Stuff from the Attic

The most awesome video game blueprint ever

2010-07-12T23:47:00.004-05:00

Title: Map of Screen I: M.I.A.
Date: 1989 or 1990
Category: Bad Ideas come from wasting time
Current Status: Sending it to EA

When I was a little kid and I became aware of side scrolling video games, I would draw my own video game ideas that usually involved terribly rendered traps that weren't even remotely drawn to scale. This continued for some time, even into 9th grade.

See, in 9th grade, I was in Honors Biology taught by Dr. June James, III. I won't go into detail on this here, because I have other material directly related to Dr. James and I don't want to use it all up on an item that is only kind of related to his class.

At any rate, I was bored in that class. Not because I found it easy, but because at the time, science just bored me. Pretty much school in general bored me, which is why I produced so much absolute nonsense during high school when I should have been taking notes on lectures (just wait... I haven't really gotten to those boxes yet). In Dr. James class, I set next to Neil "Skippy" Kennedy who had the unfortunate position of being one of the 2 or 3 people lower on the social class totem pole than yours truly. When the other nerds pick on you, that's pretty bad.

But, I was friends with Neil and for awhile, I genuinely liked the guy, even if his personality quirks sometimes made me want to punch him. So, we spent a lot of time drawing cartoons when we should have been paying attention to Biology. At one point, we had a "See who can write the smallest while taking notes" contest where we actually did take notes, but that was more of an excuse to see who could write the smallest. For the record, I won... I manged to write 7 coherent individual lines of text in between two college ruled lines of notebook paper.

Sometimes, when drawing goofy pictures and dumb Far Side wannabe cartoons wasn't enough, we'd create some craptastic thing like this. Apparently, we created some game called "M.I.A" and started creating levels for it. We couldn't fit each level on one sheet so we'd have to continue it on another sheet. I couldn't find Screen II, but I did find Screen III. If I find the rest of it, maybe I'll post the whole thing (if anybody even cares).

There's an obvious influence of both "Pitfall" and "Super Contra" to this. Apparently, it starts with the player's character escaping from his cell through an unexplained hole in the wall. Then, as if his captors KNEW he would escape at this very spot, he must choose between three tunnel things to try and make his escape. If his captors were smart enough to know where he would escape and then create death traps to prevent him from escaping, then A) why weren't they smart enough to build a cell he couldn't escape from and B) why didn't they just kill him to begin with instead of giving him the chance to escape. Villains... WTF?

So, 3 choices... 2 of them lead to death, one of them leads to possible freedom. Let's look at the certain death paths first.

Path #1: climb a wall, go into a room, and then... either fall through a trap door where you are electrocuted by an "electric beam" before you are impaled on some ludicrous looking spikes OR continue on where you must swing across a snake pit on a rope (why is there a rope here?), jump to the ledge, climb down another rope, and then get trapped in a small room that fills up with water and you die.

Path #3: slide down an incline into another room where you find a key that must have been left there by the weird looking dragon from the Atari 2600 Adventure game which will open a LOCKED SECRET DOOR IN THE SAME ROOM (why is it even locked?). Of course, this moment of pride is short lived as the secret door triggers an improbable looking gun... or possibly a giant cigarette... that shoots you when you open the door... or gives you lung cancer. I have no idea.

No, Path #2 is the "correct" choice. Here, you run down a long hallway into a circular room that has deadly "lasers" shooting everywhere. I assume they move around and give the player an opportunity to get past them, because otherwise, this is the stupidest game since the infamous "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" (again on the Atari 2600). Once past the lasers, you fall through a trap door and must grab the horizontal rope or else you will die on some other ludicrous looking spikes. If you manage to go the length of the rope and avoid the LLS, you get to jump down. Here you must crawl to avoid the physics defying "vacuum" so that you can climb up the ladder and go through the door to the next screen. If you happen to get sucked up by the vacuum, you can save yourself from some LLS by grabbing onto the "rope" that may actually be a giant earthworm. Use the rope/worm to get to another door to the next screen.

And that's all I've got at the moment. If I find screen two, I'll be sure to post it so we can find out what sort of stupid traps the player must avoid next.

Fan of The Last Supper

2010-07-04T14:14:00.004-05:00

Title: Personal Fan depicting The Last Supper
Date: I have no idea
Category: Promotional Items
Current Status: Keeping it cool

I have no idea where or when I got this. No... freakin'... clue. In case you can't tell, it's a hand held fan, made of thin cardboard and popsicle stick type wood. On the front, it features a half-assed recreation of Leonardo's "The Last Supper." I say half-assed because it changes some aspects and has nowhere near the artistic skill of the Old Master.

For example, Jesus looks kinda annoyed here. Not really divine, or angelic, distressed or even really emotional. He really just looks like he doesn't want to be in the company of these noisy people.
And then there's the image of John to Jesus' right (viewer left) has been changed. In the original, John has long straight brown hair and here, John has short curly blond hair. Now, I'm not going to get all Da Vinci Code here, but to what purpose could this change have been made? Is somebody trying to pass along secret information via this goofy promotional item? Is this part of the church's cover-up scheme to whitewash the evidence of some crazy conspiracy? Or is it just a shitty artist who can't paint worth a damn?

I'd be more inclined to go with option "C"... I mean... why else would this guy have put Bevis in a picture with Jesus?
This, according to the back of the thing, was produced by the NBA. No, it was not given away at Mavericks' games or handed out to Lakers' fans... it's a DIFFERENT NBA. This one is The National Benevolent Association from St. Louis, Missouri. The NBA doesn't seem to thoroughly exist anymore but does still exist as a part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and is now the DBS which carries on the traditions of the NBA.

Oh yeah, and this was "Made In U.S.A." Aren't you proud?

Mailing Label

2010-07-02T14:22:00.002-05:00

Title: Address Label from Colt West of Fox 18
Date: 1996?
Category: Random Scraps of Paper
Current Status: Recycled

Why the hell did I save this?

This was on a package sent to me by one Colt West of Wichita Falls who worked for the Fox affiliate up there. I'm not really sure what came in the box though, because my memory of actually dealing with Colt West places the exchange of goods in my living room.
Here's the story... back around 1996, I was all into toy collecting. Star Wars figures were coming back and I just got bit by the whole action figure thing. Playmates, who had the license to make Star Trek figures, decided to do something stupid and piss off toy collectors. They released a special edition Jean-Luc Picard figure depicting him from the fan favorite episode "Tapestry." The problem with this was that they only made a total of 1701 figures for this piece. That's a pretty small production run.
Despite not knowing jack squat about this figure, I found one purely by accident at the old Cherry Lane Target. I remember looking at the thing and thinking "That's gotta be a rarity!" Back then, though, eBay was just getting started and the web was a whole lot of lame websites and text discussion boards. So, I found a board devoted to toys and started asking around. The responses I received made it sound like I had the Holy Grail. There was really no way to gauge it's worth, though. So, I was kinda looking for a trade.
Colt West, a Star Trek collector started emailing back and forth and he had the two hardest to find Tick figures: Die Fledermaus and Man-Eating Cow. I actually collected Tick toys and these two were hard as hell to get, sometimes going for $75 apiece. So, we decided to trade. He'd give me the Tick figures for the Picard. And one Saturday, he came to my house and we made the trade.
Now, I think the reason behind the package that the above label was affixed, was that he threw in a couple of Batman: The Animated Series figures as well. He didn't have them with him when he came to Arlington so he shipped them to me instead. Of course, none of this explains why I kept this label.

At one point, I think the Picard figure peaked at about $1000. There are usually some on eBay going for $200-700, but it doesn't seem like they actually sell very often. This one was pretty much a disaster for Playmates and it's not a real popular figure. It kinda helped kill the line since so many collectors couldn't get one that they just gave up collecting since they'd never be able to complete their collections.

One other related story about this... Ray and I, who tended to hang out on discussion boards largely to just act like fools (I guess we'd be considered "trolls" now), decided to have some fun and we posted a goofy tale about going to Dunkin' Donuts and finding the ultra rare Tapestry strawberry frosted donut with sprinkles, mint in its original wax paper. Everybody seemed to like that and got the joke. I wish I could find a copy of the original post, but I don't seem to have one saved. Yeah, I didn't save a good piece of humor but I did save an utterly worthless mailing label. Go figure.

McDonald's Changeables Chicken McNuggets

2010-07-01T18:37:00.004-05:00

Title: McDonald's Happy Meal Toy: Changeables Chicken McNuggets
Date: 1987
Category: Toys
Current Status: Recycled

You remember when Transformers were all the rage and they were on all the toy aisles and kids just couldn't get enough? No, not now... not that crappy ass Megan Fox Transformers crap where all the robots look like they were pieced together from junk found in a Fry's Electronics Store Dumpster and THERE AIN'T NO FREAKIN' DINOBOTS IN IT... no I'm talking 'bout the '80's. Ahhhhh... the '80's... ridiculous clothes, ludicrous hair, synthesized music, and all the half hour toy commercials disguised as cartoon programs a kid could could want... which means about a gazillion cheap pieces of plastic that kids would also want.
Of course, McDonald's, the soulless American corporation that can only tell the difference between the mammals they serve and the other mammals they serve because one set comes on a bun and is handed over to the other when they give McDonald's some money. Kids and their parents are pretty much cattle with money and McDonald's is damn good about finding just the right type of plastic cud to drive the calves wild so they are first into the slaughter shoot with their parents in tow.
So, back in 1987, a good three years after the Transformers first showed up, McDonald's rolled out the "Changeables"... small toys that transformed from McDonald's food into robots. Never mind the fact that they missed the point of what made Transformers so cool in the first place... it was two toys in one! You know, a car and a robot... or a plane and a robot... or a microscope and a robot... it was twice the fun. So, it seems kinda stupid to have things that change from a box of fries or a hamburger or a drink cup into a robot. I mean, yeah, it's still a thing that turns into a robot, but hell... how much fun can you have with a plastic representation of a styrofoam box? Unless you happen to be the Ozone layer or an artery, polystyrene containing fatty fried chunks of something vaguely like chicken isn't all that intimidating... or fun. To quote one of my all time favorite pizza commercials, "What am I gonna do with a box?" Think of the hours of fun a kid can have playing with a food container! Rescue kidnapped presidents by infiltrating the secret hideout in a bag of fast food! Stop alien invaders by waiting for them to order at a chain restaurant!
Anyway, the picture above is actually of the little paper insert that came with the toy. I'm not sure if I still have the toy. Probably, but it's probably in a different box somewhere.
I particularly like the instructions... because this is obviously such a complicated toy that it requires a Master's Degree in Engineering to figure out.

UEFA Champions League Final Betting Ticket

2010-05-11T16:00:00.002-05:00

Title: Betting Ticket for the 2006 Champions League Final
Date: 5/17/06
Category: Bad Ideas
Current Status: Painful reminder of why I don't gamble

So, the first time I ever went to Las Vegas was in May of 2006. I'm still not a fan of Vegas, and really have no desire to go back, but I'm kinda glad I saw it at least once (I was forced to go back one other time about a year later).

The day we were leaving, my beloved Arsenal (aka "The team that always does better than 95% of all the other clubs, but never wins anything") was playing in the UEFA Champions League Final in Paris against stupid ol' Barcelona. Since I had some time, I thought it might be fun to try and find a place that was showing the match and, what the hell, place a bet on my Gunners.

I started wandering from place to place asking if anybody was taking bets on the match. We came across another guy who was looking for the same thing and we sorta teamed up. Barbary Coast (which really looks like late 60's dump) was taking bets. But that's not where we watched it. Oddly enough, the Paris Hotel & Casino was the place we decided to watch the match. We were able to place bets and watch the match. So, in a stupid way, I got to watch the match "in Paris."

I don't like gambling. I'm not opposed to it in any sort of moral sense... hell, I think we should have it in Texas (why should Oklahoma and Louisiana get money that should stay here?)... I just don't enjoy it. Besides, I have an obsessive personality and I really don't need to learn to enjoy something that preys on obsessive personalities. But, I figured... hey, when am I ever going to be in Vegas again when my favorite footie team is playing a major tourney final. I figured just having the ticket would be an interesting souvenir. So ponied up $10.

So anyway, the match comes on and me and this guy we met are sitting there watching it (Leigh wandered off to do some shopping or something). We're chatting back and forth and I discover that he's originally from Dallas, but lives in L.A. cuz he wants to be an actor (how original). He was once on the game show Distraction and is also a member of Drew Carey's LA Soccer Hooligans or something. I wish I could remember the guy's name, but I have no clue. He said he was rooting for Arsenal, but he figured Barca would win so he put money on them.

Our flight was in the afternoon, so I had to leave at halftime. Actor guy offered to hold onto my ticket in case Arsenal won and then he'd mail me the winnings, but I just decided I'd rather have the ticket anyway (it turned out to be a moot point since Arsenal lost).

Man, I hate Vegas....

Rock n' Roll Paper Plate

2010-05-04T16:30:00.000-05:00

Title: Total Foxes Set List
Date: 6/2/07
Category: Concert Trash
Current Status: In the dishwasher

Gal's Panic... one of the most awesome bands ever. An Austin based band from the 90's that had some ska overtones and waaaaaay too much energy.

In 2007, Jerm Pollet and Lance Fever got the band back together and played a reunion gig at Emo's in Austin. It was fantabulous. The wife went with me and while she stood in the back, I proceeded to worm my way through the pit and grab a front and center position in front of the band. I also managed to increase my tinnitus and become a disgusting glob of stinky sweat. But hey, it's rock n' roll!

There were three other bands on the bill that night: The Total Foxes (starring Jerm Pollet), The Catfish Hunters (featuring Jerm Pollet), and Dan Potthast (from MU330). I enjoyed all of it, and bought many CDs that evening. But that wasn't enough... oh no... I had to get autographs! I had nothing to write on of course, but fortunately, I found this paper plate that The Total Foxes put their set list on! I had to borrow a pen too, as I was horribly unprepared, but I got Jerm and Lance to sign one side and Dan Potthast to sign the other! Wheeeeee!!!!

I do remember the first time I saw them... they opened up for the Grown-Ups at the fondly remembered Mad Hatter's on Magnolia in Fort Worth. I thought they were crazy... crazy enough that I enjoyed seeing them again in Dallas at (I think) the Orbit Room. I don't remember much about that show except that Ray and I spent an hour or so sitting in the back of the club doing stupid crap. There was fire involved at one point... fire that should not have been occurring in the club.

I didn't get to see Gal's Panic when the did another reunion (fundraiser) show a few months back. *sniff* Maybe next time.

Cow Art

2010-04-30T15:10:00.000-05:00

Title: Framed Picture of a Cow
Date: Unknown
Category: Sweet Ass Art
Current Status: Prominently displayed in my backyard tool shed

Look out Leonardo! Move over Monet! Piss off Picasso! Ya'll have been Art Slapped by this fine piece of homey bovine goodness.
Cows rock... I mean, let's face it... they are a goofy animal. They produce tasty milk and tasty meat and other than that, they just kinda stand around looking bored. And yet, there is something truly awesome about cows. Perhaps it was Gary Larson's use of these mammals that injected their image with some badassedness... who knows.
Maybe it was that stupid "It's a Cow Christmas" tape, but for whatever reason, Ray and I liked cows. Not as much as ducks, of course, but they were a close second. I have a bunch of cow junk... a cookie jar, a terracotta shelf decoration, a bandanna... at one point I even had a small stuffed toy cow (named "Cow") that would "moo" three times if you squeezed it. Cow used to hang out with me in High School. Once, during an Academic Decathlon training session led by the infamous Mr. Danielson, that bum Will Chesser reached over and squeezed Cow and so everybody in the room looked at me like I was a freak. Jerk.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where this came from, but I believe it was yet another "gift" from Ray for our annual "Terrible Gift Exchange" for Christmas. It was really more of a competition than a meaningful gift swap. See who could get the other the most useless stuff for $10. Quantity was obviously more important than quality.

Take a look at the back...

doesn't that just scream "masterpiece"?!!? I mean, I bet Rembrandt never had the brilliant idea to paint on cardboard and add a bar code to make selling his work easier. Loser.

Bela Lugosi vs Count Chocula

2010-04-26T17:23:00.000-05:00

Title: Special Edition Count Chocula Box
Date: 1987?
Category: Cereal Box
Current Status: Sucking

What the hell?!?!? Bauhaus was wrong... Bela Lugosi lives and he's terrorizing cartoon cereal mascots.

I have some vague memory of the General mills Monster cereals doing this Universal Monster tie-in... Frankenberry was visited by Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster as well. At any rate, back in the days when I could somehow manage to eat bowls of these types of cereals without my teeth hurting from all the sugar, I used to dig Chocula (and sometimes Frankenberry... occasionally Yummy Mummy... but fuck Booberry... that was nasty).
I assume I thought the box was pretty cool, since I cut the front off and saved it, although I'm not sure for what purpose I did so. There are no obvious push pin or staple holes indicating that it was part of my awesome bedroom wall decorations, so presumably, this just went intro one of my infamous "save" boxes... boxes that served only to hold treasured crap like this and stored in the attic.

I like this picture though. It's kinda funny. I mean, seriously Count Chocula, what are you afraid of? I'm fairly certain that neither Bela Lugosi nor the real Dracula (or any vampire) would actually attempt to suck whatever bizarre sugary ooze no doubt fills your freakish body. For that matter, Lugosi's image seems to have a bit of Alfred E. Neuman in it. He looks less mysterious and scary and more amused at the goofy brown guy running away.

Interestingly, there are two versions of this cereal box, one of which caused controversy. Apparently the original version had Bela wearing some pointy star that some thought was a Star of David (although others claimed it was ACTUALLY the Maltese Cross from the Order of the Thelemic Knights or the Order of Saint John) and people complained. So they basically airbrushed the star out for later production runs. Of course, now the Star box is collectible, sometimes going for a few hundred bucks. (More about this story here)

My First Book

2010-04-09T12:01:00.000-05:00

Title: My First Story

Date: Early 80's

Category: Literature

Current status: Currently looking for a publisher and/or movie deal

This was my first attempt at writing a book. Seriously. I can tell you the EXACT circumstances that brought this masterpiece to light.

In 1982, The Jedi Master's Quizbook was published. The author was an 11-year-old kid named Rusty Miller. I had acquired the book somehow (I was 7, so who knows how I got it) and decided that if this goofy kid could write a book (or at least, compile a bunch of trivia questions into a book), the surely I could write a book.

Having never written a book before, I was clueless as to how to go about doing it. Obviously. I didn't sketch out a plot, I didn't concern myself with any sort of planning for characters, settings, or what the story was even supposed to be about. And, since I was 7, I asked my dad to type it as I dictated to him.

I remember clearly, pacing the kitchen while my dad sat at the breakfast table typing whatever nonsense came out of my mouth. I also remember him getting frustrated as I spent way to long trying to decide to whom I wanted to dedicate the book. He wisely suggested that it could wait until later and that I should actually write the story first.

I think he got pretty tired of being my secretary and so I know I typed some of this myself. I'm actually not sure what he typed and what I typed... for that matter, I can't actually tell whether he started typing or if I started typing. Doesn't really matter, I suppose, since it all looks like it was typed by 7 year old.

As for the story itself... well... crap... it starts off as some sort of poorly conceived tale of an incredibly boring alien (Fred) on another planet. The economy on this planet is apparently reliant on sea shells that anybody can go pick up on the shore. Except that they also eat the clam shells. It must be some primitive bartering system. Not sure. They apparently have modern technology similar to Earth, but they haven't developed a monetary system that makes any sense.

The story, at first, seems to loosely revolve around Fred needing to get clam shells to pay for damaged he caused by turning over a "dirt dumper" in the Mayor's yard. Mostly, it's just dull details about the boring events of Fred's day.

I guess I got bored with Fred too because on page 4 (right after the highly ridiculous capture of a dangerous crook by Fred), the story focuses on Fred's kids, Jack & Krissy. I'm not sure if the names were inspired by 3's Company or (more likely) they are based on me and my sister. Jack & Krissy are just as boring as their father and not even the introduction of a baby can make this story all that interesting.

Really though, there may actually be two reasons to read this 8 page literary triumph:

1) It's so unbelievably boring and ridiculous that you have to actually read it to believe that it is so boring and ridiculous and

2) I think there must be some actual family problems poking around in this thing that were bothering me when I wrote this. I'm sure psychologists would have a field day.

If you REALLY want to find out how this horrible thing ends, check out the full 8 page Masterpiece Here.

Baseball Card of Me on a Blue Team

2010-02-18T20:07:00.000-06:00

Title: Soon to be cut from the team
Date: Sometime around 1983
Category: Baseball Card
Current status: Off to get professionally graded and auctioned off

With Baseball Season just around the corner, I like to think back on all those times when I dressed up in a miniature baseball uniform and went and stood in the outfield for several hours on a Saturday morning.
I played some form of baseball with the YMCA for about 5 years. There was T-ball, and 5-pitch, and then actual baseball. I think this one might have been actual baseball, but I don't remember. My baseball career was incredibly forgettable.
In fact, the only things worth mentioning is that I hit a grand slam once, played catcher and outfield, was pretty fast, and I spent a few years playing with Matt Blank, who would grow up to pitch for the Montreal Expos. There really isn't much else worth mentioning.
I do want to point out my stylin' wristbands that don't really match the uniform. The other thing I'd like to point out is my fabulous teeth, which were my most valuable feature during my baseball years, because my teammates could use them to open the sodas we got at the end of the game.

Here, for no good reason, is the back of the card, featuring absolutely nothing useful.

Merry Christmas Printout

2009-05-12T16:42:00.000-05:00

Title: Merry Christmas Printout
Date: December, year unknown
Category: Holiday Decorations
Current status: Recycled

Man, dot matrix printers. Gotta love em. This was most likely created using some horrifying Commodore 64 program. Or maybe an early Apple computer. I don't recall. I do know that is was done on some snazzy white paper that was part of a toilet paper like ream with thos annoying feeder hole strips on the side. So, once you printed out your glorious 24-pin low res black & white picture (at 1/2 ppm), you got to try and tear stuff off all four sides without ripping the main sheet.

At one time, this was some high technology and everybody was just astounded that we could make these graven images out of little black dots. Sure they were blocky and in black and white and looked like they were created with the use of a straight edge, but man, computer printed graphics. It revolutionized the way kids made crappy projects for school. No more crayon drawings or pictures cut from magazines. No sir! Now you could tell your 25 Mhz 386 to print a picture of something that looked vaguely like a decorated evergreen along with some text in a font that looks like it was created for a low budget cartoon. Awesome!

Dallas Zoo Map

2009-05-07T14:41:00.000-05:00

Title: Map of the Dallas Zoo
Date: Before 1989
Category: Info
Current Status: Recycled

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. To be honest, I don't even remember much about going. I know I was there, probably with my Dad, but I don't know if anybody else was with us.

This might have been just dad and me, in the summer of 1988 (before he got sick) during a week where Mom and Kristen were at Church Camp. If that's the case, then this was one of the things we did instead of our original plan, which was a roadtrip around Texas. I can't remember if work or money got in the way of that, but we ended up staying home. We did do some fun things... I think we went to the West End and played City Golf and ate ate The Croc n Rock restaurant. Dad let me watch the first Robocop movie (even though it was rated "R" and I was only 13). There was some other stuff, too, but I don't really remember any of it.

So, maybe we went to the zoo... who knows. Jenny the Elephant was most likely there when I went, since she arrived in 1986.

Hey kids! Feeding time for Reptiles is 2 pm every Tuesday! Watch the primates get fed at 3 pm every day!

Polar Bears Soccer Team Photo

2009-04-30T16:20:00.001-05:00

Title: Polar Bears Soccer Club Team Picture
Date: mid-80's
Category: Pictures
Current status: Trying to get Applebee's to put it on their wall as decoration

When I was a kid, there were two levels of soccer... YMCA teams and "City" teams. I played for the Y for a year or so, but most of my friends played for city clubs. I wanted to play on a city team, but my parents wouldn't let me at first because they would play some games on Sunday mornings and my forced indoctrination into the Protestant sect of the Jesus Club was more vital (to my parents) than playing soccer.

Eventually, I don't remember how, the relented and I signed up to play on a club called The Polar Bears (later, just the Bears). In what has remained the standard for my soccer career, the team I joined was terrible. I mean, we sucked. We lost pretty much every game.

I'd like to know who the hell though "Polar Bears" would be a good name for a soccer team in Texas?

I remember a few of the other teams we played... there were the elite Panthers, the Celtics, and the StarBlazers. They always kicked our butts.

Ray Grabeel played on one of those other teams, but he swears he doesn't remember any team ever calling itself The Polar Bears and I think he thinks I made it up. Well, look at the picture... that's real. Would I Photoshop something as awful as that? Look at those socks! And the short shorts... no, nobody would willing fake a picture of themselves like this.

I played for 2 or 3 years before giving up on it. It probably didn't help that I was almost always a "Fullback". In kiddie soccer, the fullback (defender) position is tantamount to being an outfielder on a T-ball team... it's where the less talented players went. I got to play midfield once, and I remember it vividly because it was the only time I ever crossed the mid-field line. I remember thinking how weird everything looked that close to the other teams goal.

I actually wasn't a bad goalkeeper, the the coaches' kids pretty much always got to be goalkeeper. Damn nepotism.

Anyway, here are some bonus pictures. The back of the photo holder:and the business card of the guy who made his living taking pictures of crappy youth soccer teams.

Apparently, he also took pictures of pretty much anything that involved a paying client. You don't see "Banquets" mentioned very often anymore. And I doubt that many people who hold "Banquets" automatically think of a guy who calls himself "Captain Photo" as their first choice for official photography.

North Texas Irish Festival 1994

2009-03-13T15:00:00.001-05:00

Title: Ticket stub from the 1994 North Texas Irish Festival
Date: March 5th, 1994
Category: Tocket Stub
Current status: Scrapbooked

The annual North Texas Irish Festival... since 1983, at the beginning of March, Dallas hold the NTIF to celebrate all things Irish. Last weekend was the 27th edition of the festival. I didn't go.

In 1994 though, I was still in the early stages of my love affair with Ireland. That love affair started around 1992, but I'm not certain when. I was infatuated with the place. Partly because Ireland just seemed so magical and different, and partly because I thought I had ancestors from there (I have yet to find a strong Irish line... Virtually every ancestor I've found was born on this continent before the Revolution and they all came from England and France. I'm still convinced I've got a strong Jewish line somewhere). I had all sorts of touristy Irish crap around. CDs of "traditional" music, flags, shamrocks, leprechauns... whatever nonsense I could find. I subscribed to an Irish-American weekly newspaper, I wore green (never mind the fact that at the time I was drifting between Protestant and Agnostic.... definitely not Catholic), I watched "Darby O'Gill and the Little People", followed the Republic of Ireland football team, and tried to eat corned beef.
So of course, when the Irish Festival rolled, I was really excited. Ray and I went out there. It was (and is) at Fair Park out in that wretched hellhole known as Dallas. I don't remember a lot of details about the visit... I remember wandering around, hearing a lot of music, looking at a lot of stuff for sale, consuming some not particularly authentic Irish food and drinks, and just generally being amused by the spectacle. I think that year I bought this hideous green vest. At the time, I thought it was pretty freakin cool. Now, I don't think it's cool nor can I fit in it. I've still got it somewhere I think. If I find it, I'll take a picture.
I know I went to more NTIFs than just this one. I believe I went to the '95 festival as a music reviewer for the TCU Daily Skiff. I must have been at at least one after 1996 because I know I've had a (terrible) plastic cup of Guinness.
I think my last attempt to go may have been in 2000. Ray and I went out there with the intention of going to the Irish Fest. We got out there mid morning or so, but then thought it would be fun to go to the Science Museum first. Then, I think we saw some limited engagement movie at the IMAX, perhaps Fantasia 2000. next up, The Irish Fest, right? Wrong! The Titanic exhibit was at Fair Park. Gotta see that.
By the time we got done fooling around at all the other things in Fair Park, it was getting dark and we were getting tired. We pretty much got up to the gate to go into the Festival, looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and went home.

I have since lost my love of Irish stuff. I'll be honest here... a big reason why is that for the 5 years I worked at the Bull & Bush, I'd say 85% of the true Irish that I met were jackasses. I'm not the only one that has this impression either. And before anybody jumps all over me for being a jerk, I freely admit that I possibly did not get a fair cross section of the full Irish population... just the ones that like to hang out in bars and drink. You can draw your own conclusions.

Birthday Card from Mom & Dad

2009-03-03T16:39:00.000-06:00

Title: Homemade Birthday Card from my Parents
Date: Most likely May 27, 1988, my 13th birthday
Category: Birthday Card
Current Status: Scrapbook

I didn't usually get homemade birthday cards from my parents. They were typically store bought and often a little cheezy. I think my mom once gave me the same card three years in a row (the third time was on purpose).
I assume this "card" was in recognition of my achieving the age of 13, hence the goofy "you, teenager, you!" at the bottom. My parents, particularly my dad, seemed particularly fascinated by the aspect of their kids becoming teenagers. I'm not sure there was really that much difference between 12 and 13 really, but then, I don't have kids so I can't really be sure of just how exciting every little thing is.
Perhaps it was more of a milestone for my parents. The fact that I made it to the age of 13 before they actually decided to act on the near constant urge to strangle my sorry, trouble making butt. I can see how that would be exciting.
The bare bones greeting card was actually a way to show me what I would get for my birthday since they couldn't wrap it (or apparently, bring it home) :

Geez, Children's Palace... who even remembers Children's Palace? I remember I like Children's Palace better than Toys 'R Us, but I don't really know why. Figures I'd pick the loser in that horse race.
At any rate, dad borrowed a small pick-up truck belonging to the father of my buddy David Irvin and we went and picked up a 10-speed from the Children's Palace by the Parks mall on Cooper Street. It was blue with yellow trim. I think David got one shortly thereafter that was almost the same bike. Great. Bicycle twinkies.
I rode that bike all over for about 3 years, until I got my driver's license and then I didn't ride a bike again until about 4 years ago when I decided cycling would be a fun way to lose weight and/or spend a bunch of money.
I thought I still had this bike, but thinking about the garage at my mom's house (which I have spend a great deal of time working in the last few weeks), I can't picture it. There's my mom's ancient bike with the basket, dad's old bike from around the same time, dad's 10 speed from the '80s, kristen's pink huffy, and Kristen's scooter... but I can't remember seeing mine. I don't remember getting rid of it... huh. Weird.
I wanted a 10-speed to replace my previous bike, the infamous Huffy Sigma. I had gotten a Sigma for Christmas back in '86* I think, but then it was stolen over Spring Break in '88* when I stupidly left it outside of Rocky Stanzione's backyard fence... the one that faced Hawkins Cemetery Road. I was to lazy to pull it through the fence and so I left it on the ground, unchained, thinking nobody would steal it. Dumbass.

*all dates are guesses... I'm not really sure

Mysterious Page of Random Phrases

2009-02-25T19:41:00.000-06:00

Title: Sheet of random phrases
Date: probably around 1997 or 1998
Category: Random
Current status: looking for the originator

I'm not entirely sure what this is or where it came from. I have some suspicions though, based on some names mentioned in this goofy thing.

I think Robyn Ross wrote this list of random things she either overheard or were said about her on a trip... maybe... not sure... but regardless of when or why, I'm pretty sure Robyn created this and shared it with me in an email.

There are some really amusing things on here... some of which should be used by you in everday conversations.

For example, if your boss asks you why you were late to work, just say "Megaphone rocks your lame ass", squint menacingly, and walk away.

If you are ever an undercover agent trying to blend into Chinatown, just authoritatively yell "Check for lizards in the rice cakes" at anyone who looks at you funny.

At any rate, I assigned each line to one of the voices in my head so that they can repeat it over and over again. It's better than having that damn 'Nanerpus song stuck in my head...

Sports Calendar Entry for Feb 20

2009-02-20T14:11:00.000-06:00

Title: Sport Fact of the day for 2/20/1991
Date: I just told you that
Category: Calendar
Current Status: Recycled

Look! It's an appropriately dated entry! February 20th... okay so, it's not Wednesday and it's 18 years later, but hey... same date otherwise.

Here we learn that this is the birthday of Bobby Unser and Charles "What he do this time" Barkley. It's also Phil Esposito's birthday and on this very same day back in 1971, scored his 50th goal of that season. Way to go, Phil!

Let's see... when this date appeared on my calendar, I was in 10th grade... let me think if I can remember my classes:

Psychology with Mrs. Beazley
Algebra II with.... Mrs. Hailey?
P.E. with Coach Smith
Lunch with Reinhold, Joshwa, Skippy, Opie the Janitor, and Mr. McBride
English with Mrs. Maddox
Latin I with Mrs. Smith
Chemistry with Mr. Powell

I didn't have a job yet, I didn't have a driver's license yet, The Cowboys hadn't won a super bowl yet, and George Bush was still president.

man that seems so long ago.

Jurassic Park Fry Container

2009-02-16T19:04:00.000-06:00

Title: McDonald's Fry Sleeve featuring Jurassic Park
Date: 1993
Category: Collectible Food Container
Current Status: Do I hear any offers?

'Member when Jurassic Park came out and everybody went batpoop over it? There were freakin dinosaurs everywhere. McDonald's, always ready to jump on something that can sell more of their foodlike substances, pounced on the license and proceeded to put JP images on anything they could. Cups, Happy Meals, tray liners, and even these fry sleeves.

When the container is opened, it looks like a dinosaur is eating your fries!!!! WTF!!!!! OMG!!!! LOL!!!!

Sorry about that....

I think that's supposed to be a T-Rex, based on the fabulous info on the back. It's a pretty goofy looking T-Rex though... looks more like a non-fuzzy gremlin on the other side of of the apartment peephole.

I remember I liked the movie... then I read the book. If I had read the book before I saw the movie, I might have walked out before it ended. The book was much better. Of course, Crichton lost me when he resurrected characters that he killed in his first book for the sequel he wrote, Lost World, so he basically changed his creation to make the film that poorly adapted his book. Sellout.

Music Award

2009-01-29T19:03:00.000-06:00

Title: Music Award for Singing
Date: May 27, 1983
Category: Award
Current Status: Trophy Case

How cute... a "ribbon" with a copyright infringed image of Disney's Winnie the Pooh that celebrates singing and daily affirmations of self worth. Yes, by singing, it somehow makes me like myself. I didn't know it was that easy. I could have saved a lot of money on therapists if I'd known that singing in the shower could boost my ego.

I'm not sure where this award came from. I think we were already gone from Broadway Baptist Church by this point so I don't think it was there. We were probably at University Christian by that point where I had a year of youth choir lead by the illustrious Pummill family, the Von Trapps of Fort Worth. But, I don't think it was there either, because May 27th of 1983 was a Friday and we didn't do church on Fridays. Wednesdays and Sundays were church days... and two days of church was plenty. No, that leaves school as the only other option. The last day of school typically came around that time of May and awards day was the last day of school. So, this must be some goofy award from Little Elementary school, maybe even from the legendary Ms. Starnes!

It should also be noted that May 27, 1983 was my 8th birthday. That would have been 2nd grade and I do seem to remember the last day of school being on my birthday. It was like an extra birthday present!

Woodstock

2009-01-28T19:00:00.000-06:00

Title: Portrait of Woodstock
Medium: Acrylic & canvas
Date: Early 80's
Category: Art
Current status: On loan to the Louvre

Remember my painting of Snoopy? Sure you do! How could you forget something so awful! Well, as an added treat, here's the companion piece that I did around the same time... it's Snoopy's little bird pal, Woodstock! Doesn't it look just like him? Absolutely.... not in the slightest!

My wife, when seeing this for the first time, had absolutely no idea who this was supposed to be. When I told her, she just laughed. I bet Rembrandt didn't have to deal with such indignities.

It's pretty ironic that I took the time to actually paint "Snoopy" above the picture of Snoopy which is, pretty obviously, Snoopy. And yet, where it certainly could have used an identifying label, this Baylor University color scheme inspired atrocity, has no helpful clue whatsoever.

I sit here, staring at this thing and I realize first off that whatever this avian nightmare is, it is assuredly something evil. Look at it's horrible, horrible face... it's sinister grin and malevolent eye staring at you in a sideways glance, plotting your gruesome demise in ways that only an apocalyptic fowl can achieve. You'll think twice about feeding pigeons in the park and perhaps that bird feeder so close to the house isn't such a good idea. This canary of Hell shall have your soul...

For whatever reason, while I do find this thing to be disturbing the more I study it, I can't help but think that if Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was inspired by the San Diego Chicken, this is what it would look like.

You'll note that here, as with Snoopy, Woodstock has no arm (or wing) that is noticeable. Also notice that one foot is disconnected from the rest of the body. Is it simply the clumsy brush stroke error of a child learning to paint? Or is it something far more sinister? I'll let you decide for yourself...

Used Elvis Stamp

2009-01-27T19:02:00.000-06:00

Title: Elvis Stamp, Used
Date: Sometime after 1992
Category: Stamp
Current status: Recycled

Among the many dumb things that Ray and became fascinated with in the early 90's was Elvis. Not the young, popular rockin' Elvis... and not really old, fat jumpsuit Vegas Elvis either. Ours was some weird, hyper-amalgamated super Elvis. Probably more in line with old, fat jumpsuit Elvis, but more godlike. The big E used to hang around us all the time, usually possessing one of us in order to do things like try and get us to stop for food, explain his weird philosophy, or use the Elvis Side of the Force to royally screw things up and turn traffic lights red. Jerk.

I realize this makes no sense. Perhaps down the road, I will go into more detail on the John & Ray version of Elvis. At any rate, I was giving you some background on why I would have this thing.

Ray and I thought Elvis was ridiculous and his music was goofy. And so we decided to look for cheap, silly Elvis stuff. When the US Postal Service released these Elvis stamps back in 1992, we thought they were neat. We were disappointed it wasn't jumpsuit Elvis, but it was still a goofy looking image of The King. I bought some on the first day of issue and put them in a little frame. When somebody sent me a card with an Elvis stamp (might've been my mom... she would often play along with the dumb things we did although she seemed bewildered when we told people that she wrote songs for Wang Chung to help pay for grad school), I decided that I needed to also keep a cancelled Elvis stamp to go with the unused one. So it, like the unused stamps, the autographed photocopied picture of an Elvis Impersonator, the Floors-A-Plenty brochure, the Irish 5 pound note, the piece of cheese, and a multitude of other odd items, went up on the Wall of Stupid in my bedroom.

The Wall of Stupid was an area in one corner that was covered in a black & white checkerboard plastic tablecloth (2-Tone Ska period) where I stapled any odd thing that I took a liking to. It was pretty well covered. I'm pretty sure I have some pictures somewhere and I'll be sure to share.

Anyway, that's about it about the stamp. It was a stamp... with Elvis on it. Kinda boring really.

Ticket Stub for Tombstone

2009-01-26T19:03:00.001-06:00

Title: Tombstone Ticket Stub
Date: January 2, 1994
Theater: AMC Hulen
Category: Ticket Stub
Current Status: In the ticket stub folder

Remember this movie? It's a western about the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, The Clantons, and the gunfight at the OK Corral. It has an all-star cast like Kurt "Snake" Russell, Val "Batman" Kilmer, Sam "I'm in every cowboy movie ever made" Elliot, and Bill "Punk Leader in The Terminator" Paxton. What a cast! And then there's the other guys like Dana Delaney, that Brandon guy from 90210, the dumb mechanic dude from "Wings", Powers Boothe, and some guy named Charlton Heston.

Why the hell was Charlton Heston in this movie? Was it just because there were guns everywhere?

At any rate, there are a bunch of other people you'd recognize too, like Billy Zane, Frank Stallone, John Corbett, Terry O'Quinn, and a guy named Wyatt Earp who is apparently an actual distant relative of the original Wyatt Earp. It's one of those movies where you constantly go, "Hey! It's that guy!"

Apparently, this movie is relatively accurate as far as I can tell, although much of the facts about the actual gunfight are still debated. At any rate, despite Kurt Russell, it's a pretty good flick. It's managed to add a ridiculous catchphrase into pop culture... the fabulous "I'm your Huckleberry." In fact, I heard a couple of guys talking about it the other day. One guy was talking about "Young Guns II" and then said "I'm your Huckleberry" at which point the other guy said "No, that's Tombstone" and the first guy says, "Oh yeah... Young Guns was 'I'll make ya famous'."
Riveting wasn't it. It was for me too. I was in Arkansas and you take whatever entertainment you can get.

In a side note, Ray and I saw this at the AMC Hulen (which is now Starplex or something... they have $1 hotdogs). The AMC Hulen was great because it was a fairly nice theater that wasn't packed so you could watch a movie in relative comfort and peace.
My favorite memory of the AMC Hulen was this time that Ray and I saw Van Cliburn there. He was seeing something, not the same movie we were, and I don't remember either movie. What I do remember was that we didn't want to bother him since he was obviously just out to catch a flick in peace and that he was fascinated by the giant pickles they sold at the concession stand. It was pretty clear VC didn't get out amongst the plebes all that often.

The Thylacine

2009-01-25T19:01:00.004-06:00

Title: The Thylacine
Date: Unknown
Category: School Assignment
Current Status: Recycled

At first look, I simply assumed this was another fine science assignment featuring my stellar artwork. I see a grade, another exceptional one, of a "100 A+ Super!" but I have no earthly idea what the assignment was. I mean, seriously, examine this thing. It's mostly pre-typed text from some group called "The Learning Works" that tells the whole sordid tale of the Tasmanian Wolf, also known as the Thylacine, which sounds more like a Greek play than a bizarre canine marsupial. Within the text, I made the bold move of underlining the word "rats." Meanwhile, the picture above is not solely my creation. You can see the faint lines from the original picture that have been faded from the state of the art 1980's photocopying process. I can only assume that our assignment was to draw the Thylacine, even though it was still easy enough to make out the outline.
So, I drew the thing based on the body I could partially see. My drawing looks like the offspring of Lassie and Teddy Ruxpin after one too many tequila shooters at the Teddy Bear Picnic. I wasn't even smart enough to include the trademark stripes on the back end of the creature that gave it its distinctive appearance.
Perhaps my teacher was mightily impressed by my inclusion of several hunters who are no doubt trying to claim the bounty placed on this creature around the turn of the 20th century. You'll notice the two visible hunters, one on the left in the bush and one on the right in the bush, with their awesome shotgun bazookas. There must be a third hunter, since there are two shoots echoing through the forest at the top of the page and neither of the hunters we can see are even holding their shotgun bazookas, despite the close proximity of the target. Meanwhile, the thylacine stands in the open grinning like a moron. No wonder they became extinct... or mostly extinct since people still claim to see them. They are officially listed as extinct, but like the chupacabra, reports of the creature still turn up.
So, I'm really not sure what I was graded on here and the limited amount of content that I added doesn't seem remotely worthy of the high grade I received.

Interesting note about the Thylacine... it might be partially responsible for helping the werewolf story grow. Thylacines, while not actually a canine, had very dog and wolflike characteristics. It is a marsupial, though. It apparently was not a great runner and would sometimes hop around on it's hind legs. It could also stand upright for short periods of time. Plus, it had this crazy jaw that allowed it to open its mouth in a way that made it look huge. So, it's possible that people who didn't know better could encounter one, see it rear up and open it's gaping maw and think, hey, werewolf!

Now back to your regularly scheduled internet.

94.5 The Edge: Top 94 of 1992

2009-01-15T19:52:00.000-06:00

Title: 94.5 The Edge: Top 94 songs of 1992
Date: Jan 1993
Category: Radio stuff
Current status: Recycled

Ahhhh... memories... memories of the days when The Edge didn't suck. Back when "alternative" actually meant something. Yep, those were the days when my radio was always tuned to the same station because the mix of songs was great and the rotation was deep enough that you probably wouldn't hear the same song every hour.
Of course, then the Edge decided to move more pop as pop moved more alternative and then you ended up with this blurring of genres and now it's homogeneous, boring, whiny wannabe punk bands and guys with more hair than talent. It doesn't matter what station I have on these days, I'm almost certainly going to hear some Nickelback song... I don't know which one, they all sound the same to me.
At any rate, just look at this list... criminy.... 94 new songs for 1992. And these were the "top" new songs in 1992. Does The Edge even play 94 new songs in a year nowadays? And the bands on this list.... wow... I don't even remember some of them. Who the hell were the "Mood Swings" (#36)? Of course, I probably own in some form or another, 95% of the songs on this list.
Looking at this list, you'd never think U2 was the overhyped juggernaut that they are today. They didn't even break the top 25, although they did have 5 songs on this list (what is that, half of "Achtung Baby"?) But gee, They Might Be Giants had 2 songs on here.
MC 900 Ft Jesus?!?!? I'd forgotten he was that popular back in the day.
Meanwhile, I'm amazed that Erasure was #1. Sure they owned the alt rock/indie/college whatever stations back when all that meant something, but I'm amazed they managed to beat out Pearl Jam (who won best album and best new artist).
Sadly, no P.I.L. that year. The closest they got was Jah Wobble's "Visions of You" (#56) featuring Sinead O'Connor. Jah Wobble (nee John Wardle) was the original bassist for Public Image Limited.
"Back when the Edge was cool" has become a slogan for some of us of that era when we talk about the music of our high school years. Ray and I were addicted to the thing. We even had a game that we played where we tried to guess which band the station would play next. We did have to say that nobody could pick either The Smiths or Morrissey because one of those was bound to get played within an hour.
Huh... I just noticed that both The Pixies AND The Breeders are on here. That's funny.
Let's see... how many Edge DJs can I remember... Brian the Butler, Alex Luke, Jeff K, Wendy Naylor, the legendary George Gimarc... I miss the Tales from the Edge compilations.
Gee... I have so many happy memories of The Edge. I don't think I can get them all in one post!

Anti-Barney Society

2009-01-14T19:51:00.002-06:00

Title: Sheet of Anti-Barney Society Membership Cards
Date: Spring 1993
Category: Clubs
Current Status: Seeking new members!

When I was in high school, Barney the Dinosaur was still insanely popular. I hated him. He was so annoyingly cheerful and happy with his idiotic lip synching children. The songs were atrocious and let's face it, some of those kids were way too old to be believable as followers of a purple 'shroom side effect.
Ray and I felt a call to action one day after reading one of our favorite Star-Telegram writers. Lisa Davis (I think she was Kessler back then) wrote something about how awful Barney was and for some reason, we felt the need to form a club... a club whose sole purpose was to proclaim our hatred of the plum colored Jurassic Dork. I think we tried to recruit Lisa too, but I don't know if she ever actually played along.
To make the membership cards, we actually had to buy a Barney coloring book. In those days, we didn't have easy access to download images of things off the internet so we had to find some other way to lift Barney's copyrighted image. I'm not sure why Ray wrote the "do not write below line" on the side. I have some vague memory of some genius signing his name UNDER the line making it difficult to cut out the card.
Not sure how many people actually signed up, but if you did, let me know. Maybe we can get a new group going on Facebook!
Aside from the highly inaccurate color of this creature, wouldn't a t-rex just EAT those freaking kids? Man, that would've been cool. "Hey kids! What's 6 minus 1?" *Eats Michael* "It's 5!!! HUH HUH HUH HUH!" Yeah, I'd watch that.

Periodic Chart of the Elements

2009-01-14T19:50:00.001-06:00

Title: Periodic Charts of the Elements
Date: Unknown, probably senior year
Category: Information
Current Status: Recycled

It seems like every year that I had some sort of chemistry based science class, I would get one of these things. I always saved them because I never knew when I might need to know the atomic weight of niobium. Of course, I didn't actually make this a handy reference tool since I've had it in the attic for who knows how many years.
Of course, now we have the internets, a series of tubes that transport information all across the universe (even Cleveland). Instead of keeping pieces of paper like this around, I can go look it up online. And I just did that. According to this chart, my hard copy of the periodic table is outdated. On my chart, elements 104 and 105 are unnamed. According to WebElements, 104 is now rutherfordium and 105 is dubnium. And there are another 13 elements.
I see that despite these additions, they still haven't classified Twinkies. I don't know what those things are, but they aren't natural.
I probably got this one from 12th grade AP Chemistry with the always entertaining Mr. Powell. I really wasn't that interested in science back then, and I wasn't that great of a student. Mr. Powell was a great teacher, but I probably could've gotten a lot more out of that class if I had really realized how much fun science can be. I wish I had had a Bill Nye program as an elementary school student. Oh well. At least I've developed an interest in science as an adult.

Magic Eye Picture

2009-01-13T20:49:00.001-06:00

Title: Magic Eye Picture
Date: Not sure
Category: Irritation
Current Status: Recycled

Remember these $%#*ing things? Somewhere, buried in the static, is some picture that will magically appear in 3D if you can make yourself cross-eyed enough. I used to be able to do these fairly well, but man they were annoying. I can remember that there would be one in the comics section of the Sunday paper every week and my dad and I would try and figure out what the hell they were. I also remember there being a kiosk at the Parks Mall in Arlington that sold large, color magic eye pictures, presumably for framing. Because hey, nothing says fine art like a picture your house guests have to stare at like idiots for several minutes before they can tell what it is.
I can't tell what this is for sure. I think my dad got it from somewhere and made photocopies. I think I might have the image in this blog upside down, but I'm not sure. I saw what looks like "ad3" which could be a reference to this ad company. Again, I'm not sure. Now we can do an experiment to find out if a computer scanned image of a magic eye picture can be seen on a computer. I think you are supposed to stare at the spot between the two dots for 15 seconds and then pull back while keeping your eyes in whatever messed up focus they were in while staring at the dots.
One thing I can tell you, it's not a sailboat.

Irish 5 pound note

2009-01-13T20:33:00.000-06:00

Title: Irish 5 pound note
Date: 1994
Category: Cold Hard Cash
Current Status: Trying to trade for a pint o' Guinness

For some bizarre reason, I fell in love with all things Irish back around 1993. Why? I don't know. But my room started looking like the St. Patty's Day Dollar Store. I had flags, signs, T-shirts, trading cards of the Irish National Football team, leprechaun images, Irish music CDs... I was about as touristy as one could get without actually being in Ireland. Hell, at one point, I actually subscribed to a weekly Irish-American newspaper.
One day, I was at the airport. I was waiting for my mom and sister to get back from Kentucky (I think). For some reason, their plane was coming into the same terminal as international flights. At any rate, back in those carefree days of the 1990's, you could wait at the gate for people to get off the plane and you didn't have to take off your shoes when you went through security. So, I was killing some time and I saw a currency exchange booth. Since I was obviously mentally unbalance at that time, I thought it would be fun to spend some of my hard earned American dollars to buy some Irish currency that I would never spend. The lady at the booth seemed confused, but she sold me a 5 pound note. I think it cost me nearly $10 with fees. And then I took it home and hung it on my wall.
My love of the Irish dissipated during the time I worked at the Bull & Bush pub. About 90% of the Irish I met were arseholes. Hopefully when I get a chance to actually GO to Ireland, I'll meet some of the non-arseholes that must be there.
I've added my own text to the note as a lame attempt at discouraging counterfeiters. I think the fact that the Irish use Euros now instead of pounds might also discourage counterfeiters, but I figured better safe than sorry.

Word of the Day: Embracery

2009-01-13T20:09:00.000-06:00

Title: Word of the Day Desk Calendar Entry for 1/25/94
Date: I just told you that
Category: Calendar
Current Status: Recycled

Yeah, I probably should have posted this in 2 weeks on the 25th, but who really cares.
I used to get word of the day calendars for Christmas. I didn't mind. They were kinda interesting. I think I saved nearly every entry so you'll see many of them on this blog.
The word for January 25th, 1994 was "embracery." I have never heard anyone use this word in any context. According to my Mozilla Firefox spell checker, it's not in the dictionary. To me, it sounds like a Stephen Colbert word or something George W. Bush would say when trying to talk about hugging female diplomats. Actually, every time I say the word in my head, it's W's voice.
I now hate this word.
Actually, W and his boys might have actually tried embracery at some point during the last 8 years.

Mystery Item!!!!!!

2009-01-08T20:46:00.003-06:00

Before I reveal what this is, can you guess? Hmmmm? What is this? What could it be? Is it chocolate? Is it a rock? A part of the Dead Sea Scrolls? It hung on my wall for years. Does that help? Do you give up?

Title: Piece of Cheese
Date: Sometime in the early 90's (probably 1992 or 1993)
Category: Food
Current Status: In the trash

That's right... this is a piece of cheese. Or at least, at one time it was a piece of cheese. Now it is a brittle, dark brown thing.
Why in the hell would I have this? Well, back during the 90's, Ray and I played a lot of tennis. We started haveing "tournaments" every time we played and the winner would get something stupid. This was the trophy in the legendary "Piece of Cheese Classic." Since it was an important reward, I put it in a Ziploc bag (Yellow & Blue make Green!) and push pinned it to my bedroom wall. It remained there for many, many years. It slowly turned a yellowish brown and dried out. At some point, it ended up in the attic and this is how I found it.
Ray and I had lots of tennis tourneys. Most of them were just the two of us. A couple of times, we managed to get an extended tournament with somewhere between 6 and 10 people and it was the annual "Abe Lincoln Classic." Those were pretty cool.
Man, I wanna play some tennis again!

Here's a closer picture of the current piece of cheese. It's still in it's original single slice cellophane!

The Hatley's Set List for 11-9-96

2009-01-08T20:44:00.002-06:00

Title: Set List for The Hatley's show
Place: John Brown University
Date: November 9, 1996
Category: Live Music
Current Status: NOT being submitted to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame

The Hatley's. Surely you've heard of them, right? Stephen Zedler, Jonathan Kendall, Christopher Venters, Brian Roberts, and the infamous Douglas B. Hollywood. Together, they were one of the greatest rock bands to ever plug into amps in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.
Back in '96, Ray and I decided to take a road trip to see some friends at John Brown U. If you couldn't guess, some of these friends were the guys in this band. They were playing some Battle of the Bands thing or something up there so we were there to watch and then go out and party like rock stars.
I remember being there... it was some common area inside the student center or something like that. The Hatley's played some good music and I managed to snag a set list. Some of the songs are available from the Hatley's debut cassette "Bully" (which I have a copy of). Perhaps you can find one on eBay. Maybe the Zedler boys will get their butts in gear and release a special edition CD or put them online or something.
I have to ask though, is there some sort of requirement that all bands when starting out, MUST play a cover version of "Mustang Sally"? What the heck is that all about?

Wally Pleasant Show Flyer

2009-01-08T20:42:00.002-06:00

Title: Wally Pleasant Show Flyer
Place: The Engine Room in Fort Worth
Date: February 19th, 199?
Category: Live Music
Current Status: Submitted to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame

Wally Pleasant is a most awesome entertainer. His songs are largely funny little ditties about life and random things normal people think about. Sometimes they are just weird (how else can you explain "Amusement Park Death Song"?). His shows are usually just him and his guitar (and some sound effects) and as much audience participation as he can muster in a coffee house or bookstore.
I first heard Wally back in High School. I'd sit in my car in the parking lot before class listening to 94.5 The Edge and sometimes they'd play a Wally song. I finally got to see him at some point when he came to town (he's from Michigan) and played at Mad Hatter's in Fort Worth. I became a hardcore fan and started going to most any show he'd play down here. I've seen him in Denton, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Waco to name a few places. Once, he recorded a show in Waco for TV and some of it aired on a PBS program called "Texas Music Cafe." I actually was part of the show twice. He had me come up and play the Fisher-Price Xylophone during one song and then again at the end of the show. I actually have a DVD of most of that show. I'd post it to youtube, except I don't have the copyright permission.
Another time, I saw Wally in Dallas and this kid opened for him. It was Geoff "'clip" Johnston and after the show I met him. We hit it off and ended up recording a few songs. Geoff did most of the work, but I had most of the recording equipment. I have those recordings (I'm not sure if Geoff does) and eventually, they'll find their way online.
Wally doesn't get down here as much anymore. He's married with children so it's more difficult to play Texas. I'm not sure when he was last here... it's been years though. Hopefully he will return.

I don't specifically remember this show at the Engine Room. I think I saw him there twice. The one I do remember was when this weirdo performance art group opened and there were freakish puppets. At any rate, Wally is always a good show. Check out his website and bug him to come play here again!

John & Ray Ruin Christmas - Song List

2009-01-02T14:59:00.003-06:00

For anybody that is interested, here is the second part of the retrospective on the infamous cult classic "John & Ray Ruin Christmas."

Now that I've told the whole horrifying story of the how's and why's of the creation of this holiday not-so-classic, let me now give a run down of the song selection. I'm pretty much just going off the handwritten original info book that I have with the master copy of the cassette. If it's not on there, then it doesn't exist and anything that you hear on the tape that isn't covered here is a figment of your imagination.

1. Introduction - For whatever reason, this is the only non-music track that I listed on the track sheet. Ray and I used the classic "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" by the Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky) as our intro music. We also used on every subsequent version of Ruin Christmas. It should be noted that our "joke" about the Christmas tree on fire was really forced and sounds ridiculous... especially since we laugh through the whole thing.

2. Blue Christmas
3. Santa Claus is Back in Town
4. Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me
Ahhh, the Elvis block. Three glorious songs by Elvis Presley. Many, many people think Elvis was a fantastic singer/entertainer. I find him to be ridiculous. These three songs are fabulously goofy because of Elvis "style"... meaning, Elvis likes to make odd sounds that aren't really words, not really musical, but can't even be classified as scat. just weird, rhythmic goofy sounds.
And then there are the backup singers. Backup singers in the early days of rock n' roll were always a little out of place, but the Jordanaires just went with Elvis like wine goes with fried pickles. I get this image of Elvis running amuck on eggnog and sugar cookies, making goofy sounds and singing songs about Santa driving Cadillacs and kidnapping women. All the while, here are these guys in the back of the room singing backup in tuxedos and trying to add an air of seriousness to the ludicrous nature that is Elvis' Christmas Album.

5. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing
6. Silent Night
The Quackers from The Quacker's Christmas Album
Truly, truly horrifying. Until you hear this, you really can't understand just why we advise you to not listen to this while driving. Somebody, somewhere thought they could do an amusing Donald Duck impersonation, put together a band of synthesized country musicians, and made this. And sold this. Words do not do the awfulness justice.

7. Howdy Doody Christmas
Howdy Doody & The Fontane Sisters from A TV Family Christmas
I was not alive when Howdy Doody was on. For that I'm grateful. I realize that many in my parents generation idolized HD when they were children, but lets face it... he was a creepy marionette. Not only is he weirdness on strings, but his idea of a fun Christmas song is downright disturbing.
During this song, he hits on the backup singers, mispronounces several words, adds extra syllables to other words, and then yells malevolently at everybody to make them understand that it's a "Howdy Doody Christmas"... whatever the hell that is.

8. Christmas With the Devil
Spinal Tap from Break Like the Wind
Okay, granted it's a joke band that is intentionally "bad", but the sentiment is perfect for ruining Christmas and the song is hilarious. This one you can actually enjoy, even if it doesn't make you feel all that festive.

9. Santa Cow
10. Twelve Days of Christmas
from It's a Cow Christmas
I don't what the deal with this album was. It was bad and much of was unlistenable bad. Just not entertaining at all. And yet, there were a couple of gems that were just so odd that they, along with the Quackers, became the foundation of this whole project. Santa Cow is this bizarre song about cows in a barn that exeprience "Twas the Night Before Christmas" in their own bovine way. Santa Cow is a cow that drives a sleigh pulled by other cows and delivers gifts to cows. It doesn't make much sense and I still have a hard time following the "plot." The backup singers are pretty entertaining.
The Twelve Days of Christmas is performed by some dopey cow that has no rhythm or ability to sing in the right key. The things the farmer gives to the cow are just ridiculous. I mean... poodles?
Strangely enough, this album has apparently become a minor collectible. At most online shops, I see this for sale used at above the original retail price. It's long out of print.

11. Santa Baby
Eartha Kitt from Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954
First off, I was sorry to hear of Ms. Kitt's recent passing on Christmas Day '08. Largely because of this song and its inclusion here, I always been kinda fond of her.
Eartha was, judging by this song, ahead of Madonna as the original "Material Girl" by a good 30 years. It's holiday greed at it's finest. And it's seductive too... not at all what you'd expect from the "good old days" where nobody had sex and everybody was a good Christian.
I cringe a little bit when I hear us mock this song. We were unfamiliar with it, mostly. I actually like the song, but it would still earn a spot on the list for the anti-Christmas spirit of getting that it promotes.

12. Jimgle Bells
Pierre from Jacques Cousteau's Underwater Christmas
Much like the Quackers, this bit was brought about by a voice that I could do. No, not Cousteau since this might be the worst French accent ever recorded. It's the "underwater" voice of Pierre.
This is one of several times over the years that I did more than one voice in a live recorded skit. Ray, while a very funny guy, is not so good with voices. He can do Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elvis... and that's about it. In fact, everytime he tried to do an accent or something, it inevitably turned into either Arnold or Elvis. So, I had to do a lot of the impersonations.

13. Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer
Elmo & Patsy from Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer
Earlier in the tape, Ray and explain that the songs we use are ones that either aren't supposed to be bad but are anyway or songs that you might not be so familiar with. Well, this one fails both of those. Everybody knows this song and everybody knows that its bad. Why did we put it on here? Filler.

14. Christmas at Ground Zero
"Weird Al" Yankovic from Polka Party
I'm a Weird Al fan. What can I say? And this song is the peppiest yuletide nuclear armaggeddon song you will ever hear.

15. I'm Dressin' Up Like Santa (When I Get Out on Parole)
16. The Chimney Song
Bob River's Comedy Troupe from Twisted Christmas
I really hate this album. When I was a kid and it first came out, it was kind of amusing. But now, it's just annoying in that bad comedy album sort of way.

17. Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy
Buck Owens from A TV Family Christmas
Ahhhhh... Hee Haw... one of the worst television programs ever to be broadcast on American TV (pre-reality TV era). This song, performed by the legendary Buck Owens, isn't really that bad, but it is pretty goofy. It's very "sittin' on grandpa's porch in the Ozarks" country and I feel like I need to put on overalls everytime it comes on.

18. Twas the Night Before Christmas II
Anonymous from Christmas Stuff
I wrote this back in the 4th grade. For whetever reason, I decided I needed to write a parody of Twas the Night Before Christmas. The version here is largely my original text, but there were several changes. Things that were funny to me as an 8 year old just seemed absurd and out of place at age 17.
The most interesting piece of trivia about this track is that it was recorded in one take. The Halloween sound effects tape used as the background was NOT listened to prior to pressing the record button. We just put the tape in and hit play and I started reading. Consequently, when the scary monster guy starts talking about 10 seconds in, I wasn't expecting it and was in fact actually about to start speaking. The crazy thing is how the Halloween tape and the poem actually link up in several spots. It's almost Wizard of Oz/Pink Floyd.

19. Rubber Chicken Christmas Song
Esther & The Spatulas from The Trees and Your Mashed Potatoes
This might be my favorite part of this whole stupid project. This is Ed Wood if he was a musician. I find this song so bad that it's actually good in a weird abstract, avant garde sort of way. Despite the three of us (Ray, my sister, and me) all playing instruments willy nilly, there's a bit of rhythm and a slight tune. I like my rubber chicken voice and the words are just so stupid, I can't help but smile.
The Rudolph the Rubber Chicken part was hard for me to say as fast as i needed to and so somewhere, I have a tape of outtakes where I keep screwing this part up and getting angry and yelling... all while still doing the rubber chicken voice.

20. There Goes Santa Claus
Invisible Toasters from Dehydrated
Ray wrote this, I sang it. Not sure why I pronounced "sirens" the way I did.

21. The Christmas Song
Dirty Laundry from Cowboys and Hamsters
Ray wrote and sang this. It's really a horrific song and pretty disturbing. Listening to it now, I'm surprised that Ray could be that dark.

22. Deck the Halls
Honkville Duck Chorus from Christmas in Honkville
Ummmm.... Geez, this is gonna take some explaining. I'm not going to go too deep into this here, but Honkville was a town in Idaho populated by ducks and the people who idolized the ducks. Ray and I created this thing after a History assignment gone wrong and it it went horribly out of control (we actually produced a daily paper for several months). The ducks can do anything people can, except they don't speak English. Thinking about that, it really makes no sense. They can drive cars, hold down jobs, write books.... but not speak English. Weird.

23. A Message from the King
Bob River's Comedy Troupe from Twisted Christmas
Oh look... we're running out of material... time to fill space!

24. Twelve Days of Christmas
25. Carol of the Cowbells
from It's a Cow Christmas
More space filler... we play that stupid cow song again and then a not that bad version song in Carol of the Cowbells

26. Santa's Beard
They Might Be Giants from Lincoln
A last minute addition to fill time. TMBG's Lincoln is still one fabulous album.

Additional songs that for whatever reason I didn't include in the track listing include some other Quackers songs, including the unbelievably stupid "I'm a Rubber Duck", A medley of three christmas songs played at the same time, and "O Christmas Tree" sung by my sister in ear bleeding falsetto.

Finally, I'd just like to say that I talk way too much on this thing and try way too hard to be funny. I should have shut up and let Ray talk more.

Energy Pyramid

2008-12-31T21:57:00.004-06:00

Title: Energy Pyramid
Date: March 13, 1987
Category: School Assignment
Current Status: Submitted to the Texas Board of Education for use in their Science Curricula

Ahhhh... another fabulous example of what happens when my lack of artistic ability joins forces with a 6th grade science assignment.

Here we have what is called the "Energy Pyramid" that explains... uhhh... something. I'm not sure I completely understand this anymore. I get the sun... it sends the heat and light and crap that makes the plants grow, like corn, which is eaten by the chickens, which are then eaten by people. But why is the sun at the top and outside of the pyramid? If it's not in the pyramid, then is it really part of the pyramid? Does this imply that the sun eats the people who eat the chickens who eat the corn that eats the sun's energy? Is this specist tripe saying that humans are where energy ends because we are the top? What if a human gets eaten by a tiger? Does the tiger get a little triangle above the human? I'm confused. Particularly since energy doesn't disappear, it just transfers to other things. The pyramid concept seems to say that everytime something is eaten, the amout of energy that exists gets smaller until it disappears altogether. Dammit! How am I ever going to smack those fifth graders around on that stupid Jeff Foxworthy show if I can't even understand the crayon representations of basic scientific concepts!??!?

I apparently did a "good job" and got an "A" despite the fact that my chicken looks like a fat crow with tassled carrots for legs. And that human has a really gimpy arm. And why is the chicken eating what looks like straw? It's supposed to be corn, but corn doesn't usually appear as yellow sticks.

CYF Junior Camp Photo

2008-12-31T21:32:00.003-06:00

Title: Christian Youth Foundation, Trinity Brazos Jr. Camp Photo
Date: Not sure, probably either 1983 or 1984
Category: Photograph
Current status: With the other photos

The church that I grew up in, University Christian in Fort Worth, is part of the Disciples of Christ denomination. The denomination had this youth group, called the Christian Youth Foundation (CYF). Every year, all the DoC youth groups in the Trinity Brazos area would send their children to this little camp in the middle of nowhere (somewhat near Athens, TX) where they would meet and interact with other kids, learn about their faith, sing horrible songs, and try not to get caught with their elbows on the tables at mealtimes. And of course, there was the ongoing struggle of human vs every flying biting bug in existence. I'm guessing the bugs also sent their children to camp at the same time so that they could learn how best to annoy humans.

I actually got to go to Junior Camp (there was also a regular camp for older kids) early because my mom was a camp counselor. So, I was the youngest kid at camp for a couple of years. Then when I was old enough to actually go, I didn't want to.

It was kind of fun, if you didn't mind the bugs... and the humidity... and the heat... and the public showers... and the food. I always got pretty bored by the religion that was involved, like the discussions about Jesus and the camp songs that sometimes didn't make a lot of sense, but what do expect at CHURCH camp. I did like taking the canoes out on the lake (watch out for rumored aligators and water moccasins!), hiking through the woods, and especially canteen and pool time. At the canteen, I would get Astro Pops. Astro Pops were awesome because they were colorful, multiple fruit flavored, lasted a long time, and they were cheap. Best bargain out there.

Mealtime was always an adventure. You had to do stupid tricks to get your mail, like sing or act out some horrible sketch in front of everybody. If they caught you with your elbows on the table, everybody would start singing to you and then you'd have to parade around the mess hall and get poked with forks or something like that. I don't remember Jesus talking about humiliating children for no good reason, but I didn't pay attention a lot of the time.

I can't identify anybody in this picture. My wife actually had to locate me... I'm at the top, in the center, just in front of the tall older woman whose head is to the left of the window A/C unit. My mom is the adult wearing sunglasses in the group at the top left. The only other person I know is Larry Crocker (seated, far left, second row). He was the director.

I don't remember much about camp, other than I was unhappy about as often as I was happy. There wasn't any TV and you were always expected to get up early. It might have helped if somebody had told me that the spray bottle of "Off" was insect repellant and it was designed to keep bugs away and was not going to help make the bug bites I already had stop itching. I was doing it wrong the whole time.

Loaded Weapon Ticket Stub

2008-12-31T21:24:00.004-06:00

Title: Loaded Weapon Ticket Stub
Theater: AMC Green Oaks
Date: February 6
Rated: PG-13 for ribald humor and drug references
One word review: Stupid
Category: Ticket Stub
Current Status: In the scrapbook folder

I actually saw this movie... in the theater. I PAID money to watch this. Why? Cuz I was easily entertained and movies were pretty cheap back then.
It was a ridiculous National Lampoon spoof film based largely on the Lethal Weapon franchise with Emilio Estevez in the Mel "Crazy isn't just the way I act in movies" Gibson role and Samuel L. Jackson covering for Danny "I'm too old for this sh**" Glover. There were also lots of cop-buddy movie jokes.

I don't remember any of it.

Baseball Card of Me

2008-12-30T21:07:00.005-06:00

Title: Scorpions Catcher/Outfielder Johnny Lamberth
Date: 1983/1984
Category: Trading Cards
Current Status: In the collectors album next to the MC Hammer rookie card

Somebody came up with the great idea to make baseball cards of kids playing in the YMCA league. Seems like a lot of fun.
I played some form of baseball for about 5 years I think. 2 years of T-ball, a year of slow pitch, and a couple of years of regular baseball. I sucked. That's why I was usually in the outfield (where most kids couldn't hit it to anyway) or catcher (nobody expects an 8 year old to do anything at catcher).
I think this was a T-ball team, but I really am not sure. I remember the Scorpions team, because it was one of my favorites, largely because we had a scorpion logo on our hats. Most teams just had a letter or nothing at all. We had actual scorpions.
The only other thing I remember was that I played on this team with the Blank twins, Matt & Jake. Matt Blank went on to kick butt at Martin and his stellar pitching, along with future American League Rookie of the Year Ben Grieve's great hitting, helped Martin win the state title my senior year. Matt ended up going pro after college and played some with the now defunct Montreal Expos. And that is as close as I ever got to anything resembling a great baseball story.
Let's see... this was before I got braces as you can see one of my Bugs Bunny like front teeth jutting out and that glove is waaaay too big for me. Meanwhile, the back of the card with the "stats" is pretty entertaining too:

I went by "Johnny." Why? I don't really know. Coach liked to link me to Johnny Bench because we were both catchers, but there really was no chance I would ever come within the same universe of Bench's ability to play the game. Meanwhile, I was a towering 4 feet tall and 53 pounds. I'm over 4 times that weight now and unfortunately, I'm nowhere near 4 times as tall.
I'll be honest... I didn't give a rip about the Texas Rangers or Buddy Bell at the time. I said they were my favorites because really, I didn't know any other teams or players. I had to put something down.

Snowman from Hell

2008-12-30T20:52:00.002-06:00

Title: Snowman
Date: Unknown
Medium: Cut-out from photocopied pattern, crayons, glue, & construction paper
Category: Art
Current Status: In your nightmares

What in the hell is this thing??!??!?! More importantly, what was I thinking when I made it?
Apparently, in some class in grade school, we made snowmen. It would appear that our teachers photocopied some snowman picture and then handed each student a copy and said, "Decorate, children!" I'm pretty sure that this horrific winter nightmare is NOT what they had in mind.
This is apparently a military snowman. Perhaps it is now a "consultant" with Blackwater. According to his hard to read name tag, he is called "SnowM." He is outfitted with a green army helmet, bazooka/flamethrower/machine gun weapon, belt with pistol and dagger, and.... uh... some carrots. Because when you're on a covert ops mission or just storming an occupied beach, never be without a bunch of freakin' carrots. Perhaps these are the snowman equivalent to "scalping" one's victim. Kill a snowman, take his nose.
I tried to hide the scarf as much as possible, I guess, by drowning it in purple. It's hard to be a badass in a knit scarf. I'm bewildered by the purple-red color for the body/uniform as I have no idea what sort of mission would require such a poor color scheme. Additionally, the snowflakes (I guess they're snowflakes) and wheel/button things look out of place even without my bizarre additions. The ones on his head look more like blood splatters anyway.
The worst part though is the face. That is an evil freaking face. It's like killer clown evil. He looks like he's going to enjoy ripping your intestines out.
No wonder my parents sent me to all those child psychologists.

Suzuki Samurai Ad

2008-12-30T20:31:00.003-06:00

Title: Suzuki Samurai Ad
Date: 1986 or 1987
Category: Advertising
Current Status: Flipped over

Do you remember the Suzuki Samurai? They were these cute little mini jeep looking things that were pretty popular for a couple of years. They were sporty without screaming mountain man and were pretty affordable so you didn't have to have a rich daddy to get you one (although it helped). Drive around town or off road. No worries! And it was cozy so you and your date could go make out behind a tree and have the tree hide the whole freaking vehicle.
I really wanted one of these things. Granted, I was 11 or 12 and had no money or driver's license, but I REALLY wanted one of these things. I tried to convince my parents to get me one and it could be my Christmas and Birthday present until I was out of college, but no... they didn't see the practicality of buying a vehicle that wouldn't be driven by me for another 4 years. Silly parents. And of course, there's no way I would have gotten tired of never getting birthday and Christmas gifts all through my teen years.
At any rate, my love affair with this thing lasted for awhile. I would take pictures of them in parking lots, particularly the grey special edition that was most awesome. I had pictures (like this ad) on my wall. Most boys my age had posters of Lamborghini, Ferrari, Lotus, Trans Am... I had a girly little dollhouse SUV. No wonder I got beat up in Jr High.
At any rate, my love affair faded once it became well known that these vehicles had a problem with rolling over with little provocation. They faded away into the world of "cars nobody really remembers," although I did see one a few months ago. I couldn't believe there was still one on the road.
The specs and features on the back side are kind of amusing. You didn't get much of anything with the standard model. The AM/FM stereo with CASSETTE, air conditioning, digital clock, passenger side vanity mirror... these were only on the deluxe model. I guess you were lucky you got an engine with the standard model.

Border's Books Music Search List

2008-12-29T17:01:00.000-06:00

Title: Borders Books & Music Performer Discography Printout
Date: 10/16/1993
Category: Lists
Current Status: Recycled, but still looking for some of this stuff

Back in the day, before the internet was readily available on phones that could fit in your shirt pocket, it was a pain in the butt to find anything you wanted to buy. You had to go to the store and look around at every stinking item until you found what you were looking for... or you went to another store. If you were lucky, the store had things in some sort of order to make it easier to narrow your search for what you wanted. Like bookstores and music stores would put items into groups based on subject and then (hopefully) alphabetize them in some logical way. But, if they didn't have an item, then you might not know it existed.

When searching for music, there was often times this gigantic book full of yellow paper that listed albums and artists. You could browse through this phone book style monstrosity and maybe find something that you didn't know about by a band you liked. Of course, it wasn't updated very often (sometimes a store would have one that was at 5 or more years out of date) and even worse, it did not reflect actual inventory of the store that housed that particular book.

So, when Borders Books & Music started trying to merge their inventory with known catalogs, it was pretty neat. They'd have these little computers set up where you could look up stuff and it would give you some information on a little printout. Granted, it wasn't very thorough and it wasn't always tied to inventory, but it FELT like progress that took us further away from the ancient print catalogs and the needle in a haystack search method.

The front of this thing (below) shows a search I did for "R.E.M" music... my favorite band back in the 90's... this printout is sparse and pretty useless really. I had all this stuff and it didn't even really go too deep into rarities and imports, the stuff I really wanted to find.

On the back is a list I made of all the different versions of "Ring of Fire" that I knew about. I loved "Ring of Fire." It's a great song. I think I was familiar with it first from the Social Distortion cover, but I became a huge fan of the Johnny Cash version. Johnny didn't write it, of course. It was his lovely wife June Carter. But then I started finding all sorts of covers of the song and some of them were pretty wacky. Wall of Voodoo for example, is this long, synthesized, weird version. Zappa covered it, as did Olivia Newton-John and Dwight Yoakum. At any rate, I put a list together to keep with me so that whenever I was at a music store, I could look around for the versions I didn't have yet.

I never did complete this. Maybe I'll go dig around online and see if I can find some more.

Autographed Johnny Rutherford Card

2008-12-29T16:44:00.000-06:00

Title: Autographed Giant Postcard of Johnny Rutherford

Date: Mid-80's

Category: Autographs

Current Status: Do I hear $1?

Johnny Rutherford was an Indy race car driver back in the 70's and 80's. He won the Indy 500 three times (1974, 1976, & 1980). He was also a member of the church I went to growing up, University Christian Church in Fort Worth.

That's really all I know about the guy. He spoke at church during a Wednesday night program and signed some autographs. I have no idea what he said, I just remember being excited at the prospect of a famous person's autograph, even if I didn't know who the heck that person was or why he was famous. He could've been talking about racing... or Jesus... or Jesus racing...he could've been talking about his favorite color of yarn for all I know. Typically, if I was inside church and someone was talking, I was immediately bored.

I actually grabbed a small stack of these things and kept them, but this is the only one I have that is autographed. I particularly like his Ken-doll like hair in the picture.

Giraffe Card

2008-12-29T16:30:00.000-06:00

Title: Giraffe Info Card

Date: Unknown (produced in the 70's and 80's)

Category: "Information"

Current status: Recycled

Does anybody remember these things? I think they were called "Zoo Cards" or something. They used to advertise them on TV where kids could annoy their parents to call the number and become a member of this "club." They would send some cards out every month or so, with diffenernt animals on each and a bunch of facts and other info on the back. If you signed up at the right time, you could get some special gift that was a specially designed plastic box that would hold all of the cards. That way, when you are sitting at your house and an argument comes up about whether or not giraffes are mute or not, you can run to your room, grab your box of animal cards, find the one with the giraffe, and show the moron you were arguing with the correct answer.

While these still have some nostalgia for me (I'm easily nostalgic I guess), they aren't as cool as those ridiculous music stars trading cards. I can easily make the same jokes comparing them to the sports card industry like, "Hey Jimmy! Do you have the aligator rookie card?" or "Ooooohhhhh... this maggot card has an error! It says maggots come from rotting meat!". But these are largley just cards with pictures of animals and a short encyclopedia style entry about them on the back. Just your typical attempt at cashing in on parents who are obsessive about their children learning stuff. These wouldn't fly today though... why get cards sent to you house when you have wikipedia? Of course, you can't alphabetize wikipedia in a plastic box...

I think they also made history cards too...

As to why I saved... well... I guess that part of me that made me go to library school has always felt a need to hold on to "information." Never know when you might need to refernce something. Thankfully, now, I don't need to keep a card in a box. Now I can have fun trying to figure what information about a giraffe online is complete BS.

John & Ray Ruin Christmas

2008-12-11T16:41:00.003-06:00

Title: John & Ray Ruin Christmas
Date: 1992
Category: Noise
Current Status: Available through Guru Bob Records…. Cheap.

“Well, it’s that season again…”

That’s how the thing started. At least that’s how the finished tape began. The opening lines of “John & Ray Ruin Christmas” have been a running joke (at least for Ray and me) since 1992 when we made that awful album. This is technically NOT from the attic, but its cult status and relevance to the season makes it worth discussing.

We decided to make an album collecting terrible Christmas music; either stuff we found to sound unmusical, stuff that had totally the wrong sentiment for Christmas, and stuff we just thought was more goofy than festive. For whatever reason, we thought it would be fun to make a tape and convince other people to listen to it. And while it had extremely limited distribution (like, maybe 12 copies), people remember it. I don’t know if the remember it because they enjoyed it or just because it was so bad that it’s now a minor trauma in their heads.

It all started one evening in the Fall of 1992. I think Ray and I had gone to a Fort Worth Fire Hockey match and had decided to get dinner afterwards. We ended up at a Harrigan’s on Hulen Street in Fort Worth. We placed our orders and then decided to leave our table (we let our server know) and run next door to what was then a Sound Warehouse (the space is now occupied by Half Price Books) and browse. They had a big section of Christmas Music (since Christmas was nigh) and we started finding all sorts of weirdo stuff. The two that I specifically remember were “The Quackers Christmas Special” and “It’s a Cow Christmas.” At any rate, we bought some stuff and went back and had dinner.

On the way home, we decided to check out some of the crap we bought. The Quackers, I’m pretty sure, were first. We put in the tape and started to hear some nice, bland synthesized Christmas music. Okay. Then the “singing” started. And when I say singing, I mean sound that resembled Donald Duck in a drunken stupor. Ray, who was driving, and I completely lost it. I mean full on, nearly wrecked the car, side hurting laughter ensued. It was awful. In fact, when we first released the tape, we warned people not to listen to the Quackers while driving. One listener didn’t take that advice and later agreed it was a good warning.

It’s a Cow Christmas was next and most of it was boring bad, but there were a couple of tracks that were just ridiculous, namely “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Santa Cow.”

It was decided that we needed to share this with the world (or as many people as possible).

Over the Thanksgiving break, Ray and I proceeded to create a playlist of stuff we had recently acquired (Thanks to Forever Young records, too!). Back then, we had limited technical skill, even more limited audio equipment, and almost no money. We didn’t have microphones, editing equipment, multitrack… we had an old boombox with an indeck mic. So, we would speak our bits, stop the tape, dub the song, and then record more of us talking. Totally Old School.
We loosely scripted the thing. By that, I mean we talked out the rough parameters of what we were going to say and then hit record. If we screwed up, we re-recorded it.

I don’t remember if we didn’t have quite enough material or just thought it would be amusing to record some “original” works for this project, but whatever the reason, we recorded 7 originals for this thing. These were done with the help of my sister (she could play the flute and therefore was our primary musician) and were recorded live. I have the tape of outtakes with some alternate versions (mainly because the arrangements were pure anarchy and you never knew for sure what each person was going to play). We used a Casio keyboard, flute, several wood recorders, harmonica, toy drum, French horn, kazoo, and one of those spirally door stoppers that make the really funny sound when you let it spring back.

Once we completed the thing, and by the time we finished, it had lost quite a bit of the fun factor, we set about advertising it at school. We sold about 10 or 12 copies. Each copy was hand numbered with a photocopied insert/program and I believe unique holiday art. Each cassette cover had some poorly rendered Christmas related image done in high quality crayola.

Chris Heinefield told me he played it so much his Dad threatened to take it away. Mr. Powell played it class the last day of school before break while we mixed dangerous chemicals together in festive holiday colors.

We even though it would be fun to send it to some radio stations in the naïve hope that somebody would listen to it and play it on the air. Man, we were dumb.

At any rate, people seemed to like it. Why? I have no idea. I listen to it from time to time and I find it hard to listen to now. Granted, I’m usually uber-critical of my own work and the production values are minimal. Plus, I’ve heard it a gazillion times and it isn’t nearly as funny anymore.

We ended up liking the idea of these kinds of things and started making more silly audio tapes. There was “John & Ray Trash Disco”, “John & Ray’s Stupid Music”, “John & Ray Ruin ANOTHER Christmas” and some random audio sketches and unfinished songs. In the late 90’s, we upgraded our equipment from “stolen from a garage sale” to “purchased from a discount store” and recorded “John & Ray Ruin Christmas: The Special Edition.” This was largely are favorite (least favorite) songs from the other two Christmas tapes combined with some new material, including the awful “Santa’s Comin’ down the Chimney” by Bubbles McIntire. Our pal Randy Black helped out on this one. All of these tapes have virtually zero distribution.

In 2000, we somehow ended up back on the air at KTCU as Dead Air Radio (with producer Wade “2-Tons of Love” Goodman and regular appearances by James “DJ Jaime” Reimer and Neep “Happy the Rodeo Clown” Preissinger). Deciding to dust off the virtually unknown franchise again, we did the whole thing live during our three hour show. And we did it one more time as “Dead Air Radio Ruins Christmas in July.”

I’m slowly getting all of this junk transferred to CD and MP3 to try and get it available to any nut that wants it and maybe get lucky and have it become the next viral promotion on the internets. I’ve heard worse.

All of this is how I remember it, but I’ve had a fair amount of Belgian beer since then. Ray might remember it differently. Heck, you might remember it differently. If anybody remembers it differently, let me know and I’ll post a follow up.

The next post will have a track-by-track breakdown.Anybody that wants a copy of the original JARRC, contact me.

Police seek suspect in slaying at Dallas bar

2008-12-10T20:50:00.000-06:00

Title: Random newspaper clipping
Source: Dallas Morning News (probably)
Date: No clue
Category: newspaper story
Current Status: Recycled

I have no idea. None whatsoever. I don't know any of the people involved. Is the Crown Bar still there? Heck if I know. This isn't even that interesting of a story, really. Okay, somebody died, but with all due respect, a shooting at a Dallas bar? Not really a shock.
Geez.... even I'm amazed at my over-the-top packratness on this one.

Plaque Report Card

2008-12-10T20:38:00.000-06:00

Title: Plaque Report Card
Date: Not sure
Category: Report Card
Current Status: Recycled

My childhood dentist was Dr. Phillip Bailey, who apparently still practices. (If you have kids that need a dentist, Dr. B has my vote). I think my parents knew him from somewhere before I started seeing him. Might have been Waco since I think he was at Baylor for dentistry about the same time my dad was there for his MBA. Of course, my parents history before I was born is a bit fuzzy. I think the beagle we had when I was born was in some way related to my parents knowing him, as the dog's name was "Beagle Bailey." Of course, it could just be a bad pun from an old Mort Walker comic strip.

At any rate, Dr. Bailey and I had a love-hate relationship. While I liked Dr. Bailey, I don't like dental visits because there is usually pain involved. So, we had this great thing where he would poke my gums with sharp metal objects and I would let him know in no uncertain terms how much I hated the dentist's office. Once, I even made him a copy of "Weird Al" Yankovic's "One More Minute" to completely explain my loathing. It was all in fun.

At any rate, here is one of my few good grades. While I rarely had cavities, plaque and I were on a first name basis. I usually got B's and C's. No doubt this one was saved because of the rarity with which my teeth were plaque free.

Sometimes I miss Dr. Bailey's office. They always had copies of MAD Magazine in the waiting area. Much better than Good Housekeeping.

Martin Warriors 1990 Football schedule

2008-12-08T20:50:00.007-06:00

Title: Martin Warriors Football Schedule
Date: 1990
Category: Sports Schedule
Current status: The scrapbook folder

When I was a hardcore local sports fanatic, I used to staple team schedules to the wall and keep track of wins and losses. Cowboys, Mavericks, Rangers, Sidekicks... any team would do. So, when I got my hands on a schedule for my high school football team, it went on the wall as well. You can still see the holes from the staples.
I'm particularly enjoying the politically incorrect Native American head used. That wasn't what our logo ended up looking like so I'm not sure why it's on this thing.

The thing about Martin was that we usually sucked. We were terrible. We never won squat while my class was there and then after we left, they actually made the playoffs a few times. But we were awful. Fortunately, we had baseball, soccer, and volleyball where we could win state championships. But yeah, our football team was bad. I actually spent a week on the team, sort of, during two-a-days in 10th grade as a defensive back. I realized I was way out of my league and quit. I think the coach was just as happy.

Anyway, I kept track of the wins and losses for the varsity team (nobody cared about JV or sophomore). We managed a mediocre 5-5 that year, beating Sam Houston and South Grand Prairie, but losing, as usual, to Arlington and Lamar. yay, Warriors.

Kelly McGonagill signed photo

2008-12-08T20:48:00.003-06:00

Title: Signed photo of former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Kelli McGonagill
Date: After 1989?
Category: Autographs
Current Status: eBay?

I don't have any idea why I have this. I don't remember meeting this woman or receiving this picture. Maybe she came to my school. But for it to be 1989 or later, that means either 9th grade Boles Junior Hell... I mean High, or 10th grade Martin High School. I can't imagine why a half naked cheerleader would come to a place filled with young males between the age of 13 and 18... unless she was interested to see how many hormone fueled adolescent boys she could make explode just by walking into a room.

I think I would remember going somewhere to meet her... but no... no I don't. Did somebody get this for me? Geez... it's a mystery. Maybe somebody else remembers meeting her.

At any rate, Miss McGonagill ended up becoming the director of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, she got married and added Finglass to her name, and has been seen recently on screen in the film Dr. T and the Women and the CMT series, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team for the last three years. She's even got a Wikipedia page so she must be famous!

TCU vs Texas A&M Ticket Stub 1987

2008-12-07T01:55:00.007-06:00

Title: Ticket Stub for the 1987 game between TCU and Texas A&M
Date: November 21, 1987
Final score: TCU 24, Texas A&M 42
Category: Ticket Stub
Current Status: The 3-ring binder with baseball card sleeves where I keep ticket stubs

For a couple of years in the 1980's, my mom and I had season tickets to TCU games. It was the first of three times we held season tickets and one of the two times where we held season tickets to a TCU team that sucked.
Back in the old Southwest Conference days, the Horned Frogs just couldn't compete with the ginormous state funded schools and so we regularly had our butts handed to us by Texas, A&M, Arkansas, and Tech. Baylor typically owned us (although in 1987 we did beat them 24-0 in Waco) and we'd trade wins with Rice and Houston. 1987 was the first year of SMU's death penalty so our regular beatings by the ponies came to an end in 1986.

The '80's teams were coached by the late Jim Wacker, a guy who never really could get TCU up into the upper half of the league (2 winning seasons in 9 years), but he's still remembered fondly because he at least got people excited about TCU football. And he looked like Bobby Bowden next to the dipstick Pat Sullivan who followed Wacker in the 90's.

I don't remember squat about this game as I remember very little about any of those games in the 1980's because many of them are childhood traumas that I have since blocked out.
Hey kids! Find my section!

UNT Memorandum of Violation

2008-12-07T01:39:00.004-06:00

Title: UNT Memorandum: Violation of "Quiet Hours"
Date: September 7, 1993, 10:54pm
Category: School Document
Current Status: Looking for a birdcage to line

I went to three different universities in four years while achieving my Bachelor's degree. I finished the last three at TCU and freshman year was split between the University of North Texas (Fall '93) and the University of Texas - Arlington (Spring '94). UNT was the only school where I lived in the dorm. Seeing as how my mom's house (the same house I had been in since 1979) was in Arlington, UTA and TCU were short drives.

It was pretty exciting when I packed up a number of my belongings and moved one whole hour away from home to a dorm room in UNT's West Hall. I would be rooming with my best friend David Irvin. We had previously roomed together at my mom's house during the Spring semester of 11th grade and it ended horribly. I have no idea why we thought that living together again would be a good idea because it wasn't. I love the guy like a brother, but we should never live in the same place.

West Hall had what was known as "Quiet Hours" which were intended to give students a less noisy environment from about 10 pm until sometime in the morning so that they would be better able to sleep or study or something. I have no idea what we did to violate Quiet Hours, but we did something and we got this excitingly well typed warning disguised as a memorandum. Why my name is the only one on it, I have no idea. Dave was there too.

It seems like if you were written up three times, something happened. But I don't remember what. It was pretty obvious though that the concept of Quiet Hours was pretty stupid in an all male dorm full of numerous freshman. It wasn't Animal House or anything, but there was plenty of mischief.

I really don't remember much about living in the dorm, other than lot's of time watching "Animaniacs" and "The Late Show with David Letterman" as well as way too much time playing Tecmo Super Bowl on the Nintendo (can't stop Bo Jackson!). That and the leftover soggy tacos Dave would bring home from the Taco Bell where he worked.

Art Award featuring Auks

2008-12-05T21:24:00.003-06:00

Title: 2nd Place Auck Award
Date: Who knows
Category: Award
Current Status: Suitable for framing

Once every grading period or so, we would get a visit from Mr. Young, the nomadic elementary school art teacher. He would teach us about some type of art... paint, clay, string, construction paper... and we were very excited because we knew that art was fun and the grades were subjective so as long as you didn't fling paint on the wall, you'd be fine.
For whatever reason, Mr. Young had this thing about auks. Auks are funny little birds that kind of look like miniature penguins. I have no idea why he was so fascinated by them. It could be that Mr. Young found that a funny named bird was a useful way to keep elementary age children entertained.

I have absolutely no idea what this award is for. I think there was some contest involving making art where an auk was the subject matter. At any rate, I have this small piece of paper commemorating something I don't remember. Ironic, ain't it?

Birthday Card (It's a Keith Kard!)

2008-12-05T21:06:00.006-06:00

Title: Birthday Card
Medium: Wide-rule notebook paper, pencil, crayons
Artist: Keith Weiland
Date: May, 1988
Category: Greeting Card
Current Status: Waiting for Keith to become uber-famous so I can leak it to the media

For my 13th birthday, Keith Weiland saved himself $1.50 and made me this birthday card. I think he gave this to me along with the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill on cassette

At any rate, this is a fabulous card. On the front, in addition to calling me John-John, he has drawn three fruity characters, Mr. Lime, Mr. Cherry, and Mr. Grape. Whatever is the greeting inside?
"So Cherry up and have a Grape Lime!" Fortunately, he signed it so he can in no way deny having created this.
LOOK! It's the magical U-Turn arrow in the corner! That is the universal kid symbol for "Turn the sheet over, there's more!"
And on the back:"Hey you! It's a Keith Kard! ©1988 4202 Old Dominion Your Kuality Kard" and he signed it again.
Personally, I think Mr. Weiland had a goldmine waiting had he pursued his mutant ability to make awesome homemade birthday cards.

Okay Keith, enough for today. And I'm sure I've got plenty of other things to embarrass many other classmates.

Mrs. Windham's 4th Grade Class

2008-12-04T20:17:00.007-06:00

Title: Mrs. Windham's 4th Grade Class
School: J. B. Little Elementary
School Year: 1984-1985
Principal: Al Miller
Category: Class Picture
Current Status: Photo Box where no one will ever see this again

I remember Mrs. Windham's "Homeroom" class. At Little, we had a homeroom teacher that also double as our social studies/science/health/non-Reading, non-math, non-PE teacher. In 4th grade, it was Mrs. Windham. I guess our overall class had gotten too big (which was solved for 5th grade when the opened Corey elementary and many of us were sent there) because there was no room for us with the rest of the 4th graders. 4th grade was pretty much all in temporary buildings anyway, but there was no more temporary space. So, we started the school year completely segregated from the rest of our grade in a little nook next to the two rooms where the music teachers held court. Somewhere during the school year, we got our own temporary building out by the monkey bars.

I don't remember much about what we learned from Mrs. W. I remember something about Mt. St. Helens, learning about cardio exercises and spending 3 minutes working out to the Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance", and I remember reading my own parody of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" in front of the class. That's about it. I have some vague memories of other classes, Mrs. Taylor for English I believe (sentence diagramming NOOOOO!!!!) and Mrs. Moon for Math?

I can maybe name 50-75% of the people in this photo.... but I won't. Some of these people I am connected to on Facebook and they'll most likely be horrified that I've broadcasted this monstrosity across the internets. If you would like to point out that you are in this photo, feel free. If you can't tell, I'm in the front row, third from the right with the dark sweater, poofy hair, and idiotic smile.

For a bonus, here is what the photo looked like with the cover and what the cover looked like. Usually I fill in names, but not this time. Lucky you. You might not be so lucky next time.

Potrait of Snoopy

2008-12-04T19:13:00.004-06:00

Title: Snoopy
Medium: Acrylic paint and canvas
Date: Most likely Early '80's
Category: Art
Current Status: Checking with Sotheby's and Christie's to determine how many millions I can sell this thing for

My paternal grandfather was an amazing guy. He was an anesthesiologist when it was a fairly new specialty, a retired colonel in the US Army who was with the Allied forces (medical) at the Battle of the Rhine in WWII, practiced for many years in Dallas and East Texas and then retired. And then went back to school. He learned some Spanish, he started painting, he had all manner of plants and dabbled in cooking. He read a lot. Real Renaissance Man.

When he was at his most active at painting, he let the grandkids paint too. He tried to teach us some basics like shadows, perspective, colors that don't look awful together... obviously, I learned absolutely nothing under his tutelage.

This was one of my first attempts with acrylic paint. I remember going with my grandfather to art supply stores and buying canvas, and paint (apparently lots of RED paint), and brushes and whatever else we needed. I can vividly remember the smell of the paint itself, too. I can remember how much of a pain it was to rinse the paint out of the brushes when we were done. What I can't remember is why the heck I painted this.

It seems fairly obvious that this is supposed to be Snoopy, the extremely white beagle from "Peanuts." So, I'm unsure as to why I felt the need to paint "Snoopy" in large letters above his head. I mean, if Leonardo had painted "Mona Lisa" at the top of that painting, people might have known who she was, but it would have looked stupid and no longer a masterpiece. So, whatever possessed me to paint "Snoopy" at the top when a) everybody can recognize the subject and b) it's unartistic, I have no idea. I plead stupidity that comes with being a little kid.

I think I got Snoopy's head pretty good, but his body is all off. He's too tall. Snoopy is a little more circle shaped than long oval. And where is his arm?!!?! There is no arm there!!!

My wife said it's a "post-impressionist Snoopy." I say it's an 8-year-old with a tube of paint and amused grandparents.

Pro Set Superstars Musicards Ad

2008-12-03T19:25:00.002-06:00

Title: Ad for Pro Set Superstars Musicards
Date: 1990
Category: Advertisement
Current Status: Recycled

Remember back in the 80's and 90's when trading cards were huge? I mean, first it was baseball cards, the football and basketball, and hockey, and then trading cards of Musicians seemed the logical step, right? Hey! Do you have an MC Hammer rookie card? I'll trade you a Vanilla Ice and a Lita Ford!
Really, it's no wonder trading cards are now worth virtually squat. The sports card market became heavily over saturated, but these non-sports cards were just too much. I remember (and still have) when Topps put out trading cards for Desert Storm. I think I have a Saddam Hussein card somewhere. Is that weird? Yeah, it is.
Pro Set started with football cards in 1989 and redefined the trading card world. That was the year of the Barry Sanders and Troy Aikman rookies. Granted, Score put out a more collectible (and more valuable) set, but Pro Set was flashy. They had rookie cards of guys who just got out of college... heck, the cards even showed them in their college uniforms! Baseball cards took notice and stepped up to the plate after giving us such abominations as '88 Topps and '90 Donruss. Within in a couple of years, it was impossible to keep up with all the different sets of cards for everything imaginable... comic books, rock stars, Elvis, movies... if it had any popularity, it probbly got a trading card.

So, Pro Set, after taking the world by storm in football, quickly jumped on hockey and then... pop music. This was the pre-grunge world where the music part of the music business wasn't nearly as important as the image part. New Kids on the Block, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Bel Biv Devoe, Madonna... these were as much fun to look at as to listen to while staring at your swatch watch and unnaturally colored oversized clothing. Malls became places to actually see your favorite performer. Drum machines received writing credits!
To publicize this inventive foray into mixing the bizarro world of hardcore wax pack purchasers and the MTV zombies, Pro Set released this ad. I have no idea where I got it, but I know why I kept it. Look at this wonderful collection of late '80's/Early '90's youth. This should really go into a time capsule so that people a hundered years from now can look at this and realize just how stupid we were and be baffled at how we could go from the obscenely ludicrous glam of the late 70's and end up with whatever the heck this monstrosity of fashion was ten years later.
Let's take a closer look at this quartet of happy youngsters. At the left we have The Fresh Prince of Chris Rock (complete with Friendship Bracelets), followed by Debbie/Deborah Gibson (who looks pained to be in this ad) and Tiffany (she is a part of the Rhythm Nation) and then in the front, white kid who needs a character building butt whooping and a pair of socks. Chris Rock-kid and the too girls are largely okay, I mean, they look like normal kids for the era (if their parents had money) and seem to have some sense of credible modeling skill, but WTH is wrong with that little doofus in front? His face is frozen in a combination of fear, surprise, and about-to-eat-a-hamburger. Perhaps that's the face his brain made when it realized that his body was nowhere near limber enough to strike that pose. Madonna was wrong. There IS something to striking a pose. That's more Vague than Vogue. Is his belt really that close to his armpits? Did Don Johnson and Urkel have a love child? This kid is good old fashioned nightmare fuel.

I'm pretty sure Pro Set is long since out of business, but fortunately, they've left such fine examples of American culture like this ad as their legacy. Thank you Pro Set, you morons.

Caldecott Reader Certificate 1983

2008-12-03T18:45:00.003-06:00

Title: Caldecott Reader Award
Date: February 25, 1983
Category: Award
Current Status: Undetermined; Probably recycle but possibly framed and hung in my cubicle at work

I don't remember getting this at all. Granted, I was 8 at the time, but still, I usually have some vague memory of stuff like this.

I couldn't even remember what the Caldecott was in reference to... so I looked it up. It's one of those annual awards (named for Randolph Caldecott) given to illustrators deemed to have done the best work on a children's book. Some notable winners are The Polar Express (Chris Van Allsburg), The Snowy Day (Ezra Jack Keats), and Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak). Other such classic titles as A Tree Is Nice, Duffy and the Devil, and Sam, Bangs & Moonshine have also won. To learn more, go to the American Library Association's website where they have all sorts of exciting info about the Caldecott. Also congrats to this year's winner, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. I've never heard of it, but I'm sure it's grand.

Of course, this isn't the actual Caldecott Medal (as I've never had anything published, much less won an award for it), this is a Reader Certificate. My guess is that I read a certain number of Caldecott award winning books or something and got this to commemorate it. I really don't know. Perhaps I will ask Mrs. Mona Kerby, the Librarian at the time of J.B. Little elementary school what the heck this was for.

BTW, Ezra Jack Keat's book The Snowy Day rocked my world as a kid. If you've got kids, you should find a copy and read it to them.

Senior Year Class Schedule

2008-12-02T20:05:00.003-06:00

Title: Senior Year Class Schedule, Arlington Martin High School
Date: August, 1992
Category: Schedule
Current Status: Recycled

Ahhh... High School. High School, particularly Junior and Senior year, were pretty good. Partly because most of my classes were with kids who were more interesting than annoyingly popular and so I didn't get picked on as much and partly because it wasn't Boles Junior High.
I look at this schedule and I suddenly remember things about classes that I had forgotten. And I also see that those bozos couldn't get some of my info right. I've blacked out some bits of info that doesn't really need to be displayed on the web (and also had no comedic potential).

The first line at the top seems pretty straight forward, although I am unclear what "URSH" is, the blank right after my Student ID number.

The second line, sadly, has no information listed for "Other Name", despite the fact that during my 3 years at Martin, I went by several names other than "John." In pre-calculus, I was "John Bob." In Chemistry, I became "Brad" (that's a story in and of itself). In MOCE, I went by the alternate name of "Bob" in order to try and hide my embarassment at being in the class.

Dropping down a bit, I am bewildered as to where they got an "H" for my mother's middle name. Her name was Elizabeth Ann Fox Lamberth... no "H". Even more bewildering is why the line below for employer is listed as "DECEASED." I assume they meant my dad, but it would be pretty weird if your parent worked for a dead person. They actually did get mom's employer correct on the next employer line, which was supposed to go with the second parent line where deceased should have gone. Confusing? Well, that's public education for ya.

Then we have my classes. I had no zero hour. Let's face it, 7:45 for first period was early enough... who wants to be in class at 6:45. That's just insane.
Fall semester first period was Mrs. Harry's Government class. I liked Mrs. Harry. She was also our sponsor for Academic Decathalon. And she was the wife of Joe Harry, then principal of Boles Junior High. During that semester, the Dallas Observer did a cover story about some controversial happenings at Boles under Mr. Harry's watch. I was quoted. Despite saying things that were not complimentary, Mrs. Harry never mentioned it.
Spring semester first period was Creative Writing with Mr. McBride. One of the best classes ever. When I find all that stuff, I'll be sure to post it.

Second period- AP Chemistry II with the famous Mr. Powell. I was lousy at chemistry, but the class was always entertaining. Sometimes we blew stuff up. Sometimes we had contests to see who could write the best "Deep Thought" (Jack Handey style). Mostly we just listened to a science teacher who fit right in with Bill Nye.

Third Period- AP English with Mrs. McBride. I wasn't overly fond of world literature, but the class was enjoyable anyway. Mrs. McB found all sorts of entertaining assignments. And, once each grading period, each of us at to present a poem to start the class (Poetry Du Jour). I liked it so much that the last grading period of the year, I asked if I could read something everyday. I think Mrs. McB was shocked... she gave me that look that you get when you let on to a teacher that they are actually having a positive impact on you. They have that happen so rarely, they have trouble hiding that look of amazement.

Fourth period-Lunch... mostly spent racing around trying to get to a fast food restaurant befor ethe rest of 4th period lunch got there creating massive lines.

Fall semester 5th period was MOCE, Math of Consumer Economics. That was embarassing. In 11th grade, I failed the second semester of pre-calc. Not because I couldn't do pre-calc, but because I didn't do the homework. See, the teacher didn't take grades on the homework so I didn't do the homework. I passed the tests, but at the end of the grading period, we had folder tests, meaning we were tested on all the stuff, like homework, that was supposed to be in our folders. If you didn't do the homework, you couldn't answer that part of the folder test. So I would fail the folder tests. I still think that's kind of stupid. I showed I understood what was being taught, but I failed because I didn't do the homework that apparently didn't prevent me from understanding the material.
So, I needed another credit in math and the only thing open was MOCE, which was about as remedial as you could get. I mean, we learned how to write checks. We started out doing fairly simple addition and subtraction, like most people learn in 4th grade. Here I am, an AP student, in the top 10% of my class, in remedial math. With the extra credit and bonus points, I had an AVERAGE of over 100. In fact, at the end of the semester, I only needed to score 16 points (out of 100) on the final exam to earn an "A" for the entire semester. The class was taught by the golf coach, who realized at some point during the semester that I was smarter than he was. At any rate, I went by "Bob" to try and protect my identity.

The Spring semester had Economics with the infamous Mr. Danielson. He was nuts. I'm not sure I can describe him, really. He was very passionate about economics, that's for sure.

6th period was originally going to be Tech Theater, but after 2 classes, I decided building sets sounded less fun than acting on sets and switched to Drama. I ended up with the lead in the class play and also played Schroeder in our production of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." I'm hoping that video does not exist of my performances.

I had no class for 7th period. Some might say "no class" refers to me outside of 7th period as well. Typically, I ended up hanging out in the journalism room and bothered the newspaper staff and their teacher, affectionately known as "The Griffin." My best pal Ray Grabeel was on the newspaper staff and we spent a lot of time doing silly things like making flyers for the "Warrior Falconry Team" and convincing other people that we had a band. I think I became the unofficial mascot for the class. It should also be noted that the entity known as "Keithney" was birthed in that 7th period and it still exists today, living in Houston with some children. Perhaps I'll explain that later.

Okay, I rambled a bit on this one. The next one will contain more funny, less chatter.

Construction Paper Owl

2008-12-02T19:37:00.003-06:00

Title: Owl
Medium: Construction paper and Elmer's Glue
Date: Unknown
Category: Art
Current Status: Recycled

Okay... it's an owl... made out of construction paper. I have no idea when this was made or why. Usually I can get an idea of when I collected something by the other stuff in the same box. This one, I really don't know. The other things I found in this box seem to be from a junior high era, but I can't imagine why I would make this ridiculous looking owl in junior high.
For that matter, I'm not entirely sure I made it. There is no name or identifying marks anywhere... it could be my sister's work. Although I can't imagine I would save her artwork. Besides, I can see some telltale signs of this being my work... the poorly scissored curves on the feet and eyes, the badly cut jags at the end of the small malformed wings, and the presence of the original pencil guidelines that I could never get the scissors to follow. I have to deduce I made this goofy bird.

To this day, when I'm at the store and I see packages of construction paper, I feel a little spark of excitement. Construction paper, besides having a cool name, always meant that we were going to do something other than read textbooks. Always a plus. What sort of freakish work of art would we make from these colorful sheets of paper that had that weird feel, so unlike notebook paper? If construction paper was involved, that meant there must be scissors, but would we get the grown-up kind with the pointy tips or the kiddie ones with the curved, blunt ends? And did they have those cool-left handed ones with the green rubber around the finger holes? What the heck was that actually supposed to do anyway?
And of course, no construction paper event would be complete without your bottle of Elmer's Glue. Just keep an eye on those weird kids that would eat that stuff (I'm talking about YOU, David).
Sometimes, you'd also get glitter. Glitter was the custodial staff's least liked, I think. That stuff ended up everywhere. And parents everywhere didn't have to ask what their kids did in school that day because it would be sparkling all over their faces... and clothing... and hair...

And remember... black construction paper meant you could effectively use that almost otherwise useless white crayon.

Pierre Cardin Wallet ID Card

2008-12-01T18:04:00.005-06:00

Title: Pierre Cardin Wallet ID Card
Date: Late 80's or Early 90's
Category: Additional Info
Current Status: Recycled

I liked this wallet. I think it may have been my first non-kiddie, non-velcro leather wallet. Normally, this ID card would probably have been tossed long ago, but apparently, I decided to be a smart ass and fill out a section of the ID card as a teenage boy probably would.
It does seem obvious that if there was an emergency, that most people would rather you call the appropriate medical and/or law enforcement professionals to handle the problem. Obviously, that is a given and the purpose of this card is to give those professionals the ability to find somebody who can come get your sorry butt once the crisis has passed. Even though I knew this, it didn't stop from from being oh so clever and writing down "Doctor, Hospital, Mortuary, funeral home" under the "In Case of Accident Please Notify" section. To be extra helpful, I included "911" as the telephone number to use.
My pal Neil "Skippy" Kennedy, another of the outcast nerd caste that I was categorized with, felt the need to add "custodial engineer, McDonald's, carwash" after my entries. I'm unsure as to what he was going for with "McDonald's" and "carwash", but I do know why "custodial engineer" is included.
WARNING - TANGET STORY INVOLVING A HIGH SCHOOL MEMORY AHEAD!
In 10th grade, since we were unpopular, middle class students with no access to wheels, Neil and I, along with Josh "Joshwa" Boling and Shawn "Reinhold" Eiland, ate in the school cafeteria. We passed the time with many absurd games, such as "JEPARDEE", poetry readings, and general nerd weirdness. It was very much like our own little cable access television show, complete with regular guests who would interject themselves into our lunchtime activities.
There were two primary visitors: Half-Moon and Opie.
Half-Moon was, in reality, Mr. Steve McBride, an English teacher who also taught creative writing. I had him for creative writing senior year and he was awesome. Excellent teacher, as was his wife, who I had senior year as well for AP English (they told me I was often the subject of dinnertime conversation). But in 10th grade, he was just that guy with a lot of facial hair (i.e. a werewolf in mid-transformation) who monitored 4th period lunch. I'm sure Mr. McB will be mentioned in this blog more than once.
Opie, on the other hand, was a janitor. But don't call him a janitor because he would inform you that he was, in fact, a "Custodial Engineer." Opie (not his real name) took great pride in his job. And while I can respect someone who takes pride in their work, to a 15 year old boy, a janitor is not a glamorous position at all. What really made him such a memorable character was that he would sometimes lecture us on life and how to live it. I vividly remember one time when Opie was giving me a good talking to about getting my life in order. Reinhold, who had his back to Opie, kept making these ridiculous faces that only I could see which made me start snickering. Opie made sure to let me know that I shouldn't be laughing at his advice.
At any rate, "custodial engineer" became a running gag. Now you know.

If anybody is interested, here's the other side of that ID card. It's not all that informative really, but it was nice to know that I had a quality item with "Hand Turned Edges."

Awesome.

Review Unit 7 Chapter Three - Plants and Animals

2008-11-30T08:03:00.001-06:00

Title: Review for Unit 7, Chapter 3
Date: circa 1987
Category: School Assignment
Current Status: Recycled

I think this is 6th grade science/social studies material.
I typically saved anything that I considered a "creation." In this case, since I drew (pencil) and colored (crayons) these eight scenes found in nature from scratch, this counts as a "creation."
The art is obviously terrible, but hey, I was 11 and art was never my talent anyway. The perspective in each box is ludicrous and even the crayon use seems below my usual level of quality (I was an excellent crayon user.... I won awards).
In box 1, we have "Tundra" featuring what appears to be a wolf and a bird that flew in from a Picasso exhibit. I guess the green things are shrubs of some kind, but they look more like gelatinous life forms.
Box 2, "Taiga", features a bear... or horse... I have no idea what the heck that is. I couldn't actually remember what Taiga actually is, so I had to look it up. Since it is some kind of cold forest, I guess it's a bear and two squirrels although one squirrel looks like it was cross bred with an aardvark.
Box 3 contains a "Which of these things is not like the other?" style blue sky, an enormous spot of white space which may or may not be a cloud, a raccoon, and some other gray mammal. This is of course, "Temperate Forest." You'll notice my habit of putting tree style vegetation towards the top right corner.
Box 4 contains a scene from a "Tropical Rain Forest" that obviously shows a forest after it was mostly cleared by humans, since there a whopping three trees in it and they are all about 5 feet tall. This forest is inhabited by two snakes and a zombie monkey. Those blue dots might be butterflies... or fairies.
By the time I got to 5 & 6, I must have been getting bored with this assignment as there is less going on in these two than any of the others. "Grassland" has half a tree in the unusually chosen left corner and has a vulture-canary soaking up some rays. Meanwhile, there is an unknown creature near the bottom left that I can't identify. It might be a duck... or a Tremors worm popping up out of the ground. The "Desert," meanwhile, features a cactus, yet another snake, and a turtle. Also note that this is a nighttime scene as you can tell by the floating banana in the gray colored sky.
The last two panels are water scenes. "Marine" shows sea life such as a starfish, dolphin, Barney the Dinosaur, Strawberry flavored jello dessert complete with streamers, and an albino hoagie sandwich. "Fresh Water" presents a serene pond featuring a fish in mid-evolutionary change to a beaver, another freaking snake, the common badminton goldfish, frog, birthday cake for frog, and several plants that lack any root systems and just pop up from the surface of the pond.

You will note that I received an "A+" for this endeavor and also two bonus bunny rabbit stickers. This makes me wonder... when you go to school to get certified to teach children, is there a class you have to take that gives you the sliding scale of low expectations?

*Click on the Image to see a much bigger version and all the great detail*

The "What's the deal with this blog?" post

2008-11-29T17:57:00.000-06:00

As some of you may know, I'm a pack rat. I'm probably almost to the point that it's a mental illness, although after seeing the stuff my mom saved over the years, I don't think I'm the worst pack rat ever.
At any rate, since I have been cleaning out Mom's house, I've been confronted with all of the junk I've saved over the last 30 years. While going through some boxes I pulled from the attic, I found a stash that seems largely to be made up of stuff saved from elementary school. I started to just trash or recycle most of it, telling myself that it really isn't worth keeping and nobody on eBay would want it either.
But then I started picking stuff up and thinking about why I kept it in the first place. Sometimes, I had no idea why I kept it, but usually, I could put a story together explaining the value I placed on it. Birthday cards, souvenirs from trips, art from school, assignments that particularly amused me, newspaper clippings... just random stuff, uncategorized, but I could still think of words that would accurately reflect why I had saved it (or at least, why I thought I saved it).
Since I was practically writing blog entries in my head as I looked at each item and tried to determine why it was in a box in my attic, it occurred to me that it might be fun to create a digital archive museum both for myself (so I could "keep" said useless item without taking up physical space in my house) and to share with any other hapless victim that might be amused by looking at a collection of junk accumulated by one person through the late 1970's to the 21st century.
Some of these will be kind of mundane, some of them will just be ludicrous. Some of them will cause me to start telling stories that really have nothing to do with the item, but might be amusing anyway.
Anyway, maybe people will read some of this and maybe not. Either way, I'm preserving some of my childhood.