Barbie-Mobile

Earlier this Summer, my friend Myk, his girlfriend Allison and I drove to Scranton for a car show that turned out to be not quite worth the 5 hour drive. It was not a totally wasted trip, because on the way there, we saw this...

The trailer in the above picture, taken through my windshield, was towing one of the weirdest things I've seen in a looooong time...

A motorbike covered in Barbie dolls!



In addition to the Barbie dolls, there were a few Jolly Rodger flags too. I don't know.

What do you call a guy hanging on the wall?

I have a backlog of things that I need frame. I also have a stack of things that ARE framed that I haven't gotten around to hanging up. I'll get around to it eventually. I've got other things to do. Like chase the cat around the house with my video camera in hopes he'll do something interesting. You know, important stuff.

This frame situation is the bane of my Mother's existence.

Everytime she visits, she asks if we should hang things on the walls. I've already got a lot of things up around the house, so it's not as if my walls are bare. The un-hung things apparently eat at her soul. I don't know why.

This weekend, I went frame shopping and bought enough frames for all the unframed things I have aquired. Thus, the backlog is gone and my mother will now have to find something else to nag me about.

By the way, you call him "Art."

Ick.

The deck is almost finished. The only things that need to be done are small cosmetic type things that I'm in no hurry for.
My Father is the greatest for building this for me... he even used vacation days to come up and build.

He was up this last weekend building.. He came up on thursday night in order to be up stupidly early on Friday to start the day building.

When I got home from work on Friday evening, I found him sitting on the deck drinking a Corona, slightly buzzed. I tell him the deck looks great and he says he's done for the day.

Then he shows me his hand. His knuckle is a meaty, bloody mess. Holy poop, it looks bad.

He tells me he got it caught in his belt-sander. HE GOT HIS KNUCKLE CAUGHT IN A BELT-SANDER!

What a trooper.

He sleeps

Nothing of note, just some pictures of the devil sleeping. I think the slow change from Summer to Autumn is making this cat insane. He's been more of a jerk this week than usual. I've said this before, but he's really lucky he's adorable.

Top Banana of Coney Island!

See the giant inflatable banana...?

I bought it. I had to.

Obviously.

Win!

Claw-game prizes at Coney Island...

Dining at Coney Island

Return to Coney Island

Went to Coney Island yesterday. We went because this weekend was the last official open weekend of the season. With the land sales and uncertainty of the future of parts of Coney island, we wanted to go one last time. Coney Island will open next season, but it may be quite different.

In process...

Almost done!

I don't know what part of this makes me happier... the deck, or the fence that blocks the demon neighbor's view of my yard.

The Female Elvis

Janis Martin passed away today.

Turn it all around!

the previous post was really whiney and abrasive, so to balance everything out...

A Small List of Things I Like:

soft serve pistacio ice cream
when someone on television winks, and a "twinkle" sound is added
puppies that haven't "grown" into their feet yet
sleeping until you wake up naturally
scrambled eggs, home fries and toast
pantone 3265
the sound of lawnmowers
swingsets
the aloofness of my cat
fake, plastic food
the sound of a tattoo machine just starting up
tacky holiday decorations

See? I'm not always full of piss and vinegar.

Home Depot, you are dead to me.

The following list is composed of things that were supposed to occur this week. The items marked with a "YES!" did, in fact. happen. The items marked "TOOLBAG!" did not happen.

My Father and I go to HOME (Incompetent assholes) DEPOT last week to place an order for deck building materials. YES!

Man at Home Depot gaurantees delivery for Thursday Morning. YES!

My Father drives to Suburbia from his own home, 100 miles away, the night before the delivery date. YES!

Building Supplies are delivered Thursday morning. TOOLBAG! TOOLBAG! TOOLBAG!


Ahem. Let me explain...

Wednesday when I got home from work, my Father was already there, sitting on my couch watching some zombie movie. There was a message on my answering machine from a guy from Home Depot. Let's call him "Idiot."

In the message, Idiot says that part of my order was out of stock and that he looked at my order and thought there wasn't much I could build without the out of stock item, so he went ahead and cancelled my Thursday delivery, and rescheduled it for Saturday, when the out of stock item would be back in stock. He then says to call him if there is a problem with this. He'll be there until 3pm.

Three? It's now 6 in the evening. I call anyway and the woman who answered says to call back in the morning at 6 AM and they should be able to load the in stock portion of my order and deliver it LIKE WE AGREED UPON and i PAID for.. No where in my delivery contract did it say "If an item is out of stock, an Idiot will assume you don't want ALL THE OTHER STUFF you ordered and will reschedule the entire order, leaving you with nothing to work with."

I call back in the morning and explain the situation to Idiot. Idiot says he tried to call four times and then left a message on the fifth call. Funny, because my phone logs all calls that come in and there was only ONE call from Home Depot. He gets flustered and mutters something about calling and he's lying to me.

The out of stock item is a bunch of wood for the top of the deck, so his assumption that we can't do any work until we have the out of stock item is false. More arguing goes on involving me asking several times why he was making judgement calls regarding what part of my order I need when and him tellimg me some crap about the trucks already leaving so nothing can be loaded on them today anyway. Uh, it's 6 in the morning.

I ask him why the out of stock item wasn't flagged as such in their inventory when we ordered the wood a few days ago. He said it was in stock AT THE TIME WE ORDERED IT, but when it came time to load the truck wednesday, that particular wood size had sold out. Huh? So ordering items from Home Depot for delivery is in no way a guarantee that the item will be available when it is time to be delivered. Because they don't put anything aside for anyone's order. They just hope the items won't sell out between the order date and the delivery date. I ask him all this and he says that yes, that is the way it works. That is a horrible way to process orders. How dumb.

I hang up and then my Father calls back. hehehee

I then walk into the other room to get some breakfast and I keep hearing my Father say, "That's not my fucking problem. Rent a truck. We have a contract," several times.

Then I hear the best thing, ever...
"I don't care if all you have in stock is one nail. We ordered it, so you put it on the truck and fucking deliver it."

So yeah, everything is getting delivered on Saturday, but we did get some money off our order and also free delivery, so that's something.

I really hope the delivery shows up on Saturday.

Deck Deck, Goose.

Construction of my deck started last weekend...

There is now a piece of string in my yard that marks where the deck will be. It also keeps people from falling into the post holes that were dug. My neighbors have a little yippy annoying dog that runs into my yard all the time, and it would be quite a shame if one of them tripped and fell into one of the holes while running around my yard yelling at their dog at 3 in the morning, like they do ALMOST NIGHTLY. I feel bad for that dog. It's not her fault that her owners are such jerks.

Another great thing about this deck is that there will be a fence on one end to block the jerks from staring and snickering at me while I'm simply trying to grill a frankfurter in my own yard.

I can't wait.

Food Fighters!

I've been looking for these things for a while now. They were made in the late eighties. These don't seem to have had a very big production run.. it's proving to be very difficult to find any of them. I saw one on Ebay the other day. Just ONE. What the hell?

I think either Mattel only made about 73 of these things, or some weirdo in a basement somewhere is hoarding them. In this day and age of internet bidding sites and flea markets, I think it should be easier to find these toys.

Look at how funny this is...


I really like the fight scene on the package, although the tile looks like bathroom tile, as opposed to kitchen tile...

Look Familiar?

It's the Monkey Head Robot from Sharper Image!

I saw it at Coney Island this weekend. Right next to the chimp-bot was a mannequin that you could make dance around for either 25 or 50 cents, I can't remember. Either way, it's worth it.

More Coney Island...

Nice sign...


This made me laugh...

The Coney Island Rockabilly Festival

I recently bought a video camera, so I recorded a few of the bands this weekend.

They can be seen here...
www.youtube.com/suburbanwonderland

Hot Dogs and Upright Bass

This weekend I went to the Coney Island Rockabilly Festival. Saw great music, went on the Wonder Wheel and waited far too long in a line for a certain famous hot dog.




I kept seeing this dog trotting around on the boardwalk...

The Old Staircase Guard

When I was younger, my Grandparents kept this life-sized, jewel-eyed snake on the bottom of their staircase to keep us kids from going up the stairs and possibly falling and cracking our noggins open. It was a big wooden staircase so i can understand why we were banned from climbing around there unless they were around. The snake worked.. we were all scared of this thing and swore it moved when we went near it.

This past year, both my Grandparents passed away, and their house was sold. I wondered what happened to the snake. It turns out my father had taken it out of the house during the big cleanout before it was put on the market. It now resides in my living room in Suburbia. And it's going to stay there too... this sort of thing is more important to me than anything of monetary value. The snake is full of memories, and you can't buy those.

Graceland.

TODAY IS THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF ELVIS.

It's in caps because it is important.