I recently took home a box of aged but sturdy VHS cassettes from my parents' house; the greatest of them all has the triple-feature of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Muppets Take Manhattan dubbed off a CBS Fox rental cassette (complete with FBI warning for context), and one of my personal 1985 guest-shots on the Ramblin' Rod show. Nearly anyone who ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

(The following is another in my endless "my high school reunion is this fucking year" series.)


( Read more... )

I have this flimsy little Class of '96 Reunion booklet that landed in my mailbox. The reunion's main committee member was once a gangly cheerleader and (as I see by her name change) is now married to her cementheaded high school football-sweetie. This probably explains why there are so many typos in the introduction. Still, my own personal ( Read more... )

I've wanted to make this post for years. In my living room is a stack of stapled-together school notebook paper from the mid-to-late 80's, and on at least half of these pages, I drew pictures of blood geysers erupting from cartoon characters' eye sockets when I should have been learning my multiplication tables. (I'm still a little shaky on the 6's ( Read more... )

So I'm in the direct center of this diaphragm-flexing Rodgers & Hammerstein pile-up. I am, sadly, the wiry 15-year-old in the powder blue cowboy shirt and bolo tie, with the vibrant note-extending gesture. I know of at least one of these kids who is now dead.

( Read more... )

Here's another narrative arc culled from old journals, involving a high school production of Romeo & Juliet in which I played an eyepatched Tybalt. Enjoy my energetically youthful misogyny, won't you?

( Read more... )