Son Of Kong

So, I’m revisiting things. Sue me. Just don’t blame me. You could always blame Bush. But really, blame King Kong. I come to bury Son of Kong, not to praise him. Or it. So, we all know that I love King Kong. Or I am fascinated by it in a more positive way, say as opposed to Honey Boo Boo. But as far as big gorillas go, Son of Kong gets no respect. It’s not right. King Kong has been remade a few times. He even pops up fighting Godzilla. Mighty Joe Young – the Edsel of big gorilla movies – even got remade. But poor Son of Kong, who appeared to be an orphan? Shit out of luck after one go round. And sure, it was a shitty movie. And who’s his mom? But lets look beyond the debacle, the shameless cash-in, and complete sham that was Son Of Kong, and lets pay respect to the majesty of Son Of Kong. It gave us….Son of (fill in the blank). When you want to let people know a film, TV show, comic book, rock band, or anything else is a lesser spun off version of a previous thing, it’s Son Of. It works only on crummy things. Frasier was a quality show, but if it had hung from a big fat prick, it would’ve been cancelled and labeled Son Of Cheers. George W Bush is Son of Bush. Put Son Of in front of anything, all expectations are lowered. I replaced a kitchen faucet once, and it was such a disaster that any venture into blind home repair gets dubbed Son of Kitchen Faucet. By me. In my head. Probably by my wife too. We never speak of it. But even with that, Son Of implies you’re around 50 to 90 years old. It’s an old timers cinematic homage to ridiculousness. Youngsters were treated to the equally compelling Breaking 2: Electric Boogaloo. A movie that actually outdid Son of Kong as a horrendously awful pointless sequel. So I guess since I wrote about King Kong, I will re-dub this Thinking of Kong 2: Electric Boogaloo. Fuck that. Son Of Kong. I can’t wait for Bride of Kong. You know they have the script written up for that somewhere.

The Things I Used To Do

Ageing for me has never been a gradual shift of opinion or perspective. There’s been no overwhelming concept of wisdom washing over me. Sure, I’ve learned things, but I think I’ve always had the good sense to recognize that while I have the ability to master complex areas of thought, that life is too short to chase a passing fancy down a rat hole. One can make a good living as a mechanic, surgeon or lab manager. I am not leaving this world as any of those. I gave up poking around under the hood of my car in my 20’s. Later than most, but good enough. I can change my oil, air filter, spark plugs and even tackle belts and hoses if the car is old and simple enough. Fairly early on I had the wisdom to pay people to do those things. I don’t know if I could reap any benefit from school anymore. Maybe. Not med school. Age has a more subtle way of letting me know that it’s made my acquaintance. It’s jarring to know adults who talk of 9/11 as a childhood event. Favorite teen songs are tripe from – oh, I don’t know – a couple of years ago. Or 15. Nowadays, I recall distantly moving my neck freely up and down and standing upright without a dull ache. I have learned over the last few years that age is a constant companion. A houseguest that slowly becomes annoying, and then just moves in. It’s here, and it’s too late to do anything about it. Because it’s getting late. Just yesterday it seems I could spend Sunday evening on the phone with Dad. He would ask how I was doing, and that part was important to him. You could hear that in his voice. The phone would be passed to my brother. Our deeper conversations happened via email or calls that weren’t for the whole lot. The Sunday call was catch up. Mom would ask of the kids, and none of us would talk about my other brother. If he were there he’d be in the background muttering. And after a while I would hang up, and think of when I could see them again. Scheduling is tough. I was cleaning the garage when my dad died. I had given permission to pull the plug on him the day before. The call had been both quick and too long to come, but it did. Both of my brother’s deaths had been via odd jarring phone calls. Mom is still here, but I’ve prepaid the funeral expenses. When I was younger I was never a huge athlete. I could run a decent clip before what – with age – would be revealed as asthma would shoot me down. I’ve put on a few pounds since dad died, as my jogging experiment triggered ankle and hip injuries. I hoped the doctor would find some easy therapy, but the repeated concept was to ease up and back into it. I’m not 25. I just think that way. I still want to travel, to wander far off places and not be thought of as an old guy or worse and on old guy who doesn’t think he’s old. I want to walk to the library, go fishing, push a shopping cart around the supermarket, go to a movie with my son. I want my son to be a boy maybe a tad longer than he’s going to be. I don’t want to sit in hospitals or funeral parlors. I don’t want to think my next car could be my last. But wanting is nice. The last few years have shown me that death does walk beside me. Age is already inside me.

In Defense of Sports - Pee Edition

I was asked to tell a story at a show, aptly titled In Defense of Sports. I am a sports fan, so I figured I could do something. Also, as it was people I like as funny people doing it, I was honored to be asked. And I was also a little confused. Not because there would be a bunch of Chicago Jack-offs up there. That can be insufferable. But the show is called In Defense of Sports. It’s hard to defend it a lot. Even the show promo card had the D and the picket fence – I can’t defend that. You see guys holding that up at a game and you know they are morons. Then there are the balls - sports balls, and right there in your face is the big soccer ball. Soccer? I went to a party in NYC a million years ago. A rave, people on ecstasy, I got a Schooly D record. Say I made a habit of that shit and I could have gone to one and smoked some weed that was dusted. I find myself on a chair, with Pele and Beckham on my lap, they’re naked, tonguing each other, Beckham’s giving Pele a hand job, and the chick who took her shirt off in the Olympics comes over and starts licking my left nipple, - I still wouldn’t give a fuck about Soccer. I’d watch. But fuck soccer. But that would never happen to me. It happens to them I am sure, but not with me and sports stars because no one ends up being in the same place as a sports star without paying. They don’t live in our world. I have never seen Joe Mauer at Home Depot; I have never run into Kevin Love at Rainbow. Never saw Kevin Garnett at Southdale. They have people like us do that stuff for them. Unless you’re a hot blonde, it is accidental. I was in a BK drive through and looked in the rear view to see in a gold Benz behind me – ML Carr. But he was retired, and it’s not the same. I have run into TV and movie people. I did meet and talk to Bruce Springsteen at a gig I did. Nice guy, short. Cool 64 Impala. I hate his music, but that was cool. But even he knows he’s no Thurman Munson. So here’s my special Sports story. It’s a boxing story. And it involves me, and not a star, but the reigning champ - and both of our dicks. I took a leak with Marvelous Marvin Hagler. It was in a hotel men’s room, not unlike the one at the BLB where the show was, but not nauseatingly filthy. It had three pissers. A guy was at one end, so I took the other, leaving the appropriate empty one between us. And he walks in – bald, and wearing sunglasses – and takes a leak right next to me. I know what you’re thinking, and NO – I did not look at his cock. Sure I wanted to. I pictured it then as now – massive, dark caramel colored shaft, purplish tinged mushroom head. All the while his forceful stream made the porcelain chime. I wanted to look but I got hold of my thoughts – He’s a boxer. A good one too. He beats the living shit out of people for a living. I just knew if I looked… It’s a sure bet I’d see he was pissing BLOOD. That would make me fucking sick. Blood out your ass? Fine: everyone has that. But, out your dick? Jesus, I would’ve keeled over. We did our biz, and the fucked up thing is a month or so later I’m walking down Boylston St, and who’s coming right at me in a Root Beer colored three-piece suit with a tall hot piece of action in an ankle length fur? SUGAR RAY LEONARD. That’s two champs in the flesh within weeks – didn’t cost me a fucking dime. No, I didn’t piss with him, so I can only imagine his mammoth prick, and bloody urine. They say these things come in threes, so its possible I played slots with Buster Douglas at Ho-Chunk and missed it. But still – two champs that I could’ve literally stuck out my hand and stabbed. So I keep it here in my heart – for a brief moment in time my cock did a synchronized whiz with Marvelous Marvin Hagler. And the other guy who probably remembers me as I do him – some asshole.

Son Of Guy With Metal Things For Feet

In reading, or re-reading, my earlier epic on the guy who ran in the Olympics with metal things for feet, I thought at times I might be too hard on the guy – and people who embrace the Olympic dream in general. Truth be told, I made a lot of heavily opinionated presumptions about the guy, and people who devote their early time on the planet to intense sports training. My opinions are often my downfall among many of my acquaintances, who end up holding me at arms-length after being exposed to them. Sometimes my wife falls into that group as well. But I’ll be G-D’ed if I am going to change at this stage of my life. And I will admit that I tend to take a bleak view of large swaths of the greater population in my proclamations, especially in light of how, just to recap, there were humungo blobs of people who just felt all glow-y and inspired by the athletic aspirations of this disabled “hero.” So, just to bring it all back into focus, even more than I ever gave a damn for, the guy was South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius. Old Oscar ran on prosthetic feet that I accurately described as being akin to the leaf springs from a 1967 Pontiac Firebird. Others less accurately described them as being like blades, and he was apparently dubbed the “Blade Runner.” Blades, leaf springs, cake frosting spreaders – whatever. He had no feet, and wanted to run so intensely, that he and some other sports-focused prosthetic engineer cooked up these things. And to recap again, my opinionated rant concluded that the guy was a fucking nut job. And people who get so into sports that they consider this a healthy endeavor are also fucking nut jobs. And I did all of this before our hero Oscar MURDERED HIS GIRLFRIEND. Seems he thought she was an intruder. And he stabbed her repeatedly. I have seen photos of his girlfriend, who was also a model. Her name was Reeva Steenkamp. If he had not butchered her I may have thought of her – if ever - as the woman who hooked up with the guy with metal things for feet. I may have thought of her as a model – a hot one by the way – that hooked up with the metal feet guy, if I had known that much. Her motivation for hooking up with a guy who ran on leaf springs? I could go off on that tangent, and alienate some more people, but please: you do the math. Again, as sure as I am not an athlete, if embracing that lifestyle as normal would be required to be an athlete, I am also sure that I, if a woman with a chassis like Reeva was an intruder in my bedroom, would seriously try to avoid stabbing her until it was absolutely necessary. But, in a nut shell, I went out on a limb and gave my two cents on the Olympic afterglow for the blade runner and said what I thought: something is off with this shit. I ain’t down with it. And so, if I annoyed anyone by saying that I could see this particular emperor’s cock, sorry. But, between me and Bob Costas, I think I nailed it a tad better.

Post Show Blah

Well, I had a decent show. Boiling it down, I moved about $40 worth of vinyl and took home a load more than that. Sadly, I took home most of the vinyl, which is conflicting. I want to get rid of it, but then I wish I had some more hot stuff for the next one. I want to do a next one, but then I don't. I would probably want to just go and buy shit. Crazy. I had a disc that was pretty rare, and moved it for about 60% of what I was asking. I felt good. Then the guy threw it on ebay and sold it for over $200, which was about 4 times what I got. So I feel like a schmuck. Then the car blew a head gasket (or possibly the head) and that pretty much kills that car. Oh well.

Record Show's a coming

I typically find no desire to post what I am doing, or to even ramble on about what I think about something in particular. Seems to be a thing women do. But I am about to plunge into a record show again. It has been over a year. I love going to the things, although deep down I wonder how long I can enjoy this hobby without it being a distraction from other shit, like writing stuff. But I have too many lp's, and it is time to start dumping. Truth be told, I typically buy a lot of the discs I do with the idea that I can probably make money dumping them. I have. I have toyed with a blog that would chart my rise into capital gains tax status with some of the things I have sold off. But a show comes up next week, and I have to cull the herd. Maybe I will write about that. We shall see. I hope to write about something that I really feel the need to write about soon, like the metal feet. But this is something, no? Oh, yeah - mom's in the hospital, and I worry this is the end run.

Torch Dropped

I am not an athlete. I know this about myself. Now, I do wish I were more athletic in general, but I have come to understand that I do not aspire to be an athlete. A musician may or may not show the same dedication as an athlete. It takes practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but a guy who gets bombed every weekend and plays the ukulele at 3 AM is still a musician. I was a musician and still pick up and play things, but I am not an active performing musician. Anyone could be into sports. That does not make you an athlete. An athlete is different. I think nothing is more exemplary of the peculiar nature of an athlete than this past summer’s Olympics, in which the world was enthralled by the dedication and perseverance of…well, I don’t remember his name. But lets call him that guy with the metal things for feet. He had suffered some mishap that resulted in the loss of his feet, and he competed in the Olympics with a pair of springy metal things. The world was inspired and, as I just said, enthralled. Count me out of the world for this one. Here’s the thing: say one afternoon I was shopping at Von Maur and riding the escalator when I began to feel faint, and then I fainted, falling on the escalator. Not down it, but just falling back. And I was wearing shoes with too long laces. As the escalator reached its end where the steps go flat and into the floor, they catch my laces and suck my feet into them, mashing my feet up to the ankle into a pulpy shredded mess of blood, flesh, and bone. I briefly snap back into consciousness, shrieking an un-Godly howl, but promptly go into shock and unconsciousness again. Some time later - days perhaps - I awaken in the hospital, where an emotionally flat doctor, I think from India, informs me that my feet have been amputated, but as they were able to do this below the knee I should be able to walk again with prosthetics and much lengthy rehabilitation. I am not sure what might go through my mind at this point. Maybe I might wonder, “Where’s my underwear?” But I am pretty damn sure I would not first think, “I have to run in the Olympics.” And for pretty good reason. That being running in the Olympics after getting your feet cut off is mental. Without feet, one would still wander the planet into a ripe old age, even bouncing around on what look like a pair of leaf springs from a 67 Firebird. I might think something like “what am I going to do for a living in ten years?” If a violinist got his hand cut off – say the fingering hand – I think they would be universally practical and sell the violin. They might take up percussion, or slide guitar, and still play music. But they wouldn’t probably start asking Dr. Bombay for the bionic hand and an audition at Julliard. Just a guess. I don’t rule out one day that being an option. I hope so, yet I worry that the re-attachment point would be less suited to stress, maybe resulting in the fake feet sheering off mid marathon. People who go deaf can benefit from cochlear implants, so if you love listening to the ballgame on the radio, there you go. But a true athlete will hear none of this, nor will their parents. Olympic athletes and their parents – who don’t just stumble into Olympic training programs with their kids accidentally – regularly, subject themselves to rigorous and stressful routines. These routines often involve your child not living with you anymore while in grade school, intense workouts that delay sexual development, social retardation when around people not involved their sport, obsessing with their physical appearance, and familiarity with sexual predators. But, they don’t worry about paying off student loans, so maybe that is good. After the Olympic competition period of their lives has passed – sometimes by 15 - they can have reunions where they swap stories of their depression, psychiatric counseling, drug and alcohol abuse, how they are coaching some kid now and those special competitions way back, like the one where they had a group encounter with Usain Bolt. And they can remember that guy with the metal feet. No, I am not an athlete, and with age I grow more uncomfortable with every wistful Bob Costas report that I am pretty sure is supposed to be inspiring to me, but only makes me think of the Ottoman Empire raiding Christian villages for young boys to be taken and turned into efficient killing machines that would then turn around in 20 years and kill the village. The ratings for the Olympics have been trailing off for the past couple of decades. The novelty of seeing them may have gone the way of networks telling us the program we were about to watch was in color. Their height seemed to parallel the economy running low in the past, like Tarzan being wildly popular in the depression. But they were up again for this year's. Times is tough, but I did watch more this year, what with the women’s volley ball camera angles and the guy with metal things for feet.