Winter Storms

by chris cunningham

BRAIN DUMP: 50 things I remembered and wrote down this week.

1. In elementary school a kid won our school presidency by saying he’d get the drinking fountains to have soda rather than water. We all voted for him.
2. My Mom’s “I don’t have to time to prepare dinner” taco salad was made with Fritos.
3. I remember Doug Henning, the magician, use to have these yearly TV specials in the 70’s. I thought he was a weird guy, always ooooing and ahhhing. He tried treating his cancer with transcendental meditation. That was pretty stupid.
4. First song I learned on guitar: Baby, I Love Your Way
5. My velcro wallet use to smell funny because I’d take it to the beach and it would getwet from the salt water.
6. I never ditched a day of high school, but my attendance record showed all sorts of absences in everyone of my classes. That’s when I knew I could no longer trust The Man.
7. Our high school once had an assembly featuring a christian rock band. Except you didn’t really know they were until they sprung it on you if you went to the show later that night. They played Crazy Train and some AC/DC and then they started talking about fellowship. I felt ripped off and left. Reaffirmed my belief that you can’t trust The Man.
8. Blindly not knowing that the Indian Guides were a part of the YMCA. Again, The Man.
9. The Man is all in my head.
10. Didn’t understand at the time why was I so attracted to Melissa Sue Anderson from “James at 15”, Emmy Jo of “New Zoo Revue”, and Joy from “The Bugaloos”.
11.Those plaque pills that made your teeth all red so you knew you had to keep brushing.
12. Always thinking that wherever “Battle of the Network Stars” was shot, it was amazing. Only to find out years later it was just Pepperdine in Malibu.
13. The big-ass Sears Christmas catalogue that I’d cut out pictures and paste them onto paper to give to Santa.
14. I got a 4 foot long aircraft carrier for Christmas one year. It shot foam planes off the flight deck. It broke on Christmas day and I never played with it again.
15. I forgot that San Franciscans hiss at trailers and commercials in movie theaters. Nobody in Los Angeles does because the whole industry is here and trailers and commercials mean more jobs.
16. I once stole a Playboy from the bookstore at the mall. It was the Dorothy Stratton issue. Who knew at the time?
17. In elementary school poor Patty Etchevery was called Itch My Berries.
18. KMET used to do a little segment called “The Fish Report with a Beat” where they would supposedly call out the days catch.
19. The 45rpm single of version of “Spirit of Radio” by Rush cut out the little reggae section in the middle.
20. One time I won Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley posters at the fair by popping balloons with darts.
21. At age 11 me and John Boyles were at Aztec Bowl on Beach Blvd. waiting for my Mom to pick us up. We bought some french fries at the coffee shop and I still had a quarter left so I played “Bennie and the Jets” on the juke box.
22. The clown my parents hired for my birthday party showed up totally drunk.
23. Was told by my sister’s friend that “Afternoon Delight” meant the “in out in out” as he gestured with his fingers.
24. Of the cereal trifecta Boo Berry, Count Chocula, and Frankenberry, Boo Berry was my favorite.
25. The first 45rpm I bought was “Who are You”. My sister gave me money to buy her Anne Murray’s “You Needed Me” and enough to get something for myself. I rode my skateboard three miles to the Sears.
26. I stopped using a cell phone headset as soon as I saw bits of a Garth Brooks concert on PBS.
27. My grandmother showed me how to macram?ɬ© but I never really could do it without her there. And I didn’t like it.
28. One time the band I was in was supposed to open for A Flock of Seagulls but there was no room on stage for our keyboard player, so we left. The guy with the funny hair was kind of an ass to us anyway.
29. Whenever someone calls me by the wrong name, it’s almost always Scott. Last time it happened was a month ago.
30. At the high school winter formal at The Balboa Pavilion the band only played the slow part to Freebird. It was the last song of the night. They also did “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours. The guitar player played a blonde Les Paul.
31. Upon discovering a huge man-made turd in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a friend of mine turned to me and said slowly, “There’s been humans here”. We ran and kinda dry heaved because it smelled so bad.
32. Aspen sodas tasted terrible.
33. My friends parents would drive us from Orange County to The Valley to go to Busch Gardens just so they could sample the free beer. We went there a lot. Then they’d drive us home drunk.
34. They also invited me to dinner once and then kicked me out of their house for not finishing everything on my plate. It was supposed to be “clean as a hounds tooth”.
35. For a poetry assignment in our high school english class, my friend recited his poem which he called “The Electric Eye”. It was really just the lyrics to “Electric Eye” by Judas Priest. He changed the name to disguise it and he got an A. Everyone in the class thought I was being rude by laughing out loud at his poem.
36. I was on a bus going through the Fillmore district when a huge fight with hundreds of people broke out. People were getting slammed against the bus and getting beaten up, but the driver kept the door shut.
37. My Kiss ticket, for the 1979 Dynasty tour at the Anaheim Convention Center, was 9 dollars.
38. My sister ran away from home once.
39. Was once scolded by a much wiser friend of mine that “Who Wants to Live Forever” by Queen is not a “cruisin’ down Sunset on a Saturday night” type of song. The Doors “Break on Through” was and she popped it in and blasted it as we turned right off of La Cienega.
40. Whenever I crossed Slauson Ave. I’d think of Johnny Carson. “Go to the Slauson cut off, and cut off your slauson”.
41. One of my college roommates had a girlfriend in San Francisco and one in San Diego. And they knew about each other.
42. This guy Nathaniel I knew in high school was always asking for Chizz. You got Chizz?? Know anybody that’s got Chizz? I found out much later he wanted matches so he could go smoke.
43. In the 70’s I used to love to shop at the TG&Y five and dime store.
44. I used to think Humble Pie and Uriah Heep were the same band.
45. Tony Alva was my hero. So I bought one of his skateboards and a set of his wheels. Little did I know he was only 9 years older than me. There is now an Alva retail store a few blocks away from me that I have yet to go to.
46. Once when I was a kid and goofing around I hit my best friend in the forehead with a golf club. A curtain of blood poured out of his head and down his eyes and face. I ran home.
47. The week after I learned how to whistle I swung from my neighbors lamp and fell face first into their marble coffee table. I slammed my mouth in and my upper lip puffed up and I couldn’t whistle anymore. I was sad. I still have a scar on my forehead.
48. Our neighborhood bully used to ride his bike and huff paint on the playground at my elementary school. Jerry Main. He has to be dead.
49. I got so drunk at a college party once that I stole a chair and a car antenna.
50. Every year when I get my taxes done, it’s at an office near where I grew up. As a treat afterwards, I always go to the Wienerschnitzel by my old house that my friends and I would ride our bikes to. I order the same thing to this day, 3 chili dogs, fries and a drink. Although 3 chili dogs used to be 99 cents with the coupon on the back of the grocery receipts from Food King.