When I was a boy (Uh Oh. Here we go again with another in Mel’s series of meandering memories) my grandfather ran a junkyard just east of the town where I was born. You probably didn’t need to know this, but it does explain quite a bit about me. Each visit to his dump was a bit of adventure and I remember the distinct smells of the place (rusting metal and cattle from the pasture across the road) and the sound the merchandise made as I rummaged through and over piles of stuff. I once took a girl there for family meet and greet. I was, after all, a stupid young man. Having a relative “in the business” meant lots of  freebies. One thing I became a connoisseur of was second-hand comic books. My grandparents gave me crates of them, dating back to the 1950′s and ’60′s. There were a few super hero titles in the stacks, but many were classic Harvey books (Ritchie Rich, Casper, Wendy). My favorites were the piles of macabre books and I learned to read with classic science-gone-wrong titles like Killdozer, Swamp Thing, and Ghost Rider. As if to keep me on the path of righteousness, there were always Evangelical comics mixed in, usually published by the Spire company. Generally they were biographies, such as the Billy Graham Story and (inexplicably) The Tom Landry Story. Many were condensed comic serial versions of full length books from Spire’s heyday (The Cross and The Switchblade, Burn Baby Burn, God’s Smuggler and The Hiding Place). I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent hours reading the biographical comics and still find myself reading mostly about the lives of famous individuals. The comics didn’t end up hurting me too much. No, it was when grandpa started giving me boxes of ’70′s Redbook and Good Housekeeping that I slid into the abyss. I started down the path of baking William Conrad’s favorite meatloaf and getting fondue tips from Dyan Cannon, then I began the life of an adolescent hoodlum.

The New York Times, the paper that doesn’t resemble a comic book no matter which way you hold it, ran a story today by George Gene Gustines on the growing popularity of comic book publisher Blue Water Productions ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/fashion/29comics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss ) The company has found success in publishing multiple lines of biographical comic featuring influential individuals and positive role models for young people. Many of the subjects I understand and would enjoy reading about. The Sarah Palin book would be wonderfully interesting and a refreshing antidote to her self-penned biography. What an action packed comic that would be as we turn pages and see her shooting animals from a helicopter, or fighting a giant salmon. Lady GaGa’s book doesn’t carry a lot of weight since her videos and live appearances are better than anything a comic artist could conceive. Lindsey Lohan would make a great comic heroine, especially as a rags-to riches-to-rags/ fight-the-man story (better yet, just rehash Steve Martin’s The Jerk as a comic book). In October, Blue Water plans to publish an Olivia Newton-John comic book. Big hair and all. At least the proceeds, if any, go to charity.

Darren Davis, Bluewater’s president, insists at the conclusion of the Times article that there will be no Heidi Montag-Pratt comic book, or biographies of other reality TV stars. Aw, C’mon! Jersey Shore’s Snooki is a walking cartoon herself. Tell me that the publishing world isn’t waiting for Snooki and The Situation to join other mutants with weird tans and misshapen torsos to fight New Jersey’s evil Governor Jon Corzine. Now that’s a comic book. You can purchase these wonderful (and mercifully short) bio-comics at your local Jo-Ann Fabrics store. No comment on that one.

I do love living in the age of instantaneous self acknowledgment and gratification. There are myriad and mass perks to being alive right at this very moment. The last month and a half of my life, for instance, has been spent pointing my cell phone at random objects and having the device offer a glut of useless information regarding whatever I was looking at. At some point, I did get tired of pointing the phone at trees and having the braniac inform me “That’s a tree.” I got punched in the head after scanning some Chicago Cubs fan and telling him that the phone came up with Google search results for ‘fat suits’ and ‘beard diapers’.  The instant feedback age is full of good and entertaining (albeit useless) advances. Many that don’t result in my getting beat up, in fact. One example is I Write Like.

Leafing through a newspaper the other day I happened to see a general interest story about I Write Like (http://www.iwl.me/), a site that is purported to instantly analyze your particular writing style and compare it to a famous author’s work. Granted, I heard about this through the local paper, just moments before I made a hat from it and ran into the yard shouting “Arrrrr.” I honestly didn’t know what else to do with the thing. When I came back indoors, news hat ruined, I started to wonder about the whole I Write Like idea. What famous person’s written oeuvre does my work resemble? Martha Stewart, maybe. I do use the term ‘patina’ a lot. There’s Ernest Hemingway. Not the famous one (that’s too much self-flattery), but the guy who details cars down the street from me. He’s a prolific writer and a bathroom wall limerick legend. I made the mistake of clicking onto iwritelike.com, an ad site that tells every respondent their writing is a subconscious effort to mimic Chuck Norris. You can actually submit nothing at all and get the same result. Now, I sat and watched one of Chuck’s ’70′s (eh hem) classics recently and can honestly say that no one is trying on any level to write in the style of Chuck Norris. In the movie I watched, Chuckles journeys to a town run by a corpulent, drunken mayor in order to save his brother from the local muscle. Norris, in his unique way, manages to bed a waitress after she serves him coffee. If Norris had anything to do with the writing of that film then I know for sure that I’m not attempting his writing style.

After submitting two samples from this blog to the real I Write Like, the results were that my writing resembles that of Cory Doctrow and H.P. Lovecraft. Neither of the styles these two gentleman became famous for is reassuring in any way and I may as well quit writing this instant (Amen!). H.P. Lovecraft, was not a home computer designed for use by couples, but the author of necromantic science fiction until his death in 1937. Doctrow is a blogger and science fiction author from Canada. I decided to try a third, independent test and submitted someone else’s writing from an adult site. The poorly written, very misspelled piece of literature was analyzed and the result came back J.D. Salinger. So much for instant literary analysis. The I Write site is operated by Russian software programmer  Dmitry Chestnykh and is a lot of fun, but not exactly serious critique. For laugh’s, The Christian Science Monitor recommends submitting your work to I Actually Write Like. I submitted my first sample again and got the following: “You Actually Write Like A Moonstruck Lunatic Possibly Wearing A Straightjacket.” Oh, thank heavens for that. Next to that subtle hint was an illustrated pile of feces. There you have it. Technological gratification.

Monday, April 19, 2010. 

One of the perks of posting a (somewhat) regular blog is the ability to write freely about tiny, idiosyncratic behaviors that are pointless to almost everyone. One of these habits nested deep within my cerebral cortex (the part not occupied by a luminescent Maxwell House sign) is a lifelong fascination with the British television series Doctor Who. The science fiction staple, which first aired in 1963, is currently airing a new season of episodes on BBC America. The story follows the adventures of traveling Time Lord, the last of an extinct race of beings. His time machine, the TARDIS, is short circuited and remains in the form of a blue police call box. Each incarnation of the Doctor (he’s assumed the form of 11 different men) travels with companions through various historical periods, dimensions and space itself to fight evil and tilt the moral plane back into balance.

I started watching the Doc with repeats of the classic episodes featuring Tom Baker and Peter Davison during the 1980′s. For some reason, the shows always seemed interminably long. Maybe it was because local PBS affiliates would invariably cut the show off to remind Saturday afternoon viewers that for a generous $25 donation we could have our very own limited edition TARDIS cookie tins (for $50 we could get sets of remastered Beatles albums on Vinyl. Makes me wish that I had a time machine). Tom Baker as Doctor Who always seemed to have this snide, subversive element and  to this day I still carry a little of his cool around with me. As a kid, with no car and not a cent for a cookie tin (or anything else), I’d tire of hanging around on corners pretending to be a hoodlum and skulk home watch Dr. Who. If I’d only watched sports like every regular kid at the time…oh well. The Dr. always had to do battle with the world’s cheesiest villains and the BBC’s woeful special effects budgeting. Many episodes he’d have to save the wretched human race from the Daleks. These, like many of the alien villains on the series, were cobbled together sixties robot monsters with the all too scary flashing light bulbs atop their bodies. In their own weird way, the creators of who still managed to make scarier and more real special effects than anything in George Lucas’ last three Star Wars films.

Doctor Who is said to be able to regenerate 13 times and the new series with Matt Smith as the Doc is the 11th incarnation. The new season (31st-the show was unofficially cancelled in 1989) features a quick-witted, sunnier, Doc and a new, dazzling companion (Karen Gillan as policewoman Amy Pond). While the show is filmed in beautiful 1080i (It’s a guy thing. The companion is merely dazzling, the show is beautiful) at the moment, the special effects are cheesy as always. Sometimes, I suppose a story can suspend belief and fantastic visual effects and just give you entertaining stories and characters built to last 47 years.

Heaven forbid you have to be home on Saturday night, but if you are, then this is a good, old school sci-fi evening with the tellie. Of course, this is my excuse to invest in a DVR.

Thursday, April 15, 2010.

President John Kennedy used one of history’s great throw-away phrases in his famous space agenda address at Rice University in September of 1962. The line has always stuck with me:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

The other things. Nearly 41 years after astronauts set foot on the moon, President Obama is finally addressing those other things that are expected of a space faring nation. We have a timetable for our first manned travel to Mars, a mere 15 years. The week when we commemorate the 40th anniversary of what many consider America’s greatest triumph in manned space flight, the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew, is a perfect time to start considering as a country our space future.

When it was announced recently that the Obama administration was planning the cancellation of previous President Bush’s planned Constellation program (a re-introduction of manned flights to the moon) I experienced real misgivings. I was raised in the years following the Apollo moon triumphs and the heyday of Space Shuttle travel. I remember those bleak months during 1986 and ’87 with no manned space flight.  The idea of losing manned space travel as a country seemed not only preposterous, but heartbreaking. The end of space flight isn’t Obama’s agenda, however. He’s asking NASA and America as a country to once again “do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” We are being asked to once again believe in travel to the stars, not just to the Moon, or Mars, but the reaches of deep space.

When President Obama stated in reference to returning to the moon that “We’ve been there before,”  he was reminding the old guard, the Apollo astronauts protesting his plans, that this nation has to look forward and lead in space. I consider the Saturn IV-B rocket the greatest engineering achievement in the history of mankind and believe that the reusable Space Shuttle fleet designed in the early 1970′s was a technical marvel. They were marvels of their time, the 20th Century. NASA needs to look beyond the heavy lifting capabilities of the Ares rocket and the Orion crew capsule and start developing technology designed for work and life in space. Nations that lead look to the other things and send explorers forward. Not for imperialism, but for the sake of being a nation that exists in more than just history books.

Saturday, April 10, 2010.

You can be fairly certain that I’m not the first person to coin that cliché, and nowhere near the last. British newspaper The Sun reported in recent days that a biopic of late (and largely still dead) musician Kurt Cobain is in the works with Robert Pattinson as the Nirvana front man. PopEater and Gawker have been blogging about the story with a hint of disbelief, and I don’t blame them. We’re now 55 years from the death of actor James Dean and the entertainment industry has finally stopped trying to brand every actor as the “next” Rebel Without A Cause. The new martyr/rebel/misunderstood young man/died-too-early (unless you read the actuary tables for heroin addicted rock stars) is Cobain. His widow, Courtney Love, is helpfully suggesting that Scarlett Johansson play her in the proposed flick. The disbelief just keeps on rolling. Some things that will never be considered by Love or the studio, but I’ll just toss them in:

• There is a difference between the brooding of Cobain and that of Robert Pattinson. Great actors can play any role, and Bob is destined for a long career in films. He bears a resemblance to Brando and Burton, or Montgomery Clift. Taking on the drug addled, suicidal rock star with a stomach ache would mean washing off much of the sheen that makes him a star and just plain transforming himself into Cobain.
• About the differences between Scarlett Johansson and Courtney Love. Scar Jo is…well damn. I’m out of words. She’s like asking for a pony for Christmas and  getting one. Like roller skating down K2. Like not needing glasses for the first time. Like…anyway. Courtney Love is not an unattractive woman, but she does scream for product. I have listened to Hole for years and admire Love’s music. I think she should be realistic about how she is portrayed in her husband’s biopic. Suggestions on the actress to play Courtney Love? Maybe Juliette Lewis. The thing now is to take a beautiful actress and throw dirt on her to make her look punk. Kristen Stewart is starring as Joan Jett in The Runaways currently, so anything is possible. I can’t wait until the Ramones bio movie comes out starring Zac Efron as Joey. Clay Aiken in a new movie called “This Is Radio Clash” would just be neat-o. Alright, I’m stopping. Have fun at the movies, I’ll wait for the DVD.

March 29, 2010

Here at the Spatula, there are two things that are held in high esteem: movies and “borrowed” ideas. In the spirit of honoring (ruining)  both, I thought it would be good to take a few minutes and blog about Hot Tub Time Machine. Apparently, HTTM made 13 million dollars this past weekend and wound up holding down the #3 spot at the box office. Maybe you’ve heard of this film, about John Cusack and friends getting hammered and waking up in a hot tub that has transported them back to 1986. Will I go see HTTM, the poor man’s Hangover? Probably not. I’d like to catch up on Gone With The Wind and the other movies I missed from the banner cinematic year, 1939. I’m not actually making fun of the hot tub movie, because there are certainly lamer ideas being bandied about by studio executives. A musical version of Last of The Mohicans can’t be far from production. A film about four friends arguing over climate change won’t be any lamer than HTTM, even if it’s titled “An Inconvenient Booth.” Keeping in mind the love of movies and cashing in ideas, I set about creating my own slate of feature films using appliances, plumbing fixtures along with tried and true movie standards. Here goes:

→Sex In The Refrigerator: A group of sharp, urbane women lead lives of savvy, style and sexy wit in a thriving metropolis only to find out that their whole universe is the result of mold in the General Electric of a larger sentient being. Will they save their ecosystem before it’s  defrosted and destroyed? No, in the end they just have random sex and blog about it.  While they shop for shoes, the fridge is unplugged…oh the humanity!

→Laundry Mat Ninja Assasin: Trained for one thing his whole life, our Ninja hero sets out to kill those who would throw other people’s garments on the floor at the local suds-orama.  Beware those who don’t separate their whites and colors, for out of the darkness he comes, Woolite in hand. Nothing more cinematic than death by detergent.

→Microwave Oven Christmas: Vince Vaughn plays against type in this heartbreaking tale in which nobody’s mother gets motor boated. Midway through the film, Jennifer Aniston shows up and our hero learns his calling as the greatest microwave cook ever. Only to die of radiation poisoning.

→The Soup Cans of Saint Mary’s: An inspiring tale based on the life of the first person to tie cans to the back of a car on a friend’s wedding day. His empire is nearly destroyed when the first person to tie old shoes to a bumper comes along. Thanks to love, therapy and Jennifer Aniston showing up midway through the movie, our hero goes on to invent the clinking “kiss each other” glasses wedding reception tradition. The final shot in the movie has him keeling over of a stroke  as the chicken dance plays on in the background. My heart will go on, but thank heavens this post is done.

This is a trailer for what could be the greatest movie of all time (Thanks to Mother Jones/MoJo Blogs):

This morning I was incapable of muttering anything intelligible. This is a normal predawn occurrence for me. Actually, it’s happening now. Around the house I went like Sputnik, just “dint dint dinting” for several minutes before the coffee kicked in. My seven-year old daughter Anna happened to be just waking up and her mother and I started to talk to her about the day ahead. Anna made a crack about wanting to go back to sleep and for us to leave her be, and I made the usual joke to the end “Watch it, or I’ll take you to work with me and let you cook for people.” For some reason this morning, she thought about the remark and asked if the hospital actually did offer a take-your-kid-to-work-day and said that it might be nice to go sometime. I assured her that we recently did start one and that it’s very well-organized and supervised. The kids learn about hygiene and do medical career related art projects. They also get a snack, which is a shame, because I certainly don’t. We don’t let them anywhere near the drugs and no budding Doogie Howser, M.D. has ever performed a procedure. There are certain places in life just not designed for kids. Like on dad’s lap, radioing instructions to pilots.

There was an Associated Press story today about an air-traffic controller directing flights out of JFK New York who has been pulled from duty (along with his supervisor) for letting his son radio simple messages to outbound pilots. The child was on winter break from school and on the evening of February 16, his dad brought him to the desk and let the child participate in verbal directions to waiting flights. Nothing terribly serious and most commands were telegraphed verbatim from father to son and similarly to the pilots. If you look up the story under Yahoo’s AP headlines for the day, check out the comments. 588 responses and for the most part they all echo the thought: no harm, no foul. I’m going to go out on a limb here, however, and say that “no harm” thinking is complete horseshit. This wasn’t Podunk airport, but international flights leaving New York. God forbid that hundreds perish while some grade-schooler is squealing “adios amigo!” to pilots. Everybody had a laugh, the controller will probably get his seat back. All’s well that just goes away. This is no harm America. As long as nobody gets hurt, everything’s cool. The famous Heene kid went up in a balloon, after all, and scrambled up the system. His parents were liable for the damage. How is this any different?

Say Timmy, Ever Seen A Grown Man Land One Of These Things?

Despite my misgivings, I still believe in involving children in the world of their parents careers. When I was in my twenties, there were several bring-your-offspring days a year at the Postal facility I worked for. Now that was scary. Bring your kid to see the Vietnam-era drug addicts and government employment abusers in action. Those kids probably all became Postal employees after seeing people do nothing but smoke all day. That said, I love the idea of my child taking pride in what her grubby old dad does every day. Let her talk to departing pilots? No sir. Onward and Upward (without the ground chatter).http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100303/ap_on_bi_ge/us_child_air_traffic

Several years ago, I remember pausing a beat after hearing the news story that Toyota had overtaken every other auto manufacturer to become the world’s best-selling car maker. There wasn’t a lot of surprise, just the feeling that our cars were about as inferior as everything else we produce in the country. Part of me asked “Why Toyota?” I could stand to see the world go bouncing along in Honda’s or Volkswagens. Toyota? I’d been a passenger (or rented) enough of their vehicles to know that they were the TV dinner of automotive engineering. I know families that have sworn by them since the mid ’70′s, but I never got it. Soulless, plastic smelling vehicles. They transport people from point A to point wherever. That’s it. My crappy Fords were the equivalent of driving folding chairs on wheels, but they had a bit of personality. untrustworthy, slacker personalities. They were college Freshman to the reliable, urbane working cars of Toyota. That said, most people have more fun slacking in college than with uptight workers. I should be in American muscle car heaven with the continuing news about Toyota’s problems with accelerators, computer systems and now power steering. Actually, no.

If you’ve never heard the July 6th 911 call from San Diego by an off-duty C.H.P. officer chronicling the moments before he (and family) were killed by their runaway Toyota vehicle, it’s one of the most harrowing, disturbing recordings one can ever sit through. What this and other deaths in over-accelerating Toyota models managed to do was bring to light a problem years in the making. During the last few days evidence has come to light that Toyota knew there were safety issues on the horizon and worked with the U.S. Government to save millions of dollars, along with thousands of man hours, by seeking a reduction in necessary oversight regulations. Toyota managed to save $135 million dollars by only implementing those safety items absolutely necessary and reducing the scope of faulty floor mat recalls and delaying  side curtain air-bag placement and door lock upgrades. (more…)

Over the past week it may have seemed at times as if I’d abandoned the burger life (having gone two whole posts without a mention of flipping), but no. I was back at my 350 degree desk yesterday, making greased pucks for  customers who had completely tired of ham or turkey. My work in burgatory may be lessened this coming year, as I have some other employment goals to fulfill. For now, it’s just a matter of slinging hamburgers through the holidays and being the guy that fills all of the staffing gaps.

I work in what is now termed “nutrition services,” for a 250 bed hospital (and its regional network of hospitals). The door to our staff office is 300 yards from the morgue. No big deal, really. All of us undesirables are placed in the hospital’s original basement. Environmental Services, maintenance, Laundry and Patient/Associate Feeding are all in the bowels of the oldest building. Generations of nutrition managers have found ways to store materials in out-of-the-way corners and converted closets. So, to fill our convenience store sized soda displays, I make the 300 yard walk down the corridor to a little known storage room. Yesterday, on my trudge, I ran into a funeral director and one his clients. One of them was pacing the hall, the other being very quiet and lying on a gurney. I’m learning that these encounters are all part of the process, to say hello, and to move on. I had plenty of college biology trips to the cadaver lab. At 22 I was assisting a minister, the kind of job that required my constant presence at funerals. Despite these training moments in a life generally misspent, I still never know what to say to either party when I run into them with a cart load of Cokes. I should have gone all Mean Joe Green and thrown a soda and a smile the guy’s way.

I was thinking about cutting back on coffee, which would make this blog even more unreadable. Yesterday I came across a Washington Post article by Carolyn Butler  which made me think that my nervous, over caffeinated rambling had health and sociological benefits. I have not a vice left besides the devil drink and I’m glad that at least it offers some lifestyle benefits. By that logic, I should be the healthiest man alive. Onward and Upward (at least one last time this year).

Coffee may have health benefits and may not pose health risks for many people – washingtonpost.com