Gotta get back in time.

As baby day rapidly approaches,  I have been charged with the task of getting rid of a seemingly endless supply of crap to make room for diapers, tiny hats and bronzed shoes.  And last weekend, I tackled my biggest challenge of all:  my childhood desk.  The repository for everything I thought was cool and worth hanging onto from ages 7 to 18.

To say that the contents had lost a little cachet over time would be an understatement, but what I found served as a window into the mind of a young Scott.  The Dead Sea Scrolls of  a chubby nerd in the 1980’s.

Aside from the roughly 30 % Star Wars-related content, the desk held drawings, letters, books, magazines and plenty of pictures.  Pictures documenting the evolution of my still in process awkward phase and pictures of girls from my grade school class with notes on the back letting me know that I was “hilarious” and that they “loved me like a brother.”  There is nothing a 13-year old boy loves more than being thought of by girls as their “funny brother.”

It was your loss girls. My Mom said I was very handsome.

Continuing through my grade school years, I next found a copy of my 6th grade report card.  While I have no recollection of this, my report card would seem to indicate that sometime during the Summer of 1985, I was kicked in the head by a horse or perhaps zebra.

Since I speak English, the D in the 4th Quarter of English class is perplexing.  But where I really seemed to shine was Religion.  I have a vague recollection of getting a 12% on a Religion test on which I wrote in Moses for every answer, so that would probably explain the F that I got in the 3rd Quarter.  For that, I offer my parents an extremely belated apology, since they probably could have purchased a Datsun hatchback for what they paid to send me to Catholic school.

The reason for my poor grades came into a little more focus when I found the “books” that I had not only read, but decided to hold onto in case I wanted to re-read any dog-eared pages which held passages that were particularly meaningful to me.  Literary classics like the novelization of the pilot episode of “Miami Vice,” The Complete Book of Star Wars Trivia, and a CB Radio Handbook.  Nerdiest of all was a Han Solo novel, which I covered in a book report in the 8th grade.  Mrs. Saunders’ only note:  “Really?”

Holden Caulfield. Tom Joad. Ricardo Tubbs?

The magazines that I had decided to keep weren’t much better.  Only slightly cooler than the issues of nerdy kid favorite Starlog, was a copy of the hard-hitting news quarterly Dynamite.  Tackling such important questions as “Who is your favorite member of Duran Duran?” and “Who would win between Transformers and Go-Bots?”  Both questions which I am not sure we have ever truly answered definitively.

I think the tagline "For the 1980's Kid" says it all.

The self-produced items in the desk didn’t cast me in any better of a light.  Several drawings of G.I. Joe characters, recreations of Bloom County comic strips, and the outline for an unfortunately never completed script for “Die Hard 2.”  (Bruce Willis, if you’re reading this, call me.)

As I moved into the high school stuff, I found evidence of  a rebellious phase:  A button which let everyone know that I had attended the K-SHE 95 Right to Rock Rally.  A wild, come-as-you-are event from 1-2 pm in the parking lot of Union Station, featuring live performances from Don Henley and Alannah Myles and the in-your-face political protests of a man in a Davy Crocket-esque buckskin outfit holding a picket sign that read “Free the Weed.”  I risked mob violence, sunburn and an acoustic version of “Black Velvet” to fight for your Right to Rock.  You’re welcome.

While a lot of what I found made its way to the trash, I will admit that I saved some things.  Things that will one day provide my children with hours of laughter at my expense.  But if I am ever going to have to tell them to crack the books, I suppose that I should probably burn that report card.

Twihard: With a Vengeance

I consider myself a fairly well-rounded individual, as I enjoy learning about all sorts of different subjects,  but of all the things that remain a mystery to me (e.g. how the Hoover Dam was built, algebra and the surprising longevity of Howie Mandel’s career) , nothing has come close to my complete lack of comprehension of the tween-to- Cougar phenomenon that is “Twilight.” 

I don't even know what to say about this.

I will be up front right now and state that I have not read the books.  I have, however,  been subjected by my wife to the first two films, and from that experience I cannot  understand why the rabid fans of this  story make the girls in the crowd at a Duran Duran concert in 1985 look like the audience for an educational lecture on the dangers of sunstroke.  I have to keep coming back to the realization that as A.) a man and B.) a man who is old enough to make references to Duran Duran,  Twilight simply wasn’t made for me.   Much like soy burgers and recumbent bicycles. 

From what I have gathered so far, the story seems to revolve around a vampire and a werewolf fighting over a girl (Bella) who has as much magnetism as that giveaway from my Dentist’s office which struggles to hold my phone bill to the fridge.   But as much as a dud as she seems to be, I still think that she could do better than these two guys.  Both of whom seem like the sort of d-bag a girl would wonder why she dated so long when the relationship ended. 

The vampire is a wishy-washy moper who has a perpetual “It’s 4:20 at Tommy Chong’s house” -look on his face.  He breaks up with Bella about every 15 minutes because he doesn’t want her to get hurt, never hangs out with her friends and still lives with his creepy parents even though he is about 1,000 years old.  But he sparkles in the daylight like a stripper walking to her car after closing time.  So he’s got that going for him. 

The werewolf has a unpredicatable temper which will most likely end with someone needing stitches. But if you got to know the real him you would see that he is really sweet when he isn’t throwing your Precious Moments figurines through the tv screen because  you taped over “The Ultimate Fighter.”  He rarely wears a shirt and has abs that look like a topographic map of the Andes, so I guess that makes up for a lot. 

Women seem to fall into one of two camps with these guys.  My wife has let me know on many occasions that she thinks the actor who portrays Captain Six-Pack is the bees knees.  (In all fairness, she probably didn’t use those exact words)  After seeing this young man, I can say without hesitation that the only thing that I have in common with him (looks or otherwise) is that we are both currently living on Earth. 

The thing that I find most amusing about this Twilight craze is that if I had asked my wife to watch a straight-to-DVD quality movie about vampires and werewolves 5 years ago she would have told me to get lost.  But she called me after seeing the latest installment at the theater to let me know that it was “soooooo  good.”  

I am an admitted nerd, but I guess I just don’t understand being a crazed fan of anything.  I once attended a 12 am opening night showing of “Star Wars: Episode 1,” before which a portly Jedi tore his ACL having a light saber duel with a Sith Lord who may or may not have spent his days working at Kinko’s.  Witnessing that event changed me.  I think, now, I could only reach the Twilight fan’s level of excitement if Elvis delivered a pizza to my house in the Batmobile. 

I don’t begrudge the fans for their enjoyment of these stories.  I think it is great that it gets people so excited and maybe gets them to read something.  But this isn’t my thing.  So, for now, I will let others have their fun as I steer clear of this craze in the same way that I do with man-capri’s….or the Mercury Capri. 

Where was the government oversight of the Big 3 when this happened?