Some teachers give stars for perfect scores. Mrs. Vanick threw down the hottest logomark around, the Hang Ten feet. Genius. What better incentive could a 4th grade teacher think of in 1978? Other than Lightning Bolt, of course.
Exactly what I wanted — and suspected — after watching Pan’s Labyrinth on my birthday last year. Called it.
PS: I’ve been waiting for this one for thirty years.
FWIW. JTYWTK. HTH. GTG, BBL, TTL, TTFN. CYA! [click to continue…]
Shell Shocked
by Jace Daniel (b. 1969)
The television’s calling this the Summer of Love. The biggest load of horseshit I’ve heard in a year. And I’ve only been home an hour.
There she is, or so they say. My seven-month-old daughter, in a crib, under a dangling party of giraffes and butterflies. Nice to finally meet you, baby girl. All I see is a soft pink blanket with a little person wrapped up in it. I wish I could see more. Your eyes are closed. I wonder what they see.
I walk down the hallway towards the bathroom, dragging my fingertips along the wall. Deja vu. The whole place looks so small. So clean. I can smell her cooking up something in the kitchen. A far cry from the three square meals of Excedrin and Jack Daniel’s I’ve lived on since last summer. Smells delicious. I wish I was hungry.
It’s quiet. So quiet. All I can hear is the busy ruckus of the pots and pans getting drowned out by the ringing in my ears. That ringing. It doesn’t stop. It was the fucking bombs. You have no idea. You don’t know what loud is. You had to be there.
The bathroom, first door on the right. Spotless. Fresh towels and washcloths, hanging symmetrically on the wall. My welcoming committee. I close the door behind me. Why? I don’t know. She put up new wallpaper, like she wrote. I turn on the light. Fluorescent overkill. Too bright. I smell soap. She told me to shower. I’ve forgotten how. She told me to nap. I already am.
The sink. I turn on the cold water, letting it repel off my calloused hands. In the mirror, a man I knew last year. Twenty years older, thirty pounds lighter, forty brothers richer. He doesn’t recognize me. Nothing to offer but an empty stare. He won’t even smile. I’m nothing but a stranger in his boat.
I feel the cold water splash against my face, wiped away by the the sandpaper of my palms. And again. I drink a gulp from my ten-finger goblet. Then more. And more. Funny how you forget how thirsty you are until you’re halfway through.
I barely see the man looking back at me from the mirror again, his blurry image rippling through the drying pools of sweet American tap water clinging to my pupils. I realize something I’ve never noticed before:
I CAN’T CLOSE MY EYES.
This short survey will tell you approximately how many five year old children you could fight at once. Results are based on physical prowess, training, swarm-combating experience, and the flexibility of your moral compass. Here are the ground rules:
- You are in an enclosed area roughly the size of a basketball court.
- There are no weapons or foreign objects.
- Everyone is wearing a cup (so no kicks to the groin).
- The children are merciless and will show no fear.
- If a child is knocked unconscious, he is “out.” The same goes for you.
My score, only because I feel morally comfortable picking up a child and using him/her as a weapon to throw at other children:
So as part of the remodel and purge, I finally decided to get the audio party started yesterday, pulling the trigger on the surround sound home theater system thing. Whoah. My world has changed. A couple of the boys came over last night and we tested it out with a Zeppelin DVD remastered in Channel Surround 5.1. Been a long time since I did that stroll.
Part of this home audio chore included the decision to convert the closet under the soffit into what I’ll be calling the Media Closet. Everything’s going in there: receiver, DVD player, cable box, remotes, computer(s), black lights, lava lamps, knick-knacks, paraphernalia, pictures of me and you, etc. I already had the left and right rear speakers pre-wired into the soffit ceiling, but this Media Closet decision required some subterranean tasks. With my buddy Roy up in the house taking care of things above the floor, I geared up once again in my Devo jumpsuit with a beanie and flashlight, crawling under the house to run audio and component cables from the Media Closet to the far wall of the house where the TV and front speakers will be.
With all of the components now away in the closet and out of site, it’s stunning to notice how much subliminal energy they added to a room. Noise. And their absence is glaring. Something as seemingly trivial as an audio cable, or a remote, or even the digital display of a cable box is in reality just visual clutter 99% of the time. Getting it all out of sight, centralized in the Media Closet, makes the place look and feel like it had a much needed enema. Love it.
Next comes shelving for the Media Closet, followed by some decisions about iTunes hardware solutions. I’ll be diving into semi-hardcore gearheadedness for the first time in about a decade, and am looking forward to it. I always enjoyed that world, and technology has progressed so fast over the years that it’s gonna be a blast to start playing with some new toys.
A blessing in disguise presented itself to me during our work yesterday. Roy leaned his knee down on the coffee table, which Naylor once truthfully described as a “prehistoric ping-pong table for Aztec midgets”, and broke its iron leg. It’s the best thing that could’ve ever happened to that thing. We pulled it from the room, replacing it with a small table for the TV, and the whole place has opened up. I plan to use the wood from the table as the starting point for a piece of art.
Going under the house is always an experience, especially when we’ve got rain slamming the neighborhood horizontally. It was probably the worst possible time to go down there. But it was go time, and we got it done. It’s not a picnic for the claustrophobic; nothing but elbows and slither in the full army crawl. Below are few pics I snapped while down there. Just because.
