Thursday, November 27, 2003

Here's Aunt Mary and my little girl, Mariel.  Aunt Mary is a "cool aunt" so I told her about my blog, even though there's things on there that even she would probably be a little uncomfortable with.  Even as I was describing it in a somewhat hushed voice, I could sense my mom bristling with scorn and disapproval. "Your relatives don't want to be on the internet," my mom said. Meanwhile,my dad was watching golf on tv. 10:55:27 PM    comment []

Of course, we musn't foget what this holiday is all about.  Eating the hell out of some turkey!   10:45:19 PM    comment []

here's my dad Here's my dad.  A very nice and decent man. At one point of the evening, my Aunt Mary turned to my mom and said,  "no offense to your son or anything, but Bill (my dad) is the only normal man in the family." And he is very normal.  He manages to live life like its a Norman Rockwell painting.  If Marylin Manson were to walk up in front of him, something in my dad's brain would turn him into a freckle faced boy in overalls who was going fishin' down at the stream. 10:42:26 PM    comment []

actually, we call her nanny Here's grandma's house.  Actually, we call her Nanny, but sometimes I get kind of embarassed saying Nanny. Anyway, you can see the place is pure Florida. Palm trees and sunshine.   It's actually on a little Island called Anna Maria. My mom used to tell me that until 1970, black people had to be off the Island of Anna Maria by sundown or they'd be thrown in jail. 10:36:32 PM    comment []

two front teeth Here's a self-portrait Mariel took with my camera on the way to Grandma's house.  She's such a wonderful, beautiful kid.  And one day she's going to grow into those two front teeth. 10:31:44 PM    comment []

we dropped a Barney doll Here's a shot that Mariel took of the Skyway as we zoomed over the top, past all the suspension cables. When I made my "movie," Mark & Tim's Cult Classic, we dropped a stuffed Barney Doll off this bridge, a few hundred feet into the waters below. My cousin and I took hours and hours of footage of all sorts of stuff, but I think the Barney dropping was the best thing. 10:29:06 PM    comment []

skyway Here I am driving to grandma's house via the Skyway bridge.  It really is kind of a skyway, I mean, doesn't it look like I'm driving up into the sky?  (I think they use the Skyway in several car ads that run nationally, so maybe you've seen it). After taking a couple of shots, I found myself veering into the other lanes of traffic and getting dangerously close to the wall on the right, so I turned the camera over to my 8 year old girl, Mariel. 10:25:10 PM    comment []

Here is the picture I used for match.com. 9:56:13 PM    comment []

on line love I signed up for one of those matchmaker.com things today.  I figured, why the hell not.  At the rate I'm going, the next girl I meet at a bar is going plunge an ice pick into my skull. So, this morning I filled out all the questionaires and wrote things about myself to try to seem wonderful and interesting and dynamic.  I tried to play down the drinking and play up the mountain biking.  Then I took a series of photos of myself, trying to find one that was really sexy.  It was a weird feeling trying come on to myself in the flipped around viewfinder of my camera. When I got back from Thanksgiving I looked through dozens of female profiles.  I "winked" at all the ones that were pretty.  (Winking is where you just indicate that your interested or attracted with a click of a button, but no e-mails or videos yet). Before long I had a small list of people who had winked at me:  I had a fat girl from Clearwater wink at me.  I had a fat and ugly girl, also from Clearwater wink at me.  I had a fag from Louisiana wink at me.  I had one woman who was actually sexy and pretty looking wink at me.  But she lived in Brazil. 9:53:06 PM    comment []

the stop n' smash   One idea I had for my own business when I was still married was called the "Stop n Smash.  The idea was, I would set up a booth (like at a carnival) by the side of a busy road in St. Petersburg with a sledge hammer and lots of interesting things for people to smash--old TVs, plates, food processors, etc.  People would pay me a few dollars for the privilege of smashing some stuff for a few minutes, and I would never have to work for "the man" again.  I figured people would want to do this because it would be a good stress reliever, and a neat, out-of-the-ordinary thing to do. I went as far as buying a sledge hammer at Home Depot, and some steel cable by which I attached the hammer to some heavy weights (left over from when I wanted to be Mr. Universe).  You  see, I didn't want anyone running off with my sledgehammer once I was open for business.  Nor did I want any of my customers to turn the hammer on me in a fit of rage or insanity. Once I concocted this prototype of the Stop n' Smash, I took it over to my friend Jason White's house to test it.   Jason White lived right next to an interstate overpass and his house and porch were littered with dishwashers and microwaves and all sorts of things to smash.  We took a couple of whacks each at some of his yard junk with the Stop n' Smash machine.  When we finished, we were both looking at the smashed junk in yard and it was very quiet.  Then I realized what a stupid idea the Stop n' Smash was. Nevertheless, there was a Stop n' Smash song that I came up with, which my ex and I sang in better days.  It went like this:   Stop!  Stop!  Stop n' Smash! All you need is a little cash! Just smash!  Smash!  Smash away! Smash-a-smash-a-smash both night and day! (repeat)   (from Beautiful Loser, 2002)   10:49:42 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Mark Michaels. Last update: 12/4/2003; 9:24:32 PM.