Say what ?

Oh, and just a point of clarification here...I started writing this blog yesterday, but was not happy with the lack of creative juices flowing, so I put it on the shelf and am just coming back to it now. Sometimes you're just not on your game.



Remember this one? My wife and I once saw a spitting image of the bee girl. We were parked in our car eating ice cream cones at Garsides in Saco. Why the need to go to Saco for an ice cream escapes me, but that's where we were. Anyway, I pointed out the bee girl, and God, did we laugh. Pee your pants, can't catch your breath, ice cream melting over your fingers kind of laughing. Nothing needed to be said, no words needed, it was just there.

Which gets me thinking, how many conversations do we have in a day?...I don't mean emails, or facebook posts, or even phone calls, I'm talking honest to goodness conversations. Two or more people engaged in direct face to face communication....and how many of these do we actually remember (we meaning me). If you recall, I don't have the greatest memory. Here's a reminder...

http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2011/11/sometimes-ino-i-dont.html

My first conversation of the day was between me and my next door neighbor. I was half heartedly pushing a shovel around the cars in my driveway after  the snowfall the prior night. Lo and behold I see this figure pushing his snowblower along the sidewalk.





(This isn't an actual photo of the event, my neighbor doesn't have a beard).
Just like the knight in shining armor, or the cowboy dressed in white, or Leonardo Dicaprio in Titanic..He had come to my rescue. He shuts the machine off, we have a nice conversation, and I'm able to pull both cars out into the street and then drive away. Leaving him behind to finish off the driveway. I'm off to a good start in the conversation department.

Then there was the interesting conversation that I was involved in when I first got to work. It involved the highway just outside of Albany New York, an illegal u turn, a mystery appearance by a cop, the cop playing chicken with the guy that did the u turn, then the cop hitting his blue lights and going after someone else. It was a great story when I first heard it at 8:00 AM. It was a little less interesting when I heard it retold at 8:30. I was bored with it when I heard it again at 9:30. I started to visually re enact it for others when it was told for the fourth time at 11:00. Whenever he would talk about his role in the story I started to act like a chimpanzee and when he told the parts about the cop I would act out the samurai delicatessen scene from the old Saturday Night Lives. When I heard it again at lunch , me and three others (who had also heard the story repeatedly) pulled him out of the cafeteria by his tightie whities, threw him out of a third story window, went down and collected his body, and stuffed it in the trunk of a stolen car...which we then drove off the Casco Bay Bridge. Do you think he got the point?


I hope he had good insurance.

Then the floodgates opened ....nine conversations about things I was so done with at work...eight about the weather...seven about things I wasn't paying attention to...six about a sitcom that I have never seen, and am not even sure if it truly exists...five about children of coworkers (two of which I didn't even know had kids...and one that I'm not even sure that I knew the person that I was talking to)...four more about the weather...three about pets (one dog, one fish, and one chicken, yes, chicken)..two about sick family members..and one about Ted Nugent. I could feel my blood pressure starting to climb.




You know what? At that point I was ready to give in. Chalk one up in the "them" column in the "us vs. them" game. Was it just me? So you know what I did? I went and visited my Mother.

...and I talked to my Mom about work, and the weather (twice), and about not paying attention, and sitcoms I had never seen, other peoples kids, pets, sick family members, and yes, even Ted Nugent. How did this make me feel? You already know the answer...great.

That made me realize how much I love my Mom.

...and I work with some CRAZY mofo's.

Enjoy January.

C'mon, I was only ten years old

1974
This was my life....mostly in pictures.
(as best I can remember, so no fact checking needed)
This is how I rolled...my Mom's Dodge Challenger


I remember driving in this car when we heard on the radio (my Mom always had the radio on - but more on that later) that Mama Cass had died.(Disclaimer for those of you under 30...Mama Cass was a singer in the band the Mamas and the Papas...you should know about them, and if you don't, shame on you). We were driving in town Portland, I'm even going to say it was driving up Casco Street or Brown Street heading towards Congress Street....because stuff used to be on Casco and Brown Streets in 1974. After Mom got rid of this muscle car she went with a Plymouth Volare'. Oh, and it was a station wagon. tsk tsk tsk.

My primary means of transportation in '74 was something like this...




That's right, A Schwinn Sting Ray....and yes, it was yellow. Somewhere there's an awesome picture of me straddling my bike in my driveway wearing a matching yellow wind breaker. Probably getting ready to ride down to "the Park", which would be the Sunset Park ballfields at the end of New York Ave in South Portland Maine. I might have been on my way to hit my infamous little league tryouts home run that I've referenced in the past...and probably will again sometime in the future.
For anyone that wants to reminisce with me, here it is...
http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2011/10/strolling-kitties.html

Speaking of 1974 sports (which I just was), I think it was just the year before when my older brother broke it to me that the Harlem Globetrotters were not the world champions of basketball...so I decided to follow the Celtics. Coincidently that was the year that they won the NBA championship. Great team...John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Paul Silas, and my favorite, Jo Jo White. Jo Jo White might have been overshadowed by some of the other stars (although he was an all star himself), I liked him because he seemed cool...and cool was everything to a ten year old.

Coincidentally , I think that's why Rico Petrocelli was my favorite Red Sox player..because he seemed cool. As an adult, I got to spend an entire day with Rico, basically just the two of us (don't recall if I've written about that one before, if not, I've got a feeling it will be coming), and you know what? He was cool.


1974.....
I was in fourth grade at Thornton Heights elementary school. Mr. Northrop was my teacher. Mr Northrop is now a friend of mine on Facebook.




...That's it in the background...couldn't find a decent older photo of it. The library was in the basement...there was no gym...it had a dirt baseball field..and I loved it. 1974 would have been the first time we had a basketball team at school. You see Thornton Heights only went up to fourth grade, and then you went to Skillin for two years, before moving on to junior high. Don't ask me why, that's just the way it was. The point of that prior sentence was so I could point out, our 4th grade basketball team was playing the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade teams of the other elementary schools in town, and the scrappers from the west side of the city held their own. Back in the day South Portland had nine or ten elementary schools. I still remember some of my teammates...Joe McHugh -great athlete, Scott Merrill- fastest kid I ever saw (demonstrated in later years by getting chased by the police through the woods at innumerable keg parties), Rick Russell - who broke his arm the next year at Skillin playing buck buck on the teeter totter during recess, Tom Lee - who lived across the street from the school and had the nicest Mom, John McQuinn - strongest kid that ever attended 4th grade(anywhere...ever), Elliot Chamberlain - who now builds "great neighborhoods" here in Maine, Peter Flynn and Tod Douglass - unfortunately neither of which are still with us, and me. My coach (Joe McHugh's Dad...who you can still see ushering at Sea Dogs games in the Summer) gave me the moniker "The Gentle Giant". Not exactly what a 4th grade kid wants to be called, but unfortunately, it was pretty accurate...and my Mom liked it


1974.....1974

1974 was around the time I started getting interested in music. Like I said earlier, my Mom always had the radio on...I had older brothers and an older sister that were listening to the best music of the time. Unfortunately we were listening to it on something like this..


But hey, it was portable.

That music takes me back to times when we'd play outside until the lights came on....to when we'd go sledding up to "the Pits" in the Winter...when we'd build forts out in the woods....when we used to ride in the back of station wagons....eating lunch at A&W....playing Indian Ball down at the Park...having slot car races...banging my knuckles playing with clackers (remember those?)


So close your eyes (or don't) and maybe this will bring you back to 1974 (posting this was actually the whole point of writing about 1974...and it only took me about a thousand words to get here)

Oh, and by the way, Mikey from those Life cereal commercials did not die from eating pop rocks after drinking a Coke...at least, I don't think he did.

That ship has...now, what's the best way to say it..oh, I know, sailed

I once saw Bachman Turner Overdive in concert...not what I expected...they were all out of shape (not that it really matters), but they actually looked kind of slovenly. I remember Randy Bachman was wearing overalls and looked a bit like Haystacks Calhoun (a wrestler from the "golden days" of wrestling...well, at least the wrestling I remember watching on Saturdays before Creature Double Feature would come on).

That, by the way, is Haystacks Calhoun....not Creature Double Feature

Sort of like the time I saw Foghat. Not knowing any better I wanted to see this guy...

...but this was the Foghat I saw....

Well, not quite that bad..but I couldn't find an image of the red one piece jumpsuit that the guy from Foghat was wearing. Really...it was red...and it was a jumpsuit....and it was one piece. It actually looked like a character that Will Ferrell would have done in a sketch, only this predated Will Ferrell by about fifteen years, and it was real. Can anyone say Spinal Tap?

This blog was supposed to be about me missing out on another great business opportunity (hence the title). I usually put a video in the blogs of mine...and though I really wanted to post Maria Muldaur doing Midnight at the Oasis, it didn't fit the theme, which is the point of those clips in the first place. I'll find another time to post that one. So then I landed on BTO doing Taking Care of Business, but now I don't feel like that one either.

Anyway this business opportunity wasn't like some of the others that I had thought of but didn't follow through on...thankfully. None of those would have worked. This one would have.
Some of the others were in the vein of...

• My shipping/mailing company I was going to call Big Man's Package
• The lumber store that was only going to be open from 5 - 11 AM called Morning Wood
• Or the hardware store that just sold nails, but I wanted it to be first in the yellow pages so I called it Anails
• or the tow truck business, which I thought would be clever to have a camel on the side of the truck...sort of like if you're stranded in the desert all you'd need is a camel to get you out. I thought Camel Tows had a better ring to it than other people
• the well digging company I called boring deep holes
• or the specialty shop that I was going to open with my friends Mike and Scott that we'd only open for a few days a month. We were going to call it the PMS store

Then there was always Scratch Pete's Fresh Nuts, but Bob still doesn't want to put up the damn sign

So, I can't come up with a business clip...but I can come up with something that aligns with the title of this sorry blog...

...so I'd like to know where you got the notion

smell this...does this smell funny to you?

I saw the dead tree truck today. Let me clarify...If you have a real Christmas tree, they don't last forever (unless, of course, you have a real real Christmas tree), after the holiday (usually Christmas or New Years...or if your extremely lazy and feel the need to have a six foot pile of dry kindling in your living room, I guess you could extend it to Martin Luther's King Jr's birthday or if you have an unnatural love of arson, Valentine's Day) you take your tree out, and at least in my town, you put it on the sidewalk to be picked up by the city. That's the truck I saw, the city discarded dead Christmas tree truck. It reminded me of that scene from Monty Pythons the Holy Grail where Eric Idle is collecting the dead in a wagon that is being pulled through he streets.
here's the scene

...for those of you that don't bother watching the clips I always put on here (it's ok, you can admit it, I know there's a few of you...but you are missing out)...the humor of the clip is someone trying to put an old man on the pile that isn't dead yet all the while insisting "I'm not dead" and "I feel better" and "Can I go for a walk" and other non dead or dieing type things.

That's what the Christmas truck reminded me of.

...and that got me thinking of other things that are obsolete...or outdated...or no longer useful.

Such as,
Combo dvd and vcr players.

I don't even know if I have a vcr in my house that works anymore, but I probably have about a hundred "tapes". These combo players were once cutting edge, well at least for those of us that wanted to embrace this "new digital dvd technology" but were dumb enough to think that the vhs tape wouldn't go the same way as 8 tracks or then cassettes and then even albums (although I have to admit, I still do love my albums - but that's another story for another time). Christ, we're not far from dvd's being irrelevant as well. The dvd/vhs combo reminds me of my first stereo that had not only an AM/FM tuner and a turntable, but also an 8 track player...not even a cassette player...and 8 track player. Always loved how Smoke on the Water abruptly stopped at the end of track one and then, after much clunking and shifting, would restart in that spot on the next track. How come it didn't sound like that in concert?


Polaroid Instant Cameras
Remember these? You'd take your picture, then, vvvvt, the camera would eject this blank sheet of film that in a matter of minutes would miraculously appear as your photo right before your eyes. Amazing! Everybody had instant cameras, but not everyone had the Handle. I got the Handle one Christmas...I say around '77 or '78. I remember taking pictures of the albums I got for Christmas that year...I remember taking pictures of my dog Duke....I remember having pictures taken of me, usually wearing some sort of long sleeved striped rugby shirt with the sleeves pushed up my forearm (which was cool) or me in my Miami Dolphins pajamas (which was not cool). Good stuff.
I think one of the reasons the Handle may not have caught on was , picture quality aside, it weighed about seventeen pounds, although it did come with a nice nylon strap so you could wear it around you neck if you desired...or if you desperately wanted some sort of neck injury. That and the fact that you had to turn a crank to get the picture to pop out. Even in 1977 that was obsolete.

Polaroid pictures, or at least the reference of polaroid pictures made a comeback a few years ago because of that Outkast song "Hey Ya". The line was "Shake it like a polaroid picture" and all of a sudden those millions of kids that made this a number one song got a history lesson of what photography for the common man was like prior to digital. It became part of our vernacular again. That's right vernacular.

But speaking of digital...that will soon be obsolete as well.
Check this out.   http://www.lytro.com/   Essentially this camera allows you to manipulate the picture after you take it. You know how pictures get ruined when you focus or include the wrong image in the foreground or background? The Lytro lets you move the focus off that object after you've taken the picture. You can switch a photo from 2D to 3D, change the perspective, or do whatever else you want to do to the image. This isn't Photoshop changes to an already taken picture. With the Lytro the photo is alive inside your camera.

This is Jetson's stuff we're talking about here...this is Star Wars...this is 2012. Wait, actually this is 2012.

Phone Booths
This struck me last year. We were in Epcot, in the World showcase, England specifically. We were taking pictures of my youngest standing inside a replica of an old red phone booth...like they used to have in London.




I realized it wasn't the quaint look of the red booth that intrigued her...it was the fact that there used to be these monoliths erected outside where you used to have to enter into, and you used to have to close the door (for privacy), and you used to have to pay money, and speak into a receiver (it is called the receiver, isn't it?) that was attached to a cord that was attached to the phone.
Ain't that a kick in the ass?


That Tupperware container in the back of my fridge
No explanation needed on that one


The point of this blog
I think I've "jumped the shark" on this one.
Google it.


Peace.