Crumpets Continued: Top 10 Black Mercedes

L.A. through the rear view

Mercedes #1: When driving in L.A. one is ever harrowed by the relentless tailgating black Mercedes hovering like a tow car in one’s rear view. Such tailgaters are especially menacing when careening down hills of a certain Beverly persuasion, exceeding 55 mph on oily roads after rain, high on the thrill (assumedly) of chasing a lunchbox-packed economy car with cranking windows and no power locks out of posh neighborhoods, where such plebian automotives apparently don’t belong.

Mercedes #2: One must ignore ominous admonitions such as “NO ACCESS to Hollywood sign” and “NOT A THROUGH STREET” whilst winding up and around the perilously narrow, designed-for-mules-only inches of “road” in the residential areas just beneath the Hollywood sign. Keeping the foot on the gas, deftly dodging monstrous rubbish bins, and whipping around uphill hairpin turns like a resident Mercedes will get one there in one piece for a stellar photo, albeit with shattered nerves.

Mercedes #3: As local angels of the Los are quick to point out, freeways are called “THE 10,” “THE 5,” “THE 110,” never I-10. The “THE” craze even extends to streets, such as Figueroa Street is known as “THE Fig.” However, this system is rather problematic. If one walked up to a handful of people on the street asking, “Where can I find THE One?,” oh the variety of responses one is bound to receive.

Mercedes #4: In light of the United Nations-like ethnic territorial delineation in L.A., which even includes such obscurities as “Little Armenia” and “Little Ethiopia,” the sizeable Jewish population seems to lack a designated neighborhood, resulting in having to trudge past world-famous Pink’s hot dog stand, where a scruffy gentleman holding a baby bunny condemns the 50-deep queue for eating hot dogs stuffed with mixed meats. Bon appetit.

Mercedes #5: After a night out in Hollywood and packing away those olfactory clothes, try explaining to one’s grandmother upon return home why the laundry reeks of a scent none too medicinal.

Mercedes #6: Due to the recent alcohol ban on California beaches, enforcement officers have upgraded the proverbial red Baywatch beach jeep to an entire fleet of patrolling vehicles, leaving Malibu beachgoers sunbathing on lockdown as four-wheelers, tugboats, helicopters, patrol cars, and barges patrol for alcohol, oneth by land, twoeth by sea, and three-eth by sky, in the highly suspect code red terror of the unassuming beach cooler.

Mercedes #7: However, the beach fleet has yet to adequately police public nudity, as some men feel it is acceptable to drop their trousers and slip into swim trunks not quite fast enough to ruin more than one beachgoer’s luncheon respite.

Mercedes #8: Motorbikes should be A-listed in “Lonely Planet’s” ‘Dangers and Annoyances’ section for L.A. travel. However, their deafening arrogance may be eliminated by an opportunistically-timed, accidental fist pump out the car window as they try to slide by in between lanes of traffic, thereby preventing hearing loss and heart attack for everyone within a 10-mile radius.

Mercedes #9: Blaring Alabama’s “Southern Star” with the windows down at midnight on Hollywood Blvd is in every way mortifying and inappropriate. Even “Angels Among Us” would have at least been remotely topical.

Mercedes #10: Driving the segment of “THE One,” stretching from Santa Monica through Malibu lives up to every iota of “scenic” as parked cars line both sides of the coastal highway, giving passersby a fascinating study into the people that make this little slice of Monte Carlo a California beach scene. The contemplative surfers lean against their hoods surveying the sea, paying homage to Helios and Poseidon. The narcissistic Ray-Bans teen snaps a photo of himself against a backdrop of parking lot. A naked child, well exceeding the diaper age appropriate for public nudity, bares all to the highway of passing cars. The clunker mini-van spills out a doublewide’s contents of rusty beach chairs, coolers, (TVs?!), tents, buckets, surf boards, and mayonnaise-based potato salad. And many a black Mercedes lurks menacingly, nightmarishly, waiting for sweating, jay-sprinter valets to return them to the twitching toes of the accelerating fiends.

Most Wanted List: Egg-based brownie mix

Peace out, Brussels sprouts. And may it be known that this adventure was made possible in part by Kyler Post and Kelli Stansell of the Academy of Parallel Parking and Offensive Driving Instruction, of which I am a recent graduate.

Golden Saucers: whisking silence

Golden Saucers: whisking silence

On the fuzzy periphery of a weekday afternoon, a phone rings but once a day. It’s mom calling from the driveway who “could use some help” with the groceries. Occasionally a text will jolt the stillness with a zap back to where good friends are studying, interning, teaching, traveling, wedding, birthing, drinking, laughing, fighting, earning, living for . . .

the crystal-tinkling clarity of some unadulterated sound.

Save for the seldom awakening of the grad-gift phone, my sounds these days are frequently cupped silence, filled with the memory of amniotic fluidity. When the sun rays reach into my childhood window and are particularly beckoning with their gentle invitation to join the world, I drive to a cabin once filled with second cousins and aunts and toddlers spilling out every straining window screen to the patio undergrowth of frog racing, fireflying, citronella wafting, and boat motors whining for just 10 more minutes, please, in the water.

The water is calm. My phone has no bars, and I, this time, am silently alone. Floating. Rocking. Irrevocably lulled.

My brain, too, is silent, the disquiet of the neuron map for now stowed away, washed ashore to make way for the expansive emptiness of the 3:00 sky.

Allow a cloud-flood through the retinas, through to the brain. In the sun-washed silence, absence, four tablespoons of softened butter must be what a baby feels when it first surmises the sky.

Let the brain stem keep inching back till the chin passes above the horizon line of trees, toes disappear, no cheating, feel the heavy cranium stretch back, ahh, all the way.

Clouds, the silent movie that speaks with a breath of originality, of change, whisk and scramble with each blink.

In a lull of blinking silence, I rediscovered clouds.

Top 10 OxyContin Pills

This week, I traded my wisdom teeth for OxyContin pills of wisdom.

OxyContin #1: Now maybe oral surgery is on the lower end of “grave” as far as surgeries go, but it seems there really should be some sort of code against anesthetizing people in a tiny fourth-floor business suite.

OxyContin #2: The last thing cringers to all things vein-related want to hear is their surgeon comparing the quest for the perfect IV vein to a fishing expedition. “Hmm. We might have to move upstream to find a good one, but let’s see if we can’t find us a big one here first.”

OxyContin #3: More wise words from the Dr. Wisdom Fisher: “If after the surgery you find when you try to drink water it comes straight through your nose, well, then we’ll know we’ve got something to fix.”

Thanks for testing bodily hydraulics before the patient leaves the building.

OxyContin #4: With oral surgery there is also the risk of damaging a delicate nerve, barely a blip on the X-ray, that runs below the gums through the lower lip. Numbness usually goes away after three hours, but to a patient on emotion-inducing pain meds, those three hours with a numb hippo lip is life-devastating, filled with premonitions of wearing bibs in restaurants and slurping gruel like the Beast.

Be thankful for that little nerve.

OxyContin #5: Nerve damage or no, wisdom tooth extraction requires the surgeon to crank the jaw open so much so that even opening it to fit a spoon in and out requires effort equal to removing the Sword from the Stone. Unfortunately the only way around this utensil challenge is licking applesauce straight from the jar. You can imagine the mess with the added handicap of a numb lip.

OxyContin #6: You know you have some high commodity pain prescriptions after the pharmacist tries to give you “Marissa Hoover’s” measly antibiotics and your demand for your identity and its rightful narcotics creates a Spanish Inquisition into who the true Jessica Hoover is and why she needs five narcotics prescriptions from the neighborhood Walgreen’s. Foul play afoot, Marissa Hoover. I’m on to you.

OxyContin #7: And you can’t trust anybody. Your mother, for your safety and addiction prevention, will purposely “hide” the pill bottles while she is gone for the day, leaving you high and, well, not high, but dry, and in pain.

OxyContin #8: When a mid-day storm blows through causing a tree to fall in one’s backyard, thereby uprooting two smaller trees, which smash the dog fence and a good portion of the roof, all just one branch shy of an OxyContin-induced slumberer, good luck (one) waking up and (two) convincing your family you really aren’t hallucinating . . . this time.

OxyContin #9: Don’t social network while under the influence. While you may not have the strength to sit at a desk and use a computer, here’s when the “convenience” of the mobile web on your phone betrays you.

OxyContin #10: Bed-ridden and comatose on pain meds is hardly an excuse for lack of cardiac exercise. The old ticker gets plenty of cardio pumping from heart-racing recurring nightmares of being trapped in a mahogany mansion hiding for your life from Cyclops sea creatures in basement wardrobes while, with the strike of each hour, a new army of villains, in progressive historical time periods, flood the spiraling staircases raging war curses while they hunt you. It’s like playing “Jumanji” amid clash of “Narnia” (all 7) and “Night at the Museum” (1 & 2) in every battle for Middle Earth.

Missed item this week: A right mind?

Peace out Brussels sprouts.

Top 10 Bird Droppings

Bird Dropping #1: You know the fates and birds are aligned together to malign suburban walking attempts when one is pooped upon whilst strolling to the ballpark.

Bird Dropping #2: Always, always, always greet people you know, regardless of the likelihood of them remembering you from six years ago. The minute you don't, you will see them haunting the grocery store crosswalk the next day, and you are faced with the exact same previous day’s awkward (lack of) interaction precedent.

Bird Dropping #3: Upon returning home, get used to "Hey [insert name of younger high school sibling here]." Or, "So you're the younger one, right?" Or, "Have you thought about colleges yet?"

Bird Dropping #4: How long does it take a college student to shake off the 3 a.m. bed time? At least a month and still counting.

Bird Dropping #5: From the other end of the clock, how long is it permissible for a college graduate to repeatedly sleep in until noon? Two weeks ago, wasting an entire half of a day was detestable, so I enacted a calibration plan, shaving off 30 minutes of sleep each week. We’re to 10:30 a.m. at Week 4.

Bird Dropping #6: Buildings change. Businesses go in and out of existence. Yes. But when is it ever OK for a private warehouse aquarium to morph into a pool and spa?

Bird Dropping #7: If anyone is ever in doubt of Knoxville’s literacy rate, go to McKay’s Used Books any hour of any day and ponder literacy whilst circling the parking lot for eons waiting for a spot. Then go inside to meet Knoxville’s finest local literates.

Bird Dropping #8: Thanks to thunderstorms that pop up out of literally nowhere, one’s afternoon walks quite frequently turn into afternoon sprints with the added inconvenience of emitting convincing “oh my house is just around the corner” pants to strangers who offer rides home.

Bird Dropping #9: When one is lucky enough to get through an entire walk thunder-free, lo and behold pick up the pace when the ice cream truck and its freaky clown music creeps along behind you or heads you off at the crossroads. So this is what it feels like being on the run from the child snatcher in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

Bird Dropping #10: After finally having re-arranged one's room in every geometric configuration possible, the realization sets in that a) social life has significantly declined, and b) furthering individual exploration and independence has also declined. Both of which exist because of c) lack of travel and general adventure. Therefore, d) The Stagnated Self Crisis Cycle (Theorem S^2 = C^2):
--Frustration: A quick facebook perusal reveals there are more people than fingers on your hand who are doing way more interesting things with their summers than you are.
--Aggression: Rant to the dog in self pity and bitterness about a boring existence.
--Frenetic Angst: Feverishly map out possible excursions for every continent, including Antarctica.
--Repression: Cool down with sorting four years’ worth of computer files.

We haven’t quite achieved the “Acceptance” phase yet.


‘Most Missed’ this week: Rome Wal-Mart entertainment

Peace out Brussels sprouts.

Crumpets Continued: Top 10 Garage Battles

Crumpets Continued: Top 10 Garage Battles

Whilst so many are off on adventures drinking life to the lees, I am at home re-learning that we eat as a family and dinner is dependent on the daily family schedule.

Garage Battle #1: Despite the hierarchy of birth order, upon absence from the garage for four years, said benefit is withdrawn and proffered to the younger sibling, kicking the eldest to the curb. ‘Tis only the natural order.

Garage Battle #2: In addition to the cardinal rule that family that lives together eats together, removing one’s self from the table is only acceptable after one has been properly “excused.”

Garage Battle #3:
Jessica: “May I be excused please?”
Mom: “Yes you may.”
Dad: “So, Jessica, tell us about your day.”

Garage Battle #4: The one, perhaps only, comforting fact to return home and find one’s childhood dog senile, deaf, and nearly blind from old age is that one no longer must administer Valium during thunderstorms.

Garage Battle #5: In avoidance of having to give the four-year-update to all and sundry house phone caller, one begins to take the model of simply not answering the phone. However, this involves a creepy tip-toeing down the stairs (I’m sure latent from some childhood phobia that people on the answering machine can “hear” you creaking around) and awkward neck crane to hear the answering machine to make sure it is not an emergency call.

Garage Battle #6: Making my dad’s lunch bag for work on his nightshift is like leaving out cookies, milk, and carrots for Santa. I fill the lunchbox, the lunchbox re-appears in the morning, most contents are eaten, some are not. Eerily just like Santa.

Garage Battle #7: Apparently, to some high school Soffee-short-wearing types, “going to the gym” means sitting on a leg extension machine reading a magazine for 10 minutes, most decidedly not doing leg extensions. The one hands-free machine is nothing more than a hot commodity resting chair that just happens to have a weight pulley system attached.

Garage Battle #8: Nothing like getting ready to pull out of a parking lot across town 30 minutes from home and suddenly someone is banging on your trunk and filling your driver side window with the endearing face of . . . your little sister. Knoxville is, surprisingly, a small world, where missing your sister and her friends having lunch at the exact same restaurant you did is a narrow escape.

Garage Battle #9: Stamped mail sitting by the countertop on the way out the door is ready to be mailed. Notice it, whether it is yours or not.

Garage Battle #10: Walking to the post office is, on the whole, an uneventful jaunt quite conducive to contemplation, neighborhood garden perusal, and substantial 40-minute exercise there and back. Except for Jacksboro Pike. . .the only “major” road separating my neighborhood from the rest of Fountain City civilization that has a sidewalk. What is so strange about someone walking on the side of the road, I cannot comprehend. But I am tired of the jeerings, revving engines, and speeding cars ruining my sidewalk postal contemplation. Especially ones that notice I’m wearing a red T-shirt and spontaneous blare “Lady in Red.” Yet I remain un-deterred. I am determined to make Jacksboro Pike sidewalk as busy with pedestrians as the Tube juncture of Oxford Circus, London. Such is my quest and community contribution to Knoxville to which I remain dedicated in active community and family membership for the next two years at least.

Missed Item this week: My 2 a.m. fourth meal.

DISCLAIMER: I love my family. We are very close, and I greatly appreciate their accommodation free of charge, my three square meals a day, the stocked pantry and all other amenities thereunto.

The Crumpet Collection: Failed Quizzes, Four Years in Review

Top 10 Failed Quizzes: Four Years in Review

Only in college is it acceptable to make use of studious time to fail a quiz or two for the sake of extra-textual “learning.” For in learning to “fail,” well, there is a memorable lesson in itself.

Failed Quiz #1: When one agrees to being uprooted in the middle of the night for a drive to Wild Bill’s under the pretense of it being a “country bar” only to be thrown into one’s first encounter with hip hop and the rapper scene, that 8 a.m. exam arrives all too soon.

Failed Quiz #2: Attempting to uphold the ethics of underage-non-drinking is not always rewarded when one attempts to shoot Sprite from miniature bathroom cups only to nearly drown on carbonation overload.

Failed Quiz #3: Police speed-watcher officers often lie in wait on the onramps lining I-75 in south Georgia during Spring Break season to nab speeding spring speed breakers. As a driver it helps to be watching for them rather than craned away from the wheel for a photo op from a camera in the backseat. However, if timed appropriately, such a photo can also be evidence of actual speed if the speedometer gets clipped in the photo.

Failed Quiz #4: When sabotaging a car in the middle of the night for a birthday, bring a towel to wipe off the dew to lengthen the lifespan of stewed-upon-for-weeks witticisms such as “Will you light my (birthday) candle?”

Failed Quiz #5: After deliberating among six people, three computers, two Skype connections, and a few speaker phone calls over which country is cheapest and safest to get to for a week, one should, at 3 a.m., always be sure to purchase airline tickets only once. Two confirmation e-mails (and a failed reading quiz) later is a heart-stopping way to greet the light of day.

Failed Quiz #6: Enter a sketch basement bar with a $20 cover for “all you can drink” is a bad, bad mindset for the brain. “Getting one’s money’s worth” keeps paying for itself 16 hours later after horribly bumpy airplane landings and a seven hour drive home.

Failed Quiz #7: Grace Kelley night sounds superb in theory as a way to celebrate momentous achievements, but after everyone has Googled to see exactly what “Grace Kelley” attire means, acquires it, and then goes out for cheap drinks (in Rome), “overdressed” is the word of the evening.

Failed Quiz #8: What the pretty frat boys with pastel pants and bowties don’t tell you about Steeplechase on rainy, tornado-watch days is to drive a vehicle with hardcore 4-wheel drive. Toyota Corollas aren’t exactly “mudding” material, though, for that matter, neither are pearls and white dresses and pastel pants.

Failed Quiz #9: The best stroke of brilliance for a headline often comes at 3 or 4 a.m. post-Carrier dance party in a mostly-desolate office to the tune of “Zombie,” “My spoon’s too big,” “Big Pimpin,’” “Banana Phone” or other various YouTube background streamings. Many a quiz has been failed in pursuit of getting the campus newspaper on the racks at a reasonable hour Thursday morning.

Failed Quiz #10: Friends have to look out for each other when gentleman callers request an audience with a roommate outside at 2 a.m., which is how the covert non-smoker smokescreen was developed as a way for concerned friends to chaperone such meetings under the ruse of “smoking” study utensils. From afar, those white BIC pens could pass for cigs, surely.

Most missed failing that, unfortunately I deem only appropriate for college, is rapping like a gangsta with some shades and da bling to “Pop Lock and Drop It.” Those are the best kind of “study breaks”-turned-failed-quiz.

While reading quizzes are important, may the college student in us all slip on those rapper shades every so often in the big bad adult world.



As a bonus track, below I have listed the top soundtracks to accompany the various “failings” and orchestrations over the past few years for JHo and friends:

“Boots with the Fur” (also known as Low) Flo-Rida
“It’s Tricky” – Run-D.M.C.
“Don’t Stop Believin’” --Journey
“You’re So Vain” –Carly Simon
“Total Eclipse of the Heart” –Bonnie Tyler
“Touch You Once” (also known as “If You Leave” –Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark
“I’ll Make a Man out of You” –Mulan

Stay tuned for the Crumpet Collection’s continuation into life back at the homestead. This will be an interesting year.

Peace out Brussels sprouts, yo.

Golden Saucers: Reverberating Actions

The Bitter Barn. A phrase that my dear family has tossed around on more than several occasions this month-long break at home. And rightly so. Of course no one wants to keep hearing about how things are so different in England, how I miss hostel accommodation prices, safer travel, healthier food, and the constant surroundings of classic literary genius.

It's a lot easier to succumb to the illusion that the experience of living completely on one's own and successfully planning and executing backpacking excursions all over Europe was simply a dream. A dream because, when people start looking over your shoulder, making you aware of your own inadequacies in decision-making, you lose confidence and start questioning yourself. The mantra for this last semester to myself and others has been: "I survived six months in Europe utterly and completely on my own. I can handle _______. "

And everyone is tired of hearing that. Honestly, no one really cares about this kind of life-changing event. So, I ask myself, what did I really learn in Europe that goes beyond the everyday things I miss? Here's a few golden saucers, universal truths, I've compiled.

--Love and be fiercely loyal to your friends. They are the links to your inner-child and allow you to find the true ore of any experience, especially in travel. Spontaneously remind them of how thankful you are that they are there for you.

--In the event of awkward handshake/moving in for hugs/flailing hand gestures, just give a HUG! Hug your family often. Hugs are the essence of compassion, love, encouragement, safety, and reassurance.

--Explore. Make the most of breaks, time off, and weekends.

--Relationships are rarely a matter of one's appearance but are much more dependent upon encouragement and communication from both parties. Girls: do not expect for anything to happen simply by being noticed. More than likely, a guy won't talk to you because it takes a lot of guts to make the first move. Help him out. Communicate. Dare to get turned down. Guys: Don't want to go so far as to enter the "date" territory on first meeting? Ask a girl out to coffee. Tea. It's not really a date, but if it goes really well, you can make it one.

--Be a listener and offer selfless conversation; listen to every person like they are giving a one-time-only boarding call for your flight number. Always try to ask more questions about the person you're talking to than they can ask about you.

--Walk as often as possible. Walking allows for vital personal time to think, absorb, and evaluate.

--When walking into a room of complete strangers in which you don't know a soul,walk around and introduce yourself (the food table or bar is a good place for this). As excruciatingly painful as it is, honestly people probably won't think much about the fact that you're there alone.

--Regardless of your tastes or morals, alcohol is a necessary part of social behavior and business. Find a few drinks you like. You can always drink and never get drunk. Sipping is the key. If there's an option for cider or Strongbow, take it. It's like apple juice.

--If a guy starts buying you drinks, repeatedly, thank him politely for the drinks, try to sip them as long as possible, keep your head, and NEVER feel rude about leaving with no explanation if he is beginning to be more adamant that there be "payment" for his benevolence.

--Always deposit part of your pay check into a savings account.

--At some point in her life, every girl should try to go a month with little or no make-up or extra hair appliances. Mascara, chap stick, hairdryer, shampoo, soap. Confront yourself honestly.

--Make it a daily goal to acknowledge someone who has a seemingly menial task, even if he or she is rude to you. Imagine spending eight hours a day picking gum off London sidewalks in the rain. Show that person that they are a person--a beautiful person.

Such are the golden saucers of my Europe experience. As I try to step out of the bitter barn, I realize these universals are trans-atlantic. They are realizations that, thanks to my solitary European travels, I have incorporated into daily American life. It's important to step back and fairly evaluate life-changing experiences. As I use the next few months to truly evaluate , I see how my evaluations take on a more global picture, a macro-crumpet view, and I can use my actions to reverberate off others so as to impart these "golden saucer" truths that bitter barn words fail to communicate.