play-by-play hyperbolized-realism
First off: Yes, the James story was fiction. I couldn't think of anything to write, so I decided to tell a story. Thanks to those who mentioned enjoying it. Somehow, though, I don't think storytelling is my thing - so I stick to the regular play-by-play hyperbolized-realism I seem to be better at.
Ready for an abbreviated weekend report? OK:
Friday: Anthony calls me around 10am to say he may have an extra ticket to this big ol' rock show going down in the city. Asks me, if it becomes available, would I want to go. I say "yup." Noon, the ticket is mine, and I'm to be at his house by 3pm. We arrive in San Francisco sometime around 6pm and stand in line in the freezing cold with eight-thousand other mods-'n'-rockers to get in. It was a packed bill at six bands. I was excited to see Modest Mouse and Spoon, but the entire show ending up being quite enjoyable. Anthony and I even braved the very young crowd to crush right up into the guts of the floor by Modest Mouse's set. Home by 2am.
Saturday: Used the morning to catch up on three days of little sleep, woke up at 10:30am. Took a shower, pulled on some jeans, and made the conscious decision to not don a shirt. I intended to remain shirtless the entire day. Sharaun went on a Christmas shopping odyssey and was gone all day, stopping home only briefly around 5pm to bring in a take-and-bake pizza, cook it, eat a slice and head back out. I spent most of the day playing with Keaton and taking picture of CDs I'm selling on Ebay. Never did put on a shirt, either. Not even when a friend dropped by unannounced later in the evening on the way between two bars. I stood there in the living room and had a half-hour conversation barefoot, barechested, and bedenimed. A great lazy day spent being daddy.
Sunday: Church. Driving there we saw a bum on the offramp holding a ridiculously small scrap of cardboard, on which I assume a standard plea for assistance. You know, something boilerplate bum-verbiage, including go-tos like "God bless," "Vietnam vet," "anything helps," and "hungry." The little piece of cardboard was so tiny, though, that we had no chance of reading it. I jokingly said, "You need a bigger piece of cardboard, buddy." Sharaun made some comment about him needing one of those big spinny arrows or placards like the sign-people on the corner use to bring in potential homebuyers or lure people to the Cheesesteak joint. Sounded like a brilliant idea to me. I predict panhandlers will soon turn to this more animated form of begging. After church I repaired some of the faux-stonework that has fallen off the front of our house. The fallen pieces stayed where they fell for years now, and the guys were giving me crap about it the other day. So yeah, Sunday I made fun of bums and did home repair.
For some reason the other day, Sharaun had Keaton's old bouncer out from storage. She took a picture of Keaton sitting in it, and I thought it would be fun to compare that with a picture of her in it when she really used to use it. So, for a lark, here's three months and twenty-two months. Pretty sure she's over the weight limit in that second one...
Moving on...
Back some time ago, I made the decision to digitize (convert to MP3) my entire CD collection. After which I sold off all my then-redundant physical discs for profit. If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll remember that the plan took a long time, but was ultimately wildly successful. I ended up selling ~600 CDs, making a little money in the process. Not bad. In fact, it financed a bit of my Lasik surgery, so it was well worth it. When I sold my discs, though, I held onto all my prized Beatles bootlegs (as well as some other prized bootlegs from various other artists). I knew that, one day, I’d start selling them off too –but I hung onto them partly because of my strong attachment to them, and also because I figured they could fetch more if sold properly (“marketed” as sufficiently rare, etc. – which they indeed are). Anyway, I wrote this whole mess because I wanted to share some statistics:
Selling non-bootleg CDs, I made a somewhat respectable amount per CD. Bootlegs, however, have proven to be much more lucrative. Over the past couple weeks, I've been slowly but surely offloading my entire Beatles bootleg collection online. What's amazing is that, on average, I've been making more than ten times what I made selling my “commercial” discs. Not to mention I’ve got another pile of bootlegs from artists who aren't the Beatles, which I'm hoping will pull just as much dough. As an example of this insanity, while packing up one nine-CD set for sale, I happened upon my original purchase invoice from back in the mid 1990s. Right now, it looks like it’s actually going to make money over that cost, meaning the dang thing actually appreciated while I owned it. Unbelievable.
As you can imagine, I’m working frantically to get all the discs up for sale, as I suspect this is the season where I’ll realize the highest profit on them, capitalizing on Christmas gifts for collectors. It’s bittersweet, selling them off. It feels good to make money, but those things were such a big part of my life at one point. It was such fun acquiring and hearing them for the first time. Scouring obscure record bins for high-priced "imports," dealing with shady mail-order joints advertised in the back of Goldmine, ordering from "contacts" in Japan and Europe... it was all a big game of cloak-and-dagger where the reward was untold joy at getting to hear Beatles stuff I'd never before heard. It's sad to see them go, but it's not that sad... I still have the music, after all.
Anyway, dolla-dolla-billz y'all. Dolla-dolla-billz. Can the RIAA send me to Rikers for this?
Goodnight.
the day james died
The day started like any other day, I woke up in my bed at home. A few people had crashed at the house, I’m sure their parents thought mine were home. Instead they were states away visiting family. Being sixteen and excited about the prospect of having a real “my folks are out of town” party, I had declined to join them. Chris’ older brother got us the keg. It was a wild night. Someone brought cocaine.
James was already dead when I walked out of my bedroom. Everyone else was still asleep. Mark was on the couch, Eric was on the chair, Tim and Scott both on the floor, next to James. We’d all tidied the place a bit just before calling it night, as the early light was filling the sky; it was only just hours ago, so things looked pretty unremarkable – only the quarter-full keg in the laundry room to give us away. James was plenty alive then. We all were.
Beer and weed; then the coke. I think it was Mark who brought that, not even he’d tried it before. No one wanted to, of course, but we all did. It was glorious; what God must’ve intended sixteen to feel like. We bounced off walls. We sat around the table in the dark outside, the screened-in porch lit by the moon and the cherries from our cigarettes alone. As the hours passed and the sky began to go from black to grey, we all came down pretty hard. It was the last time we saw James alive.
He didn’t look dead. He looked like Tim and Scott, sleeping on the floor in front of the entertainment center. He looked pretty much like he’d always looked. I walked right past him, right out the front door to get the paper. Mark sat up as I came back in the door. We shared a sly grin; silently acknowledging a shared rough night’s sleep. I threw the paper at Eric, hitting him in the leg. Tim and Scott were up now too. Scott kicked James, and no one was concerned at his lack of reaction
It was probably fifteen minutes later when Mark shouted to the porch that there was something wrong with James. Tim, Scott, Eric and I were on the porch again, having morning cigarettes and trying to shake the cobwebs. I remember the day being warm, even in the mid-morning. Tim and Scott went inside, Eric and I stayed to finish our cigarettes. No sooner had they left than did Scott come rushing back out. “James won’t wake up, man. Something’s really wrong.”
I can remember the immediate crushing fear that dropped down onto me, even before I’d put out the cigarette and followed them back into the house. I think I knew as soon as I heard them. Everyone of us knew what was wrong; none of us knew what to do. Eric and I wanted to call 911. Tim was doing CPR, saying how they just did it at dive practice and he remembered how. Scott was back on the porch with a new cigarette. We all watched Tim, hoping James would wake up. He stopped, and it was silent.
When we piled into the car, we put James in the middle seat between Eric and Tim. Scott stayed at the house to wait, Mark rode shotgun. I remember what was on the radio, and still can’t listen to it. Tim went into the emergency room while we all waited in the car, parked in the drive-up loop. He came back with two guys and a nurse following. No one said a word to any of us; they just took James and left. Parking, we went inside.
I thought we were all going to jail. James was dead. We’d done drugs; we’d been drunk; James was gone. No one spoke at all. We sat in the waiting room and looked at our feet.
Ten minutes later, a nurse came out and told Eric we’d brought our friend just in time; that we’d done the right thing and he was going to be OK.
And that’s how James came back from the dead. Not a single one of us was asked to fill out any paperwork. No one ever asked our names. We simply gave the desk attendant James’ full name and phone number, and were told we could go. No one wanted to know what happened; they never even asked.
His parents never knew who brought him. He never told.
George Foreman is a dirty liar
Well, we made it to December, blog-readin' friends. If you've been around a while, I'm glad to have had you with me for another year. If you're a newbie, hopefully you like what you've seen and might decide to hang out in '08. I promise I'll do better, OK? OK.
Sunday night and I just finished doing dishes. Let me tell you, George Foreman is a dirty liar. Every time I see that Sharaun's hauled down that Foreman Grill to cook a chicken breast, my head sags. Just the thought of having to clean that thing out: the awkwardness of getting it positioned just right so I can direct the flow of water onto it while keeping the critical not-waterproof parts clear of moisture; the cumbersome need-three-hands job of holding the thing in place, open, and scrubbing it; and the detailed labor of cleansing every last toasted bit of chicken chicken from the ruts in the uneven grooved surface. I can't believe they were allowed to market this thing with a phrase like "Cleanup is a snap!" Maybe a snapped-neck from the yoga-like positions you have to contort into in order to get the thing clean. Maybe that.
OK, moving on. Hope everyone had a good weekend. Here's some stuff that made mine nice.
Keaton woke up around 7:30am this morning, hollering "Get out!, get out!" It was my morning to go get her up and changed, and after I did I brought her back into our room where Sharaun was still in bed. And, as is good to do on cold Sunday mornings before church, we all three climbed into bed together and snuggled under the covers for a while before getting up and getting going. While there, I asked Keaton if she had a good night's sleep. "Did you have any good dreams?," I asked. "Yes," she replied. "Oh," Sharaun said, "What did you dream about?" "God," she replied, and then, "Frog... hiding." "God and a hiding frog?," we asked. "Garbamane," she answered (her pronunciation of "garbage man"). The way I figure it, she had an awesome science-fiction like dream where God, hiding himself in the body of a frog, was trying to escape an evil garbage man. Sounds like a pretty cool dream.
Saturday and Sunday both, Sharaun and I spent time each day while Keaton napped assembling and decorating our Christmas tree. We haven't even put up the tree the past two years, as we usually head to Florida around mid-December and it just didn't seem worth it only to have to come home and take it all down again. But, since our annual Christmas-in-Florida trip doesn't start until later in the month this year, Sharaun suggested we setup the tree. I was reluctant, as I still hate the thought of having to come home and take it all down after I've already "done" Christmas, but I agreed. In the end, I'm glad I relented. I forgot how much I enjoy putting up and decorating the tree. Putting the iPod on a Christmas shuffle, drinking some hot chocolate, and bickering over whether or not I'd hung two Santas to close to each other or gotten the "peaks" of two strands of garland "too aligned."
Anyway, here's some photos of the process we thought you might enjoy (sorry for all the grain... high-ISO, low-light, and I did my best to de-noise and re-gamma them... I'm just no photographer):
Anyway, it was a nice "family" weekend, and now, with the lights out late at night, the glow all those little multicolored lights on the tree help to remind me of how much I love this time of year.
That's all folks. I love you all, but I'm outta here. Goodnight.
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