Record Store Tales

#921.5: All I Wanted For My Birthday Was…

I wasn’t feeling very social on my unhappy worstday.

However, rotten moods eventually fade and I thought I would try to fulfill my social obligations on Tuesday. I picked up Jen and we went to go visit my parents. They had special donuts for us and a birthday card for me.

I couple weeks ago, I was talking to someone about having the vaccine, and the province re-opening. She asked me “What kind of things are you looking forward to doing now that you are vaccinated and things are opening back up?” I have simple needs so I answered, “I’d like to go shopping at Toys R Us and a record store.” So far I’ve done one of those two things. Realizing I had a birthday coming too, I added “and I’d really like to watch TV with my dad.”

Watching television with the old man is an experience. The way he flips channels, his running commentary…I haven’t watched TV with my dad since Christmas 2019. I realized yesterday that the only birthday present that I really needed was to watch TV with my dad.

He had Pawn Stars on. I sat on the couch, and after an hour had gone by…I started to feel normal again.

A guy was selling “rare” picture discs. The Pawn Stars offered him $60 for five. I had one of the five! It was a shaped picture disc for Iron Maiden’s “The Clairvoyant”. I paid $10 for it back in 2001.

The Pawn Stars explained that the discs were not a gold mine, because picture discs have an inferior sound, which is true. Still, $60 for five discs is $12 each USD. And I only paid $10 CAD. So that’s not bad. The same guy also had “Infinite Dreams”, some Pee-Wee Herman, and a Ghostbusters disc.

It was the first time I’ve been in the same room as my parents without worrying about masks, viruses, and sanitizer. It was the first “normal” visit in a year and a half. It felt strange, and then it felt normal.

All I wanted was to watch TV with my dad for my birthday. I got what I wanted.

I feel alright.

#921: Unhappy Worstday

It started with a sunburn.

A mid-afternoon swim on Saturday turned into a sleepless Sunday night.  The sunburn wasn’t that bad, but we lost track of time in the water and my back was really red.  Saturday night I was OK, but Sunday I was not.  I feel asleep with no shirt on, on top of the covers, with the air conditioning blasting right onto my back.  I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst chill I ever had in my life.

I’ve never had the shivers so bad.  It took a Visions In Sound sweatshirt, lots of blankets, and a Jen, but a couple hours later I was warmed up again.  I haven’t felt a chill like that since the flu of 2009.  I hid under the covers and was sweating for the rest of the night.  The lack of restful sleep meant an exhausted Monday.

Birthday Monday, didn’t have any solid plans.  Having dinner with my folks was a possibility but I was not feeling well from the lack of sleep and sunburn.  Maybe it is age, but it was the second worst sunburn I’ve ever inflicted upon myself.  And it was my own fault too; no sunscreen.  I’d forgotten how rotten a sunburn can make you feel.  Combine that with the effects from the chill the night before, and I was in no mood to be social.  A quiet night at home would do.

Except it wouldn’t.

Jen went out in the afternoon to the mall.  I wish she wouldn’t spend so long there.  We’ve had so many seizures there, usually at the end of her day when she was getting ready to head home.  When I started getting confusing text messages from her that didn’t make sense, I knew that it was happening again.  I happened to be finished work at that exact moment, so I jumped in the car.  It took 10-15 phone calls before she finally picked up.  During the seizure she lost her groceries and mobility device.  What a nightmare.  She recovered all her stuff but…wow.

Not the worst birthday I ever had, but definitely in the bottom five.

The one thing I really appreciated is all the birthday messages.  They were the best gift, but the one I really loved was this one from Darr Erickson.  Darr wins the 2021 round with this champion of a comment:

Thank you Darr, and to everyone else who wished me a happy birthday this year.  And even if you didn’t, thank you anyway, because I know you were thinking it.

This Friday on the LeBrain Train, we’ll have the real celebration. Harrison the Mad Metal Man has chosen to celebrate his own birth on Friday, so it’s a double party!  It will be a list show with the theme:  Songs that make our skin vibrate!  We have have a full panel as well as drop-in guests.  Spoiler alert:  Brent Jensen will be there!  (And he always shows up!)

Help us this Friday to make it a much better celebration.  Hope to see you then.

#920: Wild in the Streets – Helix – Center in the Square, Kitchener, 1987

RECORD STORE TALES #920: Wild in the Streets
Helix – Center in the Square, Kitchener, 1987

We simply could not wait to see our first real concert.

As soon as the date was announced, we got tickets:  Helix with a band called Haywire opening.  Center in the Square, downtown Kitchener.  We were second row mezzanine.  Bob and I were so psyched to finally see our first real rock concert.

We wanted to bring a banner that said “HOMETOWN HELIX”.  We dreamed big.

Helix were hot on the road for their new album, Wild in the Streets.  We’d seen the video and knew what their stage show was going to look like.  The stage set played on the brick wall artwork from the album cover, with two ramps on the sides, that resembled the “fangs” in the Helix logo.  We thought those ramps were absolutely badass.  We couldn’t wait to see Brian Vollmer slide down mid-song,

We were not interested in Haywire — too pop.  The two girls in front of us were obviously Haywire fans.  They had the shirts and were going nuts for singer Paul MacAusland.  Bob and I didn’t think much of him, especially when he laid down flat on his face on the stage.  “That’s his stage move?” we questioned.  Bob liked the guitarist, but I wanted to hear some “real” rock, not this.

A kid from our school, Brian Knight, was there in the loges on the side.  He boasted the next day at school that Helix were not that good; he had seen better.  Ironically he later went on to roadie for Helix.  He could be seen in the 1991 MuchMusic special Waltzing with Helix.  He was also acknowledged in Brian Vollmer’s book Gimme An R, albeit his name was misspelled “McKnight”.  Sadly, Brian passed away this year.

What Brian claimed was simply untrue.  It might have been our first real rock concert, but it was a hell of a first.  We didn’t know a lot of the songs but we knew the hits and some of the deep cuts from Walkin’ the Razor’s Edge.  They certainly played everything we wanted to hear, including the new single “Dream On”, “Wild in the Streets”, “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'”, “Rock You”, “Heavy Metal Love”, “(Make Me Do) Anything You Want”, “Kids are all Shakin'”, and “Deep Cuts the Knife”.  They also played a new tune that we found amusing.  It went, “Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye” (“Kiss It Goodbye”).  Fritz Hinz took a drum solo, and turned around and shockingly revealed his bare bottom with nothing but a jock strap.  We laughed – we were easily entertained!

The highlight of the show was when Vollmer climbed the loges, and then ran all the way across the mezzanine, right past our noses!  We could hardly believe it.  Bob reached out his hand but Brian didn’t slap it.  I simply made a fist, like “right on man”!  It was amazing how we’d been watching this guy climb up, and then make his way in our direction…and then he ran past and it was over in a second!  Before we knew it he was on the other side, and climbing back down to the stage again.  We knew he had a reputation for climbing on top of things and doing somersaults, but we sure didn’t know that was going to happen when we bought our tickets!

Helix didn’t make as much use of the side ramps as I thought they would, but they did put on a hell of a show.  Doctor Doerner played that big doubleneck that we wanted to see so bad, and of course the “Wild in the Streets” guitar.  We got to see all their stage moves and tricks, and yes, the women in the audience were unlike any we’d ever seen before outside of a video.

We got all the songs we wanted, plus a few we didn’t know like “Dirty Dog”.  They put on one of the most energetic shows that I’m ever likely to see.  It was the MTV/MuchMusic era and all we had seen before were music videos.  The quick cut-and-paste editing of a music video is hard to compete with.  Helix had to work hard on stage, and they went above and beyond that night.

Not a bad “first”.  What I did notice was that Vollmer’s voice sounded thinner than on album.  I wondered if all concerts were like that?  I couldn’t believe how deaf I was afterwards!  Both of us were experiencing this for the first time.  It was a strange sensation and we must have been yelling in the car the whole way home, when my dad came to pick us up.

We couldn’t stop talking about Helix for days.  Weeks.  They didn’t really have to win us over; they were hometown heroes to us.  Instead Helix just cemented our loyalty.  It is said that a great rock show can change a life.  In this case, it simply affirmed everything we had hoped.

Rock Candy reissue

#919: Robert Grass

RECORD STORE TALES #919: Robert Grass

During the summer of 1988, we were lucky to have some cottage visits with the Szabo family.  They had been friends for years.  Robert Szabo is now a successful guitar player/singer/songwriter.  Back then he was a neighbour from school, but his younger siblings Steve and Michelle were also good friends.  They came to visit us at our cottage, and then we went to go and visit them at their place in Grand Bend.  A much busier beach town.

When they came to visit us, we treated them to a backyard barbecue and some fun and amusements.  Steven and Michelle came; Rob was busy elsewhere.  We busted out the games and, as usual, improvised.  We played a drawing game based on the TV show Win, Lose or Draw.  You had to draw sketches and people guessed the words you were trying to draw.  We used coloured markers and went to town on good ol’ lined paper.

We were having a great time but after a few rounds, people were guessing too easily.  I decided to throw a curve ball and pick something to draw that would be harder to guess.  A musical artist but an obvious one that people associated with me.  I chose “Robert Plant”, because I thought it was a recognizable enough name, but not an obvious pick.  Young kids in 1988 were not all familiar with Robert Plant, but some of us were.

Two words.  First word!

I drew Steven and Michelle’s family, with Robert as the tallest.  They successfully guessed “Robert” as the first word.  I hoped this wasn’t too easy.

Second word.  I grabbed a green marker and started drawing plants.  They were having trouble guessing the second word.  Shrubs, weeds, and….

“ROBERT GRASS!” yelled my sister Kathryn, seemingly in victory.

I laughed.  “Who the hell is Robert Grass?” I asked.

“I don’t know!” she answered.

A logical answer I suppose since I did draw some grass with my plants.  After much laughter and giggling, they eventually got the correct guy, Robert Plant, which made a lot more sense than Robert Grass.  And within a year or so, my sister even owned Now and Zen on cassette!  That more than made up for her wrong guess.

 

#918: Drinkin’ Thinkin’

RECORD STORE TALES #918: Drinkin’ Thinkin’

A buddy of mine said the other day, “I saw your clips from the first live show.  I was killin’ myself laughing, that was great”.  The part a lot of people laugh at is when I say “Have I had too much fruit punch this evening?”  I appear drunk but was not.  I told him that, and I had to convince him.  But it’s true.  I don’t really drink.

Note that I said “don’t really”.  I don’t call myself a “non-drinker” or an “abstainer”.  Two summers ago I had a beer with Max the Axe, so I am obviously not a non-drinker.  But that was the first drink in many years, and last drink until present.  I just don’t like the way it makes my stomach feel.  As I got older, my stomach got worse, exacerbated by anxiety and stress.  It’s just not an experience I seek out anymore.

From my mid-20s to my early 30s, I enjoyed a sometimes-drink.  I was a lightweight.  T-Rev was a great buddy to hang out with, and he tried to get me to be more social.  We’d be hanging out with a whole bunch of girls that he worked with at the Waterloo Inn, and I loved hanging out with that group.  They could take it much further than I could, but I did my best.  Beer, shots, depth charges.  Usually, I was just the designated driver.

When I wasn’t driving, I’d have some drinks at work functions.  The Record Store had a birthday party for me at Jack Astor’s.  I loved Jack Astor’s because they had the most amazing seafood linguine, and still to this day, the best lemonade.  None of my co-workers particularly liked it, but it was my birthday so it was nice of them to go there.  As for the drinking, it started with one beer and picked up from there.  Everybody wanted to buy me a shot.  It was a great night and I distinctly remember grabbing a dude’s ass.  No homophobia here, folks.  I’ll save him the embarrassment of being named, but it was a friend who played guitar in one of my favourite local bands.

I am pretty sure I puked the next morning, but I can’t even say for sure which birthday it was.  I think it was my 31st.

Even though my relations with the boss that I refer to as “The Bully” were always rocky, she did attend my birthday party.  Having seen me grab a guitar player’s ass, I thought it might be prudent to just pro-actively apologise in case she was offended by anything she saw.  “Sorry I got a little loud and rowdy when I was drunk,” I said.

“You weren’t drunk,” she flatly responded.

What?  “Yes I was…they started buying me beer right away,” I said, taken aback by her response to me.

“I’ve never seen anyone get drunk off one beer before,” she claimed.

I didn’t know what to say.  She thought I was putting on an act?  I was a little disturbed by her accusation.

At that time I was a skinny guy.  I had very little alcohol tolerance.  Whether she believed me or much, it didn’t take much to make me tipsy.  Add in the natural high you get from your own birthday party, when everybody is nice to you and at least pretends to like you.  Not only was I drunk, but I think that might have been the best drunk I’ve ever been.

What a strange accusation to make.  There was something wrong with this boss.  The professional response would have been, “Apology accepted, hope you had a nice birthday.  Have a good day.”

Circling back, when I appeared drunk on fruit punch in that live clip, I was completely sober.  I was having a lot of fun, and being live on Facebook was kind of like a birthday party.  It’s a natural high.  Your friends are there and you are the centre of attention.  Being “drunk” doesn’t depend on how many beers I’ve finished.  If I’m already surfing the high of life, it just takes a little.  I’m a cheap drunk if I’m in a good mood!

 

#916.5: I’ve Been Shot! – Update

In in update to this week’s story, #916: Oh My, I’ve Been Shot! (Again), I am pleased to provide all the nitty gritty details of getting a second jab in the arm of the ol’ mRNA vaccine.

Here it comes.

Are you ready?

I’m not kidding around when it comes to this stuff.  All the nitty gritty details.

Jen and I have experienced an eventful week since getting the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine.  On Tuesday night, about four hours after being shot in the arms, we experienced hunger, so we decided to order in.  We selected Italian, and both ordered the same:  aglio e olio with steak strips.  We each finished about half.  Later on that evening after watching American Dad, I experienced tiredness so I went to bed.  In the morning, the first thing I noticed was that I was hungry, so I was naughty and finished my aglio for breakast.  Around 10 that morning I went to Toys R Us and bought some Transformers, some Marvel Legends, and Star Wars Black Series figures.  I then had an odd tingling sensation, of being lighter in the wallet.  At the same time, a forgotten feeling in my chest emerged — the symptoms of joy from having scored cool stuff in a store once again.

Everything from this point on is simply a blur.  I didn’t know what to do, so I enjoyed the day off I had booked for recovery, wrote a review, and had a generally awesome holiday.

In other words:

Jen and I experienced no side effects.  Sore arms don’t count — that’s pretty much a universal complaint.  I had an amusing moment when I was changing around my box set display.  I was lifting a Def Leppard box over my head when I realized — oh shit, I can’t move my shoulder that high.  I discovered through the day that if I used my arm only from the elbow down, I was good to go. I just avoided moving that shoulder.  Went to work the next day.  All good.

To recap:

Jen and I had Pfizer in April, and Moderna this week.  No side effects.

It feels good to be over and done with this (until the inevitable booster — or not).  Now in a little over a week I’ll be at maximum immunity and I will be celebrating a birthday with my family.  I want to sit down in a room and watch TV with my dad.  That’s an activity I truly miss.  His channel surfing accompanied by grumping and complaining was the highlight of every visit.  I look forward to socializing with my family, playing board games, and maybe even going to see the next Marvel movie in a theater.

Oh!  Speaking of Marvel — watched Black Widow last night, not bad.  Widow was never my favourite Avenger; she and Hawkeye never resonated with me the way that Tony or Steve Rogers did.  Having said that, Scarlett kicked it out of the park with a family-focused storyline and some serious action sequences.  This was her Marvel tour-de-force and she had some intense one-on-one scenes.  The final confrontation with Russian General Whatever-akov (Ray Winstone) was cool because it was different for a Marvel film.  Rachel Weisz and Florence Pugh — also some fine performances and not the last we will see of Pugh.  And finally David Harbour.  You just want to hug that big dirty smelly Russian teddy bear Alexei.  This Marvel film was high on action, but also featuring slow and dramatic character scenes.  A pretty fair balance.  There were a couple neat twists, some cool shout-outs to the Avengers, and of course the obligatory post-credit scene.  We have now seen four entries of the MCU’s Phase Four.  Black Widow comes closest in scale to Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but far grittier.  It’s closest in the sense that it’s character-driven, Earth-bound, and without magic or space aliens coming into play.  And as to how this fits in with the future of the MCU even though it takes place in 2016?  Watch the post-Blip, post credit scene.

All is well.  Admittedly, I was worried about side effects.  A couple of my good buddy co-hosts on the LeBrain Train experienced a day or two of uncomfortable side effects.  So I listened to their experiences, planned ahead, booked a recovery day off work, and hoped for the best while preparing for the worst.  We got lucky this time, which seems miraculous for Jen given her complex cross section of medical conditions.  We rarely get lucky, but this time we did.  Jen is much more social than I am, and she needs to be able to go out and interact socially with her friends.  Me, I’m usually happy just to stay in and listen to music.  Jen and I are good this way.  So she is eager to rejoin society in whatever capacity given Ontario’s state of re-opening.

On last night’s episode of the LeBrain Train, I gave Covid-19 the finger for killing John Prine.

Let’s get this pandemic in the past.  Whatever you are currently doing to keep yourself safe, you’re doing a good job, keep it up!  We all live in different regions with different situations.  Me, I live in Hot Spot, Canada.  Stay out of the hospital.  There is one LeBrain Train guest whose name I will keep private.  He is a Covid long-hauler.  He has felt shitty for 16 months.  Any time something like that happens to someone close to me, it hits home.  I’ve been saying this for 16 months:  don’t be stupid.  Stay safe.  You matter.

 

#917: The Dangerous Walk of Death

RECORD STORE TALES #917: The Dangerous Walk of Death

Some of my fond childhood places no longer exist.  What I would give to see some of those places again, as they were in my memories.  Hi-Way Market, the old Record Store at the mall, or my grandpa’s old place in Guelph.  Scant photos exist today.

I did find a couple of pictures from one old place that is no longer as it was.  And that place is called the Dangerous Walk of Death.

One of the fulfilling activities at the cottage was to go for a long walk.  If you said “I’m going for a walk,” it could mean you’d be gone for hours.  There was so much to explore in just our little subdivision.  If we walked to the north, there was a river and sometimes we’d walk along the riverbed and explore it inland.  To the south was another river and the Dangerous Walk of Death.

My dad and sister discovered this place.  There was a road to the south we called the “K” road.  Today it is Kuehner Street.  It had developments on both sides and came to an abrupt end after several cottages.  It ended at a trail, and that is where our fun began.  When we were very young, I used to scared my sister by telling her that “Henry the Hermit” lived in the very woods that our little trail crossed through.  (I also convinced my cousin that sharks could swim up through the pipes into the toilets.)

When you entered the trail, you were immediately swallowed by the trees and things got dark quickly.  It was a narrow space but you never passed anyone else.  You had to walk single file.  It seemed to be our place and our place alone.

If you traced this trail all the way to the end, there was a clearing where an old abandoned cottage once burned down.  Then, the river that my dad dubbed “Dead Man’s River”.  He called it that for good reason.  Snapping turtles were known to make their home there.  We were careful not to step in the waters of Dead Man’s River.

Today there is a quaint little walking bridge that takes you over to the next subdivision.  In our day, it was only possible to cross when the riverbed was dry.  But crossing was not the way to the Dangerous Walk of Death.  To embark on that journey, one had to follow the river inland.

Once again, my dad and sister found the inland path.  It had obviously been purposely cleared by someone many years ago.  It ran parallel to the river, through the deep forest.  Dad used to tell us that many of these trails were original indigenous hunting grounds.  He was probably right.  Artefacts were found by an archaeological team several years ago that proved the original inhabitants used to fish there.  We were acutely aware that we were on very old land when we went on our walks.  The wilderness had probably not changed that much and it was easy to imagine stepping back in time and bumping into a tribe of fishermen and hunters.  They would have had a different name for this place.

Inland we walked, through different kinds of terrain.  There was one area we called “stump land”.  You had to watch your step, and walking there at night was foolish.  Many times did one of us trip in our journey through stump land.

In the middle of stump land was a very small clearing with a large rock in the middle of it.   Sitting Rock.  This was our stopping point.  It was quite scenic.  The sun would dance through the trees making spectacular patterns of light on the ground.  Fortunately I have a picture of this very place as it was in the mid-90s.  An ex-girlfriend and I made a trip to the lake in August 1995 and took this picture.  A much skinnier me is seated upon the rock.  My Jann Arden “Insensitive” hat, a free promo from the Record Store, sits on my melon. And there I am on my mossy seat.  I used to think this would be a cool spot to film a music video — me on acoustic guitar.  Once, I sketched a picture of how cool I’d look playing acoustic guitar on top of Sitting Rock, me and my mullet and a guitar I couldn’t play.  In the real photo, to my right you can see the trail behind.  But this was not the place to turn back.  Greater challenges and better views were ahead.

Following the trail further inland, you would reach a spot that appeared to be the end of the line.  However if you pushed through the overgrown branches, you would find a sparsely wooded area that went steeply uphill.  Watch your step that you don’t go over the Cliffs of Insanity.

This was the end of our odyssey.  Here the trees cleared again and you could look down upon the river below.  I do not have a picture of the view from here, but I do have a picture of us crouching at the edge of the cliff.  The only hint of the chasm beneath are the trees behind us.  You can tell from the distance and height of these trees that there must be a large gorge behind.

Here we usually turned back.  In younger and more adventurous years we kept venturing inland through the woods until we finally hit the main road.  Then we would walk back home.  But that way was far longer and stank of anticlimax.  Our pilgrimage’s natural end was at the cliffs and I’m glad I at least have a partial photographic document of this walk.

If Sitting Rock is still there, then it is inaccessible and on private land.   These photos could be the only ones that exist of our old stomping grounds.  And before us, the ones that lived off this land.

#916: Oh My, I’ve Been Shot! (Again)

A sequel to #894:  Entertainment Needed at the Vaccine Clinic

 

At an age that seems like a another lifetime ago, I refused to get vaccinations.  I wasn’t anti-vax by any means.  I was actually quite pro-vax, but simultaneously, a chickenshit.  As soon as I was old enough to make decisions for myself, I stopped with the needles.  Then about 15 years ago I decided to get the flu shot.  My reaction was so bad that I swore off needles once more.

A global pandemic has a way of forcing you to get over your fears, and so I’ve just had my second shot.  My arm is just starting to get sore as I write.

When we last caught up at the vaccine clinic, they were administering Pfizer.  This time it’s Moderna.  Canada has approved the mixing of these two brands, as they are so similar.  As for the side effects, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

As before, things were fast and efficient.  We were in and out in 45 minutes, including the 30 minute wait afterwards.  There appeared to be about four times as many people, but the massive facility didn’t feel any more full than last time.  Good to see us getting on top of this.  I like being in the percentage of people who are double vaxxed in Canada.

As before, the volunteers were excellent — the perfect mixture of professional and friendly.

You know what?  None of us here are scientists.  (If you are, raise your hand!)  We’re just music fans trying to make the best of a worldwide crisis.  This the first global pandemic for any of us, unless you’re 103 years old.  We are living through history and we are even making history.

16 months ago, near the start of this pandemic, I predicated and hoped that we’d see creativity blossom in new ways.  I think we have seen that.  Our friends in the band Suicide Star are a great example.  They recorded their new album Isolation during lockdown, learning to work in new ways, and finding a bloom of creative sparks.  Elsewhere, Styx were also working on new music.  Lawrence Gowan was able to use some vintage and not-very-portable keyboards on this album that he never thought he’d play on a Styx record.  How cool is that?  On the other side of the coin, the new Dennis DeYoung album 26 East Vol. 2 has several lyrics directly addressing the pandemic, such as “St. Quarantine” and “Little Did We Know”.

We have suffered, we have lost, and we have sacrificed.  With this second shot in my arm, I hope that I am doing my part to get this behind us.   If that makes me a guinea pig, so be it.  You can thank me later.  I have a birthday coming soon, and my whole family will be double-vaxxed by then.  Does that mean I can actually have a birthday party this year?

I miss walking into record stores and toy stores.  I miss my grandma.  We all hope this is slowly but surely coming to an end.  After so many false hopes, it seems somehow unlikely, but hope I shall.  Wish me luck with the side effects and I’ll be sure to let you know how I’m doing.

Let’s end this — no mercy!

#915: I Was Young Tony Stark

RECORD STORE TALES #915: I Was Young Tony Stark

Bob and I used to fancy ourselves inventors.  We designed our own video game — Vanguard 2 — but we had our sights set much higher than just Atari’s throne.  Unfortunately many of our designs were thrown out over the years, but some fragments survive.  I know I had designs for 10 more video games, though they appear to be lost.  What was preserved indicates something far more ambitious.

According to the evidence at hand, we weren’t trying to be the next Bill Gates.  We were trying to be Tony Stark.  Alongside innocent designs for video game watches, are sketches for weaponized spacecraft, aircraft and submarines.  We were little weapons dealers!

It’s hard to pin an exact date on these designs but they are likely from 1984.  It appears I was working with a couple shell company names:  “Lado Industrial” and “Perseus Industries” are two.  Spelling is inconsistent throughout but you can get the gist of what I was going for.  Let’s have a look at these designs.

The Kid Looking to Weaponize Space:  The Perseus Industries 9000 (“P.I.N.T.”)

This spaceship resembles an oversized engine pod from a Y-Wing starfighter.  It is armed with rockets, lasers and proton torpedoes, apparently.  The landing gear is clearly designed after the F-104 Starfighter’s.

Also note that there were options.  For those with more expensive tastes, add on the detachable laser pod!

The Sea Was Not Safe from this Little Captain Nemo:  Unnamed submarine craft

Missiles, torpedoes, lasers and radar dot the surface of this heavily armed sea-beast.  A work in progress, it remains unnamed and unfinished.  Still deadly.

On the back of this paper, and almost too faint to read, is a note for our school principal:  “Dear Miss Beale, thank you for letting us have an Oktoberfest party, and thank you for inviting Miss Oktoberfest.”  They were Oktoberfest crazy at that school.  They would hammer that Bible into us and give me shit for wearing a Judas Priest shirt…but sure, have Miss Oktoberfest come to the school.

The Kid Wants to Light Up the Sky:  Perseus Industries King (“P.I.K.”) war jet

I’m not sure how well this this would fly.  Two laser turrets (ventral and dorsal) plus a forward facing laser makes this a heavily armed plane.  It doesn’t look particularly aerodynamic or stealthy.  It’s purpose was to punish!

The Weapons Dealer in Your Home:  Lado Industrial satellite TV system

Deviously, I named my home electronics company Lado Industrial.  Can’t have a weapons dealer selling video games to kids.  I was smarter than I thought I was!  One of the neighbours at the lake had a satellite dish and boasted that he could watch any major league baseball game he wanted.  This was clearly the future, the high-end of the TV experience, and I wanted in.

I created a sketch of the dish, the base mechanism, and the remote.  Note that the remote has a speaker/microphone and calculator functions.  While it may appear advanced, it is still a wired remote.

The Kid Had Ambition:  The Watch that Can Do Anything

I feel like Indiana Jones with only half the map.  This watch was not designed with Bob.  I was over at Allan Runstedtler’s house, and his dad had this crazy computer paper.  Sadly this drawing was torn in half and only the bottom remains.  Many details are lost, such as the name of the watch, and what company name I was planning to sell it under.  However, many details remain, and they are funny as hell.

Ignoring the horrendous spelling, let’s run through the features.

  • Double strap
  • Lifetime guarantee
  • 5 video game cartridges included: Defender, Pong, Pacman, plus exclusives Space Chase and New Slot Racers
  • 4 controllers included:  2 joysticks, 2 paddles
  • Pinball attachment
  • “Super battery” and recharger included
  • Built-in printer (“data readout”)
  • Built-in disc drive
  • TV plug-in cable
  • AM/FM/CB/shortwave radio
  • Earphone
  • 2000k built in, 16k add-on available
  • Detachable keyboard
  • Guaranteed to play “every game exactly the same as the arcade”
  • Blank cartridges available to copy games
  • And a strategy book (for strategies)
  • PLUS BONUS – We’ll give you a Pacman key chain free!

All this for just $299.00!  That is $200.99 off the original retail price!

Even in 1984 dollars, that’s a steal for all that stuff.  The watch would have been huge on your wrist, and the controllers and keyboard tiny by comparison.  There was no way anyone would be able to play a four player video game on a watch.  It’s also comical that with 2000k of storage built in, all you can add is a mere 16k expansion pack.  I guess the real hook was that it played “every game”, and “exactly the same as the arcade”.  With the video game cartridges included, it’s clear that my watch is primarily a gaming system.

“How cool would it be if I could sit there playing a video game on my watch without the teacher noticing,” I might have thought.  With the included ear bud, you could still get sound effects.

One visionary touch is the included pinball attachment.  This meant you could actually play Baby Pac Man — the video game/pinball hybrid that could only be experienced in arcades!  Well, with my watch, you could play it at home.  When I said “every video game” and “just like the arcade”, I was not kidding around.  I took that stuff seriously.

I was an ambitious kid with the streak of a warmonger.  I was a little Tony Stark in the making and the teachers should have been worried about that rather than a Judas Priest T-shirt or an obsession with Kiss.  All the clues were there.  Look at this one final drawing.

This school assignment came with a pre-drawn airplane cockpit.  It is captioned “If you could fly your own airplane, where would you go?”

Where would I go?  To war, apparently!

#914: The Bad Batch

RECORD STORE TALES #914 The Bad Batch

Mrs. Powers used to say to us, “You are the worst class I have ever taught!”  She was good at the guilt thing.  I understand that she continued to tell subsequent generations that they too were the worst class she has ever taught.  With the benefit of hindsight, she was the worst teacher we ever had.

I had her two years in a row.  Grades seven and eight.  We were the worst class she had ever taught both years.  Coincidentally, also the worst two years of grade school.  A couple years later, my sister had her.  She was still guilting and shaming the students when my sister had her.  She was the epitome of old lady Catholic school teacher clichés.

We were not particularly worse than any other class.  We had our bad apples, that the teachers didn’t seem to know how to contain.  My time with Powers coincided with my discover of heavy metal music:  Kiss, Priest, Maiden.  Wearing my Judas Priest shirt to school was one of the biggest mistakes I made in the 8th grade.  Powers gave me a good scolding in front of everyone else, who found it hilarious.  She must have thought I was going bad too.  I will always resent Powers for teaming me up with my nemesis Steve Hartman in gym class.  The guy had been picking on me since grade two, and she thought we’d get over it by doing gymnastics together?  The fact that I even had to touch the guy was disgusting to me.  Why did she have to do that?  Isn’t that borderline abusive?

In the 8th grade I had enough with Hartman and fought him one night after school.  He brought friends; my only backup was Kevin Kirby.  He was just there to enjoy the show, he didn’t care who won.  But I managed to get Steve Hartman to leave me alone for the year after that night.  That was pretty much it for his career in bullying; he never had a comeback though not without trying.

Kiss really did a lot to get me through the Powers years.  My year of discovery for Kiss was 1985, the Asylum period.  Not the greatest entry point, but I quickly found myself drawn to better albums like Hotter Than Hell and Creatures of the Night.  It was Mrs. Powers who presided over the school retreat to Mount Mary.  Possibly the loneliest week of my entire childhood as I bunked with every kid who ever tormented me.  But we had to go; Powers scared everyone in class by telling us that any student she had that skipped the Mount Mary retreat ended up “dead or on drugs”.   Bringing your own music was forbidden, so I memorized as much Kiss music as I could, to replay in my head when the going got rough.

Sex-ed was a joke of course.  I remember the usual school films with animated cells dividing, and sketches of genitalia.  The more we learned the less we knew.  But at least we got to sit there watching a movie, so the teacher didn’t have to explain anything herself.  Rock Hudson died of AIDS that fall, but none of us knew exactly what AIDS was.  She asked us if we knew.  One kid answered, “It makes you get old and die.”  She responded, “Well, it makes you look old, yes.”  We learned that much, and that you could get it from a blood infection.  That’s what we learned.  Can’t give this bad batch of kids too much graphic information.

Do you want to know the truth?  Maybe Powers was right.  Maybe our year really was the worst batch of kids she’d ever taught.  Some of them, at least.  Our only consolation was that she if she thought we were bad, she was going to find future generations were worse.  If she thought I was heading down the wrong path with Kiss and Judas Priest, I wonder what she thought of Marilyn Manson or rap!  She thought we were bad?  The 90s were still to come!

One thing that struck me from that time that will always remain is this.  Our family did not go to church much, but frequency in church visits didn’t seem to correlate to how good of a person you were.  My sister and I were good kids.  Some of these other kids that went to church every week were real assholes.  Just an observation.

I hope that Powers did end up with worse classes than us.  She deserved it.