Fragmented Friday - Suicidal Penguins Complect the Formular

• Second week in a row that I've managed a M-F posting schedule; I told Zinger I'd have to be careful doing stuff like this, otherwise people might start to expect it. He replied that he supposed he'd let me get by with a M-T-F posting schedule; he's quite the magnanimous soul, isn't he?
  
  
• The other day I headed to the post office to pick up my mail, since they still haven't replaced the missing mail box. Having learned my lesson the first time, I made sure to bring a book to read to help pass the time; due to this, I didn't notice that one of my coworkers was in line a few people behind me until I passed by him on my way up to the window to get help. After the postal worker went in the back to retrieve my mail, I turned around to say hi to the coworker when out of the corner of my eye I noticed some weirdo donning the Junior Birdman goggles.
  
  No, not that weirdo; Li'l Weirdo! Which was a surprise to me, since the last I knew he was out on deployment. I went over to say hi and before I could even think to give him a hard time he blurted out "I just got back into town, I swear!" It's like he was expecting me to accuse him of hiding out from me or something; why he would think such a thing I have no idea . . .
  
  
• Last Friday we had our final cook-out at Cap'n Cluck's parents' house. We did most of the usual things; roasted hot dogs, roasted marshmallows, played Mafia, watched the Mafia game devolve into a mass of confusion and chaos . . . y'know the usual.
  
  
• While discussing old TV shows at the cook-out, I mentioned M*A*S*H*, which prompted Angel to ask "Do you know what the name of that theme song was?" I answered immediately: "Suicide is Painless." One of the newer, nickless Singles got a confused look on his face and asked "Did you just say 'Suicidal pandas'?" It does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
  
  
• I'm proud to say that after my Victoria Jackson post, CoIM is now the number one Google hit for the search term "eagleboob." On a related note, this week also marked the first time I ever received a blog hit from someone Googling the keywords "paraplegic porn" which took them to this post. Truly, accomplishments to be proud of.
  
  
• In preparing for yesterday's Amberbama post, I tracked down the email I had originally sent out to family and friends describing the experience at the time, as well as the Essence of Amber message board thread; you can read Rebel Monkey's version of events there. Going back through all the posts I was amazed at what all I had forgotten; six years is a long time.
  
  
• Miss ArkanSass should be flying in to town this evening, and I'm still not 100% sure what movie to pick for her first Odd Squodd movie fest; should I try to introduce her and Li'l Random to horror comedies Murder Party or Student Bodies? Should I pick one of the Netflix that should be here by then, like Run Fat Boy Run or The Foot Fist Way? Decisions, decisions!
  
  
• My favorite spam email of the moment is one which promises me a tax refund from the IRS if I can receive on my credit card if I just, and I quote, "Complect the Formular."

Incidence of Coincidence; or "The Misadventures of Cap'n Passed-out and Pity Mint in Amberbama"

Back in September of 2002, Rebel Monkey and I made plans to go to the 4th Annual Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham, Alabama. Why make the 11 hour drive to Alabama for a film festival? Because that festival hosted the world premiere of the writing/directorial debut of Amber Benson in the film Chance, in which she also starred. Now, if you're not familiar with the name, it's not surprising, as her most notable role was that of long-time recurring character Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Rebel Monkey and I, both being big film buffs who had never been to a film festival before as well as big Buffy fans, decided that this opportunity to not only attend a reasonably priced film festival but also possibly meet a Buffy/Angel cast member or two -- the film also featured James "Spike" Marsters, Andy "Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan" Hallet, and the then-wife of Nicholas "Xander" Brendon -- could not be passed up. So, the plan was for Rebel Monkey to drive from Stillwater to Denton after work that Friday; get a few hours of sleep; hit the road really early so we could get to Birmingham at a semi-decent hour and catch a few of the films playing on Saturday; get some actual sleep at the hotel and then get up in time to get in line for the theater where Amber's film would be premiering Sunday afternoon; and maybe possibly hopefully somehow actually meet Amber. All in all, things went according to plan, with a few twists along the way.

Coincidentally, the evening Rebel Monkey came down just happened to be the series premiere of the latest show from Buffy/Angel mastermind Joss Whedon, Firefly, so we two Whedonites were both able to experience that first episode together and share a mutual "What the heck? That couldn't really have been the first episode, could it? It's like we missed out on a whole two-hour pilot or something" feeling. After the show was over, the local news started playing and was running as background noise as we were comparing notes on the show. During a lull in our conversation, one of the newscasters -- I think it was the weatherman -- made a comment about an "incidence of coincidence." I couldn't begin to tell you what he was referring to, but the phrasing caught our attention, and was to be bandied about throughout most of that weekend, especially after the events of Saturday night.

We both tried to get some sleep, but I don't think either of us got more than a couple of hours before we got up and hit the road at 4 AM. The trip down just zipped by, and I never hit that wall of exhaustion and giddiness that usually accompanies my times of sleep deprivation, although I did run into some, um, gastrointestinal issues at our lunch stop. We got to Birmingham around 3:00, checked into our hotel, and then hit the festival, at which point we discovered that there was nothing open food-wise in downtown Birmingham during the weekend; kind of weird. Think we finally found a little sandwich place, but I still had a bit of an upset stomach so didn't eat much. We went to see some short films in a little bitty movie theater, which is when I saw Fits and Starts, and then moved on to our the next movie-watching venue, a little below-street-level cafe that had been set up with a screen and projector. We got there just in time to see the tail-end of Washington Heights, a movie notable mainly for the "Hey, isn't that Carla from Scrubs?" factor.

Next up was the documentary The Back Yard, which is all about these white-trash "backyard wrestlers" who mutilate each other weekly in home-made wrestling rings because they think it will help them get into the world of professional wrestling; I found it highly entertaining, in an American Movie, "let's laugh at the self-deluded" sort of way. The film is pretty graphic, since these guys are using bricks wrapped in barbed wire and flaming tables as weapons; seriously, check out this f-bomb laden clip. Craziness, no?

Suddenly, about halfway through the flick, I started feeling a bit nauseous, even though it wasn't at a particularly violent part; in fact, they were just showing the story of this one wrestler called Scar whose parents let him partake in the backyard wrestling scene because he had been so sick as a younger kid and had had so many horrible surgeries that they were happy that he was healthy enough to take part in something like this. Of course, this was accompanied by pictures of young Scar all cut up and mutilated after surgery which were much more disturbing to me at the time than the actual bloody violence. Then I started getting a blinding, needles-stabbing-behind-the-eyes headache, so I put my head down on the table . . . and the next thing I know, I'm on the ground, and these two guys are asking me if I'm all right, except they seem to be talking to me from the end of a long tunnel. Yes, that's right, I had passed out.*

After a minute or so, I came around enough to get up, and Rebel Monkey guided wobbly me towards the stairs and we headed outside for some fresh air. My head was sore from where I hit the floor (and possibly the table as well), and my ears were ringing, so as I sat down on the bench right outside of the theater, it took me a minute to understand what Rebel Monkey had been muttering to me for a couple of minutes: "Amber Benson is right over there." I turned my head, and not five feet away was a group of people all wearing official film-festival i.d. badges, and at the center is Amber "The reason we're in Alabama" Benson, who was being castigated by all of these folks for thinking The Backyard was funny. She defends herself by comparing it to another film: American Movie.

So, there I was, still light headed and not fully in my right mind yet, and this TV-star is standing near me -- the TV star who is the only reason I'm even in Alabama, mind you -- and was just in the same theater I was in watching the same movie I was and enjoying it like I was while comparing it to the same movie that I was, and the only reason I'm getting to see her now is because I just passed out, and it all feels like a dream or an episode of the Twilight Zone, a real life incidence of coincidence, and did I mention I was still light headed and so I, of course, start laughing hysterically from the sure weirdness of it all.

It just so happened that the instant I started to laugh coincided with Amber laughing, so she thought I was laughing at what she was laughing at, so she turns around and says to me "It was funny, wasn't it?" I replied that yes, it was funny, but that I was really laughing because I had just passed out downstairs and wasn't sure why, and so was a little giddy. She made a little "awww" sound and asked if I was all right. And then, as she started to return to her group, I -- and here is the part where you will go, "yup, Todd sure was out of it, because he'd never do this if he was in his right mind" -- proceeded to say -- much to Rebel Monkey's chagrin -- "Amber, just wanted to say we love you, we think you're great." So much for any chance of appearing cool; I was now relegated to "crazy fan-boy/possible stalker" status. But she was really nice, said that I was sweet, shook my hand and asked my name, then did the same to Rebel Monkey. We then talked about the movie for a couple of minutes, and she went back to her group.

Rebel Monkey and I sat there for a few more minutes as I tried to get up the strength to go back to the hotel, and Rebel Monkey tried to tear herself away from being so close to Amber. Then, as I glanced back towards Amber's group, I caught her looking at me, and she asked "Would you like a mint? Would that help?" To which I responded "Sure." So, Amber pulled out a package of Altoids, which elicited a chorus of groans from her companions who began to give her a hard time about being an "Altoid-pusher," and she gives me one, and then offered one to Rebel Monkey as well; this second offer would become known to us as "The Pity Mint."**

After partaking of the mint, I actually started to feel a lot better, whether due to the restorative properties of the wondrous Altoid or some placebo effect, I couldn't begin to tell you. But as I started to sit up straighter and stopped cradling my head in my hands, Rebel Monkey finally said in a resigned tone "Are you ready to go?" And, loathe as I was to cut our brush with a celebrity short, I was also pretty freaked out by the whole passing out experience and was ready to head back to the hotel and call my father the registered nurse to get his take on things. So, we both reluctantly got up and headed away from Amber and her friends, both certain that this incidence of coincidence would not repeat itself.

The rest of the festival was a lot of fun; while we were not the first people in line for the film the next day -- that honor belonged to MsKittyFantastico and company, a group of girls from Missouri who were wearing Amberbama t-shirts and video-taping interviews of people talking to their stuffed fish who had camped out front at 6:30 AM even though the doors didn't open until that afternoon

The Amberbama Girls and theSoul Fish

-- we were definitely in the first dozen or so. We got to visit with the Amberbama girls for quite a while, and they were the first to pose the "Did you eat the mint?" question; they then had me repeat the story for the fish interview, and asked Rebel Monkey questions about Amber's wardrobe since I was unhelpful on that front.*** Soon the line to get in was getting pretty long, since quite a few Amber fans had made the trek just to see the film,

The venue

Look, it's the back of my head! You can tell by the scar! And it looks like I was wearing my OSU hoodie that day.

and it was pretty obvious that as soon as the doors opened the semi-orderly line was going to collapse like nobody's business; those of us who had been waiting together the longest had agreed to work in concert to get good seats, so with the aid of the Amberbama girls Rebel Monkey and I got some primo seats for the show. Of course, Chance wasn't the only movie showing in that venue that day, so a theater filled with Amber fans had to wait patiently through a series of shorts before the movie we were all anticipating was played.

How was it? It's really hard for me to say objectively. I mean, first of all, that was six years ago, and the movie has never been released on VHS or DVD, so I've never been able to see it again. And second of all, so much of my memory of the film is tied into the experiences leading up to it that it's practically impossible to say how much that influenced my opinion. That being said, at the time I loved it, and was eagerly awaiting a chance to see it again.

After that, everything else was a bit of a let-down; sure, Rebel Monkey and I got to see Adrien Grenier of Entourage fame back in the same cafe theater where I'd passed out the night before as he presented his documentary A Shot in the Dark about the search for his birth father, but this was years before Entourage, back when pretty much all he was known for was playing Melissa Joan Hart's love interest in Drive Me Crazy, so not exactly something that made me all that excited, although Rebel Monkey was looking forward to bragging to her teen-aged sister. But soon enough the festival festivities were over for us, and there was nothing left to do but catch some shut-eye before heading back to Denton the next day.

We tried to keep in touch with some of the friends we made that day through email and the Amberholic message board****, but sadly I've never been good at maintaining friendships through message boards, and I soon found my time spent there growing less and less as I became more and more involved with The Singles, and soon my Alabama experiences were little more than a memory . . . an incredibly surreal memory, to be sure, but a good one nonetheless.

*At the time I had no real clue what had happened, chalking it up to low blood sugar or exhaustion or the like, but since then I've had the same thing almost happen to me at three other times, and each time it was while I was watching something overly graphic incredibly intensely, including The Passion of the Christ; I've pretty much figured out that all four times I was so engrossed in what I was watching and so overly empathetic to the pain I was witnessing that I hyperventilated unto the verge of unconsciousness. This was the only time I actually passed out completely, but a couple of the other times I became woozy and blanked out for a second or two. Fun stuff!
**Now, this is generally the point of the story where people ask "Did you eat the mint?" and then act surprised that we did and didn't save them for posterity. To which I always respond that (a) Rebel Monkey and I may have been crazy fans, but we weren't that crazy, and (b) when Amber gives you a mint to eat, you bloody well eat the danged mint!
***Or as Rebel Monkey refered to it "A pity interview for Pity Mint."
****The message board is how I found the few pictures shown above; sadly, most every picture link posted in the Amberbama thread is now broken; amazing what can happen in six years, huh?

Fragmented Friday - Entertaining the Pirate

My apologies yet again for the lack of posts, my blog monkeys; this past week just hasn't been the most conducive to the flowing of creative juices. But, since Book Monkey and recent birthday girl The Pirate -- who has recently joined the elite ranks of Book Monkey Bloggers with In Xandu did Kubla Khan -- is going crazy trying to find things to occupy her mind with while waiting to find out if she will be selected as a contestant on the new season of The Mole, I figured I should throw up a couple of random thoughts.

It looks like there's a possibility that Cap'n Shack-Fu might not be joining the Army after all; instead, he may be joining the FBI. Either way, it will mean him moving off somewhere so he can fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but at least if he's with the FBI the odds of him staying stateside and not being shipped off to a war-torn country are quite a bit better. Plus, since being a federal law enforcement officer is one of Shack's lifelong dreams, we're all hoping that the FBI opportunity pans out. Plus, "Special Agent Shack-Fu" just sounds too good.

The other day I got an email from Cedric the Destroyer which included a link to an online game and the comment from Cedric that the game had nearly driven him to drink. I, of course, immediately clicked the link, and was soon replying back to Cedric cursing his black, black soul for exposing me to the addiction that is the "Escape Room" game Vision. And, once I beat the thing, I did what all right thinking individuals would do: I forwarded the evil thing on to the friends I thought most likely to be intrigued/entrapped. A few hours after sending the email out, I got a phone call from The Lovable PigPen which began thusly: "Remind me to kill you when I get home." Of course, since approximately 80% of my conversations with my best bud PigPen include at least one death threat between us, it's hard to say just how much of that was a reflection on the game and how much was just par for the course for our mutually antagonistic brotherhood. I've tried out several other "Escape Room" games, and so far the best ones I've found have been from the same author as the first one, so if you're sucked into Vision and want to torture yourself even more, then try out Sphere and RGB as well.

I'm soooooooo happy the writers' strike is finally over; would be happier if the whole mess didn't mean that we have to wait until next Fall for new episodes of Chuck, Pushing Daisies, and Heroes, not to mention shortened seasons of, oh, just about everything else. But, at least we have Lost back, that's something to put a smile on my face.

I must admit, I've been pleasently surprised by two of the mid-season replacement series: Eli Stone, which skates by on its remarkable cast if nothing else, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which threatens to typecast Summer Glau as the go-to weirdo, kick-ass super-chick actress, but really, there are worse things to be typecast as, right? Terminator in particular has won a fond place in my heart for its interesting take on the whole Terminator mythos.

If all goes as planned, I'll finally get to see There Will Be Blood this weekend; very excited about that, it's been way too long since I've gotten to experience a new P.T. Anderson flick -- kind of makes me want to go back and watch Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love again just because.

I got a call Sunday night from my mom telling me that my grandmother had to be hospitalized for congestive heart failure. Right now, she seems to be doing better, but any and all prayers for her would be greatly appreciated.

There are few things in life as entertaining as watching Cap'n Shack-Fu cringe and curl up into the fetal position every time Hellga comes on screen on American Gladiators.

While I might not have been in a blogging mood recently, I have been in a reading mood, having just finished up volume three in Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, and subsequently started book one of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, although I might have to take a break from that in order to do a quick read of the latest Discworld novel.

After a month or so of continuous listening, I finally burned myself out on the Once soundtrack, although that may have been more a need for more upbeat, frenetic rock music to pull me out of my doldrums than anything else.

And now, a moment of silence for the late Steve Gerber, an extremely talented comic book writer whose biggest contribution to the general world of pop culture was the creation of Howard the Duck -- a comic book which had more politically charged satire and social commentary in one panel than that fiasco of a movie ever dreamed of hinting -- but whose biggest contribution to the life of young Cap'n Neurotic was his run on The Defenders, a book which was so wonderfully bizarre and warped that it could not help but pull me in.

Thankful Thursday 2008

This past year has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride for me. Joy over finally getting back into working out was dampened by multiple injuries; despair over the loss of the Blue Beast was tempered by the acquisition of my new car*; pleasure at finally getting a significant raise was strained by the fact that for several months I was the only one of my roommates getting a steady paycheck, and then I had car payments to worry about, and then medical bills on top of that . . . and then the bulk of the last four months I've been fighting to climb out of the downward spiral that my broken digit, subsequent surgery, and ongoing recovery have plunged me into. Yes, over the past year I've suffered through intense humiliation, rampant paranoia, and senseless depression the likes of which have not been seen since my college days; on at least one occasion I was so overcome with hurt and anger that I lost all capacity for speech and could only stand there, fighting back tears of rage. And yet, despite the pitfalls the befell me throughout the year, I am still thankful for many things, most especially my friends.

I am thankful for Cap'n Peanut who has become a really good friend to me over the last several months, and who is at the forefront of the "motivate Todd to get off his butt and get in shape" movement.

I am thankful for Redneck Diva, who went out of her way to make sure that my birthday spent away from the friends I had planned to be with was not a birthday spent without friends after all.

I am thankful for Zinger, and Poohbear, and Bubblegum Tate, and Kookamama, and Cedric the Destroyer, and all of those whose efforts to keep in touch help remind me that, depsite my paranoia, out of sight does not automatically mean out of mind.

I am thankful for new friends like Cap'n Bubbles and Mei-Mei and Doc Jetson and Blondie Blaarrrgghhh** and the other, still nicknameless ones whose presence has added new energy to the Singles group.

I am thankful for my not-so-new friends (too numerous to name lest I be accused of playing favorites) who have been a source of support through unstable times.

And, last but not least, I am thankful that, for the first time in over a decade***, I have added to the ranks of those I consider my Best Friends; it's hard for me to believe that at this time last year I was still just getting to know PigPen and Cap'n Shack-Fu, and barely knew Li'l Random at all and now they're like family to me. I am thankful for the countless times over the last year that they have suffered through one of my neurotic attacks, have patiently talked me through my black moods, have dragged me kicking and screaming out of the realm of negativity, have responded to my crazy ways with nothing but compassion, understanding, and the occasional metaphoric slap upside the head****. I am thankful that, on occasion, I have been able to offer them help and advice as well, although I can't help but feel they're getting the short end of the stick, here. I am thankful because this only child now has four people who are like brothers to him, and that's four more than he ever thought he'd have growing up.

Happy Thanksgiving, my blog monkeys; don't forget to tell those you care about how thankful you are for their presence in your lives.

*No, Li'l Random, I have not named it yet.
**Look, Blondie, I figure out how to spell it!
***Good grief, was college really that long ago?
****And the slightly less frequent physical slap, such as The Lovable PigPen delivered to me Tuesday night every time I'd apologize needlessly "Stop saying you're sorry!" [slap!] Happy Slapsgiving, indeed.

Mid-Week Ramblings

Some random tidbits today; I was tempted to split this up into a "karate-themed" post and a "non-karate-themed" post to pad my posting numbers, but finally decided to just alternate between them in the post. I bet you're all really glad I shared that useless information with you, huh?

• A couple of weekends ago Squiggly and I attended a "takedown and submission" workshop taught by the head of Red Tiger Karate. It was pretty cool, although I wish it had lasted a bit longer since we wound up rushing through everything so quickly that we barely had time to practice any particular move more than a couple of times. Still, it did confirm what I had suspected, which is that I would much rather be taking a grappling style martial art such as judo or jujitsu than karate; not that I don't enjoy karate, it's just that I think I'd enjoy the other styles more. Of course, until I can find a judo/jujitsu class that's as affordable as Red Tiger is, it's a moot point.
  
  
• For the first time since its inception oh so many weeks ago, I was unable to come up with a story to submit to Write in the Thick of It. I blame my assigned genre; whereas last time my assigned genre of "western" inspired me, this time around the assigned genre of "mystery" killed all creative juices. I wouldn't feel quite so bad about not entering something if it weren't for the fact that there was apparently a plague of writers block, resulting in there only being two entries: Redneck Diva and Hillbilly Mom. Today's your last day to vote for a winner; with luck, I'll be up to submitting something the next time around.
  
  
• In addition to PigPen, I have a new constant sparring partner: Cap'n Shack-Fu. You see, following our swimming pool grappling a few weeks ago, Shack-Attack has taken it upon himself to continually test my battle readiness. The evening after the "takedown and submission" seminar he had me show him some of the things we'd learned, as well as a couple of the self-defense moves from our regular karate class, before he decided it was time to run me through the Cap'n Shack-Fu Self-Defense Crash Course, much to the amusement of Squiggly who got to watch Coach Shack-Fu put me through my paces. Unfortunately, the fact that I jammed one of my fingers pretty badly last week* meant that Shack-Fu was unable to engage me in battle before heading off to OK as he obviously wanted to, which is a shame, really, since I was enjoying the fact that, for once, it wasn't me being the instigator.
  
  
• Later on today I'm going to have a phone interview with a reporter for MSNBC.com -- please note the ".com," which means that this will be an Internet article, and not something televised on MSNBC, as a few of the people I've told have assumed. As for why she's interviewing me, well, it's because of CoIM; in particular, my "Cap'n TMI" blog post, which ties into an article she's writing on people's tendency to overshare. I think there's probably a betting pool going on just how much I'm going to overshare during the interview.
  
  
• You know what the most difficult thing about karate is for me right now? It's not learning the kata or feeling comfortable with the techniques; it's not getting up to speed with the conditioning or enduring the constructive criticism of the instructors; it's not even the thought of having to perform my kata in front of an audience at the tournament or having to start sparring,**; no, the hardest part for me is not comparing myself and my progress to fellow white belt PigPen. I actually have done a pretty good job of just focusing on how much improvement I'm showing compared to when I started without trying to use anyone else as a measuring stick, but every once in a while that foolishly competitive side of myself rears its moronic head.
  
  
• Last night I updated the CoIM Cast List to include Cap'n Bubbles, as well as updating several people's nicknames, character descriptions, catch-phrases, and the like. I probably would have tinkered with it more but I got distracted by the siren call of new episodes of The Closer, Eureka, and Pirate Master, as well as the DVD of an excellent Indie horror flick Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon*** which is the first DVD I've been compelled to listen to the full commentary of in many many moons. So please, check out the updated list, but don't be too surprised if it gets updated again soon -- then again, don't be too surprised if it takes another three or four months to get updated. Because that's the way I roll.
  
  
• It's a little less than 4 weeks until our tournament, where I have to perform my kata in front of a whole bunch of people; it's kinda-sorta a competition, since they'll be awarding first and second place, but I'm going to do my best to just think of it as "something I've got to do in order to take my belt test."
  
  
• I'm experimenting with exposing different blog monkey groups to each other; on my recent Frilly's Friday I invited Li'l Random along so that he and Zinger could meet. Now, I've provided Cap'n Shack-Fu with Bubblegum Tate's phone number since Tate lives not too far from where Shack-Fu is stationed. The next step: having representatives from three different groups converge. Zinger has expressed concern that such crossing of blog monkey groups could cause some sort of rift in space and time, but I think we've concluded that as long as he and Bizarro-Zinger never meet, we should be okay.
  

*PigPen and Squiggly's Sis can testify to the load cracking sound it made when it happened, as well as to the not-nice-words which escaped from my mouth at the same time
**Both of which are just far enough away for me to be in denial about them
***I know there aren't many horror fans among you blog monkeys, but for those who are, I highly, highly recommend Behind the Mask. Funny and creepy, self-referential without being over-indulgent; think I might have just enough to say about it to resurrect Movie Monday next week . . . maybe.

A Question of Chemistry Continued: Groupings Dynamical

Hey, remember when I did a post about interpersonal chemistry and I actually got lots of feedback on it and I said I'd do a follow-up post? No? Well, guess that's not too surprising, since that was about, oh, four months ago. Back then I talked briefly about the chemistry between two people; today my thoughts are turned more towards chemistry of slightly larger groupings.

I've long been fascinated by group dynamics, and how the presence or absence of a single person can drastically affect the actions and behavior of others. Sometimes the reasoning behind these changes are obvious (e.g. a group of guys toning down their raucous behavior because of a female addition to the group) but often the reasons can be much subtler and more difficult to pin down.

When reflecting on the time I spend hanging out with various iterations of my groups of friends, I find that I tend to think of certain combinations as (for want of a better phrase) “optimal” configurations. For these groupings, all the personalities, backgrounds, senses of humor, etc. gel just right, and, in my eyes at least, the group becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Of course, for me, the gauge I use for determining these optimal groupings is generally the amount of time I spend laughing when I’m with a group. If I tend to laugh so hard that I injure myself more often when I’m with configuration A than with configuration B, then configuration A is my optimal grouping.

My prime example of this is Clan Stoneheart. I always have more fun when I’m hanging out with Zinger, Pooh-Bear, and Coronela all at once than I do when one or more is missing. It’s not that I don’t enjoy hanging out with each of them individually; it’s that, somehow, for some reason, when all four of us are together it creates just the right blend of comfort level, shared history, personality quirks, and so forth to enhance the enjoyment of any given situation. Another example can be found among the Book Monkeys, where the combo of Rebel Monkey, The Mag, Rose Hips the Enforcer, and myself tended to turn even the most mundane of tasks into a laugh riot.

Now, the neurotic side of me demands that I stress that the groupings I just mentioned are not the only ones which I find enjoyable; they’re just the ones that popped immediately into my head since they’re two of the longer-standing examples. Also, they’re both kind of “critical mass” style groupings, wherein that special exponential increase in side-splitting laughter doesn’t occur until you reach your full contingent. Those sort of groupings stand out more to me than groupings whose optimization is more situational (watching certain types of movies; going to sporting events; playing games, etc.) since these event-oriented groupings are, on the surface at least, much easier to understand the mechanics of.

Of course, when you have these optimal configurations, they can be thrown off balance not only by the lack of a crucial member, but also by the addition of an extra one. Sometimes it’s because the additional group member doesn't mesh well with everyone else, and thus throws everyone off their game; when there’s a group member who doesn’t quite get your oddball jokes, or a little too reticent to join in on your HyperForce antics, it can’t help but put the brakes on things. But at other times, it’s because they do mesh well with almost everyone. And this is where we start to move into discussing an important factor here: personal perception. After all, while I may consider a particular grouping to be premium, for all I know any other member could see my presence as the albatross around the neck of the group that drags down everyone’s fun; or, to take a slightly less self-deprecating tack, maybe that particular configuration is a blast for everyone involved, but to some people it would be even more of a blast if one other person were added to the mix. For me, a lot of the times when the addition of another person throws off my perception of perfect group chemistry, it’s generally because the new addition somehow steals focus from me, diluting my impact on the group as a whole. I know that might sound a bit selfish, and there’s a good reason for that: it kind of is. But, I doubt there are many who, given the choice of feeling like an integral part of a group and feeling like a fifth wheel will choose the fifth wheel status. With my tendency to think of myself in terms of The Outsider, I’m probably more prone to going down this road of thought than others.

One of the dangers of thinking in these terms is the possibility of it leading to cliquish behavior; if you think of Grouping A as the best of all possible worlds, then you’re not as likely to welcome the inclusion of another member with open arms. I know I've fallen into this trap before, being so worried that a new addition to a group might throw things off kilter that I've been less than welcoming which, in turn, often throws things off kilter.

Being a bit of a paranoiac, it naturally occurred to me that some blog monkeys might read about this and wonder if they themselves are part of any such optimum grouping, or if they, instead serve merely as a distraction from my preferred group configurations. All I can say is, if you are thinking like that, please stop immediately; that way lies madness.

Trust me, I know whereof I speak.

So, tell me, my blog monkeys: am I the only one who looks at groupings of friends and sees patterns like this? Or do some of you also have these optimal configurations floating in your heads?

On the Move

As some of you know, my living situation has recently changed again, and by "recently" I mean "less than a week ago." You see, midway through last week The Anti-Cap'n and I decided to move out of Biz-Z's place and move in with another of the Singles group, who we'll call Cap'n Red* for now. Cap'n Red was in desperate straits, needing two roomies to move in before the end of the month or else he wouldn't be able to afford his place. There were many factors in this decision: lower rent; enough room for me to get rid of my storage unit; closer to work and church; less traffic; and escape from the black hole of cell phone service.

Oh, and then there's the fact that I no longer have to live in fear that I will wake up one morning to find that The Anti-Cap'n and Biz-Z's personality clash has resulted in one of them snapping and killing the other in his sleep.

That's, y'know, a bonus.

There were only two real downsides to the move. The first is that, because of the incredibly short notice that A.C. and I got, Biz-Z got even shorter notice that he was going to be without roomies to help him pay his mortgage, which sucks. The second drawback is that due to the accellerated moving schedule, I wasn't able to make it to Survivor: Book Monkey Island, which would have been merely a sad thing for me, if there hadn't been so many people having to cancel earlier that my dropping out at the last minute was the final straw, and S:BMI was no more. Now, if you thought Biz-Z was unhappy about being given short notice, that's nothing compared to the rancor I face from a certain irate Book Monkey. Not going to name names, but let's just say that if someone discovers my mutilated body skewered on a tiki torch with the words "The Tribe Has Spoken!" carved into my flesh, you might want to have the cops call Tin Man.

But despite the fact that the move men ticking a few people off, the pros outweighed the cons for me, and the move was underway. After tonight I'll probably be without home Internet access until sometime next week at the earliest, so barring any lunch-time blogging things might be a bit sparse around here.

I know, I know: what else is new.



*Pretty sure he said he was a potential CAP'NS member

Randomness Abounds!

Good grief, can't believe I haven't posted anything since last Monday. Lots of half-formed blog posts floating around in my head, but I haven't been focused enough to type any up. So, until I gain some focus, here's a bunch of random tidbits.

• Many ups and downs in the world of Survivor: Book Monkey Island. The Anti-Cap'n has agreed to play, and Cap'n Cluck was interested in working behind the scenes, but now Rebel Monkey won't be able to make it. Last call for interested parties.
  
  
• I was very disapointed by the expulsion of Monkey Girl on Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero; I understand why she had to go, but after her super-human efforts during last week's guaranteed-to-give-Cap'n-N.-nightmares dog challenge, I was hoping to see her take it all. *sigh* Oh, well, at least Major Victory is still in it. And, I have to say, Dark Enforcer is much more entertaining than Iron Enforcer.
  
  
• My soon-to-be-boss and I started a "Supervision 101" class on campus on Thursday, which will take up my Thursday mornings for the next several weeks. We had an icebreaker which was supposed to demonstrate the need to "think outside the box" when confronted with random questions: they ranged from "How old is the letter Z" to "What color is your favorite song?" The instructor was surprised at how quickly we all came up with answers, saying that there are usually people who totally freeze up when confronted by such oddities; I guess most of the people in our group are used to oddity. I know I am.
  
  
• I'll get into more detail later, but for now let me just say that I enjoyed the heck out of Brick and Inside Man, both of which just came out on DVD this week. If you're looking for something to rent, those are my suggestions.
  
  
• I also watched the DVD sneak peak of the pilots for the new NBC shows Kidnapped and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I enjoyed Kidnapped, but absolutely loved Studio 60: a stellar cast armed with stellar writing, I'm going to be plugging this show ad nauseum. Fair warning.
  
  
• Last night Biz-Z and his girlfriend had a cookout for their families at the house; since I partook of the food, I felt it was only right for me to stay out among the others after I'd finished stuffing my face, despite the fact that I was in total "don't know these people and shall therefore not contribute anything to any conversation whatsoever" mode, which was compounded by the fact that all the conversations going on around me were the type that tend to put a glazed look on my face: home improvement, motorcycles, power tools, etc.
  
  
• Yesterday at lunch H.Q. told us a story about how some people at TWU refer to her as "the Wal-Mart girl" since she once let herself be interviewed for an article about whether people buy their makeup at Wal-Mart or specialty stores. H.Q. represented the Wal-Mart side of things, and so when the article came out, there was a gigantic picture of her next to a truly excellent headline: "Pretty Cheap." I told her if I'd known of that story before, she would have had a nickname much earlier . . .
  
  
• I really, really, really want to see The Descent on the big screen, but there's a real dearth of horror fans in my local circle of friends.
  
  
• I was only kinda-sorta wanting to see Accepted; then I found out that the director was co-writer of Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity, as well as co-creator of the all too short-lived excellent supernatural series Dead Last, and it got bumped up a few notches in my need to see list. Of course, it's still below Snakes on a Plane, but then again, what isn't?
  

Survivor: Book Monkey Island

Last month when there was a mini-Book Monkey reunion in honor of Rebel Monkey's 30th b-day (an occasion which marked the first time I'd actually seen Kookamama or Bubblegum Tate in 4 or 5 years) an off-hand joke by Buster inspired by the tiki-torches quickly snowballed into "hey, yeah, that sounds like fun, let's do it!" And so was born the idea for our very own do-it-yourself home-version of Survivor, currently scheduled for the last full weekend in August.

The Mag has taken on planning duties for this fun-sized edition which, despite its shortened time frame, will still include two tribes, a merger, luxury and immunity challenges, tribal council, and a monetary prize for the winner, with all the contestants agreeing to chip in $25 which will go towards the prize and purchasing supplies.

Now, normally I wouldn't be discussing this so early, but there's a slight wrinkle: as of now, due to scheduling conflicts of some of the original interested parties, we're a few contestants short of the magic number of 10 needed to get all the budgeting to work out. So, I'm now putting out the call to all you blog monkeys out there: if you would like to see if you can outwit, outplay, and outlast the Book Monkeys, and can be in Enid, OK from 7:00 PM Friday Aug. 25 through the afternoon of Sunday Aug. 27, let me know.

I'm hoping to get at least a couple more people to sign up because, if they do, then I can skip embarrassing myself in the physical challenges and roughing it, and instead just play Jeff Probst.

Which reminds me: if you think it sounds like an entertaining weekend, but don't really want to compete, we are open to volunteers to help run challenges and maybe man video cameras that will one day yield footage guaranteed to embarrass us all for the rest of our lives.

Honestly, how can you pass that up?

Nothing but 90s Weekend

While my actual 4th of July was probably the most low-key, do-nothing 4th I've ever had (consisting mainly of much movie watching by The Anti-Cap'n and myself) the weekend leading up to the 4th was chock-full of activities. While I was driving back to Denton following the activities, I happened upon a radio station that was having a "Nothing but 90s Weekend" which seemed to sum up my weekend fairly well, as I spent it hanging out with the two groups that dominated my social life in the 90s: The Parkerites and The Book Monkeys. Originally my weekend was going to be solely devoted to The Book Monkeys, but about half-way through last week I found out that Clan Berzerkr was going to be in town, so a hasty rethinking of my itinerary was required. So, instead of spending all weekend in Stillwater, I spent all of Saturday with the Parkerites and then got up on Sunday and headed to Stillwater to celebrate Rebel Monkey's 30th birthday. After having all that fun*, my brain was pretty much dead for the next two days, hence the further lack of blogging. I would be typing up a full report of my activities right now, but I'm too distracted by watching Bizarro-Zinger's Pass Paramedic video, which has a bit of a mesmerizing "train wreck" quality to it. My favorite part: the way the test-takers constantly refer to putting on their "body substance isolation material" a.k.a. "rubber gloves."

Anyway, expect some elaboration on my weekend activities sometime soon . . . soon being a highly relative term.

*And no, that's not a euphemism for drinking

"Yeah . . . I Didn't Get It" Says N. Syde Joake; Cap'n Neurotic Cheat Sheet , Book Monkey Edition

As suspected, after reading yesterday's post, Zinger brought up a few quotes that had slipped my mind; think I'll save those for my final, miscellaneous grab-bag post on the topic. For now, let's take a look at the things which usually only make sense to The Book Monkeys.

This list feels a bit anemic compared to the previous two, especially since I know the Book Monkeys are rife with inside jokes and running gags; heck, that's pretty much all my Infinite Monkey Press web-page* was based on. Perhaps it's just that the Book Monkeys tended to burn through our running gags quickly; perhaps the other things stuck longer in my mind because they occurred during my younger days; perhaps I'm just suffering from a failure of memory and as soon as I post this my brain will be flooded with a ton of things to add to a follow-up post; or perhaps most of them were just too situation-specific to carry on beyond the group. After all, always exclaiming "poppets!" in a Boston accent when puppets are in view doesn't really translate well without the requisite backstory . . . of course, neither does speaking in a British accent and insisting on calling it a "Boston" accent. Trust me, you had to be there for that one. And, as entertaining as it always was to find different ways to torment Bubblegum Tate by calling Jen from Dawson's Creek a "ho," it's not exactly something that loans itself to everyday conversation.

Quick digression: my favorite "Jen's a ho" gag was when Michelle Williams did a Christmas themed photo-shoot dressed as Mrs. Clause; we took the image, photoshopped it a tad, and made it the front desk computer wallpaper right before Tate's shift, so that as soon as he sat down he was confronted with a pic of Christmas Jen with a word balloon proclaiming she was a Ho Ho Ho.

Good times, good times.

All right, think that's enough filler; on with the other stuff.

You Lie! You lie all the time!: This is a quote from The Bad Seed, which many of the Book Monkeys got together to watch at one of The Mag's "Dinner and a Movie" nights.

The Hunge Many moons ago, Rebel Monkey sent a message about being consumed by hunger, but a typo turned it into "hunge" instead; deciding she liked it, The Hunge became part of our own brand of Book Monkey lEEt speak.

LCPH Our own addition to the ranks of LOL, ROFL, ROFL, etc. This one stands for "Laughing Cervical Pillow Hard." Yes, there's a story behind that.

RCoS Another Rebel Monkey coinage, this stood for Random Change of Subject, a clarifying acronym that was often necessary during our online chats to warn the other participant "okay, veering off into strange waters now."

People are no damn good. This one is Rose Hips the Enforcer's standard answer for why people screw you over.

You can't do that! If I had a nickel for every time I heard The Mag say this in incredulous tones; sometimes it's in response to people's behavior, sometimes it's in response to stupid plot points, sometimes it's in response to people spelling "light" as "lite". I admit that I rarely say this phrase, but I do often hear The Mag's voice in my head during appropriate situations; it was practically drowning out the horror that was Sound of Thunder.

Hola! While waiting in line for La Vibora at Six Flags last year, we witnessed a teenage girl trying to "communicate" with a group of Hispanics in line next to her; basically, she turned to one of them and just kept saying "Hola!" over and over again in the most bubbled-headed voice I've ever heard this side of Melody on Josie and the Pussycats until they finally got tired of ignoring her and grudgingly acknowledged her. We just stood in slack-jawed wonder at her condescension as she talked down to them, almost as if by deigning to grace them with her attention she were reaching out to the "little people." Anyway, for the rest of our S.X.S.F. trip "Hola!" became a sort of "Duh! Hello!" phrase for us.

Ready Randy? Ready Joan. This quote comes from the "Tabula Rasa" episode of Buffy where all the Scooby gang lose their memories, and Spike and Buffy decide that their names are Randy and Joan; for quite a while after seeing this ep, any inquiries into my preparedness from The Mag was phrased as "Ready Randy?", to which I would immediately reply "Ready Joan." Yes, we're geeks, deal with it.

*For the record, the Incredibly Curious Duo was all Rebel Monkey's doing in order to torment Kookamama who was always griping about our inside jokes; the rest of the insanity I claim for my own.

Return to Escape to Green Mountain

It's been a while since my trip to Green Mountain Falls, Colorado with the Book Monkeys, but I finally got access to some pictures.

DAY 1

Our trip mascot, Elizabeth


Here's a first at CoIM: video!



Thrilling, isn't it?

The boat ramp at scenic Optima Lake


DAY 2

If you were able to look to the left, you would see me squeezed in right there; this would be the precursor to the "Where do you think you're going" incident.


In addition to police encounters, our trip to Manitou Springs netted the girls some killer Mardi Gras gear . . .




. . .and some high scores for Rebel Monkey (C.R. being her non-blog-monkey initials)





DAY 3

The next day we headed to The Garden of the Gods



While we were there Rebel Monkey did her best job to hold up the rocks . . .



. . . but eventually had to be helped out by Rose "Atlas Shrugged" Hips






The obligatory "group posing on the scenic outcropping" picture



The obligatory "not quite as scenic close-up version"



The obligatory "okay, everyone, look like a spaz!" shot



If you look closely, you can see the walk-up rock climber



And here's most of us marveling at the rock climber


Although you'll notice that The Mag is off be her lonesome, pining for her own carefree mountain climbing days



I figured that I'd go ahead and wrap this post up with some scenic shots sans Book Monkeys, so that our stunning good looks wouldn't distract you from the scenery.

Escape to Green Mountain Epilogue: Let Me Check My Notes

I had exactly 15 minutes after I woke up the next morning to be ready to head to Panera Break to meet Rebel Monkey for breakfast before we hit the road. Another uneventful drive, with me taking over for part of it; I had had every intention of volunteering for the whole drive back to Denton, but I'm afraid I didn't really wake up all the way until we were almost through OKC. We had no run-ins with the law, leading to me believe that the copper curse truly was all on Bunny and Buster's end.

Rather than leaving off with this oh-so-boring account of my oh-so-boring drive home, I figured I'd list a few of the things which slipped through the cracks in my mind in previous postings. Note to self: next time, get out your notes so things don't slip through.

Of course, then I wouldn't be able to have a nice padded post like this.

• Our first night, Rose Hips, Bunny, and Rebel Monkey made a "quick run to the store" which wound up taking a couple of hours and yielded two significant purchases: Rebel Monkey's 80s compilation CDs and a suitable surrogate for Tin Man in the form of a sticky Sponge-Bob Squarepants figure.
• At one point early on I happened to catch movement out of the corner of my eye; when I turned towards it, I noticed it was an arm flailing in the air behind the couch which sat in front of the trap door. The flailing of limbs was an indicator that The Mag was climbing up from downstairs.
• As we were leaving Garden of the Gods, Rose Hips and The Mag decided to race to the car but were soon overtaken by Buster and his impressive speed-walking ability.
• On our last night in the cabin I was horribly discomfited after almost walking face first into a spider dangling from the bathroom ceiling *shudder*
• During the Project Runway marathon Bunny was reading some magazine, when she came across a picture of a starfish standing on two of its limbs, with third limb reaching up and draped over the "head" limb in what looked like a provocative pose, prompting her to hold it up and exclaim "look: starfish porn!" Buster then made a comment that mentally scarred Bunny, Rose Hips, and myself; we were then, of course, compelled to share it with Rebel Monkey and The Mag when they wandered in. The comment? "Look, you can see its stargina."
  
• The Mag and I were reminded of the peculiarities of high altitude cooking after a misadventure with baked potatoes; luckily, this happened during lunch, and the cooking crew was thus forewarned before attempting dinner that evening.
• While "doing everything with joy" was the official phrase of the trip, a close runner-up was coined when, in the midst of Project Runway, Buster decided to fix himself an ornate sandwich, proclaiming "the show has inspired me!" From then on, there were many activities which were pegged as the result of sudden inspiration.
• During The Mag's "I'm bored" phase on the drive home Rose Hips asked "Don't you have some TiVoed shows on your laptop?" to which the motion-sickness prone Mag replied "Are we in a moving car?"
• On the drive home through the heart of burn-ban country, we trailed a vehicle which was spitting sparks like crazy, which might have been only mildly eye-raising if not for the fact that the borderline pyromaniac vehicle was in actuality a fire truck
  

I wish I had more pictures to share with you (particularly The Mag's mountain climbing pose and a shot of Elizabeth), but we unfortunately ran out of time to burn off photo-CDs for everyone while I was in town, and I have yet to receive my copy which I'm sure will be in the mail any day now . . .

Escape to Green Mountain Day 4: Angering the Hornets With Joy

I've been torn between trying to keep my updates timely, and trying to maintain a buffer of material so I have something to post everyday; this time, the need to be timely is winning out, so here you go: the last official leg of my Colorado Book Monkey adventure.

On our way up to the cabin, the girls and I had gotten up and around bright and early; for the return trip, we weren't quite so gung ho. We got up, packed up, cleaned up, filled out our separate entries in the guest book (each of which, by the way, contained some reference to doing everything with joy), and took the obligatory group photo:

We then headed down to the nearby diner called The Pantry for breakfast. Just a few words on The Pantry: man, was that some good grub. Our waitress, the quintessential small diner waitress who Bunny said has been there every time she's eaten there, was definitely an example of someone who did her job with joy, peppering her speech with "darling"s and "honey"s and "sugar"s and the like. Some danged fine home cooking there, too, and in ginormous portions; I ordered the smaller of their two pancake options, and it just about did me in. Buster opted for the chicken fried steak, which I thought to be an unusual choice for breakfast, but considering some of my breakfast choices of the past, I can not sit in any sort of judgment on him. The Mag ordered some bread pudding, which I tried; not bad, but not something I'll be ordering for myself anytime soon. Out stomachs well and truly stuffed, we piled into our cars and hit the road.

The trip up to the cabin had practically whizzed by; the journey home felt nowhere near as speedy, for our carload anyway. I think there were a couple of factors there. First of all, there was no music playing for a goodly portion of the drive, in deference to poor Rebel Monkey's migraine. This, in turn, made us all too aware of the swarm of angry hornets hovering over the Matrix; well, it was either angry hornets or the wind vibrating the heck out of the car carrier, but either way, it was mondo distracting and annoying. After one of our bathroom stops I moved to the front passenger seat while The Mag drove. There are those who can sit in companionable silence for long periods of time with no worry or strain; I am not one of them. In the deafening silence I felt compelled to serve as driver entertainment, and yet my mind was blank; conversational gambits flourished and died in my mind before they could ever leave my mouth.

Thanks to the massive portions from The Pantry, we didn't feel the need to stop and eat until we were a good ways back into Oklahoma. We stopped at a burger joint and enjoyed a conversation about the merits of 24 among other things; afterwards we said our goodbyes to Buster and Bunny, who would be separating from our caravan soon as they headed to Enid while we continued on to Stillwater. However, as it turned out, our caravan was separated a little bit sooner than we had anticipated.

After our meal, Rose Hips took over the driving yet again, and this time we took the lead, traveling at a greater rate over the speed limit than Bunny; while Bunny and Buster dropped out of our rear view for a while, they eventually caught up thanks to Rose Hips seeing a police car ahead of us, forcing her to drop down to a less ticketable rate of speed. We were trapped behind the copper for quite some time; eventually, as we were heading up a hilly section of road, the cop came zipping by from the opposite direction. I noticed Rose Hips staring into the rear view, a look that was followed by her pronouncement that things were about to get exciting as the police car had turned back around, turned on its lights, and headed straight for us.

Or, so we thought, until the cop car settled in behind the Bunny driven vehicle, pulling them over instead of us.

Rose Hips felt awful; we were the ones who had been in the lead, and had been traveling much faster than they had for great stretches of time. And now, here they were, getting pulled over in our place. We had many theories about why they had been targeted and not us; at first glance our two vehicles looked a lot alike, with the main difference being that we had a car carrier on top, while they had a ski rack. We debated calling them to see what happened, but decided to wait for them to call us; a little while later The Mag's cell phone rang. She answered it and was greeted by Buster's pointed question: "Why'd y'all frame us?" Luckily, the cop had taken pity on them, and Bunny had escaped with just a warning.

As darkness fell on our journey, the back seat crew started to get a little antsy; The Mag began to belt out "I'm bored" at random intervals; at one point I asked what she wanted us to do to entertain her, and she replied "put on a play for me." I said okay, and instantly broke into Roald Dahl's Jack and the Beanstalk, which I had performed as both a Humorous Duet and a Humorous Interp for Competitive Speech back in the day. There was silence throughout, whether due to appreciation or appall, I haven't the foggiest.

At one point The Mag was threatening to do something which I can't recall; all I remember is adjuring her "Don't listen to the hornets!" She replied that the angry hornets were her friends, and told her to do all sorts of stuff.

Clearly, it was time to get out of the freaking car.

But, that not being an option, we instead put in the 80s CDs Rebel Monkey purchased on the trip and all sang and car-danced along to a wide variety of nostalgia-laced tracks. Rebel Monkey dug out Elizabeth, the glowing frog proxy, and we discovered that, in the dark, her little light show greatly resembled the lights of a police car; thereafter, when a driver around us behaved badly, we were tempted to pull up behind them and activate Elizabeth, Radioactive Police Frog.

Speaking of the police . . . we received one more phone call from Bunny and Buster before we made it home; apparently, their vehicle is officially a cop magnet, as they were pulled over for speeding yet again, this time mere minutes from their home. Luckily, this time it was Buster behind the wheel, and they were able to escape with yet another warning. Three police encounters, three warning; it's hard to call that sort of luck "good," but it's not quite "bad" either.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached Stillwater; although I was sorry that our Colorado adventure was now over, I was glad to be off the road again. Rebel Monkey decided to spend the night at her mom's house so she could visit with her a bit and see her dog; the plan was to meet up at Panera Bread in the morning for breakfast before The Mag and Rose Hips went to work. I called home to let mi madre know we had made it back to Oklahoma in one piece, logged on to CoIM to post my last minute Movie Monday post, and then headed off to bed.

And believe me, when I went to sleep, I did it with joy.

Escape to Green Mountain Day 3: Doing Everything With Joy

Moving ever closer to the end of the Colorado Book Monkey Journey; read on to see what sort of excitement was in store for us on our lazy Sunday at the Berry Patch.

I had a much more mellow awakening on day 3, the lack of noise overhead allowing me to come out of my sleep naturally; of course, the same lack of noise meant that Rebel Monkey was still zonked out by the time I got out of the shower, so I had to actually *gasp* use the front door to get out of the cabin. Luckily, Rose Hips and The Mag were both already up and about and getting ready to play a game of Pirates, otherwise I would have been locked out of the main cabin.

After the gals let me in, they invited me to join their game. Now, Pirates isn't the sort of game I usually enjoy; I'm all about trivia and wordplay and the like, whereas Pirates is all about strategic planning and foresight, neither of which is exactly my specialty. Still, everything seemed to line up just right for me, possibly because The Mag and Rose Hips were more concerned with taking each other out rather than stopping the newbie; I wound up scooping up their derelict ships and forging my own super-fleet. The rest of the crew got up while we were still playing, and The Mag asked Buster to take over for her while she fulfilled her promise of fixing French toast for breakfast; Buster was almost able to stage a comeback by using a similar tactic of refurbishing damaged ships, but I emerged victorious. I hereby announce my retirement from the game of Pirates, to preserve my undefeated record.

The day before we had had a plan of action in place from the get-go, but we weren't quite as organized this time around. There was talk of skating, and talk of bowling, and talk of laser tag, and talk of hiking; what we got instead was lots of lying around doing very little. I was reading some comics I'd brought along when Bunny turned the TV to Bravo, which was airing an episode of Project Runway. Now, prior to this, I'd never seen the show at all, but just a few days earlier two of my co-workers had been talking about it, telling me I needed to give it a shot. So, I sort of half watched, half read for the remainder of the episode. And then another episode came on. And another. And another. Soon, the whole cabin was entranced by the Project Runway marathon.

Not that we didn't try to escape. Periodically, someone would voice a request for a plan of action, but Santino's prima donna attitude was far too hypnotic. Buster and The Mag dug out the phone book and started calling possible laser tag venues, but weren't having much luck. One place they tried kept giving them a busy signal, so they decided to drive over to it and check it out; if it was acceptable, they'd call us so we could meet up with them. No sooner had they left than the conversation between the remaining girls turned to topics of lipstick and other cosmetic products, prompting me to finally turn to Rose Hips and say "As I sit here watching a Project Runway marathon, surrounded by conversations about makeup, I suddenly feel a great need to go play some sports." Unfortunately, laser tag was not going to be the source for my adrenaline craving; a call from our advanced scouts revealed that the reason they kept getting a busy signal was because the place was now a dinosaur museum.

By the time the exploratory party had returned, we were smack dab in the middle of the next to last show of the marathon; however, Rose Hips made an executive decision that we were getting out of the cabin and doing something. So, with only one episode left to watch, we were finally able to break the spell of Project Runway and headed to the local nearby park known as The Garden of the Gods. The park was beautiful; we wandered around, occasionally scampering up some rocks to take goofy pictures, but mainly just taking in the scenery. At one point Rebel Monkey had to run back to the car to switch out camera batteries, saying she'd catch up with us; when we came to a fork, Rose Hips and I kept going while the others waited for the prodigal to return.

As we neared a large rock formation, I noticed a rabbit and pointed it out to Rose Hips, who commented on how large it was; the lower-case-bunny hopped towards us, and then turned and disappeared into what I initially took to be a rabbit hole, but which Rose Hips realized was a drainage pipe running under the sidewalk. We moved to the other side to see if it was going to emerge; whether it did or not is up for debate. For a bunny rabbit did indeed emerge from the other end of the pipe, but Rose Hips immediately cried out "it's a different one!" for she now found the rabbit to be much smaller than the one she originally remarked upon. And my take on it? Well, the Official Version is that the pipe was a mystical size-changing portal, and who am I to argue with the Official Version?

After marveling at the size-shifting rabbit (whom The Mag, upon hearing our story, would decide was actually some sort of polymorphic alien), we next marveled at the random rock climber circling the base of the large rock formation with his handy dandy rock climber guide book, glancing first at the book, and then back to the rock, and then back to the book again. After completing a circuit, he turned and nodded to his companion, and then proceeded to ready his gear for scaling. About that time the rest of our group caught up to us, and we all stood and watched him ascend the rock wall with deceptive ease. By the time he had finished his climb and descent the sun had set, causing a rapid decline in the temperature. Suddenly very chilly, we headed back to the vehicles, and then back to the cabin to fix some dinner and play some Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture Edition.

While in the kitchen fixing dinner (a task that your trusty Cap'n TV Dinner was not equipped to help with), the girls had a conversation about how Rose Hips had done the dishes earlier without any asking, and without asking anyone else to chip in; when Bunny said she would have been pissed if it had been her, Rose Hips responded that she didn't mind because she "did it with joy." And, hey presto, we had a new catchphrase, motto, and creed all at once: from that moment on, all things were to be done with joy, whether it be cooking, cleaning, playing games, or mocking each other.

By the time we finished eating it was time for Grey's Anatomy, a show that had hooked the entire group with the exception of Rebel Monkey. After it was off, Buster found Bobby Knight's TV show and begged to be allowed 10 minutes of watching Knight in action. We watched a fair amount more than that, but finally someone asked "are we going to play a game or not?" I'm not sure who it was that asked, other than it was neither Buster nor myself, nor was it The Mag, who was just about ready to sneak off to bed only to have her plans thwarted by gameplay. We rolled for teams: The Mag and Rebel Monkey, Buster and Rose Hips, and Bunny and me. We had some issues with the DVD at first, but soon got the hang of it. We weren't too terribly far into the game when Rebel Monkey turned to her partner only to find that The Mag had zonked out. Not wanting to disturb her, Rebel Monkey instead decided to opt out of the game, choosing instead to descend through the trap door and read some of the latest Harry Potter; The Mag eventually woke up, looked around dazedly, and then headed to bed. The rest of us played the game out; it only took Bunny and me two tries at the final question to win, a win that was made sweeter by the fact that we both belted out the answer with joy: Jennifer Tilly. I'll leave it to you come up with your own questions that might fit.

After packing the game up, I headed to the trap door and lifted it up, only to discover that the lower cabin was pitch black; Rebel Monkey had had her fill of reading, and had gone to sleep instead. I had to get Buster to unlock the lower cabin front door so I could go to bed and get some rest in preparation for our trek home. I went to sleep composing all the things I was going to put in the mandatory guest book entry the next morning.

Of course, by the time I woke up, it was all a hazy memory.

Escape to Green Mountain Day 2 : Where DID We Think We Were Going Like That?

Continuing with my recounting of my Green Mountain Falls trip with the Book Monkeys; when we last left off, I had gone to bed exhausted after a full day of driving, eating, and mad table slapping. On day 2, there was more game playing, more eating, and some very uncomfortable driving.

Oh, and a run-in with the law

The next morning I awoke to the sounds of feet running above my head and the incredibly distinctive laugh of The Mag. I got up and took a quick shower before clambering through the trap door to the main cabin.

Oh, did I neglect to mention the trap door? It's one of my favorite features of the Berry Patch; beneath the main cabin lays a smaller cabin which can be reached either through going outside and walking down a little path to its front door, or by scaling through a trap door in the main cabin's living room. The trap door was the preferred method of travel between the two, although such travel was restricted by the fact that the trap door opened directly onto the top bunk bed where Rebel Monkey slept. Luckily, by the time I was done showering, Rebel Monkey was up; well, lucky for me, I suppose, but not so lucky for Rebel Monkey who, by virtue of being directly beneath the trap door, had been much closer to the noise upstairs.

We spent the first half of the day just lazing about: reading, watching TV, taking turns playing Rebel Monkey's portable old-school arcade game system version of Galaga, which ranks up there with Tempest and Tron as one of my all time favorite arcade games; we all lamented how unresponsive the little portable joystick was. Sometime around noon everyone had gotten cleaned up and ready to go out and about. Buster suggested we head to nearby Manitou Springs to check out their old school arcade, which included some even-older school penny arcade style games. The six of us (Buster's brother and col. having headed back to Denver by that point) piled into Buster and Bunny's car; since said vehicle was built for a max occupancy of five, we were a bit squashed in the back, with Rose Hips having to sit on The Mag's lap. Luckily for the more claustrophobic among us, the drive to Manitou wasn't too long of a haul.

When we got to town, The Mag noticed a wide array of strange outfits and asked if there was something special going on; Buster replied that seeing strange outfits was par for the course for a town whose motto was "Keep Manitou Weird." True that may be, but as we drove through the increasingly crowded streets we realized we had arrived in town during a Mardi Gras festival. After we finally found a place to park, Bunny immediately set out on a mission to find the booth selling beads and crazy hats; found the bead booth, but no sign of crazy hats. Buster and I headed to the arcade while the girls went in search of the crazy hat man, who they learned was moving through the crowd with his crazy hat merchandise on a pole. In the end, I was the only one who didn't wind up with any beads, hats, masks, or other strange accoutrements, unless you count the Macho Man Randy Savage finger puppet that Rebel Monkey and I pooled our hard-won arcade tickets to get.

The arcade itself was pretty cool; most of the really-old school games took pennies, nickels, and dimes to play, and there were a ton of old school arcade games like Tron and a couple of Galagas (no sign of Tempest, sadly); Rebel Monkey was more than happy to have access to a fully functioning and responsive Galaga machine, and quickly earned the high score on both machines, much to the consternation of a shaggy headed teenager, who instantly leaped onto the game as soon as Rebel Monkey was done obliterating his old score. He really should have just saved his money; Rebel Monkey is Queen of Galaga.

After demonstrating her Galaga dominance, Rebel Monkey and I played a game of air hockey in a building which could have doubled as a meat-locker; I was envious of Rebel Monkey's monkey gloves every time I accidentally touched the metal of the air hockey table and felt a little more of my flesh go dead from the sub-zero temp. I blame this obstacle for my loss, and not my total lack of coordination and tendency to score on my own goal.

After a few hours we decided to head back to the cabin, with the plan being that we’d fix some lunch after which a smaller, less crowded carload would go shopping for more groceries and a couple of videos. First, though, we were going to stop at a store to pick up some CD-ROMs so that we could burn some stuff off. Bunny drove towards where she thought an appropriate store was, but soon realized that she was mistaken, so she turned down a side street and headed back the way we came. We were just getting ready to turn back towards the main road when a cop drove by, giving us a scathing look; instead of turning in behind him, Bunny just drove straight on to the next side street. The cop was a wily one, though, and was on to our escape gambit; as we headed straight, he made a couple of right turns and came right at us with his lights flashing. He ambled towards us; as Bunny rolled down the window, he leaned down and uttered the accusatory phrase “Where do you think you’re going like that?”

Now, let me ask you, what sort of answer was he hoping for? I mean, seriously, wasn’t there a less confrontational way of approaching us? I braced myself for Bunny’s answer, which came out more like a question: “Back to our cabin?”

The officer informed us that we weren’t going anywhere, unless one of us wanted a ticket, saying one of us had to get out. So, new plan: Buster, Rebel Monkey, and Rose Hips got out and walked to the nearby store, while Bunny ran The Mag and me back to the cabin. After the shopping expedition returned, they started up a new batch of chili, and we played some games while waiting for it to cook. The Mag, Rose Hips, and Buster played a game of Pirates, while Bunny, Rebel Monkey and I played some Texas Hold ‘Em. Bunny had the power of the Big Stack (as opposed to the power of the Big Deck during E.R.S.) for a while, due to my complete inability to know when she was bluffing or not, an act made even more difficult by the fact that she didn’t necessarily know either.

After dinner, we turned off most of the lights and popped in Saw, which Buster and Bunny hadn’t seen; once it was over, we put in Saw II, which only I had seen. While I was entertained by Buster and Bunny reacting to the first Saw, I was operating on very little sleep, and wound up napping on the couch for the last 20 minutes or so. When it was all over, most of the group was pretty creeped out, and were all talking about how there was no way they were going to be able to go to sleep; then we watched Saw II, and that cured all the nerves there were. Rebel Monkey maintains the sequel is total crap; I still enjoyed it, although I think it was a much weaker film when viewed right after the original. What I found interesting was that the things Rebel Monkey cited as reasons for disliking the film (not duplicating the claustrophobic feel of the original, not doing a one-by-one blow-by-blow “here’s why you’re getting bumped off”) were pretty much exactly the things I appreciated in it; ah, well, to each their own.

The TV wound up on FX, which was showing King of the Hill; we watched a couple of episodes, but when another one started up we realized we were in the midst of a marathon, and decided to just call it quits.

If only we had had as much willpower the next day . . .

Escape to Green Mountain, Day 1: The Official Version

Continuing with the chronicles of my recent Colorado road trip with the Book Monkeys. Out of all of the days on the trip, I think that first day was by far the most jam-packed with entertainment and activities. It was also the day I stuffed myself with so much food I could hardly move; I loves me some chili

But I digress.

While 6 AM did indeed come early, the four of us got up and around pretty well. The biggest challenge before heading out was getting the car carrier secured, since the hooks on its straps weren't really compatible with the frame of the Matrix; the straps were eventually tied around the "Oh [Expletive Deleted}" handles, which appeared to be pretty secure.

Appearances can be deceiving.

We stopped at a gas station before leaving town, at which point Rebel Monkey made an interesting purchase; a multicolored frog that lit up when squeezed. As we pulled out of town, Rebel Monkey said we needed to give the frog a name; we proffered a few semi-joking options when suddenly Rose Hips started to clap her hands together, crying out "Ooo, ooo, I've got it! We have to call it Elizabeth!" There was a brief pause before I remarked "Well, it's hard to argue with that much enthusiasm." Rose Hips then explained her reasoning, which I like to think I would have picked up on myself if my Mountain Dew had had time to kick in first.

You see, when sending out a mass email to the group, The Mag accidentally sent an email to Buster's cousin Elizabeth, who replied to the group that she was jealous that we were going to the cabin and not her. Rose Hips replied back that if she wanted, we could print off a picture of her and she could be with us in spirit; the multicolored glowing frog served as her surrogate instead. About halfway there we decided we needed a surrogate for Tin Man as well, but none of our gas station pit stops provided us with anything as worthy as Elizabeth's surrogate.

About an hour into the trip I was distracted from the Amy Tan novel I was reading by a loud flapping noise from the roof. I glanced up and noticed that the strap above Rebel Monkey's head was starting to unwind from the handle. I grabbed for it and suggested that Rose Hips pull over as soon as possible. Rebel Monkey held it in place until we could stop and get it retied; there was no more slippage after that, and after further tightening at our next stop the noise above lessened greatly.

We took a small detour to Optima Lake, a man-made lake near Guymon that never managed to fill up. By turning at the lovely intersection of Mile 46 and Road W, we were able to see the scenic marvel Rebel Monkey dubbed Random Rock; an abandoned restroom which Rebel Monkey felt compelled to explore, only to exit quickly saying that she feared it was going to suck out her soul; and the oh-so-effective boat ramp which lead straight down to desiccated land. Honestly, a more desolate landscape I doubt I've ever seen.

A few of the other trip highlights:

• The ability of The Mag to determine what food items had been opened in the back seat from smell alone, which earned her the nickname Sniffmeister J.
• Our strange fascination with the rows and rows of ginormous windmills
• The Mag accusing Rebel Monkey of digging through the trash to discover candy wrappers, followed by Rebel Monkey’s denial, which led to Rose Hips saying that in the Official Version, Rebel Monkey did indeed dig through the trash; debates about what items would make it into the Official Version would continue throughout the trip.
• Discovering that Sniffmeister J’s powers were possibly tied to her seat, as Rebel Monkey displayed similar abilities when we rotated positions later.
• Rebel Monkey, dressed in monkey shirt and monkey pants, put on monkey gloves and made them do the monkey dance; the monkey dance had the unfortunate side effect of serving as a Trigger for “The Safety Dance.”

On the whole, the drive up to Colorado went by surprisingly quickly for me; we were in view of mountains before I knew it. Rebel Monkey was the first to spot them, but The Mag quickly pointed out a mountain on the opposite side of the car; actually, she became quite possessive of it, referring to it as "her" mountain. Since it kept peeking in and out from behind the intervening scenery, I dubbed it Mt. Bashful. Once Mt. Bashful was in sight, The Mag started periodically asking Rose Hips what the temperature was outside; for an uncannily long time, it was stable at 66 degrees. After the temperature rose following a quip at Rose's expense, I cried "She's a weather witch! Stop antagonizing her!" You might think that's a bit of a stretch, but all I can say is this: after stopping at McDonalds to get Rose Hips an ice cream cone, the temperature almost immediately began to fall. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Now, although the trip had gone by pretty quickly, we still had been cooped up in the car for many, many hours, and had subsequently gotten a bit loopy; when Rebel Monkey made a comment about seeing chipmunks the last time she was up there, The Mag broke into her impression of the Chipmunks' version of "Love Shack." I opined that we were all giddy because the air was thinner; Rebel Monkey responded that her patience was thinner as well.

It wasn’t much longer after that when we finally arrived at The Berry Patch. Bunny and Buster had gotten there the night before, and had spent the day skiing; although The Mag, Rose Hips, and I had all talked about skiing as well, we all decided against it. For my part, I knew that I’d only have two days of non-travel time, and I didn’t want to spend one of those trying to learn how to ski; if I’d had at least one more day of possible relaxation, I might have gone ahead, but it’s a moot point now. Anyway, by the time we got to the cabin, a very very tasty batch of chili (derived from Fellow Book Monkey and Blogger Bubblegum Tate’s recipe) was waiting for us. Also waiting for us was Buster’s brother, sister-in-law, and nieces from Denver; one of the highlights of the trip for me was watching Buster play hide-and-go-seek with the older of his nieces. At one point he sat in a recliner and covered himself in a blanket; his niece ran past him about ten times, totally oblivious, while the rest of us were dying laughing, with her mom lamenting “Oh, honey, you suck at this game.”

We watched some of the Olympics; it was the evening of the ice skating champs’ special performances, which struck most of as borderline ice porn. After Buster’s brother and family headed off to the neighboring little cabin with the kids for the night, the rest of us played a game of Shadows Over Camelot; once again, the forces of good prevailed. Then The Mag set up the PS2 to demonstrate the workout game. The camera had a hard time discerning movement in one particular corner, but was more than able to pick up Buster lounging on the couch behind The Mag; after realizing his movements were destroying targets, he started kicking furiously at the left side of the screen while The Mag cleared the right, still telling Claudia Black to shut up the whole time. While Buster was taking his turn playing on his own, Bunny, Rebel Monkey, and I started a round of a card game which was a mainstay in the Parker days, and which I have known by many names, including Egyptian War and Rapture, but which the cabin crew called E.R.S. If you’re not familiar with the game, I’ll just say this: it’s kind of like War, only there’s lots of slapping involved. In fact, before our first game was over, I had to switch slapping hands because I had bruised my thumb so badly from hitting the table. I won the first game, even with Buster coming over and slapping himself in, but when we started a second game using two decks of cards, Bunny suddenly unveiled her super-psychic E.R.S. powers; she collected so many cards so quickly we started referring to her as Big Deck. Nice bit of synchronicity: just as we were all cursing Bunny’s domination, the CD player segued into Erasure’s “I Love to Hate You.”

The game of E.R.S. (which lasted until about 2 in the morning) is one of those things that I can’t adequately put into words; maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was the hours trapped in a car, maybe it was the thin air, or maybe it was just the fact that I was hanging out with friends I hadn’t seen in almost a year; whatever the reason, I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard for so long. In a way, I think that game served as a sort of mental release for me; I’ve been pretty stressed out recently due to some non-bloggable issues, and really needed a way to unwind. That first day enabled me to blow off steam, get into full-on vacation mode, so I could truly enjoy the next couple of days of lounging around the cabin.

That’s the Official Version, anyway