Random Story Leads To Random Photos (With Even More Random Commentary)

I had a calendar hanging on the wall of my office. Since I work in a recording studio, there is soundproofing on the wall. I used pushpins to stick the calendar onto the soundproofing. Pushpins tend to loosen from such material, but every few days I'd make sure the pushpins were still doing their job by pushing them in tighter as needed. However, I came in one morning last week and, when I turned in my chair to look at my calendar, the calendar was nowhere to be seen.

Here's what I think happened: The calendar was positioned directly over my wastebasket. The pushpins must have come loose, the calendar must have fallen straight down into the wastebasket, and then the cleaners must have thrown it out. Live and learn, I guess. The next calendar I get will NOT go over the wastebasket, and I'll use three-penny nails instead of pushpins.

I told my co-worker, Dan, about my predicament and he installed Google Desktop on my computer. It's pretty cool. You can configure it as a sidebar and have all sorts of different gadgets, widgets, whatnots, and knick-knacks, one of which can be a calendar. So far, I have also added a local weather report and a rotating display of my personal photos.

(If you're keeping score at home, that's the end of the random story, and now come the random photos.)

I've been highly-entertained by the photos popping up in random order, and I got to thinking that some of them have never been used here before, so why not write a blog post about those orphans?

Well, how about that! Here's the post now!




This is the aluminum Christmas tree that was a fixture of my childhood holidays at my maternal grandparents. It has since gone the way of the dodo. When I first saw it - and for a couple of years afterward - I thought it was the most hideous desecration of Christmas I had ever encountered. Trees were supposed to be green, real, and smell of a lovely pine scent, not silver, phony, and smelling of nothing whatsoever. However, as the years passed, I grew to love that tree. It had more to do with the people who gathered around it than it did with the tree itself, but however it came about, I sure do miss it now.





This one is especially for my good friend, Lime. Earlier this week, the following question and answer appeared at her place:

"The TV gods have appeared before you in the form of a burning remote. They instruct you to select any canceled television show to be returned to the airwaves. You do, however, have to make your case to them. What show, what’s your argument in favor?"

"The test pattern and the playing of the national anthem before station sign-off broadcast in technicolor analog transmission on a floor model television the size of a kitchen stove which requires a half hour to warm up and someone standing on one foot wearing a tinfoil hat while holding rabbit ears trying to get good reception. The value here is self evident and needs no argument."

This is the big-ass old Admiral TV of my childhood. Alas, it does not meet the technicolor requirement, but in all other aspects it fits the bill.

It's amazing the things you carry in your head from childhood. I can still 'hear', with crystal clarity, the 'ker-chunk' sound made when changing channels on that beast. The construction project going on in front of the set consists of things called 'Bill Ding Blocks', which were wooden men about 4 inches high, sculpted in such a way as to allow them to interlock. I loved those things. There's a really good close-up (and an interesting use for them) HERE.





Me, in my First Communion suit, with My Mom. The setting is Caddy Road in Dorchester, our street. For those unfamiliar with Catholicism, First Communion is the ceremony wherein young boys and girls initially share in The Lord's Supper of bread and wine during a mass. Not much to say about the photo, other than that I was a good Catholic boy and Saint Gregory's was the church where it took place. I do wonder, though, about the suit. I don't recall ever wearing it again, and it must have been relatively expensive to buy a boy a suit that he would wear only once.





My Grandmother giving me a bath in her kitchen sink. The older I get, the more I go back to resembling myself in this picture (except I have less hair on top of my head and a bit more on my chest.) The facial expression, though, is the same one I still make whenever I disagree with an umpire's call.





Here we see my Uncle Jimmy from the mid-1940s. Unless I miss my guess, he's standing on Hyde Park Avenue in Roslindale. That was where my paternal grandparents lived when I was very young.

I love this photo. The vintage cars, the triple-decker houses in the background, the dirty street - doesn't it all look like he could be starring in an Our Gang movie with Buckwheat, Spanky and Alfalfa?




This is a view of the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth as seen from Prescott Park. Portsmouth is a lovely New Hampshire seacoast town and MY WIFE and I try to get up there once or twice a year for a few days.

As you may be aware, I'm not overly fond of bridges. As a matter of fact, I try to avoid them when driving. However, this bridge is sort of a 'friend' of mine, as I've actually walked across it. MY WIFE suggested it as a way to cure me of my fears. It took some resolve on my part, believe me, as I really, really, really don't like bridges, but MY WIFE - not a big fan of heights herself - held my hand and went with me. I 'conquered' it, and now it is probably the biggest bridge around that I don't mind - too much - driving over.





I'm a hideous photographer. I take hideous photos. Everybody who knows me knows that. So, it's rare that I like a photo of mine just for the art of it. Most of those I publish have something to add to a story, but this one I like just for the tactile value. I especially like how the Shredded Wheat box has so much texture on the bit facing you, and is so reflective on the other bit. Since there would never be a story to go with it - unless you feel like making one up - I figure this is as good a place as any for it.





The above is basically this one...


... without a flash having been used. They were both shot, by MY WIFE, after my (ha-ha) final softball game ever. I have since played two more seasons and nobody will ever believe me again if I say I'm going to retire. I am the Bret Favre of modified fast-pitch softball.

Speaking of which, this weekend will decide our fate. Either we make the playoffs and I'm a happy guy, or we get eliminated and I take a toaster into the shower with me afterward. See you with the results on Monday! If you think God wouldn't mind too much, I'd appreciate your prayers (for no injuries, at least, if you'd feel uncomfortable praying for us to win.)





Finally, here is proof that I was rude and crude even as a toddler. Look at my right hand. It appears that I'm telling the photographer what a waste of time this is, by giving him the international sign for jerking off.

Come to think of it, it fits in pretty well here, too.

Soon, with more better stuff.

[Addendum: I just noticed something in the "old TV" photo. Look on top of the TV. That's my pet cat, Blackie, asleep. Cats just loved to climb on top of those old tube TVs and nap. The warmth, I guess.]