We Are Errant Knaves, All

Believe none of us.

I try to think of myself as an honest person, someone who walks on the right side of the law. A recent topic came up on a message board I frequent that caused me to re asses my virtue. The topic of the thread was "Did you ever steal?" When conjuring up my response I began to find more and more instances in my past of thievery. After compiling the list and posting it, I realized I was quite the larcener.

My pilfering began at an early age when, as a small child, I picked up and carried a Winnie the Pooh doll right out of a department store. My parents have told me that I found it on the floor, discarded by another child. I had always believed it was part of a display and that I had just felt that it needed to go home with me. I still have the stuffed animal, tattered and torn, missing an eyeball, with visual signs of previous surgeries to repair severed limbs, and have given it to my daughter as a passing of the plush.

While in high school I ran with some unsavory crowds. Some members would use their five finger discount at the local music store, sporting a baggy zip hoodie and filling the space between with CDs from the bins. Not wanting to be accountable for actual theft, I refrained from participating but knew full well the actions of my friends. No, I was not up to the big game, I worked on a smaller scale. We would go to a knock off of Chuck E. Cheese's called Sideshow Pizza for the buffet. Their proof of purchase was a colored string clamped on your wrist with a contrasting colored metal clasp. This allowed you repeat trips to the pizza buffet and drink fountains. We would chip in a couple bucks each and purchase one meal, taking turns wearing the loose fitting bracelet. When one member would come back with his plate he would remove the bracelet and pass it to the next person under the table, away from the watchful eyes of the manager. After each trip to the restaurant, our wheelman would remove the clasp from the bracelet and add them to our collection hanging from his rear view mirror. Sometimes, fortune favored the felon and a discarded bracelet from that days color scheme would be found in the parking lot saving us the five dollars outright.

By college, I was a regular Campus Clyde Barrow, setting my sights on the ridiculously overpriced student meal plan. Our plans consisted of 'blocks' equating to roughly five dollars. For a block you get infinite trips to the cafeteria food line which consisted of items found in most institutional settings, both educational and penal. After one trip, it was a crime against humanity to return for more. The other option was a newer, renovated food court which consisted of several themed areas with offerings such as pasta and pizza, a deli, fish, rotisserie, and frozen deserts. In this instance a block would get you a combo meal including a drink. I would usually get my lunch or dinner to go, opting to eat in the comfort of my dorm room instead of the general seating areas. Instead of the mandated two pieces of pizza I would get four, stuffing them into a plastic "to-go container." The heat from the pizza would then steam up the plastic, obscuring the view of the contents. When approaching the cashier, I would not say anything to give away my ruse, allowing them to make the mistake on their own. With a 90% success rate, I could get have leftovers for dinner on one trip. In my estimation, this was reconciliation for the devious methods by which the university would parlay students fear of losing unused blocks at the end of the semester. Their practices of selling cases of soda at the special price of five blocks a piece roughly came to a 500% markup of retail price. Who was stealing from who in that scenario?

Since graduation I have been low key in my larceny. I won't go into any great detail for fear of retribution but I have refused to buy music since 1999. Frankly, my worst crimes are behind me, I mainly stick to small time jobs more consistent with that of a petty nature. Maybe an extra apple of a higher price slips into my bag while going through the self checkout at the grocery store. That coupon is out of date, but you never know unless you try. Perhaps, I don't tell my server they forgot to charge me a drink and then I slip them and extra dollar for tip at my favorite restaurant.

When I really think about all the things I've stolen I realize that I'm probably not as evil as I make myself out to be. We all steal in one way or another. I've stolen a kiss before, and maybe a few hearts. Half of my semi funny observations are probably not my own but unconscious recollections of something I've seen or heard. In the past, I blatantly stole web page code because that's what you did in the early days of guerrilla website design. If you didn't know how to code something, you found it somewhere else and stole the source. I didn't even draw that goofy Mongo picture at the top of this blog. I found a jpeg through Google of some one's drawing of DC Comics' Solomon Grundy character and added the computer. And this blog entry's title, I stole that from Shakespeare. In fact, the sum of our individual personalities are an amalgamation of others'. A saying or action that you may do with regular frequency is probably something that you adopted from someone else. You stole their shtick. Such phrases as, "Shit the bed," "Hell's half acre," and "Huh, Hell! Pay Attention!" are all common sayings that I did not originate but use in my everyday world. While I may have been a thief of just about everything in this world I make reparations with the gift of laughter. That should be enough to balance the scales. Am I right?

Right?

I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?

Go thy ways to a nunnery.

And don't steal anything on the way.

Behind The Red Room Door

In my house there is a room of complete and utter chaos. The laws of physics do not apply. It is a room where objects disappear into another dimension, only to reappear months later. Mystical forces block memory of leaving objects here. This place, this unearthly place has no basis in reality. Its location can shift overtime, occupying different areas of a home. As for now, its blood red carpet chills the spine. The shapes and figures that adorn the walls mock you when you enter. Abandon all hope for this is the red room and it is the dumping ground for everything which has no other place.

No, this isn't the Twilight Zone and it's not Twin Peaks. This is the spare bedroom in my house. It was a kid's bedroom that had ugly red carpet and wallpaper depicting baby Disney characters in all manner of bedtime preparation. On occasion, when we can clean it up, it serves as a guest bedroom but for now, it's pretty much storage for all sorts of junk that have no place anywhere else in the house. It also serves as a closet for all my clothes and a ready room for me in the morning so I don't wake my wife. It's nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, a lot of people probably have a 'stuff' room in their house. It's the room no one ever sees. The one door that always remains closed when company comes to visit.

My parents had one. It was my brother's bedroom after he moved out. The once sparse room now contained all manner of plants and packages to be wrapped for Christmas. My wife's parents have one. It was their eldest daughter's room. At one point, it held their old Macintosh computer and two recliners. My wife's parents would watch television in that room while we occupied the downstairs. Eventually, it shifted to other rooms of the house as they found the need to have an extra bedroom available. I used to have two. No, I'm not rich, just disorganized. But with the birth of my daughter, I needed a nursery. So, I had to downsize to just one. But let's talk humble beginnings.

I didn't always have a 'stuff' room. My first apartment did not have a 'junk' room; therefore everything I had was stuff. It was the George Carlin rule. "Your stuff is shit. My shit is stuff. Get your shit out of here. I need a place for my stuff." I also did not have anything in great quantities that could be construed as miscellaneous. All my worldly possessions at that point resided in one of the many rooms in my Dad's office building. Short of holding a vintage complete with a jar containing the head of Benjamin Raspail (a.k.a. Miss Hester Moffet), there was all manner of 'stuff' housed at the office. There was the custom made headboard from my college dorm, a Domino's Pizza thermal bag, various books, and two round table tops and bar stools. There was no way I could these items in my current living space, but when I moved into a bigger townhouse, I began to accrue more stuff. Now, my spare bedroom became a stuff room. It contained all of my Christmas and Halloween decorations in the closet, my monster entertainment center that no longer fit anywhere else, a futon, the litter box for the cats, all my records (not music), and various nick knacks that no longer had a place among the regular everyday ones. During this time, I was planning a wedding and could not fathom getting a whole lot of new 'stuff' from guests since I had no place for more of my current 'stuff.'

At that point, my then fiancée decided to buy a house so that we didn't have to move so much stuff. When we moved in brought all my 'current stuff' with me as well as the 'old stuff' from the office and my wife's stuff. We stacked everything from floor to ceiling in both extra bedrooms. Each had an odd theme. We called one the 'Pooh Room' since it was painted in Pink and Yellow on opposite walls. The other was a horribly designed kids' bedroom we dubbed the 'Red Room' from the carpet and wallpaper. Both of these rooms also had to hold bedroom furniture since we brought those from our respective homes as well.

My introduction to the Red Room describes as a place where objects disappear. I simply mean that anything that can not be found was usually located in the red room. However, at one point during our engagement, my wife lost her ring. Her friend had come over to help color her hair and hoping to not get any color or chemicals on her ring she removed it and forgot where she had left it. Usually, I have an uncanny knack for locating lost items in my house as long as I know where it was seen last. I can deduce the final location based on movement and tasks completed after said item was last seen. It's the equivalent to a contact wearer dropping one of their lenses and always looking in the weirdest of places to find it, whether it be the side of the vanity countertop or the back of the underside of the faucet. Since my wife had no recollection on when or where she had seen it last I had no basis on which to mount my search. Sickened to her stomach, she agonized for days over where it could have gone. I asked her if it was possible that she threw it away. Her uncertainty gave me pause. It was late in the week, so I would have a large amount of trash to sift through in order to declare it not there. But, I did. After cleaning up, she continued to fret over the ring as we only had six months before our wedding. She was puzzled at my lack of worry. I told her that with all the things that had to be done before our wedding, I couldn't worry about this one thing. It wasn't in the garbage and you last saw it while in the house. It had to be somewhere and we would find it when we stopped looking for it. In all probability it was where I originally figured it would be, the Red Room. She did not remember leaving it there and the room was a disaster as it was. Although, I refrained from giving her more grief by stating that perhaps one of our cats had eaten it, but since I did the litters, eventually it would appear, if that were the case. My wife's continual bewilderment at my lack of fear of losing items in my house is only matched by the track record of finding said items when I quit looking for them, though not all were found in the Red Room.

Every so often, over the course of the next few months, I would take a spin around the house and check in unusual places for the ring, but never did I locate it. About a month prior to the wedding we began shuffling stuff from the 'stuff' rooms in order to have space available for out of town guests attending our wedding. While the mattress and box spring for my wife's old bedroom suit were located in the 'Pooh Room,' the frame was stacked in the 'Red Room.' Again, the nature of the 'stuff' room is that there is no logical order to what is kept there. While moving the folded up metal bed frame I heard a tinkling noise that didn't sound like it belonged. Then, there was the dull sound of a small object hitting the carpet floor. Among the blood red sea of shag pile lay a bright shiny metallic object. It was the ring. The interdimensional doorway had reopened and deposited the ring into the folded up bed frame just in time for the wedding.

This was, of course, the only explanation because there was no way my wife would have purposely put the ring in between the folds of the frame. I surprised her with the find, asking her to marry me all over again. She, at first, assumed that I had bought another ring, but that was not the case. I asked her if she remembered taking her ring off in the 'Red Room' before coloring her hair. She suddenly recalled being draped with a towel and adorned in foil and thinking that she better take off the ring. Her and her friend had been looking at her in the mirror on top of the dresser when this thought occurred. She then took the ring and placed it on the window sill of that room where it must have fallen down off the window sill and into the frame. She could neither remember taking it off or being in that room until this point. The 'Red Room' cast a spell of amnesia on her before taking the shiny jeweled object.

From then on we tried to do our best not to go into the 'Red Room' with any thing of value. In the last year we have managed to discard or organize the bulk of our 'stuff' as to alleviate the contents of our 'stuff' room. One motivational factor was the first birthday of our daughter this July. Again, an out of town friend was visiting and since the other room was now a nursery, we needed a useable bedroom. We worked long weekend hours to clear out both our primary 'stuff' room and our secondary 'stuff' room, our garage. In the case of inclement weather threatening our picnic, we would bring tables and chairs into our garage to house guests.

Granted, both rooms still house an amazing amount of 'stuff' that needs to go somewhere else. I hope that by this time next year, this 'stuff' has found a more permanent home, either in the dumpster, another room, or the 'Room of Abandonment.' That's my attic and it has a lot of 'stuff' that makes appearances throughout the year and it is a pain in the ass to get it. I need to get rid of a lot of stuff.

I Come in Pieces

With one year of fatherhood under my belt, my thoughts turn to the future. Specifically, how to stop it from happening. While I know that's impossible I do keep a thought in my head that keeps me up nights worrying. "I'm going to have to put a lot of things together over the next few years." That single idea of "some assembly required" is enough to rattle any one's cage. I don't care how skilled a craftsman you are.

I make jokes about it but the truth is I really hate putting things together. It's not that I have no skills in inserting tab A into slot B, it's just that I hate instructions. My last jigsaw puzzle contraption was a brand new grill that got tested out at my kid's first birthday. My previous one finally proved ineffective a couple of years ago and lack of money and space kept me from getting a new one. I resorted to charcoal grilling on a rinky dink grill that I can toss across the street and believe me there has been days. I'll say one thing about grilling and then back to the topic at hand. Never by cheap charcoal. If you are serious about grilling on charcoal then by quality, no fluid needed, briquettes. Also, a good rule of thumb is to have one of those chimneys around. Those are cool.

Ok, back to my cobbling prowess. Over the years of living on my own, I have had to assemble a lot of furniture. Once, I actually considered getting a job where all I would do is go to different stores and assemble display models. It was a whim when a coworker told me all about it. I could work my own hours, set my own pace, and pretty much just sit alone in a room with a bunch of pieces of veneered particle board and an allen wrench and make some magic. What is it with the allen wrench? Ready to assemble furniture relies on the hex bolt to hold everything together and now I've got fifteen allen keys sitting in my garage that I'll never use again.

My first project was an entertainment center in my first apartment. I had no money but wanted to build the perfect beast to house my television, DVD player, stereo and VCR. I ended up going to a local defunct chain called Ames. They were a casualty of the Wal-Mart takeover at the turn of the century. For $99.00 it was, in my mind, a great buy. It was walnut veneer with a huge opening for all my A/V equipment. It had those magnetic glass doors so you could see all of my DVDs and games. I was quite proud when I put it together. It even had the veneered cardboard with several perforated punch out areas depending on the size of my television and cabling structure. It was a monster. Then I moved and it had to come with me. I disassembled it and put into storage. Alas, it never held a good shape after that and I decided to get a new one. I gave it to a stoner neighbor and went off to Wal-Mart for a better one.

What I found was another good deal on my previous model's bigger brother. This one was nearly floor to ceiling with flanked shelving areas and cabinets underneath. It had molding around the top and bottom that made it appear more expensive. A night with an allen wrench and I had the Mt. Everest of Entertainment Centers ready for action. Then I moved and it had to come with me. Unfortunately, this model had a little more intricate design. Perhaps someone at the Sauder/O'Sullivan/Ovation factory took some designs from M.C. Escher and Frank Lloyd Wright because this thing didn't break down into modular pieces.

Once in my new residence I found that I did not have the space to erect the monstrosity. My wife, then girlfriend, could not fathom having furniture that went beyond the slanted opening of a stairwell. Neither my entertainment center, nor my couch, sit squarely in the middle of a wall without breaching into open space. Insistent that I would not get rid of what I now called the S.S. Enterprise, I moved it to a spare bedroom and it pretty much became nick knack storage. Again, I bought a new one. In a move I can only describe as getting away from an SUV in favor of a fuel efficient vehicle, I opted to buy a more compact and lightweight model considering my pattern of moving once I bought furniture. I went with a model that had side shelves and cabinet space beneath but allowed me some room to eventually expand my television screen towards 32". Something, I hoped to do once the price of Plasmas came down. Then I moved.

At this point the exercise in taking an older entertainment center with me became futile as I was more suited for building a ship in a bottle. I was going to have to call Maury Povich to bring a crew over to my house and take out a wall in order to get the Enterprise out of the spare bedroom. Instead of scrapping it, I offered it to the movers who helped me vacate my premises on the contingency that they were responsible for it.

In the house I have now, I still have the smaller entertainment center upstairs and a newer, even smaller model downstairs in my family room. Again, the space I had did not allow me to be too elaborate. I did however take advantage of the manual's policy of calling the manufacturer instead of the store for replacement of missing or broken items. These things are so cheap that they are willing to just ship you pieces of wood and hardware at no cost because they know how badly they are constructed and packaged. In fact, my old coworker, who nearly convinced me of a career in display construction, passed a manual around to family members who in turn rounded up enough pieces to construct two new stands.

Since then I've learned a few things about ready to assemble items.

1. The better the quality, the less there is to build.
2. Some idiot is in charge of writing the manuals because they make no sense and the diagrams are ridiculously horrible or do not match the model you have.
3. From now on, chose living accommodations based on current furniture ownership.
4. Hope and pray my daughter doesn't move as much as I did.
5. Find a purpose for three walnut shelves and a futon bolt.

Meet Me At Hemmy's.

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.  So, why not go where everybody knows your name?  I used to back in the day.  That place was Hemingway's, nestled right among the dormitories of The University of Pittsburgh.  It was the kind of bar that you could walk into and disappear.  This was the kind of place that didn't cater to the meat market college coed.  It was a more refined outlet for libations and relaxation.  It seemed an unlikely fit for all the hustle and bustle of the campus lifestyle, yet it was the one place I could count on to provide me with what I needed.  Every college area has its various outlets for drinking.  We had a bar that specialized in Greek life.  We had one that dealt with the general meat market crowd.  We even had a bar that primarily embraced the alternative music crowd.   But Hemingway's embraced, well, everybody.  Yet, not everybody went.  That was the magic.  They didn't discriminate but most people couldn't get past the name when choosing it for a place to patron.  Most people felt it was a hoity-toity, high faulting, artsy fartsy, and other "pretentious words that don't exist" kind of place.  Really, it was a small pub that just emanated class.  Stepping off the street onto the tiled floor you can feel the history of this place.  It wasn't famous like, say, Bull and Finch but it had that ambience of an established watering hole.  The brass railings and "judges paneling" style of walls were the perfect setting for cracking open a book written by someone who has been dead for over a 100 years.  Granted, the place wasn't enormous but the mirrored wall behind the bar gave it that larger than appears look.  It seemed a timeless place that could never change to keep up with the habits of the college crowd.  Of course, that was 15 years ago and the bar has gone through extensive changes, not all for the good.

It was truly by accident, that I discovered Hemingway's.  Being a sophomore, one would think I would not be able to hang out in bars, let alone hang out in one that wasn't wall to wall drunken coeds.  I was a fledgling Theater Arts student and after successfully being cast in my first show at The University of Pittsburgh, I tagged along with a group of other well seasoned member of the Pitt Theater Community.  I sort of just kind of showed up and blended into the tapestry of characters.  Being underage and unemployed I didn't exactly have the means or the right to be there but nobody bothered to ask any questions.  It was a different scenario when frequenting the beer garden meat market just around the corner.  Two bucks and your college ID got you into the show and most people went for the quarter drafts.  Here, I was never questioned about my age, because I was with a group of people who frequented the bar enough that after a few visits, there was a drink in front of me before my butt was in my chair.  In fact it became so commonplace that as soon as we entered the premises, glasses began filling and were delivered to a table already established as our spot.   It was truly the kind of place I could get used to.   It was a dizzying courtship as I became engrained into the group.  One of the gang was taking orders and asked what I was drinking.  I told him I wasn't 21 and he gave me "pfft" and said, "So."  I replied, "But I'm broke, too.  I just came to hang out."  He said don't worry about it and got me a beer.  He was an upperclassman and had just received a small inheritance from a late aunt and was buying a few rounds.  Eventually, I did secure my own funds and became legal to drink, but by then, I was already recognized by staff and was given the same standard of service as my fellow cohorts.  When I had no one to watch Superbowl XXX with in 1995, I just went down to Hemingway's and enjoyed a few beers and a nice spread of sandwiches and snacks.  Hemingway's was that cool without being "cool".  I only wish we had beaten the Cowboys.  That would have been super cool.

If were to describe an evening with friends at Hemingway's, I would say it was laid back, a little smoky, and full of interesting tales.  I've spoken before about my friend Ray, who was the lead singer for a band out of Philly called, Open Cage.  We would sit and listen to his tales of being in the air force and every once in awhile he'd break out into song, usually leading to a rousing chorus with everyone joining in on the act.  We'd drink some more and eventually close the place.  It was never busy, but it was always doing good business.  Hemingway's had a built in fan base and even though the members rotated in and out every year due to graduation, it was always some place you could drop in for a reminder of what the simple life in a bar was like. 

Unfortunately, I cannot say that the owners of Hemingway's felt the way I do.  It had been quite some years since I had been in the bar, but in 2004 I met up with an old college friend who was in town for a conference.  It was also a chance to put a face to the name if you will.  I had told so many stories about Hemingway's that she was convinced that the bar was an old girlfriend and that any other bar just couldn't compete.  I merely related tales of what a real bar was like in comparison to the dives I had been dragged to by her friends.  When we arrived, it was like seeing your old house completely remodeled, but in a bad way.   There were colored twinkle lights that are only permitted in dorm room windows at Christmas time.  The back room where we held many an opening night cast party was now housing a pool table.  It was like a bizarro Cheers with Rebecca and Woody, not Diane and Coach.  Suddenly, the color drained from my face.  "Our" area was gone, replaced by tables and chairs that echoed a patio bar complete with plastic cups.   I was sick with grief over the changes. 

Because other bars had been closed for violations coeds were pushed like deer from the woods in favor of housing plans.  They migrated down into the once "deerless" areas and suddenly became a nuisance.  Seizing an opportunity to make more money, Hemingway's cranked up the college music and watered down the drinks and soon the place was packed wall to wall with loud and obnoxious students who didn't appreciate the architecture and acoustics of the bar.  Even the bathroom had been painted like a school locker-room taking away from the nostalgic "Here I sit, lonely heated..." decor.  My friend and I looked with a teary eyed as we saw our young adulthood wiped away with a coat of paint and string of lights.  The bar was gone, replaced with a younger, hipper, model that just didn't have the character.  My wife kind of liked the place.  She's younger, and doesn't get it.

Perhaps one day I will have the financial wherewithal and ambition to open my own bar and make it into a sort of Hemingway's, Too, or maybe just add the extra M to differentiate.  In any case, I will never cater to the crowd that sees it as a place to serve beer in a cup or shot in a test tube.  This place will have glass mugs, frosted within an inch of their life.  We'll have whiskey and scotch, aged to perfection.  There will be no quarter draft night and anyone who comes in will know that they are welcome as long as they don't tell the cool kids where we are.