You may remember this post, in which I told of my plan to construct a “Wall of Conduct” in my apartment. I’ll explain the concept again later, when I post my actual finds for the “Wall”. This post is dedicated to a few things I saw the first time I hit the stores a few weeks ago but wasn’t able to capture in photo form:

First, here’s the actual antique vibrator, complete with dessicated rubber attachments, that Cookie fingered then rubbed her hands on my face.

A few more after the jump.

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Marilyn Chambers - Benihana

A little throwback to the days of cocaine, pubic hair, and really corny disco.

Years ago, I worked at a men’s clothing store in a now-all but abandoned mall in Columbus. One day, I was dusting and straightening the shoe display at the front of the store. I was crouched down, engrossed in my stimulating work, when I saw a pair of feet approach. I followed the feet up to find them attached to Steve Perry, ex-singer of Journey. He wasn’t the first celebrity I’d met, but he was the first to whom I felt obliged to speak. I stood up and said “Oh, hi! You know, I stayed up until midnight the night Escape was released. WTUE played it in its entirety and I wanted to tape it because I loved you guys so much.” Steve grinned and replied “Yeah. That was a great time for music.”

I’ve never known what he meant by that cryptic remark. Did he mean 1979 was a great time for music? Surely, for Journey, it was. Did he mean midnight was a great time for music? He would have been correct on that score, as well.

I posted this anecdote for HazBeen. For some reason, he loves that story.

Recently, I’ve had a series of conversations with a friend in which we wrestle with ethics issues as they relate to a blog. The conversations have been ongoing and were sparked again by my announcement that I intended to “get out on the dating scene” in the coming year. I made the comment that, if nothing else, tales of dating here in Pigspittle would provide good blog fodder. My friend had mixed feelings. One of the first questions was “What if you write unflattering things about your dates and they read them? Won’t you have to keep your blog a secret from them?” I said “First of all, I would think my entries would be more unflattering to me than anyone else because that’s my nature.” I firmly believe that people like to read humorous stories in which the writer is self-deprecating, humble and quick to point out his foibles. I don’t subscribe to the “Jamie Foxx School of Comedy.” To me, comedy isn’t cool. I don’t think people would want to read a blog with nothing but entries about how awesome I am and how much wool I’m pulling. (Not that either of those scenarios have any basis in fact.)

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As I descended the creaky steps down to the basement of the guitar store, I looked at the yellowed posters on the walls. Surely, the men on these posters were guitar gods, but I didn’t recognize any of them. None of them had bat wings or spiked codpieces, just more muted browns and mustaches. Always with the mustaches.

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I don’t remember asking for a guitar for Christmas. My friend Brian had an acoustic that I played every time I went to his house. I would lay it across my lap and play the theme from “Peter Gunn” using my thumb to fret the strings. (At that time, I thought I was playing the Blues Brothers music, not Peter Gunn.) I don’t know if Brian’s mother alerted my mother or what, but on Christmas day 1978, my mother brought a large, black case out of her bedroom and laid it on the floor next to me. I eagerly popped the latches and hauled out a brand new acoustic guitar. It was a Conn—a budget brand that she’d bought at Hauer Music for about $300.00. That was a lot of scratch for a single mother in 1978, even if she was getting a whopping forty bucks a week in child support from my father.

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Ever watch Monster Quest on the History Channel? I can save you an hour if you follow these simple instructions: Tape, TiVO or DVR the program first. Watch the first five minutes. In the first five minutes the narrator will say something like “Scientists and cryptozoologists alike have searched for proof of the existence of [Bigfoot, Nessie, Mutant Dogs, Chupacabra, Yeti, etc.]” Now, fast forward to the last minute of the program. The narrator will say “In light of these findings, scientists and cryptozoologists still do not have conclusive proof that the [Bigfoot, Nessie, Mutant Dogs, Chupacabra, Yeti, etc.] exists.”

There. I just saved you fifty-six minutes.

There was a Monster Quest marathon playing Christmas night. It was on while dad and I looked at old photos. In addition to the Monster Quest-watching tip above, I also learned that, despite my having lived through them and being reasonably cognizant, I did not recall the seventies and early eighties being only these colors: Harvest gold, avocado, brown, and another kind of brown.

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After we’d unwrapped nothing, we took a drive a few miles north to a strange, new development, North Clayton, Ohio. As we were pulling in, dad said “I like these houses. They remind me of Kammer Avenue.” (Kammer Avenue being the street on which my dad’s childhood home was located.) Sure enough, the homes did look like homes built in the twenties and thirties. There were approximately seven houses built, none of which appeared to be occupied. I told dad it looked like a movie set.

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I left Pigspittle on Christmas Eve at 2:00PM. Hit Whole Foods in Columbus on the way and picked up $57.00 worth of dry-aged (whatever that is) sirloin steak. I was in and out of that place like I was rescuing Jessica Lynch. Negotiating the surprisingly busy Whole Foods was like playing a real-life game of Centipede only with hipsters and smartly-dressed gay gentlemen instead of spiders. Cookie the speed-shopper would have been proud of me. “Go, John, go!” *Chariots of Fire theme*

Once I arrived at dad’s, I greeted the dogs and handed him the steaks. “$57.00? Jesus Christ!” he said. I replied “Hey, they’re dry-aged!”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I have no idea.” (He later looked it up on the Internet, but didn’t share his findings with me.)

I gave dad his gift wrapped in a towel from the linen closet. After wrapping everyone else’s gifts, I was tired of wrapping. Also, I suck at it. It was in keeping with a family tradition, though. When we were growing up, dad would always grab a birthday or Christmas card we’d already received, cross out the “Nephew” or “Grandson”, write in “Son”, then cross out “Aunt Rose” or “Granny” and write “Dad”. He’d hand us the altered card with a rolled-up brown grocery bag with a hundred-dollar bill in it. I’ve inherited my love of tradition and ceremony from my dad, obviously.

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It’s Christmas Eve morning here in Pigspittle. Monday, December 24th. I only recently got out of bed and am nursing the day’s first cup of coffee. I read one of the comments left on my “Wall of Conduct” entry, which compelled me to read the entry itself once again—something I do not typically do. Once the entries are written, I tend not to revisit them. Upon rereading the entry, it occurred to me that I told a story from the entry just yesterday to Spike and Uck—both avid readers of the blog—both of whom have clearly heard (or read) the story before. I enthusiastically told the story of the photo that inspired the project—the photo of the alcoholic executive.

There is every possibility in the world that they read the original entry and simply forgot it. They may not have read it at all. That doesn’t diminish the point that the lines have become blurred. I cannot keep track of what I have told to whom anymore. (Good thing I’ve got nothing to lie about.) Between the RRC forums, the RRC blog, this blog, my father and my friends, I no longer have any idea what story I’ve told or where. This troubles me. I have a finite amount of stories. I’ve lived only so much “life”. I could write forever about the things I haven’t done or thought or squeezed, but writing a blog as Walter Mitty doesn’t seem terribly interesting to me. “Angelina Jolie unzipped my fly and began her work in earnest. Pocketa pocketa pocketa.”

The only solution? Live more life, of course.

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