No Diner For Young Men

Couple years back I took the car to get fixed. My parents had drummed into me the need to get to repair places right when they opened so I would be first in line. I've since learned that at most places the mechanic doesn't show up until 9, so you may as well get another couple hours of sleep instead of hanging around reading 7 month old Newsweeks and watching Judge Judy on the crappy repair place TV while wondering how much all this is going to cost.

After a couple hours of waiting around I figured I'd walk down to this diner and get some breakfast.

As I opened the door all conversation stopped and everyone turned to look at me. I felt like I just walked into the saloon and was going to start a shoot-out. I determined that I was the youngest person in the place by like 50 years, and had probably interrupted some Masonic ritual or spirited review of last week's church social.

After the oldies vibed me out, they went back to eating, but I could tell they didn't take kindly to this young buck taking up valuable space in their establishment.

Later that week my wife and I went to see TV on the Radio at Freebird Cafe, where we were the oldest people by about 15 years, so I suppose it all evened out.

Take a Letter

My dad was awesome at writing complaint letters. If he felt a company or organization had slighted him, he’d get out the paper and pen and fire off a letter. I don’t know exactly what he said, but it must have been pretty persuasive since a few weeks after mailing out the letter he’d get a ton of free samples or a credit voucher delivered in the mail, along with profuse apologies.

Dad wasn’t stingy with praise either. He tried some sort of foot powder and liked it so much he wrote the company. When I came home from college there were crates of the stuff in the garage. I couldn’t visit without my parents trying to sneak bottles of the stuff into my car to take home with me. Now I could see if this was from a big company like Arm and Hammer or Gold Bond, who could afford to mail out a boxes of foot powder to keep a customer happy, but this was some sort of Mom and Pop foot powder outfit, so I’d constantly have people finding a bottle of the stuff holding up the couch or something and asking me what the hell Dr. Funkenmeir’s Olde Tyme Foot Powder and Poultice was, and why did I have a million little plastic bottles of it anyway.

But if he was good with a letter, Dad was a maestro over the phone or face to face. We’d be buying a car stereo or something and he’d say to the guy at Circuit City, “So how much is this really.”

I’d be all embarrassed, because I knew that you just didn’t do that sort of stuff, but sure enough, the guy would knock like 50 bucks off the price. The few times I tried that on my own, the salespeople just sort of looked at me and I felt so awkward and embarrassed that I’d write out a little extra on the check just to make up for my faux pas.

So one day my sister and dad are watching the local news. There’s some story about this Minute Maid fruit juice that was being recalled.

“You know, I’ve been feeling sort of sick all week. I’m pretty sure I had some of that juice.”

“Dad, you’ve never had that stuff in your life.”

”No. I ..I’m pretty sure I had some earlier this week and that’s why I don’t feel good.”

“Dad, that stuff is called like ‘Extreme Razzleberry Kicks.’ You’d never drink that.”

“No, I think I had some at work. I’m gonna have to write a letter.”

Whatever he wrote it worked again, because we had bottles of the stuff when I got home.

Saturday in the Dark with George

Last Saturday night with George Romero commenting over “Night of the Living Dead” was awesome. I fully intended to write something up about it, but got lazy and got scooped.

There’s not much I would have said that Alonzo didn’t hit, but I will say that I was surprised Romero downplayed the politics that have been read into the movie (A movie made in the midst of the Vietnam War featuring children eating their parents lends itself to all sorts of political readings), but he mostly dismissed that as something Cashiers du Cinema took off with and he sort of went along with.
Most of his talk was more on the cooperation between the team that made the movie, and the rigors of the filmmaking, as well as frequent plugs for his new zombie movie which he promises to be more in the spirit of “Living Dead” than the “Land of the Dead,” which won’t really be that hard.

Oh yeah, and he hates fast-moving zombies.

I was also able to use the movie as a way to unveil this year’s Amateur Film Contest. We’re going with a zombie theme this year. As with the other years, all you have to do is make a short movie with a zombie theme, submit it and possibly win valuable prizes.
Expect to be hassled about this from now until May.

High Anxiety

I've always been a worrier. I've also had a pretty healthy dose of anxiety. I was really relieved when the Santa Claus myth was confirmed by my parents, since it meant I didn't have to spend another Christmas Eve throwing up after getting all worked up wondering what Santa was going to bring me. That whole "he knows if you've been bad or good" business wasn't helping matters any, either. I guess I'd been good, but had I really been good enough to trick the jolly old man for another year?
So yeah, anxiety is nothing new, but lately I've been nebbishing around like Woody Allen in between therapist visits. It didn't help that we went to a wedding where I didn't know anyone at all a couple weeks ago (my wife knew the bride's mom or something) and with no bar, I didn't have any antidepressant juice to help me out.
Then we had this training thing at work which was a little too much talking about your feelings and goals and stuff for my tastes. As we went around the room, I had a flashback to middle school as I counted down in terror as the next person spoke, realizing I had to come up with something smart, quick, but when my turn came I blurted out whatever popped in my head, making me seem like a smartass, when I wasn't trying to be at all, and why can't we just have training where someone talks and we sit and take notes and draw pictures and then we take a test or something and get to go home early? I mean, shit, we're a bunch of clerks and librarians, none of us want to speak in front of people. If we did, we would have been actors or newscasters or politicians. What's with all the getting in groups and talking about yourself stuff? Can I blame this on the Baby Boomers?
Well, at least I have a three day weekend starting tomorrow and I'm seeing George Romero talk about "Night of the Living Dead" while I eat nachos and drink beer Saturday night, and I've got some ebay/amazon treats coming so I should be alright. Just as long as I don't have to talk about my feelings for a while.

That's the Last Time I Let Lou Dobbs Cut My Hair

I’ve been getting my hair cut at the same place for a few years now. It’s pretty awesome. Not only is it cheap (10 bucks for a haircut), it’s a seriously old school barbershop, where they have old Playboys laying around and the woman who runs the place shaves the back of your neck with a straight razor and hot shaving cream at the end, which makes me feel like a cowboy.
We never really talk, other than superficial stuff about the weather, my impressive cowlick, and how yes, I want to keep my sideburns. I don’t care what the rest of America looks like, I’m keeping the 90210 ‘burns. Just wait – 10 years from now I’ll be seen as ahead of the trend, especially since by then I will have moved on to cultivate an impressive pair of ‘70s Elvis muttonchops.
Today I made the mistake of going in there while she was watching the news. They were talking about those kids that got eaten by the tiger or whatever had been taunting it previously. Duh. Anyway, that launched her into this whole thing about how it served them right because they were Mexicans who were over here to rape women and steal our jobs.
For the rest of my haircut (which wasn’t really long) she kept on the Mexicans coming here to rape women. I kept quiet, because you don’t really want to make your barber upset, but now I’m wondering if I’m going to have to find another place to get my hair cut.
Thing is, I like going there, not only because of my fundamental cheapness, but also because I really like that shave there at the end. I suppose if I don’t go in there while the news in on, maybe I’ll be OK.

"They're Dead...They're...They're All Messed Up."

Finally bought 2 tickets for George Romero's February presentation of "Night of the Living Dead." Based on the John Waters and H.G. Lewis talks, its gonna be awesome. I'm hoping we'll have our flyers finished for this year's Film Festival contest by then, which I'm telling myself will be awesome as well. Don't want to give away any secrets yet, but "Night of the Living Dead" will be appropriate to this year's theme.

In more news of movies that inspired Misfits songs, Vampira died this week. She joins Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi and Ed Wood Jr. in the afterlife, where I'm assuming they reenact "Plan 9 From Outer Space" constantly.

Somewhat Reassuring

I just determined that one of my headlights is out. I thought that my night vision was just getting a whole lot worse.