The creepy guy at home with me on snow days

I have very distinct memories of watching afternoon TV in my youth. God knows I did plenty of it...usually from about eight inches away.

On sick days and snow days, the time in between morning PBS shows and after-school cartoons was a struggle. There was always a really unsettling period precipitated by when the soap operas came on. The depression was probably coincidentally deepened by the Super Sugar Crisp wearing off at about 9am. I'd turn off the TV and kind of sit there, dumbfounded, thinking "What the heck do I do now? Read?"

Right after lunch, there was an otherworldly force that inhabited the TV. I knew it was there, and I usually kept the TV off in Poltergeist-fearing fashion. If desperation set in, however, I would brave turning on Channel 50. And, almost without exception, I was greeted by this man:



That's Bill Kennedy, folks, of Detroit-area fame. Bill Kennedy at the Movies was on every afternoon and I despised it. Bill Kennedy would sit in a horrible, dark wood-paneled studio waxing nostalgic about old movies that I could've cared less about. I'd turn it off and on in ten-minute intervals, praying that the show would magically transform into cartoons. I swear the show never freaking ended! It was like being trapped in a room with a near-dead great uncle you never really knew but tried to stay on the other side of the room from because he never remembered your name and he would mumble incoherently about The Big Crash and smelled of cigarette smoke and urine. (I never had one of those, mind you, but if I did, I'm pretty sure he would look like Bill Kennedy.)

The point is, I didn't want to watch old gangster movies and black and white crap. I wanted cartoon animals braining each other 24/7.

I seem to recall his show finally relenting at about 3pm. There was a chronological segue to cartoons via The Three Stooges, and maybe even Our Gang. I watched a LOT of Three Stooges, gradually discerning my preference for Curly over Shemp and those confusing short-timers Joe/Curly Joe. (I also remember being somewhat disturbed by the cherubic drama mask in the corner of the Stooges credits screen. I thought it was Curly's face ripped off. But I digress.)

Anyway...there are apparently a good number of people who remember Bill Kennedy. Doubtless not in the distorted way I do, but if you're interested, check out this tribute site.

Bilbo Baggins vs. Dolly Madison

During my Junior year of high school, I was in a class play of The Hobbit. Not a school-wide affair, it was the production of the Freshman-laden Drama 1-2 class. Still under the heady spell of my successes in two school plays (Girl in the Mirror and Grease), I landed the lead role of Bilbo Baggins.

A role that lead me to hell.

Well, let's not be melodramatic. It wasn't really hell. But it was hardly the theatrical high point of my life. Or for anyone that had the functional senses of sight or hearing.

Beyond the expected, eye-rolling embarrassments resulting from having most of the dwarves played by 13-year old girls, a female Gandalf and Smaug played by a guy in a black turtleneck sweater, cape, and red, paper mache dragon head that looked about as menacing as a six year-old Chinese boy in a cultural heritage parade, there was one particular aspect of my performance that stands at the pinnacle of humiliation.

During a riveting, pivotal scene (yeah, right), Bilbo and the dwarves are mustering courage while planning an assault on Smaug. We all line up to get some "cakes" that one of the dwarves has prepared. Standing in a single file line facing the audience, each character says a line while receiving the morsel and then moves to the back of the stage. No problem, right? Basic blocking.

The problem arose in between rehearsals, dress rehearsal and the actual performance. (We only did one show, thank God.) You see, in the weeks of rehearsal, we'd simply pantomime eating the "cakes". The absence of any real substance made reciting lines and moving through the scene easy. During our final dress rehearsal, the one dwarf responsible for bringing actual food brought Saltines. Each of us who had to eat in the scene bumbled a bit with having real food, but it wasn't too bad.

On performance night, however, the food-toting dwarf thought she'd honor the significance of the evening by bringing Dolly Madison cakes for the scene. It seems she thought that since the scene called for "cakes", she'd go for authenticity. Just prior to the scene, I saw her unwrapping a dozen or so individual bite-size cupcakes backstage onto her tray.

On stage, as I came to the front of the line and recited my line, said dwarf placed a cake in my hands which, according to my scripted direction, I devoured hungrily. In the nanoseconds between the time when the cupcake came to rest on my tongue and the time when my teeth bisected it, I realized that the cupcake was filled with chocolate pudding.

I took my first bite and gooey fudge erupted from the cake, immediately shooting to all four corners of my mouth. In slow motion, I walked to the rear of the stage and grappled with the knowledge that I had another line rapidly approaching. A second chew only served to solder my teeth together. It was like the pudding had some "just add water" fine print on it; my saliva seemed to activate it further, adding to its mass. Suddenly, I had a mouthful of non-lethal, immobilizing foam. Or imagine The Blob oozing from the movie theater windows, chasing Steve McQueen and hundreds of bobby sock-wearing denizens into the streets. Now imagine it being made of chocolate and it squeezing through the gaps in my teeth and you get a sense of the proportions of this gelatinous invasion.

And a sense of the problem.

I managed to garble out my second line and, as I feared, it was almost entirely unintelligible. I prided myself on knowing all my lines and being the consummate professional. After my second line, though, my auto-activated ego defenses kicked in and I snickered a little bit, somehow thinking that that would let the audience know I was aware of how bad the line sounded. I returned to furiously chewing and licking and sucking the surging flood of pudding from around my gums.

My third line was supposed to be an emphatic call to arms, as I remember. It ended up sounding like a stroke patient with a mouthful of hot tar yelling for more turkey casserole. This made me chortle on stage and doing so made me inhale the cake.

I was confronted by the moment all humans share when they think they're choking. The cough and check to see if you can talk/breathe. My first attempt at a breath failed. Total esophagus lock. I turned away from the audience, facing stage left. Real panic in my mind. Not only for my health, but for trying to not completely derail the performance. I attempted a second inhale to see if my windpipe was clear. I was rewarded by a deafening, ragged gasp that seemed to reverberate off the walls of the auditorium. It sounded like bagpipes being run over by a steamroller. Like a pack of sea lions being forced through a meat grinder with a bullhorn at the business end.

So, time stops. I was literally at the crossroads when I needed to decide whether to run off stage or start flailing my arms for help because I was in full-on choke mode or, I suppose, die. So strong was my instinct that the show must go on. At that second, I dislodged whatever was in my immediate airway enough that I drew breath. But even though my mind was quickly realizing that I could get through this, my body apparently communicated otherwise. I was doubled over facing the rear of the stage, my eyes shot open wide and I'm sure some sort of rictus expression on my face. This compelled Erica, the same dwarf responsible for bringing the Elmer's Glue Cupcakes, to forearm me across the back and bellow with Paul Revere fervency "OH MY GOD, HE'S CHOKING!!!...Choking...choking..."

Frankly, I'm not entirely sure what happened in the next 5-10 seconds. I was still faced upstage, turned away from the audience so I could compose myself. After the echoes of Erica's shrill cry died down, I fully expected members of the audience to be racing up the stairs on either side of the orchestra pit to rescue me. Or my beloved Drama teacher to come to my aid. I began thinking of ways to gather my dignity and get back into the scene. Tears were streaming down my face, triggered by my gag reflex. As the rush of blood resounding in my ears died down, I determined where we were in the scene and realized I had a line seconds away. I turned to the audience to what I was sure would be horrified expressions of shock and concern.

Pins dropped.

Crickets chirped.

Yawns dissipated.

A shit was not given.

I croaked my final line of the scene with a voice sounding like razorwire was wrapped around my uvula. I was totally thrown by the reality of the event and that no one seemed to notice and/or care.

Well, the show went on. I was totally discombobulated and useless throughout the remainder of the play. My best efforts to get back into character fell far short. I completely forgot to bring my sword onto stage with me during my showdown with Golum, forcing an awkward but pretty astonishing improvisation by myself and the Freshman playing the creature. My precioussssss...

It was a debacle.

There were only about 50 people at the performance that night. One of them was my girlfriend. When I asked her about how bad the scene went, she mentioned that she really didn't know anything went wrong. Either it was expected that Bilbo Baggins was supposed to choke in that scene, or, no one was really paying attention. I'm sure we all know which was the case.

The next day, I asked Mr. Ferrell, my director and educational mentor, what he thought about the event and why no one came to help me. He told me, quite calmly, that he "thought I was trying to ham it up."

To this day, I'm still shocked that I could be suspected of throwing a scene to get a laugh.

When I share the story with the girls, it's in the context of not letting even the most embarrassing moments impact you. (And I've had many of them.) In time, everything passes and you'll eventually laugh about it.

Many times, you just need to swallow your pride. And a lot of chocolate pudding.

Channel 61

Shortly after moving to Arizona in 1981, my generation discovered MTV. Well, the lucky kids who had cable did, I should say. In Phoenix, we children of the proletariat had Channel 61.

Channel 61 was a publicly-accessible UHF channel that played music videos. Well, "publicly accessible" implies that you could actually get discernible reception. The channel put out barely enough signal to power a hair dryer.

For a time, I had a black and white TV in my bedroom that was roughly the size of a toaster. (It eventually got replaced by a color TV that hooked up to my Commodore VIC 20.) It maybe had a 10-inch screen. If you sat in just the right spot and held your mouth just right, letting your braces bounce the UHF signal, you actually might just make out a music video or two amidst the static.

And God knows I loved me some Channel 61. I'd sit on the end of my waterbed mouth-breathing, watching whatever I could for hours on end. And that was the beginning of my music video obsession that lasted well into my 20s.

So, in the spirit of this flashback thing, here are the top 10 videos that will forever scream Channel 61 to me. Not your classic MTV Duran Duran/Michael Jackson/Bruce Springsteen fare. These still sport low-end production values and some naive underground-ness. Nascent greatness:

This is probably my quintessential Channel 61 video. Literally, every time I hear this song I reflexively say "Channel 61" with Pavolvian certainty.



This one's firmly in the Channel 61 pantheon of greatness. Much better than the Falco version:




Another classic. As Karl would say, "when Bubba hits the phone.":



Tonight is probably the first time I've watched this video in at least 20 years. Wow, this takes me back. Strangely ahead of its time. There was a definitively European flavor to much of the early Channel 61 rotation. They must've got cheap bootlegs from East Germany:



The blown-out production values always looked like this could've been made inside my TV.:



This one may have crossed over to the MTV days but I associate it with Channel 61. But I do recall seeing it in color. I include it because it scared the crap out of me. (Still kinda does.):



Pure classic. Enough said.



Not sure if this was Channel 61, although the release date of 1981 is appropriate. I recall seeing this in color late at night. I found the ninja silhouettes strangely erotic. I think my testicles might have descended when I first watched this. Can't be sure.:



Finding this video, I see that it has a release date of 1984, so I had definitely graduated beyond Channel 61 by the time this came out. Still, like the Herbie Hancock video, it stuck with me because I was frightened by it. The little girl plain creeped me out.:



I think she rapidly grew into Annie Lennox. Red hair buzz cut and fish eye views of moo cows. Cold War, puberty and night sweats waiting for the bomb to drop...all intrinsically connected to this video.:

Magic bus

On the way to work today, I pulled up to a red light beside a school bus. Emptied of its passengers, the sunlight played across the black seats. I noticed that the bus seats were high back affairs sporting shoulder belts.

Clearly, school buses have endured a significant safety upgrade since my grade school days.

The memory rushed back of the daily occurrence in our bus where we would descend a hill en route to Doherty Elementary. As we would close the distance to the last major intersection before we arrived at school, all the kids would get wild with anticipation. At the midpoint of that intersection, the angle of the road either changed abruptly and/or there was some sort of lump in the road.

As we'd come down the hill, we'd all begin jumping in our seats. The goal was to launch off your seat at the precise moment the bus would hit the bump. If your timing was precise, you'd go flying toward the ceiling. Time it wrong, and you'd drive your ass up through your spine and knock the wind out of yourself.

We did that every day. Laughing, yelling, wheezing. And not a seatbelt to be found. Just green vinyl benches with metal rails framing the seat in front of you. I can practically smell the iron of those rails. My eyes were probably even with them most of the time.

I'm sure the driver tried to keep us from bouncing at some point, or probably just capitulated mid-year. But I have the distinct memory of, on more than a few occasions, catching a glint in the driver's eye and a smile at the corner of his mouth as we would crest at the top of the hill and the collective breath would raise in all of our little chests. The driver would accelerate ever so slightly, as if his foot controlled our very pulses. On magic days, we'd cross the point of no return at a moment when the driver would choose to gun it to make the yellow light. And in that three-second eternity, thirty little kids would percolate like varicolored Jiffy Pop, waiting to slip the chains of gravity and kiss the sky.

Or at least the ceiling of the bus.

Total recall

My blogwriting has become pretty sporadic and uninspired lately. Time demands certainly are complicit in me not writing, but frankly I'm questioning the purpose of this blog. I don't offer any particularly insightful thoughts on much of anything of use. I'm not terribly political. I choose not to talk about work in a public forum. I can only write so many entries about the kids. I don't really follow sports much anymore. I could care less about celebrities or gossip. I'm lucky to write a few sentences of fiction a week.

Yet, I feel it's important to write something. When I get in a groove, I typically find that I feel creatively charged at work. The act of writing just keeps me mentally limber, I suppose.

A thought occurred to me a few days ago as I was having a fairly serious conversation with Sydney about trying harder at school and overcoming fear. I was sharing a few of my childhood experiences as a context and I got, frankly, a fairly morbid thought. What if should drop dead tomorrow or next week? I would never get a chance to share all the mundane details of my life with my kids. Maybe there'd be a few lessons embedded in those details, but beyond that, they'll undoubtedly reach a day years from now when they might wonder if I ever went through what they were experiencing at that time. And if I've croaked, I'd never get the chance to share.

Or what if I'm just in a coma?

Or brain dead?

Or what if, years from now, I get Alzheimer's? Assuming that we haven't transcended physical form in the next three or four decades and computers aren't obsolete, it might be nice to have some sort of recollection of the more distant memories of my youth.

Motivation's a little macabre, I'll grant you, but devoid of anything else to write, it's what I think I'll focus on for a while. At least until something else strikes me.

I didn't say it would be entertaining. Publicly self indulgent, I'm sure. I'll tag them all with "total recall" so you can easily skip them if/when they become laborious to read.

Stylishly looking the other way

This weekend, we received two large mirrors that we ordered from ZGallerie about 6 weeks ago. After hanging them in the dining room (where they look quite nice), I noticed the various "defects" in the frames. I didn't panic, because the intended look of the pieces is "distressed." After collecting up the various packing components, I saw the commonplace "Made in China" stamp emblazoned across the broad side of the boxes.

And the thought occurred to me.

What if the whole trend in furniture and decorating that touts "distressed", "rustic" and "antiqued" finishes is nothing more than a global effort to counterbalance the "shoddy", "half-assed" and "slave-driven quality" cranked out by most of the consumer goods-producing countries outside of the US?

At some point, confronted by exponentially increasing returns on products coming out of China and Mexico, did some marketing geniuses say, "You know what, screw this return claim shit...tell them that finish is intentional. People LOVE broken handles and dinged surfaces. Tell them it's 'old world charm'"

Don't get me wrong. I bought into the look. We have a dozen or so pieces that sport that exposed undercoat of a different color paint. And I like it. But maybe the analgesic I've clearly ingested is simply letting the zombified, mercury-drinking, asbestos-inhaling masses of Chinese peasants coping with their country's breakneck descent into industrialized oblivion get away with quality control murder.

What if they start shoveling cars our way and we're all fed the party line that "Fang Zhou takes you back to a simpler time when whiplash was a sign of prosperity and amputees were revered members of the community"?