You wake up exhausted, but unable to sleep. It's the day off. The one you've been looking forward to, the end of the holiday season, the start of the slow season, there's a lot to do. New Years Day was a day off too, but that was spent cleaning the house, preparing to bring in the New Year, today will be spent with the boy, I haven't seen him since the holidays began....
By the time he arrives I'm almost asleep again, but force myself awake. He's got to open his presents.
Now I've been busy with work and all and haven't really had time to get him a proper present. A few stocking stuffers is all, a bottle of hand cream, some pink rubber gloves, a box of kleenex. It all sounds very suspicious but, believe it or not, it isn't. Really.
And the "Big Gift", one I know he'll enjoy, the padded toilet seat.
He's speechless. I take pictures.
He tells me about how he can't wait to tell his friends but they won't believe him. Not a bit. They don't believe any of his "Dad" stories. A couple of years ago he tried to tell the class about his vacation to Idaho and the subsequent week-long Odyssey of hitchhiking across the United States with his father and sister. No one believed him. We should have taken more pictures, but I doubt that would have persuaded anyone....I tell him that I've been busy working, that I meant to get him something better but nothing inspired me, that I'd go with him to the store and we'd pick something out together, but he assures me that he's just fine. He doesn't need anything.
I share with him my newfound passion for Johnny Cash. "The Man Comes Around".
"Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin'.
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin', voices cryin'.
Some are born an' some are dyin'.
It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It's hard for thee to kick
against the pricks."
I'm loving it. It's lyrically strong, unlike "Hurt", and there's something upbeat-apocalyptica about the music. That's not a misspell, I'm rewriting the language to my own ends. I suggest that he could learn to play it on the Guitar and I could sing along and play the tambourine and we could maybe visit his school and play it for his class but he's just not that enthusiastic....
Damnable adolescence. It's going to be a long next few years. Although, on the up side, he got onto the honor roll on his last report card, which impressed me until I found out there was an "Honors with Distinction", at which point I swatted him alongside the head and told him to pull up his bootstraps and try harder and ignored his protestations that it was reserved for "The Asian Students".
For my Christmas gift he's going to take me to a movie. I suggest "Avatar", the new James Cameron film, not because I like James Cameron, in fact I rather despise him (especially since "Titanic", which was akin to giving oneself a full frontal lobotomy via the eyeball...), but I'm curious to see the special effects. He's already seen it.
So we decide upon "Sherlock Holmes" - playing at Westhills Famous Players.
We've got an hour and so bundle up and head to the bus stop. We have no clue as to when the bus comes and so just wait. There's a black man waiting inside the shelter, I try to persuade him to use all the "Homey" skills he's picked up playing GTA - San Andreas to go and talk to the guy and find out when the bus is coming. It's kinda funny in that completely inappropriate way and he refuses to do it, even when I explain that he's not really black because if he was he'd just stop and carjack the next person to stop at the lights. . . .
It's what happens when you let video games inform your cultural sensitivities.
He still won't go and ask so I go and ask, as if he was a regular white guy, but he's not really impressed, maybe he's been playing GTA as well and needs to look cool. Probably he's thinking he should just carjack the next car to stop at the lights, or maybe mug me, but I really don't look worth mugging. He tells us he's just got there. So we wait a few more minutes, take a station where we can watch two bus stops at once, wait a bit longer and when it becomes apparent we can't wait any longer for fear of missing our film we start to walk. The bus passes us thirty seconds later.
It was predictable.
We hail a cab, ride the six blocks to Westbrook, the cab driver, having "forgotten" to turn on the meter, waves his hand and tells us "Ten bucks will be fine...".
I know it's fine. In fact $5.50 would have been fine and given him a hefty tip but we don't want to miss the movie so I don't bother arguing or asking him if he's friends of Maurizio and we make the film.
I have no expectations, and they're well met. It's OK, standard CGI Hollywood drek, but I like Robert Downing Jr. and he's amusing, and the steampunk props and sets make it worthwhile. The rest, well, ....
A late lunch afterwards at the neighboring "Earl's", busy restaurant, not the first choice but we have gift vouchers to use up, and I bore the boy with talk of the original Sherlock Holmes and the many and various anachronisms and anatopisms in the film. We then go to the neighboring Home Depot to pick up some hardware I'm needing for various art projects that will never, ever get off the ground and while there pop in to the men's washroom and marvel at artwork on display....
Well, I marvel at the artwork and then describe it to the boy who doesn't believe me and has to go in to see for himself....
"Shooting the Wad"
Yep, that's it. Flaming red transparent dice, a roll of money, sexy dancing olives cheering them on.
I couldn't make this shit up.
There are moments when you're exhausted and you look at this stuff and think "What the fuck?" or "Am I the only one that's sane here?", and what's really insane is that this isn't a one off, someone didn't just decide to make this, no, it got made, then somebody liked it, then somebody liked it enough to think that it deserved reproduction, not in a limited numbered series but in countless cheap fucking reproductions that are sold all over the internet. Not that the "cheap fucking reproduction" bit even matters, in fact, when you think about it it makes you think there's someone out there with the ORIGINAL of this, proudly hanging it on their wall or maybe in a gallery, protected from jealous art rivals by a thin layer of plexiglass....
Which, if you're curious, you could purchase here: http://www.redsunfineart.com/michael-godard-art.html
I couldn't sum it up better than the website does... "
Michael Godard, our new generation fine artist and also known as the rock star of the art world, brings you a lifestyle of fun, humor and joy with his fabulous artistic cutting edge creations of Martinis, Wine and naughty Olives. Every image has a story that will top your time of leisure.
From olives jumping into martinis, grapes chasing corks, dancing strawberries to gangster olives...one thing gallery owners and the public agree on..."Michael Godard's paintings are incredible!" His paintings have taken the conservative art world and turned it on its head, redefining art as we know it with a new definition and of course a punch line."
Uh-huh. And then someone at Home Depot in charge of the "Men's Washroom Art Purchasing Department" got a budget and made a decision and really liked this piece.
There's something fundamentally wrong with me, that I'm missing the meaning here, missing it completely, not even slightly understanding any of it...
I think that maybe it's just me, but the boy reassures me it's not....
We get home, he's hungry again, it's adolescence, and I feed him his favorite meal, we kick around waiting for his mother to pick him up, he goes with his Xmas loot, returns a moment later with the toilet seat laughing, his mom didn't really want him to take it with him, it's one of the pieces that can "Stay Here", which is good, because I have only the shattered splinters of a toilet seat myself, painstakingly reassembled with duck tape, and he leaves again and I crash on the bed for another couple of hours, then wake up exhausted.