It's Going to Fast

Yes... this kind of thing has been overdone of late but with a bellyful of cookies and chocolate cream pie and a few days overload... days? Try 4 weeks overload of Christmas specials and Feliz Navidad, this is perfect.

KFC = Christmas

It's early afternoon on the day before Christmas... I consider only the night before Christmas as "Christmas Eve" versus the whole day... Kerry's got the house full of cookies and food. She's great with cookies and cakes and all that. Buckeyes and these are my favorite. Everyone else goes nuts over the sugar cokkies which normally I'm not a big fan of but Ker's are pretty good.

Liam's got a whole theory about the method and timing of Santa's trek around the world involving the International Date Line and a north-south zig-zag route around the globe. Erin's into the whole Tinkerbell thing and she's reading pretty well now. Finn's taking it all in... figuratively in wide-eyed wonder and literally in his never-ending appetite.

We've gone through all the major Christmas video's... all the classics (Rudoph, the Grinch, the one with the Miser brothers, Frosty, etc.). We missed out on the Charlie Brown one this year because irt was checked-out at the library but ended up with some obscure (for good reason) ones: Flintstone Christmas, the two Frosty sequels, and a few other forgettables.

Vince Giraldi is in the DVD player and I'm heading outside to the woodpile so we can do a fire tonight... after we eat our tradional Christmas Eve KFC dinner.

But first it's off to the recycling center for a pre-Christmas trash dropoff plus a visit to the hardware store to get two screws for my new bike (for my pump bracket) and some mousetraps.

Ho ho ho!

SUBURBAN ASSAULT!!!!

My mission: deliver 6 packages by bike to six separate locations spread throughout the Windemere wilderness. Piece of cake, right? No way, Jose. The last dude to make the attempt totally ended up as a hood ornament on a Kia Sedona. But then again, my middle name is Danger. Well, like it’s William really but wouldn’t that be wicked awesome?!

Anyway, it’s windy and cold as I head out but the clear sky gives me a total rush and I merge onto the 60 mph blacktop like I own it, man. I’m a gutter bunny ridin’ a tightrope on a shoulder as thin as a Huey Lewis tie… pickups and vans slamming past me. But I keep on pushin’ and pushin’ until I enter the cozy safety of the first development on my list. Can’t remember the name right now but does it matter? It was just Spring Mill, Vista Glenn, or Crapdog Farms or some nothing BS like that, ya know?

I mailbox the first package and jet to the next drop zone… which means a few gonzo downhills and a few granny gear climbs… wash, rinse, repeat for 4 more mail calls, comprende? Did a few Daniel Boone’s to find a few off-the-map shortcuts including an impromptu golf course path. Hey Arnie... rockin’ follow through!!

Took a much deserved break, check out this righteous view, bro. Me against the elements, man.

Sweet.

Glenwood Gravitas

Last Saturday, I did one of my yearly (maybe half-yearly?) trips intown to hangout with friends this time at a few of the new bars in East Atlanta. And when I say “hangout with friends”, I am not referring to an online chatroom or some My Face (yes, I did that on purpose) “social network”, I’m talking about actually being in the same room with people. And when I say “actually being in the same room with people”, I don’t mean some Second Life virtual porn palace where I can shell out lindenbucks to some voluptuous stripper with comic book heroine proportions and a guy in a smelly XXXL DragonCon ’96 t-shirt behind her eyes.

I’m talking about sitting at a bar with real goddamn people, goddamnit!!

Anyway, the next morning I found myself walking the 2 miles from Matt’s house back to East Atlanta to get my car. About ten feet from my car, I realize I don’t have my keys. Now this is the part I don’t get… that piece of information was in my brain the entire time. For the long walk in the cold through gray, leaf-strewn streets… the fact that I did not have my keys and the minor fact that I WOULD HAVE TO WALK ALL THE WAY BACK THEN POSSIBLY ONE MORE FUCKING TIME TO GET BACK TO MY CAR was in my head but my subconscious chose not to reveal this little tidbit until I could almost touch my car.

So I then found myself walking back to Matt’s house. About halfway back, little stabs of pain began needling through my recently cut-into knee and I started lacing my text messaged (the first time ever for me… pop!) implorings for a ride with this fact and it worked. Travis picked me up.

Of course, it was right in front of Matt’s house but hey, a ride’s a ride.

Kraftwerk?

Wait a sec... make that this Portishead song. This sounds EXACTLY like having an MRI. Listen to whole thing then get out and put on your pants.

Rafty: The Beginning

It seems like a fair amount of grooms these days elect not to have a bachelor party or have such a watered-down, tame one that it is not even worthy of the term. A bachelor party includes 1) lots of alcohol, and 2) strippers. A couple o’guys playing poker or camping although fun is not a bachelor party.

And I’m not saying it needs to be over the top. It does not need a flight to Vegas. Although that town will basically guarantee a good time at a bachelor party, drop the money you would’ve spent on the trip at the Sapphire Club behind the truckstop off Exit 17, and a great time will also be guaranteed. And then some!

So Mark, Matt, Charley, myself, and possibly a few others are in a raft floating down the Chattooga River in northeast Georgia approaching Bull Sluice, a Class 5 rapid. It was the first time I ever was on a whitewater rafting trip and probably the same for the others. We and the guys in one other raft are celebrating Charley’s upcoming wedding and this was the preliminary phase to the bachelor party.

By the way, my old school definitions of a bachelor party do not preclude anything like this. Hell, as long as you END UP drunk in the vicinity of strippers, you can spend the day doing macramé for all I care.

Anyway, we stop to watch the first bunch of our team go over the Sluice. They approach it all wrong and end up spinning around and going over backwards. But they are fine.

We, on the other hand, approach the first drop perfectly and glide over smooth as silk. We are just about to start the arms-raised, woo-hoo phase when – and here is what someone later said – it looke like everyone suddenly decided to jump out of the boat. Apparently, the raft skirted the edge of a fall and the inrush of water flipped over the boat, dumping our asses into the cold rushing torrent that is Bull Sluice.

Much like this guy.

Later that night, I ended up Dancers 2, a not-so-flashy place off 75, with a few guys but because this was in the days before everyone had cellphones, Charley ended up at another place. We finally met up near the end of the night and an enjoyable, frolicsome evening was had by all.

Fast-forward three years, Travis, myself, and a bunch of others went to what we thought was Dancers 2 mostly because of my fond recollections. The place had changed its name. We barely noted this and proceeded to walk into the place. Suddenly, we see Travis, who had been a bit in front of the main group come plunging toward us, his arms flailing wildly and his face a fierce grimace of shock. "Go back! Save yourselves!!" The joint’s new name was Swinging Richard's.

It later reverted back to a hetero place called Mousetrap where I had my own awesome bachelor party but that’s another story.

Did I forget something? Oh yeah… so we were approaching Bull Sluice and joking about what we should name the raft. I can only remember one but I suppose they were various iterations of “SS” this and “HMS” that and I said, “How about Rafty?”

With or Without Huynh

Kerry just recently found a box of my old CD's sp last night I was listening to Pixie's "Trompe Le Monde" which takes me back to Class Break, a pool hall across the street from UCF where Mark, Matt, and I used to hang out.

One of our typical gags back then was to make a substitution in the lyrics of songs. Smashing Pumpkins' "I am One" became "Matt Let One". Janes' "Standing in the Shower Thinking" became "Standing in the Shower Drinking". Usually they were a joke about someone but often, especially in the case of Mark, they were mindless. "Shock the Marky [Monkey]" was an example of highbrow, complex humor when compared to Pearl Jam's "Evenflow" becoming "Marky-flow".

That last one, coupled with Vedder-esque dramatics was endlessy repeated exactly because it made no sense (and annoyed the hell out of Mark). Anyway, one of the Pixie's songs has a repeated line with "Jefrey with one f" in it which became "Marky with one f".

F being exactly 2.5 times funnier than K.

I realized that nothing on TV or in movies hardly EVER comes even close to making me laugh like the way I do at jokes made up with friends. I can crack up at work, poolside, and definitely at a bar but put me in front of SNL for an hour and I'll hardly smile.