You Have to Believe We Are Magic

You ever have an experience where an item you've had for a long time suddenly feels completely outdated and in need of a wholesale change?  Like a bed or a car or something you use every day and don't give it a second thought.  Then one day you walk into your room or garage and think,  "Wow, I really need to upgrade."

When I got back from China last week, one of the first things I did was stop in to look over the current state of this blog space. As you may have noticed, I experienced that outdated feeling when I looked at this site.  Has it really looked the same since 2009?  Shame on me.  

I've been busy since I got back, so I set out some time today to update the blog's look, right after I went to the gym.  On the way back from the gym, I heard some Electric Light Orchestra on the radio.  ELO tunes have a certain infectiousness.  As I sat down to work on the revamp, I couldn't get the song out of my head.  And for some reason, from the time I was probably eight years old, when I think of ELO, I always associate them with Xanadu, even their non-Xanadu stuff.  There's a reason for this.  

See, when I was eight, that was about seven years after Xanadu was released.  I must have been in about third grade and my brother Griswold was in high school.  Our family had this enormous piece of furniture that housed a record player, a sprawling monolith to melodious vinyl, entombed in 70's-shiek carved maple.  The thing must have weighed over 400 lbs, and was showcased in our main family room.  Most of our records, as far as I can remember, were classical or stuff my mother would listen to, like The Carpenters.  But us kids were rock and roll kids.  As the youngest, I was raised on the tastes of my older siblings, which meant Van Halen and AC/DC ruled, or even some classic rock bands like Boston.  I had never heard of Eurasure or Depeche Mode until I went on a mission and had to live with kids from Utah.  Listening to that synth-pop stuff might have gotten me an economy class trip down a flight of stairs, courtesy of Big Brother Airlines.  

One day I came home from school, and through the front door I heard the sweet harmony of Olivia Newton-John and ELO.  I curiously opened the door and walked into the living room to find Griswold sitting in front of the record player intently studying something in his hands, (what I later discovered was the vinyl jacket for the Xanadu soundtrack).  I piped up and asked what he was listening to.  He flinched and hurriedly turned the music off, as though I'd caught him looking at a dirty magazine in the living room.  "Nothing.  Just go away.  Forget about it.  Nothing."  He stuffed the jacket back into the stack of records and headed downstairs to his room.  I doubt Griswold even remembers this incident, but for some reason it has remained vivid in my mind for 25 years.  

Anyway, I'd never seen the movie until today.  With ELO jamming in my head, I decided to look up Xanadu on Netflix and watch it while I worked on the blog.  I'm about an one hour into the movie and one thing is becoming increasingly clear:  there is a drug imbalance here.  Either I need more of them, or this movie needs less. I guess this is about the time that Hollywood was experimenting with a lot of split-reel overlays and neon lighting.  I also never realized how big roller skating was around the start of the 80's.  Probably because I missed out on the phenomenon on account of I couldn't even walk back then.  

Am I blowing your mind yet?

The second half of this is developing into a cinematic stew, with chunks of Saturday Night Fever, Tron, and Superman 2, and just a dash of Clash of the Titans thrown in for seasoning.  Which is to say, totally mind-blowing.  Not sure if it's in a good way.  But man, Olivia Newton-John is spectacularly hot in this show.  I'd don some plum smugglers and pull on my roller skates if I could curl up with a woman like that on a couch like mine to watch shows like this.  

Unfortunately for me and my roller skates, if I dressed like Michael Beck does in this movie, I'd likely be drawing a whole different crowd (hello Miami, here I come!)

     

This Cheating Heart

My dogs, I've neglected you for quite some time now.  I can explain.  You see, I've been in China finishing my MBA program on a consulting project here.  I am on a team of four, here to help the local lemon industry improve it's capabilities, with the long-term goal of reaching world markets with raw lemons and processed lemon products like fragrance, oils, and concentrate.  Riveting stuff for you, I know.  I've also been maintaining the blog for the project on our school website, so I haven't had time to attend to this space.  This will continue to be the case for at least the next three weeks.  Forgive my infidelity.  If you want to follow the work we're doing here in Sichuan Province, click on this little blue link.

So until May, I leave you with a photo.  See you all soon.

Groomed for the wasteland from birth

A Very Karaoke Christmas

Christmas at the Humungus family compound is a reliably mellow experience.  Like a sweetly glazed creme brule, it provides occasion enough to gather around for good conversation, and it is best savored slowly.  In my youth, Christmas was conducted with reckless abandon.  It was as though we were an army in the field during The Great War, closing our eyes, but never truly sleeping.  A bugle would blow reveille at 0600 to signal that Santa had stolen the march on us in the night. Everybody came running to assembly, followed by screaming children ripping and thrashing and gorging on 5-pound bags of gummy bears (I was a chubster for a reason.)

Nowadays it is a much more adult-paced holiday.  We are able to skip the early mornings and mountains of wrapping paper, as I am joined by three of my five siblings in riding the wasteland childless and alone.  It has been a pleasant metamorphosis of traditions in a way.  We are able to focus more on enjoying our time together, less on playing with whatever new toys we may have scored.

My brother, Clark Griswold, carries most of the Family Man water for us siblings, what with his amazing wife and four kids.  He's making a pretty good case to be our parents' favorite (if only they didn't love me so, so much.)

Family photos to aspire to

This year, after the adults had opened our gifts at the parents' place, we went over to Griswold's to catch the tail-end of his kids rampaging through their piles of goodies.  I must say, as peaceful as the adult affair is, I probably get as much enjoyment from watching the excitement of kids opening their new stuff as I do from opening my own.  But even after the paper stopped flying and the squealing ceased, the best gift had yet to be revealed.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Griswold has become a karaoke dynamo.  So great has his enthusiasm for his art grown that Mrs. Griswold bought him a karaoke system all his own, and his friends bought him a powered mic bedazzled with rhinestones.  When Griswold suggested we all fire up the machine that night, I'll admit I was a little reluctant to get into character for the jam.  I've never done karaoke in a living room, and certainly never in front of my family.  But about three songs into it, I was singing along the whole way.  I decided to jump in for a duet with Griswold (dual mics, y'all!) of Steve Miller's The Joker, the lyrics of which are innocent enough.  Unless you're singing it in front of your mother.  We were rolling along, singing passionately of being jokers, smokers, and midnight tokers, getting our lovin' on the run.   When we sang of how much we "really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree,"  mother asked quizzically, "What does that mean?"  And we all laughed, because really, who wants to explain what that means to their mother?

Surprisingly, everybody took a turn at the mic except for Slut Rock and dad, although we did get Slut Rock singing along with a rowdy rendition of Whitesnake, and brought the whole family in with some Neil Diamond.  There were a few songs that I've sung a thousand times in my car, but never realized how really nasty they are until I was singing in front of my mom and dad and saw the lyrics written on the screen.  Gold Digger and Baby Got Back, for example.  And let's not forget the horror of watching video of myself perform Like a Virgin.  I won't say it was embarrassing, because there's no room for self-awareness in karaoke.  You have to give it your all.  If you were any good, you'd be making millions singing on the MTV, or wherever you go to watch music videos these days.  Being bad is half the fun of karaoke.  We can all take the piss out of each other individually, but collectively, our crappy singing makes us better.  And really, isn't that what family time is all about?