Nomadtoons.com Blog

A blog all about the horrible misadventures of a town full of marauding tigerzombies!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Stupid stories...

When I was in middle and high school, me and my best friend Jason H. used to spend lots of time making up really stupid stories which were recorded on a crappy old cassette recorder I'd inherited from my Dad. Here's a few of these "classics":



1: "The tire"

The story of a gigantic tire that grew by running over people, "absorbing" them and magically growing bigger and bigger. The story was influenced by a Boy Scout trip where we found an old truck tire and proceeded to roll it down a huge, steep hill that we later found out led to a road below. It was 11:00 at night so all we heard was the sound of the tire crashing through the woods on its way down. We found it the next day stuck way up in a tree.



2: "Ancient Alien Worms!"

I don't remember much about this one. Something about worms from outer space that had been "awoken" by humans, which of course made them angry. They sought vengence!

3: " Beer Beetles"

A small town in Texas is inundated by beer beetles that are angry because the town's crop of beer flowers- of which they feed- fails to grow becuase of a drought. They seek revenge by flying into resturaunts and stores full of people and spontaneously combusting. The town hires a "beetle detective", aptly named "Mr. Beetleman" to solve the case, which really doesn't get solved. We were recording the story in the car on the way to Florida and passed by some attractive girls in a convertible. The story stops there because I assume we were interested in them.

4: " Playdough dinosaur"

A small boy makes a dinosaur out of playdough. His mother is angry at him ( for some reason) and flushes it down the toilet. The playdough dinasaur grows from all the water and comes back- seeking revenge ( notice a pattern here?) and proceeds to eat the mother, the father, and basically everyone else in the story. It goes on a rampage, breaking into stores collecting more playdough to make itself bigger and bigger!

5: " Snake spaghetti!"

Not much of a story, we just liked to yell "Snake Spaghetti!" a lot. But we made up a story anyway. Basically, people at a fancy resturaunt order spaghetti and it turns into live, poisonous snakes! Oh no!

6:" The Vacuum cleaner"

Inspired by my Grandad's crappy old canister vacuum, one day a vacumm goes bezerk, grinding up a whole family.

7:" Charlie Brown and the alternative people"

Grunge was pretty popular in the early 90's and being the unpopular nerds we were, me and Jason despised these people. So we made up some stupid story about how Charlie Brown ( not sure why he became the character) was the star of a popular computer game ( not sure why that was the case either) but anyway, he "magically" comes out of the computer and goes around insulting all the "alternative people".

8: " The sinister plastic easter egg"

I don't remember much about this one. Something about an evil plastic easter egg of doom that has awful messages stuffed inside it that all come true.

9-?: Various stories involving famous characters. They won't be mentioned for legal reasons. But basically lots of stories about famous fast food and theme park icons that go out and do the same kinds of things that always happened in the rest of our stories: Either a character seeks revenge, grows bigger, or eats people.

10: "Gangster Banana Peels"

Gangsters who are basically just bananas go out at night at offices and throw themselves in the floor, making famous and rich people trip and fall, breaking their necks.

I can't remember all of the stories. We made up A LOT of them.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Live from Grossingers and other forgotten places.


About 10 years ago I bought a record ( yes an actual vinyl record) at a small flea market in TN for 50 cents. Its a live recording of Tito Puente, the famous Cuban jazz bongo drum player. Even now, its one of my favorite records.

The first track starts off with the accouncer with typical 1950's cigarette-altered voice introducing the band. " Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Grossinger's Hotel is pleased to bring you Tito Puente and hiw world-famous orchestra." Then the music starts. In the background you can hear glasses tinkling, people talking, and so on. Recording music before a live audience was seldom done in the 50's, so the record is rather interesting in that aspect. Its like a slice of the 50's frozen in time.
I never really thought about the mentioning of Grossinger's Hotel nor the pictures on the back of the album showing images of people swimming, skiing, and golfing at the resort. But just a few days ago I pulled out the album for the first time in a few years and listened as I did some work at home. Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the Grossinger Hotel to see what had become of it and whether it was still in business.

What I found was fascinating. The Grossinger Hotel was only one of hundreds of hotels located in the Catskill mountains of Upstate New York. From the turn of the 20th century up until the late 70's, the area was known as the "Borscht Belt". Primarily Jewish immigrants and their children would leave NYC and New Jersey for the catskills and stay at these primarily Jewish owned resorts. Some of these resorts were enormous. The Grossinger Hotel had over 35 buildings alone, but others were even larger, with as many as 1,500 rooms, large indoor and outdoor heated pools, huge banquet and dance halls, and huge dining rooms that served large quantities of Kosher meals.


But reading further, almost all of the resorts closed their doors by the mid eighties. Grossingers but the dust in 1986. Others like the Pines Hotel as recent as 1998. Only a few remain, namely the Kutsher Hotel, which is still family owned. A large majority of the former resorts lay abandoned and in decay. Its sort of a feeling of sadness to see pictures of these resorts now in ruin.


Its strange to me that in the US in particular, once-popular destinations, towns, or even entire cities can have such dramatic swings in fortune. In the case of the Catskill mountains, their demise was met with the advent of cheap airline travel, where those same families who used to drive from NYC to Upstate NY could for the same price travel to Florida, California, or Hawaii. Its only human nature to seek delight in places most different from our own familiar home turf. Indeed thats why I tend to like desserts versus the lush green areas similar to the humid South that I grew up in. But Nevertheless, what gets left behind in the transition are crumbling monuments of a place and idea that was once deemed sufficient and desireable by another generation.






We as a society are on a neverending road to seek something better than where we have come. My Grandfather is a perfect example. He grew up in a large family of 10 children. His parents were not terribly wealthy. He was expected to work dilligently and purposevely. He bought a house outside of Dayton, TN when he and his Wife retired. It was a small house with basic amenities. Out back were several small sheds full of tools and lawn mowers. He drove a plain blue Ford pickup with vinyl seats and a straight 6 engine. Perhaps by today's standards my Grandfather was a working class individual with limited means. But he was an accomplished man by his own definition, owning his own house, a little bit of land behind it, and a good-running truck. He was proud of the small little town he lived in and I can recall riding with him around it, where he would proudly point to all of the new developments ( Wal-Mart and Mcdonalds). I can also recall that pretty much everybody knew who he was. " Hello Mr Card, how are you?" seemed to be what I heard no matter where we went. Nevermind that Grandad was hard of hearing and couldn't understand half of what people were saying to him. People just like him just the same. I can also recall the more practical approach he took to doing things like planting rose bushes and flowers. That meant large poles with copious amounts of brightly colored green wire would be used to prop them up. To him their survival and health were more important than the outward appearance. For him, with a yard full of strangely doctored plants and trees, it was a scene of success. It was a sense of pride of accumulated work.






Perhaps we could all learn a thing or two from people like my Grandfather. We're all so busy looking for something better, as if we're trying to prove to somebody that we are a success. We- just like all those families who abandoned their former vacation resorts in the Catskills- are continually looking for a never-ending horizon, or somewhere "better". We would be wise to seek the good where we are and appreciate what we now have.






Thursday, April 02, 2009

The modern age and the fear of change.



Parked outside the house I rent are two very different cars. One is a 1955 Mercury Monterey. The second is a 2002 Toyota Prius. The Mercury I've owned for around 7 years. The Prius was inherited from my Wife's Father who passed away a year ago. It became our primary commuter car because we have an insane 45 mile each way commute. We carpool together and since the car gets somewhere around 50MPG freeway, it does actually save us a considerable amount of money.

That said, after having driven it for a year, I've become acutely aware of the amount of outright ridicule these cars seem to get bombarded with. That California was the first state to get the prius where it soon became adopted as the car of choice for more liberal, environmentally sensitive consumers meant that it soon garnered the badge of basically becoming yet another hippy car, along with VW Bugs and Microbuses.

Americans have used cars as a further means to express themselves and their idealology. That's a given. But what's rather troubling to me is that the prius seems to also be the poster child of an epidemic sweeping the country, and that would be the fear of change and the demonizing of new technology.

The typical response from those who hate the Prius are in order of frequency:

A: "Well... they'll be fine until the batteries wear out. Then they'll cost a fortune to replace.
B: " The batteries are full of dangerous chemicals and metals that will get put into landfills.
C: " The mining of materials to make these batteries means there will be a runup on battery cost"

There are other responses as well. But the reason for making these claims is seldom to do with their premise. The message from such statements boils down to one simple attitude which is that the cars are different, and hence not approved. But breaking that down one step further, the underlying reason is getting to the point I was making above: New and misunderstood technology.

I work on all three of our cars. The 55' Mercury is the epitome of mechancial simplicity. But more is required to be serviced from the zillions of grease points versus a modern car's sealed bearings. The carburetor has to be constantly cleaned and adjusted. The points have to be set, and so on. None of these tasks are difficult but requires more time in order to ensure the engine performs well. I also have a 96 Toyota Tacoma. With the addition of a computer, a sophisticated emissions system, and various electronically controlled mechanisms, the truck for the most part runs for years at a time with no meaningful service other than oil changes and occasional throttle body cleaning. But it shares a lot in common with the Mercury in that both have the same basic engine design principles . The Prius on the other hand has a 200 pound battery that sits under the back seat, a 500 volt inverter that feeds current to a large electric motor intergrated into a large transaxle which drives the front wheels. A small 4 cylinder engine is bolted the the transaxle. The engine is the same as you'd find in any small car but the major difference between this drivetrain and that of the other two vehicles is a secondary electric drivetrain that more or less "piggybacks" off the engine. When we first got the car, I had to read lots of service information about how to do even the most rudimentary procedures. The car has two cooling systems- one for the inverter and one for the engine. The transaxle is pressurized and has to be changed every 30,000 miles or so. I recently replaced a faulty PCV valve which unlike most cars, was buried deep within the engine bay, requiring the removal of the entire windshield wiper system.

But after a year of driving it, I have learned how to work on the prius just as easily as the other cars. The point being that despite being different and requiring myself to learn how to work on it, the car is just like any other mechanical object and built to be serviced and understood. In addition, I've learned the true answers to these suspicious concerns of those who dislike them.

A: The battery uses efficient charge/discharge cycle: 40-60% both ways. The result is that the battery lasts for a very long time. Even if one were to fail, their replacement is not difficult ( lifting up the back seat) . Their rate of failure is severely less than the engine failure on a typical car. Plus Toyota has a 150,000 mile warranty on the batteries.

B:The batteries have a sticker on them. Toyota has a buyback program for the batteries. Plus they are not full of lead as many have suggested, which itself is ridiculous since all conventional cars have lead acid batteries, which almost always get recycled anyway. So why would Prius batteries be different if they were to say- be made of lead?

C: The metals used in prius batteries ( Nickel metal hydride) are also used in just about every other electronic device. Economies of scale are already in action.

The attitude in the US today seems to be one of growing suspicion and ridicule when it comes to advances in technology and science. Sometimes this attitude comes from the increasing desire amoungst some chunks of the population to see that religious doctrine trumps science. Perfect example: Stem cell research. A generic wand is waved over all stem cell research as being unethical simply because those against it often don't understand that there are many types of stem cells that come from many places- like skin. It is assumed that ALL stem cell research involves embryonic stem cells. Thus all stem cell research must be a great evil.

This goes back to something I touched on earlier. This fear comes from not knowing the full details or simply from misinformation and the lack of knowledge and education. This lack of information is what makes people mistrust what they do not know either because they percieve it as a threat, or they don't fully understand the meaning and potential impact a given breakthrough could provide.

Perhaps this is ironic, coming from a country that still to this day prides itself in claiming to be the leader in innovation and creativity. Using the 55 Mercury as yet another example is its styling. The whole car is meant to suggest the grace and speed of a modern jet plane. With its large rear "fins", its jet engine like trunk emblem, and even the hood ornament molded into the shape of a plane itself all points to a time when science and advances in technology were heralded as modern miracles. Right after WW2, after having endured a depression along with a war to boot, Americans suddenly found themselves in an era that reaped the benefits of modern technology: TV sets, Stereo Hi-Fi's, High speed transatlantic jet planes, modern paved freeways, nuclear energy, and so on. Phrases like: " The home of tommorow", or " By the year 2010, we will be... ( fill in the blank)", and so on were common. There was this celebration of man and his scientific advances.

But if you look at the 1950's compared to today, much has changed in the way that Americans live. The 50's saw the most stable era in US history. With the GI Bill and college fund, Most families could easily afford a modest family home. Most could afford college. Social programs still worked and many workers kept the same jobs for decades, working in unions that kept those jobs secure. America was a humming, manufacturing, inventing machine. 1957 is noted especially because according to the US Census, was the year in which the level of contentment in the country was at its highest. In an environment like that where stability was king, modern technology was only more frosting on the cake.

Enter the world of today where quite the opposite has occured. Most urban areas have become prohibitively expensive places. Buying a house often means financial risk. College has skyrocketed. Social programs are broke, and in fact, the whole economy is in shambles. The middle class in general has shrunk and whatever level of security it once had is long gone as the companies and unions that employed them distentegrates.

For many in this era, perhaps new technology has become a threat. Since at the same time the very term "Social" has become an evil word along the lines of Communism, the idea of developing science and technology for the greater good- like developing fuel efficient cars- is deemed distasteful as it doesn't mesh well with the overall more conservative belief that any and all socially beneficial advances are deemed wasteful since we must all be responsible for ourselves and the idea of communal cooperation for the benefit of all is once again- against idealology.

In the end, science is mankind's greatest achievement for mainly humanitarian reasons. It is up to us to decide whether we support the idea of developing science for our benefit or to continue letting ignorance and misunderstanding get in the way.