Read and Burn

Back when I was writing press releases for the University of Florida, I had a professor turn the tables and start asking me questions. He wanted to know what newspaper I read. I told him the St. Pete Times, and I’m sure I had a good rationale because I was in my 20s and had lots of reasons and justifications and speeches for why I liked or disliked things.“That’s a good paper,” he said. “But they go overboard on all that ‘the moon hung lightly in the fog-misted night’ stuff. Sometimes I just want to know who got murdered, you know?”

The professor had a point. I’m not opposed to a little poetry or finesse, but journalism school, years of simple punk rock, and my shattered attention span have me screaming, “Get to the point,” or “take that ‘word symphony’ back to creative writing class,” when an author gets too overblown.Which brings me to Love and Death in the Sunshine State, a book about the disappearance of a motel owner on Anna Maria Island which is about 10 minutes from where I grew up. It's where we went to the beach. My first girlfriend lived there. I was interested to see how it described the place, especially since the book got pretty good reviews.

Man, did that thing make me mad.

Author Cutter Wood hangs out on Anna Maria Island for a week, gets obsessed with the murder/disappearance and halfway attempts to investigate. Actually, his half-assed investigation is my favorite part of the book, where he’ll sleep until 10 or 11, show up to interviews unprepared,  and try to guilt the motel owner into giving him a reduced rate. Hell, I’d totally read a book about a lazy detective. Somebody get on that!

I think I hate Cutter Wood. I want Oprah to make him cry on the TV like she did to that Million Little Pieces fraud. I want him to be forced to grade his dumb students’ short stories for eternity while Jimmy Buffet plays on a loop. I want Donald Trump to be his roommate. I want the stupid typewriter he uses (yes, of course he uses a typewriter and has to mention it) to run out of ribbon right before he types out another overwritten “poetic” description of Florida.

Incidental characters sound like mashups of Tom Waits and Jimmy Buffet songs, and I don’t really think Woods actually talked or listened to them giving their “I’m just a sunburned carney worker propping up the bar here, but let me tell you some hard-earned wisdom about women and life” jazz. I grew up in Florida. I’ve ridden busses. I’ve worked terrible jobs. I’ve heard those guys all my life. They’re not that poetic.

It's also full of mistakes that are easy enough to fix in the age of Google. Mr. Bones is a bbq restaurant, not a bar. I don’t even think they have a bar. Hernando DeSoto died near the Mississippi River, not in Florida. The name of "The Sarasota Paper" is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Tourist season is generally in the colder months. After mistakes like these, I’m a bit leery that he really saw a cook give himself a blood sugar test in a greasy spoon that smells like nail polish remover because it’s next to a nail salon in a strip mall. I also don’t believe the young woman that takes a birth control pill and a Flintstones vitamin every morning.  Do they even make Flintstones vitamins anymore?

You could say that the true crime book started, or at least turned respectable with In Cold Blood, Truman Capote’s blending of reporting and novelistic tools to create a work that was able to get into the characters’ thoughts and motivations. You know what Truman Capote didn’t do? Dedicate over half of his book  to chapters about the author falling in love and moving in with his elementary school crush and teaching students he thinks are stupid and attending parties.

He also, from what I remember didn’t cover the thing in the most florid, overwritten prose that I’m not going to give an example of because I’ve already returned the book and trying to remember it angries up my blood. 

Sometimes you just want to know who got murdered, you know?

Free Speech for the Dumb

I was in the back of a city car being driven to a drug test. This was my third time getting tested in about a year.

This meant that instead of doing my job, I was being taken to a building to pee in a cup to prove I wasn't smoking the jazz cigarettes, a process that could last up to two hours depending on the backlog.

It was evaluation season, and I was wondering how I was going to get everything finished and approved and signed in the next week or so, but couldn't get too worked up about it, because, honestly, for as much I might grumble about being taken away from my work, not doing evaluations and having an official excuse wasn't that bad.

Plus, the two HR guys driving me were acting as an unintentional comedy team.

"You're driving way too fast."

"I have to - you drive like an old lady."

"Maybe, but I'll get us there in one piece, and without a ticket. Who's gonna pay for that, anyway?"

The driver (who was going sort of fast, honestly. I mean, what's the rush?) was an old Florida cowboy type. I can't remember his name. Like the nerdy guy riding shotgun, they've both long retired. Let's call them Cowboy and the Nerd.

I wasn't paying too much attention, just hanging out in the backseat, looking down the river from the bridge, wondering how long this was going to take, and pondering what I'd get for lunch later when I heard Cowboy give his philosophy on the police.

"You know, they work for you, right? I mean, we're taxpayers," Cowboy said. The cops were also taxpayers and we were working for them also, but I wanted to see where Cowboy went with this.
"So anytime I get pulled over I just tell them whatever I want, like, 'how did you pass the physical to get on the force,' or 'Looks like you've been hitting the donuts too hard lately, buddy.' And they have to take it - they can't do anything to you. It's free speech."

"You really do that?" the Nerd asked.

"Oh yeah, everytime," replied the Cowboy. "Most of the time they're too shocked to do anything and just let me go. If they write me a ticket, I just ball it up in front of them and make fun of them. There's nothing they can do about it. It's in the Constitution."

Cowboy didn't sound like he was lying, and I'm not sure if he was or not. In any case, he believed what he was saying.

The Nerd was quiet after that, possibly trying to think of a rebuttal. I was in the back thinking, "You might be able to pull that off, Cowboy, but I'm gonna stay with my usual acting polite and still usually getting a ticket anyway plan."

And I've stuck with that plan ever since. According to a 20 second internet search, you can't get arrested (legally) for swearing at or flipping off a cop, so I'm assuming going all Don Rickles on an officer is similarly protected by our Founding Fathers. Needless to say, I'm not going to be the one to try it out, but if you do, please let me know your experiences.

Oh - and I totally passed my drug test, by the way.

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!

The Best of Bread

I don't know how many of you have been on online dating sites, but on one of the big ones the final question is, "I spend a lot of time thinking about..."

I don't remember what my answer was for that one, but I didn't exactly tell the truth. This was a departure from my policy of absolute honesty for the other questions, where I revealed that I am a 6 foot tall ex-CIA agent who once rescued a baby and several puppies from a house fire. Although I'd like to think that they rescued me.

If I'm being completely honest, I spend a lot of time thinking about bread.

In fact, let me share some of my favorite gluten-free bread recipes I got from my CrossFit group - hey, where's everybody going?

Actually, I spend time thinking about bread just as a sheer impossibility. I mean, the cards really seem stacked against its discovery, you know?

Like, some caveman (or woman) had to notice some wheat growing out in the wild and think, "Hey, I I could probably eat that."

Which just in itself seems like an insane leap of thinking. I get seeing some berries or a fish or a watermelon or whatever, and thinking you could take a bite out of it, but wheat? That's like thinking you could eat feathers or sandspurs.

So even after Ook figures that out, they have to decide not to eat it then, but to grind it up and add...I dunno...eggs? Water? then bake it up. Meanwhile, there's mammoths and fruit and vegetables right outside the cave just begging to be eaten. The whole grinding flour thing alone seems like the cave equivalent of the Space Race or the Panama Canal.

Just to prove how astonishing this step was, it was thousands of years after this invention before the Earl of Sandwich discovered the sandwich, and possibly centuries after that before the invention of the Reuben or the club sandwich.

I would like to take this space to thank you, unknown caveperson. Not only did you provided me the basis for many treats throughout the years, you've also provided me with much to think about. For this, take a bow, unknown caveperson. You deserve it.

Zine Thing

Was there ever a youth movement that demanded as much out of its fans than the American punk/hardcore scene? Sure, you could just go to the shows and buy the records or whatever, but there was an unspoken expectation that you would add something to the conversation - start a record label, write for or publish a zine, or in the words of the Big Boys' Randy "Biscuit" Turner, "OK ya'll, go start your own band."

I wasn't in a band (even though it is generally accepted that I have the voice of an angel), but I was on the community college newspaper, so I decided to stick a press card in my hat and become a zine publisher.

It's sort of amazing that a gawky kid could just declare himself a writer and people in bands would take minutes out of their day to answer hard-hitting questions like, "What are your influences," "What do you think about GG Allin/Ian McKaye," or "Are you straight edge?"

Of course, that makes it sound a lot easier than it was.

My zine Freezerburn started with a crack staff of four of the least outgoing and self-confident teens on Earth. Our first journalistic coup was a trip to Brandon to interview a couple of bands, Awake* and Slap of Reality. We sort of shadowed them around for hours in their houses without really asking any questions. I'd like to think this was an exercise in immersive journalism, trying to find what made our subjects tick by observing their day-to-day life, but in reality we just didn't come up with any questions, even though we had plenty of opportunity on the hour-long ride from Bradenton. And even if we did have questions prepared, we would have been too shy to actually ask them.

Somehow we became a little more outgoing and were able to work with the local promoter to interview nationally known bands like 7 Seconds, Social Distortion, and a couple more I can't remember right now. Fugazi, Down By Law, Pegboy, I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting.

We didn't get press passes or anything, or even get on the guest list. We just got permission to hang out at the sound check until we got the courage to approach our musical heroes with our questions that they had probably just answered at their last tour stop.

We'd wander around the venue trying to keep out of the way of sound people and workers and spending hours trying to work up the courage to approach the bands. Our approach consisted of, "Hey, maybe they'll see us standing around and ask us if we want to interview them." Or, "Uhh...well, they look really busy right now, so maybe we should wait another couple hours," until the promoter basically took us by the hand and made us speak, sort of like making your kid perform in front of company at a party.

While we had learned the valuable lesson of actually preparing questions for bands, we would get thrown if something came up that wasn't on our list of questions, and I'm sure our stammering and stuttering either brought out a protective big brother trait in these bands, or at least provided some entertaining van talk when they recounted the shyest interviewers they ever encountered.

Looking back, I wonder why we didn't just stay in the venue once we were inside, which as an adult and pillar of the community today, I'd totally try to get away with. The only time we did that was late in our journalistic career when we interviewed All and Bad Religion. We wandered through Florida Theater killing time, at one point hanging out in the green room (We had gained a bit more self-confidence by then), actually helping ourselves to some beer (Hey, that's how we gained our self-confidence!) until some Swedish guy said, "Now you are to be going now," so we hid in the bathroom for another half hour or so. As professionals, we did not let this incident color our story.

I'd like to say that interviewing people and seeing a project through to completion gave us all needed self-confidence and courage, but it would take years for me to feel comfortable enough to speak to strangers (although I did get better at interviewing) or vague acquaintances, instead of waiting for them to speak first. So you could say that zine writing kept me from living the life of a Howard Hughes-like hermit. For that, you can all thank Freezerburn.




*In a feat of under-the-gun, working-with-what-we-had journalism, we were able to salvage enough to write the stories, almost like a sober Hunter S. Thompson. Also, that Awake 7" is so good. Here, check it out:

Antmusic

Remember that fable about the grasshopper and the ant? You know, there's a fun-loving grasshopper and an industrious ant. The ant gathers his ...wheat or whatever it is that ants store up for the winter, while the grasshopper hangs out playing music. Winter comes and the grasshopper hasn't collected any food, probably because he was helping the ant by playing music to help him forget that he was gathering wheat. The grasshopper begs the ant for some food, but the ant tells him to go pound sand, since he should have been working instead of playing music. Then the grasshopper starves to death while the ant feasts on his stores of wheat and rejoices.

Most kids heard this and maybe vaguely got the idea that there was no reward without work. They grew up fine. Other kids heard this and grew up to be people who post on Facebook about how a woman in front of them at the grocery store used food stamps to buy lobster and champagne.

I'm not sure how or why, but I'm pretty sure this has something to do with racism.

To an anxious, overthinking kid like me, this story just gave me a new pile of worry. I already had to stress if I had been good enough for Santa and God, now I had to worry if I had saved enough wheat or worked hard enough.

It probably didn't help that my mom's favorite saying was (and remains) "I've done a full day's work before you even got out of bed." That's the sort of thing ants are always saying to grasshoppers.

I'm still not 100 percent sure if I'm an ant or a grasshopper. I feel I'm basically lazy - if I'm at home unsupervised with a couple hours to spare, there's about an 80% chance there's gonna be a nap involved. I've got just enough grasshopper guilt in me that I can't really relax during the day unless it's raining or I'm sick or something. You know those dudes that can watch football or movies all day? After about 2 hours, I feel a crushing guilt - that I haven't accomplished anything during the day, and some grasshopper is gonna be laughing at me while I beg for winter wheat in the cold.

That leaves me to overcompensate - like if I laze around on one day, I'll have to complete a huge list of chores the next to keep the grasshopper anxiety at bay.

And that's as an adult. I remember being a kid on a Sunday evening and having total little kid psychic meltdowns over this. "This was it," I'd think. "You've had some fun this weekend, but fun doesn't last. Now you have to get ready for school. And you're totally unprepared for school." It didn't help that my favorite non-science fiction reading material at the time was collections of Peanuts, which in retrospect, might not be the most healthy stuff for a somewhat smart, yet tightly-wound prepubescent.

I totally identified with Sally here.

I'm trying to get away from being torn like this. This is the year I commit to either total grasshopper or total ant. So 2017 will either see me transform into a total renaissance man, or I'll just wait on someone else to do things for me, like in my favorite fable, the shoemaker and the elves.

Now that's a story I liked, with a moral I still appreciate - if you're a pretty good person, some magical force will take pity on you and do all your boring work for you, while you revel in the profits and abundant free time.

That seems like a much less stressful way to live.

Ball and Biscuit

Here's another Fest story halfway shrouded in booze and memory.

I was headed back to my room at the Hampton Inn the second night of Fest. As a middle aged man who had spent the day drinking and listening to loud music I was very glad Hampton Inn was within walking distance of everything.

I was feeling good. My ears were ringing and I was tired, but I was nice and drunkhappy. I was thinking about the last full Fest I had attended five years or so ago and how I felt like a completely different person. While I had an awesome time both times, there was a desperation last time - sort of a yearning need to blow out my system and ...I dunno, feel something, some sort of connection with people again or something. This time I was a little older and more centered, and was just focused on catching up with friends and bands and getting drunk.

I was holding on to that feeling as I settled into the Hampton Inn's elevator, an elevator so slow that I'm pretty sure it is powered by a Donkey Kong-like gorilla pulling the cable up and down.

I wasn't alone in my reveries. A group of British Fest goers was in the other corner. They didn't pay attention to me, as they were engaged in culinary conversation.

"Oi mate, that wasn't really gravy was it?"

"Blimey, and what they called biscuits was bleedin' huge and doughy. Nobody could eat that for breakfast, guv'nor."

It took a while to cut through all the gin and tinnitus and sleepy, but it slowly registered that these limeys were dissing biscuits and gravy, here in central Florida.

The nerve of these foreigners. Gainesville had put on an amazing music festival for them and they were gonna malign biscuits and gravy? You didn't hear me disparaging British cuisine when I was over there - no, I kept my comments stateside out of respect for their ...Queen or whatever. Plus, those people riot over soccer games, who knows what would happen if they heard my irreverent take on spotted dick, which I'm sure they had never heard before.

They might have well been bad-mouthing Steve Spurrier or Tom Petty (As a side note, I can think of at least three houses in Gainesville that I was assured were Tom Petty's old house. Dude got around).

I wasn't going to take this lying down. As a Southern gentleman, I was considering challenging them to a duel, but I think the limeys invented that game, so instead I just burst out with a incredulous "Whaaaaaat?"

That broke the ice. "What kind of gravy did you expect? And your biscuits are cookies. Why would you expect cookies for breakfast?" (I hoped they hadn't heard about Cookie Crisp cereal, or my argument would be invalid).

I actually meant my remarks to be in the nature of good-minded fun, but I did notice they visibly recoiled from my outburst. Then again, if I were trapped in an elevator with a dude twice my age ranting about cookies and gravy, I'm not sure if I'd be able to discern the feeling behind the words either.

We soon patched things up and hurled a few good-natured insults back and forth, all of which are lost in time, unless they've got the internet over in England and they happen to read this and can get back to me.

A week later, my country elected a TV con man to be President of the United States, so I guess they really showed me up, after all.

There's Something Wrong With My Toast; or Stories I Like, Yet Am Not Entirely Convinced They Are True, Part Six

I went to Fest again this year. It was awesome. For those who don't know, Fest is a yearly celebration of punk rock and ugly beards in Gainesivlle, Florida. It's also a Gainesville family reunion, all full of laffs and day drinking and cookouts and catching up and thinking, "Hey, that band I thought was just OK in college sounds like the greatest thing ever right about now."

While catching up with people, I was sufficiently liquored up to tell the following story to a friend.

"You know, that speech at your wedding was the greatest speech I've ever heard. Like Gettysburg Address level."

"What speech?"

How could she not remember the speech? To set the scene, dear reader, two friends were getting married. It seemed a bit tense. Family (mostly her side, I believe) was on one side, friends were on the other side. There was no mixing. They said their vows and all that, then it was reception time.

"So your mom gets up to give a speech and gathers like, your brothers and your new husband."

"I don't have any brothers."

"Yeah, but she gathered them all together and ...wait? No brothers? Are you sure?"

"I'm pretty sure I don't have any brothers."

"But that was the whole point of the toast. Your mom gathered (Name Redacted) and your brothers -"

"I don't have any brothers. Not one."

"WELL ANYWAY, she gathered like, three fake sons and said, 'You know, after this weekend, I feel I now have four sons. Then (Name Redacted) grabs the mic and goes, 'yeah, sons of bitches,' meaning, like, 'we're all crazy, fun-loving guys.' But it came out like he called your mom a bitch. Then there was this total silence and people started whispering like, 'did he just call her a bitch?' Then the whole place started cracking up. Well, except for your relatives. They didn't think it was that funny."

"I don't really remember that, and again, don't have any brothers. But that's a pretty good story."

I've given a few speeches in my life. Whether in front of library board members, weddings, or nursing home residents, one thought kept me calm before starting to speak. "Well, it can't go over any worse that that wedding reception speech where (Name Redacted) accidentally called his future mother-in-law a bitch.

Now I see that I had the power inside me all the time.

As you know, The Goo Goo Muck is tirelessly dedicated to pursuing the truth, at least until it seems like a whole big deal and I've gotta do something other than a half-assed Google search. In this spirit, I sort of thought about asking people who were at that wedding if they remembered the toast, but then thought, well, if the bride said it didn't happen that way, I guess I'll have to accept it. Which sucks, because I've used that story for years as a funny anecdote whenever someone would bring up disastrous speeches or weddings or toasts, but I have to regretfully rate this story as Mostly False. He did totally accidentally call his mother-in-law a bitch, I mean, I was there! But I suppose the execution was different from what I remembered.

If anyone has another failing speech story I can use to psych myself up before speaking, I guess I'm in the market now.

Life on Other Planets

In college, my friend Curt lived in a shack.

Well, not the whole time, just his last summer in Tallahassee. And it wasn't really a shack, more like an old warehouse. It actually used to be a punk club, Planet Ten. It was downtown over by an auditorium and a bunch of half-razed buildings.

I spent a lot of time there that summer. At least that's how I remember it. I was probably only really there for a few weekends. It was fun, if a bit unnerving. I mean, you'd be sleeping on a bed close to where Black Flag played a few years previously, but you'd also worry a bit about rats or bums interrupting your beauty sleep.

The place didn't have a bathroom, air conditioning, or water, but that didn't seem that big a deal in your 20s. There was a gas station close by that was friendly with their bathrooms, and I remember swimming in some apartment complex's pool when the dirt/heat got too much.

Curt and his roommate Pete had different strategies to beat the Florida heat and humidity. Pete took to sleeping with a bucket of ice water on his chest. It made sense at the time. Curt's remedy was simpler - in his words "You have to get drunk just to get some sleep."

I certainly wasn't objecting to that.

Curt had the larger room - right off of where the stage used to be. Pete had a room in the back decorated  like a cross between a dungeon, a cable access monster movie show and a set for a Cramps video. He had an awesome collection of old monster records, as well as just about anything you could put a Frankenstein or Dracula on.

There was a courtyard-type thing between their place and an auto repair place, one of the few businesses still standing. This area was filled with junked cars and busted out TVs and other assorted debris, giving the place a nice post-Armageddon look.

Planet Ten was a perfect place for parties, as there were no neighbors (well, except for the occasional bums on the other side of the plywood wall) and nobody really cared what went on in the run-down part of Tallahassee. Like a lot of punk houses, it had the feeling of Pinocchio's Pleasure Island (before the whole turning into donkeys part), a space with no rules or responsibilities, a place where you could set off bottle rockets inside, play your latest records at a respectable volume, have a party on a Tuesday, or just reject your middle-class upbringing by throwing empty bottles at the busted TV out in the back.

It was the morning after a party one day and Curt and I woke up around 11, as gentlemen are wont to do. This was in those wonderful, magical days before your body punished you with hangovers, and we were sitting around playing Pete's monster records while planning what we were going to do later that day.  An angry banging on the garage-type door interrupted our philosophical discussion on "Famous Monsters Speak."

I mean, of course we had to discuss this. Look at those headlines!

Curt rolled up the door and we were confronted by two angry rednecks and their short African-American friend. The head redneck was screaming at Curt for having a party and leaving cans and bottles all over the vacant lot.

A scene like this is never fun to be confronted with first thing in the morning, but to be caught holding a copy of "Famous Monsters Speak" with a dazed, deer in the headlights look like I was, at least added some humor.

Head Redneck finished screaming at Curt after we promised to pick up all our trash, and he and Silent Redneck got in a truck and took off. Their African-American pal got on a bike and shouted, "Ya'll shouldn't be having no parties anyway" as he was leaving.

We spent about 20 minutes cleaning up the yard, and Pete was even awoken from his dungeon enough to help for a while. While Curt and I were accustomed to crappy work in the Florida sun, it was pretty funny watching a hungover Pete gingerly grabbing a can, looking like a vampire caught in the first rays of sunlight.

There weren't too many parties after that, and Pete and Curt drove off to grad school a month or so later, right on the heels of a long-awaited bum invasion of the space. Years later we learned the rednecks were touchy about the condition of their vacant lot because they had branched out into the much more lucrative business of smuggling cocaine and were currently awaiting trial.

The three of us, on the other hand, have all moved on to become respected members of our communities, In fact, if you need a skull microphone (and who doesn't, really) check out Pete's site.

Occasionally when I'm shelling out for a monthly mortgage gouging, or the city tells me I have to clean up the vines on my side yard, I yearn for the simplicity of a shack where I can live far away from The Man's rules and regulations. Then I remember the scary rednecks and bums and rats and the lack of air conditioning and kiss the threshold of my suburban home.

Skeleton Dance, or Stories I Like, Yet Am Not Entirely Convinced They Are True, Part Five

Longtime readers of my foolishness might remember this story, I first published it back in the ancient days of Myspace, but I have recently unearthed new information which begged for an updated version. While plagiarizing yourself is looked down on by the elites, sometimes loose cannons like myself have no other choice in our relentless hunt for the truth.

Several Christmases ago I was at my parents’ house with my sister and then-wife. My dad made an offhand comment about a place called the Skeleton Hotel. Apparently construction started on a hotel back in the ‘20s during one of Florida’s periodic land booms. After the inevitable bust there was no money left to complete the hotel, so it sat unfinished for years, earning the nickname “The Skeleton Hotel.”

One of us commented that with a name like The Skeleton Hotel there should really be more skeletons or ghosts running around that story. 

“No, never saw any skeletons,” he said. “But I did find a mummified hand and a coffee can full of coins there once.”

Wait, what?

So my dad and some friends were playing at the old hotel and started digging under the front stairs. That’s when they unearthed the mummified hand and can full of coins. We asked him what the coins were like, were they regular U.S. money? Doubloons? Whatever money leprechauns hide? He wasn’t really sure, or couldn't remember, or tried to throw us off the trail. They took the hand and the coins to the police, then never heard anything else about them.

He did manage to save a photo of his find, however.

We were awestruck by this story. Not only did little kid dad find actual buried treasure, an obsession that took up like 40% of my brain when I was a kid, but he also unearthed a mummy hand, with all the weird, unholy powers that was sure to bring him.

My sister and I were doubly struck by the fact that he didn’t feel this story was interesting enough to drop on us until we were in our 30s.

I can understand that a bit now – had he told me that story when I was a kid, our yard would have looked like the surface of the moon after my frantic searches for treasure.

Couple weeks ago I mentioned this story to my mom. She said she didn’t remember anything about it. She also pointed out that my dad would regularly, let’s say exaggerate stories for comedic effect, and that my sister and I could be somewhat gullible about this. For example, he got pins in his shoulder when a car slipped a jack and fell on him right before I was born. When I asked  him about the scar he told me a kid at a campfire had thrown a flaming marshmallow at him, leaving a (rather large) permanent scar.

I don’t know if this was supposed to be a joke or a lie turned into a teaching moment, but it did the trick. While I’m a fan of both shenanigans and fires, ifI felt things were getting too rowdy around an open flame, I had a vision of my dad’s marshmallow scar. “This could get dangerous,” I’d think. “I better get out of here before people start flinging flaming marshmallows.”

So in the spirit of the investigative journalism that The Goo Goo Muck is renowned for, I decided to see how true the Skeleton Hotel story was. My mom didn't offer much hope, but she could just be part of the conspiracy. The first step was to see if the Skeleton Hotel even existed. Holy crap! While I was picturing a much more Addams Family skeleton, it looks like the Skeleton Hotel was a fairly well-known landmark in Lake Meade, and stayed up until the mid-'60s.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the mummy's hand howling for his can of coins.

You can't see the haunted front steps from here, but they were probably taken down by subsequent treasure hunters.

I have no idea who my dad's friends were as a kid, so there's no way to track them down without, actual, you know, effort. However, through a half-assed Google search I found a Fort Meade Historical Museum which mentions a 1957 bank robbery where two dudes used an airplane and kidnapped a policeman. Maybe the coins were hidden then? I'm not saying the sky robbers were cursed by the unearthly mummy hand, but I think that anyone with a scientific mind can infer that they 100 percent were.

Based on this evidence, I decree that not only was Polk County a pretty strange place in the old days, but I declare my dad's story to be True. I will be contacting the sheriff soon to claim the can of coins as my dad's rightful heir. They can keep the mummy hand. I've got a hard enough life trying to stay away from flaming marshmallows without getting mummy curses on me.

The Man with X-Ray Eyes

"Looks like we got the Honeymoon Suite," said my co-worker.

"You're crazy," I replied. "It's just a nice hotel."

"Did you see the bathroom? It's see-through."

"First of all, that's a bad photo, and secondly, in what universe is a see-through bathroom sexy? You're insane," I said, resting my case.

My co-worker Matthew and I were rooming together at the American Library Association's annual conference in Washington, D.C. The W hotel was giving cheap rates, but that rate would be even cheaper with two thrifty guys sharing a room.

The week before the conference we'd crack jokes about the see-through bathroom, with me insisting that there was no such thing, and even if there was, no one would want a see-through bathroom anyway.

I arrived in D.C. first. I couldn't check in til afternoon, so I spent the day wandering through the Smithsonian. It was cool visiting alone because I could spend as much time as I wanted checking out certain things while ignoring boring stuff.

"Oh, the history of commercial aircraft? ZZZZZZZZZ. Hey, look! Spaceships and WWII planes!"

People had warned me about D.C.'s heat, but as a native Floridian, I didn't pay too much attention. Hell, I grew up in humidity and heat. Maybe I'd run a marathon up there just to show everyone.

They were right. August in D.C. is no joke. It didn't help that I was carrying around all my clothes in an overstuffed messenger bag like a homeless person.

So I was more than ready to check in to the W. And yeah, it's a super-nice place. Great bar up on the roof with a view of the Capitol Building so you can pretend you are in the beginning of an action movie, lots of amenities and ....holy crap. See-through bathrooms. Yep. There's a toilet, a shower, a sink, all out there in front of God and everyone.

Artist's Rendition.

Shit. Matthew was right.

By the time I was in high school, group showers were a thing of the past, which was just fine by me. In the years since I had seen more male anatomy than I cared to, thanks to tricks like Hanging Brain or the Minnesota Wristwatch . But these were parlor tricks performed by degenerates that an upstanding lady or gentleman could simply ignore. I was going to have to like, shower and use the bathroom in clear view of another human being for a whole three days.

I have a confession to make. While I am a fellow who appreciates occasional off-color or bawdy talk, I'm a total prude when it comes to bathroom matters. I close the bathroom door when I'm at home alone. That scene in Bridesmaids where everybody's all shitting in the street? Gross. The term "Brainfart?" Gross, and probably my most hated phrase.

I had no problem changing in front of another guy, or sleeping in the same bed with him, but having to sit on the toilet while he was a few feet away watching cable? I would rather run a marathon in the D.C. heat, provided I had a private place to shower afterwards.

"Well, I'll be damned.'" I said. "You were right." Looking at Matthew's face, I could tell that he didn't really want to be right.

Luckily, my roommate was as genteel and refined as myself, so throughout the three day conference we made elaborate plans to make sure the other was far away or deep asleep or roofied before showering or using the bathroom. Because we were very cultured, we never actually talked about this, we just sort of worked it out without resorting to anything as crass as communication.

We were able to survive the weekend, but the incident leaves me with questions. First, who thought that was a good idea? How many architects and designers and planners had to OK a clear bathroom? Were we really in the Honeymoon Suite? What new bride or groom wants to see that? Save some mystery, people. And more importantly, I wonder if the statute of limitations has run out on suing for emotional distress and how much can I ask for.

Comedy Classics

We were somewhere near Daytona on the edge of the ocean when the '70s soft rock began to take hold.

My friend Todd and I were driving to Jacksonville after another big Orlando/Gainesville meetup/reunion in Cocoa Beach.  We were playing my Wussrock playlist - you know, AM Gold, Yacht Rock, the sort of songs where they use the word 'lady' a lot. You heard it on the radio if you grew up in the '70s. If you grew up a little later, you were probably conceived to it.

Todd and I were roommates in Gainesville years ago. We could...well, honestly we could be pretty annoying when together. Actually, I've got a fairly large group of people like that. Everyone has in-jokes with their friends, I've managed to meet and befriend a few who could stretch those in-jokes past the point of comedy, way past annoyance, barrelling past anger, and finally into hysteria. Well, hysteria for us, anyway.

We were playing Gerry Rafferty's hit "Baker Street" (You'll know it when you hear it) and one of us came up with the idea of President Obama playing the sax solo in it. Here, now it's in your head:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Yi762sQTo

This naturally led us into all sorts of scenarios - Obama practicing daily in the Oval Office anxious to show his sax skills to the public, a public address where he would announce "America, we are a strong nation. But we are never stronger when we can share the gift of entertainment to the world. That is why I have gathered you together tonight. Folks, I've been practicing these tasty sax licks for a year now, and here is my gift to you, the American people. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the great Gerry Rafferty."

Needless to say, our Obama impressions were flawless. Or we'd do an impression of a secret service agent seconds before the sax solo hits: "Mr. President! You're on!" This one in particular would crack us up. We then expanded our joke to having President Clinton step in for the guitar solo at about 4:45 if you're following along on Youtube. I'm pretty sure we were picturing him doing the 'guitar face' where you sort of half close your eyes and bite your lip. At least I was.

You could argue that this scenario is not funny. I probably wouldn't argue too strongly with you. It could have been the consequence of a long car ride, lots of caffeine and boredom. But it made us laugh and passed the time.

Couple weekends later I was in Atlanta. After a few drinks Todd and I couldn't stop our Obama sax routine. Predictably, our comedy was lost on the squares, who pointed out things like the fact that Clinton played the sax, not Obama, or that we were being annoying and stupid. Much like Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor, we were just ahead of our time.

Return to the Sea

Years ago I received some advice from a wise old Native American. I had just moved back to Gainesville after spending a year in Atlanta delivering food and felt that I had basically wasted a year of my life. I didn't like Atlanta, but in truth, I didn't really give it much of a chance.

"Remember," he said, in a voice resonating with ancient wisdom, "Never live somewhere that isn't within a half hour of water."

Technically, that ancient Native American was really just one of my friends, and there was a very good chance that one or both of us were drunk on King Kobra malt liquor at the time, but I've remembered his advice ever since.

I'm no "Salt Life" guy, but I can't deny that the ocean has a pull on me, a calming effect, probably from growing up near it. Again, if I grew up in Nebraska, I'd probably be waxing philosophical about the meditative effects of wheatfields, so take my psychological musings with a grain of salt. It's one of my homemade therapeutic tools, along with punk rock and the healing power of a good drunk. 

The past few months, hell, past the year or so has been full of death and a strange, nagging feeling similar to waking up from a bad dream - you can't really remember what happened, you just know enough to realize you should feel bad or upset somehow. Then you wake up more and the feeling fades away.

A friend's dad had recently passed away. He was one of the few adults in my teenage years who treated me with respect and interest, even when that respect wasn't actually earned or deserved. Coming closely on the heels of losing another friend, this sort of seemed like a psychic last straw.

Since I am an unattached grown man who can take time off from work, I decided to take a trip. I didn't really have an idea as to where I was going, I just felt the urge to go somewhere.

I ended up in Bradenton. I didn't tell anyone, mostly because it wasn't planned, and partly because once I ended up there, I felt like being anonymous. Sure, I can be anonymous just as easily in Jacksonville, but it wasn't the same somehow.

I didn't shop around. I got a room at the first place I saw close to the beach. I bought some trunks and walked into the Gulf of Mexico. It was warm, and I could see little transparent fish swimming near the shore. It felt right. I felt like the kid at the end of The 400 Blows when he finally makes it to the ocean. Except of course, I knew all about the Gulf and that kid had never seen the ocean. Thinking about it, maybe I wasn't anything like that kid at all, and the only thing close to the French new wave were the European tourists gazing in disbelief at my pale, almost translucent skin.

The song "Drowned" off the Who's Quadrophenia kept running though my head in a loop as I swam and floated around for about an hour. 

Let me flow into the ocean. Let me get back to the sea.

I didn't think I was stressed, but floating out there in the Gulf I could feel the anxiety leaving my body and floating away in the water, probably out to Mexico.

I got out to get some food. Driving around the island (which is what we called the beach), I was struck by how many ghosts inhabited it now. That's where my first girlfriend and I used to go to watch the sunset and mess around. That's the channel where my dad and I would fish in. Both of them are dead. I was playing Quadrophenia and thinking how I had probably listened to this album on the same beach probably 25 years ago.

I ate middling fish tacos and listened to poor renditions of Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffet*, and Van Morrison while I drank a fruity drink and watched an angry sunset. I listened to the tourists and thought of ways to butt into their conversations just so I could insert some lie about being a tourist from the Midwest finally getting to see the Gulf.

See, I told you it was angry.

I came back hours later after the sun had set. The night was cloudy. The water was cold but I needed to get back in. I acclimated and started swimming.

I wanted to feel something. Something more than just the absence of stress from earlier. I wanted to feel my muscles burning, my lungs aching for breath, and hopefully avoid any Jaws or Kraken beneath me.

I swam out as far and as fast as I could, then stopped and treaded water. I panted in the cold water for a while, then dove as far down as I could before my sinuses threatened to implode or a Loch Ness Monster noticed me, then flew back up. I could still see the white sand of the beach, so I knew I was OK, even if I was starting to realize that maybe this wasn't one of my smarter ideas, what with the sea monsters probably starting to wake up.

In The Postman Always Rings Twice the protagonist wants to swim as far as he can in the ocean until he can't muster any more energy and just sort of let nature take its course in a sort of passive suicide. I didn't have anything that drastic in mind, and plus, I hadn't helped murder a diner owner to get with his wife, so my conscience was clear.

I swam back, walked to my motel and spent the rest of the night watching cable in bed, feeling worn out, both psychically and physically.

The next morning I got up early and drove home after a great night's sleep. Once again, I had stumbled on to a perfect homemade therapy - something to do with salt water, anonymity, and shark avoidance. Someday the American Psychiatric Association will recognize me for my services. I'm not sure where exactly my statue should be erected, but I have several majestic poses already picked out.



* Trick question! As a native Floridian, there are no good versions of Jimmy Buffet.

Money Folder

I'm not the greatest mathematician. If you've ever watched me try to calculate a tip or figure out how much longer a movie lasts, you'll soon realize that I'm basically functionally retarded when it comes to numbers.

I've had to do some calculatin' at work recently. In my last bit of mathmagic, I submitted an invoice requesting an order of 200,000 cards at $27.88 per thousand for a total of $5,576. Pay attention, this will be on the test.

As with many things work-related, this required dozens of signatures and different offices and forms and letters and holy crap I just fell asleep reliving all those forms I had to fill out.

About a week after I turned all this in I get a call from someone in City Hall. The numbers weren't right, which wasn't really surprising. She talked me through it and pointed out that the order I submitted actually came to $55,760, a sum that would never, ever, ever get approved.

I hung up and looked at my forms (always keep a copy!). I dunno, it looks like my numbers were right. 200,00 cards, $27.88 per thousand...that should come up to $5,576, right? Then again, just because I came up with the same answer twice doesn't really mean anything, so I asked some smart people and they came up with the same answer. So when City Hall called back this morning, I laid out my case.

It did not go well. Like a beloved comedy routine, we kept getting stuck in a loop, which I'll recreate for your pleasure:

City Hall: "So if you order 200,000, that would be $55,760."
Me:    "Right. But they're $27.88 per thousand. So you would multiply that by 200, right?"
CH:    "OK. $27.88 times 200,000"
Me:     "No. $27.88 will buy me 1000. To get 200,000, I would have to buy that 200 times."
CH:     "So multiply $27.88 by 200,000."
Me:     "No. Say I go into a store. I've got enough money to buy a thousand of these. But I want 200,00. So I'd multiply that by 200, right?"

After about 10 minutes of this, she hung up and said she'd call me back. While I was waiting for her call, I began to question my math. She was probably right. I mean, she works with numbers every day, and if I could do math, I'd probably have a different job. Why am I pestering that poor woman? Then she called back and said, "OK, so my math skills have disappeared." Then we worked through the requisition process like a team, which was nice, since she said I was driving her to drink on our first call.

I don't mean to make fun of City Hall lady, since anyone can have a brain slip-up or get so sure of something that we fail to see the facts. Hell, I do both constantly. But if you're ever in a situation where my math skills are what saves the day, that is a situation you do not want to be in.

Pants on Fire

"Man, I just can't believe it."

The words came from the guy sitting next to me in study hall.  They were punctuated with a heavy theatrical sigh. Let's call the speaker Steve.

I sat there trying to focus on whatever I brought to study hall, but Steve wouldn't let up. He now complimented his heavy sighs with some dramatic head shaking.

I knew Steve would keep this up until I made some sort of comment, so I waded in.

"Uh...you OK?"

"Yeah...I guess. Sigh. I've got this girlfriend up in New York. Last week she was murdered by some drug dealers. Luckily, my uncle lives up there and he's got a bunch of friends from 'Nam who have all sorts of killer weapons. They know the cops can't do anything, so they're gonna take 'em down. I'm supposed to go up there for the funeral and meet them and blahblahblah..."

I had seen that Charles Bronson movie on TV last night as well, but let Steve keep whispering the plot, spiced in with declarations of his fighting and weapon abilities while I haphazardly went about my work. These stories had been going on for a while, and while I didn't really encourage them, they were fascinating just for their sheer audacity. He was taking a chance that I hadn't seen the movie he was plagiarizing as well as banking on the fact that I wouldn't call him out on any of his fantastical tales.

Which I didn't, so I guess the guy knew his audience.

It's funny - people feel compelled to share their secrets with me all the time. I've had countless conversations that start with "I'm really not supposed to tell anyone this..." or end with "I guess I really shouldn't have told you that."  It still happens, and I'm not really sure why. Maybe because I can be counted on to keep a secret unless it makes a really funny story. Maybe I have a trusting face?

But Steve's tales were something else. I was awed at the sheer audacity of them, if not their originality. They were generally blatant rewrites of whatever action movie had struck his fancy lately, interspersed with digressions on Steve's fighting skills.

I fancied myself an experienced liar, but my lies were utilized to get out of trouble or used as an occasional spice to liven up a story. I have completely grown out of such childish antics and would like to remind readers that all stories I post are run through a battery of fact-checkers, which explains why I'm down to like one story a month now.

But back to Steve. His penchant for stealing storylines was emblematic of a bigger problem. He was also highly susceptible to '80s media. At one point he became obsessed with the hit TV show Miami Vice, like a lot of people at the time. Unlike most people, he took it a bit farther and started dressing like a high school version of Don Johnson.

Of course, a lot of other people probably did that. What they didn't do, however, was go undercover.

Apparently there were a few convenience stores that would sell booze to underage kids. Steve would go into them dressed like a mini Don Johnson, buy some beer, then call the cops. Or maybe he was wearing a wire already, who knows.

I didn't really drink in high school, and honestly thought that the kids hanging out in parking lots getting drunk every weekend lacked imagination, but even I considered this a Benedict Arnold-like strike against the kids.

That was the last I heard of Steve. After we had both successfully completed study hall I didn't see him anymore, which was fine with me. It took a lot of psychic energy to act halfway interested in recycled action movie plots every day.

Occasionally I'd think about the guy, wondering if he had picked a new persona or had finally gotten comfortable enough with himself that he didn't have to do stuff like that anymore. Adolescence is a time to put on different guises and characters, and although most kids didn't take it to the extremes Steve did, we were all in the process of figuring out who our real selves were.

Then I'd forget about the guy, harnessing my mindpower to decipher the lyrics to punk rock songs, where the best skate spots were, or the best way to get my money's worth at the Wendy's buffet.

Years later I was working at a film developing place in the mall and I see Steve saunter up. He was a mall security guard, or possibly had bought a really good replica uniform from the same place he bought his Don Johnson getup from.

He didn't recognize me, and I didn't say anything to him. Actually, I couldn't even if I wanted to, since he was telling my co-worker some story about trying out for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had spring training in Bradenton. After he left, I told my co-worker, "Hey, uh, I know that guy, and he makes up a lot of stuff."

"Oh, that's just Steve," she said.

Old Follks at Home

Bradenton, at least my little corner of it, was a strange place to grow up in. When my parents first moved there, there weren't many kids in our neighborhood for my sister and I to play with. There was also a prevailing parenting philosophy at the time that if kids weren't doing yardwork or domestic work, they should be out doing ...something or other until dinner time. That's how my sister and I made friends with a lot of old people.

Our street was full of elderly people - I remember at least two of them referred to as "The Colonel." You'd see them out watering their yards or smoking cigars and they'd talk to you. Somehow my sister and I decided to take our old person relationship to the next level.

I definitely remember us hanging out in a lot of sun rooms, Florida rooms, and living rooms (I sort of think all of these are the same room). Sometimes our elderly neighbors would give us cookies or candy, and we'd talk about...jeez, I have no idea. School? What else could we talk about? The houses were shaded by palm trees and you could see the quartz crystals sparkling on the outside walls. The rooms were heavily air-conditioned, so much so that you could almost see your breath indoors. You could also vaguely smell the residue of decades worth of cigarette residue on the walls.

Sometimes WDUV would be on lightly in the background, making me think now that we were part of the entertainment for cocktail  hour.

Funny thing is, I don't ever remember an invitation, I just remember going up to the door, like you would with an age-appropriate friend.


I do remember a couple of the old guys telling me some pretty cool WWII stories, but I've forgotten most of them, only retaining the impression of hanging out in the cold Florida living rooms while the ceiling fans whirred above.

I don't know what the old people got out of these visits - I guess they got to hang out with some little kids for an hour or so until we all sort of mutually decided our visiting time was up.

I also remember cutting through people's yards and gardens regularly - whether on our way to the bus stop in the morning, or just deciding to play in someone's back yard other than our own. There were lots of houses with landscaping full of ferns and palms dark enough that you could pretend you were in a jungle. There was also a family of wild parrots in the neighborhood that would screech occasionally to add authenticity.

We didn't have a strong concept of property rights, and luckily this is before Florida became synonymous with shooting people, and I guess nobody really minded a pair of kids trespassing through their property at the time. If they did, they never said anything about it.

Again, I realize that this is another of those stories that makes it sound like I grew up in the '30s or something, but if you think about it, culturally, the early '80s were still really the '70s. Then you have to subtract a few years for it being Florida, then another few years for it not being Tampa or Miami, and ....uh, do a little more subtraction, and you've ended up with 1964. That seems about right.

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.

Aunt Mary's All Alone

My dad's funeral was on a Saturday. I left work early the previous Monday when I got the phone call and spent the rest of the week in a daze. I obviously knew he was gone, but it didn't seem altogether real, that someone I knew for my whole life (and had known me even longer) had just been sort of disappeared from the earth.

I spent a lot of time on the couch, sort of halfway paying attention to movies we had watched together, texting and talking to family and friends, and trying to wrap my head around his death.

Before my dad died, I had planned to drive down to Gainesville for a Radon reunion show that weekend. While by my estimations I have seen about 46,000 Radon "reunion" or "original lineup" or "final" shows, it's always a good time, and it brings all the oldsters out of the woodwork so we can drink and sing and act the fool away from our responsibilities and set the clock back about 20 years or so to recharge our worn out batteries.

While I obviously wasn't going to go to Gainesville Saturday night, I decided to spend Thursday night in Tampa, catch Radon in Ybor City, then drive down to Bradenton the following morning.

I was a bit conflicted about this plan. Should I really be having fun so close to my dad's death? Sure, I could tell myself that dad would want me to have a good time, but that seemed sort of hollow and somewhat disrespectful. In the end, I decided that it would be good to have a little fun to step into normal life for a little while and to steel myself against the funeral. Sure, that was a pretty cheap rationalization, but it was what I was going with.

I had a great afternoon; sure, sadness lurked around the corners, but I hung around band practice, drank some beers and talked with great friends that I haven't seen in a while, some of whom had gone through losing a parent and offered whatever advice or sympathy they could.

Remember that band in college, that one who might not be technically proficient, and maybe the drummer would slow down halfway through the set, or the guitars might be out of tune, or the singer might forget a verse, but it didn't matter, because after a few songs you and your friends transformed into a single organism, jumping and singing and making the wooden floor creak and bend under your weight while you could transcend, just for a second, the day-to-day cares and frustrations and become one, unified mass of humanity? Well, Gainesville was (and still is) lousy with those bands, and I was counting on Radon to bring that feeling back for a few minutes that night.

And they didn't disappoint. I knew the song that was going to kill me. "Grandma's Cootie," a song about an aunt left alone by the death of her husband who takes a ride on a roller coaster and sees the beach from the top of the coaster.



They played it about halfway through the set, right before "Stepmother Earth," a song that always made me think about the complicated relationship between fathers and sons, even though there's not really anything specific to that reading in the song.

Tears welled as I sang along with old friends and strangers, but they were different somehow. They were sadness mixed with that feeling of transcendence along with a bit of happiness. I could almost grasp a theory about loss and death and the power of friendship and love, but the music and gin and tonics clouded my thinking and it remains just out of reach.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Most people freeze their musical tastes in their 20s, and while I have continued seeking out different genres and styles since then (just ask anyone who has had to endure my "Summertime Reggae/Ska/Rocksteady/Dub" playlist at a cookout), the music and friends I made in my 20s have a special place in my heart. You can use that feeling to live in the past and moan about how things aren't as exciting now as they were back then, or you can take a bit of that feeling now and then to jump start your heart, to realize that you are part of something, that you have friends and family who love you, and that no matter how shitty life can be at times, you will endure and thrive.

I'm not saying that that night cured me, I continued (and continue) to have bad moments and bad days. But it did help, and if the suits at the American Psychiatric Association will ever recognize my groundbreaking research into punk rock music as grief therapy, I feel many more people will be helped.

Spanks. Spanks a Lot

I'm always astounded when what I think are simple, universal experiences are anything but. I mean, yeah, I realize that some things, like your parents hiding ancient Indian skulls in your closet or being forced to pick up mangoes as a child are fairly esoteric, but most of what I write here I just naively assume are experiences that just about everyone who grew up in roughly the same time period as I did can share and laugh at.

So yeah, I'm always a little amazed that people are shocked that I went to a high school that still spanked students.

I grew up in a time when most parents spanked their kids. Most parents don't spank anymore which is probably a good thing. All it really teaches you (or taught me, anyway) is that there is someone bigger and more powerful than you who can cause you physical pain, so it's best to sneak around and not get caught. Or that you can inflict pain on someone smaller than you, like say, a convenient younger brother or sister.

I was spanked as a kid, and I hated it. Looking back, my parents had to live with me 24/7. I'm surprised they didn't beat me more just on principle. The weird thing was, it always seemed like any adult back then had free reign to grab you and start spankin.' I remember the first time I got spanked by a teacher. I was laughing at a comment someone next to me made in my second grade class. My teacher grabbed me by the arm, lifted me out of my desk into the dark, deserted hallway and gave me two licks with a ruler. While it hurt physically, the worst part was having to go back into class and sit down while everyone knew I was bad and got spanked. Also, I was shaking and trying not to cry.

Of course, that was in Mississippi, so I was probably lucky I didn't end up on a junior chain gang.

There were always teachers you had to look out for. There was a teacher later in elementary school who was notorious for shaking the hell out of kids. I know, because it happened to me. Once again, I was laughing, this time in a line, when she came up and said, "You think that's funny? Do you think this is funny," as she shook my little fourth grade body around like a paint can. This was a public high school in Florida. No other teachers came running up saying, "Hey, crazy teacher, I think you've shaken him enough," or "Hey! You know you can't shake kids, crazy teacher! We had that big staff meeting about that!" She wasn't even my teacher, just a woman who saw a kid who needed some shaking and decided she was the one for the job.

Most kids who grew up in the same era have similar stories; whether they themselves were spanked or shook, or they saw or heard about classmates getting similar punishments. This is probably why when a kid was called to the office, the entire class had to go "Oooooooooooooooh."

But what really throws people is when I casually mention that I was spanked in high school. In the 1980s. That's right, while everyone else in the country was dancing around to Kajagoogoo, having their John Hughes-esque day-glo good times, students at our high school were regularly spanked by adults.

I'm not sure what you had to do to get licks. I only remember getting them for talking/laughing in class (careful readers can detect a trend here) and once for getting three tardies. I don't know if girls got spanked or that was just a punishment for the guys. I do remember the last time I went in. I was a senior, which really seems too old for someone to get spanked. The dean gave me a choice of three licks or a three day suspension. I took the licks, since my parents wouldn't have to find out.

He called in a secretary. Apparently you had to have a witness. She looked at me and said, "Oh, I don't like it when they're little like this. They remind me of my grandchildren." I remember thinking, "You have the power to stop this, lady. Stand up and say something, and we can all walk out of here."

No dice. I grabbed a desk, took out my wallet, and spread my legs. Licks were delivered via an actual wooden paddle. The first one took a while, I guess he was warming up or trying to build suspense. It wasn't too bad, but holy crap did the next two sting. Just like elementary school, I didn't cry (plus, by now I had the advantage of being almost a full-grown man), but I was pretty shaky as I left the office.

In the years since I've had a number of jobs that required me to do things I didn't necessarily want to do, so I sympathized with the dean a bit more. The guy got a degree in education, thinking he was going to mold young minds, and instead he goes home each day with a sore shoulder and cramped hand from spanking teenage boys.

Years later, in my erotic life, I met several partners who liked the occasional spank. I am above all a gentleman, so I obliged. I'll admit, it was pretty fun, even though part of me was thinking, "didn't she get enough of this in high school?" Then I realized she probably had a normal upbringing where she wasn't getting spanked by deans for being late to class three times.

 It also made me wonder if maybe I was wrong in giving that dean the benefit of the doubt.

Welcome to the Working Week

For a fundamentally lazy person, I've always gotten along fairly well in the working world. My first real job was bagging groceries, and I soon found that not only was it less work than I would be doing at home, but it was actually scheduled and I got paid for it. Granted, in those ancient times minimum wage was a couple of shiny nickles and a handful of hard candy, but that was enough to buy records and keep my car in gas.

For a relatively simple job, there seemed to be about a thousand different things to know. Was it OK to put dishwashing detergent in the same bag as sealed food? How full should I pack the bags? And I only took a few tests after the interview. Was I really qualified to start bagging so soon?

On my first day a woman had some candles that weren't priced. I had to find them and report the price to the cashier. This is called a "pricecheck" in the business. I speedwalked through the crowded store looking for the candle aisle. I never remembered seeing any candles when I went to the store with my parents. Jesus, how may aisles does this store have, anyway? You know, those candles looked like they should be about 3 bucks. Sure, let's say that. I made my way back to my cashier and confidently lied, "Three dollars," hoping she couldn't see that I was sweating.
"Three dollars? Did you find them on aisle three," she asked.
"Oh yeah. Isle three. Yep, that's where they are."
"They're 5 dollars. They're right over there in that bin," she pointed out with all the scorn a cashier can muster to a lowly bagger.
If she knew the answer, why would she let me lie to her like that? I made it a point to find another cashier to work with as soon as possible.

I also made a friend that day. Well, he made me, I guess. He was this little weaselly looking guy who kept talking to me while I was trying to concentrate on bagging and price checks and what the cashiers looked like naked.

Kids - here's a tip on the house. When you're a young adult, the first person you meet at a job, school, church group, or extracurricular activity is generally someone who has burned through everyone else and sees you as a way to start fresh. Try to stay away from them.

Not to say this guy didn't have his good qualities. Cleaning up one night he showed me his favorite trick. He took an apple from a display, took a hefty bite out of it, and returned it to the display, with the bite side on the inside.

"Check it out," he said. "Tomorrow some old lady will be reaching for an apple and she'll pull out this gross looking bit one."

I had to admit that was pretty funny.

Overall it was a pretty good job - old people slipped me tips, and whenever I needed time to myself, I could go out and gather carts, watching the bank clock turn over as I counted down the hours til quitting time. I'd daydream about how in a few short years I could promote to stockboy, then a manager, and then maybe run my own chain of stores. It would probably be a short hop from grocery store magnate to President, I'd imagine.

Every month we'd have a night where we had to stay late and clean. We'd take out all the eggs and milk and spray bleach water in the display cases to clean out the grossness, mop up, and prepare the shelves and floors for a crew to come in late at night to scour the place. It was kind of fun, mostly because we weren't dealing with customers, the managers would play classic rock over the PA system, and we could sneak cookies from the bakery. There were rumors that some managers allowed workers to make huge Scooby-Doo sandwiches from the deli, but that never happened while I was around.

Every once in a while, I'll get a whiff of bleach with an undertone of sour milk and be transported back to my high school grocery career. I can hear Bad Company, Foreigner, and the Guess Who and wonder why I gave up on my dreams of becoming a grocery store magnate.

Then I'll remember how bad that sour milk in the display cases actually smelled, and how getting off at 1 a.m. really kinda sucked, and I'm kind of glad I left the world of groceries behind.