When I’m driving home from work in the middle of the night, there’s a stretch of Interstate 81 where I’m often the only car on the road.  It’s where the highway splits-off, takes a sudden upward slant, and heads toward the Sno Mountain ski resort.  And it sometimes gives me a mild case of the willies.
 
If there are other vehicles around I don’t think too much about it.  But when I’m all alone out there I get a tad uneasy.  It feels like I’m in the first thirty minutes of a horror movie, the part where they’re letting you get to know the characters – so you care about them once the slaughter commences.

Also, there was a (made-for-HBO?) movie several years ago, that often pops into my head when I’m traveling that road at night.  It starred Meat Loaf, if you can believe it.  Yes, good ol’ Meat drove around in an eighteen wheeler, picked up foolish hitchhikers and whatnot, and mutilated them inside the elaborately tricked-out rolling death chamber, hidden inside his trailer.
 
I remember making jokes about that flick when I first saw it, but it’s stuck with me – for years.  I find myself thinking about it more often than the movie probably deserves. 
 
And what if I break down on that desolate section of 81, and a “trucker” comes to my rescue?  How will I know he’s really hauling Ritz crackers and/or medical waste?  What if the pallets of tuna on the back of his rig are merely a façade, hiding an amputation laboratory with a blood drain in the floor? 
 
Stupid Meat Loaf… he’s gotten inside my head, maaan.
 
But luckily, it’s only a few miles, and the uneasiness quickly fades.  Once I reach the top of the “mountain,” everything returns to normal.  That is, I start to see Pizza Hut signs again, and it’s not quite so Donner Party.
 
Is there a road, a house, or just a section of town or whatever, that gives you a case of the irrational heebie-jeebies?  Tell us about it, won’t you? 
 
And, while we’re at it, what movie that you know is retarded, has had an unexplainable lasting effect on you?
 
Use our fancy-pants commenting tool, and I’ll see you guys later.

Summer, as defined by school schedules, is starting to wind-down in the Upper Perogie Belt.  As usual, we had a list of things we wanted to do while Toney and the boys had free time, and accomplished, well, a few of them.

To that end, we’re planning to spend the day in New York City on Friday.  No specific purpose, we’re just going to submerge ourselves in the energy of the place.  We do want to have lunch at a certain Chinese restaurant, but other than that…  we’re just gonna see what happens. 

And two weeks later, on another Friday, we’re going to return to Knoebels for the last hurrah.  Somehow we’ve established an unwritten contract with the Secrets, whereby we’re required to visit Knoebels no fewer than two times each summer.  And they’re threatening legal action.

We didn’t make it to my parents’ house in West Virginia.  That’ll have to be pushed-back to Thanksgiving. 

And we didn’t go to Philadelphia, yet again.  Every summer we say we’re going to do all the historic stuff, like Independence Hall, etc.  And every summer it doesn’t happen. 

It’s because Philadelphia is a big hassle, I think.  Spending a day there always seems like a good idea in the abstract, but when it gets down to actually doing it… nobody wants to deal with the aggravation.  The insane traffic, the narrow one-way streets, paying some ex-con with a lazy-eye thirty dollars to park…  It’s an easy thing to put off “until next time.”

You’d think NYC would be crazier, but it isn’t.  We go to a park ‘n’ ride in New Jersey, and take a commuter bus to Port Authority, near Times Square.  It’s simple, painless, and cheap.  And those are three things I can get behind.

What about you guys?  Any last-minute Hail Mary scrambles, before the indoctrination centers reopen?

For inspiration, here’s the original John Hughes article that inspired National Lampoon’s Vacation.  And this is a recent piece he wrote about, you know, writing it.

And speaking of school…  Toney reminded me of something that shocked us, simply shocked us, when we first moved here. 

Every August the newspaper used to publish a school bus schedule, for every nearby district.  They identified the exact location of every bus stop, the times buses would pick-up and drop-off – and the names and ages of every kid who would be using them.

They don’t do it anymore, and I should hope not.  I hate to be the paranoid type, but it seemed like they were essentially handing pedophiles a menu. 

“Let’s see…  Today, I think I’ll go with a…  Tyler.  Yes, I believe I’ll try a Tyler!”

What do you think about that?  If they’d been doing it while my kids were in school, I would’ve raised nine different hues of hell.  Am I overreacting, and getting all Oprah-ed up?  Or do you agree?

Even though “summer” is almost over, there’s still plenty of life left in summer.  It’s going to be hot and humid, and underwear-windingly nasty for a couple more months.  And I think my car air conditioner is losing the will to live.

I’ve noticed it taking a lot longer to cool-off recently, and can see dollar bills flying out of a wallet when I close my eyes.  Yes, the thought of taking my car to the shop for an air conditioner “servicing” scares me.  But I ain’t driving around with no A/C, dammit.  That simply won’t do.

I’ve been hoping I can put it off until next summer, though.  Everything still works, just not as well as it should.  But I had a scare over the weekend.  I was going to the grocery store, to pick up a can of beans (for Beans), and the A/C was nothing but a glorified fan.  It was blowing air exactly the same temperature as the outside world.

Grrr…

I told Toney about it, and we made plans to bite the bullet and take it to the shop on my next day-off.  But, it turned out to be a false alarm.  Care to guess the problem?  Yes, that’s correct, the air conditioner hadn’t completely shit the bed, it was turned off.

Wotta douche.

But please allow me to explain…  I never turn it off, even in the dead of winter; I just adjust the temperature as needed. So it didn’t even occur to me to check it.  Toney, however, had taken my car somewhere the day before, and she hits that A/C button like she’s playing a video game.  It makes me crazy; she just can’t leave it alone:  off, on, off, on…  STOP, PLEASE STOP!

So, she’d been playing with it, and left it off.  And I was about to take it to a repair shop, as a result.  Man, talk about bending myself over a couch…  Those guys would’ve gone wild on my ass. 

“Hey Charlie, get this.  That asshole out there thinks his air conditioner is broken, but it’s really just off.  You want a piece of this action?”

So there you go: a summer-themed extravaganza for a Tuesday afternoon.  What do you think of these shorter, but more frequent updates?  Let me know.  I’m still getting used to our new reality here, and appreciate your input.

I’ll see ya next time.

Yesterday I joked about wanting a cable channel that shows only the human interest stories about Olympic athletes, and leaves out all the actual competition.
 
This got me to thinking about other ideas for cable networks I’ve cooked-up through the years.  I tried to collect them together, and have almost certainly forgotten a few.  But here are the ones I can instantly recall:
 
The Choking Channel  Nothing but people choking on food, twenty-four hours a day.
 
RaveTV  Repetitive, thumping technocrap blaring at all times, the screen functioning as a giant strobe light.  …Of course, we’d have to do some advance testing, to make sure it wouldn’t destroy plasma screen TVs and/or trigger grand mal seizures.
 
Weather Forecast Classic  Random weather forecasts, lifted from local TV news broadcasts over the past forty years.  Almost all would be for uneventful days, when nothing out of the ordinary happened.
 
The Pet Alone Network  A channel for pets that are home alone.  Open fields, walks around interesting neighborhoods, car rides, jowly senior citizens spooning on the praise…  I think it would be a hit.     
 
The Off Channel  For people who get anxious and nervous when the TV is turned off, but occasionally need a little peace and quiet.  It would be completely silent, and the screen would be black – except for the comforting Off Channel logo in the lower right-hand corner.

So there you go.  Those are but a few of my ideas for new cable networks.  And now it’s your turn.

Please leave your suggestions in the comments.

I know you’re not supposed to admit such a thing, but I found myself (good God, what am I doing?) enjoying the Olympics over the weekend.

We watched a lot of swimming, some gymnastics, and even a little beach volleyball.  And because of the human interest stories NBC does about the participants, I found myself getting sucked in.

In BAT high-definition.

In fact, I asked Toney if there’s a channel way up in the 500s or 600s where they show only the human interest stories, and edit out the actual competition.  But it was just a joke… sorta.

Regardless, I found myself looking forward to watching every evening.  I tried it during the day, but it wasn’t quite the same.  Apparently they save all the interesting stuff for prime time?  Sweet sainted mother of the hag on the fire door.

For instance…  Did I imagine this, or did I really see a report about U.S. “athletes” competing in the airsoft pistol competition?  I’m serious, I believe this is actually part of the Olympics.  Airsoft guns!

The next time I tune in during daylight hours, I’m expecting to see a hard-fought battle between Lichtenstein and Tuvalu, in finger-flick football.

One thing I’m not much enjoying… shaved male armpits.  For some reason it gives me the creeps.  And that goes for complete pit-hair annhilation, as well as the carefully manicured, matching Triscuits of fur.

I mean, what the hell, man?  You’re telling me armpit hair creates drag in the pool?  Well, I don’t buy it; I think it makes you feel pretty.  And eliminating one kind of drag, facilitates another.  I suspect.

And if that’s not bad enough, each time a pile of commercials is dropped on us, we’re forced to watch some chick walking the streets in a Secret ad, figuring out new and creative ways to display her underarms to the world.

It’s enough to put a person off their lunch:  all pits, all the time!

Any thoughts about the Olympics so far?  Or are you pretending not to have watched?  Which is probably the route I should’ve taken…

On Saturday I helped the older Secret make a “movie” with his new Flip video camera.  I am the star of this one-minute epic, and we called it Beans.

It opens with a shot of me rummaging through our kitchen cabinet, and settling on a can of Campbell’s pork ‘n’ beans.  I’m shown taking it to our dining room table, removing the pop-top lid, and eating the contents with an enormous spoon.

In the process I get the “juice” all over my face and halfway down my neck.  I’m doing my best over-the-top imitation of Nostrildamus in a rotisserie chicken frenzy…  And the cameraman had a hard time holding the shot, because of highly unprofessional laughter.

Then I stop in mid-chew, have a look of distress on my face, and lift one butt cheek high off the chair.

At that point the Secret spliced in short snippets of stuff we stole off YouTube, including a mushroom cloud, nuclear destruction, a train crash, vintage tornado mayhem, Pete Townshend windmilling his arm, Mrs. Puff puffing up, a NASCAR wreck, etc. etc.

Finally, after all the explosions and chaos, it switches back to me at the dining room table.  And I rub my stomach and say, “Woo!”

Yes, we were very proud of our accomplishment.  And once this art film was completed we showed it to Toney, who laughed but balked at the idea of us uploading it to the internet.

“Doesn’t anything embarrass you?” she asked me.

This was enough to trigger just the tiniest bit of doubt about my performance, and I forbade the Secret from sending it to YouTube.  Upon additional viewings, I realized Toney was right, once again.  Beans just wasn’t the proper vehicle for me, at this particular point in my acting career.  And it’s been shelved.

But, of course, everything will undoubtedly come out, after I announce my candidacy for the United States Senate…