WEIRDNESS:

So with February comes fake spring here in the great Northwest. Fake spring is that week and a half of sorta nice weather that arrives sometime in February just before it starts raining again for another 2 months. Fake spring brings out the strange.

Exhibit A: Stoop Bowling

About ten hipsters were posted up on a rundown old bungalow's front lawn. It was 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday and about half the people there were drinking 40s in paper bags. The hipsters had somehow wrassled up a bowling ball and 10 bowling pins, and were in the middle of an intense bowl-off in their front yard. One after the other, they would step up to the line, run a pale hand through their carefully tussled hair, and then hurl a bowling ball down the cement walk with all the force their skinny arms could muster. They were tearing the hell out of the front steps and it took quite a while to set up the pins after each frame, but that left more time for drinking I suppose. Ahhhh....unemployment. Huzzah!

Exhibit B: Conspicuous Porn Consumption

As I strolled out of a market near my house (the kind of market that sells rebel flag key chains and has a case of knives and doorags next to the vast malt liquor assortment, and is invariably run by a dude who is very new to the English language) I was confronted by waaaay more porn than I'm used to seeing in public. A seedy looking meth-head type was sitting in his car in the parking lot, randomly and nonchalantly flipping through nudie magazines in broad daylight. He had a 3 foot stack of porn sitting on the front seat next to him. What variety of filth was he reading? Why, "Hot N' Older", of course! Nothing but the best for this discerning consumer of fine smut.

- posted by Aaron @ 10:17 AM

 
ROAD TRIP DETRITUS:



1998 - I discovered this gem in a brochure rack in a gift shop just outside of Sisters, Oregon. I quickly made my donation to this fine organization and am now a proud member of the National Miniature Donkey Association.




1999 - I picked this moist towlette up in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is clearly marked "for external use only" on the back, making it unfortunately useless for wiping clean the stain on my eternally damned soul.




2000 - I don't remember very much about where I bought this lovely novelty. I think it was somewhere on the North Side of Chicago. I quickly wore out my cracking balls with repeated banging. Even though they had "over 400 blasts" it only took about 10 to seriously piss off my roommates.




2001 - The Country Music Hall of Fame is in Nashville, Tennessee. It is one of the coolest places on Earth, and not only because one of Elvis Presley's cars is there - a Cadillac with a special pink paint job. Why was it so damn shiny, you ask? Why, because Elvis had crushed diamonds and fish scales mixed in with the paint, of course. Also on this trip was a visit to Memphis, Tennessee where I was assaulted by prostitutes.




2003 - I managed to take in a baseball game while in San Diego, California for a friend's wedding. We'd gotten kicked out of our hotel the night before, and were forced to finish our drinking contest in the parking lot.
- posted by Aaron @ 12:01 PM

 
MEMORIES:

In order to avoid going months between posts, more in an occasional series on Irvington Elementary

Sometimes we played soccer at recess, but that was only when no one remembered to bring a football to school that day. Usually, we'd divide up into teams and head around to the side of the school where we had staked out our football playing territory.

The field was essentially a large open cement area bordered on one side by a low wall, and by the street on the other side. There were strips of grass at either end that were designated the end zones. We played two-handed touch for the most part, but if the ball went into the endzone/grass area, it was game on for tackles. Last second hail mary passes usually involved more kicking and punching than football, but I guess that was sort of the point.

A kid named Derek used to play with us from time to time. He was mainly harmless, but sometimes he'd flip out and try to start fights, or try to throw you off your game with "yo mama" jokes. He wasn't actively liked or disliked, most people just sort of put up with him.

One day in 5th grade we were in the closing seconds of a barn burner of a game. The offenses of both teams were lighting it up, and yet again a deep ball was thrown into the endzone. Derek went up for the grab, and I layed a shoulder into him. Another 5 people piled on, and Derek went down hard, but he still made the catch.

Derek jumped up to celebrate, and that's when he felt something weird on the back of his head.

"Um...dude? You got something on your head, man." One of my friends informed Derek.

"What?" he asked, lifting his hand to feel the back of his head. He pulled his hand down to see what was clinging to his hair, and discovered that he had landed headfirst in maybe the hugest pile of dog crap ever.

He immediately started crying, and just took off running towards his house.

We didn't see him again until the next day, and nobody ever mentioned anything about it to him.

It wasn't too long after the poop incident, that Cameron went out for a pass near the sideline, and ended up running directly into the low wall at full speed. He flipped over the thing in a sort of agonized kung-fu maneuver, and ended up fracturing both his shins.

We'd all been watching first aid movies that week, and decided he was going into shock, so everyone around that side of the playground remembered the recommended procedure, and tried to keep him warm by piling our coats on top of him. By the time the school nurse got there we were all just milling around, wondering what to do, while Cameron cracked jokes from under a five foot high pile of coats.

I'm not sure why we never tried playing football on another part of the playground. You'd think we'd have learned our lesson.
- posted by Aaron @ 10:47 AM