The Couch

  • by Drew

Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a couch. We tried donating one to the Salvation Army years ago when we were living in Connecticut. At that time, in that location, they would only do pickups every third week or so. After passing the initial round of questioning, not unlike a college interview, they agreed to consider our couch. The day they were to come by with the truck and pick it up, we humped it out onto the porch. We’re not talking super modern furniture or anything here, but it was a very nice couch with clean upholstery. We just didn’t need it anymore.

So, the first time we dragged it out onto the porch, I came home from work and it was still there. I called them up and found out the truck had broken down. I dragged the couch back into our kitchen (closest room to the porch, and there was no way I would drag the couch all the way back into the living room – there was no longer any place to put it and it had barely squeezed through the varied twists and turns).

About three weeks later I rescheduled pick up and dragged the couch out onto the porch again. Again, I came home from work and it had not been picked up. This time, when I called, I found out the truck had been in an accident and the pickup had been cancelled.

Several weeks later, I called to schedule pickup for the third time. I was otld the truck was indefinitely out of service and I should continue to call weekly until they were ready to pick it up.

That night, after several months of tripping over a couch in my kitchen, I broke out a saw and took the thing down to it’s component parts. It went out in a variety of trash barrels the next day.

So much for charity.

Brats

  • by Drew

Can I take a moment and make some paternal complaints? The kids are into video games. They love them. They have handhelds, they play wii and Internet based games, they recently even discovered games you can play with the remote on cable. Like I really need my 8 year old bragging about his Tetris prowess. Dude, I OWNED that game in college. I can totally bury his butt. Of course, then he cries, so I have to let him win…or at least give a good show of competing.

Anyway, my complaint is this: why are my boys incapable of putting the damn games away. Specifically with their handhelds or the wii. I am so sick of finding wii sports resort under the living room coffee table with the booklet from Mario Kart and the weird PS3-ish case our used copy of Lego Batman came in.

Meanwhile, my 19 month old baby girl can satisfactorily deliver an heirloom china cup across a thirty feet of hard tile from Mommy to Daddy on a whim. And then she’ll rearrange the tupperware on the shelf in the lower cabinet so everything fits and close the door. Is this a genetic thing? Is it ingrained gender type stuff? I don’t know, but if you could bottle it I’d have my boys drinking it by the liter on a daily basis.

Bumper Faith

  • by Drew

Here’s something that’s been troubling me for a while. A couple weeks ago we went to Sam’s Club to see if there was anything we might want that would justify a membership at Sam’s Club. I mean, let’s face it the discounts just aren’t there any more, not even on the meg-ginormous packages of mac and cheese and toilet paper. Still, it is a compelling place.

In the parking lot I saw a pickup with some bumper stickers that really confused me. Actually, it was one bumper sticker and a few other visual accouterments that suggested (at least to me) that I might be very wrong about my role and the role of a creator in our little, limited, microverse.

First off, there was a huge bumper sticker that read “Jesus is the Answer.” Fair enough, I mean, they didn’t provide the question, but in your favorite Douglas Adams-y way, you can run down that little convo in your own mind. What gave rise to my confusion was the portrayal of two bathing beauty naked chicks alongside the Jesus sticker. I’m not talking art prints or even remotely tasteful presentations of the female form. These were the classic shiny metallic stickers depicting a buxom female with ample posterior, seated, with her head thrown back and her boobs pointed squarely at heaven.

Maybe the question is something like “who is your heavenly pimp?”

It’s Snow Joke

  • by Drew

We had a massive snow storm last week and I had to shovel out my driveway. Twice. Once at night and once in the morning. See, my snow blower kept stalling out, and I had no choice. Our driveway is like 100 feet long with a pretty big area by the two garages, so…that pretty much sucked. The snowblower, meanwhile, is at a repair place, probably in need of a new carburetor. No big deal, but we got slammed with another two feet of snow a couple days ago. 3 hours of shovelling and a broken back later, I was ready to start looking at Duck vacation rentals. Maybe for the duration.

Then I took a moment to watch the news (something I usually avoid if possible to keep my blood pressure down) and found that several of our southern states also got snow. So, maybe the Carolinas are not so much the place to be after all. Especially after talking to a friend and coworker in Virginia who had a great story about being snowed in for a weekend by about 6 inches of snow because nobody had a shovel. Nobody even had a scraper for their car down there, so…yeah, roughing it.

On the shovel thing I had to be understanding, though. I mean, it’s not like I have a surfboard and a ton of beach gear in my garage, so…

Tech-No-Mo

  • by Drew

I have this beautiful Tascam DAT deck from about 10 years ago. It was a bonus given me by a former employer when a particular project went off very well. It was a show of appreciation, and I…appreciated it greatly. I used the deck to mix a couple of records in my home studio back in the day, but since then, I have obtained different equipment that allows me to mix straight to CD. For all intents and purposes, at least my purposes, digital is digital, and the CDs are really a lot easier to deal with.

Problem is, now I have this nice DAT machine I haven’t used in quite a while and I’m thinking about its future. Actually, I’m thinking online auction, but I am concerned about performance. It doesn’t have a lot of hours on it, but it also hasn’t been used in ages, so…who knows. As a result, I am hesitant to demand top dollar since I’m no tech or anything. Then again, I don’t want to just give it away.

Anybody need a DAT?

BTW – if you don’t know what a DAT is, you don’t need it. And don’t feel bad. On one occasion, doing some impromptu mixes of a project when my drummer made a surprise visit, I tried buying DAT tapes at half a dozen stores. My favorite encounter was Radio Shack of all places. The guy working there had no idea what I was talking about and kept trying to get me to buy micro-cassettes, like for a Get Smart spy recorder. Just one of many times the Shack let me down.

Puff

  • by Drew

Something else I saw at the bowling party, while I was spending all that time sitting in the parking lot reading comics, a guy smoking a pipe. Not, like, some old dude with a Rex Harrison hat and suede elbow patches. This was a guy in his thirties and seemingly out of the whole pipe-smoking realm (though he did have a sort of pseudo-academic sweater and facial hair combo). It’s just one of those things you don’t usually see, and it kind of threw me.

As the electronic smokeless cigarette makes its way to mall kiosks across America and the quest for the best ecig review is ongoing, I can’t help but wonder about the epipe. Is this an untapped possibility? Could I make millions on this? Think about the marketing – whether you’re a full time librarian or just want to look like one, the epipe is here for you!

Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’

  • by Drew

I’ve got to get off the Chuck E. theme. It’s just Chuck E.-ing my good nature right out the window. So, what about the bowling party? Glad you asked. Certainly, bowling was so much kinder than…that other place. The kids were generally more subdued and in line. They also had pizza and cake, and they also had the opportunity to play some arcade games if they so chose.

I actually spent most of the party in the car. See, the baby hadn’t napped all day and she fell asleep on the way over. It was actually planned that way. I brought some comics and I had my phone so I was good for awhile. When I finished two old Phantom double issues and the New York Four trade, though, it was time to wake her up and head inside. I had to shake the car a little bit to rouse her. It’s much better if she thinks she’s waking up naturally as opposed to being yoinked out of a sound nap.

And maybe if I wasn’t dying of thirst and needing to pee and noticing that cars noticeably lack kitchen sinks and urinals…maybe then she would have napped even longer.

The frustrating part is that she is such a poor napper. She only takes a good one in the unlikeliest of places, the unlikeliest of situations. Sigh. At least now I know, though, that if I really need her to take a nap I just need to head over to the bowling alley parking lot with some reading material.

And maybe a bottle of water and a pee jug.

Chuck E. Avoidance

  • by Drew

I should state that I am not totally advocating a Chuck E. ban or boycott or something so silly, in spite of my recent post about Chuck E. parents and kindergarten birthdays in general. We have actually gone to Chuck E. Cheese on a couple of past occasions. We weren’t going to parties, just taking the boys for some ridiculous over-stimulation as a sort of summer treat. We’ve only ever gone on weekdays, in the summer, a little before dinner time. On those days the place was crowded, but nowhere near as bad as it was this past Sunday. For the most part, the parents are still dips. On those non-party weekday nights you see a lot of parents who hang out in the booths eating wings and pizza and ignoring their children as they climb on things that shouldn’t be climbed on and cause a general ruckus that goes way beyond public spectacle. I’m not one for ignoring my children when they tear a place apart, act completely inappropriate in public, or run around cursing at strange adults, but…to each his own, I guess.

There are also the people who bring their kids in, but don’t buy them any tokens or food. The adults just hang out in a corner, also ignoring the behavior of their offspring, while the kids scam tokens from other kids, swipe tickets from little kids, and pick food off the salad bar when the employees aren’t looking.

But then, there are anomalies. For one, I’d like to think we are an anomaly. We supervise our kids and play the games with them. We all sit down and eat cardboard pizza together. It’s a family outing. The kids love it. The parents long for margaritas and escape. It is…again…a family outing.

There are other anomalies as well. Occasionally there is a parent or even a couple with neither tattoos nor 300 excess pounds. Occasionally there are other parents actually playing the games with the kids. Occasionally you even get a whiff of globalization, french accents, trying to get wi-fi for their portables. Chuck E. Cheese – soon to have their own seat at the United Nations.

The Chuck E. Crowd

  • by Drew

One of the more noticeable aspects of a kindergarten birthday at Chuck E. Cheese. As I mentioned, there is a definite WalMart vibe to the place. Lots of missing teeth, lots of supersized Moms in men’s v-neck tees and sweat pants. to be fair, not every one of them is a slob, I saw some pajama jeans and algeria shoes out there.

But the rudeness. I mean, you kind of expect it from little kids running around. They’re so overstimulated and they just want to hear the bells ring and see the tickets roll out. But the parents…I don’t know , am I wrong to expect civility? I mean, I saw adults pushing little kids around to make room at games for their own children or even themselves. I saw adults pull tickets from machines when little kids ran away too quickly – and they didn’t even think about giving them to the kid, just added them to their own sweaty pile. And worst of all, I saw more than one adult take tokens when a little kid accidentally left them behind. And let me be very clear, these are incidents when the adult saw the kid walk away, and they pounced. It’s not like they innocently came upon a cup of tokens with no owner in sight.

Actually, I only saw the cup thing once. The other thing I saw was an adult who watched a kid drop a few tokens on the ground and stepped on a couple of them so the kid didn’t see them. He waited until the kid retrieved his other tokens and walked away, and then this wonderful man moved his foot and collected his booty. Seriously. Stealing from a 5 year old. How’s that for class?

I should also mention that these were not the parents of my son’s classmates. There were four birthday parties going on at once, and a whole hell of a lot of freelancers to boot. Even when all four parties were eating pizza and cake at their tables, the games were still jamming with non-party attending players. It was mad, simply mad.

The weekend that was…

  • by Drew

Ouch. This past weekend was the weekend of Kindergarten birthday parties. Yup, my kindergartner is becoming a little social butterfly. I mean, dude, two parties in one weekend. This kid is so ready for college. He’s even got the come hither hooded eyes and effortless rock star hair. Is it wrong to envy your 5 year old progeny his rock star good looks.

But I digress. I’m not talking about my delightful kids. I’m talking about the weekend from hell. Specifically, the weekend featuring two little kids birthday parties.

The Saturday party was actually pretty good. It was a bowling party at a local place. I have been to a few bowling parties in the past, all with my older son, and this was, by far, the best one. The birthday parents were attentive and prepared and the kids actually followed something like the rules of bowling. It was a significant departure from my last bowling party a couple years back when each kid was just grabbing a ball and rolling it down that little kid helper rack roller thing. They didn’t even watch to see if they knocked down any pins. Sometimes you’d have three or four balls rolling down the lane at the same time. One kid even managed to get a ball stuck when the pin clearing thing came down and it temporarily disabled the entire place.

No such disasters on Saturday.

Sunday was the real nightmare. Chuck E. Cheese. As one of our friends, also a kindergarten parent, said: You must really hate the parents of your child’s classmates to subject them to a party on Chuck E. Cheese on a Sunday. Two words describe the so-called “where a kid can be a kid” spot: Absolute bedlam. If WalMart had a crappy arcade, it would be Chuck E. Cheese.

The noise is unbearable, the machines break down constantly, the kids are irritating, but the worst part of all is the parents. Seriously. I didn’t know there could be so many flavors of douche in one location. More variety than Black and mild cigars. And by the time you escape that hellhole, you’re ready for a hot shower, mouthwash and a session with that Men in Black memory eraser thingie.

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.