Cap'n Gown

Went to see some Yacht Rock in Atlanta this weekend. For the uninitiated, Yacht Rock is a term to describe the smooth rock hits of the '70s. If you're of a certain age, its the stuff you fell asleep to in the backseat of your parents car. You know, like this:

If you're a few years younger, it might be the music your parents played while they made you in the backseat of their car.

So this band of younger guys resurrected the songs, occasionally getting the original artists to sing or play guitar or whatever.

Sure, you could dismiss it as campy or kitschy or just another case of hipsters being ironic. Or you could just mellow out and sing along to "Brandi," like the happy people here:

Me with my hostess. Probably singing "Brandi."

It was a pretty swell night. I also saw someone suggestively lick a light saber (I don't know why there was a dude with two light sabers walking around. Maybe he was from the future.)

I sense a great disturbance in the Force. A great sexy disturbance.

So yeah, it was pretty fun. You know what's not fun? Driving the 5 1/2 hours back to Jacksonville the next day through a monsoon. I don't mind long drives too much - day to day driving can suck it, but long trips can be relaxing when I don't focus on how just a few inches of space separate two two-ton vehicles speeding along at 70 miles per hour and holy crap, isn't it amazing that I haven't died multiple times driving?

I used to make up games in the car to keep me focused and awake. One of my favorites was trying to hold my breath over every bridge I drove over. My ex-wife didn't like that game, probably because my stubbornness made me speed up to cross the bridge rather than give up and inhale, even if I was turning red and purple.

Looking back, maybe that was sort of dangerous.

I had other rituals, like how I wouldn't shower the last day of a trip, the idea being that sitting in your filth would make it that much better when you got home and could clean up. She didn't care for that game either.

As I left my host's neighborhood, I knew I needed a new challenge, something to keep me occupied on the long ride home. But what? I needed something that had just the right amount of stupidity. Glancing in my front seat, I had it - with our tickets we also received these captain's hats. You can see mine in action up there. I decided I'd wear my captain's hat the whole trip home. The only rule I had is that I couldn't take it off - not to buy gas, to eat lunch, change a tire, whatever. The captain's hat had to stay on my head the entire journey.

After the first half hour it felt kind of natural. "I should wear a hat more often," I thought. "Look at this thing - look how sophisticated and dashing I am. I look like I should be commanding a PT boat with JFK."

I pulled up next to a carload of college kids playing The Cure's "Why Can't I Be You" at my first gas stop. I gave them the cool guy head nod. They didn't really pay any attention. Probably intimidated.

In fact, it was disappointing how nobody really glanced at my hat when I'd stop. I was hoping for some sort of acknowledgement or laughter or subtle points or something. But no, nothing. Not a muffled "Gilligan" or "Aye, aye Captain" - nothing.

Things were different on the road, where I could sense fellow motorists were suitably impressed. A truckload of Victoria's Secret models frantically motioned me to pull over. A Cadillac full of old people silently saluted me for my service to the country.

But I couldn't stop for any of them, nor could I remove my hat. And I'd like to think I learned a little something on that trip.

By subjecting myself to potential ridicule all day, I gained more empathy, more understanding. Never again will I make disparaging comments on the internet about someone I don't know, but who strikes me as funny. And aren't we all wearing our own captain hats in life? Did I not learn that from my journey?

Nah, I just wanted an excuse to wear a ridiculous hat all day. Nice try, though.

I'll House You

For a couple weeks in high school, my friend and I had our own house.
We didn't actually pay rent or live there or anything. We would just sort of hang out there every once in a while.

We were walking home one day after cross country practice and a celebratory bonus meal at 7-11 (that was when you'd buy a Big Gulp and stash a microwave burrito in the cup. The plastic wrapper kept it from getting wet) and got caught in one of Florida's summer downpours.

We sat under the carport of a house for sale waiting for the storm to stop. While discussing the dangers of misdiagnosed mental illness expressed in Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized," we noticed the door to the house had Jalousie windows.

If you grew up in Florida, you know what Jalousie windows are, even if you don't know the name. They were those horizontal glass Venetian blind looking windows. Here, like in this picture I stole off the internet while searching for "old Florida horizontal glass venetian blind windows."

While they offered several  benefits to Florida homeowners, including brightness, an ability to catch breezes and a cool mid-century design, they had a few drawbacks, the main one being the fact that a couple of high school delinquents using no tools can take out enough of the glass panes to slip in the house in about 7 minutes.

It was strange once we were in the empty house. We were quiet and probably a little scared. Still, we figured if we got caught, we'd just say the door was open so we came in out of the rain.

We noticed the previous owners had left some stuff behind in their move. Nothing too interesting, some glasses and silverware, some food and supplies and a Penthouse magazine I let my friend keep, a move I instantly regretted.

We remained fairly respectful and quiet in the house that first day, and left soon after splitting our feast. Of course we were going to go back.

We couldn't wait to get out of practice the next day to break back into our new clubhouse. Again, we just sort of hung around inside, ate some shoplifted 7-11 treats and poked around to see what the owners had left behind that we missed the first day. It was a weird feeling; we knew we shouldn't be in there, and we still remained fairly quiet in the house. That would change soon.

We had been visiting our house fairly frequently when in a rare case of quitting a bad idea while we were ahead, we decided we should probably stop hanging out there. So we decided to go back one last time, but this time instead of exploring, we would dedicate our last day in the house to science and the arts.

Specifically, I had a science project that had vexed me for years while looking at my parent's sliding glass doors. If a scientist were to throw a glass at such a door, would the glass shatter on impact or would the momentum be enough to leave a cartoon-like hole in the door? While I had made many advanced mathematical equations, I still needed real-world testing, testing  my science hating parents would probably try to actively discourage.

So we tried it out. As a teenager, it is insanely liberating to break something. It is even more liberating to do so inside a house you aren't supposed to be in. The sound of the breaking glass was magnified through the empty house, and while we were dedicated scientists, we weren't robots - it was exhiliratingly funny.

The arts portion of the trip involved us squirting some left behind Elmer's glue on the floor and coating the design with a box of cereal we found in one of the cabinets. I can't recall exactly what we made, but I can almost guarantee there was at least one anarchy sign.

We threw all the abandonded food (including a bag of flour) we could find through the house, a glorious food fight against ... the house? Squares? Homeowners? The Man? Probably all of the above. We had brought along a can of spray paint and decorated the rest of the house with punk rock slogans and band logos, along with what I considered the crowning touch -  "LEAVE THIS EVIL HOUSE" in all caps above the mantle, as if a ghost got a hold of some haunted spray paint, leaving a terrifying warning to the human residents.

We left the house, carefully taking our spray paint can so it couldn't be dusted for prints, and walked away, never to return. And I can only speak for myself, but I remember feeling a bit depressed. Not only because we were walking away from so much  potential science and art, but because we had found a place where we were guaranteed not be hassled or oppressed, a place where we were free to create however much mess and trouble we wanted without facing any consequences of our actions.

Its sort of a sick joke that as a teenager you have all this extra energy built up and only a handful of acceptable ways to let it out. Once I become President, I will take all the nation's foreclosed homes and open them up to teenagers to vandalize and destroy. This would not only help the kids blow off steam, it would help the economy by employing workers and cleaners round the clock.

And in our case we actually did  help the economy, sort of. Years later we were telling the story of our house on the track team when an older runner got sort of quiet.

"My sister tried to buy that house," he said.

Oh shit. Was this guy gonna kick our ass for messing up his sister's house?

"Yeah, because it was so trashed, her and her husband got it for like, next to nothing."

So remember kids, vandalism is a win-win. Not only is it fun and stress-relieving, you also have a great chance of helping out some struggling homeowners.

Hangin' Brains

I made it up to Chicago to check out the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2009 as part of my Divorced Guy North American Tour. I had a great time.

Saturday afternoon, my friend Jon was driving me and my friend Kevin to the second day of the festival. We were running late and had already missed two of the bands I wanted to see, so I'd like to imagine Jon was driving all French Connection to get us there without missing any more fun, although I know that when looked at through a purely factual worldview, that's not exactly true.

What I do know for sure is that Jon was playing a Bad Brains CD in his car. There was some discussion as to whether it was the self-titled album (you know, the one with the lightning bolt of righteousness striking the Capitol building) or "Rock for Light." I can't remember which one it was or which side I was on, but since I'm writing this blog, we'll go ahead and say I was right.

There was much singing and pumping of fists and pointing for emphasis. There was much talk about how insane it was to finally see the lyrics if you had a dubbed tape of the album and wondering how all those words fit in there when all you could make out was "hackabackabackabackaPOISONWEEEELL." There was much skipping of reggae tracks.

Discussion floated from mutual friends who were lucky enough to see Bad Brains in, if not their peak, at least not in their crazy, 'you might get energized HR, might get reggae, might get crazy no singing HR' days of the last ...holy crap, 20 years, to the awesomeness of "The Big Takeover."

Here, check out this stolen Youtube clip from 1983:

While this cuts out the awesome Morse code sounding intro, and Dr. Know's guitar solo doesn't sound as much like a semi truck as on the studio versions, it still shows just how vital and explosive the song is. Now for the rest of the week I'm going to be singing "jusanotha nazi scheeeme. Heeeaay." And check out that blonde girl on the stage happily singing every word. I wonder what she's doing right now?

As Einstein and Doc Brown have taught us, time is a crazy thing. Sometimes I think that Pitchfork fest was just last year, sometimes it seems like about a decade ago. Then I realize that I've known the people in that car for over 20 years. Our friendship is old enough to drink! I was married for over ten years. I've been at my job for longer than that, even though thinking back, the past 30 years or so seem like they've gone by in a flash - all my stories, all my experiences seem like they happened in the blink of an eye, which, I guess in the grand scheme of things, they did.

 I'd say that listening to decades-old hardcore songs made the three of us feel young again, but, at least in my case, I feel about the same as I did when I heard "The Big Takeover" for the first time. A little fatter, with possibly a few more life lessons under my belt, and with marginally better skin, but not too much different from my late teens or early or mid 20s. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I do know that when it came time for Jon to drop us off, after listening to Bad Brains for about a half hour, we all sort of looked at each other, knowing that with all the bands we were going to see that weekend, none of them could touch what we were listening to at the moment. I think we made him drive us around the block just to milk a little more Bad Brains out of the afternoon.

Seller's Market

As I've mentioned before, I used to be a huge record collector. Years of accumulating and living in a small apartment with a wife whose fabric and bead collection seemed to multiply weekly made me think more and more about selling stuff off. Actually, as much as I liked finding and buying, I also liked letting stuff go, culling my collection of stuff I hadn't listened to in a while, releasing my treats into the world in hopes that my efforts would result in treats coming back to me.


Ebay was helpful with this - I sold records for awhile when I was getting rid of my vinyl and would make at least $100 each time I posted stuff. Through the luck of good timing, I was occasionally able to 'buy low and sell high,' unloading Sub Pop singles I bought for 3 or 4 bucks in college for $30 or so. Just like the housing bubble, those days are long gone. Also like the housing bubble, I have a nagging suspicion that I had something to do with causing it.

I felt I earned whatever money I got, after dealing with nit-picky questions, annoying cheapskates, and buyers who would flake out after winning, as well as standing in line at the post office and buying mailers and whatnot. And inevitably, even though it was posted over and over that I only shipped to North America, at least once each auction I'd get an email from the high bidder saying "How much to be shipping to Turkey."

Sure, I could stick to my guns, but money was money, and if selling to Balki could clear some stuff out of my house and make me some cabbage, then I was shipping to Turkey. Plus, I felt justified gouging him a bit for shipping to compensate for my pain and suffering.

As annoying as ebay buyers could be, however, they were nowhere near as aggravating, confusing and downright crazy as yard sale people, if only for the fact that yard sale people were actually yammering ridiculous questions at you in 3 dimensions, and you couldn't turn the computer off to make them disappear.

My ex-wife and I had a couple yard sales when we lived in Riverside. I think our apartment was near the center of prime yard sale happy hunting grounds or something, because we never did half as well once we moved to Murray Hill, where you'd think there would be more poor people looking to sift through our refuse.

We never put an ad in the paper, we'd just put up signs, which is where potential customers would first start harassing me. As I'd try to tape a sign to a cement post with a roll of wrapping tape, looking like Pee Wee taping up the reward flyer for his bike, people would yell questions at me from their cars. "Where is that?" What time do you open?" "What are you gonna have there?" I could understand their excitement, though. I mean, just look at me struggling with this sign. Why, anyone could see from my clothing and demeanor I was a man of wealth and taste. What valuables would I have waiting the next day? Used gold bars? Cursed antiques? Rare spices from the Orient?

Once crazy yard sale people see a sign and a starting time, they memorize that stuff, driving by an hour early, hoping we were setting up the gold dubloons extra early just for them. Actually, at that point, we were trying to figure out how to set up the card table and still putting price tags on everything. They'd still circle around in their old Cadillacs jammed full of treasures, just watching us. It was like being in a shark tank at feeding time.

If you want to see the strangest people in your community without visiting your local nut house or the public library, just set up a table and start selling your used stuff. Here's a conversation I had with a guy:

"You got any bookshelves for sale?"

"Nope. Had some earlier, though."

"Oh yeah? How tall were they?"

"I dunno...about 6 feet, I guess."

"How many shelves?"

"Like, five, I think."

"Were they wood or metal?"

"They were wood. But they're gone. Somebody bought them hours ago. Sorry."

"Hmmm...was it a dark wood or a light wood?"

Later that afternoon I had a guy haggle with me over a 26" TV/VCR I was selling for fifteen bucks. He wouldn't take my word that it worked, so I had to lug it upstairs and plug it in to demonstrate.

The whole time I'm thinking, "It's a TV for fifteen bucks. If it doesn't work, just turn it into a fishtank or drop it off a building or pretend you're Elvis and shoot the screen out. Hell, that's worth fifteen bucks in entertainment right there."

But I didn't say anything and let him take it away for ten bucks, since it kept me from lugging it back upstairs.

I don't have as much stuff to sell anymore, although if someone from like Africa or Haiti were to look at my treasures I'm sure they'd have a different opinion. Every once in a while I think about getting rid of some of it, either online or in person, but then my laziness and hermit-ish-ness kicks in, and I kick that thought out of my mind and drive it down to the Goodwill. Actually, I found that the Vietnam Vets will take the stuff right off your porch, and you don't have to even have to talk to another human being! What a wonderful time to be a lazy hermit with too much stuff!

Lend Me Your Ears

I was in the doctor's office about to get waterboarded. Every once in a while a bunch of wax builds up in my ears, so they squirt some water in them to flush it out. It sucks. I can feel them firehosing this water next to my brain and it takes about three hours. Well, three hours in horror time, actual time is about 5 minutes or so.

 The doctor (who is either my age or a few years younger) checks out my ears,  leaves and sends in the assistant who starts setting up the spray bottle and tarps and whatnot.

I'm sort of pacing around the room while she gets ready.

"You OK?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah...It's just that...well, the only thing that freaks me out more than going to the doctor is getting stuff stuck in my ears."

"Oh." Her face sort of fell. "Yeah, I remember you."

However, I didn't pass out, even though she used a bottle and a half in just one ear while I squirmed and gave up military secrets I didn't even know I knew.  Plus, with all that stuff out of my ears, I can hear crimes being committed three miles away.

The Mall Has It All

I have about a 20 minute window for shopping. Too much longer than that and I get sort of dizzy and bored and holy crap, why didn't I just order pants on the internet like a normal person instead of driving all the way out here on my day off.

This, of course, does not apply to the countless hours of my life I wasted digging through record and DVD stores, looking for that elusive catch that would make me a more well-rounded individual and, more importantly, the envy of my fellow nerds.

I didn't used to be this way. In fact, when I was in middle school I loved going to the mall. Loved it. In fact, the summer before high school a friend and I would spend almost all day there, even though we didn't have any money. I'd give the guy's name, but I haven't heard from him in years, and I don't want to sell him out in case he's running for office or something, you know? Me, I've got no prospects, so I don't mind implicating myself.

We would walk or ride our bikes there, which from what I remember was quite a trek. We almost always had less than five bucks between us, so we'd have to plot the best way to stretch it to last all day.

That was hard because we were addicted to video games. We'd usually start out in the arcade, which would take a couple bucks out of the pot right from the start, but what were we gonna do, not play Gauntlet?

We could usually go to a couple of the stores in the mall with single games and say the machine took our quarters and get a refund. The managers didn't really believe us, but we'd usually be able to get 50 cents out of that which was enough to keep the video game shakes from returning. If that didn't work, or we felt we had gone to that well a little too much, we could always play the video game systems in Sears, but that was a desperation move, sort of like alcoholics drinking vanilla extract.

Far away from Bradenton, in a wonderful land called California, the Summer Olympics were taking place. The commie countries had boycotted the games, giving America a huge advantage. Why did this matter to two kids in Florida? Well, McDonalds had a scratch off game where you'd win free food whenever America won an event. We'd buy a drink or small fries and almost always end up winning something else - thanks Carl Lewis! When people talk about missing the Cold War, I know exactly how they feel.

After our meal, it was time to hit the movies. We would hang around the outside of the theater until we found two ticket stubs on the ground, which was fairly easy, as nobody cared about littering back in those unenlightened days. We'd show them to the guy at the front, telling him we left to play video games if he ever asked, which hardly ever happened.

Once we got inside, it was relatively easy work to get into whatever R rated movie promised gore or nudity.

And the mid '80s were a glorious time for teen boys at the movies - Porky's rip offs, slasher movies, barbarian movies - you pretty much couldn't lose.

Like all good things, our Celebrated Summer at the mall had to end. One day the theater changed ticket colors,  so when we walked through, the ticket taker called the manager.

We were told to sit in a chair and wait for the manager. Naturally, as soon as ticket guy's back was turned we split up and took off running. I thought I had it made until I felt a tightness around my neck. Ticket guy had some good hustle and caught up to me, grabbing me by the back of my collar and throwing me to the floor.

I was hustled off to the security office and my parents were called. I was banned from the mall for a year. I'd like to think I didn't rat out my friend, but I don't really remember, so who knows. I probably told my parents it was all his idea.

I'd also like to think that this scare taught me that you can't get something for nothing, and scamming free food and movies was no way for a man to live, but that wasn't true at all.  In fact, in just another three or four years, my mom would get a call from the cops telling her that I had been arrested for stealing a pizza with another friend. But that's a story for another time.

Man, was I a shitty kid.

Stories I Like, Yet Am Not Entirely Convinced They Are True, Part One

Years ago one of my ex-wife's friends told us a story about how her and her brother would cause all sorts of trouble for their parents growing up. Not even photographs were safe from hijinx.

"Our parents wanted a family photo. Before they took the pictures, we went to the kitchen and each got a plum. When they got the pictures developed, we were both holding a plum at waist level and laughing."

The parents made the mistake of mentioning something about the sneaky fruit in the photos, which inspired the kids to take as many plum pictures as possible. So there'd be pictures of Christmas morning with the kids slyly holding plums, or photos of the family at the Grand Canyon or whatever holding the fruit and ruining the pictures.

As much as this story cracks me up, especially thinking of these parents getting a pack of pictures back and flipping through each one, saying, "Dammit, why can't we just have ONE normal picture of you two,"  I do have several areas of concern. First of all, if they were that upset, why would they continue to buy plums? And did the kids just carry plums with them everywhere they went? Wouldn't the parents notice the kids holding plums while taking the pictures? And yes, the storyteller stressed that only plums would work. Not apples, oranges or pears. They had to be plums. Which only makes sense. Plums are much funnier than apples.

Weighing the evidence, I have decreed this story to be Mostly True. I'm thinking there were times other fruit was substituted, or perhaps even photographs when no fruit at all was displayed. This should not stop you from trying this trick on your own, especially with Instagram giving your plum photos a vintage sheen.

Next Episode: My Great-Uncle's War Stories.