I have a few minutes and checked my writing prompt book for something quick and got the word...
Beast
An evocative word. And the first image I get is an auditory one. And, yes, I understand an "auditory image" is a head scratcher but I can hear it. Its an ax, a tomahawk to be specific, swooping through the air and dancing off someone's wrist. Then the head of the ax shucking into the soft space underneath someone's arm. Then it sitting there stanching the bleeding. No screams or anything else except the satisfying smack of the metal into an armpit. That feels and sounds beastly.
Beast makes me think of something curled up and getting smaller and smaller to spring back. When my son is angry he does not want to be seen. He curls into a ball and hides under the Ikea coffee table. The cardboard honey comb structure of that table is exposed due to all his kicks and scratches from other beastly moments. I hear beast and think of some plowing down a long elementary school hallway. Just a husky kid in a huskier coat with a faux fur hood dragging an endless amount of children behind him. And everyone is clawing onto bulletin boards and posters to hold him back so everything is shucking off the walls. The student posters. The 100 things I would buy on the 100th day of school easel pads. The signs thank you for not smoking.
Beast is what the heroine slays as she pulls a spear from the now defeated 12 heads of a bristling hydra. The snicker-snacking Jabberwock. And from the sinew of the last neck she cranes back her own so her hair whips back in a cinematic victory pose that hems in the falling stars of what used to be the beasts winged and irritating progeny.
Beast is the series of paper jams that winds it way through the copier and snarls everything up. Someone tries to go fix it and the toner cartridges slides out so everything, all the powder, flies up into their face. They have to then go home and change out of their cardigan because it is now cyan blue. And for the rest of the day the air is sooty and grimy even after various wipe downs.
Beast feels like slipping on ice and cracking your coccyx two feet away from the front door. It is the neighborhood dog in Mayaguez, Pee Wee, chewing on discarded chicken bones from the bodega. Its the angry eyes from my wife when I forget to put the twist tie on the coffee. It is the flutter and fear when my work crush walks up to the copier. Not the one from above.
Whenever I post about MTG my page views dramatically jump. Now, mind you they jump to like 10 views but compared to 2 that is bananas. I would post more on MTG but I am 1)Not that good at MTG, 2) Don't have time/money to grind to be better, and 3) I swear my two regular readers are not into MTG* and don't want to subject them to that. Too much. I want to give a run down of how my Theros Beyond Death pre-releases went.
Paper Pre Release 1
This was two headed giant. A format I am not a huge fan of** but a buddy did want to partner up so lets go. He played a Blue/Black controlling pool with my showcase Thassa, Deep Dwelling ($$) and that Narcissist inspired guy. This guy...
I told maybe 6 people "The Narcissist guy, you know" and no one had a clue about the myth. Such a Sisyphean task!
It was A LOT of fun to make a dozen reflections or so.
I played Red/Green pool with my foil showcase Purphoros, Brozen Blooded (Which was like $100 at that point, then it shrank down to like $30 but whatever, Commander people will appreciate it...eventually) and tried to slam in while he stopped a bunch of threats. Variance killed us in the last round with me being stuck on two lands and the opponents milling me so I played zero Magic.
We went 2 and 2
It does look nice. And yes, its the "worst" god, but let me enjoy something!
Paper Pre Release 2
I got ANOTHER showcase Thassa, but nothing too crazy to flicker. And a foil promo Purphoros but no big red dummies to cheat in. I went blue white and lost first match again to variance (Never got a blue source but survived thanks to just drawing white cards for first 5 turns...then not so much) and then got CRUSHED in Round 2 by this card...
Uggggggghhhhhhh!
Dream Trawler is unfair. More on that later
In 3rd round I played against someone who bragged about getting a ridiculous pool during his deck building and I lost but I did get one game. He played a wonky Rakdos build with that Titan that drains you for 3 and the black shock to just grind away.
Now 0 and 3 I switched to green white because why not and did win my 4th over someone playing "satyr tribal with no other satyrs" (Ok...They have the lord lady but....ok?)
So 1 and 3.
Arena Sealed 1
Played 3 games, lost 3 games. Eliminated. I hate this fucking game so much.
Arena Sealed 2
Won 6 matches before being eliminated. Grindy blue/green enchantment deck that just durdle until Aspect of Hydra made some flying nerd HUGE. Or cast the flash 4/5 blue guy. I love this game so much!
Arena Sealed 3
I opened Dream Trawler and my girl Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis. I then splashed green for First Iroan Games and this was an easy 7 wins. Again, Dream Trawler is busted. It and Elspeth just ground people to dust. The only way to get it is wraths or edicts or some stupid self inflicted error like playing all your cards.
Arena Sealed 4
Got 4 wins which the deck really should not have. Black blue with (ANOTHER, albeit digital, Thassa) and Tymaret and a Gary. Did flicker Gary once with Thassa to drain a total of 8 life in the turn.
Is Mono Blue a thing because I have half a playset of this lady and I want to flex on people!
So, I played a lot albeit much of it is digital. I still want to do the Pre Release gauntlet and go to EVERY event my store offers in one weekend but I am $150 too poor and too rich in you know...spending time with family and what not.
* No proof for this. Just a vibe. You can always trust your gut on the Internet, yes?
** You play with a partner and the people who need one are always weirdos who aren't that great at the game. #selfown
I read a book recently where someone described the smell of a city. And it broke from anything expected as the author described it as floral honeysuckle and cedar wood and the smell of roasting cashews. Found it quite lovely and unique.
I don't want to speculate on the smell of any city I have lived in as I would feel phony. I lack authority to take it anywhere beyond the hackneyed. Cleveland is old smokestacks. Ithaca is tacky sticky marijuana with crushed oak leaves. I have little clue for San Juan as its centers are so scattered. The old city that smells of heat bouncing off cobblestones and salt spray. The high rise mile of finance that smells like the fry traps of Chinese restaurants.
A digital place like Twitter would smell like animal shelter. That sharp nose slamming smell that indicates someone has been running around cleaning but the mess keeps piling up. It is pervasive and permeating. I mention this because I saw a RT where someone asked that. Someone with millions of readers and the most common response was a public restroom. But that is very abstract. This blog
I have a feeling on how certain specific places smell. My workplace in the winter smells like the wispy dust the lingers in the sunlight. It is tired and salty yet clear and subtle. This is also the smell of Central New York house for rent. It lingers in mud room vestibules cluttered with winter boots and three separate snow shovels.
My old job had airport parking lot smell. That is also salty but with hits of diesel fuel and engine exhaust. Note I did not work at an airport but in warehouse so there was also a living smell of rock doves in the rafters. The wispy husks of cardboard that smell of light friction.
The water in the gutters by my aunt's house in Mayaguez smell like wet dust and that fish tank smell of moving living systems gurgling.
My current office smells like little much save the musty sharpness of toner and whatever lotion someone has on. My space in it is likely petrified coffee shellacked into rings on the compressed cardboard.
On the news that Puerto Rico has (and continues) suffer from a series of stubborn earthquakes, I immediately thought of Mami. Oh, she is safe. She moved up to my sister's in Ohio. And she doesn't live in the "quake zone." But I could just imagine the reactions.
I think she would be most concerned about her wine. During the big one on 1/6/20, she would utter something like "The bitch made me spill my wine."
And during the remaining ones she would be drinking them all to save them from the aftershocks. "Mijo, I may need to buy boxed wine. But the box is so heavy that it hurts my wrist and I have to take two relaxers."
I could also imagine her wrapping up all the bottles in the monogrammed towels she kept pristine from her wedding day in the late 60s. Don't worry they are still beyond fluffy because she never let anyone use them. "They are for guests. But not every day guests. One set for me and one set for your father, may he rest in peace"
You may think this is mean. "Your poor mom. People down there are very scared."
And, you, mystery reader are right. Except for poor mom. We got poor mom out of there because there was nothing left for her in PR. People back home often paint anywhere but PR as a savage land. My dear grandmother was amazed to learn we had hot water in college in NY. She assumed it was impossible in the winter and that people bathed themselves with "a sort of warm rock." But considering most other places, including sleepy Ohio (Which based on recent moves from Columbus I know dub Mississippi On The Lake), don't have random power outages, earthquakes, and hurricanes I think we did OK.
Poor mom lives in a McMansion in southern Ohio. Her misery is now that my sister works too much (Note my sister works 2.25 hours a day) and my brother in law travels too much so she is so lonely. There is plenty of wine there.
Looking at my blog metrics it appears that now two people regularly read these posts. I have no clue who these folks could be except you can DM me on Twitter @garikapc. That is usually where some of these posts begins. As 240 character screeds where I shake my linguistic fist at phantom inconveniences. Maybe you came from there? Or maybe not? MAYBE YOU ARE A FAVORITE TEACHER!? Eek...sorry about all those posts. I know you are not Mami...quizas? But anyway, thanks!
Anyway here is the post and sorry that it is an MTG post but that seemed to be the trend this week.
Not going to lie but a lot of the 7th graders think I am cool.* Well, a lot of the 7th graders that play Magic The Gathering think I am cool. Which means like 5 kids. But these kids are constantly asking me to play with them. Which is sweet but I have no time after school. That is when I push paper and scrub down stalls and make sure my own son isn't screaming down the halls.
"Mr. A! I challenge you to a game of Magic the Gathering" said one as I passed him in the hall.
And my heart gushed. "Sure! What kind of deck do you play?"
"Mono black mill."
"...Is it Modern or Standard?"
"What?"
"Nevermind. Ok, sure ask your teacher."
"It is very good. I have only ever lost once in my playgroup and it is only 40 cards."
At this point I knew the kid, while well intended, was playing the trickiest of combo decks.
First, if you are not initiated then a MTG deck must have 60 cards.** I have seen some wild "kitchen table" (ie casual rules) in my day but never someone arguing to have less cards in their deck. There is a reason my your yet to be drawn cards are referred to as "gas" and cards like "Mind Flayer" or "Brain Blast" (Mind you I don't think these are actual cards) have an effect of making you discard cards.
A mono black mill deck? To the un-initiated (and why you are still here I am not sure), mill is a strategy where you don't win by killing someone. You win by making all their cards go into their discard. When they can't draw a new card, they lose. More often than not the person gets locked out of doing anything and just concedes. Mill is the "cult classic" of Magic win conditions barring actual goofy alternative win conditions like Happily Ever After.
I lost to this once on Arena and I am still face palming
Newer players love mill because it is so quirky. Its like when you first see a Monty Python movie and need to tell everyone about it but do so by saying NEE! to everyone. I love mill because it feels good. If you are one of those people that loves those Oddly Satisfying videos then you would love mill.
But in the five colors of Magic blue is the main mill one with black being the complement. A mono-black one? Its like Robin beating the bad guys all by himself.
Now, I don't play much competitve constructed Magic but I would guess Mono-Black Mill is equivalent to a Tier 4 modern deck. Saying it is not so great. But, that's fine. Its just a middle school library.
Doing a bit of digging I find that its a thing with a bunch of combo pieces like Altar of the Brood, Heartless Summoning, and Myr Retriever. THere is even an old The Mana Source video about it in Pauper.
So, that makes the 40 cards make sense. Because it lets him get to whatever combo he needs and just locks the opponent out. Would be awesome if it is wasn't cheating.
It is very hard to explain without knowing the game but imagine you are playing basketball except each team has their own ball. A red ball, yours, and a blue ball, theirs. THe blue ball is slightly smaller and faster than the red one. So it goes into the hoop quicker. It doesn't rattle as much. It leaves people hands faster on the pick and roll.
SO thats why. Because he can just sit around and the law of averages makes him get whatever 1 or 2 combo pieces he needs. I would lose because you just don't expect that since it is illegal. THe kid is pulling a Kobayahi Maru from Star Trek!
But, I am going to build my deck to ruin his whole day!
The great thing about Magic is the variance that lets even casual players beat pros. Not to say I am anything but casual but I don't plan on losing to a ginned up 40 card ringer deck! I get rick rolled by kids all day but not this day!
*I have a pair of Pokemon shirts that the younger ones love. They are Art Nouveau style Eevee evolutions. I love Art Nouveau and I love Eevee. And apparently so did a fair piece of the more weeby 6th grade girls because their teacher approached me once and said, "I need to see this shirt all the 6th grade girls are wild about." Which made me feel icky.
**Unless you are playing a format called Limited, where you build decks from packs you just opened Then 40 cards is perfect! This was not it. These kids are whipping out spot Sealed events.
So, the other day #girlsinyogapants was trending on Twitter. And, I am not made of stone so I viewed the hash tag at work and well....
Me, internally: #girlsinyoga pants is trending. Let's go!
Also, me internally, but screaming: OH NO! I am doing this from work! Why is this trending!? I thought porn bots were my friends! My only readers
Boss: Hey! Just thought I would drop in. What are you up to?
Me: NOTHING! ***slams computer***
Boss: .... Doesn't look like nothing.
Me, sweating: Oh, I needed to reset my password and I forgot. Well, it didn't take. So annoying. Sorry you had to see me like that
Boss: What's that you say...."PUT IN A TICKET!" ***Laughs a deep belly laugh***
Me: Haha, right!?
Also, me: ↓↓↓↓↓
As a closing note there was nothing exciting about that hashtag as it was a mix of A) People befuddled by it, B) Porn bots furiously retweeting, C) Jokes.
One thing at my job that leads to a regular crisis of confidence is when I visit some of our remote sites to assist with helpdesk issues. Everything is just different enough to lend itself to inevitable delays and that sort of tribal knowledge from my own location is gone. I also can't approve purchases for these sites so often I am just advising my peers who can who are out of the building. In any case here is a bit of a play.
Staff Member: Hey, can you help me with my projector?
Me: Sure. What happened.
SM: It exploded.
Me: ... FOR REAL?! (Note, internally I think this is beyond awesome.)
SM: Well...it got really hot and then a puff of smoke came out before it died.
Me: Oh looks like a a bulb died. Purchasing is getting a quote to then replace
SM: How fast will that be?
Me: I don't know. A week?
SM: Can you give me a projector? I need one very soon.
Me: ... No, sorry.
Also, me (internally): No, sorry. I left my Bag of Holding at the Hairy Troll Inn so I am plain out of projectors that I can just unfold from my satchel
The writing prompt book took me to an ask that said to begin a bit with an onomatopoeia type noise. So "BANG" or "KAPOW!" But that seemed to pedantic so I wanted to start with this...
HOT AND DANGEROUS!
That is what I am going to name my chili eating team. Coney Island has hotdogs every Independence Day but in February downtown Ithaca is going to host the Chili Cook Off and that will be our name.
Save, I need to find a team of people. But, its Ok because it is just October right now so I still have time. James from work said he would do it. So, that's one. But he is not very hot. It's ok. I am confident enough in my feelings to say that. He and I took and overnight trip once to Cedar Rapids for a conference and we shared a room. He came out of the shower in black briefs with little else and it was nothing special.
But, is he dangerous? I think he owns a gun.
Not that we need to be true to the name but it would work so well. Much better than all the topical names people fling around. A lot of semi political ones last year. The I'm Peachys. Yet Our Stomachs Persisted. Make Chili Spicy Again. I was surprised because it was all puns before but now you tried to ham fist something newsworthy.
I want to take it back with a pun like HOT AND DANGEROUS!
When I write the word here on this entry form (They released them already even though, like I said, it is October) I can hear the words too. Not just how they pronounced but a sort of drum and energy. A lot of twirling. I heard it in a song once, I know it. But, can't remember the name. So much Top 40 is so same-y. Maybe they will play it over the DJ booth at the festival and I will shout out, "Holy shit, guys. That's it! That's us!"
Maybe someone from my team will now. I need to recruit people who are hot and dangerous and have a better understanding of Top 40 pop then I. That should not be too hard.
The rules say you need at least 4 people on your team. One person competes in the heat portion and the other in the volume portion. You need 4 because there is a veggie and non-veggie tier for each. Teams don't judge quality. There is a chili marshal for that.
These happen simultaneously so hence 4.
There is a barista at the Gimme! Coffee on Seneca that could fit the bill. I see her every day and she smiles at me and we exchange more than usual pleasantries. Her name is Summer ("An awful name to give a woman from Central New York, I know," she told me that first time she shared it) and she has dreadlocks with marble beads braided into the two longest ones. I think she is cute so that will do for the hot but the dangerous? She once told me about blasting the steam wand on the espresso machine for a bit too long and scalding the palm of her hand. Could that do?
Findings these folks is getting hard especially since they are acquaintances. The last time I went on a date it was because someone set it up and that friend even was CC'ed on the emails. And, yes, we used email. It did not go great.
I could ask my mom! But she is not hot. No way. And dangerous? We got past that. But she would say yes. I jot down "Mom---the nuclear option"
I mostly just know people from work. Some of them are already on teams. I don't talk much to the night cleaner, Ernesto. I am going to ask him especially since I have to work late on Thursday making the deposit before the Columbus Day holiday. He has a mustache which lends an air of mystery.
A thought! Getting someone who is vegetarian will improve our chances in the veggie categories! They will appreciate it more. Whoever does it needs to love beans. If you drive just a few minutes out of town and sit in the bar by the Pudgies pizza then the people there will say that dangerous angry vegetarians are lousy in town. I jot that down. I can look on the missed connections on the town Craigslist. I also jot down posting on the town Reddit page that I am looking for people for my chili cook off team.
They need to agree to the name HOT AND DANGEROUS (Which is always capitalized so we will need to always inflect when saying) and then prove to me they are hot and dangerous.
"Aren't we always dangerous?" I imagine a few saying. These would be the good ones. Those filled with mystique and power.
"Yes," I would say. "But what do you think about beans?"
The real win? That is getting someone who meets all my criteria AND is from the town of Chili, NY. Which is not pronounced chili like the food but with a chi that sounds like the tea. Then a longer last syllable.
CHAI-LIE, New York.
Its only 45 minutes away. Its a suburb of Rochester. There has to be someone here that meets the bill.
I then jot down, 'Take a day to go Chili? Ask boss?"
My whole family got struck with a mighty cold that waylays everyone but me. Until about a week later when the only time I wasn't a dripping, sniffling, shivering mess was in the 4 hour reprieves granted by Advil Cold and Sinus. A true wonder drug that makes Dayquil feel like the bagged cereal of the OTC cold remedies.
For reasons that have no basis in science I stopped taking my other normal meds during this cold. It just felt odd and dirty. I already take 5 pills just to fucntion and now I needed one just to breathe. Let's give that one all the metabolic space it deserves.
Because of that I was off my antidepressant for 4 days. Its effectiveness is now proved by its absence. The guilt of not always doing something productive didnt become an awkward hollow fuzzy. It gnawed like before and I would want to bounce to blasting work emails and folding laundry and grinding in video games. If these were denied (because, you know, the kids need something. Can you believe it) then anxiety reigned until I wanted to curl into my couch. Luckily I spent a lot of time passed out so that helped.
I did appreciate losing the fuzzy cloud of feeling. The only way I can describe it is maybe having a significant other grab your palm under the table to silently sign, "No, stop." But all the time and in your mind. It's not normal albeit appreciated.
I was also eating more and flipping out quicker. A co worker snap chatted me with "angry ostrich face" as I told someone how little they knew about things actually got done. "You always are salty just less so sometimes," they said. I also crushed hard to the point where I spent 10 minutes staring at someone's earrings so smitten I was they way they fell on their face.
Once the cold cleared I went back to the routine now more comfortable with that metabolic bandwidth being shared by the ground level rate of medication.
The writing prompt I stumbled on was a "thief steals something from the Garden of the Sun." Which felt appropiate because it had just enough a shade of epic and the upcoming MTG set is ancient Greek themed and it made me think of Prometheus.
But I am awful at writing fiction. This blog is proof of that so I wanted to try something different.
In this situation the thief steals anxiety. Because the garden of the sun is actually a prison. It looks good for sure. It features a koi pond cut into a well manicured divot into a hillside surrounded by sedges and non-invasive cat tails. The fish themselves are fat mythical dragons the color of old amber. Around this pond there are butterfly bushes that are ever blooming. The whole space is well lit. True to name, in the Garden of the Sun it is always high noon so there are no shadows. At the center of the garden is a polished cedar pedestal holding the MacGuffin on anxiety itself. And anxiety is huge. Because everyone is anxious. About world war 3. About their health. About politics. About their children. About work. As you get older one realize that few people know what they are doing but those we perceive as better skilled are just pretending until they get by. You could say I am strong writer if you were to compare me to a freshmen English major.
So because we have been on a precipice for the last 30 years (Anxiety briefly shrunk after the Soviet Union fell and people agreed with the End of History point of view of world politics. But it recovered) anxiety is huge. It has no true form itself but the thief has studied what others have described. The shape is both deeply personal yet common. Cutting and quite mundane.
People describe seeing a lotus head filled with holes.
People describe seeing a single blue tile askew to the pattern in the bathroom floor.
They see a DMV form drowned in blue ink and the space in the boxes for one's personal information shrinking.
Its a child standing on the busy road shoulder as both sides of the rural highway fill up with F250s.
Sometimes its a feeling like a piece of popcorn husk shucked into your gums A partner saying we need to talk. A panicked co-worker saying what should we do. The feeling of sitting in the driveway of a relative's house knowing the weekend is already lost. Its seeing your crush and boiling the courage to say something to then realize this will be like all the other times.
But the thief takes anxiety because the thief has the special containment device. Its like the ghost trap in Ghostbuster but instead of it being made of metal and plastic and rubber it is made on a giant damn Cymbalta pill. A pill the size of a milk crate with the inside lined with all the rainbow colors of Paxil and vaporized Zoloft running through the internal honeycombed walls. And there are pipes made of gummi candy that carry chilled Proseco for cooling.
While anxiety is huge (The thief later reports that at seeing the box, Anxiety morphed into a hurt inky black pool of ink) it shrinks next to the containment device until it is the size of tennis ball and into the box it goes. It can never be destroyed but in the box it can be contained.
Free of anxiety the world becomes braver and bolder. The honesty crushes some (Even crushes some businesses and governments) but it lifts others. The robbery is a rising tide that sweeps some boats high and others under.
One day at worked I realized that a good majority of my day is spent moving things around. Boxes, trash, piles of dirt with a broom. And there is no shame in his work or in staying humble but that is far removed from what I tell people I do. But, that is how it shakes out and someone needs to move these boxes.
And that got me thinking of the making formerly intransigent objects mobile. Because another big part of my job is the 1st law of motion. Objects at rest stay at rest unless acted upon an external force. I am that external force. That case of paper? MOVED! This trash? DUMPSTERED! That overflowing dumpster? COMPACTED! This bureaucratic red tape? CUT! These binders? FILLED WITH RECEIPTS!
Then that got me thinking of stripped screws. We strip screws at work all the time. Which would make sense if say we were a carpenter or body shop but we are a school.
Its the tables which are all adjustable but only so through the technicality of the word adjustable itself. I could ride my cat cross country. It would take forever, involeve a lot of blood, and be no fun but sure he is a beast of burden. And so are these tables!
Now our tables come in two varieties. The ones I bought and the ones I inherited. THe ones I inherited are leftover civil defense monsters that weigh 900 lbs. I swear they are lined with lead to stop fallout when kids drilled to duck a cover. Then the ones I bought are the best soft cheese steel China can offer. Hey, I can admit it but I tend to get the lowest bidder because its a table!
Regardless of the style all are adjustable by using a series of screws that thread through a tubular slot in a metal sleeve anchored to the table. These then lock into a leg with different holes to lock in heights. Aligning these guys is a Death Star Trench run of suck. Both the screws and then the legs which, on the older tables, have been Fraknesteined together so even at the same damn height they don't align because 12" inches on Leg A IS NOT the same 12" as Leg B!
And all have either sunken fishing boat irons rust or brittle steel that strip at anything but the perfect turn with a screwdriver made just for it. So I strip all these guys. Usually the very last one when I think I am done and then it is FUCK!
But I have a stripped screw retriever. A tiny set of screws you hammer into the broken head and then wrench out so all the bound tension countervales at the turn of a crescent wrench and success! Feels amazing to pry one of those out and in my mind the scene goes like this...
Me: I got that stripped screw out for you. Leg is fixed
Teacher: ***swoon*** My hero!
Me: Alright!
But it really it is much less adventurous
Me: I got that stripped screw out for you. Leg is fixed
My last post made me reflect on Puerto Rican desserts. Note that as a kid I hated going to "traditional" restaurants because I wanted "other" food. Sometimes Mami called this American food (ie fast food chains) but it also meant anything ethnic or sugary. Worst at the traditional PR restaurant were the deserts. They were the same at every place no matter if it was The Tropicale in the abandoned Paseos mall or Burbujas or Los Hermanos. You know how you can go to any Chinese restaurant in America and they all seem to have the same menu? Well same happened in PR. The restaurant mob got together and said "Ok, we are all going to have the same deserts. They are going to be brought out on a giant serving tray for everyone to admire albeit they all know what to expect. And, of course, we won't make any of these."
So there was always flan. Which I am not a fan of. No fan flan here. Not a big fan of custards except creme burlee which is only passable because they toast the top and make it less like eating a piece of sugary whale blubber.
Then there was "dulce de lechoza" which means candied papaya except no one calls is lechoza back home. This is candied papaya served with a semihard white cheese I was taught was "Caribbean Cheese" You can find it at CostCo as Queso Caribe made in Wisconsin. Its damn good especially grilled in a pan like halloumi or other grilling cheeses. Here it is still good but the candied papaya is often dry and feels like sucking down the membrane on a long cold hot chocolate. Note this is impossible to find outside PR and now I crave it.
Then was "tres leches" which is three milk cake. Its a sponge cake soaked in three milks. What I was never sure. Regular milk. Condensed milk and err maybe like skim milk. Mami said it was goats milk but doubt it. In any case tres leches is OK except it can ave the mouth fell of soaked toilet paper.
Then the tray dices it up because the try to sneak in some more flan as different deserts. This is a chocolate flan and a pumpkin flan. Bull shit.
But the PR dessert I want to talk about is el brazo gitano (literally gypsy arm but likely means gypsy cake) or Jelly Roll cake as I have dubbed it.
The main player in the jelly roll cake is a company called Brazo Gitano Franco which is based in town I was born in, Mayaguez, PR. Mayaguez is like the Youngstown, OH or Binghamton, NY of Puerto Rico. It used to be a big deal and your family is from there. Famoulsy enough I took my then girlfriend now wife to Mayaguez and based on my description of it she for real thought there would be no power. "I expected a donkey to be tied up to a post next to the church," she said only to realize it is like City of Industry, CA just with no industry. And less Mexicans.
The Franco bakery is right across the River Yaguez from my aunt's house in the neighborhood Mami grew up in. You could swim there if you were so inclied especially since its about 30 feet but the water is about 90% silt. From what I understand you can walk there now what with all the silt build up but when we walked we had to cut through the abandoned concrete house someone left on the riverbank when the finance fell through.
This cake is ubiquitous across PR. It is in white rectangular boxes with a red and yellow trim. They come in dozens of flavors (still indicated by a marker check someone physically puts on there) but the default one is guava.
Now if you run into another Puerto Rican they are going to say that oh yeah they love brazo gitano but they are laying because no one likes these monstrosities. It is the candy corn of Puerto Rico. Or fruit cake. It exists solely to be gifted to people you don't care enough about but still feel obliged to. Or to tourists in the duty free section of SJU airport.
All these bad boys are a yellow sponge rolled around a gritty guava paste. They are then BLASTED in powdered sugar and sealed in plastic wrap and shucked into the box.
These things are awful. Dry yellow cake with too much powdered sugar and that paste that bites back. It makes you scream for something to drink. 'Its not to bad with a cup of coffee," Mami said last time she ferried some up for me and the family. Well, falling off the roof of my house isn't too bad with a cup of coffee either, Mami!
There are other flavors. The "crema" (cream) flavor was OK as it was filled with a white buttercream frosting that did not taste like the bottom of a grizzled prospector's pan.
Mind you there are competing jelly roll cakes in Mayaguez like Ricomini but I never had there cakes. I would like to both these sites but the Franco one is "under construction" and the Ricomini one is a 404 error code. "Mayaguez is a sleepy town. We rise and go to bed with the rooster," said a cousin of mine once. "Mayaguez is where we swallow a cable," is what we mother would say meaning its a boring place. And she grew up there! It reminds me of that line in Return of the Jedi where Luke tells Han there is nothing to see on Tatooine.
Oh, one GREAT desert is the Yemita which translates to "little egg cake" and I can't find anywhere on Google. That was a treat for going to Mayaguez. It is was an airy sponge cake covered in a bright yellow glaze and then coated with sprinkles. They then sprinkled some rainbow dot sprinkles on it and sealed this all in with an egg wash. It was golden and bright like a rod of escaped plutonium. The size of a bar of soap it was a meal onto itself.
Now I want one of those but that would mean going to Mayaguez.
As they say around my house..."At least 2019 won't be written on my gravestone."
And because it is that time of the year I am putting down in writing my 2020 resolutions. That way all you porn bots can keep me accountable*
1) Eat Less Sugar
If you read this blog then you know I love bread. Like my favorite snack is a "Taco De Sal" which is a tortilla pan fried with butter and salt. Mind you that made me a professional fat kid and pre-diabetic so back in the late summer my doctor told me to cut that out. And bread isn't too hard to cut out but I love candy. Mami was not one of those "we have dessert" type people** so once I could make/pay for my own meals you bet we are going to have dessert. But considering you know it is awful for me I am going to need all the willpower.
2) Drink More Water
So when I want to eat candy I am going to slam my fist in a wal....err...I mean I am going to drink water.
3) Play More Commander!
Commander (aka EDH) is a Magic format where you have a 100 card deck lead by a legendary creature type (Your commander) and then 99 other singular cards. It is an incredibly popular paper format that emphasized multiplayer. If you are not a nerd then its just a good way to scream at people in a basement using pieces of cardboard wrapped in plastic. But Commander is FREE at the local game store and it fires every weekend (as opposed to draft) so as long as the wife let me dissapear for 3-4 hours on Saturday then we are all good.
That't it! And hopefully these resolutions (Well except for number 3) will help me cheat death a bit longer and maybe keep losing some weight and getting those gains*** so favorite teachers notice me! And not just because they overheard me talking to myself about how this is all bullshit or spilled coffee on my shirt.
*Instead of asking for my money to meet hot single moms in my area. I know the kind of people who live in my neighborhood and only 1 of those 3 is true.
**Mind you PR desserts aren't so great. Candied papaya and some white cheese? Ehh, not so much
***There are no gains. I approach all the weights at the gym as if they are going to buck up and punch me right in the dick.
It snuck up on me that this is indeed the end of the 2010s. A lot of extra special year end lists as you can do "Year's Best X" and "Decade's Best X." Will be a lot of fun to read AV Club this time of year.
I have not kept that great a list of things in this decade but i will say best movie from it is Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse.
Beyond that my memory is not what it used to be so just go read the stuff online. I will say something personal about the decade.
It marked a sudden shift to regular employment and a life that many of my generation do not have. And it began as the decade began with the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Because, at the time, I was, as I had spent much of the 00s, un/underemployed. And my wife urged me to do something with my days instead of sitting at home and watching PBS cartoons.
So I found a charity in town that collected surplus medical items and shipped them overseas. I can volunteer for you. Maybe do some copy writing, etc. I even dressed up for it after the 1.5 hour bus/train ride. And they said sure, you can volunteer.
Then a day later on 1/12/10 the earthquake hit and that organization was slammed with donations. THey hired some extra helpers on temporary gigs to help sort and pack containers and I was one. I then became a warehouse assistant, then volunteer coordinator, and varying director level positions over a five year period. It was a job with a salary and PTO. I got to buy a car and a house and have a kid. The fact this all happened on the back of 100K plus dead victims is not lost to me and the impostor syndrome kicks in where I should not have what I have.
This then morphed into another full time job working at a school that I still have and (even for all the ranting on this blog) enjoy.
And this isn't lost on me as it seems the decade also marks the fact that I am an iconoclast. A stable family with two incomes and benefits in this America? A middle class family? That really feels like impostor syndrome to me and likely climate change will rend it all asunder. It seems like a clock started this decade and when I look at my kids I want to get them as much experience as possible before it rings.
Our household was blessed with many a video game this holiday season. My kids were excited but are more prone to watching than playing. I remember being six and having better/control interest but sure that nostalgia affects this. And, instead of a parent either jumping in or searching for a YouTube tutorial I just had Mami sipping on her wine. "These kids always scream when that Mario dies. I hope they scream so loud when I die!"
So here is a round up of the games we got
Far Cry Primal
Ok, I bought this for myself because it was on sale on Xbox and I love these games albeit they are really phoning it in what with copying them over and over. And I know Primal is "old" because 5 and New Dawn have come out but its a Far Cry game so its pretty much just the same as all the others. And, yes, even with having played umpteen other iterations of this game I dig it. Note that it has a caveman/pre-historic theme to it so you have to smash guys with your club and spears! And it is very satisfying to get a bead on someone with a spear and hear the swooshing ka-chunk as it nails them.
Not my video. Credit to Vincent Lauzon on YouTube
You can't buy anything so there is some more verisimilitude to the hunting and gathering* to make better gear as opposed to in the other games. Here you really do need to kill a bunch of rhinos to make the ultimate spear belt as opposed to say in 4 where maybe you could just pick it up from the hundreds of dead guards.
Note that Ubisoft made it so everyone speaks in...whatever it is they are speaking. Cave person talk. Wenja in the lore of the game but considering no one heard early humans talk real cave people could have been singing Jimmy Eat World.
Oh, you can tame animals to work for you. Which is very easy (Feed them meat and then press one button) but is quite fun. Your black panther can run down enemies and you can command a saber tooth tiger. Oh and no grenades but they do have bee bombs! BEE BOMBS! Which I think was lost to time along with the recipe of Greek Fire but its fun to see guys get all swallowed up by your angry bees.
The Outer Worlds
Ok, so this game is newish. And I love this kind of retro pop-future sci-fi. Spacer's Choice brand Mock Apple juice! Automechanicals. Freelances facing down company towns and corporate armies. It all feels very far flung yet something still anachronistic compared to our current level of wonder. I get some serious Fallout vibes from this which makes sense since it was apparently made by a former team from there.
And while I have not finished the game does feel small and short. Almost as if they weren't 100% ready or confident in it. I do hope we get some additional DLC to expand this world because it deserves it.
I love that the ship is called The Unreliable.
Lets Go Pikachu
My wife: Lets get the kids a Switch for Xmas
Me: Ok.
Also, me: YES! YES! YES! I can play Pokemon on it!
My wife: I am not getting Pokemon Sword and Shield. It is 60 dollars and I am not sure if he (the son) is ready for it. I know YOU want it but you already got games.
Me: That's fine but we can get the older Pokemon for it used! Lets go Pikachu!
Wife: Ok, but no more than like 35 dollars
Me: Sure
Also me: Ok, so I paid 54 dollars for it.
Wife: WHAT!?
Me: But it is going to be awesome. Here we go! ***Puts game in***
Me: WHY CAN'T YOU BATTLE WILD POKEMON IN THIS GAME!?
Wife: This game is boring and I like Pokemon Go. Its like Pokemon Go
Me: GOD DAMN IT!
Wife: You didn't read the reviews. Lots of other nerds are mad about that. They even say right here "Its like Pokemon Go"
Me: WHAT DID THEY DO TO POKEMON!?
Kids: Oh, look daddy an Oddish! Catch it!
Afterwards my wife points out that I don't play the Pokemon game anymore....
Super Smash Brothers Ultimate
Again its for my kids (which they played this one. The 4 year old asked for it by name!) but even encouraging them to button mash renders no effect. So it is has become a solo player game for me which is fine because this version of Smash has a ton of....lore. A giant narrative spanning all the Nintendo IPs in a cartoon fighting game. But I thirst for playing against people and....getting wrecked because wow are people online totals sharks with this game. At least no one can beat Daddy at it!
I dig the Wifi Fit Trainer character as it triggers memories of finding my breath
Mario Kart 8
At one point I thought my kids were video game prodigies as they were doing OK at this. Not winning but like 8th-7th place and making turns. My kids can't even wipe themselves after pooping!
Then I realized there are a ton of "new player" features baked into the game including an auto drive, short falls off the course and even some auto turning. So my kids weren't really playing as more they were moving the controllers wildly around. Unfortunately, this is not the Wii guys and the machine doesn't see you move.
Its Mario Kart so its fun with a big group of people. 200 cc is freaking hard and the only brutal part of this game. Unlike OG Mario Kart which was always brutal.
My wife is better than me at this game and her favorite character is Rosalina.
Me: Why do you like Rosalina so much?
My wife: I don't know. She is just...
Me: Its ok. You can admit to me that its because she's hot. She is.
My wife: ....maybe
Shut up and drive.
One last word on the Switch...I usually don't dig the gimmicks Nintendo cooks up (Wii sensor bar, the "3D" on the 3DS, and I played an OG Virtual Boy!) but I do love how the Switch seamlessly goes from a TV console to then a robust handheld. Wow, is that a lot of value. Now, If i could just figure out which controller is the main one.
Every year in late September the Ohio City corporation shuts down a five block section of the city on West 25th for a street festival. And, on a combination of both dare and a need to get into the VIP section, Emily was there lugging a beat five gallon bucket filled with flowers. They were mostly thrashy little bouquets made of golden rod boughs and clumps of chicory. All yanked up from the lonely roadside on the Irish Bend on Carter road.
"Flowers for a dollar!"
"Hey, want some flowers for a dollar? They will look great in your hair!"
"Flowers for a dollar? I mean, I would love getting one so why not get her one?"
There were few takers. "Why aren't there wrapped up? Like the ones you buy at the gas station," sneered someone who took the time to stop and then quickly flit away.
Emily kept screaming for the sales while shuffling through the throng to the VIP area. Her plan was to snake through the crowd and then dump the bucket as she comes up to stainless steel barriers cordoning off the VIP area. She thought the sales cover would be funny and maybe sneak her a few dollars. She did not plan for how the inertia of the bucket would cut into her ankle. Her right bicep also burned so she needed to double palm the handle and lug it in zombie crawl side step.
By the Cambodian restaurant someone bought a pair. A mother for her two children who then proceeded to smack each other with the goldenrod boughs. The mother, frazzled, began to holler but Emily had skittered another few feet as she saw an opening in the claustrophobic sidewalks. Not just people but also arm thick bundles of water and power cables. Boxes filled with swag for each of the vendors. Water bottles for a dance studio. Erasers for a school. A carton of t-shirts someone would throw into the crowd.
A block away from the VIP area Emily saw a pair of police officers standing by a vinyl event tent. Here she dropped the bucket sending the water and now soaked boughs into the overflowing gutter, saturated by the melting ice of a beer tent in the VIP section. She did grab one bouquet and held it together in her hands as she walked up to the rope of the VIP section. The police were not so much guarding it as just idling. The only guard was someone in a black t shirt and jeans. A thin young man with protruding elbows and a water bottle.
Emily made eye contact but didn't smile. She didn't know if this phased the guard (a loose term) but she walked right through bothered by the man she thought would ask for the lighting bolt hand stamp that indicated VIPs. Or by the police asking for a vendors license. For the moment she appreciated the edge of privilege she had albeit the power to use it to break into the open air VIP section of a family street festival was less than thrilling.
Because it pops up this time of year, I recently re-watched Die Hard.
To get it out of the way I am in the camp that this is not a Christmas movie. It is a movie SET during Christmas. Setting it during Christmas makes it a lot better of a movie (Like Home Alone) but you could set this movie any other time and it would still be good. I know the war on whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie is only topped by the war on Xmas itself but I have chosen my side.
Note that this is not a bad movie and holds up very well so not much to say except my story on the first time I saw Die Hard which was in college.
A college girlfriend told me that it was her favorite action movie. Now, note that she was one of those "I don't own a TV" type people and was very crunchy. This isn't a slam on her. She was great but it was odd. She was someone who had Teva sandal tans etched into her foot by the end of the summer and rode her bike up South Hill...in the winter! She worked for NYPIRG going door to door asking for donations to support renewable energy. And Die Hard is a favorite movie?! "Oh yeah. The "ho ho ho I have a machine gun now" is so great"*
And, I had never seen it. But I had seen Firebirds and Delta Force a ton of times!!
She even had it on DVD but without a TV we watched it on my tiny 13" inch TV using my PS2 to read the disc. The go-go 00s in college were something. I would stolen it on Kazaa but then my computer would be a Chernobyl of digital hot hot heat.
The kicker to this story is that after we watched it we went to her place** and instead of her room in the said on-campus apartment she slept on the balcony. In a little sleeping bag on top of camp bed roll. A real semi-permanent setup (Just until it gets really cold. Like 40 degrees) with a tiny end table a little goose neck map clamped onto it. Then blankets and pillows all nestled into various corners. And we slept there about 3 floors up and the central New York sky (and yellow bee balm glow of the lamp posts) above us. And considering I can 1) Sleep anywhere*** and 2) It was next to a lady. Oh boy! I slept pretty well. And so did she as she continued this until Campus Safety told her to shut it down. They said it was too dangerous she told me in an anguished AOL Instant messenger with multiple sad emoji faces. "I wonder who ratted me out?" she followed up we both agreed it was her roommate, Maria. That bitch.
So, that is what I always think about whenever I think about Die Hard. Not John Ritter flying off the roof or Bruce Willis crawling through a duct. Not even a Yippie Kay Yeah, Motherfucker. Just the sleeping bag and the balcony nest.
*I don't know the rules for a quote within a quote. I was not one to edit. As you can tell from this blog.
**Don't get excited, porn bots. All 4 (Yes, 4!) of her roommates were there and we slept on a balcony.
***If we ever run across each other in the real world then it will surely be awkward. But, once we get over that, you can challenge me to sleep. And If I lay on anywhere for about 3 minutes I will fall asleep. Just don't take my stuff, ok?
Rouge is the name of a sexy anthropomorphized bat in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe. I know this because my son enjoys Sonic albeit he has never played the games. There are dozens of these side characters who share the world sometimes with humans and sometimes not. There are about a dozen sonic cartoons.
"The one where Sonic fights the octopus on the beach and Amy uses her hammer!" My son is light years from reading so show titles as pointless. It's like road signs and me. You want to get to the airport? I gotcha but listen because you will pass two BP gas stations and one is good and one is bad and the turn is at the good one. And then a willow tree.
And then I have to divine if ite Sonic X (which is like an anime) or Sonic Underground (Hes in a band and has a brother and sister!) or Sonic Boom (which is goofy) but not as goofy as Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog which I watched in Spanish dub! Sonic agaisnt the evil robots Chatarra and Robo Pollo!
Rouge is sexy in that we are told she is. Not like I'm into human like bats. More of a Sailor Moon for fictional character crush kind of person. But Rouge....she's a femme fatale. Who is also a bat. She speaks in a Feench accent. And she's a jewel thief! Which is pertinent in Sonic because he is always looking for those Chaos Emeralds.
Rouge is also a synonym for makeup. I cleaned out apartments one summer in college and we sometimes found petrified makeup left behind. A bit of foundation that fell behind the toilet. Things like that. Sometimes people will wear makeup and they usually dont. Like it's a special day. Picture day. And I want to say to them "Oh, you like nice." but anxiety cripples me so I'll say it on this blog because being so public feels that more confidential. This blog is digital rouge made to jazz my first impression up.
I hope this becomes a series.* A coworker**gifted me a book of writing prompts for the holidays. Much better than the online ones where I can just hit refresh. No one sees that because it's just blips on a keyboard*** but turning a page to a new prompt and then ignoring it? The universe sees that!
So the first prompt is peaches.
Just that....peaches.
Ok, so the first thing I think about is butts! Because of the emojis and online culture. Think about certain ones more so than others!
Look, this book made a choice when they began with peach because it would get everyone's thirst going. But, I am pretty sure no one wants to read any of that from me. So I self censor and segue to the time our pediatrician asked us if we were sure if our son swallowed a peach pit or a nectarine
"Big difference," he said after the answering service found him on his day off.
And I had no clue the difference between a peach and nectarine. They are the same thing like lemon and limes. right? My wife always reminds me of that whenever we purchase said lemons or limes. Same difference!
"Its a nectarine. I'm sure."
"Oh, then it will pass. If he is sick later tonight or tomorrow then go to the ER. But we should be ok. Glad it was not a peach."
Had it been a peach sure the kid would have choked and the call never happened. "Its too big for him to swallow. Its just a size thing," my wife said.
I'm tired of things making sense like that. Peaches are dangerous because of three extra layers of chitinous embedded onto the peach pit.
Or we never evolved the ability to break down peach seed like how we can't generate our own Vitamin C.
Our son was just fine and this post would have been better if about butts.
*I say this like there is some editor or advertiser to please. This is my blog!
The following is a list of things that are incredibly mundane at job but that people treat as if it were black magic.
Changing the toner on the copier
Submitting a purchase request
Carrying a box of paper up stairs
Making an outbound phone call
Restarting your computer
Knowing who your supervisor is
Knowing how pay periods work
Connecting to WiFi
Using the supply room
Cleaning the kitchen
That's very salty. There are people who get it but the sheer amount of people flabbergasted by this saps my faith sometimes.
However, it reminds me of an old SNL sketch with Mike Myers
"Middle Age Man"
I can't find clips but here are some links to better blogs who also remember. And he knows things like how to jump start a dead car battery and "I know when all my appliance warranties are up."
So, just like Middle Aged Man was a hero I am going to embrace this as it, if anything, affirms my usefulness when I could be replaced by a laminated FAQ.
A co-workers recently told me that I am always salty and well..I got to give it to them. They were right. But they know how to change toner.
At work someone brought in extra holiday chocolates to leave in the common kitchen. A pro move I have used myself when dumping extra food. Save these were dark chocolate, caramel, nut and dried cranberry clusters. They were nice with a hint of saltiness but the name cracked me up.
Cranberry Rascals
I will let you finish giggling. Which I did because that's a name.
A Cranberry Rascal...sounds like a mischievous faerie that rises up from the bog to tell the heroine fruit based riddles.
The Cranberry Rascals...that's the name of the Ocean Spray acapella group that comes together at every company holiday party.
The Cranberry Rascal...that's the name of the seasonal smoothie at the bagel place but sometimes they run out of the frozen cranberry concentrate so you need to order the regular Mango Madness one.
The Cranberry Rascals...the name of the intramural all city softball team of Cranberry, PA.
In Sapsucker Woods pond there is an ancient snapping turtle that locals says is a as wide as a manhole cover. Visitors to the nature center on the western bank of the pond say they sometimes see it from the cedar plank observation deck. Every tourist will turn the viewing stations down from the horizon and towards the water. John Gelbert, an expert birder who, after retiring from the state power and gas commission, would only turn his Swarvoski scope downward whenever he saw the people rush to the banister and crane over the railing.
"There it is!"
"Its huge!"
"No, its just the sun hitting some logs!"
"NO! It moved! I swear"
The nature center had yet to capitalize on this albeit when there as a rash of sightings there would be more cars in the lot. More people taking the Route 23 bus line all the way from town, which was an hour and 15 minute loop around all the hills to Sapsucker Woods pond. They sold more sodas and stuffed Audubon birds that sang when you squeezed them.
My neighbor, Mr. Rollarino, had a penchant for scanning the local paper and the crime blotter every morning. He was the only person on the block to still get the Journal and I, the only person, who would talk to him. This is no comment on him. He is very friendly. Retired and originally from Torino, Italy. He worked as a glazier there and then moved here to work at Corning. He had one grown child now in the Marine Corps and a wife who passed a few years ago. Cancer. But, the neighbor was now mostly renter who ebbed and flowed. I ended up stuck there and with Mr. Rollarino.
He would scan the blotter and point out the ludicrous to me. Sometimes he waited till I got back and from work which let me know it was something very impressive.
"Look at this! At the pond up the road!"
And in the paper the blotter narrated how the Sheriff apprehended 3 men in a row boat. It said they were inebriated and had on there person several lengths of rope, broom sticks, fishing rods, and what was described as a home made net.
"They were hunting for it! The turtle!"
I decided to buy a copy of the Journal the next day as the headline was about the arrest. Indeed they had tried to row out and catch the turtle coming around 4am. They failed to factor in the birders there to whom 4am is the start of the day and it was Mr. Gelbert who saw them and hollered. He claimed they screamed "Fuck you" back at him which is why he called the police. The assumption was they had gone turtle hunting but the suspects made no statement.
A fourth suspect was seen on a kayak but rowed to shore before he could be caught and ran into the woods. The kayak had no state boat registration sticker. The sheriff was attempting to secure prints from it. Aside from the center they may also face charges from the state department of natural resources for illegal hunting and possible ecosystem degradation.
"The hills on which Sapsucker rests are actually a rare ecosystem in the state," said a Dr. James Conifer from the dept of natural resources in the article. "They are a Swamp White Oak Swamp with the namesake pond itself being the largest depression that filled in over years. There are sedges we never see anywhere else." He did not mention the turtle which, if it existed, must also be quite rare. Wasn't that like hunting a white tiger? An albino elephant?
When this week became Saturday I drove out to the pond. There were more people there than I had ever seen and they all peered into the inky water scanning for bubbles. On the far side there were poles cast but no people attending to them. Someone from the center would tromp out and knock them down every two hours or so.
"The kayaker is putting them back up!" said a father there with his children. "He is still hunting the turtle."
When I told Mr. Rollarino about this he said he would scan the blotter for the next hit. "I will tell you if they succeed!" And he poked his folded paper putting a divot right where the blotter section appears below the ads for puppies.
The Sunday paper then had a write up about the legendary turtle in the life section. "The Onondaga Indians, original owners of this land, believed a turtle held up the world. These were likely inspired by local snapping turtles and can be seen in other myths worldwide." The article was then accompanied by crayon pictures of the turtle children had left at the nature center
Mr. Rollarino then started telling me about other crimes. Someone falling out of a window. Someone stopped for putting gas in a garbage bag at the Sunoco. The turtle never appeared again in the blotter.
Time to talk about another movie I LOVED as a kid...Chuck Norris's The Delta Force.
This is a very fifth grade movie. And not just because that is when I watched the hell out of it to the point that I am sure the ribbon on the tape burnt out. I got chicken pox in fifth grade (After tackling Adrian Richner in what was supposed to be two hand touch football. He had just come back from having it* No one expect me to tag him much less tackle but yeah get wrecked.) and watched this on repeat. It is also a fifth grade movie because I think only fifth grade boys will enjoy it. Well and those guys who enjoy Call of Duty just a bit too much
Note those weapons be firing and they have the look of someone just telling them their delivery pizza is running late
Does it hold up?
Well, first this is a toughie to find. A lesson in save those DVDs. Not that I ever had one but if I did it would have been easy. You can only buy from Amazon and you can get it from Starz (Which is still a thing I guess) but I am leery of those 7 day free trials. I am going to fucking forget or, worst, I will say fuck it and keep it and never watch it while Mr. Starz counts his money. But I found it on...Vudu? Alright, we did Starz. Remind me in 7 days to cancel that , OK? Thanks!
It stars Chuck Norris during his film making heyday albeit he lives on in memes. And fitness commercials. And, you know, being alive. Every time I hear his name I can only hear it in the Nostalgia Critic style with an explosion in the background. "Ahhhh Chuck AAHHH NORRIS"
Its an older meme, but it checks out
Its also Lee Marvin's final film before he passed. Not that I have seen much of Marvin's filmography but he was one of those "guys" in all those war movies they show on Memorial Day. A "Dad's" kind of actor.
The movie begins with a literal explosion. A helicopter blows up and bunch of soldiers scurry away to awaiting escape planes. Chuck Norris (who is called McCoy, because of course) runs but then realizes there is a man still trapped on the burning chopper. Of course he defies Lee Marvin's orders and gets him. He then begrudges how the top brass don't get it and we get some exposition saying how their mission failed. This, like the movie, is based on real events referring to the Tehran hostage crisis and a failed US mission to save the hostages. The movie is then based on hijackings in the 70s and 80s. Terrorism felt much quainter back then and the eeevill guys even say they are hijacking to stop the anti-socialist Americans and Zionists. Remember the Cold War?
The movie then clips along in a fast yet ham handed way jumping to 1985. A plane is taking off and we are loading up our cast of hostages and eeeeevil guys. I love the scene where the terrorists pull their guns out from their coat pockets and a little kid sees them "Oh shit, dad! Wake up" Its played for empathy but it is so goofy like he just spilled some Gatorade on dad's briefcase.
Then we move fast as phones calls expose what is going on. This is the plane we need the embassy. This is the embassy we need the State Department. Then the State Department needs the Pentagon! We got an emergency flash for THE PRESIDENT! Again, this is meant to be build excitement but its got the feel of a Power Point slide. We even get a shot of McCoy, now in retirement at his ranch, shaking his head as he sees this on TV.
Then the movie...kind of gets boring. Once more, I think they play this for tension but the stakes don't feel earned. Its the whole situation played out in real time. Everything is TOLD and then showed with the same tension of an Unsolved Mysteries re-enactment.
There is no nuance here which, jokes on me its a Chuck Norris action movie, but we got the eeevil terrorists asking the flight attendant to pick out all the Jewish names from the passports. Then she screams "I can't do it. Can't you see I'm German? Don't you remember the Nazis!" Some major cringe. They want a Schindler's List moments but they get fucking The Delta Force. There is a very long scene where the terrorists grab all the people they think are Jewish and someone literally screams "its like the Holocaust again!" and that would have been a powerful allegory if you know there was some nuance or development. For a vehicle that is all about the explosions they linger on these awkward scenes for way too long. That said there is one nice scene where the little girls gives her dad her doll to keep him safe as the terrorists abscond him to first class cabin.
"You are facing disaster if you try to land!" Screams an air control tower at the plane. No shit. That is implied!
Really this is a series of tropes you have seen in other movies. They even shoot a hostage from the door of the moving plane and they mug at the hero which I thought only existed in Face/Off But here is Delta Force doing it years before
Oh the movie has a nice ditty theme song that sounds like Miami Vice music.
Why did I like this movie?!?!?!
Oh yeah the big action piece at the end. The movie plods to the final piece where after much flim flammery the terrorists have gotten to their evil lair.
And this spoke to the 5th grade tendencies as we got dune buggies and dirt bikes zipping around shooting rockets. I am pretty sure the Army does not have rocket shooting dirt bikes but they should! Then its kind of a chase movie as the terrorists now have a whole army and Delta Force is trying to run back onto the plane to escape.
In the seminal scene Chuck Norris comes up behind two evil jeeps shooting at the plane. He mows one down with his dirk bike machine gun. Then he wheelies up past them and kills the last one with a TAIL PIPE ROCKET LAUNCHER!
This is a two hour movie. A SLOW two hour movie and I loved it for about 10 minutes of action. I was an idiot.
*I often joke that i peaked when I made an unassisted triple play in elementary school kick ball gym class. And yeah its a bit tongue in cheek but it was also pretty fucking cool. Especially for a fat and slow kid like me. That tackle was another one. I also saw a pair of boobs once. Not in a magazine mind you and found 50 dollars on the sidewalk once. Those were all peak times.
Have you ever experienced something and later had no desire to never have it again? Not a "Well I just don't like it." but a "This will cause me pain." Because just not liking something is like black licorice*. Yeah, you may not like it but its not going to cause any emotional dread. This could be a food. Like I CANNOT drink Vanilla Coke as it triggers an awful memory in college of drinking a mix of it Sprite and Cointreau** from a Lego Bionicle jar and immediately gagging. Only time my body has ever reacted like that and I drank the water in Nicaragua!
But these are also experiences. Ever seen a movie or show you wish to never watch again? I have dodged Snoopy Come Home for roughly 27 years after watching it once as a youth. Another film I dodged is Jumanji. Its not a bad film and it includes my only celebrity crush ever, Kirsten Dunst***, but once was enough. Even getting this poster made me suck in my breath, flick some nails, and curl up my toes inside my shoes.
Fuck
Ok, a bit of backstory on this.
Why I am talking about this is because I saw the new version with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jack Black. And its pretty fun for kind of a throw away PG-13 distraction. Worth a watch on a rainy afternoon.
The when is December 1995 going into January 1996. I'm 11.
My dad passed away in 1994 And, I don't recal ever feeling any grief or pain. Not because he was horrible but because I was young and he was either sick or working for most of my childhood. I was inevitable and it happened.
I have a "cousin" (who is actually my second cousin. I think? Read on) named Ana**** who is my age. One month older than me. Her mom is my actual cousin (Martita) but she is much older like 20 something years older. Because of the difference in age between my aunts and Mami and because Mami had me at 35 both Mami and Martita (So my mom and her niece) were pregnant at the same time in 1984 and had us within a month of each other. Not that me an Ana were super close but we grew up as cousins are supposed to whenever we got together.
Anyway in the winter of 1995 Ana's family (Her mom and her dad, Pedro, but everyone called him Peter) decided to spend Xmas in NYC. And they invited me. I would see snow for the first time! And my mom sent me with a wad of 20s and an Orlando Magic winter coat (The only one they had at the Sears in PR but that's OK because in the go-go 90s the Magic were good) on this trip. The only thing I remember her telling me was that these people "owed your father" which I didn't put much weight into at the time but, much later, realized my dad helped pay for a lot of things in the extended family back in the day. At some point in the pass we were the "rich" folk in the family and he was sort of an ersatz godfather. The full details still escape me but things changed as his health declined but those favors were still owed.
And it was an awesome trip. A hotel right in NYC. Walking through Central Park. Times Square. Top of the WTC and Empire State building. Going out to eat every meal We went to FAO Schwartz and then took a train up for one day in Lake Placid where it SNOWED AND SNOWED. Tried eggnog for the first time and even visited a long lost "aunt" who lived in a rent controlled apartment on the Upper East Side.
So, how does this relate to Jumanji.
Ok, so when the New Year rolled around we flew from NYC to Eunice, LA.
And I try to not be too judgmental on this blog because its a lame blog no one reads and I am an overweight guy with too much anxiety but Eunice, LA can go fuck itself. It even has a horrible sounding name. I rather live in Enema, LA.
We went there to visit some long lost sideways relatives. They were Ana's god parents and used to live in PR but left for the dad of the clan (A man named Kermit. Well at least his nickname) to become a pediatrician. "He was a horrible man," Mami later said. "It is why they moved to that awful town so far away."
We stayed for a few days going into New Years Eve and Day. I don't remember anyone's names but the family had 2 young boys and a sister about a year older than me and Ana. And we played a ton of video games and goofed around. Their house was tacky with lots of faux wood and fake plants. Lounge chairs with ruffled skirts and doilies on the couch arms. My parents house was pretty mod***** and I felt as if on a joke movie set. Was Alf going to come out at some point. But the parents were odd and without my own family (ie Mami) to be my advocate I felt like an unwelcome guest. I had to sit at the kids table for dinner which was boggling to me. "What the fuck is a kids table?" I thought. Fireworks are legal in LA and we bought some but kids were not allowed to use them which was beyond lame. Fireworks are NOT legal in PR PR but every NYE we would go to my aunt's house, down the street, and fire off an amount of ordinance suitable to take down the government of say Chad with all sorts of cousin. It is the only constant family gathering memory i have and something, the only thing, I looked forward to with them. Not being able to blow away things on NYE sucked. They prayed before eating which we didn't do and I was chastised for only mouthing the grace******. At some point I could feel my chest tighten with the start of an asthma attack and I got the bottle of liquid albuterol my mom gave me. I asked for a glass of water and the Kermit fellow asked why. When I told him he was shocked "Why would your mother let you carry that and dose yourself!?" Which, now, I realize he had a point but also go fuck yourself because I needed it. I also remember they had just gotten a puppy. A lovely chocolate and white Cocker Spaniel and they asked me to take it out and put on the run. And I carried it out in my arms and as it was yipping and being excitable it fell out of my arms and somersaulted in the air landing on its back. And it didn't move. And I remember the pronounced rush of emotions of "Oh shit " to "Good. Fuck this family" that hit me before it shook itself off and romped around the yard.
This all relates to Jumanji because on evening we went to see it with the family one evening in a literal two screen theater. The older me would think ti quaint and "yeah support a local business" but at the time the young me missed the gigaplexes and it just enshrined how backwards these folks were.
I was glad to leave and I never watched Jumanji again.
So, that's why. Because of that awful experience where I felt alien and judged for decisions made by my family. About a year ago my mother told me she heard "Kermit" had passed away and she and I agreed it was a good thing. Fuck that guy.
*I actually enjoy black licorice something I share with Mami who ONLY likes black jelly beans. "Black like an old telephone. That is what I like," she would say whenever we got some Jelly Bellys.
** Now, Butter Schnapps. Those were good times.
***Swoon
****In a weird tick of language I pronounce her name "Anna" (like in Frozen) because in Spanish you emphasize the last a. This carried over into English so even a random "Ana" becomes "Anna" much to the chagrin of the "Ana" I ran into once I left the island. Thankfully, Frozen came out and now I can use that excuse. "Its just always on! Sorry....Annnnnnaaa!"
*****A bit on my parents house. It was huge but only in its verticality. We had two living rooms that no one used. One was on a lower level and it had pastel couches, two grey love seats, a coffee table with unsecured marble tile tops and a 12 foot ceiling. Then mounted to the side was a sculpture of a faux gold rod bent into a S shape. Then about 20 three foot metal rods hanging down from it. Like an indoor wind chime. Above this was the dining room which had an 8 foot glass table top. Six high back black chairs and a wall made of a solid mirror panels. Next to that was the normal living room with a wooden couch lined with white cushions. If you want a visual guide imagine the house of the yuppies in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. That's our house.
******Something my nuclear family never embraced is religion. I think my parents only indulged it because their parents did and while I was "raised" Catholic it never was a central part of our lives. That said religion to me is in Spanish. I cannot say the Lords Prayer in English. It sounds very alien like the clicking of wild beasts. I've been to masses at weddings and everything feels like a wispy dejavu.
This week I go to do one of my favorite things which was roll change!
A co worker came to me with a Ziploc bag stuffed with pennies. "Someone paid for popcorn with this!" Then she handed me the bag and I briefly imagined it was a medieval bounty paid for delivering a fugitive to the royal court. Except instead of gold it was 600 plus pennies in varying stats of age. Including many that were nasty rime coated green veterans of long campaigns trapped in a kid's piggy bank. Someone had shot their shot in securing that bag of popcorn. I hoped they got the Cinnamon Roll flavor which sounds awful but is lovely. Cinnabon at the movies! Which still sounds awful but its good. Buy a bag for $6 and help us out to try and see?!
First, I said, I am going to find this kid and read them the riot act. Which made me feel like quite the dad because who uses the term "riot act?"
Second, I am going to take this change and roll it. Which I LOVE! More than doing dishes and shoveling snow. Oh and washing walls.I realize that make me quite intriguing indeed. Like James Bond but in the suburbs!
But all these things are about taking something and making order from it. And don't mistake me for some Type A ultra clean freak. You should see my desk at work. And the kitchen when at 11:45pm after fighting with my kids to do their homework (How many hops on the number line!?) I just say fuck it.
However, these things scratch a particular itch. Change rolling because it takes all the disparate pieces and turns them into neat tubes of actionable currency. All these loose change is useless and annoying but seeing 12 sticks of 50 cent rolled pennies? That is pure dynamite! It even looks like dynamite with the brown paper wrapper and the burnt old west red lettering.
A roll of quarters? That is a fusion core with the heft and power of a purchasing grenade. Ka-fucking-BOOM I paid for lunch with a roll of quarters. A roll of gold dollar coins which I have only seen once but sometimes those roll packets come with a handful of them. They are black and mythical in both their creation and power.
You pay in a roll of change and the cashier feels that heft and effort. They are likely annoyed but it is only because they are jealous that you created something of such locked up dynamism.
In high school for about a year I had frosted tips. It was the go-go 90s and I swore it made me look bad ass. The fact my mom did them in our laundry room with rolls of wrap, that bleach goop, and the sharp point of a comb handle went unreported. Then I would spike them up with glops of gel. The big blue LA Looks kind because it was 1) Cheap 2) Extrem Hold. The number rating for hold went all the way to 12! 3) Had bubbles in the gel. I am sucker for bubbles in things. I had a set of glasses with a single bubble in the base and I found myself quite classy. "Thisnis only for good stuff, you see! The Makers Mark, you see."
At work a colleague found that picture online and uses it every so often as a reply all to an email. "Yeah that's good everyone but check this out!"
"Hey!" I say. "I'll report it for harrassment"
"Oh will you?!"
Fuck, no. I wont because it's funny and I'm a secret sucker for the laughs.
I then in college tried to grow my hair long. But that summer experiment lead to no length. Just volume that puffed up on my head so I had this Q Tip look.
"You need to style it so it grows that way. Like cut it and painting it to grow that way."
