Posts By A.B. Kelly

Spring Break on a Boat

· May 1, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , · No Comments

Welcome back to the Spring Break recap. Last time I wrote about our pitstops at a couple of obscure Orlando locales.

But Disney and Universal were only addendums to the true purpose of our cross-country jaunt. Why drive all the way across Northern Florida for entertainment when you can just get on a boat and have said entertainment all around you? 

Of course, for this comparison to work, the ship would have to be smaller than Disney World, which they aren’t anymore. Or Florida, for that matter. But the theory is still sound. 

At least I’m less likely to lose my rental car while on a boat. 

Wife and I have cruised a number of times, both separate and together. We love them. I know not everybody feels that way. Last time we cruised, it was with a couple trying their first cruise and they’ve had absolutely no inkling of ever returning. 

So we figured nine was a good age to determine if Daughter was going to follow in our footsteps, or if we needed to put her up for adoption. I know the perfect land-locked couple! 

Wife wanted to start with an Alaska cruise, but they don’t run in springtime. They also tend to be on the longer side on the off-chance Daughter decided cruises weren’t for her – a more likely conclusion when it’s thirty degrees and sleeting on the Lido Deck. 

Meanwhile, I looked at a Carnival cruise to Key West and Cozumel, because I’ve never been to Key West and Daughter’s growing into a mini-parrothead. Three problems with that option: Carnival. Spring Break. Key West.

“Daddy, what’s a stripper pole?”

We finally opted for a quick four-dayer on Royal Caribbean to Nassau (the East Cost Ensenada) and the private island that pretty much every cruise line has in the Caribbean that simply is not available on my side of the country. 

We chose Royal Caribbean because it’s a good middle ground between Carnival and the fancier lines. While I don’t remember which cruise lines my family took me on in my youth, as an adult, I’ve always took Carnival. They’re cheap and boozy meat markets, which was precisely what I wanted in my twenties. 

But the last time I rode on Carnival (that Ensenada junket with the noobs), it felt lackluster. I’m sure part off that is my age, but I also believe that Carnival has slipped. Or the clientele has. It’s gone from a “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” booze cruise to a full-fledged “Ain’t nobody on this boat for the ambiance.”

We looked at Disney Cruises for, oh, about five seconds. I know there’s a Marvel Day at Sea, but for that price, it better include a hand job from Chris Hemsworth.  

Princess and Norwegian are more expensive than Royal Caribbean, but have fewer sailing options. So Royal Caribbean is still mass market like Carnival, but just costly enough to get rid of the riff-raff. In the end, it ended up being about the speed we were looking for. Somewhere between dive bar and Ritz. 

Except maybe not on Spring Break next time. 

Sorry, getting ahead of myself.  Let’s start with: 

The Biggest Change

Even though I’ve been on cruises as an adult, this was the cruise where I noticed the most pronounced changes from Ye Olde Cruisin’ days of the 1980s. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t chalk things up to Carnival anymore or maybe it’s because, with a child along, I was not just sipping pina coladas by the pool for the entirety of the cruise. 

But the biggest change I noticed was that most people aren’t just sipping pina coladas by the pool anymore. 

On cruises of yesteryear, EVERYTHING happened on the Lido Deck. Nothing worth doing was anywhere south of the 8th or 9th floor. Everything below that was rooms and a couple gangplanks.

I remember boarding my first cruise with my wife. There was a cute little entry way with a small bar along with maybe the shore excursion deck and a few other general information spots. They had a library with some board games and sudoku puzzles, and I was convinced we’d spend copious amounts of time down here, reading and whatnot with maybe a snifter of brandy. 

The next time I saw said library was when we were getting off the boat five days later. 

The entryway to our current cruise was fucking ginormous. It was three stories tall and stretched all the way from the forward elevators to the aft. Multiple bars and eateries opened out onto a cobblestone-painted floor. And that pizzeria pushed out free slices at a pace I wouldn’t imagine possible. Seriously, there were always people in line, and yet that line never took longer than a handful of minutes.

As we walkred around on emarcation day, I was reminded of that library I never saw again. These fountains and the fancy car were totally rad, but ultimately a waste since we’d likely never come back here. Maybe, just maybe, I could remind myself to check out the Schooner Bar once before we disembark.

But cruising’s changed. Instead of pushing us up toward the pools, most of the activities pushed us back down to this promenade. These were the bars that hosted trivia, that faux-cobblestone turned into the nightly dance club. Hell, even the karaoke bar was on deck five.

There were still plenty of things to do up on the Lido Deck (although I don’t think they call it the Lido Deck anymore). Mini golf and a zip line, the buffet restaurant, and abviously the pools. Pools, plural, because there isn’t really a main pool.  This boat had maybe three of four “primary” pools, none of which were bigger than, say, a 20’x20′ square. If there were more than ten people in a pool, it was crowded, and even if it was empty, nobody’s swimming laps.

But unless you were heading up there for the purposes of the mini golf or the zip line or, increasingly unlikely, the pools, there wasn’t really much of a draw to the upper parts of the ship.

In addition to the Promenade, which was in the center of the ship, there was an open-air Boardwalk area at the rear. It was made to look like a Coney Island or Santa Cruz, complete with a hot dog stand, a carousel, and an arcade (although most of the games in this arcade were broken). This was also where the climbing wall was and, let me tell you, it was legit. It went up six floors, where it gave way to the zip line.

The most impressive addition to these “inside the ship” locations was a park, located on the 8th floor, precisely above (and creating the ceiling of) the Promenade. This park was… I mean, it was a fucking park. Like, plants and winding paths and benches and shit. One of the tables had a chess board, another had backgammon, although I never figured out where to get the pieces. And like the Boardwalk, this was open air. Even though there were another eight decks above it, it actually opened to the sky. In fact, the spot directly above the park is where the ginormous pool would’ve been on earlier ships.

This layout made for an odd ship design, in that most of the balconies were on the INSIDE of the ship. Historically, most of the rooms on a cruise were porthole rooms. Most of the interior rooms went to the crew, but there were still a handful available for those looking for cheaper prices. The balconies were only on a handful of floors. Primarily because they had to be outside the ship. I never understood the purpose, because it can get damn windy on the outside a ship going twenty knots. Not exactly the place to read a book and sip a mai tai. 

Most of these balconies, instead, faced inward, rising above the Boardwalk on deck six aft and the park on deck eight mid. There were still some outside of the ship, but I assume those weren’t as popular. I’d actually spend time on one of those internal balconies, and in fact I saw a few of them being used. Although I assume the ones above the boardwalk stayed loud after hours. There was a spectacular water show that ran most nights at 10:15 pm.

I assume the balconies above the park were quiet. The few times I checked it out after hours, or even during regular hours, it was filled with quiet, contented people.

If we were left to our own devices, I think both Wife and I would’ve spent the majority of our cruise in the park. It’s weird, because if you had asked me what I would like to see added to cruises, I don’t think that a park would’ve made my top twenty. Or even my top hundred because it wouldn’t have even entered my consciousness as something that was feasible or desirable. When somebody brought it up the first time, were they laughed out of the board room? Or did all the other people in the room suddenly start scratching their chin, pondering, which was my reaction when I saw the picture of a tree on the elevator.

Yet each time Wife or I had some free time (me, when she took Daughter to see Mamma Mia, her when I took Daughter to Nassau), we each spent our time reading not by the pool, but on a park bench. If only they could add a couple of chaise longues.

The Card and the App

Ships have been using the key to your room as your primary form of interaction since the beginning of time. Nowadays, they also have an app.

Of course, my dumb ass lost my room key the one time I was left alone. While Wife and Daughter were at Mamma Mia, I sidled into the Schooner Bar for some trivia and a drink, because they had this wonderful concoction called a rum old fashioned. I opined recently that I’m enjoying rum more than whiskey, but I wasn’t sure if it was the rum or the fact that too many whiskey drinks are just whiskey. Well, I discovered on this cruise that, nope, it’s the whiskey. Because the rum old fashioned only had rum with a splash of coconut simple syrup and bitters, and I loved it.  

But when I sat down, I couldn’t find my card. I freaked the fuck out. The waiter, not wantign to lose a tip, says “It’s fine, we can still charge your room.” But I was concerned less about paying for my drink than about how many other people’s drinks I was paying for right now. 

Kinda funny, our reactions. I’m freaking out that my identity is being stolen, while he’s rolling his eyes at something he’s probably seen happen a thousand times. Maybe I should’ve taken a hint from the guy who encounters it more often.

After checking my last two or three locations, I booked it down to customer service to get a replacement. The moment it was in my hand, before I could get out “Is the old card…” the employee assured me that activating this new card deactivates the old one. Again, guessing it’s everybody’s most pressing query.

I also noticed that they didn’t ask for my id when I got my replacement. In fact, I didn’t even have to verify my name. I gave them my room number, they asked “Are you Mr. Anthony?” Jeez, they really don’t give a shit who’s charging what to whose account!

Of course, then I remembered that we had pictures tied to our account. So chances are whoever picked up my card could only use it if they were some overweight middle-aged dude with a mostly graying goatee that he’s still trying to make look hip. 

So, only like forty percent of the cruisegoers. 

And fortunately, you can track all your purchases on the app, which I watched like a hawk for the next twelve hours. 

So yeah, the app. Most of the time, it worked great. There were some definite coverage issues, especially on the back of the ship. Wife set up down on the Boardwalk to film Daughter riding the zip line far above. I was supposed to text her (on the app) when Daughter was next in line, but when the time came, neither I nor she could get the Wifi working to send or receive said text.

We weren’t sure how it would work with only one of us purchasing the internet option, but it’s like on airplanes where you can connect to their wi-fi without getting the internet. So al three of us could access the daily agenda and make reservations and look at our photos. 

Even though the app was more convenient than the paper of yesteryears, I kind missed the daily agendas being slipped under your door in the middle of the night like from a tooth fairy.

My biggest quibble was that, until she’s thirteen, Daughter can’t have her own login for the app. We logged her into her phone as me, which was fine for everything except sending texts, because the text would come from me to me and I wouldn’t get pinged. Seems like getting messages to and from tweens would be a primary purpose of the texting feature. 

One of my biggest quibbles with the app was that, until she’s thirteen, Daughter can’t have her own login for the app, meaning she has to login as me. Feels like getting messages to and from a tween would be one of the primary purposes of the texting feature.

Not that she ever separated from the two of us. Which leads me to:

Child Activities

I remember running around the cruise ships of my youth like we owned the damn place. Me and a group three or four other tweens, who I had never met before and have never seen again, were inseparable from the moment we got on the ship. We even had our own favorite bartender (shocker, I know) who made us “virgin whiskeys,” which were coke with grenadine. We might’ve even opted to stay on the ship for one of the ports in order to hang out.

In contrast, the kids area on this ship was basically a day care center. Basically, you dropped your kids off an isolated spot with “fun” things to do. Some computers and picture books of sea animals… an art room, maybe?  

At least it was separated out by age. The art room and a theater were all ages, but the sequestration rooms (I’ll be nice and not call them prison cells) were designated under 2, pre-K, lower grades, etc. Daughter would’ve gone to the 9-11 room, which is where some of the computers were, but is it really a great idea to take her on a cruise in order to plunk her in front of a screen? Besides, what does one do on a computer that isn’t theirs? Play games that they can’t save progress on? Go on YouTube and continually run into whatever filters they’ve put up? As far as I could tell, there’d always be a crew member babysitting, but there didn’t appear to be any specific events planned.

Furthermore, there was a limit to how many kids could be in any room at a time, so the couple times we checked it out, the 9-11 room was full with a line about ten deep to get in. Daughter peeked at the front of the line, saw it was almost all boys and instead asked if all three of us could go to the art room.

One night, she ate at the buffet and was planning to go to the kids area while Wife and I ate. We gave her the option to check herself in or out, which is only allowed for nine and above (but, again, they can’t text us when they check themselves out). About twenty minutes later, she was back claiming not much was going on, so she just did some art by herself then left. I asked if she talked to anyone or went to the 9-11 room and she said no.

I don’t know how many kids she talked to over the four days, but it could be counted on one hand. Wife reminds me that when we were cruising as kids, the ships housed maybe one-third of the customers the current ones do, so we would regularly run into the same people over and over again. That’s how we made friends.

She may have a point, but I distinctly remember a “Coke-tail” party on the first night where you met some of the other kids. I also remember things planned around the ship, not in a centralized jail. Because then, like now, I’m not exactly a self-starter in social situations, but if you tell me when and where something fun is going to happen, I’ll be there.

One more slight funny: The ship doesn’t have a thirteenth floor. Seems a bit overzealous on the superstition front, unless one of this ship’s ports of call is Camp Crystal Lake, But whatever. 

The children’s area is on the 14th floor which, follow me here, is actually the thirteenth floor. Hey, I think I finally found the day care where all that Satanic worship was going on back when cruises had child activities.

The daily agenda did at least have some teenage activities for 12-17 year olds, so in a few years we might finally be able to pawn our kid off at something more social than an empty art room. And as a bonus, she’ll be able to text us when she’s done.

Pre-Booking

Back in the old days, it was much more difficult to pre-book things. It was still possible, but most experiences, both on the ship and at the various ports, were still available when you got on the ship. 

These days, you’ve damn near got to know your itinerary by t-minus three months. In February, I noticed there were some cupcake decorating classes. Sounds fun, but do you plan that for the day at sea? The first night? How long will it take us to get situated? By the time I discussed with Wife and Daughter, all the cupcake decorating was gone.

Similarly with Mamma Mia, which we booked for midday on the Day at Sea, opposite tons of other stuff. There was a very cool diving show that I didn’t know existed before I got on the boat. Most of them were opposite dinner, which is fine because inevitably there’s a night we hit the buffet instead of formal dining. But how am I supposed to know which night, especially without seeing the menus? 

I still got to see the water show by standing in a walk-up line for an hour. With fifteen minutes to go, they let us take the empty seats of people who had reserved but not shown up. Probably because they booked it back in November.

One of the pre-bookings we did splurge on was the coffee card. For $30, you get fifteen stamps on a card, each one good for a shot of espresso in a drink. So that’s seven double lattes. Bargain!

Except we forgot to follow up on it until our third day. While at the Starbucks on the Promenade for the third time, Wife asked if those coffee drinks were just being comped on her keycard. But no, turns out that it’s a separate card that we need to get at customer service. They can have our Kennedy Space Center tickets for the day we disembark waiting for us in our cabin on day one, but evidently we have to hunt down our free prepaid coffee.

Even worse, the Starbucks on board won’t take the card. It’s only usable at the Cafe. Which serves… Starbucks drinks. We ended up using only half of our stamps.

Meanwhile, the Hibachi restaurant was booked, the sushi making class was booked, the ice skating (yes, they have ice skating) was usually booked. The trivias and Name-That-Tunes were overflowing by a half-hour before their start time.

Maybe it was only like this because it was Spring Break. Maybe under normal conditions the ship isn’t at 110% capacity. But they keep making the ships bigger and bigger, while the theater stays the same size. 

Then again, given my luck with the coffee card and the zipline, had I bothered prebooking stuff on the ship, I probably would’ve picked the shitty option. Oh, you wanted to see the Broadway musical, Mamma Mia? No, this is just three hours of an overly dramatic Italian guy speaking with his hands.

Final Thoughts

I was going to delve into our shore excursions here, but considering the length of this post, I’ll post that one tomorrow. Instead, I’ll give you a couple miscellany.

Our waiter’s name was Boy. It was awkward:

Take my order, Boy!

Boy, could you pour me a coffee refill?

Boy! Rum! Now!

I’m just glad he was Indonesian, because if he was Dominican or Nigerian, I’m sure I would’ve been arrested when re-entering California for committing hate speech. 

His busser, which they call “assistant waiter,” was Jamaican. Thankfully, her name was Eleice. 

My final gripe goes not toward Royal Caribbean, but Elon Musk.

There was supposed to be a SpaceX launch at 5:00 pm the day we embarked. We were still close enough to shore to see the launch pad, so we hung out until 5:30, but saw nothing. Found out the next day that it was delayed until 8:00, when we were at dinner.

Another launch was scheduled at 1:00 the afternoon we returned. We had tickets for the Kennedy Space Center and would’ve been leaving for the airport right around 1:00. This launch was postponed till the following day.

What the fuck, people? 

Boy, get me my space launch! Boy!

Spring Break in Orlando

· April 10, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , , , , , , , · No Comments

One of the side effects of sending Daughter to a different school district than the one I work in is that our Spring Breaks rarely align. Mine comes at the end of third quarter while hs is tied to Easter. This year, a ten-week quarter and a March Easter conspired to give us, along with pretty much every student and teacher from kindergarten through graduate school, the same week off. So how about heading to Orlando for amusement parks and a cruise? Nothing says nice, relaxing family vacation like being sweaty ass to sweaty elbow with half the population of Earth. 

In a random bit of serendipity, I was reading two books while there: Killers of a Certain Age, which starts out on an exploding cruise ship, and FantasticLand, about a Florida amusement park that turns into Lord of the Flies after being shut off from the world in a hurricane. Fortunately, my ship didn’t explode nor did we resort to cannibalism at Disney World, although with the amount of salt they put in their popcorn, they’re clearly hiding something. 

This post will stick to the land stuff, while part two will cover the cruise. 

We spent most of Friday flying east, arriving late at night using the logic of “our bodies will still be on West Coast time.” That logic always falters when the the alarm goes off the following morning on East Cost time. 

On Saturday, we did two Universal parks, primarily so we could ride the Hogswarts Express between the two. On Sunday, we hit the Disney circuit, hopping between Animal Kingdom and Epcot. We skipped Magic Kingdom  because it’s about 90% the same as Disneyland, which we’ve all been to countless times. As sacriligeous as it seems to fly 3000 miles and not go to Magic Kingdom, flying 3000 miles to go to a park that we can visit in an hour seems even worse. 

Universal

The two Universal parks, which could really be one park but then they couldn’t charge extra for a park hopper, is an odd collection of old and new.

I might love the Simpsons as much as the next Gen Xer, but a land devoted to a show that hasn’t been hip for thirty years seems an odd choice. Fortunately for them, Jurassic Park has been either rebooted or sequelled (Kinda hard to tell where the Chris Pratt movies fit in the canon) or else two of their lands straight outta 1991. What, we couldn’t get a McGyver ride? 

None of those are as bad as their Toon Land, though, which is based on newspaper comics. What 21st century kid doesn’t love following the exploits of Blondie, Heathcliff,  and Marmaduke? A Popeye ride! Great! And yeah, sorry kid, I can’t even begin to explain to you who Dudley Doo-Right is. 

Honestly, if it wasn’t for Harry Potter and one block of Minions, Daughter might not have had a clue about any character in the entire park. 

Oh, except for Marvel. 

How weird is it that a property that sold to Disney twenty years ago is still grandfathered into one of their competitor parks? I remember going to Universal Orlando once before the MCU took off and Marvel Land seemed as desolate as Marmaduke Land. Now it’s buzzing and Universal has got to be begging Disney to right that MCU ship soon. Or maybe coax Disney into making a new Popeye shared universe. 

We started our day in Marvel Land, making our first ride of the day the Hulk Coaster, where we became aware of a very stringent riding policy. They don’t let you take anything on the ride. No keys, no cell phone. Nothing. You have to go through a metal detector! 

While I understand the premise (there was a ride at Magic Mountain where I spent the whole ride freaking out that my phone was going to fall out of my pocket and couldn’t enjoy the ride), there’s got to be a limit, right? I mean, they let me keep my glasses on, and while I’m no physicist, I have to imagine that any ride forcing my keys out of my front pocket would long ago have thrown off my glasses.

There are “free” lockers nearby for you to put your everything in. You need your ticket to open it, and our tickets were on our phones. So how the hell am I supposed to reopen said locker? The attendant gave me a piece of paper the size of a business card with a QR code that opens a locker. Somehow that paper stayed in my pocket, whereas my wallet… wouldn’t?

The Hulk ride was great though. It’s an old-school coaster. Unfortunately, many of the rides at Universal were “cutting edge.” Which pretty much just means 4-d.

What is a 4-d ride? Not to belittle Universal any further, but think Star Tours. You’re in a stationary contraption that shimmies and shakes in order to appear to follow something happening on a screen in front of you. 

Universal also likes to add occasional water sprays for emphasis. The most disgusting version of this was on the Kong ride, where the water spray simulated guts and viscera from monsters exploding via machine gun fire. Refreshing! 

I understand the draw of these rides. They take up substantially less real estate than a traditional roller coaster. If all the Universal Rides took up the same amount of room as, say, their Hulk Coaster or Rock-It Coaster, they would have to expand the park. 

I remember when Star Tours was new. It was groundbreaking. I couldn’t figure out how the hell they made it feel like we were gong to light speed, to say nothing of timing all the little jerks and jostles  with the scene playing out “through the windshield.” 

That was 1989.These days, I know that they’re just tipping the container back to simulate acceleration and forward to simulate braking. 

Instead of the contained unit like Star Tours, most of the Universal rides have us in individual buggies jiggling in coordination with an Imax screen. The space in between creates a strange disconnect, as if the motion on the screen and the motion of our ride are separate entities.

It triggers Wife’s motion sickness something fierce. The only way she could ride the main Harry Potter ride was by closing her eyes the whole time. She didn’t even attempt the new Harry Potter “Escape from Gringotts” ride. We opted for the Simpsons ride instead, only to find it the same damn 4-d.

Speaking of Escape from Gringotts, I didn’t expect it to be so dang spoilery. Daughter finally started getting into Harry Potter books last year. We’re making her read the books before seeing the movies. She’s finished the first two and started number three on this vacation. While a few of the other rides might have some mild spoilers, it’s not like knowing there’s a World Cup of Quidditch will somehow make book four any less enjoyable. 

I kinda assumed there was an unwritten rule that rides take a generalized approach to their characters. For instance, the Guardians of the Galaxy ride at Epcot Center takes place after the first movie, because it goes in depth about the planet they saved in it, but Groot is full-sized. Either they didn’t know he was going to age slowly over the next five movies or else they figured, hey it’s a fucking ride. It should be enjoyable even for the people who haven’t consumed every goddamn ounce of intellectual property.

But as you’re standing in line for Escape from Gringotts (so it’s not even a quick thing that can be overlooked), there are a number of Daily Prophet newspapers with headlines like “Dumbledore Dies,” “Severus Snape New Hogwarts Headmaster,” and “Harry Potter: Public Enemy #1.” And, of course, now Daughter wants to know WHEN Dumbledore dies and HOW IS IT POSSIBLE they’d give it to Snape and all I can say is, “You’ve got five more books to get through and they ain’t getting any shorter.”

Can’t wait until Disneyland opens the “Iron Man is Dead” ride. 

I don’t mean to harsh on Universal. In all reality, despite my minor quibbles about the Harry Potter rides, the lands themselves are phenomenal. Fully immersive in a way that even the new Star Wars land at Disneyland, which opened afterward, fails to match. We spent hours there and didn’t even feel like we’d experienced it all. The butterbeers, the wands, almost every shop from both Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley presented the same way they were in the books and movies. While Daughter and I were in line for the Gringotts ride (because it was 4-d), Wife excitedly texted us that she’d found Knockturn Alley, the “dark wizard” portion of Diagon Alley. 

It was a fun day. I grinned from ear to ear the entirety of the Hagrid’s Motorbike ride. Instant acceleration, both forward and backward!

Okay, fine, one more quibble. Our last ride of the day was the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, a ride with a soundtrack. Each person picks their own personal song that blares in their ears throughout the ride. You start with five or six genres and, at least when I rode it a decade ago, that genre would lead to six choices of songs. I think last time I picked an Aerosmith song.

This time, each genre only had one choice. Daughter picked pop/disco in the hopes of a Taylor Swift option, but was instead saddled with “Waterloo,” by ABBA. It’s fine. She loves that song.

My only choice in the rock/classic rock genre was, similarly, a song I love, so no harm, no foul. It was “Welcome to the Black Parade,” by My Chemical Romance. I’m sure anybody older than me might not enjoy a song from 2006 being the only option in a classic rock genre, but it’s a kick-ass, balls-to-the-wall song that anybody should be fine riding a fast roller coaster to.

Or at least the middle portion is. If you haven’t heard the song, it has a little bit of that “Bohemian Rhapsody” vibe, where it starts out a little ethereal, dramatic, and then progressively gets faster and louder. If I were to pick a random spot in the song to coincide with a fucking roller coaster, it would be right around the 1:50 spot, and about two minutes later, when the ride would be ending, there’s an instrumental key change that could transition us back into the station.

Unfortunately, they started the song at the beginning, so it was JUST getting to that rocker part at 1:45 as we were pulling back into the station. It’s like “rocking out” to “There’s a lady who knows all that glitters is gold” only to dial down your excitement level right as they’re getting to “And as we wind on down the road.”

Seriously, people, it might be hard to sync up thirty songs to a roller coaster, but if you’ve only got five, figure out how to make the soundtrack match the action.

But you know what? Universal offers to put rum in your Icee. So, in my book, they can do no wrong.

Animal Kingdom

We started our Disney day at Animal Kingdom. And while I’m not the first person to take this photo, if the photographer’s gonna put his umbrella there, I simply can’t be a grown-up.

How was the actual park? It was fine. Maybe I’m a little spoiled because the San Diego Wild Animal Park (or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days) kinda sets the standard for these open-air zoos, but Animal Kingdom is definitely worth checking out. 

The major draw of the animal portion of the park was the Africa Safari. Defeinitely some cool animals there. Lions and rhinos and giraffes, oh my! Got to see some gorilla kids climbing all over their very exhausted mother. Who says they’re not related to us?

One of the coolest exhibits was a glass looking both above and below the water of a hippo exhibit. Dude was just laying there while a shit-ton of fish swam around him, including up his nose and into his ears. Gotta be some good grub forming on an animal that sits there for hours at a time. He was so stationary that people around me thought he wasn’t real, that somehow amongst acres and acres of live animals,Disney just decided to put a statue of a hippo for the fish to swarm around. 

Not saying Disney wouldn’t stoop to this level if required, but considering there was no unicorn exhibit, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that this hippo wasn’t the same one from the Jungle Cruise.

Then again, they did have a dinosaur land. Fortunately, it was mostly a kids area made to look like a fossil dig. No velociraptors. How Disney would that be? If Universal is going to keep their Marvel land, wait’ll they see how we steal their Jurassic Park mojo. 

The Asia area didn’t have a bus safari, but did have a walking one. The highlight was probably the tigers.

No, you know what was the highlight of both Asia and Africa? Aviaries. Not only did they contain colorful birds, but damn, them birds was active! All swoopin’ and cawin’ the whole dang time. Not sure why I regressed to second grade vocabulary there, but I don’t know much about birds, so you’ll just have to accept, “Dang, dey got lotta dem bright, purdy burdies.”

Unlike Africa, where the animals were the main draw, Asia contained rides. Unfortunately, we limited ourselves to one hour-long line in the hopes of utilizing our park hopper. So we skipped the water rapids ride and opted for the Everest Expedition. We originally laughed at the description, “Rush through the Himalayan mountains on a speeding train while avoiding the clutches of the mythic Abominable Snowman,” because if you replace train with bobsled, it’s pretty much the exact same description as the Matterhorn. 

Except it was substantially more fun than Matterhorn. Faster, less predictable, not as bumpy. At one point, you’re going backward. Hagrid’s Motorbikes at Universal did the same thing, as did Guardians of the Galaxy in Epcot. Seems that’s the “it” things in rides these days, but as far as I know, no California parks have followed suit.

We also never made it to the Pandora because, well, if dinosaurs don’t belong in a modern “Animal Kingdom,” then for sure the make-believe blue things found in Avatar don’t belong. Seriously, who the hell decided that a park that’s based on science and nature should have a land devoted to fiction? I go to the zoo to see real raccoons, not Rocket Raccoon.

I know Disney’s got to mark its territory like a dog in heat, but sheesh, dudes, do you have to be so obvious about it? It’s not like you would confuse Norway with a Frozen land or any… I’m sorry, what do they have at Epcot? I wasn’t aware Arondale was a member of the United Nations. How’d they do in the last Olympics?

Then again, if the line for the Avatar ride was ever less than 100 minutes, I would’ve put all my opposition to Avatar Land aside. 

Although if I had known what the next couple hours would contain, I would’ve just stood in the damn line… Not that my upcoming pergatory was Disney’s fault.

We left Animal Kingdom around 3:30, which was later than planned, but should have still given us a solid five hours at Epcot. 

Unfortunately, we lost the damn car.

Daughter was convinced we had parked in two sections away from the park gate. I thought we were three away. Wife believed, naturally, that we were parked somewhere in the middle.

We were all wrong. 

But that didn’t stop us from looking for, I shit you not, more than an hour. We went up rows. We went down rows. We went IN BETWEEN rows, because it had a bumper sticker (weird for a rental car) that we’d been using to distinguish it from the bazillion other silver mini-SUVs, but Animal Planet had double spots where the first car pulls all the way up and the next car pulls in behind them, so the bumper sticker would likely be blocked by whatever car was behind us.

I swear we must have checked every damn car in the parking lot. Multiple times. Obvioulsy we didn’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few cars I checked ten times or more.

You know how when you first can’t find your car, your first, absurd thought is “Oh my God, it’s stolen!” and then you calm yourself down and realize, it ain’t stolen, it’s just a row or two away. Well, we went through that process initially but, after twenty minutes or so, I was back to thinking maybe it WAS stolen. But who the hell would steal a rental Chevy Trax with 20k miles on it from a Disney parking lot? 

Y’know, even though we rented it from Hertz, there was a previous rental paper in it from Dollar. Maybe one of them put an APB out on a missing car that we comehow triggered coming onto a Disney property with cameras everywhere. It wouldn’t be the first time Hertz accidentally got their cusomters arrested, right?

Although doesn’t pretty much EVERY rental car in Orlando make its way to a Disney parking lot? It’s clear I just need to walk up and down the rows again. I know it’s a Chevy, but did it have the Chevy symbol on the front, too? Ooo, Ooo, I think I see it. No, that’s just the same damn Kia I’ve already been fooled by multiple times.

I must’ve cycled through that progression a minimum of five times. We split up and looked in different directions. We come back together in that “in between” section. I kept hitting the open and close and alarm buttons on the key fob. Nothing. The damn thing was just not in this dimension.

While Wife and I are mainly incredulous, Daughter is having an existential crisis. There is no car. There has never been a car. There never will be a car and we will have to hitchhike back to our hotel. Or cut out the middle man and Uber straight to jail. 

After she starts bawling, we finally cut our losses and take the shuttle to Epcot. Animal Kingdom closed at 6:00, so if we waited until, say, 8:00 and took the shuttle back, there should be a lot fewer cars for our nondescript rental to hide.

Epcot

Yeah, I can’t really give you a great rundown of Epcot. We planned on getting there by 3:00, but instead it was close to 6:00. 

I was also low-key stressed the whole time. Not really worried, but going through a “What is reality” fugue state. It was going to be 9:00 when I got back to Animal Kingdom and was getting windy and I didn’t have anything warm to wear and who the hell knew how long I was going to be wandering around in the mostly empty parking lot and if it turned out Hertz or Dollar or some random criminal had removed the car from the premises, then I was going to be hanging out in the parking lot till midnight. And we skipped lunch at Animal Kingdom assuming we’d do the World Showcase at Epcot, but now it was too late to do that and I was getting friggin’ hungry and the Animal Planet parking lot might or might not have the car, but it definitely didn’t have a Chick-fil-a.

But, hey kid, Spaceship Earth! It appears to have last been updated in 2005. 

Which is twenty years fresher than the Fignment ride.

We did manage to utilize our 7:00 am virtual queue for the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, which is totally different than the Guardians of the Galaxy ride in California. The latter was formerly a Twilight Zone ride (built forty years after Twilight Zone was a thing) tha drops you up and down. The Florida one is like Space Mountain except the indivudal cars detach from each other and spin independently. While it was hilariously fun, it was right up to the limits of my dizziness. Good thing I rode it this time, cause I don’t know if it’ll still be fun for me in another five years. 

They also blare a loud song as you’re going through the ride. We got “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” but allegedly you can also get songs like “September” or “Disco Inferno.” 

And unlike Universal, the songs actually go along with the ride.

After two days of non-stop amusement parks, we were ready to get on a boat. Check back next week for my review of the cruise.

The Car

Oh, you’re probably curious about the car. Yeah, it was where we left it.

I left Wife and Daughter at Epcot shortly after 8:00- to take the shuttle back. They don’t run as often once the destinateion park is closed. If Family hadn’t heard back from me by the time Epcot closed at 9:00, they were going to shuttle to Magic Kingdom, which was open until 11:00. 

The parking lot was probably less than ten percent full and, more importantly, the remaining cars were spread out. I started walking from the park’s gate instead of taking the parking tram, because we had walked to the park in the morning, and, when I was walking back to meet them at the Epcot shuttle, about halfway there, I had that, “Wait a second, this part of the parking lot looks familiar” thought. 

Yeah, instead of being in between tram stops one and two, it was actually before the first tram stop. Daughter was more right than me, but all three of us were way off.

I drove to Epcot, made damn sure I remembered where I parked this time, and then went to meet them in the park. Except I had left my tickets with them. Fine, it was almost 9:00, so they would be coming out any second. After they stopped at the Starbucks. And the gift shop. And the pin traders. 

Thankfully, nobody was in the mood to attempt Magic Kingdom.

Ten Years of Curling

· February 26, 2024 · Musings · , , , , · No Comments

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Do you realize that February, 2014 happened, like, TEN YEARS ago?

It seems like only moments ago. 

The president was a physically fit, well-spoken fifty-something. The most-recent pandemic was over ninety years in the rear-view window, never to rear its head in modern society. Newfangled social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram showed immense potential for regular people to interact with respected journalists and celebrities, who we wanted to learn the profundities and musings of.

Like I said, it’s like nothing has changed.

But it’s been ten years.

Something else from February, 2014, was a Winter Olympics. Sort of. They were in Sochi, a city Russia just kinda made up but didn’t bother actually constructing, except for an intricate doping and cheating infrustructure. Who needs working toilets when you can just swap in someone else’s pee?

Again, I doubt Russia’s gone on to do anything more nefarious in the intervening decade.

While watching said Olympics, I engaged in my once-every-four-years tradition of trying to figure out what the fuck curling was. I mean, who sweeps ice when it isn’t even dirty?

One of my friends claims I used to say curling was dumb. I never said that. What I always said was “Hell, I could do that.” So in February, 2014, I signed up for a learn-to-curl.

Turns out I was right. I CAN curl.

Not at the Olympic level, mind you. Many a beginning curler thinks they’re only a year or so from competing for nationals. Not so much. It only takes a half hour to learn, but decades to master. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve followed up the shot of my life with a shitstorm that looks like I’ve never been on an ice rink before.

When I first started curling I was obsessed, which you can probably verify by searching the number of curling related posts in this blog between 2014 and 2018. 

(Holy crap, I’ve been blogging here for more than a decade, too? Crazy! Even crazier than my starting a decade after blogging was edgy in the first place. Based on that track record, I should be migrating to Substack in another seven years or so. Maybe I’ll just keep at it until blogging, like a mullet, is hip again, which should happen right around when both Twitter and daily newspapers go out of business. So, like, fifteen months from now. Give or take.)

The dearth of curling content on this blog the last five years shouldn’t be taken as a waning interest. Maybe I don’t watch every single professional match like I once did, but I can still talk your ear off (or write your eyes off) about Korey Dropkin’s chances of finally getting past John Shuster or whether Rachel Homan or Tracy Fleury should be calling strategy for their team. 

It’s always funny when a professional tournament has been broadcast recently, because us novice curlers all of a sudden start calling impossible shots that we saw the pros make. 

But after a decade of curling, it’s a matter of “been there, done that.” I’ve beat Olympians and I’ve lost to noobs. I’ve had games where I place my entire team on my back and singlehandedly deliver victory and games where I give away the winning points to our opposition. And for blogging purposes, there’s only so many ways I can describe a double takeout or a picture-perfect draw to score one point that prevents the other team from scoring five. 

So instead, I waited for a big anniversary to see if I can enunciate it all at once. 

Here’s one thing I know for certain: the losses stay with you a lot longer than the wins. I think that’s human nature, some ingrained caveman instinct that forces us to fixate on the mistakes.  Want to know what I did right those times I beat Olympians? Couldn’t tell you. But holy crap, I can still explain that one time in 2018 that I held the broom in the wrong spot, causing my skip to miss the shot for the league championship. 

Had one of those moments last year. Through pool play, we were the number one seed out of a thirty-six team field. The team we were facing was a bunch of noobs, most of whom we had mentored at some point over the previous year. We were up 6-0 with two ends left, had chances to run up the score but didn’t want to be assholes. Guess we should’ve been assholes. We gave up one point in the penultimate end, and figured they’d shake hands, down by five without hammer. It’s the Spirit of Curling thing to do, to not make a team that’s advancing in the playoffs play longer just because you’re being eliminated. But these guys were new, so whatever, all we had to do was take out three of their eight stones and walk away with the win.

I don’t know how many sports analogies there are for losing a five-point lead in the final end of a curling match. Maybe the infamous Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl collapse? Except the Patriots had an entire half to come back and, well, they were the Patriots. We were the one-seed, so it would be like if the Falcons had instead come back against the Patriots. 

The more realistic analogy would be a ninth-inning collapse. We were the L.A. Dodgers taking a six-run lead into the ninth inninng against the Oakland A’s. Or a double-a team. We needed three (take-) outs. We only got two. Even worse, we had the final shot, so it was a top-of-the-ninth collapse, followed by maybe a bases-loaded double play to end the bottom of the ninth.

How does something like that happen? If you want, I can give you a play-by-play. Even though it happened more than six months ago, I remember every bad decision, every missed shot, and every bad decision forced by those missed shots. The only reason I don’t wake up in cold sweats thinking about the guard that, instead of removing from play, I actually pushed backward into the house, thereby removing the only stone we’d actually put in the right place, is because I can’t fall asleep while thinking of it.

What about those other games in the tournament? After all, we were 3-0 going into the playoffs. Can I tell you what shots I made? What smart calls we made? No. I can’t. 

And you might think it’s a recency bias. Except I’ve played plenty of times since then. Literally yesterday, my skip and the opposing skip said I was lights-out. I kinda maybe remember a couple shots they were talking about, but they’ll be out of my mind by the next time I curl. The shots all run together. 

Except the bad ones.

I tell my students about this curling tendency when I return tests or essays. Instead of focusing only on the parts they got wrong, they should notice the things they got right. Inevitably, they’ll get questions they thought they were guessing on right, and it’s informative to determine if it was a lucky guess or some nascent inkling that they can trust more in the future. if they only  review the guesses they got wrong, it won’t improve their test-taking skills.

Does it work? Not usually. Because no amount of teacher blabbing will counter human instinct. 

My skip, by the way, hasn’t been back on the ice since that shitshow. Granted, he has multiple children with continuous sporting activities, so it was already determined he wouldn’t play in Fall League. But we’ve had a couple more sign-ups since then and he hasn’t come back yet. I know the feeling. I almost didn’t stay for broomstacking, the post-match tradition where the winners buy beer for the losers. There’ve only been a few times in my life I’ve been a poor sport, but dammit, I had every right to be a bad sport after that game. Even if it meant no free beer.

In the end, I swallowed that humble pie and let those hooligans buy me beer. My skip was there, too. That’s the last time I saw him.

Unfortunately, I’m not currently at the top of my game. I think I steadily improved (okay, maybe not “steadily” but “mostly upward trajectory”) for the first seven years or so, but then I hit my late-forties. Now, as my wisdom continues to advance, my knees and back retreat. I usually know what shot needs to happen, my body just doesn’t comply.

Add to that my eyesight. I wear glasses while driving now and the target is far enough away that I should really be wearing glasses. But I’m a right-hander with a dominant left eye. Without glasses, I can compensate by craning my neck a bit to the right while delivering, so my left eye is above my right arm. But somehow with glasses, it doesn’t work as well, like I’m looking through the wrong lens and can’t get it pointed in the right direction. It also didn’t help that I started wearing glasses during Covid, when we had to wear masks, and the fogging is much worse on the ice. 

So yeah, no glasses. I’m pretty much curling blind. With a bum knee.

At least there’s a group of noobs who think I’m the greatest curler in the history of curling. I skipped for them, which is usually a no-no (to prevent a team bringing in a ringer to make the most important shots) but allowed because they’ve only played a few games and wouldn’t really know what to do otherwise. I made a few clutch shots. A few weeks later, I skipped for them again and made some clutch shots again. At the end of the season, they were 2-5, with the two wins being the two times I played for them. Wait till they face me in a bonspiel a year from now and I can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

And no, in case you’re asking, I don’t remember any specifics about the good shots and good calls I made for that team.

Among the crazier things I’ve done while curling is my two outdoor bonspiels. I blogged extensively about one of them, back in January, 2020, right before the whole damn world shut down. My second one was a few weeks ago. Hopefully no armageddon follows suit this time.

The first one had mostly good weather. Lows in the mid-teens, highs in the mid-30s, mostly sunny skies (not that we play when the sun is out, because even a sub-freezing sun will melt the ice). On Sunday morning, when we were in the semifinals, it started to snow and that changed everything.  We couldn’t figure our asses from our elbows and before we knew it we were down 6-0 and, boy, that drive back to Boise was going to take longer in this weather so maybe we oughtta just shake hands and be on our way. 

At the more recent outdoor bonspiel, it snowed the whole damn time. And you know what? It was an absolute blast. Nobody gave a shit if they won or loss (okay, we all wanted to win, but we weren’t exactly watching game tape to wonder why we didn’t call the out-turn on shot five), and were primaily concerned with getting in touch with those Scottish originators of the sport, throwing granite on some dark frozen loch. A snow shovel and push broom replaced our expensive carbon fiber brooms. Seeing the snow puff off the ice with each push of the broom made me realize why those Scots probably started sweeping the damn ice in the first place. Kinda like whatever caveman cracked open the first crab leg, I might not understand what inspired him, but I’m glad he did it.

Oh, and drinking. We were also concerned with drinking. Twenty-five bucks got all-you-can-drink beer for the whole weekend. And I don’t know about you, but I hate feeling like I got cheated out of an all-you-can-whatever. By the end of a crab feed, I’ve degenerated into full caveman mode.

The biggest thing I’ve gotten out of my decade on the ice is all those curlers I’ve met. It might not surprise you to find we’re a quirky bunch. Competitive but humble, analytic but brash. We spend three minutes moving the broom left and right by five inches to ensure the exact right spot, then miss our target by ten inches. 

One time we came back against a team that was beating us something like 7-1. It took three or four ends for their collapse to play out, during which they were getting more and more frustrated. The skip and vice started disagreeing about what shot to call. As the skip headed down to take his shot, the vice muttered something under his breath. The skip turned around and shouted, “No, if we’re going to talk about this, let’s fucking talk about it. Right Now!” We all looked sideways at each other, thinking we’d be broomstacking alone. Nope. They were all laughing about it ten minutes later.

In general, curlers are amazingly polite and fun. Part of it’s because they’re Canadian or Midwesterners, but there’s also something called the Spirit of Curling, which says you compliment another team when they make that unbelievable shot that plunges a dagger into you. And you don’t beat when you hit that very same shot. Again, it could be a Canadian thing, but more than anything it’s that you know how quickly the fates can turn. 

I recently played in a bonspiel near where my sister lives. Her husband had always asked questions about it, so I said she should come out and watch. I told her to ask people watching what was going on, because a) if you’re just watching, you don’t know what is going on; b) other curlers can usually explain what’s going on and which shots are good or bad (even if they are on the other side of a partition disagree with the call), and c) curlers love nothing more than explaining curling to non-curlers, especially when a game is in motion.

By the end of the game, my sister was banging on the glass and giving thumbs up when I hit a good shot (I remember that one – it was a simple draw behind a guard, but it blocked the other team’s access to the button). After the game, she was asking us all sorts of questions, talking us through how the various ends played out, and why we changed strategies at certain points (Again, the other curlers explaining to her probably said, Okay, they’re trying this shot, but I’m not sure why”). At one point, she turned to my teammates and said, “You have to understand, my brother’s always been a dork, so when he started posting about this weird curling thing, I had no idea it could be so intense.”

Said a hell of a lot of learn-to-curlers, too.

When we travel, there’s a tradition of trading pins from your curling club with the teams you play against. What we do with these pins varies. Some put them on equipment bags, others on their clothes. One of the guys at the recent Montana bonspiel put all the pins of clubs he’d been to on his right lapel and those he hadn’t yet been to (ie we’d come to him) on the left with the goal of eventually moving them all over to the right side. 

Me, I got a corkboard and a map.

So what do I have to show for a decade of curling?

Well, here ya go:

Whiskey and Rum and Gin, oh my!

· January 18, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , , , , · No Comments

As I approach my fiftieth birthday, I find my choice of liquor changing.

I don’t know if it’s actually changing or if I’m finally just coming to terms with preferences I’ve had all along. Who would’ve ever guessed I wanted juniper?

For this post, I’ll steer clear of the beer and wine sections, although I could talk your ear off (or write your eyes off, technically) about hoppiness and tanins. 

No, for this post, we’re sticking to the hooch aisle. 

Speaking of hooch, moonshine’s come a long way. We were looking for something to put in our eggnog last year, and discovered a butter pecan cordial tasted wonderful. Unfortunately, once we burned through it, we couldn’t find it again. But when Wife sent me to the liquor store to find a replacement, we found a delightful line of sipping creams from Sugarlands Distillery in Tennessee. It even comes in a mason jar. 

Since then, we’ve discovered a whole line of sipping creams from Sugarlands. Dark chocolate coffee and electric orange and peanut butter, oh my! No eggnog needed!

Technically, sipping cream isn’t moonshine, but Sugarlands has some of those, too. Their moonshine comes in about twenty different flavors. I’ve only tried the apple pie and hazelnut, but there’s a good ten more I’d be willing to try right now. I mean, maple bacon moonshine? That’s either divine or disgusting. No in between.

Unfortunately, sipping creams and moonshine are probably too varied and niche to make much of a blip on my alcohol choices. There aren’t a lot of bars you can go in and order moonshine. At least not in my stretch of the woods. 

Whiskey, meanwhile, is dropping down my power rankings. I figure if Deion Sanders can make (and publicly announce) power rankings for his own children, then whiskey, you and I are gonna palaver. 

Whiskey used to be one of my go-to’s. Jack and Coke is about as solid of an option as you can have in the “one alcohol/one mixer” department. Even better, now that I’m in my older ages and have to think about sugar content, a “Jack and Diet” works great as well. Jack and Coke Zero is even better.

Ooo, you know what else goes well with Jack Daniels? Sparkling water! Like, the flavored ones that have just a tiny bit of sweetness. Or, if you prefer, the super sweert ones, although if I’m venturing into New York Seltzer territory, my alcohol needs to venture into vodka territory. Whiskey has enough residual sweetness on its own.

Okay, so if I’ve just delved into countless wonderful whiskey concoctions, why is whiskey dropping down my power rankings? Because most whiskey drinks aren’t of the concoction variety.

Here’s the deal: I don’t like straight alcohol. I like mixed drinks. 

That being said, I like my cocktails to have the flavor, and the potency, of their base spirit. Don’t give me a damn half-shot masked by seventeen juices so I can pretend I’m drinking when I’m really not. I make a pretty mean margarita – it’s one of the main reasons my wife married me – and whenever people ask me my secret ingredient, I say tequila. They think I’m joking, but most margaritas bury the tequila. If done correctly, the bitterness of the tequila is a great counter to the tartness of the limes and sour mix.

My other secret ingredient is orange juice. Trust me. Put a splash of orange juice in your margarita.

What does this have to do with whiskey? Most whiskey drinks are ninety percent whiskey. No, adding two drops of bitters or a crushed cherry at the bottom of a drink doesn’t all of a sudden turn it into a mixed drink. 

One of the Camptathalon guys decided to replace the opening beer with an old fashioned toast. Isn’t that just whiskey, I asked. No, he assured me. It also has simple syrup and bitters and… and… a ginormous ice cube. He’d been working on his craft and claimed he’d found the perfect ratio. 

To me, it tasted just like whiskey. 

That ginormous ice cube made it worse because it didn’t melt fast enough. My usual m.o. for drinking whiskey is to order it on the rocks and let the ice melt. It might seem wuss, but James Bond’s drink of choice in the Ian Fleming books was a scotch and spring water, which is more or less what I have after the ice has melted. And if I drink my whiskey the same way James Bond does, I think I can hold onto my man card, thank you very much.

Obviously James Bond switched to a made-up drink when he moved from the pages to the screen. A vodka martini was not a thing, because vodka has no flavor, meaning all you get is the vermouth. And who the hell wants vermouth? The best martini instructions say, “show the glass a bottle of vermouth, then pour in the vodka.”

And yeah, I’m okay with vodka martinis, which you might note are pretty much all alcohol. Especially the martinis I drink, because I don’t like olive juice or anything overly salty. I’ll usually order it with an olive, then take it out about halfway through to avoid the last twenty percent tasting like brine.

While on the subject of martinis, let’s take a look at the first spirit rising up my power rankings: gin.

I swear I didn’t used to like gin. I mean, I never ordered it because I was neither a) seventy years old, nor b) a nineteenth century Cockney.

But it’s not like I never drank gin and tonics. They were blech. No thanks. Move along. 

Do you know what I’ve realized in the years since then? I don’t like tonic water. Similar to the olive juice in a martini, it overpowers and destroys whatever it’s paired with. I have a friend who will drink tonic water by itself, which I would only resort to in the middle of the Sahara Desert. I mean, seltzer water isn’t great, but at least it’s got some fizziness to it. Take away those bubbles and add the bitter undertaste of an industrial dump and you’ve got tonic water.

So recently I started wondering if maybe it wasn’t the gin I disliked, but the tonic. 

I also realized I was okay with juniper. It’s got that nice rosemary smell I enjoy in my food. Drinks, too, as there are some fine winter ales and lagers with a juniper bite. Far preferable to hops, if you ask me. So it stood to reason I wouldn’t mind a juniper-infused vodka.

The other thing that got me curious about gin was a Baha Men song. No, not “Who Let the Dogs Out.” Did you know they have an entirely other song? It’s called “Gin and Coconut Water.” The lyrics aren’t very intricate. Mainly “gin and coconut water, gin and coconut water.” Surprising considering how erudite they are when inquiring about responsibility of various canine’s locations.

After hearing the song a few hundred times, I thought, “I like coconut water.” And most liquid refreshments can be improved about with a shot of hooch. Fruit punch? Meh. Hurricane? Sure!

I looked up the recipe and discovered that a gin and coconut water also includes a lime. But it would be really weird to call a drink “gin and coconut water and lime.” Still, Tom Cruise’s character in Cocktail approves of the proper nomenclature. If the drink was called a Baha Men, I never would’ve looked up how to make it.

So I made one. It wasn’t the greatest, but it had potential. So like any good lush… I mean, scientist… I tinkered with the ratio and order of ingredients. After a few tries, I realized that half booze and half mixer (plus a half-lime), stirred pretty ferociously, created a refreshing little drink.

Strangely enough, the last line of the “Gin and Coconut Water” song refrain is “I cannot get it in America.” Um… we have gin. We have coconut water. Not sure why the Baha Men would have trouble getting it here. Maybe bars don’t carry coconut water?

I haven’t really branched out into other gin drinks, but I could certainly see a limited number of other mixers that would go well with juniper. Not as omni-useful as vodka, perhaps, but I think with certain flavors, it might be superior to vodka. 

The other alcohol finding its way to my gullet (and liver) more often is rum.

As with gin, my earlier distaste for rum came not from the booze itself, but from its most common mixed drink. Rum and Cokes are disgusting.

As a molasses drink, rum is effectively made from syrup. Syrup is also the primary flavor and consistency of cola. Putting the two together ain’t the kinda double down like when you’ve got an eleven against a dealer’s six. More like you doubled down on a five with the dealer’s showing an ace. 

Don’t get me wrong, I like sweet drinks, but there’s something about rum and Coke together that puts it into maple syrup territory. Might be fine to put a rum and coke on pancakes, but I don’t want to guzzle it. It reminds me of the caramel drinks at Starbucks, which don’t taste like caramel. 

Yes, I know caramel is probably the most popular flavor at Starbucks. Rum and Cokes are popular, too. Shit, throw IPAs in there, as well. I’m not here to explain why everyone else is wrong, just to explain why I spent the last twenty years of my life assuming I didn’t like rum. 

Except for the caramel coffees. You’re all wrong on that. It tastes nothing like caramel. 

Unlike gin, I never completely avoided rum drinks. That would be almost impossible. Can’t be a Jimmy Buffett fan or take a cruise without a steady supply of mai tais, daiquiris, and pina coladas. If you’ve been reading me for a while you’ll know I’d damn near eat dog shit if it was coconut flavored. Perhaps there’s a theme in that both of my new alcohols can be paired with coconut, although coconut water doesn’t really taste much like coconut. Still, if whiskey is looking to make a comeback in the next power rankings, it knows who it needs to be hanging out with.

The reason I never equated pina coladas and daiquiris with an enjoyment of rum was because I assumed they just masked the rum. Most establishments equate boat drinks with weak drinks. Not sure how that argument held water with mai tais, but after a few mai tais, I’m not one to quibble about minor inconsistencies in my alcohol choice. 

A bar in Hawaii started my course correction on rum. They offered a floater of dark rum on top of their pina coladas during half hour. I doubted I would like it, but with the prices they were charging for those typically weak boat drinks, I took whatever booze I could get. 

Similar to tequila in margaritas, the additional rum actually complemented the drink, almost as if, follow me here, a pina colada… tastes better… with rum. I know, I know. Shocking! Every cruise ship I’ve ever been on has lied to me! 

I’m not quite as trepidatious about branching out on rum as I am with gin. There aren’t many flavor profiles that makes me think “this really needs more juniper.” But plenty are improved by rum. The only one that isn’t is Coke.

I’m learning about when it should be light rum and when it should be dark rum. Never spiced rum, though. Captain Morgan and Coca-Cola might be equally to blame for my early dislike of rum. 

The last thing I need to branch out into is higher end gins and rums. There’s an old adage that you should only use well drinks for cocktails or else you’re missing out on the quality. I call bullshit. You’ll note I said Jack and Coke, not whiskey and Coke. Because Jack tastes better with Coke than, say, Jim Beam or Wild Turkey or Southern Comfort. Granted, I’m not going to mix Whistle Pig or Johnny Blue with Coke, but if the base liquor has a better flavor, the cocktail benefits. 

And people who sip tequila are just insane. It’s one of the top indicators of sociopathy, right up there with using a magnifying glass on ants in one’s youth. I bet the Night Stalker sipped tequila. 

Hannibal Lecter seemed like an Old Fashioned kinda guy. 

(Yes, I used one real killer and another fictional.)

I suppose I should put a recipe at the end of this post. Although if it’s like any of the other recipe posts I see on other people’s website, I’m about 5,000 words short of the introduction.

Here ya go:

Gin n’ Juice:
1 oz. Gin
1 oz. (or more) Juice (of your choice)
Ice.

Instructions: 
1. Mix ingredients.
2. Lay back.
3. With your mind on your money and your money on your mind.

Camptathalon 2023

· January 5, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , · No Comments

The thirteenth iteration of Camptathalon happened the second weekend of June, 2023, at PiPi Campground. Not our first choice, but half the campgrounds in California (including where we had reservations) were still under some variation of snow, flooding, or tottering trees after the eternal California drought ended with a vengeance.

Four (and-a-half) competitors attended. Garrett was on the disabled list but still came up to partake in the few events that don’t require a rotator cuff. Chris D, meanwhile, caught Covid the Tuesday before, so he tapped out, much as I did last year. That makes Covid an event-winner in three of the last four years. In 2020, we still managed to get in a streamlined event in September, but, again, not at our choice of venue and time.

As always, I offer no more context than what is provided in the Log. Trust me, the setups wouldn’t make it nearly as entertaining.

Thursday
10:42 (via Text): “Don’t need, but I would gladly smoke one.”
12:56 Tentcot Instructions: “Spread both legs to fully open positions.”
1:10 Chris (first arrivee) returns to campsite to find it full
1:28 First beer. Not counting the many Chris drank last night.
1:34 Sparky undecided on Loser Libation. Two options. One is “just terrible.”
1:40 Sparky opens first beer.
1:41 Chris doesn’t want to be the outcast. Opens beer.
2:19 Chris is reading “Mastering Mule Deer.” Hoping to start a dating app?
2:59 I don’t think anyone’s ever torn a rotator cuff tossing butter.
3:15 It might rain a little, but nothing like last year. Knocks on firewood.
3:26 In-depth discussion of relative sizes and uses of skewers, chopsticks, cherries, and sausages.
5:27 Have already burned through the first bag of Honey Dijon Kettle Chips.
5:30 “I don’t know. What else are we going to do?”
   “Sit around, drink beer, and listen to the baseball game? No seriously, that’s my plan. To sit around, drink beer, and listen to the baseball game.”
6:45 We bust out the manly battery-powered blender for margaritas

6:47 I’m no mixologist, but that might need more ice.
8:00 Children at the adjacent camp make it difficult to urinate.
9:02 Sun’s down. At least now we can pee.
9:06 “Should I not say fuck with kids around?”
   “No, fuck those guys. They took 36 tries to back their fucking RV up. It’s like the tarmac at LaGuardia, for fuck’s sake.”
9:33 One bottle of tequila down. The last round of margaritas might be a little strong.
9:37 Wait, James Dean and Dean Martin are different people?
9:52 Inaugural canasta ends. We finally light the fire.
11:29 Not sure what the fuck happened next door. Dude drives up, wakes campers, yells about staying two weeks in one spot. Definitely not a government employee working at 11:30 at night. Said he was the manager and they’re banned from all camping sites on highway 88.
11:45 Dude’s gone, but neighbors appear to be packing up.

Friday
6:35 “Banned” neighbors still there.
6:38 Family with kids (other side) already awake, so first piss of the day must be in proper facilities. Goddamn anti-American. A first amendment right. The founding fathers believed in peeing outdoors.
6:53 Sparky takes first drink from “Reigning Camptathalon Champion” mug

7:03 There’s no picture of how to pee, so I was totally lost
7:55 Discussion of least-offensive sports teams. Consensus at this point: Carolina Panthers and Milwaukee Brewers
8:19 Beginning of Frank Sinatra Friday
8:27 My mouth tastes less like ass now.
8:56 Grilled chunks o’ ham and cheddar on English muffins for second breakfast
11:00ish Head over to “closed” campground. We totally could’ve camped on this river.

12:15 No swimming or float tubes? Come on, fun police!
12:40 Chris questioning the life decisions of some cows.
12:42 “Lube. Lots of Lube.”
1:05 Pass “banned” neighbors as they’re leaving campground. We consider warning them they’re heading toward Highway 88.
1:25 Fuck it, we’re taking over their spot. Tag expired last Sunday.
1:33 Open the Pube Mixe
2:42 Bets on when Rick will show up: Sparky – 3:17, Tony – 3:33, Chris – 4:20
3:03 Rick arrives. Sparky wins absolutely nothing.
3:11 Four tentcots, looks like a goddamn commune
3:30 Flag is raised

3:31 Official Opening Toast: Old Fashioned. 
3:59 I don’t think that’s an according-to-Hoyle strawberry shortcake.
4:20 NinersPussies.com
4:28 When he wears a sweater, he has tits.
4:32 I’ve got your Pike’s Peak right here.
4:41 Last. Henry Weinhard’s. Ever. 
5:03 “Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
  “I’d be concerned if he did.”
5:23 I’m just gonna start throwing my wood at you.
5:26 Sparky was a late bloomer. He didn’t become interested in boys until 5th grade.
5:59 That’s tactile engagement. That counts.
6:22 Camptathalon Event #1: Poker
6:46 Chris all in. Loser Libation reveal: Stella Artois Cidre with a shot of Fireball.
6:47 The Loser Libation that didn’t make it: alcoholic energy drink
6:50 There’s no smoked salmon in that fucking river, you retard.
6:56 This cigar is like sucking a dick
7:18 Chris “wins” Loser Libation
7:33 Sparky catches queen on the river. Rick throws cards.
7:48 Tony wins poker on trip-5’s
***Standings after one event: Tony – 5, Sparky – 3, Rick – 2, Chris – 0
9:06 “I’ll do anything fucking once.”
9:30 Friday Night Draft. But first… cigars.

Draft: Worst Sequels:
First Round: Sparky: Smokey & the Bandit II, Chris: Phantom Menace, Rick: Ghostbusters II. Tony – Superman III
Second Round: Tony: Rise of Skywalker, Rick: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Chris: Attack of the Clones, Sparky: Cannonball Run II
Third Round: Sparky: Pitch Perfect 3, Chris: Godfather III, Rick: Caddyshack 2, Tony: Ocean’s Twelve
Fourth Round: Tony: Moonraker, Rick: The World is Not Enough, Chris: Halloween 3, Sparky: Star Trek V
Fifth Round: Sparky: American Wedding, Chris: Free Willy 2, Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Tony: Thor: Dark World

SATURDAY

6:49 What did they call golden showers before 1942?
7:02 “Since it’s cooler than usual today, we might need to take the butter out earlier than usual.”
   “God fucking dammit.”
7:23 We’re getting showers of the non-golden variety
7:50 “Doubt I’ll drink more than 15 beers today.”
    “Not with that attitude, you won’t.”
7:55 Opened the mini baseball figures. Tony gets Freddie Freeman, Giancarlo Stanton, Rick gets Josh Naylor, Austin Riley, Chris gets Spencer Torkelson, Mike Trout vintage, Sparky gets Juan Soto, Justin Verlander.

8:14 Had to move Spencer Torkelson to second base.
8:23 Did I hear there’s a possibility of ham?
8:38 You’ve never opened a beer with your car door jamb? The fuck is wrong with you?
10:10 Camptahtalon Event #2: Cornhole
10:15 Garrett arrives with no tent, no pants. Crocs only.
10:33 “I think that shot’s called a rim job.”
10:40 Usually I wear pants.
11:04 Sparky wins cornhole
***Standings after two events: Sparky 8, Tony 8, Rick 4, Chris 0
11:08 There is no pussy that is that good
11:25 Rain returns
11:50 Motley Crue’s latest hit: Vaping in the non-gender-specific restroom
12:00 It’s supposed to be nice and moist, but it’s like beef jerky in here.
12:12 Alright, let me find my balls.
12:21 Camptathalon Event #3: Home-run derby
12:40 We haven’t had a good jack-off in a while.
12:43 First round: Tony 3, Rick 2, Sparky 1, Chris 0
12:53 Wait, can you explain this jack-off thing?
12:57 Second Round: Tony 4, Sparky 3. Rick 2
1:03 First 100 fans will receive a free jack-off bobblehead
1:20 Sparky wins final round 3 to 2
***Standings after three events: Sparky 13, Tony 11, Rick 6, Chris 0
1:45 You wouldn’t fuck Joan Jett. Joan Jett would fuck you, my friend.
1:50 You could eat an old shoe if you had to.
2:04 “And I can wipe my own ass, but let’s talk about other things that don’t matter.”
2:10 Lockeford Sausages for lunch.
2:14 Ted Danson is a good-looking guy, but I wouldn’t jack-off with him.
2:15 I fucked this up and this is now really uncomfortable.
2:29 You just want to be able to yell “Who’s the Boss?” when you’re banging her.
2:53 Camptathalon Event #4: Butter Toss. Target: Meghan Markle

2:57 Sparky and Tony engage in a toss-off for last place
3:01 That thunder sounds ominous
3:04 Garrett “wins” Butter Toss, but is on the ineligible list. Chris gets 5 points, Rick 3, Sparky 2, Tony 0

***Standings after four events: Sparky 15, Tony 11, Rick 9, Chris 5
3:18 Should we wait till after bocce to light that fire? Phhhttt. Blows out fire.
3:20 Camptathalon Event #5: Adventure Bocce. If Tony finishes first, Sparky last, he will win Camptathalon. All other outcomes, Sparky wins. 

3:36 “That would’ve been nice for you to just kiss me over there.”
3:44 Adventure Bocce paused on account of inclement weather. Current scores: Chris & Tony have 6 each, Rick and Sparky have 3.
4:00 Lightning less than a five-count from thunder.
4:13 Been an awful lot of thunder since we threw butter at the departed queen’s blessed granddaughter-in-law
4:41 Exhibition Event: Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza
4:43 No, I wasn’t paying attention to the instructions
4:47 What sound does a goat do? Meeeh.
4:54 That’s just because he’s usually rubbing his nipples on a regular basis.
4:48 I notice you’ve got a wet spot over there.
5:10 You need to jerk off more.
5:14 Much like lube.
5:30 Pulled pork dinner
6:53 Once talk turns to whorehouses, it’s tough to pull it back.
7:03 “Did you shit yourself?”
   “Wait, I’m getting to that story.”
7:11 I had to wear my shit pants down the hallway
8:00 Rain is done, but Rick refuses to finish Adventure Bocce. Forfeit gives him 0 on the event, meaning Sparky wins Camptathalon 2023. With an asterisk.
8:28 The Dude that does the shit or whatever.
9:17 Rick creeps over to the neighbor’s camp asking if they want his marshmallows.
9:31 “I fucked up the joke. I apologize. I will sit here quietly now.”
9:43 The first time harlot and Rosie O’Donnell have been used in the same sentence.
10:11 First Camptathalon blood since 2013.
10:13 They drew first blood, not me. They drew first blood, not me. 

Sunday
6:53 Westbound and down. I hope the greasy spoon’s open.

2023 Concerts

· January 2, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , , · No Comments

Going to start off 2024 with a couple of 2023 reviews. Not a stupid ranking of my best or anything, just my usual concert review and, later this week, the results of the twelfth annual Camptathalon.

Unfortunately, I only attended two concerts this year, so my concert review might be a bit sparse. Fortunately, one of those concerts had three bands.

Stevie Nicks

I didn’t see Stevie Nicks this year. 

I intended to. Unfortunately, we had a couple of last minute cancellations. First on her part, then on mine.

The first aborted attempt came in March, when Stevie Nicks canceled a week or two in advance for health reasons. Wife and I had babysitting all lined up for the makeup date in December until Daughter did her best impression of the Exorcist the night before. Figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to sick (literally) the projectile vomiter on grandma, so we sold the tickets the morning of the show.

Meh. We’ll see her next time. Even if I’ve had fifty years worth of chances to see her and she already had to reschedule the majority of this tour for health reasons. Old musicians tour till the end of time.

Speaking of which, we contemplated seeing Jimmy Buffett in May, but skipped it. I’m sure we’ll catch him next time he comes through… what was that? He won’t be touring anymore?

Hmmm….

Concert #1: 990s Redux

One of my local Indian Casinos (How are we not calling them Native Casinos or Indigenous Casinos yet? Indian Casino is still the preferred nomenclature? If you say so) opened a fancy new concert venue. See if you can spot the trend in the acts they’re booking: Air Supply, Kenny Loggins, Gladys Knight, Rod Stewart. 

That’s right: Fans with Disposable Income! 

My concert lineup? The Spin Doctors, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, and Blues Traveler.

When I invited my friend, he asked if there might be better uses for the time machine I’d obviously found. An asinine statement, because if it was 1994, these guys would all be headlining, not opening for each other.

Gin Blossoms were also in town the same night, playing the state fair. Some bookie is doing a terrible job, because every single person in attendance at one of those concerts would absolutely attend the other if they weren’t on the same night. 

Before the concert started, one of the background songs was “No Rain,” by Blind Melon and I thought, “Wait, are they one of the bands we’re seeing tonight?” Turns out they weren’t making a surprise appearance. They were probably at Gin Blossoms.

Spin Doctors

Weirdly enough, this was the draw of the concert. I’ve seen Blues Traveler and Big Head Todd countless times, often performing with each other. Never seen Spin Doctors. Hell, I didn’t even know they still existed as a band or as living humans.

Turns out they are, in fact, alive. But the first thought I had when they came out on stage was, “Damn, how’d that guy get so old?”

I was kinda expecting the same shaggy hippie dude with the oragnish-brownish beard from 1992. Dude had, Gasp!, white hair. 

No, I’m not looking in the mirror, why do you ask?

They started their concert with “What Time is It?” The song answers the title question with the time 4:30 and the rejoinder, “It’s not late, nah, it’s early.” When written, that was presumed to by 4:30 in the morning after a night of partying. Now that we’re all north of 45, the lyrics seem to refer to the early bird special at Denny’s. 

They were promoting a new album, because of course they were. Doubt I’ll run out and buy it.

I learned that “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” was not about a jilted love interest, but a step-mom that his dad had finally dumped when he was a teenager. Go listen to the lyrics again. Totally makes sense.

Other than that, they were pretty standard opening band fare. Other than the fact that I knew all the songs. Minus the new songs. 

Now that I think of it, they played no songs from in between their popular album and their new album. Kinda think they might’ve taken most of the last thirty years off.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters

I’ve seen Big Head Todd many times. In fact, they might actually be the band I’ve seen the second most. At worst, they’re in third place.

I’ve never really set out to see Big Head Todd. I don’t own any of their albums. I don’t check their tour dates.

That being said, I’ve always enjoyed them. If I see they’re on to a tour, my response is usually, “Oh, hey, Big Head Todd. I like those guys.”

So as long as fandom doesn’t require something like knowing a band’s songs, I’d say I’m a Big Head Todd fan. Let’s see, there’s “Bittersweet.” Oh yeah, and “Broken Hearted Savior” (although if you were to have told me that song was the Goo Goo Dolls, I wouldn’t have argued the point). And then there’s… um, well… Did I mention “Bittersweet?”

Well no more, dammit. Since this concert, I’ve asked Alexa to play songs by Big Head Todd and the Monsters (the last word of which she says with a Boston accent) at least… seven or eight times.

Damn, they’re good. They play a variety of different styles, mostly rooted in blues but with heavy influences from other genres. And Big Head Todd himself abso-fucking-lutely shreds on guitar. His solos were not too short, not too long, and energetic to the extreme. 

By the second song of the night, I was in full, “Yeah, this is what I feel like every time I see them!” It was a cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” Not much to that song, really. It’s a whole bunch of “Boom, boom, boom, boom”s and “Bang, bang, bang, bang”s in front of that one riff from every George Thorogood song. 

You wouldn’t think a guy other than John Lee Hooker, or maybe George Thorogood, could own that song, but holy crap, Big Head Todd made it his bitch. There’s something about finding fifty different ways to sing the same four words over and over. I think my favorite was when he just said “Ooooo” while rolling his finger over his adam’s apple. Right before shredding out a couple of solos. 

It probably doesn’t hurt my enjoyment that these dudes dressed exactly like me. Todd wore a Hawaiian shirt while his bass player wore a Baseballism t-shirt. It’s like they’re parallel universe versions of me, where I focused my formative years developing musical talent instead of the propensity to snark on an anonymous blog. 

I wasn’t connecting with the keyboardist, though. He never smiled. It’s not like he was frowning, not upset or concentrating. He just stared off into space a lot as if  unaware that he was showing up in the background of most of the camera shots on a huge Jumbotron. Since the concert, I’ve found other videos online where he’s got the same disinterested look. Somebody must’ve told him by now, right?

Aside from the keyboardist, however, the rest of the band seemed to be having a blast. Todd is grinning from ear to ear during most of his songs. The only time his demeanor changed was when he was singing the soulful songs, because you can’t be someone’s broken-hearted savior if you look like you just hit a walk-off grand slam.

Seriously, these guys are having way too much fun for having been at this for thirty years. I certainly don’t approach my classroom with the googly eyes of a twenty-something anymore. Meanwhile, Big Head Todd kinda stole the show. 

One minor quibble: They played a fun song about Annie Oakley’s husband called “Don’t Kill Me Tonight (over something I might’ve said this morning).” Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be recorded anywhere. Their last album came out in 2017 and their website says nothing about anything forthcoming. Meaning for the foreseeable future, the only place I can hear that song are crappy audience videos from other concerts, none of which seem to capture the fun energy I associated with it. I know bands make zilch on albums these days, but come on, people. I want high quality stuff that I will listen to for free.

Other than that, I loved these guys. 

Just like all the other times. 

Hopefully I’ll remember that this time. 

Blues Traveler

It might take some mental gymnastics through compartmentalized memories to figure out if Big Head Todd are the band I’ve seen the second most. There’s no question whatsoever about which band I’ve seen the most. I can’t say precisely how many times, but it’s for sure double digits. 

Pretty sure I’ve even written about previous concerts once or twice on this blog, so instead I’ll focus on what made this concert different than some of the others. 

Last time I saw Blues Traveler was at the state fair. At the time, I mentioned that John Popper’s harmonica, while as fast as it’s ever been, didn’t have the force and drive that it had in his (and my) youth. I opined that his losing the weight, while doing a bang-up job of keeping him alive, might have hurt his harmonica-blowing ability. 

Glad to say I stand corrected. The acoustics at the Indian Casino are substantially better than at the state fair. Who woulda guessed? The mouth harp was powerful and piercing. 

Then again, he seemed to be growing a bit of a gut back. Not an unhealthy Jabba girth like he was known for in the 1990s, but a “Dude, I’m in my sixties, what the fuck do you expect” gut. And I’ve seen him at plenty of outdoor festivals and been fine with his harmonica before. So who knows why his harmonica was a little lackluster a decade ago. But I’m happy to report it was kick-ass this past summer. 

The other thing that sounded much closer to the Blues Traveler concerts of my youth was the open-ended jams. Vegas casinos aren’t known for letting their concerts drag on. The concerts are only booked to get you on the premises. Once you’re there, they don’t want you wasting time listening to music. I guess the state fair runs a tight schedule, too. The fireworks have to go off at a certain time and that funnel cake ain’t gonna eat itself, so the bands get eighty-five minutes and not a second more. 

The Indian Casinos don’t seem to mind, though, so Blues Traveler returned to their roots as a jam band. There were two or three times throughout the concert when John Popper completely left the stage. And not just to grab a quick swig of water or anything. I mean, he left for a good five minutes while either the guitar player or keyboardist or drummer, or some amalgamation thereof, jammed by themselves. 

As such, Blues Traveler was on the stage for close to two hours but only played about ten songs. Big Head Todd, meanwhile, was on for half the time but managed to fit in 15 songs.

I kinda forgot this was even their thing in the first place. Considering how music is consumed these days, it’s not like I’m throwing a live albums into the cd player anymore. I ask Alexa or Pandora or Spotify to shuffle songs by them and similar artists. 

The crowd reactions to these extended solos has changed since all of us were twenty-five. One of my favorite concert statements ever was when some random dude walked up to me at a festival and said, “I hope these ‘shrooms last as long as that last solo.”

Now most of the attendees were fifty-somethings who finished their second beer sometime during Spin Doctors and, dammit, have to get up in the morning.  A few people left the first time Popper left the stage and a fair number more the second time. When they finished their set at damn near 11:15 pm, the exodus was on long before the encore. 

Then they started said encore with a ZZ Top cover instead of one of their own damn songs. 

Learn from Big Head Todd and play those covers early. 

Concert #2: Ed Sheeran

My second concert of the year was a little-known redhead crooner from East Anglia. 

What? The guy who sings “Thinking of You” is multi-platinum? Was Rick Astley unavailable?

Wife, back when she was still Fiancée or maybe even just Girlfriend, gave me one set of instructions: If Ed Sheeran ever toured the United States again, I must take her. It took a decade or more, but he totally made up for it by scheduling his Northern California show near our anniversary. I referred to this year as the “Ginger Anniversary.” 

As a bonus, the tickets went on sale right before Christmas last year, so I got credit for both Christmas and anniversary in one gift. 

Notice I didn’t say “for the price of one.” If you add in parking, this concert should get credit for the next five birthdays, too.

We saw him at Levi Stadium, home of the 49ers, which is next to an amusement park. Evidently they close said amusement park on the days of 49er games, but not for concerts, so we paid $70 to park at a nearby college and walk about a half-mile. You’d think the powers-that-be would know that concerts sell more tickets than football games, because you can’t sell field seats to a football game. 

It’s why I found it odd when Ed Sheeran announced that he’d set the record for most tickets ever sold to a Levi Stadium event. “Even the Super Bowl,” he said.

We all know he really meant Taylor Swift. 

Not saying Ed Sheeran’s more popular than Taylor Swift, just that he has a smaller stage. Because, much like the Super Bowl, a sell-out is a sell-out is a sell-out. It’s all just a matter of how many seats there are to sell.

Speaking of Taylor Swift, while I didn’t endure that particular grandiosity this year (fortunate for my sanity, perhaps unfortunate for my blog traffic), when I heard about the songs she sang, it was mostly songs I had heard of. Some Taylor Swift songs I might not know the name of, but when someone says “You know that song, it’s the one that goes…” I realize that yeah, I guess I do recognize them as playing in the background somewhere.

I kind of assumed Ed Sheeran would be the same. Even if I could only positively identify three or four of his songs (and only half of those by name), I assumed I’d at least be able to recognize half the concert by osmosis. 

Not so much. I knew more songs at Big Head Todd.

At least I was decked out like a true fan. Ed Sheeran sponsors one of my favorite (minor league) soccer teams. Whereas the fancy Premiere League teams have sponsors like Samsung and Adidas and various airlines, in the minor leagues, they just emblazon somebody’s tour plans on the front of their jersey. I know you’re not supposed to wear shirts from the band’s previous tour at a concert. But what are the rules regarding sports jerseys featuring the current tour? Answer: I’m still not sure, because nobody seemed to notice that I was repping Ed Sheeran’s favorite soccer team. They probably just wondered where I got the concert tee that was slightly different than all the other concert tees.

I must not’ve been the only Sheeran noob at the concert. He started the concert saying he was going to play songs off all his albums. Some for the casual fans, but a lot for the big fans. “And if you just got dragged here, you’re in for a long two and a half hours.”

At one point, he introduced a song that he wrote for another artist while he was “taking time off” between albums. Finally, I figured I wouldn’t be the only one who didn’t know the song. Nope. Everyone else was singing along. I found out later it was a Justin Bieber song, so I’m not too disappointed that I didn’t know it.

About ninety minutes into the concert, he finally played “Photograph,” the first song I could positively identify. He introduced that song with “If you don’t know this next song, you’re definitely at the wrong concert. Even your grandma knows this one.” That tells you how among my peeps I was. 

One doesn’t hear comments like that at a Blues Traveler concert, although I’ve gotta think more people get dragged to obscure bands because it’s harder to find another fan. Like last year when I accompanied my friend to Airborne Toxic Event. 

It seems to have the opposite effect, though. Paradoxically, the more obscure a band is, the greater percentage of the audience knows the ins and outs of their entire catalog. Now I wonder how many of those record Taylor Swift crowds spent the entire concert watching a ballgame on their phones.

Which is not to say that’s what I was doing. On the contrary, the music geek in me was astounded. 

One-man bands should be at a circus, not filling football stadiums. And make no mistake, Ed Sheeran is a one man band.

I didn’t realize that at first, primarily because he had a band out on stage with him. Instead, I thought him the most arrogant musician of all time. Check out the set-up of the stage. 

You’ll see he’s on the rotating stage in the middle. All of his backing musicians are on islands far removed from people’s attention. Sheesh, dude. I’ve seen Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, you name it. They all put the band on stage with them. Seemed kind of a dick move to keep the stage all to yourself. I bet even Taylor Swift acknowledges that her songs have bass lines.

After the first song, the band left their individual stages and Ed Sheeran was all by himself. But in song two, background music was still coming through. Wow, now he isn’t even letting them be seen. If I wanted to listen to some pre-recorded shit, I could’ve taken Daughter to the Kidz Bop concert. 

(Bonus points to Wife for taking Daughter to the Kidz Bop concert)

After that second song (first without the band), Ed Sheeran stopped to explain what he was doing. Everything was live. He had a series of pedals on the floor that basically worked as an 8-track machine. So he’d depress a pedal on the floor and beat his hand on his acoustic guitar for an eight-count. When he took his foot off the pedal, that recording would repeat over and over, thus becoming the drum beat for the upcoming song.

Then he’d lay down a bass riff. Not on a bass, just using the bottom two strings on his guitar. Then maybe a chord progression to fill in the rhythm guitar, although sometimes he played the rhythm guitar live. 

The most amazing tracks he laid down were the backing vocals. While I didn’t know the song at the time, I’ve since learned the name is “Don’t.” That four-part “ah, ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah” going through the song is all him. He’d keep playing the track over and over, adding a higher harmonic each time, until it sounded like a full choir behind him.

Look, I’m not saying I’m shocked at this technological innovation. Billy Joel sang all the parts in “For the Longest Time,” even though it sounds like he’s got a full a capella troop behind him. Bobby McFerrin recorded an entire album with no instruments other than his own body. And yes, I’m fully aware the Beatles were never in the same room at the same time while recording one of the most cohesive albums of all time. 

But here’s the difference. Bobby McFerrin wasn’t mixing that fucker on a stage in front of 70,000 fans who paid top dollar. When Billy Joel performs his song in concert, he’s got back-up singers. The Beatles stopped touring halfway into their career because they wouldn’t be able to play their new songs live. Ed Sheeran’s doing it all live.

And the mixing didn’t stop once he started playing the song. Because nobody wants to listen to a song that has the same four-note bass riff for five minutes straight. If you’re at a regular concert, some musicians drop out for part of each song, either because it’s written that way or they need to drag on a cigarette. You know that part in every concert when all the instruments except one suddenly cut out and then the tambourine player starts clapping their hands above their head to encourage the audience to try to keep the beat, even though the audience is  notoriously bad at keeping said rhythm once the band players stop their direct instruction?

Well, Ed Sheeran kept all those facets by stepping on and off the various pedals while running around the stage at full speed. He steps on two pedals and the bass and drums cut out. By the time he’s done with his guitar solo or eight bars of crooning, he’s moved to the next set of pedals and the bass comes back in. He does the “Clap along” instructions to the crowd while he’s walking to the next set of pedals and, magically, the drums come back in. Since he’s got the pedals at five different spots on the stage, he’s continually mixing in and out sounds behind his live music and singing. But, again, it’s all him.

So yeah, consider me a convert. Not that I’ve listened to a ton of his music since the concert, although there has been a time or two I’ve heard a song (like “Don’t”) and thought, “Wait, where have I heard that before?” Oh right, I saw it mixed live.

At a football stadium.

Ed Sheeran Addendum

Ed Sheeran’s opening act was a guy named Russ. He was… interesting. Couldn’t really decide if he was rap or r&b. But considering the number of f-bombs he dropped, probably the former. 

He started his act by flipping off the entire audience. Like for the whole damn song. I think he was trying to flip off “the haters” or whatever, because the name of the song was either “Fuck That” or “Fuck Them,” but the effect was that those birds were flying straight at the stands. And he left that middle finger up the whole song as he walked all the way around the circular stage. 

Ironically, after that song, he broke into a whole “So happy to be here.” At multiple times, he talked about following your dreams and believing in yourself because nobody ever believed in him and he used to play little shithole locations. “But now I’m playing at a fucking football stadium in front of 70,000 people!”

Um, dude, we’re not here to see you. Maybe you should go back to flipping people off.

My students, by the way, knew who Russ was. They were appalled that I a) had never heard of him, b) had gone to one of his concerts to see someone other than him, and c) was less than enamored with his performance.

Ed Sheeran Addendum #2

Both Ed Sheeran and Russ (and a third opening act I forgot the name of) kept referring to the stadium location as Santa Clara. Technically, this is true. 

But Santa Clara is a suburb. None of us are from Santa Clara. And nobody has ever been “so happy to be here in Santa Clara.”

Just say San Francisco. Or maybe San Jose. Hell, you could say Bay Area or Northern California and get a more accurate reflection of the attendees. None of us are going to cheer for Santa Clara. Even people not from the city proper usually consider themselves from the metro area associated with it. 

The first opening act was actually wearing a 49ers jersey. 

Guess what: They ain’t the Santa Clara 49ers.

Two out of Three’s Company

· November 26, 2023 · Musings · , , , , , , , , · No Comments

The death of Suzanne Somers sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

Before I digress (yes, my main point is the digression), how the hell was Suzanne Somers 76 years old? The same age as Jimmy Buffett? Then again, Suzanne Somers hasn’t really done anything since Chrissy Snow, so she’s eternally stuck in 1979 in my mind, whereas I’ve seen Jimmy Buffett twice in the past decade. If the last thing he ever did was Margaritaville, maybe I’d have been equally surprised. Although not that he died of skin cancer. That’s as unsurprising as the Marlboro Man dying of lung cancer.

Although, if my math is correct, Suzanne Somers was already over thirty when the series began. How is that possible? Next thing you’re going to tell me is that Jason Priestley and Luke Perry weren’t really high schoolers in 1990.

While I’m at it, Jimmy Buffett was born on Christmas. Chrissy Snow got her name because she was born in December. It was a good thing she wasn’t born in June, or else her father would have introduced her as “Meet my daughter, Father.”

So yeah, I’m saying Jimmy Buffett was Chrissy Snow and vice versa, and you can’t convince me otherwise. Ever seen them in the same place at the same time? Didn’t think so.

But no, that’s not the rabbit’s warren I discovered beneath the surface of Suzanne Somers’s demise.

In case you couldn’t tell by my rather obscure direct quote that was probably only referenced in one episode, I’m a bit of a Three’s Company aficionado. Back in the good old days, due to the wonders of syndication, I spent most afternoons from 4:00-6:00 receiving valuable life lessons from not only the residents of a fictional Santa Monica, but a never-ending supply of sass from the likes of Alice, The Jeffersons, and Welcome Back, Kotter. 

Oh, and Happy Days and all its spinoffs. Including Mork and Mindy, which seemed a perfect trajectory from the height of Americana. Forget jumping the shark. I’m supposed to believe they’re back to juke boxes and poodle skirts one week after a coked-out alien showed up?

But of all the sitcoms I grew up with, Three’s Company always had a special place in my heart. Jack Tripper was a father figure to me. Now that I’m in my older years, my fashion style can best be described as a 21st-century Mr. Furley.

I was always much more of Furley guy than a Ropers guy, although perhaps at the age of eight, I wasn’t the best judge of deadpan humor. But it wasn’t just the slapstick. Mr. Furley seemed earnest, while Mr. Roper just seemed mean. And Mrs. Roper? Please. Who would think a horny old lady complaining about her husband is funny. The answer: everybody over the age of thirty. 

I was also more of a Terri fan than a Chrissy fan, even if I knew she was a pale comparison. After all, I ain’t writing this homage on the death of Priscilla Barnes. Hell, she’s more likely to be remembered as the three-nippled psychic from Mallrats than her Three’s Company role.

At least we can all agree that Cindy was terrible. Not really her fault. She was thrown together at the last minute when Suzanne Somers went on strike. They wanted to make the character ditzy, because that’s what the third roommate had always been, but they didn’t want her to be the same ditzy as Chrissy, so they added a klutziness to bring out more of John Ritter’s physical humor. 

It was an odd choice. After all, when they replaced the Ropers a season earlier, they go with a carbon copy. Nor even a “mostly Ropers but with one key quirk.” Instead, they went polar opposite with Don Knotts. That’s why I liked Terri, because she didn’t fit the mold. By the forward-thinking year of 1982, they realized that a blonde can be smart and sassy, too. Which allowed Janet to cut back on the snark as the characters aged into their thirties.

Years later, Cheers found a better way to replace one ditz, Coach, with another kind of ditz, Woody. Perhaps they learned from Three’s Company’s experience, because when Diane left, they went straight to Terri. Not that Kirstie Alley’s character was anywhere near Priscilla Barnes (if anything, they transitioned from a Terri to a Chrissy), just that they went for a different character type, changing the tenor of the show. If Rebecca came in to be a new “will they, won’t they” love interest for Sam, she would’ve paled in comparison. 

All these casting choices bring me back to what I found myself watching after Suzanne Somers died. 

Did you know that the show didn’t start with Jack, Janet, and Crissy? In the pilot, they were David, Jenny, and Samantha. Played by John Ritter and two random women who were decidedly not Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers.

That pilot episode was what I discovered recently. And then a second pilot. Turns out the Three’s Company we came to know and love was, perhaps fittingly, the third attempt.

The first pilot episode was effectively the same episode as what would eventually become the first episode. The second pilot was the second episode. Odd that they wouldn’t just reshoot the same episode three times. As a social scientist, you gotta have a control group.

I’ll address a couple of the minor changes first. The strangest was the locations of the bedrooms. In the final series, the doors to their bedrooms are next to each other in the back corner of the apartment.  Jack’s room is on the back wall, the girls’ is on the side. As far as I’m concerned, this is the natural state of things.

In the first pilot, Jack’s room was on the same wall as the girls’ room, but downstage, past the bathroom door, such that it was off-camera for most of the episode. In fact, as I watched, I figured maybe they only had one bedroom in this iteration, or maybe they were only going to add a second door if the series got picked up. Then in the final scene, when he moves in, they walked all the way over to his bedroom door, which required a different camera angle. No way would that have worked for eight seasons of sneaking-in-and-sneaking-out farce.

In the second pilot, the two bedroom doors were moved to their final spot but, in the uncanniest of valleys, they were switched. I can’t express how much it fucked with my mind to think of Janet and Crissy (as they had updated their names to) sleeping in the back room and Jack on the left. 

Now the all-arching question: why did they swap? I understand why the first pilot’s placement didn’t work, but who, after watching the second pilot, thought, “Yeah, they’re in the right spot, but who is sleeping in which room needs to change for this show to really take off!” 

Speaking of the physical layout, the original pilot implied that the primary apartment was next door to, not upstairs from, the Ropers’ apartment. Probably more realistic considering Santa Monica geography, but it makes it much easier to understand Stanley’s grumpy gripes if the loud parties are constantly over his roof instead of a few walls away.

Thankfully, the Regal Beagle looked exactly the same as in its final iteration. I don’t know if I could’ve handled a different layout for the ultimate sleaze-bar pick-up spot. That would be like The Brady Bunch moving Alice’s room to… to… wait a second, where was Alice’s room? The doorway in the back corner of the kitchen went to the laundry.

When my tenth grade English teacher told us we could debate any topic, some of my friends and I tackled that one. Complete with visual aids. I think Rian Johnson might have been in on that debate. Maybe it’ll be a key clue in a Poker Face season two mystery. 

The main takeaway from watching both pilot iterations, however, comes down to casting, not set design. I doubt the first iteration would’ve lasted long. 

I don’t know how much of it was acting, how much of it was directing, and how much was chemistry. A lot of the online comments talked about those initial actresses missing the panache of Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Sommers. And while there’s definitely something to that, I don’t know that it’s entirely their fault. After all, John Ritter and Norman Fell were both in all three iterations, but the magic doesn’t hit. 

Mr. Roper is a curmudgeon throughout, but he wasn’t a funny curmudgeon until the final product. In the original, Mrs. Roper was almost as curmudgeonly as her husband. The winning about never having sex anymore came off as true animosity in the original instead of the eye-rolling love in the series. 

Jack Tripper (sorry, “Dave”) was a struggling actor instead of a cooking student. Although the culmination of the episode was still him whipping up a gourmet breakfast for the girls, which convinces them to ask him to move in. Don’t know how many struggling actors are closeted gourmet chefs.

The brunette worked at the DMV instead of being a florist. Not sure how that would’ve worked going forward, because there ended up being a few episodes where they visited Janet at the florist shop. While a visit to the DMV can certainly be played for laughs once or twice, how much can you do with Janet (oops, “Jenny”) sitting at the front of a long line of disgruntled customers. Plus, maybe I’m suffering from confirmation bias, but Janet totally worked as a high-strung small business owner, not an “I don’t give a shit” government employee. Which might be why, in the pilot, it was the brunette, not the blonde, who was a bit sex-crazed. 

Not that Chrissy was sex-crazed, mind you. If anything, quite the opposite, but she was the sex symbol.  Still, I think Jenny made a comment about Dave being attractive, whereas Dave didn’t seem to notice that the girls were attractive. He was a bit more of a horndog in the second episode, but only as a plot point so Mrs. Roper could realize he wasn’t gay. 

It was obvious in watching the original pilot that there was little chemistry between the three main characters. What I wonder is how the producers knew that it wasn’t a John Ritter problem.  Is there some alternate universe where people remember Three’s Company with Jenny, Susanne, and a Dave character played by, I don’t know, John Stamos? Probably not, because I just looked him up and John Stamos was only 14 when the show premiered. But you get the point.

Regardless, the second pilot brought in Joyce DeWitt and another random blonde to play Chrissy, as all the characters had their proper names by then. Again, maybe it’s confirmation bias, but the Jack and Janet dynamic was already there. Prior to this deep dive, I never would’ve thunk it, but I now think that Joyce DeWitt was actually the lynchpin that made the show. Janet was Jack’s foil. Should’ve been more obvious considering they went through three blondes and never lost a step. I always assumed it was John Ritter that carried the show, but Three’s a Crowd, the sequel that had Jack living with his girlfriend and her father, was lousy. Guess who wasn’t in it?

Which isn’t to say Suzanne Somers wasn’t vital for the show to work. Chrissy certainly brought a certain flair to the show. She played an earnest ditz, more naive than stupid, which forced Jack and Janet into a protective roll. In the pilots, there wasn’t really a “dumb one” and a “sassy one,” they were all somewhat sassy, somewhat ditzy, and all kinds of rote. For an ensemble to work, there needs to be distinct characters. The show was already going to suffer from a serious “women are objects” vibe. It wouldn’t do any good to double-down and make them interchangeable, as well. 

One might think that this was just a pilot and the characters would’ve evolved or been fleshed out later. Or that the writing got better between the pilots and the show. Except when you see Joyce DeWitt in the second pilot, she pops. 

Of course, any discussion of how that ensemble worked has to delve into how Suzanne Somers left the show. Suzanne Somers wanted as much money as John Ritter. Not a bad goal and a fight still going on in Hollywood today. If they’re an ensemble, they ought to be paid the same. That’s the path the Friends stars would take a generation later to the tune of a million dollars an episode. 

Unfortunately, Suzanne Somers didn’t go that route. She didn’t say she and Joyce DeWitt ought to both be paid the same as John Ritter. Only her. And depending on whose account you believe, she might’ve asked for more than John Ritter, thinking she was the star, the main draw. That the show would fall apart without her. 

In one sense, she was probably right, as these initial pilots showed. But they also showed that each of the three brought their own ingredient to the roux. The version starring Denise Galik as Chrissy might not’ve been a hit. But the version that had already swapped out Norman Fell for Don Knotts didn’t really need Chrissy Snow anymore. 

What it did need was Joyce DeWitt, who Suzanne Somers (and probably a hell of a lot more of us) completely dismissed.

New Car… Licensin’?

· November 5, 2023 · Musings · , , , · No Comments

I only planned on writing two posts about my new car. One about the excruciating purchasing process, one about all the stupid bells and whistles that are allegedly for safety, but in reality are just too raise the price and add a panache of tsk-tsk. What else could there possibly be to write about? There can’t be any extra layers of bullshit, can there?

You must not be from California

You see, I have a personalized license plate. Never really seemed like something I’d do. Same teason I don’t have a tattoo. I can’t think of anything so important to me that I’d need it on my skin, or on my car, for all the world to see for the next fifty years. 

But five or six years ago, one of the California government’s eternal money grabs spoke out to me. 

Plenty of states are running specialty plates these days. Some of them raise money for cancer or whales or, I don’t know,  hemorrhoids. If you ask me, the last thing cancer needs is more money. It kills millions of us every year. Why the fuck would I buy it a big-screen t.v.?

What? The money goes to fight cancer? They should make that clearer.

Well, like me, the California government decided they didn’t want the money going to cancer, either. They wanted to keep it all for themselves. 

So they came up with fancy new California license plates. That were actually the fancy old California license plates. 

Back in ye olden days, California had colorful license plates. Then again, California used to be known for quirk and personality. Beaches and sunsets and roller blading. Now we’re just known for traffic, regulation, and feces on sidewalks.Makes sense that we’d opt for white license plates with boring blue script.

When I grew up, we had blue plates with yellow digits, reflecting our state colors (See: UCLA & Cal Berkely, plus every other Uuniversity of California). Prior to those, we had black plates with gold lettering. I remember those growing up, but they were all faded on old jalopies, most likely a truck being driven by somebody older than dirt. 

Evidently before the gold-on-black plates we had black letters on gold. Never saw those, not even the remnants. They’re listed as representing the 1950s, but, growing up in the 1980s, I associated the black plates with the 1950s. Turns out they were mostly from the 1960s, meaning cars last a lot shorter than I expected.

The reason I now know about those gold plates is because, before bringing back the old license plates, they had us vote. They were going to bring back one set of plates (for an additional fee, natch) and one set of plates only. Not sure why, because there’s already about twenty specialty plates out there, but nothing draws up interest like scarcity. And online voting. When sales wane on the winner, they’ll release the next one.

I voted for the blue plates of my youth, but unfortunately that didn’t win. The black ones of the 1960s won because if Boomers do nothing else, they vote, as is evidenced by every presidential election from 2016 through 2024. Since it was an online poll, I thought us Gen Xers had a chance, I shoulda known better. We’ll never get a Gen X president and we won’t get our fancy blue license plates.

Much like sports, once my team was out of the license plate race, I figured I’d tune out of the posteseason. But it turned out that those black plates had some exciting players on their team.

When they started showing up on cars, I was surprised at how sharp the black was. Again, when I was growing up, the only black license plates driving around were sporting twenty years of road rash and grime. More gray than black, and the “gold” digits looked closer to tooth plaque than what one might find in them thar hills. 

Unlike those decrepit remnants from 1960, these new plates sparkled like a black hole. Wait, do those sparkle? The pictures NASA has released look nothing like what sci-fi has been promising for a century.

Regardless, when I bought a deep brown car, I thought it totally needed a bright black and gold plate, so I ordered one. Only fifty bucks and maybe if California makes enough money on these plates, they’ll lower some other… ha ha, sorry, I couldn’t even pretend to finish that sentence. 

Here’s the strange thing. A personalized license plate also costs fifty bucks. Not fifty additional bucks. For the same price, you can get a specialized plate, a personalized plate, or both. Furthermore, if you bought a no-personalized black plate, you weren’t getting the random seven digits of a normal plate. Instead it was six digits that were in a weird order, such that people would think it was personalized and you’d constantly be responding to people asking, “Okay, I give up, what does HG25LZ mean?”

So I opted for a personalized plate. I realized the scam of the “same price for specialty and personalized plates” a year later. Personalized plates cost that extra fifty bucks every year, as opposed to the one time fee for the black plates. It’s like drug dealers giving you the first hit for free. Or all those alleged houses giving trick-or-treaters cocaine because the kids will totally remember which random house they got that free cocaine at when unloading hundreds of skittles packs. Then they’ll go back to that house with their one or two dollars of allowance. Do I have that right? Makes total sense.

Anyway, after I bought my new car, I wanted to transfer my personalized plates, even if black plates on a black car are so gauche. You take the plates off your old car when you’re trading it in to the dealership and hold onto them until your generic permanent plates show up in the mail. Then you take both sets of plates into the DMV (or, thankfully, AAA) and have them do the swap on their computer. 

Seems like a gargantuan waste of time when I could’ve just written my personalized plates down on one of the five hundred forms I had to sign when I bought the car and saved everyone the hassle of producing and sending out a license plate that will never be used. Then again, DMV stands for “Gargantuan Waste of Time,” so no harm, no foul. 

Besides, that would require someone at the state to actually read some of the forms I’m signing, and we all know that ain’t happening.

It took about six weeks for my permanent (temporary) plates to arrive. Since I knew I could do AAA instead of the DMV, I didn’t feel the need to take a day off work or anything. Until I showed and was informed that my vanity plates had been reported lost or stolen.

Lost or stolen? What the fuck? I’ve got them right here in my hand. They’ve been riding around in my trunk for six weeks. At no point was it lost, nor was it stolen. “I see that,” the AAA employee said.

Unfortunately, since this was now an issue of potential thievery, the glitch couldn’t get fixed at the interest group level. The polite AAA employee sentenced me to… the DMV… Sans appointment!

When I showed up, the lady at the end of the first line (because there are always multiple lines at the DMV, and you must suffer through the first line to learn which new line you get to go to the end of) asked what I was there for. “Um, these plates are reported as lost or stolen. They’re… not?”

She gave me a ticket starting with the letter G. Probably stood for “Dumbfuck.” Some of the other non-reservation people sitting around me in the next staging area had B tickets and R tickets. It’s a convenient way for nobody to have any clue how long they’re waiting. Now serving B seventy-three. How many tickets away from G thirteen is that?

When I finally made it to the front of the line, the DMV employee wasn’t completely blown away by an alleged license plate thief standing in front of him. While it wasn’t precisely the norm, he claimed it had happened a number of times, and that number was increasing. He’d had one earlier that week. So the good news was he knew what had to be done.

The bad news was that, in DMV parlance, “regular” doesn’t mean “expedited.”

At least they had a form for it.

Okay, it wasn’t a form specifically for missing plates that aren’t missing. Instead it’s a generic “statement of fact.” Unfortunately, my DMV Dude didn’t have that specific form, and when he grabbed one from the sloth next to him, it was in Spanish.

Fortunately, I wasn’t the one who had to fill it out, and he swore he knew what all the questions were asking and it could be answered in English. So then I just had to stand there and watch him fill out the form. And let me tell you, he wasn’t using shorthand. Ugh. 

Then it was on to his supervisor, who needed another twenty minutes or so to sort shit out. Fortunately they at least let me go back and sit down in those super-comfy plastic chairs that feel like they’ve been requisitioned from a local third-grade classroom. Although I had to keep going back up to confirm factoids. Like that the plates were never missing.

I never actually read what they wrote. Didn’t have to sign anything. Probably because the fifth amendment says I don’t have to acknowledge that I stole something that bqelonged to me and never left my possession. That’s what plea deals are for. 

But hey, after it was all done, I was able to leave the DMV with plates ready to put on my car! 

Not my personalized plates, mind you. I had to put the generic plates on.

The Statement of Fact, I was informed, would take somewhere from three to six weeks for the bureaucratic legal process to work its magic. That three to six weeks was the same timeframe it took to get the generic plates in the mail. Considering that my vanity plates had only showed up as missing three or four days before the generic ones came in the mail, I assume my vanity plates will be legitimized at the same time my generic ones will show up as missing. Can’t wait to explain that one to the cop who pulls me over.

This timing seems suspicious. I figure this is one of two culprits. First option is that the dealership where I traded it in finally resold it or auctioned it for scratch metal. But the timing doesn’t seem right on that. A high-volume dealership has to have that process pretty dialed in. I can’t imagine my 200,000-mile piece of shit sat on a back lot for six weeks only to finally be moved at the exact time I got my new plates.

The most likely culprit, then, is the state of California. Here’s my guess. One level of the bureaucracy believes everybody should get their new plates within a set period of time, say, six weeks, and automatically marks personalized plates that haven’t been swapped back by that time must be “missing.” Another branch of the government, the one that actually produces license plates, takes its sweet time with plenty of days off and eight-hour workdays with six hours of coffee breaks. 

Heck, throw in another department that processes the “Statement of Fact” paperwork. Maybe workers from all three departments meet up for happy hour after work (at around 2:30 pm) congratulating each other for the continuous M.C. Escher feedback loop of job security they’ve created amongst themselves. 

Normally I’d throw the DMV into this farce, but for once the epitome of government ineptitude actually carrying its weight. They knew exactly what needed to happen and got the ball rolling. At about two miles per hour. 

Does my new-found confidence in them mean I expect them to follow through and let me know when all is clear? After writing down my phone number on flimsy piece of scratch paper nowhere near the Spanish form with English writing? 

What am I, an idiot?

New Car Drivin’

· October 15, 2023 · Musings · , , , · One Comment

Last time I posted about the excruciating process of buying a new car, where even knowing the precise car and price walking onto the lot, it still took four hours and an extra eight grand. Oh, and getting a different color car than the one I requested.

Now that I’ve had a couple weeks to drive the new car, allow me to go all old man on you and complain about all these newfangled cameras and gear selectors and safety thing-a-ma-gogs. 

Boy, back in my day, we used to drive ten miles to the gallon. Uphill both ways.

Most of the additions to cars over the past decade are mandated by the government. Others are economically driven, with every car company scrambling to be Tesla Lite. Then again, if I wanted a Tesla, I’d buy a Tesla. They’re not that much more expensive than the Nissans and Hyundais and Fords (Oh, my!) these days. If you want to make me feel like I’m driving a car out of my price range, make it like a Ferrari or Aston Martin. Preferably with an ejector seat.

Instead we get self-driving cars that can’t drive themselves. 

Most of the additions are as harmless as they are useless. The gear selector is buttons. No, not a dial. Buttons. Takes some getting used to.  I feel like something needs to be turned or cranked in order to put the car in park, especially when the car is beeping at me from multiple directions because it’s shocked, Shocked!, to find a curb in this parking space. I’ve found myself turning on my windshield wipers and blinker in an attempt to disengage the “drive” option.

The car also freaks out about the curb in front of me when I put my car into reverse. The front bumper will flash red, the corner by the headlight will flash yellow, and the beeping will go off incessantly. It’s like, “yeah, that’s why I’m reversing.”

This will not be the only time the car chastises me on my driving. To switch gears, I need to put my foot on the brake. To reverse out of my parking spot or driveway, I need to have my seat belt fastened. 

I’m sure those two security features sound perfectly reasonable to some government bureaucrat in Virginia. Changing gears or reversing can cause DEATH if done improperly.

Except for the time I realize, after getting out of my car, that I’m a little kattywompus in the parking spot. All I have to do is reverse about five feet then pull back in. Might not even touch the damn accelerator, but I have to fasten my seatbelt. Fuck it, I guess I’ll just be the asshole taking up two spots right next to the asshole who backed his truck in. 

Recently, I took it to an automatic car wash and it wouldn’t let me switch from neutral to drive without stepping on the brake. Of course, hitting the brake while a conveyor belt is pushing me forward ain’t ideal, but if I wait until I’m completely off said belt, the car behind me will be inside my trunk.

Yeah, yeah, I took my brand spanking new car to an automatic car wash. Back in my old days, I’d wash it by hand for 30,000 miles or so, but Daughter’s already scuffed the inside putting on softball cleats. Besides, I didn’t get the color I wanted, anyway.

The middle console can wirelessly charge my phone, which is very cool. Except the phone must be place in one specific spot, and since there’s no glasses holder in the roof (because there’s five other buttons that I don’t know the purpose or ability of), the best place to store them is the wireless spot. So my phone’s usually plugged into the cigarette lighter like it’s 2004.

Sorry, the “power plug,” or whatever the yunguns call it. It’ll always be the cigarette lighter to me, even if it never comes with the heating element anymore. Forget 9/11 or the Berlin Wall, the true generational divide is whether or not you ever burnt yourself on one of those. 

To unlock the door, all I have to do is slip my hand under the door handle. Pretty cool and convenient. Allegedly, I can lock the car by simply swiping a finger across handle. The “alleged” part isn’t the action, which I’ve done a few times, it’s the “simply.” Can’t run your finger over it too fast or too slow. Can’t stop or spurt on the glide across. Usually takes three or four attempts. Meanwhile I’ve got a fob in my pocket that only needs one push of a button. 

The windshield display takes some getting used to. A digital speedometer, plus additional info about blind spots, a low gas tank, and, disturbingly, the speed limit at my location, show up in the lower left corner of my windshield. Wife thinks it’s too distracting, but I’m fine with it. It’s far enough down that it isn’t in the way of anything. Kinda looks like it’s hovering above the hood, around the height of the license plate on the car in front of me at a red light. It’s a little transparent, like the glasses and occular displays shown on futuristic sci-fi. Like maybe the stuff Tony Stark puts up in the air in the MCU movies. I was sure I wouldn’t use it, because the actual information is only an eye flick lower, but damn, I acclimated to that even quicker than the back-up cameras on my last car. Think of how annoyed you are now at having to turn around in the driver’s seat to back-up, and after you get one of these windshield displays, you’ll show the same disdain for having to look ALL THE WAY DOWN to the steering wheel.

Then there’s the cameras. Oh, my fucking God, the cameras. They have cameras for every damn angle of the car. It’s a goddamn surveillance state. 

I’m used to the back-up cameras now. Sure, they probably raised the price of new cars by 10% or more and are singularly responsible for the vast increase in douchebags backing into parking spaces. Taking an extra minute pulling in, in order to save five seconds while pulling out? Really? While there’s ten fucking cars behind you waiting to get into their own parking spaces. Frontwards, like decent human beings.

Still, back-up cameras have a use, primarily because they show an area you can’t see from the driver’s seat. 

You know what you can easily see? The area right in front of your car. But that’s where the nimrods placed another camera.

No, I don’t mean a sensor. Plenty of cars beep when you’re about to run into a wall or a car or something. My car does that, then immediately shows a live feed of said object on my center display. Yeah, camera, I can see the giant tree right in front of me because it’s, well, right the fuck in front of me. Not only that, but I can see my entire hood and how far it extends toward said said obstacle. There’s this old-fashioned viewing instrument called a windshield. I know, I know, might as well be an abacus.

I also have side-view cameras that come up when I turn on my blinker. It’s a circular view that pops into the middle of my speedometer or gas usage monitor (the tachometer’s spot from ye olden sticke shifte days). It’s showing the area near the ground next to the back half of my car. My side window shows the same spot, at least up high, and I doubt there’d be something down by my back wheel that wasn’t also high enough to be in my mirror, especially when I’m changing lanes at sixty mph.

Isn’t the blind spot outside my mirror’s view, like directly to my right or left, not back by my trunk? That’s why the “blind spot” mirrors have that little convex on the outer edge. My new car, by the way, doesn’t have those. I guess that’s what the cameras are for. Perhaps the next generation of cars will get rid of all mirrors and just have us watch the screens constantly. Windshields, too. 

Not sure if that’s even a joke anymore. Think about the logistics of what I just described. When I want to switch lanes to my right, the car wants me to be looking at my dashboard. Seems like, while moving one’s car to the right, one’s attention should be towards the right. The dashboard seems the last spot the focus should be. Didn’t we all learn “Signal, Mirror, Over Shoulder, Go” in Drivers Ed? Or was that just a SoCal thing because the easiest thing to correlate with cars there was smog?

Similarly, when moving forward, one ought to be looking out the windshield, offset by some glances in all those various windows and mirrors. Yet when my new car drives through a mixture of parked and moving cars, it’s all cameras on deck. My screen turns into an overhead shot of my car (although not really my car, because the roof is one of the few spots not decked with cameras) and a weird, fishbowl amalgamation of the obstacles around me, but really just their toes because, again, all the cameras are facing down. Except for the front one which shows exactly the same thing I see through my windshield.

Another thing that faces down is my side mirrors when I’m backing up. As soon as I go into reverse, they angle down to show the ground beneath my trunk. Did I miss some news story about how all accidents occur underneath a car? Are there gnomes who aren’t picked up via standard lanes of vision? Sure, maybe Daughter’s bike might be lying behind my car, but my insurance ain’t kicking in unless I hit the car parked behind me. And that car ain’t showing up in my mirrors if they’re looking for at the driveway. 

All of these cameras also like to keep me in whatever lane I’m in. I appreciate their effort, but I’ve been driving for thirty years now. I think I can keep my car straight. When I drift out of my lane, it’s probably because I see an obstacle farther ahead than HAL 9000.

My wife drives a 2018, so I expected a certain element of Lane Nazism. Her car beeps at her whenever she changes leaves without signaling. It bugs me when I drive her car, but she doesn’t even notice it anymore. 

My car doesn’t just beep. It nudges the car back into the lane. Perhaps that would be helpful  if it was an accidental move, but usually it’s not.  Usually I’m moving onto an offramp or a newly forming lane. Then the car admonishes me to keep my hand on the steering wheel, even though my hands are very clearly on the steering wheel, evidenced by my countersteering against the “correction” (said like the Shining bartender) to proceed into the lane I was merging into in the first place.

New cars: 50% nag, 50% narc. 100% cameras!

Of course, I could fix this “correcting” by simply using my blinker. Except when I use my blinker that damn camera shows up on my dashboard, which is much more distracting and destructive to the driving process than feeling like I rubbed up against a curb at seventy miles per hour. 

My main worry is that all these tire nudges are going to mess up my alignment. Or that my car will alert the state of California that I don’t use my blinker and Herr Kommandant Newsom will fine me in order to fund another poll to reiterate the fact that he had no fucking chance of ever being president. 

My “gas low” signal comes on when there’s about 30-40 miles left on the tank. Then, about five miles later, the dashboard flashes with a “Refuel now to avoid causing hybrid battery damage.” Um… the gauge still says there’s 24 miles left until empty. Does the battery get damaged when there’s still gas in the tank? If so, maybe they should adjust the “miles left” gauge to be when the battery gets damaged, not when the well is dry. Unless… unless the car… doesn’t think I know I need to get gas? Thinks I’m going to ignore the two other indicators (low fuel light and miles left, not to mention the fuel gauge) and think, what, that this hybrid is a full electric? I’m sure I signed some paperwork to that effect. 

All the sass of KITT with none of the turbo boost. 

Sometimes when I’m sitting at a red light with cars on all four sides, my car freaks out. It bings and buzzes me, screaming “Check your surroundings.” The screen shows the view from my windshield along with the bug-eyed look at the cars to my left and right. I’m like, “yeah, it’s called sitting at a red light.” Seriously car, if you’re gonna chastise me for merging onto a freeway, you gotta be able to handle your own shit when we’re sitting at a red light. If you were a full self-driving car, you’d be curled into a fetal position before you ever leave the driveway. 

If this is the state of our future AI overlords, we’re a hell of a long way from Judgment Day. 

When Terminator comes to wipe out the human race, just put a couple of curbs in his way.

New Car Buyin’

· October 5, 2023 · Musings · , , , , · 2 Comments

Just got back from buying a new car. Let’s see if I can form any cogent thoughts. Like, for the rest of time.

I was going to make a joke about how chafed my asshole was or some other such metaphor for being used and abused, but it’s not really like that. 

If I had bought a used car, sure. That process is more like waking up in a pool of vomit (not your own) with an already-scratched lottery ticket, and maybe a note about your missing kidney.

But buying a new car is just a fucking drain. On your energy, your lifeforce. Your self-worth and desire to live. Even when you prepare ahead of time. 

Maybe next time, instead of hours online I’ll just lube up beforehand. 

Do they let you test drive if you’re drunk? Because being of sober mind and body only makes the process worse. Instead of offering me bottled water every fifteen minutes, how about a glass of wine? Or a handle of rum.

My old car’s been on its last leg for a while. My commute is a brutal 55 miles each direction, meaning I’m burning through about 3,000 miles a month, 30k a year. Thank God for June and July.

This last car actually lasted a year longer than expected because that whole “schools closed for a year” thing meant no commuting. So in the seven and a half years I owned the car, I *only* drove 204,000 miles. Assuming there’s no new pandemic, look forward to my next “Fuck, I had to buy a car” post around 2030.

Some people like buying a new car every year or two. Not me. If I could’ve driven my last one until it was 300,000, I would’ve. Hell, I’d drive a million if the auto industry would let me. Maybe instead of adding more cameras and monitors and shit, they could, I don’t know, develop an engine that doesn’t fall apart as soon as we finish paying off the car. 

Unfortunately, the engine didn’t agree with my sentiment. About a year ago, the oil started leaking. Not very much, but occasionally after parking the car, I’d get a whiff coming off the engine. Plus there was some drops on my driveway. 

Three trips to the dealership and a couple grand later, the problem seemed to be fixed. Can’t really tell you what it was, because they didn’t fix the right thing the first time. They fixed a gasket. Then it was a mount. When I brought it back the third time, they actually fixed it for free. Like, I didn’t pay for the $500 part they had to order, nor did I pay for the 7-10 hours of labor. Nothing says, “Oh shit, we finally found that thing you were first complaining about months ago” quite like a repair place ponying up for their own labor costs.

That worked for six months or so, but the last time I took my car to the quicky lube (which should totally be the name of a whorehouse), they said there was barely any oil in the engine. They chastised me for going too long between oil changes, and I took it because I couldn’t really remember when I’d done it. I don’t drive much in the summer, so maybe I hit 3,000 miles in May, but had stretched it out another 2,000 when it was mostly trips to the store. Even then, 5,000 ain’t exactly “bone dry” territory, so I assumed my old friend Slow Leak was back.

Three weeks and two thousand miles later, when I smelled what could only be described as a raging inferno of grease and steel coming through my air ducts, I realized Mr. Slow Leak had grown to adult size. Fortunately, I could coast to an offramp with a gas station. Two $12 quarts of oil later, I was able to drive myself the rest of the way to work. 

I bought a third quart just in case this leak became a gusher, but turns out I didn’t need it. In fact, after letting my car sit for a week (I drove a rental until I could go car shopping on the weekend), the oil level hadn’t really dropped much from the two quarts I’d put in. So maybe I could’ve kept driving my old car for another few months, topping off the oil every thousand miles or so, but the writing was on the wall. And it’s not like car shopping in December would be less excruciating than September.

Which leads me to my Sunday through the Wringer.

Theoretically buying a car is easier these days. A little online research will show us not only the price range of new cars, but pictures of the specific inventory currently on the lot. Although the websites I checked listed a bunch of cars “In-Transit” with a caveat that delivery dates are only estimations and should not be relied upon. Except none of them listed arrival dates. So wait, you’re telling me it might not arrive by an undisclosed date? 

Fortunately, there were a couple dark blue hybrids already on my local lot. 

Unfortunately, neither was the car I ended up with. Not entirely sure why. After I showed the guy which car I wanted from his own website, he “went to go grab it.” It looked black, not blue, when I got in it for the test drive, but it was in the shadows and was pretty dirty, so I just figured it was a dark enough blue that the true color wouldn’t pop until it was on the road. Nope. He grabbed the black one. Probably because it’s a “premium color,” despite living in the Sacramento Valley, where summer temperatures regularly top 105.

I did, at least, get a hybrid. With my extensive commute, I figure if I use one gallon of gas each direction instead of two, then over the course of 180 school days, I should be saving 360 gallons, give or take. At $5 per gallon (lol, try $7), I should saved more than the extra $8K for a hybrid pretty quick. I still wasn’t ready to make the plunge on full electric because of the whole plugging in thing. Come back to my 2029 car bitching session to hear about the fire I’m inevitably going to start in my garage when I put in the new docking station.

Yeah, I know I said my next car will be 2030. Maybe I’ll split the difference and purchase it in 2029 after the new model year is released. Speaking of which, the days of getting great deals in mid-September when the new model year came out are long gone. Everything is “What’s on the sticker is what you pay.” Followed immediately by “What’s on the sticker is nowhere near what you pay.”

There’s a dealership closer to my work where the car I wanted cost a couple thousand less. I figured that was my leverage. So the sales guy does the bullshit of bringing in his manager and whatever and allegedly this guy agrees to split the difference. 

Of all the car purchasing steps, this pretend haggling over the price is the worst part. Why the fuck does the “Manager” always use the thick marker and scribble all over the numbers the salesperson wrote down?. It’s not Sharpie because it doesn’t bleed through, but it’s thick and bright. Is that supposed to connote finality? Or boldness because they’re give us “such a great deal”? It’s got to be for some psychological reason, but if they think I’m going to be impressed, it’s a failure. 

Especially when the end result is the same fucking price. I did at least send him back a couple times to tell me precisely what interest rate my 800+ credit rating was giving me. I knew it was going to be terrible after the past eighteen months of Fed action, but might as well scratch off my morbid curiosity. Over six percent, which is a few percentages higher than I had to pay in the late 1990s when the prime rate was… exactly where it is now.  Of course, this was the rate given to me by the car company, so guess who’s going to the bank to get a better rate?

Hell, they didn’t even run my damn credit report. I only found out later when I asked if I could know my rating since I hadn’t run it in a few years. The guy was all, “Oh sure, I can run it. We hadn’t run it, but I’ll run it right now and have you sign off that we did.” Some consumer protection thing. But what the hell? Were they just trusting me when I told them I had an 800 credit score? Kinda defeats the purpose of having a credit score if people can make up whatever number they want and be believed. Then again, if they’re going to be charging over six percent, I guess they’ll just hedge their bets that people like me will offset all the 300 credit ratings who are lying about having an 800. 

Then comes Mr. Extended Warranty Guy, the most hilarious part of the car-buying process. You’ve just spent an hour hearing about how wonderful this new car is, how it’s the height of modern technology, one step away from being able to wipe your ass for you. Now Extended Warranty Guy says “Holy Crap, that’s a piece of shit you just bought. You’ll be lucky if it doesn’t break down on the way home, much less long enough to finish the five years of exorbitant financing were tacking on.”

After I said no for the third time, Mr. EWG told me about a cheaper option that covers dings, dents, and windshield. I splurged on that because Sacramento roads suck. I had to replace the windshield on my last car at least three times, maybe four, plus another half- dozen chip repairs. One time Safelite quoted me a low price on the phone, then said “unless you live in Sacramento, California.” i informed them that i did. They doubled the price. 

I’m sure that what I think is covered won’t be covered when the time comes to fix it. “Sorry, that windshield was damaged by a pebble. Your warranty only covers glass that spontaneously cracks.” But whatever, it only added $20 a month to the payments and if I hadn’t said yes this time, I’d probably still be there today, learning about a $1 a month warranty that covers only the passenger floorboard. We were well past two hours for a car I had already decided on before walking on the lot. I’ll pay $20 a month to make it home before bedtime. 

Then comes the signing. Mr. EWG morphs into Paperwork Dude. Seventy-five pages of initials and scribbling, some on a digital screen, some on paper. I think one of the papers I signed acknowledged the use of tire chains. Highway Patrol won’t let me past the snow checkpoints without them. Can I just sign something then?

Some of the papers were about lead. Maybe asbestos. Probably agreed, under penalty of imprisonment, that I’ll vote for Herr Kommandant Newsom when he runs for president. The state of California probably thinks they’re doing a bang-up job protecting my consumerness, but the more there is to read, the less I’m going to read it. Especially when I’ve already sat through Mr. EWG’s entire timeshare presentation and the Siegfried and Roy tickets will turn back into pumpkins at midnight.

The one paper I slowed down on was the total cost, because I wanted to figure out how the $38k, which I had “negotiated” down to $37k, was now showing up as $44k. The top line still showed the MSRP. When I inquired about that, he said my negotiated price was listed under “rebate,” so the taxes would still be based on the original price. That rebate, by the way, was from the state of California because the car is a hybrid, not because I’d showed them the same vehicle priced lower nearby.

Seriously, why does Manager Dude even do the hardcore haggling? Just say you’re giving me whatever price I’m asking for, then blame the final price on “taxes and licensing.” I wasted thirty minutes “negotiating” money already due to me by the state. Sure, maybe if I hadn’t “negotiated” the rebate, the dealership just would’ve pocketed it. It’s what my district does when the state gives them COLA money to “pass through to the teachers.”

Of course the state is going to give me $500 off right before charging me $4,000 in various other fees. This is the same state of California that’s trying to discourage people from getting solar panels because it made it harder to collect windfall profit taxes from the electric company monopolies. Perhaps if I’d bought a fully electric vehicle, which comes with a $5,000 rebate, the fees would’ve gone up to $9,000. Something about disposal of electric batteries. 

Speaking of that rebate, when they first quoted me my price, it was $50 cheaper per month because they had “fat fingered” the $500 into $5,000. Allegedly. Considering the full electric rebate was $5k, maybe it was less pudgy fingers and more having no fucking clue what the customer was buying before scribbling over it with your marker.

This might also explain why the blue car I’d asked to drive ended up being black when all was said and done. It was all shiny now, so I could tell for certain it wasn’t the car I’d originally asked the salesman for. But what am I going to do, sit through another two hours of new paperwork for something as meaningless as the color? 

If they’ve got a dumbfuck who will accept a rebate as a good-faith negotiation, and who will shrug and accept a monthly payment fifty bucks higher than originally quoted, then why not saddle the schmuck with the black car, too?

Game, set, and match, dealership. 

So now I’ve got a new damn car that I couldn’t be less thrilled with. Come back next week to hear me bitch about all the newfangled shit they’re putting on cars these days.

While telling the damn kids to get off my front yard. 

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