I've been trolling through my old blogs looking for good stories that i might be able to update and post here. This one tickled my fancy, and i'm just going to paste it verbatim.
[previously posted by me on MySpace, September 23, 2006]
So Tawny and i pulled this ferocious double team on Camyle on Wednesday night. We were having a taco potluck, and Camyle wandered over by where Tawny & i sit shortly beforehand. It went kind of like this.
(Camyle & Tawny talking about stuff i wasn't paying attention to)
Tawny: Yeah, i brought the lettuce.
Camyle: I don't like lettuce.
Tawny: Neither do i, actually.
Trevor: It's ok, i like lettuce. I'll eat the lettuce.
Camyle: So do you like spinach, too?
Trevor: No, i didn't much like Popeye as a kid.
Camyle: Oh, man, when i was a kid, i used to watch that Popeye movie all the freakin' time.
Trevor & Tawny: There was a Popeye movie?
Camyle: Um, yeah. With Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall?
Trevor: I don't even know who that is.
Camyle: Shelley Duvall? From The Shining?
Trevor: Never seen it.
Camyle: (frustrated) You do know who Robin Williams is, right?
Trevor: He's that fuzzy guy, isn't he?
Camyle: You are killing me.
Tawny: I know who Robin Williams is! He was in Flubber!
Camyle: Flubber? What the fuck is Flubber?
Trevor: Man, that movie is so old, it's like...1994.
Camyle: Oh, like 94 is so old. I was in college in 94.
Trevor: I was in 4th grade.
(silence)
Camyle: (bowing her head) Yeah. I'm getting out of here before you make me feel older.
Tawny: I was in 3rd.
2010/07/31
2010/07/30
They're Only Starter Teeth
If you'd like to take a quick jaunt back to the 1980s with me, i'll tell you everything that i remember. Here it is:
Candy.
That's all. Candy. Oh and getting lost. I've got three stories, which breaks down to two of each. Strangely enough, both of the candy stories involve me being terrified out of my mind, and that is the catalyst which brought me the candy. So, if you're a child under the age of ten, i recommend getting lost and scared as a means to obtaining the sacred sugary goodness.
The non-candy story doesn't have much to it; i'm only relating it here because it happened in the 80s and i think i have a vague memory of it. This may be a fallacy; it's entirely possible that i only remember this because my mom told me this story multiple times throughout my youth. But basically, we were at Woodman's, which is an expansive grocery store chain in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. My mom, still relatively new to this whole "parenting" thing, set me down by the pile of oranges while she picked out some fresh fruits and vegetables. Bear in mind that, at this particular Woodman's location, the produce section is the first thing you see when you walk into the building. So this happened like immediately.
So, my mom continues to shop, and after making the two-hour journey through the store, she comes to the checkout, and suddenly realizes that she used to have a baby. This item is no longer in her cart! Her misplaced progeny was found at the front of the store, on top of the pile of oranges, happy and giggling. I don't know that any candy was involved in my recovery, but i'm assuming probably not.
I wonder what ever happened to those oranges.
That one was clearly first, i've no idea the chronology of the other two, but i'm still relatively sure they happened in the 80s.
I was terrified of escalators when my age was in the single digits. I don't know why. And come to think of it, i'm not really sure how i ended up on the second story of the Boston Store at Madison's East Towne Mall that day, since the only way to traverse the levels is via escalator. But i outright refused to go back down. I was screaming and crying and making a hell of a scene, but the mall was closing so there wasn't much of a crowd. Sooner or later, my parents decided to just get on the damn escalator and suffer me throughout the ride down. Though they did not dare walk down the escalator, even though it would have sped the journey, lest my cries of agony become increased a thousandfold.
I was promised candy, not just any candy, but the candy from the candy store in the mall, which i must have been very fond of though it must have been expensive. This was a promise they could not possibly deliver on, since the mall was pretty well closed by then. You know, i'm really not sure how all these details work out in this story, it's pretty fuzzy. Maybe my mom could fill in the details i'm missing, but it's more likely she'd say this story never happened. But i know better.
There was this lady who was near the bottom of the escalator who noticed my plight, and like a true superhero, decided to intervene. She climbed back up the down escalator until she had reached our position and took me from my mom. "I work at the candy store," she assured us.
I spontaneously calmed down. I suffered the remainder of the descent silently, although i can't say as there was much of a descent left by that point. The lady then took us to the candy store, where i was fed a good variety of candy while my parents socialized with her.
It's entirely possible that this person was somebody that my parents knew, and in fact may even be somebody who i knew or even still know. I'm not sure. But i'd rather not know, if it is...i'd prefer to continue to think of this person as the magical candy genie who saved my life once. So if anybody knows the magical candy genie's identity, please keep it to yourself.
My final 80s tale takes place at the Henry Vilas Zoo on Halloween. The thing i'll probably always remember best about Halloween at the zoo is these cheap little flashlights that Rayovac handed out to everybody. They were rectangular and black and ergonomically incorrect.
Well, my flashlight and i got separated from my parents. Being little more than knee-high, i panicked, and started darting neurotically about the darkened zoo, the insufficient and oddly-shaped luminance from my Rayovac flashlight suddenly my best friend.
Eventually my flashlight and i ended up in the hands of security, who took me to the concession stand for safekeeping until my parents could be located. Once there, i was shown how cotton candy is made. When my parents finally arrived at the concession stand, they were made to wait while the vendor whipped up the largest stick of cotton candy i'd ever laid eyes on. It was probably twice the size of my head. And so i went home happy.
If anything else occurred between 1980 and 1989, i'm not aware of it.
Candy.
That's all. Candy. Oh and getting lost. I've got three stories, which breaks down to two of each. Strangely enough, both of the candy stories involve me being terrified out of my mind, and that is the catalyst which brought me the candy. So, if you're a child under the age of ten, i recommend getting lost and scared as a means to obtaining the sacred sugary goodness.
The non-candy story doesn't have much to it; i'm only relating it here because it happened in the 80s and i think i have a vague memory of it. This may be a fallacy; it's entirely possible that i only remember this because my mom told me this story multiple times throughout my youth. But basically, we were at Woodman's, which is an expansive grocery store chain in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. My mom, still relatively new to this whole "parenting" thing, set me down by the pile of oranges while she picked out some fresh fruits and vegetables. Bear in mind that, at this particular Woodman's location, the produce section is the first thing you see when you walk into the building. So this happened like immediately.
So, my mom continues to shop, and after making the two-hour journey through the store, she comes to the checkout, and suddenly realizes that she used to have a baby. This item is no longer in her cart! Her misplaced progeny was found at the front of the store, on top of the pile of oranges, happy and giggling. I don't know that any candy was involved in my recovery, but i'm assuming probably not.
I wonder what ever happened to those oranges.
That one was clearly first, i've no idea the chronology of the other two, but i'm still relatively sure they happened in the 80s.
I was terrified of escalators when my age was in the single digits. I don't know why. And come to think of it, i'm not really sure how i ended up on the second story of the Boston Store at Madison's East Towne Mall that day, since the only way to traverse the levels is via escalator. But i outright refused to go back down. I was screaming and crying and making a hell of a scene, but the mall was closing so there wasn't much of a crowd. Sooner or later, my parents decided to just get on the damn escalator and suffer me throughout the ride down. Though they did not dare walk down the escalator, even though it would have sped the journey, lest my cries of agony become increased a thousandfold.
I was promised candy, not just any candy, but the candy from the candy store in the mall, which i must have been very fond of though it must have been expensive. This was a promise they could not possibly deliver on, since the mall was pretty well closed by then. You know, i'm really not sure how all these details work out in this story, it's pretty fuzzy. Maybe my mom could fill in the details i'm missing, but it's more likely she'd say this story never happened. But i know better.
There was this lady who was near the bottom of the escalator who noticed my plight, and like a true superhero, decided to intervene. She climbed back up the down escalator until she had reached our position and took me from my mom. "I work at the candy store," she assured us.
I spontaneously calmed down. I suffered the remainder of the descent silently, although i can't say as there was much of a descent left by that point. The lady then took us to the candy store, where i was fed a good variety of candy while my parents socialized with her.
It's entirely possible that this person was somebody that my parents knew, and in fact may even be somebody who i knew or even still know. I'm not sure. But i'd rather not know, if it is...i'd prefer to continue to think of this person as the magical candy genie who saved my life once. So if anybody knows the magical candy genie's identity, please keep it to yourself.
My final 80s tale takes place at the Henry Vilas Zoo on Halloween. The thing i'll probably always remember best about Halloween at the zoo is these cheap little flashlights that Rayovac handed out to everybody. They were rectangular and black and ergonomically incorrect.
Well, my flashlight and i got separated from my parents. Being little more than knee-high, i panicked, and started darting neurotically about the darkened zoo, the insufficient and oddly-shaped luminance from my Rayovac flashlight suddenly my best friend.
Eventually my flashlight and i ended up in the hands of security, who took me to the concession stand for safekeeping until my parents could be located. Once there, i was shown how cotton candy is made. When my parents finally arrived at the concession stand, they were made to wait while the vendor whipped up the largest stick of cotton candy i'd ever laid eyes on. It was probably twice the size of my head. And so i went home happy.
If anything else occurred between 1980 and 1989, i'm not aware of it.
2010/07/27
The Frog
At a party this past weekend i solicited my friends for inspiration for this blog. I explained that i'd started a blog with the purpose of telling true stories of stuff that's happened to me, and i'd like suggestions or requests of things that we've done together. Cyndi of course immediately demanded what is affectionately known as The Story, which i expected. The Story will be told eventually, but i'm staving it off for a little while.
After we'd bantered for a bit and a few suggestions had been made, Cyndi stopped, i think maybe mid-sentence, and her face suddenly assumed the form of complete inspiration. "I have a story," she said with complete nephalism.
"What is it?"
"The Frog."
At first i wasn't sure what she was talking about. Maybe i'd blocked it from my memory because it's so depressing. But after she'd recounted it, i knew that the story of The Frog must be told. The Frog must be remembered.
It was summer, i assume 2002, give or take a year. Juli and Cyndi and i were out for a walk in the booming metropolis of Marshall, WI, sometime after dark. We'd taken a pause in front of the antique store, sitting on its short case of concrete stairs. We'd been sitting there for a while when a frog leaped out of the bush to our right. It sat on the sidewalk in front of us for a few minutes, and then made a couple more jumps toward the road. It repeated this pattern a few times, and was finally in the parking lane.
All three of us had been watching this frog make its journey in complete silence. When it had finally come to the parking lane, one of us said, "Somebody should go save that frog." But none of us moved. Cyndi claims that one of us started to make a move toward it, but i'm not sure i believe her.
The frog gingerly took a few more hops into the road. It was now right in the driving lane. I said, "If that frog gets hit by a car...i'm going to laugh, because it is going to make the funniest noise in the world. And then i'm going to be really sad."
I swear that none of us moved even after i had said that. Within one minute, a truck came barreling down the road at thirty miles per hour and that frog did not move. It may have been suicide. But i was right: it did make the funniest noise in the world. And all three of us laughed for a matter of seconds, then all three of us bowed our heads in shame.
After we'd bantered for a bit and a few suggestions had been made, Cyndi stopped, i think maybe mid-sentence, and her face suddenly assumed the form of complete inspiration. "I have a story," she said with complete nephalism.
"What is it?"
"The Frog."
At first i wasn't sure what she was talking about. Maybe i'd blocked it from my memory because it's so depressing. But after she'd recounted it, i knew that the story of The Frog must be told. The Frog must be remembered.
It was summer, i assume 2002, give or take a year. Juli and Cyndi and i were out for a walk in the booming metropolis of Marshall, WI, sometime after dark. We'd taken a pause in front of the antique store, sitting on its short case of concrete stairs. We'd been sitting there for a while when a frog leaped out of the bush to our right. It sat on the sidewalk in front of us for a few minutes, and then made a couple more jumps toward the road. It repeated this pattern a few times, and was finally in the parking lane.
All three of us had been watching this frog make its journey in complete silence. When it had finally come to the parking lane, one of us said, "Somebody should go save that frog." But none of us moved. Cyndi claims that one of us started to make a move toward it, but i'm not sure i believe her.
The frog gingerly took a few more hops into the road. It was now right in the driving lane. I said, "If that frog gets hit by a car...i'm going to laugh, because it is going to make the funniest noise in the world. And then i'm going to be really sad."
I swear that none of us moved even after i had said that. Within one minute, a truck came barreling down the road at thirty miles per hour and that frog did not move. It may have been suicide. But i was right: it did make the funniest noise in the world. And all three of us laughed for a matter of seconds, then all three of us bowed our heads in shame.
2010/07/25
Yoda Would Not Approve
My Freshman year of high school, 1999-2000, was a year of great experimentation for school districts in my area. You probably thought about experimentation with homosexuality or illegal narcotics when you first read the part where i said, "great experimentation," didn't you? I did. And i wrote it knowing full well that that's not what i meant. I'm slightly inebriated right now so if this blog doesn't quite work out, you have my sympathies and so forth. But i promise it's a really good story. I mean, as long as you think pedophile jokes are funny, it's a good story. Gosh i think i'm farther in the bag than i thought. God bless you, automatic spell check. This blog would be a lost cause already if not for those bright red squiggles under incorrect words. I'll probably be a little less verbose than usual on this one.
I may just re-author this blog at a more sober time. We'll see if you/i have the attention span to read/write this twice.
Now that the qualifiers are out of the way, on to the story.
In my freshman year of high school, the district was working in conjunction with a couple other school districts on an experiment which would bring students from multiple schools into classes together, thus eliminating the need for every school to hire a teacher for classes they knew would be somewhat small. The most obvious choices for this new experiment were foreign language classes. I had signed up for French.
This newfangled technology was dubbed the JEDI System, which was an acronym for Jefferson something or another. Jefferson is the name of the city where the system was based (not my school). How it worked was basically this: we sat in a classroom with a camera pointed at us. There were four televisions in the front of the room, suspended from the ceiling directly above the teacher's workspace so the class could see them. Another camera and another four TVs hung above the first row of student seats, pointing at the teacher's desk. Displayed on these four TVs were the teacher, the class, and two other classes from around the state. This way, a teacher in any one location could teach the other two simultaneously. French was not taught out of our school, so no teacher was present in the room during class. We had the German teacher.
The thing was, the cameras were of such a low resolution that the video may as well have been processed by the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Since this class happened first hour, i would generally sit right in the front row with my head down on the desk and sleep. If the teacher called on me to answer a question, one of my classmates would poke me and give me the correct answer. I would then press the Talk button on the microphone that sat on my desk, recite the answer i was just given, and then promptly go back to sleep.
Another completely inadequate aspect of the system was the way we turned in most of our homework. There was what was called a document camera, basically a camera mounted to point at a flat surface, which transmitted the image onto one of the televisions for the teacher to see. Kind of like a primitive scanner, if you will. This, too, was hideously low-res, and at least one girl in my class took serious advantage of it. After she'd done the homework the first week of class, she never did another assignment. She'd show the same assignment on the document camera every single day. The teacher never caught on.
Tests were either faxed or mailed, depending on the circumstances. And since, due to the poor cameras, we could basically get away with anything short of having our books open during a test without being noticed, we'd have piles of notes or stuff written on our hands during them. However, in fact, after a while we figured out that the fax machine itself obscured enough of my work area, right in the front of the room, that i could have my textbook open as long as i wasn't terribly conspicuous with the page turning. This is probably why my classmates covered my ass while i was sleeping most of the time.
It's all a horrible way to learn, i know, and in some ways i regret it, since i took two years of French and i can say about three sentences. The one i'm the best at is "I'm a dumb white guy," which i can actually say in seven languages. It seems so useful! If i'm ever trapped in a non-English speaking country, at least i can offer up a weak excuse for my poor social skills and strong language barriers.
So anyway, due to a discrepancy between when Jefferson's class periods and our class periods ran in physical time, the system cut out every day ten minutes before out class actually ended. The screens would all go blue and we'd be completely unmonitored. At this time, the girls would leave, where they'd go i don't know because it's not like our high school had any place interesting to be between classes, and the guys would sit around and shoot the shit, or else translate pick-up lines into French. Aaron and Brandon had translated quite an arsenal of them by the end of the year, not the least of which was "Nice shoes, wanna fuck?" (Bonne schuettes, something something, i'm not really sure but i think that's about what it sounded like. There was a girl in one of the other schools that had been to France and helped us out with swear words one day when the teacher left the room for a couple minutes). I would always leave my desk and seat myself at the teacher's station and log onto the internet.
One day, after the system went down and the girls had left, Kyle stands up and starts meandering around the room, ever so slowly and deliberately. He stops at Justin's desk.
"Justin."
"What up?"
"Why do you like..." he paused momentarily for effect. "Little boys?"
Justin stared at him for a moment, unsure what to say. "I don't know."
Without another sound, Kyle moved on to the next desk, with all the grace of a ninja who has cornered his prey. "Aaron."
"Yeah?"
"Why do you like...little boys?" he asked in the exact same monotone.
"I don't know, Kyle. I just do."
Kyle made the same slow, graceful motion to the next desk. I had been carefully observing him out of the corner of my eye, careful not to look like i was paying too much attention. I knew he was going to end up at me. I wasn't really sure what his master plan was.
"Brandon."
"Kyle."
"Why do you like...little boys?"
"I'm not really sure, Kyle."
I was the only one left. I'm going to finish this story with my own bizarre, unworldly response, and let you use your imagination for the hilarity and confusion and chaos that ensued thereafter. Rest assured, it was indeed hilarity, and confusion, maybe not chaos, but hilarity and confusion for sure. There was no pause between his question and my answer, it was delivered as though i'd been waiting my whole life to answer the question. It was my destiny.
I sure hope it's not really my destiny because it would be depressing to know that i'd fulfilled my life's purpose eleven years ago and everything's rolled downhill from there. Plus to know that i was put on this Earth simply to be the punchline to a pedophile joke. I digress. That's Captain Morgan speaking, don't listen to him.
"Trevor."
"Yes?"
"Why do you like...little boys?"
"Because my dick looks really big in their little hands."
I may just re-author this blog at a more sober time. We'll see if you/i have the attention span to read/write this twice.
Now that the qualifiers are out of the way, on to the story.
In my freshman year of high school, the district was working in conjunction with a couple other school districts on an experiment which would bring students from multiple schools into classes together, thus eliminating the need for every school to hire a teacher for classes they knew would be somewhat small. The most obvious choices for this new experiment were foreign language classes. I had signed up for French.
This newfangled technology was dubbed the JEDI System, which was an acronym for Jefferson something or another. Jefferson is the name of the city where the system was based (not my school). How it worked was basically this: we sat in a classroom with a camera pointed at us. There were four televisions in the front of the room, suspended from the ceiling directly above the teacher's workspace so the class could see them. Another camera and another four TVs hung above the first row of student seats, pointing at the teacher's desk. Displayed on these four TVs were the teacher, the class, and two other classes from around the state. This way, a teacher in any one location could teach the other two simultaneously. French was not taught out of our school, so no teacher was present in the room during class. We had the German teacher.
The thing was, the cameras were of such a low resolution that the video may as well have been processed by the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Since this class happened first hour, i would generally sit right in the front row with my head down on the desk and sleep. If the teacher called on me to answer a question, one of my classmates would poke me and give me the correct answer. I would then press the Talk button on the microphone that sat on my desk, recite the answer i was just given, and then promptly go back to sleep.
Another completely inadequate aspect of the system was the way we turned in most of our homework. There was what was called a document camera, basically a camera mounted to point at a flat surface, which transmitted the image onto one of the televisions for the teacher to see. Kind of like a primitive scanner, if you will. This, too, was hideously low-res, and at least one girl in my class took serious advantage of it. After she'd done the homework the first week of class, she never did another assignment. She'd show the same assignment on the document camera every single day. The teacher never caught on.
Tests were either faxed or mailed, depending on the circumstances. And since, due to the poor cameras, we could basically get away with anything short of having our books open during a test without being noticed, we'd have piles of notes or stuff written on our hands during them. However, in fact, after a while we figured out that the fax machine itself obscured enough of my work area, right in the front of the room, that i could have my textbook open as long as i wasn't terribly conspicuous with the page turning. This is probably why my classmates covered my ass while i was sleeping most of the time.
It's all a horrible way to learn, i know, and in some ways i regret it, since i took two years of French and i can say about three sentences. The one i'm the best at is "I'm a dumb white guy," which i can actually say in seven languages. It seems so useful! If i'm ever trapped in a non-English speaking country, at least i can offer up a weak excuse for my poor social skills and strong language barriers.
So anyway, due to a discrepancy between when Jefferson's class periods and our class periods ran in physical time, the system cut out every day ten minutes before out class actually ended. The screens would all go blue and we'd be completely unmonitored. At this time, the girls would leave, where they'd go i don't know because it's not like our high school had any place interesting to be between classes, and the guys would sit around and shoot the shit, or else translate pick-up lines into French. Aaron and Brandon had translated quite an arsenal of them by the end of the year, not the least of which was "Nice shoes, wanna fuck?" (Bonne schuettes, something something, i'm not really sure but i think that's about what it sounded like. There was a girl in one of the other schools that had been to France and helped us out with swear words one day when the teacher left the room for a couple minutes). I would always leave my desk and seat myself at the teacher's station and log onto the internet.
One day, after the system went down and the girls had left, Kyle stands up and starts meandering around the room, ever so slowly and deliberately. He stops at Justin's desk.
"Justin."
"What up?"
"Why do you like..." he paused momentarily for effect. "Little boys?"
Justin stared at him for a moment, unsure what to say. "I don't know."
Without another sound, Kyle moved on to the next desk, with all the grace of a ninja who has cornered his prey. "Aaron."
"Yeah?"
"Why do you like...little boys?" he asked in the exact same monotone.
"I don't know, Kyle. I just do."
Kyle made the same slow, graceful motion to the next desk. I had been carefully observing him out of the corner of my eye, careful not to look like i was paying too much attention. I knew he was going to end up at me. I wasn't really sure what his master plan was.
"Brandon."
"Kyle."
"Why do you like...little boys?"
"I'm not really sure, Kyle."
I was the only one left. I'm going to finish this story with my own bizarre, unworldly response, and let you use your imagination for the hilarity and confusion and chaos that ensued thereafter. Rest assured, it was indeed hilarity, and confusion, maybe not chaos, but hilarity and confusion for sure. There was no pause between his question and my answer, it was delivered as though i'd been waiting my whole life to answer the question. It was my destiny.
I sure hope it's not really my destiny because it would be depressing to know that i'd fulfilled my life's purpose eleven years ago and everything's rolled downhill from there. Plus to know that i was put on this Earth simply to be the punchline to a pedophile joke. I digress. That's Captain Morgan speaking, don't listen to him.
"Trevor."
"Yes?"
"Why do you like...little boys?"
"Because my dick looks really big in their little hands."
2010/07/22
Total Eclipse of My Ass
2005 was a pretty good year for me. I graduated from college the first time, my band damidol hit its first prolific phase, i had been working for WPS just long enough to enjoy the work (to an extent) but not long enough to truly realize what a soul-sucking evil empire it is, and later in the year i would turn 21.
My brother also happened to graduate from high school that year. The day after, i would receive a total eclipse of my ass.
I was standing in a room of my family's (more or less) newly constructed house, aptly named "The Big Room," playing my guitar quite loudly, as will become apparent in a moment. I was alone. As i finished a song i glanced up at the clock and realized it was about time to get ready for my night job at WPS. I turned off the amp and ambled toward the stairs. I noticed, through the bay window in the living room, a small crowd of people standing on the sidewalk in front of our house. I silently wondered what was going on, but it didn't pique my interest highly enough to go investigate. What i had failed to notice, though, was that instead of a crowd of people, i should be seeing my Jeep parked on the road, framed neatly within the bay window like art.
As i ascended toward my bedroom, my cell phone rang. It was Zippo, at this time also referred to as Tube Nuts, who happened to be the drummer in my band damidol at the time.
"Dude, what happened in front of your house?!" he greeted me enthusiastically. Zippo really had no "off" switch, though, so enthusiasm was a hallmark of any conversation he was involved in.
"Oh, i don't know. I noticed some people, but..."
"It looks like somebody hit your Jeep!"
"Wait, what?" I hung up and reversed my direction. As i walked across the big room, then the dining room, and finally the living room, through the parallax a Mitsubishi Eclipse came into view. There was something unique, though, about this Eclipse. And that was that it was upside-down.
Yes, a very new-looking red convertible Mitsubishi Eclipse had gone ass over teakettle straight into the middle of the road in front of my house. I burst out laughing, maybe from shock, maybe because of the inherent humor of the situation. In any case, despite the fact that my Jeep, which had been left in first gear with the parking brake on, had been pushed 30 feet and had sustained heavy damage to the rear, i strode through the front door with a smile on my face which i could not suppress.
Near as we could figure, these kids were going at least twice the legal speed limit (which is 30) when they plowed into my ass. They must've hit the tire juuuuuust right for that kind of a flip. Speaking of just right, they scraped my gas tank. Another quarter inch to the right and they'd probably have blown themselves up.
They were lucky to have hit me, anyway, because at the trajectory they must've been on, if my truck had not been there, they'd have jumped the curb and wrapped themselves around our neighbor's large, stately oak tree.
So what had happened that these two kids, both high schoolers, had managed to assail a parked vehicle thus?
Their story was that they'd been out fishing all day. On their way home, a fish had jumped out of their bucket and become lodged under the gas pedal. They were trying to get it out when they suddenly lost control of the vehicle.
I shouldn't have to dissect this story too thoroughly to bring out the flaws. They're pretty glaring.
(a) If a fish has gotten itself underneath the gas pedal, the vehicle is not going to speed up. In fact, it is going to slow down, since you will not be pushing on the gas pedal. Unless you are trying to stomp on the fish, in which case, why did you bother to catch it in the first place?
(b) I think most reasonable people's first instinct, had a stray ichthyoid made any move to hamper control of their moving vehicle, would be to pull the fuck over.
(c) I am not a sportsman, so please correct me if i'm wrong about this, but isn't fishing protocol typically to gut and clean the fish on location, before you head home? I mean, besides that, why would you drive anywhere with a bucket full of water in your car, let alone a bucket full of water and live fish? Especially a two-year-old expensive sports car.
(d) When the tow truck arrived and flipped the car back upright, the following items did not fall out of the car: rods, reels, tackle, a fucking bucket of fish.
But the cops swallowed the story hook, line, and sinker (see what i did there?). The copy of the official police report that i was provided at my request lists their poor excuse for an excuse as fact. The cops also failed to take any photos of the scene. I did not make this oversight.
I can't complain that much, though. Their insurance paid out enough for me to buy another Jeep and a van for my band. As for that Jeep, i drove it for another three months or so while i was waiting to find another one. It did have to be totaled, though, since there was so much damage to the frame. The back wheels dogtracked badly.
Probably the best part, though? When they flipped the Eclipse back over, the waterfall of coolant, oil, and other engine fluids which issued from underneath the hood.
Oh yeah:
The oil stains are where the truck was parked.
My brother also happened to graduate from high school that year. The day after, i would receive a total eclipse of my ass.
I was standing in a room of my family's (more or less) newly constructed house, aptly named "The Big Room," playing my guitar quite loudly, as will become apparent in a moment. I was alone. As i finished a song i glanced up at the clock and realized it was about time to get ready for my night job at WPS. I turned off the amp and ambled toward the stairs. I noticed, through the bay window in the living room, a small crowd of people standing on the sidewalk in front of our house. I silently wondered what was going on, but it didn't pique my interest highly enough to go investigate. What i had failed to notice, though, was that instead of a crowd of people, i should be seeing my Jeep parked on the road, framed neatly within the bay window like art.
As i ascended toward my bedroom, my cell phone rang. It was Zippo, at this time also referred to as Tube Nuts, who happened to be the drummer in my band damidol at the time.
"Dude, what happened in front of your house?!" he greeted me enthusiastically. Zippo really had no "off" switch, though, so enthusiasm was a hallmark of any conversation he was involved in.
"Oh, i don't know. I noticed some people, but..."
"It looks like somebody hit your Jeep!"
"Wait, what?" I hung up and reversed my direction. As i walked across the big room, then the dining room, and finally the living room, through the parallax a Mitsubishi Eclipse came into view. There was something unique, though, about this Eclipse. And that was that it was upside-down.
Yes, a very new-looking red convertible Mitsubishi Eclipse had gone ass over teakettle straight into the middle of the road in front of my house. I burst out laughing, maybe from shock, maybe because of the inherent humor of the situation. In any case, despite the fact that my Jeep, which had been left in first gear with the parking brake on, had been pushed 30 feet and had sustained heavy damage to the rear, i strode through the front door with a smile on my face which i could not suppress.
Near as we could figure, these kids were going at least twice the legal speed limit (which is 30) when they plowed into my ass. They must've hit the tire juuuuuust right for that kind of a flip. Speaking of just right, they scraped my gas tank. Another quarter inch to the right and they'd probably have blown themselves up.
They were lucky to have hit me, anyway, because at the trajectory they must've been on, if my truck had not been there, they'd have jumped the curb and wrapped themselves around our neighbor's large, stately oak tree.
So what had happened that these two kids, both high schoolers, had managed to assail a parked vehicle thus?
Their story was that they'd been out fishing all day. On their way home, a fish had jumped out of their bucket and become lodged under the gas pedal. They were trying to get it out when they suddenly lost control of the vehicle.
I shouldn't have to dissect this story too thoroughly to bring out the flaws. They're pretty glaring.
(a) If a fish has gotten itself underneath the gas pedal, the vehicle is not going to speed up. In fact, it is going to slow down, since you will not be pushing on the gas pedal. Unless you are trying to stomp on the fish, in which case, why did you bother to catch it in the first place?
(b) I think most reasonable people's first instinct, had a stray ichthyoid made any move to hamper control of their moving vehicle, would be to pull the fuck over.
(c) I am not a sportsman, so please correct me if i'm wrong about this, but isn't fishing protocol typically to gut and clean the fish on location, before you head home? I mean, besides that, why would you drive anywhere with a bucket full of water in your car, let alone a bucket full of water and live fish? Especially a two-year-old expensive sports car.
(d) When the tow truck arrived and flipped the car back upright, the following items did not fall out of the car: rods, reels, tackle, a fucking bucket of fish.
But the cops swallowed the story hook, line, and sinker (see what i did there?). The copy of the official police report that i was provided at my request lists their poor excuse for an excuse as fact. The cops also failed to take any photos of the scene. I did not make this oversight.
I can't complain that much, though. Their insurance paid out enough for me to buy another Jeep and a van for my band. As for that Jeep, i drove it for another three months or so while i was waiting to find another one. It did have to be totaled, though, since there was so much damage to the frame. The back wheels dogtracked badly.
Probably the best part, though? When they flipped the Eclipse back over, the waterfall of coolant, oil, and other engine fluids which issued from underneath the hood.
Oh yeah:
The oil stains are where the truck was parked.
2010/07/20
The True Story of Play-Doh
I'm reasonably sure this happened in mid-November, 1999, which would make me a freshman in High School. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.
My parents had recently completed work on the second addition to our house, which included a new section of basement. This new basement had been annexed for my dad's work room, but at the moment, it was still just wide open territory. So i laid a claim on it for the site of my birthday party that year. This was in a more innocent time, when my birthday parties consisted of five to eight guests and neither bands nor alcohol were present.
I dragged a TV, VCR, and Nintendo 64 down to the basement and set them on a microwave stand. I also came up with two or three mattresses, i don't exactly remember where from now, and set them side by side across the basement in front of the TV. Since the plans for the night essentially consisted of the N64 and a couple of movies (i do remember the movies, actually: Virus and The 13th Floor), this was all that a small group of 7th to 9th grade boys needed for a wild night. Right?
So, that's pretty well exactly what happened. This story isn't about the night of the party itself; it's about the morning after.
Seeing as the party was but a small group, my dad made French toast for everybody in the morning (nowadays, i have to cook the French toast myself). As we begin eating breakfast, the orange juice gets passed to Skippy, who unsuccessfully attempts to pour himself a glass.
The pitcher was of a style which, i think, nowadays, is pretty standard. The lid is normally closed, but you rotate it to get either a full pour, or a strainer. Skippy didn't seem to understand the concept, so when he tipped the completely full pitcher of OJ and nothing was coming out, he became confused. Believe me, even in the days before Skippy discovered pot, he was very easily confused. So he did what anybody would have done: he tipped the pitcher farther. Somebody, i think it was my mom, noticed what he was doing and was just attempting to get him to stop and explain it to him when the pitcher reached near-vertical, and the lid popped off, sending an entire pitcher of orange juice straight into Skippy's lap.
Not a huge deal. It got cleaned up. My mom procured some of my brother's clothes for Skippy to wear while his were in the laundry. A new pitcher of orange juice got made. It seemed the incident was pretty well wrapped up.
After breakfast, we retreated back into the basement and returned to our Goldeneye tournament. That was, after all, what we did back then. After a length of time had passed, suddenly somebody said, "Hey, where's Skippy?"
All of a sudden, a pair of underwear come flying out of Skippy's sleeping bag. The rest of us exchanged the expected bewildered glances, and then came to stare at the sleeping bag.
A moment passed in silence, and then Skippy burst forth from the sleeping bag like he was an alien fleeing John Hurt's chest. He was butt naked and raving loudly something about not wanting to wear my brother's clothes, and started jumping up and down on the mattress and flapping his arms like a wounded penguin.
Then the screaming started. Not from Skippy, from the rest of us. Everyone except for Zippo averted their eyes, clamoring for him to get the clothes back on. Zippo just stared, in a stupor, probably in what paramedics would describe medically as "shock." This went on for such a long period of time (seriously, ten minutes or more), where nobody wanted to move or open their eyes due to the trauma. We'd look up occasionally, to see whether it had stopped yet, but the end result of this action was always a renewed round of screaming and all-around horror. One wonders what my parents were thinking at that moment and why they didn't come down to investigate. Actually, from their perspective safely outside of the basement, it probably didn't seem all that unusual.
Now, accounts vary on exactly who made the statement that would follow Skippy around for the next six or seven years. Some say that it was Skippy himself who made the observation, others believe it was an incoherent rambling from Zippo, at least one person has suggested that it was even me. But in any case, somebody made the following observation about Skippy's genitals: "Hey! It looks like Play-Doh!!" Come to think of it, it was probably Gay Eskimo.
I don't really recall how this story ends. Somebody may have finally just tackled him, and somehow stuffed him back into the sleeping bag until his own clothes came out of the dryer. Or else maybe the rest of us left the room. Neither of these options sounds entirely feasible, but i'm at a loss as to what else might have happened.
And that is why we called him "Playdo" for years to come.
My parents had recently completed work on the second addition to our house, which included a new section of basement. This new basement had been annexed for my dad's work room, but at the moment, it was still just wide open territory. So i laid a claim on it for the site of my birthday party that year. This was in a more innocent time, when my birthday parties consisted of five to eight guests and neither bands nor alcohol were present.
I dragged a TV, VCR, and Nintendo 64 down to the basement and set them on a microwave stand. I also came up with two or three mattresses, i don't exactly remember where from now, and set them side by side across the basement in front of the TV. Since the plans for the night essentially consisted of the N64 and a couple of movies (i do remember the movies, actually: Virus and The 13th Floor), this was all that a small group of 7th to 9th grade boys needed for a wild night. Right?
So, that's pretty well exactly what happened. This story isn't about the night of the party itself; it's about the morning after.
Seeing as the party was but a small group, my dad made French toast for everybody in the morning (nowadays, i have to cook the French toast myself). As we begin eating breakfast, the orange juice gets passed to Skippy, who unsuccessfully attempts to pour himself a glass.
The pitcher was of a style which, i think, nowadays, is pretty standard. The lid is normally closed, but you rotate it to get either a full pour, or a strainer. Skippy didn't seem to understand the concept, so when he tipped the completely full pitcher of OJ and nothing was coming out, he became confused. Believe me, even in the days before Skippy discovered pot, he was very easily confused. So he did what anybody would have done: he tipped the pitcher farther. Somebody, i think it was my mom, noticed what he was doing and was just attempting to get him to stop and explain it to him when the pitcher reached near-vertical, and the lid popped off, sending an entire pitcher of orange juice straight into Skippy's lap.
Not a huge deal. It got cleaned up. My mom procured some of my brother's clothes for Skippy to wear while his were in the laundry. A new pitcher of orange juice got made. It seemed the incident was pretty well wrapped up.
After breakfast, we retreated back into the basement and returned to our Goldeneye tournament. That was, after all, what we did back then. After a length of time had passed, suddenly somebody said, "Hey, where's Skippy?"
All of a sudden, a pair of underwear come flying out of Skippy's sleeping bag. The rest of us exchanged the expected bewildered glances, and then came to stare at the sleeping bag.
A moment passed in silence, and then Skippy burst forth from the sleeping bag like he was an alien fleeing John Hurt's chest. He was butt naked and raving loudly something about not wanting to wear my brother's clothes, and started jumping up and down on the mattress and flapping his arms like a wounded penguin.
Then the screaming started. Not from Skippy, from the rest of us. Everyone except for Zippo averted their eyes, clamoring for him to get the clothes back on. Zippo just stared, in a stupor, probably in what paramedics would describe medically as "shock." This went on for such a long period of time (seriously, ten minutes or more), where nobody wanted to move or open their eyes due to the trauma. We'd look up occasionally, to see whether it had stopped yet, but the end result of this action was always a renewed round of screaming and all-around horror. One wonders what my parents were thinking at that moment and why they didn't come down to investigate. Actually, from their perspective safely outside of the basement, it probably didn't seem all that unusual.
Now, accounts vary on exactly who made the statement that would follow Skippy around for the next six or seven years. Some say that it was Skippy himself who made the observation, others believe it was an incoherent rambling from Zippo, at least one person has suggested that it was even me. But in any case, somebody made the following observation about Skippy's genitals: "Hey! It looks like Play-Doh!!" Come to think of it, it was probably Gay Eskimo.
I don't really recall how this story ends. Somebody may have finally just tackled him, and somehow stuffed him back into the sleeping bag until his own clothes came out of the dryer. Or else maybe the rest of us left the room. Neither of these options sounds entirely feasible, but i'm at a loss as to what else might have happened.
And that is why we called him "Playdo" for years to come.
2010/07/16
The Francesca Incident
A package arrived at the lab today filled with items which definitely should not have gone to us. I won't go into details about the contents of the package, but suffice it to say there may be legal implications for the sender. As Kathy was delivering the package to the lab director, Lisa and i debated the merits of various methods of disposing of this package.
"We should sell it on eBay; i'll bet you that the right buyer would give us a cool million for that," i said, with some exaggeration. Half a million might have been more reasonable.
"No, we absolutely cannot do that!" Lisa stated quickly. She continued on for a moment about how it was irresponsible, or something.
"You still can't tell whether i'm kidding or not, can you?"
"As a general policy, i assume that you're serious until proven otherwise," she explained.
"I suppose that's a sound policy, given the Francesca incident," i conceded. Michelle, our new chemist, was standing next to Lisa when all of this happened, so she went on to explain the Francesca incident for Michelle's benefit.
These days i'm a little more reserved than i was in my teenage years, and so, unless we met during an episode of me exhibiting my almost Jack Sparrow-like affection for rum, it may take you some time before you discover that i have no shame. None. When placed in a more professional environment, it may take a little longer for this quality to come out, but rest assured that it will. My co-workers have discovered over the years that when i say things like, "i'm just going to crawl under my desk and take a nap," it's going to happen. And when Tom brings in a Barbie T-shirt with pink rhinestones on it and requests that i wear it for the rest of the day, this is also going to happen. I'm not even going to take that shirt off before my bus ride home.
So therefore, when Lisa, for reasons i cannot remember anymore, dared me to answer the phone and introduce myself as Francesca, less than two months after either of us had begun working at the lab (so this is probably about September of 2006), that too was going to happen. And so, within five minutes of Lisa's proposition, it did.
I didn't even bother to disguise my voice. I picked up the phone with my customary greeting, replacing my own name with that of Francesca. "[name of lab], this is Francesca," i said, my tone and inflection not at all marred by the humor of the situation.
The man on the other end of the phone was clearly staggered. He took a moment before he stammered out his request: "Hi...er, um...Francesca...is Karen available?" Karen is my direct supervisor.
"Yes she is. If you'll hold for one moment, i'll see if i can find her for you."
"Ok," he said, still a little unsure.
"Please hold," i said, pushing the hold button and hanging up the phone. Lisa and i burst into tears and i'll bet the uproar of our laughter could be heard from the next lab over. I took a moment to compose myself, and then struck out to find Karen. At this particular time, that was uncharacteristically easy. Usually when people call for her, Karen is nowhere to be found. I was slightly disappointed; i was sort of looking forward to picking the phone back up and saying something to the effect of, "This is Francesca again, i can't seem to find her. Would you like to leave a message?"
I think this incident pretty well set the stage for our relation over the next several years. I don't use the word "relation" by accident here, either; Lisa and i have come to refer to each other as "Mom" and "Son," respectively.
Not long after we'd gotten into that habit, Roni was asking me why i called Lisa Mom. So i enlightened her: it's because we had realized that, under the right conditions, she could've been my mom. She's 16 years older than i am. Roni's response was: "Oh! Then i suppose i could be your grandma!" This was clearly one of those reactions where the mouth moved before the brain, because once she had considered her comment, she realized that not only was it just as possible for her to be my grandma, it was far more likely. Roni is 43 years my senior. Once she put this together, she started moaning, "Oh nooooo! I didn't really mean that!!"
But it was too late. From then on, Lisa referred to her as my grandma.
"We should sell it on eBay; i'll bet you that the right buyer would give us a cool million for that," i said, with some exaggeration. Half a million might have been more reasonable.
"No, we absolutely cannot do that!" Lisa stated quickly. She continued on for a moment about how it was irresponsible, or something.
"You still can't tell whether i'm kidding or not, can you?"
"As a general policy, i assume that you're serious until proven otherwise," she explained.
"I suppose that's a sound policy, given the Francesca incident," i conceded. Michelle, our new chemist, was standing next to Lisa when all of this happened, so she went on to explain the Francesca incident for Michelle's benefit.
These days i'm a little more reserved than i was in my teenage years, and so, unless we met during an episode of me exhibiting my almost Jack Sparrow-like affection for rum, it may take you some time before you discover that i have no shame. None. When placed in a more professional environment, it may take a little longer for this quality to come out, but rest assured that it will. My co-workers have discovered over the years that when i say things like, "i'm just going to crawl under my desk and take a nap," it's going to happen. And when Tom brings in a Barbie T-shirt with pink rhinestones on it and requests that i wear it for the rest of the day, this is also going to happen. I'm not even going to take that shirt off before my bus ride home.
So therefore, when Lisa, for reasons i cannot remember anymore, dared me to answer the phone and introduce myself as Francesca, less than two months after either of us had begun working at the lab (so this is probably about September of 2006), that too was going to happen. And so, within five minutes of Lisa's proposition, it did.
I didn't even bother to disguise my voice. I picked up the phone with my customary greeting, replacing my own name with that of Francesca. "[name of lab], this is Francesca," i said, my tone and inflection not at all marred by the humor of the situation.
The man on the other end of the phone was clearly staggered. He took a moment before he stammered out his request: "Hi...er, um...Francesca...is Karen available?" Karen is my direct supervisor.
"Yes she is. If you'll hold for one moment, i'll see if i can find her for you."
"Ok," he said, still a little unsure.
"Please hold," i said, pushing the hold button and hanging up the phone. Lisa and i burst into tears and i'll bet the uproar of our laughter could be heard from the next lab over. I took a moment to compose myself, and then struck out to find Karen. At this particular time, that was uncharacteristically easy. Usually when people call for her, Karen is nowhere to be found. I was slightly disappointed; i was sort of looking forward to picking the phone back up and saying something to the effect of, "This is Francesca again, i can't seem to find her. Would you like to leave a message?"
I think this incident pretty well set the stage for our relation over the next several years. I don't use the word "relation" by accident here, either; Lisa and i have come to refer to each other as "Mom" and "Son," respectively.
Not long after we'd gotten into that habit, Roni was asking me why i called Lisa Mom. So i enlightened her: it's because we had realized that, under the right conditions, she could've been my mom. She's 16 years older than i am. Roni's response was: "Oh! Then i suppose i could be your grandma!" This was clearly one of those reactions where the mouth moved before the brain, because once she had considered her comment, she realized that not only was it just as possible for her to be my grandma, it was far more likely. Roni is 43 years my senior. Once she put this together, she started moaning, "Oh nooooo! I didn't really mean that!!"
But it was too late. From then on, Lisa referred to her as my grandma.
2010/07/15
Go Down the Street
Here's another one from New Zealand. Day 4, Thursday March 6, 2008.
We'd been driving for quite some time and it was getting on eight o'clock when we decided to start looking for a place to stay the night. We had already figured out that six was considered late in Dunedin; we hadn't quite pieced together yet that the whole country was like that.
We had spotted a motel or two along the road, but for some reason arrived at the conclusion that we should make it to Invercargill before we stopped for the night.
By the time we got there, it was already dark out. It was about 9:30. The streets were deserted and everything we passed was closed, except for the Pizza Hut and one gas station. We'd already found accommodations in our guidebook that we thought we'd give a go to, now the only trick was to find the place. It was called the Beach Road Holiday Park.
Having no luck finding Beach Road, we stopped into the lone gas station for directions. I complimented the clerk on his hair color (blue), and he presented me with a handy map of the whole city, and showed me where the Beach Road Holiday Park was. It was not on Beach Road. In fact, it was several kilometers away from Beach Road. It wasn't even, strictly speaking, in Invercargill.
So we traveled the ten or so kilometers to our destination. Upon arrival, we (no surprise) found the office closed. Helpfully, there was a note taped to the door which stated that we could help ourselves to a tent or powered site, or for a tourist flat or a cabin, we should call one of these numbers. So i wrote down these numbers, since a cabin was what we were looking for, and we drove back to Invercargill in hopes of finding a payphone at the Pizza Hut. We were, after all, ravenously hungry, having not officially eaten since breakfast. We were surviving on chicken-flavored potato chips and Pods (Pods: little scoops of cookie with drops of well-known candy bars in their center, such as Milky Way or Three Musketeers).
The Pizza Hut may, in fact, have been closing when we arrived, but they served us anyway. They did not have a payphone, but the lady at the counter was kind enough to let me use their phone in the manager's office. Calling those numbers proved to be of no avail, so i inquired of the clerk whether she knew of any hotels, motels, hostels, or whatever else in the area which might still have an open lobby.
"You're going to have to talk to this guy," she said, pointing at a delivery driver who was just entering the building. If i remember correctly, he was a gaunt man with a backwards baseball hat and a long goatee. The remainder of his face appeared to be a couple days out from a shave, and he may have been missing some teeth. His name was Carl. I explained our predicament.
"Well, there's this place, this place, this place..." He rattled off the names of the area's lodgings as though he were reading a phone book. When he ran out of names to rattle off, he produced an actual phone book from behind the counter, and pulled out some more names. Then, he shocked us: "Do you want me to call some of these places for you?"
"Um...yeah, that would be great," i stammered out in my surprise. And he proceeded to do so.
After placing three unsuccessful calls, he said, "Well, maybe you can drive over to some of these places, and hopefully there will be somebody there." He started to give me directions, but must have realized quickly that i had no idea what he was talking about. So he reached over to the receipt printer and pulled out a long strip of paper. He wrote out the directions to four area motels, and sent us on our way.
Amanda, who had been driving all day, since it was her turn in the rotation, crawled into the back of Lucy, our van, and collapsed from exhaustion. I took over the driving duties, and Alyssa attempted to navigate me from Carl's poorly-written directions. We were so tired, and things were getting worse at a rate which could only be described as "exponential." We were approaching delirious by the time we reached the third motel, which was also closed. Alyssa got to the fourth and final item on the strange list, and adopted a quizzical expression. She was mouthing something silently to herself.
"What does it say?" i asked.
"It says, 'Don Street, Go,'" she answered.
"That doesn't make any sense," i said. I pulled over so that i could take a look at it. It did, in fact, read 'Don St, Go."
We sat there for a large number of minutes, trying to figure out what the hell Don St, Go could possibly mean. No cars passed us.
"I think it means, 'go down the street,'" i offered. "What's the next line?"
"Right then."
"...Right then?"
So, i continued to go down the street. At some point, we ended up in a roundabout where i just kept circling and circling, because we didn't know what to do and we were losing coherence fast. Amanda woke up at this point and saw the street light going around and around through the sunroof, and said, "You guys, what's going on?"
"Nothing, Amanda, go back to sleep!" Alyssa interjected urgently. Amanda was quick to take this advice. Alyssa would later attribute this quick response to averting some sort of disaster.
Alyssa and i were giggling profusely enough to hurt by now, because the whole Don Street thing seemed to be about the most ridiculous notion in the history of mankind. If there was a joke funnier than, "Don Street, Go! Right then!," we have probably become incapable of laughing at it, because Don Street is the only joke that matters anymore. We continued reciting this line at varying volume levels which would make Spinal Tap jealous as Amanda continued to slumber.
We'd probably driven down every major artery in Invercargill five or six times before, by some miracle of a more amusing god, we passed by Don Street. And we were both like, "OH MY GOD! DON STREET!!" So i said, "Right then!" and we took a right on Don Street. We happened across the intersection of Don and Spey, which was also mentioned on the receipt. We finally found the motel in question, and it was closed.
I was just about done for, so when i saw that grocery store, i didn't hesitate. Alyssa had already dropped off on me, now that a navigator was futile. I pulled into a parking stall at the edge of the parking lot, equidistant from the door and the street.
Of all the fucking things to be open at that time of night.
Yes, customers were coming and going from the grocery like it was a Saturday morning. I sat in the driver's seat with my eyes shut for a good long while, hoping that unconsciousness would claim me and i could just be held accountable for whatever happened next at some time in the future, preferably at least six hours. But when i was still awake twenty minutes later and somebody got into the SUV parked next to us, i knew it wasn't going to work out. I started up Lucy and drove another ten kilometers before i called it a night.
But as far as where the Beach Road Holiday Park hides their tent sites, i will never know. I cautiously slunk down their roads into their dead ends, hoping Lucy's lights wouldn't wake anybody, but it just wasn't happening. Finally i found a clearing, quite wide open, with a tree right in the middle of it. I got off the road and pulled up right next to that tree, and i said this is it.
Dawn's first rays woke me peacefully, and i decided that i needed to get the fuck out of there. Amanda and Alyssa were still asleep, but since i was already in the driver's seat, that mattered little. i just wanted to get out of there before whoever owned that house asked why i was parked on their lawn.
Here's where i started to muse about the downward spiral we'd been on. Our first night in New Zealand, we'd splurged on this expensive hotel with more amenities than i had previously though humanly possible. The second night was in a cramped little hostel room with community kitchen and bath facilities. The third night was spent in a tent on the hard ground with the wind blowing the walls into our faces all night. And now the fourth night, we had slept in the god damn van. If things kept going like this, the fifth night we would lose the van and be huddled in a ditch, hoping to avoid that tornado, and the sixth night we would be dead.
Things improved from there.
We'd been driving for quite some time and it was getting on eight o'clock when we decided to start looking for a place to stay the night. We had already figured out that six was considered late in Dunedin; we hadn't quite pieced together yet that the whole country was like that.
We had spotted a motel or two along the road, but for some reason arrived at the conclusion that we should make it to Invercargill before we stopped for the night.
By the time we got there, it was already dark out. It was about 9:30. The streets were deserted and everything we passed was closed, except for the Pizza Hut and one gas station. We'd already found accommodations in our guidebook that we thought we'd give a go to, now the only trick was to find the place. It was called the Beach Road Holiday Park.
Having no luck finding Beach Road, we stopped into the lone gas station for directions. I complimented the clerk on his hair color (blue), and he presented me with a handy map of the whole city, and showed me where the Beach Road Holiday Park was. It was not on Beach Road. In fact, it was several kilometers away from Beach Road. It wasn't even, strictly speaking, in Invercargill.
So we traveled the ten or so kilometers to our destination. Upon arrival, we (no surprise) found the office closed. Helpfully, there was a note taped to the door which stated that we could help ourselves to a tent or powered site, or for a tourist flat or a cabin, we should call one of these numbers. So i wrote down these numbers, since a cabin was what we were looking for, and we drove back to Invercargill in hopes of finding a payphone at the Pizza Hut. We were, after all, ravenously hungry, having not officially eaten since breakfast. We were surviving on chicken-flavored potato chips and Pods (Pods: little scoops of cookie with drops of well-known candy bars in their center, such as Milky Way or Three Musketeers).
The Pizza Hut may, in fact, have been closing when we arrived, but they served us anyway. They did not have a payphone, but the lady at the counter was kind enough to let me use their phone in the manager's office. Calling those numbers proved to be of no avail, so i inquired of the clerk whether she knew of any hotels, motels, hostels, or whatever else in the area which might still have an open lobby.
"You're going to have to talk to this guy," she said, pointing at a delivery driver who was just entering the building. If i remember correctly, he was a gaunt man with a backwards baseball hat and a long goatee. The remainder of his face appeared to be a couple days out from a shave, and he may have been missing some teeth. His name was Carl. I explained our predicament.
"Well, there's this place, this place, this place..." He rattled off the names of the area's lodgings as though he were reading a phone book. When he ran out of names to rattle off, he produced an actual phone book from behind the counter, and pulled out some more names. Then, he shocked us: "Do you want me to call some of these places for you?"
"Um...yeah, that would be great," i stammered out in my surprise. And he proceeded to do so.
After placing three unsuccessful calls, he said, "Well, maybe you can drive over to some of these places, and hopefully there will be somebody there." He started to give me directions, but must have realized quickly that i had no idea what he was talking about. So he reached over to the receipt printer and pulled out a long strip of paper. He wrote out the directions to four area motels, and sent us on our way.
Amanda, who had been driving all day, since it was her turn in the rotation, crawled into the back of Lucy, our van, and collapsed from exhaustion. I took over the driving duties, and Alyssa attempted to navigate me from Carl's poorly-written directions. We were so tired, and things were getting worse at a rate which could only be described as "exponential." We were approaching delirious by the time we reached the third motel, which was also closed. Alyssa got to the fourth and final item on the strange list, and adopted a quizzical expression. She was mouthing something silently to herself.
"What does it say?" i asked.
"It says, 'Don Street, Go,'" she answered.
"That doesn't make any sense," i said. I pulled over so that i could take a look at it. It did, in fact, read 'Don St, Go."
We sat there for a large number of minutes, trying to figure out what the hell Don St, Go could possibly mean. No cars passed us.
"I think it means, 'go down the street,'" i offered. "What's the next line?"
"Right then."
"...Right then?"
So, i continued to go down the street. At some point, we ended up in a roundabout where i just kept circling and circling, because we didn't know what to do and we were losing coherence fast. Amanda woke up at this point and saw the street light going around and around through the sunroof, and said, "You guys, what's going on?"
"Nothing, Amanda, go back to sleep!" Alyssa interjected urgently. Amanda was quick to take this advice. Alyssa would later attribute this quick response to averting some sort of disaster.
Alyssa and i were giggling profusely enough to hurt by now, because the whole Don Street thing seemed to be about the most ridiculous notion in the history of mankind. If there was a joke funnier than, "Don Street, Go! Right then!," we have probably become incapable of laughing at it, because Don Street is the only joke that matters anymore. We continued reciting this line at varying volume levels which would make Spinal Tap jealous as Amanda continued to slumber.
We'd probably driven down every major artery in Invercargill five or six times before, by some miracle of a more amusing god, we passed by Don Street. And we were both like, "OH MY GOD! DON STREET!!" So i said, "Right then!" and we took a right on Don Street. We happened across the intersection of Don and Spey, which was also mentioned on the receipt. We finally found the motel in question, and it was closed.
I was just about done for, so when i saw that grocery store, i didn't hesitate. Alyssa had already dropped off on me, now that a navigator was futile. I pulled into a parking stall at the edge of the parking lot, equidistant from the door and the street.
Of all the fucking things to be open at that time of night.
Yes, customers were coming and going from the grocery like it was a Saturday morning. I sat in the driver's seat with my eyes shut for a good long while, hoping that unconsciousness would claim me and i could just be held accountable for whatever happened next at some time in the future, preferably at least six hours. But when i was still awake twenty minutes later and somebody got into the SUV parked next to us, i knew it wasn't going to work out. I started up Lucy and drove another ten kilometers before i called it a night.
But as far as where the Beach Road Holiday Park hides their tent sites, i will never know. I cautiously slunk down their roads into their dead ends, hoping Lucy's lights wouldn't wake anybody, but it just wasn't happening. Finally i found a clearing, quite wide open, with a tree right in the middle of it. I got off the road and pulled up right next to that tree, and i said this is it.
Dawn's first rays woke me peacefully, and i decided that i needed to get the fuck out of there. Amanda and Alyssa were still asleep, but since i was already in the driver's seat, that mattered little. i just wanted to get out of there before whoever owned that house asked why i was parked on their lawn.
Here's where i started to muse about the downward spiral we'd been on. Our first night in New Zealand, we'd splurged on this expensive hotel with more amenities than i had previously though humanly possible. The second night was in a cramped little hostel room with community kitchen and bath facilities. The third night was spent in a tent on the hard ground with the wind blowing the walls into our faces all night. And now the fourth night, we had slept in the god damn van. If things kept going like this, the fifth night we would lose the van and be huddled in a ditch, hoping to avoid that tornado, and the sixth night we would be dead.
Things improved from there.
2010/07/14
You'll Go Blind
"Trevor, your Blind QCs are getting really out of control..." Aimee said to me earlier this morning.
"How so?" i inquired.
"'Richard Burns?'" she replied. "With the mother, 'Aretha Burns!'"
I was a little disappointed in Greg, who had to have the names explained to him.
Perhaps i should step back a moment and explain what's going on here. In the laboratory where i work, we deal with blood samples on babies from across the state of Wisconsin, as well as another state and three foreign countries. In order to test both our instruments and our chemists for accuracy, a couple times a week we slip fake samples into the mix. These are called Blind Quality Controls, or Blind QCs. To help ensure the desired result, the chemists aren't supposed to know which samples are fake. But these samples, of course, don't come straight out of thin air. Somebody has to make them.
The blood samples are created by one of our chemists using donated blood, which is then spiked with disease. Somebody else needs to make up fake demographics for this sample, including of course the baby's name and the mother's name. This leaves room for a lot of creative license. In the past, some people assigned this task have simply rifled through the phone book, but that's no fun. I take this task far too seriously for that.
My first experience with these Blind QCs came a couple months after i started working at this lab, back in 2006. I had come across a sample on a baby Ra's al Ghul, which struck me funny, and i had to share. So i took it to Eric, who's kind of a Batman dork (though to a lesser extent than myself). Eric was unfazed, though, and recognized it immediately for what it was. His boss, Tom (who is in charge of the Blind QC program), was disappointed in me for ruining it, and decided to punish me by assigning me to make more.
My first batch of names was pretty boring, but after a little inspirational talk from Mike, i started to bring a certain flavor to my Blind QCs.
Paraphrased: "Porn names! You've got to use porn names. Like Rusty Palm and Filthy Sanchez and Hugh G. Rection.
"Otherwise if you want to insult somebody's taste in music, like Robert's for example, you would do something like suggest that Ian Curtis from Joy Division is the son of Patsy Cline or something."
I ended up doing far worse to Joy Division as a Blind QC, even though i kind of like them. Mother: Joye Division. Baby: Gary Glitter.
I certainly didn't take Mike's advice lightly. This sort of thing panders directly to a sense of sophomoric, juvenile humor which i will never apologize for.
The real kicker is that when a chemist discovers a Blind QC, they've got to bring it up to the director of our laboratory. More from Mike: "It always sucks when you've got to bring a sample up to him with a name like John Holmes and you're standing there, trying hard not to laugh, and just waiting for him to get it, but he never gets it."
I've been responsible for quite a few of those uncomfortable moments, and since i'm not a chemist myself, i'm never the red-faced sucker standing in the director's office. Some of the better ones from my tenure have included Gloria Hole, Mony Schott, Arja Stillsmoking-Kraak, Kathy Stillsmoking-DeRoche (Kathy is a coworker), and Padme Rose Johnson, daughter of Bobbie Lopez, which to outsiders means nothing but inside the lab is a very thinly-veiled reference to Robert procreating with a certain co-worker that everybody despises, for a variety of very good reasons. Tom had removed Kraak from Arja Stillsmoking, but i'm still shocked that i got away with Gloria Hole. I thought that Mike and Eric were going to lose their shit laughing at that one.
Probably my favorite incident, though, was the one that didn't get taken care of properly. There is another agency which we collect some information on behalf of, and when we do Blind QCs they are supposed to get removed from the queue of specimens which get reported to that agency. Well, one day, one didn't get removed from the queue, and a report went out. There was much confusion around the lab that day as people on our end, their end, and the end of the hospital this baby was allegedly born at. This probably could have been solved right away, but of course, i was not in that day.
I came to work the next day, and as soon as my boss sees me, she stops me in my tracks and says, "Are you responsible for baby Boo Ger?"
Aimee was telling me today that she had been the one to deal with the other agency on that case. "The lady on the other end of the phone was so professional about it. She just said, 'we need some information on baby Boo Ger." This part of the story really needs Aimee's verbal inflections to be funny. But trust me, it was.
Really, though, i just wish i'd been able to see the look on Greg's face when Aimee said, "Dick Burns? Urethra Burns?"
"How so?" i inquired.
"'Richard Burns?'" she replied. "With the mother, 'Aretha Burns!'"
I was a little disappointed in Greg, who had to have the names explained to him.
Perhaps i should step back a moment and explain what's going on here. In the laboratory where i work, we deal with blood samples on babies from across the state of Wisconsin, as well as another state and three foreign countries. In order to test both our instruments and our chemists for accuracy, a couple times a week we slip fake samples into the mix. These are called Blind Quality Controls, or Blind QCs. To help ensure the desired result, the chemists aren't supposed to know which samples are fake. But these samples, of course, don't come straight out of thin air. Somebody has to make them.
The blood samples are created by one of our chemists using donated blood, which is then spiked with disease. Somebody else needs to make up fake demographics for this sample, including of course the baby's name and the mother's name. This leaves room for a lot of creative license. In the past, some people assigned this task have simply rifled through the phone book, but that's no fun. I take this task far too seriously for that.
My first experience with these Blind QCs came a couple months after i started working at this lab, back in 2006. I had come across a sample on a baby Ra's al Ghul, which struck me funny, and i had to share. So i took it to Eric, who's kind of a Batman dork (though to a lesser extent than myself). Eric was unfazed, though, and recognized it immediately for what it was. His boss, Tom (who is in charge of the Blind QC program), was disappointed in me for ruining it, and decided to punish me by assigning me to make more.
My first batch of names was pretty boring, but after a little inspirational talk from Mike, i started to bring a certain flavor to my Blind QCs.
Paraphrased: "Porn names! You've got to use porn names. Like Rusty Palm and Filthy Sanchez and Hugh G. Rection.
"Otherwise if you want to insult somebody's taste in music, like Robert's for example, you would do something like suggest that Ian Curtis from Joy Division is the son of Patsy Cline or something."
I ended up doing far worse to Joy Division as a Blind QC, even though i kind of like them. Mother: Joye Division. Baby: Gary Glitter.
I certainly didn't take Mike's advice lightly. This sort of thing panders directly to a sense of sophomoric, juvenile humor which i will never apologize for.
The real kicker is that when a chemist discovers a Blind QC, they've got to bring it up to the director of our laboratory. More from Mike: "It always sucks when you've got to bring a sample up to him with a name like John Holmes and you're standing there, trying hard not to laugh, and just waiting for him to get it, but he never gets it."
I've been responsible for quite a few of those uncomfortable moments, and since i'm not a chemist myself, i'm never the red-faced sucker standing in the director's office. Some of the better ones from my tenure have included Gloria Hole, Mony Schott, Arja Stillsmoking-Kraak, Kathy Stillsmoking-DeRoche (Kathy is a coworker), and Padme Rose Johnson, daughter of Bobbie Lopez, which to outsiders means nothing but inside the lab is a very thinly-veiled reference to Robert procreating with a certain co-worker that everybody despises, for a variety of very good reasons. Tom had removed Kraak from Arja Stillsmoking, but i'm still shocked that i got away with Gloria Hole. I thought that Mike and Eric were going to lose their shit laughing at that one.
Probably my favorite incident, though, was the one that didn't get taken care of properly. There is another agency which we collect some information on behalf of, and when we do Blind QCs they are supposed to get removed from the queue of specimens which get reported to that agency. Well, one day, one didn't get removed from the queue, and a report went out. There was much confusion around the lab that day as people on our end, their end, and the end of the hospital this baby was allegedly born at. This probably could have been solved right away, but of course, i was not in that day.
I came to work the next day, and as soon as my boss sees me, she stops me in my tracks and says, "Are you responsible for baby Boo Ger?"
Aimee was telling me today that she had been the one to deal with the other agency on that case. "The lady on the other end of the phone was so professional about it. She just said, 'we need some information on baby Boo Ger." This part of the story really needs Aimee's verbal inflections to be funny. But trust me, it was.
Really, though, i just wish i'd been able to see the look on Greg's face when Aimee said, "Dick Burns? Urethra Burns?"
2010/07/13
Bathing with Foreigners
In my previous blog, Piss on the Wall, Question Mark, i discussed how many American males view the public urination experience. It all boils down to one basic rule: no talking while my wang is out. As previously discussed, i've recently learned that this rule is attributed more to males who live in a more urban setting, as more rural folk are more comfortable talking while their wangs are out. Let me speak here about a more grievous breach of protocol, again on the New Zealand trip we took two years ago. The following events take place on Thursday, March 13th, the eleventh day of the trip and a full week of poor restroom facilities after the last bathroom story.
After checking out from the campground in Kaikoura, our plan for the day was to go on some sort of a dolphin swimming encounter. Kaikoura has a couple of small businesses which do this sort of thing; the idea is that they take you a few kilometers out into the see, slit your throats and dump your body.
I mean, they drop you in and you get to get all up close and personal with dolphins. This sounded pretty cool to our badass tourist selves. Unfortunately, reservations were required and they were all booked out for weeks. So we went with Plan B, which was more what i had wanted to do anyway: a seal swimming encounter. Seals!
...
Seals!!
So, we made our reservations for the seal encounter, a mere couple hours into the future, and did some hardcore American-style shopping downtown Kaikoura. A waterproof camera was our most important purchase at the time.
The encounter began when we slipped into wetsuits (Wetsuits!! How cool!) and boarded a bus, which drove us across town to the docks. The boat took us out to an island-like rock formation which was maybe a hundred or so meters across. It was the seals' natural habitat, their home. There were a great many of them sunning themselves on the rocks. This is what seals do: they sun themselves and sleep. This was not the first time that we'd seen seals in New Zealand. However it was the closest we'd been in their proximity, even closer than the injured one we'd seen on that rocky beach a few days prior, before it got mean and started to look at us in a threatening manner and we ran away.
We were advised not to get too close to the seals or to their colony, and physically touching them was expressly forbidden. At first this seemed, to me, like it was defeating our purpose for being there; i had thought that we'd be getting to actually swim with them. I wanted to pet a seal. So although this dream was not fulfilled, i still feel that this excursion was worth it.
The water was frigid, and getting in was a shock to the system for sure, but after hyperventilating for a few minutes and remembering how to breathe through a snorkel (which i hadn't done in years), it got a bit more comfortable. I started to, probably largely due to the cold water, feel the pressure in my bladder mounting. It would continue to mount, subsiding occasionally, and at those moments i thought i had pissed myself. Judging by the geyser i unleashed when we returned to base, i'd say i probably remained fully continent during the excursion, though i'm pretty sure that the warm spots i swam through were other peoples' pee. Lovely.
After we'd been floating out there for a while, the seals started to come up to us and lazily lope around in the water. I laid face down, staring at the beautiful underwater vegetation, and one coasted by directly below me, staring me in the eye. It was so close i probably could have reached out and touched it, but it may have viewed that as a challenge. Don't mess with seals when they're in the water, they will destroy you.
Sea water is awful. Alyssa had accidentally ingested a lot of it, so she returned to the boat, feeling sick, well before the rest of us. One of the other women on the trip had a similar experience, and so the two of them struck up a conversation on the boat. It turns out that she and her husband, probably in their sixties, were from Maryland, and they and their daughter were visiting their other daughter, who was living there on a six month visa. Aside from the three of us and that family, there were two other people on the tour: a couple from Shanghai.
After two hours, we made our return. And that's when things got awkward.
I entered the men's shower room. I'll paint you a picture of it: straight ahead from the door is a common area with benches on three walls, probably a dressing room. As you enter the door, immediately on your left there is a bathroom stall. Further left, there is a long partition identical to the walls of a bathroom stall. It housed four showerheads, spaced about three feet apart. I, being the first member of the party into the room, peeled off the wetsuit and dropped it on the floor at the rightmost shower. This was where the entry to the partition was. I then walked all the way to the leftmost shower, which is the most enclosed of the lot, and began to rinse myself off, with my swimming suit still on.
The man from Shanghai did as i did, but selecting the second shower from the right, effectively putting a one-shower buffer between us. He, too, began to rinse off with his swimming suit still on. This is the correct course of action. See, dude from China knows what's going on.
I was pretty well done, i was just about to step out, which would have meant walking across the other man, since there was only the one exit, all the way on the right. This wouldn't have been a big deal, even though there is only about three to four feet from wall to wall. I could probably have passed by him with a comfortable six inches between our still-suited asses.
Then, suddenly, the man from Maryland had to go and ruin everything. He suddenly saunters into the shower, butt ass naked, with his shriveled old man balls flapping in the breeze, and gets into the shower between us. Although i must admit that this was the only remaining shower, as the rightmost shower was occupied by all of our wetsuits, this was not an ideal situation for me. Now, suddenly, i need to cross a naked man in close proximity to exit the shower. This would have been bad enough in itself.
Remember the general convention: a man should never, NEVER speak to another man while urinating. Never. Don't do it. It throws everything off. So, how does this apply to showering?
Never speak to another man while showering. I suppose i should make an amendment to the rule of thumb we discussed: NO TALKING while YOUR wang is out, EITHER.
In fact, talking while your wang is out is worse than talking while my wang is out.
"Oh, check out these shower apparatuses! These are so nifty, why don't we have showers like this back in the States? Don't you think these are cool?" I'm paraphrasing here, but this is the general gist of the conversation he attempted to start with me.
I wanted to scream, "SHUT UP! Don't you know you're throwing your wang in the face of ten million years of human evolution?! This is not done! How is that acceptable?!" but it only came out as, "Uh...yeah."
I turned to face the corner of the wall and rinsed my hair again. I rinsed my hair for longer than could possibly be considered natural, unless you were a hippie on your annual wash. Then i shampooed again, which took abnormally long. Then i rinsed for longer. Basically, i went at it with my hair until the old man left the shower, and then waited another couple minutes to be sure that he'd have his clothes back on when i came out.
As it happened, when i exited the shower, he was still standing in the middle of the common area with his aging scrotum hanging loose, making idle conversation with the other guy, who obviously had fewer qualms about making nude conversation with strange men. Fortunately for me, right at that moment Amanda shouted into the men's locker room for the soap and shampoo, which i had, in my mortification, forgotten that we needed to share. After i brought it out to them, i locked myself in the toilet stall and pissed until i heard the old man's voice taper off out the door.
After checking out from the campground in Kaikoura, our plan for the day was to go on some sort of a dolphin swimming encounter. Kaikoura has a couple of small businesses which do this sort of thing; the idea is that they take you a few kilometers out into the see, slit your throats and dump your body.
I mean, they drop you in and you get to get all up close and personal with dolphins. This sounded pretty cool to our badass tourist selves. Unfortunately, reservations were required and they were all booked out for weeks. So we went with Plan B, which was more what i had wanted to do anyway: a seal swimming encounter. Seals!
...
Seals!!
So, we made our reservations for the seal encounter, a mere couple hours into the future, and did some hardcore American-style shopping downtown Kaikoura. A waterproof camera was our most important purchase at the time.
The encounter began when we slipped into wetsuits (Wetsuits!! How cool!) and boarded a bus, which drove us across town to the docks. The boat took us out to an island-like rock formation which was maybe a hundred or so meters across. It was the seals' natural habitat, their home. There were a great many of them sunning themselves on the rocks. This is what seals do: they sun themselves and sleep. This was not the first time that we'd seen seals in New Zealand. However it was the closest we'd been in their proximity, even closer than the injured one we'd seen on that rocky beach a few days prior, before it got mean and started to look at us in a threatening manner and we ran away.
We were advised not to get too close to the seals or to their colony, and physically touching them was expressly forbidden. At first this seemed, to me, like it was defeating our purpose for being there; i had thought that we'd be getting to actually swim with them. I wanted to pet a seal. So although this dream was not fulfilled, i still feel that this excursion was worth it.
The water was frigid, and getting in was a shock to the system for sure, but after hyperventilating for a few minutes and remembering how to breathe through a snorkel (which i hadn't done in years), it got a bit more comfortable. I started to, probably largely due to the cold water, feel the pressure in my bladder mounting. It would continue to mount, subsiding occasionally, and at those moments i thought i had pissed myself. Judging by the geyser i unleashed when we returned to base, i'd say i probably remained fully continent during the excursion, though i'm pretty sure that the warm spots i swam through were other peoples' pee. Lovely.
After we'd been floating out there for a while, the seals started to come up to us and lazily lope around in the water. I laid face down, staring at the beautiful underwater vegetation, and one coasted by directly below me, staring me in the eye. It was so close i probably could have reached out and touched it, but it may have viewed that as a challenge. Don't mess with seals when they're in the water, they will destroy you.
Sea water is awful. Alyssa had accidentally ingested a lot of it, so she returned to the boat, feeling sick, well before the rest of us. One of the other women on the trip had a similar experience, and so the two of them struck up a conversation on the boat. It turns out that she and her husband, probably in their sixties, were from Maryland, and they and their daughter were visiting their other daughter, who was living there on a six month visa. Aside from the three of us and that family, there were two other people on the tour: a couple from Shanghai.
After two hours, we made our return. And that's when things got awkward.
I entered the men's shower room. I'll paint you a picture of it: straight ahead from the door is a common area with benches on three walls, probably a dressing room. As you enter the door, immediately on your left there is a bathroom stall. Further left, there is a long partition identical to the walls of a bathroom stall. It housed four showerheads, spaced about three feet apart. I, being the first member of the party into the room, peeled off the wetsuit and dropped it on the floor at the rightmost shower. This was where the entry to the partition was. I then walked all the way to the leftmost shower, which is the most enclosed of the lot, and began to rinse myself off, with my swimming suit still on.
The man from Shanghai did as i did, but selecting the second shower from the right, effectively putting a one-shower buffer between us. He, too, began to rinse off with his swimming suit still on. This is the correct course of action. See, dude from China knows what's going on.
I was pretty well done, i was just about to step out, which would have meant walking across the other man, since there was only the one exit, all the way on the right. This wouldn't have been a big deal, even though there is only about three to four feet from wall to wall. I could probably have passed by him with a comfortable six inches between our still-suited asses.
Then, suddenly, the man from Maryland had to go and ruin everything. He suddenly saunters into the shower, butt ass naked, with his shriveled old man balls flapping in the breeze, and gets into the shower between us. Although i must admit that this was the only remaining shower, as the rightmost shower was occupied by all of our wetsuits, this was not an ideal situation for me. Now, suddenly, i need to cross a naked man in close proximity to exit the shower. This would have been bad enough in itself.
Remember the general convention: a man should never, NEVER speak to another man while urinating. Never. Don't do it. It throws everything off. So, how does this apply to showering?
Never speak to another man while showering. I suppose i should make an amendment to the rule of thumb we discussed: NO TALKING while YOUR wang is out, EITHER.
In fact, talking while your wang is out is worse than talking while my wang is out.
"Oh, check out these shower apparatuses! These are so nifty, why don't we have showers like this back in the States? Don't you think these are cool?" I'm paraphrasing here, but this is the general gist of the conversation he attempted to start with me.
I wanted to scream, "SHUT UP! Don't you know you're throwing your wang in the face of ten million years of human evolution?! This is not done! How is that acceptable?!" but it only came out as, "Uh...yeah."
I turned to face the corner of the wall and rinsed my hair again. I rinsed my hair for longer than could possibly be considered natural, unless you were a hippie on your annual wash. Then i shampooed again, which took abnormally long. Then i rinsed for longer. Basically, i went at it with my hair until the old man left the shower, and then waited another couple minutes to be sure that he'd have his clothes back on when i came out.
As it happened, when i exited the shower, he was still standing in the middle of the common area with his aging scrotum hanging loose, making idle conversation with the other guy, who obviously had fewer qualms about making nude conversation with strange men. Fortunately for me, right at that moment Amanda shouted into the men's locker room for the soap and shampoo, which i had, in my mortification, forgotten that we needed to share. After i brought it out to them, i locked myself in the toilet stall and pissed until i heard the old man's voice taper off out the door.
2010/07/12
He Needed Others
Not too long ago, my co-worker Kathy received this spam in her work email. When she showed it to me, i was struck in such a profound way...it's very inspirational, for, you know, spam. I had her print it out for me and i ran around the lab quoting it at other coworkers like it was the lost Shakespeare masterpiece or something.
From: Ime Jubb [ime.jubb@news.midtown.net]
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 9:55 AM
To: [removed]
Subject: very slipped going great
going in as had purse great going motor
school on luncheon great me person deal porter
alone much has others deal it as top he on main much ten dollars ten dollars and on had after luncheon and going and only motor me person has person only dollars very He the dollars also bought the after only paid has had in others deal on as word only paid also He later person the dollars the and ten on later word as great and and and had luncheon on purse bought the my alone top deal great he great ten after purse He needed others
Isn't that amazing? I mean, if you have me read that out loud, i think it really gains something, because the simple words on paper or a computer screen really lack the inflection that it needs to truly come alive. Lisa and i set about trying to translate its magnificence into something that would be a little more obvious to persons who don't have our unique perspective, but by now i've mostly forgotten Lisa's brilliant insights. So here's how i interpret this:
He secured his purse as he went in on his great motorcycle, its powerful engine pulsating beneath him. This school was widely known for its luncheons, where they served a hearty porter ale at a good deal. Though he was alone and liked it that way, his chosen course of action meant he'd have to deal with others.
At the top of his mind was how to score as much of that ale as possible. He knew the school would be strict about it. Upon arrival, he inquired directly.
"Ten dollars," they replied.
"Ten dollars!" he exclaimed. And on and on he raved. But he went to the luncheon anyway.
After the luncheon, going was the next order of business. Only his motorcycle, could he think of. But a person blocked his way. It was me.
"Have you only dollars?" i asked.
"Very few."
He gave me the dollars and bought several pints of ale. He also bought my trust, as only after he'd paid would others give him ale. But we had made a deal on his words; that was all he needed to pay me. He would be by later with more dollars: ten. His later words were of gratitude, and as great as i could have ever imagined. We had another luncheon, bought from his purse, to celebrate that this alone was the top greatest deal.
"He's great," i would often say of him thereafter.
He gave me another ten after the luncheon, again from his purse, and i gave him more ale, because of course, he needed others.
From: Ime Jubb [ime.jubb@news.midtown.net]
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 9:55 AM
To: [removed]
Subject: very slipped going great
going in as had purse great going motor
school on luncheon great me person deal porter
alone much has others deal it as top he on main much ten dollars ten dollars and on had after luncheon and going and only motor me person has person only dollars very He the dollars also bought the after only paid has had in others deal on as word only paid also He later person the dollars the and ten on later word as great and and and had luncheon on purse bought the my alone top deal great he great ten after purse He needed others
Isn't that amazing? I mean, if you have me read that out loud, i think it really gains something, because the simple words on paper or a computer screen really lack the inflection that it needs to truly come alive. Lisa and i set about trying to translate its magnificence into something that would be a little more obvious to persons who don't have our unique perspective, but by now i've mostly forgotten Lisa's brilliant insights. So here's how i interpret this:
He secured his purse as he went in on his great motorcycle, its powerful engine pulsating beneath him. This school was widely known for its luncheons, where they served a hearty porter ale at a good deal. Though he was alone and liked it that way, his chosen course of action meant he'd have to deal with others.
At the top of his mind was how to score as much of that ale as possible. He knew the school would be strict about it. Upon arrival, he inquired directly.
"Ten dollars," they replied.
"Ten dollars!" he exclaimed. And on and on he raved. But he went to the luncheon anyway.
After the luncheon, going was the next order of business. Only his motorcycle, could he think of. But a person blocked his way. It was me.
"Have you only dollars?" i asked.
"Very few."
He gave me the dollars and bought several pints of ale. He also bought my trust, as only after he'd paid would others give him ale. But we had made a deal on his words; that was all he needed to pay me. He would be by later with more dollars: ten. His later words were of gratitude, and as great as i could have ever imagined. We had another luncheon, bought from his purse, to celebrate that this alone was the top greatest deal.
"He's great," i would often say of him thereafter.
He gave me another ten after the luncheon, again from his purse, and i gave him more ale, because of course, he needed others.
2010/07/11
Ed Wood Part II
Back in April of this year, which feels longer ago than it actually was, i participated in a 30 day film festival through the school that i currently go to. In this festival, groups of students are given thirty days to come up with a short film between four and eight minutes long and satisfying a large number of criteria. So Dan, Dick and i decided that we were going to be a group, and started laying plans for a horror film that we thought we could pull off. This was before we received the criteria for the film; the idea was that once we got them, we would just slip the needed elements into our completed script and film away. I think it should be obvious what happened next.
The requirements for the festival were as follows: there must be a character named Bud Garcia. The line "We need to track down the source of your anxiety," must be included in the dialog, there must be a basketball and a wig used as props, and there must be a shot of a reflection. And each group got assigned a different genre. We did not receive horror.
We got sports.
Panic set in for a short time, and after a couple days Dan and Dick started tossing around new ideas. Dick, from who the hell knows where, came into the idea of using the sport Chessboxing. Chessboxing has apparently been gaining popularity steadily in Europe, being hailed as a marvelous combination of the most intense physical sport and the most intense mental game at once. See, Chessboxing works like this: there are seven rounds. Competitors begin with one round of standard boxing. After the round is over, a chessboard is brought into the middle of the ring and the two sit down for four minutes of chess. Then another round of boxing, and so on, to checkmate or knockout. It's an interesting game, for sure, and we thought it would make for a strong backdrop to our story. The original horror story was, of course, completely gone. We were starting over.
Dan began working on a script. He actually pounded that thing out rather quickly. After a couple of days, we had a group meeting over at Dick's apartment to flesh out the script and discuss how everything was going to go down. The decisions made at this meeting would eventually prove to be poor, though at the time we were feeling confident. So when i say, "discuss how everything was going to go down," it's not just an expression.
I arrived at Dick's apartment complex and called up so they could come let me in. Dan and Dick come out of the building and Dan, overexcited and under the influence, shouts, "Hey! How do you feel about playing the lead in the movie?" I had barely gotten an affirmative response out when he belligerently continued: "The only thing is you have to kiss a chick. OH YEAH! And your girlfriend has to be in it, too!"
We went inside and Dick presented me with a bottle of rum. Then i got a look at the script, which didn't have a title, but i would have called it Rocky XIII, because it was essentially Rocky with a little chess mixed in. Dan had also written in a lot of references to great works, maybe in an effort to fool the judges into thinking we knew what we were doing, or maybe just as an homage of sorts. The most obvious among them were to On the Waterfront and various Mark Twain works. Our lead character, for example, was named Tom Clemens (Tom Sawyer + Samuel Clemens).
The script called for Tom, a.k.a. me, to take quite a pounding. In the opening scene, he gets hit in the head with a basketball. Then there's all the boxing. I asked Dick how he intended to get all of the fighting shots, and his response was that we would just do it. As in, actually hit each other. At the time that this came up, i had been under the impression that Dan was going to be playing my foil, the Apollo Creed of the film, if you will: Bud Garcia. This was not the case. Dan had somebody in mind for the role, and he was an actual boxer. This, i did not feel so comfortable with.
Probably the biggest mistake we made that day was allowing Dick to be the director. In retrospect, we really should have known better, but at the time it seemed like an acceptable situation for some reason. Maybe it was the rum.
It was a beautiful day when we started filming. We did our opening scene at a park off of Monona Drive in Madison, where there's this awesome view of Lake Monona behind the basketball courts. The boxer, fortunately for me, had to pull out, and instead we ended up with this tall skinny flamboyant gay man. I didn't think he fit the part in the least, and he was a pretty alright guy...it was difficult for me to portray my character's tension with him. Part of the reason i couldn't get mad at him was that he couldn't deliver his lines with a straight face, he just kept laughing at everything...it didn't so much work out. After a number of takes, we got what we needed. Then came the whole hit-in-the-head-with-the-ball thing, which we had to do four times before we got an acceptable shot.
After that, we drove up to the Monona Terrace, where we filmed me running up some stairs and then across the terrace, where i pulled a Leonardo DiCaprio on the railing overlooking Lake Monona. From there, we were going to go film the date scene, but then Amanda + i, working in conjunction with not enough communication between us, managed to get both my keys and my wallet, which has a spare key, locked in my Jeep. Dan had to drive us back to our house, which is a considerable distance from the Terrace, to get a spare set of keys and then back, all the while hoping that i didn't get towed since i was not, strictly speaking, legally parked. Dick, meanwhile, bought everybody dinner from KFC. All in all, it was a good day of shooting, except that by the time we returned to the Terrace it was pretty well dark and we couldn't shoot our date scene.
It would be a couple days before we were able to film again. Working around everybody's busy schedules was proving hard enough, but we were now starting to have trouble competing for cameras with the Camera Techniques class. This was the beginning of the frustrations. Dick, meanwhile, had been calling around to various gyms in the area, trying to get us a boxing ring to use for those scenes, but to no avail. Shooting the date scene went well, anyway, although it was all we got done that day. Dan and i were starting to have doubts that the project would get completed, given that it was at a pretty epic scale in the first place, and we were already having such trouble getting our shit shot.
A number of days went by before we were able to shoot again. Dan had secured us a boxing ring in Janesville. It belonged to this guy who just happened to have a regulation-size boxing ring in his back yard. It was a lucky break for us, getting that ring, but there were some unfortunate drawbacks. First of all, it was in somebody's back yard, but we needed it to look like it wasn't; the best solution we had was to film at night and light the ring in such a way that it was all that was visible, thereby leaving a completely black background. This didn't seem like such a bad idea; it's worked for other movies. A crowd could be easily implied. The problem with shooting at night was that the guy's daughter's room was on the back of the house, with the ring just outside her window, and to top it off she was sick the night we needed to film, so we were told to "box quietly." Hmm.
It wasn't bad, though. The lighting on the shoot was brilliant. Boxing with our fruity villain, though, proved to be a problem, though. He would hit me, and then recoil both of his arms back to his face and apologize. At first it was kind of funny, but after a while it began to seriously irritate me. We obviously couldn't use those shots, since having our huge Chessboxing star and big badass bad guy of the film apologizing every time he hit his mortal enemy wouldn't really make a hell of a lot of sense. So, every time he apologized and recoiled after hitting me, we'd have to reshoot. And reshoot. And reshoot. Over and over and over ad nauseum. And since we actually hitting each other for realism, even though he didn't hit hard, the repeated blows to my head were starting to really affect me. Plus, he had requested that i not hit him in the nipples, since they were both pierced. I had to be much more careful punching him than he did punching me.
After we got everything we needed out of him, we shot some footage for the training montages. The script called for two of them: one where i lose, and one where i win, to show the character's improvement. For these shots, i got to box Dick for a bit. My mounting frustrations toward him really lent these shots the realism needed, and from the video it looks like he was feeling the same way. Dan had also been saying all night that he wanted to take a stab at Dick in the ring, and he got his wish at the end of the night. I grabbed the camera and filmed that, too, for my own amusement. Later on, i was glad i did.
Here's where Dan and i, who had already become apprehensive about the project, really started to turn against Dick. We were already there, on location, with everything we needed, and after all the boxing had been done, he decided not to shoot the chess scenes, or my interaction with Amanda's character. "We'll greenscreen that in later," he said. I yelled at him, quite loudly before i was reminded of the sick little girl in the nearby room, about how this was poor practice and it would not look nearly as good as if we just shot it here and now. Besides, Amanda had come all the way to Janesville with us to shoot these scenes, on her birthday, no less, and for what? To stand around and watch us punch each other? In the end, we followed the advice given to us by Ray on the first day of his class: the director is always right, even when he's wrong.
After this, Dan and i became emotionally detached from the project. We started to follow that credo through everything, the director is always right. Instead of being our project, it became Dick's project.
I don't recall whether this actually happened before or after we shot the boxing footage, but i want to say it's after. Dick showed me his edited version of the opening scene. It looked awful. His cuts were sloppy and i thought he had made very poor choices on which shots went in and which did not. His audio was inconsistent and the whole thing looked like it had been slapped together by someone who had just seen Final Cut Pro for the first time that afternoon. I said, "this looks alright for a rough cut," and you could almost hear his heart drop. He tried to cover, like that was exactly what it was, but it was obvious that he thought he was finished. Well after the film fest debacle was over, Dan would end up seeing this cut and tell me that my description was generous.
Dick started to cut a lot of corners. He was becoming concerned that our final product was going to be over eight minutes, so he started chopping out pieces of the script. I kept telling him not to do it, we could shoot the full thing and when it was all over if it ran too long we could edit it down then. Taking things out now was not going to do us any good. Dan, being the author of the script, was highly offended by Dick's actions. Then he started removing things which were required elements for the contest.
We had already told Dick once that we were leaving the project, but he'd talked us into finishing. Then the final straw came. I had skipped a day of my internship at a local radio station so that we could get part of a training montage filmed. Dick had told us that the local YMCA would let us film there, under the condition that we didn't get any of their other members or any of their logos in our shots. However, he had not secured a camera for us to use on the only day that we could film there. So, armed with my little mass market consumer model camera, Dan and i headed down to the YMCA to film our scene while Dick headed to the aforementioned internship that he and i shared. After all, we couldn't both skip the same day.
It was completely silent in the van as we drove down to the YMCA. The only sound was the occasional grunts between us as we tried to figure out exactly where the place was.
"Hi, we were told we could film here today, we're from Madison Media..." Dan began.
"Oh. Are you Dick?" the clerk inquired.
"No, but we're working with him," i replied.
"I see. The manager tried calling him three times. You can't shoot here."
The dam broke. We both just started laughing. We said something that was probably less coherent than ideal about how that was consistent with everything about the project up to now.
"Oh, it's one of those projects, huh?" the clerk said. He understood perfectly. He went and got a manager for us, just to confirm that we could not, in fact, shoot there, but we didn't care. We had already heard all we needed. The manager explained to us how he had not followed the procedures they'd told him to on requesting the shoot, and it needed approval from management and blah blah blah. The point was, Dick was a dumbass.
We were much more lively on the ride back to school. We were both done with this, it was time to wash our hands of Rocky XIII (still didn't have an official name) and move on. But, we'd already put so much work into it! It would be a shame not to have anything to submit to the 30 Day Film Festival after all that. I suggested that our movie be eight straight minutes of me punching Dick in the head, since we did have that footage. Dan liked the idea, but wanted to expand it a bit better. From the school, i headed home to take care of some things, Dan went in to work out a new script. He emailed it to me about an hour later.
The new script was, in my humble opinion, hilarious. He had essentially taken the story of what had happened to our 30 day film fest entry and turned it into a 30 day film fest entry. The new script featured two characters, Tom Clemens and Bud Garcia, sitting down at a bar and talking about working for the worst director ever, culminating in throwing darts at his likeness. To tie it in to the sports genre, the final line of the script is, "Hey, do you think darts counts as a sport?" He had hit every point that we'd already filmed, too, so we effectively turned all of the original A-roll into quality B-roll.
I immediately phoned a nearby bar for permission to shoot, which was granted with no questions asked. The owner was positively excited to have us shoot in his bar.
We wanted to get everything done before Dick returned from the internship. We headed down to the bar, though still without one of the school's HD cameras, and shot Dan's whole new script with our two consumer cameras. We were back to the school before Dick, as planned.
That night, we had studio time reserved with the school's audio department to record the soundtrack to our film. Dick was there with us the whole time, and it was difficult not to tell him what we'd done, or even that we'd quit his project. He never asked us how the filming had gone at the YMCA, either, so we didn't have to tell him anything. Yes, it was an awkward night, though.
Unfortunately, our footage was too dark and just generally not very good. So, Dan and i reserved a school camera for the following Wednesday, which was getting dangerously close to the deadline, and headed back to the same bar to reshoot what we'd already done. This time, though, we knew our lines and we knew the shots. The bar was considerably more busy, though, which may have negatively affected our audio, but added realism. All in all, the shoot was smooth and satisfying, like shoving a Snickers up a baby's ass. Because Snickers is satisfying and a baby's ass is smooth. Or something. Yeah, i don't like that metaphor as much now as i did thirty seconds ago.
During one of these shoots, Dan brought up Ed Wood, largely considered the worst director ever to grace Hollywood. His crowning achievement, after all, was Plan 9 From Outer Space. They made a movie about him, appropriately titled Ed Wood, which starred Johnny Depp in the title role. Since we didn't have a title yet, i took Dan's comments as an inspiration, and the final package was called Ed Wood Part 2.
Dan thought it was funny that Dick had taken the film away from us, and now we had taken it back from him. In an ironic twist, Dan won Best Director at the film festival. We also took home Best Editing and Best Sound Design.
The requirements for the festival were as follows: there must be a character named Bud Garcia. The line "We need to track down the source of your anxiety," must be included in the dialog, there must be a basketball and a wig used as props, and there must be a shot of a reflection. And each group got assigned a different genre. We did not receive horror.
We got sports.
Panic set in for a short time, and after a couple days Dan and Dick started tossing around new ideas. Dick, from who the hell knows where, came into the idea of using the sport Chessboxing. Chessboxing has apparently been gaining popularity steadily in Europe, being hailed as a marvelous combination of the most intense physical sport and the most intense mental game at once. See, Chessboxing works like this: there are seven rounds. Competitors begin with one round of standard boxing. After the round is over, a chessboard is brought into the middle of the ring and the two sit down for four minutes of chess. Then another round of boxing, and so on, to checkmate or knockout. It's an interesting game, for sure, and we thought it would make for a strong backdrop to our story. The original horror story was, of course, completely gone. We were starting over.
Dan began working on a script. He actually pounded that thing out rather quickly. After a couple of days, we had a group meeting over at Dick's apartment to flesh out the script and discuss how everything was going to go down. The decisions made at this meeting would eventually prove to be poor, though at the time we were feeling confident. So when i say, "discuss how everything was going to go down," it's not just an expression.
I arrived at Dick's apartment complex and called up so they could come let me in. Dan and Dick come out of the building and Dan, overexcited and under the influence, shouts, "Hey! How do you feel about playing the lead in the movie?" I had barely gotten an affirmative response out when he belligerently continued: "The only thing is you have to kiss a chick. OH YEAH! And your girlfriend has to be in it, too!"
We went inside and Dick presented me with a bottle of rum. Then i got a look at the script, which didn't have a title, but i would have called it Rocky XIII, because it was essentially Rocky with a little chess mixed in. Dan had also written in a lot of references to great works, maybe in an effort to fool the judges into thinking we knew what we were doing, or maybe just as an homage of sorts. The most obvious among them were to On the Waterfront and various Mark Twain works. Our lead character, for example, was named Tom Clemens (Tom Sawyer + Samuel Clemens).
The script called for Tom, a.k.a. me, to take quite a pounding. In the opening scene, he gets hit in the head with a basketball. Then there's all the boxing. I asked Dick how he intended to get all of the fighting shots, and his response was that we would just do it. As in, actually hit each other. At the time that this came up, i had been under the impression that Dan was going to be playing my foil, the Apollo Creed of the film, if you will: Bud Garcia. This was not the case. Dan had somebody in mind for the role, and he was an actual boxer. This, i did not feel so comfortable with.
Probably the biggest mistake we made that day was allowing Dick to be the director. In retrospect, we really should have known better, but at the time it seemed like an acceptable situation for some reason. Maybe it was the rum.
It was a beautiful day when we started filming. We did our opening scene at a park off of Monona Drive in Madison, where there's this awesome view of Lake Monona behind the basketball courts. The boxer, fortunately for me, had to pull out, and instead we ended up with this tall skinny flamboyant gay man. I didn't think he fit the part in the least, and he was a pretty alright guy...it was difficult for me to portray my character's tension with him. Part of the reason i couldn't get mad at him was that he couldn't deliver his lines with a straight face, he just kept laughing at everything...it didn't so much work out. After a number of takes, we got what we needed. Then came the whole hit-in-the-head-with-the-ball thing, which we had to do four times before we got an acceptable shot.
After that, we drove up to the Monona Terrace, where we filmed me running up some stairs and then across the terrace, where i pulled a Leonardo DiCaprio on the railing overlooking Lake Monona. From there, we were going to go film the date scene, but then Amanda + i, working in conjunction with not enough communication between us, managed to get both my keys and my wallet, which has a spare key, locked in my Jeep. Dan had to drive us back to our house, which is a considerable distance from the Terrace, to get a spare set of keys and then back, all the while hoping that i didn't get towed since i was not, strictly speaking, legally parked. Dick, meanwhile, bought everybody dinner from KFC. All in all, it was a good day of shooting, except that by the time we returned to the Terrace it was pretty well dark and we couldn't shoot our date scene.
It would be a couple days before we were able to film again. Working around everybody's busy schedules was proving hard enough, but we were now starting to have trouble competing for cameras with the Camera Techniques class. This was the beginning of the frustrations. Dick, meanwhile, had been calling around to various gyms in the area, trying to get us a boxing ring to use for those scenes, but to no avail. Shooting the date scene went well, anyway, although it was all we got done that day. Dan and i were starting to have doubts that the project would get completed, given that it was at a pretty epic scale in the first place, and we were already having such trouble getting our shit shot.
A number of days went by before we were able to shoot again. Dan had secured us a boxing ring in Janesville. It belonged to this guy who just happened to have a regulation-size boxing ring in his back yard. It was a lucky break for us, getting that ring, but there were some unfortunate drawbacks. First of all, it was in somebody's back yard, but we needed it to look like it wasn't; the best solution we had was to film at night and light the ring in such a way that it was all that was visible, thereby leaving a completely black background. This didn't seem like such a bad idea; it's worked for other movies. A crowd could be easily implied. The problem with shooting at night was that the guy's daughter's room was on the back of the house, with the ring just outside her window, and to top it off she was sick the night we needed to film, so we were told to "box quietly." Hmm.
It wasn't bad, though. The lighting on the shoot was brilliant. Boxing with our fruity villain, though, proved to be a problem, though. He would hit me, and then recoil both of his arms back to his face and apologize. At first it was kind of funny, but after a while it began to seriously irritate me. We obviously couldn't use those shots, since having our huge Chessboxing star and big badass bad guy of the film apologizing every time he hit his mortal enemy wouldn't really make a hell of a lot of sense. So, every time he apologized and recoiled after hitting me, we'd have to reshoot. And reshoot. And reshoot. Over and over and over ad nauseum. And since we actually hitting each other for realism, even though he didn't hit hard, the repeated blows to my head were starting to really affect me. Plus, he had requested that i not hit him in the nipples, since they were both pierced. I had to be much more careful punching him than he did punching me.
After we got everything we needed out of him, we shot some footage for the training montages. The script called for two of them: one where i lose, and one where i win, to show the character's improvement. For these shots, i got to box Dick for a bit. My mounting frustrations toward him really lent these shots the realism needed, and from the video it looks like he was feeling the same way. Dan had also been saying all night that he wanted to take a stab at Dick in the ring, and he got his wish at the end of the night. I grabbed the camera and filmed that, too, for my own amusement. Later on, i was glad i did.
Here's where Dan and i, who had already become apprehensive about the project, really started to turn against Dick. We were already there, on location, with everything we needed, and after all the boxing had been done, he decided not to shoot the chess scenes, or my interaction with Amanda's character. "We'll greenscreen that in later," he said. I yelled at him, quite loudly before i was reminded of the sick little girl in the nearby room, about how this was poor practice and it would not look nearly as good as if we just shot it here and now. Besides, Amanda had come all the way to Janesville with us to shoot these scenes, on her birthday, no less, and for what? To stand around and watch us punch each other? In the end, we followed the advice given to us by Ray on the first day of his class: the director is always right, even when he's wrong.
After this, Dan and i became emotionally detached from the project. We started to follow that credo through everything, the director is always right. Instead of being our project, it became Dick's project.
I don't recall whether this actually happened before or after we shot the boxing footage, but i want to say it's after. Dick showed me his edited version of the opening scene. It looked awful. His cuts were sloppy and i thought he had made very poor choices on which shots went in and which did not. His audio was inconsistent and the whole thing looked like it had been slapped together by someone who had just seen Final Cut Pro for the first time that afternoon. I said, "this looks alright for a rough cut," and you could almost hear his heart drop. He tried to cover, like that was exactly what it was, but it was obvious that he thought he was finished. Well after the film fest debacle was over, Dan would end up seeing this cut and tell me that my description was generous.
Dick started to cut a lot of corners. He was becoming concerned that our final product was going to be over eight minutes, so he started chopping out pieces of the script. I kept telling him not to do it, we could shoot the full thing and when it was all over if it ran too long we could edit it down then. Taking things out now was not going to do us any good. Dan, being the author of the script, was highly offended by Dick's actions. Then he started removing things which were required elements for the contest.
We had already told Dick once that we were leaving the project, but he'd talked us into finishing. Then the final straw came. I had skipped a day of my internship at a local radio station so that we could get part of a training montage filmed. Dick had told us that the local YMCA would let us film there, under the condition that we didn't get any of their other members or any of their logos in our shots. However, he had not secured a camera for us to use on the only day that we could film there. So, armed with my little mass market consumer model camera, Dan and i headed down to the YMCA to film our scene while Dick headed to the aforementioned internship that he and i shared. After all, we couldn't both skip the same day.
It was completely silent in the van as we drove down to the YMCA. The only sound was the occasional grunts between us as we tried to figure out exactly where the place was.
"Hi, we were told we could film here today, we're from Madison Media..." Dan began.
"Oh. Are you Dick?" the clerk inquired.
"No, but we're working with him," i replied.
"I see. The manager tried calling him three times. You can't shoot here."
The dam broke. We both just started laughing. We said something that was probably less coherent than ideal about how that was consistent with everything about the project up to now.
"Oh, it's one of those projects, huh?" the clerk said. He understood perfectly. He went and got a manager for us, just to confirm that we could not, in fact, shoot there, but we didn't care. We had already heard all we needed. The manager explained to us how he had not followed the procedures they'd told him to on requesting the shoot, and it needed approval from management and blah blah blah. The point was, Dick was a dumbass.
We were much more lively on the ride back to school. We were both done with this, it was time to wash our hands of Rocky XIII (still didn't have an official name) and move on. But, we'd already put so much work into it! It would be a shame not to have anything to submit to the 30 Day Film Festival after all that. I suggested that our movie be eight straight minutes of me punching Dick in the head, since we did have that footage. Dan liked the idea, but wanted to expand it a bit better. From the school, i headed home to take care of some things, Dan went in to work out a new script. He emailed it to me about an hour later.
The new script was, in my humble opinion, hilarious. He had essentially taken the story of what had happened to our 30 day film fest entry and turned it into a 30 day film fest entry. The new script featured two characters, Tom Clemens and Bud Garcia, sitting down at a bar and talking about working for the worst director ever, culminating in throwing darts at his likeness. To tie it in to the sports genre, the final line of the script is, "Hey, do you think darts counts as a sport?" He had hit every point that we'd already filmed, too, so we effectively turned all of the original A-roll into quality B-roll.
I immediately phoned a nearby bar for permission to shoot, which was granted with no questions asked. The owner was positively excited to have us shoot in his bar.
We wanted to get everything done before Dick returned from the internship. We headed down to the bar, though still without one of the school's HD cameras, and shot Dan's whole new script with our two consumer cameras. We were back to the school before Dick, as planned.
That night, we had studio time reserved with the school's audio department to record the soundtrack to our film. Dick was there with us the whole time, and it was difficult not to tell him what we'd done, or even that we'd quit his project. He never asked us how the filming had gone at the YMCA, either, so we didn't have to tell him anything. Yes, it was an awkward night, though.
Unfortunately, our footage was too dark and just generally not very good. So, Dan and i reserved a school camera for the following Wednesday, which was getting dangerously close to the deadline, and headed back to the same bar to reshoot what we'd already done. This time, though, we knew our lines and we knew the shots. The bar was considerably more busy, though, which may have negatively affected our audio, but added realism. All in all, the shoot was smooth and satisfying, like shoving a Snickers up a baby's ass. Because Snickers is satisfying and a baby's ass is smooth. Or something. Yeah, i don't like that metaphor as much now as i did thirty seconds ago.
During one of these shoots, Dan brought up Ed Wood, largely considered the worst director ever to grace Hollywood. His crowning achievement, after all, was Plan 9 From Outer Space. They made a movie about him, appropriately titled Ed Wood, which starred Johnny Depp in the title role. Since we didn't have a title yet, i took Dan's comments as an inspiration, and the final package was called Ed Wood Part 2.
Dan thought it was funny that Dick had taken the film away from us, and now we had taken it back from him. In an ironic twist, Dan won Best Director at the film festival. We also took home Best Editing and Best Sound Design.
not a real blog
Let me reiterate that the purpose of this blog is not to keep track of my everyday daily life, like i used to do on Myspace, Livejournal, Xanga, etc. but rather to tell stories about things that i have done or that have happened to me. I'm having some difficulty gauging which stories are funny, which is my primary goal, or at least entertaining in some way or at least interesting. I realize that i have no readers as yet, probably partly due to the fact that i've told almost nobody about this blog, but if you do stumble upon this blog, please treat this post as sort of a comment card. Where do we stand? 3/10? C-?
2010/07/10
When Body Organs Revolt
"There are several steps to realizing that your appendix must be removed."
Thus begins the paper that i wrote about my eighth grade trip. See, where i went to school, every year up until the year after my class (they don't do it anymore - but that's a different story), the school would take all of the eighth graders on a camping trip to Camp Lucerne in Neshkoro, Wisconsin. As you may have gathered from the opening of this post, mine didn't go exactly according to plan.
The first night of the trip, a Tuesday in the spring of 1999, largely consisted of the journey to Devil's Lake, where the students were divided into groups and dumped unceremoniously at random locations around the park. We were instructed to find our lunches from there. My group came in last. After lunch, there was another lengthy bus ride to the actual campground, where we spent some time lighting things on fire before being sent to our cabins for the night. My cabin got yelled at for playing loud music well past lights out, which shouldn't be much of a surprise, really.
Wednesday morning, i woke up and i felt absolutely awful, but it's not like i could really call in sick to camp, so i got up and tried to make things work. At the time, i didn't really feel like anything was out of the ordinary, just your average run-of-the-mill sick day. Of course, my little group, or task force or whatever they called it, had been assigned to kitchen duty for breakfast. So, ill as i was, i went ahead and prepared breakfast for seventy odd kids and a fistful of teachers. It was eggs. Also notable: the camp's tap water came out of the faucet green, and after about ten seconds became somewhat transparent. We were assured that this was normal.
My little group was then sent to a canoeing class, which was a subject i had some experience with, what with my being a Boy Scout and all. Really, all that knowledge really only served to tell me that this was not going to end well, given my present physical condition, but i dutifully followed instructions and got into a canoe. I suspect that my motivation up to this point, what with the breakfast preparing and the canoeing and all, was that i was in a group with this girl that i had an enormous, immeasurable crush on. Eventually, though, even that got outweighed. Due to a strange set of coincidences, i ended up wrecking my favorite pair of pants, and i asked to leave the class early since i wasn't feeling up to it.
I walked straight from the beach to the payphone to call home. What had started as a run-of-the-mill sick day had taken quite a different direction, and i really couldn't bear to be there anymore. I had a five-minute calling card, which at the time were free in packs of Pepsi, so i put it to use. My conversation with my mom basically consisted of me trying to convince her i was dying, and her trying to convince me i was fine. In a strange twist on normal parent-child relations, it turns out i was right.
Well, my calling card ran out midway through the argument, and asking around for change was of no avail, so i decided that she had been right and i'd just stick it out. One of the teachers (one of the best - and i'm very sad to say that she is no longer with us) made me a pot of honey tea, and i retired to my cabin for some rest. Conditions were somewhat less than ideal - it was difficult to get comfortable on them anyway, so the burning in my guts made it nigh impossible.
Within the hour, i jumped bolt upright from a dead sleep, blasted out the door and puked completely undigested eggs all over a tree. About an hour after that, my first lucky break occurred: my dad showed up at the camp. On the long car ride home, i attempted to sleep, but things were getting worse and i just couldn't do it. Upon arrival back home i returned to bed, where i spent the remainder of the day and subsequent night. All i ended up eating and keeping down that day was a bit of ice cream late in the evening.
Thursday morning, the pain had localized itself into my right side. I crawled downstairs and into my parents' bed, since they were both gone to work, and watched MTV while my brother and cousin (two cousins and an aunt were living with us at this time) got themselves ready for school. Later, i had relocated to the bathroom and was sitting on the toilet, clutching a bucket, when i vomited up what i could then only identify as "yellow stuff." In retrospect, i'm almost positive it was bile.
After that, i thought i was feeling better, but the pain was starting to grow exponentially. I started to speak to God, and after a few minutes moved on to a more plausible immediate savior: my aunt, who was sleeping upstairs. I think she worked second shift at that time, i'm not really sure. Shouting became yelling became screaming and after ten minutes or so, my younger cousin came down the stairs angrily and demanded, "What do you want?!" I told him to get his mom.
"Which side is your appendix on?" i asked as soon as she came into the room. I remember being more than a little surprised at her calm demeanor as she handled the rest of the situation; she called 911 and spoke with professionalism that i'd never known from her. Soon after, i was riding in an ambulance with my pastor. He's an EMT. Odd combination?
"I don't think you're going to have an appendix for very much longer," i remember him saying on the drive.
As the ambulance sped out of town, i was asked where the pain fell on a scale of one to ten. "Nine," i quickly replied. "Because the only thing worse than this must be childbirth."
After half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, of speeding along some hideously neglected roads and feeling every bump ripple through my body starting with the lower right abdomen, i was admitted to the UW Hospital's ER. They stuck an IV in my arm and started to pump me full of fluids, handed me a jug, and requested a urine sample.
This proved more difficult to provide than i had anticipated. I simply could not pee. The nurses were pumping me full of a massive quantity of water. They started the obligatory conversation about waterfalls and rainstorms and floods and fire hydrants, They left me alone in the room with a dripping faucet. Minutes went by. Hours went by. Days. Years. Decades. Braveheart. Finally, a doctor walked in, took one look at me, and said, "Well, i guess we'll have to get a catheter." The floodgates opened up, and suddenly that jug was not big enough. That's not a metaphor; i overflowed it.
They confirmed appendicitis, put me under, and took it out.
Six hours later, i woke up in recovery with a tube up my nose.
"How do you feel?" i was asked.
"Fine," i said. "Can i go home now?"
"No, we've got to keep you in the hospital until at least Monday," was the reply. "But you may take the tube out of your nose now."
"Tube...?" I reached up, and there was a tube in my nose. THERE WAS A TUBE IN MY NOSE. So i pulled it out. Sucker was long, too, i could feel it way back in my skull.
Then i requested my appendix in a jar. I had heard that they do that, give them back. My request was denied. Something about a biohazard. Bunch of bullshit if you ask me. I should've had my appendix removed in the sixties.
I was wheeled up to my room, where my parents were waiting. The pediatric level was full, so i ended up in a regular-person room, single occupancy. Worked out pretty well for me.
Being as i was fourteen at the time, i was highly disappointed to discover that the hospital did not get MTV. When you're a fourteen year old male in the United States, MTV is on the level with God. If there's a Gideon's Bible in the room, there ought to be MTV. I would never say that about MTV nowadays, but my memories of it in the late 90s are fond ones. Sifl n Olly 4 life!
Yeah, i went there.
Anyway.
I was still required to do my business in little plastic jugs. They didn't call them jugs, though; they called them "urinals," which they clearly were not, but i suppose it's a more friendly term than "specimen jar."
This is probably my favorite part of this story; i've told this part to just about everybody i know multiple times and probably every random stranger foolish enough to speak to me between 1999 and 2001ish.
Friday morning, sometime after sunlight is visible but before the break of dawn. I woke up with a bladder full to bursting. I laid there, staring at the ceiling for a moment considering my next course of action. It was, of course, to stand up and use a "urinal." I was almost rolled onto my side, which was the first step of the great ordeal that was standing up, when a Hispanic man entered my chamber. It was immediately apparent that he was not skilled with the English. These are the exact words of the exchange. They are burned into my memory forever.
"Hello. I come to take some blood."
"Um," i replied. "Ok, could you wait a minute? I have to take a pee."
A blank look. "What is that?"
"Umm...i have to urinate."
"Ohh! You have to make a urine? Ok, do you need help?"
I wonder now what my eyebrows may have done at that moment. I've been told often that they're very expressive. "Could you just wait outside for a minute?"
"Ok," he said, and exited.
I conducted my business, and returned to the bed. I picked up the intercom attached to the bed and paged the nurses' station. When they responded, i recited my most frequently used line: "I need assistance with the urinal."
A nurse, who identified herself as my nurse-of-the-day, dutifully responded to my call, recorded the volume of my excretions, and disposed of them.
"Um, there was a guy in here a minute ago who wanted to take some blood," i stated.
"Yeah. There's going to be someone in here to take blood every day."
"Ok, could someone else do it? This guy makes me kind of nervous."
It might seem a little insensitive now, but if you can look at things from my perspective then, the guy was a little nerve-wracking. A medical professional who does not speak the same language as his patient is probably not going to have the appropriate bedside manner. I ended up with a lady who was probably old enough to be my mom who was very talkative and friendly, and we ended up debating the social merits of Marilyn Manson.
Later on in the night, a group of medical students came by to check me out. That's when i got my first look at the incision. It was a wide-open cut with the sutures loosely strung through, not really doing anything. It looked like i'd been knifed by a cross-stitching old lady. As a fourteen-year-old boy, i thought it was pretty cool. They changed the bandage for the first time, a process they would repeat twice a day.
Saturday was dominated by a Police Academy marathon on USA. For lunch, i was given solid food for the first time since those eggs at camp, which i promptly chucked, so it was back to liquid diet for me.
Late in the afternoon, my nurse-of-the-day took me for a walk down the hallway, using my IV stand as a support. It felt good to be moving under my own power again. Upon successful completion of the walking program, the nurse inquired about my bowel movements. This led me to the realization that i hadn't had any in five days. Normally that only happens at summer camp with the Boy Scouts, where it is intentional.
Now that the defecation seed had been planted in my head, it had to sprout into a glorious, urgent flower. Sunday was the day i tried to poop.
It happened first thing in the morning. I called the nurse to disconnect the IV from AC power and help me walk to the bathroom, no easy feat in itself. Next came a completely indescribable feeling, when i tried to actually sit down; i couldn't do it. It was probably akin to the weightlessness that astronauts feel, where there is no distinct sense of "down," only a general vicinity of what you think might be "down." The feeling passed as soon as i was on the ground in between the toilet and the wall, leaning on the shower door for support. It took three nurses and the IV stand, which i bent, to get me back up again. I estimate the total time of getting me ten feet from the bed to on the toilet at half an hour. Then the vicious hand of irony struck: i couldn't shit. It was all for naught.
Lunch brought another unsuccessful attempt at solid foods.
That night, my IV sprung a leak. So, they had to put in a new one at a different site. The nurse found several of what seemed to be good locations on my arms; unfortunately, this was false hope. Every time she stabbed me with that fucking needle, she'd either hit a valve or, worse, a nerve.
My original essay on this states that the process of moving the IV took three hours and five doctors. I find that hard to believe now, but since eleven years have passed and that essay was written the week after, i'm forced to believe it. What it came down to was the last doctor wanting to stick it in the back of my hand, which i put the kibosh on immediately. That sounded painful and unwieldy, so i was having none of it. I suggested they try the same site on the other arm, which seemed terribly obvious but for some reason had not been tried. The doctor put up a bit of a fuss about how it wasn't feasible for some reason or another, but that if i wanted to give it a go, we would. And we did. And it worked.
On Monday i was finally on solid foods and walking around unassisted. Late in the morning, the same pediatric team who'd been changing my bandages came in. I had assumed that it was time for our little ritual.
But it wasn't.
No, now it was time to close the wound. Their pulling on those sutures was almost as painful as the bursting appendix was in the first place. If i hadn't been able to see what they were doing with my own eyes, i'd have sworn that they were playing with matches down there. Probably an 8.5 on their little pain scale. Maybe an 8.6.
I was basically free from there. I walked down to the "teen room" a level below, where i played video games and listened to music on their stereo with three-foot-tall speakers, all the while being observed by a gigantic poster of the original five Spice Girls. At 4:30, i checked out of the hospital.
On Thursday, i went back to school, all drugged up and ready for class.
The following Tuesday the stitches were removed, a painless process, especially when compared to closing them up. They were replaced by "sanitary strips" which strongly resembled packing tape.
I think it was two weeks after discharge that we got a phone call from the hospital, giving us the go ahead to send me back to school.
I spent the next several years showing strangers my wound/scar and telling them it was from when i got knifed in Vietnam.
Thus begins the paper that i wrote about my eighth grade trip. See, where i went to school, every year up until the year after my class (they don't do it anymore - but that's a different story), the school would take all of the eighth graders on a camping trip to Camp Lucerne in Neshkoro, Wisconsin. As you may have gathered from the opening of this post, mine didn't go exactly according to plan.
The first night of the trip, a Tuesday in the spring of 1999, largely consisted of the journey to Devil's Lake, where the students were divided into groups and dumped unceremoniously at random locations around the park. We were instructed to find our lunches from there. My group came in last. After lunch, there was another lengthy bus ride to the actual campground, where we spent some time lighting things on fire before being sent to our cabins for the night. My cabin got yelled at for playing loud music well past lights out, which shouldn't be much of a surprise, really.
Wednesday morning, i woke up and i felt absolutely awful, but it's not like i could really call in sick to camp, so i got up and tried to make things work. At the time, i didn't really feel like anything was out of the ordinary, just your average run-of-the-mill sick day. Of course, my little group, or task force or whatever they called it, had been assigned to kitchen duty for breakfast. So, ill as i was, i went ahead and prepared breakfast for seventy odd kids and a fistful of teachers. It was eggs. Also notable: the camp's tap water came out of the faucet green, and after about ten seconds became somewhat transparent. We were assured that this was normal.
My little group was then sent to a canoeing class, which was a subject i had some experience with, what with my being a Boy Scout and all. Really, all that knowledge really only served to tell me that this was not going to end well, given my present physical condition, but i dutifully followed instructions and got into a canoe. I suspect that my motivation up to this point, what with the breakfast preparing and the canoeing and all, was that i was in a group with this girl that i had an enormous, immeasurable crush on. Eventually, though, even that got outweighed. Due to a strange set of coincidences, i ended up wrecking my favorite pair of pants, and i asked to leave the class early since i wasn't feeling up to it.
I walked straight from the beach to the payphone to call home. What had started as a run-of-the-mill sick day had taken quite a different direction, and i really couldn't bear to be there anymore. I had a five-minute calling card, which at the time were free in packs of Pepsi, so i put it to use. My conversation with my mom basically consisted of me trying to convince her i was dying, and her trying to convince me i was fine. In a strange twist on normal parent-child relations, it turns out i was right.
Well, my calling card ran out midway through the argument, and asking around for change was of no avail, so i decided that she had been right and i'd just stick it out. One of the teachers (one of the best - and i'm very sad to say that she is no longer with us) made me a pot of honey tea, and i retired to my cabin for some rest. Conditions were somewhat less than ideal - it was difficult to get comfortable on them anyway, so the burning in my guts made it nigh impossible.
Within the hour, i jumped bolt upright from a dead sleep, blasted out the door and puked completely undigested eggs all over a tree. About an hour after that, my first lucky break occurred: my dad showed up at the camp. On the long car ride home, i attempted to sleep, but things were getting worse and i just couldn't do it. Upon arrival back home i returned to bed, where i spent the remainder of the day and subsequent night. All i ended up eating and keeping down that day was a bit of ice cream late in the evening.
Thursday morning, the pain had localized itself into my right side. I crawled downstairs and into my parents' bed, since they were both gone to work, and watched MTV while my brother and cousin (two cousins and an aunt were living with us at this time) got themselves ready for school. Later, i had relocated to the bathroom and was sitting on the toilet, clutching a bucket, when i vomited up what i could then only identify as "yellow stuff." In retrospect, i'm almost positive it was bile.
After that, i thought i was feeling better, but the pain was starting to grow exponentially. I started to speak to God, and after a few minutes moved on to a more plausible immediate savior: my aunt, who was sleeping upstairs. I think she worked second shift at that time, i'm not really sure. Shouting became yelling became screaming and after ten minutes or so, my younger cousin came down the stairs angrily and demanded, "What do you want?!" I told him to get his mom.
"Which side is your appendix on?" i asked as soon as she came into the room. I remember being more than a little surprised at her calm demeanor as she handled the rest of the situation; she called 911 and spoke with professionalism that i'd never known from her. Soon after, i was riding in an ambulance with my pastor. He's an EMT. Odd combination?
"I don't think you're going to have an appendix for very much longer," i remember him saying on the drive.
As the ambulance sped out of town, i was asked where the pain fell on a scale of one to ten. "Nine," i quickly replied. "Because the only thing worse than this must be childbirth."
After half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, of speeding along some hideously neglected roads and feeling every bump ripple through my body starting with the lower right abdomen, i was admitted to the UW Hospital's ER. They stuck an IV in my arm and started to pump me full of fluids, handed me a jug, and requested a urine sample.
This proved more difficult to provide than i had anticipated. I simply could not pee. The nurses were pumping me full of a massive quantity of water. They started the obligatory conversation about waterfalls and rainstorms and floods and fire hydrants, They left me alone in the room with a dripping faucet. Minutes went by. Hours went by. Days. Years. Decades. Braveheart. Finally, a doctor walked in, took one look at me, and said, "Well, i guess we'll have to get a catheter." The floodgates opened up, and suddenly that jug was not big enough. That's not a metaphor; i overflowed it.
They confirmed appendicitis, put me under, and took it out.
Six hours later, i woke up in recovery with a tube up my nose.
"How do you feel?" i was asked.
"Fine," i said. "Can i go home now?"
"No, we've got to keep you in the hospital until at least Monday," was the reply. "But you may take the tube out of your nose now."
"Tube...?" I reached up, and there was a tube in my nose. THERE WAS A TUBE IN MY NOSE. So i pulled it out. Sucker was long, too, i could feel it way back in my skull.
Then i requested my appendix in a jar. I had heard that they do that, give them back. My request was denied. Something about a biohazard. Bunch of bullshit if you ask me. I should've had my appendix removed in the sixties.
I was wheeled up to my room, where my parents were waiting. The pediatric level was full, so i ended up in a regular-person room, single occupancy. Worked out pretty well for me.
Being as i was fourteen at the time, i was highly disappointed to discover that the hospital did not get MTV. When you're a fourteen year old male in the United States, MTV is on the level with God. If there's a Gideon's Bible in the room, there ought to be MTV. I would never say that about MTV nowadays, but my memories of it in the late 90s are fond ones. Sifl n Olly 4 life!
Yeah, i went there.
Anyway.
I was still required to do my business in little plastic jugs. They didn't call them jugs, though; they called them "urinals," which they clearly were not, but i suppose it's a more friendly term than "specimen jar."
This is probably my favorite part of this story; i've told this part to just about everybody i know multiple times and probably every random stranger foolish enough to speak to me between 1999 and 2001ish.
Friday morning, sometime after sunlight is visible but before the break of dawn. I woke up with a bladder full to bursting. I laid there, staring at the ceiling for a moment considering my next course of action. It was, of course, to stand up and use a "urinal." I was almost rolled onto my side, which was the first step of the great ordeal that was standing up, when a Hispanic man entered my chamber. It was immediately apparent that he was not skilled with the English. These are the exact words of the exchange. They are burned into my memory forever.
"Hello. I come to take some blood."
"Um," i replied. "Ok, could you wait a minute? I have to take a pee."
A blank look. "What is that?"
"Umm...i have to urinate."
"Ohh! You have to make a urine? Ok, do you need help?"
I wonder now what my eyebrows may have done at that moment. I've been told often that they're very expressive. "Could you just wait outside for a minute?"
"Ok," he said, and exited.
I conducted my business, and returned to the bed. I picked up the intercom attached to the bed and paged the nurses' station. When they responded, i recited my most frequently used line: "I need assistance with the urinal."
A nurse, who identified herself as my nurse-of-the-day, dutifully responded to my call, recorded the volume of my excretions, and disposed of them.
"Um, there was a guy in here a minute ago who wanted to take some blood," i stated.
"Yeah. There's going to be someone in here to take blood every day."
"Ok, could someone else do it? This guy makes me kind of nervous."
It might seem a little insensitive now, but if you can look at things from my perspective then, the guy was a little nerve-wracking. A medical professional who does not speak the same language as his patient is probably not going to have the appropriate bedside manner. I ended up with a lady who was probably old enough to be my mom who was very talkative and friendly, and we ended up debating the social merits of Marilyn Manson.
Later on in the night, a group of medical students came by to check me out. That's when i got my first look at the incision. It was a wide-open cut with the sutures loosely strung through, not really doing anything. It looked like i'd been knifed by a cross-stitching old lady. As a fourteen-year-old boy, i thought it was pretty cool. They changed the bandage for the first time, a process they would repeat twice a day.
Saturday was dominated by a Police Academy marathon on USA. For lunch, i was given solid food for the first time since those eggs at camp, which i promptly chucked, so it was back to liquid diet for me.
Late in the afternoon, my nurse-of-the-day took me for a walk down the hallway, using my IV stand as a support. It felt good to be moving under my own power again. Upon successful completion of the walking program, the nurse inquired about my bowel movements. This led me to the realization that i hadn't had any in five days. Normally that only happens at summer camp with the Boy Scouts, where it is intentional.
Now that the defecation seed had been planted in my head, it had to sprout into a glorious, urgent flower. Sunday was the day i tried to poop.
It happened first thing in the morning. I called the nurse to disconnect the IV from AC power and help me walk to the bathroom, no easy feat in itself. Next came a completely indescribable feeling, when i tried to actually sit down; i couldn't do it. It was probably akin to the weightlessness that astronauts feel, where there is no distinct sense of "down," only a general vicinity of what you think might be "down." The feeling passed as soon as i was on the ground in between the toilet and the wall, leaning on the shower door for support. It took three nurses and the IV stand, which i bent, to get me back up again. I estimate the total time of getting me ten feet from the bed to on the toilet at half an hour. Then the vicious hand of irony struck: i couldn't shit. It was all for naught.
Lunch brought another unsuccessful attempt at solid foods.
That night, my IV sprung a leak. So, they had to put in a new one at a different site. The nurse found several of what seemed to be good locations on my arms; unfortunately, this was false hope. Every time she stabbed me with that fucking needle, she'd either hit a valve or, worse, a nerve.
My original essay on this states that the process of moving the IV took three hours and five doctors. I find that hard to believe now, but since eleven years have passed and that essay was written the week after, i'm forced to believe it. What it came down to was the last doctor wanting to stick it in the back of my hand, which i put the kibosh on immediately. That sounded painful and unwieldy, so i was having none of it. I suggested they try the same site on the other arm, which seemed terribly obvious but for some reason had not been tried. The doctor put up a bit of a fuss about how it wasn't feasible for some reason or another, but that if i wanted to give it a go, we would. And we did. And it worked.
On Monday i was finally on solid foods and walking around unassisted. Late in the morning, the same pediatric team who'd been changing my bandages came in. I had assumed that it was time for our little ritual.
But it wasn't.
No, now it was time to close the wound. Their pulling on those sutures was almost as painful as the bursting appendix was in the first place. If i hadn't been able to see what they were doing with my own eyes, i'd have sworn that they were playing with matches down there. Probably an 8.5 on their little pain scale. Maybe an 8.6.
I was basically free from there. I walked down to the "teen room" a level below, where i played video games and listened to music on their stereo with three-foot-tall speakers, all the while being observed by a gigantic poster of the original five Spice Girls. At 4:30, i checked out of the hospital.
On Thursday, i went back to school, all drugged up and ready for class.
The following Tuesday the stitches were removed, a painless process, especially when compared to closing them up. They were replaced by "sanitary strips" which strongly resembled packing tape.
I think it was two weeks after discharge that we got a phone call from the hospital, giving us the go ahead to send me back to school.
I spent the next several years showing strangers my wound/scar and telling them it was from when i got knifed in Vietnam.
2010/07/09
Ghosts I
The first time that Bob set foot in our new house, he told me it was haunted. I wrote him off as joking, or paranoid, or both. In the earlier days of our ownership of said house, i often felt a little uncomfortable being there at night, like i was being watched, you might say (i wouldn't say that). Later, we deduced the presence of mice, and much of the unease and very small unexplained phenomena could be attributed to that. For example, the bag of Hershey's Kisses which was left on the counter for weeks as we slowly ate our way through it, which seemed to be emptying faster than we were eating. When we pulled the oven out from the wall for the first time, there was one massive grave for Hershey's Kiss wrappers which still had 60-75 percent of their original form retained. After the first mouse got caught in a mousetrap, mouse-related goings on seemed to have stopped.
Of course, with the mouse happenings ended, what may or may not have been supernatural happenings began. I judge these occurrences to be the work of a non-corporeal being, you may feel otherwise, and i'd respect that viewpoint.
The first of these that i can remember was the night of November 12, 2009. We were having band practice in the basement. Before practice, i had gone out to the garage to retrieve a couple of items. For some reason i grabbed an 8mm videotape, which was not related to the practice at all, but i brought it downstairs and set it on the counter behind where i stand during practice.
At the time, there was this pegboard across one wall, the wall that i face when we play, which had metal hooks in certain places. We were in the middle of a song, i forget which, when i noticed a tambourine hanging from one of the hooks. I was reasonably sure that i hadn't seen this tambourine before, so once the music stopped i inquired of Bob and Natalie whether either had brought a tambourine to practice for some reason. Both responded negatively. Plausible explanation: it had always been there, and i am not observant.
Next up was a letter which randomly appeared at my feet while playing. It's of greeting-card size, yellowed, and sealed. It was addressed to somebody in Mount Horeb, WI, which is about 20 miles East of Madison. There was no specific address, just a name and the city. Postmark date: November 1, 1936. This letter predates the house by about 40 years or so. I didn't open the letter at that time, but it was a little weird that it would suddenly be on the ground at my feet. I can say positively that it had not been there before practice, at any time since we'd gotten into the house. Plausible explanation: it fell from the ceiling, somewhere in that mess of joists and beams that hold the house together.
But the third item i cannot explain away so easily. After practice, we head upstairs and i realize that i had forgotten something, so i head back into the basement literally seconds after we had left it. I find the forgotten item on the counter. Very near to it is the aforementioned 8mm videotape. On top of the tape, there is a silver fork with a string tied around it.
I left that fork there for a good long while, not wanting to disturb it. I couldn't, and still can't, come up with any good explanation as to why it had appeared there.
Subsequent band practices brought out more items. Why they items only appeared during band practice, i'm not sure. One theory, in the 'plausible' column, is that the vibrations were knocking them loose from wherever they'd been hiding (like joists, support beams, etcetera), but we later disproved this. My guess is that the ghost just likes the band (right?). New additions to the ghostly items bin: another unopened letter, this one from 1937 (also to somebody in Mount Horeb, this time the "Mrs." that matched the original's "Mr."), a small card reading "Best wishes, Selena Jordan." Natalie, Bob and i scoured the basement after practice to see if we could find more stuff hidden in the nooks and crannies. We came up with nothing. We reasoned that, this way, anything else that showed up could not have fallen out of a secret location, and therefore must be the work of a supernatural force leaving things for us.
That night, Amanda + i left the dogs alone in the house while we were out. When we came back, the smaller one seemed terrified (which, really, isn't overly unusual; she's a border collie with the demeanor of a chihuahua) and the larger one, overly clingy. We attributed this to their being left alone in what was still a more or less unfamiliar area.
I don't remember exactly when this occurred, but one night while Amanda was at work, when the bed was in the lower level since we were working on the upstairs, i had gone downstairs to go to bed, took off my pants and laid them on the table (yeah, that's what i do with pants), then turned around and noticed the upstairs light was on. That's funny, i thought, i was sure that i turned that off. So, i went back upstairs and turned the light off. When i got back into the lower level, i turned around, and it was still on. Well, i said, i guess the ghost wants the light on up there tonight. So i left it alone and went to bed. It was still on in the morning.
So i posted a couple of notes on Facebook about it and the story generated a certain amount of interest among my friends. Most people wanted to know what was in the letters. So i made a promise to everybody that we'd open them at my upcoming birthday party. I made good on this promise.
The earlier card turned out to be a handmade Father's Day card. It's a sheet of paper folded in quarters, you know the type. The latter card was a card for the mother on her birthday. But here's what really tripped me out: i unfolded the card and inside there is a thumbprint dried in blood.
The party latched on to this and many headed into the basement themselves to see what they could come up with. Items were indeed found; i don't remember the precise order of them. Most staggering was the ten inch knife that David found on a shelf that Bob and i had each personally searched the previous Thursday. Then letters started to be found, not cards, but actual letters. The first few were from the late sixties and were from a sailor writing to his then-girlfriend in California from the boat, addressed through his APO. We read them, they were pretty much just a bunch of sappy love letters with all the basics you'd expect therein. But then a letter was found wedged into a pile of copper pipes that we had put there. This one came without an envelope and was written on loose note paper; same man writing to the same woman. This time, it's 2002, and he's writing to her from jail to her home in Wisconsin. Apparently, she had been responsible for his arrest (his crime is not specified), and he had heard that shortly after the cops hauled him off, she had broken into his house, and he angrily demanded to know why.
I finally inspected the fork. It seems to be actual silver, but it's tarnished all to hell. The stamp in the back of it lists its manufacture date as 1893! Drew, via his cell phone, googled the company which manufactured the knife and found that the specific logo stamped in the blade was only used in the mid-1930s.
There have been other items found since the party, creepiest among them being a picture frame with three very old portraits in them. Things tapered off pretty quickly after the party, though, and nothing's been found in a while. The house feels a lot more comfortable, but that may be due to the addition of simple things like carpet and paint since the party (there was not yet any carpet last November). Maybe the ghost's gone, or maybe she's just given us all she wanted to give, i'm not sure. Maybe we fulfilled whatever it was she wanted from us, though it's not like we contacted any of the addressees from the letters (we'd considered it at one point). So maybe the ghost is gone, maybe she's not.
I'm pretty sure her name is Gail.
Of course, with the mouse happenings ended, what may or may not have been supernatural happenings began. I judge these occurrences to be the work of a non-corporeal being, you may feel otherwise, and i'd respect that viewpoint.
The first of these that i can remember was the night of November 12, 2009. We were having band practice in the basement. Before practice, i had gone out to the garage to retrieve a couple of items. For some reason i grabbed an 8mm videotape, which was not related to the practice at all, but i brought it downstairs and set it on the counter behind where i stand during practice.
At the time, there was this pegboard across one wall, the wall that i face when we play, which had metal hooks in certain places. We were in the middle of a song, i forget which, when i noticed a tambourine hanging from one of the hooks. I was reasonably sure that i hadn't seen this tambourine before, so once the music stopped i inquired of Bob and Natalie whether either had brought a tambourine to practice for some reason. Both responded negatively. Plausible explanation: it had always been there, and i am not observant.
Next up was a letter which randomly appeared at my feet while playing. It's of greeting-card size, yellowed, and sealed. It was addressed to somebody in Mount Horeb, WI, which is about 20 miles East of Madison. There was no specific address, just a name and the city. Postmark date: November 1, 1936. This letter predates the house by about 40 years or so. I didn't open the letter at that time, but it was a little weird that it would suddenly be on the ground at my feet. I can say positively that it had not been there before practice, at any time since we'd gotten into the house. Plausible explanation: it fell from the ceiling, somewhere in that mess of joists and beams that hold the house together.
But the third item i cannot explain away so easily. After practice, we head upstairs and i realize that i had forgotten something, so i head back into the basement literally seconds after we had left it. I find the forgotten item on the counter. Very near to it is the aforementioned 8mm videotape. On top of the tape, there is a silver fork with a string tied around it.
I left that fork there for a good long while, not wanting to disturb it. I couldn't, and still can't, come up with any good explanation as to why it had appeared there.
Subsequent band practices brought out more items. Why they items only appeared during band practice, i'm not sure. One theory, in the 'plausible' column, is that the vibrations were knocking them loose from wherever they'd been hiding (like joists, support beams, etcetera), but we later disproved this. My guess is that the ghost just likes the band (right?). New additions to the ghostly items bin: another unopened letter, this one from 1937 (also to somebody in Mount Horeb, this time the "Mrs." that matched the original's "Mr."), a small card reading "Best wishes, Selena Jordan." Natalie, Bob and i scoured the basement after practice to see if we could find more stuff hidden in the nooks and crannies. We came up with nothing. We reasoned that, this way, anything else that showed up could not have fallen out of a secret location, and therefore must be the work of a supernatural force leaving things for us.
That night, Amanda + i left the dogs alone in the house while we were out. When we came back, the smaller one seemed terrified (which, really, isn't overly unusual; she's a border collie with the demeanor of a chihuahua) and the larger one, overly clingy. We attributed this to their being left alone in what was still a more or less unfamiliar area.
I don't remember exactly when this occurred, but one night while Amanda was at work, when the bed was in the lower level since we were working on the upstairs, i had gone downstairs to go to bed, took off my pants and laid them on the table (yeah, that's what i do with pants), then turned around and noticed the upstairs light was on. That's funny, i thought, i was sure that i turned that off. So, i went back upstairs and turned the light off. When i got back into the lower level, i turned around, and it was still on. Well, i said, i guess the ghost wants the light on up there tonight. So i left it alone and went to bed. It was still on in the morning.
So i posted a couple of notes on Facebook about it and the story generated a certain amount of interest among my friends. Most people wanted to know what was in the letters. So i made a promise to everybody that we'd open them at my upcoming birthday party. I made good on this promise.
The earlier card turned out to be a handmade Father's Day card. It's a sheet of paper folded in quarters, you know the type. The latter card was a card for the mother on her birthday. But here's what really tripped me out: i unfolded the card and inside there is a thumbprint dried in blood.
The party latched on to this and many headed into the basement themselves to see what they could come up with. Items were indeed found; i don't remember the precise order of them. Most staggering was the ten inch knife that David found on a shelf that Bob and i had each personally searched the previous Thursday. Then letters started to be found, not cards, but actual letters. The first few were from the late sixties and were from a sailor writing to his then-girlfriend in California from the boat, addressed through his APO. We read them, they were pretty much just a bunch of sappy love letters with all the basics you'd expect therein. But then a letter was found wedged into a pile of copper pipes that we had put there. This one came without an envelope and was written on loose note paper; same man writing to the same woman. This time, it's 2002, and he's writing to her from jail to her home in Wisconsin. Apparently, she had been responsible for his arrest (his crime is not specified), and he had heard that shortly after the cops hauled him off, she had broken into his house, and he angrily demanded to know why.
I finally inspected the fork. It seems to be actual silver, but it's tarnished all to hell. The stamp in the back of it lists its manufacture date as 1893! Drew, via his cell phone, googled the company which manufactured the knife and found that the specific logo stamped in the blade was only used in the mid-1930s.
There have been other items found since the party, creepiest among them being a picture frame with three very old portraits in them. Things tapered off pretty quickly after the party, though, and nothing's been found in a while. The house feels a lot more comfortable, but that may be due to the addition of simple things like carpet and paint since the party (there was not yet any carpet last November). Maybe the ghost's gone, or maybe she's just given us all she wanted to give, i'm not sure. Maybe we fulfilled whatever it was she wanted from us, though it's not like we contacted any of the addressees from the letters (we'd considered it at one point). So maybe the ghost is gone, maybe she's not.
I'm pretty sure her name is Gail.
2010/07/08
Piss on the Wall, Question Mark
Two years ago, i spent three weeks in New Zealand with my girlfriend Amanda and our friend Alyssa. There are, of course, a multitude of stories which stem from this experience, and i'm sure many of them will crop up here eventually. For example the time that Alyssa and i got drunk and climbed a volcano, and i pushed her off.
I was reminded of this story today because i was reviewing some of the video from the trip. See, when we got back from New Zealand in 2008, i made this movie about our trip, titled Kiwiland, Ho!. It's a scant four minutes shorter than Braveheart. I was very proud of it at the time, and in fact it was the catalyst to my enrolling in a film school. I am now in my final semester of said school, and my final project is a complete redo of Kiwiland. I'm aiming for two hours this time, and two interesting hours at that; this is much more than i can say about the original movie. Nowadays, it makes my eyes bleed to watch.
So here's the story. The following takes place on March 6, 2008, the fourth day of the trip.
After we left from Larnach Castle, we continued South down the Otago peninsula to this quaint little diversion where one is supposed to be able to see albatross in their natural habitat. That's a lot of what New Zealand is, for the uninitiated; seeing wild things in their natural habitat. Down there, they've gotten used to the presence of people because people don't fuck with them down there. It's an amazing contrast from America that way.
Upon entering the building, the first thing between you and the exhibits is a donation box bearing the sign, "Suggested donation: $3." I figured, hell, that seems reasonable enough. They have to keep up this building with all these fancy lighted posters and videos and employees somehow, right? So i dropped a few bucks in the receptacle. We walked around and took in the information presented for ten or so minutes, and then we went about trying to get out to see the albatross nests. It turned out that you couldn't just go out and see the nests, you had to pay something to the tune of $35 for a guided tour. $35 to look at some birds?! F that. So we left, unhappy about our donation.
Down near the carpark there's another viewing area that you can go to for free. So we headed over there. From that vantage, we could see lots of seagulls, and far off in the distance one large bird that may or may not have been an albatross. We're not really sure.
Later on in the trip, we'd end up seeing something like ten or twenty albatross for free.
But none of that is the reason that i have chosen to share this particular story. So far it's all been kind of a downer. Well, i guess things don't really improve from there, but at least many will enjoy a good laugh at my expense.
The only noteworthy part of our albatross encounter was my, um, encounter, the first of many, with New Zealand's terrible, terrible opinion on restroom facilities.
I walk into the men's bathroom, i had to pee so, so bad, and i look around, taking stock of the situation. There's the sinks on my immediate left, and ahead of me a single door which leads into a single stall. I'm looking around for urinals, stating the word as a question. "Urinals? Urinals? Are there urinals?" The closest thing to an answer that i get is a wall to my right (i say "a wall" rather than "the wall" because the room was not of any named shape) which has a sheet of metal across it. In front of the metal sheet, there is a gutter in the floor, trough-like, with a drain on one end and a metal grate over it. I examine it, questioning its urinalocity. I estimate it to be about 20% urinal, 80% cruel joke that is played on foreigners. Lacking options, i stepped up to the grate, opened up my fly and began to piss on the wall. The whole time, i kept thinking to myself: "i really hope this is a toilet. I hope that nobody walks in here and looks at me and says, 'what the hell are you doing?!'"
That particular scenario did not occur. However, as it happened, somebody else did walk in. He strolls right over, takes a stance next to me on the grate (which is maybe four feet wide at best), and unzips his fly and starts peeing right next to me. The discomfort i felt at this point would be difficult to measure on a ten point scale. It was certainly one of the more awkward moments of the entire trip.
See, there's this thing with (i used to think all, but i've more recently discovered that it's only a large percentage of) guys: peeing is a sacred moment. It is a moment that one conducts alone, in solitude, with nobody else. Talking to another man while at adjacent urinals is strictly prohibited. Here's an easy rule of thumb: "No talking while my wang is out." So you can imagine what physical contact during the act of urination is like. Yes, with two men standing on a four foot grate, peeing on the same wall, there is going to be contact. And there was. At least he wasn't a talker.
Well, at least i'd learned that it was, in fact, an appropriate place to pee.
I was reminded of this story today because i was reviewing some of the video from the trip. See, when we got back from New Zealand in 2008, i made this movie about our trip, titled Kiwiland, Ho!. It's a scant four minutes shorter than Braveheart. I was very proud of it at the time, and in fact it was the catalyst to my enrolling in a film school. I am now in my final semester of said school, and my final project is a complete redo of Kiwiland. I'm aiming for two hours this time, and two interesting hours at that; this is much more than i can say about the original movie. Nowadays, it makes my eyes bleed to watch.
So here's the story. The following takes place on March 6, 2008, the fourth day of the trip.
After we left from Larnach Castle, we continued South down the Otago peninsula to this quaint little diversion where one is supposed to be able to see albatross in their natural habitat. That's a lot of what New Zealand is, for the uninitiated; seeing wild things in their natural habitat. Down there, they've gotten used to the presence of people because people don't fuck with them down there. It's an amazing contrast from America that way.
Upon entering the building, the first thing between you and the exhibits is a donation box bearing the sign, "Suggested donation: $3." I figured, hell, that seems reasonable enough. They have to keep up this building with all these fancy lighted posters and videos and employees somehow, right? So i dropped a few bucks in the receptacle. We walked around and took in the information presented for ten or so minutes, and then we went about trying to get out to see the albatross nests. It turned out that you couldn't just go out and see the nests, you had to pay something to the tune of $35 for a guided tour. $35 to look at some birds?! F that. So we left, unhappy about our donation.
Down near the carpark there's another viewing area that you can go to for free. So we headed over there. From that vantage, we could see lots of seagulls, and far off in the distance one large bird that may or may not have been an albatross. We're not really sure.
Later on in the trip, we'd end up seeing something like ten or twenty albatross for free.
But none of that is the reason that i have chosen to share this particular story. So far it's all been kind of a downer. Well, i guess things don't really improve from there, but at least many will enjoy a good laugh at my expense.
The only noteworthy part of our albatross encounter was my, um, encounter, the first of many, with New Zealand's terrible, terrible opinion on restroom facilities.
I walk into the men's bathroom, i had to pee so, so bad, and i look around, taking stock of the situation. There's the sinks on my immediate left, and ahead of me a single door which leads into a single stall. I'm looking around for urinals, stating the word as a question. "Urinals? Urinals? Are there urinals?" The closest thing to an answer that i get is a wall to my right (i say "a wall" rather than "the wall" because the room was not of any named shape) which has a sheet of metal across it. In front of the metal sheet, there is a gutter in the floor, trough-like, with a drain on one end and a metal grate over it. I examine it, questioning its urinalocity. I estimate it to be about 20% urinal, 80% cruel joke that is played on foreigners. Lacking options, i stepped up to the grate, opened up my fly and began to piss on the wall. The whole time, i kept thinking to myself: "i really hope this is a toilet. I hope that nobody walks in here and looks at me and says, 'what the hell are you doing?!'"
That particular scenario did not occur. However, as it happened, somebody else did walk in. He strolls right over, takes a stance next to me on the grate (which is maybe four feet wide at best), and unzips his fly and starts peeing right next to me. The discomfort i felt at this point would be difficult to measure on a ten point scale. It was certainly one of the more awkward moments of the entire trip.
See, there's this thing with (i used to think all, but i've more recently discovered that it's only a large percentage of) guys: peeing is a sacred moment. It is a moment that one conducts alone, in solitude, with nobody else. Talking to another man while at adjacent urinals is strictly prohibited. Here's an easy rule of thumb: "No talking while my wang is out." So you can imagine what physical contact during the act of urination is like. Yes, with two men standing on a four foot grate, peeing on the same wall, there is going to be contact. And there was. At least he wasn't a talker.
Well, at least i'd learned that it was, in fact, an appropriate place to pee.
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