Tuesday, January 27, 2009

One Adam 12...


I'm reliving my childhood lately. That is, assuming I ever left it. I've got the first two seasons of Adam 12 on DVD. I don't think I missed too many episodes as a kid. It starred Martin Milner as veteran cop Pete Malloy and Kent McCord as rookie Jim Reed. The shows are chock-full of two-bit crooks, abusive drunks, zonked-out druggies, with a sniper or saboteur thrown in to season the mix. And a parade of the worst-dressed, dumbest hippies ever seen - even in LA. One of my favorite episodes has Malloy and Reed called to an apartment building where the landlady reports that a single mom tenant has gone off and left her baby in the room... as well as a lion. They look at her like they're getting ready to slap a straitjacket on her when from behind the door comes a roar... and a baby crying. Folks, it doesn't get much better than that.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

An anomaly

My wife bought a new SUV a couple weeks before Xmas. They didn't offer much for trade-in on her old Explorer so we kept it and I put it up for sale on Craigslist. First guy who called had cash but was a couple hundred bucks short of what I'd figured was the low price. He said he was a painter and offered to do painting for us to help pay.
We had a kitchen where we'd stripped most of the wallpaper but there were stubborn parts and we'd basically thrown up our hands and hadn't touched it for... well, time enough for a woman to conceive and have a baby, let's say (not to pin it down too fine). I sold the guy the Explorer, got the cash, and figured that was all I'd ever get. No carrot on a stick to induce him to come paint, he had the vehicle and the pink slip. But the $$$ were twice what the dealer offered for trade-in so screw it.
Today he showed up and painted our kitchen in lovely green and it looks @ a zillion times better. More naive people would have their faith in human nature restored.
I bet he comes back tonight to rob and kill us. Where's that handgun? ;)

Thursday, January 22, 2009

You dodged a bullet!

Despite my threat in an earlier post to start writing about music, I've decided not to alienate the doubtless tens of thousands of readers I've accumulated in my six days of blogging by writing music posts which will tend towards the obscure. So I'll do that in a separate blog and save this one for more relevant and sexier posts like:
Did you ever have a recipe that called for using leftover Thanksgiving turkey? And by the time you remembered to take the recipe when you went grocery shopping a couple-three months had gone by? And the turkey had freezer frost? And you defrosted it and went ahead with the recipe which was kinda a casserole? And when it was done you scooped out a portion and there's frickin' water in the bottom from the frosty turkey?
You never did? Hmmm... me either.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Drifting through the blogosphere


Wow, I've been a blogger for over 48 hours and already everything seems so... the same! But even if no-one is reading it there are consolations... when I get cruddy service at a store or someone passes me on the highway as I slow down for the car in front of me making a left turn (which happened today) instead of slowly seething rage that ebbs and flows inside me, I can just say 'here's something for the blog!' And with this groovy template and font, I can write stuff that ain't too good and it looks much more profound on the blog! Someday soon I'll probably start writing about music I like and weird experiences I've had... so be warned.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Brushes With Idiocy, #1 (of many)

Saturday nights are slow where we live in Smalltown (come to think of it, so are Sunday through Friday nights) so we decided to go to Hometown where I grew up (and still work) for dinner and a movie. Showtime was 7:05 and we hit town about 5:45. Our first few choices of where to eat were packed. So were the next couple. I thought we were in a recession sliding into a depression... these people should have been home sitting in dark rooms shivering under comforters with the thermostat set to 55 degrees, with minds full of dread and fear, not paying somebody to cook dinner for them. Hmmph. So we went to a place that wasn't even on the list of possibilities, but had open tables. The first brush with idiocy was our very young waitress, who seemed to be mentally communicating with some alien civilization and was taken aback everytime we'd say something to her. The place was half-empty by maybe ten minutes after we sat down but nothing was forthcoming from the kitchen for us. Finally at five till 7:00 food appeared. It had interesting colors, let's let it go at that. So we wolfed it and got out of there at 7:05 but were only a few minutes from the theatre. We arrive and the acres of parking lot were so full that some people were parking at closed adjacent businesses. And there was a line I haven't seen since opening nights of the original Star Wars movies. We got into line and checked our watches much too often. Well, there'll be a bunch of ads and previews, it'll be okay. We finally reach the ticket window at 7:30 knowing we've missed the first ten minutes. Two for "Grand Torino" I said, with a foreshadowing of disaster. "Well, actually, that's sold out" said the kid at the window. I pointed out that it would be nice to tell people before they stood in line half an hour. "We're trying to make a sign" he said. Maybe I'm overconfident, but I'm pretty sure I could have fashioned a sign in two or three minutes, since all you need are a) something to write with, and b) something to write on. It might even be possible to send one of the pimply kid employees walking up the line announcing the sell-out every 5-10 minutes, and for a really high-tech approach, a new invention called a PA (public address) speaker could be mounted on the outside wall to make said announcement!
Thinking about this, I prefer when the theatres were spread throughout town - most of the time I'm going to a show that's maybe gonna have 50 viewers and I don't need to wade through crowds of people that are going to see Saw 36 on its opening weekend. Hurry to DVD, Clint, 'cause I'm not going back to that multiplex any time soon.

The Thing That Wouldn't Die

This fine piece of machinery is a 1981 Subaru four-wheel-drive wagon. I had a longtime, somewhat perverse desire to own one of these and about eight years ago the area vo-tech school put one up for sealed bid. Nobody bid as high as they had wanted (strangely) but I was closest and ended up purchasing it for $500. It had apparently quit running and was sitting in the parking lot for years winter and summer which led to interesting things like the dash developing @400,000 cracks and some of the plastic interior bits crumbling into dust. The automotive class got it running for the auction, at least sort of. After I got it I saw the odometer had a zero in front of the 52,000 miles clocked - I had assumed it was 152,000 from the appearance. I put another $400 or so into tires and repairs. Now it's hit 83,000 miles and sad to say is the lowest mileage vehicle I own.
But apparently in Japan they don't have rust. I'm losing the bottoms of the doors and the back hatch, and various holes including a sizable one under the back window. At least four times I've been going down the road on my 50-mile roundtrip commute to work and pieces detach themselves at 65 mph. I hear a CLUNK and watch the chunk of car cartwheel down the highway. I picture a day when I'll have only a chassis with seats tooling down US 77. The winters will be a bitch.
The car has developed more lovable quirks as the years go by. A hole in the floor is liable to let spray from the wheels through if the vintage Love floormat isn't kicked over it. The hood latch shot craps but a bungee cord hooked into a hole I drilled keeps it in place just fine. The right mirror got knocked off by a flying lawn mower (I choose not to elaborate at this time). The latest is occasionally no response when I turn the key, always at the least opportune moment. This can be remedied by violence: hit the battery connections and if that fails pull the spare tire out from under the hood and hit the starter. I've started carrying a ballpeen hammer (the Ass Ponys have a great song called 'Ballpeen' but I plugged them in previous post so I won't mention it). I added a bumper sticker to the hatch door: "Yes, It's Fast, No, You Can't Drive It." Whatever the opposite of ostentatious is, this baby defines it.
When the snow falls though, it chugs its way 25 miles into work, often past a lot of newer vehicles in the ditch, even a few big 4WDs. So it's not going anywhere.
I'm used to running cars into the ground and calling the junkyard to come get 'em. But this one may outlast me.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Lights, Bushels and the Bible House


Came across this picture in my files... it was taken next town over from me and i don't know what the story is... if some slick salesman selling scripture siding (say that five times fast) came by one day, or the inhabitant(this must be a solo act) took that 'don't hide your light under a bushel' admonition a bit too seriously. but a lot of the verses seem to mention neighbors so it is most likely a new slant on the time-honored tradition of neighbor vs. neighbor feuds. We can get to the interesting yellow color splashes and the touches of red another time perhaps.
There's a great ex-band named Ass Ponys that had a cool song called Bible House. Too bad I can't sync it as the soundtrack for this post. Anyway, you'd be better off checking out the Ass Ponys than reading this.

I hate blogs... how ironic

maybe it's the name ... 'blog' just isn't a word that conjures up anything I want conjured up. Or maybe it's the ratio of good ones to sucky ones. yet i have found a few that are great. this one probably won't end up falling into that category. but as our state motto goes, 'to the stars through difficulty'