critically cocksure

perspective

2009-11-16T15:40:00.002-05:00

if i had to list the things i worry about on a day to day basis, where lebron james plays basketball next year is easily in the top five. soon after is low-lying sidewalk branches poking my eyes out.

so you've decided to serve rich people!

2009-11-02T11:31:00.002-05:00

hello! so, you've decided to SERVE RICH PEOPLE! welcome to the fast-paced and rewarding lifestyle of earning a living from the TABLE SCRAPS of the wealthy!

we here at SERVING RICH PEOPLE are glad you have joined us, warmly bringing you in to a beautiful dance, making slightly more than MINIMUM WAGE for hours of disdain and glaring from rich people IN YOUR AREA!

now i know what you may be thinking - what can I DO to serve rich people??? my past work experience only involves WORKING WITH UNDERPRIVILEGED CHILDREN and HELPING RUN MY SCHOOL LIBRARY.

do not worry! serving rich people involves little to no training, just a WARM SMILE and an ability to shrug off condescending remarks ON A DAY TO DAY BASIS!

we have positions available now! you could serve rich people their food at any number of restaurants staffed by local ARTISTS and recent college GRADUATES! handling food not your thing? rich people also love MARTINIS after a hard day of MAKING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. bartending is a great way to MAKE MONEY and be verbally and sexually HARASSED by men with 401 K PLANS and UNSETTLING MORALS!

love CARS???

you could always park the cars of rich people on their way into dinner!

stand outside in DISGUSTING conditions for hours on end only to run and get someone's LEXUS or BMW at their beck and call! feel like a SECOND CLASS CITIZEN as they investigate the outside of their cars before tipping you ONE DOLLAR!

and there are MORE options still!

there are thousands of rich children just begging to be BABYSAT! they also need to go to TUMBLING CLASS! and endless hours of PRESCHOOL! or just walked around THE BLOCK!

act as a parent for a wealthy child as their creators do more important things, like WORK and ATTEND BANQUETS! you might become so good at watching over rich children they will mistake you for THEIR REAL MOTHER and become MORE EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED to you! oh, how the benefits just pile up!

not really a kid person? well rich people have SO MUCH SHIT they need done during the day you can barely MAKE A LIVING doing things like WALKING THEIR DOGS or running simple errands for them! as everyone knows, rich people turn into GOBLINS when they are forced to do physical labor, so imagine all the YARD WORK and LAUNDRY you could accomplish for them!

the exciting world of SERVING RICH PEOPLE is laid out before you, and it is all yours FOR THE TAKING! so make sure you look PRESENTABLE and get that smile ready, because RICH PEOPLE are out there just waiting for someone like you to make THEIR LIVES BETTER!!

will exercise for money

2009-10-15T19:01:00.002-04:00

this sunday was the chicago marathon. it was cold, it was windy, i imagine it was a very long and tiring four hour run. but i bet everybody that did it was very proud of themselves. myself, i woke up at 1:15. that's pm, baby. in the spectrum of sunday morning accomplishment, you had a slew of russians and kenyans pushing their bodies to the point of exhaustion for over two hours.

and, on the polar opposite side of things, you had a 26 year old adult man sleeping until a time suitable for lunch.

but back to the race...it seems that most everyone i know that ran had some sort of charity or organization they were raising money for. i think this is pretty commonplace now. everyone has seen a request in their inbox, pledges to donate money for every mile run. or mile biked. or mile walked. or hour stayed up to. you get the picture.

and i feel like this has become a great donation business, pushing yourself to physical extremes to help out a cause, group or research pertinent to your life.

but i'm more concerned about how, exactly, the practice of donating money for marathons etc. originated. i'm sure it was something good-natured, people looking to help out their athletic nephew, neighbor or good looking dorm resident advisor.

but this is the dialogue i imagined in my head.

"hi, paul. this is jeff."

"hey jeff, what's happening? saw you out runnin the other day"

"yeah, that was me. love it! but i was actually calling to ask you...well ask sort of a favor of you."

"oh yeah? need help movin? airport again?"

"actually, i'm trying to raise money for a charity, it helps do research on (nameless illness). if i can get donations from all my friends, family and co-workers i could make a really good contribution."

"oooh....well, am i gonna get anything out of this?"

"i mean, just the satisfaction of helping out i guess."

"hmm. well, see i just don't know if that's enough for me. i mean, i'd be willing to donate, i just...i'm just not gonna give it out for free."

"i mean, i could maybe do some chores for you?"

"nahhh."

"a nice dinner?"

"no, i won't need that."

"well what then?"

"well, i'd like to see you...i don't know...i want to see you just fucking run."

"like, sprint somewhere?"

"no, no sprinting. i want you to run for like....5 fucking hours. straight."

"straight?"

"right through baby."

"and if i run for five hours straight you'll give me 70 dollars for research?"

"believe it, my man. and you have to take pictures of it, for proof."

...or something like that.

andy young's facebook comment...

2009-07-28T12:36:00.003-04:00

...is making me put more efforts into writing funny shit for my friends to read. Thanks, brother.

So here it is, I haven't updated in about two months. I'm sorry. There are reasons for it that are far better than working at Staples. Or that I'm doing nothing. I'm busy living the life of a vagrant, sleeping nearly every night on the floor of my brother's apartment, keeping my belongings tucked away in the closet and drinking a nearly fatal amount of coffee each morning.

But things are good. I'm working at an outdoor store in the city, selling Nalgenes and polar fleeces to the city's affluent and maladjusted. I work with a collection of interesting people, most functional stoners that come into work hungover (with a frequency that makes me feel right at home.)

I'm also trying to write some novel for young teenage boys about video games, the united states military and other preposterous ideas. I've written two chapters and am waiting to hear back from it.

Two weeks ago I had a conference call with an editor and the VP of the company, two people talking to someone living a life that couldn't be further away from the ones they've grown to know. I am technically homeless. When I work I am fielding questions like "Do you guys have fishing lures here?" and "Well then where the hell can I buy guns in this city?!". I am still 40 percent sure I have some amount of wildlife living inside my body.

When they asked the question "Are you represented by anybody? They'll want to look over a contract if we send it to you," I didn't really know how to respond. Do I just tell them I sleep on a floor every night? Do I just read aloud my banking statement from the last period? (chipotle, bar, bar , chipotle, mcdonalds, public transportation, seven eleven...)

Instead I'm playing it cool, hoping that one of these days a contract might be showing up in my mailbox. And I'm using the term 'my mailbox' loosely, as there's not really an address I'm guaranteed to be at.

In short, if you have siblings that will let you sleep on their couch for upwards of two months, I suggest doing it. It's much better than Staples. Although sometimes I do miss the faint smell of mothballs 60 year olds working cash registers give off.

phase 5

2009-05-12T15:56:00.004-04:00

right now i am in, probably, phase five of shaving my facial hair off. this is not by design, mind you, but just because my beard trimmer was not sufficiently charged. one would think that by now we've been able to harness the power of a beard trimmer that can work on battery AND use the current flowing through itself as it's plugged into an outlet. pipe dreams, friends.

what i have been left to do is save up enough juice to get about 30 seconds worth of trimming in. my first initial trim had the power of about an hour and half behind it, so i really got a lot of work done. face sides - check. neck beard - check. goattee and wild sideburns - somehow even more wild.

so now i am left to play the waiting game...going to my computer for about eight minutes and then reentering the bathroom to see how much i can get off of my face before the razors begin tugging and pulling what is left of a majestic beard.

after the second phase i looked something very similar to colonel sanders, just missing a thin bowtie and looking a little more haggard. you could probably order chicken from me, it just may not be up to certain standards we all enjoy. (and most likely you could only pay in cash or some sort of gold trade.)

phases three and four have not done much to help me out. phase three made me cut one sideburn too short. phase four required me to forget about the beard and try and get this fucking sideburns situation figured out.

you see, in three days i'm going on a vacation with my girlfriend (sara brown!) and her whole family. while i know that they probably couldn't care less about my facial hair, trying to not look homeless is something that my mother has always tried to instill in me. (i think she's slowly thrown out all of my thrift store tee shirts over the years.)
so i need the sideburns to look good. and i also had a tragic accident this winter where i kept trimming up, up and up until i literally had no more sideburns to trim. if you're trimming up to the top of your ear you're either 1) amish or 2) a serial killer. or 3) a perfectly meshed combination of the two. so for about two weeks i tried and brush my side-hair down as far as possible. it didn't really work.

also, you really pay more attention to peoples' sideburns when you don't have any. i kept looking at friends and other prominent figures in my life to see if they were on my "no sideburns" team.

sadly, none of them were. only really, really pale guys with really, really gross bowl cuts. and let me tell you what, that is not a team that you want to be the captain of. and i feel arrogant enough to call myself their temporary captain.

so now we come to phase five. i'm trying to kill a lot of time so it gets a good charge; hopefully this will be my last attempt at shaving my beard off. it's already made me an hour and half late for shopping for new glasses. but no beard is better than no beard and no sideburns.

that kind of thing is like a phase seven thing...possibly even phase eight.

for someone that strives to write professionally...

2009-04-13T13:09:00.002-04:00

...i do a pretty shitty job at keeping up with it.
for the last, oh i don't know, five days my little notebook has had only a few simple tasks that i've listed in order to feel like a productive person. sadly the only ones that have been fulfilled are 'adventureland at 5:10' and 'record rock of love bus.' i am not joking.

things like 'do taxes' and 'write a first draft of a new story' have been pushed to the wayside for things designed to suck the creativity out of my body. it's pretty impressive how little you can accomplish on a day to day basis.

the only thing worse that i could imagine is making a list of everything that i've accomplished since i came home in november. and the only thing worse than that is sharing that list on my blog.

here are just a few highlights from my last four months, and believe me i'm only taking the cream of the crop on this one.

-one week i worked at staples for 37 hours.

-i have watched probably 85% of the cavs games this season

-i took four ibuprofen in one swallow

-we found a beer in the snow at towner's woods

-i helped drink a frozen beer at towner's woods

-have played roughly 100 hours of halo 3

-vomited in the desert

-eaten a couple of oranges

so when you get it in writing, it really does make it all look better!

work it out!

2009-02-24T13:46:00.004-05:00

hi friends.
recently i've been a little lax in adding new posts, and for that i apologize. i came down with a bad case of 'the staples blues,' a fleeting illness marked by late night paper ream anxiety and something only described as the 'three hole punch sweats.'

luckily i have fully recovered, thanks to a night of drinking with old friends and a new membership to kent state's wellness center. while it is a bit pricey, it's been a great cabin fever reducer. plus i think all of the new year's resolutions are long gone so midday the place is relatively unoccupied.

today was my first day, and thankfully everyone in the sauna had shorts on. one guy, however, did keep making occasional glances over my way. i'm not sure why but after the third time i greeted his eyes with mine, hoping that it would put an end to all this profuse sweating awkwardness. it did not. his stare was unwavering and i was the one that eventually had to pull away. it was really weird.

i also saw a bunch of old naked men. something i haven't seen in a while and had almost forgotten exist. but lo, dear reader, there was unstoppable force of wrinkles and loose skin at hand in the wellness center today. i just did my best to avert my eyes and not breathe in the gold bond a smallish older man was slapping all about his naked body. gross.

it did remind me of a column i wrote for my college paper, though. years of suffering through a gross rec center were over as everyone was excited to get a brand new facility. everyone but me, i guess. i was that asshole who vocalized completely fabricated negative traits of the new facility. some fabricated, i guess. others were far too real.

enjoy!

Critically Cocksure
By Jeff Miller

Here’s your advance warning: join the YMCA. Find a Bally’s. Go look around for an empty warehouse somewhere that you can throw a stationary bike and a treadmill in, because that’s the only way you’ll be getting your workout in come February 5.

Yes, that day that’s been on the tip of everyone’s tongue for years: the opening of UC’s new Rec Center. Finally, days of sweating it out in a small, white drywall prison are over. Expansive glass walls welcome students new and old, along with new dining options, a rock wall, a swimming pool and a lazy river. A lazy river!

But hold on there, cowboy, it may all sound like ginger snaps and crinkle cut French fries now, but just wait when it opens.

What I expect to see is something parallel to a Michael Jackson concert in the early 90’s or a Michael Jackson trial earlier last year – unadulterated mayhem, no pun intended. Come Monday, plan on seeing girls wearing ugg boots wounding, pouncing and eventually maiming other girls wearing other pairs of said uggs in attempts to get first dibs on a new stairmaster or elliptical machine. No holds barred, no mercy, no more tubby thighs.

For guys, the weakest and the smallest will be pushed into trash cans or pool filters as a race for the dumbbells breaks out. Once those weights get occupied, then those smaller guys will be pulled out and used as free weights and punching bags. It’s like prison, just with not as many poorly-crafted tattoos – I also did see some freshmen being sold for cigarettes in a racquetball court once.

In short, don’t plan on finding free time in the Rec Center for about the next five quarters, you’ll either have to pull a fire alarm or just be OK with standing on top of someone on a stairclimber or sharing a treadmill with a guy named 8-Ball who smells oddly enough like long-cut Skoal and trucker speed.

It doesn’t stop there, though. I’ve seen what this Rec Center does to people, I’ve been down this road my friends.

A long time ago in a world where gas was under $2.00 and the Y2K virus was still plausible, I saw what a new Rec Center does to people: it makes them stop being lazy.
People who have no business putting physical strain on their body take this as a wake-up call, so they lace up tennis shoes that haven’t seen the light of day for the better part of a decade, slip on some jogging pants and put down their greasy handful of spare ribs.

It gets worse. It’s not just college students that do this, it’s old people. Old people! Spider veins will be out in full force as memberships to the new gym will be selling like hotcakes. Have you ever brushed the naked thigh of a 60-year old man in a lazy river? Doing it just once made my cousin go mute for seven whole years.

What’s even worse is what happens after these oldies get their workout in. After years of wearing clothes at all times bashfulness is no longer an issue-be prepared. Get ready for when you change in those locker rooms, co-eds. Full on geriatric nudity will soon be at hand. They don’t care if you look, they don’t care what they look like and they definitely don’t care that gravity is great for physics but the cruelest of jokes on the human physique.
It’s best to just avoid eye contact and make sure not to brush into anyone, lord knows when the last time that back hair was shaved or conditioned.

So bonne chance, my friends. If you’re one of the lucky ones that can find an open space to work up a sweat more power to you; if not, there’s always binge drinking.
E-mail Jeff at givemepizzaorgivemedeath@hotmail.com.

can you guarantee it?

2009-02-16T11:17:00.002-05:00

"i bought a chairmat from you but a year ago and it's already broken."
"ok."
"now i need one that's not going to break."
"this is the best quality chairmat we have."
"can you guarantee that this won't break in two years?"
"well...i mean...it's covered by warranty."
"that's not what i'm asking. can you guarantee this won't break in two years."
"sure."
"because if this break's in less than two years i'm comin after ya. i just want you to know, i'll be on ya."
"sir, if you come here in two years and i'm still working here i want you to take me into the parking lot and end it. i'll be numb already so just make it quick."

sometimes

2009-02-04T15:24:00.002-05:00

sometimes you just have to accept things. at an early age i had to accept that while i am exceedingly tall, i have little to no athletic prowess.

at a later age i had to accept the cruel truth that despite my wishes, i could not wear solely elastic band pants for the rest of my life. i can still feel the expansive void at my ankles of my first pair of real jeans, a place i had normally kept cinched with the unforgiving strangle of rubber-lined sweatpants.

at an even later age i was forced to accept the fact that man boobs were going to be with me for life and jumping around in gym class was something i could no longer do with reckless abandon.

even later still found me accepting the fact that while i may not be cool, i will surely be more happy and successful later in life.

now i sit in my bedroom of 22 years typing on a blog about ticks in buttholes during my day off from staples.

now i am accepting the fact that success/happiness has it's price. that or i'm just not accepting the fact that the cool kids are probably doing pretty well for themselves. this is entirely too much to think about on a wednesday afternoon.

but what i have accepted today is the fact that i am never ever ever going to exude any amount of professionalism in my life. now i know that i've talked about this inability to work in a professional environment before, but this right now is more about basic things. like voicemail messages or email addresses.

for about the last eight years or so my voicemail has been dedicated to the memory of one of the nation's worst villains, assassin j.w.booth.

for the last 5 years my email has been a severe bastardization of true patriotism. (writing this all down makes me really feel like an asshole, too.)

i say this because as i've been looking for jobs, i've been getting my resume in order. aside from small layout critiques, what most people say is that i should probably get a professional email account.
mainly to portray the idea that i'm a competent adult and not someone who just really really likes pizza. also because givemepizzaorgivemedeath is long as shit to spell out. do you know how many forms i've had to use more than the allotted spacing for an email account? it's borderline embarrassing.

so today i sat down to finally procure myself a legitimate email address. something that is short, straightforward and really instills confidence. a powerful name to splatter across the top of my resume.

after trying what i would believe to be any combination of my name, i began trying to see any other possible things that could be associated with me. 'mrmillersoffice,' hadn't been taken, but i didn't really feel comfortable using possessive grammar in an email account.

then i started getting dumb.

'secretpizzaparty' had sadly been taken, same as 'pancakemix.' after typing a few more ideas i caught myself.

'jeff, this is supposed to be professional. like, for jobs. who the hell is going to respond to 'mrmillersoffice.'

i breathed a defeated breath and went back to the jumbled forms of my name, about to submit to the hand of gmail persuasion.

then i stopped, typed, and hit submit. signing up to not only a new address but accepting the fact that jeff miller is never to have a professional email. i think it's just meant to be.

so, at least for now, you can still leave all messages for me on john's machine. he's pretty good at relaying the information.
you can also now send all electronic mail to 'professionaltransient@gmail.com,' because that's about as legitimate as things are going to get around here.

the audacity of hope

2009-01-20T14:34:00.002-05:00

some people said it couldn't be done. few believed it would actually happen. but last friday my world was turned upside down. the unthinkable sprang forth into the world of actuality.

staples called me back. i start on friday. yes we can! (have shitty part-time jobs!)

as dan and i were in the parking lot of kmart looking to buy spray paint so dan could do some stenciling (read: put anarchy signs on predominant kent buildings), i got a call from a number i didn't recognize but somehow knew very well.

the unsure and sedated voice on the other end of the line i immediately recognized as dan, the man who gave me my first interview and my soon to be new boss. he asked if i could come in on friday to watch training videos and start on paperwork. i said sure, with the excitement of an inmate who just got his 11 year sentence shortened down to 9. i mean, on the one hand its a job. and on the other its at staples, where i'm sure if i applied myself i could be manager in about two and a half months. either way i've already likened this experience to two years of probation and i can only assume it will ring true.

the biggest thing that i worry about, though, is the slim chance that i'm going to love it. that starting at my training i will be one hundred percent in love with my position at staples. i'll learn the cash register, master the color copier and soon enough i'll be the assistant manager, signing a lease on a new kia and trying to pump up the sales staff on the latest sale on usb cables.

what if that fucking happens? what if i just get an apartment in twinsburg and start eating at mavis winkle's like every other tuesday? what if i take a bride that works at staples? what if grow a moustache? what if you have to grow a moustache to work at staples long-term? what if i have to buy black walking shoes? WHAT IF I BUY TWO PAIRS OF BLACK WALKING SHOES?

i guess time can only tell if my fears will be realized. friday at 8 am will start the great experiment. for my sake, i'm pretty sure i'll be miserable but content. it'll give me some source of minimal income and help break up the monotony of my busy week, full of watching tv and a constant sense of uneasiness that can only come from being 25 and living in your parents' house.

everybody's working for the bleak-end

2009-01-07T01:49:00.002-05:00

here i am, the eve before i call staples for a third time in order to procure a second interview. what's that? yes. you read that correctly.

you see i guess staples (read: shitty office supply chain) has some sort of divine screening process that only makes sure the truly chosen ones are accepted for mindless copy work or variably paced register work. maybe they know i'm not jewish already, thus the elusive tactics they seem to use everytime i call.

-"yeah, well we're just pretty busy right now, but we'll get you in next week for a second interview."

-"tell you what, we'll call right after the holidays, we're just too busy right now to get new people in here."

-"listen jeff, you seem like a nice guy, but you have a degree. like...a real degree. stacey over here can't even spell degree...but i bet if you wrote it down she could make five dozen perfect photocopies in a range of any color you could want. what the hell are you doing with your life? i mean...this is staples...in streetsboro...ohio."
"i...uh...well..."
"you know the best part of my day? when i go to your house to pick you up and for a split second i think maybe you're not gonna be there. that you took off somewhere."
"isn't that from good will - "
"please get out of my office."
"so that's a 'no' then?"
"just please leave, i'm very strong."

so tomorrow i get to call them again. and look for more jobs to complement the intense winter depression i'll certainly be facing over the next two months. if things work out well, i'll be working somewhere soon in attempts to save up money and move my ass to a city. if things don't work out, well, my writing's going to get a lot better or be one of those "i'm starting to worry about my friend" type of an operation. here's hoping it's enough of both.

-"hi, may i speak to a manager please?....hi, my name is jeff miller, i'm wondering if you're hiring right now...yes i'm aware it's january...in a horrible recession...and i know i'm well overqualified for this position...yes...no...no...of course...no...well i mean technically my friend told me to do it....i think it was about a six lane street...umm word for word??....something involving a taser and crime not paying...no....yes....no....ok thanks for your time."

holiday sands: revisited!

2008-12-15T16:54:00.003-05:00

ok, so i know that i posted my holiday sands piece like a year ago, but i just recently revised it in an attempt to procure a job as a legitimate writer of young teen girl fiction. here's hoping i have a chance. but here's the revised version, a little tighter and hopefully a little better.

I want to tell you why I love Ohio. But there are some things you should know first. I love Ohio in the way that Justin Timberlake loves ‘N Sync - it was great starting out and I’m glad it happened, but I’m much happier where I am now. But the difference between me and JT is that the haircut I regret was a bowl cut in seventh grade and his was some sort of curly Family Circus ‘fro that the whole world had to witness.

But dropping the anecdote for a second, Ohio is a great place to grow up in, complete with friends, family and a countless number of Chinese buffets.

But Ohio will always remain just that – a place to help shape people into decent human beings then have them fly away and return only for major holidays. . . and sometimes not even Easter. It’s the sad truth of the buckeye state, but something you learn with age.

At times I wish things weren’t this way, that Ohio and I could share a lifetime of happy memories together, but life started calling and Ohio doesn’t get very good reception. In fact I think it’s still in Extended Network.

But I, as well as other re-populated Buckeyes, have an enduring love for the state I call home. I get a special warmth inside when my change from a morning coffee gives me a quarter with Warren-born Neil Armstrong glistening in the morning fluorescence. Or when I hear The Black Keys or see Carmen Electra eloping in Vegas, all I can be is proud of what Ohio has had to offer.

But there’s so much more than the scattered famous faces Ohio has produced. There’s real people, real relationships and real, real good stories.
- - -

- - -
Growing up, my family lived just outside of Kent, Ohio. It was always easiest just to say we lived in Kent, but where we live is actually called Twin Lakes. It’s a nice part of Ohio that straddles a state route and offers, as you can guess, two lakes. They are by no means twins, but I have urinated in them so many times they do share some kind of special common thread. Among other things, this is something that you learn by living so close to a lake- public urination is usually frowned upon on dry land, but once half of your torso is submerged it is a veritable urinal designed for you and you alone.

I’ve learned that in cold waters like California peeing in your wetsuit can warm your body and help you better acclimate to the chilly saltwater of the Pacific. In Ohio, lakes can often reach temperatures of most baths, so warming yourself up isn’t really the desired effect. Usually it’s out of laziness, to gross your friends out or an accident that can really put a halt on a game of Marco Polo – but rarely does it occur to help.

The amount of child urine that has touched the fair shores of West Twin Lake is something I’d rather not think about. Mainly because this is the same place I have swam underwater in with my eyes open, exposed a staggering amount of open wounds to and, on occasion, drank as a result of dehydration on my ragged catamaran.
While this may seem utterly unhygienic and disgusting, I have yet to really see any side effects from it. Now and again something that I can only describe as “worm-like” passes across my eyeball, but for all I know that was there before I learned how to swim and is probably not the hatchlings of some northeastern Ohio bacteria. Here’s hoping.

While being exposed to what I’m sure is a wild assortment of lake germs may seem like a bad thing, living in close proximity to a lake really had its benefits. I never really needed a babysitter, drowning has never really been an issue and scouring my body for any piece of sand leftover from the beach has given me an impeccable sense of self hygiene. Impending punishment from your mother for tracking sand into the house really makes you completely investigate every nook and cranny.

But as much fun as the lakes were, special summer days called for a little extra adventure in aquatic fun. If we were lucky enough, my parents or a friend’s parents would take a day to go to Holiday Sands, a water park of sorts located in Ravenna. If you do not know of Ravenna, Ohio, then I would consider you lucky. I rarely use the term “armpit of America,” but Ravenna seems to aptly fit the description.

As bad as Ravenna is, Holiday Sands somehow took it up a notch. Holiday Sands was like the Amsterdam of summer water fun. Even though I was only a kid going there, I had this feeling that pretty much the craziest shit you could imagine was made possible. You wanna swing on a rusty chain into water that may or may not be deep enough to dive into? Go ahead. Want to know what a 100 foot spiral staircase made entirely out of slippery, decaying metal feels like soaking wet? Give it a shot.

I think the best description I can give of Holiday Sands is that there was rumored to usually be one fatality a summer, and everyone just accepted that as the cost of doing business. When you play with fire, you’re going to get burned. And in this case, it wasn’t so much fire as it was insufficient supervision in a water park made up of death traps.

The place itself was a freshwater lake nestled off of State Route 14, boasting an array of activities from shallow end monkey bars to a set of rings crossing the lake at one edge of it. It was a pretty good size lake, and from what I remember it was naturally made. But there were concrete walls on some edges so I think it was partially man-made. “Naturally made with some human influence,” you could call it. This human influence led to things like a platform with two rings for people to swing out and jump off into the water on. An idea that sounds simple in theory but nearly fatal in execution.

To start, the platform I think was made out of butter. Well, maybe not butter, but whatever it was the lifeguards on duty most assuredly waxed it down on an hourly basis.

This slanted wooden deck was pointed down towards the water and potential swingers had to shimmy down it to grab the ring, which was dangling from two chains that had seen more service time than the entirety of the first Gulf War. If they were lucky enough to stay on and grab the ring, they had to go back up the ramp, this time with resistance from the chains. If nothing else, the ring swing was a vital lesson in applied physics with drunk, overweight hillbillies.

Once the ring was secured came a true test of skill. Said test was no more than trying to swing out and land on the people that just went before you. If you got lucky, you had a lifeguard glancing away at a cute girl or a smarmy redneck, and believe me there were plenty of both, and you could take aim. Having been on both sides of this operation, it was never a good idea –but, like most ideas around the age of 12, it was there and you’d be damned if you were going to let it pass you by.

As a result of this, you learned what kind of power a lifeguard has, and how agonizing being banished from the water until next break could be. I would try and sneak around to the other side, hoping I wouldn’t be seen, but somehow the eagle eye vision of lifeguard justice would find me. As mad as this made me, I was impressed. Being a fairly normal looking gangly boy without any birthmarks, rashes, glass eyes or missing teeth, this ability to pick me out from a crowd was a true testament to the caliber of the lifesaving Holiday Sands employed. Or at least their ability to hold a grudge.

While waiting for your sentence to end, or if it was break, Holiday Sands provided a playground for kids to play on. It was fairly large, covered in sand and offered some pretty atypical playground paraphernalia. Sure there were conventional slides and swing sets, but the makers of this playground must have cut a deal with NASA to purchase their dated zero-g training equipment.

Now believe me when I say this, there was a contraption there that could never have met safety standards in times before the Industrial Revolution, let alone the early 90’s. It essentially was a souped-up carousel, but instead of creating mild dizziness and laughter this brought pain and suffering.

The main structure was an elaborate set of bars making a circular wheel. The middle was then connected to a pole about 20 feet high with chains stretching up from the middle “spokes” to the top of the pole.

When turned around, the chains would slowly wrap up on the pole. This caused several things to happen. First, the actual wheel part would begin to rise up off the ground as the chains constricted themselves against the center. The higher it got, the fewer kids could keep pushing. So they had to just grab on and wait for everyone to finish. Some kids would begin sitting on it and let other people do the work. Those kids were assholes.

So, once the tall kids pushed the contraption as far as they could, everyone grabbed on and hoped for the best. To lend an example as to what was next to happen, I can give you a mental picture. Imagine placing a fan face-up on the floor. Then boil a pot of spaghetti. Toss these wet noodles onto the fan and turn the fan onto its highest setting. Watch as noodles fly off, splaying in all directions. Some land on each other, some skid off yards away. A lucky few may have actually wedged their way in the blades and are somehow clinging on whether they wish to or not. Now instead of spaghetti, imagine it to be the supple bodies of two dozen children wearing nothing but swimming suits.

I had always learned that hourly breaks were meant to keep you safe and not let you get tired, but there was no such thing at Holiday Sands. After you spent a solid 45 minutes exerting yourself in the water, you had to stare death in the face as young bodies flew at you at speeds incomprehensible by a 10-year old.

Centrifugal forces caused you to become completely parallel with the ground as you held on with all you had. Then, when the sweet lord deemed it to be, your hands gave out and you soon realized the benefits of wearing a t-shirt while you tempt fate on a playground. Blood was all too common, as were the soothing sounds of pre-teen yelps and chains grinding against metal. But all of this seemed to be forgotten come next break.

Looking back, I can understand why people ride bulls professionally. Not because they’re stupid, but because of the rush it brings them. For cowboys, it’s the glory of holding on for eight seconds and staying on a bucking animal. For the youth of northeastern Ohio, it was feeling that first layer of palm skin peel off from the rusty bar you couldn’t let go of. That, or the feeling you get when you blast a 7-year old in the chest as you zip around a steel monster created by Satan himself.

But the main draw of Holiday Sands was a huge metal waterslide, standing tall in direct defiance of safety considerations everywhere. Not only was it a terrifying piece of metal that would warm to unimaginable temperatures, but climbing up the beast was the scariest part. A twisting metal staircase led you up to the top of the slide, with nothing but a small railing to keep you from plummeting onto the hard cement underfoot. For a young boy, every step you take really lets your mind do some thinking.

The first dozen or so steps greet you with excitement and anticipation. Once you hit, oh I don’t know, step 30 doubt begins to creep in. “This is very slippery. How far up am I? Was that a scream? Did I just step on bone marrow?”

Right when you near the top your mind is in full-blown pandemonium, forcing some to even make a frightened and incredibly dangerous walk back down. Honestly, once you got to the top it was probably best to just suck it up and go down the slide, because walking down a spiral staircase capable of accommodating one reasonably small Asian man was a death wish.

The unbelievable truth was that of a constant wait of about ten people once you got to the top, so you not only had to climb the stairs but then stay on them. When you are standing atop a huge metal structure that seems to barely be standing, thoughts start running through your head. Thoughts like morning newspaper headlines: “14 Dead in Waterslide Collapse” or even “Tall, Malnourished Kent Boy Plucked From Water Park Wreckage.” A mind begins to wander as you notice every strong gust of wind a hundred feet above concrete. (Just as a side note, the slide may not have been 100 feet tall. Actually, I can probably guarantee it. But to a child, any height over 30 feet is intimidating.)

But as I would wait to go down the slide, I was witness to a side of life my parents did a great job herding me away from – the life of Ravenna locals. Now I am in no way speaking ill of them, but more in admiration of a life I could never lead - a life of fast trucks, long cut tobacco and the working knowledge of field-dressing deer. I would never be able to fit in with these people outside of Holiday Sands, and I’m pretty sure our school systems planned it that way, but on these sunny afternoons I glimpsed a life I only saw in professional wrestling Monday nights, and I appreciated it.

I could see the new fashion in cutoff jean shorts and eventually grew to appreciate the intricacies of lower calf and back tattoos. I even learned a few new curse words that I wasn’t quite aware of.

But the most important thing I learned was to relish life, which was done by watching full grown men leap out onto a slide stories above pavement. The thrill for them was the added drop and extra speed they received by “getting air,” heaving their hairy bodies out into the heavy Ravenna air. The thrill for me was seeing them land half on the slide and then shift their body weight back onto it, tempting fate on, of all things, a hot, metal monster designed for children.
Then it was my turn, where I simply went down feet first and hoped that every support would hold, keeping me and my newfound appreciation for life safe from the apparent ‘Ravenna crazy’ that was in the water.

But after each time I went down that slide, I would eventually get up and do it again. Why? It is the mystery of Holiday Sands. Like the song of the sirens, it always leads us back.

This tenuous relationship with a small water park in Ravenna is eerily similar to my relationship with Ohio. Memories that Holiday Sands were able to give me are lifelong, either because of the fun or the fact that there may be some serious emotional trauma. But do I wish I could return there time and time again, creating new and better memories? Not really. If I end up having children will I long to take them to a place where they can see what almost drowning feels like? Nope.

Mainly, because that shit is dangerous. Also, and more importantly, I’ve moved on.

I love Ohio, and I love its sketchy water parks, but it’s more appreciation for how I’ve ended up. Sometimes you just have to make that solo album and tell Joey and Lance that things are over. Maybe we can do a reunion tour in the future, but right now this is the way things are going.

Maybe if Holiday Sands ever has enough money to pay the outrageous insurance premium I’ll get one last reunion tour, but I should just be happy as to what I’ve learned from it.
Seeing the glistening, flowing locks of an inebriated man flow in the wind as he gracefully shifts his body back onto a metal slide high above the ground is something you can’t see anywhere else. No teacher can show you life like a poorly groomed man from Ohio can. The highs, the lows. Holiday Sands made sure you didn’t give up on your dreams. Not because it cared, but because it was proof that anything is possible – especially creating a veritable wonderland of things that could easily kill small children.

strong enough for a grown ass man

2008-01-04T15:05:00.001-05:00

so for the third day in a row, i'm wearing womens deodorant. not by choice, mind you, but because i ran out of my own supply.
unlike other things like underwear or shoes, opposite sex deodorant is actually something you can get away with wearing. it by no means feels right, but you can manage. if i attempted a "girdle tuesday" after i went through my clean boxers then there would be issues. but as it were, i've been doing relatively ok with the secret. the upside is that i don't have to buy new deodorant, and with my current financial situation that is a tremendous thing. but there's one big downside - and that is smelling like my mom.

if it were the anti-perspirant of a significant other, then maybe it'd be better. it'd be a cute thing i do in the morning as we both get ready for the day. she dressing up to tackle the working world and myself making a nest of blankets and knick knacks before price is right starts. i'd softly blow bubbles in my chocolate milk as she makes her lunch, gathers her things and, while walking out the door, makes sure i see both middle fingers pointed directly at me .

but thinking back, i actually don't really recall any of my past girlfriends' deodorant smelling, let alone smelling like my mom. is this some kind of cruel 50+ trick the deodorant company plays on women everywhere? once you have officially become old you have to smell the part, too?
i'm thinking yes, because if i snuggled up to a girl that smells as i do now we would absolutely have no future together. my armpits smell like smurf shit.

but perhaps there's some kind of unscented deodorant that i don't even know about. or my mom doesn't know about.

or maybe it's the whole "ph balance" thing secret always seems to harp on. you know, the whole "strong enough for a man, but ph balanced for a woman." maybe i have the wrong ph balance. maybe whatever balance is going on in my pits causes normal deodorant to smell like the open grave of liberace.

it's secret's male deterrent. "secret, strong enough for a man, but ph balanced for a woman. and if you're a man and you wear this, you have a 100% guarantee of not getting to second base. ever. because you'll smell like your mom. i mean, she's a great lady and all, but you're 24 years old. you should smell like the wilderness, bowling alley sex and an old catcher's mitt."

roll with the punches

2008-12-11T16:53:00.003-05:00

it's not that i think i have a tick living in my butthole that is the problem. the problem is that i think i have a tick in my butthole and have just accepted it and moved on.

i even named it rick.

there's an animal possibly inside of me and the best efforts i've given at getting it out are sitting down really hard and leaning in different angles while i fart.
that's sort of the way i deal with stuff now, not really letting it get me down and so i move on and go drink a couple beers and throw rocks on the half-frozen lake.

parts of my toes have been numb since may. only one door of my car has a functioning lock. my glasses are held together by superglue in two different places. i sat in dog shit three weeks ago and my jeans are still in the trunk of my car because the cold doesn't make them smell.
i'm really only a few dvds and about 90 dollars from being homeless.

but i've come to realize that i think that's what i like about my life.
i recently just did americorps, a grassroots hippie socialist movement somehow funded by the united states government. in it i did a year long, country-wide tour of manual labor. i roofed houses, sanded maintenance shacks and painted the cafeteria walls of inner city new york schools.

what i also did was step into a world that won't allow me to go back to normal human interaction. meeting up with old friends at thanksgiving sort of brought everything into focus for me. sure everyone had great stories, but most of them were about struggling through their jobs and taking their few chances at excitement, doing very normal things like vacations, hiking, or possibly going back to school.

then this unemployed asshole (read: me) shows up, drinking all of their beer and telling them all stories about how he thinks he has a tick living in his butthole and 'for fun' one night he threw about 15 ears of corn in a worksite port-o-potty. lets get our coats, i think we should leave.
waking up in a daze on thanksgiving morning made things quite apparent of the lifestyle that was mine. i can't escape it if i want to.

i can barely go ten minutes without using the word boner. i don't belong in professional settings.
but i think americorps helped me understand something - i don't want to be in a professional setting. the cliche office job we're led to believe is what we should do after college is good for some, but i've come to realize that i don't need it. an invaluable lesson i learned working with countless numbers of office workers volunteering on the weekends, prisoners to tivo and daytime droning fluorescence.

for some, offices are great. i just guess it depends on which one you're in. but i know that a man shifting around in attempts to remove the wildlife in his anus has no place in an office. no place at all.

47-Year Old Heartburn Patient Keeps Suffering Antacid Flashbacks

2008-12-02T01:48:00.000-05:00

back with a vengeance!

2008-11-25T01:47:00.003-05:00

hi everyone! i'm back!
sorry for the extended break...i sort of got busy helping america. but i'm back in kent and have even less to do than before, so that means good news for the five people who actually read this thing.

anyways, here's the first of what should be many new posts. hope you like it.

This is a story about why I hate waking up early and still get sweaty palms whenever purchasing prophylactics.

Starting about when I was eleven or twelve, I was on a bowling team with two of my closest friends. I’m not sure as to how we became inundated into the greater Portage county bowling scene, but somehow we were. The league we were in occurred every Saturday morning, starting roughly around 10 or so. You bowled three games and went head-to-head against another team. After the three games one team was the winner of the day and the other suffered crushing bowling alley defeat. Well, that may be a bit much, but I’m sure somebody’s parents were disappointed on a weekly basis. What? Another loss? Get in the fucking van, we have to go practice again…and get daddy’s Skoal.

The league was also divided into age brackets, so normally you would bowl teams of your age and ability. You had an off chance of playing older teams, but usually handicaps would work to even out everything.

If you are not privy to the world of junior league bowling, each person had an average score. Then you would add enough pins to equal a game of 150, I believe. So the better you were, the smaller the handicap. That’s where the older kids got the bone-job. Their rippling muscles and nicotine stained fingers were no match for my 96 pin average. Although they were by far the best bowlers, they pretty much always lost because they had little to nothing to work with as a handicap.

And I feel they also lost because they were bowling against 12-year olds on Saturday mornings, and where I come from that is the exact opposite of “winning.”

So every Saturday morning we would all get up and get dropped off in this magical world of splits, spares and ill-fitting shoes. To us, it was an amazingly fun way to enjoy a day off school and a fun source of competition. Oh, I also forgot to mention – I hate competition. Like, really really don’t like it. I am six feet six inches tall and didn’t play anything remotely close to an organized sport in high school or college. A mystery - a creature birthed of giants… with the athletic drive of Bruce Vilanch.

So for me bowling was the one time I actually had fun while competing. It was something I was good at and couldn’t feel very intimidated by. Essentially, it’s a sport for fatties, and that was the mental edge I needed.

For me, going to Kent Lanes every Saturday was like gearing up for the Thunderdome. Every morning I woke up ready to take on the next team. I went in, got my shoes, then promptly found my favorite 12 pound ball with appropriate chip between the thumb and index finger holes. My chainmail. The armor I suited myself with. The weapons I needed.

To anyone else, I’m sure it just looked like an awkward looking 12-year old going to bowl in the aftermath of a Friday night bowling alley booze bender.

In the eyes of my parents, I feel the internal monologue went something like this: Every time he comes back from that bowling alley Jeff smells like someone dumped a wet ashtray down his elastic-lined pants and made him do sit ups. (Yes, up until age 13 I couldn’t wear pants without elastic bottoms. God knows why.)

True, my time in league play was all before a smoking ban snuffed out Ohio. This was far ahead of that, to be honest. This was nearly a time harkening back to the beginning of cigarettes, where people couldn’t smoke enough. Smoking was beautiful, majestic. And I smelled like it for five to seven hours after I left the lanes.

But I was fine with it, it just sort of seemed to be what happens when you go to a bowling alley. If there were two things that complemented each other perfectly, it’s bowling and smoking. Well, to be fair, drinking, too. It’s like a special trio reserved for the alcoholics and poor dressers of the Midwest.

But the lanes did not only introduce me to wonders of second hand smoke, but also jump-started my foray into sex education.

Now, many bowling alleys are geared towards families. The fun black light bowling, the charming birthday parties – all of it is to bring in that coveted 5-12 demographic left in the wake of Chuck E. Cheese and Patrick O’Shenanigan’s Funtime Pizza Parlor (doesn’t exist.).
But in the 90’s, bowling alleys hit a few demographics hard - mainly drunken, lonely rednecks. These people are the bread and butter of bowling alleys, truly. They love to bowl and drink indoors.

But what you also must understand is that sometimes after a few cocktails, drunken, lonely rednecks may find someone. It could be a “wrong lane” ball toss or the classic “next round of Keystones is on me,” but whatever it is love sometimes can blossom in the dirtiest of places. And with any kind of love, you need to make sure of a few things. She’s 18 and you’ve got some rubbers.

Well, Kent Lanes was fully prepared to help you out with the latter. Nestled back in the darkest reaches of the mens room was a shiny treasure trove of prophylactics. While I’m sure it was a lifesaver Friday night, Saturday morning as it eyed me at a urinal was unnerving. I might even say terrifying.

The first time I saw it I had little clue as to what it was. A hand dryer? No, because that stained re-circulating hand towel next to the sink was there for that. Fake tattoo dispenser? No, the only skull on it seems to be hand-drawn.

Then I was informed. This was done by a fellow league member purchasing one and throwing it around the bathroom.

This was apocalyptic. Up until the age of 22 I was never even able to comfortably discuss sex. In any way shape or form. Every health class resulted in me needing to apply double the amount of anti-perspirant. So when I found out that this balloon being shot around the room was for “sexing up,” it’s safe to say I freaked out. I think I had to have a long talk with my mom that night. It mainly proved that grown up church kids are not meant to be lurking in bowling alley bathrooms.

It also proved that it would be a very long time before I would a) be needing to purchase something like this and b) be comfortably purchasing something like this. To this day I have to buy at least 10 dollars worth of unnecessary items just to cover up the dirty little secrets I’m buying. As if three packages of Big League Chew will help balance out the torrid evidence of my premarital sex. It’s almost like I’m making a non-verbal thesis on why I’m a good guy. “Well…although I’m purchasing this package of condoms…I’d like you to notice all these astronaut stickers and wacky candy bars I’m buying. So…you know…I’m just sayin…PLEASE DON’T TELL MY MOTHER.” I’m a pretty weird dude.

But amidst all these bathroom hijinks, we actually became good bowlers. Like, actually good bowlers. I even scored a 225 once. I know. I was fit for a beer gut and Chevy tattoo before I could vote.

But, by the hand of God, things changed. Everyone else started to get better and I was on the decline. People were learning how to throw the ball so it curved out and then came back in towards the pins. People were bringing bags of chalk to the lanes. CHALK. I don’t even know how that would fucking help you?!

So as everyone enjoyed fruitful Saturday mornings full of high scores and higher fives, I sat in agony. Until I came upon the great realization: I hate waking up early. With a passion. Completely despise it.

If I get a great new job and they require me to show up at 6 am, I would send my apologies and walk my ass out the door. If I could go outside and see Venus eclipsing the sun at 7am on a Saturday I would rather see my head eclipsing my pillow. I truly loathe being awake before 10.
That’s where my life went from “maybe I’ll buy that 15 pound ball and put in extra hours of practice” to “let’s start drinking and not wake up until Sunday.” The sand was there and the line was drawn. Fuck bowling, I’m sleeping in.

I can say it made me sad, because I didn’t see my friends with as much frequency, plus I also was in the dark on what was the fashion trend for lower calf tattoos. But no matter how many turkeys or spares I could have earned, nothing could compare to that feeling of wasting half of my day doing absolutely nothing. Because even though I could sense my friends’ disappointment every morning they called, I knew that I was making the right decision. A decision leading me towards hazy late night memories and leading the rest of the league to 215 pin averages.

great business ideas

2008-03-16T16:49:00.003-04:00

"alright everyone, now you are all well aware of the seriousness of this advertising campaign we have just picked up. i'm talking billboards, television and print of all kind. this is what we have been waiting for."
(murmurs of approval)
"quiet, everyone. please quiet down. now we have the general idea of what we want the message to be. we've put our best people to work on it and i think that this is our "where's the beef." yes, it's true. the ideas that have been put before me are amazing. we are going to kick the advertising world in the balls with this one.
but there's just one thing we can't seem to figure out. we have the content, but we just need the style in which we portray it. actually, we just need a font that will make the ad sizzle. you know? we just need something that can do justice to what we have in front of us. so i am opening the floor up for open discussion. our design team has been stumped, and nothing we think of really hits the spot. so we're begging all of you...please give us this missing ingredient."

"well...have we tried papyrus?"

"oh god yes. we tried the shit out of papyrus. but literally 80% of other businesses are using it. we need something that is unique, something that will help us stick out from the crowd."

"umm...i mean...the star wars font?"

"get the fuck out of my office."

"umm, may i interject something sir?"

"why you're just a janitor."

"a modest janitor, yes, but i have worked here as long as any of you. i windex your windows and quietly peel your pubes from the company urinals."

"which by the way you're doing a bang up job of."

"thank you. but...oh it wouldn't work."

"no, no. say it. you deserve a chance to say whatever you want."

"well...whenever i read anything, whether i'm at night school, driver's ed, alcoholics anonymous, a 4H raffle, the ice capades, chuck e. cheese, the local sporting events, local easter egg hunts, felony hearings, seedy male strip revues, childrens bmx races or secret santa gift exchanges there's always one font that makes everything light, funny and overall an enjoyable experience."

"yes? what is it, good sir. what is this cup of christ you hold before my lips?"

"ms comic sans."
(gasps)
"prince of persia!"
"of course!"
"why yes!"
"right fucking on!"

"you, janitor. what's your name?"

"my name sir? i'm stanley clemover, sir."

"clemover, you just became the richest janitor since richard pryor. grab my hand, i'm buying you a fucking pony."

weirdest entry ever.

bedtime

2008-01-28T01:00:00.000-05:00

ok, if you're reading this blog that means you've most likely stalked me on the f-book. this also means you probably now i'm leaving for americorps for a while. so...i don't know the frequency in which i'll be able to post. hopefully i'll have some chances, but who knows.

so before i leave, here's a poorly crafted entry to tide you over.

i'm horrible to sleep with. and not that way, perv, just in general. i'm not someone you want to be partnered with in a bed. i'm huge, i'm squirmy and there's a lot of noises coming from my body. said noises entail a horrible teeth grinding habit and a lot of incoherent dream dialogue.

the dentist just told me i have 'severe incisal wear.' that means my vampire teeth aren't looking that good. good news for transylvanians, bad news for me. now i have to sleep with a mouthguard. and by 'sleep' i mean put it in for five minutes and then immediately spit it out because i can't breathe. at least it's a step in the right direction.

but the main reason you probably don't want to sleep next to me is that i say some pretty wild shit. from what i've been told, it's not often long lines of dialogue or full sentences. oftentimes it's just quick, one word yelps that wake you from sleep and also put a healthy 4am fear into you. from what david has told me, whom i lived in a tent with for a summer, most of the nighttime vocal workout was things like "knife!" or "don't!" being yelled out into the crisp silence of a california night.

if this were a play rehearsal for streetcar named desire, then things may have seemed normal. but when it's you and another person alone in a wood-planked canvas tent, the last thing you want to wake up to is someone shouting out names of potential weapons - especially ones you know are merely feet away.

"shank!" "six feet of shorn extension cord!" "dave! dave! dave!" - all things you don't want to have pierce nighttime silence.

but even worse than me yelling weird stuff is that i've been told i sleepwalk. i'm not sure if it happens anymore, but i used to. quite a lot. my freshmen year roommates would tell me tales of me getting up at night just to slam open and shut my dresser drawers. i then tried the door to the hallway but by the hand of zeus it was deadbolted shut. the last thing i want to surprisingly wake up in is a dorm bathroom. scratch that, just a dorm period. that shit's worse than a nightmare.

so when i was little, my mom would oftentimes catch me sleepwalking. as a rule of thumb, i heard, you're not meant to wake people up if you catch them. just simply guide them back to bed, because they won't ever stop if you wake them up. it's like the saying 'teach a man to fish...' but instead its the uneasiness of knowing any jar of mayonnaise in the house could be demolished in a sleepy time feeding frenzy.

one time, i walked into my parents room. a dim glow from the hallway outlined my figure as i just stood in their doorway. feeling the presence, my mom asked me what was the matter. after saying nothing, she figured i was sleepwalking.

then i stepped shit up a notch.

carrying on with what i felt was sleepwalking business as usual i proceeded to treat their room as the room i thought i was in - the bathroom. the good old water closet.

i let rip a sleepwalking pee stream the likes of which are yet to be topped. a rich river of frothy urine cascaded onto their shag carpet as i stood with full sleepwalking confidence that this was just another pee.

but this was no ordinary pee. it was far from going into an ordinary toilet bowl. no, friends, this pee reached out and shook hands with the carpet, a pair of my father's shoes and a wool sweater soon to be donated to goodwill. it was the night sleepwalking turned into a tangible problem.

being smart, my parents didn't tell me what happened for quite some time. i would have felt very guilty and embarrassed and the whole ordeal would have just gotten worse. so they waited, and when they did tell me enough time had passed that it all seemed pretty funny.

upon hearing i voiced my apologies and found it it had never happened again. this was relieving. nearly as relieving as the sleepwalk pee that led me there in the first place.

well, i'm on nyquil and getting a little loopy. hopefully you enjoy it.
xoxo.

oscar buzz

2008-01-14T22:00:00.000-05:00

So I’ve been thinking of routine pieces I can write for this blog. I’ve had a couple ideas but one that seems really good is a returning feature called “Forgotten Acceptance Speeches,” where acceptance speeches that never were given have been miraculously found. Now most acceptance speeches are reserved for winners, achievers and leaders in their respective fields. In “Forgotten Acceptance Speeches,” you will see none of these things. Enjoy.

“Forgotten Acceptance Speeches – Kevin Costner Wins Academy Award for Waterworld”

1995. Found crumpled and thrown into a back alley Los Angeles restaurant dumpster. Possible tears/blood found on lower corner of paper. Also, apparently stage directions have been written into the speech. They remain in the text to keep historical accuracy.

Oh, wow. I…I really don’t know what to say. This is truly such an honor for this to happen to me. I haven’t even prepared anything! (Rub hand through hair in astonishment. Fish out crumpled piece of paper with names. DO NOT READ. Proceed with memorized speech.) Well, that’s not true, I have only a few names on a piece of paper.

First, my thanks to Kevin Reynolds, the director of this masterpiece. When I think of him, I seriously consider him to be in a league with the best. Scorcese, Welles. Soon you all will be saying “Kevin Reynolds is the best American filmmaker that has ever lived.” And you’ll know where you heard it first. The fucking C-Man.

Also, I would like to thank David Rubin for casting me. Although I was not the first choice, I always had a saying around my house: “If at first you don’t succeed, perhaps the fourth time you try and succeed will be the time that you actually succeed.” And I feel we did that. Although I was the fifth choice.

At any rate, I would like to thank everyone that worked with me on this film. It truly was a ‘whale’ of a time! (Wait for water-themed laughter to subside.)

Now even though it seems like it was easy, making this film was rather turbulent. We went through our ups and downs, ebbs and flows, but we managed to make what I feel is the most important film made in this century. I truly do.

I mean sure Citizen Kane can be touted as one of the best, or even something like Casablanca. But you know what both of those movies didn’t have? That’s right, a renegade mutant mariner drinking his own urine and following a girl’s back tattoo to dry land. (Pause. Stare at anyone smiling. Like, really stare. This shit is serious.)

That is what tugs on the heartstrings. That is what people connect to. Because a world where the ice caps have melted and bands of tobacco renegades roam the high seas in search of dirt and saltwater foreplay is not far off, colleagues. It really isn’t. Have you watched MTV recently? (Wink at that RuPaul thing.)

I hope Waterworld could serve as not only my shining moment in thespian history, but a wake up call to those afraid of trusting mutants with the lives of our children.

The year 2000 is rapidly approaching, friends, and I for one am not taking it lightly. At home I framed a newspaper story where a child was born with three arms. Three arms. Do you know what that means? That’s two arms for holding you down, and one for fucking killing you. Now I am sorry for the strong language, but I am passionate about this. (Breathe from inhaler. Flex abs.) If we don’t take the film legend Waterworld into serious consideration as the future of mankind, then I truly did not deserve this award.

But if there are enough you out there, and I think there are, that feel the same way as I do, then together we can make the future a great place.
A place where more films like this great nautical epic can be made.
Which brings me to telling you the juiciest bit of Hollywood gossip your sweet ears have ever heard. (Pause for shocked murmurings to settle.)

Yes, friends, that’s right. A sequel. I won’t spoil it by telling you what happens, but I am at liberty to tell you the name….
Waterworld 2: Field of Wet Dreams.

holiday sands was like the amsterdam of summer water fun

2007-12-22T19:07:00.000-05:00

so i know i haven't really posted much recently, so here's a piece i wrote about holiday sands about a year ago. it's pretty rough, so don't expect a christmas miracle here, people. but i'm happy with the first half.

xoxo.

Growing up, my family lived just outside of Kent, Ohio. It was always easiest just to say we lived in Kent, but where we live is actually called Twin Lakes. It’s a nice part of Ohio that straddles a state route and offers, as you can guess, two lakes. They are by no means twins, but I have urinated in them so many times they do share some kind of special thread.

Among other things, this is something that you learn by living so close to a lake- public urination is usually frowned upon on dry land, but once half of your torso is submerged it is a veritable urinal designed for you and you alone. I’ve learned that in cold waters like California peeing in your wetsuit can warm your body and help you better acclimate to the chilly saltwater of the Pacific.

In Ohio, lakes can often reach temperatures of most baths, so warming yourself up isn’t really the desired effect of peeing in the water. Usually it’s out of laziness, to gross your friends out or an accident that can really put a halt on a game of Marco Polo – but rarely does it help you.
The amount of child urine that has touched the fair shores of West Twin Lake is something I’d rather not think about. Mainly because this is the same place I have swam underwater in with my eyes open, exposed a staggering amount of open wounds to and, on occasion, drank as a result of dehydration on my ragged catamaran. While this may seem utterly unhygienic and disgusting, I have yet to really see any side effects from it. Now and again something that I can only describe as “worm-like” passes across my eyeball, but for all I know that was there before I learned how to swim and is probably not the hatchlings of some northeastern Ohio bacteria. Here’s hoping.

While being exposed to what I’m sure is a wild assortment of lake germs may seem like a bad thing, living in close proximity to a lake really had its benefits. I never really needed a babysitter, drowning has never really been an issue and scouring my body for any piece of sand leftover from the beach has given me an impeccable sense of self hygiene. Impending punishment from your mother for tracking sand into the house really makes you completely investigate every nook and cranny.

But as much fun as the lakes were, special summer days called for a little extra adventure in aquatic fun. If we were lucky enough, my parents or a friend’s parents would take a day to go to Holiday Sands, a waterpark of sorts located in Ravenna. If you do not know of Ravenna, Ohio, then I would consider you lucky. I rarely use the term “armpit of America,” but Ravenna seems to aptly fit the description.

As bad as Ravenna is, Holiday Sands somehow took it up a notch. Holiday Sands was like the Amsterdam of summer water fun. Even though I was only a kid going there, I had this feeling that pretty much the craziest shit you could imagine was made possible. You wanna swing on a rusty chain into water that may or may not be deep enough to dive into? Go ahead. Want to know what a 100 foot spiral staircase made entirely out of slippery, decaying metal feels like soaking wet? Give it a shot.

I think the best description I can give of Holiday Sands is that there was rumored to usually be one fatality a summer, and everyone just accepted that as the cost of doing business. When you play with fire, you’re going to get burned. And in this case, it wasn’t so much fire as it was insufficient supervision in a waterpark made up of death traps.

The place itself was a freshwater lake nestled off of State Route 14, boasting an array of activities from shallow end monkeybars to a set of rings crossing the lake at one edge of it. It was a pretty good size lake, and from what I remember it was naturally made. But there were concrete walls on some edges so I think it was partially man-made. “Naturally made with some human influence,” you could call it. This human influence led to things like a platform with two rings for people to swing out and jump off into the water on. Now as simple as that sounds, I witnessed some nearly fatal accidents there in my childhood.

To start, the platform I think was made out of butter. Well, maybe not butter, but whatever it was the lifeguards on duty most assuredly waxed it down on an hourly basis. This slanted wooden deck was pointed down towards the water and potential swingers had to shimmy down it to grab the ring, which was dangling from two chains that had seen more service time than the entirety of the first Gulf War. If they were lucky enough to stay on and grab the ring, they had to go back up the ramp, this time with resistance from the chains. If nothing else, the ring swing was a vital lesson in applied physics with drunk, overweight hillbillies.

Once the ring was secured, then came a true test of skill. It was called trying to land on the people who had just gone and were swimming out of the way. If you got lucky, you had a lifeguard glancing away at a cute girl or a smarmy redneck, and believe me there were plenty of both, and you could take aim. Having been on both sides of this operation, it was never a good idea –but, like most ideas around the age of 12, it was there and you’d be damned if you were going to let it pass you by.

As a result of this, you learned what kind of power a lifeguard has, and being banished out of the lake until the next break was over was agonizing. I would try and sneak around to the other side, hoping I wouldn’t be seen, but somehow the eagle eye vision of lifeguard justice would find me. As mad as this made me, I was impressed. Being a fairly normal looking gangly boy without any birthmarks, rashes, glass eyes or missing teeth, this ability to pick me out from a crowd was a true testament to the caliber of the lifesaving Holiday Sands employed. Or at least their ability to hold a grudge.

While waiting for your sentence to end, or if it was break, Holiday Sands provided a small playground for kids to play on. It was fairly large, covered in sand and offered some pretty atypical playground paraphernalia. Now believe me when I say this, but there was a contraption there that could never have met safety standards in times before the Industrial Revolution, let alone the early 90’s. It essentially was a souped-up carousel, but instead of creating mild dizziness and laughter this brought pain and suffering.

The main structure was an elaborate set of bars making a circular wheel. The middle was then connected to a pole about 20 feet high with chains stretching up from the middle “spokes” to the top of the pole.

When turned around, the chains would slowly wrap up on the pole. This caused several things to happen. First, the actual wheel part would begin to rise up off the ground because the chains would begin to shorten as they were continuously wrapped around the structure. The higher it got, the fewer kids could keep pushing. So they had to just grab on and wait for everyone to finish. Some kids would begin sitting on it and let other people do the work. Those kids were assholes.

So, once the tall kids pushed the contraption as far as they could, everyone grabbed on and hoped for the best. To lend an example as to what was next to happen, I can give you a mental picture. Imagine placing a fan face up on the floor. Then boil a pot of spaghetti. Toss these wet noodles onto the fan and turn the fan onto its highest setting. Watch as noodles fly off, spraying in all directions. Some land on each other, some skid off yards away. A lucky few may have actually wedged their way in the blades and are somehow clinging on whether they wish to or not. Now instead of spaghetti, imagine it to be the supple bodies of two dozen children wearing nothing but swimming suits.

I had always learned that hourly breaks were meant to keep you safe and not let you get tired, but there was no such thing at Holiday Sands. After you spent a solid 45 minutes exerting yourself in the water, you had to stare death in the face as young bodies flew at you at speeds incomprehensible by a 10-year old.

Centrifugal forces caused you to become completely parallel with the ground as you held on with all you had. Then, when the sweet lord deemed it to be, your hands gave out and you soon realized the benefits of wearing a t-shirt while you tempt fate on a playground. Blood was all too common, as were the soothing sounds of tears and chains grinding against metal. But all of this seemed to be forgotten come next break. Looking back, I can understand why people ride bulls professionally. Not because they’re stupid, but because of the rush it brings them. For cowboys, it’s the glory of holding on for eight seconds and staying on a bucking animal. For the youth of northeastern Ohio, it was feeling that first layer of palm skin peel off from the rusty bar you couldn’t let go of. That, or the feeling you get when you blast a 7-year old in the chest as you zip around a steel monster created by Satan himself.

But I digress, because most of memories from Holiday Sands are in the lake itself. Well, not even so much in the lake as a hundred feet above it. The piece de resistance, if you will, of the entire water park was a huge metal waterslide, standing tall in direct defiance of safety considerations everywhere. Not only was it a terrifying piece of metal that would warm to unimaginable temperatures, but climbing up the beast was the scariest part. A twisting metal staircase led you up to the top of the slide, with nothing but a small railing to keep you from plummeting onto the hard cement underfoot. For a young boy, every step you take really lets your mind do some thinking.

The first dozen or so steps thoughts are simple, like “wow, I’m excited to go down this slide!.” Verging on 30, doubt begins to creep in. “This is very slippery. How far up am I? Was that a scream? Did I just step on bone marrow?”

Right when you near the top your mind is in full-blown pandemonium. I’ve seen many a person buckle under the pressure, making that long walk back down the staircase that just terrified them on the way up. Honestly, once you got to the top it was probably best to just suck it up and go down the slide, because walking down a spiral staircase capable of accommodating one reasonably small Asian man was a death wish.

But the most ridiculous part about the slide was the line. There was a constant wait of about 10 people once you got to the top, so you not only had to climb the stairs but then stay on them. When you are standing atop a huge metal structure that seems to barely be standing, thoughts start running through your head. Thoughts like morning newspaper headlines: “14 Dead in Waterslide Collapse” or even “Tall, Malnourished Kent Boy Plucked From Waterpark Wreckage.” A mind begins to wander as you notice every strong gust of wind a hundred feet above concrete. (Just as a side note, the slide may not have been 100 feet tall. Actually, I can probably guarantee it. But to a child, any height over 30 feet is intimidating.)

But as I would wait to go down the slide, I would get to see what new brand of stupid was being offered up by the Ravenna locals. I always got to see what new styles in cutoff jeanshorts were in fashion, and I even began to appreciate the intricacies of neck and calf tattoos. But what was truly astounding was these Ravenna natives who had apparently become content with their lives and wished to risk everything.

This was accomplished by something so stupid as leaping out above the slide at the top, “getting air” and landing several feet or even yards further than those of us simply sliding down it. Even as a kid, I knew full well that this was one of the dumbest things I had ever witnessed in my life – and this is coming from someone who saw his brother burn his nighttime orthodontic headgear in celebration of getting his braces removed.

The gasps that come out of you as you see a 40 year old man in shorn black denim shorts land five feet out and halfway off of the slide itself are truly disgusting. If it weren’t for everyone making the exact same noise, I would have been completely embarrassed.
The kind of embarrassment that can only be matched by the brutal wedgie I was soon to receive courtesy of a giant, hot metal monster.

But after each time I went down that slide, I would eventually get up and do it again. Why? It is the mystery of Holiday Sands. Like the song of the sirens, it always leads us back.

Whenever I think back about my times at Holiday Sands, it is much akin to junior high school. I shared a lot of good times there, but looking back I don’t know how or why any of us did it. Except instead of the learning process taking two years, as it does in junior high, one can learn a lot in just one afternoon at a small lake in Ravenna. Seeing the glistening, flowing locks of an inebriated man flow in the wind as he gracefully shifts his body back onto a metal slide high above the ground is something you can’t read in a textbook. No teacher can show you life like a poorly groomed man from Ohio can. The highs, the lows. Holiday Sands made sure you didn’t give up on your dreams. Not because it cared, but because it was proof that anything is possible – especially creating a veritable wonderland of things that could easily kill small children.

New Game Release “Sitar Hero” Receives Dismal Reviews

2007-12-04T16:31:00.000-05:00

By Ravi F. Shankar III

Well, if I told you I expected this I would clearly be lying. This was my chance, the time was right and…well, as you can see by this bar graph representing video game sales, we fared lower than “Mathematics for the Incontinent,” an algebra themed game geared for the loosely-boweled. Christ almighty, I mean a diarrhea smart game beat us. I guess it is just painfully obvious the public is not ready to embrace the world of droning, 23-stringed gourd instruments.

I had the idea while I was touring throughout Persia. A ne’erdowell on the street propositioned me to purchase something called “Guitar Hero,” a game where Caucasians emulate their rudimentary and syphilis-laden music stars. After examining the game, which the man informed me “was a big time popularity game time in America,” I purchased it and went home. After playing for less than two hours, I had defeated every level on the hardest setting. This got my sitar wheels in motion.

“If mimicking a six string guitar is fun, and profitable, why won’t quadrupling the intensity produce quadruple the profit?” I, obviously, have only had limited training in both business and mathematics.

If I could only go back in time and kick myself in the balls, then I wouldn’t be thousands of dollars in debt, the laughing stock of my country and on the receiving end of a public “total body hair wax off,” customary in my village for those who bring shame to it.
But, as it were, my beloved “Sitar Hero” came into being and I did not have the foresight to know it would be so poorly received.

I mean, I understand that it may be a little “unorthodox” from other gaming controllers, but gaining dexterity on a 23-string pan lute requires time. But I guess time is something that none of these impatient assholes in America has. One time I spent a year just playing four notes on my sitar. FOUR FUCKING NOTES. During that time my wife left me, I was discharged from the National Sitarmy, a public music defense program, and had to start subletting a basement shanty. So don’t talk to me about “time.”

And they even try and tell me “the songs are too obscure” and “the advanced setting is a literal physical impossibility for any human being to do.”

I mean, I tried to pick out songs that people would know – believe me. I had one Beatles song and one Rolling Stones, other than that it’s all from the other side of the globe, baby.
But I was hopeful. Maybe playing sitar can be the newest “shitty idea actually gains popularity” thing, like that Dancing with the Stars or letting women vote. But boy was I wrong again, apparently if you’re not tattooed up or letting your vagina hang out of a limo nobody has any clue who you are anymore.

And in defense of the advanced setting, it IS setup to play with the skill and sanctity of a six-armed Hindu god, so you are right in saying that no human can play it. That’s the point. The advanced stage gives you a time to not only reflect on your gameplay thus far, but pray and meditate. It’s an added bonus to the game, douche bags.

So as I am receiving angry letter upon angry letter, I have come to an understanding that the world is not ready for “Sitar Hero.” It was my idea, it did not work, and now I am forced to live with the consequences. And right now those consequences are bubbling up a large cauldron of wax on the town square.

walking dogs with gyro bob

2007-11-27T14:39:00.000-05:00

this afternoon, as i usually tend to do, i took my parent's dog marvin to a dog park close to home. usually it's pretty empty because every other person is working or doing something with their lives, but today marv and i were able to share the park with another man and his dog.
rolling up with a border collie, a man got out of a 15 passenger "this van is hiding some secret" van and said hello. rather, he didn't just say hello, it was more of a "how's it goin, guy."
having spent a good deal of time in maine this past summer, i've learned that to be the typical greeting for any mainard. "hey there, guy" or "how ya doin there, guy" is pretty much all you hear. couple that with a disturbing amount of back tattoos and you'd be right home in the upper northeast reaches of the country. but the man did not seem to be from maine and the indians hat perched on his oblong head assured me he was all northeastern ohio.
after getting into the park and doing the typical dog small talk (what kind of dog is that? how old is he? oh wow, he looks great. oh, yeah? he's that smart? wow, and you say he can flush the toilet? you sir are living the dream.) we got to talking about what we do. whereas i don't have much to say right now, i was informed that i wasn't talking to a mere man. no, friends, the man i encountered just off ravenna road was a living kent legend: gyro bob. for anyone unfamiliar with his handiwork, gyro bob has been the pere noel of drunken food cravings for the better part of two decades. from lamb to cheesesteak, gyro bob is stationed in downtown kent in a silver fortress of trans fat. some even call him a miracle worker. those who were drunk but ten minutes ago are "now cool to drive, bro," and the loneliness of another failed night at finding love gets dulled with a sweet, cool cucumber taste. yes, gyro bob is and seems always will be an integral part of kent alcoholism.
knowing that i was talking to a veritable fountain of information and stories, i took advantage of the time he and i shared. in the circularity of throwing tennis balls back and forth, we covered the truly hard-hitting topics. things like using the tops of tzatziki containers as frisbees, routine begging for free food, and, of course, the time he offered a free gyro for fellatio.
now, although i cannot remember how most of the conversation went, i do remember some great gems bestowed upon me by the prince of pita. i would like to share them now but due to the fact that gyro bob has one of the dirtiest mouths i've ever heard, i will be replacing every profanity with the word GYROS! please enjoy.

on his dog
oh, he's so smart. one night he wanted to play and i was exhausted, sleeping on an air mattress. and since i wouldn't play this GYROS! bites the GYROS! plug off my bed. i mean, what a GYROS!

on people asking for free food
i don't wanna see your GYROS!, i just want some GYROS! cash. you've seen one pair of GYROS! you've seen 'em all!

on more people asking for free food
i probably could've had 400 GYROS! from drunk girls at this point. it's ridiculous. they all wanna be GYROS! paris hilton. skanks.

on free food, but wanting a "favor in return"
gb: you want a free gyro? how about this. i'll give you a free gyro if you give me a GYROS!
girl: GYROS! no! you're GYROS! disgusting!
gb: you've had GYROS! in your mouth for less than four dollars, what's different about now!

on local authorities
the cops are GYROS! GYROS!. arresting some GYROS! kid for walking home at 11 after a few drinks. come on. (pause) GYROS!.

well, as you can imagine the conversation continues in this same vain for quite some time. up until about the time where i became noticeably uncomfortable and was lucky i had a dog to blame my leaving on. i told him i would stop by next time i'm downtown on the weekends and he wished me a happy holidays. we waved from our cars and both drove off in separate directions, dogs peering out of our passenger windows.
"man, that guy is wild," i say to marvin. he looks back at me, having no understanding of what i just said or what just happened. all i knew was that i was really hungry. and anything in a pita sounded GYROS! awesome.

well, it's come to this

2007-11-20T22:18:00.000-05:00

so with two months of living in my parents' house ahead of me, i've decided to make strides in combatting boredom. this has lead me to reading about a book every two days and spending an appalling amount of time browsing through profiles of old friends on the facebook. if technology is anything, it's creepy.
at any rate, i'm going to try and write 'actual' things to put on here, shying as far away from the meanderings of a pre-teen as much as i can. (by 'actual' i mean full stories/essays/what have yous i write while at home. i'm not trying to sound self-righteous.) ((re-reading that made me sound really self-righteous. sorry.))
but if i do run into a cute girl, or if something stellar happens at the mall, it may show up. just so you know.