McBoo Halloween Pails

Sit down kids and listen to a scary story: Every once and a while back in the day, around Halloween night, McDonalds would give kids Halloween-styled pails with their Halloween-styled Happy Meals (frightening stuff in there!) to go trick-or-treating with, so you got to know that for a dork like myself, this probably had my name all over it, and it sure did. Despite how dorky you may have looked carrying one these around trick-or-treating, at least the old McBoo pails they used to send us home happy with actually had something to do with Halloween. Usually it was a pumpkin, a ghost, and witch, and I know I definitely had the pumpkin one with the queasy "ga-harsh!"-looking face, and probably still do somewhere, burred out in the garden, waiting to rise again!

But here's the real scary part. The new 2013 McDonalds Halloween "McBoo" pails (which aren't even called that now) are just crass marketing tie-ins for Angry Birds and some other junk they think girls will go for. What a shame.

Happy Halloween!

A Very 8YO Me Christmas

I was always a naughty boy. I never believed in the fat man... no matter how much of a cool dude I thought The Santa Clause's "Bernard the Elf" was. (Bernard was my DUDE.) Seriously though, I loved that movie... the death of Santa Claus, the bumbling Tim Allen as a first-time Santa and longtime dimwit dad ("And THAT is exactly why you want a high-quality fire extinguisher... right in the kitchen!"), the "plain milk's fiiiine"... the E.L.F. Squad, the farting reindeer... all classic Yuletide stuff. That's more my speed. 

Now go ahead and call me "not sentimental" or whatever (like my girlfriend does), but I guess I was always just a big cynic about the whole "Christmas" thing. Probably because my parents were. We weren't religious, so for me, Christmas was always far more pragmatic than "magical." Long car rides around the neighborhood at night to go look at the people's lights were the highlights of our traditions, so if there's one thing I still love about this time of year, it's the lights. And the candy. And the presents. And the candy "reindeer poop." 

That's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown. That's the "naughty list Christmas," and it's the best kind. And I'll tell you why... it's the most miraculous. 

Yeah Christmas for me was about jumping in the warm car to go tramp around in the ice cold evening wind for an hour or two admiring the lights around the lake, usually accompanied with a trip to the local church light display said to be one of the biggest on the eastern seaboard. Waiting in the never-ending traffic of the nighttime rush hour stall getting over to the light display as the heat in the car approached Death Valley levels... THAT was the "magic of the season!" Listening to Jerry Matthis belt out "It's the most wonderful time of the year!" five times over while dad drove us around in circles in the packed parking lot was truly the "spirit of the holidays." And it was considered a "miracle" if we found a prime spot right up front (near the nativity set). I swear, those glowing figurines always looked so charming and innocent when caught in the headlights!

Yes, Christmas was about the details of getting through it. All the little chores. One year, me, my dad, and my brother attempted to assemble the fake Christmas tree for the living room, and it took nearly the whole day. We rolled the plastic Douglas Fur out of the box, and when the trunk wasn't fitting together, my dad literally took the thing to his workbench in pieces to rig up some PVC piping to hold them in place. His explanation was that by the time the thing was decorated we wouldn't even notice it, before going off on a tirade against the "plastic Christmas tree industry" for over-engineering the thing so damn much with their "know-it-all college degrees." We stuck the pieces together, bottom to top, and set to work unfolding the branches. Then we took a step back, and something didn't look quite right. 

"Dad, I think it's upside down..." I said.

Sure enough, the tree started out small at the bottom and was exploding near the top! After a laugh, we pulled it apart, tore off all the "modifications," and put it together the way those college-educated know-it-alls at the company most likely intended. We threw on some ornaments and three hours after we had first taken it from the box, it was up, with all its pieces in the right order. Something tells me it would've been up in twenty minutes if mom was home. *knock knock*

Christmas was long hours fighting the traffic over to the mall for shopping trips, begging my parents to go this or there and joking about the empty chair for the mall Santa... ("Guess he had to hit the magical CAN!" I'd joke). The mall was always so decorated and lit up, and bustling around Christmas time. We could barely even play "the black floor tiles are lava" as me and my brother were tugged through the crowds. We could barely make it through the Radio Shack, the Discovery Store, the KB Toys... and whatever that store was that had the wooden train set you could play with right in the store... you know, all the COOL stores! No, they were "too crowded." "Too many kids." But damn it, the JC Penny and the Sears? We spent sooooo much damn time looking at comforter sets, curtain rods, and crock pots. Too damn long for the 8-year-old me... One time I got so frustrated I pulled down my pants right in the store! My brother did the same right after me, and it worked! Our parents pulled us out of there so fast you'd think we'd set off a bomb. We got a good whoppin' for that. Merry Christmas! 

Welcome to the Jungle!

Lights have always been more my bag. It just isn't Christmas until you've untangled the thicket of green wires freshly gutted from the cardboard box, and then gone through one after another looking for that stubborn one that's out in the whole set. It's not really Christmas until you rig up the lights only to find out that none of the reds work. It was never really Christmas until we had littered the living room floor with wrapping paper and the boxes of ornaments, fought over who got to use the tape and where the extra scissors went, and wrapped all the presents like tootsie rolls because I couldn't wrap a box worth a damn. Then I guess, it wasn't really Christmas until we came up from our bedroom in the morning to find waaay more gifts than were there the night before, knowing that mom and dad must've had a busy night (especially if a new Lego set was in there!). Magic!

Wow! I've been a naughty boy all year and I still got the Lego set! It's a Christmas miracle! I KNEW Santa wasn't real! 

The E.L.F. Squad though, that's legit. 

Merry Chex-Mix.

The Dreaded Sweater

Growing up in the 90s, I think we saw the end of the "holiday sweater" as a legitimate article of clothing, and especially the end of the fuzzy sweater. For a long while there, as soon as the temperature started dipping to the 30s around the end of November, you'd suddenly start seeing them. Young and old alike. Girl and boy. We all became Swiss in December.

As kids of the 90s, we spent half the year swimming in our massive t-shirts hanging lower than our shorts, and the other half choking ourselves behind itchy wool. That is, when we weren't already choking ourselves in itchy wool the rest of the year (yes, sweaters were once considered casual clothes!). The sweater beast usually came in vomit colors, grey-ish neon fibers all meshed together in fuzz, or came stark and contrasting enough to blind you in sunlight. There was no in between. Then there was the dreaded holiday sweater, usually dark red, with knit-work reindeer, Santas, or snowflakes, all assuring its immediate termination after the holidays.

They got me too!

What can I say? The collars strangled me, the sleeves rode up my arms, the elastic-y bottoms gave me a draft whenever I bent over, and the sleeves caught on everything! I can't tell you how many I tore through just trying to walk out many a screen door! Plus there was always that static cling to worry about. If you weren't careful, you might be going to the Christmas party with a sock or pair of underwear stuck to your back. And I can't tell you how many girls I saw plagued by the sweater's anti-gravity qualities when it came to standing their hair on end! And how's the Christmas party supposed to be any fun if you can't poke the girls without getting TASERED by their sweaters!? Seriously! (That's how I think I lost my virginity.)

I'm sure somewhere out there people still wear sweaters. Heck, I wore my raggedy old black sweater straight on through high school. But something tells me that this fashion statement is going to be hereto referred to as "that thing we wore back in the 80s and 90s." Maybe the sweater beasts were hunted to extinction, and now it's just, "hey, why are you wearing a sweater? And why does it have to be fuzzy? That's so 90s. Even caterpillars are wearing different styles now."

...Oh who am I kidding, you know I mock 'em 'cause I love 'em.

The Zombie Pumpkin

This may or may not be the ill-fated gourd.
I'm the one in orange.

Some time around my 10th year of life my local Cub Scouts den was holding its annual pumpkin carving contest at its Halloween shindig. Yes, costumes were involved and I think I went dressed as "some guy in a cape" because I liked capes and that was that. Capes and top hats, for some reason that definitely has everything to do with that debonair grasshopper guy from the James and the Giant Peach movie...  (man did I love his cool top hat in that one scene). 

Anyways, we had been tasked with carving the scariest pumpkin face for a chance to win some stupid prize, and I was all over this. We got our pumpkin carving kits, the little saws and knives, and the book of scary faces to trace, and I took home my pumpkin intent on owning that competition. I hacked my way through this thing, gutting it and scooping up all that orange puke and seeds and went to town with the tracing paper and whatnot. Then I just let the thing sit out for two weeks.

After the first week, I began to notice how the cover didn't fit as well as it did the first night, and then how the eyes were getting all soft and soggy, and then how oblong the thing got, like it had been sitting under something. A few days later, there were dark spots on the inside, and gray spots on the outside, and I just figured "Well, maybe nobody will notice." By the time I was set to bring this Jack-O-Lantern to the contest, it was barely holding itself together. One wrong move, and it was just going to smoosh down into moldy, green and orange smelly mush... green of course, being the mold. Apparently I was supposed to refrigerate it or something.

So like a dork I brought it in anyway and sat it down next to all the other entries looking store-bought fresh by comparison, thinking "oh well, there's no way I'm winning this one." If anyone asked me which one was mine I'd just point the one next to it. So I went about the Halloween party jumping on the stacks of folding tables, getting yelled at for jumping on the stacks of folding tables, and doing whatever else so that I could ignore the putrid oozy mush ball at the front of the room. When it finally came time to reveal who had won the pumpkin carving contest, I may have taken a short retreat to the bathroom just so I wouldn't have to be seen lugging my smelly, moldy, wilted, zombie of a pumpkin off the stage like a double loser.

They awarded 3rd place, 2nd place, and lo and behold, tagged that last big blue ribbon on the side of none other than my decrepit mush of a hollowed-out gourd. Now I swear to you, the whole place just nodded their heads in agreement, for surely, that thing was the scariest one indeed. And when I went up to accept my stupid prize, I learned a valuable lesson about what being a Boy Scout is all about: being prepared. I may have told one or two people that I did it on purpose, and that it was supposed to be a "zombie pumpkin," as in, "from beyond the pumpkin grave," but I only wished I came up with something that ingenious on purpose. Either way, I went home that night with a swell of pride. The pumpkin went in the trash on the way out the door.

P.S. - For disaster relief in the wake of "Frankenstorm," this former Boy Scout asks you to consider a donation to the American Red Cross to assist people struggling in New York, New Jersey, and affected areas. Thank you.

Fireworks and Glowsticks!

The best part of the early summer has to be the fireworks. Every year we'd get out of school a little bit in June, and that whole week was just spent hanging out, vegging out, and getting used to not having to put up with that daily school grind for once. The days were hot, long, and spent doing... well, nothing. That was usually more my speed, as I'm a creature of comfort. But summer has to start sometime, and that was always the 4th of July. If you didn't know by now, I'm American, and I'm sorry. But... Cookouts, fireworks, and glowsticks! Let the summer begin!

Even though it's illegal here, people were always firing them off from their backyards anyways. So we might've had a local puff here or there to "ooh" at, but as evening set in, we'd set out in search of the town displays. We'd fight the miles of traffic and spend a half hour just finding a spot to park, and often get there half into it and have to find another one to go to. Grand finales could be seen from miles away, so we'd chase down any puff of color in the sky as the crackles rumbled here and there in the dark. Once or twice we'd get a little too close and the ash would actually start falling down on us (like this one time when I was sitting up in the jungle gym at a local field), and that would just rock my world! "The closer, the better!" I used to think. But my parents always kept us at a safe and car-convenient distance... sometimes my brother and I would even sit on the roof of the car to watch them.

We never prepared. Sometimes we brought a blanket to sit on, but that was it. We knew whatever we had with us we were probably going to be carrying for a mile or two, and it seemed like a good idea then to travel light. But as soon as we were down in the thick of it with everyone else, and sitting out on the grass or the concrete, I always started getting envious of all those people who had packed half their house for the event. They'd all be out there with their folding chairs, portable radios, coolers, and summertime foodstuffs, like watermelons slices and Popsicles, and it always looked a heck of a lot better than just sitting it out on the grass. But I took comfort in knowing that they were NEVER getting out of there! Hell, even we were booking it half way into the grand finale!

Probably just as exciting to the 8yo-me as the fireworks were the glowsticks, necklaces, and bracelets that used to be rolled around on the carts. These guys would come around with about a hundred of these colorful glowing loops and sell them right off their body for like, 2 bucks a pop, and all the kids went crazy for them. As soon as things started getting nice and dark, I'd start seeing other kids with two or three around their neck and couple at the wrists just twirling those brilliant reds and blues and greens in circles and throwing them in the air, and that's when I'd start begging. 

And I mean, BEGGING. I'm talking, hands clasped, on my knees... "I'll do the dishes the rest of my friggin' LIFE, mom!" kind of begging. "I'll clean my room. I'll always put the seat down. Anything! Just ONE glow ring! PLEASE!" No one ever wanted anything more than I wanted one of those glowy things. Even just one was enough. So once I FINALLY had one slung around my neck, I was officially having a good time... for the week! And then (seriously though) the kids who had dozens of them were just straight up Mussolini to me. Hell hath no fury like the envy I felt (and still feel) for the kids at these events who had parents who'd buy them half the cart of glowy-things and then set them loose around the crowds to show off how cool they were to have ALL the glowy things, because that was too cool, and it wasn't fair, and envy makes me... feel things... horrible things. 

Anyways I remember the little bubbles on the inside, and that if you snapped them or chewed on them (like I could never stop myself from doing), they'd soon start going dead, but at least a few times my brother and I would be wearing them all the way home in the dark car, twirling them around, and even sleeping with them lighting up the room. They never seemed to last very long, even later into the night, but just like the 4th of July, and summer itself, they certainly were fun while they lasted.

** Happy 4th! **

Home Alone 2

I have never seen the original Home Alone in one sitting. I have seen the whole movie, but not from start to finish. The one I saw a whole lot more often (because we had it taped, and it was of...*ahem* so-called "lesser quality" than the original, and so got played more) was the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. As far as sequels go though, Home Alone 2 actually isn't bad. In fact, could it actually be better than the first movie? YES. Hear me out people!

I mean, come on, as a kid, what's better than having the whole house to yourself? How about having your dad's credit card, identity, no spending limit, and the city of New York at your disposal? And it's all 90s tech so no one can find you. Hell yeah! Think Florida sucks on Christmas? Why not crash at the "world renowned" Plaza Hotel in instead?... on your dad's credit card! Why not indeed. Why not do it now? 

Seriously, this movie is tighter with its set-ups and pay-offs than a 40's mobster... so tight in the opening minutes that if you miss any small line of dialogue you'll be more lost in New York than Kevin is (because he's never really "lost" in New York anyway, that's a scam). The Talkboy tape recorder? Set up. The clown balloon? Set up. The "He said that if I go in there, and see him naked, I'll never grow up feeling like a real man..." ? Set up. (Trust me on that one.) After the first 10 minutes, just sit back and wait for those sweet, sweet payoffs... and boy does this movie not disappoint. They tease you about 10 times on the way out the door with the "where's Kevin?" schtick, but lol and behold, there he is in the front seat! Not gonna leave him behind this time! I DEFY YOU MOVIE to keep him in tow! 

My family's in Florida...
and I'm in... New York?

It's actually impressive how they get him separated a second time... although once again, it all comes down to his parents being idiots and not checking on him the ENTIRE FLIGHT. Besides, stopping in the airport to get the batteries in your TalkBoy is way more important than going to Florida anyway. It's not his fault. He ended up having a much better vacation anyways. You go boy! 

Anyways, here's the scene they don't show in rebroadcasts for reasons that become obvious (was probably a really expensive shot to get too)... featuring the most nostalgic Christmas song ever made: 

Someone's gotta stop kicking
Mac in the nuts.

So in the rare case of a 90s boy actually having some intelligence (Minkus doesn't count as a human being), we now find Kevin pulling the same tricks to get himself ensconced in a king-sized bed with his big cozy bath robe, surrounded by treats and bloody gangster films ("Merry Christmas you filthy animal!"), and eating two scoops of every flavor ice cream there is. He's dive-bombing into sweet hotel swimming pools (with, and then without, his shorts), paying his personal bag slave Rob Schneider in gum (glorious too... and for Schneider, sooooo deserved), and doing just about everything every kid has ever dreamed of. 

"Peet-zah."

At least... it was everything I ever dreamed of doing, but then again, I never dreamed about the "stolen" credit card getting suddenly declined, and Tim Curry coming after me to collect, and that's precisely where this paradise starts to unravel. Even still, it was enough to make me want to board the wrong flight with my dad's credit card. Throw in some (shoehorned in) retread jokes with the same bumbling robbers (calling themselves the Sticky Bandits this time, or at least, just Marv... Joe Pesci was too busy inventing new ways to swear and still keep it PG), and it was still wall-to-wall stitches from my side of the room. That's not saying much though. I laughed at pretty much anything that didn't require brain cells: 

Harry: "What's that?"

(*Looney Tunes Shenanigans*)

Marv: "That was the sound of a giant tool chest... falling down the stairs..." 

Still gets me every time! So much wholesome holiday goodness! 

Chances are, if you're like me, you can't hear many Christmas tunes on the radio without thinking about this or the first Home Alone, like the Johnny Mathis "It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas" or "Jingle Bell Rock." But especially this one, which was done for the movie and now you hear it every year  (update: yeah the original was taken down, but here's a pretty good cover from American Grapefruit):

Just as well, you probably wanted a Talkboy tape recorder because of this movie, like I did.

Merry Chex-Mix! 

Halloween Candy Hunting

I never cared much for costumes on Halloween. I remember one year wanting to go as Dr. Grant or any of the rabble of JP employees, but ended up going as a surgeon (it wasn't my idea). And no, it wasn't even a cool "diabolical surgeon" or anything, just a regular surgeon with face mask, gloves, and scrubs. I think I went as a pirate once. In other years, I think I just ran around in a black cape and top hat and tried to be... something in a black cape and top hat (probably because, no joke, I wanted to be the fucking grasshopper from James and the Giant Peach or something). Don't judge me. Remember, it was "a virgin who lit the candle" after all...

I never put that much thought into it. If I had a thing for top hats one year, that's what my costume was. What I cared more about was the candy. Oh fuck yes! Sweet sweet candy! The legal cocaine! The costume was just something I'd do so I could get at people's candy, and some years I didn't even dress up! "What are you supposed to be young man?"  "Nothing. Give me candy." I really think I had a problem. Even so, every Halloween you'd always came back with the same-old cheapo "bargain bag" variety. You always got a few handfuls of Reese's, M&Ms, and KitKats, a bunch of those Mr. Goodbars and Nestle Crunch, a solitary box of Milk Duds, and about a thousand rolls of Smarties. Usually if you dug through your bag deep enough, you might stumble on some Skittles, Laffy Taffy, Nerds, Mike & Ikes, or Dots (you know, the good stuff) but that's if you had a good night. You were almost sure to get your Mars fix though. They gave out Snickers/Milky Way/3 Musketeers/Twix minis by the bucket-load! And sometimes you'd get a few oddball throw-ins... like once (I kid you not) I got Pepperidge Farm cheese crackers. That's in the dictionary under "lame." Even razor blades stuffed inside of Snickers would be better than that!!

I was pretty much the kid in the back.

The neighborhoods you decided to hit up made all the difference in your stash, and we usually tried to hit up a few different parts of town. The housing developments were just too PC on Halloween. Everything there was pretty well lit and everyone was packing it in around 8pm. But before then it was an absolute mad scene with kids up and down the street in every direction and every house feeding their fix. It almost seemed like the holiday was only for the 5-and-under crowd though, but those were the neighborhoods with the most freakin' candy, I swear. If you wore different masks, or just covered your face, you could visit a house a few times without them even knowing it! Their front doors were like Grand Central. On a darker side street like the one I lived on, sure there was much more fun to be had in the dark and spooky bedlam of Samhain, but that was only because few had their porch lights on, so few cared whether you had a trick because they hadn't treats. Those who did, took  f o r e v e r  to answer their doorbells.

8yo me: "Trick or treat?"
Neighbor: "Oooh what are you supposed to be?"
8yo me: "I'm the one asking the questions!"

It's like, yeah yeah, hurry up grandma, make with the candy already, I got a stack of other houses to get to, and I ain't doing this for my health! Seriously, the question was "trick or treat?" Do you want to give me a treat right now and I be on my way, or do you want me to come back with toilet paper or party poppers? This is serious business. Do not jerk me around. I need sugar like Sir Mix-a-lot needs big butts. I have a problem.

Me... on candy.

And even the old ladies carrying their candy from other parts of their dang house for some reason (rather than just keeping it by the door) wouldn't have been so bad if there wasn't always such a wack of competition to fight through! I mean, you had packs of marauding 15-year-olds on bikes with nothing but a party store Michael Myers mask split between all five of them, more than likely armed with eggs and toilet paper whether they got their treats or not. I mean, come on. Go rob a gas station or something like normal teens are supposed to do, leave the candying to us kids! But at least they had the spirit of Halloween inside them. Worse were the screaming pumpkin-dressed toddlers, often being carted around in wagons and peeing themselves at the sight of anything in a mask. And yet they got the MOST candy! And they couldn't even fucking chew! Then there were the early-birds you had to contend with, those who'd already been shoo'ed away at 4pm, but who knows? The early birds could've gotten the candy worm... or a nice hard boot in the ass. And then there were the parents, usually single moms, who obviously were just using their kids as the lamest excuse possible to "get out of the house" for the evening, and who seemed to think their pumpkin-clad 2-year-olds in strollers deserved extras.

MFW I took more than one. (Or just Casper, 1995)

Is it any wonder that by the time a crazed, impatient, sugar-junkie like me shows up without a costume, a lot of those people had already had it and just ended up going "fuck off!"? Many said screw it and had already given up, just leaving their buckets of candy out on the porch in a last ditch attempt to "avoid any trouble." But in the mad pursuit of all this free candy, I was definitely tempted to ignore the "please take one" rule to my own peril, usually concerning baskets left unsupervised on doorsteps. One time when out Trick-or-Treating, I decided to take that taboo second handful on a dark and lonely doorstep, and learned my lesson for good. The psychos jumped out from behind the front door, screaming, "RAAH! ONLY TAKE ONE!!" I almost crapped myself, and almost went for the KNEECAPS! But I just ran off screaming into the night, startled beyond all reason and desperately trying to coax my shit back up my rectum. It was scary indeed. So, word to the wise: either take one, or take the whole damn basket and book it!

Mine! AHAHAHAHA!

As a result, trick or treating was actually the least cool part of Halloween. The better parts were getting to watch scary movies (Ernest Versus the Trolls freaked me the FUCK out!) while pigging out on the sweet sweet stash. And I didn't just eat it. I got freaky with it. I called it "my preciouses." I told it how naughty it was and how it had to get in my mouth as punishment! I spanked it. I rubbed it on my face. I teased it. Then I vored it like a lion on an antelope. And when it all was finally inside me, now a part of me, I'd pretend to smoke a candy cigarette and go "wow... that was.... sweeeeet." So while I was sure to regale my friends with tales of wild chases in the dark, setting off party poppers and hurling toilet paper, I never did anything like that. There was never any property damage, just a whole ton of trespassing and a sugar high that could've put me in a coma. For all I know it did.

Candy's a hell of a drug... ...

Leafblowers Rule

Here's me in the leaf corpses.

When given the task as a kid to name my favorite season and draw a picture of it, I thought for a while, and chose "all of the above." I know that's not a season, but there was just something about each of the four seasons that I liked. I probably got a C-. Okay, maybe when it comes to autumn, I get it, it's crisp, it's colorful, but I don't go nuts over the season like most do. Screw pumpkin spice creamers! And screw pumpkin-spice pie scented candles! (Well... okay... I will admit that that autumn-loving apple-pumpkin-cranberry-spice-smelling Yankee Candle store we got around here sure is a great place to make a quick stop in to mask a fart when you're at the mall with your girlfriend... Amirite fellas? True story.) So, okay, point taken. 

Anyways... What? Chick stuff... autumn... making it more cool. Oh yeah! So... is there any hope for autumn to be as awesome as the other seasons, as in, something even the 8YO me could like?

Well, when it comes to autumn, of course, the big thing on my mind is the leaves literally dying all around us, their copses being raked into piles to be trashed, burned, and jumped in by small children. Suddenly all that stuff "up there" hits the ground, you get crispy leaf corpses underfoot and blowing around, and they need picking up. It's payback for the free air, I thought. Well, you could rake them up, but come on, that's not nearly fun enough. Mankind has not always done a great job making life easier on this planet since the time of the mammoths, but one of our greatest achievements since our glory days of prehistory has got to be the "leafblower."

Don't get me wrong, it's not that they're completely useless. They may never actually get the lawn clean, and may actually end up making it worse at times, as you go scurrying around to chase after leaves in every which direction, but no, they do have their purpose, and it's a purpose that could've only been originated in a guy's head. That their actual use, and therefore why they were invented and why we continue using them, is more about, how shall I say this... allowing their users to have the most fun being an idiot while still making it look like "work" was being done. For that, I'd say the leafblower is a level of genius worthy of a Bud Lite commercial.

Every kid, raised in a temperate climate has memories of raking a big pile of leaves and jumping in them, throwing them around, and then generally needing to rake them back up... so I won't bore you with the details of that. Trust me, there was a lot of it. My dad did have some pretty ingenious ways of raking leaves though, involving a leaf blower and a big tarp. Hell yeah. So you pick one of those up as a kid, rev it on, and have yourself a little mini Wizard of Oz in your front yard. Find a pile, blow it to pieces. Make it rain! Get those leaves cornered and make it tornado! Play volleyball with a leaf, blower style, and see how long you can keep it in the air! Stick the nozzle between your legs backwards and pretend that the sheer power of your retro-rockets are blowing the front yard clean! Blast the nozzle in your brother's face and watch his mouth gape open, his eyelids curl up, and his hair fly back in the breeze! Chase your sister and really screw up her hair from behind! The possibilities are endless. The yard never gets clean, but it's sure fun.

Anyways, something about autumn (November included) always reminds me of childhood and family... perhaps it's because Halloween is around the corner (for childhood that is... I assure you, my family doesn't make me think of Halloween!), and perhaps it's because this is the time my family used to start getting together (...nice save!). Something about the fall made me think of the mundane routines in life--going shopping, going to the Laundromat, going to school, raking the leaves... and as the weather got colder, how we'd always start paying attention to things that could get us out of the cold... like all the big sales.

The second thing I picture is a gourd... not for any particular reason, other than it being a funny word, and the fact that you just can't think of autumn without picturing gourds. I have no affinity for them or eating anything involving pumpkins, and actually had a pretty daunting experience with one that I'd rather not relive (so definitely expect a post on it soon). Maybe it's just because I like the word "gourd."

You know what? I take it all back. I love the fall.

Marching Webelos

The best thing about being in the Cub Scouts was getting recognized for being in the Cub Scouts. You flash a badge, you wear a neckerchief, and not only are you in the club, but you're in everyone else's club too. I'd wear that uniform to school for picture day and suddenly transform that "humdrum smile against the paper background" into a proud military portrait in full regalia... a full smile, a missing tooth, and a badass bunch of badges. Two words: aw yeah. 

It was the grade school equivalent of stuffing your crotch in high school to look bigger... all the show off pride, and none of the actual self respect. Well nothing was more stupidly honorary for the average 8-year-old snotty booger pee-pants goof ball boner gas dork (that I was) than marching in the Memorial Day parade. And that we did as Cub Scout Troop [whatever]. In fact, we had more honor than we knew what to do with. (If that's what you wanna call it.)

Struggling to
avoid molestation
jokes in this post. 

"Remember, your behavior reflects on the whole troop," they said, as we all sat there on the grass adjusting ourselves beneath our shorts and staring at the Hot Rods. The parents had to preempt our fighting and make sure each of us got a shot at carrying the banner with our troop insignia, which was a matter we took very seriously. Some of us could've died that day and it would have been worth it for a shot at carrying the banner! 

So we stood shoulder to shoulder in one long single-file line holding this thing up and stepping on each other's feet for a mile and a half. We began the journey at the "secret parade people's meeting area" in the field where the Scotsmen were tuning their sheep bladders and the Hot Rods and Harleys were idling and revving up for no reason, and waited there for the eternity it took the thing to get started. We baked, and sweat, and got on each other's nerves under the hot sun, we told "Your Mom" jokes and probably something having to do with the male genitalia a half dozen times amid the chorus of animal noises ans bodily functions, and then finally found ourselves lining up to be smack dab between the fire engine and that high school drum ensemble. Let's just say, the novelty of marching wore off pretty fast... 

That fire engine was a tough act to follow. It tossed out the most candy, and like hell if we listened to the pack leader about staying in formation once there was candy in the area. If the banner almost dropped a few times and caused an embarrassment for the whole council, it was because we were stuffing our pockets before those leeches on the street corners got theirs. Nobody expects a Cub Scout to be a "giver" and a "sharer" anyways... unless we're talking about farts.

As far as where we were headed, "who the heck knows... just keep following the fire truck!" So we just kept walking and walking under the hot sun, slowly losing our hearing, slowly losing our shirts, and getting on each other's nerves (that would've happened anywhere). When we finally made it to the end, we sat in the grass at the grave site and ate our candy and rang the sweat out of our neckerchiefs until our parents caught up with us. There was some memorial ceremony going on there, but what did we care? We had three things on our minds: shade, silence, and water!

That's what Cub Scouting is all about, teaching you what's important.

Christmas Eve Billiards

I've recently discovered that pool (billiards), is the only sport I actually find entertaining (if you call it a sport). Watching a couple hours of it tonight reminded me of all those years in my kiddyhood we spent Christmas eve at my rich uncle's house (yes, certain members of my family were upper middle class, in case you haven't guessed by the sheer amount of privilege I seem to throw around). He had this lush refitted basement... a cozy space for gatherings, complete with shag carpet, wood paneled walls, stocked bar, and three types of indoor recreation: table tennis, darts, and pool. He had a really nice pool table with one of those stained glass light fixtures hanging low above it and all the typical billiards paraphernalia (wooden signs on the wall reading: "Billiards is not just life or death, it's more than that!"...etc.) All the essentials.

"Keep your fingers off the table! You want to get hit with a ball?" That's what they'd tell us. Funny as it may seem, the adults (and when I say that, I really mean the DADS, who I guess are adults) hogged the table as they got progressively intoxicated and left us kids to the table tennis and darts to almost "kill-each-other the night away!" My dad walked around the hot room holding a camcorder with a title card on the lens: "Family Christmas Party/ 1995,"... like he was shooting some amateur film, and that was about the extent of his supervision. Meanwhile, all the kids ran wild with the music cranked. The problem with the darts, besides me almost blinding my brother with them, was there were so few unbroken ones and most ended up hitting the board and falling down behind the recliner. At least it was a nice dart board. It even came with a small slate on the door where you could chalk in your score. One could say it wasn't a good idea to let us play with the darts and paddles and not the pool table, but I guess mixing alcohol and projectiles in a crowded setting would've been a worse one.

The pool table was obviously what us kids wanted to have a swing at though, and soon enough we'd get our break (pun definitely intended). When the adults were having a good enough time they'd head upstairs to really "get serious" and let us kids play with whatever we wanted. My brother and I would break out the sticks, balls, and triangle, and stand tippy-toe around the edges of the big piece of shiny, carved oak. We'd chalk the ends like we'd seen the dads do a dozen times, lay our sticks down on the green, and poke random balls around for a good ten minutes, ignoring any idea of stripes, solids, and numbers. Supervision poopervision! Bah... our rich relatives had their own shot glasses to attend to (and by that I mean literally, wearing shot glasses AS glasses half the time).  "Yep, pool's a man's game," I'd smugly say, trying to sound cool between sips of my non-alcoholic Sprite... I mean, alcohol.

Who won and who lost? Who knows. The game would evolve, and soon we'd just be rolling the balls around with our hands to see how many collisions we could set off or knuckles we could break, and eventually do away with the pool table completely and sword fight with the sticks. My brother whacked me good right across the back with a cue, but he was helpless against my 8-ball air assault! At least some time was spent with the stick between my cousin's legs, pretending it was his "wooden pole," if you know what I'm saying, which I wish I thought of at the time because it was a good one. We didn't break anything except a little skin. I got my brother back with a boomerang toss of the triangle right to he gut. Our cousin still thought his "cue-stick woody" was funny. He was right. Good times. Good times.

"Yep, pool's a man's game," I said.

So once the temperature in the room had risen enough and the energy in us kids was finally flushed out, we'd head upstairs to wind down and enjoy the lit fireplace in my uncle's posh living room (watched Jumanji on television one year). This was Christmas Eve to a dorky suburban boy with a rich uncle.

The Great Thanksgiving Beanie Baby Battle

To the 8-year-old me, Thanksgiving meant trips to my gramps with the rest of the family on my mom's side, disgusting carrots soaked in molasses, and of course, the "replica of the inside of the can rendered in cranberry sauce." Add to the plate the driest piece of white meat on the eastern seaboard, and you have quite a mouthful. The drab old-person decor, the stuffy book shelf, the "turntable," the hanging plants in the living room, the television submerged in a wood cabinet resting on the floor (a game of football running as background noise on it), the brown shag carpet, the adults engaged in dull and endless chit chat... none of it would make the experience all that exciting for any kid, let alone me.

So let me start over. Thanksgiving was about running outside of gramp's house with the other kids for a nice game of tag. I always really did love me some sweet, sweet tag. About the only thing I loved more than tag was annoying girls, so how much fun do you think I had when I got to combine those two pastimes into one? Well, such a thing happened that one awesome Thanksgiving my brother and I stole a Beanie Baby Hedgehog from the girls, and it was a temporary victory for boys everywhere because they weren't getting that thing back without a fight! I had to prove my smarts. This was war. Sure, they could think they had me cornered on the porch when I "absent-mindedly" ran into that enclosure, but I knew there was nothing stopping me from hopping the railing five feet to the ground, taking off across the driveway and getting way the heck out of sight. I knew it wasn't a drop they wanted to take, and the time it took to walk the steps and come around the house kept them at a distance. I can't stress this enough, it was all for a Beanie Baby.

Whenever they caught one of us, we always made sure the other was off somewhere with the stolen good, or at least, that's what we told them. And whenever they had me in their clutches, I was sure to do what boys do best... play dumb: "I don't know where he took it, go bother him about it. I'm done playing." In reality, the thing had been tossed over the back fence at some point into the neighbor's yard where they'd never think to go looking, but they didn't need to know that. Also, as a boy, I didn't always need to 'play' dumb, but that they already knew. Needless to say, I had my dumb excuse to get a couple girls to chase me around in circles and impress with my cunning and wits. I still don't know what their excuse was, unless they actually cared about that thing. I sure didn't.

When their head girl had me cornered at the back fence behind the shed, I scaled the wood and hopped it, right into the neighbor's lawn. That's where I grabbed the hedgehog and did a dash across the yard all the way back around and through two rows of very prickly bushes. To my surprise, they chased me. I'd throw it off to my brother in the driveway, only for him to do his signature move of hopping up on the roof of the car. The girls had him surrounded, but he booked it down the hood and cilmbed up on the porch with the thing in his teeth. Luckily I made it to the porch as he was getting torn down and he handed it off to me. I stuck the thing in my back pocket of my jeans, shook my butt at them and said the magic words sure to make any girl cringe: "come and get it nooooow."

Not wanting to have to find themselves in any position near that particular end of my body, they just stood there and crossed their arms, and I walked in the back screen door, my appetite slowly returning for whatever food thing they were starting to serve in there. And so, even as we all piled around that kids' table for the feast of horrors (in the china room), on that special day, and bowed our heads to give thanks for what we had (in our possession... stashed somewhere they'd never find it!), a silent war raged. The grimacing girls lost the battle knowing that in just a few hours they'd win the war anyways. We eventually had to give the thing back. After all, what did such a soldier like me want with a cutesy Beanie Baby hedgehog anyways?

It's not surprising the girls won. What's surprising is they actually put up a fight!