The arcade explosion

It’s what I imagine being inside an exploding firework is like. Blinding light. Deafening noise. All oxygen consumed. Furious, tornado-like winds. Finally, in a millisecond, you’re blown out of your senses into a thousand tiny pieces. That was the experience as I walked in the door. “Oh crap,” I said. KABLOOEY! I’m still not sure what the place is called. Or what the place is. A screaming arcade and kiddie playland mixed with a screaming sports bar and adult playland. An inside bowling alley with football games and pop videos displayed above each lane so you can watch Nicki Minaj while you roll into the gutter. Behind you bleeping, screeching, blurping, crunching, blasting, ca-chunking video games. Over there a band warming up. Over there a baby crying. Over there … wait a minute … what the heck is that? AND HOW DOES IT MAKE SO MUCH NOISE!?! And the lights. Fourth of July with a side of sunspots and a laser light show sprinkled on top for added seasoning. “I like this place,” my daughter told me, squinting. “Let’s go play.” My daughter used to hate these kinds of establishments. Too busy. Too noisy. Too overwhelming. But now she storms into them, bouncing from game to game, desperate to win enough tickets to buy something incredibly cheap in the reward shop. “Two hundred and fifty tickets for this!” I called out. “Do you realize the mark-up?” “Dad!” a voice chided me. Only, it wasn’t my daughter’s. It was a little […]

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Simple and technology free

I like a campfire for its technological simplicity. Pile up some sticks. Crumple up some newspaper. Light it. Stand back. Watch it smolder out. Curse and repeat until you have a roaring fire, or you burn down the forest after resorting to gasoline. Simple. Technology-free. Back to basics. Analog in a digital world. So different from everything else in our lives. Our technology-saturated and digitally-dependent lives. No app on my iPhone will start that fire. My family and I spent a week in a cabin in Blowing Rock, N.C. It was a re-charging, liberating, technology-freeing experience. A gurgling little stream rolled through the property. Cell phones barely worked there. It was back to basics time. Well, certain basics. We didn’t have to shoot a moose for dinner or forage for pine nuts. But most of my modern-day cares melted away. For once, technology wasn’t omnipresent. That wasn’t the case on the way in. On the road, all I thought about was how much technology had changed the monotonous haul for the better. How road trips had been vastly improved by devices and satellites and anything with “Mac” stamped on it. Like satellite radio. Who needs terrestrial radio when you can get music from the stars! Anything you want. Anywhere you want. The radio on long trips used to be the pits. My memories of childhood rides to the Rockies or the Sierras in California were of my finger glued to the radio scan button in a desperate dash through endless […]

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Ten things I’ve realized since the end of the World Cup

After a month of games — countless, wonderful, inspiring, addictive, all-consuming soccer games — the World Cup has come to an end. I must have watched the bulk of all but maybe a couple. And I’ve learned a few things along the way: • Excessive World Cup viewing can cause saddle sores. This is a little known fact, and not something that has been talked about in the media. But if you sat and watched as many games as I did, you are in a world of misery right now. • I have a daughter. Thanks to too much soccer watching, I completely forgot this. Well, until I was served with papers for gross neglect and becoming (as she called it in her affidavit) an “undeniably boring soccer boob!” • You can’t explain soccer to people who don’t understand it. The passion. The intensity. The funky rules. When someone says, “Dude I just don’t get what the big deal is,” simply reply, “That’s OK. It’s for higher mammals.” • Tour de France is little consolation when you’re craving major sporting events. I mean, they just ride bikes! • Don’t try to relive your high school soccer glory days. I realized this at a World Cup warm-up game for Team USA in Jacksonville. Two buddies (and their beers) tried to execute tricky soccer moves and nearly executed themselves. Both have required tailbone replacement surgery. Leave it to the professionals … and the sober. • If an important work meeting is scheduled […]

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Call of the wild children

I knew what I was in for when I played the voicemail message and heard what sounded like a train wreck being swallowed by a tornado to the tune of whirling banshees. Children. Three of them. All staying at my house. One of them mine. Two from out of town. They had decided to leave me a message: “BONGO JIMMY,” they screamed. A phrase I made up. Played back to me it sounded like an ice pick to the ear drums. I considered phoning a travel agent and booking a trip somewhere quiet and peaceful and heavy on the Mai Tais. I’m not used to “children.” I’m used to a “child.” One child. An ONLY-child. Three kids in a house? I once flew onto a Navy aircraft carrier in the middle of war games. That was like a high school study hall compared to this. Three kids — two 8-year-olds and a 5-year-old. No volume control. They scream everything. As if they’re on a construction site shouting over heavy equipment. Or a sinking ship trying to rise above the crashing waves and churning engines. Such urgency. Such bellowing. So many profound statements that the world — the ENTIRE world! — must here like: “CAN I HAVE SOME MORE ORANGE JUICE?” or “HOW COME YOUR TOILET WATER SWIRLS TO THE LEFT?” I DON’T KNOW! HOW COME WE’RE 5 INCHES APART AND SHOUTING? Kids don’t understand sarcasm, do they? They answer back, “I DON’T GET IT. DO YOU WANT ME TO SHOUT […]

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The old house summer projects

Oh no. It’s July 6. Deep into summer. Cresting the hill. No, heading downhill. Picking up speed. And with so much left to do. Daggone summer house projects! I live in an old house. A really old house. One that needs what all old houses need: Money. Attention. Brain cells. (And I long ago filed for bankruptcy on that last one.) Old houses will consume you. They will turn your summer into one long, unending project. That is, unless you procrastinate long enough and never begin any projects. Then your house will literally fall down and consume you. Oh no. It’s July 6 … The list always grows longer in an old house. Never shorter. I have one of many tacked to a cork board above my desk. There were two items crossed off, and three more added. (The three additions were to re-do my earlier work, plus repair the damage from a hammer I threw out of frustration.) If we ever named my house it would be “Futility.” Or something I can’t print here. People always love old houses. These are smart people who don’t live in them. They live in civilized dwellings with level floors, insulation, windows that work and roofs. They walk into old houses and say genuine things like, “Oh my gosh, I love this! It’s so rustic. And unique. And wonderful. Is that a live chicken on your mantle?” My wife is usually pretty sedate, but sometimes she goes off on people like this. “Are […]

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