boo!

so many kids out tonight all looking for the same thing. a little sugar fix. i can still remember being a kid and trying to figure it all out. "people give you candy for just knocking on the door?" i was a pretty shy kid and if i close my eyes i can still see out through the eyeholes of my paper ultraman mask with flame retardant jumpsuit. "now who are you supposed to be?" i heard over and over again that night. "i'm japanese superstar ultraman!" i wanted to shout, but mostly said nothing. the smell of my own breath and the sound of heavy breathing inside the mask. i kept looking down at my feet to see where i was going. as we came down the last street around the corner from my house a pickup truck with high school kids in the back pulled up and they all jumped out. "run!!!" some kid yelled. my brother and i booked across the last two lawns, ran up our steps and locked ourselves inside. safe for another year.

you see the stars then
look down and count all your toes
to find your way home

is it time to start believing yet...?

the protection of
these thin walls between the world
my tabernacle

small houses 06

location: home
when you're a kid there's nothing quite as fun as getting up on a weekend long before your parents wake, sneaking out to the living room with every sheet, blanket and pillow you can find and then building yourself a fort. it is something within us. a desire for shelter, even when already inside one. a distant connection to a time in the wilderness. to raise up and take down your tent. and inside our makeshift dwellings we would then feast on sugar cereal and entertain our guests to the wonderment of the saturday morning cartoon lineup.
and when you grow up, that feeling and desire don't go away. we make success out of the places we live in. and in reality we all came from one place. part of that cozy sense we get inside the fort transports us back to the safety of the womb, though we are closer now to the tomb. and the only thing that makes all of this even better is when the rain is pouring outside as it was this past weekend. the shelter. the reason.

all signs point to the
future successes of all
your new endeavors

a weekend of rain, games indoors, the giants win the pennant!, carving pumpkins, and more games. movies. and now the sun comes to dry up all our weekend memories and reminds us it is monday once more...

intently watching
the color of river rocks
change in autumn storm

a balanced part of this complete breakfast

saturday morning. the eternal kid in me wakes up with hopes for the weekend measured out in careful optimism. the cartoon cavalcade underway, bowls and spoons clink together as milk is slurped. and i am reminded of what edie brickell and her new bohemians once said, "philosophy is the talk on a cereal box"
quaker recently re-introduced these great cereal boxes from the 1960's. they feature the early characters and look that capn' crunch had at that time - the crew of alfie, brunhilde, carlyle, dave and sea dog. and of course the characters they met along the way in their adventures on board the good ship "guppy". crunch beast, smedley, and the dastardly pirate jean la foote, who of course was always plotting to pillage the guppy and steal the crunch berries.
all of these characters and ideas came out of the jay ward studios. they also brought us rocky and bullwinkle, george of the jungle, tom slick and superchicken. what a better fit for the design of a cereal box. you could catch the adventures of rocky and bullwinkle on a saturday morning while gazing back to these packages. and these reproductions also feature two trading cards with a character and bio on each.
general mills recently did this same thing with the trix boxes and i have to say i'm really enjoying these re-releases. the simple graphics and wonderful characters for me have opened again that door to the past where a world of imagination awaited. floating on the guppy with the capn', i too can now re-take my place at my station awaiting the capn's orders on the high seas of adventure cereals.

the space between us
this makes all the difference
in seeing ourselves

pioneer boots

my 4th grade teacher was a man named mr. sobaje. (pronounced so-bah-jee) he was a wonderful teacher who made every effort to make all of us kids feel important and accepted. i remember his hands were always covered with chalk dust as he rarely used an eraser. he wore a casual suit each day with suede hush-puppies. we often sang in his class as he strummed the auto-harp, and he loved to tell us stories.
one i remember particularly well was about a poor boy in a turn of the century schoolhouse who after showing up barefoot was told he could not attend again without shoes. because he was so poor, his family could not afford to buy him a new pair of shoes, and as he was the only boy in a family of girls, he was forced to wear an old pair of ladies style lace up boots to school the following day despite his protests. though he tearfully begged his parents to let him stay at home rather than face the humiliation of his peers, they would not relent, believing his education to be more important than ridicule. the following day as he walked to the one room schoolhouse with his sisters, kicking the dirt as he went to hide his shame, he arrived and quickly took his place at his desk sliding his feet as far back under his seat as he could and waited in hopes no one would notice his lady style shoes.
as the other students filled their seats and the teacher arrived, he began to walk around the classroom, as was his custom while he taught. as he passed the poor boy he noticed the shoes even as the boy tried ever harder to slide them under his seat. the teacher continued to walk around the classroom, and then stopped and looked directly at the boy, and then at his shoes, and then said "is that what i think it is? are those...? yes, look everybody. look at johnny's shoes." the boy's heart raced as he braced himself for the shame. "those are real pioneer boots." the teacher continued, "why i haven't seen a pair of those in quite some time. those are the kind of boots real pioneers used to wear as they forged their way westward. yes sir, real pioneer boots."
at these remarks all of the children in the classroom suddenly became very curious and interested in little johnny's shoes and at recess they all begged to take turns trying them on.
of course the moral of the story here is twofold. the first, make every effort to reduce ridicule and humiliation for others, and the second, we can always see something from a new perspective. that's a long and roundabout way of me getting to this. while riding my wife's step-through bike the other day a guy called out to me. i stopped and headed back to his garage. "do you know what that is?" he asked. "do you know what you've got there?" "uh...?" i slowly replied. "you probably thought that was a girl's bike, didn't you?" he said. "yes?" "that's a mixte. (mix-tee) it's a french design. they're rare" he went on to tell me. and as he opened up his encyclopedic knowledge on the merits of the mixte, even showing me his own example amongst a half dozen or more vintage bicycles, i just stood there smiling, not sure if the whole thing was a put on or not.
later at home i did some research on the mixte and discovered everything the old guy had told me was true. there are whole legions of folks dedicated to finding, restoring and riding these odd little hybrids. if you don't believe me, check 'em out here. and as i ride around town now, i must say i don't feel quite as self-conscious wearing my very own pair of "pioneer boots".

a head full of fire
in my belly many seeds
of desire to grow

the great pumpkins

grandma and grandpa came by yesterday and took us all out to the pumpkin patch. it's apparently become an annual event and the kids really look forward to it, as the season begins to turn. since it had rained over the weekend, i wasn't sure if our little quest for the orange squash would end up a muddied affair, but it turned out to be a perfect day of stubborn indian summer sunshine.
the folks over at the patch seem to have it all figured out too. come in and park for free on weekdays, but come saturday and sunday it's 10 bucks a carload. throw in all the little rides and activities, and it adds up. but hey, it's for the kids, right?

but the most fascinating part of the whole trip for me was watching the apple cider production. before my very eyes and within a matter of minutes i watched as apples came in from the field, were loaded on to a sorting and cleaning machine, carried up a conveyor belt into a machine that turned them to mush and then pressed all of the juice into a bucket which was then sucked out by a hose into a beautiful stainless holding tank where workers than tapped it straight into gallon jugs. reminded me of the old films mr. rogers used to show us.
and of course we loaded onto the hay wagon and made our trip into the wilds of the back 40 to find our jeweled gourds. each one a prize. and after all their effort lugging these things back to the car (can't have it if you can't carry it) we made the car trip home together and then as my littlest guy pulled his out of the car it dropped on the sidewalk with a painful thud spilling some of its guts out.

the hands on the clock
point our way to the beginning
of new journeys

and now sunday. and as the threat of rain approaches, why not grab a blanket and that unfinished book, and curl up in your favorite chair to wait it out?

don't give in to hate
as you let go your conscious
mind and blow things up

star wars lives!

one film has influenced more people in my generation than any other, even if some of us would not care to admit it. for those of us who remember the spring and summer of '77, it would forever mark us. and it still continues to leave its mark as evidenced here. one of my best friends talks about the day he went to see star wars with his parents and his little brother and describes it as a point of division in his history like bc and ad.

and in a time before multi-plex theaters and bootleg internet downloads, the opening of a blockbuster movie still meant something. waiting on line for hours with other enthusiasts was common, and the badge of honor for any kid at my school was the number of times they had seen it. every kid birthday that summer seemed to involve a trip to the movie theater as the eyes and ears continued to pick up new details.

and on the playgrounds, wooden climbing structures became death stars and parallel sets of monkey bars served as imperial star destroyers and rebel blockade runners. every girl in my class wanted to be princess leia at recess, and every guy han solo or luke skywalker. when recess ended we continued by drawing endless death star battles at our desks while the teachers worked to free us from this "distraction".

and everywhere we looked was the evidence that this wasn't just a passing fad, but a growing phenomenon. it was on on the lunchboxes we carried from home to school and back. it was on our clothing and covering the walls of our bedrooms. it was our play through countless toys and collectibles and it seemed to burrow deeper into our very sub-conscience so that it even entered our dreams at night. and still, we wanted more.
and in between drawing tie-fighters and x-wings we also collected and traded these cards. i found a box of these today in my garage and a flood of memories hit me. i can still remember that excited feeling heading up to the 7 hills market to see if they had the new shipment, and then opening the package and taking out the obligatory flat sheet of bubble-gum, popping in it in my mouth and then quickly thumbing through the stack of cards to see if i could now fill some of the gaps of missing numbers. these went on for a while through different series of colored decks, and though my collection is sadly lacking in comparison to what i remember my friends having, i would like to share a few with one of you. so, if you would like your very own pack of pre-chosen star wars trading cards, simply be the first to leave a comment, on this post and i'll get them out to you. and may the force be with you!

being glad in all
these moments as they shape us
become memories

the model of all
our own insecurities
made of many parts

(image courtesy of frankensteinia)

franken-brick

our latest trip to the lego store was something of a marathon session as i mentioned in an earlier post. and if you had to justify these by the number of individual bricks they gave out each time your minute for brick ratio might just seem a little disappointing. but hey, you can't quantify the love of the brick. and for my guys the loyalty runs deep.
this month's model featured the empathetic frankenstein monster. of all the classic movie monsters he is my favorite. and certainly i can not think of a finer analogy than lego as i watched scores of young dr. frankensteins stand in line, and then welcomed into the lab, begin assembling their promethean creations. their assistants, the staff of the lego store handing each mad scientist their bucket of body parts. the spark of life, each child's imagination. and as we walked out with a small army of monsters in our little hands, i considered the many others loosed throughout the area. silently sitting on shelves or broken apart only to be put back together as part of another creation, it is not for me to question. it is the will of the creator.

we fill up with grief
take our troubles to this place
then empty our souls

just sitting around today in my favorite chair spending time with some old friends...

feel the wind blow from
the roar of twelve cylinders
as you ride the beast

in public

i found myself at the mall again the other day for one of the monthly lego model builds my kids enjoy so much. we got there later than usual and the later you get to these things, the more the line begins to look like the outside of a 1982 who concert. needless to say we had some time to kill. so taking turns holding our spot we broke off into different scouting groups to make trips through the food court to the drinking fountain and the bathroom.
i hung my head over the rail of the upper level we were waiting on and watched all the people walking by. so many people just seeming to wander aimlessly. i picked out a little square of space on the floor below and started some statistical analysis of how many people who walked through my square were attached to electronic devices. 24% in case you're interested. and then i spotted these seating areas and decided to pay a visit.
i'm always fascinated by public seating areas. this one is as nice or nicer than many people's living room furniture. and it looks inviting. anyone can walk into the mall as it opens and sit down here all day. bring your newspaper or a book and a cup of coffee and idle the morning hours. and a better place for people watching you'll be hard pressed to find. although one certainly trades off the privacy and personal comfort of their own space for sitting in public, there's something i think we as americans miss in this exercise. a connectedness that dispels the notion that we are all kings sitting alone in our private castles. go out and sit for a spell, and watch the world pass you by.

leaves fall and change come
sing an ode to autumn now
receding our thoughts

today was the first day that felt like fall to me. the air is just beginning to crisp up and you can sense the earth has just slightly shifted its tilt. it's that in-between time when people aren't quite sure what to wear. and very soon the skies will stay dark longer and the chill will be upon us all.

my mind parks a stool
i idle away the hours
marking my place here

miss u

i lost my cell phone about a month ago. i actually did find part of it, but the majority was destroyed by cars on the 80 fwy which meant i had to go looking for a new one. now buying a new anything is a major ordeal for me, but it didn't help that i had grown attached to my little celly over the five years we enjoyed our relationship together.
i actually went to the phone store two other times before staying long enough to make a purchase. i don't know, maybe i just felt like it was too soon. i even went hunting around on the internet and found the exact make and model of my old phone on some website and briefly considered purchasing it again. but technology being what it is i figured even the most basic model would have to surpass what i had from back in 2005.
yeah, not so much. although smaller and basically the same type of phone, the new one has me missing my old phone even more. i'm not a big tech gadget guy, so this actually came as a bit of a surprise to me. when i'd be in a room full of people all talking about their phones and the various features i'd always chime in and say "well mine does everything i want it to..." to which somebody would answer "like what?". "it makes phone calls" i'd reply. and that is truthfully how i felt, and mostly still do.
so since this one does just that too, i figured it had to be something else. i guess it's kind of like that old line in a break up, "really, it's not you. it's me". only i don't have plans to break up just yet. after all we've only had one call together. i figure it may just take me a little time to warm up.
honestly i think what i miss is the familiarity. the look and feel. i miss the little picture that greeted me each time i opened it. the start up tone from a carrier that no longer exists. the glowing orange frame around my keypad. my ring tone. if you had an old timex watch, and one birthday you got yourself a new watch, sure you'd wear it, but wouldn't you find yourself going to look at the time and just feeling a little disoriented? ah well, life goes on right?

inspiration waits
golden opportunity
suited for framing

cover project

so as i went to prepare another record for today i discovered to my horror that my needle was broken. arrgggh! but though i have no music to offer this time around, i thought i might make another offering. the other day i came across rolling stone's list of the best 100 album covers. you can take a look at it here.
and although i think it's a pretty good list and i do have a few of these in my own collection, i think they may have missed a few lesser known gems. so here are some of my own personal favorites in no particular order. forget the content. the question here is can you really judge a book (or a record) by its cover?

midnight serenade - sammy kaye - columbia records

yeah, it's midnight. and as sammy exits the club to come out on the streets fresh with rain and stares up a the clock, we are left to imagine where he'll go from here. a lonely wanderer with no particular destination. the only question remaining is will we join him?

east of suez - 101 strings - somerset

this is one of those records i picked up just because of the cover. it's one of those wild bachelor pad records that promises more than it delivers. still, with titles like "in a persian market" and "temple dancers" the promise was enough at the time for all the young men planning harems.

do it yourself - music for gracious living - peter barclay and his orchestra - columbia

another example where the sum of its parts is not greater than the whole. in a time where so many americans were all about diy and home improvement projects, why not a little music to go along with it? let the revolutions begin!

james joyce a portrait of the artist as a young man - cyril cusack - caedmon

this selection for fans of ireland's greatest poet. i like the woodblock image and it's easier for me to understand than cyril cusack's thick brogue.

tahitian rhythms and jungle drums - augie goupil and his royal tahitians - decca

there are so many of these out there. tahitian, caribbean, hawaiian records. and they're almost always great for a cover. this one promises that if you learn how to pound the skins a lovely maiden just might show you a little leg.

a toast to benny goodman - benny goodman orchestra - crown

no need to go into benny goodman here. king of swing? sure sure. i just really like this strong graphic image. a reminder of all encompassing fascination in the new atomic age.

countdown time in outer space - dave brubeck quartet - columbia

another jazz great dave brubeck. brubeck with his signature horn rim glasses and west coast cool had covers which usually featured modern art. so like patrons to the moma we are invited to dig this crazy non representational piece whilst also digging dave.

love is a many splendored thing - richard hayman and orchestra - mercury

i love it when the cover to a soundtrack immediately makes me want to see the movie. and though i haven't seen this one yet, its on my list and bill holden here with jennifer jones in his arms is suitable for framing.

baby doll - ray heindorf and wb orchestra with smiley lewis - columbia

another soundtrack cover. and another one i bought for the cover. i actually only have the cover. the record could not be located at the time of purchase. but that's ok. this one just draws me in to the disturbing world of tennesee williams, elia kazan and actress carrol baker. and i want to know more...
well there you have it. my vintage record cover round up. maybe the next time you're out visiting your local second hand store you may want to take a second look in the dusty record bins. there be art there.