Adopted monkeys and driving cats

The following is from an email one of my coworkers received, grammar and spelling mistakes included:

“I was interested in adopting one of your monkeys. I have some questions about the adoption processes. Are we taught to take care of the monkey and do we get to bring it home. If you could please send me some information on the adoption procedure and what it in tales I would greatly appreciate it…”

The zoo has an “Adopt an Animal” program, which is basically a way for patrons to donate money and feel like their funds are going to help their favorite animal. Most people are smart enough to realize this, but occasionally we get people who take the whole “adopt” thing a little too seriously. I’d like to think that the “what it in tales” phrase is meant to be funny, but I kind of doubt it.

They are actually doing away with the program because some people, who as children were raised by adoptive parents, take great offense at being equated with zoo animals. I wonder if these same people get mad when they see those “Adopt a Highway” signs on the side of the road?

During my morning commute, while sitting at a stoplight, I glanced in the rear view mirror at the car behind me. The woman in the car had a cat in her lap, which was sitting at the wheel as if it was driving. Yeah, I did a double take…but I didn’t spit my coffee out in amazement.

Mass Inheritance of Vinyl

Recently, I inherited my friend Kerry’s record collection. Kerry is an old friend and college housemate – we spent countless hours together “back in the day” hanging out, drinking beer, and spinning our latest vinyl finds. For the last few years, he has been living in Albany, New York. He recently decided to make a new life for himself in England, and got rid of almost everything he owned. Remembering the old days, and how much I enjoyed pawing though his collection, he graciously offered his records to me – six crates of vinyl, a storage tub of singles, and a small box of CD’s. Geek that I am, I jumped at this offer. He freighted a few things from Albany to his sister Karalee’s house in Aurora, and shipped the albums there as well. If you’ll indulge me a little, I’d like to share the story of their trip to my house. It ended up being more work than I had originally planned…

The original plan was simple - pick up the crates, put them in the car, drive them home, and then load them into our "music library." There was an empty space that would easily accommodate six stacked crates. So I made the long drive to Aurora in the li’l woman’s old station wagon. When I got there, looking at the pallet, the crates appeared to look a little slanted. When Karalee and I started taking the plastic off of the pallet that was holding the vinyl it appeared that extra boards had been placed along the sides, maybe to sturdy the load. As more plastic was removed I realized that they weren't extra boards, but the crates themselves - they had started to fall apart. We attempted to carry one crate to the car, and it more or less disintegrated before we could load it in - poor Karalee had to support the load, while I frantically grabbed handfuls of records and loaded them into the car. All of the crates were in this shape, reduced to so much kindling. I attempted to pick up a few of the crates, and they would come apart in my hands. In the end, they served to hold the vinyl in place and prevent the records from flying everywhere on their journey to Colorado. I ended up just loading stacks of records into the back of the car by hand, it was more or less impossible to keep track of order. Once loaded in, I put the remains of the crates on top of the records for the drive home. I drove home and pulled the car into the garage.

When I got home, I realized that the destruction of the crates had rendered my original plan null and void. Where in the world was I going to put the records once I loaded them inside? As luck would have it, I have a metal shelving unit designed for holding LP’s. I've never been really happy with these shelves, and was using them to store cd box sets and various knick knacks. The box sets were stacked on top and in a few other spots in the room, and the toys tossed into a box. These shelves were finally going to get used for their originally intended purpose! Once the shelves were cleared off and dusted, I went back outside and tossed the crate remains on the back patio. I went back to the garage and weighed my options - should I just load the records out as they are, and go through it all later? My anal retentive nature ruled that out, so I found some boxes, and looking at the mass of vinyl started painstakingly pulling out the records in alphabetical order - the way I had loaded the records in, I would be able to find large sections that were already in order. Then I'd load them into the boxes, carry them inside, and put the records on the shelves. This took me about 3 hours. Strangely enough, the shelving unit almost seemed designed for this mass inheritance of vinyl. Once loaded in, the records filled the bottom four shelves and most of the fifth and top shelf.

I eventually salvaged four of the demolished crates from the remains – lots of sawing and hammering for a guy who is not all that handy with tools. I cut the boards down so that they were the same size as the crates I already had and they stacked quite nicely. (I always cut down my crates so that they would fit in the back seat of my old car, and also because it made them more sturdy.) I was also able to make a smaller fifth crate that I’ll eventually find a use for. I’ve had a fun time going through the old records, and have found quite a few gems. Oh, and I’ve had a good laugh as I’ve come across some of the joke birthday presents that I gave Kerry back in college (ah, the 99 and 25 cent bins, an endless source of entertainment…). There are some doubles of records I already had, which I knew would be the case, so I do have a bit of weeding to do. The whole process has been a lot of fun (I’m one of those guys who can browse through record bins for hours and stay entertained), and it should keep me busy for some time. Thanks Kerry! Your records seem quite happy in their new home.

The brain of a milli*naire

Last night I watched a pretty nifty old movie from 1953, Donovan's Brain, that I had taped off the TV earlier in the day. It involved a doctor who keeps a dead milli*naire's brain alive, and starts to communicate telepathically with the brain. The doctor is eventually taken over by the brain and takes on the traits of the dead milli*naire, who it turns out was a despicable sort bent on taking over control of the financial world. The film was played really straight, with none of the cheezy qualities usually associated with 1950's sci-fi movies. The doctor's assistant, hailed as a brilliant surgeon, is an unrepentant drunkard who disappears to go on binges - "i've got 11 bottles left in that case I bought, so I won't see you for a few days..." I found this interesting, as you couldn't have a character like that in a film nowadays unless he was to see the errors of this ways or get into a car accident by the end if the story. The female lead was played by Nancy Davis, now known as Nancy Reagan. Her performance was even more impressive than her appearance on the very special "Just Say No" episode of Diff'rent Strokes. Okay, I admit it, I never actually saw that episode - but I hear it was great, and got all of the nation's kids to quit doing drugs.

This was the type of film I was hoping to catch on Halloween. I had to work that day, and it was incredibly busy, so I wanted nothing more than to go home and catch an old horror or science fiction film on the tube. I was disappointed to see that very few channels were even acknowledging Halloween. AMC, which the previous year had devoted the entire month of October to spooky movies, only had repeated screenings of Scream 2 scheduled - ugh, hardly a classic. I’m not sure why nobody had scary movies scheduled, but my conclusion is that everyone was too freaked out about the election that was happening in a few days to think about Halloween.

Foxy Sunday

I made it to a few shows over the weekend. On Thursday I caught Agent Orange at the Lion’s Lair, a small craphole of a bar on Colfax, more or less on a whim. Musically there were no big surprises to be found – just Agent Orange running through all of the old classics. I was, however, surprised that a pretty good crowd showed up on a weeknight. And most of them were wearing backwards baseball caps, hmmmmm…agent orange must be popular with the current breed of “extreme” skaters. I got knocked down a few times by some wayward moshers, but overall had a pretty good time. For some reason the main p.a. speakers pointed to the audience weren’t on so the vocals were hard to hear. The warmup band was a lousy local act, Self Service, who I saw stink up the same joint a few weeks ago (warming up for another oldie punk act, the UK Subs). This time a creepy girl kept jumping up on stage to sing along, dance, and spray the crowd with beer. You could tell this probably the high point of her week….kind of sad, really!

On Friday I caught the Dwarves on an email freebie from the promoter I had received earlier that day. The email read that it was “only good for the first 10 people who bring them in …so get there early!” well, I showed up at 9:30, 90 minutes after the doors opened – the girl at the ticket window pulled out a small stack of printouts, counted them, and wrote a big “6” on mine. I guess the punks didn’t sign up for the mailing list, hahaha… The show was okay, nothing to write home about, but worth the drive over. The Dwarves seem to get a lot of press about what a dangerous band they are, likely due to their notorious past, but what they deliver nowadays is pretty tame (then again, this was an all ages show so maybe it was toned down). A pretty rowdy, drunk, and dirty crowd – I felt kind of out of place, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve felt that way. Several years ago, after leaving a Zeke/Dwarves show in seattle, my friend Scott described the crowd as looking very “methadone anonymous.” I think that term may still work.

As I pulled out of the garage and got about a block from the house this morning I saw 2 foxes running around and playing in the fresh snow. I’ve seen foxes at night in our neighborhood before, but they usually scatter as soon as they see a pair of headlights. I drove slowly past both of them, stopping to get a good look, and they didn’t pay me any mind as they ran about doing their fox bidness. Cool!

Of snow and cats...

It’s a cold and snowy day in Cowtown, so what can I do on the intranet that doesn’t involve me spending money I don’t have? Start a blog! I’ve been meaning to do something like this for a while now in an effort to keep all of my friends outside of Denver up to date on my life – what shows I’ve been hitting, the tunes I’ve been spinning, and my latest pop culture obsessions. I hope to eventually figure this stuff out well enough to add some photos of life in Colorado (yep, computers still aren’t my strong point). So please check back often – any feedback or help you can send my way would be appreciated.

Like I mentioned earlier, it’s snowing here – it started last night, and has been going slowly but surely since then. The roads haven’t been affected, which is good. I don’t mind snow until it makes things inconvenient for me. Unfortunately, it also means I’m stuck in the house with our cranky old cat Sky Pilot. Sky is always obsessed with going outside, as she has been an indoor cat since moving to the Mile High City. She has never gotten used to this, and anytime you walk through the living room she makes a mad dash for the door in the hopes that you’ll take her out for a walk. What’s funny about a day like today is that if I open the door and offer to walk out with her, she looks incredibly confused by the weather. “Hey, it was nice and sunny yesterday, what in the hell is this crap?” Then she’ll howl at me as if the snow is my fault.

As I mentioned, Sky Pilot is a bit old and cranky. I think veterinarians have a medical term to describe her condition. I’m pretty sure that term is “batshit crazy.”