Heritage USA’s “Paint ‘N’ Play” sets

The late 1970’s really hold some great memories for me in regards to toys and hobbies and just generally having a hell of a good time as a child.  That was a time of “Star Wars”, dirt bikes, Dungeons and Dragons, the Terran Trade Authority handbooks, skateboards that were half the size of skateboards today and … Heritage USA’s "Dungeon Dwellers" series and "Galacta" series “Paint ‘n’ Play” sets.

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The Cosmic Liquidator

The Cosmic Liquidator ... late '70's ... $4.99 at Kmart in Hattiesburg, MS. The first pressurized water gun on the market, a space-type pistol fed by a clear tube connecting it to the "power pack" you wore on your belt. The tiny switch at the front of the pistol set it for either stream or pulse fire and you charged the water gun by pumping air into the liquid tank (much like a garden sprayer). I say "liquid tank" because one afternoon Alan Speed and I decided to fill the "liquid" tank with gasoline from his dad's gas can in the garage. I pumped the tank up, we marched across the street to a vacant lot, he held the Bic lighter at a safe distance and I pulled the trigger, sending a stream of high pressure gasoline through the flame and ...

... and it was nothing short of glorious ... and for a few short minutes two nine year old boys had a working flamethrower which devastated large ant hills and anything else we spewed that flaming stream of gasoline on. We even tried to write our names in burning liquid on the back side of a neighbor's fence.

... and then we noticed that in our gleeful abandon we had been maybe a bit ambitious in our pyromania and there was more fire than we could stamp out, believe me, we tried. There was more foot stomping than "River Dance - The Musical" and more cussing than a Richard Pryor concert. Knowing that we had only one chance to avoid what could only be trouble of Old Testament proportions, we ran back across the street, grabbed about a hundred feet of coiled up garden hose, turned it all the way on and spent the next ten minutes doing our best to keep a vacant lot in Hattiesburg, MS (and probably the neighbor's fence and several houses around that lot) from burning to the ground.

We were successful in our fire fighting efforts and we learned a valuable lesson that day ... gasoline and plastic are not friends. Our brief adventure with the Cosmic Liquidator using gasoline as a projected medium of entertainment had melted the air pump and most of the internals of the gun rendering it useless ... but while it had worked and before things had gotten out of hand it had been nothing short of awesome to hold a pistol like that in your hand and be able to stream liquid fire out to ten or twelve feet.

Today, all these years later, I'm amazed that I ever survived my childhood but what memories I have and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

The Milton Bradley Star Bird

Everything about toys changed in 1977 when “Star Wars” hit the big screen … just as “Star Wars” changed the way we thought about science fiction and movies in general, George Lucas’ epic space fantasy also changed the way that we thought about and bought toys.  Everyone wanted to cash in on a piece of the tasty marketing pie that Lucas had served up steaming hot and fresh in May of ‘77, even an old family game maker Milton Bradley.

Suddenly science fiction was cool … and extremely profitable … but what could a board game maker like Milton Bradley bring to a table that was already getting crowded by everyone and their mother trying to cash in on the sci-fi craze?

Plenty and it all revolved around that oh so ‘70’s buzzword … electronic.

Nothing sounds like electronic Star Bird.  

Nothing.

Ever.

Period.

Enter Milton Bradley’s bid for their slice of the science fiction super nova … Star Bird: The Space Transport with electronic circuitry – one of the first of many such toys in the late 1970’s and one which I was lucky enough to own (and still own).

Milton Bradley’s Star Bird was a really cool toy and simple to operate (if not just a bit annoying to your parents or other adults in the play area).  A single 9volt battery went into a compartment just behind the front laser guns and in front of the massive speaker while a simple on/off switch turned Star Bird to active or inactive duty.  As soon as you flipped that little black toggle switch, the whole toy emitted a deep throbbing hum and depending on whether you tilted the nose of the Star Bird up or down, that throbbing hum would either increase in pitch to an ear crying whine or decrease in pitch to an even deeper throbbing hum.  Once you had the pitch that you desired, you could level the Star Bird off and it would maintain that sound for as long as you held it steady.  If, during your cruising of the galaxy, a hostile element appear in your path then a big gray button on the neck of the hull, right behind the cockpit, triggered the front mounted twin LED laser cannons which would pulse / flash red and emit high pitched laser-like sounds.

If those electronic strengths weren’t enough, Star Bird was full of other play features.  

The front cockpit and the rear main engine could both be pulled off and fitted together to form a type of smaller, arrowhead shaped fighter with all the sound FX.  Slide the front cockpit cover off to expose the main laser / battery compartment / speaker assembly and you had yet another sub-fighter array / play configuration … this one with a cockpit canopy which was little more than a flat sticker.  

The wing tips of the main body were actually small space fighters labeled “Interceptor-1” and “Interceptor-2” that could be removed for either escort duty or to add their attack capacity to whatever cosmic foe Star Bird was valiantly facing at the time.  

World War 2 made gun turrets sexy and during the 1940’s and 1950’s the gun turret was a staple of most large military aircraft … waxing to nostalgia during the 1960’s and 1970’s but “Star Wars” made the gun turret sexy again.  Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon with its dual pom-pom laser turrets made it a requirement for any self-respecting sci-fi space ship to have at least one gun turret (or two) and so the last play feature in the design was a double barreled laser gun mounted on top of a ball turret on top of the main body.  Looking at the arc of fire of the turret, it would probably be a very good idea to launch the wing mounted Interceptors before ever opening fire with the double barreled laser guns on the turret otherwise you were going to have some collateral damage / friendly fire to explain to the head brass back at the Command Base.  Also, it should be noted that the design of the ball turret was more than a little similar in appearance to the Imperial Death Star.  The ball turret could also be removed and used as an escape pod … another piece of hardware made famous by “Star Wars.”

Star Bird was billed as a “transport”, albeit a pretty well armed one with its dual wing mounted Interceptors, twin laser gun turret and those big flashing laser pulse cannons up front.  You had to begin to wonder just what it was that Star Bird transported and what would need so much firepower to protect.  In fact, looking at the overall design, I guess it didn’t have very much room to carry stuff so as a child I always thought of the Star Bird more as a Pony Express than say, an 18 wheeler.  Remembering a line from “Star Wars” in 1977, I thought of the Star Bird as a “councilor’s ship”, a diplomatic transport, high speed and heavily armed … designed to get VIPs into and out of bad situations.  In that regard, at least in my mind, Star Bird was very much like Princess Leia’s own Tantive IV Corellian Corvette (i.e. the hammerheaded “blockade runner”).  I even spent a couple of days one summer tracing the outline of the Star Bird and its parts and drawing out the interior … deck by deck, and created a kind of “Star Bird Owners Manual” complete with facts and statistics on the imaginary capabilities of the toy.  It was a whimsical exercise in imagination for a 9 year old and garnered the admiration and praise from my close group of friends but sadly that spiral bound notebook and those drawings are long since lost to the passage of time.

Pity.

Maybe I’ll do them again one day, improving upon the design as the Star Bird is one ship that would definitely make a good project for blueprints.

Like any good spaceship, Star Bird needed to operate from a staging area and Milton Bradley was kind enough to provide just such an accessory with the Star Bird Command Base … a somewhat weakly built cardboard construct which didn’t fare well to heavy play or the passage of the years but while you had it, the Star Bird Command Base was king.  As stated, it was the action control center for electronic Star Bird … however the Command Base itself had no electronics of its own.

The Command Base was another vast canvas for your imagination to roam and play on, sized to the Star Bird itself and loaded with Star Bird support features; the Command Base resembled something right out of a Chris Foss or Peter Elson painting.  Sit it on the sand of a beach with the waves crashing in the background or in a shady patch of lichen covered ground in your backyard and the Command Base could have been built on just about any alien planet your imagination could come up with.

Features of the Command Base included a transport vehicle designed to act as a dolly to carry the removable engine core of the Star Bird, an Interceptor landing deck with two marked slots to slide the removable wing-tip mounted Interceptors into, a working winch which could be used to lift the engine (and engine cradle) from the transport vehicle up into the open service bay, dual high mounted anti-invasion laser guns (which were simply much larger versions of the turret mounted double barrel laser guns on the Star Bird) and last of all four “scaled” space figures (all in the same “howdy” pose) though it was obvious that these “scaled” space figures would never be able to fit inside either the ball turret of the Star Bird or the cockpits of the wing-mounted Interceptors so what Milton Bradley meant when they used the term “scaled” I’m not sure of.

Later offerings from Uncle Milton included a revamped version of the Star Bird packaged and sold as the Star Bird Avenger.  The Avenger had different decals, darker windows on the front and upgraded electronics which could send and receive infra-red signals (like those found in a television remote).  Kids could now fire their Avenger’s pulse laser cannons at a special (included) target and register a “hit” against the target. 

Shortly thereafter, Star Bird got its first real adversary in the addition of the Star Bird Intruder to the toy lineup.  Shamelessly, the Intruder was a lackluster (but rare) toy thrown together with little or no imagination from existing parts and molds of the Star Bird line.  The Intruder was simply the front part of the Star Bird / Avenger toy with a much shorter rear section and it was painted black with alien type decals.  Possessing the same electronic upgrades as the Avenger, the Intruder and the Avenger could dogfight in a fashion that was a precursor to laser-tag in that if a “hit” was scored on the other toy it would signal that hit through its electronic suite and by making a different sound.  After the Intruder was introduced, the Star Bird line faded into the pages of toy history, its chapter having run from 1979 to 1981 and it had been a good run.

A damn good run.

Today, my Star Bird (original) and Command Base sit on a shelf, in their original (tattered) boxes, like somewhat tarnished trophies from my youth.  Every few years I get the Star Bird down, unbox it, connect a 9volt battery and flip the on/off switch to bring the old spaceship back to life.  For a few wonderful minutes I relive a cherished memory from my childhood.  Invariably, the electronic sound of the Star Bird’s warbling engine along with its pulsating LED laser cannons brings my curious daughters running to daddy’s study to see what I have resurrected and soon I’m watching the ancient Star Bird disappearing down the hall in the hands of my two girls, riding the waves of their imaginations.  

Seeing my two daughters run around my house with my Star Bird whining it’s engines at full load, pulse lasers flashing and screaming, girls giggling and taking turns with the toy spaceship makes me realize that some toys really are timeless … some toys have the power to cross generations and make the children of tomorrow, the children of yesterday’s children, smile … and Milton Bradley’s Star Bird was just such a toy.

Quench yourself, fool.

In the late 1980's I started something of a personal tradition ... the carrying of an Aladdin insulated mug with sweet tea in it.  The first mug was purchased at a local Junior Food Mart convenience store and I believe that it was the 32 ounce model ... white or bone white/gray with a red top and red "Jr. Food Mart Mega Mug" logo on the side along with the displacement call out ... something to brag about like the "5.0" or the "SS" or the "Tuned Port Injection" logo on your muscle car.  You purchased the mug and the cost included the initial filling of the mug with one of the many flavors from the self-serve soda fountain (I had to settle for Coke and Coke products (yech) since JFM didn't carry Pepsi but one store in particular carried Coke that was more syrup than soda and it was actually pretty good since it didn't have that annoying Coke "bite" to it when you drank it).  Refills cost considerably less than the initial purchase price of the mug and over the long run you could amortize the cost of the mug into basically nothing.


See ... I graduated college with a degree in business administration so I'm always looking at not only the bottom line but ways to maximize profit, especially if it's my own personal profit.

Later, in 1990 to 1991, when I worked for Puckett Labs as a medical courier, I upgraded the 32 ounce model to the new and improved 44 ounce model ... woo-hoo!  It was almost fifty percent more beverage!  I found that I could go to the Sonic drive-in on 4th Street and get a Route 44 sweet tea, dump it all into the 44 ounce Mega Mug and be set for about half of my trip.  There was a Sonic on the other end of my route which I would grab lunch at and refill my Mega Mug with sweet tea for the return trip.

And then came the big one ... the 52 ounce Mega Mug. 


So big that if you spilled it inside your car chances were that you would drown before you could ever get out of your seat belt and open out of the door ... rescue and EMT personnel would just find your lifeless body floating in a car filled to the roof with Coke or Coke product and they'd probably have to get the Straws of Life out to open up your vehicle.  That 52 ounce Mega Mug was just truly ridiculous in its volumetric capacity but its ability to carry a favorite beverage flavor and keep it cool for most of the day was legendary. Over the course of the 1990's, I kept one mug faithfully, so much that people came to associate me with the mug and if they ever saw the mug sitting around somewhere they knew I wasn't far away.  If I went to hang out with my friends, when they answered the door I was always standing there to greet them with my 52 ounce Mega Mug in hand.

- The Gang in Bay St. Louis - circa Fall 1993 -
At a friend's beach house with Eric, Cindy, Mel,
Bill and me with my trusty JFM Mega Mug

My Mega Mug and I were inseparable and we remained that way until the mid to late '90's.  It became something of a running joke that I wasn't ready to go until I had my Mega Mug in hand and it was full.  At 52 ounces of capacity, people also joked that not only did the Mega Mug have its own tidal forces acting upon it but that it took almost as long to fill it up at a convenience store fountain as it did to fill up gas in the car we were in. 

During the late '90's I began to purchase a large stock of these mugs and store them away in case ... I don't know ... Just in case.  I think that by the time the year 2000 rolled around I was still using my original 52 ounce mug (the lesser mugs had gone ... somewhere ... and been forgotten) but I had four more, unopened, still in their shrink wrap, held in reserve.  

And then something happened ... my original mug vanished.

It was like losing a cherished pet or a breaking up with your girlfriend. 

To his day I still do not know the fate of my beloved 52 ounce Junior Food Mart Mega Mug only that it was gone and it was sorely missed.  I went to my reserve stock and tore another 52 ounce Mega Mug out of its shrink wrap.  Months later, that mug vanished as well, fate unknown.  This happened over the course of two years, the early 2000's, and every Mega Mug that I had disappeared.  I went to the Junior Food Mart where I had originally purchased the Mega Mugs ... and they had none!

I couldn't find a Mega Mug anywhere!

Sadness set in for the long haul as I began to search for a replacement.  Bubba Keg?  Nope, it just wasn't the same.  Other insulated mugs from various companies ... not the same.  Finally, a few years ago, my wife got me a Tervis Tumbler for my birthday, a practical birthday present, and while it served me faithfully and admirably it still wasn't an Aladdin Mega Mug and so I made do with what I had for a few years more.

One day, bored, I got on Ebay and looked for a "Junior Food Mart Mega Mug" with no results found.  I saved the search and then made a new search called "Aladdin mug" and saved that as well.  A few weeks later, my search notified me of several Aladdin mug offerings and what did I find?  

Mega Mugs!

Well, not Mega Mugs since I guess that is a trademark name of JFM not used by Aladdin on their products but it was the same tankard devoid of commercial logos.  I did a search on Aladdin and discovered that the company had been bought out by another company and that Aladdin had closed its Tennessee based manufacturing location ... thus no more Mega Mugs.  A seller on Ebay had gone to the closeout of the TN manufacturing location and had purchased a large quantity of these high capacity insulated mugs for sale at a later date and over about two months I purchased five from him, four white with blue lids and no logos and one white with a blue lid and a Chevron "Cold Front" logo.

Ahhh!  Sated bliss!  More fluid storage capacity
than a double humped camel! 

My best container friend was back and I had spares!  

Again!  

Happy happy joy joy!

Holding this mug in my hand now is like seeing an old friend that you lost track of and even though it isn't technically a "Mega Mug" that is what it will always be to me.  If you're looking for one of the best insulated beverage cups on the planet, get on Ebay and buy yourself an old Aladdin insulated mug in the 32, 44 or if you've got the balls (and the bladder capacity), the almighty 52 ounce size and quench yourself, fool.

Word.

The Ideal “JAWS” Game and Kenner’s ALIEN figure

As a lifelong fan of toys (at 43 years of age I still walk through the toy departments of stores) I often get time to sit back and reminisce on toys from my youth both those that I had and those that I did not.  Two toys that I did not have were the “JAWS” game by Ideal and the ALIEN figure by Kenner though I remember seeing both for sale in the stores at the time that they were available for purchase and I think that I played the Jaws game a time or two at some point in my youth.

Toys taken from movies that no kid was ever supposed to go see.

You have to wonder about the mindset of toy marketing execs … here you have two toys designed from the core creatures of (at the time) rated R splatterfests that were terrorizing adults in theaters.  Think about it, toys for children taken from the core creatures featured in movies that children aren’t allowed to see … that’s a leap of faith there, folks.  I can imagine a parent giving a child one of these toys and when the child looks up with questioning eyes the parent merely says 

“Here’s a toy representing an unstoppable biological death machine that tears people limb from limb while repainting the entire area with the blood of its victims and decorating said space with the entrails from the dead bodies.  Have fun, kiddo!”

In the mid 1970’s, the movie “JAWS” was responsible for putting a real fear of open water and the beach in a lot of people.  ALIEN couldn’t really do that, since it took place in space and, despite what we’d been told as kids since the 1950’s, even by 1979 families just weren’t taking their vacations in space.  The beach, however, was a different matter.  I’d question the values of any parent that took a child to see either “JAWS” or “ALIEN” but I can’t since while I didn’t see “JAWS”, my father did take me to see “ALIEN” in 1979 and, suffice to say, it scared the weasel piss out of me (I was 9 at the time).  Today, ALIEN and ALIENS are two of my favorite movies but back then, to a kid who was all into Star Wars and for who aliens were cute or cuddly things, seeing ALIEN was a real mind-fuck.

As such, who were the marketing executives who looked at “JAWS” and “ALIEN” and said “You know, I bet we can make some toys for kids from those movies!”  I don’t know who those people were, but the toys were actually made and marketed with mixed results.

The “JAWS” game was sold by IDEAL (previously known for their Evel Knieval series of toys) and kids had to wonder about the background to this game.  It was pretty simple, along the lines of “the straw that broke the camel’s back” game theory, in that there was this big plastic shark that you loaded his hinged jaw with items (including a human skull and a femur bone) and you used a hook on a pole to “fish” the items out, one at a time.  I’m assuming that the items all weighed different amounts and that certain combinations would lead to shorter or longer games but that’s something for Rainman to figure out (“Definitely the skull.  The skull.  Definitely the skull.”).   

The short of it is that the “game” was over when someone removed an item that took enough weight off the rest of the items to cause the jaw of the shark to either slowly close on the fishing hook or to rapidly shut on the hook (scattering the other parts of the game and probably making a few lesser skilled children wet themselves).  Even though the game was harmless, for the most part (I’ve never met anyone who had to have therapy for playing it in their youth) the decision to market a toy based on an R-rated horror movie proved that the dollar will always win over common sense.

Fast forward a few years to the edge of the Star Wars marketing supernova, a retail marketing chain reaction set off by the blockbuster movie and George Lucas’ foresight to retain marketing rights for merchandise from the movie itself.  Kenner rode a treasure train to unheard of profit in the late 1970’s with their line of toys from the Star Wars movie.  In fact, Star Wars and Kenner’s success was such that a string of copy-cat movies and toys soon appeared.  If it dealt with space, aliens, spaceships and laser guns chances were better than good that someone in Hollywood was going to throw some money your way and that a toy company was going to want to do some toy based off of your movie.

And so it was with Ridley Scott’s blockbuster sci-fi horror masterpiece, “ALIEN” which came onto the scene a full two years after Lucas’ “Star Wars.”  Where Star Wars was a fairytale of good triumphing over evil, ALIEN was a much narrower and smaller story.  Star Wars was grandiose space opera at its finest, the best of the old Buster Crabbe / Flash Gordon / Erol Flynn movies in vibrant eye melting color and accompanied by a soundtrack the likes of which could be compared to the all time great composers.  ALIEN, on the other hand, was biological, xenomorphic death in dark tunnels, dimly lit rooms and a splatterfest in space.  It was a meat grinder in close quarters, a crew of a commercial ship (no military training, equipment or weapons) is forced by a company protocol to answer a mysterious distress signal and they inadvertently discover an alien life form, an incredibly strong, hostile and violent life form, bring it back onboard their ship and then proceed to die one by one in the most horrible fashion imaginable.

The cantina scene in Star Wars, ALIEN ain’t.

So, Kenner, in their infinite wisdom and riding high on the pride of their super well selling Star Wars toy line, looks at Ridley Scott’s new movie and thinks “I bet we can market a toy based on that new ALIEN movie and sell it to kids … why, let’s market the ALIEN creature itself!”  And do you know what?  They did!  In 1979, Kenner introduced “THE ALIEN” and because it was a rush to market, it was a somewhat poorly made toy that not only came apart under the duress of hard play but also didn’t hold up in storage over the many years that followed.  Expensive, quirky, ill-made and with a sales flow matching that of a constipated snail, the Kenner ALIEN figure was not only a surprise bitch slap in the face to toy maker giant Kenner, it was a good swift kick in their now oversized and proudly displayed dangling tenders as well.

 

Here is a link to the 1979 Kenner “ALIEN” toy commercial.  When it comes to being scared, I don’t think those kids were acting.  In fact, they were probably rushed from the commercial set and put straight into therapy where they spent the formative years of their teenage lives.

Another problem with the ALIEN figure / toy itself was its large size … think about it.  This toy was huge and at a foot and a half of evil, dark colored plastic ugliness you couldn’t use it with your three and three quarter inch Star Wars action figures because they would look like Fay Wray to King Kong.  Since Kenner didn’t market any of the rest of the crew of the ill-fated commercial towing vessel “Nostromo” in scale to accompany the ALIEN creature, about the only thing this toy was good for was bridging the imagination gap over to the then aging 12” line of Hasbro’s Adventure Team and scaring the ever living crap out of your full size G.I. Joe with Kung-Fu Grip™, especially since there was still a pretty good size difference in the ALIEN figure’s favor.  No wonder Eagle Eyed Joe was constantly looking left and right … you’d be eye sliding like crazy as well if you knew that the Kenner ALIEN figure was in the same room as you, especially with that glow in the dark brain under that clear chitin upper carapace and that inner set of jaws which slid in and out faster than a discount whore’s set of dentures.

Today, both the IDEAL “JAWS” game and the Kenner ALIEN toy figure are high priced relics of bad toy maker decision processes, mistakes in hindsight that didn’t seem like mistakes at the time and which have now found their rightful home in the possession of collectors and toy aficionados.  If you’re looking for one of these items, Ebay is probably your best bet but be prepared to pay through the nose for either of these long out of production toys, especially the Kenner ALIEN figure (when you can find it all in one piece or in pristine condition).

If anesthesia is its own religion then suffering must be its pilgrimage. 

My first root canal ... at 42 years old I consider it something of a rite of passage ... like my first gray hair several years ago.

Seven days of agony, held at arm's reach by a steady diet of pain killers and abject stoicism.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best ... "All undeserved suffering is redemptive."

I am a pious astronaut cast adrift.

 

Amid the eerie ambient sounds of the Stars of the Lid "Dust Breeding (1.316)+ playing on my Ipod I find myself marooned in a comfortable nebula, illuminated by a warm, far distant supernova so bright that even my closed eyelids can't dampen its searing brilliance.  My internal gyro is useless as I slowly spin on my central axis and do slow backwards flips in the dental chair.  I am suspended upon a mixture of gas and chemicals which deaden all pain and expand my consciousness, putting me straight into a mindset to fully understand the lyrics to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb."  

Just a little pin prick and there'll be no more "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggghh."

 

Zero signal.

Faithless.

I am lost.

Tales from the Driver's Seat - Katrice Watkins

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"You will always be blue collar, Christopher Shields.  Always."

It was Friday night,  March 13, 1992  and these were the very last words ever spoken to me by Katrice Watkins, the woman that I almost married, as she stepped out of my '88 Corvette and walked away forever.  Like most of the things she had told me while we were dating this bit from her would also never come to pass.

The truth is that I had been stupid for ever dating her but then any stupidity that you can walk away from isn’t really stupidity, rather it’s a learning experience and Katrice was definitely a learning experience.

Long hair, screamin' guitars and burning rubber

KIX - "Laying Rubber"

Kings of the Sun - "Road to Nowhere"

A pair of songs from a pair of underrated ‘80’s bands … Kix and Kings of the Sun. I've been listening to Kings of the Sun since I bought their first self-titled album at Camelot Music in the Metrocenter in Jackson, MS way back in the spring of '88. If anyone is local, they'll know that's a long time ago.

Both songs remind me of my well spent youth, particularly the years of 1984 to 1992 which were my teenage to early adult-hood proving grounds. Fast cars, fast women, shallow relationships, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, abject hooliganism and a time when cruising was still an acknowledged and accepted rite of passage for red blooded American males. Today, American males have been neutered by the media and society at large … metrosexuals or baggy pants, backwards cap wearing retards group in flocks at the mall to collectively pose and try to figure out what to do with a member of the opposite sex while the only thump most cars have today is from a pair of subs in the trunk, not from any cubes under the hood.

As for the bands … if you like power metal, maybe proto-metal, then here’s two tickets to light you up. Enjoy and listen to it loud while you're frying the tires, winding the clocks and pinning the needles.

Hectic and non-stop. That about sums up life for the last three months ... oh, and there was that dance with Death called Cellulitis. It started out in my right nostril and quickly spread across my face within a period of hours. I went to the ER twice in two days and on the second visit I was hospitalized and given so many bags of IV antibiotics that I lost count. My doctor friend who treated me told me that I might not have been at Death's door ... but I was in her neighborhood, on the block where she lived and I had her number on speed dial. He also said that when I stumbled into the ER with half my vision going, fever and slurred speech that I was one step away from a helicopter ride out of there. He also mentioned something about emergency surgery, a big needle up my nose and mentioned something about Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis. Needless to say after 12 years of working in the ER I knew just enough about all of that terminology to know that I was heading downhill fast in a serious way.

As it turned out, everything worked out fine but I was down and out for the better part of ten days straight from start to finish. That was a few weeks ago, I'm better now but for a while there it was definitely touch and go.