Everyone is playing the California Game!
_ _ _
Where is Atlantis? Continent of mud.
Where is the mud? It’s buried in crud.
What is the crud? A dream in decay.
Whose dream was that? They squandered their day.
When was the day? An age of great life.
Why was it great? They abolished all strife.
Who gave it up? The creative few.
What did they make? Themselves, anew.
Where is the self? Enshrined deep within.
Why are they gone? The price of the sin.
_ _ _
She’s done it! Mombo has a second entry at her site. Right now it looks as if she makes one each year, but I’m sure that won’t last for long. She’s really started out on an enjoyable note for me—comics and games—and it doesn’t get much better than that (unless she starts reminiscing about toys)!
Ian’s face-recognition blog entry is hilarious. I had to try it, too. So I uploaded a recent picture of me that Dana likes.
Who the hell is Christian IX of Denmark?
Sulking, I looked through a few more pictures, and—you guessed it—I selected a picture of my notorious alter ego, Headley Lice.
No picture of Admiral Lice would return a result at the MyHeritage.com site. Very curious. The fear of this pirate’s dreaded wrath extends deeper than I ever presumed.
And so I used my old Muscle Club shot.
—Theodore Roosevelt— YES!
Then I took the big plunge. Uploading a photo of Dana in high school, I sought scientific proof that ever since the night I first watched El Cid, I had spent my youth trying to lure Sophia Loren into the pillows.
—Isabelle Adjani— Hmm, not bad…
Who the hell is Sophia Loren?
Marie Antoinette never said “let them eat cake” — this is a mistranslation of “let them eat The Carson Family.”
All of the roles in Shakespeare’s plays — including the female roles — were originally played by Pirates.
The horns of Sugar Boop are made entirely from hair.
The number one cause of blindness in the United States is Stench Pit.
— Year of 2005 workout totals: Swim-73; Bike-28; Run-41; Lift-22; Yoga-9
— Month of December workout totals: Swim-4; Bike-0; Run-4; Lift-3; Yoga-8
— I’m satisfied with how I was able to maintain a good momentum of swimming during an unsettled 2005 that didn’t exactly lend itself to regular exercise; plus I’m pleased with how I managed to regain regular yoga practice at the end of the year (it helps to be watching Lisa Bennett-Matkin). Nevertheless, an odd tenderness in the right knee will cause a delay in my return to running form, but I’m expecting it to be a huge year for cycling instead. Brian M gave me his “hardly used” Shimano pedals—look out!
— Once again, my family had its annual Hot Wheels car race. When I try to explain this event to the uninitiated, the listener nods politely and probably can’t get past the idea of little boys playing with toys. My description fails to capture the rich generational traditions, the competitive repartee, and the comedic tone, not to mention the feast of delicacies, snacks, and tempting junk-food delights. And we have our announcers—two of them—so jaded and sarcastic that “real-life” fans would have long ago beaten them to a pulp in the parking lot after their summary dismissal by speedway executives.
— I humiliated myself last night by making the classic blunder of bringing a movie that I’d never watched to a get-together with friends. William H. Macy let me down with his dreadful “The Cooler,” and who in the world wants to see his saggy buttocks anyway? I suppose we salvaged the evening to some degree by attending the wildest midnight scene in Danville—the annual three-inches-of-confetti-on-the-floor bash at the Hamlins. It’s rowdy, loud, and lots of fun, if you don’t mind digging the little colored stuff out of all those personal nooks and crannies that WHM so gratuitously displayed to the whole world.
— I finished another Grandy-bo piece this morning (my tenth) that Caitlan ended up getting during the Clan’s Chinese (Chine-Yine) gift exchange. I’m finally achieving the loose, spontaneous style that I’ve been after for quite a while. Rita’s photo show was particularly moving for me, as though my torch had been passed to a new generation of documentarians. She’ll get better at editing down her images to a more focused presentation, but it was the kind of montage that I used to have such a passion for, and I’m happy that someone else wants to pick up where I left off. Now, if I can only convince her to take over the Seitz Reunion portrait…
— Our family gathering today was filled with much love, perhaps more that usual, if that’s possible. The gesture of generosity that was extended to Dana and me took us by surprise, and brought emotional closure to a holiday season that had seemed somewhat diminished by an inability to carry out our usual traditions at the Town House. What a thoughtful, caring thing to do! It made us realize that a tough, draining year was behind us at last, and how much everyone has missed Bruce.
I saw Joan’s mention of Aunt Carol’s game.
Beverages included? What about spices?
Ok, ok…
If I spend any more time, I’ll just keep fiddling around with them, so here are my picks—
Corn, tomatoes, spinach, almonds, eggs, cheese, avocados, vanilla ice cream, strawberries, and raspberries.
And we get to share, right?
How about if we add to the game?
I wasn’t there at the genesis, but what if we discovered a chest on Magic Island containing three books—a Holy Bible, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged)—and each of us could pick three additional books, which the chest would produce for our group library. There would be no other books on Magic Island—for the rest of our lives.
What three volumes would you choose?
Here are my selections—
The I Ching (or Book of Changes), The Odyssey of Homer, and James Clavell’s SHÕGUN.
When faced with picking books with pictures or books with words, I chose words. When faced with making more universal choices or being selfish, I decided to be selfish.
What about you?
Would you pick a how-to book, a cookbook (not a bad idea), or a collection of reproductions? Literature? What about a book with blank pages—no other books on Magic Island means just that—or a work you’d want the other inhabitants to read?
Nobody knows how long the chest’s magic will last.
Hurry, but choose wisely…
Yesterday I went to church at the Salvation Army, which inspired me to write a Thanksgiving prayer, so I treated myself to a sandwich at my neighborhood hang and wrote it out. I saw Tim and Jo Ann, learning that they’d been able to buy the infamous “Banker’s House” on Perryville Road and were in the midst of moving. They said that if they didn’t do it before the holiday, they might be too busy until January (Jo Ann) or April (Tim). Yep, that sounds about right for those two. I wondered how far into seven digits the sticker price climbed. They asked me how Bruce was doing. Given Tim’s long, long recovery from his accident, these are two people who understand the meaning of “slow progress.”
Afterwards I puttered around at home, taped plastic around the air conditioner in the mud room, and managed to fit in a nice cross-country run on Mack‘s Trails with Milton and Jim before joining the Strocks for an evening of relaxation. Terie invited me to share a delicious birthday dinner for Marty—venison chili with cornbread and salad, followed by cake and ice cream (mounds of it!), plus a DVD thriller with Kathryn Morris.
Later on, Marty and I both realized we were still in front of the tube watching, for no reason, a Will Ferrell movie with Mike Ditka that stunk to high heaven—because we politely assumed the other wanted to—so we promptly re-adjourned in front of the PS2, enabling the Galactic Empire to capture Hoth, the ice planet, and closed our night with a burst of energy.
Moral of the story— If you’re going to eat two bowls of chili, birthday cake and Breyers, be sure to run hills for five miles first.
Or maybe eight.
I finally went into the Central Kentucky Wildlife Refuge. It’s a fact—I’d never been beyond the parking lot. Why? Because I always told myself that if I had the time, I’d rather go to the Blue Bank Farm to be in our own knobs. While that notion is essentially valid, it allowed me to stupidly neglect an extraordinary natural setting right here in Boyle County. I ran the picturesque trails with some friends. Some might say this was a ridiculously hazardous thing to do under the circumstances, since it was raining and there were roots, loose stones, and lots of fallen leaves on the trail. The downhills were particularly treacherous; there were places where it would have been almost impossible to stop, and even slowing down before a level spot made the footing more uncertain. You know what I mean if you’ve ever run down a really steep grade. I know runners who won’t run on anything but a paved surface, fearing injury. They won’t even run on grass, which is my favorite thing on which to run—always has been. I remember how uninhibited I used to feel after watching a Johnny Weissmuller movie, and I’d run barefoot at top speed across the back yard with a rubber knife and give the Tarzan yell, which I thought at the time to be an exceptionally decent rendition of the Hollywood sound effect (for an eleven-year-old Ohio boy it probably wasn’t bad). I felt swift—I never paused to consider how it might look as though I were standing still if one of the Vagedes brothers had been running next to me. They were all sprinters from birth and grew up to challenge the rushing and stolen-base records of their day. I was never similarly fleet of foot. I didn’t run track in high school. I said it was boring to run in circles, but the true reason is that I wasn’t fast. I thought I would do better at a longer distance. In the late 60s track and field competition offered nothing over a mile run, so I went out for cross country. The distance was two miles. Today a two-mile run is a track event. I was still slow, but I got to run on grass. Dadbo was supportive and said I had a natural stride. It was nice to have my father tell me that he enjoyed watching me run, but we didn’t talk much about cross country. If he came to observe any of our meets, he kept out of sight. He must have thought it might make me nervous if I saw him. I’m guessing it would’ve helped. If I’ve ever possessed “the Means,” it wasn’t back then. Most likely, Dadbo knew that. In any case, I was usually injured because I waited too late in the summer to begin my training. On top of that, I had inferior shoes and poor coaching. I’m still relatively slow, but I can take a medal in my age group now and then if I’m in shape (and only one or two good athletes happen to show up in my category). But I’ve learned to run without injury at last—and I can pull out all the stops on a slippery October trail run among my fitness chums, with the keen insights of Paul Watkins reverberating in my psyche.
The Ohio Renaissance Festival!
The persona of Cap’n Lice might be too potent for extended wear. This role-playing business can be heady stuff. I’m such an amateur.
(What’s that you say?)
Voice of reason: “You don’t have to literally become a reeling pirate with his “decks awash.” That’s why they call it A-c-t-i-n-g…
As usual, Brendan hits the mark.
“Slime water” may be good for pirate blood (or mild lunacy), but bad for just about anything else.
The Hornsbys of Metairie are heading our way via Baton Rouge. They left Sunday morning before Katrina hit the Gulf coast. Timsby’s dad is reportedly stranded at a VA hospital where he works, and there’s no word yet about his circumstances or whether the facility is being evacuated. The family is traveling light.
We’ll connect with them in Ohio near the site of the Renaissance Festival.
Headley Lice (recently promoted by Her Majesty to the rank of Admiral) cannot get himself in the mood for a playful celebration.
Josh was quiet, but clearly happy to be among family. I can’t remember the last time there were so many of us gathered together. The “Houseboat Trilogy” was a hit, and Seth deserved to get most of the glory.
Welcome back, Josh. Have a good time before you must return. Forgive us for the fake video violence that we create for amusement. We know that you’re a professional, and that the dangers you face are very real. We can play at fighting only because you volunteer to go to work behind a machine gun.
I’ve already mentioned that “Pirate Revenge” is done and ready for tomorrow night’s premiere. The family has previously seen a rough cut that’s pretty crude (home VCR edit with no sound track). On the surface, there’s nothing profound or meaningful to be found, because the “Houseboat Trilogy” has always been about indulging ourselves with a bit of silly entertainment for some good laughs and a few inside jokes. The original film was silent 8mm, shot in sequence during a 1971 lake vacation. It was short, violent, and very funny. The second part came 17 years later, when we celebrated Mombo and Dadbo’s 40th anniversary at Dale Hollow Lake. We’d made the shift to VHS by then, but it was also a spontaneous, in-camera effort, with some miserably poor post-production to spice it up. Now the characters from “Pirate Waters” had names and a context, so “Pirate Isle” was an instant classic within the Clan.
It looked like the next installment was going to be another of my many unfinished projects. I’d decided to shoot it more like a typical movie—get a lot of takes “in the can,” and then put it all together later. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but I didn’t have any capability beyond splicing clips from the raw Hi-8 footage to a home VHS deck. We recorded that master tape during a long weekend outing to Lake Cumberland in 1993. Brendan and I shot some filler months later, but basically nothing happened for nearly twelve years to bring the series to a conclusion.
But now, in the words of Petey the Pirate Urchin, “Everything’s changed,” because Seth rolled up his sleeves to reconstruct the entire production from scratch as a labor of love, adding his own natural sense of pacing and story coherence. The result goes way beyond my original vision for what was never meant to be more than another goofy contribution to the family archives, and I say that because the clean production quality of the Casablanca editing system at WREB lends an odd credibility to the composed footage. For me, this achieves two things. It provides a more satisfying entertainment experience rooted in our unique camraderie and shared humor, but, beyond that, it captures in one collaborative creation a intensely pleasurable look at the many raw talents and “playtime personalities” of the participants—the acting skills of Brendan in early formation, the not inconsiderable ability of his mother to craft a powerful characterization with minimal screen time, the hilarious histrionics of Jeanne, Susan, James, Jeffrey, Jerome, and others, the touching scenes of my parents together (demonstrating the typical respect they had for our endeavors by playing their roles straight), but perhaps more than anything, Seth’s embryonic media capability, which no one should fail to admire at his stage of the game.
Speaking only for myself, I think this oddball creation should be preserved and treasured forever.
My family was never far from my mind during the seven months I lived in Europe during 1974. (In fact, I so turned off a pretty Flemish girlfriend by admitting I missed my family that she dumped me within hours for a Belgian doofus named Bruno.) One way I could feel connected to my brothers was to think about “The Legend,” and it was easy to be inspired, surrounded as I was by all the fascinating history of feudal conflicts, life on the manor, warring political factions, imperialistic ventures, and Napoleonic exploits. I was constantly encountering the art, architecture, accouterments, and weapons of the general time period we’d chosen to frame our imaginary world of swashbucklers and tyrants. When my brother James sent me a letter mentioning Hedda Keeh, one of our beloved characters (a native of the Western Plaines and Peace Chief of his nation), I plunged into the creation of a comprehensive map and sent it home along with our most ambitious document to date—a long letter from Joncules Dix to his half-brother Jimcus (otherwise known as Chaims-Dan, or Man-With-Flying-Feet, from his years among the outcast monks of Chap). Before long, the nonlinear structure of our narrative was firmly rooted in the idea of producing documents and artifacts that revealed only a portion of the totality, which would then lead to further discussion, attempts at integration, and ongoing creativity (often using dioramas built with the very type of plastic figures that influenced our imagination from the beginning). It became a perfect organizing principle—not original to us, I suspect—and reinforced the historicity of our approach, removing it forever from a strictly oral realm. An explosion of development followed, with numerous drawings, carvings, models, and written fragments. Spinning yarns within “The Legend” has never been the same since.
When Brendan spoke of “building a narrative out of noncontiguous events,” it was as if he was talking about the tapestry of stories that my brothers and I have been weaving all our lives. Stories… they’ve been part of my creative identity from the beginning. Wanting to tell them was as natural as drawing. First it was with chalk and blackboard (my artistic genesis), and then it expanded to comic strips, “scrips,” and my early childhood writings (the Summer family’s life on a farm and the adventures of Gordon Antent, leader of shipwrecked souls). But whatever artesian well of infatuation might emerge and run its course, there was always a distinct narrative world that continued to evolve at the pace of my maturing regard for the human condition, and there was never any doubt about the fact that this was a story project that was meant to endure. As is typical with any creative momentum that has an origin in early life, it’s difficult to define how naive concepts gain an inertia that survive childhood play. And it was always a collaborative enterprise from the start, involving a sibling give-and-take of ideas that would find enough consensus to mold the stories and character profiles in a semi-permanent fashion, until the next burst of development. It all grew out of an activity that, for us, was a powerfully stimulative pastime—playing with little plastic men. Current hobbyists and collectors would refer to them as “playset figures.” The next generation would know them as “action figures.” But most families like ours wouldn’t expend limited resources for the elaborate playsets on the market, with their carefully planned and crafted groups of figures, buildings, props, and accessories (few would dispute that the Marx Toy Company was the high-water mark in the genre). We fit into the merchandising strata at a level called “dimestore toys,” cheap, simple bags of men (rarely women) with few if any accouterments. We envied the friends and cousins who had Marx
playsets (WWII Battleground, Blue and Gray, Fort Apache, Alamo, Ben-hur, and TV spin-offs like Davy Crockett, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and The Rifleman), but we could make do. We had imagination to spare and we had each other, but most of all, it really wasn’t about the toys. It was about the dramatic stories, and the heroic personalities, and the exotic homelands, and the interactivity of brotherly minds, and the continuity of our boyhood traditions, and ultimately… the fascinating nonlinearity of it all.
— I woke up this morning with a distinct phrase in my mind: magnesium fusion triggers. Look, I don’t drive the thing. I’m just ridin’ shotgun…
— Marty called last night and we talked about a subject that’s totally captured his excitement, the new Sony PS Portable. Hey, you’re allowed to get excited about something like this when you’re thirteen. For me, at that age, it was probably Art Linkletter’s “The Game of Life,” or something like that. However, I can’t help but think of this quote from Ben Stein: “I tremble for the day that the next generation has to provide for themselves with what they have learned from their video games.” Relax, Ben. They’ve probably learned more than I ever learned from watching too many hours of “The Avengers,” “The Prisoner,” “Hawaii Five-0” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
— From what I can discern through the Associated Press, Josh and his 623rd Field Artillery unit was with the convoy that came under attack on Sunday morning, but it stayed with the trucks during the battle and sustained no casualties (from a Bruce Schreiner byline story).
— The new brochure we created for the Brass Band Festival is a major hit, according to our friend who’s retiring as director of the Visitor’s Bureau. I told her I hoped our work makes a good impression with her successor. She said she thought it would and will put in a good word for us. Sounds promising, but the new person brings strong connections to her former employer, a previous client of ours turned competitor. All I can do is stay positive and make my case at the appropriate time. I’d insert a link to the Festival, but the site is just too ugly. Wait a second! This is a job for Website Makeover™ Man!
— Dana and I are heading back up to Indy today to check on Bruce. Normally I have my Rotary Club meeting, but we’re dismissed for Good Friday, so we’ll deal with any urgent matters in the studio and then hit the road before it gets too late.
— I decided to google for “magnesium fusion triggers” and found myself reading an overview at GlobalSecurity.org about special weapons facilities on the Indian subcontinent. OK, so what am I supposed to be more scared of, the metastasis of the World Wide Web, unchecked nuclear proliferation in South Asia, or my own dadburn subconscious?
The past 36 hours have been exhilarating, frustrating, profound, hectic, gratifying, aggravating, sublime, surreal… A trip to Indianapolis to be there for my stepson Bruce, hospitalized with the potential loss of his transplanted kidney, and at the same time provide support for his wife Pam, and at the same time take my grandson Marty to the “INDY 2005” Toy Soldier Show (one of our annual highlights of quality time together, sharing our passion for vintage plastic figures), and at the same time deal with all the monumentally exasperating aspects of a healthcare system run amok, stripped of all idealistic illusions as a result of far too many behind-the-scenes absurdities and ugly exposures of egoism… and at the center of it all, my calm, sweet mate… strong, loving, and wise.
“Let there be polyethylene!”
Don’t go to
this Website unless you like to play with men.
— Surprising as it might seem, I never read H.S. Thompson. Maybe it was because I had a back-stabbing co-worker in the 70s who carried on a lot about how great a writer Thompson was. Either that or I just couldn’t get past all the Ralph Steadman, which has been a bit of a mystery, since Steadman’s work was mildly influential for me at a certain point in my development as an illustrator (even though I found something fundamentally revolting about his style).
— Brendan’s new Idiotcam archive is positively super-dooper! Now I have only two major goals left in my life: building a home in the Knobs and making it into the exalted Plastic Mullet Series.
— Something about Mombo’s tribute has really sparked some childhood memories. For some reason I got to thinking about one of the most brattish (perhaps the most brattish) thing I ever did as a child. I was pretty young, so my recollection is rather hazy. I don’t think it was my birthday, so it must have taken place at Christmas. I do remember that I’d been agitating for the only toy I desperately wanted—a firetruck. My parents must have been anticipating the delight that would certainly result from their big surprise. Or maybe it was my Uncle Don who was behind it.
There it was! A bright red steel pedal-car-style fire engine complete with little wood ladders and a silver bell!
I threw a fit. Weeping dramatically, I let it be known that I was totally disappointed. How could somebody have gotten it so utterly wrong? That’s not what I wanted. What I wanted was a little firetruck that I could take out to the sand pile and play with! It was a bitter tragedy. No, it was the end of the world!
I don’t know how much longer it was before the replacement arrived, or what mixed emotions my tantrum must have triggered, but the Tonka fire engine eventually appeared, and it was a beauty. It even had a red hydrant that connected to the garden hose to supply a realistic fire-fighting stream. I have no recall as to what my reaction was. I hope I was appropriately grateful, but I may have just accepted it as merely just and overdue.
Both toys are long gone. Did the pedal car end up at the home of a cousin? Whatever became of the little fire engine? Either toy would be a valuable collector’s item today…
