It’s just about noon here in Los Angeles and I’m getting ready to pour myself a cold drink, crank up Guitar Hero III and celebrate the 4th of July.
If you need something to read I just posted something new at LA Metblog called Remains of the Moving Day, about a found picture and the things we leave behind.
Hey, I just noticed that it’s my 30th post over at Metblogs! You can see them all here.
I hope you’re having a great day, wherever you are.
Tomorrow is the 4th of July here in the States, actually it’s the 4th of July everywhere but it’s only here in America that we get to stay home from work. This usually means things are pretty quiet around here. Without my fellow Americans slacking off at work, it’s up to my pals in Canada, Ireland, Turkey and elsewhere to pick up the internet reading slack and go crazy, especially here. It will be just like that movie Home Alone, but on this blog. You can read the archives and comment knowing full well that most of my American readers will be too busy drinking and starting fires
The good news is that bumbling crooks will probably not try to break in and give you the old “Dudley at the bike shop” once over. That’s the Be the Boy promise, you can write it down: “On Holidays, your home won’t be invaded by burglars just because you live in a different country”, see I just wrote it down for you. Now go crazy, I’d recommend starting with happened at our house in the early morning last 4th of July.
Once you’re done going to town, here are some other things to check out:
Here’s a companion piece to the 4th of July post posted above, after leaving our house we headed to Chicago for fireworks.
Jim at Medialoper discusses one of my favorite songs.
Finally, I’ve added a new link to the sidebar that I’d like to bring to your attention. Readers of Be the Boy, meet Sarah Atwood; Sarah meet the readers of Be The Boy, they are pretty awesome.
Have fun everybody! Don’t get blown up.
I created a Facebook network for Be the Boy (that’s the blog you’re reading now). You could like, join it and stuff. It’s like a gang for blog nerds. Plus, I’d totally join yours.
You’re probably asking what’s in this for you and the answer is, not much. Unless you live near a Carvel ice cream store: if you join the network and mention my name at Carvel you’ll get a free Fudgie The Whale cake.*
*This is not true, I called Carvel to ask if they would co-operate and they said “no way, jackass”, but if I could give you free ice cream I would totally do it.
In honor of yesterday’s Crappy House Day I’d like to share a story from the house mentioned in the post.
Tell a Fourth of July Story
Between the years 1983 and 1987 I lived in a house where people blew things up a lot more than most other households. There were always a lot of people over at our place drinking and this regularly led to things being lit on fire and then things exploding.
There was one guest who took part in the drinking but never the fire or fireworks; when things got too rowdy he would come find me downstairs and we’d discuss baseball, books I was reading and school. Unlike the rest of the regular house guests he was quiet to the point of near silence, like Boo Radley with a drinking problem. My mother told me that I was the only person he said more than two word to since he came back from Vietnam. At that age I knew that there had been a war in Vietnam and I knew he had served in it but I didn’t know that he came back changed because this was the only way I knew him. While others remembered a wild and fearless teenager I only knew the grown man who didn’t like to talk much and hated the Fourth of July.
When Independence Day turned to night he’d find his way downstairs to my room where it was quiet and we’d play board games and watch TV while everyone else attempted to blow up the neighborhood. When the noise was too much he’d put his head down and when his beer ran out I’d run to the cooler to get another (and sometimes one for myself). The next morning I’d find him outside sifting through piles of spent fireworks he had collected He said he was making sure there was no live explosives left in the field. I didn’t know what this meant but he told me I wasn’t trained for this and I should stay inside until he gave the all clear. I didn’t ask questions, he was my friend.
P.S. Upon telling this to someone they remarked: “So the most responsible guy you knew as a kid was a Vietnam vet with a post traumatic stress disorder?” I never said most responsible, but he was the least dangerous.
You probably didn’t know this but today is a special anniversary in the life of Be the Boy, actually I didn’t know it either until I was writing a check for the rent this morning and realized that it’s July 1. For those of you who don’t have the official calendar of this blog, the one with all of my important dates listed in it, I’ll explain.
Here at Be the Boy, July 1 is Crappy House Day, where you remember the worst place you ever lived or stayed at but still managed to love.
It all started on this date in 1983; 25 years ago…my mother packed my brother, my sister and me into the car and drove us to Copiague, the town on Long Island where I’d spend most of the next 15 years. Of course, she wasn’t just driving us through Copiague, we were moving there and we were excited (probably the last to ever be excited to move into the town) because after several years of basement apartments we were going to live in an actual house…one that you could see daylight from. How could my single mother who cut hair by day and went to school at night afford such luxuries? Well that was the thing…it had some flaws. Things like:
We didn’t let these things dampen our enthusiasm though. After all, we were going to have multiple bedrooms rooms and did I mention there was daylight? When you don’t have much, a little goes a long way.
When we pulled up to that house on July 1, 1983 I was nine years old. I didn’t know on that day that it I was moving into a place that would profoundly affect me and shape who I grew up to be and I had no idea that by the time we left that place, four years later, our world would be changed. On that day I was just happy to have a Capri Sun and a place to play. The sun had come up and we were doing fine.
For the record, many of the Greatest Be the Boy Hits took place in this house including the infamous paper cup story.
Happy Crappy House Day, everyone! If you’ve ever loved a less than spectacular place I’d love to hear about it.
Over the weekend, Dr. Mrs. Slackmistress-Betheboy informed me that we had an unused gift card that we received as a wedding gift. Found money is always good news so we made a list of the things we could do with that money (you can guess who suggested which item):
Get prescriptions filed
Buy fake mustaches
Stock up on girlie underwear
Go taco crazy down at Los Tacos
Those were all worthwhile suggestions but in the end we tossed them all aside and bought Guitar Hero for the Wii and rocked all weekend.
Actually let me rephrase that, Dr. Mrs. Slackmistress-Betheboy ROCKED all weekend, while I merely lowercase rocked. To be fair, she played much more than I did. In the four hours between hooking up the guitar and starting Saturday’s video chat (part of which is archived here), the game play breakdown went like this:
Me: 15 minutes of fumbling around.
Her: 3 hours and 45 minutes of her rocking me like a hurricane.
Basically it was the first time she showed up at my house all over again, both in the sense that she rocked and I realized I needed a lot of practice to catch up.
Last night we held our second live video chat and I think it went pretty well. It was technically smoother than the first go round and there was only a single troll interruption in the nearly two hours we we’re live. While it featured less porn talk than the first chat we did manage nonetheless to offend the internet enough to get temporarily booted from the video hosting service (this was rectified in minutes). Parts of the video are archived here.
We’re still working the bugs out but we’re having fun. Thanks to everyone who played along last night, we hope to see you (and everyone you know) next time. Here is where you’ll find us when we do it again.
One of my favorite things about having my own blog is the ability to highlight the awesome things that other bloggers do. Today’s serving of awesome comes courtesy of ESPN and Scouts, Inc. writer Keith Law, who blogs about food, writing and sometimes baseball over at The Dish. You should check out Mr. Law’s blog today because he’s put together The KLaw 100, his own list of the 100 greatest novels of all time.
I encourage you, implore you actually, to check out the list. You’ll probably see a lot you’ve read and a lot you haven’t and you may not agree with Keith’s list but I think you’ll agree it’s interesting. Here’s that link again.
While I’m asking you to do things let me remind you of tomorrow’s video chat.
Thanks for playing along at home.
FYI everyone - If you didn’t get a chance to participate in last week’s live video chat. The Mrs. and I w
ill be trying it again this weekend so join us at The Slackmistress’ Cam Page (that sounds just as dirty as it is supposed to sound), on Saturday June 28th at 9pm PT. More details can be found here.
Here are answers to some questions you may have about it:
Q- What is Stickam?
A- The short answer is: A better option than Yahoo Live. The longer answer is that it’s a great service where you can stream live video and chat with friends.
Q- Do I need to register to participate?
A- No, you can watch and listen without registering but if you want us and other users to see you, or if you want to participate in the chat you’ll have to register. Registration takes a minute and it’s free.
Q- Do I need a webcam to participate?
A- Nope, you can just log on when the live chat starts and play along as you see fit.
Q- Why are you doing this on a Saturday night when I have a ________ to go to?
A – We know you’re popular but it’s the only time that my wife and I both have several hours of uninterrupted time. Plus we’re nerds who like to stay home and play video games on the weekends and we know where not the only ones. So we implore you to cancel your plans and become lovable shut-ins like us.
Q- What are these chats about?
A- Whatever you want them to be about but the last one was mostly about video games and pornography. It’s basically a chance for everyone who reads my wife’s blogs and this one to interact and wear funny hats.
Stay tuned for the start time, we hope to see you there.
Here’s that link to the Stickam page again.
