The Clip Show Of Archivalism

The clip show is a popular way for television shows to stretch out a season.

The blogger archive recap is a way to add content to your site by trolling your old posts.

I've got five years worth:

BLOG ARCHIVE

► 2010 (27)
► 2009 (10)
► 2008 (166)
► 2007 (130)
► 2006 (68)
► 2005 (125)

Archivalism is in my blood. Just like it is with my friend Mike Daily.

Around this time in 2007, I was writing about my job as a pool boy at the Beverly Hills Hilton.

On 2008, I was talking about losing my lake virginity (I grew up vacationing at the beach), Cloris Leachman and the summer Olympics.

In 2009, I had a total of ten posts in six months for the whole year.

Now, it's 2010, and punk rock still never gets old for me...

Friday Foto

gettingThegreenLight, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

If you asked anybody who knows me what my favorite color is they would probably say blue or black.

But green does have a special place in my heart.

Green is the color I see most in nature from grass and trees to those fuzzy halos around street lamps at dusk.

Green also means go.

A green light means to move forward.

What does green mean to you?

It's Perseid Meteor Shower Time Folks

I love a good meteor shower.

I do.

Two years ago, I pined for a telescope.

I'm still pinin' for one...

Friday Foto

Some say it is a sign of drugs to see a pair of shoes hanging over power lines. Others say it is a sign of gang activity.

Some say it is a sign that a murder occurred there.

In some countries, it is a sport.

In other countries, it is a male past time.

Shoes hanging on a telephone could mean anything.

I'd like to debunk the first three myths by saying this photo was taken across from the Durham Police Station on Foster Street by the skatepark.

But then again, it is Durham, and anything is possible.

The Yawn Heard 'Round The World

That Smell

I don't know about you, but certain smells conjure up specific memories for me.

And if anything conjures up the past and all those things that made me who I am today - bmx, skateboarding, punk rock - it is the smell of a new pair of Vans.

This week, I passed on the smell of new Vans to my oldest son.

At some point in the near future, I'll introduce him to the pungent smell of Rector pads.

Friday Foto

crashed_car, originally uploaded by greg.barbera.

I took this picture with my phone a few months ago. My boys and I had gone back to one of our favorite spots - Bolin Creek - from when they were in preschool.

We used to hang out at the park there and walk the bike path up to a spot where you could climb down to the creek's bank. We'd often skip rocks here (and keep and eye out for snakes).

The last time we went I saw this faux Hot Wheels car wedge between some rocks, clearly washed up and jammed in there from heavy rains. I wonder what the story is behind this little lost car?

Pantalones!

I don't know why or how it came to be, but the word pantalones has become a term of exclamation with my kids.

If somebody rides by on a Harley or passes the car in a monster truck, they yell out, "Pantalones!"

I'm still unsure of whether it is a term of endearment or a something you say to jone on somebody.

Either way, it's something that deserves to be exclaimed during momentous moments.

Yes, I just said "momentous moments."

Pantalones!

That Guy

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a new camera.

I was finding myself in a pinch at work more and more for the need for a simple photo that didn't require paying a professional photographer. I needed a cheap, utilitarian point-and-shoot that I could carry around and put to use when duty called.

And besides, I think I can take a decent photo.

I was surprised to find just what a digital camera can do these days, especially one as affordable as this handy little Sony.

Face Detection? A Smile recognition function? An "easy" mode?

WTF? This thing does everything but wipe my ass... and it comes with a 96-page manual (as a pdf file of course).

I took it out to lunch one day to experiment with the settings and modes and basically just try to familiarize myself with the thing. I snapped a picture of my lunch. My co-worker looked at me as I readied the camera by my plate and said, "You're not going to be that guy."

"What guy?" I said.

"The guy who takes a picture of everything he eats," said my co-worker.

I laughed.

"Oh, that guy," I said.

That guy.

Haha.

Payback

Two summers ago, against my better judgement, I let my kids entertain themselves with TV programming for the adult set.

Parenting is difficult enough but can be made more difficult when you have friends like this.

So it is with great pleasure that I share this moment of bliss - my boys filming me giving the creator of Wildboyz and director of Jackass 3-D a mamba. A white mamba at that...

I Got Bacon On My Mind

I Drive In Silence

I had just bought a new car. Okay, not new, but used, and was on the Interstate. The windows were up and the radio was off.

In the silence I listened for sounds.

The sound of mechanical problems, the sounds of an airplane chasing you, pretty much any sound.

And smells too. Like oil, transmission fluid, all that good stuff.

Buying a ten year old car can be nerve-racking to say the least but making sure it is up to snuff is a must. My brother thinks I'm delusional and paranoid. But I invested in a AAA card none the less. It's been a few weeks now and the Subaru Forester is doing just fine. It survived a five hour trek to Maryland and is slated for another lengthy haul to South Carolina next weekend. On the way to Maryland, the boys watched a DVD for the better part of the drive... so I drove in silence once again.

The return trip had them sleeping for a a better part of it, and again, I drove in silence.

My dad used to drive in silence. And it used to drive me bat shit crazy. "Turn on the radio at least," I'd think to myself. "Talk radio even," I'd think. Just give me some static to counterbalance all the quietness that enveloped the car. These were the days before Walkman and iPod my friends.

I remember feeling liberated when I got my first Walkman because it meant silence-free road trips, even if it was only a radio version and I had to scan for local rock stations in central Pennsylvania or the Jersey Shore when all I really wanted was some Minor Threat.

And yet now I have become one of them now.

One of the silent drivers...

Do The Math

My day job had me spending the weekend in Richmond, Virginia.

I've driven through Richmond countless times in the last fifteen years; I've stared at the buildings and studied the bridges yet I'd never spent an evening there.

But I confess I've always had an affinity for their anarcho-punk scene, for bands like Avail, Strike Anywhere, Wasted Time, No Way Records and the town's general D.I.Y. ethic that seems to pulse though the blood of anyone I have met from there.

The town reminded me a lot of Baltimore with its row houses, and New Orleans with its sleepy seediness, and Savannah with its Civil War history and cobblestone streets.

It was a town populated by characters and I cursed myself for not having a proper camera to document my experience.

While out running errands for the day job, where we had to go pick up some signage for the beer festival, I spotted this gem on the light post.

Sometimes you just gotta do the math, ya know?

The Rainbow Connection

It had been one of those weeks. The kind where no mater how much you got done on your To-Do List, be it personal or work-related, you still just feel like someone keeps adding blocks to your Lego tower.

To make matters worse, the photo shoot I had to AD for work ran ridiculously over schedule and I was hungry.

On the way back to the office, I spotted the OnlyBurger truck. I convinced my editor to stop so that I could get myself a burger. I was hoping they'd have Bacon & Blue on the menu but they didn't. While listening to me rant about the burger truck as I waited to place my order, I convinced my editor to try one.

She ordered the same as me and when we got back to the office, we sat outside and chatted, one of us talking while the other chewed and a brief rainstorm came upon us - it was gone as quickly as it came.

But it left this beautiful gem over the Historic Durham Bulls Athletic Park which sits directly across from our office. It is part of baseball lore and movie legend and a spot that has hosted many a blues fest and World Beer Festivals.

Armed with nothing but my cell phone, I snapped a shot and then took a moment to take this natural wonder in. There's that old cliche about how you need to stop and smell the roses from time to time; today it was about gazing at a double rainbow.

No pot of gold was to be found, but I have since been unable to get this song out of my head.

Bang, Bang.

I've long been fascinated by elevators.

I think this goes back to my days as a bicycle messenger - because I spent a lot of time in those boxes of transportation. There's a weird etiquette to life in the elevator, ya know? Another thing I've always pondered is the use of braille with elevators. And apparently I'm not the only one. Don't get me wrong, I think it is totally awesome that elevators have braille, my question is in the "How do they get to the elevator?" and "What do they do when they get out"? As a seeing-eye person, I've have some truly baffling experiences trying navigate the numbering systems of businesses and hotels so I can only imagine how completely frustrating this must be for a blind person.

Come to think of it, in all my years of riding elevators, I don't think I've ever encountered a blind person on an elevator.

Another thing I tend to look at is the signature from the Commissioner of Labor, who in the state of North Carolina just happens to be a woman by the name of Cherie K. Berry.

And apparently I'm not the only one who has noticed this either. She's even got a song dedicated to her.

But this photo was new to me.

Living in a carry concealed state, I often scan establishments for this sign. But seeing it on the doors of an elevator was a first. I know you can't take them into establishments that serve alcohol and they are not allowed at parades or funeral, but elevators?

Do this seem strange? Looks like it falls under the selling of alcohol rule.

Anyway, you may start seeing these pop up on the doors of hotel elevators nationwide.

But be sure and look at who signed the letter from the Labor department...

Food, Glorious Food

Panko fried asparagus with sea salt, malt vinegar and lemon.

Oh, and some Brussels sprouts for good measure...

Welcome to My Nightmare

There's nothing quite like a good nightmare to shake things up.

I had one last night, and as per usual, it involved aliens.

This time there was a big party. A party of epic proportions. Like Burning Man except that, if I recall, family members were involved.

And as my dreams tend to be, it was all over the place.

But the alien invasion did come. They dispersed some sort of spores that were like little nails/tacks/sharp objects which people easily inhaled. People were having trouble breathing and started dropping like flies on the ground as pandemonium ensued.

Then the machines, like metal spheres with octopus tentacle-like legs, began to spread bullet-sized magnets into the air. The magnets would then latch onto the person who had inhaled the "spores" like leeches causing the pointy "spores" to dig into a person's insides in the name of connection.

Then the octopus leg things sucked up the dead like a vacuum.

Yeah, I know right?

WTF.

The Currency of Skittles

My oldest son is currently obsessed with two things: soccer and skateboarding.

His soccer coach, after every game, hands out Skittles to the kids as a reward. All team members get regular. Captains of the game get wild berry, if you had an assist you get sour and for those who score goals there's tropical.

My son is more of a granola and yogurt kind of kid; he's the kind of kid that doesn't eat all his Halloween candy in one sitting. I knew he would quickly tire of Skittles, especially since he's usually a captain, almost always has an assist or two and is one of the main goal-scorers on his team.

So by now, with a few weeks left in the season, he's got a bounty of Skittles up in the joint.

Fortunately for him, Skittles are currency in the ol' neighborhood.

He recently scored a used Tony Hawk HuckJam Series deck for 5 bags of Skittles.

And he was stoked because it meant he was moving up from the micro mini he'd been skating for the last few years.

Even better was the father/son moment we had taking his trucks off the old board and putting them on his "new" deck.

A priceless moment indeed.

Now I just need to have him let me cop a few bags of the candy for this...

The Uncle Mike

My brother Mike, much like myself, is a serious foodie.

A couple of summers ago while at the Jersey Shore, he turned me onto a deli called Blitz's that served their breakfast sandwiches on kaiser rolls. We've had a long-running joke over the years about us one day partnering up to start our own deli, so we always critique the food we eat when we are together (and sometimes over laborious phone conversations). In our clever little fantasy world, we try to think up good menu items for our place.

After that trip to the Shore, all breakfast sandwiches made with a kaiser roll from then on have been dubbed, "The Uncle Mike."

So enjoy a shot of today's Uncle Mike, with cheddar, bacon and jalapenos.

Ohh Ahh Ahh Ahh

WWE wrestling is the new Pokemon with my boys.

There will always be some things that your children will latch on to from your youth that will inspire you and then there are things that they will obsess that can be mortifying.

Case in point: pro wrestling.

I never really got into it as a kid although I do remember the days of Jimmy "Super Fly" Snuka, Haystack Calhoun and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

But it was never something that ever really held my interest.

My kids have been skirting this fascination with pro wrestling for years as their neighbor across the street has had a deep seeded passion for the sport for years now. And in the last six months it has finally gotten a chokehold on my children.

My youngest son likes to now try moves on me and often asks me who my favorite wrestler is... and I always tell him that I don't have a favorite wrestler because I DON'T WATCH WRESTLING!.

His favorite the night of this pic was Umaga, the Samoan cousin of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. I just found out he passed away six months ago.

One day I'll be able to show my boys this movie which spoke to me on many levels.

The Power Of Suggestion

I was knee deep in work bullshit and my tummy was growling.

I was lurkin' in the murky world of Twitter when I saw a tweet about food: OnlyBurger was going to be at Sam's Quik Shop pushing their special of the day.

The Bacon & Blue with Red Onion Jam.

Doesn't that just sound divine?

Well it did to me.

So I shuffled over to the beer store parking lot then saddled up and placed my order.

And man was it fucking delicious.

Epic even.

I want another...

Five Is The Magic Number

The news is on.

And the weather folks are all in a twitter about the snowstorm that is about to bear down on us this weekend.

I've seen the panic in the streets here before, and generally, whether (weather!), it is a hurricane or an ice storm or a fucking blizzard, the people in the South lose their shit. But really, in the decade plus that I've lived here only maybe twice has a snowstorm lived up to the hype.

I don't want a foot of snow, but then again, if it is going to snow by god fucking snow!

Anyway, it got me to feel the need to post and in posting I realized that I've had this here little blog for five years now.

And, a lot has gone on since then.

I started it because I was getting a vasectomy and it seemed like a good way to talk to myself about it. I'd been a fan of journals and diaries for a long time; I am a documentarian at heart. I also started one as way to jog as they say. Because as a writer I needed to exercise my words and what better way then to talk about my days. I was, after all, a few years into my stint as a stay-at-home-dad and a few years out of a job as a journalist and felt the need to put my experience down on paper as they say.

Along the way I raised some boys, dealt with a lot of shit, had my car stolen, catered my ass off, told a lot of stories about past jobs and found some new friends who could relate to what I was doing on a daily basis.

As life tends to be, the ride has not been without its bumps, but there it all is for me, you, your mother's best friend, or someone linked in to facebook or some other web 2.0 bullshit to look back on and read.

I was never good at keeping up on the baby book, but damn I think I did a bang up job of blogging about life as a parent.

The Fairness of The Tooth Fairy

I'm discussing this matter over at Dadcentric, the parenting blog I contribute to just about every Monday.

How much do you pay your children for a lost tooth?

What do you do with the teeth years later?

Make a nice tooth necklace?

Put it in amber and make a paperweight?

Curious minds want to know...

Welcome To Sammytown

Um Yeah, You Know, I Heart This Band

Off With Their Heads - Fuck This, I'm Out from Mario Framingheddu on Vimeo.

For Jay Reatard R.I.P.

Mi Vida Loca

Yes, life has gotten crazy.

Nuts you might say.

So I hang on and try to stay sane.

I'm told I do my best writing when it is of the deeply personal kind but right now I'm just not up for the task.

My world was never green pastures and purple ponies by no means.

But I do know one thing, I need to write.

About something.

Anything.

Some Robot Has Found My Site

and now I get endless jim jam comments from the intrasphere...

and most in languages I cannot read.

Hello...

It's me again.

Summer slipped away in the blink of an eye. Mostly because I was busy as shit at work but also because I've been spending too much time wrapping my head around the world of social networking over at places like facebook and twitter.

Also I've started blogging around at Dadcentric and writing about music again over at Shockhound.

So until I can get back into the routine of some sort of regular posting, let's take a look back on what has happened on or around September 13 the last few years.

In 2005, there was frogs, hub cap sized turtles and my quest to stimulate my stay-at-home-dad mind with books. 2006 I was talking about bodily fluids and in 2007 I had to start putting the sniff test into action. Finally, last year I was giddy over my son playing football.

Just a month later, I would shed my stay-at-home-dad status and rejoin the working world after landing at job at All About Beer Magazine.

They're Back!

A few years ago we had a couple of Carolina wrens build a nest in our shed. I startled the chicks one day and they all scattered about.

I thought I had chased them away.

But a little research told me that they mate for life and are territorial. So I wasn't that surprised to find another clutch of eggs a few months later.

Last year they got an early start laying eggs in mid-April.

So I was surprised to not see my little wrens around this year. They were noticeably absent year both in song and sight. I had discovered one nest by a bush out our front door but that turned out to be a robin's nest. It turns out that they too are monogamous.

Then I discovered a nest outside my bathroom window but the bird's call was distinctly cardinal.

I couldn't help but wonder what happened to my wrens.

And then today, just a short while ago, my son went to get his bike out of the shed and said a bird darted out at him.

Sure enough, my wrens have returned...

Extreme Parenting

My foray into extreme parenting began way back when I turned my sons on to DEVO.

And then there was the tattoos.

Add many hours of watching Rocket Power and Disney's Recess surely could earn me a trophy worthy of the mantel for my parenting skills.

Last summer there was those heat wave days we spent getting to know the Wildboyz which some said led to a lapse in judgement on my part.

And of course I can't forget the mad cred I got for having a Chest Pains song used in an episode of Rob & Big.

Now my boys are all about Nitro Circus.

I can't fault them for being fascinated by these daredevils.

I myself grew up on Evel Knievel and his many attempts to jump his motorcycle over things so it wasn't a surprise to walk out back the other day and see my boys launching their bike off of a ramp trying to get their old mini BMX bike to jump the creek in our back yard.

Nope. I wasn't surprised at all.

[Nitro Circus airs Sundays at 10pm on MTV... but they show reruns during the day!]

Who Got Da Funk?

There are two different bus stops I use to catch the Number 10 DATA bus into work. One just has a bench and it out in the open on the sidewalk, the other is covered and can offer shelter from the wind and rain.




Recently it was pouring out so I got a ride to the stop that was covered.

I was standing there just looking at the sheets of rain coming down, sideways at times, when I looked down and spotted something. Always in the habit of carrying my camera around I snapped a picture of it. I wasn't sure what it was but upon closer inspection I deducted it was exactly what I thought it was: poop.

Clearly, someone had to go so bad that they squatted on the edge of the bench and took a dump. Looks like they use a combo of a stick and sliding off the edge to wipe themselves.

I still had a good ten minutes before the bus came and now all I could smell was the nasty stench of human poo.

Then I looked down behind me and saw some on the sidewalk where I was standing.

"Fuck!" I said and started noticing it everywhere.

I took a quick look at my shoes and was quickly relieved to find that I hadn't stepped in it. The thought of shitting on a bus with poo wafting up my face made me gag.

And cough.

God it stunk.

Then I walked out into the rain and rubbed my shoes in the swollen gutter just in case; I had a vision of sitting at my desk at work smelling nothing but this smell all day.

Ugh.

I was reminded of the time I worked as a bellman at Washington Duke Inn, a hotel right across from Duke's West Campus and just down the road from Duke Hospital. These two facts are important to note because it meant that two kinds of people stayed at the hotel - Duke douchebags and rich people in need of care at the hospital.

One fateful day I was unloading leather bags out of a high-priced sports car when I saw an elderly man approaching me. He sported a grimace on his face as he walked my way. I lifted a bag out of the trunk and turned to put it on the luggage cart.

He walked between me and the car.

I turned around to find a shit patty sitting right in front of me.

"Where'd the fu..?" I was about to drop the F-bomb in front of some guest.

In a matter of seconds you could smell the diarrhea.

"Damn!" I said.

I told the guest to hold on so that I could go get a maintenance man to clear it up.

As I walked toward the double doors to enter the hotel I notice two more poo patties on my way.

"Motherfucker," I said under my breath.

And then I opened the double doors...

And saw one in the doorway and then two more in the lobby. Apparently he got the elevator as well.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day inhaling disinfectant fumes and the unbearable essence of poo.

Back the the bus stop.

So later that day on my walk to the bus stop I got caught in a downpour and had to run the last five minutes to the bus depot arriving soak to the bone. It was as if I just jumped into the shower with all my clothes on and jumped back out.

My shoes squished as I sat down on the bus.

The rain must have unleashed all that lives in my shoes because ever since then all I can smell is the funk.

The shoe funk.

Damn.

Order Here

It's been one crazy weekend after another up in the joint.

So until I can process the visit by Dan Esptein, my weekend in Northern Virginia on business when I got snowed in and was force to hang with MVS or the 80 degree weekend here in NC and the family's Eno River hike (and now were bracing for 40s and rain again), I offer you up this photo.

[Galaxy Hut in Claredon, Virginia; February 2009]

Off To The Races

 

"I'm ready," said Cole.

"He's ready!!" said the neighborhood kids in unison.

My wife came in from outside.

"He's ready Greg!" she said.

"Okay great," I said. "Cole is ready."

"Quick," she said. "Come take off his training wheels... he's ready to ride a two-wheeler!"

I dropped everything and dashed outside.

Tools where handed to me.

"Wrench," I said.

I felt like a hunky doctor on a popular TV show.

I removed the training wheels safely and checked the tires to make sure that they were inflated to the correct pressure.

Cole saddled up as his friends looked on.

But the backyard proved to be too muddy so we moved our bodies to the front yard. The kids cleaned up all the pine cones just in case so Cole wouldn't fall on them. And then mom gave him a push and he was off, turning around half way down the front yard to see if she was still holding on.

He saw that she was not.

"Again, again!" said everyone.

But the front yard was proving to be too small; it didn't offer up the space he needed especially if he wanted to turn around. So we all walked up to the street and BAM! off he went.

I remembered when Spencer got race fever and demanded that his training wheels be removed. Spencer was 4 at the time, Cole is now 5 and a half.

Now Cole is officially part of the crew, the posse, the OBC.

It's moments like this (and this one and that one) that are the true rewards of parenthood and being a dad.

Dear Blog

I'm sorry I have neglected you over the recent months.

I know you don't like the fact that I have been spending most of my time with that instant gratification whore Facebook.

I apologize for forgetting your birthday a few weeks back. I was reminded of this yesterday when I got into a discussion with a co-worker about her husband's upcoming vasectomy procedure and it occurred to me that I needed to stop in and say hello again.

It's not that there hasn't been plenty to write about, I mean the bus ride is still full of surprises especially when Shoe Shine gets on (because everybody seems to know Shoe Shine), and researching and writing about beer has yet to bore me.

It's just that by the time I get home and do the dinner with family and homework with the kids, I don't have much left in terms of thinking capacity and energy to jump on and crank out blog posts.

But things should start to pick up again as I feel like I have finally gotten past the transition from being a stay-at-home dad to a 9-t0-5 working stiff...

Rock You Like A Hurricane

A couple of months ago, I spent the day at the the local hockey arena chasing down a story.

Here it is.

The Sound Of Cracking Ice

 

What do you do with your kids when it is like 20 degrees arctic out?

Why you go for a walk.

Our outdoor adventure started in the backyard, where the boys marveled at the ice they were finding everywhere. We spent a good portion of our early morning foray into the wonders of a frigid Mother Nature trying to figure out how thick the ice was in the creek in our backyard.

It was thick enough for the boys to stand on but began to crack when I stepped on it.

"Let's go to the lake!" said Spencer.
"And see if it is frozen."

Curious myself, I agreed to take the five minute walk over to Clark Lake but only after we retreated inside for a spell to warm up.

About an hour later, we once again bundled up to make the hike; it wasn't far by any means but shoot if wasn't freakin' cold out.

On the way the boys were thinking about all the things they could do on a frozen lake like ice skate and play hockey. It didn't matter that they didn't have skates or sticks but such is the joy of young minds.

My wife assured us all that it indeed would not be frozen, that the lake was "too deep" to freeze.

She was soon proved wrong when we walked up and saw the entire lake frozen over.

My and the boys started throwing rocks on the ice and the sound of the rocks hitting the frozen water made this odd reverberation noise.

We all just looked at each other with open eyes - it was a sound they had never heard before and one I hadn't heard in many, many years myself.

It was all we could do to get them to not run out there on the ice.

So I set out to prove a point.

I walked over to the edge of the lake and grabbed the branch of a tree and put the weight of one foot on the ice.

Nothing.

I put two feet on there and stomped with one... and the sound of ice cracking began to bellow out through the air. There's really no other word to chose and that one is poor at best.

Once my foot broke through the ice to make a hole to the water, the acoustics changed and from underneath the ice came an even eerie, inexplicable sound.

At that moment we saw a blue heron fly over the lake.

Awesome.

On the walk back we saw couple of blue birds.

"Freaky," said Cole.
"They are like brown but then when they fly away blue," he said.
"That's weird Dad!"

We went back again today, but the weather had warmed enough that the lake wasn't totally frozen.

We still threw rocks on to the frozen section and listened for that odd sound.

Like a long, steel coil unraveling is the best I can come up with to describe it.

Today was a good day.

Yum, Yum, Yum

 

I'm no chef but I like to cook.

This Christmas I got a Thai cookbook, but not just any Thai cookbook - I got the quick & easy thai.

So Sunday night I dove in and made yellow curry chicken with potatoes.

Awesome.

Total ingredients? 8

Coconut milk, yellow curry paste, chicken, chicken broth, potatoes, onion, fish sauce and brown sugar.

Doubly awesome.

Leftovers anyone?

[9 if you include the basil...]

Classic, Just Classic

 

So Christmas Day we were sitting out back on our deck playing this game called Catch Phrase.

My tweener niece had asked for it.

Apparently it makes for a good drinking game but you'll have to test that theory for yourself and get back to me on it.

Basically, the holder of the game gets a topic or phrase (like "egg on your face") and has to try and get the group to guess what the phrase is by dishing out clues.

My niece had the game at one point and was all, "ooohh, oooh, like, um, er, like ooohhh, ooohhh this is like, um, um, like something you do at a sleepover!"

Without a beat, my nephew, her teenager brother said,"Get head lice?"

Laughter ensued.

Hardy laughter.

"What? What? For real," he said.
"It's happened twice."

[I have no idea what that is a picture of by the way. Bring on the captions. Photo by Greg Barbera December 2008]

Recycling Bin Of A Beer Magazine Editor

 

Unfortunately, no Duff Beer in there.

Spot any of your favorites?

Weird Science

 

I spent the last few weekends laying down a new floor in my house with the help of my brother-in-law.

Most of my Thanksgiving holidays were spent on my hands and knees prepping the floor for the installation. I tend to get lost in thought during mindless chores like this (my latent ADHD rearing its ugly head), and pulling staples out of my floor was no different.

I recalled a time when I spent the day (or two or three) as a production assistant on a television commercial for some Japanese company during my early years in Los Angeles.

I had gotten the call because the production of the commercial had lagged past its pre-production schedule creeping into the Christmas holidays. As an East Coast'er living on the West, I didn't have the money to fly home for Christmas. So when half the production manager's staff flew the coupe for the holidays, I got the last minute call for work.

At the time, a day rate of $125 seemed like good money but I would soon find out that day rates suck if two thirds of the crew are unionized.

I was told to pick up a box truck from a rental company in Hollywood and then drive it out to Agoura Hills to some newly built subdivision where the shooting would take place. Call time was at some ungodly hour like 6am so when I rode my bike to the rental company in the bowels of Hollywood the sun had yet to rise.

When I arrived on set and met my contact I was informed that the shoot shouldn't take more than half a day. The previous week had been spent shooting establishing shots and now all that was done was to wait for the talent to show up and shoot the damn commercial.

Talent was a guy by the name of Charlie Sheen.

They had been waiting on him for a week.

So while the director, lighting grips and a gaggle of Japanese business men waited for talent, I was assigned to help the art department. The art department in this case was two guys - one a surfer dude from San Diego and the other a stout Jewish guy from Long Island. Our job for the day was to strip up the floor of the kitchen in one of the house they shot at earlier in the week. Removing the floor meant a lot of time spent on your hands and knees with a putty knife.

And some chemicals.

These guys did nothing but huff (unintentionally) said chemicals and laugh at themselves as they barked out lines from Weird Science.

I had entered the Sci-Fi Zone.

And it wasn't pretty.

Around 3pm we had finished our job of floor removal and walked down the empty subdivision cul de sac to the house where all the production trucks were. But nothing was going on. Charlie was still MIA.

So the douchebag director was trying to get the grip guys to try different lighting scenarios in case Sheen showed up after dark but all they did was sit and smoked cigarettes and talk to each other as if nobody was around.

"What are those guys doing?" I asked my trusty art dept. cohorts.
"They're union," said Surfer Dude.
"So," I said.
"They are killing time," said Long Island boy.
"Why?" I asked.
"In two hours they will be at time and a half," explained Long Island boy.

And sure enough, when the mental money bell rang in these guys' heads, they snuffed out their smokes, crushed their cans of soda and suddenly began to "hear" the director. I think I got home around 11pm that night.

Since Charlie didn't show, everybody trekked it back out to Agoura Hills the next day. And again I spent the day as clean-up errand boy doing the most useless tasks to kill time until something might happened when they might need me to actually do something.

Charlie showed up at dusk the second day.

In a limo.

Stocked with booze.

His driver said he had been on a bender and that you'd better hurry because you probably got about two hours before he turns to shit.

Charlie dressed up in some super hero robot kind of costume and held some ray gun. Apparently, from what I gathered, he was knocking stains out of clothes with his ray gun. But that would all come later in post production.

It was a wrap before Charlie turned to shit.

I had the pleasure of returning the box truck to the rental company in Hollywood. But first I needed to take the art dept. guys to the studio so we could unload it, then give Long Island boy a ride home to his crib in the Valley before I could finish my day.

It was well after midnight by the time I got to the rental company and despite the many reassurances of my production coordinator, I was fully convinced it would not be open. When I got to the office in the dark of night, there was an employee of unknown origins sleeping on the floor with a machete. I startled him awake banging on the door, gave him the keys and signed off on the rental sheet.

"Charlie fucking Sheen," I thought.

I caught the glint of light off the blade of the machete and mumbled to myself "Charlie don't surf" as I walked away.

[Lenny Kersey ponders a pattern for the floor; December 2008.]

That Busy Time Of Year

Life has gotten so busy.

Crazy busy.

A few months ago I landed a full-time job at a magazine. While I love my new job - I couldn't have asked for a better way to transition from being a stay-at-home dad - the transition has now come without its own growing pains.

I don't have the time on my hands like I used to mull over things to write about like punk rock dad sitcoms and my parenting memoir.

Working in the beverage industry isn't a 9-to-5 job. Sure I pretty much go to the office during that time but brewers keep hours like musicians so a fair amount of my evenings at home are spent following-up with beer blokes on the west coast or in other parts of the world. Toss in the holidays and vacations and suddenly I have to scramble to keep the production of the magazine on schedule.

The good news is that I've got half a year's worth of upcoming issues assigned so the future looks less hectic, but making it through to the next issue to going to be maddening as people disappear into the fog of family obligations, holiday parties and other such seasonal nonsense.

We did managed to score a Christmas tree yesterday. Looking back on my blog archives, I had to chuckle at how we have gotten our tree pretty much the same weekend the last few years.

The holidays always bring up a plethora of emotions for folks - some good, some bad - so I hope everybody out there has fun this holiday season and makes it through unscathed.

Last year I wasn't so lucky.

I've got my fingers crossed that from this date on things will only look up.

Where The Huskies Go

 

Gratuitous beer and music post.

Do the math.

This Is A Post About Bacon

 

As if I didn't eat enough food the past few days, I had to finish off the weekend with this shrimp dish:

Fry up some bacon.

Take some of the grease
and cook the shrimp in it,
salt and peppered.

Remove shrimp to paper towel'ed plate.
Add more grease to the pan
and toss in a bag of cabbage and

Splash it
with
red vinegar.

Stir cabbage in pan until
almost wilted,
but still crisp.

Now toss back
in the shrimp
with the cabbage.

Serve
and garnish
with bacon bits.

Double Vision

 

Over the last few weeks I have started to question my eyesight.

I'm not sure if the need to squint is a sign of age or the fact that I know have a full-time job that requires gratuitous amounts of computer time.

Mostly, these blurred encounters happen in the early morning or late at night, especially during sports when I sometimes have trouble reading the scoreboard from my armchair. But then again, I don't really watch sports that much because my Redskins rarely get the TV time around here. But Heels basketball has started up and I am eager to see if the team can pull off the almost impossible task of an undefeated season.

I probably will make an appointment to get the eyes check once my health insurance kicks in but that won't be until after January so for the moment I just get to hypothesize on the subject and squint a lot.

Yesterday I spent a nice, quiet Thanksgiving with the family.

While I am usually a big fan of the massive get-together it was nice just to enjoy the company of my family this year.

We got up early, put on some Loretta Lynn and started making pie. Loretta segued into side one of The Outlaws, that became Mars Hotel which then led to a big, long Neil Young jag. I could see this was going to be a day where the vinyl was going to stack up at an alarming rate and that's exactly what it did.

After the morning was lost to food prep, we ducked out of the house and took a walk around the neighborhood. Upon returning we noshed a bit and then retreated to the back yard to toss the football around. I came inside to watch the Lions/Titans game (squinting) but that was a total blowout and not the slightest bit entertaining so I channel surfed on over to VH1 Classic only to find a Pink Floyd marathon going on.

I stumbled for a moment trying to find a connection between Pink Floyd and Thanksgiving and then a light bulb went off in my head: tryptophan.

Pleasantly bored, we made another trek around the neighborhood only this time we decided to explore some of the woods nearby as well as crossing over the street to the lake to skip some stones.

Words like bucolic and idyllic came to mind.

Back home we readied for the feast and destroyed the table full of goods in less time that it took to pronounce the day's name.

Stuffed, we al showered and then sat down to watch a post-dinner family movie... Journey to the Center of The Earth.

In 3D.

It pretty much sucked.

The kids loved it of course.

So after 90 minutes wearing those glassed my eyes were toast. After we put the kids to bed and tucked them in, we did the same of ourselves. I turned the Tv on more as a source of light; it is easier to use the remote to turn off the TV than it is to reach over and hit the switch on the light.

I fluffed my pillows and then heard a familiar sound,"So ya thought ya might like ta go to the show...

Nothing like ending your day with tryptophan, Floyd and technicolored dreams seen through your third eye.

Do Work

 

My 8-year-old asked me if there was any work to be done around the house.

He's got a book fair at his school coming up and is looking for ways to earn some dough.

I told him that we needed to rake the leaves in the backyard and he agreed to do it for a fee: six dollars and hour.

So after sleeping in, watching TV and then playing some video games, the boys got dressed.

Without me telling them to.

I knew something was up.

I heard the back door slam shut and then creak back open again.

"What time is it dad?" he asked.

"Quarter to twelve," I said.

"I'm gonna earn some money!" he said.

My younger son heard all the commotion and asked what was going and within moments was hooded and hatted and out the back door himself.

I sat there and watched in delight at the thought of these boys getting old enough to do the shit I always do like rake, mow the lawn or shovel snow. Before I could finish my daydream the rakes had been dropped... and I noticed the slide of the treehouse was now covered in leaves and pines needles.

You want to teach your kids the value of money and the hard work it takes to get it but then again you also want your kids not to have to grow up too fast, you want your kids to have kid fun. So I raked around the yard while they entertained themselves.

"What time is it?" my 8-year-old asked.

"Has it been an hour?"

"Probably," I said.

"But you don't get six bucks because you stopped working," I explained.

"Aw man," he groaned.

"I'll give you two bucks, a dollar for each pile you raked."

He seemed content at that.

I raked about a half dozen piles of leaves but left the biggest for last. As I dragged the tarp over to scoop up the pile they both screamed.

"Wait! Wait! Not yet..." said my 8-year-old.

So I sat and watched these two brothers run football plays with their K2, each one ending in a dive into the pile of leaves.

The 8-year-old was trying to finish off the game with a Hail Mary pass to his little brother. He kept razzing his little brother about not catching the ball until I pointed out the quarterback was throwing weak passes to him.

"Don't you be talking about my quarterback!" said my 5-year-old as he ran towards me holding the ball up above his head like he was going to throw it at me.

One more pass turned into two. Then three. And four. Five. Six. Seven...

Then my 5-year-old caught the ball as he fell into the pile. They both screamed as the quarterback came running over and picked him up then dumped the two of them into the leaves.

By the time I raked the mess back up into a managable pile, they were already inside.

Then I heard the door open.

"Dad, how about three dollars?" said my 8-year-old.
"For teamwork, because we worked like a team."

"Okay," I said. "Three dollars."

Rob and Big - MTV Shows

Shoe Shine Man And Other Stories

I knew there was a full moon coming just by the bus.

Three weeks into commuting and not much had happened.

Sure there was your average bus fare: a drunk guy here, a homeless woman there, wayward teens whittling away their time as best they know how. And there was the simple fact that I was the lone white guy ninety nine percent of the time.

I'm sure some of them think I'm a narc.

But for the most part, it was basically about people getting on, and people getting on the bus with as little interaction as possible.

A few days ago that all changed.

I had caught the 5:30 downtown and boarded the bus to go home. I noticed two white guys in suits and recognized them as the Mormons I saw a few days earlier when it occurred to me after I saw them that I don't see white people riding the bus.

The bus seemed unusually crowded with a handful of folks grabbing the overhead.

And that's when I heard someone yelling out from the back.

"ShhhhuuuuShhhhinnnnnee!" he said. It almost sounded like a yodel.

Just then an older man, one with grey hair and cane, took off his hat and squinted his eyes toward the back of the bus.

""ShhhhuuuuShhhhinnnnnee!" said someone again from the back.

"I hear you but I can't see you!" said Shoe Shine Man.

I caught a reflection in the window behind me of the Caller and the person next to him in conversation but it was inaudible.

The Mormons began to chant a psalm or hum of hymn or whatever reading from prayer books in sing songy unison is called these days. Maybe I have finally put my ingrained Catholicism aside by now because I can't remember.

Shoe Shine looked at them and said something to the Caller; his mouth was nothing but gums.

The Caller called back, "They on a mission ShuShine!"

"So am I!" said Shoe Shine punctuating it with a "ha ha."

"To find the Holy Ghost!" he said

"Yeah, Holy Ghost..." said the Caller.

"Or maybe some wine," said Shoe Shine with a laugh.

That was weird I thought.

And then I recalled how when I was waiting for the bus at the depot I could see in the outside window of the information center.

I saw a woman looking at lingerie on her computer.


***

The other day a fight broke out at the depot. It started off like most altercations with people calling each other names in an increasingly louder cadence until it was clear there was going to be some "commotion." I came to the assumption that two teenage [??] boys had tried to lift something out of another guy's backpack and he called them out on it. Then the threesome sat in the middle of the road mouthing off to each other but it seemed like things we far from getting heated. I wasn't close enough to hear nor did I want to be.

A cluster of two others joined me as spectators.

The older guy said he'd kicked both their asses but one at a time, that two on one is cowardly. Then he came at them hard in the middle of the street, stomping and puffed up like a peacock: " You niggers are a bunch of bitches!!"

Then he said something about guns not making you a man and how fucked up the kids today are because they can't even step up and fight.

The kids then back off and walk away.

"He's ri-aight, tho he's ri-aight," said a fellow standing next to me.

"Dressin' like a gang banger don't make you a gang banger," he explained.

Reading Versus Writing

I'm been spending entirely too much time reading over at places like Beerinator and Facebook, the latter a modern day version of crack.

My fascination with Facebook is the sheer fact that almost everybody in the world has a profile - from the kids in my neighborhood to kids from my old neighborhood. You type in a name of someone you know and chances are they are going to have a Facebook page. Unlike MySpace where my band has had a page for years and seems to be the domain of musicians, Facebook seems to be all about personal social networking unlike LinkedIn which seems to be for the most part about business.

I digress.

What this post really is about is the simple fact of how one can go forward yet look back at the same time.

One month into working a full-time job again after seven years and I feel I can finally start to digest those years; the waves no longer crash on my mental shores everyday.

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day which means there is no school. Normally this would just been another blip on my radar screen noticed only by a closed bank here or a trip to the doctor's office there. But now there's the scramble to see who will watch the kids, the drawing of straws between my wife and I over who is going to take off work.

I remember the many trips to the doctor's office - there's nothing like going when your kids have tattooed themselves.

Two years ago this November, I went to an At-Home Dad Convention which was one of the most eye-opening and spiritually uplifting things I have done in my life. To meet guys who shared my way of life, who had been through the trauma and the trite stares; endured the bullshit and the banal existence that can come when your life swings completely in the opposite direction was good for the soul. I may have moved on but I have not and will not forget my brothers who still walk the walk and talk the talk in the fight for gender equality when it comes to raising children.

Whether you are forced into it or chose to do it, never let anybody make you feel like you can't or shouldn't be raising your own children.

It wasn't until I embraced the fact that I was a stay-at-home-dad that I was fully able to relish the role. It was shortly after the convention that I started to put being a dad, and an involved one at that, first and foremost. Although I had kept a blog for a year leading up to it, it wasn't until after going to Kansas City that I actually "came out" as a dad blogger to my friends and family. It 2005, it was weird just to say you were a blogger much less a dad blogger.

I'll admit it, sometimes being the parent at home was hell.

But sometimes, Hell ain't a bad place to be...

The Best Day Ever

I finally wised up the other day.

For the past week, I kept telling myself that I needed to grab one of my kids' mp3 players before I left for work. It would give me something to do while I stood there waiting for the No. 10 bus and drowned out some of the chatter I overhear during my commute.

The sound of cars and squawking birds gave way to the Cars, Cheap Trick, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ramones.

A little back story is in store here: The only reason we bought some cheap ass mp3 player for our 5-year-old son was because we had gotten an mp3 player for his older brother when he turned seven and that became an obsession for him in so much that he carried it everywhere (so we went with the placating bribe with my younger son to avoid them fighting over it).

I downloaded about 60 songs on it for him.

Then I figured out I could download a shitload of songs (some not age appropriate) and put them in another folder slash playlist. But this summer when we took the great family road trip we ran into a problem where his player would only play my songs but this wasn't discovered until well into the trip.

So there I was trying to remedy the problem while driving through some tunnel on the verge of getting light-headed and ill so that my two kids could listen to their own music in the back seat even though several of their musical choices were housed in the family car's multi-disc changer.


Suddenly the sound of rubber tires on asphalt didn't sound so bad.


Fast forward to the other day: I'm standing at the bus top and groovin' to some tunes. About four stops later on the inbound bus, I deduct that the contraption is running through the playlist in alphabetical order.

Soundgarden came on and I had an epiphany about Kim Thayil and how despite that rhythm section and Cornell's yelp, the band would have been nothing without Thayil's guitar.

I guess that Powerbar I ate ahd kicked in.

The song ended and suddenly Spongebob came on.

I fumbled through my jacket to find the player to try and make sense of the settings but once again looking at it made me light-headed; I'm not one who can read in the car obviously.

The next day I switched out players.

Avail came on at the bus stop.

I mouthed the words to two songs as I watched my shadow bounced in front of me.

The bus came and I climbed on.

Song crazy song that reminded me of the label came on but I for the life of me had no idea who it was; once again I was forced to dig into my jacket to see who the artist was only to be shut out as the player listed song titles only.

I forwarded to the next song.

As I suspected this too was going through the playlist in alphabetical order.

Must have been Clockcleaner I thought.

Next song was some dub reggae.

I tried to check the title, got light-headed and decided to turn the mp3 player off.

So now it's back to car horns, bus stop alerts and random chatter.

But that beats feeling light-headed...