right over here," I say, walking him over to the musicals.

The guy starts going into a spiel about how this DVD is actually a bootleg copy and and I tell him that it came from a reputable distributor, and blah, blah, blah. Then he starts telling me about his days in early television.

Now we get a lot of cranks, crazies and straight-up delusional people in the library. We used to have a regular phone customer who woman who claimed to be Axl Rose's daughter, so I wasn't sure how much to really believe this guy, but he went on to tell me this story.

The old guy was a producer for the Judy Garland show back in the '50s and '60s. Her show was shot live, which was risky, since Garland wasn't the most punctual or dependable performer due to her addictions. So the day after President Kennedy's assassination, the crew was wondering right up to the shoot if they were going to have to find a guest star at the last moment. Garland was friends with the Kennedys, and was very distraught. At least that's what they assumed; they hadn't heard anything from her since the day before.

Minutes before the show aired, a visibly shaken Judy Garland walks on stage. She makes a short speech to the studio audience and then sings a song dedicated to the late President. I can't remember what he said the song was, I think it might have been "Over the Rainbow." It was one of her big ones. After she finished, the whole place, crew, audience, everyone just starts bawling, and the show goes on.

So the crazy part? This is before the actual show and nobody thought to turn on a camera and point it at her. Nowadays, we'd have blurry phone camera footage within seconds after she stopped singing. Now, there's still a chance that the whole thing is made up, but I love the fact that this simple, heartfelt tribute was shared by a few people, then forgotten forever. Until the old guy told me. Hell, I didn't believe the Bob Hope Gator Growl story, but enough people have come out of the woodwork to make me believe that one.

The guy left, but not before almost crushing my hand with a handshake, I guess to show me that he worked on musicals, but he was all man. Again, I have no idea if the story is true or just the product of an old guy with too much time on his hands, but like the guy from the X Files, I want to believe.