Payback

That's what you get when you know you're not well and you push yourself anyway. Why? Well, usually it's a stupid reason. Like a paycheck. Or an item on sale that you can't live without. Or, in the most extreme cases, a little toy car.

Okay, so I was maybe looking for part-time employment, maybe, and I really did have that haircut appointment- which, trimmed way down in anticipation of warmer weather, looks mighty fine, if I do say so myself -but we all know the real reason I dragged myself out of my sickbed, shaved and shined, dressed and drove forty miles each way to see a former workmate who I only confab with every two, three months of late...

That's right! It's the Batmobile, baby! Na-na-na-na-na-na-nah! Batman! Not a cartoon Batmobile! Not a movie Batmobile! The REAL Batmobile! Score, baby! Thank you, Big Don!

Yes, what started life as the 'Car Of The Future'- envisioned, oddly enough, by its designer after a real-life encounter with a shark; the streamlined contours, fins and toothy grillework a mimicry of those belonging to the powerful fish -the 1955 Lincoln Futura enjoyed a whirlwind tour of the years' auto show circuit and a brief stint as the centerpiece of the 1959 celluloid masterpiece, It Started With A Kiss starring Glenn Ford and Debbie Reynolds. Relegated to a musty storage facility until self-styled 'King of the Kustomizers' George Barris bought her for a paltry sum in the early 60s, she seemed destined for the scrapheap or perhaps, under George's hand, some way-out, kandy-kolored, psychedelic supposition of 'Hey, Daddy-O' hipness... until fate intervened in the form of a TV show based on a comic book character with a pretty hip ride of his own.

With only a few weeks' notice until shooting began on Batman, ol' George was under the Hollywood heat lamp in a big way! So he rolls out the languishing Futura, strips some chrome, makes her an open top- much more happenin' than the claustrophobic Jetsons-style closed canopies -paints her black, adds a few Bat-notions and some pinstriping and >voila< she's done.

By all accounts the car was quite literally a rolling wreck: too heavy with its huge all-steel body so that it constantly blew out tires and could barely be stopped by its braking system, hard to handle without power steering and a suspension made for a car lighter by half, not to mention a miniscule gas tank good for getting from its trailer into the shot but never back again...

In spite of these behind-the-scenes flaws, the car onscreen was a dazzling thing to behold. Long and sleek, polished and deep, deep black, with it's jet cockpit styled bubble top... it looked for all the world like just the one-of-a-kind conveyance for those mysterious and colorfully garbed Caped Crusaders.

And the magical undercranked camera made it seem like it would cover the fourteen miles to Gotham City before Commissioner Gordon could return the red phone to its cradle.

But, I digress...

I was sick as anything all day then yesterday, hacking and going on like pneumonia, weak as a pup and alternating between chills and heat flashes and the best part of the night was a struggle to get comfortable between the same extremes of temperature and general malaise. What a drag!

At least I had that new little Batmobile on the wall to glimpse through bleary eyes and bouts of achey breaky sweats...

And just to prove that I learned my lesson I was back on the road today, all over the county stocking up on mailing supplies, wrapping articles for mail in the back seat of the car, gathering doll parts, consolidating artifacts and craft materials at my remote storage facility(Mom's garage)and back tending to e-business tonight another coupla hours. Yeah! Go, baby, go! 'Sick' is all in your mind...

>hack, hack<

So, now... I need at least one more Batmobile so I can break it outta the plastic bubble and play with it like a little kid. And then one to customize, y'know, tweak the details a little. And my son surely wants one too... Hey, a few small pleasures adds up to one big one, I always say.

Okay, I just made that up. But, seriously, anything and everything you might wanna know about the TV Batcar can be found here:

1966 TV Batmobile

A quick one

Just to say 'hello' and report on the weather and keep not too many days going by without a note here. Quite temperate and sunny out of doors. It'll be swell to get out there- sometimes it takes an act of Congress to cross the threshold and see beyond the confines of the homeplace, get stuck in the toy studio or at the keyboard and before ya know it the day is waning -running over to the local KayBee Toy Outlet to see my old workmate, Big Don, who's working there part-time now- Wonder if he needs any help? I'm a natural for a toy store, after all! -and snagged one of those snazzy new Hot Wheels TV Batmobiles for me. Whatta guy!

It would be more exciting if I weren't fighting a cold or some sort of invasive malady; I'm all chesty, sinus painish, overall bedraggled feeling... >blaaaahhhh< Where does this stuff come from?!? I was fine yesterday and toward evening it came all creeping around uninvited...

Maybe my haircut appointment this after will freshen up my outlook some. If I don't fall asleep in the chair, that is.

Yep, just another day in paradise, as it were. Wheeee!

Weather report

Hey, well, this is different. A good morning that sees the daylight rather than the middle of the night!

It's a beautiful wintry morning here in south-central PA with the sun breaking brightly despite the snow on the ground. Through the frosty pane I see robins and doves drinking from the puddles of melted snow in the backyard while inside the house not a creature is stirring except this mouse.

And the day holds promise of fun and frolic. Well, okay, maybe not frolic but fun anyway. Then again I may frolic just for the fun of it. So I can say at the end of it that it was indeed a day of fun and frolic.

Isn't it funny how when you say words repeatedly they seem to lose their weight or sense? Frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic, frolic...

Hahahaha, see there! It's 'fun and frolic' already with the 'copy' button and I'm not outta my pajamas. Hoo boy, am I easily amused or what? ....Yeah...!

Hard Day's Night

That's what I think of when everything starts to run together. Not that I have such a crowded slate of activities but working from home, working early, working late, working in-between... It gets weird sometimes. Nice but weird, seems like the 'normal' rhythm of things just goes out the window sometimes. Plus there are times when it gets so I hate to leave the house. Like this past week, it was so nice for a coupla days- just a few days ago, seems longer -I think it broke the 70 degree mark one afternoon and I might have gone out twice, three times, usually to check the mail. Too late, now it's back to frosty, snow-covered, thirty degrees or less wintertime again. So I'm definitely not excited about going out now, all bundle-fundled and breath freezing in your nostrils. I hate that feeling like few others. Maybe worse is the feeling of knowing your gonna throw up and there's really nothing you can do to stop it. That's worse. Worse than actually throwing up. At least then you know it's getting over with. But knowing it's coming... that's bad. I hate that.

How'd I get on to that?!? So, I finally got the Crash Magnet into the garage this past week; inspection, as always, reveals problems to the tune of several hundred dollars. No getting around that muffler fix plus tires plus brakes. Torture never stops. But it'll be good to have it be nice and quiet again. Scheduled for this week once the garage gathers all the parts they need to do the work.

Cat has evidently forgotten the game of fetch. I can't blame her given her almost two months forced confinement, in that small space there was no room for chasing the orange mouse-like device hither and yon and I guess that time span is a lot longer in cat time. She still gives her string toy- a plastic stick with pink yarn wrapped around with a long, loose length to whip back and forth -what for and will chase that thing forever and a day but the mouse when thrown she only chases after and never returns. Too bad, I really thought she might merit a trip to Letterman one day with that act.

And so it goes. I've got a 'care package' to get together, been promised over two years now- Time, as they say, flies when you're having fun. Even when you're not, I think, but that's a whole 'nother story -and I've been holding off until everything I wanna include is 'just so'. Well, you know how that goes. Or maybe you don't. But with my scattershot approach to things 'just so' could be another two years and that just wouldn't be right. So I'll give it a mighty push this week and see whether I can actually finish something for once.

 

Like Humans Do

I've got part of my PC audio playlist leftover from the previous owner and while I think I've got a modicum of variety in my own musical library I own no Talking Heads. As far off into left field as I've gotten was Oingo Boingo, you know, the guy who went on to score Tim Burton movies and stuff. But there's a leftover David Byrne track in the midst of my own Audioslave and Disturbed nuggets. An interesting aside on social interaction and the nuance and quirkiness of the things people do as a matter of course. Neat.

Things like that make me yearn to be more musical, able to string words and notes together. Music never clicked for me in school- not that it does now, by any means. I'm strictly a pretender, don't read, can sometimes barely decipher the chord arrangements of radio stuff and maybe drag half a melody kicking and screaming out of a reticent and uncooperative guitar -when it might have made a difference in my chosen form of expression.

Isn't it funny? Artists wannbe musicians. Musicians wannabe actors. Actors wannbe artists. Or musicians.

I'm too distracted to go too deep here. It's time for Smallville...

The week that was

Coco-Loco-Miss Pussis is out of her bathroom prison and, as expected, is completely weirded out by her newfound freedom. Spends a lot of time under chairs and skulking behind things.

Saw Night At The Museum with a handful of friends, quite entertaining, coupla laugh out loud moments. Cheap seats and free refills on the large buttery popcorn and raspberry tea, can't beat that for an hour and a half of diversion.

Spent the day today 'backed out' in bed or on the couch, kinduva drag. I don't know if it's skeletal, muscular or what but it came uninvited and I hope it goes away likewise unbidden tomorrow.

One possible cause: 'Crash magnet' is living up to its name again this week with son-boy behind the wheel. His mother wheedles and begs every opportunity for his tutelage without regard for traffic and/or weather conditions so I've taken to riding in the backseat and letting her ride shotgun. At least I don't need a seat belt back there and it's only half as nerve-wracking when you can't see how close the corners are cut or the uncertain hand at the wheel. I doubt it would have made any difference being in that front seat when he made a wide semi-truck type of turn at a not-so-wide local intersection Friday afternoon at the height of rush hour as I barked from the back seat, 'Don't... hit... the... curb...! Turn, turn, turn!!!'

BANG!!!

Caved in the right front wheel, neatly slicing the tire and breaking a lug on the cement curbing before lurching to a stop on the flattened rim. Managed to remove the wasted tire and wheel after some struggle and replace it with the donut spare and- with the boy safely removed to the back seat -coaxed it the remaining half mile home on three lug nuts.

You know, for as many hours upon hours he's spent at the video games, driving and careening about in virtual driving, you'd think he could avoid something as big as the side of the road and that curbing... but nooooooooooo...

So tomorrow will be an adventuresome day of wheel and tire repair, breaking into the moolah set aside for the long overdue muffler repair and upcoming inspection. Yay!

I keep thinking that I haven't set eyes on me mother in probably almost a month now. Not only are we removed to the other side of the county, there's also the on-again, off-again nature of her relationship with my spouse, lotta water under the bridge between 'em and... well, like everything else in this ragged existence, it ain't what it oughta be. A super drag. I hear she has a new dog, another German Shepherd, one better trained, more mature and less hyperactive than the last adoptee.

I need to scavenge some stuff from my collected paraphernalia still stored in her garage so I'll have to make a point of covering the intervening miles sometime this week. Or get disowned.

And so it goes. Stay tuned for more exciting meaningless drivel, er, I mean, exciting news soon, you betcha!