Green Eggs and the DEA next door

Some time after the release of RETURN OF THE JEDI my good friend Mike tracked down the only Luke Skywalker "in desert disguise" action figure in our entire town. We all wanted one, but, like Laser Tag, it just somehow never arrived at the ratty toy store down by the interstate. I don't remember exactly why we all wanted it so bad, but something about the idea of a hero incognito grabbed hold of our collective obsession with a vigor like nothing before or after it. If memory serves, it was basically the normal Luke action figure cloaked in cheap sheet of brown plastic cape -- but to us it was the Holy Grail amusement.  And like the Grail, if you couldn't have it, you sure as hell wanted to get close enough to it to worship the dam thing.  So we all basically lined up and waited for our turn to go over to Mike's house and play with fabled piece of plasticine.

Not the coolest of kids, I had to wait nearly two weeks to get over to his house. I half expected to show up and have him say he lost it, and then I'd know he'd been lying about having it the whole time. Hell, under the right circumstances, that's exactly what I would have done. But thank god Mike wasn't me, because when I finally got to see the thing -- it left me breathless. 

Like a medieval monk measuring angels in some forgotten crypt, I sat there comparing it to the old EMPIRE Luke that I'd brought along with me. It simply blew it out of the water. The appendages moved more discretely, the plastic was strong and more dense, but most of all -- his new light-saber had been etched with an extra panel of detail. Mike reasoned that it was because Luke had had to build a new one after the fight with Vader in EMPIRE. I was struck speechless by the beauty of it, so my only response was to nod.

For an hour, we ran around the house staging battles with our action figures, two outdated Ti-Fighters and a brand new Addat (yep -- he had one of those two). On any other day, playing STAR WARS would have gotten boring after two hours, but on hour three were still going strong. My sadistic mind kept coming up with new and gory ways for incognito Luke to die and be resurrected on my side of the battlefield (drowning in a glass of acid milk, buried alive in the dirty clothes hamper, shredded in "razor blades" of a washboard.)  Mike loved it, and remained as psyched about the whole thing as me. I coveted every minute I got with the new Luke. When it came time for me to leave for dinner, I begged and begged his mother to let me stay for just another fifteen minutes. I laid it on so thick that she agreed to let me stay until she got back with tamales from the old lady who sold them out of pickup truck down the street.

As soon as we were left to our own devices, the game somehow lost steam. Even though she hadn't been watching us play the whole time, something about her presence in the house kept us going.  Within five minutes of her departure, Mike lost interest in our battles completely. He all but gave incognito Luke to me. Once I'd run through every fatality my twisted mind could come up with -- we both sat in silence for a few minutes until Mike asked:

Mike: Hey -- you wanna see something neat?

Me: Sure.

(He ran me down the hall into his parents room. No one had said not to go in there, but I could tell we weren't welcome. Mike began pacing anxiously at the foot of his parents bed.)

Mike: You can't tell anyone I showed you this.

Me: OK.

Mike: Swear.

Me: I swear.

Mike: Swear on my new Luke?

(He grabbed hold of half the action figure, and gestured me to grab the other half. It was obvious this was serious, but all I could think of was getting it over with so that we could get back to my last siege before having to head home.)

Me: (rolling my eyes): I said I swear.

(Mike got down on one knee and grabbed hold of the heating grate on the wall. He began tugging it. I didn't know anything about heating grates, but I was pretty sure he was going to break it. A pit started to form in my stomach -- this was trouble and I knew it.  Worst of all, I was missing valuable Luke time.)

Me: Come on already. I have to go home soon.

Matt: Wait! It's almost ...

(The grate came flying off and nearly hit me in the head. When the dust settled, all I could see was a heating duct.)

Me: Cool. Can we go play now.

(Mike was ignoring by this point. He shoved his hand inside and drew out three things: a bundle of cash, a shiny metal and giant .357 Magnum with three speedloaders. Mike went straight for the metal, but I couldn't stop staring at the .357. I dropped incognito Luke like a bad habit and snatched up the revolver. It was much heavier than I though it's be.)

Mike: Don't touch that! It's from Daddy's office.

Me: Your daddy has guns at his office.

Mike: Yeah, whatever. (Proudly displaying the metal) Isn't this cool. 

Me: I guess. My sister has bigger one from swim team.

Mike: (pissy) Well my Daddy won this one in the war.

That's when we heard Mike's mom come in the front door. We managed to just get everything back into the grate as she came calling for us down the hallway. Frightened we'd get busted, we snuck out the bedroom window and pretended to be playing in the backyard. Mike's mom scolded us for going outside -- having no idea that we'd done much worse than that.

A quick note on Mike's dad -- I only saw him four of five times in the three years I knew him. Average height, a bit pudgy, kinda grumpy, but otherwise unremarkable. Unremarkable, except for the shoulder length hair he wore.  Back then, no one in West Texas had long hair except for the handful of Native Americans at the reservation and -- druggies.

A few months later, Mike's mom came over to our house very late one night and precipitously gave us all their chickens. I could lie and say it was an event that I vividly recall -- like her eyes were blood red from lack of sleep, she was dressed in all black and kept asking if we could hear something in the bushes -- but it isn't. In fact the only thing I really remember is that a few days later I went to feed the chickens and realized that some of the chickens were laying greenish-blue eggs (Mike's Mom's chickens were Araucanas -- a real kind of chicken that lays green eggs.) Sure Mike hadn't been at school, but again, I thought he was sick. The answer came a few days later when my parents nearly shit a brick reading the morning newspaper.

Turns out that Mike's dad was -- an undercover DEA agent. Like incognito Luke, he'd been a hero in disguise for as long as I'd known him. He'd busted one of those kingpin types with a tunnel full of drugs leading to Mexico, and forced to leave in the middle of the night to avoid having him and his family killed in retaliation.

So there you have -- real life DEA agents, green eggs and the ham that is me in the middle of it all. Tomorrow -- BB GUN WAR - WOUNDS

The real ANIMAL CHIN

Let's try this again.  It's 1987. See if you can guess what I am now -- bangs to my chin, ratty jean cutoffs and a permanent Sean Penn sneer on my face that said -- Yeah? So what are you gonna do about? I was a skater, and it was glorious. But if I was out in public for more than hour, my cheeks would start twitching with muscle fatigue. An older kid at the mall once noticed and warned me to lay off the Jolt.

Tiffany, neon, and the popcorn smell of Hot Dog on a stick -- the mall was pretty much heaven on earth. Even though our town/city wasn't that big, the mall had an inexplicably large umber of high-end boutiques and department stores that drew public appearances by some well known actors and pop even -- Tiffany. The reason was simply that there was  a booming shadow economy of people who only paid in cash -- mountains of cash. That's what happens when you live in a place that's the biggest transshipment point for cocaine into America. More on this in the next post -- THE DEA NEXT DOOR. The point is that the mall was the singular oasis of civilization in my life at the time, and I only got to go five times before we moved away.

Sis and I were always at war. The only time we formed a united front was when it came to the mall.  Mom got a headache at the mere mention of "mall." 

Mom: It sure is hot today. You kids want to go swimming at the pool?

Me: You'll take us to the pool? I mean it's so far away.

Mom: It's only twenty minutes away. Besides, it's a 110 degrees outside and your Dad still hasn't fixed the air conditioning.

(At this point Sis and I would lock eyes, and try to act casual. Like Laura Holt and Remington Steels casing a joint -- casual. We loved that show. I still love that show)

Sis: I don't know, I could really use some school supplies.

Mom: OK, we can get some on the way.

Me: Couldn't we just go someplace with air conditioning.

Sis: I know, why not the mall?  I can get my supplies at the stationary store.

Mom: Gee, I don't know. It's a long drive and my head is starting to hurt.

The one time Mom took me to the mall was to buy an itchy wool suit at JC Penny's for my Aunt's wedding. I nearly passed out from heat exhaustion, but Mom insisted it be wool. I sweat so much trying the first one on that we had to buy it. Mom felt so bad took afterwards she bought me a new set of Swiss bearings at the mall's skate shop afterwards.

The four other times I went to the mall with friends we spent literally hours in the skate shop drooling over the new Vision decks, latest Indy trucks and Slime Ball wheels. Arguments ranged from the merits of seven ply decks to how high Natus Kapas could really ollie. All my friends were solid skaters.  All could kick flip ollie, grind twice there body length on a rail, and, most importantly, pull method airs of a launch ramp. I, on the other hand, could ollie, and, well -- talk. Talk gear, talk skaters, talk vert, and -- talk some more. Basically I peaked early in my skating career when by some miracle I was the first one in our group to ollie over a Coke can without crushing it. Luckily, everyone had been watching me at the time. I skated by on the fanfare of this feat six months before everyone progressed beyond me and started to question why they hung out with such a bad skater. 

Things got so bad going into summer break that I concocted the most elaborate lie to stay in the skate clique: I swore that that summer I was gong to learn to skate half-pipe on a family trip to Wisconsin. At the time, it seemed like a great lie because no one we knew had a half-pipe. The plan was that I'd get home, pretend that I'd become some great half-pipe skater, and simply reason away my deficiencies as a street skater as a divine trade-off for undeniable (and unverifiable) knack for half-pipe. Of course when I got to Wisconsin, the place we visited was all country highway. They didn't sidewalks, let alone half-pipes. The only available asphalt was in the bowling alley parking lot. I didn't skate a single day all summer. 

Nevertheless, the plan worked wonders. I kept to the script, and my skater brothers took me at my word.   Then it all came apart one Friday afternoon in November. Luis, a kid in my sister's grade with a bad teen mustache, had just finished building a half-pipe in his back yard. Given the bitter rivalry between skaters of different grades, they had all decided to put me up as the ringer to represent our crew on the ramp.

I'll spare you the gory details, but basically I dropped in on the ramp -- half believing my own lies -- and nearly cracked my head open from the fall. I was so mortified when it happened that I just lay there on the ramp without saying a word. The searing stares of my peers pierced my ice cold embarrassment. My humiliation was so complete that it couldn't even muster a warm blush. I suddenly realized that shame was a cold lonely frigid thing. No one said a single word. Instead, Luis silently escorted me out of the backyard. The only thing Luis said was that he'd appreciate it if I didn't tell my parents I'd hurt myself on his ramp. Because if his Mom fund out, she'd make him tear it down. I agreed with a few nods. I welcomed the warm stream of blood dripping down my forehead on the walk home. It was the first sign that I wasn't going to freeze to death from disgrace.

The next week at school was tough. I tried to lie my way out of my lie, complaining about my board, the ramp conditions and the rotten pear I'd eaten for breakfast beforehand. Actually I had eaten a rotten pear, so at least that part was true. But true or not, no one was buying anymore of my bullshit. The next few weekends I thought and thought and thought about how I could redeem myself, but nothing came to me. My depression got bad enough that Mom started asking why I wasn't skating anymore. After brushing her off with inadequate answers, she found out from my sister what happened. I had always been a moody kid, but Mom and Dad started to worry after I spent two weekends alone in doors watching reruns of GOOD TIMES and a martial arts movie marathon on KTLA. Always the ingenious American parents, Mom and Dad resorted to the only weapon left to them in the battle against adolescent malaise: they each bought me a present. In one of those inexplicable synchronicities, they each bought a present not knowing the other had done so.

On weekend three of exile from planet skate, I woke up Saturday morning to a PXL 2000 and a copy of the Bones Brigade's THE SEARCH FOR ANIMAL CHIN. The skate video was Mom's idea to get me inspired to go outside. The video camera was Dad's idea to ... well Dad sticks with what works. After resolving my pirate problem years earlier with his Super 8mm camera, he decided to revisit the solution with a more idiot proof video camera. How a camera was supposed to help me he didn't know, but hey -- it worked last time my friends ditched me. To be honest, I wasn't that psyched about the PXL 2000, but ANIMAL CHIN was pretty damned sweet. 

I must have watched ANIMAL CHIN twelve times that weekend and again every night that week. Tony, Lance, Steve, Mike and Tommy were gods, and the ramps they skated were their Mount Olympus. I can't say I remember the story all that well, but it had to do with some quest around the world to find the elusive Animal Chin -- a guy reputed to have invented skate boarding in ancient China. I lived and breathed every sequence of the movie. On my walk home from school, I took the route through the irrigation ditches. I'd run up and down the concrete banks miming to perfection the moves that the Bones Brigade executed down a concrete canal in Hawaii. I got so proficient at it, that I convinced myself that doing it on an actual skateboard was a pure formality like how a great fighter pilot doesn't really need more than a Chinese kite to prove his mettle. Unfortunately for Mom and Dad, this meant that I spent even more time inside than ever before to make sure I knew the movie by heart.

Over breakfast the next Saturday morning, Dad anxiously inquired when I planned to get outside and start skating again. Mom and Dad were starting to worry because I was beginning to look pretty damned pale. Thats when I laid out my plan to learn how to do everything in the movie by kind of visual osmosis. I didn't use these terms, but you get the general idea. If I watched it enough times, at some point I'd just spontaneously know how to do it. Dad gently suggested that while my plan might work, at some point I'd have to go out and actually try the moves to see if my plan was working. When I grudgingly agreed, he offered to come along and videotape me on the PXL 2000. That way I could review the tapes to help learn from any mistakes I might make.

Me: Mistakes? No way. I've seen ANIMAL CHIN like a thousand times already.

Mom: More like twenty times.

Me: OK ... Twenty five.

Mom: Twenty two tops.

Dad:Whatever. All I'm saying is that I'll be there -- just in case you make a mistake and want to learn from it.

Me: Impossible.

Impossible? In my infinite wisdom, I decided to start with something easy like -- the irrigation ditches I'd been "skating" home after school.  

CUT TO: Ten minutes later. Both knees are skinned and I've only managed to successfully drop-in once for a ten second ride before crashing into my father's feet.

Dad was beside himself with what mom was going to do when he brought me home bleeding like this. Desperate for him to understand what I was going for, I posed for some half handstands at the top of the banks with my board that he half-heartedly shot with the camera. Mom was surprisingly copacetic about my condition, grateful that I'd at least gotten some sun. 

That night I reviewed the footage and two amazing things happened. 

1) I didn't look all that bad.  Sure I didn't look anything like a member of the Bones Brigade, but I was shocked at how good I looked during my one successful drop-in. The ride lasted a mere ten seconds what with: drop-in, successful frontside turn, even more successful backside turn and then I crashed at Dad's feet.

2) Due to the gutterboxed image of the camera, my poses on the banks after the successful drop in almost looked like real time maneuvers.

After reviewing the tapes three more times, there on the parquet floor of our living room I discovered the first principal of cinema -- montage. The next day I conned my dad into going out with me again to the ditches. After a half hour of blood, sweat, tears, two successful drop-ins, four great poses and some successive shitty pixilated images I'd managed to concoct twenty-three seconds of photographic proof that I could skate vert.

The next week I somehow convinced my skate friends to come over and watch it. Thanks to montage and movie magic, I was invited back into the group. No sooner had I celebrated the reverie than the group decided the best way to celebrate the reunion was to skate the ditches. The walk to the ditch felt like an eternity as I felt the arctic breeze of another humiliation coming when they discovered I'd bamboozled them again.

Perched at the lip of the embankment, they wanted me to go first and show them how it's done. Before I dropped in, I made sure they ll knew how much I'd missed hanging out with them, and, more to the point, how sorry I was for lying to them. I didn't say which lie, just that I was sorry for lying. They all forgave me in the rush to get on with skating the ditch. So I took a deep breath, and dropped in.  Mercifully, I made it down and up twice before skidding out in a slimy puddle. My cohorts ran to help me, and before I could explain the depths of my lies -- this is what happened.

Skater Boy #1: Dude that was a wicked wipe out!

Skater Boy #2: Gnarly! Damn you're already bleeding through your jeans.

Me: Yeah, well -- sorry. Guess I'll see you guys later.

(My last skinned knee hadn't healed yet, so the injury looked worse than it was. I silently skulked away. I'd been found out again, only this time my affiliation with the group was over for good.)

Skater Boy #1: Dude, where are you going?

Me: Well, I obviously can't skate this thing.

Skater Boy #2: What are you talking about -- that puddle hit you out of nowhere.

Skater Boy #3: Could of happen to anyone, Dude. Not me, but anyone else.

(They all nodded in agreement, and me soon after.)

Me: Cool, yeah, of course. Maybe I'll just sit out and watch this round.

Skater Boy #1: Hell's yeah dude.

Skater Boy#3: Hell's no! Dude you should get your camera and take some movies of us.

Me: Hell's yeah, I could do that. For sure...

For about a month, I was the designated videographer of the group. It was great to have an excuse to just watch, hang and be cool for doing nothing more than making other people look cool. I wish I could say that I stayed in touch with these guys, but as soon as Dad went back to work, I went back to playing soccer. So film, like skateboarding, went the way of the dodo until I got the option to make a video instead of writing a paper on Marxism in the 8th grade.  But before we get to that, there's so much more you need to know. So tomorrow -- I'll tell you about THE DEA NEXT DOOR.

(NOTE: Dude was even more prevalent then, than it is now.  If you don't believe me, just have a look at THE SEARCH FOR ANIMAL CHIN.)

West Texas Surprise

1987 was a tough year for America.  There was Dutch's implication in the Iran-Contra affair, Black Monday blew the economy to hell, and then our good friend Eli Lilly released Prozac to help America cope with all the bad news. The two hardships I remember from that year were my Mom's constant absenteeism and Dad losing his job. Even when mom was around, she didn't really listen to me, which sucked because she was my best friend. I know, I know -- I'm a Momma's boy. Mom told dirty jokes, loved to collect lizards in the backyard and never kept secrets from me. Not even the big adult ones, probably because she knew I couldn't really understand them at the time anyway. That and I always kept my mouth shut. She was even my soccer coach until we ran so low on cash that year that I had to quit the league. Dad by contrast was always around so I kind of got sick of hanging out with him. 

Mom was gone so much because she was helping her best friend through a particularly loveless marriage. The big secret was that Mom's pal was having an affair with an older reclusive man who lived up the mountain. Mom's friend was a tall lithe brunette that even at the tender age of ten I knew was beautiful. I saw the guy once. It was in the side yard at the Junior League. He was pacing furtively behind the pyracantha waiting for Mom and her pal to get out of meeting. I still remember catching flashes of his ocean blue eyes bouncing between the lacunas in the hedge. Strange the things you remember. 

Mom's friend ended up running away with the guy to Paris for a time. Apparently it didn't last. I say apparently because Mom lost touch with her friend after we left Texas. There was the odd holiday card or late night phone call, but like so many friendships built on the clandestine, it just fell apart once Mom wasn't there to take her daily confessions. The story would be a dead end, except that years later the old man decided to peep his haunting Celtic eyes back into my life. It was Christmas day. My family had just polished off the second bottle of Champagne, and nearly a third of the carton of Tropicana orange juice. We start out drinking mimosas, but at some point we forgo the citrus and just stick with champagne. Nevertheless, we still call them mimosas. The exchange went something like this.

(Dad opens my present while Mom cleans up some mess in the kitchen. It's a book -- but from Dad's bemused reaction, you'd think I'd gotten him an extra-terrestrial translation of a VCR manual. Dad reads, but rarely beyond the C's -- Clancy, Coonts, Cussler etc . )

Dad: Wow a book! Thanks kiddo!

Me: You won't be able to put it down -- I promise.

Dad: I'm sure I won't.

Me: It's a Western. You know like Louis L'Amour? But more -- literary. Like getting your desert and your vegetables all at once.

Dad: Sounds -- Ah-ha. I'll put it at the top of my list.

Sis: You know he won't read it. He never reads anything we give him.

Me: You never know. It has all these great descriptions of ranches in it, a few gunfights, horse chases. It's a western you're going to love it.

Dad: I'm sold. 

Mom: Who wants more mimosas?

Everyone raises their hand. Mom fills all our glasses with champagne. My sister stops her short to leave room for orange juice. She feels like we're all alcoholics for drinking straight champagne at 10am, while the rest of us -- don't. My mom returns with orange juice for Sis, but drops the bottle when she sees the author's photo on book jacket. It turns out that in all the conversations with her best friend back in Texas, Mom was never given the old reclusive man's name. She saw him a few times by accident, but never made the connection that he was the world famous author who reputedly lived in our town back then. None of his work had really pierced the mainstream yet, much less been adapted to the screen, so it was understandable Mom never made the connection.  So what's the moral to the story? 

No idea. It's just a memory that came to mind, and eclipsed everything else. Since I'm still finding my legs in the blogosphere I just wanted to get it out. I'm only giving myself twenty minutes a day to write these. Bet you could tell by the homonyms and spelling errors.

So tomorrow ... how I saw THE SEARCH FOR ANIMAL CHIN and came up with a half-baked plan to fool my friends into thinking I could skate half-pipe.

My First Movie

My first movie was a pirate picture called THE PIRATE QUEEN GUINEVERE.  It took place on the high seas of a muddy irrigation ditch behind our house.  The ditches and the mighty Rio Grande that they fed into a hundred yards away was the only water available to me for a hundred miles in any direction.  God knows why I didn't make a Western since I lived in the desert, but it was the spring of 1983 and all I could think about was pirates.  How did they comb their hair?  Would they approve of my cowboy boots spray painted black?  How about the saber I'd constructed from my Dad's car antennae?  Could you make people walk the plank with a 2x4 and reasonably large puddle?  

I was six years old and had just seen THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE staring Kevin Kline at his swashbuckling best.  For six glorious weeks everything I did had to be checked with the homunculus sized version of him in my head.  If the Pirate King said to wear one pair of underwear all week, then that's what I did.  No matter the crinkled noses, sour expressions and sharp words from my second grade teacher Mrs. Aguilar -- if the Pirate King said jump, I leapt for the main sail and never looked back.  The few friends I did have jumped on the pirate band wagon for a week, but then got bored.  In a town where kids got real guns at ten, car antennae and eye patches can't really compete.  They just didn't get it, and I didn't care.  I didn't care one bit -- not for two weeks anyway.  So by week three of my pirate phase, I found myself marooned at home after school.  None of my playmates wanted anything to do with me.  The PIRATES OF PENZANCE had not been a hit with age group, or anyone else's from what I remember, so unless I could convince people pirates were cool I was shit out of luck.  Alone, dejected and hungry for playmates, I was rescued from despair by the most unlikely of confederates -- my older sister.

My big sis was pretty cool.  Tough, athletic and big for her age, she played boys soccer and baseball because the local leagues deemed her "too aggressive and competitive" to play with the girls.  Only three years older, she was wise beyond her years.  She truly didn't give a fuck what other people thought, still doesn't, and it's always been an inspiration.  She abided hanging out with me for three reasons: 1) I was never without wit and imaginary games to keep her entertained, 2) I never ratted on her when she beat the snot out of me (happened a lot) and 3) she was a tomboy sick of pretending to like dolls and horses.  And the only cure for MY LITTLE PONY fatigue is to make the bitch walk the plank.  So we did it, over and over, until even I was sick of it.   The juggernaut of pirate zeal I'd hoped was sailing inside my sister turned out to be nothing more than a weekend regatta.  Bored, she fled across the street to play guns with Russell down the streets.  That night, I told my father all about my loner plight, and this is how it went:

Me: Everybody hates me because I'm a pirate.

Dad: Hates you? Really?  

Me: Yep. Haven't you noticed nobody comes over anymore.

Dad: I have noticed.  Why not just have your friends over to play DUKES OF HAZARD?

Me: But Bo and Luke aren't pirates dad. They wear cowboy boots for shit's sake.

Dad: Please don't swear at the dinner table. Any other place or time in the house is fine, you know that, just not at the dinner table.

(FYI -- I had a serious swearing problem as a child, I'm taking borderline tourettic. My parents realized after I started washing my own mouth out with soap rather than abandon my new vocabulary that it was a war they couldn't win. So instead of abandoning the words altogether, they got me to agree to certain times and places I couldn't swear like during school, synagogue, church or any room with people who had gray hair.)

Me: Sorry.

Dad: It's OK. So priates are the problem, huh?

Me: No -- everyone else is the problem.  Nobody understands that pirates could kick Bo and Luke's ass any day.  Swords, muskets and ale beats the General Lee any day.

Dad: I see your point. So remind me why you like pirates so much.

Me: Dad don't you remember?  PIRATES OF PENZANCE.

Dad: The Musical?  I thought you didn't like musicals.

Me: I don't.  I'm talking about the movie.

Dad: But there's music in the movie.

Me: Dad, I'm talking about the movie?  You know, with the Pirate King. None of my friends liked it.  If they liked it, then they'd want to play pirates with me.

Dad chewed contemplatively on my Mom's Michigan stew.  The beef was always a little tough, so you'll have to give him a second.

Dad: I see. So if they saw the pirate movie and liked it, then you'd have friends again?

Me: Exactly.

Dad: Why didn't you say so before?  I've got just the thing.

After dinner, Dad went to his Air Force footlocker in the attic and retrieved a dusty old Continental Airlines bag.  You remember those blue ones that looked like bowling ball bags? Inside it, he had an old Bell & Howell 8mm camera.  Dad had taken movies of everything he did in the Air Force -- bomb tests, T38 flights and his volleyball tournaments.  The Cold War wasn't just about stopping the communist scourge, it was also about winning volleyball tournaments.  If Dad's film was the only record left of that period in American Military history, scholars would likely deduce that the struggle for hearts and minds was won one side out at a time.

Dad: Know what that is?

Me: Wow a video camera!

Dad: No, that's a film camera.

Me: Right. A film camera.

(No idea what "film" is or the point of this gift)

Dad: Now you can go make your own pirate movie.

It took two weeks, twenty dollars and several ass whoopin's from my sister (aka, "the pirate queen Guinevere") to get my first movie made. The two things I had going for me was that Sis didn't mind getting dirty, and the dog could play dead like nobody's business. Drool, spasms, bared teeth -- truly Academy calibre stuff.  All it took was two dog biscuits and she'd conk out.  In hindsight, those might have been tiny diabetic comas, but they looked really gross and pretty nifty. 

The film was made up of three sequences that exploited these two attributes over and over. My Sis would hunt Sprinkles down inside the labyrinthine levee canals, fight her with the car antennae, but then Sprinkles would miraculous splash to freedom down a separate canal. The film ended with Sprinkles spectacular fight to the death against my sister on a delta of sun scorched soil in the Rio Grande.  

Two days later we got the film back. I paced around the house all afternoon waiting for Dad to get home.  The only place that processed Supper 8mm film in our town was forty minutes away near my Dad's office. Dad arrived home shaking his head, mustering as much of a smile as his mustached upper-lip allowed.

Dad: So we got the film back.

Me: I know, I know.  I can't wait to see it. All my friends are going to love it!

Dad: I don't think so. It's all been flashed.

Me: No. We all had our clothes on.

(There had been an incident at the junior high involving a septuagenarian in Mexican blanket. The only other time I had heard "flash")

Dad: You see with film you have to be careful not to expose your negative to sunlight.

Me: OK. So when can we see my movie?

We went back and forth like that until my Dad's somber tone gave way to hysterical laughter at my complete inability to understand what he was saying. I was six years old -- what did he expect. The moment of truth came when I made him string up the flashed film up onto the projector. He was right -- there wasn't a single image on the damned thing.  Disappointed, I buried my head in my hands for the last minute of footage. Dad didn't know what to say until --

Dad: Wait a second.

Me: What? (mumbled through my hands)

Dad: I saw something.  Take a look at this.

Dad backed up the film, but I didn't see anything. Dad rewound it three times until I saw what he was talking about. It was a very thin and ghostly image of my Sis with her foot planted triumphantly on Sprinkles belly. Somehow a single frame from the delta had been mercifully spared from the twiddling genitals of doom that is our sun.  Miraculous. Dad and I stared at it for about two minutes before I lost interest.  After all, DUKES OF HAZARD was on.

My first film wasn't made for art's sake, posterity, girls or money.  It was a propaganda film plain and simple.  I made the movie to convince my friends that pirates were cool and they should want to play pirates with me. It didn't work, because no one to this day has ever seen it besides my Dad and me. Comprised of a single ghostly image that has haunted my mind ever since.

NEXT POST: PXL 2000