Well, I had hoped to get up to Athens Thursday of last week, but since I spent the afternoon with my dad at the hospital, that didn't happen. Marie was planning to go on Saturday and game with her buddies, but her car let us down and that didn't happen either. So I'm going to rush up there and back after work this morning. Maybe sometime soon we can have a proper, long, relaxing visit...?

Dad's still in the hospital [Piedmont], and it looks like it'll be a few more days before they've got enough fluid out of him for his heart to get back to pumping at full strength. The kids and I will be back there this evening, and I'll be with him for a spell tomorrow after work as well. I know he's miserable, but hopefully his spirits will be a little more lifted than the last couple of visits, when all he did was, understandably, complain about how uncomfortable he was, and how he just can't stand Tennessee. Well, at least 50% of him is where he normally is.

I've spent a good few hours the last couple of days with my dad, who's back in the hospital. Mom had asked me to run him on what I thought was going to be a routine trip to his cardiologist, but they determined his pulse was way too high, he was retaining too much fluid and, oh, yeah, he has arryhthmia now. So we sat around for a good while yesterday waiting for a bed at Piedmont Hospital, and I went back by today for a few hours after work.

Dad's really not fun in the hospital. Apart from everything else, he's become really claustrophobic in recent years, and is prone to anxiety and panic attacks. All the Ambien in the world won't put him to sleep and keep him that way, and nobody's found a long-lasting solution to his restless leg syndrome. You remember Peggy Ann McKay from that Shel Silverstein poem? That's my old man, only he's not crying wolf.

So he had an electrocardiogram this morning and they got his pulse back down to 90 and were giving him a blood transfusion this morning, and were going to give him something to get him to evacuate all these extraneous pints of fluid which have swelled his legs. For Dad, it's become almost routine, and they hope he can come home tomorrow.

We were talking football yesterday, as we do, and I mentioned that I'd occasionally thought about going to see a Tech game. Whatever game, it didn't matter, just to root for the other team, whoever they were. I thought I was right clever coming up with such a thing. But Dad let me know there was nothing new under the sun; when Tech was still in the SEC in the late 50s and early 60s, he and Mom went to cheer on Bama whenever they came over to Grant Field to play. He thinks it was the third time, it was when somebody he knew was no longer going to be able to use his Tech season tickets at all, and so my folks just went down to every Tech home game that season and rooted for the opponent.

Eventually, since season ticket-holders all sit together, some fellow recognized my folks as always coming down and cheering for the other team. So he asked my dad, "Excuse me, where did you go to school?"

My dad said, "I didn't. I just hate Tech."

Middle school stinks for parents. I have learned this to be true.

The Hipster Son is doing pretty well at bat overall, but he is struggling in his AP science class, because, like practically everybody else his age, he doesn't have a lot of initiative and he's very concerned about his appearance to his peers. He doesn't want to be that kid - nobody does - who stops the teacher because he doesn't understand the assignment. And these assignments! I don't know whether he's in science or art.

A big part of the problem is that while my boy has lots to commend him, he's simply not a creative person. His skill sets lie elsewhere, and in those places, he excels. So when he was assigned to make a board game about volcanoes - apparently, they're trying to "make learning fun" - he had no clue how to proceed. Since nobody taught him how to make board games - professional, sold-in-stores, professional-quality board games - it just did not occur to him that the teacher was asking for something on construction paper, so he surrendered immediately.

Compounding the problem is that part of my son's issue is lacking the mental agility needed to figure out how to create something. The other part is that his handwriting and artistic talents are greatly lacking. So he was basically given a project which, rather than testing his understanding of the material, which he knows better than all his classmates, tested mine and Marie's ability to walk him through art class.



The finished product represents God-only-knows how many hours of work from the three of us, and it's mainly the grown-ups' work that anybody will see. The Hipster Son gave a rough idea of what he wanted the board to look like, and wrote up the twenty questions that players can answer. Marie drew the magma, and I did the rest of the board. The boychild spent more than an hour typing up the questions under Marie's direction, and then she attached the printouts to index cards. (Again, the dude's got horrific handwriting, so he has to type things... but he's not had a typing class yet. I had typing in middle school. What's the holdup?)

I have a conference with this teacher next month, and I'm going to let her know how little I appreciate the time sink projects like this become. If she wants to quiz the Hipster Son on pillow lava and undersea vents, he'll kick the dickens out of her tests. Idiot arts and crafts projects like this test nothing but my patience.

The rest of the weekend was less frustrating. Much of Saturday was taken up with a family shindig: my dad's sister is turning 90 and one of her daughters threw a party for her. I don't see much of her line of the family; they're all absolutely wonderful folk. Aunt Lera's grandkids are around my age, and now her great-grandkids are around the same age as the Hipster Son and Daughter. The huge age gap between each of my dad's siblings - there are five in total - always baffled me as a kid, although I later understood it's not all that uncommon. Dad's nephew Gerald is three weeks older than him, and they'd occasionally get in trouble together.

In the absence of any pics from Saturday afternoon, here's one of me and the Hipster Daughter, taken last week:



The rest of the weekend was okay. Friday night, we had pizza and fried green beans at My Cousin Vinny's. The Hipster Son and I went out for barbecue Sunday afternoon to plan some Christmas-related stuff and give him a bit of a pep talk about school before tackling that darn project. I got some reading done and downloaded some scans of out-of-print comic stuff for a forthcoming Reprint This! feature.

The downside was learning this morning that Arena Football League has suspended the 2009 season, promising a return in 2010. You know, I think it's time that league quit fooling itself that it's the fifth major sport and accepted its place, not as a multi-hundreds-o-millions business, but as a fun niche sport for families. Circumstances conspired to keep us from seeing the Georgia Force last season and I was looking forward to going to a game this year. So I put on one my Force shirts anyway when I got dressed. Even though Arthur Blank was one of the owners who voted for suspension-during-restructuring, solidarity, y'all.

I wonder how many people this is going to put out of work? I know the league and the sport's not taken seriously by most, but this is a hell of a climate for people to be losing jobs. Even if they don't come back, 23 seasons was a pretty good run. (Commentary and news at Arena Fan, have your pop-up blocker installed.)

Anyway, we have some family birthday things to do for the Hipster Daughter this week. And the other thing is a new Muppet special on Wednesday evening. You know, about four years back, I was suggesting somewhere that the problem with modern Muppet productions, when stacked against the old ones, was that 70s and 80s Muppet things had Hollywood legends and major stars in them, and that contemporary stuff has Whoopi Goldberg. As if underlining my point, she's in the new thing Wednesday. Gosh, can't wait!

I found out last night that Shannon McArdle released a solo album in the summer. I'd protest, petulantly, that nobody told me about it, but hell, the Mendoza Line didn't even have a Wikipedia entry 'til a couple of years ago, so it's not like anybody really follows them. Sorta like the AFL when you think about it! Neither Resonator Mag nor Paste nor Cable & Tweed mentioned this (or if they did I foolishly overlooked it), and these are the main sources I have for new music. Can anybody recommend a LiveJournal friend or feed which'll do a better job keeping me updated on new album releases?

We somehow lucked into more of a sports weekend than planned! Work gave me tickets to see the Hawks Friday night. Since Marie works two blocks from Philips, we picked her up and caught a really good pasting of the visiting Toronto Raptors, 110-92. The Hawks are now 4-0 on the season. Here are some pictures from Friday night... and yes, I've managed to get pictures from baseball, football, hockey and basketball games since the summer! I didn't intend for that to happen, but I'm kind of pleased it worked out that way.










Yes, that's a Celtics jersey. I don't know when or why he decided he was a Celtics fan, but he is, and he was getting high fives from people all night shouting "YEAH! Go GREEN, baby!"







When we got back, the Hipster Son went downstairs to watch The Omen, which dramaqueer had lent him, while I finished up online and went to bed. This morning, the boychild described the film to me. I have never heard the word "DUUUDDE!!" so many times in my life. "And then he said you are the child and DUUUUDDE!! he ran back and DUUUUUDDE!! it came off the roof and..." He gesticulated and jumped at this heightened level of excitement for about five straight minutes. So much for worrying that horror movies might be too scary.

So today, Marie went out to do some shopping, and so I turned on the Dawgs playing up in Lexington. We held on, despite once again not having defense as strong as it should be. Anyway, I watched most of that before Marie got back, and then we went to my folks' place to watch Bama beat LSU with my dad. He's a very, very happy dad this season. Do you realize, now that Penn State has fallen, that there is a genuine chance that the SEC Championship matchup, Bama and Florida, might also end up the BCS National Championship matchup? What the hell? I'm with President-Elect Obama, we need college playoffs.

Tennessee got beat by Wyoming. At home. It actually is a little sad to see an honorable opponent like Fulmer play so horribly.

In other news, Six Flags is remaking and remodelling the venerable Monster Plantation into the Monster Mansion with help from the ride's original designers.

Also, the kids pestered me into buying them a pumpkin pie milkshake at Krystal, and I had a sip, and it was even more utterly revolting than anticipated.

And that's pretty much where we stand. I'm enjoying the new Jenny Lewis record a lot. I want to pick up Amanda Palmer's solo record next week, and the new Dar Williams. She's actually in town tonight, at Eddie's Attic, but that wasn't to be. Oh, I really like Brooke Waggoner, too. You can hear one of her songs over at Cable & Tweed, which all you local types should bookmark, particularly if you like comics and music like I do. I think I'll retire to bed early this evening. G'night!!

I hope today goes well. Not merely at the polls, but here at work, where the Hipster Kids have taken over a pair of cubicles with their portable DVD players, books, music and pencils. Since the schools are closed for Election Day, I hoped my folks could watch 'em, but Dad is having a chemo treatment today and I can't afford the time off this month - only eighteen business days this cycle and so very much to do - so the boss said I could bring them in. What's really awful is that the office has a pair of Nintendo Wii machines here for a contest, and they've just stared at them, drooling, hoping that somebody will invite them to play this "Fitness" game. Shame they don't have GoldenEye for the Wii...

Speaking of Dad, I phoned him yesterday just as soon as I read that Tennesee's coach, Fat Phil Fulmer, had announced his resignation. I figured that'd bring him a grin. He said "I hate to see a man lose his job, but Tennessee's Tennessee."

Last night, the four of us watched "Legacy for the Saint," a slightly eyebrow-raising, but nevertheless very fun caper episode from the sixth season of that wonderful show. It guest-starred T.P. McKenna and Stephanie Beacham, not that I recognized either of them. We've also recently watched the Charmed episode "Wicca Envy," which seemed to resolve the running subplot about Prue's demonic bosses, and in a great way - at no point did the writers spell everything out. They left a lot unexplained, very sensibly leaving us as much in the dark as the heroines as to who Rex and Hannah actually were. Sounds like another excuse for some eye candy, that.



We've also been watching Stargate SG-1 as you know, and there's some evidence that Marie got into this show on account of its eye candy. On this historic day for our country, I'd like to follow the example set by Fox News and, in a way that's as fair and balanced as that network, show off some of this eye candy.



Actually, the episode "Brief Candle" was the first from this show that I really couldn't make some snobbish objection to. Well, I could. You'd think that even at this early stage of the series, they'd have the sense to communicate a little better with the societies they meet, and say things like "We are unfamiliar with your cultural background, and need to know what this gift means before we accept it." Might save Jack the embarassment of waking up married to some hottie after having a bite of cake. Other than that, it was a pretty decent little hour of action/adventure fun.

Well, the kids have been here for ninety minutes and there's been no craziness yet. The office as a whole is a little subdued. I think some people are coming in late today after voting and some others are going to leave early, so it's a pretty weird day for business. I've got a pile of stuff that's awaiting my attention... for lunch, I'm taking the kids to the Mad Italian on the other side of 400, since the one by us closed. Wish I could put 'em to work for me. Wonder if the warehouse needs anything moved...?

If you haven't voted yet, go get in line! And bring a book, you might be there a spell.

Marie and I had just about the most perfect weekend to ourselves you could ask for. The children were in Danville, Kentucky with my folks, and so we got to kick back without any kids around. Marie's been making supper most of the time, with able assistance from two surprisingly eager young cooking students, and so we were able to splurge on some nice meals out. Well, we had all gone to Sweet Tomatoes on Wednesday evening, when the kids could eat for a buck, in order to get some of that fine soup, but other than that, I mean. Anyway, Friday night, we met at my folks' house and went over to Roy's Cheesesteaks for dinner. And that may not be what most people think of when they hear "a nice meal," but damn, those are the best cheesesteaks I've ever had. (Plus Fanta Birch Beer!)

Saturday morning, we got up bright and early, and left a little after 8 to go through Athens and to Lexington, where we spent about an hour playing around in the woods at Shaking Rock Park. This has been one of my favorite hideaways for many years, and there are lots more rocks up in the woods if you go looking for them.



After our morning exercise, we went over to Paul's for lunch. It occurred to me that this was the second weekend in a month that we'd end up having two meals from my list of Twenty Southeastern Restaurants You Must Try Before You Die! Paul's is one of my absolute favorite cue joints, a little hole in the wall that's only open for five and a half hours a week. I think they serve most of their food to go - deer hunters will stop in just as the sun's coming up to get a large order to take out in the forest with them, and tailgaters and picnickers aren't far behind them. Anyway, theirs is No'ca'lina-style BBQ, with hash (they call it stew, but t'isn't), and a vinegar-based sauce, and it is completely wonderful. I don't get out there often enough.

After lunch, we drove back to Athens and did a teeny bit of yardwork at Marie's old place - now come on, somebody wants to buy a goddamn house in Athens - before making our way to the State Botanical Gardens. We hadn't taken a walk in the woods here in five months or so. This time, we decided to walk a portion of the White Trail. Now, if you have never visited these gardens, you are certainly missing out. It is a great place to just get away from everything for a long, quiet hike in the woods, and certainly one of the region's best-kept secrets. Once we got away from the paved paths and down to the river, we only saw four people and a rat snake.

The only objection I have with this place is that they really could do a better job labelling the paths... we got confused as the trail broke into the open to cross under the power lines, for instance. We checked the distances once we got back to the car. Had we stuck strictly to the paths, it would have been a two-mile hike, but when you factor in some back-and-forwards along the Orange and the Orange Alternate paths trying to figure out where the heck we were, we added a good quarter-mile to the walk. So yeah, once we got back to the parking lot, I was very sore. I wouldn't have traded that day for the world, but I do wish they'd put some more signs along the way.

From there, we drove to campus, parked behind Gilbert and walked downtown. We noted sadly the clothing store that moved into where the dearly missed Barnett's used to be, and then visited with Devlin for a bit and spent a good chunk of change on some new releases, and then walked down to the Last Resort Grill for an early supper. We arrived just a few minutes before they were ready to start serving dinner, but they told us we could have drinks or cake while we waited. So we had dessert for an appetizer (mocha chocolate cake) and then ordered a plate of roasted veggies and a pasta dish with duck. It was a little decadent and very, very wonderful.

We got back a little after sunset. We listened to the last quarter of the Dogs beating LSU on the way, and when we got home, I turned on the Bama-Vols game. Y'all know that my dad's having chemo treatment to fight cancer now. I think that he scheduled this trip to Danville as a "just in case," so that he and two of his brothers could watch the game together. They all love Bama more than you love anything - I'm the black sheep of the family for goin' to Georgia - and they all hate Tennessee more than you hate anything. So my son got the rare treat of getting to see the game with the three brothers, and a great game, where the hapless Vols got utterly schooled by the number two team in the nation. (Incidentally, I wanna know who turned the clock back forty years and made it 1968 again, not just because loudmouths on the radio're screaming about Viet Nam-era radicals, but the top three teams in the country are Texas, Bama and Penn State, who are still coached by Joe Paterno.)

Well, Saturday was completely perfect, and somebody upstairs must have mandated this be so, because my body waited until Sunday to rebel against me. We went to bed around ten, and as best I can figure, I was sleeping on my side with my legs curled up underneath me. And all the day's walking caught up with me, and the backs of my thighs cramped and locked that way. Sometime after midnight, I stirred enough to roll onto my back and stretch my legs out. Let me tell you: that was no way to wake up. I've thought about it since it happened and I do not recall ever experiencing that much pain before. Then I felt guilty waking Marie when I yelled bloody murder. She massaged the backs of my legs while I swallowed a pillow. So I drank some water and ate a banana to get more hydration and potassium into my muscles and had a li'l acetaminophen with codeine and what I did on Sunday was sit on the couch reading while very slowly flexing my legs. Frankly, I would rather be clobbered into unconsciousness by Popeye the Sailor than have that happen ever again:



More about Popeye in a subsequent post.

Well, I caught up with some emails and sent Ric about half of the pictures I took at his wedding, and Marie did some gardening and I watched the Falcons lose on account of a bullshit call in the fourth quarter and we had pancakes at a late breakfast and Marie cooked tsardust chicken for supper and we collected the younguns when they got back around 8.30.

They took the very scenic way back from Danville; as I understand it, Dad bought a barrel of Maker's Mark whiskey some time back, allowing him to visit the distillery and have bottles poured at any time from it. So they went by this place, which is apparently near London, KY, so Dad could see this great big barrel with his name on it and have some bourbon straight from it. I tell myself that's a tad eccentric, but then I remember that if I actually liked Kentucky bourbon, I'd probably do exactly the same.

Well, my legs quit aching overnight and I can navigate stairs without incident. We have a new employee in our department, and it's the receptionist's turn to go to the dept. lunch for her, so I'll have ample time to read my block-o-Sayers without rushing. (Basically, if the department takes a ninety minute lunch, then I get that long on my own.) The new girl's name is four letters' different from someone I used to date, so I had an awful double-take when I saw it! Oh, Marie also cooked up some chili yesterday which we're going to have for supper tonight, so this small salad I'm going to have while I read my Sayers is gonna seem incredibly unsatisfying, knowing there's good chili awaitin' me this evening!

Tomorrow, we're going to early vote now that they've got the later locations open in my county. The kiddos are all ready to go trick-or-treating, and we're all ready for the Dawgs to beat Florida - we want to go to the Taco Stand to see it, if anybody wants to join us - and I'm all ready to go back to sleep! Blasted work, there's too much of it. I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Apologies for the impersonal way of putting this.

Every football season, I make the announcement that none of you, not one, have really lived until you've watched a Bama football game with my dad. It does not matter where your support lies, or even whether you care about the great game at all, it's just a simple fact that nobody in the history of our planet has ever enjoyed anything that's ever been nearly as much as my dad enjoys watching his Crimson Tide.

I say this every year knowing that, well, the overwhelming majority of you won't actually take me up on this suggestion. But there may not be many chances after this season.

I mentioned in passing that Dad's health is not as good as it could be. (It's certainly better than it should be, considering how he's punished his body for seventy years, but that's beside the point.) A couple of weeks back, I stayed with him in the hospital one night while a problem with his colon was addressed.

It was there they found a spot on his liver, which caused them to run some tests, and then do an MRI, and then call him in for a biopsy Monday morning, and then call him back to the doc a little earlier today in order to tell him he has cancer.

We will know more after the weekend, when he follows up with the oncologist. I do not have any more details at this time.

But if you do want to see a Bama game with them, well, I think they're underdogs against Clemson Saturday, but I am hoping to watch that with him.

Well, it appears that the stinkin' Bats have won the division. Never mind, Toledo will be back to kick ass and take names next season. Go Mud Hens!

The last couple of days have been very stressful. I guess I could note that I'm up at this ungodly hour because I had, of all things, a Blair Witch Project nightmare. Honestly, I was having this perfectly innocuous dream about Burgess Meredith, who was still living, owning a chain of hamburger restaurants in some city which specialized in a chocolate banana lemonade drink, and a couple of shuttle buses which went around this city in different routes going around to each restaurant. Then, I was no longer a participant in the story but a viewer watching this on TV, and then one of the cameramen started re-enacting the last two minutes of THAT MOVIE, which, scoff if you must, was the most horrifying entertainment event of my life, and since I trained myself to wake up as soon as that sort of thing starts happening in my subconscious, I'm up... bleary-eyed and with fumbling fingers, but... damn, I love/hate that film.

Anyway, the whole restaurant/fucked-up beverage business was clearly inspired by watching Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on Food Network, which is the greatest television show ever made. I discovered this Friday night sitting with my dad in the hospital. Hello surprise! Yeah, that's what I meant by stressful. He seems to be fine and is back home and this was comparatively minor, insofar as anything at his age and health is minor, but he had a small problem with his colon last week, so they had to pump him full of drugs and wait for nature to start working again.

Mom called me Friday and asked me to sit with him for the evening, so I headed down to St. Joe's after work. This was very soul-destroyingly depressing, since Dad was so... enfeebled and helpless, if you will. He slept for almost the entire time I was there, but otherwise he was babbling and unhappy and whiny. And beyond that, you really don't want to know and I will refrain from passing along the details.

I got back a little after midnight Saturday morning after my brother relieved me for the midnight shift. My body was very tired, as it is now, since I'd been up and doing stuff since about 4.30 the night before. But I couldn't sleep. I got not-quite three hours, was up for two, then tried to sleep but only succeeded in waking Marie with constant adjusting. Got another two hours eventually, and I napped for about five minutes twice yesterday. We'd intended to just have a quick run to Athens to cut the grass at her old place and come home quickly, but it took longer than planned... the sensible thing would have been to let her and the kids go to Athens and try and get some sleep, but I was so upset by Dad's condition that I decided I needed a comfort burrito from Mean Bean. This made things 22.5% better. Fighting a bunch of clueless incoming freshmen for a parking place downtown afterwards then made things 6.5% worse.

Well, while the Hipster Son is still deep in debt with me for his purchases, his sister has been doing an excellent job saving, and so we stopped in the Titan in Smyrna for her to spend $31 on a BeGoth doll. I think she picked a really gorgeous one named Leda Swanson. So we hopped over to the folks' house - Dad was discharged about 11 yesterday morning - to see about him, and for my mom to hit the ceiling over this doll her precious granddaughter had bought. I wasn't even in the mood for poking and prodding on this front, but at least my li'l love recognized up front: "Let's show Grandma my new doll - she'll hate it!!"

Anyway, Dad's doing a lot better, which is what's important, but I'm clearly still very bothered by how helpless he was Friday night. That's not how my indestructible father is supposed to be.

I wish I could sleep.

Yes, indeedy, we had a very good weekend. I hope y'all did as well.

Thursday evening, I met dramaqueer over at chetbakerfan's place. We went to dinner at El Pique, which is one of the very few El-This-Los-That places in the metro area where I can stand to eat anymore. They are on the East-West Connector in Powder Springs and have a wonderful table salsa and very good guacamole. I know that not many of y'all are in this area often, but if you are, make a note to give this place a try. After dinner, we watched some old sitcoms back at Dave's place, and a couple of season two Venture Brothers.

Friday was moving day. I had a long day at work, a decent, lazy drive home and I'd no sooner settled down with a sandwich at the computer to read the 2000 AD message boards at a nice leisurely pace when my adrenaline-charged girlfriend roared the big Penske truck backwards up the drive ready to unload it NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

"Did you want this sandwich I got for you?" I asked.

She took one bite and said "Thanks, let's GO GO GO GO!"

Now, those of you unfamiliar with the Hipster Pad may not know that it sits atop a mountainous peak, with a steep drive not unlike the first hill of the Great American Scream Machine. Unpacking a truck is incredibly weird, since you have to move things up to the back of the truck and then down the ramp, with the omnipresent quiet groan of the emergency brake reminding you that shifting weight around like this wasn't what emergency brakes were designed for. You remember the cliffhanger ending to The Italian Job? Felt kinda like that.

Well, anyway, some sleep and codeine later, we returned the truck about 9, and then stopped by the IHOP near the Big Chicken for breakfast. We'd picked up some BOGO coupons at the Sounds game last week good at any IHOP, and let me tell you, those praline & peach pancakes were amazingly yummy. Then we did some window shopping and went home and I crashed for a nap since I'd been up half the night and Marie began the long task of unpacking her stuff and setting up the kitchen. I had a grand time rearranging the bookshelves in the afternoon. The place is still a complete disaster, and the garage is still jam-packed with stuff, but it's looking better!

In the evening, we went over to my folks' place for an odd little expedition. Some of y'all may recall that some years ago, when gas was a little less expensive, I drove two hours for a chili dog. Well, my dad learned that the venerable old Atlanta steakhouse, Pilgreen's, still exists, but only as a single restaurant in McDonough, down I-75 in Henry County, so evidently my madness is genetic and not an affectation, because Dad wanted to drive an hour for a steak and a martini. Pilgreen's started in the 1930s, and was a fixture on Lee Street for forty years before the building burned in the late '90s. There were also locations in Morrow and Roswell, but now there is just this one. They have absolutely yummy fried cauliflower and I had a wonderful sirloin and salad. It was a very good meal indeed.

Now the ride home took a while. Dad and I were sitting in back, so I missed exactly what happened, but there was some kind of navigational error up front, and a wrong turn was made, and before long we were travelling northeast from McDonough. That is not the way you want to go. "We're heading towards Covington," I said, and when we got back and I checked the map, I wasn't far wrong. Eventually we went north up GA 212 and found our way past that monastery in Rockdale County and into south Dekalb and Flat Shoals Road. That was a good little adventure - I'm just glad my folks had a full tank of gas!

I slept a little better Saturday night, but I was still up needlessly early. Marie had to get back to Athens because she has one last week of work, so I "drove" her up there, but she took the wheel about halfway while I grabbed a quick nap and found a second wind. Well, we dropped her and her overnight bags off, and then I went to Wuxtry to pick up some stuff from the Unsinkable Robert Brown, including Alex Robinson's new book Too Cool to Be Forgotten and a new collection of Pat Mills' Sha, a comic made for France which apparently appeared in the late 1990s in Heavy Metal. I also got the latest three 2000 ADs and the Meg, and those completely shook off the doledrums that I mentioned in the last Thrillpowered Thursday. There is some amazingly good stuff in these issues right now, especially the new Dante.

I grabbed some lunch at Barberito's as Mean Bean was closed for the day, and hurried on back, returning before 3. Then I didn't do much of anything other than straighten and unpack and arrange a little more. Most of this needs Marie's eye, so hopefully this coming weekend things'll be a little less crazy in the house.

In the evening, I went to Borders to buy my dad's birthday present. Looks like the one near me is converting over to that new-fangled "concept" store design, with all the comics and graphic novels in a six-shelf enclosed area almost in the center of the floor, with the humor shelves right next to them. Next to the enclosure is a separate wire rack that I suppose Viz might have provided, because the top of the rack is a big ad banner with One Pound Gospel on one side and Naruto on the other. See, that's how you sell books: you advertize them, and you put those ads right in front of potential customers. I hope One Pound Gospel sells very well for Viz, because it is very sweet and funny, and maybe, just maybe, if it does well, they'll start Urusei Yatsura in 2009...?

Oh, and speaking of comics, if you've never seen this, Alan Moore and Peter Bagge blow the lid off the origins of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Well, tomorrow, my brother's bringing the truck over and we're loading some of the things I don't need anymore, like that hideous love seat and that awful dining room table, and hauling those to the thrift store and picking up a new utility shelf to stack the rest of the 2000 AD milk crates in the guest room. I apologized to Marie for this looking kind of ugly, but we need shelves that can hold a really enormous weight without bowing, and I just don't see this sort of thing at IKEA. Maybe when we move to a new place one day down the road, we can get something a little more aesthetically pleasing.

I hope you all had a good weekend. What do you have planned for the week?

My little jaunt down memory lane (June '01 - April '02) has reached a temporary rest stop, in time for me to look around the present and see that things are so darn decent that I don't have much to talk about. I've not felt the need to let people know What I Just Read lately, the kids are either at my folks or behaving pretty darn well when they aren't, work is work and so on.

Marie brought another carload of stuff and we hung some pictures, but otherwise we didn't do much of anything Saturday. We did watch the Sontaran two-parter of Doctor Who, and like everybody else but me, she didn't like it much. I like the dialogue and performances so much that I'm willing to overlook the plot deficiencies, but damn, that story would have been a good degree better had Luke Rattigan not been a stupid teenager, but rather a cranky old guy. And a line like "It could take up to an hour for all of the poison to be completely dispersed" would have helped. And how did the Doctor know that Luke managed to hit the button and make everything go boom before the Sontarans gunned him down? And... well, dammit, the acting is great...

The kids and I watched one of my favorite Gilmore Girls episodes yesterday, "Love and War and Snow," which is a grin-inducing joy from start to finish, except I forgot to show the kids afterwards that I have the Duran Duran poster on the back of Lorelai's old bedroom door. It's the fold-out poster sleeve of the "Reflex" seven-inch, which is the only Duran 45 that I own, specifically because of the novelty of the poster sleeve. I've already shown them photographic evidence that I used to have Lorelai's old Bunnymen poster as well! Then we watched the Sherlock Holmes adaptation of "The Devil's Foot," which successfully makes Cornwall look like the most beautiful and desolate place in the world, but which probably was more frightening when it was first written, before the general public knew of such things as magic mushrooms and before LSD was concocted.

Sunday evening, my son and I went to dinner with my dad and my brother. It wasn't a really good meal, but Dad enlivened it with more of his odd stories. Twelve years ago, Newt Gingrich, who was Speaker of the House at the time, gave Dad one of his little gavel lapel pins, and people kept asking Dad whether he was a judge when he wore it. Dad gradually went from polite denial to being a flirting smartass ("Just a judge of great beauty") to just lying. He and some friends once went to Scalini's on a Friday night, and when the greeter asked him, he replied, "Yes, up in Ellijay, we've got something that's going to take us all weekend to get to the end of, so we're taking a dinner break down here."

Now, that reply does not make a lick of sense. But it had the remarkable effect of having the woman quietly say "Seat the judge and his party immediately." Dad felt he might embarass her by admitting he was just kidding, so they got good seats promptly...

In other news, the poor old Atlanta Dream, our WNBA franchise, is off to a 0-13 start in its debut season. Ouch. The Georgia Force is in the playoffs and playing to good crowds. We'll not have the chance to see them this year, it turns out, but we're going to catch three baseball games while out of town on short road trips this summer. (Albeit not the Mud Hens, who did get completely clobbered by the Yankees, 10-1, last night, but still lead their division.) I am really looking forward to some games!

Wow. Good golly, miss molly, am I ever dead on my feet. I woke at 4 and couldn't fall asleep again, and of course nothing makes you sleepy like a long drive through a light rain. Zzzzzzzz

Friday night we had a good mob over for Doctor Who, and I inadvertantly upset one of my neighbors. The Hipster Daughter had a friend over, and the mom, who tain't on my favorite person's list anyway, phoned ahead to ask what this "movie" we'd be watching is. I explained that it wasn't a movie, but the newest episode of Doctor Who, and she misheard me as saying Doctor Seuss. Turns out that Doctor Who is banned from their house on account of being too scary, but that didn't stop the little tyke from taking advantage of the situation and sitting down to watch it. Now, this is a nine year-old, and you'd think somebody of that age would have some proper experience with fire breathing dimetrodons and stuff, but this was not the case, and, two-thirds in, a big gunfight proved too traumatic for her, so the girls went upstairs to watch teenage girls complaining about teenage boys on one of those identikit Nickelodeon shows. Just as well they left before Tim McInerney started playing with the back of his head then.

Now, I must point out that the neighbor in question lives behind us, just up the hill. I mean, not so close that I should worry about them being Gladys Kravitz, but in sight of us. When the Hipster Daughter goes to visit, she does what any sensible child does, and goes up through the woods in the backyard. So she sat and waited in the backyard for her friend, not knowing that the friend would be delivered via SUV to the front of the house. My instinct, of course, was to send the kid home the sensible way, but I went ahead and wasted gas driving her home so as not to aggravate anybody any further, just in case the poor kid woke up with nightmares. At any rate, I don't think any more invitations will be extended to this girl.

Saturday, Marie watched Cloverfield with the Hipster Son. Remember the age when you could watch a film seven times in a week? That's how old he is. For his birthday, he asked for a trip to Fernbank Museum to see the "In the Dark" exhibit about nocturnal critters, so we went down that way, stopping in for lunch at Fat Matt's for fried chicken (mmm-MMMM!) and then going down for the learnin' stuff. We had a pretty good time, and some of the exhibits are neat, but I still can't believe how much it costs to get into that place. I swear I'd go twice as often if they'd lower admission by a third. The nocturnal exhibit was pretty fun, but "A Walk Through Time" is still the best thing there.

Well, we mosied on back to visit my dad after that, and he invited us to go to dinner. Mom was out of town, and I was looking forward to spending a little time hearing oddball stories from him, but no sooner did we arrive than a friend he's had since high school phoned to chat. They talked for a very long time, while Marie and I kicked back on their reclining loveseat and eventually zonked right out. By the time Dad finished his conversation and we'd woken from our nap, his Restless Legs Syndrome had kicked in pretty bad, and he said he couldn't join us for supper after all, but he'd buy us grub all the same. I amended that and suggested I go pick up US Cafe for everyone. Incidentally, you may recall that my dad's been pissing me off with the stupid amount of gambling he's been doing? Well, he takes Requip [ropinirole] for his RLS. Look what happens when you Google ropinrole and gambling.

So we chatted for a bit, and he told us about the time he missed seeing the Kentucky Derby in the mid-sixties with then-Governor Richard Nixon, when the new next-door neighbor stopped by to give advance word that her teen daughter would be having a birthday party in the evening, and to please forgive the noise. I mention this because when he has the grandkids over, there's nothing my dad likes to do more than make a hell of a lot of noise with fireworks. And when the sun goes down and you start shooting off fireworks right next door to a carport full of teenagers, you bring 'em running over faster than lightning. And when you've got twelve teenagers in a backyard with a swimming pool at night, well, yeah, the birthday girl got thrown in. That was funny!

Marie had to go back to Athens Saturday evening so she could do some chores early on Sunday. The kids and I slept late, and in the afternoon went to play in a Heroclix tournament. We only bought four boosters of this expansion (DC Crisis) in order to play in a sealed event. What I decided to do instead was swing by a game store in Alpharetta, where I bought a big pile of grunts from the very first Clix set - SHIELD Troopers, Skrulls, Henchmen - for 25-50 cents each, and swapped them with a friend who buys multiple cases of the sets to get all the chase figures and is left with all these bajillions of extras. I didn't get a complete set from Tommy, but I got most of them, and spent only a little money. I came second in the game, but the Hipster Son had an awful day and came dead last. At least he made an awesome trade at the end of the day.

In the evening, we had sandwiches and watched Buffy and the children had a half-hour of Super Quiet UnInterrupted Reading Time (SQUIRT - and if you have kids, you should make sure they have SQUIRT as well). They're halfway through their CRCTs and tell me that they're pathetically easy. That's good. I think we're going to have a slow week with lots of wacky kid stuff and reading time and TV time. If work doesn't make my brain explode first! Take care of yourselves!

Last month, kudzu told me about one of the neatest books I've seen, Six Flags Over Georgia by Tim Hollis, part of the Images of America series. It's a pricy $20 for something so small and monochrome, and the binding is less than perfect, but heavens, what memories it unlocked. It also combines two of my pet interests: amusement parks and Sid & Marty Krofft.

These days, Six Flags is a deeply uninteresting prospect. They decided in the mid-80s to chase the teen dollar and focussed on high-speed coasters to the exclusion of just about every other kind of ride. And that isn't completely horrible; I've always loved roller coasters, but I'm getting towards the other end of the age bracket that will ride them in comfort, you know? And as for the park itself, well, there isn't anything wrong with it that banning everybody between the ages of 15 and 20 wouldn't fix. When I was a kid, and Six Flags was a family park, it was millions of times more interesting, because of the variety of rides and the sense of odd, otherworldly weirdness of the place. In the summers from 1977 to 1981, my family took an annual trip down the road there. Sure, by '81, my mom had had her fill of the place, and thereafter resigned herself to twice-monthly shuttle duty once my brother and I got season passes. Certainly, much of the interest I have lost in Six Flags can be chalked up to age and crankiness, but when the park itself does so little to keep the strangeness that made it so appealing when I was a kid, it shares the blame. The last time we rode the Monster Plantation, half of the robots weren't even moving, and those that did were out of synch with the boat. The Horror Cave and the Casa Magnetica were removed years ago, and Buford Buzzard retired when I was in high school.



We didn't visit the park until after Sid & Marty Krofft severed ties with the Six Flags organization, so a whole lot of stuff in this book was pretty obscure, even to me. The general line is that the Kroffts went from weird live shows to building costumes for Hanna-Barbera's Banana Splits to doing H.R. Pufnstuf in 1969, but a more honest lineage is traced through Six Flags, because Pufnstuf, both the character and the TV show, evolved from a weird series of shows at the park in 1968 starring a dragon called Luther. The casts of H.R. Pufnstuf and Lidsville - or odd, tall, off-model variants of them - were regular characters at the park through the early 1970s.


Jimmy Carter: America's Police Chief

One of the really unusual facts of my own childhood visits is that we did not go through the Lickskillet (Wild West) sections for at least three years. My parents thought that if you came down from either direction, it just led you to the old rear entrance, where the Deja Vu coaster is now. (Or was - I read this morning that, madly, this brilliant ride's been removed!) Learning from schoolfriends that there were more rides down there which I'd missed out on was a completely infuriating shock, since it'd be months before I could return and try these Drunken Barrels that people spoke of.

Actually, one thing that the book did do is prompt even more questions. For decades, I believed that the Barrels replaced the Spindle Top, a "centrifugal force" ride which you sometimes see at state fairs, and which schoolyard urban legend suggested was removed because some girl was killed in a freak accident - cut in half - in a malfunction when the floor rose again too early. It turns out that the Barrels actually replaced what seems to have been a remarkably fun ride called the Wheel Burrow in 1971. (The Spindle Top was apparently in a place next to the Drunken Barrels, and by the time I learned enough to go down to Lickskillet and see, it was gone, replaced by some shops. Allegedly. This is what Neal and I pieced together from a few Six Flags fan pages today, but none of them are entirely accurate, so take that with a grain of salt. A scan of the Wheel Burrow is in the comments.) Later on, the Barrels were removed to make room for the Wheelie, which was relocated from the park's USA section, and which is one of my favorite rides there.



This is what I mean when I say that Six Flags has no sense of its own history. Until enthusiasts began putting web pages and books together about this sort of thing, a ride removed was a ride that effectively never existed. I can understand that there is little mileage in making note of "things we used to have" in a park designed to attract the dollars of the present, but it's unfortunate that it falls down to group memory to have any chance of surviving for future generations to see.

As a side note, my kids find it quite bizarre to consider that the Krofft characters used to be the park's spokespuppets. Pufnstuf and Lidsville exist to them solely as those weird old TV shows their dad has on DVD and in coloring books; since they have been otherwise completely absent from the life of kids their age, it doesn't make sense to see pictures of them in this book, whereas the current Looney Tunes spokescharacters do make sense. All kids know who Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are, and it is understood that they are "at" Six Flags. So... what the heck was H.R. Pufnstuf doing there? It's trying to put two completely disparate elements together, and for them, they don't fit.

When we were making our family trips, there was a ride, pictured in the book in great detail, called Jean Ribaut's River Adventure. This was a slow boat ride, not entirely unlike the Jungle Cruise at Disney parks, up a river, observing animatronic frontiersmen and aggressive Indians, who would occasionally "attack" the boat by way of volleys of arrows on thin wires which would just miss the guests. One of my memories from the day was going to take my seat - I was about eight - and complaining that the seat was wet. The teen who acted as "tour guide" and "steered" the boat (it was, of course, on a track), quickly assured me that it was "magic Six Flags water" and would not get me wet. Someone should've given that teen a medal. Jean Ribaut's River Adventure was removed in the early 80s and replaced by Thunder River, which must've held some kind of record for the most boring ride in the history of amusements before they installed Splashwater Falls.



Of course, the really big thing in the book is an as-complete-as-possible tour through the Tales of the Okeefenokee dark ride, the thing that Six Flags has politely and discreetly swept under their carpet. Don't get me wrong, the Monster Plantation, which replaced it, was all kinds of fun when it was being maintained, and probably a far better ride, but the Okeefenokee ride had the joint thrill of (a) being full of Sid & Marty Krofft creations, all of which were probably dumped in a landfill and (b) existing before the Uncle Remus backlash made it impossible to do this sort of thing.

That Six Flags would open with an Uncle Remus ride is pretty remarkable in retrospect. Disney has done its best to deny any existence of Song of the South, but those characters were pretty strongly identified with Disney in the late 1960s, thanks to all the merchandising that used to be around - Disney even did a Tales of Uncle Remus newspaper strip which ran for many years - giving pretty solid stamps for generations of kids as to what Br'er Rabbit and the gang were supposed to look like. So Sid & Marty Krofft's version probably looked to most riders like a cheap bootleg version of Disney. The ride was the only thing that survived the Krofft purge that Six Flags embarked upon when they left to open their own park in downtown Atlanta, though The World of Sid & Marty Krofft is a story for another time, and Okeefenokee only lasted another four or five years before the Monster Plantation replaced it.



My dad always enjoyed Six Flags more than my mom. That's perhaps unsurprising, but I know that after his first couple of heart attacks, when I was in the seventh grade, I was really broken up about the fact that he wouldn't be able to ride the Scream Machine with us anymore. Here I am with him and my brother in 1978 in front of that illustrious coaster.



The rotten thing is, Six Flags is still there, but it's not the same at all. It costs too damn much to do anything and all the oddness has been scrubbed and sanitized away. It's just that place you have to go if you wish to ride roller coasters. I promised the kids we'd go early this summer, and I especially have to do that since the trip we planned last year had to be abandoned because of the 100-degree heat the day I took off work. But we won't see the skeletal remains of Six Flags tourists which they used to have stuck in front of a "house" visible only from the railroad; that sort of thing was yanked out years ago.

Unfortunately, time hasn't been incredibly kind to my own memories. I was trying to place more events from the times I went with my parents, but most of those are gone, and those that remain are from the times I went in middle school, usually with my brother and one or two friends. We'd go about eight times each summer, getting full use out of those season passes, and eating at the old "...Tacos...Nachos" stand that used to be near Thunder River, because for some reason (most likely a park oversight), the Mexican food there was fifty cents cheaper than the other restaurants.

But the time with my folks I don't remember very clearly. My dad lost his wallet there one year, but somebody turned it in and he picked it up a few days later. I remember that the Mindbender, which was installed a year before the Jolly Roger Island area, had a completely different entrance, which was more difficult to find. There wasn't a long line for it that time. It scared the absolute wits out of my brother and me. We were both bawling. Years and years later, the girlchild was just about as terrified by the Dahlonega, a coaster which time has proven to be a pretty pitiful little bore.

One of the greatest finds in the book was this picture, vindicating an old memory of mine:



That's the Wombles, in 1977, having a picnic with Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Bear and another Okeefenokee critter in the shadow of the Scream Machine. I knew I wasn't crazy.

1977 was the first year we went to Six Flags, and I was completely alarmed by these odd, snouty creatures wandering around the park. For years, I just called them "goons," and nobody else remembered seeing them there. It wasn't 'til I was in college that I found a photo of a Womble, recognized it as one of those "goons" from my childhood, and then I was completely baffled. What the fuck were the Wombles doing in Six Flags? The Wombles' U.S. appearances were few and far between. Their episodes periodically appeared on Captain Kangaroo for a couple of years, but otherwise we were spared the omnipresent, Tellytubby-like children's juggernaut that was the Wombles, who racked up more weeks on the UK album chart in 1974 than any other act.

(Those of you Americans and younguns unfamiliar with the Wombles might compare their show to Clangers or The Magic Roundabout, spectacularly cute little six-minute stop-motion animations with the voices all done by a narrator, in this case Bernard Cribbins, who'll be back on television in three days with a recurring part in Doctor Who. Since the Master has been shown to have an interest in both the Clangers and the Tellytubbies, it should go without saying that the Master knows who Bernard Cribbins is. Anyway, I'll stick a couple more Wombles photos in the comments.)

So no, I never met Pufnstuf at Six Flags. I never even met Rah-Rah. But I met the Wombles as a kid. And, at Vacation Bible School one year around the same time, I met the Atlanta Braves Bleacher Creature. Remember him?



And finally, as we close the photo album at the end of this sentimental journey, here's my brother and me at another amusement park in the 1970s. This is Magic World, which used to be in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We had a family trip with my folks and my aunt Lera up to the Smokey Mountains and I pressured everyone to take us here because the travel brochure showed that there were dinosaurs. There was a freaking enormous brontosaurus out front, and caves that looked exactly like the caves in Land of the Lost, made, no doubt, from the same odd material. There were a few small rides, none of which would thrill you too much, and most of which relied on odd light shows and moving walls to work. And there were lots of great big prehistoric monsters to climb on. Behind us in this photo, you can see the entrance to the Flying Saucer ride.



Magic World is now gone, run out of business, perhaps, by the much larger Dollyworld. I want to say the site's now a big minigolf course, and that the big brontosaurus might still be there, attracting tourists, just another odd piece of Roadside Americana.

Apart from the mystery of the Spindle Top, the biggest question I have now is... what the hell was with my mom's obsession about dressing me in horizontal-striped tank tops??

The black & white photos in this entry are from Tim Hollis's book, which you can order from Amazon by clicking the link above.

Y'all know I'm crazy about small restaurant chains. Turns out Red Robin, a west coast chain of pricy, bizarre, "gourmet" hamburgers - sort of the opposite of the no-frills Five Guys experience - snuck into Georgia when nobody was looking. There are stores open now in Columbus, Newnan, Evans and Lawrenceville, with a fifth opening in Cumming soon. And how'd I find out about this? Somehow, our TV's picking up basic cable and I let the kids watch My Gym Partner is a Monkey in time to catch an ad.

We had a good weekend, all told. We had a small crowd over on Thursday to watch The Last of Sheila for Movie Night. This was a structure-skewing murder mystery that did not completely win me over, but damned if I can find anything wrong with it. I'd sort of like to see it again now that all the clues have been laid out.

Friday night, I don't think we did anything of great import.

Saturday, this damn kids' cable channel was playing Spongebob Squarepants all day. Seemed every time I turned it off, some child would wander back through and start it up again. When I was a kid, I thought it horribly unfair that my dad banned Jabberjaw - remember that? - from our house, because the voice drove him nuts. And Jabberjaw was only on for thirty minutes a day for one TV season. If I ever hear Spongebob's voice again, they'd let me off easy for the murders I'd do.

Over the last weekend, I found several books at Acapella that I wanted, but I didn't want to spend the money, and wasn't actually sure whether I had some of them. So we went back down there and I got everything I wanted, cheap. We also picked up some kosher Coke and had dinner at Dusty's. They have a little corn salad there which is just too wonderful for words! I promised the kids we'd be home for the Kids' Choice Awards on Nick. Another warning for other parents: do your best to raise them in isolation from celebrity culture, but once they're in school, that's all she wrote. It's all Shia LeBouef and Naked Brothers Band and Ashlee Simpson and Shrek III after second grade. Harrison Ford showed up to present an award to Eddie Murphy and plug the new Indiana Jones film, and good-naturedly accepted a sliming. What a good sport.

Sunday, we played Heroclix. My team got its butt kicked, since it wasn't a really game-measured set of pieces, but I had fun with it. Can you guess the theme?

LE Peter Parker
V Green Goblin
V Captain Atom
V Blue Beetle + "Taunt" feat
R Question
C Creeper

Yes! I made a Steve Ditko Heroclix team. In round two, I had to play my son, who soundly thumped me with his much more competitive team, but only with a little coaching from me. I made up for helping him out by being a complete meanie with the Taunt feat, not only forcing him to move his Zombie Giant-Man all over the damn board and tying him up, but also blocking him with a pog. ("Thug," whom we decided must be the guy who shot Peter Parker's Uncle Ben. The Hipster Son had the Joe Chill pog, and the two of them jockeyed for bragging rights.)

This doesn't affect anybody, but a big flaw in Heroclix is that "Taunt" cannot be assigned to the Question because Question has 0 range. The opportunity to do that is just too great. "DOCTOR DOOM! I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHETHER YOU HAVE READ AYN RAND'S ATLAS SHRUGGED?" Admittedly, it was about one in the morning when that crossed my mind, but I laughed like a drain at the silliness of it...

The Hipster Daughter has finished The Yearling and is preparing to take a test on it tomorrow. She's been all kinds of rotten about getting this book finished. I'm kind of glad this trial is over. Now she wants to dance to a Lindsay Lohan CD which I have not heard her play in almost two years in the school talent show. I think I'll discourage her from doing that, you know?

This weekend's the road trip. I have the worst case of Spring Fever anybody's ever seen since... well, me, last spring. GRAH FRIDAY GET HERE NOW.

A couple of years back - actually, it must have been closer to three - my dad built me this really fantastic utility shelf which is in the guest room, and which holds eight crates and boxes of my 2000 AD collection. The shelves are actually old countertops he'd found somewhere. I told him then it was fantastic and that I'd like a mate as soon as possible.

Since the flood in the summer of '05, it slipped straight off the radar as the room just became a storage room and became full of old Playstations and dying VCRs. But as things have been changing for the better and we've been cleaning the house and getting rid of stuff, the need for the second shelf has returned. So Dad asked me to measure the dimensions and he'd get started.

Last night, we went to my folks' house for dinner (Mom made meatballs in a light, Worstershire sauce which was pretty good) and I gave Dad the plans. He scratched his head and was completely baffled how he'd assembled the initial shelf in the first place. Part of the problem is that he built the frame around the countertops, and he since used the ones he had left on some other project.

As we talked, he leaned forward a little and his reading glasses fell from his nose onto his desk. "I hate these things. Fifty years, I didn't break a pair of glasses. I had that stupid surgery so I could see better when I drive, now I need reading glasses to see up close, and I've broken three pairs of the damn things in a month."

This week, I'm going to move the magazine storage into the closet, and set aside pah-lenty of room for Marie to move her scientific journals and periodicals. We've got a few kick back and do nothin' days to watch TV and play. Friday is the kids' Valentine's dance at school, and Saturday night we're going to see some hockey in Gwinnett. (I also have to do classroom Valentines. Lordy, am I tired of those.)

Everything's coming together very nicely indeed. :-)

The other thing I want to talk about is... boy, there sure has been a lot of fun comic gossip this year, hasn't there? This is only the sixth week of the year, and between the "oh, no, they painted Wonder Woman's costume on Tiffany Fallon" fuss and the "publishers need to stop selling advance copies of new books at cons" fuss, not to mention the "Spider-Man made a deal with the devil and swapped his marriage for Aunt May not to die" fuss, there's been plenty of popcorn to chew on. Just yesterday, Dave Sim and Gail Simone had a pretty interesting debate at Sequential Tart which I am still reading, and Dirk Deppey published an incredibly interesting essay, spurred by a group of readers who are trying to pressure DC into including, in the pages of Batman comics, a memorial case for a briefly-active female Robin.

Don't get me wrong, I love watching a good online debate, but really, there are times where some of the participants just don't actually seem to enjoy reading comics at all. Well, obviously, Dirk enjoys sneering at the suckers who actually give Marvel money for that retarded Spider-Man plot, and I certainly enjoy reading him sneering. But seriously, where's the joy? Where's the love?

(That said, I've not bought Playboy in a long time - the last time would have been to read the Bettie Page interview - and I am curious whether this was a full pictorial of Fallon in body paint or whether she was just on the cover. Does anyone know? Surely someone out there still subscribes...)

Swear to God, my dad is the only man in America who can get a splinter in his thumb at an Italian restaurant.

No, I won't elaborate, because I don't know any more than that. I love my dad, but heavens, can he ever be a handful sometimes. I'm beginning to think that with his increased obsessions with gambling, drinking and smoking cigars, he's just trying to prepare me for the worst-case scenarios of what my own younguns might be getting up to behind my back in a few years.

On the other hand, Saturday around 11 am, see, that wasn't the first time and it probably won't be the last that a bunch of bleary-eyed people about my age went stumbling home in a little disbelief that a seventy year-old stayed up just as late as them, and took all their money at the poker table.

I think I'm just aggravated that their house smells like nasty old cigars now.

* * *

Why I don't much care for Major League Baseball: Bud Selig's too much of a sissy to ban those players named in the Mitchell Report from the game for life, strip each named player of any record he might have obtained, and then ban them from the Hall of Fame. You want to do the right thing? That would be it. Close the book and move on.

Otherwise, what was the point of the thing?

* * *

You know what's really embarassing? Miami finally won a game yesterday. They're like one and ninety or something. And yet, they are thrilled that they are not as pathetic as the Atlanta Falcons.

* * *

My mind is very, very scattershot this morning, as the above unconnected statements might indicate. I got frustrated with the state of my closet earlier, and figured I needed to rearrange everything, but then I figured since Marie will be moving in next year, I should wait and see what she can contribute. And the same with the linen closet and the library closet... and man, am I ever sick of the junk room downstairs. I swear, once upon a time, that room was going okay. Then there was the flood and I've just piled crap in there ever since.

We're going to turn it into a guest room, and find the right shelving - and throw that warped, ugly old, too-wide useless chest-high thing OUT - and make it really nice... but it seems like so long away. Another thing I want to do, once we have new shelving in the guest room and turn that into the defacto second library, is move the paperback books I have in the shelves under the stairs into the guest room, and then actually use the staircase storage for things like my boxes of old action figures and such.

And I don't have the energy yet. I just have discontent and a lack of pleasure in my place. I still haven't wrapped presents. ARGH. I will do (some of) that tonight. I guess I can probably stack all those Virgin Doctor Who NAs and MAs (which are currently shelved under the stairs) in a box, and stick it in the guest-room-to-be until we get the new shelving, and just begin clearing out space, anyway.

I realize I'm coming across as impatient and cranky, but I am so happy with Marie. We've been dating for fourteen months now and have not had a single cross word. She puts up with my moodiness and little obsessions, and she's so good with the kids. She'll be in town tomorrow and has hinted that they'll be doing some baking before I get home. Mmmmm!

One thing I do have is all kinds of space in the kitchen cabinets for whatever stuff she has. Since I've just had the bare minimum for about five years, there is room a-plenty for whatever mixing bowls and cookie sheets and muffin pans and things she has! Yeah, I know that she says absurdly nice things about what a generous, loving and accomodating sweetie I am, but she is all of these things and she bakes. Bakes well. So I guess she got a pretty good catch in this super-cool single dad and his groovy kiddos, but I got an awesome catch in her.

This will be an insanely busy week. I'm working late today, and Marie will be in tomorrow... on Wednesday, I am taking the kids shopping to let them pick out some of their presents early. We have a secret Santa party on Friday, and then Saturday morning it's off to St. Simon's Island for a couple of days.

* * *

One other thing to note, for posterity's sake, was that December's sports thing with the kids was a trip to Philips for the Hipster Daughter's birthday for a Hawks game. Work got me spectacular seats within speaking distance of the court, and a parking pass for the game against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Dec. 6. It was a really great game, and we won not quite at the buzzer, but too close to it for the 'wolves to do anything about it. I like to give a sports report as soon as we can after a game, but we had to go to Knoxville the next day and it escaped my notice.

We still haven't seen the Gladiators this season! I need to do something about that in January. Love me some ECHL hockey!

I hope everybody is having a good day and life is not being too crazy...

We had a very relaxing weekend! Apart from almost killing myself to keep from finding out what happens in Doctor Who, because I have next-to-no willpower. I've even withdrawn from the 2000 AD forums, except to post news, until Thursday.

The children had a pretty awful Wednesday - well, the girlchild did - but they have been excellent since. Marie came to town Friday, and if you think there's anything better than coming home from work to find your sweetie curled up in a chair reading comics after having stocked your fridge with neat small-market sodas, you are mistaken. We didn't have a lot of time together, since her brother was coming to Athens and since I had aunts and uncles in town.

Friday night, she joined us - twelve in total - at my dad's club. Let's see, it was me, Marie and the Hipster Kids, and my parents and my brother, Dad's best friend Amos, two of Dad's older brothers and their wives. I like my Aunt Delores very much; well, they're all family, but Delores in particular is spectacularly wonderful. She and Dad's brother JT live in Danville, Kentucky. That's where UGA president Michael Adams was previously employed, at Centre College. I have been trying unsuccessfully to get Delores to take him back, ever since. Dad's other brother "Bunk" and his wife Glenda live in Paintsville, which is a little town of 5000 so far east in Kentucky that it might as well be either Ohio or West Virginia. Now, they offered to take the Hipster Daughter home with them, and in this, I was unsuccessful in getting her to go!

Marie left before lunch on Saturday, and the family reunion recommenced when Dad's sister, who is approaching 90 and in very poor health, arrived with all of her family. Her three children came, along with some of her grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. So the house was completely full of people, many of whom wanted to tell me how much they liked Marie, and how I'd do well not to let her slip away. I was a little exasperated with crowds and talking pretty early on, and after mpceccato phoned to remind me that the AFL playoffs were on, the Hipster Son and I retired to my folks' bedroom to watch chunks of Columbus beating the hated Tampa Bay Storm. And damn, the last minute of that game was a nailbiter, even for AFL. I caught some of the second half of the Colorado-Kansas City game, too. I was very impressed with ESPN's coverage; they do a much, much better job than NBC ever did.

The Force, who have won the Southern Division, host the Philadelphia Soul on Sunday night. I wish we could see the game, but we can't. Should be a good one; the Soul has developed into a major rival!

We got back late Saturday night and just picked up about $5 of tacos from Taco Bell since we were all still pretty stuffed from the gigantic lunch. I bought the new Heroclix starter and one new booster, and WizKids has done just about everything they claimed in making the new pieces customer-friendly; they're well-packed and with far less wasted plastic, and the sculpts and paint jobs are excellent. The kids and I played Heroclix and video games and cards all that night and yesterday afternoon. It was a good weekend to stay in and play games, especially with the big thunderstorm that blew through yesterday!

My dad and I were having a conversation earlier. Sparked by some Philly Connection coupons in an ad circular, it led from Fanta Birch Beer to some cream sodas somebody left in the fridge outside.

Incidentally, "that refrigerator" is a standard unit of measurement with my dad. As in "built like..." or "more meat than you could fit in..." and so on.

Dad didn't know what cream soda was. "How did you get to be your age and not know what a cream soda is?" I asked.

"Well, I guess I was doing something else at the time."

"You've been using that excuse since I was in high school."

"I have not!"

"You have. You said you didn't know who David Bowie was because you were doing something else at the time."

"Well, I still don't know who he is, but you're making that up."

"No, it was when I was in high school. It was 1988."

"Bull!"

"It was August 14, 1988."

Oh, the look I got.

"I know it was that date, because that was mine and Cheryl Anne Ray's six month anniversary and we went to see Bryan Ferry at Chastain. You picked us up and after we took her home, you asked me who Bryan Ferry was, and I told you he was the lead singer of Roxy Music and you'd probably not know them, but I thought you'd know Bowie, and I said they were contemporaries. I think we were still on I-85 at the time."

"I don't know who anybody you just mentioned is. You could be lying for all I know."

"You don't remember Cheryl Anne Ray? I took her to the prom."

"Most days, you're lucky I remember you. And you need to quit cussing."

"I haven't cussed a single word since I got here!"

"Well, I'm just saying."

I didn't get to say much after that. This made its way into a story I'd heard before about how his older brother once beat up five disrespectful hoodlums in Paintsville, Kentucky so badly they had to call an ambulance for two of them, and then he told me about a cab driver in Savannah so big - "about like that refrigerator" - he could barely fit in the taxi. Then he got onto my brother because my dad's car isn't as clean as Russ's, and that Russ should be pleased to wash them both. Then his eyes started hurting and he went to lay down.

This wasn't a good weekend for people travelling on the interstates in Georgia. I see that, separately, flyswatter and jtownse were trapped for ages and forced onto back roads because of highway-closing wrecks. Me, I headed for Nashville Saturday morning completely oblivious to the major work the DOT was doing at mile marker 283. After travelling two miles in twenty minutes, I exited at exit 277 and fumbled my way north through Acworth, Emerson and Cartersville, totally destroying my plan for a lazy trip up to Nashville and plenty of time to kill. Oh well. At least I spent thirty minutes moving twelve miles instead of spending an hour moving another six had I just sat on I-75.

I had a really great day with rainbowwisher and keenmixer while the kids played around the city's malls and parks with their mom. Brooke showed off her new place and introduced us to a weird webcomic called The Bunny, and I showed off the downright sick Perry Bible Fellowship, and Tory bid us watch a couple of funny episodes of Ask a Ninja. And now you can follow in our footsteps!

The Nashville-and-back in a day thing's a little tired overall, though. Sheesh, I'm sticking down here 'til Deb's baby's born. The Hipster Son was exhausted and motormouthed like you've never seen, basically starting a topic in Murfreesboro and talking nonstop until he finally shut down in Manchester. That was actually amazingly impressive. We got home around 1 and I slept 'til 11 the next morning, when I woke to find my awesome kids had unloaded the dishwasher for me. I still needed a nap yesterday as well, and the girlchild crashed with me for an hour before we went to my folks'. (And then I slept from midnight to 4. Damn, I wish I could sleep on a sensible schedule.)

Dad told me a couple of bizarre road trip stories he'd never shared before. I don't know how he's managed to tell me as many oddball tales as he has - hundreds - and still have as many weird tales as he has to tell. This is as good a time as any to remind folk that college football season is just around the corner, and you'd do well to pencil in some Saturday in October, ideally the third, to come round my dad's house and watch a Bama game with my dad and me while the opportunity is still there for you to do so. No matter where your football loyalties lie, and even if you don't like the game, you have not lived until you've seen a Bama game with my old man. Unless you're a Vols fan, in which case he doesn't want you around. Especially on the third Saturday in October. (The Dawgs, meanwhile, have a very neat schedule, with Colorado coming to visit in September. Awesome!)

The kids are with my folks this week for a Bible school Mom has planned, along with several days of swimming. I'm being antisocial and looking for work, two great states that don't go that great together. Hope you have a great week!

"So, what'd your old man do the day after he got discharged from the hospital, Grant?"

"Well, he carried around five gallon buckets of Alabama dirt, dug support beams and tied up tomato plants in 85% humidity and bitched that he was bored, that's what."

(typewriter cussin')

An update: Dad slept through the night for the first time in more than a year. They are concerned about his heart and taking extra precautions on that front, because refilling his body with fluids is apparently a pretty big shock to the system. The CAT-scans and everything came up normal; apparently every frightening symptom he was exhibiting Monday was a direct result of the dehydration.

I voiced my concern about his potential overmedication and conflicting medicines and was told yes, yes, we know.

(Comments disabled; I'd rather they stay on one thread.)

Lighthearted stuff: Yes, I'm perfectly aware what time it is. You don't seriously expect me to be sleeping anyway, do you?

Today's userpic - I just rotate them day-to-day rather than by mood, you know - comes up as apt because if the Gladiators ever needed any support, it's now. They're playing well, just not well enough against Alaska and are down three games to none. I'm still hoping to see them Wednesday night, fingers crossed on the home front, but suddenly we're in a position to see Alaska get awarded the Kelly Cup. It does mean that if we're going to win it, we have to win four straight against the best team in minor league hockey. Yowch.

But at least the Gladiators are playing well. The Force didn't. We turned on NBC and watched the local boys get their asses handed to them by the Dallas Desperados on Saturday. That was painful.

On the other hand, at least they both made the postseason, unlike the local major league teams.

The other lighthearted stuff is silly fan and eBay stuff. I snuck in a nice win this week for a lot of unappreciated little British annuals which didn't get a single bid above my starters of 49p or 99p, and a really silly one which my daughter might like for pennies more. My son, meanwhile, has decided, to my great pride and happiness, that Mean Machine Angel is his favorite comic character ever, so I've been pulling out some of his appearances in Judge Dredd and letting him enjoy them.

Oh, my daughter made the most awesome comic ever. It's about 25 pages long and almost entirely splash page introductions of all her friends and various celebrities as superheroes like JUMPING JULIA and FLOATING CASEY. I really need to get a plastic clip-folder to keep this thing forever. I'm not going to spoil the surprise of some of the characters here, however, because I want to see the look on some of your faces when you meet some of these champions of justice. Hell, JUMPING JULIA's the best superhero name that anybody has ever come up with, and that's not even the best one in the batch.

Well, there's INDELIBLE BLACK MAGIC MARKER LAD, but no, my daughter wins it.

The silly fan stuff is on one of the fora I visit, where I almost lost my temper with certain people who spend a lot more money than I have ever been able to justify every single week on superhero books and then complain about every last one of them. "Here's what I bought this week," they say, and then list ten titles and say "CRAP" about each one. Fuck's sake! I wish I had a spare thirty bucks a week to blow on things I don't enjoy.

Anyway, shout-out to lyneidas and sprocketship, I think I do want to put off going to lunch until Thursday, just in case something goes wrong or bad in the next couple of days. I hope that's not an inconvenience.

And about that, the not-lighthearted stuff is that we don't really know more about what's gone on. ( Read more... )

My dad is a lot sicker than he's letting on.

Worse, yesterday he worked outside on one of his mad patio roofs up on a ladder with his arms above him, and he's badly pinched a nerve in his neck, or something, and now he can barely see or move his left arm.

He has a headache. My dad has never, ever had a headache.

He's been cheating death for fifteen years. Now I am worried.

Mom took him to a CVS minit-clinic a little bit ago and they sent them straight to the emergency room at St. Joseph's. I'll know more a little later, I guess.

update: Among other things, he had become dehydrated and his kidneys got very close to failing failed, so he's hooked up to lots of IVs and will be at St. Joseph's for several days. I'll update as I know more.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to my parents' house for Mother's Day and we went to dinner at Pasta Bella... but not before my son made the astonishing discovery of a treasure map signed by "Blackbeard, 1722." He looked at it for a time, made some sense of the landmarks on this odd curiosity and then made his way to the workshop which his grandaddy assembled for him, in order to find a shovel. Thus armed, he went stomping towards some of my dad's gardens while my mom grumbled that Dad had better intervene if the boy started digging in the wrong place.

After a short time, he emerged with a most unusual treasure: a pewter mug filled with what turned out to be thirty dollars in dimes and quarters.

"That," I said to my dad, "was considerably more Blackbeard's treasure than I ever found in the backyard."

"I sent your ass to college, hush."

On the way home, it occurred to the Hipster Son that the coins had dates considerably more recent than 1722. "How did these coins get buried in 1722 when they all say 1990something or 2000something?"

"That's a... that's a strange anachronism, Big Man."

He paused for a moment before quietly remarking, with the calm satisfaction that comes from solving a complicated problem, "Blackbeard must have fallen forward in time."

* * *

This weekend, my mightily-pregnant-for-only-four-months ex-wife came into town; she allowed me to participate in her weekend (since I'd already pencilled in the Force/Soul game with the kids and mpceccato) in exchange for crash space here Saturday night, saving a little cash on a motel. The game was not a very good one. There was an impressive crowd of 13,766 opposite a Braves game which drew 37,040. With the Braves at home, I figured our Force would be lucky to break 10k, but everyone was treated to some pretty subpar football, with only one of Chris Jackson's trademark plays and with our QB Matt Nagy throwing an awful three interceptions on three consecutive drives, leading the Soul to a 57-41 win.

The Force managed to sneak into the playoffs after all, as the Destroyers lost to San Jose, but this really has been an unremarkable regular season. I hope the next weekend brings a win against the New York Dragons.

Meanwhile, our South Division champs the Gwinnett Gladiators are up three games to one against Toledo, and a single win away from their first Conference championship, leading to the Kelly Cup final game against the National Conference winner. Alaska and Fresno are tied with two games apiece.

* * *

I had a good day shopping and stopped myself from spending too much money, but I did finally pick up the Young Ones DVD set since Tower had it marked down to $35. This leaves me with even more things that need a new home, so if you want to claim any one thing on the list below, please comment below and it's yours as soon as I see you next or you come get it or Paypal me some cash to ship it to you. Especially if you haven't been cherry-picking from me already; spread the wealth and all that.

*ITEM! The Young Ones, complete on VHS - CBS/Fox home video editions. Four tapes.

*ITEM! Lord Peter Wimsey, 1987 series on VHS - 3rd gen taped from TV. Two tapes.

*ITEM! Sapphire & Steel, complete on VHS - 2nd-4th conversions from PAL home video; quality varies. Eight tapes.

*ITEM! Ten issues of Maxim, mid-90s, really good condition.

*ITEM! The Complete Judge Caligula from Titan Books. Redundant copy; I'd love this to go to someone who's heard about all this 2000 AD stuff what I talk about and would like to try it out.

*ITEM! RISK computer game by Hasbro for Windows 95. Will not play on newer platforms.

*ITEM! Seventeen Seconds by the Cure, Elektra CD from the late 80s

ALSO! If you're looking for CBS/Fox Doctor Who VHSes, I have a new listing at Outpost Gallifrey's trade board and would totally love to trade with you. I've only picked up a couple of new tapes for the collection this way so far, but the real prize was swapping a pair of redundant Tom Baker tapes for the 1966 and the 1985 Who annuals.

Seriously, I got this for freaking Planet of Evil:



Refuckingsult.

I felt so bad about such a one-sided trade that I told him flatly that I owed him at least three tapes, not two, but the guy wouldn't take any more than two. So I figured it would come with its cover falling apart. Nope, it's in really nice condition for a forty year-old book. Lawdy.

* * *

In other news, watching more than about fifteen minutes of Homestar Runner can get a little joke's-gotten-old mighty quickly, but Strong Bad's e-mail about the one-legged puppy is fucking hilarious.

I'm sure you are all very interested to learn what I think is the best love song ever written. Well, some of the time, I think it's "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart," performed here by Marc Almond in a 1988 duet with Gene Pitney, who had recorded it about two decades earlier. Their version went to #1 in the UK; it was not released in America, though Marc's solo version was. If you watch this video, watch at about 3:46 into it as Gene blows Marc off the fucking stage. I mean, Marc tries to get over the top, but you just don't beat Gene Pitney for melodrama.

Most of the time, I think the most honest love song ever written is "Summer Lies" by the Magnetic Fields. Sums up my life, anyway. Oh dear, someone's going to accuse me of being passive-aggressive again now.

Well, that's what's going on with me! I hope good, good, gooooooood things are going on with you.

This turned out to be a very long post catching up on the last few days and some considerable internal sadness, mixed with joy and silliness and nice things. But since I prefer to hide mentions of parenting anyway, and because a fellow can’t mention an ex without at least somebody getting their panties in a twist about “passive-aggressive!”, I’ll spare those of you disinterested in such things. ( Read more... )

Good morning.

In my weeks away from Livejournal, I missed out on relating a really important anecdote.

My bedroom furniture was a gift of Joe Thompson, a friend of my parents' who has been some high-level Republican muckitymuck in Cobb County for a number of years, and a more thoroughly decent, sweet fellow you couldn't hope to meet anywhere else. He gave me a bed, two nighttables and a dresser when I moved.

In mid-November, I was making my usual Saturday stop at my folks' house to watch football with my dad. This was probably the 12th.

Now, I've reminded myself and so I'll pause before I forget. Each of you, whoever you are, simply must plan on at least one Saturday next fall to put all other business aside and come over to my folks' house and watch an Alabama game with my dad. No matter who you support, or whether you think nothing of the great game, your life is simply incomplete without watching a Bama game alongside my dad. I'm telling you this now, and I'll remind you in the autumn. When Bama won the Cotton Bowl on the 2nd, he was probably happier than I've ever seen anybody. You totally need to experience this. Unless you support Tennessee, in which case Dad won't have you in his house.

So anyway, we weren't watching Alabama at the time; we were watching Clemson host FSU. Since Bobby Bowden is the coach of FSU and his son Tommy coaches Clemson, this ACC rivalry has become known, informally, as "the Bowden Bowl." I was supporting Clemson, despite their old 1970s-80s rivalry with Georgia, firstly because Clemson hates South Carolina, who now employ Steve Spurrier, and also because FSU is in Florida and I don't like that state. Yes, I know about Mark Richt's time on their coaching staff, and like 'em when they're playing the Gators, but otherwise they can bite me. Plus, Clemson has a very pretty campus and a good radio station.

Dad, leaning back and enjoying a roast beef sandwich I'd made him, and some of those awesome Wickles brand pickles, which are SO GOOD, said "I do like that Bobby Dodd." That was a little strange, since we were not, for obvious reasons, watching a Georgia Tech game. But then again, my dad will occasionally be reminded of the time Knute Rockne and Joe Paterno had a knife fight on a freight train in Ohio on the way to the 1958 Tangerine Bowl, so I never know whether he's about to tell me some mad anecdote or if he's just gotten confused.

"You mean Bowden," I said.

He got confused for a second. "Oh, him too. Who's this?"

"This is Bobby Bowden. We're watching the Bowden Bowl, remember?"

"Oh, yes, I like Bobby Bowden. I like all the old coaches. I like Bobby Dodd, too, though."

"I can't believe," I said, "that you'd insult me by saying you like Bobby Dodd after I made you that sandwich."

"Well, he's a good fellow. He's, ah, he's Joe Thompson's ex-father-in-law, you know."

"What-what?"

"Joe Thompson married his daughter. That was his first wife. They divorced some time back."

"Dude. Joe Thompson gave me my bed."

"That was real nice of him, wasn't it?"

"Bobby Dodd's daughter has had sex in my bed."

"Well, I hope you've changed the sheets."

"I've changed the goddamn sheets many times, it's the mattress I'm concerned about."

Clemson won the game, which served FSU right for having a coach with the same first name as Bobby Dodd. There is some small hypomocrisy in my making that statement since Tech, obnoxiously, plays on a field with the same name as me, but then again, college football has never once been about logic.

Oh, how pathetic. A day off work and I can't stay away from darn Livejournal.

Anyway, I've had a good weekend even if I keep going to Target for some reason or other. On Friday, we stopped by the location nearest us after work to find that both seasons 1 and 2 of Gilmore Girls were on sale for $18.88 each, but they were sold out. So we picked up rain checks for them and walked down to Media Play. The kids were rambunctious and silly and we had a good time window shopping, and I picked up the new Franz Ferdinand CD for $8.99.

On Saturday, we went to my folks' place, not knowing that Dad was in Alabama... I knew Mom was in Ducktown for her every-other-month getaway, but I was hoping to watch some football with my old man. The kids enjoyed having access to the cartoon cable channels while I watched a little bit each of the six early broadcast games before settling in with sandwiches and sodas for Georgia at Tennessee, which was an exceptional game marred by an agonizingly long third quarter while the Vols tried to set a new NCAA record for most penalties.

I don't mind Tennessee; I think, like Auburn, it's a good rivalry with a colorful history against a team with lots of talent. It helps that I adore the city of Knoxville and think that Neyland is one of the best stadiums in the nation. (Can't abide that asshole coach, mind.) Perhaps I'm old-fashioned and agree with my dad that you should only hate two or three other teams and enjoy the rivalry with the others. Dad, of course, as a Bama fan, detests Tennessee. He finally returned in the fourth quarter and the Hipster Son jumped up to go tell him Georgia was winning. "No, no," I called, "tell him Tennessee's losing. He'll like that better." And he did.

Dad had a bittersweet day. He and his three brothers and his sister had lunch in Fort Payne, Alabama. Dad, the youngest, came home certain that this would be the last time the five of them would be together. I think Lera, the oldest and the nearest we have to a "family matriarch," is 90 and, like Ray, the oldest brother, in a home. Since he wasn't in the best humor, I sent the kids into love-and-'fection overdrive to cheer him up and we stayed until past the kids' bedtime.

Anyway, before we went to their place, we got the oil changed and stopped by a different Tarzhet to get the season 1 Gilmore Girls box after all. I took this with me to Athens on Sunday so Rebecca and the girls could watch the first episode over lunch. Nutty seemed to really enjoy it, so I left disc one with her to watch the rest of the first four. All six of us went to the Carmike afterwards to enjoy the delightful Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. What a fantastic film!! Just in keeping with one of my journal's running themes, there's even a throwaway Watership Down joke which had me in stitches.

We weren't able to stay long, since we had a dinner party to attend, but that was the best afternoon we'd had in many weeks. Anyway, back on the road and over to jtownse's around 7, just in time to hear the Braves finally lose, to join Lindsey & Jenn's niece E, drlaurac, mpceccato and sprocketship for Jenn's fantastic chili. Laura had some bothersome excuse about her not having baclava, but she made up for it with really yummy cookies.

The kids got to bed late again, and got to sleep in this morning since I took them to school for breakfast and a conference with the Hipster Daughter's counselor. Breakfast was pretty fun; we sat with two of my son's friends and they acted like typical eight year-old boys, and then I got dragged to see all of their teachers since they've been at Bells Ferry.

The conference went pretty well, and I went back out to Tarzhet afterwards to buy a couple of gifts and some household cleanin' products. Can't stay away from that darn place lately. Then I came home and took a nap and I think I might have another one now.

Well, not too many naps, mind. I'd hate anyone to think I was being idle. Which reminds me, that Laura girl who's apparently on American Idol? She lives two streets over. Cobb County represent! We can sing shitty show tunes as badly as anybody else!!

(Originally posted October 10, 2005, 13:27 at gmslegion, six comments after the cut.) ( Read more... )

So the other week, my battery light came on. My brother said “it’s the alternator.” The Hipstermobile went off to the family mechanic, who said “No, it’s the starter,” and replaced it.

That’s as maybe, but it was also the alternator, which went yesterday. That might have been fun to watch, as an academic exercise, but not so fun to experience, as the electrical system progressively deteriorated. It started with a pop-pop-pop with the radio on, then the radio clock went out, then it came back on when I turned off the AC. By the time I got it up the exit ramp to Paces Ferry, I was asking Holy Joe Mavers, great god of hipsters, to just let me get it to my folks’ in one piece. The “service engine soon” light came on as I turned onto Orchard, then all the dashboard lights shut off, and as I pulled it into their yard, it died. Then I got to rag my father about having dead cars on his lawn.

The family mechanic’s coming over to my folks’ house tonight with a new alternator. I think my brother will be standing behind him with a tire iron to make sure it gets done right.

The plan had been for me to come to Smyrna to meet mrdisco99 for the concert anyway. My mom had picked up the kids and three of their friends and brought them all to her house to swim. So I helped wrangle up the children, and spent most of the afternoon trying to convince my dad that the computer can be used for good, and not evil. Then again, this man can execute any engineering project you can imagine with pencil, paper and a C-clamp, but has not touched even the “power” button on a VCR, so I was kind of wasting time. (“You realize you’ve had a device in your house for TWO DECADES that you cannot operate. Doesn’t that scare you?”)

Ric made it to my folks’ around 6.40 and we went to the Taco Stand for dinner and free Buckhead parking. (Matt, our server from Saturday stopped by the table and apologized to me for the service the other afternoon.) Walked down to the Roxy for a short wait before New York’s Longwave took the stage.

Damn, what a performance! Longwave, a five-piece guitar act, just ripped the hell out of the place. Their influences include Television and early Eno, and their album There’s a Fire must be purchased now. Well, if I had a spare $15, I’d have got it last night. I was incredibly impressed with them.

In fact, they rocked harder than Doves did, which is not to say Doves were at all below expectations, in fact their show was downright amazing, It featured a fabulous light and video show and the band was so damn tight that they synched up with it flawlessly.

Oh, if you enjoy really good music videos, find the one for their single “Sky Starts Falling.” Ric noticed that some of the projected videos were not the actual promotional films. I think this one is the promo video – it looks too expensive to be a stageshow throwaway. If you find the one that looks like it was filmed in 1910 and features a magician filling the sky with biplanes, that’s the one. HOLY CRAP THAT WAS COOL.

Doves’ set sagged about halfway through. Despite some phenomenally engaging sonics and some of the best lyrics of the past decade (“The Cedar Room” is maybe the best song about heartbreak from a man’s perspective I can think of right now), Doves still have a lot of the early 90s shoegazing which influenced them early on. Which, to be honest, was kind of nice, as I never got to see Slowdive, Ride or My Bloody Valentine live, and Doves can capture that spirit pretty darn well. But they picked up with “The Last Broadcast” and drove like a runaway truck into the encores. “Here it Comes” is just phenomenally menacing, and was matched with a video made from 1970s film of people dancing at some seaside “Casino Club.” The disparity between the creepy lyric and that bizarre film footage was really, really effective. It projected a mood of great discomfort.

“There Goes the Fear” quite naturally closed everything, and they had to play very tight to synch up with the end of the video, and went fucking nuts with the Brazilian-styled percussion. The hall roared; it was a beautiful moment.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
INTERRUPT TRANSMISSION

URGENT MESSAGE FROM HIPSTER DAD TO WEST COAST OPERATIVE MICHAELPOP

THEY PLAY AT THE HOUSE OF BLUES, ANAHEIM, OCTOBER 10

MESSAGE ENDS
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well, I’m sore from standing but I had a great time and I wish I could get out to shows more often.

(edit: Check out mrdisco99's review for the set list & stuff)

Tonight, the kids and I have three tons of laundry to do and some Doctor Who to watch and some salads to eat, and tomorrow is movie night, and this weekend is AWA, and while the kids will be with me for most of it, I’m desperately hoping my folks will keep them late Friday night so I can go to Anime Hell, which is the best part of any con.

The kids are insisting on costuming as well. Ivy wants to wear her little black-and-orange witch costume and will demand that I photograph her with every Sailor Scout in the convention center. Manipulative child; like I can say no to that.


Originally posted at gmslegion, nine comments after the cut. ( Read more... )

So I decided yesterday afternoon I'm going to convince my parents to vote for John Kerry.

I figured it would be a good summer project. It follows my spring attempt to reconcile the friendship with Mary, and precedes my forthcoming autumn experiment in transmuting base metals to gold.

I went 'round their house for about an hour yesterday in the late afternoon. Now, you might enjoy watching reruns of All in the Family late nights on TV Land, but seeing it live's even better, except there's no live studio audience. And my dad's no Archie Bunker. No, he presents an even bigger challenge because he's much more interested in changing the subject, talking at lengths that make me look positively cogent and direct about something utterly unrelated but, as a proper Southern storyteller, are remarkably entertaining nonetheless, before wrapping his story back into his point in a way that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Last night, I started talking about Iraq and he told me that a few nights ago, he couldn't sleep, so he drove to the Huddle House at 3 am. Only when he arrived did he feel tired, so he fell asleep in his car in the parking lot. One of the servers he knows woke him with a cup of coffee, and didn't charge him. So he sipped his coffee and decided to go home before Mom woke up and panicked that he wasn't there. He pulled out and got not half a mile away before a cop pulled him over. Officer Law had been watching him discreetly and figured Dad was drunk.

"And that's why I just don't like government, so why should I vote for - ha! - John Kerry?"

As a defusing technique to end debate, it's amazingly effective. I must remember it the next time the Jehovah's Witnesses are 'round.

My brother, meanwhile, who moved back in with them some years ago, is pursuing a very lucrative side business completely dissassembling Nissans and selling them piece by piece on eBay. Dad pointed out to me Russ's current project yesterday. I think this was car #4. Russ has this red Nissan spread across the back yard in literally several hundred pieces in order to take photos of each bit to provide to bidders. I mean, the entire back yard, from swimming pool to fence. I protested yet again. "You're the same people who would roll up my comic books and hit me with them if I left them on the kitchen table. There's a goddamn grill on the living room couch."

"Oh, it used to be in the study."

"That's not my point, and you know it."

"Well, Russ knows this house will be his one day. He's just getting settled."

I stormed out back and told Russ "MOM AND DAD AREN'T DEAD YET, YOU KNOW." He had no clue what I was talking about.

I stayed around for about an hour and met David at a yakitori place in Smyrna. This was pretty good, but I still haven't figured out why Japanese food costs so much. My favorite skewers were the shitake mushroom and meat ball. They had J-pop playing quietly in the background, which was awfully distracting. I figured out some months ago that one reason I've grown to dislike Japanese films and music that I used to not mind is that I have developed a pretty intense loathing for the way the Japanese language sounds. Something about the cadence and the elongated vowels, particularly when used by a continuity announcer telling you how amazing next week's episode will be, really makes my spine shudder. So J-pop irritates me greatly: mixing the elongated vowels of a 14-year old girl bopping over a music track which surely was created at random from the "happy" setting on the keyboard just bothers the absolute hell out of me.

Anyway, David always has weird gossip and fun stories, pointing out that Jeff Clark, the diabolical force behind Atlanta's free alt-culture zine Stomp & Stammer, used to work at a CD store which was once in this same strip mall, and David had lots of run-ins with him over the years. We drove down to Tower and heard Cassandra Horn doing an in-store and I bought Snow Patrol's album.

I got home to find a second box of GMS Legion Heroclix waiting for me. You have no idea how cool it is to have your own characters in 3-D form. This lot included Nova Girl, Viper, Stone, Inferno Kid and Gunfighter. (Dave, you really need to see Gunfighter before y'all leave town. He's all black and brown in a sleek combat suit with a pistol in each hand.) But there was a sixth in the box as well. It took me a second to figure it out and then I nearly pissed myself laughing.

You might recall the GMS Legion "jam story" called "The Other New Kid on the Block," in which darn near every girl at Scandal High falls in love with the new student Joey McJoey, and the only way they can get rid of the dancing menace is to introduce him to a gigantic, fat, Californian record executive with tusks named Mon Starr? Well, now I have a Mon Starr Heroclix. He's modded from the X-Men's enemy the Blob. (Of all the dust-gathering Heroclix at the bottom of tackle boxes, Blob is one of the least frequently disturbed.) My customizing friend put his own minor spin on the character, who only appeared on two pages as a gag anyway, putting him not in a ridiculous toga but in a spandex two-piece and slippers. His chest is open to his navel and he has a gaudy and audacious gold chain and medallion. Well, both the very idea of having Mon Starr preserved forever in plastic, and the actual appearance of the creep (who went on, of course, to sign four kids exactly like Joey McJoey and rampage up the charts a year later) tickled me so bad I couldn't breathe for laughing. Oddly, I realized today where Jerry got the spandex idea and the color combination. He doesn't look too many miles removed from that tusked fellow in the red shirt from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons!

I spoke to Randy for a bit on the phone after that, in an absurdly silly mood as you might expect. Dreams kept me up and down most of the night.

Tonight, I'm having dinner at Don Jorge on Austell Road. This is an awesome, wonderful little taqueria I discovered in what used to be a house and is now painted garish purple and orange. None of the staff speak English and their menu's not written for people who don't speak Spanish, but I figured you can get four really good barbacoa or pastor tacos for six bucks, a bottle of orange Jarritos and some really thick rocket fuel tomato salsa and some incredibly nummy tomatillo sauce, too. Then I'll play Clix and Incapacitate my opponents with my halitosis breath. (Even though there are apparently not going to be any prizes tonight due to some screwup or other. Maybe I can do some swapping.)

Tomorrow, I have some errands to run and chores around the house, then I'm travelling to Macon to meet nolens_volens for dinner at Satterfield's, a barbecue restaurant of some local renown. I'm still planning to go to the Decatur street festival on Sunday, and hopefully meet up with playright. Would anyone else like to come?

Monday, I'm spending all day in my parents' pool. And if they come outside, I'll get back to work on transmuting base parents into Kerry voters or whatever hopeless, lunatic scheme I've come up with. (You can blame Jim Nabors. His AWESOME cover of "The Impossible Dream" has certainly inspired me.)

No, on second thought, I'm not going there.

It has been a very, very bad month. This weekend went fine until the very end of the day Sunday (stop checking your e-mail; it never, ever seems to contain anything good). Even the presence of sixty gajillion bicyclists wreaking havoc on the Athens economy and inconveniencing the crap outta me didn't bring me down for more than maybe three hours. I got lots of swag at some Heroclix marquees this weekend and Julian enjoyed company and a good time at the football game. I also found the did-not-ship-to-shops 2000 AD Prog 2004, purely by chance. Also, hey kellinator, I ran into Marie H. today and she says hello.

I'm doing myself no favors by giving in to exasperation, to bad news, to bad attitudes, to drama, to my own temper, to my laziness, to other people's opinions or readings, and other people's issues. I cannot prevent other people's decisions and the very normal behaviors of children and where people are going to live and whether people choose to play with loaded dice and can't do a damn thing about whether people will lie to or, worse, lie about me. I've not been as good a dad as I should be of late, I've been procrastinating, I've been withdrawn and I know full well I'm better than this.

(Even my dad: of this, I will bitch. My mom's in Florida for the week. Before she left, she started prattling about the Shrine Circus and how I should take the kids. I explained that I had no time this past weekend, and this coming weekend (May 1), Deb has them, so it couldn't be done. This took two discussions to sink in. Well, she left Saturday morning. Yesterday, while the kids and I, and their mom, and Neal, and Matt and S. were at the football game, someone came by my parents' house doing door-to-door selling and Dad bought six tickets, figuring I would naturally want them and would take my kids to the circus this weekend. He phoned yesterday evening and was really ticked off after I reminded him next weekend is their mothers'. Then he suggested I should screw my plans, and for Deb to screw whatever plans she's made for herself and the babies, and for me to go pick the three of them up and take them to the circus.)

Anyway.

I've had a number of stressors from a number of people, but at least that many have offered their support and lent me an ear. So I'm going to try to hold my head back up a little more this week. Perhaps I won't be decapitated. I'll also return the favor and the kindness somewhat. I've grown to learn that when I get some bad news and wince a little, most everybody - not all - takes a step back from me and sort of pats me on the back from a distance. I can't say I blame anyone for that. I've been sort of a karmic nexus for bullshit for about five years now and I've handled some of it spectacularly badly.

But, look, I'm still here if anybody needs anything. And while I like getting good e-mail or phone calls, I'll take the bad if it means I can do something for somebody. And I like doing things.

But, coincidentally and weirdly enough, it was thirty days ago today that so many different, mohhhhhstly unconnected things started going wrong*. So that was the bad month. Let's let the next eleven, at least, be super.

*Which, upon further thought, really does suck, because it was the day before that the state decided to drop charges against me, so you'd think that a wonderful burden had been lifted and now you can get on with the rest of your life and not spend thirty days dealing with crap. Arg.

(Originally posted April 26, 2004, 09:51 at gmslegion.)

A discussion with my dad about distant relatives and politics turned, as it invariably does, to how much simpler things were in Fort Payne, Alabama in the 1950s.

You all - every one of you - need to hear my dad tell some of his screwed-up stories. My old man, y'see, was a real rough guy with a tough, violent crowd filled with wonderful backwoods characters, police chases, fistfights and illegal liquor.

His stories preach of the dangers in telling tall tales, which have every chance of becoming so intrinsically linked with you that your new nickname absolutely replaces your real one. The fool who claimed to have strangled to death a bear which dropped from a tree was known until his own end as Bearchoker Hughes. The man who lost an eye in a knife fight and claimed an eagle attacked him became known as Eagle-Eye Wallace. Other valley ruffians such as Corn-Tooth Pyrdum, One-Arm, Crip Murphy and Butterball Baugh populate his frankly jawdropping stories.

The best of the lot was one he never met; rather his older brother Bunk did. That would be Burnt Bob.

Oh, Bunk? Well, his real name is LT. It doesn't stand for anything; that's his name. He has another brother named JT. At least he goes by JT - LT is "Bunk," and has been, as he was built like a brick shithouse in his youth and was known for putting his fist through the doors of '55 Fords.

Bunk and JT each live in Kentucky; Bunk in Paintsville and JT in Danville. They're each incredibly wealthy, having started very, very successful construction businesses. Bunk crossed paths with Burnt Bob in the mid-1960s when he got a contract in another city to build some big city expansion or other. The standard in out-of-town construction jobs is to bring your management team and some foremen and recruit workers locally.

So Bunk set up the office trailer to take applicants and the first day, some fellow who came in to fill out forms and asked "Burnt Bob been in yet?"

My uncle, used to a world full of Eagle-Eyes and Butterballs, found nothing unusual about the name, but asked "Should I have?"

"He's the best carpenter in the county. You need to bring him on."

Over the next week, Burnt Bob was recommended to Bunk three or four more times. So a couple of weeks into the job, Bunk wasn't at all surprised when a fellow comes in with the left half of his face missing: just a mass of black scar tissue and one swollen eye. He says he's looking for work.

"You Burnt Bob?" my uncle asks.

"Yeah. How'd you know?" the fellow replies.


Then there was the time my dad blew up Main Street in downtown Fort Payne. That one tells better than reads, though. Some other time.

(Originally posted December 03, 2003, 22:14 at gmslegion.)

So Friday morning, I'm dropping the kids off with my mom since it's a county holiday, and Mom asks "Do you want a sleeper sofa?"

And I reply, very truthfully, "No. No thank you."

Mom's body language tells me she is not at all pleased with my answer. "Why not?!"

(A few years ago I decided, for those of you who don't know, that I really don't appreciate being asked to justify my decisions if I don't want to do something. If you'd like me to explain why I LIKE Interpol or Indian food or Clix or reading to my kids or this Bowie album or this addictive tangerine soda, I'll happily talk for hours. Don't demand of me an answer when it's a negative. It invariably puts me in a sour mood.)

"Well, in the first place, I don't like sleeper sofas for a number of reasons and in the second, Neal has a sofa which he's promised me to replace the one I've had for years." and in the third I really don't like the way you are presenting this as though decorating my house with your friends' furniture is a fait accompli.

"Can't you put Neal's sofa downstairs and put this one in your den?"

"No, thank you. I don't want it."

It was, at that point, forgotten.

Hours later, my pa phoned me at work: "Listen. We've got this couch which I. Really. Liked. Why can't we keep it at your place?"

What the hell are you talking about? "A couch?" Oh. "Yeah, yeah, if you want it, you can keep it in the garage."

"The garage?"

"The garage."

And again, I forgot about it.

Yesterday evening, my mom started again. "I just don't understand why you don't want a nice sleeper sofa."

"Because I don't like sleeper sofas." Nor do I like people telling their friends Oh, Grant will want that without asking me and then getting a fucking attitude when they learn I won't want it at all.

"Well, what if you have spend the night company?"

"Then they have the choice of the couch Neal has for me, the kids' beds, a recliner, or, hellfire, chap might get lucky one day and they may even want to share mine." What the hell, Mom? More people have slept under this roof than an average Marriott and there's not a sleeper sofa anywhere in here.

Many hours passed. The sofa was delivered to my garage in my absence. I confessed some level of unease when I opened the garage, fearing my own long-serving couch would be there and a little redecorating done without me around, but no. My furniture was safe and sound.

And there in the garage, lit by my headlights, resplendent in its yellows, greens, blacks and whites, is the ugliest motherfucking sofa I have ever seen in my entire life. Don't bother trying to trump me through Google, I've just spent twenty minutes and didn't come within a nautical mile of the thing in my garage.

Well, you know, I've got a meteorite, I've got the only appearance of Steve Ditko's Odd Man, I've got a UGA championship Coke bottle, I've got David Sylvian's autograph and I've got the planet's ugliest couch. Give me rhythm and style and I'm set.

(Originally posted October 18, 2003, 22:11 at gmslegion, four comments after the cut.) ( Read more... )

Well, I am certainly missing my kids.

Their mother called me late last night to check in. All seems very much in order; I'll be picking them up Saturday evening in Knoxville and they'll spend some time with my folks on Sunday, and then school starts Monday the 11th. I am a little worried about my son's registration. I filled in all those forms and mailed them in and heard nothing, so I phoned some weeks back and was told everything looked to be in order, but that registration wasn't until the 29th. Only... I still haven't heard anything, so if there's not a "welcome to skool" packet in the mailbox tonight, I'm going to have to phone tomorrow.

But Deb does not appear to be planning to go back on her word or fight me in any way. "...Sometimes she's a mess to deal with, but mostly we've been living here unhindered..."

And sure, the kids' absence does allow me to play certain albums at maximum volume and shake the house - the Tindersticks and Stone Roses yesterday evening - but this place was built for the three of us and the house is missing them.

Also, there are some evil, evil spiders living in the trees and the moist, ivy-covered grounds. I have to bat down new spiderwebs every other day, giant thick things they're building all around the exterior walls, on the step rails and the outside light fixtures. Anyone interested in visiting me here in the wilds of Marietta who suffers from arachnophobia should telephone beforehand and give me the chance to make the outside of my house look less like a bad old William Shatner TV movie.

Today is my dad's birthday and we're all going to Scalini's. My brother will no doubt inhale more garlic than the rest of the diners combined and my mom will make her standard quip about how she could just eat nothing but their good salad and be happy. Deb invited me to phone before we go so Mom and Dad can talk to their grandbabies. I hope Dad likes the Bama book.

Speaking of which, I'm getting pretty excited about the college football season starting. I've had a detailed look over the Bulldawg schedule and I'm genuinely only worried about three games. Clemson could go either way since they have always been a reliable team and our offensive line is untested, and our performance there is going to be a harbinger of things to come, but that one should still go our way. No, the three to watch are LSU, especially since we're playing there, Tennessee, particularly as Fulmer has an ungrateful Volunteer nation after last year's performances, and, here comes the gloating, Auburn.

Auburn is going to be one damn difficult team to beat this year. Frankly, they were really good last year, despite that amazing one-inch vertical jump which I enjoyed so much, and they haven't lost nearly as many good players as we have. Coupled with their considerable aggression, their assured victory over Bama this year, and the fact that both teams always win at the other's school means that Auburn has way too many cards in their deck this time around. In fact, they're a dead cert to win the SEC West, and even if we do take them and Tennessee, we'll have to play them in the SEC Championship. No, Auburn's a very safe bet to take at least 10 wins this year, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them in the Fiesta Bowl.

There is probably going to be at least one remark below containing some capital letters, the words hayul and dayum and some nonsense about fighting birds, so investigate further at your discretion.

Ah well, I'll be venturing up Kingston Pike in the heart of Volunteer country Saturday night and stopping at McKay's, a giant used book and CD store. I found a Blue Aeroplanes album there for 99 cents once and wouldn't mind at all repeating the process. Say what you will about the Vols, their students certainly sell a lot of good albums to the used CD stores.

And now, a light lunch awaits. I won't want to spoil a giant Italian dinner tonight.

(Originally posted August 05, 2003, 12:46 at gmslegion, three comments after the cut.) ( Read more... )

Yeah, that's me dad right smack dab in the middle of an "undisclosed contributions" scandal involving Saxby Chambliss and Jeb Bush. Bet this hasn't happened with your old man recently.

(Originally posted June 02, 2003, 10:55 at gmslegion, with the text (in case it vanished like the AJC link did) and a comment from Mary after the cut.) ( Read more... )

Last night my dad invited me to play poker with him and the guys.

I didn't do too horribly. I was only down $8 from my initial $25 when I had to go since the girl-child needed to go to bed. At one point I was ahead by $9. I should have bet considerably more on one hand of Low Chicago since having the three of spades in the hole guaranteed me half the pot (someone else had the two showing).

Two observations: I hate, hate, hate 3/33 and 7/27. Christ, those are excellent ways to lose money.

Secondly: People actually do eat anchovies, only they're all over the age of 40. I thought Gentleman Jim was joking when he asked my mom to order one of the pies with anchovies, pepperoni and mushrooms, but that thing went first.

The house rule at my dad's card game is that each hand's winner owes $1 to the kitty. After the pizzas are paid for, whatever left is given to my mom to buy presents for the Cobb Christmas fund. She makes a trip to K-B Toys every so often and buys what's on clearance. Since they started doing this in January, she has ten giant trash bags in the attic filled with new toys for needy kids.

(Originally posted May 30, 2003, 08:32 at gmslegion.)

Yesterday evening, I worked 'til 6.30 and headed north, for home, to spend some time with Deb and our son. The girlchild is with my folks. We dropped Deb's prescriptions off and took the Hipster Son to dinner at Popeye's. As far as faux Cajun goes, that was cold comfort over the real thing we should have been eating in New Orleans this weekend, but the initial plan last weekend before everything went to hell was to take the kids for a family meal last Friday, and my son had not let Deb forget it.

Deb is on some serious medication for her anxiety. A knockout little cocktail of Xanax, Zanaflex and some muscle relaxant. I start seeing a new shrink next Monday. So maybe the drugs will help Deb stop treating me like shit and maybe the doctor can convince me to stop going comatose with depression when I feel like shit.

The boychild and I watched part two of "Frontier in Space," which was not particularly thrilling, although I had no idea that Ray Lonnen (later of The Sandbaggers) had a small part in it. I am playing dumb on this one, acting as though I've never seen it before. After we put him to bed, Deb and I watched a little of the Thrashers game together (but not a whole lot; Atlanta played embarassingly poorly) and then I went back to Smyrna.

Thursday night is poker night at my folks'. Dad had six people over, crowded round the kitchen table throwing money on insane variations of the game. I watched for a time, as each dealer called a new type -- "High Chicago Wild," "Find the Lady," "Sweaty Queen" -- and desperately tried to figure out what they were doing each time. I had to ask the rules after they finished Sweaty Queen, because I couldn't figure out why the wild card kept changing. I played five-card draw and seven-card stud in college a few times. I guess I'm boring.

Now, my daughter had slept very well Wednesday night on the other couch in the den with me, but last night was a very annoying different story. She woke up, demanding grandma, as the men were winding down around 11.30 and preparing to leave and toddled oblivious through the forest of people in the kitchen to the bedroom. About 3.30, she woke me up and I had to pat her back down to sleep. The alarm woke us both up at 6.05 and she toddled straight back to grandma again.

Franklin Lewis had bought far too many sandwiches last night and refused to take them home, so I have a leftover 12-inch Subway for lunch today. Hopefully it will keep fairly well until then.

(Originally posted November 08, 2002, 07:53 at gmslegion, four comments after the cut.) ( Read more... )

My dad can be a cranky, conservative, controlling kinda guy sometimes, and we don't get along that well, but he is something else. And he was very, very happy this morning.

Dad's never held elected office; he's a mover and a shaker and a kingmaker instead. Republicans don't get into office in Cobb County without him working for them. They also don't get into office if they cross him -- witness Frank Bradford, who pissed Dad off with his stance on the proposed annexation by the city of Smyrna of some neighborhoods that didn't want to be annexed. When word got out that Dad was endorsing a demmykrat over Bradford, people figured, Republican or not, Bradford was a bad egg. He lost yesterday.

My dad's in his sixties, had four or five heart attacks, has a horrible cough, surgical scars up and down his body, poor eyesight and hearing, and a bad leg. He was still out 'til 2 am at various victory parties, and woke me up with CNN blaring in the kitchen. I heard "Republican sweep" and just said "Jesus Christ." I mean, my marriage on the rocks, the trip to New Orleans is cancelled, the Dawgs lose to Florida, Cyndi Lauper cancels, and Cleland, Barnes and Tom Murphy all lose. What. The. Hell. (First I wake up to find goddamn Sonny "Old Flag" Perdue is the next governor, and then I wake up cracking my head on the table. What kind of lousy night is that?)

The distressing thing about Georgia is that it has long been ruled by a good ole boy network of demmykrats. Now it's ruled by a good ole boy network of Republicans, who are exactly like the previous network, only their members have a nasty tendency towards bigotry and intolerance, and are much richer. All of my candidates lost yesterday -- libertarians tend to -- but at least the very important amendment (for the spay/neuter program) passed, and the very stupid amendment and congruent referendum (for tax breaks for commercial fishing vessels) were turned down.

Dad was awake right behind me at 6.45 and pouring over The Atlanta Constitution and The Marietta Daily Journal. The phone started ringing at 7 am. His insight was needed.

(Originally posted November 06, 2002, 09:13 at gmslegion, two comments after the cut.) ( Read more... )

My dad, attempting to annoy my mom by alluding to sexual hijinks: "I had two strange women visit me today."
Me: "You shouldn't let Jehovah's Witnesses in the house."
My dad: "Oh, no, no, these women stayed all afternoon."
Me: "Ah. Mormons."

(Originally posted February 06, 2002, 12:19 at gmslegion.)

I haven't done much in the way of talking about my dad's cancer.

He's seen several specialists in the last two months looking for a range of opinions about his health. They all concur that he has something wrong with his colon, but opinions have varied as to whether it's malignant. They all concur that, given his health -- he's had six heart attacks and four open heart surgeries -- it is unlikely that he would survive surgery to remove any cancerous tissue.

He and mom went home to Fort Payne this weekend, and dad spent much of the weekend either suffering severe abdominal pains or doped on codeine. Yesterday, they spent the morning and afternoon in the ER because the pain was really bad, but the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with the "top half" of his colon.

He's going to see a specialist this afternoon. My feeling is that he'll be told that if he doesn't have surgery, then he's going to spend the next several days in pain and not recover, and if he does have surgery, he probably won't survive it.

I sent Deb and the kids to their house this morning to surprise them. I suggested they wake my folks up by playing in the backyard, laughing and singing and making happy noises.

(Originally posted January 16, 2002, 07:34 at gmslegion, comments behind the cut.) ( Read more... )