Vacation of the Rings

One last post before the end of 2005. The week has been a blur. It has consisted of hours and hours of cleaning and taking stuff to the dump or the Salvation Army (not a group I want to give stuff to, but we lack any non-homophobic charties willing to take our stuff that is just this side of junk), followed closely by hours and hours and HOURS of watching all three Lord of the Rings movies in their extended DVD editions. Damn good movies, and the extras that explained how they make Hobbits small and how Gollum existed at all was fantastic. Also hours of sleeping... stay up late watching Frodo and Samwise emote at each other (now THAT's true love) meant sleeping until almost nine or ten each morning and I woke up exhausted. I may have sleep apnea. Thank god for showers. I've only written a few thousand words of the novel, but it's getting closer, much closer... not close enough for my taste, but close. The big move of the week was us taking out a home equity line of credit (or HELOC to those of us in the know) so we'll have a spare $40k laying around to buy little things like hybrid cars and people to paint the really, really high parts of the walls in our stairwell. I will brooch the subject of using it on an over-sized, wide-screen DLP TV eventually, but I suppose it can wait until 2006.

Perfect Doris

Just in time for the holiday, I wrote this short story about love found and lost. Sort of. Not really tho. Enjoy.

Perfect Doris

From the moment in his life that he was supposed to find women attractive, Donald found most of them repulsive.

It wasn't that he was gay. Men did nothing for him in that sense. It wasn't that he wasn't interested in women and didn't mind celibacy. The pictures of models in magazines and on billboards filled his head with fantasies. In such stills, women represented captured perfection. It was when they moved he had a problem.

The issue was one of age, or more specifically, Donald's fear of the march of time. He found the elderly quite horrible. No one liked to be reminded of their own mortality; for Donald it was a constant. For whenever he looked at a female he could tell exactly what she would look like when she got old. Once pictured, he could think of nothing else.

He thought of it as his personal mutant super-power. However, outside of how the comics say extra-normal perception is a curse more than blessing, there was nothing Homo Superior about it. It was simply an obsessive over-active imagination fixated on the ravages of maturity, much like a child might imagine candy in every strangers's pocket, or serial killer imagining the slice across every naked throat.

It didn't matter the size or shape or age of the girl, Donald instinctively knew what happened with their bodies as they aged. His mind's eye showed the crow's feet, if their hair would recede or thin, the amount of weight gained or lost, how low the jowls or waddle would hang.

He knew that a hawk-nosed skinny girl would turn into wizened old vulture. He could spot any big-boned co-ed destined to be a big momma with thighs of purest cottage cheese just in time for menopause.

The ones with plastic surgery were the worst. He shuddered at every rhytidectomy, rhinoplasty, cheek and chin implant, collagen injection and the nastiest... the chemical peel. To Donald, each procedure added more years than it took away, pulling the recipient down deep into the grave earlier than ever.

In his head, there was no facial feature that could not be twisted or wrinkled, no appendage or digit that would not grow gnarled with arthritis, no spring in a step that would not be retarded into needing a walker or wheel chair.

He stayed alone with his gift for all the adult years of his life, living in a small apartment, commuting into the city to his desk job, always going home alone. That's how it went until the morning at a coffee shop about six blocks from his office when he saw Doris for the first time. She took his order without a smile and filled a paper cup with the caffeinated liquid that would get him through the next hour or two.

He could not stop looking at her face. He glanced away long enough to see her name tag with the old-fashioned name, "Doris," like she'd stepped out of a 1960's movie. She had long, straight, dark hair pulled in a pony-tail. She had pink skin and one hoop ear ring and wore no makeup.

For the first time in his life, Donald saw perfection that his imagination could not blemish.

He did not remember paying for his coffee nor walking to work. His next conscious thought -- "How did I get here?" -- was at his desk. It didn't last long, for as soon as he dove into the busy paperwork that was his so-called career, his subconscious became a pool swimming with images of the brunette barista.

Donald was back at the coffee shop that afternoon, walking the six blocks away just to get another glimpse at her. Again, Doris did not smile as she took his order, filled the cup with stark efficiency, and made his change. As he held out his hand for the coins, he saw she had muscled arms and a spray of freckles on her shoulders.

"Next," she said.

Over the rest of the week he visited every morning and spent the rest of the work day thinking about Doris. Not simple fantasies, those weren't for Donald. He skipped ahead to thoughts of a full fledged relationship. More than a relationship he realized: physical contact. Touching.

"Sex," he said aloud. At little too aloud, as the woman in the next cubicle stood up and peered over the wall at him. She was only 33, but to Donald she resembled a 73 year old pipe-cleaner bent into an odd shape, with the hairy chin one would expect of a pipe cleaner.

The next six weeks were a fog for Donald, which lifted only twice a day (sometimes three times), Monday through Friday, when he would walk the six blocks to the coffee shop. He bought a mug from the place that could be refilled, and it gave him a little thrill every time Doris took it from him. One time, she even touched his fingers on accident, and Donald blushed. He learned her schedule (on at 7:30am, out by 2:30pm most days, though occasionally she stayed late, probably for extra money) and planned his day around hers. If she was bussing tables he tried to be at one. If she was on the register only during a heavy customer rush, he would be sure to have incorrect change so the transaction would linger.

He never spoke to her. He wasn't sure how. After so many years of looking away from women, imaging cataracts clouding their pupils like spilled low-fat milk, he even had difficulty making eye contact. When she did glance at him, which was not often, he looked away, ashamed of his staring.

It was close to Christmas and he was not happily anticipating the week after the holiday. His company would be closed until after New Year's and that would mean he'd have to commute into the city to see Doris at work. This struck him, in one incredibly lucid moment, as a ludicrous thing to do, but that moment did not last. He knew he would make the trip every day that the coffee shop was open.

On December 23 he walked into the shop at 8:15am for his usual morning fill-up, his plastic cup in hand and ready. Doris was not there. Instead, a zaftig 20-something girl who Donald could see was headed for 300-plus pounds by age 45, took his order. Doris was not even in the store. Donald wanted to ask where Doris was, but he couldn't, so instead he said, "Are you open tomorrow?"

The girl sighed with dramatic flair and said, "Yeah. But only until two."

The next day, Christmas Eve Day, was a Saturday, but Donald went into the city anyway. He gave Doris extra time to get into work, figuring maybe she just overslept the day before, and didn't arrive at the shop until 9am.

No Doris.

Donald went to the plump girl (who, really, was going to have a heart attack by age 40, he could tell), handed her his travel mug, and blurted out, "Where's Doris?" His voice sounded high pitched in his head. Maybe a little crazy.

The girl didn't seem to notice his desperate tone. In fact, she seemed used to the question and a little disgusted by it. It wasn't the first time someone had asked about the lovely Doris and Donald felt a flare of jealousy in his gut like he'd swallowed something hot on an empty stomach

"Car accident," plump girl said. "She's fine, but she'll be out all next week."

If it has been a movie, Donald was sure he would have literally reeled out the door, spinning in circles as the camera moved in and out, showing ever growing distress on his face. He felt that inside, but from without he only nodded, paid for his drink and left the café.

The next week was a misery. Donald did not venture into the city but stayed in his apartment for days at a time, venturing out only to the grocery only once when his own internal supply of coffee grounds was running low. Despite the high caffeine level in his body, he spent most of his time in bed, wondering what had happened to Doris, who was responsible for the accident, concocting elaborate revenge scenarios against the perpetrator. Occasionally he found his thoughts drifting toward what may have happened to her physically, but he refused to let them go to far.

By Friday, it was clear to Donald what he had to do. When he saw her next, he had to talk to her. He wasn't fool enough to think that he would proclaim his love and expect that she would reciprocate -- though that was one of his favorite fantasies, usually ending with them copulating in the coffee shop's unseen stock room. He just wanted to ask her out. On a date. That was all. He couldn't see how she would possibly refuse something so innocent. From there, he knew that she would soon see him for what he was: the love of her life.

Showing infinite patience, Donald waited until Tuesday, the day after the New Year's vacation day. It was a regular work day. So, as was the routine, he went into the café and stood in line with his plastic mug in hand.

Doris was there. He could see her for brief glances past and over the heads of the patrons in line, her dark pony-tail flashing like black lightning as she sped around the small area steaming milk and pouring flavor shots and wiping counters. When he got up to the counter, her back was to him. The other barista on duty was starting to ask Donald for his order, but Donald shoved the man behind him in line ahead. Donald waited for Doris.

She finally finished cleaning something on the espresso machine. As she turned, Donald said, "Hello, Doris. I..."

The words he rehearsed in his head were no longer there to say, erased from his tongue and brain, replaced instead by a single, devastating image: Doris, easily a octogenarian, her muscled arms atrophied to bones, her freckles spread into long brown liver spots. Her face was no longer a marble sculpture of perfection, but looked like a skull wrapped in waxy skin, eyes sunken, lips so thin they resembled a wound.

"What?" Doris said.

Donald handed her his cup. He didn't order. He just turned on his heel and left.

"Hey!" Doris called.

"What the hell was that all about?" asked the other barista.

"I have no idea," Doris said.

She scratched absently at the bruise on her forehead, the size of a quarter, the only evidence of her car accident a couple of weeks before, and pondered not for the first time at the weirdness of customers, even the cute one's, like that guy.

The Meme of Four

The trick is to do it fast, apparently...

Four jobs you've had in your life: disk jockey, waiter,  food service manager, editor.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Adventures of Robin Hood, Magnolia, Superman: The Movie, The Incredibles

Four Places You've Lived: Hornell and Ithaca and Wappingers Falls, NY; Northampton, MA; Montclair, NJ;

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch: Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, Scrubs, LOST, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, The Office (original and new flavors), The Sopranos, Entourage, Deadwood... ah, this could go on forever.

Four Places You've Been on Vacation: London, Maui, Caribbean, Toronto

Four websites you visit daily: LifeHacker, DownloadSquad, Neil Gaiman's Journal, BlogLines.com, and about 10,000 others through the miracle of RSS. (

Four of your favorite foods: McDonald's Fries, chocolate cake, roast chicken sandwiches on a baguette, popcorn.

Four places you'd rather be: out to lunch, up stairs, in bed... just about anywhere, really, rather than this basement right now.

Testing PerFormancing

This is a test of a new FireFox extension called PerFormancing that lets me blog directly to my blog without opening up my blog. Yeah it sounds complicated... and it probably is, so I'm not sure I'll use it. but it's fun to play with new toys.

Thanks for the Mammaries

I've been accused by some -- I've even accused myself -- of not liking my collegiate alma mater. I have a hard time articulating my feelings about the place outside of the overwhelming feeling that I did not get out of it what my parents paid for. Whether that is my fault or the college's is probably quite debatable, but I have no intension of blaming myself when there's a perfectly good scapegoat available.

Whatever I may or may not feel, I owe Ithaca College one thing. Because my wife works there, that institution paid for her new breasts.

The secret can now be told! One year ago she went under the knife -- it's the one-year Boob-iversary! -- and my wife says I can sing it to the world: Yes, I've lived the dream. I'm a husband whose wife had a boob job. Take a few seconds, people, to bask in the glory of being me. Jealous? Good.

Of course, my wife -- whom I call Squanto! -- is an iconoclast and didn't actually get what most people expect when they hear "boob-job," the so-called "enhancement" that involves the insertion of silicone-filled soccer balls in the knockers which makes them defy gravity and create a grand canyon of cleavage that exists no matter what position a woman is in. No, not my spouse. She got a reduction to her love bubbles.

She was always more woman than I could handle anyway.

This was a surgery long over due, as far as she was concerned. Several years overdue. Most insurance companies won't pay for any kind of bazonga surgery as it is usually considered cosmetic. This surgery was deemed medically necessary for the wife, however, so our out of pocket expenses were minimal. Despite some scary moments in the days afterwards (bad reactions with pain killers and a moment of almost passing out in her first shower), the recovery was quite easy overall.

Now, every morning that I can get my ass up in time, I watch as my wife examines herself in the mirror and marvels at just how damn wonderful it all turned out.

Happy Boob-iversary, Squant-astic one. The girls look great. And you're not bad yourself.

The wife herself sez: I would recommend that any over-endowed woman suffering under the weight of her bazooms run -- not walk -- to the best surgeon she can find and ask if she qualifies for medically-necessary surgery.

Well, maybe not run -- for fear of black eyes.

All about BOB

How many of you can say you've met Time Magazine's Person of the Year?

Not Bono. I'm not really in U2, tho I like their commercials for the iPod.

No, not Bill Gates... tho I did see him dirty-dance with my boss once at a Studio 54 in Las Vegas.

I'm talking about MRS. Gates, Melinda. I was working at FamilyPC magazine in late 1994 when she was traveling the country on the stump for the product she managed at Microsoft that would soon change the world of family computing as we knew it: Microsoft BOB. Sadly, the only thing BOB gave us was things like animated paper clips in our software. Bill didn't hold it against her apparently, and shacked up her a few years later. And now she's mega-rich and powerful, but probably still hates that frickin' paper clip like the rest of us, I bet. If I ever meet her again, that's the first thing I'll ask just before I hit her up for a loan.

I wonder if I should tell her he dirty-dances with editors when he's away from home?

That 70's Childhood

Because of my advanced age, a friend of mine working on some kind of nostalgia toy story asked me what my favorite toys were in the 1970s as I moved from tyke to toddler to boyhood. It did not take me long to come up with this list:

Star Wars anything from Kenner (but the Millennium Falcon and Death Star Playset in particular)

The Green Machine (like a recumbent Big Wheel -- and still for sale! This is one of the few things on this list I did NOT have, and always covetted, so maybe I'll get them for my nephews...)

System 7 -- seven toy guns in one!

Shogun Warriors (and matching Godzilla and Rodan toys)

Stretch Armstrong (I don't think I had one, but I vividly remember cutting one open to see what was inside...)

Weebles (I saw the new Weebles at Wal-Mart the other day and they suck.)

Pet Rock

Bionic Man action figure (tho I preferred my Mike Power, The Atomic Man with his cardboard playset)

Sonic Ear

Hugo, Man of 1000 faces

Starsky & Hutch Guns (they looked like real guns; I shall never forget having these on the car ride home after first seeing Star Wars in 1977, pretending to shoot out TIE Fighters over head...)

BB Guns (they were REAL guns! I used mine to shoot the windshield of my great-grandmother's car and got in big trouble.)

Any and all Mego super-hero action figures.

Star Trek Phaser flashlight and Communicator Walkie-Talkies (they flipped open just like Kirk's Communicator...wish I'd had the tricorder)

Hand puppet of Animal from the Muppets (I used him to hone my ventriloquial craft as a child... and still have him here in my office)

Connect Four (Game)

Mousetrap (Game)

Simon (game -- the 70's verison of Gameboy!

Underoos (Spider-man, of course)

What am I missing?

Posted by Eric G. at 03:31 PM | Comments (4)

Not To Spoil Anything, but the Monkey Buys It

Around the point where they start to capture Kong, I thought to myself, "I dunno if I want to see anymore of this film."

Not because it wasn't beautiful-- cuz, lordy, it was. And I could seriously watch Naomi Watts walk around in a nightgown for hours. Even in Mulholland Drive. (Okay, maybe not.)

But did I really want to see the big guy take a flying off the ESB? Not really. I mean... he's just an innocent kid, really. And cute. Especially after he played with the jaw of the dead tyrannosaurus. That was freaking adorable. (And why does every CGI character Andy Serkis play die? )

I kept waiting for some little homage to the 1976 remake, which was the first time I saw King Kong, even before I saw the black-and-white stop motion 1933 original. But we don't even get to see Watts dunked in a waterfall like Jessica Lange in '76. Too bad. Thankfully, they also did not include anything about how they transported the gorilla back to NYC, one of the sillier things in the '76 version. But not as bad as the giant snake. And the capture was a lot more dramatic this time than the big pit o' knockout gas and the giant animatronic arm. I can't even remember how they got him in the original. Took away Willis O'Brien's clay, maybe?

(Sorry if I should have included a spoiler on this, but c'mon, if you didn't see it on opening weekend, you know you're waiting for the DVD... that or you figure you seen one giant silverback ape on film, you've seen them all.)

On the scale o' remakes, with 5 as totally worth it, and 1 as a fucking shambles that elevates the original to grander hights, Kong's a five. here's some others:

Starsky and Hutch: 1

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: 2.5

Cheaper by the Dozen: 3

The Producers (based entirely on gut feeling and knowing they cut Nathan Lane's best number until the DVD release): 3.5

Is Kong now the most remade movie with exactly the same plot/resolution in each flick? Three for three... anything else come close?

Now, since they just made the "last" big lizard film for a while over in Tokyo, maybe Peter Jackson could, around the year 2015, do the CGI blockbuster remake the world is really clamoring for: Godzilla vs. King Kong. NO suits. NO claymation. NO puppets. Just pure digital fist-cuffs between legends.

Noisy Toys!

Back at Thanksgiving, as I was getting ready to leave my parents house, I approached my soon to be three-year-old nephew, John, and said that if he was good, at Xmas, I would bring him a lot of "noisy toys."

He said I could take those over to his house right now.

(And I lied about the good part. I'd bring them anyway, probably.)

This morning, my brother called and made John get on the phone and tell me what he wanted from Santa. After he said "some green cake," (which sounds good to me as well), he said, "Noisy toys!"

Paul had no idea where that came from. Me, I welled with pride knowing I was contributing something to John's future materialism and ability to make a lot of annoying noises around his parents.

I've got more shopping to do....

How to Not Get Things Done

The never ending mind games that internal combustion engines play with me continues today when the snow blower started up with one pull on the cord. Working like a charm.

I totally screwed up the buying of Billy Joel tickets, putting too much faith in the ticketmaster.com site and letting it royally ream me in the arse. Luckily, Major Bill still likes them, tho the wife and I didn't like them enough to buy any for ourselves. I forgot they have big jumbo trons so it's not like you can't see anything, but for that I could rent on of his recorded concerts on Netflix.

Okay, the wife is out shopping, the scent of slow cooked drunken chicken (some new dish my wife made up) is in the air, the dogs are sleeping... time to do some writing.

I am a Bear of no Brain at All

It's been a dramatic week at Casa de Griffith. None of which I can talk about really because, I learn from other people's mistakes, and I know that blogging about jobs (even if it's not my job) is a big no-no. Suffice to say, the status quo is still in place, though with potential improvements.

I haven't written much on the novel this week... it's amazing how much incentive NaNoWriMo gave me through November, but ten days into December I've only written 4,400 words. Pathetic. Though I had a nice night Tuesday, where the wife helped me think though a silly plot problem and I was so jazzed I got up at 4am the next day to write it. If only that happened everyday.

I'm a power downloader this week, stealing MP3 music like a mad-man from Web sites (highly recommended: Wishful Thinking by the Ditty Bops; not recommended: My Humps by the Black-eyed Peas... though, admittedly, neither the wife nor I can stop talking about "lovely lady lumps" after hearing it). I also finally found a BitTorrent site that seems to actually work for me, and I've got the first two episodes of Veronica Mars second season on the hard drive. (Go Netflix season one right now. Go. Seriously. Now.)

I will spend the rest of my day with various projects: I need to buy tickets to see Billy Joel in concert at the Carrier Dome in March, for myself, the wife, and my friend Bill and his wife— he'll be back from Iraq after the first of the year. I have to take the snow blower up to the repair place, which means muscleing it into the back of the mini-van. A trifle bit more Xmas shopping, but mostly that's done, so the evening will be spent wrapping presents just like last Saturday was (we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, definitely in the running for the least needed remake of all time, at least until this new Winnie the Pooh with the female version of Christopher Robin was announced by Disney this week...)

Headbag -- Chock full of Heady goodness!

Caper's only birthday gift on his seventh -- his head in an empty bag of dog food.

Klem Kadiddlehopper

What happens after a few hours of writing in my dining room. Not pretty.

I Hope They Bring Back Kahn

From Wired 13.12: To Boldly Go Where No Fan Has Gone Before

As every geek in the galaxy knows, Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise set out on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before. But NBC canceled the show in 1969 after only three seasons. New Voyages aims to fill fans in on what they missed. In September, Cawley and Marshall assembled more than 50 Trek lovers from across the US (and the UK and Canada) to shoot the third episode of what should've been season four. At their current pace of one episode a year, they'll finish the five-year mission in 2054.

This spring they will release episode three, titled "To Serve All My Days." Like the first two episodes of New Voyages, it will be downloadable for free at newvoyages.com. You'll also be able to snag bonus features, outtakes, and commentaries. You can burn it all to a disc and put it on the shelf between your Star Trek the Original Series - The Complete Third Season boxed set and your Star Trek: The Motion Picture director's edition DVD.

Damn. I love this... it's exactly what I wanted to do when I was 11.

You Say It's YOUR Birthday? It's MY Birthday, too. Yeah.

I got automated birthday wishes in e-mail this morning from the Red Cross (who only love me for my delicious blood) and from the forums at TivoCommunity.com (which I like to read about once every three months) and from the forums on my own site. Based on the formatting of the messages, it is obvious both forums use exactly the same software. But it's the automated thought that counts.

I got a personal message from my friend Bill in Iraq, who was born one day ahead of me, so we always remember each other's birthdays. Though I forgot to e-mail him yesterday, cause I suck. I wrote him back and told him I'm grateful to be home on my birthday, the first one in three years (no more Wi-Fi Planet show in December... or ever), which of course I'm sure he wants to hear since he has lived in the Green Zone for a god damn year with the exception of one leave and then another short trip home when he thought he needed surgery. Which he didn't even get at the time. When I asked him if the Army gave him sand-colored camouflaged balloons on his b-day, he said, "No, but the Army did give me a free trip to Iraq. Now that is service. They are also going to remove a piece of my intestine when I get home...all for free!"

I'm going to spend my free time today trying to find a new doctor, since I can't go to the old one, as the group she's under dropped my insurance, probably because I had to fight with them all for a year for my last check-up visit to get paid. Other things on my agenda are to write notes to my friends who've recently had babies, get the title for my car from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (even though I've lived in New York over three years), and well, probably some writing. I didn't write at all yesterday except for work. I read month old comic books I'd been ignoring, which says a lot about that hobby, I suppose.

So, yeah. Thirty-six years old. Weee.